Traveller Tuesday, Band on the Run

I'm in the process of writing up a proper debriefing document for my players, but we finished "Death Station" a few weeks ago, and I thought I'd put up a report about it.

The players had just finished defending themselves from a mad scientist and his rat-like minions, and were pretty beat up. They decided to let the medic do some first aid on the most wounded members of the party while the others went to the nearby engine pod to attempt to restart the ship.

The engine pods themselves were dark and scary, but ultimately not useful. The players had a tense moment as they broke into the nearby auxiliary bridge, a task made more difficult by the fact that the power was off, the iris valve was stuck, and their strongest character was undergoing first aid. Nevertheless, with a combined effort and a make-shift crowbar, they got the valve open only to find the room deserted. They reactivated the ship's power and gravity in time to make the communications window with their employer. After a few tense moments of their patron not understanding that they were all in serious danger and that almost everyone else was dead, ("What do you mean 'dead'? Put Larssen on, right now!") the patron agreed that it would be wise to evacuate the ship with as many survivors as they could carry. (In this case, three.)

As the players made their way back to the docking ring, their antagonist, still at large, came on the intercom and chided them about their foolishness, crowing that it would all be over soon, and it was too late to escape his friends. The players at first believed he meant the rats, but then remembered the evidence they had found that a Solomani mercenary company was interested in the lab's work. They hurried to the boat, but the small elevator and the need to ferry up the immobilized survivors slowed them.

The scout went up first and began warming up the ship. Each turn, I had him roll his Piloting skill to advance to the next level of ship's preparedness. When the ship's sensors came on and calibrated, they detected an incoming ship on an intercept vector. As the players got the last of their number onto the little pinnace, the comms channel came on in a loud voice demanding that their ship stand down, cease rotation and prepare to be boarded. "The Package" was to be handed over as arranged. The players faked their way through the conversation while the pilot finished his launch preparations.

As the pinnace slid out of the docking ring, the hostile ship opened fire. (Here, I used the "Ship's Boat" skill suggested roll sequence - roll once to avoid damage, roll again to escape. But instead, I rolled 1D to determine how many "escape" successes they would need before getting away, and each "hit" was rolled on the standard combat damage table, rather than just destroying the ship as suggested.) The little pinnace didn't have any offensive or defensive equipment, but had speed on its side. The ship lost its comms early on, but the ex-Navy tech was able to repair them enough to get landing clearance (necessary on the last "leg" of the escape), and the ship took two hits to the engine, making subsequent "escape" rolls harder, I mean, forcing the Pilot to fight for his life as his compatriots feverishly tried to get their vacc suits on in case of a hull breach.

The pinnace "landed" at Gadden's excuse for a space port, and the Solomani mercenaries, deciding they didn't want to show their hand to the mining company's management, broke off their attack.

We broke there, and called the adventure over. I'm working on a few news reports and memos about the incident, and once I have them composed and distributed to my players, I'll post 'em here too.

All in all, a good game. It took me a few sessions to get the hang of Refereeing Classic Traveller, but I think I have a reasonable grasp of it now. As long as I don't think of it as so much of a turn-based board game, things go better. Though it does make things harder for the players, since they don't have as consistent a framework to hold on to.

I would run another CT game if people wanted to, though I don't know if I'd go for a "bite sized adventure-a-week" format, a sprawling "Firefly" type game or what. The "One night stand" adventure format, like Death Station, doesn't work so well when you can only play for an hour at a time, and then only every week or two. It was hard for me to keep continuity going between sessions, and I suspect even harder for the players, since none of them grew up playing Traveller, and had very little cultural reference to the factions involved.

Traveller Tuesday - S*** just got real

After stating that I wasn't going to do an update, here's an update.

Today saw a lot more combat.

The players, after "securing" the unconscious scientist (shot into unconsciousness last game) to a rolling chair to for easier transport, moved into the smaller lab room.

Inside, they found evidence of an explosion and some structural damage to the ship, but at first, that appeared to be all. As they slowly advanced across the lab, half way there, they began to hear urgent whispers - "quickly! quickly!", then soon afterwards, a huge swarm of rats irrupted from underneath the rubble to attack them. Simultaneously, a crazed scientist appeared from behind some cover at the end of the lab shouting "devour them my children!" and opening fire with a snub pistol.

