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TTA XXI
Onwards we go, although thinning out in numbers it feels which gives pause for thought about how poor I might be at refereeing. Or maybe it’s other issues for those who can longer make it. Still, better one volunteer than ten pressed men.
We tried a new pub this time round. Apparently we’re not welcome to use the upstairs room of The Dolphin anymore. Best we can work out is that the manager didn’t like the ad hoc arrangement the bar staff had with us that if it wasn’t in use we could use it. Perhaps he thought we should be booking it properly. But there’s no way we could justify the expense even if we did like the quiet and privacy. It wasn’t as if we weren’t spending enough on food and drink in any case. Don’t know.
But anyway, a new pub had opened in Guildhall Walk – city centre of Portsmouth, just off Guildhall Square – called the Guildhall Village. What drew us to it was that it has an upstairs space with lots of tables (and ping pong if you want!) and you could even book a table if need be. We tried it out for bookgroup and liked it – but that was before term started and the students were back and before the place had been open very long, so maybe that was why it was quiet.
We pitched up a little after 5pm to find there was a drag quiz going to start upstairs at 8pm. And apparently it’s every Thursday. We normally aim to finish around 9 or 9.30pm, so fearing the noise we tried sitting downstairs. Which, for a couple of hours, wasn’t too bad but then started getting noisy itself after 8ish. But we didn’t feel too ‘exposed’ sitting at an ordinary table and there was enough noise to cover our usual gentle mayhem. Perhaps because there was only four of us. I did dig out the handmade ‘landscape’ A4 Referee’s screen Jane made me when I mentioned I didn’t like the usual ones (portrait) because they’re so tall. It didn’t hide everything I was doing and I’m not sure I care about hiding rolls anymore in any case, so it was more there to make it a fraction less obvious when I’m reading from The Traveller Adventure, or just reading from my made up notes. I don’t know that anyone cares, but it feels important to me. Having said that, given that I’d really only sketched out tonight’s events in my head when I couldn’t sleep in the small hours (and some quick notes next day), it wasn’t as if I had vast amounts of text of my own to read out in any case. Which kind of showed when comparing the TNS news items in the run up to Trade War vs my own contributions to ‘hide’ them. That didn’t work! Not sure whether to try fixing that for another time or accept that players buy into the whole conceit. While I’m thinking about players, our regular sleeper apparently has another Thursday night engagement as from now and won’t be coming along any more to occasionally stir from slumber and make a medic roll… I’m not sure whether to be disappointed at another player falling by the wayside or relieved at the (admittedly fairly slight) stress his behaviour bought to the table. I thought he’d been enjoying it – to some extent at least.
While we waited for food, I told everyone about the encounter table TML has been creating from folks’ personal experiences. If I recall correctly we might be stalled at around the 24 items mark (of 36). So I thought it might be an idea to get them to contribute a couple of lines which all were happy to do. Don’t let me forget to send them separately.
Having spent three sessions already on a side adventure which really was supposed to be just one evening to introduce a new player and turned into something a bit more epic (or perhaps fairer to say, vague), I was quite keen that we move on. Especially as the new player had never actually made it. I suppose I can console myself with the fact it sort of balances the made up chapter I inserted way back for Two Days on Carsten. So maybe this effort will see light of day at some point. Meanwhile, back in the actual The Traveller Adventure, the Trade War chapter is waiting and it was hard to see how much more we could wring out of the small Tukera subsidiary company’s abuse of a local animal if the PCs weren’t particularly interested in going to the authorities or taking direct action themselves.
So, in a quick wrap up they backed off their explosive filled submersible drone from the Kutear base (much to Lily’s chagrin) and having got passengers and freight for Rugbird, one Jump spinward, we did some Astrogation and Jump drive button pressing and headed off. No danger of misJumps really between the fairly easy tasks and the skills of our characters. I’m not sure why we roll, but it’s kind of a nice moment of stress and perhaps one day there will be a hidden negative DM that they don’t know about! Besides, it’s handy for chronology purposes to get the duration roll and Tess can glow when they hit very close to 7 days.
