Mongoose Traveller Mini-AP

[Psion]

I once again got tapped to run a game. I decided I've been itching to run Mongoose Traveller, so offered to rolled up a few characters and run a short game. The group had never played Traveller before, except one who had reported a negative experience. He said that the group did boring trading. To which I reported that's a good place to start, but the idea is you are supposed to do fun stuff along the way.

To those who had never played, I summed the "typical Traveller tramp trader" type campaign as being "like Firefly, minus so many western references." That seemed to get the message across.

We had 3 players and one book, so we had to walk through chargen one term at a time. I like my chargen a bit more heroic, so I offered them "reroll chips". I hadn't (and still haven't) decided just how this works, but basically I told them, they can ask for a reroll, but they get a chip which I tally up at the end of chargen, and acts as a sort of "luck debt" I use to inflict problems on them. That seemed to work alright.

I told them a limit of 5 terms; they all took all 5 terms. We ended up with:

Darko Milozich - 5 term merchant
Omar Baroddy - 5 term navy engineer
Trillian Albright - 1 term noble (dilettante), 3 terms entertainer (journalist), 1 term scout (explorer). (Yes, I made jokes about whether their ship would be named the Heart of Gold.)

I liked the way that the events worked. Generating the characters term-by-term made it easy to invoke the "connection rule", and we had some interesting connections. The merchant marine had taken the noble for a cruise to an exotic alien world where they both learned sophontology. The engineer got assigned to train the noble in gun combat on a diplomatic mission, and they ended up having a tryst.

My players played Spirit of the Century with me before, so they idea of connecting characters came naturally.

None of the characters ended up having skills over 2. The big fear over on the Citizens of the Imperium boards was that the connections rule would be used to parley into high skills, but my players were interested more in getting skills they wanted but weren't rolling, than bloating their skills into uber-leetness.

Mustering out, the players got 11 ship shares in a commonly owned ship, which worked well. I like the new ship share thing. It's something that was got shoved into adventures with pregens, but never supported by chargen. I let the merchant use his Free Trader shares at full value for a Far Trader because J-2 gives me a bit more flexibility at tugging the players around the universe.

We played a short session after finishing characters. I used my first "bad luck" chip to say that the seller that the players got their ship from hosed them and annual maintenance wasn't done (incidentally, MongT assumes you do maintenance monthly; I reverted to the old way of having it only be an annual requirement.) I allowed the merchant and admin roll to file a complaint. He recouped the cost of the maintenance, but they were still stuck in port while the maintenance was being done.

For activities... I pitched two patrons at them, from the (no longer available) patron encounters by ComStar games. One patron was the port authority who needed a crew to man a rescue cutter due to staffing problems. The other was a clerk who came to the world for a college reunion who lied about being a merchant captain, and wants the group to pose for pictures and come help bolster his story.

They took both jobs. I allowed the merchant (again) make an admin roll to work their schedule so they could do both.

Of course nothing's ever simple. In the rescue cutter scenario, the ship ends up rescuing a free trader with a malfunctioning maneuver drive. A junior drive hand messed up and tried to cover it up. The merchant pilot and engineer set about making repairs while the dilettante stayed in the cutter. Well, it turns out that the junior drive hand messed up, covered it up, and is now in a panick. He grabs a body pistol and decided to try to hijack the cutter. The silver-tongued noble after a short altercation convinces the drive hand she doesn't know how to pilot it. He runs off and locks himself in the stateroom; the crew extracts him, and the group turns him over to the port authority.

They get back in time to go to their college re-union. The noble's holography (photography) skill actually came in handy manufacturing the evidence. But again, things can't be simple, can they. Really, the clerk never graduated, but came to the reunion to try to get back a romantic rival, who happens to be a noble with several bodyguards. The group talks him down before he does something really stupid, and earn themselves a new ally on a nearby world.

For a setting, I used the Gateway to Destiny book for T20. I ad hocced some details for the worlds we randomly chose as homeworlds... but found out they all had details in other books. This played to my benefit and chagrin. On the good side, I have more background data to work into the player's backstory, AND one of the adventures I want to run (the Linkworlds cluster book for T20) feature two of the PCs' homeworlds. On the downside, those 2 PCs have backstory elements to make them not want to go back, so I might need to do some finagling to get them back there.

Overall, I like it pretty well. I still think that T20's way of giving you a bit more choice in chargen, and the more competent characters it makes, is something I'll miss. However, I really do like the way the events and connection rule works in building a backstory. We also are used to playing with fate points/action dice, so I may introduce something like that soon.

 

[rust]

We also are used to playing with fate points/action dice, so I may introduce something like that soon.

If you do so, please let me know how it went. I am currently toying with the
idea to introduce something like the Hooks and Action Points from Thousand
Suns or a kind of Destiny Points into my campaign, to give the players an op-
portunity to "edit" the setting in a minor way, but I still hesitate out of fear
that it might ruin the campaign.

And thank you very much for your insights into your game session.

 

[Psion]

Ran this again today. We had the 3 starting players and another, which I had to throw a character together for. She expressed the desire to play some Security/Surveillance type person. The new character was:

Ayza (didn't catch a last name). 3 terms agent / 2 term security (from Mercenary)

I did all the rolling, but let the player personalize the character by letting her make up the details of the connections (and pick the connection skills) and two picks from the skill package. Like the other players, she concentrated more on adding skills she felt she was missing (for this player: explosives was one!)

As their ship was done with maintenance, it was actually time to name their ship. The decided to run with their joke name Heart of Gold. Ah well.

Life conspired to make the session short; one player had to leave early and I got there late because I took my car in to get fixed and it took forever to get the loaner car.

I decided I didn't like linkworlds as a mini-campaign as much as I once did, so I set my sight on running Homecoming, a mini-campaign put out by ComStar/Avenger for the 993/Gateway setting (the setting was for T20, though the adventure was CT because Martin Dougherty didn't have rights to put out T20 stuff). They were a ways from there, so I decided to have a patron pay partial charter fees to travel to Annapabar (the Gateway domain capital) where it would be refit and they would receive a full charter from the scientist patron.

So, to keep things interesting, I threw in another patron encounter along the way. I also pulled this from a no-longer-available comstar book, their Patron Encounters book.

As the players have loaded their cargo and are getting ready to depart, a grizzled old vargr rushes up to the ship and begs for them to take him to their next stop and assist him in recovering a large stash of bearer bonds and credit plaques.

