Comments interspersed.

On 5/12/21 07:24, Timothy Collinson - timothy.collinson at port.ac.uk
(via tml list) wrote:
>
> The Traveller Adventure - part 35
>
>
> For once I was more excited about refereeing than apprehensive. I wish
> I could have that balance more often!
>
Perhaps... _dun dun DUNNNN_... you're getting better as a GM?
> <snip>
>
> As we’ve /not/ established that the wallets are transceivers, I guess
> it was fair to limit them to a range along these lines although I
> managed to get to that with ‘feel’ and Jim’s great advice rather than
> spending ages looking stuff up in a variety of books and on multiple
> pages as I just have in writing this.It’s probably a bit late to nail
> this down, but I’ll write myself some notes for future Traveller
> games.My apologies to all those who eat this stuff for breakfast and
> could have told me all that on the spot.
>
Sounds like improvisation on the spot to me.  Something you say you're
not overly good at.
>
> <snip>
>
> How to manage the schedules?How to manage the schedules?No one had
> come up with a plan for that last time.No one seemed to have solved it
> in the interim.No one was suggesting anything now.I couldn’t bear it
> any longer.Lily, who previously had been assigned to help with admin
> and I’d made sure I’d included in the recap as being doing just that
> and assisting Marilla Sen who organizes them all and their rotas, is
> sitting around the meal table as they discuss this.“Guys, I’m sitting
> right here.”They press on with their planning discussion.“If only we
> could fix people’s days off.”“I’m RIGHT HERE.”Finally, it twigged.I
> have no idea if that was me abusing the playing of NPCs and whether I
> should have left the players if not the characters to stew or left
> them to come up with another plan entirely, but anyway.It moved things
> forward and we were in danger of not getting any further along with
> events as we’d spent quite a time by now on comms and plans.I did at
> least have her say “there is one snag”.“I can’t come up with a reason
> why /I/ should be going out there.”In my planning of that line the day
> before, I had thought she could follow up with something along the
> lines of “but I could always stay here, cover your tracks and perhaps
> catch up with you at a later date” with the thought that maybe it
> could be an exit for the NPC (without killing her).In the event I
> can’t recall if I forgot or didn’t get a word in edgeways with various
> things being thrown at me, but if I did deliver the line, it got lost
> in the traffic.
>
> Indeed, it was worse than that as I had assumed they’d still want to
> use their remaining few days to carry out some hacking but their
> entire purpose for being on Lewis seemed to have been lost sight of in
> their schemes to rescue Gharukh at the behest of Gvoudzon.Again, I’m
> feeling a bit bad driving things along as he’s an NPC and maybe I was
> overplaying his concern for the cryptographer, but if nothing else I
> thought it would give a suitable climax to the chapter.
>
Repeat after me.  No GM plan survives first contact with the players,
let alone _continued_ contact.  As far as I can tell, you did the right
thing to keep things moving and not bog down.
>
> So, to give them hacking opportunities I’m still playing through the
> days (see previous write up) only I’m not having too much in the way
> of actual events so that I don’t slow things up.Fred/Frank is doing
> chaufferly duties; Ghazan/Arlan is doing mechanical things with Eric
> who thinks he’s found an ideal replacement so he can retire; Loyd/Ooar
> is slaving away in the kitchens and seems to have found a niche in
> providing food for the children in the house.But no one’s doing any
> hacking!And each day, if not the game, is quite dull.
>
> I’m still trying to play Sheelaa as obsessed with Ooar so I threw in
> an event I’d meant to do last time but forgot.I introduced it by
> having Gvoudzon drop by Loyd’s room to express his concern about
> Gharukh and to seek reassurance that they were going to do something
> about it.“Certainly”, responded The Captain.Even if it’s a bit referee
> driven with me playing the vargr, the players seem to have grabbed
> hold of the idea.Gvoudzon disappears for the night, satisfied.Loyd was
> then awoken in the night by some kind of sound which might have been a
> door closing.The following night, he awakes again to find Sheelaa
> sitting at the end of his bed just watching him.He doesn’t seem at all
> fazed by this and invites her to stay but in her embarrassment at
> being caught has already fled.[You’re a coward, TC…]
>
> Another dull day passes.Still no one is doing any hacking so I’m not
> inclined to linger but did think I might as well riff on Jane’s
> introduction of a squeedle in the kitchen last time.[Rather out of the
> blue because she’d just knitted a large one.]I figured Arlan would be
> the one to find it and had Sen rather angrily order Eric and he to
> find out why the heating seemed too warm on the west side of the
> house.Ghazan (Jim?) goes all analytical problem solving and I’m
> desperately wishing I had actual environmental control schematics for
> the building.I don’t even have floor plans.Aaarrgh.I just have to make
> stuff up on the fly.Never really my forte and I don’t feel that went
> particularly well.Probably a good job no one is an actual HVAC
> engineer.It was probably also a good job neither Tess the player nor
> Tess the character was here.I tend to get myself into trouble with
> engineering stuff unless I’m very sure of my ground.Even so, it was
> all taking long enough and time was pressing on such that I was
> convinced we’d get nowhere near the rescue this session and we'd be
> backA bfor Inselberg part 5 next time.I couldn’t bear the idea of
> stretching it out any further and got on and had Ghazan/Arlan find a
> blockage in one of the heating ducts.Eric sends him to find some
> flexible camera thingies and for the first time Arlan has free run of
> a small equipment store cupboard.He takes note of the contents – just
> about avoiding Eric wondering where he’s been all this time when he
> returns with the gear.They divide the ducts between them and
> eventually Arlan finds the blockage; something biological perhaps?He
> uses another flexible doodad with some pincers to try extracting
> it.Disastrous DEX roll so he just gets a bit.Looks like a tentacle or
> something.Eric tells him to try again.Better DEX roll and he pulls
