Using Troupes in Traveller

Arrival Vengeance - more of a campaign frame than a scenario.

In the MegaTraveller era, there was an epic scenario pack called Arrival Vengeance: The Final Odyssey. It told the tale of a Lightning Class Frontier Cruiser despatched from the Domain of Deneb to try and establish what had happened to the Imperium; it had the potential for the characters to find out the truth about Emperor Strephon's assassination and contact the different factions in the shattered Imperium. In honesty, reading it made me tearful when I found out the truth of what happened. In canon, the mission was successfully concluded and the Domain of Deneb went its own way.

Arrival Vengeance was part of the Hard Times line, which contained some of the strongest writing for Traveller as it dealt with the collapse of interstellar society and pitched the characters involved into scenarios where they had a chance to keep the flame of civilisation burning. One of the interesting aspects of this was that it suggested that the players play multiple characters, both command crew and lower ranks so that they could be involved in all the scenarios. It was a style of troupe play more associated with games such as Ars Magica. I never ran this campaign, so I never tried it out.

Reaver's Deep...

Moving forward, I worked on several scenarios for BITS that potentially could have resulted in the need to adopt such a style of play. One was firmly grounded in Milieu Zero and never made it to print (it was part of a collaboration with Signal GK). The second has made it to the table a couple of times at conventions but not as an extended game.

Looking back, you should have seen it coming. The briefing was word of mouth. It was never on the Navy’s muster or posting opportunities. And it was vague, but enticing. An opportunity to earn hazard rate, or maybe even prize money. A fast track to promotion, or maybe an opportunity to muster out early with full service career entitlements. But they couldn’t tell you want it was about, not until you signed up.

Officially, you resigned from the Navy a few months ago; in reality, you’re on detached duty but the records are sealed. You’ve travelled across the border into one of the Imperium’s client states, and the Captain has just called a briefing having met with the system authorities. The rumour is that you’ve been given a Letter of Marque, and are turning Privateer...

This was a campaign frame called 'Plausible Deniability', which was an evolution of the J.Andrew Keith material in Letter of Marque. The characters were the crew of a Type T Patrol Cruiser, operating as a deniable asset for the Imperium against the Carillian Assembly in the Reaver's Deep Sector. The Type T was kitted out as a privateer and carried a crew of eighteen. Ten of the crew were starship crew, a mixture of officers and enlisted men, and eight were marines. There was the potential to add additional characters into the game if their operation was successful, as they were supporting the Provisional Government of Illdrissar against the Carillian Assembly and would almost certainly need to capture and crew a merchant vessel as a support ship as a minimum.

I handled the troupe play by having the players generate the main command crew members. This was their primary character. I generated a crew list with names and characters for the remainder of the crew (I'd have probably done let the players do this if I was running this outside a convention).

The BITS Simple NPC system - a boon for a hurried GM

I gave a spread of experience amongst each crew section based upon the BITS Simple NPC system but didn't assign this to individual crew members. Finally, I generated a list of potential motivations for the characters, stealing liberally from the card-based method in 2300AD.

At the table, I had a stack of coloured index cards (one colour for marines and one for crew) and when a secondary character was needed, I let the relevant officer assign which crew member was in use. The player then picked (or rolled) a motivation, and also how experienced the secondary character was. This was all written on the index card.

When a skill was called for, the player decided if it was core or not. There was a limit to the number of core (high rated) skills, so this was recorded on the index card. Significant events and equipment were also added. This gave the scope for another player to take ownership of a secondary character if a scene ever occurred where a player had the secondary and primary characters involved.

Overall, it seemed to work well and definitely felt that it would be effective for a sustained campaign(*).

Has anyone else used troupe style play in Traveller? How did you approach it?

31 January 2021

(*) Speaking of which, I stole the campaign and adventure front approach from Dungeon World, which worked well, providing a light framework for the campaign. If anyone's interested, drop me a comment and I'll share how that worked.

A Year in Blogging 2021 Edition

Slow growth

This is my 145th post this year, which is slightly down on 2020. However, I didn't do all of #RPGaDay because some of them were just too obscure for me to get my head around.

I had two days when the blog spiked about 700 views back in late July and August. I'm not certain what caused that, but I do know that my reviews of Helvéczia were shared on one of the major RPG sites around that time. However, the total number of hits doesn't tie up so it wasn't just them. It does remind me that I need to finish the third part of the review.

Warlock remains strong in the top 10 most viewed posts

As a result of that share, Helvéczia has taken the most viewed spot in the blog; the top ten posts are all reviews except for the second look one which is an after-action report on running Warlock!

I did see an uptick in comments and interaction in December 2021 when I started doing some posts on Traveller and sharing them with some of the Traveller social media groups. I'll probably do some more as my love for that game is still strong and I'm being drawn back in by the updated edition.

The move to Blogger definitely seems to have worked for me. I do need to resolve the old website (either to redirect the domain to my Blogspot or get it up and running again); that's probably more likely now that I've ordered a new MacBook (first since 2008).

I have changed my workflow for writing some of the posts, reviews especially. Quite a few of them are completely drafted longhand on my reMarkable, OCRed, error corrected, then emailed into the blog. I've found that it tends to put my head in a better space. 

I'm still using Flickr to host photographs; that works well for everything except for the odd mobile view depending on screen width.

The views overall are up at 11k against last years 4k, which is nice. The blog still syndicates to the Gaming Tavern and seems to provoke interesting discussions there every once in a while.

All in all, a solid year.

31 December 2021

A Year in Gaming 2021 edition

 

It's that time of year again, and as I don't expect to get any games in before year in, time for some reflection.

My gaming this year was dominated by two systems; various forms of Dungeons & Dragons and Gumshoe. I hang my head in shame as I haven't managed to get Traveller to the table once. I suspect that this may be the first year that this is the case.