The party was surrounded - rats along the flank, crazy scientist with a snub pistol at the head of the line, closed unpowered iris valve behind them. [Think Hannibal at Lake Trasimene, if you're a complete dork like me.]

The first turn six rats died from excessive shotgun and SMG exposure, then the rest split up with a half-dozen rats swarming each person in range, climbing onto them and biting them. The crazy scientist engaged two others with his snub pistol. He had taken up position very near to a "tunnel hole", but had some good, hard cover to shoot from behind.

The rat attack portion became a game of attrition - for simplicity's sake, I assumed a rat swarm got one attack per round, and players could melee the rats with either a weapon or their hands if they had no relevant weapon skill. A rat died on a 3+ wound, and extra damage could "spill over" to another rat. The "rat fight" got pretty ugly, almost dropping two players. As written, the rats should probably have stripped all of the players like piranhas, but my rats are not quite as nasty as the official ones, and they have a few other tactical advantages I won't go into here.
The gunfight side was equally nasty - the first round, the players didn't grab as much cover as they should have, but the closest player's cloth armor saved him from the first round from the snub pistol. The scientist's enhanced physique allowed him to survive three solid hits, and after a few rounds of lucky rolling the cloth armored character was suffering greatly. He withdrew from the firefight, leaving the army guy to finish the job. He obliged, plugging away with his rifle from around the corner. By the 4th turn, the scientist was worn down to the point that another solid hit would finish him off. He decided to evade and make a break for the tunnel, but the army guy finished him off with a final rifle round - the players' first human kill of the adventure.

Upon the scientist's death, the rats dispersed, leaving the players to ponder the strange mental reading data one of them had uncovered earlier in the lab computer's data....

And that's where we broke for the session. Two characters on their last breath before going unconscious or worse, another pretty beat up and two in relatively good shape.

I'm using a more forgiving version of healing than true CT - if you don't zero a stat, first aid will completely recover your wounds. In truth, the CT rules are ambiguous about how to handle slightly wounded characters, so I've decided to err on the side of Hollywood - unless you're actually knocked down, some "field medicine" will return you to fighting form.

On the down side, effective first aid takes a Medic-1 and 15 minutes with a medkit, so it would take their medic the better part of an hour to patch everyone up.

They're most likely not going to have that much time. :)

Traveller Tuesday - working towards the bridge

The Traveller Tuesdays game resumed this week, where our intrepid band of misfits found themselves subduing the mentally unstable ship's engineer.

The engineer's "disease" wore off, and he collapsed into a nearly unconscious state. The players were able to question him briefly, but he was more concerned with denying that he had been eating the dead bodies they found him with than he was in answering any relevant questions about what was going on.

While they were tranquilizing him and tying him up, another swarm of ratoids attacked. The ex-soldier was bitten, but the damage was negligible. (I'm using the rule that unless you zero a stat, first aid restores you completely.)

The players approached the bulkhead's iris valve and opened it. It immediately snapped shut, and a voice over the intercom said, "Ah, I see my little lab rats have learned a new trick...." Though discomfited, the characters bypassed the door control and moved onward towards the bridge. They investigated a few staterooms along the way, but found little of interest until they were within visual range of the bridge. (One stateroom had signs of a struggle and evidence that someone had been murdered, in contrast to the other bodies which appear to have died before being chewed on.)

The lead character saw something scuttle away around the "horizon" of the deck. Flicking on his IR goggles, he detected a single pair of human-sized footprints moving away from the bridge's doorway. Very soon afterwards, the sound of another iris valve door closing was heard down the hall. The players decided to investigate the bridge.

The bridge was largely operational, though a few of the lights were smashed out. One of the powerplant modules reported itself as being off line, most of the ship's fuel tanks are empty, and of course the long range communications gear was not responding. The ex-merchant came up with the bright idea of using the ship's security cameras and systems to the character's advantage. While many of the cameras had been smashed along with the lights, and a few more cameras were looking into dark areas, the players got a few glimpses of the laboratory areas and their disorderly states.