But we didn’t leave before getting a couple of bits of news – one from the news bulletins of Trade War and one from the local city they’re in announcing that two dandelions had been found beaten up in a back-alley. They were now in intensive care but expected to survive. Relatively unusual though as the dandies – in these parts at least – tend to keep to themselves. Despite the (deliberate) brevity of the news item, and despite it being a couple of months since we last played, I didn’t have to remind anyone of the fact that these must almost certainly be the two dandies they’d employed to watch the caves and who had been kidnapped (lionnapped?) by Kutear. Fully aware of his responsibility as Captain, Loyd didn’t hesitate in making sure their medical expenses were paid as well as making a charitable donation to Llellewyloly (good grief – after all this time can I still not spell that, he says looking it up for the umpteenth time?!) medicine.
I’m a bit cross with myself leaving Junidy so easily. Ages ago I mapped out where all the Encounters and Exotic Encounters occur in Aramis subsector so that if we got to the planets I could run the encounters. Back then it seemed unlikely we’d get to any of them; they certainly seemed a long way off. Anyway, it was only as I unpacked my notes *after* the session that I remembered there was one for Junidy which I could have used. And failed to do. Ah well. Not the end of the world and perhaps it would have just spun things out even further, but if you’re going to do TTA, it kind of seems a shame not to, well, do it. Still, on the upside, I feel that Llinos, the dandelion patron has been one of my better NPCs and it almost seemed a shame to say farewell to her. I can credit her with now being able to produce (almost) a Welsh accent. I wonder if we’ll be back this way…
I was keen to get on so for once we elided fairly swiftly over Jump which I always think is a shame.
Rugbird has a horrible atmosphere so I thought it might add something to take that figuratively as well as literally and suggest that the comms chatter as they approach the planet was laden with swearing and off-colour humour. This might have been one weak point of the evening as a) I wasn’t prepared to back it up and ‘perform’ it rather than merely describe it and b) I didn’t carry it through into subsequent conversations or interactions with anyone from the world. But as it was just a throwaway line, I don’t think it mattered much.
There’s more incoming news that’s arrived while they’ve been in Jump regarding the incipient Trade War. I’d produced a few other news items to feed the players as well although by the time I’d delivered some news as they’d arrived back from their outing on the Astrid, more as they left Junidy and now this, Tess wanted to know if there were any news reports of attacks that *weren’t* directed at Oberlindes. No. It was pretty apparent that something was being directed at Oberlindes. I didn’t even have to remind them of the older news they had had weeks back on the trip up to Junidy which was the first in the string of TNS news items from Trade War.
Now those who know The Traveller Adventure will probably be aware that you can’t just go from Kidnapped on Aramanx to Trade War because you need a certain number of weeks to pass while these news reports build up. That was the other reason for a side excursion on Junidy – it added a week or two to that timeline. By my calculations we’re now in week 8 of that stream so there’s still a couple of weeks to fill before the arrival of the Oberlindes invite to play ‘bait’.
So, what’s going on at Rugbird? Well, not a lot from the description. All remote ops from orbit. Not a planet you’re landing on. Or not, at least, as the engineer pointed out to Captain Kitman, not if you want to do anything with the March Harrier afterwards given the insidious atmosphere. I’d decided there was a main orbital station and lots of lesser ones, some under construction. The main one could have the beginnings of an engineering project to join them all in one big necklace eventually. The night before I’d had the bright idea that they could hear a rumour about a crashed ship (true) with a cargo of lanthanum (untrue) although I knew that wouldn’t really be suitable for an adventure. I’d half thought about a monastery down on the surface but that didn’t seem likely. Then I had the idea of an orbital cenotaph which would be a very small ‘station’ memorialising the 84 souls who died several years back in an attempt to set up an experimental base on the surface. “1241” (originally my idea for how many died, now the time the base suffered catastrophic collapse) is a saucer shaped disc with a wide corridor running around the outer edge giving the story of the surface installation, it’s history, the disaster and the stories of some involved. All this surrounding a central core of a pillared space filled with 84 holographic flames and the names of all 84 inscribed on the walls. (I was channelling visits to the World War I battlefields around the Somme etc and some of the memorials around those parts).