The D&D category was dominated by my Curse of Strahd 5e campaign which is ticking along nicely; we had 19 sessions in all. It's fair to say that December was a train-wreck for this with three sessions being cancelled, but I've booked weekly sessions into the start of next year. I hope we can keep a pace and conclude, if only as it'd be nice to open up space for more. I also ran two sessions of Old-School Essentials (which I intend to revisit by opening a drop-in version of Castle Xyntillan) and Through Sunken Lands. The latter was face to face and one of my gaming highs of the year. However, I'm still in shock that my most run system is D&D, not what I expected. I'm very much with First Age in his view that the long-form has attractions all of its own.

Gumshoe was spread across two systems, both horror. I'm really enjoying playing in Richard Lock's take on Eternal Lies, the epic Trail of Cthulhu campaign. This is being played one-to-two, which Paul Mitchener and I in the player's berths. It's surprisingly intense and the first two chapters (Savannah & Los Angeles) have really captured the feel of their settings. We played ten sessions and are due to arrive in Mexico City in January 2022. We also had five sessions of The Yellow King RPG; this covered the first part of the game in Paris, and was great fun. Paul Mitchener had the helm for this, and it was one of my disappointments this year when we didn't get the game back up and running over the late Autumn. 

I played one session of Delta Green and had the joy of running my Stranger Things mash-up at Furnace 2022. I've noted Steve Ellis' comments that it probably needs two sessions to make it have space to breathe. It worked well, and I like the system but it doesn't quite gel with me as yet, probably as I'm calling for too many dice rolls.

I had a fun game of Alien, helmed by Darran Sims who is a master at this game. It was a spur of the moment thing, so I enjoyed it a lot. I enjoyed playing the Last Fleet at Furnace, which Steve Ellis pulled together nicely.

I managed to get Golgotha, a|state, Dune 2d20 and City of Mist to the table and enjoyed them all. This was part of my play what you buy approach (same reason OSE got to the table) and I'm happy with it.

All in all a good year.

Conventions

I attended (and ran) one convention, Furnace, face-to-face. It was fantastic to sit around a table again but also incredibly tiring. I forgot how intense conventions are, but I'm hoping to get more in again next year. I also helped to organise the online versions of Revelation and North Star, which were fun. I suspect that I felt more tired with the face-to-face as I deliberately chose to take sessions off on the online conventions.

Purchases

Bought too many games, but I'm making a valiant effort to at least read them all. More will be sold this year as I don't have the space for them all. 

Disappointments this year? 

• Best Left Buried Deeper had enough typos that I lost all appetite for what was supposed to be a deluxe book. Not what I expected and I'm looking at the copy of Orbital Blues what was similarly messy in the beta stage and hoping that the editing and proofing are better.
• Swords of the Serpentine finally arrived in PDF, but it's reaching the point I'm not excited by it anymore. I suspect that Through Sunken Lands will steal its niche. Shame really, as my initial skim attracted me.
• Cartel arrived late from Magpie after it hit retail, poor communication throughout, and they lost part of the UK orders. I'm feeling like I'm seeing the same sorry mess happen again with Urban Shadows 2nd edition. I'm going to read it before I decide to sell or not.
• Fearful Symmetries was announced and released at Dragonment. When I saw this, I went and ordered it on the Pelgrane website as I've been waiting to see Steve Dempsey's campaign for a long time. Subsequently, they changed the description to say it was a pre-order. Had I known this I would have waited, as I'm sworn of pre-ordering from Pelgrane until Swords of the Serpentine finally lands.

High points?

• Dune 2d20 is excellent; I really like the way they've approached the game and I plan to dig in some more.
• City of Mist - the final books from the Kickstarter arrived. I've read one so far and it was excellent.
• Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft - this is a great reboot of the setting.
• Everything Delta Green - these books are top quality and I hope to get Impossible Landscapes to the table sometime soon.
• Warlock - the streamlined take on WHFRP style play is great, although the production rate of material is too high for me to keep up with!

Looking Forward to 2022

I suspect that most of my gaming will continue to be online, with the heavy lifting split between Roll20 and Role for my games. Roll20 suits the crunch of 5e and was surprisingly good for City of Mist. Role has the best AV I've seen, and the template builder is excellent. It gets better and better with each update.

I'm hoping we get Revelation, North Star and Furnace to run face-to-face this year although I fear Omnicron threatens the former. I'm also hoping we can help Andy Lilly get TravCon restarted.

Curse of Strahd will probably finish in 2022 provided we can get three or more players to the sessions we have planned. In the wings, I have some thoughts about running Mutant Year Zero: Elysium or City of Mist: Nights of Payne Town mini-campaigns. I've already agreed to run Impossible Landscapes for Delta Green, but I think that may well be in 2023 because it's with the same players and GMs as Eternal Lies and The King in Yellow, although it will be a challenge to finish both of those campaigns over the next year.

I'd like to get the drop-in OSE game of Castle Xyntillan set up; that needs a bit more work on Roll20 first. I'd also like to get the one-shots of Troika and Mausritter to the table as I failed with both.

And then there's Traveller. I'm increasingly getting the urge to return to my first love in gaming, and I can only see that increasing as I read the Core Rules update for 2022. I'd love to get a campaign set up, maybe to playtest some of the unfinished scenarios and campaigns that I have.

30 December 2021

First Impressions - Longwinter (Luka Rejec) - system agnostic Alpine setting (some spoilers)

I finally got time to sit down and read through both parts of Luka Rejec's Longwinter setting and I'm glad I did(*). Split across two pristine perfect bound books, I was almost afraid to handle it because it reminded me of freshly fallen snow that you didn't want to disturb. That snow has bursts of glorious colour, where Luka's pen and ink style illustrations capture the essence of the setting. The first book is the Visitor's Book (104-pages), a gazetteer of the Barony of Brezim, a high valleyed alpine setting. The second book is the Referee's book (114-pages), which provides details of the factions, encounters and the metaplot that the characters will hopefully endure and break free from.

(*)Disclaimer; I back Luka's Patreon and read this as it developed initially, but made no contributions to the work itself.