> out, to absolutely no one’s surprise by this point, a large
> squeedle.The edges of which are beginning to rot.Lots of discussion
> about how it got there and who might have brought it in.[I don’t know.
> Last time one in the kitchen was fine, but now a second one and you’re
> just beginning to wonder that?!]They decide they’re going to have to
> tell Marilla Sen although Ghazan, perhaps wisely, decides to feign
> ignorance over what on earth it is.In actual fact he was quite clearly
> remembering all too well that when he first met Adma it was around the
> time the medic had a smaller one in his shirt pocket which Tess
> eventually spaced.Eric has no desire to face Sen and suggests
> (orders?) Arlan to go and see her with the squeedle now stored in a
> bag.Sen is curious, but mostly relieved that they seem to have got to
> the bottom of the heating problem.
>
Sounds like you're giving Rule of Funny full reign.
>
> Jim, of course, knows that Fred and Loyd caught one in the kitchen,
> but his character Arlan doesn’t know that.Cue next time they’re eating
> together a discussion along the lines of “remember that creature Adma
> had…” and then explaining that they just found another one.This time
> properly dead already.Fred, or more likely Jane, is disappointed that
> they’ve given it to Sen so they can’t stirfry that one as well.Though
> Lily, or was it Adma – who am I these days? – thinks it’s probably a
> good job they didn’t stirfry it if parts of it were rotting.Meanwhile,
> at the same meal table, Ooar is being curiously incurious about
> Sheelaa’s night time wanderings.I privately text Jane to ask if I’m
> being suitably obsessive enough.I don’t think she saw it though as I
> didn’t get a response.While it’s handy having the private channels on
> Discord that Tess set up for us, I’ve not worked out a way of alerting
> players that there’s a message there without alerting the other
> players that, well, there’s a message there.Even if they can’t read
> the content, sometimes knowing such a message exists rather spoils the
> fun.
>
> Anyway, it was soon back to the planning and I had Gvoudzon still
> concerned about Gharukh in the hopes it might speed things along.But I
> also couldn’t resist dropping a rather unsubtle reminder about them
> being on Lewis for a purpose which reminded them to have a few more
> hacking attempts.If you remember from last time, they’ve worked out
> that providing the family member whose login they’ve pinched is in the
> house, it doesn’t seem to draw the attention of the guards.Having Adma
> at the other end of the alarm system must help as well.Maybe I’m being
> too easy on the players.Now you may also recall from previous reports
> that as well as the four messages provided in /TTA/ which they’re
> ‘supposed’ to be finding, I’ve added a whole bunch more so as not to
> make the printed ones the be-all-and-end-all.[There are a few problems
> with this: firstly it takes more hacking attempts to find
> ‘everything’; secondly, the players and the PCs actually have no idea
> of when they have found ‘everything’ so at what point do they quit?;
> oh, and of course it took some effort to come up with them in the
> first place.Finally, it does have a tendency to distract them into
> thinking some messages are important which were just there for fun.But
> on the whole, I think it was worth it and has worked quite well as
> they have a fair bit to chew over, or to laugh at, and it allows some
> in character discussion about what’s important, what’s useful to
> Oberlindes, why certain family members might be looking at x or y and
> so on.]Intercharacter discussion, to relieve some of the pressure on
> myself, is something I’m all for and would like to encourage more
> of.In fact, it was The Captain (or Carl) who was most stressed about
> whether they’d found ‘everything’ or not and so he kept egging Ghazan
> on to further efforts.For Ghazan’s part (or Jim’s?) he was fairly laid
> back about it.In any case, I thought I would leave it in the air as to
> whether they’d found out everything they could or whether more
> attempts would find more files/dirt/intrigue.They had most things but
> not 100% of my table.Then Jim rolled very high on his last hacking
> attempt and what with the Effect that he got after skill and such was
> taken into account and /then /rolling <6> and <6> on the little
> classic Travelleresque table I’d created, I figured they really ought
> to get the couple of really juicy things they’d not found previously.
>
You have a _golden_ opportunity knocking here to get your players'
(unwitting) help in roughing out future plots.  Retroactively promote a
few (three to four) of those "red herring" messages you cooked and that
the players found interesting up to actual importance.  Doesn't have to
be immediately in the future, but will give a nice callback (and save
you some effort).
>
> <snip>
>
> After a lot had been said, and not a huge amount done – though Frank’s
> chrome was looking pretty polished – there was no getting away from
> the fact that it was time to put the plan into action.No more
> excuses.I was a bit concerned that they didn’t seem to have really
> thought through what they would do at the labs when they got there –
> what with all the lab assistants and the guards – so I had Gvoudzon
> mention his worries about it, but they seemed happy enough that they
> could make it up on the fly so I didn’t press the point.
>
> On the day of rendezvous with the March Harrier (they knew she was on
> planet due to Kunal’s call as they came in from orbit to land at the
> mine) they all piled over to the garage to get in the air/raft,
> presumably one of the larger ones.In fact, I had Adma/Manda call
> Fred/Frank from the guardhouse as he’s preparing and make sure he
> chose /this/ particular air/raft.Turns out that while Ghazan and Loyd
> have been getting on with hacking the house and business files, Adma
> has been doing a bit of snooping himself and discovered that one of
> the air/rafts has a couple of extra weapons stored in it against some
> emergency.Just a couple of carbines, but better than what they
> had.Which amounted to a sharp kitchen knife Ooar has filched and a
> large wrench that Arlan has made sure is in the toolbox he’s brought
> along for the maintenance job he’s supposed to be doing.
>
Wot, no shotgun guitars with spikes coming out of them?  Ozzy Fudd, Da
Wabbit Swayer, will not be pleased...