The vargr identifies himself as Jonezy and seems a little paranoid, and asks the PCs to meet him at a secluded bar. Once there, he explains his situation. He and some buddies came across some cash by unconventional means; the gang secreted the stash in cases buried in the outback of their next stop. The gang agreed that this "retirement fund", as they had come to call it, would sit until the day they were all ready to cash in.

But to Jonezy's chagrin, all but himself and one other member of his gang were victims of gunshot wounds. It seems that one of Jonezy's old pals was going to make a run for the money. Jonezy resolved to get there first, and agree to split the take with the crew of the Heart of Gold if they could take him there are recover it.

The group agrees, and when they get to the destination world, start unloading the cargo and other passengers while 3 characters (everyone but Darko) decide to go with Jonezy to recover the cases. As the group is departing in the Air/Raft*, Jonezy notices his rival loading up in an ATV with some native help.

(* - Astute observers will note the Mongoose Traveller far trader does not have the Air/Raft that comes standard in CT/MT/T20 Far Trader designs. I sort of decided that I like T20 designs better, and resolved to go with those for the purposes of this game.)

The group is about to slink away with the air/raft when Ayza notices an unusual lump of material on the side of the air/raft. She almost missed in, but her trained eye noticed the peculiar appearance of a sort of "chameleon paste" used in demolitions work that matches the surrounding of whatever it is slapped against. (The chameleon-paste was an impromptu thing I created on-the-spot.) She used her explosives skill to remove the lump, only to find out there was no explosive. Someone had put a tracer-bug with an inertial locator in the paste. Someone meant to track them.

The group turned the device over to Darko to analyze and went whipping over the landscape, making much better time than the ATV. They arrived at the site where the cases were buried, only to find that the area had been the site of a mudslide since Jonezy's gang left it.

So, they start digging. Their time lead was about to vanish.

Meanwhile, back at the ship, Darko notices another starship landing (this is a paltry little type D starport, so it's not a frequent occurrence), a small scout ship. More significantly, he notices that the ship takes on 5 people that the Heart of Gold have brought here as low passengers. And, it was headed approximately towards the group (more precisely, it was headed towards the ATV, which Darko was able to determine.)

Darko notifies the group in the air/raft and begins to spin up the ship. At the site of the money, the ATV has arrived, and Jonezy and the other member of this gang start cussing at each other, blaming each other for the killings. It slowly begins to dawn on them that they had been set up, and someone else was following them to their buried treasure as Trillian begins to talk them down.

The groups quickly unearthed as many cases as they can and take off with them; the group in the ATV takes off with half of them. Unfortunately, the ATV still had a bug on it, and the group in the scout ship hunted them down.

Darko piloted the ship for a mid-air retrieval of the air/raft, which went less than perfectly. The ship left the world with an empty cargo hold rather than deal with the paramilitary force the ship had determined was on the scout.

The rest of the trip to the domain capital was uneventful, aside from a few rumors from Homecoming to help frame the upcoming adventure. I ran the meeting with their new patron (lots of exposition about the sites of the capital but not much action) and their ship being refit, but that was about it.

This session, I purposefully tried to streamline trade. I pretty much told the players NO TRADE CALCULATIONS DURING PLAY. They weren't doing speculative trade, so it wasn't a big deal. I came up with a monthly maintenance amount, and jotted down all the cargo and passengers they transported, and at the end of the session calculated the proceeds. Though some inaccuracies may have crept in that way (the jumps/month probably didn't line up to exactly 2), I wasn't really that specific about how many days they spent insystem at each location, so there was wiggle room there. They managed to keep their accounts positive with the monies from the patrons.

Addendum: I still haven't added any sort of action/fate point/aspect thing yet.

The players did comment that they liked the skill system. I still like MT's better (and occasionally, when thinking up tasks of the fly, still think to myself certain pairs of skills would go good instead of skill/stat), but so far I'm "playing it straight".

 

[Madarin Dude]

nice to hear about a successful campaign starting gives me a bit more confidence.

 

[Psion]

I ran this two more times, getting about 2/3 of the way through Homecoming. It's proving quite a bit more brisk than I anticipated.

I don't know if I feel up for a play-by-play because honestly, they played right along with the adventure. I commented at one point I felt the adventure might be too railroady, but the players insisted they never felt railroaded.

*** First Session of Homecoming, part I ***

SPOILER WARNING: Major parts of the plot of Homecoming discussed here

The players made it to Annapabar (the new domain capital of the Domain of Gateway) and met their erstwhile patron, Dr. Markia. Dr. Markia is a field-researcher/historian type. The adventure had CT stats (aside from some vestigal D20 stats, which were trivial convert). Porting the characters was not a problem.

Dr. Markia has received the imperial grant that paid for an upgrade to the players' ship and to charter it for the period of his research. There are some gaps in the history of the colonization of the gateway domain he intends to fill by traveling the area, interviewing people and examining records, as well as using a new state-of-the-art sensor array they had installed on the ship.

(The adventure provides the players with a 400 ton lab ship variant, but my group already had a ship. I smoothed this over by making it into a mod with modular labs and a sensor array that took half of their cargo bay).

As soon is the refits on the Heart of Gold is done, the group takes her out for a spin, and test out the new sensor suite. As they are about to secure from their mission, a public emergency erupts. They get a message from the port authority to thrust for a certain section of the sky and immediately commence EM silence. The chatter of radio noise filling the system goes quiet. However, the ship's new passive sensor suite gives them a view of what's really going on out there. System defense assets are quietly moving, and they catch site of a shuttle being fired upon and destroyed, and soon after, a subsidized merchant type ship making a run out to 100 diameters, and appears to have been destroyed before it jumped.

While this is going on, the players find some other craft arriving in their marshalling area, including a harried System Defense Boat captain and a cantankerous merchant captain, Kaille Suulig of the Legendary Ledger. The port authority issues a stand down, but the traffic irregularities already have started: a rock-hauler had an engine casualty, and a boulder sized object is now traipsing around the traffic lanes.

The SDB announced their intent to aid the hauler, but the port authority discovered that the Heart of Gold had a sparkly new sensor system and asked them to take on the task of locating the boulder and tagging it with a transponder. The do this task, which become a classic traveller "skills against the environment" type of scenario that has the players deploying sensor, piloting, zero-g, and vacc suit skills to get the task done.