The Longwinter Visitor's Book presents enough to use the setting for a campaign; written in the style of an in-game guidebook, it describes the history, notable personages, factions, towns and geographical features such as the mountains, forests and rivers. Although quite short, these layer together nicely to provide plenty of hooks and opportunities for adventures. The setting feels early modern (with technology close to the 1920s/1930s albeit done in such a way that it is magical). It would suit a low powered D&D game (although there are certain types of character and ability that would ruin this) but part of me found myself realising that this would work with most low-heroic systems. Traveller sprung to mind, but there are hints for Luka's SEACAT and 5e included. The setting includes guns, so definitely isn't vanilla D&D.

The later part of the book provides core rules for travel, survival and encounters. Guidance on encumbrance, dealing with cold and some sample equipment is provided. The book wraps with a short story that illustrates the setting. 

Finishing the book, I imagined shenanigans not unlike those in Helvéczia, with the characters being drawn into machinations between factions such as the Oldsettlers, Baronials and Wolffolk. The book describes it as a cosy roleplaying setting of high mountains and deep problems. A land of beauty in the summer and cold and snow in the winter.  If you don't read the second book, that's the natural thing to be thinking. Except for the ill-omens.

Spoiler Break - don't read any more if you want to play this

Sargasso of Space - looking at Andre Norton through the lens of Traveller

The book that started me on a slippery slope to roleplaying games.

In 1977 we moved house from Liverpool to a small dormitory town in Cheshire called Holmes Chapel, following my dad's job. My parents had moved out from their hometown once before but had been forced to move back when my dad's job disappeared after English Electric's computing division was closed down after GEC bought it out. I really didn't want to move out to Cheshire, despite the fact that I was the only family member who had been born there.

Holmes Chapel had a fantastic public library (indeed, my first Saturday job was working there which was heaven for a geek) and it was a place of discovery for me. I found "The Hobbit" there, and then Andre Norton's "Sargasso of Space", the first Solar Queen book. I was visiting regularly and reading a lot of books; it was a geek's paradise. This was before home personal computers became common and we never had a games console. There were three channels on the TV at the time (Channel 4 wouldn't launch until 1982), and we had one TV. Books, Star Wars toys and imagination were a big part of my life.

Sargasso of Space remains an important book for me. It was the first real SF story that I read, although I soon moved through Azimov and Arthur C Clarke on my dad's shelves. It is one of the three sets of books(*) that defined the feel of the Traveller roleplaying game for me, along with Azimov's "Foundation" trilogy and Clarke's "Rendezvous with Rama". The book is very much written in a young adult, boy's own adventure style, yet it is borderline hard SF, with very little stretching credulity to the limits. It tells the story of Dane Thorson, a young cargo-master apprentice, as he takes up his first role outside the Training Pool on the Free Trader Solar Queen. You aren't going to see complicated characterisation, but you are going to have an exciting ride.

Originally published in 1955, the book suffers from a lack of female characters. I guess that's to be expected as Andre Norton had to publish it under the pen-name of Andrew North. It probably reflects the merchant and wet navy cultures at the time as well. However, it doesn't jar as much in this as it did in my recent re-read of "Foundation".

Let's dig in a little into the elements of the story that resonate with Traveller. It wouldn't take too much effort to use the setting as an alternative to the Third Imperium, or even to steal elements outright (something that I've done before).

(*)Of course, Star Wars and 2001 were also strong influences in their own ways.

Background

Terra is still the seat of humanity, presently in the second wave of colonisation to the stars. There is ongoing tension between the Martian colony and Terra, most recently seen in the Crater War a decade before the book's events. Space travel was previously achieved several hundred years before, but for some reason, its use fell back and many colonies were lost. There is genuine concern that Terra could be lost (burnt-off) if the ongoing conflicts with colonies continue.

There is an overarching Federation that regulates space; it operates the Patrol (police/military enforcement) and the Survey (the exploration and mapping organisation). It also controls Trade.

The Sol system is heavily developed, as are the Inner Systems. 

Humanity has encountered five non-human races and multiple former Terran colonies. Aliens are referred to as X-Tees. 

It has also discovered alien ruins of a civilisation now known as the Forerunners. These were aliens with extremely advanced technology who perished in a brutal war with whole worlds burnt off with nuclear and energy weapons. The most famous find is known as 'the Twin Towers', a large structure presently being investigated by the Federation. There are famous books about the Forerunners (Haverson's Voyages and Kogbe's Survey) but no one really knows much about them, and the Federation reserves the right to investigate them.

Piracy and smuggling are real issues. The Patrol operates quarantine stations to decontaminate ships that have visited new worlds. If you get 'Patrol Posted' then that means that you're outside the law and a wanted person who others can kill with impunity.

A world of trade

Trade assigns new apprentices to ships based on their skills and psychological profiles (done by a machine referred to as the 'Psycho'). This assessment is coded into the individual's ID strip/wafer/plate. There's no right of appeal evident for the posting. Trade operates at three levels; the Companies, Free Traders and Interplanetary.

The Companies include Inter-Solar, The Combine(**), Deneb-Galactic and Falworth-Ignesti. These have mail routes, multiple ships and the funding to cream off the most profitable trade. Interplanetary traders include Martian-Terran Incorporated; they operate in-system.

Free Traders operate where the companies won't. They have to take bigger risks and are often single ship operations with a tight crew. 

All the spacefaring professions - Patrol, Trade and Survey - have distinct and standard uniforms. It doesn't matter if they work for different companies in Trade. Survey wear blue/green, the Patrol black/silver and Trade brown. Roles on ships in trade are indicated with icons - astrogators have a chart symbol, engineers a cog.

Common roles on ships are Com-Tech's, Astrogators, Stewards, Cargo-masters, and medics. Pilots are referred to as Jetmen. 

(**) I seem to recall that this company becomes big enough to become its own government later in the timeline.

Survey Auctions

Survey will auction off exclusive contracts to worlds that they discover for Trade to exploit. Worlds are classified A, B, C & D. 

A & B are newly contacted with a high degree of civilisation and possibly with interplanetary in-system capability. C classified worlds are backward cultures, and D classifications have primitive or no-life. If you win the Survey auction, you gain exclusive rights to all trade in the system for a decade. You can also obtain a Federation Free Claim (which lasts for a year and a day) and gives you rights to any profits from the planet for that period.

