On 13/2/22 06:47, Timothy Collinson - timothy.collinson at port.ac.uk
(via tml list) wrote:
> Being notes on the 37th session of our Traveller Adventure.
>
> *TTA XXXVII*
>
> Off we go up the line.Having ‘wrapped up’ Inselberg last time and
> tried to get some idea of whether the players wanted to go direct to
> Jesedipere and start there or whether they wanted the opportunity to
> equip themselves at Nasemin along the way as Oberlindes had suggested,
> I realized that although we’d agreed they’d refuel at Nasemin, I
> didn’t really have much idea of what everyone would prefer.As usual,
> my inexperience – or perhaps now I should just say my lack of ability
> – had me in a quandary over what was “best to do”.I thought I could
> wing it and see what the players, or the characters, wanted to do as
> we got on.That of course meant that I needed to be prepared for
> Jesedipere /and/ for events along the way.Ah well, I never like making
> it easy for myself.
>
... "WHAT DO?  EAT DRUMS!" - Animal, a great(-er than me) Traveller GM
>
> But it meant that I could easily see things going in one of three
> ways: a (half hour?) segment of travel to Jesedipere via the four one
> parsec Jumps and rather eliding over the time in Jump but with a quick
> look at the /Central Supply Catalogue/, sorry, market stalls at
> Nasemin.Or we could just skip on Jesedipere and pick things up on
> arrival there – maybe with some purchases just assumed.Or we could do
> what we’ve tended to do across the 36 previous sessions and play out
> the time with some stuff in Jump, perhaps some bits at the refuelling
> points of Zykoca and Yebab (we had at least agreed they wouldn’t be
> stopping at either world) and perhaps even a whole side adventure at
> Nasemin.Though it would have to be relatively brief as we didn’t have
> a lot of time before the Ashkashkur meeting with the vargr to hand
> over the meson guns/get the cash.
>
> As ever I’d left preparation rather late.Absolutely no excuse except
> the usual procrastination and displacement activity.And I don’t really
> get why as I love this kind of ‘creation’ and planning.But it is
> tricky and requires thought and work so other things are easier.Plus,
> I’d managed to mislay a key memory stick I use so I wasted a fair bit
> of time looking for that, berating myself for even needing it.(And
> being berated by my boss for still using one when I mentioned
> it.)[Reason being that work have made our IT systems so locked down
> and painful to use that doing things via the cloud has become a
> nightmare of its own. In the light of a recent cyberattack I suppose I
> can hardly blame them.Although I was rather irked the other day,
> having dutifully set up a relatively long password as per their new
> instructions, to have an IT guy login into my laptop remotely to sort
> something out and find that his username is three characters and his
> password was eight characters.<sigh>What’s sauce for the goose,
> clearly isn’t sauce for the gander.Ah well.Sorry, <rant mode off>]Oh,
> and the demands of my wife to clear up the dining room I’ve used as a
> study for years and an office for work for the last 20 months so that
> we can fit far too many people for comfort into it at
> Christmas.<sigh>Ok.Some excuses.
>
So _you're_ J. Random Poorsod?
>
> As I read up on Nasemin to get ready for the session, the byssal were
> ringing a lot of bells and I was /sure/ that I’d read some Traveller
> adventure somewhere about then.Or at least, more than just the brief
> write-up I was finding in GURPS /Behind the Claw/ for example.But I
> wasted a bit more time dragging books off the shelves in a quest to
> find what I half remembered and wondered if I was just conflating the
> Library Data with /Nomads of the World Ocean /(which is set on an
> entirely different planet).Not quite ready to give up, I tried a
> google search and that turned up:
> https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/traveller-adventure-seeds-in-the-style-of-76-patrons.341688/
>
> which I thought was just the thing really as a possible side
> quest.Although I certainly don’t recall ever seeing it before so I
> don’t think it was what I wasn’t really remembering.In any case, it
> seemed ideal as something that the players /could /get involved with –
> though perhaps not for two weeks – but which they could also skip past
> and I wouldn’t mind because I’d not invested any time in inventing
> it.It did occur to me to pinch a thought from it for a news item which
> would work as a hint if they took the option and just be ‘colour’ if
> they didn’t.That paid off.
>
Woot!
>
> So, we gathered together on WebEx once again. Discord as a side
> channel for Library Data and images.[I suppose we could move over to
> Discord entirely but I’m not sure I can record the session which I can
> in WebEx.] Tess, Jane, Jim and Carl playing Tess, Fred, Ghazan and
> Captain Loyd as usual.A host of NPCs in tow still: Kunal (pilot), Adma
> (medic), Phlo (stevedore), Lily (admin/explosives) and Gvoudzon
> (vargr-about-town).Not to mention Arrlanroughl representing
> Oberlindes’ interests and Sheelagh – now Zena – as the Captain’s
> friend-who-is-a-girl-and-could-it-be-something-more?Is that everyone?I
> lose track.And I’m supposed to know…
>
I've found writing up the major NPCs in a ship's crew, in a small-ish
list, to be helpful.
>
> After a social chat I recapped the previous session which wasn’t too
> hard as I’d only just been writing it up over the last day or
> three.I’ve gotten somewhat behind.It also seemed important to
> summarize what they thought they knew from the various messages they’d
> intercepted in the Tradewar chapter or stolen from Tukera in the
> Inselberg chapter.Jim kindly corrected me on the date as there seemed
> to be rather more time than expected to get to Jesedipere.Jim spotted
> I’d misremembered the departure date from Lewis as the departure date
