Mongoose Traveller Prelude on Earth

[colinfit20]

Okay this started off as a prelude to an existing game set far in the future and I wanted to see about setting another near enough that it could eventually explain how humanity reached the spinward marches in the first place.

I discussed this on the Mongoose and Giant of the Playground forums and it evolved from a sort of Battlestar Galactica remake set around T2300 to a more or less present day game.

Anyway the adventure i had planned evolved around a research program (run for at least two decades or so prior to 2012) shelved last September which involved scientists from around the world in an effort to build the next generation spaceship intended for a manned mission to Mars.

Due to the recession and political infighting between the scientists involved as well as certain government officials the project was shelved and most of the participants returned to their homeland to continue their own research.

However unknown to most a recent addition to the program was busy perfecting a working cold fusion reactor, she managed to successfully test her invention in front of a group of the project backers much to the indignation of some of the remaining senior scientists who saw her success as a robbing them of their status since it should have been them demonstrating the invention as she had been a mere assistant of an ESA Astronomer who had recruited her over six years previously during an Antarctic mission to run tests on certain ideas to do with the project.

One used his former status to access her background files and forwarded them to his government who used the information to issue a warrant for her extradition to the US for questioning about her links to a suspected Serbian War Criminal.

Whilst the extradition was being fought her entire research team, the research materials and prototypes were illegally transferred to an American facility and apparently lost when the plane carrying them crashed just after crossing the east coast.

The scientist by this point had already returned to her home in Canada before the extradition proceedings reached Paris so at first there was legal proceedings that led to a team being organised to locate the missing scientist and return her to Paris to face questioning over the US accusations.

However thats when the illegal transfer of her team and research was discovered which the Chinese and Russians caught wind of and openly complained, the airplane crash has made her recovery critical as she's the only remaining scientist who can rebuild her project.

The game I'm planning (its been delayed as I was going to run it last sunday but the meeting was cancelled at short notice) involves a group of characters I've pregenerated who all have some kind of link to the missing scientist.

These include; Hercule Van Zeeman a Dutch ESA Astronomer who was the missing scientist's former mentor and who brought her into the research project as mentioned above.
Whilst she has outstripped him as a physicist he doesn't believe the claims being made against her and is one of only a few who know where she lives and could find her.
He chose most of the others save the Interpol Agent, Carl Wagner who personally met the missing scientist so can recognise her whilst her files have a remarkable discrepancy that I planned on revealing in the first session.
The rest of the team included a company lawyer named Laura Braun who was requested by Hercule and included because of her link to the backers of the project and Van Zeeman's Swedish assistant Wulfric Sigmundsen who has also met the scientist they're looking for and is familiar enough with her research to be able to identify them if they came across any of it at her research lab in Toronto.

Have you tried designing modern day characters with Traveller?

I was wondering who you'd design as a suitable party and what questions would you want answered if you were going to play in this game?

 

[Cryton]

I do have a stack of pen and paper notes for MgT detailing modern careers that I have used in a modern Invasion-Earth style game.

I used the following careers, all set up for a TL 7-8 world with areas of lower (occasionally MUCH lower) TL.

Agent (Corporate, Government, Law Enforcement)
Air Force (Flight, Support, Air Lift)
Aristocrat ( Politician, Diplomat, Idle Rich)
Army (Calvary, Infantry, Support)
Citizen (White Collar, Blue Collar, Farmer-Rancher)
Drifter (Barbarian, Wanderer, Scavenger)
Entertainer (Artist, Journalist, Performer)
Marine (Support, Fleet, Ground Assault)
Merchant Marine (Operations, Steward, Engineering)
Navy (Fleet, Submariner, Naval Aviation)
Rouge (Enforcer, Con-Man, Thief)
Scholar (Doctor, Scientist, Field Researcher)

And I added a few of my own as well:

Adventurer (Explorer, Hunter, Treasure Hunter)
Grad School (Continuation of University)
University (Arts, Sciences, Engineering)

Characters generated for this game all get Lang (Native) 2, and Edu Mod +3 Lvl 0 skills from an expanded background skills chart, and 2 points per term served for buying Advantages strait out of 2300AD (adding of course a few new ones like Dual Citizen which gives you another Lang at lvl2), with the option to take up to 5 points of disadvantages as well.

