The Traveller Adventure XXII - Rugbird to Yebab(ish)

[skip on to paragraph beginning "Now, as I told them..." if you don't want my rambling and do want to get straight on with the story.  Such as it is.]

Change of venue again for episode XXII.  The new pub we tried last time has various issues.  The food was good enough and the location’s not bad but involves our driving member paying parking costs.  However, on Thursday nights it turns out they have a quiz night in the upstairs space that we thought might be nice and not quite as noisy.  We tried sitting downstairs and that was fine for an hour or so but then did get noisy.  Plus there was no way of avoiding the second hand smoke being blown straight through the doors from the smokers dutifully standing outside.  We considered changing the night of the week we meet, but that proved way too complicated, even for just four of us on this occasion.

 

So it was back to the Duke of Buckingham which is snug and down in Old Portsmouth which means free parking and not too much of a walk for me.  We’d used it quite a few times before for TTA and for the Library book group which meets in intervening months, but one of our number complained after he’d got an upset stomach from the food twice in a row and we’d not been back.  As he’s no longer participating, we thought it was worth another go.  As it turns out, it seemed fine.  It only got noisy towards the very end.  We may well return another time.  Especially as one of the bar staff, a Bulgarian, seemed quite interested in what we were up to and was apparently keen to join in except she was working.  She may have just being nice to the customers but it seemed more than that.  Captain Loyd got to try out his real life chat up lines; or was that in reality your humble referee who happens to know a word or two in Bulgarian?

 

Two other points to note: for those keeping track it, doesn’t seem like two months since we last met.  It’s not.  We decided to meet early and avoid the raucous noise of Portsmouth pubs in the run up to Christmas as we had had a bad experience last year.  Also, still no sign of the computing lecturer who has threatened a few times to join us but has issues with getting home after to the Isle of Wight as the hovercraft don’t run late.  The rest of us had agreed last time that if she did come along we’d start playing immediately and play through food so that we could finish earlier, but despite flagging that up in a reminder a week before, it didn’t seem to help.  How long do I keep carrying the extra stuff I bring so she can slot into whatever character she likes (established NPC? new character entirely? something made up on the spot?); not to mention the extra planning that takes in preparation?

 

So, it’s our ‘thin on the ground’ set up for the (third?) evening now since losing a couple of players.  I’d really like at least one if not two more as I feel it reduces the pressure on refereeing, but if I’ve not said so before I’d rather have players keen to be there than coming along just to make up numbers or to keep me happy.  The three I have are pretty keen – two having been there since the start and one for almost all of the time.  We have Tess playing the risk averse engineer.  Jane playing Fred the bald 7 foot gentle giant who would ordinarily be the gun-bunny but is actually our try-not-to-intimidate-the-passengers steward.  And then there’s Carl playing Captain Loyd the lovelorn, hapless non-leader.  Or perhaps just playing himself; who knows?!  Now as fairly permanent NPCs we have Gvoudzon (vargr emissary and gunner if it ever comes to ship combat), Lily (attractive archaeologist with explosives skill taken on to help Loyd with the admin and NOT for her looks), Egon (can anyone recall what he does?), Kunal (pilot) and Adma (medic with a dodgy past and something of a sleep apnoea problem).  There’s also a new NPC in Phlo, a Dandelion taken on at Junidy to act as stevedore with all her limbs and dexterity.

 

I’d planned to spend the weekend before preparing for Thursday night and decided to start with *finally* updating the timeline of events that I find quite useful and offer to the players as way of coping with some chance of recalling events given that we only play every other month.  In that timeline, I try to include news events because TTA’s very first chapter has important Plot Clues in news and also in later chapters (Trade War, I’m looking at you) do the same.  From the get go I thought it best to not draw attention to these so I have always tried to present them with other news, perhaps local to the planet, perhaps of wider Charted Space interest.  I’d had the bright idea that rather than make up everything it might be fun to extract “real” news from the Traveller corpus.  Don McKinney’s wonderful Integrated Timeline meant that I actually had much of this to hand rather than having to go through hundreds of books.  The dates for 1105 run to a couple of pages and I could scratch several of them because they were ‘adventure’ events from adventures that I just might conceivably run (e.g. Annic Nova).  The remainder looked promising but of course it was immediately apparent that although I had the date of the news items (although not for all of them – a random number generator soon sorted the rest), the dates the news would arrive at the players’ location would vary widely.  I’d have to work it out.  Fortunately TravellerMap has a terrific ‘route’ feature and it only took a moment to put in the news’ origin point, decide I’d calculate them all to Aramanx which is pretty central to the Aramis subsector where TTA takes place, and then decide whether the news was likely to propagate quickly or slowly to an out of the way place like Aramis subsector.  I calculated routes for Jump 2, Jump 3 and Jump 4, multiplied by 7 for a number of days and then depending on what I felt the ‘importance’ of the news was, picked one of those to add to the origin date and then insert in my timeline.  Mostly I went with Jump 2 as there often weren’t direct x-boat routes and I figured things would meander and not go at the top speed possible.  It also gave me some margin for error.  For example, I miss an event out or realize it must take a day or three longer and have to scoot everything along a few days.  It’s a work in progress.