As for the lack of plans... this was a great opportunity to have their
complete lack of planning jump up and bite them in the glutes. 
Frinstance one of the more switched-on guards radioing Their Lordships
and blowing the lid clean off?

> <snip>
>
> Meanwhile outside, Fred is using the cover of his air/raft to break
> into the garage where Adma has told him there is a g-carrier which Jim
> (maybe Ghazan and probably not Arlan) has explained is like an
> armoured air/raft and much more suitable for their getaway and their
> run to the mines than an open air/raft.The physical lock to the garage
> didn’t present much problem for Fred’s brute strength (and some tool
> or other he’d picked up) but the electronic pad on the g-carrier is
> trickier.He tries to see if there’s a way of spoofing it but in the
> end, it falls victim to hefty thwack as well.There was some discussion
> about whether just smashing the lock would be likely to result in it
> automatically locking or automatically opening.The thought came, I
> think it was from Jim, that it would depend on whether it was
> primarily for civilian or military use.Was safety or security the
> prime concern?I decided it was a family vehicle, that maybe the guards
> would use, but primarily civilian so that with safety the overriding
> factor, damage would cause it to fail in an ‘open’ state.I decreed
> that a double 2 would mean it failed to ‘lock’, otherwise it would
> fail to open.No, I clarify, it would fail and be open.This made for a
> very tense dice roll from Jane and everyone, including me, held our
> breaths.In the event, she avoided snake eyes and we all breathed
> again.[I’m not quite sure why, as they could have still escaped in one
> of the air/rafts, but anyway, it was a great dramatic moment.]
>
Brilliant!
>
> Loyd, Sheelaa and Lily return from the woods.Presumably Lily has been
> ensuring that no dalliances have been going on between the two
> lovebirds so they have actually collected some herbs and Loyd is
> already mixing up some concoction with the mortar and pestle he’s
> brought along for the purpose.He’s soon got a spicy broth prepared and
> they approach the guards.His plan is to have them drink it and knock
> them out so they can’t interfere and can’t alert the resting/sleeping
> guards over in the other building.I initially play them as bored but
> very uninterested in this as it’s not their job and they’re on
> duty.I’m gearing up for a Persuade roll here.But Carl goes into a real
> production number of actual role-playing chit chat about how wonderful
> it is and where the recipe came from and how much Lily and Sheelaa
> have appreciated the terrific taste and the great gusto it imparts.I
> have Lily play along nicely and Sheelaa, after a moment’s puzzlement
> does as well.I’m still not convinced the guards would necessarily be
> persuaded so I call for a Difficult Persuade roll but offer a bonus of
> DM +1 to Carl for Loyd/Ooar’s great role playing.That seemed fair.Once
> again, we’re all collectively holding our breath.Until Carl produces a
> double 6!(Plus his skill +1, plus his +1 SOC, plus the bonus).I relent
> and have the guards persuaded under a sort of ‘don’t tell the boss’
> kind of slyness.They’re soon out cold, but propped up against the wall
> to not look /too/ derelict in their duty and Sheelaa is looking even
> more puzzled.
>
> Inside the inner lab, Gvoudzon, Gharukh, Arlan and Adma are now all
> set and Gharukh fetches the human assistant from next door.Adma is
> instantly in his best “old gang” mode from his previous life with a
> voice the crew haven’t heard before and his laser rifle up at the poor
> cryptographer’s neck.The cryptographer instantly capitulates and Arlan
> starts taping him to a chair.
>
> Back in the garage, Fred then turns to making sure the air/rafts are
> inoperable without some considerable repair work (the nuns at the end
> of /The Sound of Music/ sprang to mind).Now in actual fact, Jane had
> carried out these actions in reverse order.Wrecking air/rafts and
> /then /breaking into the g-carrier.That might have been a disaster if
> Fred couldn’t get into the latter.But I decided that on the ground in
> real life, Fred wouldn’t have been likely to make such a rookie error,
> so it was a mite unfair to insist that that should stand.I then
> worried that I was being a bit lenient once again.Ah well.
>
Again, let Rule of Cool flow.  "Cinematic Next Tuesday".
>
> <snip>
>
> In any case, it was well past ‘late’ for us as we normally stop at
> 10pm.Further combat therefore seemed a bit unkind.On the other hand,
> that everyone was still engaged at ‘past bedtime’ showed there was
> some tenseness to the situation and that we should finish tonight not