> from Aramanx.Still time enough, but nearer a week or ten days in hand
> than a month.I was kicking myself for not having found time to update
> my master timeline which would have brought that error to light before
> we’d even started.
>
Would it be feasible to do a 'rough log' version of your master timeline
during game time and polish it up/bolt it in later?
>
> In Jump from Aramanx to Zykoca, I noted some things that were
> happening such as Gvoudzon moping because Gharukh has gone with
> Oberlindes to decrypt a message, Lily taking Zena under her wing, and
> so on but I made the mistake of kicking off by having Kunal chat to
> one of the players in an attempt to get some role playing going.To be
> fair, coming straight out of the blocks as I did rather cold, this was
> a bit of a surprise so I perhaps shouldn’t be surprised it wasn’t
> bitten at.Fred decided to make cappuccino brownies as their snack
> supply had run short and these went down well.Ghazan (Jim) thought to
> look up Library Data on Jesedipere and that occupied us for a short
> while as I’d cobbled together a page which I now pasted into Discord
> for all to read.I learned that a page of text is over a limit so
> Discord turned it into a text document which was fine, but not quite
> as direct as I liked.So I also pasted the chunk in
> paragraph-by-paragraph which worked. Tess had been very clear that
> she’d lowered the temperature in Loyd’s cabin as a ‘punishment’ for
> kidnapping Sheelaa as she saw it, so I thought it might be fun to have
> The Captain roll against END to avoid coming down with a cold.He
> succeeded during this Jump but finally succumbed during the Jump from
> Zykoca to Nasemin.Adma was able to prescribe bed rest and fluids.It
> let me give Sheelaa, sorry, Zena an excuse to avoid him.You may recall
> that although she’s in The Captain’s cabin, the Captain has decamped
> to one of the passenger cabins to allow Zena space to ‘process’ the
> rather abrupt discovery that his invite to run away to the stars and
> adventure was all very well but he wasn’t who she thought he was.I
> cycled back round to Kunal’s enquiry of concern and had a brief answer
> but no more so we pressed on.
>
Sounds like some good role-playing.  A tool I've found that can help
encourage such is what have come to be called "GM fiat skill blocks".
Bam, there + then, the PC in question gains a skill block in whatever
skill you've specified.  Use sparingly, and adjust your criteria to your
group's experience.
>
> <snip>
>
> The other thing that occupied them during Jump – presumably in the
> evenings after their training – was a discussion about what identity
> to use at both Nasemin and eventually Jesedipere.Given the length of
> time this seemed to take with the players, it certainly seemed as if
> it would have taken them a few evenings in the lounge to settle.First
> was deciding whether to use the March Harrier identity, the Albatross
> identity (from Tradewar and Inselberg) or the third transponder
> setting that’s currently blank.Arrlanroughl readied his, presumably
> rather illegal, computer/software so as to be able to create a third,
> and final identity if they so chose.The Albatross was clearly right
> out for sneaking around on Jesedipere as news of them at Lewis could
> easily have got there before their arrival.The March Harrier seemed a
> reasonable choice until it was pointed out that that identity had had
> its own run-ins with Tukera and might be unwise.So having decided to
> use the third transponder setting there then followed a debate on what
> to call the ship.We went through various options (including a
> discussion about whether a German name would actually be ‘readable’ in
> the Third Imperium and whether or not it was wise to use a name like
> ‘Dark Ship’ (in any language) and thus suggest they were up to no
> good.Arrlanroughl soon put his keyboard aside to wait for a final,
> final answer as his paw wore out the delete key and hovered over the
> enter key.Eventually The Odyssey was settled on and as I blanched at
> /everyone/ producing nom-de-plumes once again, we limited it this time
> to Loyd becoming Captain Homer Dunkel.
>
Subsector's greatest(?) no-goodniki, in proud tradition of Boris
Badenov, nyet?
>
> Anyway, any thought I might have that we’d whizz through all that was
> clearly coming to naught – entirely my fault – but we did eventually
> arrive in the outer system of Zykoca.I’m not sure I’ve read much about
> it, but I have been assuming that (good) astrogation rolls can put
> them into a planetary system roughly where they want to be – not just
> close to the 100D limit which would normally be the aim.In general,
> Loyd’s astrogation and Tess’ engineering rolls are so much above
> what’s required that misJump is never a risk and I’m happy enough to
> say they can, generally, aim for where they want.In any case, there
> was no intention of stopping on the Amber Zone world of Zykoca.They
> were just there to transfer fuel from the collapsible tanks to the
> main tanks, work out the astrogation plot to Nasemin – although this
> was done more slowly than usual and with Kunal’s help as Loyd was now
> coming down with his cold – and take the opportunity to get into vacc
> suits and paint the hull.Again. Loyd was excused due to being ill.And
> had rolled a four on my 1D light/miserable/death’s door table so he
> was much happier out of the way.And a good job he isolated himself as
> that made the rolls I had everyone else make to avoid catching it off
> him, rather less difficult!Ghazan had a close shave and thought his
> throat tickled for a day or two but it didn’t turn into anything.
>
There are crunchier rules, but buggrit, millennium hand and shrimp,
leave 'em where they are.  Sounds like you were on a roll.
>
> After some more training and probably more discussion about whether
> they were happy with their new identity we arrived at Nasemin.I had