 

Anyhoo, as you can perhaps imagine, that took a while, especially when I realized I’d have to do 1104 as well for news that had taken time to travel and would actually be arriving in 1105.  I wasn’t too stressed about this as I figured that mostly that would be the early part of the year which had already passed.  We’re currently around day 300 of 1105.  But you know me… for the sake of completeness…   But it explains why I did no prep for the session that weekend.

 

I then had a day off in the week prior to the Thursday night get together, so I figured that would be my moment to sit down with all my notes.  Now unable to fit into a single ring binder.  Well it was a good moment, but I found some tidying up of the timeline to sort out and that was my morning gone.  After lunch I wondered how feasible would be to also catch up my trade sheets which calculate how much money the March Harrier is making or spending.  Long-time readers will recall we had a go at the trade rules live in the pub in an early session but decided they weren’t a lot of fun for most people and that I’d just come up with something reasonable between sessions.  This has the advantage that if I want, I can drive things along with cargos for planet X quite easily.  The disadvantage is that I’ve got a bit behind and have no idea how much cash they have to spend.  Sitting down to reacquaint myself with the rules after a long time meant that by the end of the afternoon I’d only progressed a couple of Jumps.  Even with the simplification that they decided ages ago that they’d mostly just ship freight rather than risk cargoes.  (Note the ‘mostly’.  We still have cargoes to drive adventure if it seems ‘right’.  The time it was taking, perhaps I’m just a bear of very little brain, was not helped by finding some mistakes in my early sheets.  Aaargh!  It’s just complex enough to not be a lot of fun.  If anyone’s got a Mongoose 1 or 2 compatible abstract system we could do round the table, I’d be very interested.

 

By now I was too tired to prepare anything and work on Wednesday was too busy, so I had got to Thursday and not really got anything ready to go.  Worse yet, I had had half a thought of running Annic Nova as a side adventure at one point – probably a couple of years back and had a) printed out plans etc as handouts and b) seeded the ‘news’ of the ship being sighted as per the early paragraphs in some ‘Notices to Starfarers’ I’d given a new player when he took on Kunal our pilot.  Now, all this time later, I couldn’t find my file of print outs which I’d had near my desk at work for ages.  I finally decided I must have had a clear out thinking it would just be easier to print them again if we ever needed them.  <sigh>  However, grabbing JTAS 1, Double Adventure 1 and Compendium 2 to read on the bus and refamilarize myself with the whole thing, I just about had time to produce some nice deck plans and cut them up for any exploration should we get to that.  I also thought we might actually do some trading again just to remind ourselves that that was the point of the Harrier.  But much cut down.  I also had in mind that we might just cut to the chase and get on with the Trade War chapter as I’ve been practising ship combat for a little while now to make that work.  Although a snag with that is that a tiny bit more time has to pass as I’d worked out from the newly minted timeline.  And I also had the idea of getting them to ship back to Junidy as I’d forgotten to run either of the two Patron Encounters that you can do from that world when they’d left last time.  I was thinking of doing Separate but Equal and in a hurried lunch break had generated some names and stats for the two humans and four Dandies that that patron encounter has.  It would be a shame not to do some of the Patron Encounters in the book as we are actually supposed to be doing TTA.  I’ve done a couple (Special Delivery, Last Ride Home, Rare Vintage) but there’s plenty more.  I did look at Moving Day and Charter to Cratersea which can both start on Junidy but particularly the latter looks more like a small campaign on its own and I think would then take us well away from the Trade War section.  Maybe later.