A typical free-trader (such as the Solar Queen in the book) could stretch to win a class D contract at the auction but it would be a risky push. In the book, the Queen's crew vote to add their salaries into the pot to increase their funds.

If you're lucky, you could get exclusive trading rights to exotic items such as Thork Gems or Lamgrim Silk and make your fortune, perhaps becoming a trading prince.

Technology

Starships are tail-sitters in a needle configuration. The text implies they use a form of reaction drive. They have a hyperdrive that snaps between real space and hyperspace. The snap induces a feeling of vertigo into humans. Journeys take at least several days (although this isn't discussed in detail, just in implication) and the bridge of the ship will be continuously manned in case there's an issue. Each ship has a master book of charts which is technically owned by the Federation and must be handed back or destroyed when the ship is decommissioned. Astrogators can get it updated by the Survey when they port on a planet.

Trade ships appear to be larger than the classic Traveller free traders. They have crews of ten to fifteen (or at least the Queen does) and carry crawlers, flitters (air/rafts) and all the cargo-handling equipment that they need. They have hydrogardens for air and food. Survey ships are often smaller. Patrol ships are likely to overwhelm other vessels should they get in a fight, even larger traders.

Designs of equipment such as crawlers and flitters is generally standardised. 

Weapons include blasters, stun-rods and flamers. Later books add tanglers, which restrain people with elastic bonding.

Rumours and myths.

There are many rumours and myths;

The New Hope, a ship that blasted off with many refugees from the Martian Rebellion and was found a century later, with ports sealed and nav-lights glowing a baleful red. Believed to be a plague ship.

Sanford Jones - the first pilot to enter hyperspace. He disappeared for years, eventually emerging in the Sirius system, with his ship - the Comet - bearing his mummified corpse. The stories say that spacers lost in hyperspace or space will end up on the Comet.

Psi powers exist, but aren't really covered in this story.

CONCLUSION

There is a wealth of material that can be mined from Andre Norton's books. I added some elements on Survey Auctions into Milieu Zero in a Signal GK issue and have riffed off plot elements in scenarios that I've written. I recommend reading her Solar Queen books (especially the first four - Sargasso of Space, Plague Ship, Voodoo Planet and Postmarked the Stars) and the others in the Forerunner setting.

Have you read them or used them in Traveller or another game? What do you think of them?

28 December 2021

(Slightly updated the same day to add Psi powers and Patrol Posted references).

Reflecting on my House Rules for Mongoose Traveller (2008)

Mongoose Traveller (first edition 2008)

I'm digging deeper into my Traveller notes, as picking up the revised version of Mongoose Traveller (2022) has disturbed the embers of my love for the game. In the notes, I found the plans for the house rules that I would apply when running the game. Bear in mind this was written in 2009, and probably needs an update...

1. Clustered skills are rated at highest specialism ‐1.

This was to remove the over­restrictive clustering which is works much better with high skill versions of Traveller (ie not MegaTraveller, Marc Miller's Traveller). I'd retain this one.

2. Task DMs = +6 Simple, +3 Basic, 0 Average, ‐3 Hard, ‐6 Formidable

This gives target numbers of 2, 5, 8, 11, 14 which much more closely maps MegaTraveller & is less complex than the base rules. Not sure if I'd keep this.

3. Autofire – when you get the pool of dice, you can allocate as many as you want to each target within 6m. So you can make an attack roll with 1 dice, or with 4 dice, rather than the usual 2 dice for a task.

This increases the chance of a higher effect on a single target and is faster than multiple dice rolls. 

Need to check if it's still applicable.

4. Damage is replaced as follows: Weapon damage is always applied randomly against one of the three physical characteristics. It is calculated as normal. 

If one characteristic is reduced to zero, the character is knocked unconscious. If two are reduced to zero, the character is seriously wounded. Three, they’re dead. 

Recovery from Unconsciousness is as standard. First Aid and Surgery is as standard. Serious wounded status is removed once only one characteristic <0. Characteristic DMs are adjusted as the characteristic drops in combat.

This was done because I prefer the earlier edition mechanics as I think that they are much more brutal and elegant.

5. Starship combat damage rolls add effect from the to‐hit roll.

This was correcting an inconsistency in the rules. As the whole combat engine changed in 2017 this is probably no longer applicable.

6. The revised High Guard core mods for starship combat are in use.

I did some consulting for the first edition Mongoose Traveller High Guard (although bizarrely they credited me in the Scouts book!) and this was one of the elements that I slipped in with Loz Whittaker (see p47). This made Pulse and Beam lasers work in line with canon. It was suggested that it needed to go back into the core book but Matt didn't take that forward. I also wrote the reaction drive element, which was fun. This is probably no longer applicable with the updates post 2017.

I also planned to add in some additional house rules:

7.  Each characteristic has an aspect that can be tagged for +/‐ 1 DM. As a guide, tags are positive if the attribute is 8+, but referee’s decision final. System is based on FATE.

I'd probably do this still, but link it to boon/bane.

8. Armour will be re‐rated to match T4’s mechanic.

This needed a fair bit of work, and I wanted a way to do it without screwing around with stat blocks for weapons and armour too much (ie it needed to be done on the fly). Unlikely I'd do it now.

I also had an unwritten rule, which was to accept any previous Traveller starship design on the basis of the in game performance rather than the stats. In other words, I accepted the MCr cost, the jump performance and ignored the volumes etc.

REFLECTION

Looking at this list, the only definite house rules I'd take forward are (1) and (4). The clustered skills approach annoyed me as it stripped character competence and the damage rules from earlier editions work better with me in my head.

What would you house rule for Traveller? Do these resonate or would you play rules-as-written?

26th December 2021

Season's Wishes

Happy holidays!

I hope you're all having a great Christmas Holiday period. I couldn't resist sharing the card above, which Luka Rejec sent to his patrons on Patreon. (He's a fantastic illustrator and creator of gaming material, check out his stuff, especially the Ultra Violet Grasslands).