> some news items for them as is traditional on arrival in system –
> presumably there’s lots of broadcasts and comms chatter flying round
> for them to hear.This included them picking up on my snippet inspired
> by the AlHazred’s patron encounter (URL above) and a discussion about
> why Biaadin might be missing.I’d decided by now /not /to offer the
> patron encounter directly, partly because time was getting on and
> partly because I had something of a sense of a desire to ‘get on’.But
> I quite liked the sense of stuff happening that they /could /have got
> involved in but weren’t, so I’m glad I put the note in the news.[Oh,
> and FWIW, my logic for Zykoca NOT having news items was a low-tech
> level and a general lack of enthusiasm for off-worlders.Laziness in
> inventing something, not at all!]Although I’d prepared for gas giant
> refuelling and had the Mongoose /Traveller Companion/ rules and notes
> to hand, they decided to refuel at Nasemin itself and I got to use my
> little descriptions of the planet, starport approach in Weather, and a
> market/bazaar where they could buy all sorts of items of all sorts of
> quality at all sorts of prices.
>
Regarding gas giant skimmage per the _Companion_, I've found dropping
the base difficulties by 2 to work well enough in Parental Advisory. 
Curly lacking two left feet - DEX 12, iirc, and making off with (the
American rapper, not the Belgian jurist) M.C. Hammer's pants from 140
years later a couple of times - and having The Right Stuff (Pilot
(spacecraft) 4) may also have had something to do with it.
>
> The Weather.Yes.This seemed straightforward enough.From published
> Library Data Nasemin is rather stormy so I thought I might as well
> lean into that.My description began: “The starport is on the island of
> Idelph in the Bermon Sea.A jewel in the eastern ocean – well it would
> be if only it wasn’t so windswept and rain wracked.Much is in a lower
> level beneath the surface of the land and the water.Even at TL11 there
> is a problem with mould and a certain aroma in the place that is hard
> to ignore.[Gvoudzon at DM-1 for scent rolls.]”In my head was the idea
> of using Michael Brown’s interesting take on the subject in /Weather
> /(https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/317312/Weather).That was fine
> although the PCs weren’t around long enough for the storm to blow
> over, but it did give Kunal a chance to show off her skills.Which
> would work well if she wasn’t an NPC.Rather than just have me doing
> the dice rolling, Loyd is their second pilot so I had him rolling for
> Kunal.Well, I know he was tucked up in his sick bed, but his rolling
> was atrocious and twice Ms Dins had to pull out of her landing as wind
> shear fouled up her approach and more than rattled the occupants of
> the March Harrier.Sorry, Odyssey.I inflicted damage rolls on the crew
> but may have gone overboard on saying a failed DEX roll meant 2D
> damage.Perhaps that was a bit harsh.Ghazan was unconscious (as was
> Phlo) under the knockout blow rule, Fred was very dazed and Tess had
> been through the wars, but at least that gave Adma something to do.But
> he’s an NPC too so the value of that is somewhat reduced.Although I
> suppose the PCs do get to role play their injury/recovery if they so
> choose.
>
Sev 1 or 2 crew critical hit?  Bent landing gear?
>
> The major snag with all /that/ was that as I ran a rollcall of who was
> going ashore it was soon apparent that with Loyd sick and the other
> PCs bruised, battered or blotto, it was only NPCs who were going
> shopping.Stupid Timothy.Stupid, stupid.Ah well, I live and learn.
>
On upside - you've _realised_ this.  Now go and make a different mistake!
>
> The other consequence of this was maybe good and bad.Given how rough
> it had all been – from flight to landing – it seemed reasonable to
> inflict some damage on the ship.That would also give Tess something to
> do which seemed a win/win.So, I dug out the /What’s Wrong With the
> Ship? /tables I’ve used before and had Tess give me a couple of d666
> rolls.Now she had some fixing to do but with that and the refuelling
> it effectively meant she wasn’t leaving the ship and after looking at
> what the issues were – one of which was a power loss leading to a loss
> of atmosphere (not a problem on Nasemin but would have been tricky in
> space) – informed The Captain that the March Harrier/Odyssey was
> grounded for the duration.Well, I suppose that had the upside of
> giving the others time to recover.The downside is that I /think /using
> these tables means Tess the player feels her skills as Tess the
> character are being impugned.I look at it from completely the other
> direction: note how /little/ repair work she has to do generally
> thanks to her skills and dedicated maintenance; note how quickly the
> repairs are carried out usually.I’m not entirely sure I’m handling
> this well – maybe it’s the arbitrary nature of the tables or
> something?I vaguely recall Jim implying in one discussion that they
> are not how he’d handle it.This is an aspect of Refereeing that I find
> really hard.Giving the players things to do and things to respond to,
> but not being sure how best to actually implement that.Agency is the
> word that’s in my head and I try to offer this.But even with arbitrary
> tables isn’t there the option for players to head them off at the
> pass?And indeed, Tess may have been heading that way in her request to
> The Captain to allow her more engineering spare parts.Though how we’ll
> work that, I’m /really /not sure!(I mean it’s easy enough to designate
> more of the cargo hold to such spares – I think we already dedicate 3
> tons to it – with the loss of revenue that implies (not that they’re
> fussed about that, running empty as they do so often at Oberlindes’
> behest and payment).
>
Regarding player Tess' feelings, unless you're telepathic... umm.. ask?