 

So.  So, I was feeling very underprepared and a bit stressed (work wasn’t helping with a completely demented 90 minutes or so before we were due to depart for the pub), but I did have some options and was relying on the players’ ability to make something out of absolutely nothing.

 

We ordered food, we ate, we didn’t even bother looking out the door for our possible newcomer.  And we kicked off from the end of events at Rugbird last time.  If you recall the PCs had helped out a woman who’d missed the shuttle to a memorial service that was important to her.  Captain Loyd’s attraction to her of course had played no part in their decision.   Getting her to the memorial service meant The Captain might as well accompany his new friend to the service itself.  Maybe it would be an opportunity to put a comforting arm round her.  He knows all the tricks.  She  didn’t seem to object but was perhaps thinking of a trip back on the Harrier rather than crammed into a shuttle with the other locals.  The shuttle malfunctioned on departure after the service and the March Harriers’ crew could save the day by helping repair the problem and escort the shuttle back to the main orbital station.  Hurrah.  Included in that recap, someone remembered that Adma still has one last remaining squeedle that he smuggled into his pocket and which didn’t get turned over to the Psionic Institute.  No one is happy about the idea – given the mental degradation they bring on [in place of the anolas if you recall] but technically none of them know about it yet as Adma kept it quiet.

 

Now, as I told them, the news cycle was moving on and focusing more on the two shuttle pilots as they are locals and of more ‘interest’ than visiting merchants who happened to actually save the day.  But you win some, you lose some and the crew turned to their broker.  A hard-bitten, hard swearing (as we established many at Rugbird are in the last session) woman who might have some freight and passengers for Junidy today or tomorrow or might have something for Jesedipere in a few days.  (I was thinking of my Patron Encounters, you can tell.)  Any resemblance the woman might have to Estelle from Friends (Joey’s agent) is purely coincidental but I just happened to have been rewatching an episode with her a couple of days before.  Of course, there was the usual merriment around the table as I went into character but couldn’t refrain from keeping to our PG rating.  “Yeah, I’ve got these effing passengers; they’re probably the usual unmentionablebodyparts but their money’s good.”  I tried to abstract a cargo roll.  “Roll 2D” I said looking up the cargo table.  Double 1.  They panicked until they realized it was a d66 roll.  Basic Electronics.  Should I have said?  Ooops, my bad.  And then on the fly decided that on a second roll, 9+ you get it cheap, 5-8 it’s about what you’d expect, <5 it’s expensive.  They rolled a 10.  It was all to no avail, however.  Someone, mentioning no names Jane, had remembered that they had made a decision last time to go on to Yebab (which I’d forgotten).  I’m still no clearer why.  We recalled they’d brought food to Rugbird – dried seaweed from Junidy iirc – on the grounds that orbital stations wouldn’t have great agricultural opportunities and they’d been avoiding Towers because of the Amber Zone (despite the fact that Rugbird is one too), so I think last time they’d rolled a die to choose.  They decided to roll another die just to confirm the choice.  1-2 Jesedipere, 3-4 Yebab, 5-6 Nasemin.  Jane rolls a 3.  Oh hang on, this should be The Captain’s roll/role.  Carl rolls a 3.  Ok, it’s clear we’re meant to go Yebab having let the fates decide not once but three times!  I quietly screw up Separate but Equal in my head.  You can see what I’m dealing with… :-) 

 

We did get the trade rules out at that point as I *think* I detected some slight unease about my overly abstracted trade rolls above, but just a few minutes in and everyone recalled why we didn’t do it round the table.  OK, so they can round up some cargo of Basic Electronics and just a handful of Middle passengers for Yebab.  Off we go.