After the travellers return to the port, the port authority thanks them and compensates them for their time. He also asks if they could deliver a small cargo to Kam, a lightly populated nearby world. Dr. Markia agrees that this is as good a place to start his search as any.

The travellers were starting to get signs of interest in the Dr's work right away. One woman offered a small grant for having the players keep an eye out for Ursa artifacts unrelated to their search. While Darko and Trillian were meeting with her, Omar (remaining at the ship) got an anonymous message advising them to watch out for Dr. Markia and to install a (provided) trojan that lets them lock people out of vital areas of the ship. Some investigation.

The players wisely did no install the program. They left Ayza on Annapabar to investigate the source of the transmission (her player was absent; it was convenient.)

Kam proves an interesting world. The port authority director is one Morgan Lakarmis, a drunkard with a small spares business who abuses his authority to keep business flowing. A small marine contingent keeps things flowing. Lakarmis was indisposed when the players asked for landing clearance, so a marine corporal waved them on down. The players receive an earful for landing without Lakarmis' authority, but eventually, he wanders off back to the bar.

Trillian meets Brianna Stalling, an old fellow journalist on Kam, which seems to have evolved into a relaxing little resting spot for eccentrics and other retirees. Brianna relates stories of how the news-magazine she worked for State of the Gate got shut down. The magazine made a living out of exposing corporate malfeasance. But eventually, threats and extortion cause the main people behind the magazine to quit. She still knows where some of those folks are, but the players don't follow up and that trail remains open.

While Markia and Trillian are out interviewing the locals, Darko is on the ship while the working crew moves out the cargo. Darko notices a seeker barreling towards the landing pad where the Heart of Gold lies. The working party is unphased by the plummeting descent, however, saying "Oh, that's old Karse. That's they way he always lands." Sure enough, the ship arrests its descent and lands snugly beside the Heart.

The party meets the pilot of the ship, Karse Vaali, his daughter Myla, and the old white haired belter legend known as Granddad. After some carousing and retelling of exploits, Karse tells of a small cache of alien artifacts he found on in an old shelter on an asteroid he stumbled onto while working on some trojan asteroids at a nearby system, which one he can't quite remember. He shows them his one keepsake from this cache; the rest he sold to some "museum guy" on Dadegadi. He shows them the one remaining artifact from this find, a fashioned egg-like orb.

The Heart of Gold heads out to Kishmaa to see if they can't find this asteroid.

(More to come. They covered a lot of ground this session...)

 

[Kilgs]

Gateway Domain rules! Looks like things are going well, looking forward to more updates. We could use more AP's here as opposed to grumbling...

 

[Psion]

Gateway Domain rules! Looks like things are going well, looking forward to more updates. We could use more AP's here as opposed to grumbling...

Indeed. I get the impression that most people who rip apart MongT haven't played a whit of it.

 

[Psion]

Homecoming Session I, part 2

SPOILER WARNING: Spoilers for Homebound continue

Kishmaa system (Ley 1933)

The ship arrives in the Kishmaa system, and follows the route that the belter Karse described to a rock near the trailing Trojans of the gas giant Promija. While in port, they caught wind of the Brindan Prime, a large mining ship (with a variety of small craft assets) that had laid claim to those trojans. This is contrary to imperial laws regarding claims, but they have enough assets to keep belters from crossing them.

As the heart of gold passes the cluster of trojan asteroids, they get the expected "stand clear" messages from the Brindan Prime. Stand clear they do, since the asteroid the belter spoke of was somewhere outward from the main cluster of trojans. They traced it down by applying a bit of sensor skill along with a bit of astrogation to find it's likely orbit.

Upon approach to the asteroid, the sensors pick up the structure at the end of a gouge in the asteroid. They set the Heart of Gold down and Omar takes a vacuum walk to explore it. The structure ends up being an unusual nature, obviously not of human build. Omar finds only a wrench (probably left by a drunken Karse years earlier) and an oblong orb similar to the one Karse had.

But, as luck would have it, the Brindan Prime were keeping an eye on the travellers and were very interested in what they were doing. A pair of fighters were headed for an intercept course. Darko spins up the ship and (through some tricky piloting) gets it where they can snag Omar and get out of town before the fighters can get there. Behind them, they see the craft launching an inspection team, an soon after, their sensor array sees the flash of missiles exploding on the surface of the rock.

Using the lab facilities aboard the Heart of Gold, Dr. Markia makes an analysis of the orb. It has discrete layers with different densities and magnetic characteristics, quite probably some manner of recording device. But he is unable to divine how to read the device, and they probably would be best served by someone who has experienced these artifacts before.

They head to Dadegadi to find the "museum Guy" that Karse sold his artifacts to.

Dadegadi (Ley 1836)
Dadegadi A443745-C

Dadegadi is am important and busy port, the main entry point of jump-2 traffic into the cluster. The group's best bet seems to be the Boraosis Collection, a private museum specializing in offworld artifacts.

They take the rail to the neighborhood where the museum is located. The last few block are by foot, but they don't get a block before the trouble starts. The region has been cordoned off and emergency vehicles go rumbling by. Up ahead, there are signs of a fire that have ripped through the neighborhood. The museum is gone and all its workers dead, and the police find nothing.

On the way back from the museum site, the group gets accosted by a bunch of thugs, who leave the players with a few bruises and a warning to stop looking for what they are looking for. They retreat before anyone is seriously injured.

But now, of course, they have all the more reason to look. Omar and Trillian do a little records hunting and figure out that all the current employees of the museum all do appear to have passed away. But the curator is new. The man that would have been curator when Karse has sold his artifacts to was Dr. Ernest Lavaaki, who retired and left Dadegadi with no reasons beyond "family business".

Where he went was unspecified, but checking the port records show his immediate destination upon departure to be Lepanto.

Which, of course, becomes their next destination.

But before they can depart, they get a job offer. Far End Freighting offers them a juicy charter contract, at 25% over the going rate. It's a good offer, but it would involve dropping Dr. Markia's charter. They refuse, but are suspicious that this is some sort of set up. Other parties have received and accepted similar offers lately, but it seems legitimate.

Lepanto System (Ley 1735)
Lepanto C555565-9

The players have been to Lepanto before, on their first transit into the Imperial Trade Cluster. It's post as an amber zone by the TAS; the world had experienced unrest due to pro-solomani activity, and is now under Imperial jurisdiction.