Jedi/Sith fighting.

We've had a good break, with my Dad up with us. The kids got pretty excited with some proper fencing grade lightsabers, which looked spectacular and because they're built by a fencing equipment company they're great quality and can take a hammering.

Sith?

The eldest demonstrated that he is not yet fully developed in his skills because he managed to take his and his brother's blades apart and disconnect connectors he shouldn't trying to work out how to charge them. With his, the charger port was visible without disassembly (he just assumed it would be a USB connection rather than looking at the cable). His brother's did need a cover removing, but it didn't need all the interconnections removing cables disconnecting, which was why I was stripping down and reassembling a lightsaber after one in the morning. For some reason, the eldest had decided to sneak downstairs and cause carnage charge the sabres, rather than going to sleep.

Jedi?

The usual Christmas morning carnage happened, with blizzards of paper. Unusually, we got a bit of lie-in as Aidan slept later. The most technically challenging part was pairing the set of his and hers Homepod mini's that Jill and I had managed to buy each other. Once I realised that we needed to enable two-factor authentication to do this, it worked smoothly enough, although I'm sure it will come back to bite me later as we have a shared account.

She likes a nice bit of wrapping paper.

The cats liked the paper and boxes, but generally avoided the carnage and had the occasional fight with each other. They weren't impressed with the cold weather.

Reading a fair bit; there are some roleplaying games that I want to read, but that's balanced by the fact that I know I'm very close to the number of books I read last year (according to my tracker on Goodreads) and it would be nice to match the same number.

Dad seems to be enjoying himself, although he mostly reads (now he's stopped the marathon Christmas Card writing sessions). The eldest has enjoyed having lots of chats with him.

Christmas dinner came together well; Jill's project management skills showed through. Most of the preparation gets done on Christmas Eve, so it's all about timing. No doubt we'll be eating the leftovers for the next few days.

Hopefully, we'll get a few games in, miss out on COVID-19 Omnicron, and have a relaxed few days. I hope you do too.

26 December 2021

Grognardia on Twilight's Peak (Traveller)

My original copy of Twilight's Peak

James Maliszewski has been posting some more on Traveller, this time discussing his favourite adventures. It's a fun read which I recommend. 

Top 10 Classic Traveller adventures: 10 to 6

Top 10 Classic Traveller adventures: 5 to 1

He places Twilight's Peak at number ten, although he questions whether he should have put it that low.

Twilight's Peak is the third adventure ever published for Traveller and it's a very good one. Indeed, I hesitated to place it so low on the list, because, in some respects, it's a near perfect example of the kind of sober, serious science fiction that Traveller represented (especially in contrast to most other SF RPGs at the time). Unfortunately, the adventure depends heavily on the learning of certain information via rumors in order to proceed from world to world across the Spinward Marches. Even then, these rumors often only lead to the search for yet more information, potentially leading to a long and tedious investigation into matters whose ultimate import is not clear. Admittedly, the final payoff is worth it and the scenario includes a number of interesting stops along the way, but, unlike The Traveller Adventure – which is not included on this list, by virtue of its having been included elsewhere – I found it to lack forward momentum at times. Still, it's well-done and, as I said, a solid example of the kind of restrained science fiction Traveller does better than most SF RPGs before or since.

Personally, I'd put Twilight's Peak at the top of my list. I have talked about this before back in 2014 in the first #RPGaDay but I'll recap.

Twilight's Peak is a framework with a meta-plot to be stumbled upon. It isn't a standalone mission like you get in The Kinunir or Research Station Gamma. It's the seeds for an extended campaign across the Spinward Main, the Jump-1 route through the Spinward Marches. You have a ship, which needs repairs and will struggle to be profitable if you don't fix it, so your characters will need to take other jobs to finance the repairs. The Referee can then weave scenarios at each port, draw upon published adventures and let the meta-plot slowly reveal itself. Throw the JTAS TNS messages for the period on top of this, and you have the Fifth Frontier War brewing in the background. 

My experience running this was one of the best that I had. I've run it twice; once very directly, but the second time I treated it like a decent bottle of red. I opened it and let it breathe, pouring a little out every now and again. At its best, it should start to feel like the reveal in a multi-season TV show when things that happened in the past emerge as more significant the more the characters discover.

My initial concept of Traveller was always framed through Andre Norton's Solar Queen free-traders, Arthur C Clarke's exploration of Rama, and Isaac Azimov's Foundation, with elements from CJ Cherryh, EE Doc Smith and more layered on top. Twilight's Peak is so Norton that it pushed all my buttons in a good way.

It'd be good to hear other people's experience with this.

24 December 2021

Mongoose Traveller 2022 has fixed the worst issue it had

 

The new cover, which I don't like as much as the 2017 one.

I generally liked Mongoose Traveller's second edition (see review here) but the one thing that really wound me up was the 'dogfighting' rules, used when fighters etc get within 10km. It meant that any starship suffered a -8 DM on a 2d6 roll for attacks if it lost the dogfighting opposed pilot skill test. If you won the test you had a - 6 DM. In most cases this was always going to be the case. This changed the dynamics of Traveller combat from previous editions; fighters were never this dominant. It really irked me (as much as having HEPLAR plasma engines and not changing the way starports and docks looked did in Traveller: The New Era).

They've fixed it in 2022 by deleting the following statement: "In addition, spacecraft of 100 tons or more are not designed for this kind of ‘knife-fight’ and will suffer DM-6 on all attack rolls they attempt."

This means that you're not facing a base -8DM if you're in a dogfight in a starship and lose the opposed piloting roll. You only get the normal -2DM if you lose the opposed pilot roll, which is fine. Turrets can face anywhere. Happy with this resolution.

It's still quirky in that you use the difference in your opposed roll to determine a modifier for the second and subsequent turns, but I can live with that. It should really be treated like a task chain (so your mod is based on the effect of the winning roll) to be internally consistent. However, it works and I'd happily use it as it's presented now.