 

They seem to enjoy the rigmarole of going through the Astrogation and Engineering rolls for Jump (plus we have the Astrogator Captain and Engineer as PCs so it makes sense, plus I like the outside chance there might be a misJump – not that they ever go with unrefined fuel), so we always do that.  To ensure Fred doesn’t feel left out we also always have a stewarding roll for how his food and care goes down in Jump.  No real problems.  However, the 6D roll for Jump length is four sixes and a five and a four or something.  Right at the upper end of the possibilities.  Aha!  Just what I was waiting for.  It seemed to me that Annic Nova needs to be ‘off the beaten track’ so I’d decided that I’d run it as soon as we had a poor Astrogation roll or something to justify it.  We calculated the hours, argued about whether it was just over a day extra or a day less because someone on the alcohol wasn’t adding up correctly and then decided how to break it to the passengers.  Loyd had a go with his best charm and came up with a wonderful story about it being quite normal and nothing to worry about.  (We rolled for whether they bought into it or not and they did.)  I also thought it was about time our creaky old March Harrier had another roll on the six d66 “What’s  Wrong With the Ship?” tables you can buy cheaply on DriveThru (not quite Traveller, but with a bit of revision to the double talk for some  entries they work well enough).  (Shame there’s not something similar for Pilots.  Or even Captains or Stewards.  Hmmmm….)  As there happen to be six WWWtS tables I just treat them as a large d666 table.  Tess is yet to fix the third of three problems the Harrier has had over the last few months (she had another go at that in this Jump, but failed).  Her roll was a good enough failure however that I told her the two were linked (given we had m-drive and power plant fuel tanks etc, it kind of seemed reasonable).  It both passes time in Jump and satisfies my ‘Jump is elided over too easily in my opinion’ concern.

 

For those who are interested in occupying your engineers (if not skip on to the paragraph beginning “OK”):

She already had something to do with m-drive power fluctuations (I can’t remember the roll might have been WWtS? 5 – 15 “Ventral port backup m-drive power link is shorting out intermittently (12)”).  The new roll (WWWtS? 2 – 66) “The dorsal starboard primary plant fuel tank is flooding intermittently.  (37) Roll 1d6: 1-2 Power Offline” (she rolled 3) so I called it a ‘brown out’ for 1d6 x 10 mins (she rolled a 1). (The 12 or the 37 is a KCr repair cost).

 

I’ve long thought that what I really need is a house rule on how often to roll on these tables.  It now occurs to me that to be really helpful it would be good if each entry had, as well as a cost, a can-it-be-repaired-in-space/Jump/port/yard note, and a difficulty level with time frame.  Hmmm, could that be my next job… no, hang on, that seems energetic, why not a table that you roll on for any task?  Much easier.  OK, how about this:

Roll an Engineering task once per week.  Failure means rolling on WWWtS? 1+1D-3 times.

For any task roll 2D: 1-2 needs an A-B class starport (or 1D weeks wait for part); 3-5 needs a repair yard (A-C class starport); 6-9 can be done in transit; 10-11 needs to be done in port, 12 needs to be done in a repair facility with specialist engineer(s) or a 2D weeks wait for parts.  Adjust if task seems to demand it.

For any task roll 2D: 1 = Simple, 2-3 = Easy, 4-5 = Routine, 6-7 = Average, 8-9 = Difficult, 10-11 = Very Difficult, 12 = Formidable.

For any task roll 1D: 1 = seconds of repair, 2 = minutes of repair, 3-4 = hours of repair, 5-6 = days of repair.  DM+1 if Difficult or harder.  Additional trained crew can reduce time.

Very happy to take comments/criticism.  [anyone still here? <taps mike>]

 

OK, so now The Captain has the passengers crowded round concerned about the power brown out.  He goes back into conciliation mode.  This time Fred contributes to the task by cooking them all pizzas which (again, by die roll, goes down really well and pacifies them).  [Goes down really well… see what I did there?  Oh, never mind.]

 

Asking for any final actions regarding Jump we leave the passengers to their own Fifth Night celebrations and Loyd wants to know if he can practice some unarmed combat.  Perhaps he’s irked that the firing pins of his SMGs have been hidden and all his running around in the cargo bay has been wasted.  :-)  Fred agrees to go a round or two with him and other crew, getting wind of it, come to watch – or in Adma’s case ready to pick up the pieces if there’s a cut or sprain he can deal with.  Little did we guess.  Much to everyone’s surprise (given Carl is rolling for Loyd with a -3 DM due to his lack of skill), Loyd isn’t absolutely trounced.  He manages to acquit himself with dignity for four rounds and though Fred wins each fairly easily, it’s not the beating everyone expected (hoped for?!).  For the first couple of rounds I attempt to interpret the die rolls as descriptive action and after that get the players to do it themselves.  That actually worked.  If I sound surprised it’s because none of current players are terribly into acting their parts in character as it were.  I may have been the only person who spoke ‘in character’ all evening.  Meanwhile, Gvoudzon (that’s me) is really getting into it and cheering on The Captain.  Mainly because he’s the underdog.  [Hah!]  Loyd however is tiring and they decide to call it quits after one final round.  Jane rolls a decent enough number… Carl rolls… double 1.  Jane describes how Fred picks up The Captain a bit too enthusiastically given he’s getting tired and plants him on the deck, Carl takes it on Loyd’s chin and I roll for a… broken right wrist.  Adma’s up!  The Medic bandages up The Captain and administers analgesics.