> stretch it out to another session.It was quickly realized that
> approaching the mining area from the east would leave them rather
> exposed so they circled around to the north west and came in towards
> the landing pad where the March Harrier was sitting.Kunal was warming
> up the engines and Phlo was opening the forward cargo ramp so they
> could just squeeze the g-carrier into a space beside their ATV and all
> the lanthanum ore B Crew had loaded.Kunal didn’t hang around and had
> them taking off and heading for the 100D limit before Ghazan could say
> “and we’ve nicked a load of lanthanum as well?”
>
Sounds like my mob.  Have your mob been reading my writeups?
>
> I must admit, that along with Jim, I was rather curious to see what
> the next internal Tukera report from the Inselberg Estate might look
> like.You’ve what?Lost our key cryptographer?And a large amount of her
> data?And several of the servants?And a g-carrier?[Which, looking it up
> as a I write this is worth over MCr11].And 150 tons of lanthanum
> ore?[1]I can’t help feeling someone is going to be in trouble.I’m not
> quite sure what happened to the “excellent security organization” of
> p.115 of /The Traveller Adven/ture which is supposedly protecting the
> Estate.Though rereading it, I note that it actually says “The Tukera
> estates at Inselberg… protected from /intrusions/ by an excellent
> security organization”.Nothing is said about a smash-and-grab inside job!
>
> Sheelaa’s jaw dropped as she came to terms with a rather different
> future than anything she’d imagined.“You’re a captain?You’re The
> Captain, of this ship?What else haven’t you told me?”Loyd suspected it
> might be a long Jump or two.I suspect that down in the engine room
> Tess was muttering about another ‘hot’ departure.Meanwhile Gvoudzon
> and Gharukh were falling into each other’s paws.
>
> It seemed a suitably climatic ending to some four sessions of
> Inselberg, or three if you actually only count time on Lewis, and it
> was getting late so we wrapped there with a slight dun-dun-durrrr
> moment of Tess, the next day, wonder aloud where Phlo was.Perhaps
> we’ll find out next time.Though Fred, who’d last seen her on the cargo
> ramp, wondered if they’d left her behind in all the excitement much
> like they had poor old Kfouzorr back on Aramanx.They still don’t know
> if he died in the firefight or was just left behind the as the hatch
> closed.
>
> For all its problems – mainly due to age – it’s been a good chapter
> after all and we all seem to have had fun.If I could have asked for
> anything as a Referee (aside from a complete update to the computer
> hacking) it would have been some detail of the family in the house so
> you have a clue how best to have servants interact with them as that
> seems the main point of the chapter.Floor plans of the Estate, with
> computer access points, and perhaps one or two other key servants
> would have been useful as well.But I quite enjoyed inventing these
> last and the imported Zilan servants as well.
>
*koff* improvisation good *koff*
>
> Knowing my group, we could spend a session or more just doing the two
> Jumps back to Aramanx, but in theory we only have the one chapter,
> Showdown at Jesedipere, left and we’ve completed /The Traveller
> Adventure/.So, that’s probably about four more sessions at our rate of
> progress!
>
> [1] Looking up the Base Price of common ore in the MgT2 Trade goods
> table (p.212-213) I find it’s Cr1000/ton but presumably lanthanum
> would be in Uncommon ore which is Cr5000/ton.Precious Metals, which I
> imagine lanthanum would be, are Cr50,000/ton.But just to be really
> unhelpful, /The Traveller Adventure/ book is clear that what’s being
> loaded at the Inselberg mine is ‘enriched ore’ which has already had
> some pre-processing at the mine.So what that might have as a Base
> Price, I’ve no idea.I don’t know, does Cr10,000 sound
> reasonable?Still, that’s another cool Cr1,500,000.[Checking /The
> Traveller Book/ to see if it is any clearer with that rule set doesn’t
> help.There’s no mention of ores or lanthanum on the table on p.105.]
>
> It occurs to me as I write this, that as far as I can see there’s no
> reason there mightn’t be sparkles in the ore.(Or do Tukera only ship
> out ore that has already been sifted by the poor workers on spoil
> heaps?But I can’t help feeling if there’s a chance of the waste ore
> containing them, then presumably the enriched ore might well still
> have them?)Of course, there are no rules about either how frequently
> they might be found or how much work it is to find them.How does one
> per 20 tons sound on a roll of 6+?One sophont day to sift 10 tons of ore?
>
>
At least in real world, I think you might be talking about a couple of
different things.