What it did remind me is how close the ranges are in Mongoose Traveller. Distant range is only 50,000km, a sixth of a light-second. With directed energy weapons like lasers and decent sensors, I suspect that combat could easily be started at a much longer range. Lasers travel at the speed of light, and there's no real reason what they'd lose coherence in space that I'm aware of. It becomes a game of tactics and probabilities, as ships fire salvos of laser shots over a volume of space looking for a shot to intersect a target.

Overall, a change for the better. More on the update once I've assimilated it.

20 December 2021

On the long form (again)...

 

James Maliszewski's blog is always worth a read.

So First Age starts posting about long-form, and soon they're all at it!

James Maliszewski has a good old moan on his blog about his Empire of the Petal Throne campaign write up. He'd been doing write-ups of his sessions, but recently killed them because they each rarely got more than 200 unique views (ha!) and very little interaction. He then has this mini-rant.

I had naively hoped, back when I started posting session reports, that they might at least encourage some discussion of the care and maintenance of long campaigns, because I think this is something of a lost art. The impression I increasingly get is that much of our hobby is devoted to idle consumerism – the never-satiated pursuit of the latest baubles – and not much play of any kind, never mind dedicated campaign play. I've sometimes darkly mused that the interest in so-called "actual play" videos and streams serves as a substitute for playing oneself.

I do understand what he means; my blog posts on the Strahd game seldom get more than 20 unique views, often less, and tend to provoke less conversation than other posts that I make. That said, I'm not doing them to drive traffic or provoke conversation really. They're there to capture what happened, in part for me. We're in our second year of the campaign and it would be so easy to lose track of what happened. If they serve as a reference for the players and entertain others, then they've done their job. Provoking a more detailed conversation is a bonus.

That said, more discussion of the long-form is worthwhile. Reflecting back, I've learned a lot reading blogs like the Alexandrian (see blog roll) and Sly Flourish, both of which consider campaigns in some depth. However, as a GM, I tend to internalise my thoughts on their advice more than starting a conversation back. Sometimes I just read the descriptions of the game sessions for ideas and to see how someone else does it. Often it makes me feel like I'm doing this too much by the seat of my pants, but is that a bad thing?

And do people watch 'actual play' videos and streams as a substitute? I don't know, because I'm more drawn to the written word than watching videos.

20 December 2021

A different kind of long-form campaign?

Mountain Dragons - Photo by Ali Müftüoğulları on Unsplash

My regular game of D&D fifth edition didn't happen this week, as one of the players has had COVID-19 (hopefully on the mend now) and I have a lovely (not-COVID) sinus infection which left me pretty much wiped out after a full day of Teams Meetings and working-from-home. So we cancelled. 

It hasn't stopped me musing a bit about the long-form nature of D&D, prompted by some of First Age's blog posts about the 4e campaign he's running. I was counter-pointing this to some of the brutalist comments from a poster on the Old-School Essentials Facebook group, mainly about not tailoring the scenario to the characters and letting it fall as it will. Interesting stuff, if a tad evangelical and heading towards telling people that they're doing it wrong. 

Dungeons & Dragons has supported long form since it started, but the nature of that support has changed, mostly from the release of D&D3e, although there's a case that later-day AD&D2e (especially with the splat-books) was moving to a different form of game.

Early D&D had characters go through a winnowing process; they were fragile, and died often if you followed the core rules. Most DMs that I knew had house rules to address this; maximum hit points at first level, not dying at zero hit points, loads of retainers to soak damage and so on. Definitely not the rules as written. By the time characters hit the mid-level sweet-spot, you felt that the characters had pulled themselves up from inexperience newbies to minor heroes. They weren't that fragile and they were powerful enough to put at risk. Your investment in the character grew with them, and they started to show themselves later in the game from what they did. RuneQuest followed the same tropes.

Later D&D starts from an assumption that your characters are minor heroes. They have feats and cool powers (which really start to kick in at 3rd level in fifth edition). They aren't anywhere near as fragile (I remember realising this when I first ran the game and the party killed a vampire spawn with ease at second level, something that would have probably resulted in character deaths in the older games). The character investment is higher, as is the preparation time. By the time you hit mid-levels, they're powerhouses which can take on a serious level of threat.

System-wise, I think that the characters probably occupy a similar point in the eco-system at mid-levels; in both styles of D&D, you won't want to lose a character. We're 33 sessions into Curse of Strahd, and losing a character now would be both shocking and sad, especially if it was seen to be for something meaningless. That said, I don't mollycoddle. I will foreshadow, I will warn, but when push comes to shove, the players have the choice about the combats that they initiate. There've been a number of combats when they've taken decisions that could have killed them; the attack on the vampire spawn at the coffin-maker's workshop, the ambush by the vampire spawn at the Blue Water Inn and the attacks on the Durst Mill (the Old Bonegrinder) came close to killing characters. The Barovian sandbox follows an OSR mindset in some ways; the characters chose where they go and the threats that they face (or not). The only balance is made by geography; less dangerous areas tend to be encountered first.

A decent OSR DM will foreshadow, leave options to avoid combat and reward innovative play. Encounters could be deadly, but ultimately they can be avoided. If they can't, the DM isn't doing it right. Holmes, B/X, BECMI and AD&D weren't built as funnels to slay characters, it was just they way the mechanics played out; a skilled player could still lose a character to RNG, but the chances were reduced with experience. 

Both game styles look for the long form, it was just harder to get there with the earlier takes on the game.

19 December 2021

First Impressions - Dying Hard on Hardlight Station/Nirvana on Fire - Mothership RPG (ZineQuest3)

The complete package...

This week saw one of the last zines that I'd backed as part of the Kickstarter ZineQuest 3 promotion back in February. It was certainly the prettiest, both in terms of initial presentation and in the quality of the material. Dying Hard on Hardlight Station is 32-pages long, staple-bound, printed on decent weight paper and uses a pallet of predominantly black, red and white. It is beautifully illustrated and feels like a quality product. It has good, clear layout which is well organised and easy to reference at the table. The second zine - Nirvana on Fire - is shorter at 12-pages, but of similar production values. This one doesn't have nice illustrations but is well laid out again. Obviously, there are minor spoilers below but I try to keep them to a minimum.