The arbitrariness of such tables may be a factor - maybe allow PC Tess a
roll either during flight or, less ideally, retroactively, to head such
issues off before they become problematic?  And what is stopping you
from using the table entry as an inspiration for something funnier
and/or a better fit to story?

> Anyway.Eventually, Ghazan and Fred do hit the bazaar as Ghazan wants a
> rifle of some kind and Fred offers to help with advice as the academic
> is a bit clueless.Arrlanroughl tags along as they’ve persuaded him
> that this should count as part of the legitimate expenses that
> Oberlindes has offered to cover.Not missing a trick, Jim asks if
> Arrlanroughl knows about guns and I’m stumped.I have all the usual
> March Harrier PCs and NPCs with skills in a handy sheet, but hadn’t
> thought to add the (temporary?) Arrlanroughl.I decide I’ll just roll
> for it and come up with double 1.No.He knows even less than
> Ghazan.Well, he is a PA really, so it seems reasonable.Though in the
> middle of the night after the game it comes to me that there’s
> actually an ‘entry’ for the main NPCs in /The Traveller Adventure/ so
> maybe I had his stats and skills all along.Even though it’s cold and
> dark I’m so curious I actually get out of bed to drag downstairs and
> check.No, it is just a paragraph of text as I’d thought.(Of course, it
> never occurs to me that there’s a tablet beside my bed on which I
> could have looked it up without getting out from under the duvet!)But
> it does make me think that maybe it’s high time I actually rolled up
> some details for Arrlanroughl.I know Gvoudzon (who does have stats and
> skills in /TTA/) has an even more detailed write up in /Freelance
> Traveller/, but I’m not sure any of the others from /The Traveller
> Adventure/ do.
>
D'OH!
>
> <snip>
>
> With time pressing on (both in game and out of it) we got going and I
> was inclined, as it was late, to gloss over the two additional Jumps
> to Jesedipere.No need to stop at Yebab although for once they’ve
> actually been there previously and had some idea of what it was
> like.Later I also realized that this haste had perhaps deprived The
> Captain of opportunities to woo Sheelaa, Zena further.Ah well.Next
> time.Meanwhile, I realized a bit too late that I’d forgotten to have
> Ghazan, I think it was, have his pocket picked of his wallet and I’m
> not sure it would be fair to retroactively fit that in next time.The
> other thing that we got nowhere near was the fact that inspired by
> Mongoose’s worldbuilding faction table, I’d come up with another bit
> of detail for Nasemin in that, as well as the representative democracy
> its UWP declares, I had rolled for a faction with significant power
> and decided that the Sklatayzy family were something of a law unto
> themselves and might provide opportunities for run ins with the
> players (or even jobs for them).Still, better to have options I don’t
> use than be stuck for options when I need something.I did get them,
> the players that is – not the Skaltayzy family – to quickly give me
> some rolls to see how training across the fortnight of Jump had
> gone.In my head is the idea that these rolls feed into the actual task
> roll, after eight weeks, for the skill improvement but there’s no
> formal mechanism for that.Really, I think, it’s just an encouragement
> for those who want to, to give this a go, but we didn’t spend long on it.
>
I thought the RAW (and thus, how I ran it) was 8 weeks of study to let
the character _attempt_ the EDU roll (diff 8).  Success, and that's one
block down of whatever skill they were studying.  Failure (or being
Drake Milford), and that's 8 weeks of study effort wasted.
>
> And /that/ is mainly because I had a sense from Carl at least, that he
> was a bit frustrated that we’d not got to Jesedipere sooner in order
> to actually get to the meat of what all the messages and communiques
> and so on had been about.I don’t know.I may be reading too much into a
> throwaway line.It’s funny how you fixate on the one downer, however
> brief, and not the enjoyable evening we’d had and everyone said they’d
> had.But it did encourage me to think, as we discussed possible dates
> for the next session and discarded two weeks’ time and three weeks’
> time, that maybe we could meet on the next Thursday.Perhaps we could
> even wrap up the entire campaign and finish /The Traveller Adventure/
> before the end of the year.Although I didn’t say that.[Next day one of
> our number reported he’d missed a calendar event and couldn’t do next
> Thursday so, unwilling to have them miss out, it looks as if we’ll
> have to continue in the new year.]I appreciate our little group could
> yet make the Showdown on Jesedipere chapter last for three evenings,
> but it still seems astonishing to think that we could be within one
> session of completing the book.How I feel about that I’m not
> sure!Where we go from that, I’m also not sure.I’m increasingly aware,
> from reading others’ experiences of gaming groups, that it’s a huge
> privilege to have had such a steady group of players across so much
> time.Reflecting on it afterwards, however, I couldn’t help wonder, for
> the umpteenth time, whether maybe I should have just picked up this
> session at Jesedipere and got on with the ‘showdown’.Would we have
> lost anything?Would it have improved things?Better referees than I
> will have to judge.
>
_Ask your players_. You may not be able to take all of their feedback on
board, but it's better than any of them feeling they are ignored.