 

I have been having some fun though in the character of Gvoudzon as a change from my refereeing duties and fun appears to be being had, so with my best vargr voice (worse than my Welsh accent for Llinos) ask Fred to let me show Loyd how it’s done.  “I can go a couple of rounds with you.”  Fred’s up for it; he’s barely broken wind.  [Hang on, that’s not right…] broken sweat; or barely winded.  Gvoudzon’s got Melee Combat (infighting) which I have to defend as unarmed combat, but surely that’s exactly what it is?  Anyway, despite being maybe two or more heads shorter than Fred (waaay back we established everyone’s heights, I think it was for stretcher bearing purposes in Wolf at the Door) – just 5’6” to Fred’s 7’ – he’s a much better match better match although Fred has been dutifully NOT using his combat implant as that would be unfair and he continues to not use it.  They have three very evenly matched rounds and decide to have one last one as a decider or call it a draw.  Fred rolls a 9 (+2 for Strength and skill = 11); Gvoudzon rolls… yes, you’ve guessed it… double 1.  In one of those freak accidents, we determine the vargr has broken his… tail.  What a woeful tale.  Of course, we’re all creased up round the table in the pub amused at the likelihood – or otherwise – of two snake eyes on both “last round” bouts.  Although I’m technically playing Adma as well, it’s far more fun to keep on role playing Gvoudzon with his painful tail as Adma tries to deal with something he has no experience of.  Medic roll 3!  Gvoudzon gets even more excised as the others start talking (quite needlessly) about amputation just to wind him up.  Tess starts hunting in the computer database and eventually comes up with a medical tome which addresses the issue and Adma’s able to do what needs to be done while he reads from the text, add a splint and administer more analgesics from his rapidly dwindling supply.  I suspect Fred was on them too for too much painful laughing.

 

See what I mean about being stupidly stressed about material?  My lot will make something out of anything.  Carl had only in passing thought maybe some training might come in useful at some point in the future, but I love how the whole thing played into his general not uselessness so much as lack of fortune and haplessness.  It will be a time in Jump that I’m sure we’ll long remember.  (I’m also rather banking on the fact that I can perhaps cheat at the healing times because of Adma’s smuggled squeedle – which may also explain his excessive sleeping and also his poor Medic rolls of late).

 

But time to emerge from Jump and tell them the bad news.  The lengthy time in Jump was indicative of something being not quite right.  They haven’t misJumped but they are far out in the Yebab system.  Five or six days out.  Captain Loyd is going to have to go back to the passengers.

 

“Five days?!  You can’t be serious!”  They’re not amused.  But I’m having fun as I role play all of the passengers.  Loyd really does have a mob on his hands this time.  Fred’s going to have to pull out more than pizzas this time.  Although actually they’re working out whether provisions might be a problem.  Air and water are no trouble.  Food’s going to be okay – good job they haven’t got a full load of passengers.  Fresh salad’s going to be off the menu for a bit…  Tess suggests The Captain tell them that “an anomaly in the local subspace continuum has resulted in a minor navigational hiccup and we are now five days out”.  We roll again to see if they’re still buying it.  Fortunately they’re not the brightest passengers in the sector, or even the subsector and rather grudgingly they go back to occupying themselves.

 

By the time all this has gone on, I have Kunal reporting from the bridge (or maybe it was Loyd on the bridge a bit later while Kunal was off watch, I’m forgetting already) that there’s a blinking light and a small alarm.  Sensors are picking up a ship.  Around about the same size as the March Harrier, maybe a little larger.  Not moving.  Not responding to comms.  The first is suspicious enough; the second really gets their skin prickling.