TL;DR: Dying Hard on Hardlight Station has excellent production values, with a location that can serve equally as a campaign hub or a one-shot. Although the package I got here would be a three-shot. You'll see why in the review. Good stuff.

Carefully packaged.

 
Dying Hard on Hardlight Station throws the characters into a hot mess of two different plotlines converging over Christmas. As you may suspect, it does a riff on a certain action film in names used and a vague similarity in part of the plot.

The zine discusses how to use this as the basis for a campaign or a one-shot. For the longer form, it suggests that Hardlight Station is used as an operational hub for the characters to stage out of, and +to just throw in the other scenarios when it feels appropriate.

The first plotline involves an operation by the Black Shield Mercenary Corporation against one of the tenants at Hardlight Station. The second plot involves what's been going on at the tenant, HealthTek. They've been carrying out research that is best not disturbed as they try to help survivors of a mission to Tau Sigma 7. Naturally, carnage ensues as these two plots intersect.

Characters can play the survivors from Tau Sigma, should the GM feel it's appropriate.

In fact, you can play the entire Tau Sigma adventure, as it was unlocked as a stretch goal in the funding campaign. 'The Horror on Tau Sigma 7' is a brutal alien style horror story - the characters will try and recover a rare metal sample from a dig site in an impact crater. it's likely to go wrong, badly, and would be a great set-up with some disposable characters.

Hardlight Station itself has an overall image, but the detail of locations isn't mapped out. There are references for what each sector is like, with useful random tables and hooks to drive interaction. There's more than enough to support a fun theatre of the mind game.

The package included sound files that can be used to add to the fun, plus a Warden's Screen of key references for the scenario. I'm not certain if these are Kickstarter extras or not.

Nirvana on Fire sees the characters visiting a Zen colony orbiting the moon Bodhisattva 2a, with a mission to help restore the power systems on the colony. In return for this, they get the rights to salvage the abandoned terraforming tower at the top of the space elevator. Unfortunately, the AI that controlled the terraforming may not be amenable to this approach. The adventure is in outline form, with less detail than Dying Hard on Hardlight Station. There's enough for a good session or two of play. It's very much a sandbox, but less dangerous than 'The Horror on Tau Sigma 7'!

The back page has a random generator for Mothership plots, which looks like it will be helpful for inspiration.

Overall, both of these zines are excellent. They also show a credible way to link dangerous scenarios into a campaign, recognising that you don't need all (or indeed any) of the characters to survive so long as the repercussions of previous encounters have a clear impact on the future plot.

11 December 2021

Curse of Strahd - You're not privy to that information [musings]

Blue Water Inn - Not a privy in sight.

The maps for Curse of Strahd are lovely examples of the work that Mike Schley has done for D&D5e, yet they are generally lacking in one thing. 

Privies. Bathrooms. WCs. Toilets.

The only place I've found one so far has been at the Wizard of Wines Vineyard (W7), and that feels like an addition that's there to support the wild west feel of the scenario at that point where the characters are likely under fire from needle blights.

There is a bath chamber in Castle Ravenloft itself (K43), but again, that serves a certain trope within the genre.

Now, this is unlikely to be Mike's fault - he'll be working from sketches from the scenario writers.

It just seems odd that there's nothing at all.

5th December 2021

 

Curse of Strahd - S4E5 - Matters of Faith

 

Our heroes have just emerged from the depths of a very strange library for the second time, bringing with them an injured woman, Ez D'Avenir. Now they need to decide what to do about the Abbot of St Markovia.

Our dramatis personae:

Ser Adon de Rouge of House Starbright (a half-orc Paladin, from a knightly background, with two human retainers and a priest), played by Paul (dr_mitch). Lawful Good. Married to Ser Alys.

Kelwarin (Kel) (a half-elf Sorceror flush with the powers of wild magic, an outlander), played by Graham (First Age). Chaotic Good.

Gaddock Teeg (a halfling wizard and former prizefighter), played by Alex (Doggetay), Neutral Good

Ser Alys de Adon-Rouge of House Starbright (a half-orc Fighter with a soldier background, currently the leader of the town militia of Daggerford), played by Tom (Guvnor). Lawful Neutral. Imagine a slightly greener take on Grace Jones... Married to Ser Adon. 

also featuring: 

Ireena Kolyana (a human warrior, daughter of the Burgomaster of Barovia, Twice-Bitten reincarnation of Strahd's unrequited love, Tatyana) - upgraded as a sidekick.

with : 

Alexei the Vistana (a young human expert, sent to pay off his debt to the party by his Vistani elders after they rescued Arabelle from certain death when Alexei lost her in town. A late teenager who is so taken by Ireena and the excitement of the adventure that he's forgotten he planned to be sulky and surly for his 13 moon exile) - upgraded as a sidekick.

All characters are presently 6th level, including the sidekicks.

1st December (early evening)

Having exited the library, they gathered their wits and decided that they needed to find out what the truth was about the Abbot. Was he a fallen angel, or was he something else? Whilst discussing this, they were surprised that Clovin appeared unnoticed and started to chat to them. He led them down to the main hall where the Abbot and Vasilka were conversing, and Ireena, Alexei and the small group that they had rescued from the library were resting. A conversation of sorts was held, but it was almost as if the Abbot and his guests were skirting around the subject. After a short while, the Abbot and Vasilka retired for the night as the party said they were tired. Clovin, Otto and Zygfrek pulled pallets up from the store cellar and everyone bedded down for the night, with Kel taking the first watch. The party were clearly on edge. The plan? To wake up in the middle of the night and find out what was going on in the other wing of the building. 

As they were whispering plans, Clovin appeared again at another inopportune moment, which they managed to cover up with a request for some more wine which he fulfilled with great enthusiasm.