A little data mining reveals Levaaki was here fore 3 weeks, and then (under an assumed name) took a free trader, the Skiphop (which just happened to be one of the ships that took the Far End Freighting offer) to Annapabar.

Annapabar (Ley 1936) A4367A9-D B

On Annapabar, the group picks up Ayza, who failed to turn up a lead on who sent the message with the trojan program earleir.

They also check up on the skiphop. The boarding records show that no human adult male passengers disembarked here, just a vargr woman and her child. The skiphop departed for Kam, a world the players are familiar with.

Kam (Ley 2034) C354301-A

The players return to Kam, and discover the belter community is mourning over the death of Karse, Granddad, and Myla. Karse was prospecting when a failure in drive controls left it careening into the rock they had picked out.

This wasn't near enough for the players. They had done a bit of vacuum investigation, why stop now? They chatted up the belters to find where the crash was, deployed their sensors to find the wreckage. There was no sign of foul play or survivors, but they did manage to recover Karse's orb.

Keeping on the trail of Dr. Levaaki, they players find that he had left the skiphop and got passage on a seeker headed for Shamuus, where he had hoped to obtain a position at a university.

Which would be a tale continued in the next session.

Mechanics/Play Notes

We covered a lot of ground in this session. Whatever else you wish to say about the system, it certainly did its job of keeping the game going, supporting play with a minimum of consultations. The simple 8+ rule is easy to remember and use.

The one snag is that my players (perhaps as a sign of too much D20 and FATE) kept wanting a Sense Motive skill or something like it.

This particular group is pretty weak in combat; when the thugs accosted them, they had no ability to resist without Ayza along. Some of them set out to remedy this by training in melee skills. I still worry that they won't be good enough in combat for some encounters later in the campaign.

I also have a comment on the mods to the UWP definitions, but it bears on the next session as well, so I'll save it until then.

 

[GypsyComet]

The one snag is that my players (perhaps as a sign of too much D20 and FATE) kept wanting a Sense Motive skill or something like it.

Depending on situation, that could be Investigate, Streetwise, or Carouse.

 

[Original_Carl]

This particular group is pretty weak in combat; when the thugs accosted them, they had no ability to resist without Ayza along. Some of them set out to remedy this by training in melee skills. I still worry that they won't be good enough in combat for some encounters later in the campaign.

If there are any undefined contacts in the group, consider making one of them a member of a mercenary company trying to catch up with an old pal. Describe how after a few beers and a few shots the merc says something like, "How'd you get that shiner? Did you start boxing?" and lead that to an offer of a few trained soldiers or marines to assist with security on the ship and in port.

 

[Psion]

If there are any undefined contacts in the group, consider making one of them a member of a mercenary company trying to catch up with an old pal. Describe how after a few beers and a few shots the merc says something like, "How'd you get that shiner? Did you start boxing?" and lead that to an offer of a few trained soldiers or marines to assist with security on the ship and in port.

That's close to what happened, but not quite.

I'll discuss that in three posts.

 

[Psion]

session 3/6/09, part I

Ran this 2 more times since the adventure detailed in the last post.

As before, Spoilers for the Homecoming adventure by ComStar games ahead

Shamuus (Ley 2133)
C453758-9

Starport

The party was on the trail of Dr. Levaaki and hoped that this would be their last port of call. Shamuus is undergoing some unrest similar to that going on on the world of Lepanto (which is classified an amber zone and is under imperial rule to quell the uprising). The local pro-solomani agitation isn't as bad as Lepanto, but many paranoid anti-sollie groups are harassing innocents while the civic guard struggle to keep the peace.

The group follows a lead that Levaaki had a friend at the city of Kaanachi and hoped to find a job at the influential university there. The world only allows starships to dock at the starports, and only allows local flyers (which are all owned by rich technocrat.) The quickest mode of public transit is the rail line.

The rail line, however, is one of the prides of the world, and quickly connects disparate sites on the surface. The rail line the PCs take transits over the Targye straits on the Great Targye Bridge, a monument of local engineering. (The locals have never been to the honeycomb world of Stoner a few subsectors over, but for TL9, the bridge is pretty nice...)

Kaanachi city, Shamuus

The group arrives in Kaanachi and finds that things are very tense here. Zealous anti-sollie groups roam the street and nobody is safe. The group helps out one local before making themselves scarce when one zealot gets wind of offworlders and runs off to draw his buddies.

With some short access to a local traffic terminal, the group track Dr. Levaaki to an upper-class district for university fellows. They make their way there on foot, avoiding the roving troublemakers.

The group takes measures to ensure that if Dr. Levaaki is there, he can't flee; Omar heads out back to intercept anyone who escapes. Trillian knocks on the door, and is greeted by a nervous looking housekeeper who invites them in and mentions that Dr. Levaaki left some cases for them. The party soon begins to realize that the housekeeper thinks they are someone else. And when the travellers ask the whereabouts of Dr. Levaaki, the housekeeper begins to suspect they are not his associates, but Trillian begs off claiming they are students trying to impress a professor.

Examining the cases the housekeeper offered them, they determine that they are academic papers of little pertinence to their search. But the housekeeper said that Dr. Levaaki left with other cases and took a riverbarge to the port of Karell, to meet a ship for Trayse, a major city on the east coast of this continent; his ship continues on to Pargrave’s Landing, the Starport/Capital city.

The group tries to take the rail back to intercept him, only to discover that someone (the "sollies" according to the locals) took out a major support on the Great Targye Bridge, and rail travel that way is down until the engineers can get it fixed.

So the group rents a cab to get them to a nearby town where they can pick up the ship. The cabbie gets a little shy when someone starts firing shots at the travellers. But the shots cause the violence and rioting to escalate, and a little extra cash keeps the cabbie going.

Trayse city, Shamuus

They get to Trayse just as the ship is putting hurriedly to sea. The crew seems short handed, and a long line of would-be passengers are being turned away from the overcrowded boat. Just then, a mob of people descend on the last few crewmen loading the last few crates. The stressed first officer (one Janine Tilsenn) says the travellers can have passage if they get the rest of her crew on board. With a little brawling and grappling, the group pulls the struggling crewmen away from the mob and Darko (covering their escape) is the last one one, leaping the gap as the ship pulls away from the gangplank.