 

They go in for a slightly closer look reminding each other about all the news they’ve had in recent sessions about pirate attacks and the like (i.e. the run in to the Trade War chapter of TTA) which I had rather forgotten might be just a mite off-putting.  With a five day trip to Yebab still, they’re considering a micro-jump.  The Captain is all for it.  Jane and Tess (if not Fred and Tess) seem to be being persuaded.  Even the waitress who is back for more drinks orders and has sized up the situation immediately from a very quick recap of the situation is of the opinion that the crew should leave well alone.  Thanks miss.  [or Blagodarya].  I’m about to beat my head on the table in front of me.  I may have sagged a little.  I really really want to let them do whatever they want to do but I’m also torn as I’ve long thought it would fun to include such a venerable and classic adventure as Annic Nova in our sessions and really, I don’t have anything else up my sleeve.  Not that it appears to matter.  (And by now the deck plans are on my lap under the table ready to go…).  But questions are being asked about the look of the ship.  No, it’s not vargr shaped.  No, it doesn’t look Aslan.  And I’m getting “it’s reavers, isn’t it?”  “It’s Aliens, isn’t it?”  “It’s Firefly, isn’t it?”  (There might have been another films/tv series but I can’t recall which now).  No, no and no.

 

They really are about to Jump onwards and bypass the whole thing when I think Jane and/or Tess see something in my eyes.  Tess (as ever, it’s not clear whether player or character) reminds The Captain that she’s an ex-scout and so is Kunal the pilot and wouldn’t they want to explore new things?  Besides, it might be Ancient.  With a capital A.  Just as I’m getting into gear to skip the Annic Nova and move on when Captain Loyd (or Carl) is persuaded they should look closer and off we go.

 

On the deck plans I copied from Double Adventure 1 (all on one page, see?)  (which is ironic because I then cut them up into the different decks) there’s also an image of the ship and a good rendering of ‘Annic Nova’ not in Roman script.  I present them the former (upside down in honour of a friend of mine who always complained about Star Trek ships encountering each other in the same orientation) but they’re quickly on to not really knowing the orientation so I don’t have to belabour that.  Then I present the lettering (actually, numbers) and let them make of that what they will.  Whichever way up they like.  All the while I’m looking for signs of recognition from our grognard player Tess as she twigs what’s in front of her; or even Jane as a somewhat experienced Traveller now who I know has the classic Traveller CD, that she’s recognizing it.  If they did, they did a good job of pretending otherwise which I liked.  I don’t think they did immediately recognize it which I had feared might be a problem with running this.  It almost certainly would be at TravCon.

 

We went through the possible access points and they opted for the lower iris valve to preserve any atmosphere inside.  They could see from outside just the dim red emergency lighting on the lower deck and by now I had the notes in front of me as I wasn’t relying on my memory from readings of old or reading it again on the bus that morning.  And then they fall to deciding who’s doing what.  Eventually it’s decided that Fred, Tess and Phlo would enter the ship.  (Phlo if you recall is the Dandy stevedore they hired on Junidy after they saw her skills in unloading the container of plastic toy ducks they ran into.  All those arms you see.)  This slightly surprised me as I was rather betting that Tess would do her usual thing of remaining on the ship while the others explored.  But my plans to require her engineering to effect entry and the like weren’t needed as they’d worked that kind of stuff out themselves.  Loyd would stay on the March Harrier and track their movements, Lily, Egon and Gvoudzon would form a back-up B team on the Harrier. 

 

There’s also a discussion about weapons.  They still have the gear they picked up on Aramanx during the Wolf at the Door episode (hence Loyd’s SMGs) and we establish that Lily still has four grenades from the Renitzan outpost they stopped at.  She’s dying to blow something up and is eyeing up some of the other entry points I’ve noted.  So much so that in a similar vein to Tess hiding Loyd’s firing pins, I have Egon suggest that perhaps he should hide the pins in Lily’s grenades for safety…   ah well, perhaps you had to be there, but that cracked up us for a minute.  Meanwhile, Fred has a laser pistol and dagger; Tess takes the rifle she’s become fond of since her fluky kill shot on the vargr mercenary leader Dhurgeng, and Phlo has a laser pistol in one limb and a knife in another and still has three limbs for moving round.  I assumed she’d brought her own vacc suit with her or we’re in trouble on that score.