Meanwhile, the ex-navy character was examining the ship's computer's logs, turning up evidence that not only was someone sending reports to an unknown factor back on Earth, but that Solomani mercenary officers had visited the station - a bit suspicious, since Lysani corp has an Imperial charter. She was unable to determine the subject of the research from the coded messages however.

She did, however, discover the ship's anti-piracy software package (standard issue on a covert research laboratory), and the party immediately began to plan how to use this new capability to their advantage. Anti-piracy measures include locking out ship sections, modifying gravity and atmosphere withing bulkhead zones, and releasing sleeping gas as required.

They know that at least one human is out running around, and that he knows "his" ship has been invaded. It's also likely that he knows the capabilities of the ship, and won't hesitate to use those capabilities to his own advantage.

This is where we broke for the week.

Hopeless Characters?

In my "Death Station" game, I decided to have players pick from the pregenerated character list in the adventure, just to keep things simple. The leftovers were characters that could best be described as "hopeless", or at least obviously disadvantaged compared to the other characters in the list.

In a random character generation system like Traveller's, this is unavoidable. The rules are pretty strict - if you don't like your character, sign it up for a dangerous career and hope it doesn't survive. That's kind of harsh to be sure, but it also leads to characters who suddenly become interesting because of their training, or who you begin to root for anyway during the generation process.

One of the folks considering joining the game wanted to know how to interpret these "hopeless" characters, so I wrote up a potential bio for each of them, to give an idea how seemingly "bad" character stats can lead to fun characters to play.

I doubt these exact characters will be of any interest to anyone, but since I like to read articles like this myself, maybe others will too. If you're not familiar with Traveller, 7 is the average statistic, which range from 2-12. Skill level-1 is competent, level-2 is accomplished, level-3 is expert, etc. "Soc" is not like Charisma, it's your social status. Low Soc doesn't make you bad, but it does mean that society ignores you (at best). Attacks are what "plus" you get to hit with that weapon and how many dice you roll for damage.

4) Ex-Other 658573 Age 30 3 terms 

Str: 6     Dex: 5     End: 8     Int: 5      Edu: 7     Soc: 3

Skills: Brawling-1, Gambling-1, Streetwise-1, Bribery-1

Attacks: Blade +0 2D, Fists +1 1D, Carbine +0 3D (Note, low dex makes any other firearm impractical)

Equipment: Cr2,000

This guy is probably a petty thug, skilled in pushing people around (bribery, streetwise), gambling and fist fights. He’s not very strong, but he has a passable endurance, which would help in in a fight. He’s kinda below average in most respects, and his Social Standing is so low, he’s either some sort of illegal alien or other social undesirable. Considering his average level of education, he’s probably not a barbarian or street urchin, so there’s probably a story there.

He does, however, have a fair amount of cash compared to everyone else, probably resulting from his Gambling skill. I picture this guy as a small-ish but surprisingly sturdy person who may not be the world’s sharpest intellect, but has learned how to “work the system”, even though “the system” has very little use for him. I would guess that he wound up on the mining colony to help pay off some “bad choices” made on another world, and has steadily been currying favor and running some petty gambling games to make money on the side.

5) Ex-Marine Lieutenant 966855 Age 30 3 terms     

Str: 9     Dex: 6     End: 6     Int: 8      Edu: 5     Soc: 5

Skills: ATV-1, Tactics-1, Brawling-1, Cutlass-1, Revolver-1

Attacks: Cutlass +1 3D, Fists +1 1D, Revolver -1 3D (yes, -1, due to his low Dex), Dagger +2 2D

Equipment: Cr4,000

This guy is big, strong and smart, though not in the best shape, and not very well educated. He’s mostly all about the close-in fighting or armor tactics (ATV includes crewing tanks and APCs, and his Tactics skill indicates he was at least the vehicle's commander.)

If it weren’t for his high Intelligence, I’d say he’s your basic big violent jarhead, though he did made it to Lieutenant, and he’s managed to save more money than any other character in the list, so how dumb is he? I imagine he’s at the colony because he found he was at a loss to find gainful employment when the marines no longer needed him, and maybe didn't know enough about how the world works to read the fine print on his employment contract.