Aboard the maritime freighter Broad and Deep

Once on board, the group find Dr. Livaaki, who has 3 other flight cases with him. On showing him the orbs, Dr. Livaaki examines the device, and states that, yes, he had seen such devices before--and it is, indeed, an ancient storage device--though he never figured out who made them. He excitedly pulls a device he put together for examining such devices and hooks it up to the orbs the players had.

One of the orbs seems broken (possibly the fractures sent through it when the belter's seeker impacted the asteroid), but the other seemed promising. Livaaki could pull out a starchart corresponding to the nearby Matarishan subsector, some garbled text, and some video footage.

The video footage seemed to be shot from some probe or spy ship. The surviving images show an orbital starport or similar installation with warships alongside. The base is obviously a temporary fuelling station, but the world below looks familiar. There are dozens, perhaps hundreds, of ships including escorts as larger ships.

One vessel Omar identifies as being the grandfather of the current Lamii Sikauu class Bombardment Cruiser.

Spectral data from the recording device also showed a large number of high radiation areas on-planet. Patterns are typical of an orbital bombardment. The fleet that went to Kishimaa, went there to fight.

Starport, Shamuus

Once back at the Heart of Gold, the travellers cross check the star patterns and landmasses against existing records. With some help from Dr. Markia and Livaaki, they determine that the world below is Kishmaa on the order of 5000 years ago. There was a Vilaani fleet there long before the Vilaani were known to be in this region. The Ziru Sirka never in any of its histories recorded any mission, outpost or military action this far beyond the borders. Whatever this fleet did here, it was expunged from the history books.

The group takes Livaaki on as part of their expedition. They resolve that Kishimaa is worth another look.

 

[Psion]

Homecoming session 3/6, part 2

Homecoming spoilers continue

Kishimaa (Ley 1933)
D785779-4

Once back in the Kishimaa system, they can use their impressive sensor system to make more detailed comparisons of star positions, and determine the video came from somewhere between -5700 and -5300 Imperial.

Hotspots here have equalized to near background level, but analysis of the video and spectral data reveals the location of a possible site that wasn't bombarded. Densitometer readings of one such candidate area reveals a hollow. It might just be a cave or underground hollow. But it might be more.

The travellers land the Heart of Gold and use hand sensors to better narrow in on an entrance to the chamber. A gulley near the hollow seems to be a promising entry point with minimal digging.

The digging breaks into a series of linked chambers, what must have once been a group of buildings made of a lightweight extruded concrete. The bells go off in the heads of the xenologists in the group (Trillian and the doctors). Only one race makes structures like this: the so-called wanderers.

The wanderers are a race of somewhat insect-like creatures with home bases deep in interstellar space, and visit modest size imperial worlds in the region. Darko knows from experience that wanderers are most often found at class C starports.

The suspicions are confirmed when they discover a group of wanderer corpses buries in silvery shrouds. A lone wanderer corpse remains without a shroud, but it is clutching a group of natural stones with strange symbols on them. A little analysis shows that the stone does not come from this area, or indeed, this world.

The travellers spend a little time wondering where this leads them now. With no other place to go, they decide to pursue Darko's lead and head to a nearby class C starport, in hopes of finding a Wanderer enclave. Next stop: Egran.

Egran (Ley 1832)
C256555-8

The travellers luck out and find a wanderer enclave on the next world they land on, a temporary extruded concrete building erected on land leased from the starport, with construction familiar to the crew that saw the dig on Kishimaa.

The enclave has a rotunda area where visitors interested in trade are greeted. The group arrives and starts asking about the recording devices and stones in their possession. Some seem agitated by the stones found on the dead wanderer. The envoy asks the travellers to wait, and soon a leader and a ragged looking priest arrive.

The leader introduces himself as Andrew (his true name would be unpronounceable to humans), and he seems quite desperate to acquire the stone and any other the PCs have, offering 500 KCr for the one on their person, and another 500 KCr for the rest.

The players acquiesce and Andrew explains the reason for their desperation. In ancient times, they first developed sublight travel, then jump drive, and traded the drive to the Luriani (a human minor race in the region). The Luriani were only ever peaceful towards the wanderers. But the Vilani bureau Sharurshid met the wanderers, they attacked their worlds.

The Wanderers fought back, and repulsed the initial Sharushid fleet was repulsed. But the Sharushid fleets returned, and were too powerful for the Wanderers to resist. World upon world of the Wanderers were bombed out of existence, and Luriani that had aided and taken in some Wanderers also felt the wrath of the Sharushid. (This is a known event, called the Year of Woe, though its reason was never known.)

The Wanderers retreated in sublight ships they used as bases, and eventually developed a new culture around these ships, and knew peace from the Sharushid as the long night (for you non traveller historians, that's the long collapse on interstellar civilization causes when the terrans took over the vilani imperium about brought about perilous changes the Vilani were not ready for.)

It is a belief of wanderers that after death, their souls are lost without their homeworld; the stones the players found were homestones, taken from the Wanderer homeworld by Wanderer spacefarers, so they may hold their soul upon their demise. But now their homeworld is lost, no new homestones can be made.

A New Challenge

After getting the homestones from the travellers and explaining their situation, Andrew offers the travellers a new task.

The ancient Vilani Shurushid Burea is now the Sharushid Megacorporation. The wanderers have sought their homeworld, but Sharushid have opposed them every step of the way. It appears that Sharushid is trying to prevent the public relations disaster that would result if their role in the Year of Woe and the extermination of the Wanderers ever became known.

But the travellers can operate in imperial society and perhaps evade Sharushid's notice. Andrew asks the travellers to do what they could not: find the Wanderer homeworld.

The course before the travellers

The players (and the excited researcher NPCs) accept this new task. But how to go about it.

A little research reveals a number of possible places where the identity of the wanderer homeworld might be sussed out. By comparing the chemical composition of the homestones to worlds in the region might be useful. But direct inspection would eventually attract Sharushid's attention.

But by comparing the rock and other things the players have discovered--such as Kishimaa's unknown history as a colony, or the fact that 6000 years ago Wanderer colonies were nuked by the Vilani--to known data can help narrow the search.

Two of the best places that suggest themselves to this sort of search would be the Imperial Claims Registry office and scout bases/way stations. The imperial claims registry can be found at any class A starport.

There is one nearby world that has both a type A port and a scout base. The travellers head back to Annapabar.

Mechanics note

One thing that troubled me when I initially saw it in the Mongoose Main Rulebook was the law level table, which in addition to the traditional weapon prohibition has prohibitions on things like technology, travellers, etc. That incensed me a bit, as it seems like many great games would be nixed by these assumptions.