2nd December (early hours)

They woke quietly and started to sneak out to check what was going on. Ser Alys almost blew the whole plan when she dropped her battle axe. She decided that she'd leave her armour and move in stocking feet to give herself a better chance to sneak around. Ser Adon carried his in his backpack. Alexei unlocked the door to the hall and they headed out into the cold, foggy night. The fog was lit through scant moonlight shining through the clouds above, giving a eery and disturbing feel to the night. Scouting through the fog, they found some of the strange half-bred creatures like Clovin locked in pens on the south wall. Gaddock saw something, hearing noises, perhaps the sound of bat wings. He decided to create a distraction with his owl, but when it tried to lift a slate to drop, it made a noise that woke something and then there were cries from more of the creatures they'd just found, calling for food. Something was looming in the mist, so Gaddock edged back and filled much of the courtyard with fog. The party formed a daisy chain to work around the northern side of the courtyard, as they'd seen no pens there when they walked through previously. 

Concentrating on the spell, Gaddock was startled to discover that the person holding his hand in the fog was Clovin, who seemed to be very excited about the adventure they were going on. Quickly, Gaddock responded with a suggestion spell that Clovin goes back to bed, get some hot milk and go to sleep. He was very agreeable to this and headed off.

They reached the far end of the courtyard, and Ser Adon opened the bar that was locking the creatures in the Eastern wing. Sneaking in, Gaddock and Adon found a wrecked office, and then Ser Alys noticed that something was coming. A huge lumbering creature approached, sewn from multiple bodies, telling them they shouldn't be there and it would smash them if they didn't leave. It would tell the Abbot and Clovin that they were trespassing. Of course, it said this very slowly. Gaddock looked around the corner and agitated the creature, who thought he had escaped. It grabbed him and threw him into a cell. Ser Alys dived in after the halfling, while Ser Adon squared off with the creature, some form of construct.

In the cell, three sets of hungry eyes opened from their sleep and said expectantly, "Hungry? Breakfast?". 

Outside the creature advanced on Adon and he tried to push it back.

In the cell, Gaddock emptied his ration pack for the creatures, who piled in, buying time. 

Ser Adon managed to shove the creature backwards, allowing his colleague and wife to escape. 

The construct roared in anger and started to chase after them. It battered Ser Adon backwards, slamming him into the walls.

As they fled, they realised that the cell opposite was teaming with more of these creatures, more deformed and basic versions of Clovin, Otto and Zygfrek. They ran. Exiting into the dark, they were relieved when the construct wouldn't cross the threshold of the wing. 

They headed back to bed down, agreeing not to speak of this again.

Once they got back, they talked about what had happened and were joined again by Clovin who they'd woken up. He made them hot milk. They chewed over the Abbot's situation, the fact that Vasilka was obviously some type of construct, perhaps a doll to placate Strahd, and wondered if the Abbot had fallen. They were startled when the Abbot stepped out from the shadows in the room, noting how perceptive they were about his situation. He confirmed he had arrived over a century ago to restore hope following St Markovia's sacrifice and had tried to bring a change. This had not worked as well as he planned, and soon he was discussing the challenges of the Darklord of this domain with a nobleman who visited. The noble, one Vasili Von Holtz, provided information on rituals from the Amber Temple which allowed him to create life, after a fashion. He tried to heal the Belview family, but ended up creating mongrelfolk instead; the former humans were happy, but deeply twisted and were his wards.

The discussion ranged and he admitted that he was trying to create a creature that Strahd could love, a perfect bride. Every attempt by Strahd to calm his demons by finding Tatyana had failed, so this was a way to bring him comfort and to break the curse on the vampire and the land.

A lively debate ensued, with the group trying to convince the Abbot that this was the wrong way forward. He counterpointed that perhaps that could draw Tatyana's soul into Vasilka's body? Ser Adon debated with him that this was wrong. Ser Alys added his arguments, and then Kelwarin joined the conversation. He praised the industry and artifice that the Abbot had shown in the face of evil, and how he'd struggled for a solution born from love not hate. However, the Abbot had become obsessed and couldn't see that his scheme would never work; it wouldn't bring Barovia back to the light because Strahd was utterly gone, utterly evil and his own journal showed that he had embraced the dark powers before Tatyana killed herself for the first time. All his plan with Vasilka would do would be to damn the soul of an innocent to hell, because Strahd would never accept her or change.

A tear rolled down the Abbot's face. He muttered that Kel was right, was insightful and although not a man of faith, clearly a man of good. Turning to Ser Adon, he asked for his blade. The Paladin obliged. The sword burst into flame, a cold, clean, radiant energy of whites, blues and gold. The Abbot, looking more angelic than ever before sadly said that how he must remove the evil from this land, the corruption that he'd become. Ser Adon looked on horrified, Ser Alys looked on indifferent. Kelwarin, agast, argued with the fallen angel, telling it that the inmates here needed him, that they looked up to him, that he had done good in bringing light to a small part of Barovia. Somehow, he got through, and the Abbot passed back the blade to Ser Adon, also healing the warrior-knight as he did so.

They slept the rest of the night. In the morning, the Abbot told them that he would provide them sanctuary and what aid he could. He told them that if one of them died on this quest, they could bring them to him promptly as he may be able to return their soul to their body.

The party graciously thanked him, and planned to set out for Vallaki to try and find Jenny Greenteeth and see what she knew about the Fanes.

Ser Adon realised that his sword had absorbed part of the angel's energies and named it for the events of the night before, "Deva's Redemption".

GM Notes: This whole part of the scenario was gearing up for an extended swarm fight with the player, with them also facing off a fallen celestial. Instead, we roleplayed. Graham's in character roleplay was superb, and he had a dice roll to reflect that (high 20s critical) which actually beat the Abbot. They now have an ally or at least an alternative sanctuary. The scenario seems to be set up assuming that there must be a fight, but the players wanted to work their way around this. I was happy to oblige; it leaves a morally but partly redeemed angel as a player in Barovia and gives the party a good sanctuary. They now want to restore the Fanes and strip back some of Strahd's power before they face him directly. But will he insist on them taking up his invitation to visit first?\

Some fun roleplaying and clever use of magic this session.

1 December 2021