8) Ex-Other 586AA4 Age 26 2 terms

Str: 5     Dex: 8     End: 6     Int: 10     Edu: 10    Soc: 4

Skills:      Forgery-2, Dagger-1, Streetwise-1

Attacks: Dagger +1 2D

Equipment: Cr1,000

And this guy is another street punk, but this time with high dexterity and VERY high Int and Edu. With Forgery-2, I suspect he’s the archetypal “guy you go to to get whatever you need”, with a specialty in fake documentation – sketchy and slightly built, but slippery and able to handle himself in a knife fight. His education may be the result of some sort of scholarship offered to “socially disadvantaged” students with great potential, or it could be a personal obsession with learning that has allowed him to gain an encyclopedic body of knowledge without any actual ability to apply that knowledge.

He’s possibly on-world “playing dead” to avoid some crime boss back home. If he could just get passage off world, well, the Imperium is a big place and he’s good at not being found.

Traveller Tuesday for 9/25

<Picking up with the party in the Reception area>

While investigating the reception area, a swarm of what appeared to be Gadden’s rat-equivalent creatures swarmed the party. They seemed afraid of the light, but (amazingly) their hunger drove them to attack. A few rounds of shotgun, SMG, Rifle and Pistol fire reduced the swarm to a messy puddle of blood and pseudorat meat. Two characters got bitten (nasty little critters), but the wounds were not serious enough to cause any lasting trouble, and after a quick bit of first-aid, everyone was ready to go. The “rats” looked to be escaped experiment animals (tags, chemical shunts, shaved patches, etc.) but seemed unusually muscular specimins.

The players decided to make their way to the bridge, going past the galley area on the way. The few staterooms they passed seemed mostly unused; one of them was a small meeting room with some notes about the research. A character downloaded the notes to her handcomp for later, just in case.

In the galley (completely dark due to smashed light fixtures), the scout character spotted a figure over by the meat locker using his infra-red goggles. That person ducked into the locker and warned the characters away, mentioning something about “the enemy” and some other nonsensical fear-induced ranting. The ex-army bruiser entered the locker and closed the door behind him, at which point he and the mystery person began to fist fight. The mystery person was fiendishly tough though, and the ex-army guy took a pretty solid blow to the head. Still conscious, he tried to break away from the mystery person, and was aided in his excape by the timely opening of the door by the rest of the party. The mystery person recoiled in fear from the party’s flashlights, and the ex-scout netted him

Now that there is some light on him, the person appears to be a crewmember, though somewhat “hulked out” and very dirty/bloody/smelly. It also appears that he’s been eating some of the other people on the station, and had been using one of their arms as a cudgel.

Tune in next week, when the characters attempt to subdue the crewman and hopefully get some answers.

Tomorrow's Traveller Game

Tomorrow is the second session of the office lunch-hour Traveller game, based on Classic Traveller rules and the "Death Station" adventure, both from around 1981.

The players, who are using characters from the provided pre-generated characters in the adventure, are down-and-out Travellers, stuck on a company owned mining colony with growing debt and shrinking futures. An executive from a research company on planet for somewhat nebulous purposes has proposed a deal with them - a lab ship in orbit is not checking in on schedule, and the characters are to travel up to the ship to see what's going on. If their is anything going on requring them to help out in a significant way, the executive will pay off their company debt and supply them with passage off world. If not, hey, at least they get out of the mines for a few days.

Last session, the characters used and air/raft and some vacc suits to rendezvous with the lab ship in orbit. After some investigation, they discovered that they could board the spinning ship through its docked boat - a 40 ton small craft usually used to collect biological samples on the planet's surface. The session left them aboard the "Carl Sagan", standing in the lobby and wondering where all the crew is.

I suspect next session to begin with the players going door to door down the ring of the ship (effectively a long corridor with limited "horizon" visibility), slowly discovering that things are not ok on board the ship, and that they are not alone....

(The best part is, the problem's not what they think it is)