I didn't notice until a few weeks ago that government type also had a table on likely prohibited technology. The light came on... not all government made the same sort of laws, and applying the government table as a modifier to the law table made the situation more textured and less artificial seeming. Applying these guidelines, the worlds would tend to look a lot like the ones described in the Homecoming adventure (with respect to how offworld transit was treated, as well as other factors.) Since observing this, I am less uncomfortable with using the Mongoose Traveller UWP tables.

 

[Psion]

Homecoming session 3/20/09, part 1

This, then, was the session I ran yesterday. To this point, the path has been fairly linear for the PCs, but the combat situation was a little fluid and some interesting things happened, and I wanted to capture some of the events before it slipped my feeble memory.

The combat that happens here was tough and I knew the existing PCs weren't up to it. For how I handled this, see below...

Homecoming Spoilers Continue

Annapabar (Ley 1936)
A4367A9-D B

Annapabar had both a scout base and a type A starport (and hence, Imperial Claims Registry office), and was in the middle of the Imperial Trade Cluster with easy access to several other type a starports. This made it a good starting point for their search.

The first place they stopped was the Claims Registry Office. Nominally a belter resource, with a little administrative footwork, the travellers manage to secure access. Omar, Trillian, and Kendal (the NPC steward the group hired who has Space Science (any) 0 ) cross reference the data they have on the homestone with the data in the office.

Doing a profile of the rock reveals that:
1) it has characteristics of a rock formed in the life zone of a system, and
2) the exact concentrations of rare earth metals suggest a certain proximity to ancient supernova events in the area.

These two facts let the travellers narrow down the list of candidate systems to about 20.

Trillian uses her detached duty scout status to gain access to the scout database and eliminate 2 worlds from the list.

After the shuttle trip back from the scout base, the group was traversing down an accessway from the shuttleport where Trillian and Omar spotted a suspicious looking man holding a communicator at the other end of the accessway. Trillian also noticed as they progressed a piece of luggage tucked behind a support in the access tube.

The group stops. Trillian keeps an eye on the man with a communicator (stealthily) while Omar and Kendal double back and summon the authorities. When the man spots the police officers coming to inspect the situation, the man bolts. Trillian runs after him, but the man eludes pursuit.

The police call in EOD robots to inspect the package, and find there is, indeed, a bomb. The group is detained for a few hours while they relate to the police what is going on.

Someone still has an interest in seeing that the travellers don't find what they are looking for.

The group resolves to head to Glen Murdoch next.

Glen Murdoch (Ley 1837)
A54A742-B

The claims registry database on Jutland eliminates 5 more worlds.

With a shorter list of worlds to look at, Dr. Livaaki is familiar with one and does a bit more research. The world Igikur has its own indigenous sentient species which, while they did have contact with the wanderers, don't have any history indicating the long existence of them on their planet. Trillian (a minor scholar in Sophontology) concurs, noting that it is rare for two different intelligent species to evolve on the same world.

On the way outsystem, Trillian notes an interesting entry in the transponder log; a ship insystem is registered to the Imperial Planetological Society, an organization with an interest in planetology. Trillian chats up the comm officer of the IPS ship and gets them to do a quick records check, which lets them eliminate one more world.

Next stop: Jutland

Jutland (Ley 1838)
A336744-A

On Jutland, the group is able to narrow the list down to 3. A little more records searching and science by the Markia and Livaaki eliminate 2 more of the worlds as likely candidates. The apparent homeworld appears to be Lirguu, a small agricultural colony outside the imperial borders.

The party relaxes and goes canvassing to sell passage on their staterooms at the Jutland bars before heading out, and in so doing, manage to get themselves in a bar brawl. When Omar was about to sock the jaw of a burly mercenary at Jutland, he realize he knew this guy. This was a fellow he had interviewed some years earlier, a mercenary battalion had engaged in egregious looting after an ugly conflict. This man, Luke, had been one of the few that had recused himself from the ugly practice.

And, it seems, Luke's mercenary team had taken a ticket on Lirguu and were looking for transport.

Mechanical Intermission: The Mercenaries

I knew the team needed some muscle to survive what lay ahead. But I wasn't sure how I was going to make that happen. When I departed for the game, I took extra character sheets with me, thinking I would have the players make a new mercenary group whose contract would fall out from under them and leave them looking for work.

So, when I had the players make carouse checks to russle up passengers, and 2 of them rolled 2's and one rolled a 12, I had my opening: they players run into an old contact that were "headed that way", and I had my opening. And I passed out character sheets.

I told the players that they could make 3 or 4 term characters, that should be army, marines, of characters from the Mercenaries book.

They (the 3 players present) resolved to make 1 marine of each specialty for 2 terms, and then go to Mercenaries careers. Events caused one marine to stay in for a third term.

The new characters were:

• Luke Renard- 2 term marines(star marines), 1 term striker(breaching troop), 1 term security(ship security)
• Maggie Roth-2 terms marines(ground assault), 2 term guerrilla(saboteur)
• Arvo Tilpennan - 3 term marine(support), 1 term commando(spec ops)

They players had a blast making the new characters. Events and connections really help the players get involved, and they way the character's stories meander make chargen an adventure in itself. I really do think Mongoose Traveller has the best chargen yet.

Next time: part 2, the group investigates Lirguu.

 

[Psion]

Homecoming session 3/20, part 2

Homecoming Spoilers Continue...

The ship makes its way to Liguu:

Jutland (Ley 1838 )->Angel (Ley 2037)
Angel (Ley 2037)->MAMIKHA(Ley 2237, red zone)
MAMIKHA(Ley 2237)->Lirguu (Ley 2239)

Lirguu (Ley 2239)
D786644-5

The group jumps insystem. The mercenary group initiates comms with the Frontier Development Corporation, the small startup group that had hired them.

However, it appears the FDC camp is putting up, and the FDC rep tells the mercenaries they are no longer needed. It seems that the FDC bean counters have decided that their capital are better invested elsewhere, and have closed down their Lirguu project.

The mercenaries have a repatriation bond that will pay their way back to the Imperium, but the Heart of Gold has another task ahead of them. Dr. Markia ventures that he has a stipend that can cover their salaries, and given the troubles the group has run into, having a group of hired guns along can't help.

The crew of the Heart of Gold agree, and they go about their task of investigating whether Lirguu is, in fact, the Wanderer homeworld.