Do they want to keep going with their current characters?

Try something different (*koff*Advisoryverse*koff*)?

How about being middle-to-senior crew aboard _Starleaper One_'s
history-changing flight?  (For such an epochal flight, I'd lean towards
keeping Lorette Strider, the canonical captain, an NPC).

Or, for a change of pace, still in something like the Advisoryverse, We
Built This City^H^H^H^HColony?

Does someone else want to run Traveller?

Zeitlin, J. has pointed out my perspective is probably biased here.  My
current mob, in its current geographically-dispersed form, has been
gaming that way since 2013 (?).

Here, I think Jeff said something that best translates into Pommie as
"smug/lucky git".

I've had a stable-enough group for long enough to be able to duct-tape
my colours to the mast (can't afford nails) around long-running
modern/sci-fi games.  I'd clean forgotten that Parental Advisory had
been running weekly since before COVID Classic landed in STRAYA
(25/01/20).  That game has come to an unplanned, but hilariously
(according to players)/ironically (according to PCs) appropriate end as
at last week.

I met Wombat and Easy Frag (before he had the lack of hair that provoked
my nickname for him of "Mullet" - he's taken it in good enough humour he
hasn't GROWN HAIR about it) at a FLGS in 2005. With any luck, a third
veteran of that FLGS  might be joining us.

I went to school with Eddles (1997), same school with dingus (1998) and
TAFE with Herr Sweep (2001).  Started gaming with those three in 2001,
before the cultural end of the 20th century.