On 14/2/22 06:08, Timothy Collinson - timothy.collinson at port.ac.uk
(via tml list) wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
>     > /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?
>
>
> !!
>
Said shady character:

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/boris_badenov.png

>     There are crunchier rules, but buggrit, millennium hand and shrimp,
>     leave 'em where they are.  Sounds like you were on a roll.
>
>
> I could probably run a game with no players and just myself doing the
> NPCs.  My worry is I wouldn't even notice...
>
>     >>
>     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.
>
>
> ah, ok, noted.  If I ever get to it, I'll bear that in mind.
>
> Hang on.  I'm confused.  You've *dropped* the difficulty in the face
> of an uber skilled/DEXed character??

And Mongoose have _never_ missed getting a difficulty bang-on first-time
around?

Curly still treated said gas-ball with wary respect, and Nikki gladly
let him.

>
>
>
>     Regarding player Tess' feelings, unless you're telepathic... umm..
>     ask?
>
>
> I do, but often get vague answers or complicated ones that reveal I'm
> not doing it 'right' which can be tricky and painful.
Five whys/hows?  "How am I not doing it 'right' ?"   "XYZ" "Ok, how am I
not doing XYZ right?", etc.
>
>
>     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?
>
>
> Hah!  Yes, I ought to do this more.
>
>     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.
>
>
> Yes, that's correct.  I just wanted to encourage them trying
> (particularly in the face of the upcoming Showdown at Jesedipere). 
> I'd still do the 8 weeks before trying and then the roll.  (Although
> you may recall that for Fred to get Steward 1 we role-played his
> two-day exam and I buried THE roll somewhere in that.
Again, better story fit trumps mechanical orthodoxy.  So sayeth Zeitlin, J.
>
>     > 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.
>
>
> I do try and ask things like this periodically, but they're either so
> happy-go-lucky they don't mind or know no better so put up with it!
Still, _ask them_.  I wouldn't mind seeing another ISW-era writeup.
>
>     Do they want to keep going with their current characters?
>
>
> I believe so.
Problem solved, then.
>
> My write ups are two behind so I've not yet revealed here (although
> I've been surprised by the reaction to a mention on Twitter), that we
> actually finished The Traveller Adventure on Thursday!  I'm still not
> processing that.  6 years 5 days.  39 sessions.  9 players (not
> simultaneously).  15 planets.  100s of NPCs.  1 ship.  1 ref.
> But I was vaguely surprised to find that a) all seem to want to
> continue (in some form or another) and b) probably with the same
> characters.  So, Season 2...
Maybe, just maybe, you've done a good job and _you're a better GM than
you give yourself credit for_.
>
>
>     Does someone else want to run Traveller?
>
>
> I did say I felt I needed a break so Jane is going to run Signal GK as
> a (one?)off while we decide what's next.
Woot.  Can haz writeupz?
>
>
>     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 (?).
>
>
> I have understood from reading other's experience that even our six
> years is quite unusual (or certainly at least special), but 9 years! 
> Well done!
I thought you'd managed six years for _the one game_.  My mob have had
multiple games over the past 9 years.
>
>
>     Here, I think Jeff said something that best translates into Pommie as
>     "smug/lucky git".
>
>
> Exactly.
>
>     (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.
>
>
> Ah.  Well commiserations if that's a sadness and well done if you feel
> you've 'completed' it.   I'm certainly feeling a sense of completion
> over finally finishing TTA. Even if we 'go on'!

Boiled down, they were ball-of-twining an uncharted planet in what would
be Neworld sector in the Golden Age.  Said rock had a whacking great big
supervolcano that stood out like dog's balls on all the maps they had made.

Enter, stage left, the 300 m Bolide of Thwappage.

Rhett Shird, sensor operator extraordinaire missed it until a few
seconds before impact - enough time for every available sensor to be
turned to record the Bolide of Thwappage slamming into the supervolcano.

There's a few consequences of a 300m rock slamming into a 7000km one. 
Said big rock rings like a bell.  The Bolide of Thwappage didn't
vapourise completely - it exploded the moment it detonated on impact. 
That generated a lot of rather rapidly outbound (beyond planetary escape
velocity) shrapnel from the supervolcano's former location.  And Das
Boot was well above the local horizon at boom time.

As I said earlier, Rhett Shird missing the BoT imposed disadvantage on
Curly dodging, ducking and weaving through the shrapnel cloud - the poor
sod was caught by surprise.  That did not stop Curly reaching back from
2129 AD to 1990 AD to swipe MC Hammer's pants and thread the needle
through the shrapnel cloud, dodging any significant damage to the ship.

"How in blazes did you _miss_ a three hundred metre rock closing beyond
terminal velocity?" - Nikki

"You told me to look at the planet" - Rhett Shird

The air/raft had been wrapped around a terrain feature two planets
previously, and Nikki wanted to refuel from planetside water before the
worst of the impact fallout buggered it all up.

All well and good, nothing surprising, done this a heap of times before.

They dug up a sheltered ocean inlet and hot-footed it down there.

Somewhere along the way, Herr Sweep's Wheatonic dice karma rubbed off on
Wombat

Curly crit-failed the landing, so I let him see what happened on a luck
roll.  Which (to much player hilarity, including Wombat) he critically
failed as well.

Thus, Das Boot crashed on approach, causing significant wear and tear to
ship and crew.

Joe, being "an old man on heart meds", suffered a fatal heart attack
during the crash as Eddles gleefully failed an END roll.

I then asked the surviving PCs to make Luck rolls, diff 8.

Rhett Shird failed (massive surprise).

Curly critically failed (Wheatonic dice karma).

Nikki failed (this _was_ a surprise).

Thus Das Boot crashed, killing all hands.  For special effect, I decreed
that leaking residual hydrogen had been dispersed just enough to add
insult to injury with a massive fuel-air blast. GAME.  OVER.

>
> cheers and thanks for reading
>
> tc
>
>
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