Play Report: The Return of the Star Walker

The Star Walker (see this post) limped out of jump space in an unknown system far to the galactic South of Holtzmann's Corridor. Fortunately for them, the system was inhabited. They found out the locals called their world Saorsumma. In the undefined subsector it is in hex 0303.

On Saorsumma, Mac and Carter, along with the crew & passengers, were taken into captivity by the local government. Saorsumma it seems has starships, but they have lost the knowledge of how to construct or repair them. Jump drives are now to them a Black Box technology. The locals were excited to say the least to get their hands on another functioning J-drive. They wanted to know how to get more. Mac and Carter wanted to get back home.

After a few weeks in (relatively comfortable) captivity, a few of the Walker's passengers made a break for it with some local separatists. They disappeared into the world's back country. Maybe some day we'll play out what became of them.

Mac and Carter came up with a plan. The locals weren't thrilled but it sounded like the best option. They have waited four months for the local shipyard to finish the “refit” of their ship the Star Walker. (and we've waited three months to play out the next part of this adventure) I took what the players wanted and checked in Trillion Credit Squadron. By the book, it would take sixteen weeks to complete.

The Schamel Affair: A Traveller Braunstein

It all started in week 16 of year 929 of the Space Age when Tyrian von Stolberg arrived on Schamel. He was under orders from Count Murietta to explore for ways to boost the Schamelian economy. this was meant to get into the local's good graces and allow Murietta room to negotiate with them for mutual economic benefit. Two weeks later, von Stolberg's prospecting team hit the jackpot - a lode of gadolinium, possibly as much as a million tons of it. In-game, gadolinium is an important component of jump drives, so it's in demand by the ship-building powers: Lanzhou, Stavanger, Dekalb, and the Empire.

On the Traveller Trade tables, metals/alloys go for 10,000 credits a ton, so this mine was billions of credits waiting to be dug up.

What Happened?

Six Factions showed up on Schamel to negotiate and deal for access to the gadolinium mine.

• Count Murietta
• Baron Namsos of Stavanger
• The Lycosky Trade Protectorate Director of Operations, Corridor Region
• The Dekalbian business director for Thetford Aerospace
• Mr. Tarpov, Assistant Secretary for Trade at the Talaveran Consulate (a Boss for the ICO, the Sakamoto Ring)
• Baron de Quintero, another Contender who has a lot of money in mining already, and might see Murietta as competition.

and the Governor of the Schamel Habitation, Gov. Castberg, played by the Referee. In retrospect, it should have been a player running Castberg. The Referee had too much to keep track of to play him effectively.

The Referee assigned each faction a primary and a secondary objective. this front-loaded some conflict into the game. Each faction would, at the end, be assessed on how well those objectives were accomplished. 

Each turn, the players handed to the Referee a card explaining their plans for the following turn. Then they had 20 minutes to interact with the other players in negotiation, argument or whatever. The time limit kept things from bogging down, but we could have made it 30. We only had the afternoon to play it out, and we wanted to get through as many turns as we could, to get to some kind of resolution. We did. See below. 

'I think I did a TARDIS' - a First at the Gaming Table

 Huh?*

This past weekend, we had two firsts at the table while playing Traveller. This despite that I've played this game since about 1982.

First, the simple one. My older son was playing a new character, Dismas, an ex-Flyer. He was on Narok, a non-Imperial world in the Corridor. While there he found himself in the middle of a public protest against the Empire and its various evils. Remember that from the Empire's POV, everyone in the Corridor are barbarians. 

Dismas was minding his own business but stumbled into the midst of the protest anyway. Some protesters noticed him and moved to attack. As is typical at the start of combat, we rolled for Surprise. Neither side gained surprise. I asked if Dismas wanted to fight or escape.

Escape and Avoidance: Encountering parties may attempt to escape from, or avoid contact with, an encounter. A party which has achieved surprise may always avoid an encounter by so stating. Non-player character parties which have surprise and are outnumbered will avoid an encounter on a throw of 7+ (no DMs). If two parties encounter without surprise, either may attempt to escape immediately (before any combat or contact occurs). Roll

9+ to escape (DM allowed based on range: -1 if close or short range, +I if medium range, +2 if long range, +3 if very long range).

Abstract Combat with Book 4

My older son wanted to try his hand at running a mercenary unit. He's got a six month contract on Faldor, defending a town as unrest and civil war swirls around them. He's got about a platoon worth of troops and light vehicles.

His PC is the owner of the PMC “Wolfpack Security Corp.”, while an NPC is the field commander. His patron is the King of Pampati. A contingent of Pampatian Gath emigrated to Faldor to find work. The King is concerned about anti-Gath prejudice among the competing factions. Gath are genetically modified humans, standing 2.7 to 3.3 meters tall. Sounds like they could take care of themselves, but they moved there to work, not fight. Wrong place at the wrong time, you might say.

I've run most of his time so far as a set of random encounters as detailed in the Encounters chapter of TTB. A mix of hostiles and friendlies, government and rebels. A week or so back, a scout group from another PMC came snooping around their town. They exchanged shots before the scouts broke contact and retreated. They took one prisoner, who identified the group.