The group has investigated an ancient bombarded Wanderer world before, so they have some idea what to look for. Sure enough, there is a pattern of hotspots and bowl-like depressions at common city building sites. However, densitometer readers detect a void near one of the ancient blast sites that may have escaped the worst due to sheltering by natural terrain features. It's a dry spot in the northern hemisphere away from any current human settlement with many gullies and canyons.

Darko puts the ship down close to the site, and the travellers investigate. The area has several remnants of ancient buildings covered with dust and vegetation. After searching several buildings, two are located with basements closer to the hollow. With some digging equipment and some strong backs, the group breaks through to a large underground chamber.

Within the chamber are a number of wanderer corpses in burial shrouds, assembled at the edge a depression like a mass grave. One stands apart with a shovel, but no shroud. There is one human corpse amongst the others in the grave.

Several tools are in the area, but no homestones. This last fact is significant, since the only reason that modern wanderers use homestones is to have an anchor for their souls until they can be returned home; wanderers on their homeworld have no need for such items.

Also among the tools are more of the ancient recording orbs. Dr. Levaaki's machine remains at the ship. The travellers send back Dr. Levaaki back to the ship with the air/raft, with Maggie flying.

While at the ship, Maggie notes that the sensor array detected something. Taking a quick look, she sees that a ship (a big 1000 ton freighter) entered orbit while they were at the site. Alarmed, she radios the group. They resolve to power up the ship in case there is trouble. She starts heading back to the group, with some weapons in tow just in case.

On the flight back, Levaaki gets the reader going, and gasps at what it has to show. But before they can land and show anyone else, two missles fly overhead and strike the Heart of Gold, followed by a barrage of laser fire.

Upon landing, Levaaki shares the contents of the recording:

Fragmented images show a city of tall Wanderer style extruded-concrete buildings, grav vehicles and missiles flying overhead, and mushroom clouds on the horizon. Strangely-clad Wanderer troops dig through rubble of collapsed buildings. The wanderers seems to be in the midst of an evacuation. The nameless recorder is bundled into a vehicle and leaves the city, heading for what is unmistakably the region of the dig.

On the way, some of the vehicles divert to the site of a crash. The downed vessel is some kind of gunship; Omar suspects it could be the Vilani-built ancestor of the current Turuu Kaaniaii-class strike boat. Some Wanderers enter the wreck and bring out a lone dadly wounded human survivor and bring him aboard their vehicle.

Later, the vehicles reach the town where the ruin the travellers are exploring now lies. The evacuees take what cover they can as bright flash occurs and a mushroom cloud rises where the city was. The blast levels most of the town and knocks over nearby rock pinnacles. Afterward, the recording captures the grim work of digging out the survivors, only to find that they are dying of radiation poisoning.

The final scenes show a pit in the floor of the building the travellers now explore, and the dying Wanderers placing the bodies of their people in it.​

Though this stands as the most concrete proof yet, they have little time to act on it, as the group spots the freightliner descending to a position on the other side of the ship, and a pinnace descending closer in.

The pinnace disgorges a 6 man recon team armed with Advanced Combat Rifles, who descend on the area. The team opens fire with under-barrel grenade launchers and automatic fire. The mercenary team from the Heart of Gold makes short work of them; the recon team's armament is not made to deal with the merc team's combat armor.

The pinnace pulls back to the region where the freightliner has landed. Two air/rafts armed with light machine guns approach the ruin and start an announcement with a loudspeaker, while the observers can see another platooon of troops disgorging from the freightliner.

The announcement from the air/rafts is thus:

"You are cut off and surrounded. Your ship is disabled and there are no settlements nearby. Surrender immediately. You will be well treated; your safety is guaranteed. We offer safe conduct offworld and ten thousand credits to anyone who lays down his or her weapon. We will pay well for information about this place. You have fifteen minutes to come out, unarmed, and surrender. After this time we will storm the area. Surrender immediately."​

The group debates this for a short time before deciding to send Trillian (the group's nominal diplomat) out with Arvo to negotiate. A rifle squad greets and disarms them. Trillian attempts to negotiate, but the squad leader seems not to be in a position to do so; apparently his orders are to take out anyone who does not come out himself. The pair gets zip-tied and the squad leaves one member to stand guard while the rest head into the ruins.

A firefight commences, but the situation is much the same as with the recon squad: the ACRs have difficulty against the combat armor. Some grenades are fired, but they don't make enough of a difference to save the second fire team. A pair of snipers manages to injure Luke, but Luke and Darko manage to take out the snipers before they can do serious damage.

While Arvo and Trillian are tied up, they can see a bit more from their position. The rest of the platoon, a demolitions team, and a pair of snipers with laser rifles getting ready to deploy. Arvo breaks free of his bonds and gets in a struggle with the soldier for his rifle.

Omar boards the air/raft with Maggie. Though the LMG is scary, Omar proves good enough with his laser rifle to take down the gunner on the first LMG before he does any harm, and then injures the driver.

The traveller soon get a message from the wanderers on their comm.

"Assistance inbound.
For the sake of our souls, hold your ground.
We are coming home."​

The freightliner's weapon's sway and start firing overhead and starts getting peppered with laser fire from an unseen target above. The ship lifts off before all the soldiers can arm up and disembark.

 

[Psion]

Homecoming session 3/20, part 3

Homecoming spoilers continue...
Battle of Lirguu, continued...

Omar and Maggie loop to go get the Arvo and Trillian when they note the demolitions team advancing and the other air/raft en route to get them. The LMG on the opposing air/raft opens fire and scrubs the hull off of the traveller's air/raft, but Omar's return fire deals with the gunner and then pilot of the next raft. Maggie launches a frag grenade at the demolition team, taking out the team and lightly injuring some of the escorting rifle squad. However, the rifle squad returns fire at Maggie's air raft, and Omar is seriously injured. Maggie flies back to the ruins to get Omar medical care.

Meanwhile on the ground, Arvo finally gets the better of the soldier and ties him up. Arvo sees the other squad and command detachment heading towards the site where the EOD team bit it. Arvo makes an attempt to cow a squad sent out to deal with him, and kills 2 before they retreat.

Shortly thereafter, the pinnace returns, but a Wanderer boat is close on its tail. The next platoon disgorges. The platoon is immediately engaged by a disorganized horde of impromptu armed Wanderers from the Wanderer boat. One squad peels away to enter the ruins.