Also for the game, I also reworked the damages of weapons to use ammunition caliber using police and FBI ballistics reports to make them more accurate. Funny thing is, it didn't change things much from the MgT CRB, though the long-arm damages now range from 4d6 (.223) up to 7d6 (7.62 NATO).

I do have plans to do a 2300AD like listing of Modern Nations that includes Languages spoken for use in the setting as well, but for now have just been winging those.

So far, the game is going into its third session, but play is very sporadic. The players love the modern rules, and are looking forward to the next time we can all get together to play.

I was wondering who you'd design as a suitable party and what questions would you want answered if you were going to play in this game?

While I didn't design my players' characters, they came up with a few good ones:

The first was a 3 term-er. University/Grad School/Scholar. He was a robotics engineer who worked on bleeding edge prosthetic replacement limbs, and in his spare time was Fanatical member of a Robot combat league.

The second was another three term-er. Air Force/University/Scholar. He was a medical consultant to the previous character who paid for his schooling using his GI bill (-2 to education debt).

The final character was a Two term-er. University/Adventurer. Who had earned her Bachelors in Archaeology. She was a close as you could be to a young Laura Croft as the player could manage.

All three players decided that their characters had met during their School days, and were still in contact with each other when the game kicked off.

I would say any of their characters would work well in your game due to their scholarly backgrounds, and it would be simple to say they knew your scientist, and would want to help her in any way they could. (I would do this by making her a free Contact/Ally)

As for what questions I would want answered if I were to play in your game, they would be:

1. What's my connections to the other players.
2. What's my connection to your plot? Do I know the missing scientist? Am I being paid to help her? ect.

 

[colinfit20]

Traveller Prelude

I would say any of their characters would work well in your game due to their scholarly backgrounds, and it would be simple to say they knew your scientist, and would want to help her in any way they could. (I would do this by making her a free Contact/Ally)

As for what questions I would want answered if I were to play in your game, they would be:

1. What's my connections to the other players.
2. What's my connection to your plot? Do I know the missing scientist? Am I being paid to help her? ect.

So far;

The ESA Astronomer was a former mentor of the missing scientist and was the one who brought her into the project six years ago but wasn't able to participate properly until a year or so ago due to professional rivalries of him.

His assistant has been working for him for a couple of years and was taken on as an assistant by the missing scientist who emigrated from her native Serbia to Sweden in the late nineties so gets along fine with him.

The Lawyer is a friend of the Astronomer and although accused of being biased was the first to realise the implications of the missing scientist's research since she's aware its a economic and political game changer for Europe let alone the world.

The Interpol Agent was assigned to help supervise security at the facility and met the scientist when she moved across a year ago and had more contact during that time due to her practice of wandering outside the facility looking for a lost "toy" she had bought for her infant son which kept disappearing and being found outside.

Still working on the villain and other reasons behind the situation.

I believe letting the players ask questions at the start and letting them decide for themselves might drastically change things but if I want this to be expanded beyond a one shot I need their input to keep their interest.

In regards to what I "assumed":

The Astronomer and former mentor believes she's innocent and unlike the others knows where she worked over in Toronto, he also blames himself for Cortez's actions since he was the one who supplied the background information on her Serbian heritage that Cortez passed on to the US Government.

The assistant is looking for a job as part of the missing scientist's research team and with them dead he's the only one outside of the missing scientist who has actual working experience on her research.

The lawyer sees this as a huge advancement for herself, if the project is put into action she would certainly be looking at a promotion within her firm.

The Interpol Agent believes she's innocent for the simple matter she couldn't have known about Cortez moving her research and her team, the fact that they've been killed and her project seemingly destroyed leads him to believe she's next as noone outside of the facility she worked in was aware she had returned to Canada to spend Christmas with her family.

However... no plan survives involvement of the PCs!