The People's Popular Development Front (PPDF) worked for the government, bolstering its forces. Then the PPDF leadership decided to renege on the contract. They saw an opportunity to establish themselves as a local power.

Last night we played out the next encounter with the PPDF. Three squads rolled into town to do “recon-in-force”.

We've been working from a sketch map of the town,

and I drew up a second hex map. The battle map noted important features like the HQ building and town gates. We both laid out counters for our units. My son's PMC is divided into about a dozen teams and squads. We did not worry about scale of the hexes, or length of turns. This is abstract, to resolve the battle quickly but without 'GM fiat'.

I added on a few simple rules to the abstract battle system in Book 4. Each turn both sides roll 1D and add the leader's Tactics skill. This is the number of counters that can move on a given turn. Each unit that moves can go one hex in any direction. This became an important factor for one side, later on. Neither side had Leadership skill on the board, but a Leader can make a throw to move a unit 2 hexes instead of one. (We'll see another time if that rule works well or not)

In the Avalon Hill game Antietam (part of the Blue & Gray series) the Union side can move only 6 of its 40+ counters per turn. This reflects McClellan's dithering during the actual battle. The movement throw added a variable to the game. It reflects the difficulties of command & control over a spread out force.

By the Numbers

Play Report - Gaming on Vacation

This past weekend my sons and I went on vacation to Charleston, SC. Saturday brought heavier rain than we anticipated. This curtailed our plans and kept us inside the hotel for a good part of the day. Fortunately, Dad thought to bring along The Traveller Book and some dice. We had a map of the Holtzmann's Corridor subsector, but none of my other notes. They chose to begin play on Armstrong's World, so were for a change not playing Imperials.

Keep in mind the following:

• PCs were rolled on the spot

• I used the random encounter and rumor tables, with results enforced

• I used the reaction tables, with results enforced

• I provided a little imagination for the details

In the span of just a few hours of gameplay, the following adventures happened:

Their PCs took ship as temporary crew by a Belter patron. They flew off-planet to a gas giant ring system and went ice asteroid mining. The mining expedition lasted three weeks of game time. The trip featured a near-brawl aboard ship with an NPC. A crewman got lost, a damaged suit almost killed one PC. On top of this, they still managed two separate strikes of crystal deposits. In three weeks of adventuring,they made a net total of 30,000 credits each. The patron offered to take them along back to Ferrocore, but they decided against it.

Play Report - Ghost Town, the Conclusion

 The troubleshooters did not spend the night in the shuttle after all. They chose instead to hole up in the chapel, which they had already searched. They took turns watching, first the two guys (Eowan Addison and Jotunn), then the two gals (Krater Constellation and Genevieve).

In the last watch of the night, Genevieve realized that she was being watched. Through a broken window, she saw a vacc suited figure looking in at her. The face plate was shattered – and there was no face inside the helmet! 

Calling out for her comrades, she tried to bring her autopistol to bear on the figure. Once again it darted away upon being spotted, heading in the direction of the shuttle and the arrival station.

The gang gave chase, but it seemed once again that the mysterious figure had eluded them. Eowan and Jotunn entered the shuttle to inspect it, fearing sabotage. Genevieve and Krater searched the exterior of the shuttle, then Krater spotted the vacc suit figure again. This time, it was on the roof of the station! Bullet and laser beam found their target, knocking the figure backwards. The guys climbed out the shuttle's top hatch and jumped over to the roof. No vacc suit!

But wait! There it was, rushing away down one of the 'streets' of the town, probably planning to lose them in the darkness again. 

Eowan (my son's PC) pulled a neat trick. He teleported to a spot in front of the fleeing figure, and body-blocked it into the dirt. Did I mention that all four of these troubleshooters were Psi-trained? This is only the second time in my history as a Referee that psionics came into play.

From the roof, Jotunn used telekinesis to launch a handful of steel balls at the vacc suit figure. He realized his shotgun would be ineffective at the range, but TK could cover the distance! Between them, they finally put the rogue suit on the ground.

Eowan realized while grappling the suit that there was no normal body inside. Once they had it subdued, he cut into the suit with his Blade, to reveal

Play Report - Ghost Town

At this week's game session, a number of regulars were absent so we turned to a standalone adventure with new characters. 

At my encouragement, several of the players went for Psionic training for their new PCs. What we got was a selection of low-level Psi talent, which they put to good use right away. 

The group, troubleshooters on Stavanger prime, were hired by a businessman to investigate some unusual happenings on a subordinate world. A mining town there had closed down when a better operation began elsewhere on the world.

The original owners of the land & mine eventually sold the property rights to the patron. He had a team of assessors on site, to determine the value of the location and inform what the patron might do with the land and buildings. 

The assessors reported back that strange things were happening around the town, so the patron hired the PCs to go out and act as troubleshooters. Get to the bottom of the mystery and let the assessors finish their work. En route to the subordinate world, the PCs passed the assessors' shuttle going the opposite direction. They'd seen enough and were scared off.