The players expect a repeat of the engagement with the last squad, but get more than they bargained for. Each of the two fire teams has a gunner with an advanced squad weapon, a LMG type weapon with enough penetration to be a serious threat to the combat armor equipped mercs.

The mercs soon figure this out, and do their best to pin the ASW gunners down with grenades and laser fire. But the squads stick tough to the bitter end.

And there's a reason for this. They are a distraction for the squad and command elements from the first platoon that had recovered one of the nuclear demolition charges that were angling a the entrance to the underground chamber.

Trillian and Darko (who at this point was in a rearguard area near the chamber entrance) tried desperately to slow their advance with laser pistol and rifle fire until finally the mercs could double back and finally devote enough firepower to stopping the squad from placing the charge. The gunner and the charge-carrier went down; the leader grabbed the charge and was taken down scant meters from the entrance to the chamber.

Soon thereafter, the group sees the plummeting freightliner. The Wanderer ship in orbit reports victory. On the ground, the troopers had failed their objective, were stranded and overrun by Wanderers and quit the fight.

The travellers lick their wounds; Omar survives, though he is going to be hurting for a bit. The Heart of Gold is disabled, with its hull breached and power plant disabled. The Wanderer entourage arrives and do what they can for the travellers. Work begins in repairing the ships, but it seems relatively hopeless.

Days later, the sensor systems onboard the heart of gold detect another starship contingent breaking out of jumpspace: The 2000-ton Jump-3 liner Ohasset Star, registered to MAE Lines (the Archduke's company), escorted by three Patrol Cruisers (400t) and an Escort Destroyer (1000t). The warships are all operating under the banner of the Archduke’s Huscarles.

The warships set up a blockade and a communication from the Archduke's envoy, Sir Andrea Tyler, relates a message from the archduke:

"Lirguu is not an Imperial world. The Imperial Navy has no jurisdiction here, and will not intervene if the Wanderers choose to seize the world by force, nor even if they attempt to oppress or exterminate the human population. However, the Archduke instructs me to inform you that his Huscarles will protect the human population of this world against any and all aggression. He wishes me to express the earnest hope that this situation can be resolved by negotiation in good faith between all parties, and I am further commanded to offer my services as a mediator. As of this moment, the world of Lirguu is under blockade. No ships of any origin will be permitted to land without inspection and permission from patrolling Huscarle vessels. This is for the protection of all parties."​

After Sir Tyler talks with the travellers and Wanderers and gets a better picture of what is going on, she invites the travellers, scientists, and a Wanderer delegation to return to Annapabar onboard the Ohasset Star so investigations and negotiations regarding the situation can take place.

The Wanderers, seeking only to have their story heard, are pleased.

The outcome of this remains for next session.


Mechanics commentary: combat and technology

My players really had fun with this session, and heaped on the praise. It was a lot of fun.

On my side of the screen, I had a few aggravations. The combat seemed a lot less deadly than I anticipated. This was mainly due to the combat armor. As described, ACRs simply aren't that effective against combat armor. The "ASWs" that the later squads had were an on the spot improvisation.

In retrospect, I should have considered the forces were made with prior versions of Traveller in mind. If this were MT or T20, the combat armor would not have been near as effective (in MT, you can get very lucky hits or target weak spots, and you can threaten combat armor troopers with low tech tactical weapons. In T20, armor is seldom totally effective.) There's also the fact that MongT makes combat armor a possibility in mustering out; in CT, getting your first set of combat armor was a task.

This was also my first real full blown firefight with MongT. We had some brawls, scuffles with ruffians, and drive by shootings, but this was the most extensive examination of the combat system we've had to date.

It fared pretty well. I perhaps overplayed the presence of cover, but it made some sense in the setup described in the adventure.

I had never had a PC seriously injured before, and had some surprises with the damage system. On the bright side, damage was easy to manage. On the not so bright side, there really isn't any bleeding or condition deterioration that I could tell, nor is there a way that a character in play could get some of the long-term debilitating injuries described in chargen. These seem a bit of a significant detail omission to me. It seems I may have some injury houserules coming.

The group briefly discussed the shape of future games. We could either try to integrate the mercenaries into the crew, or split into branches in the campaign, a free trader branch and a merc branch. They opted to keep the mercs on, and the players could swap out characters as the situation warrants.

Also, this adventure is drawing to a close. I'm going to have to think of a new activity for this ragtag crew.

 

[Whipsnade]

Psion,

I've enjoyed reading this "log" of your campaign very much. I hope you'll continue posting sessions in the future.

Thank you for taking the time to share it with us.


Regards,
Bill

 

[drnuncheon]

On the not so bright side, there really isn't any bleeding or condition deterioration that I could tell, nor is there a way that a character in play could get some of the long-term debilitating injuries described in chargen. These seem a bit of a significant detail omission to me. It seems I may have some injury houserules coming.

If you are seriously injured (lost at least 1 pt from each stat, even after first aid) you can't recover the lost points without surgery - that seems like it would be roughly equivalent (since the chargen injuries can be fixed by medical/surgical care also).

There's also long-term condition degeneration, but only if you have a really low Endurance. (I guess you would if you were seriously wounded.) That's on the order of days, though, so it's not bleeding out & dying on the battlefield.

 

[drnuncheon]

If this were MT or T20, the combat armor would not have been near as effective (in MT, you can get very lucky hits or target weak spots, and you can threaten combat armor troopers with low tech tactical weapons. In T20, armor is seldom totally effective.)

Were the attackers just rolling poorly, or did the defenders have high-tech Combat Armor? The TL11 version you can get on mustering out only has Protection 12, and ACRs do 3d6 - some damage ought to get through on an above-average roll, or even an average one with a few points of effect. If they were using burst fire it'd be 3d6+6, which ought to penetrate on average.

If they had higher TL combat armor I can see the issue - but then we are talking about something that's +2-4 TL to the weapon in question, and so it probably should be pretty effective.

 

[Kilgs]

Were the attackers just rolling poorly, or did the defenders have high-tech Combat Armor? The TL11 version you can get on mustering out only has Protection 12, and ACRs do 3d6 - some damage ought to get through on an above-average roll, or even an average one with a few points of effect. If they were using burst fire it'd be 3d6+6, which ought to penetrate on average.

That's my question as I was planning on raising the Armor values in my game. Now I'm not so sure...