So the PCs hit a bar just outside the main starport airlock and can hear an old timer going on about the crashed ship. (When I say ‘hit’ I just told them that’s where they were they’re such an unproactive lot!) He’s asked by other bar patrons why *he’s* not going to extract the lanthanum. He dramatically rolls up his sleeve and shows off nine diamond shaped tattoos on his arm – “I’ve nine of these see, one for each trip to the surface. Everyone knows it’s the tenth trip that gets you. I’m not chasing ghosts.” The Captain tries buttering him up for more information on crashed ships etc but doesn’t buy him the drink he’s clearly hoping for, so that well goes dry. (This was neatly layered with the fact that *I* was ready for another drink and the player wasn’t taking the hint…!)
About this time there’s an announcement over the station comms that the shuttle for the memorial service is leaving in the next half hour and all those intending on going should be boarding. This had the players/PCs curious and gave me the opportunity to regurgitate the paragraph on the station above. That prompted further discussion on fluorine and insidious atmosphere worlds and the bright idea to see if they could get a cargo of the resources mentioned in the Library Data to ship elsewhere.
They head off to the ‘mall’ – really another corridor – and I get them to tell me what shops they’re visiting. Loyd (with NPC medic Adma?) has found a brokerage where he’s quizzed on the cargo capacity of the ship, passengers and destination etc. Always fun putting the players on the spot. That leads to a discussion about their next destination and they look at Towers (dismissed because of the code duello fears and The Captain’s likelihood to cause offence however innocently), Yebab (nearly dismissed because of the conservative matriarchy) and Jesedipere (can’t recall why it got dismissed), but eventually Yebab was chosen as perhaps ideally receptive to minerals/chemicals etc from Rugbird. [Ah yes, I recall now. In the end they were so indecisive, Jane rolled a D6 with a 1/3 chance of going to any of the three. Yebab it is. But let’s see if we can justify it in game!]
Fred (with NPC Egon tagging along) is just mooching round the mall, thinks about buying underwear but remembers he did so on Junidy and doesn’t need more. Eventually he wanders into a comestibles shop and finds some dried mushrooms for a recipe he wants to try on the crew. Lily (NPC) has hit a clothes shop; Gvoudzon (NPC) is most likely with her eyeing up the fancy waistcoats. Tess is looking around Jelf, a department store that was the subject of a local news item and is newly opened. “A Debenhams not a Harrods,” one of the players remarks after I describe it. [My apologies I can’t translate that into American equivalents… but something along the lines of ‘firmly middle class and not super high-end’.] I’m not sure we established what Kunal, NPC pilot, was doing, so probably tagging along with Tess in the department store. (I presume I can retrospectively just decide that the next day… :-) just for the sake of completeness.).
Phlor [or is it Flor?], the Dandy they hired back on Junidy as a stevedore for their cargo handling after watching her unload the container full of rubber ducks they stumbled across [it’s a long story – see TML reports passim], has gone off to do her own thing. [I have quite enough NPCs to forget about already thank you very much…]
The PCs meet at the end of the mall and find a cheese emporium – yes, I was inspired by the same in Cirque which may or may not be named after someone familiar – and they’re soon sampling the various cheeses on offer with sips of synthetic alcohol being given away as well in small glasses. There’s a couple of people in their late 20s at one of the standing tables across the space.
“Where do you keep the cows?” asks Tess(?) of the owner. The shop owner is very upfront about the fact that it is synthetic cheese but is confident that they won’t be able to tell. I have them all throw against social standing and indeed, no one can tell although Loyd and Lily are borderline.