An "orebody" contains some amount of valuable materials that, given
current technology, market conditions, etc, can be economically
recovered.  For example, coal powerplant ash piles can be uranium orebodies.

"Ore" is/are the materials (usually minerals) present in an orebody,
before any processing.  "Gangue" are the non-valuable materials also
present in an ore body.

Processing (milling, floating, etc) produces what you called an
"enriched ore" but is, I believe, more commonly called a "concentrate". 
The gubbins that your processing rejects are "tailings".

For an example, consider the Olympic Dam orebody in (I think) South
Australia - containing copper, gold, silver, uranium, and various rare
earth oxides.  As at May 2014, its rare-earth oxide grade was ~ 3500 ppm
for light rare earths and ~110 ppm for heavy rare earths.  Entire
deposit is in region of 10 gigatonnes.

The result of straight up DIGGY DIGGY HOLE would be ore.  Feeding that
through a process recovering (say) 95% of the values and hoicking 99% of
the gangue would result in a light RE concentrate grade of 33.2% and a
heavy RE concentrate of just over 1%.  That intermediate concentrate
would need to be further upgraded to extract the actual rare earth
metals (at least with TTL8).

As I said above, industrial-scale mineral processing rarely recovers all
the values, so it does make sense to let the rare earth concentrates the
PCs swiped have a chance of containing sparkles.  Assuming they're
something analogous to diamonds, this link (
https://www.911metallurgist.com/blog/kimberlite-deposits-and-geology-formation-of-diamonds
) might be worth perusing.

Alex

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