 

Bit of fun getting over to the ship as the iris valve / airlock are not Charted Space standard and Fred has no Vacc Suit skill.  (He doesn’t have Zero G either, but in this I’m rather with Mongoose Traveller 2^nd Edition here (which has dropped it) and not stressing about that.  Make it a Dex roll.)  He fails a roll as you might guess, but with Phlo there and five limbs to help out, she soon has him under control.  His strength is needed in any case as they fail to get the valve to open electronically, despite it being on emergency power and they have to crank the thing open manually.  Phlo giving Fred some anchorage so he doesn’t spin wildly.  Oh, and we establish that the air lock isn’t the 2m or so that would be standard in Charted Space but just 1.7m.

 

They make it into the ship and go on up to the Bridge deck (at the bottom).  Till now I’ve been deliberate NOT using ‘up’ and ‘down’ except in relation to their own movement so they’re a bit disorientated as they come in the ‘ceiling’ but once they’re on the Bridge they can orient themselves by the seats etc and explore that deck.  I very clearly mention the ‘breakers’ that are visible as the book says but although Tess checks there is power running through them, they decide not trip them and turn the power on or, despite the perfectly breathable atmosphere, disrobe from their vacc suits.  Now I’m kind of with them on this as I’m not sure that the advice in the adventure – i.e. to have them treat it as perfectly safe – makes any sense to any standard group of Traveller players.  Not that I’d like to second guess how Marc Miller must have run this.  It would make my life easier if they switched the power on but this is really something I’m going to let them choose.  Although I will inflict the dexterity penalties as Annic Nova prescribes.

 

Tess, the player (I think), wants to know if the seats have particularly narrow backs or otherwise suggest that they might be designed to accommodate winged beings.  Ancients are still in her mind.  Not quite sure whether this counts as metaknowledge, but I’m happy to confirm that they show no sign of that.

 

They check out the rooms to either side although Fred’s left in one of the console seats rather than get in the way.  Then they progress up to the next deck although I’m aware that time is running out in the evening.  But that’s fine because I’ve decided that I’ll slightly spice up the bog standard Annic Nova and have some critters for them to deal with.  Over a cup of tea in the afternoon I’d hurriedly used the Traveller Tools website to crank out four critters I could use: a monkey analogue (a family of ship’s pets that’s survived I decided), some ratlike creatures the monkey’s are living off and that were just stowaways but have bred, some insects that bite and some spider equivalents.  My apologies if this lacks imagination, but I was seriously pressed for time.  Not that it was really critical but I’d found when we got going that I’d completely failed to print out the four pages of notes/critters I actually had so I was trying to do everything from memory anyway.  Good job we didn’t really get to hit points etc… <sigh>  I’ve probably said this before but we could really use someone with some organisational ability running this game.  I don’t know… a librarian say…

 

I do my best, as Halloween is only just behind us to ratchet up the dim lighting, the creaking ship hull noises, the cobwebs that are present on this deck.  No idea how well that works in a bright and noisy pub but at least I feel I’m making the effort.  Phlo is first out onto the deck (good ol’ NPCs) and is immediately attacked by one of the monkey like creatures.  Far too close for her to bring her pistol to bear but she has a go with her knife and misses.  It rips a tear in the shoulder – sorry, one of the ‘shoulders’ of her vacc suit (it loses integrity), but on a second attempt she manages to get her knife through it and they have one dead floating ball of fur in front of them.  Leaking blood, as I imagined, like something of Star Trek’s Undiscovered Country.  And there we had to leave it.  Dun dun durrrr…

 

I’ve got till next time to decide whether there’s just the one monkeypet or whether there’s a hungry family of them.  Are the spiders there for effect or are they nasty?  Is there much point in nasty critters if they remain in the vacc suits and zero g?  I have no answers to any of these but at least next time I’ll be preparing a definite something which should make it easier; not a vague lot of somethings with no idea of what’s likely to come next.

 

On the upside, I felt this session went much better than last time which had been a bit anticlimactic.  I really should have made more drama out of the shuttle fault and possibly falling into Rugbird’s atmosphere and Tess fixing it and so on, but I’m never very good at that on the fly, never good at raising tension and climaxing, and it’s only afterwards that I see opportunities I’ve missed.  Still a rookie referee and still amazed – particularly given somewhat dwindling numbers – anyone actually wants to play.

 

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