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18.8.16 IV. Pysadi part 1 (chapter: Pysadian Escapade)
Pysadi C4766D7-4 Ag Ni Ga
[News items: I think I recycled some from last session that I hadn’t used.]
19.8.16 TML
For those who cared, Pysadian Escapade seemed to go well last night - despite a no show by the Captain and the excuses of Gvoudzon (who had an important family bowling trip move dates on him while he was on holiday).
Still the remainder of the crew were up for it.
Well sort of.
A subset of the players of The Traveller
Adventure have also been testing out my make-it-up-as-you-go ability (which
is virtually non-existent) by playing fortnightlyish games at lunchtime.
One of those players much prefers her lunchtime character to the rather bland
marine captain of TTA (partly my
fault for not writing up a better background for a completely new to role
playing player). I could sympathise and despite the added sessions of
Traveller I’ve not, to my
recollection, ever killed off a PC before and the idea of doing so (in a
planned way) rather appealed.
I could think of any number of ways of
making the switch: just a fiat “the
character has just changed”; have Fox
leave the ship and need to be replaced; have Fox die and need to be
replaced. But of course the latter seemed much the more fun way of going,
even though I only had the space of yesterday afternoon at work to think up a
death, come up with some ‘crew for
hire’ for the (acting) captain to
interview, and come up with a reason for Lily to be there (which I actually
left to the player).
I decided to go with a Tasha Yar-style ‘meaningless’ death rather than anything heroic
because a) the player didn’t care
much for the character and b) the death had to happen very near the start of
the adventure if she wasn’t to spend
most of the evening playing Hogan in the lead up to the death. So
remembering the dockside games of footy we used to play against other ship
crews when I worked on a bookship for a couple of years in S.E. Asia, I
inflicted on Fox the accident I had in CalcuTTA
where I headed the ball at the same time as an opponent and landed very badly
tearing the ligaments in my foot and ending up on crutches for three
months. Fox didn’t damage his
ankle however but hit his head badly on the concrete and never came round from
the concussion. The look on the acting captain’s player’s face when the
ship medic told her the news to pass on to the crew was easily worth all the
stress! She was genuinely shocked - due to a job change she may not be
able to play with us in future and had been half expecting *her* character to
die!
I worried that it might derail the whole adventure, but what the heck... it nearly did but I didn’t foresee the players hiring *two* of the applicants (acting captain rather liked the look of the Harrison Fordesque carpenter who wanted to leave Pysadi because his family had been killed in an unfortunate accident) and I simply bypassed all the faffing around in the Business District with the bureaucrats and the old lady and the market which they weren’t doing anyway and had the carpenter be the cousin of Baraatsa out at Itzeny which soon put us back on track (literally!) and we finished with the arrival in Itzeny which is about where I was guessing - and I think Richard suggested - we’d get to.
So many thanks for all your tips and encouragement, the players seemed to really love it and I gave them lots to do which made up enormously for my rather narrative driven rescue of the prospector last time.
cheers
tc
(Oh, and Richard might be interested to know that we stopped at *every* stop on
the way out [train journey to Itzeny]. First to get cushions for the hard
wooden train seats, then to get some food, then to see what the fuss in main
street was about (a wild porcupig had wondered into town and was being chased
down), then to get some painkillers (which took a couple of stops due to
getting permits and so on). Definitely worth naming all the stations.
(and the look on the seasoned player’s face when the carpenter said “phew, that was a straightforward trip, they often get held up for various reasons” was a picture. He’s already thinking about the return journey.... [the rules say 50% chance of a holdup which I didn’t tell them]).
[As the above is a bit brief in terms of plot, here’s what I have from my pre-game notes:
We’re about 50 days into the year 1105 now emerging from Jump.
In Sadi the PCs meet with Sameel Denton in the Port Warden’s office to do cargo/passenger paperwork.
They employ Deeko Maisters to hunt for cargo and passengers for their next destination, Aramanx via Carsten.
They hit Smitty’s bar, a Western style saloon with wood and ironwork fittings; it’s expensive. Meet the 6 Tukera crew.
Options to visit Old Town, the Suburbs and the Business/District [TTA bungs in a lot of detail we got nowhere near!]. I had a whole bunch of NPCs in the Old Town to progress the plot: warehouse clerk – Jan Woodman (yes, he’s heard all the jokes), Grator Xalman a minor bureaucrat, and Old Marj in the market – relative of Buul Baraatsa. But in the end, in the interests of getting on with the plot (the whole death incident had taken waaay longer than I expected) we just had the carpenter they hired being a distant relative of Buul Baraatsa as I say in the note above.
They get permits from Salvor Hardin [bonus points for knowing the reference] and get a train.
The stops I came up with and enjoyed reciting as a platform announcement more than once:
Walton (+10 hours)
Western Junction (+23)
Lauraville (+34)
Karto (+44)
Plain Sailing (+54)
Itzeny (+65)
We really did make a job of the journey with something bought/found/seen in every stop – the hard wooden seats becoming a running joke – scenery outside the train and passengers to meet on the train. The seats were too hard so they bought cushions, they needed forms for something and had to get them in one stop and hand them in at another. The porcupig getting loose incident… Oh, and Gvoudzon finding some ‘picture’ magazines in a baggage van that seemed to occupy for him a considerable time.
[Part of the reason for making a thing of this was because of the experience I had on a 50 hour train journey in Africa. I can still recall it now 35 years later. I wanted to see if I could make it something the players would remember. Part of that was getting the players to tell me what they saw out the window and who they were meeting in the nearby seats. It certainly made it interesting and gave me something of a break and some enjoyment.]
And arrival in Itzeny was the dun-dun-dun moment we finished on. Never let it be said I can’t do a cliffhanger. ;-)