Loyd, by now, has spotted that of the two others in the emporium, the woman is an attractive redhead, not very tall and quite skinny but evidently pushing the right buttons for Captain Kitman. Yes, no surprises to learn that as soon as the player/PC expressed an interest, Jane (playing Fred) whipped out a copy of our Loyd’s Ladies tables {again, see TML reports past] which she evidently keeps far too handy. (Mine is tucked at the back of the section on characters in my folder and would have taken me a few minutes to find most likely). Loyd wanders over with a bite of cheese and drink in hand with the instant classic opening line “I see you’re into cheese.” He pretty much ignores the male standing at the same table, but the woman doesn’t really notice as she’s obviously had several of the small drinks. Not that that’s helping Loyd’s case as Jane has thrown a ‘neutral’ for the cheeselover’s reaction to The Captain. He presses on regardless despite the hard stares from her companion. He finds out she’s divorced although her friend is never introduced so we’re still not clear on what his relationship was. Work colleague? Business contact? Friend? Interested friend? Boyfriend? Ex-partner? By the time The Captain is finding out what she’s interested in aside from cheese, Jane has rolled ‘crafts’ which happens to be Jane’s own area of expertise, so I randomly go for the obscurest thing I can think of. Macramé. Slight pause in the game while we crack up around Carl (Loyd’s player) or maybe Loyd himself asking ‘what’s that?’ and getting an intricate run down on knotted string from Jane. Fortunately. As I didn’t really know for sure. From there we somehow got to macramé bikinis – the mind boggles – and refraining from allowing Google searches at this point, we continued and they eventually head back to the ship.
It’s about then that there’s a chime at the Harrier’s ’lock and Majram Tiradees is presenting herself. A gorgeous brunette in her 50s, tall and thin, outgoing and with exotically bright fluorescent hair down to her waist. And expressing an interest in The Captain. Yes, the Loyd’s Ladies sheet was back in action as Jane threw on way more tables than I’d ever planned would be sensible. There was a +2 DM on Majram’s attitude to Loyd in view of what she wanted.
Turns out she’d managed to miss the shuttle to 1241 and the memorial service. Is there any way the March Harrier, the only ship in port, could give her a ride out there. “My father died in the accident, I would hate to miss a year at the service.” Well, that was all that was needed. Damsel in distress and all that. Loyd needed no further persuasion and I don’t think the subject of Credits was even mentioned. His eyes had lit up at the description Jane had given – further adding that she was in a Mary Quant style dress of four quarters of bright colours. Of course, it’s ever at these moments that we have no idea if Carl is role playing or not…
So, off they go on the five hour trip out to 1241 and although most of the PCs stay aboard the Harrier, Loyd decides to attend the memorial service with Majram of course. A couple of NPCs tag along I’m sure; it’s a chance to ‘get out’. It’s a rather moving 90 minute service for the 40+ folk who’ve come out for it, with eulogies and hymns and times of silence. When the names of the 84 are read out Majram is in tears and Loyd decides it’s a good moment to put his arm around her shoulders. She doesn’t seem to object. She’s probably calculated that a ride back on the March Harrier would be preferable to five hours in a fairly full shuttle. [Which reminds me. For all that shuttles are detailed in just about every edition of Traveller and their cargo space is well known, I could find nothing quickly about how many passengers you can reasonably jam in the back of one. I took at stab at ‘50’ and decided there were actually 47 aboard including the two crew. But if anyone’s got a canon source, I’d be interested. /rant] The whole is wrapped up with ‘The Spacer’s Hymn’ (of course!). If we hadn’t been in a public space I might have encouraged a verse or two of it. For those who have no idea what I’m going on about or who have forgetteries as good as mine: http://www.freelancetraveller.com/features/gallery/timothycollinson/spacershymn.html)
The Captain twigs that offering Majram a lift back would go down well and the shuttle departs the station without her. However, a few minutes later there’s an emergency call from it as they suffer an engineering failure with the power systems. Could the PCs help? In particular, their engineer. So far, so good. Only I’d perhaps, when dreaming this up the night before, not thought of how all the earlier new stories would have played out. Despite interweaving them with more ‘ordinary’ news stories, I don’t think anyone was fooled for a moment into not seeing the pattern of attacks on Oberlindes ships. So of course there was a certain amount of paranoia about going anywhere near the shuttle. But as Captain Loyd pointed out, it’s a Signal GK, we have to respond.
Tess the engineer is very keen just to put them on tow and not actually board the shuttle at all. I must confess I’d not thought of this and have no idea whether this is feasible, what the rules for it might look like, or anything [anyone got anything on that?]. So I felt rather caught on the hop with this. It got worse though. In my head, as I’d planned this and on my notes in front of me would be the idea that there’d be an Engineering task which would take a certain length of time. It would be Very Difficult if they were coming from the main orbital station (taking more time) but only Difficult if they were on hand at 1241. I do like to try and reward the players actually taking part in the universe around them rather than just battening down hatches and not doing anything. Not that generally my players have ever had much problem doing that. Well, except for Tess the engineer who’s rather risk averse (and I’m not entirely sure whether that’s the character or the player!). The idea was that there would be a 2D roll as well as the task for how quickly the orbit of the shuttle began to decay. Multiple tries on the task allowed but worst comes to the worst the passengers (and two crew) can be evacuated to the March Harrier – with all the crowded fun that might be.
That would have been fine except I’d made the mistake of saying that it had just undergone its thrust for the main station and now had no M-Drive. Our engineer (PC and player) of course is fairly familiar with space travel and I’d lost my moment to say there was any kind of orbital decay if it was now on course (but coasting) for the station, especially as we’d been very clear that neither 1241 or the main station were in danger of drag from the horrible atmosphere. Worse than that, as I looked it up in the rulebook for the first time (having previously only checked on the capacity of the shuttle), I discovered they’re Thrust 3 and the March Harrier is only Thrust 1. Technically they couldn’t catch it. I wondered for a moment about the shuttle’s manoeuvring thrusters and whether they could help but I’m pretty sure (as was Tess) that they’d not make much difference.
Now better scientists and better Referees than I would probably have spotted the trap before falling into it and in any case have much better solutions than I was managing. Or any ‘solution’ really. But I think we decided that the burn for the station had only been a minute or three so they hadn’t gained much velocity and the Harrier could go tearing after them. On the upside, no one had a problem with the shuttle co-pilot not being an engineer anywhere near Tess’ class. (She has Engineer (J-drive) 2, Engineer (electronics) 1, Engineer (m-drive) 1, Engineer (power) 1 – not to mention Mechanic 1. I told you the player was risk averse.) I probably should have made the tasks a difficulty level harder as well. With a +1 bonus for INT or EDU, she does pretty much eat engineering tasks for breakfast.
Speaking of which, Fred is busying cooking up pizza for everyone. He’s also rather concerned about the unidentified leaves in a packet in the fridge. He’s rather edgy about them and demands to know whose they are. Adma (being NPCd) has arisen from his slumbers long enough to admit that they’re the special medicinal herbs that the elderly dandelion had taken him out onto the crags of the island back on Junidy to collect. Somehow, some of them find their way onto his slice of pizza and he’s away with the fairies and then returns to his cabin for another big sleep.
Anyway, eventually buying into the rescue, Tess and Egon cross over to the shuttle to effect the repairs after trying to talk the shuttle pilot through it one more time. A spare part the Harrier is carrying seals the deal in having to go over there anyway. However, it’s going to be 50 hours to get back under the reduced thrust, not 5, but that’s fine. Air and water not a problem. The Harrier can give them some food. Where did the 50 hours come from? Well, another complete failure of mine as Referee was to have any idea of how all these various manoeuvres were likely to work in reality. Worse, I knew the formula for calculating such is in the classic The Traveller Book which I didn’t have to hand but I couldn’t remember it and wouldn’t have been sure what numbers to plug in anyway. Very poorly thought out. I suppose I should have just made something up but Tess (the player) was ready with a calculator and reckoned she could work it out so I let her get on with it while we did the on-board cooking stuff above and the tourism below. I’ve no idea whether she had enough numbers to give a meaningful answer or just made something up after a bit of faffing that would sound reasonable. I’m not complaining about the latter – I’d have done the same. And 50 hours sounded kind of reasonable.
Much to the crew’s relief, there’s no attempted hijacking (maybe I missed a trick there!) and they’re able to return to the main station with the shuttle and be hailed has heroes. Captain Loyd, meanwhile, spends the return trip showing Majram the beauty of the stars. Although I did point out that if they just looked the other way the fascinating burnt orange swirls of the atmosphere enveloping the planet below were even more spectacular, but maybe Majram had had enough of that.
Needless to say, when they’re back at the orbital station and Captain Kitman is asking his new found friend if she wants to ship out with the March Harrier, her interest is much diminished and she politely refuses saying “it’s been lovely to get to know you, but my work is here.” The disappointment on the player’s face was once again palpable and indistinguishable from his character as he muttered about that being the story of his life.
Now very early on in the campaign we had a go at doing proper passenger/freight/cargo rolls live in the game session. It wasn’t uninteresting but there was no one dying to that regularly so it’s been left to me to work out what they might actually be shipping in between times. Which reminds me… I need to catch up on that a bit… ;-) That’s not to say that we don’t have some cargo driven calls to the next world but we keep it simple. In general they’re instruction was just to take freight, not cargo. Anyway, because it felt ‘right’ for the moment I had them make some rolls but really simplified the whole thing and in general just had them roll on the cargo table to see what might be available and then a very ‘rough’ price based on how far above or below 8 I rolled. Very bodged, but it gave a bit of feel of it and gave them some decisions to make without taking more than a minute or two. No one seemed unhappy.
They’d worked out that with 50 tons of Common Electronics as Freight and 50 tons as Cargo (does that make any sense, I’ve no idea – but I was amused when the only double 1 of the evening came up when I asked for the roll and Carl, playing The Captain knew that was bad until I explained that he was only rolling on a d66 table for which option!). Anyway, they still had around 40 tons left – they’ve also got an ATV we’ve never used in there, The Captain has 3 tons of what we’ve never established and Tess has a couple of tons of engineering spares. So we rolled again on the cargo table with the result of live animals. I rolled lower than base on price but even that didn’t tempt them. I dropped the price a bit and they still weren’t convinced. Not helped by someone asking where these animals were kept. Then it dawned on them why the seller was keen to get them moving if they’re taking up space on the station somewhere and he has to look after them! Loyd seems to be teetering on taking them to fill the rest of the cargo hold and I throw in free fencing and the gear to keep them in the hold as an added incentive. But Tess has played Three Blind Mice back at TravCon some years back. To her mind animals are more pain than they’re worth. [For those who can’t be bothered to check out a free adventure – it concerned three blind, in various ways, stowaways hiding out amongst a cargo hold full of live animals.] I dropped the price once more but they still turned it down. Still, it was a fun few moments of role-playing and metagaming combined.
There might have been a desire to play out a little bit more, but the pub was getting noisy and it felt like a natural stopping point – not to mention I had nothing more prepared – so we called it a night and chatted for a bit on the pavement outside in the cool and the quiet. With Christmas coming and lessons learned from last year, we’re aiming to meet again at the end of November rather than in December to avoid the crowds, so I’d probably better not put my notes away. If nothing else I need to keep practising ship combat if we’re really going to get to Trade War next time. Though it does occur to me that if you’re familiar with TTA and the players decide NOT to take up Oberlindes’ offer, doesn’t the whole campaign just fizzle out there and then?! Perhaps it will be our last session. I’ve no doubt the TML servers will be relieved if not The Reader of these write ups.