Solo - The Journey Continues

I'll really need a recap as it has been some time since I last managed to get a round in.

First, this is a MTU universe (My Traveller Universe) based on my old college notes. Back before there was much of an Imperium designed and you rolled your own. We are in the D'Arlee Quadrant which is somewhere on the edge of the Great Rift (as I have these giant poster maps, though I may end up moving it again, further out). While a chunk of this quadrant (4 subsectors) is Imperial, most is not. There are a couple of other political groups here, the big one being the League of Planets. It has its own navy and police forces, and less of a structured starport system - no Starport Authority.

My goal in this was to expand a bit and play with the rules, especially some of the newer ones in T5 as well as the Cepheus systems.

So, quick recap: our main character is:
Malik Catillion, age 34, Jounalist, Senior Staff writer (4 terms)
699B96
Art (Writing 2), Carouse 0, Deception 0, Drive 0, Flyer 0, Persuade 0, Steward 0, Language 1, Electronics (Comm 1, Sensors 1), Investigate 1, Streetwise 0.

He is off to do another round of reporting but this time for himself. Basically, a future blogger that will have to make a living as he goes around the universe. He is now entering the political sphere of the League of Planets, an independent group of planets at the edge of Imperial Space. Malik is also part of the crew for the No Refunds, a trader that is part of the Antares Ship Builders and Trade Speculators group. This group is sort of like the trucking companies where the drivers own their own rigs: they pay a small portion to the mother company, but also get access to brokers and some services in various systems. It is also a news gathering system: not only physical cargos get around but so do informational ones. Brokers often live by the rumors and reports from the surrounding systems. The No Refunds is a Lakota class cargo ship based on one of Ryan Wolf's ships. See this post for details. And in finding out that the tonnage he uses is standard tonnage where 1 ton - 100 cubic feet, that ship is actually 650 dTons. I will have to update all that at some point. But at least now I have a solid tonnage based on the actual volume! His 3D modeling calculates all that for him, so it should be pretty darn accurate!

They have just jumped from Preacep to Krim, and so I need to roll on the on board events table: ship malfunction! Not good news when you are in the middle of an alternate universe protected only by a hydrogen bubble!  Gas build-up. What does a gas build-up mean? There is an entry for waste disposal problems, so ruling out the bathrooms are having issues. We can go with another reactant gas on-board that is used for processing in the life support system (there has to be a reason life support is so expensive in Traveller. So we'll need a plan to deal with this.

First, roll to see how many days before this becomes a problem. 1d6 = 6 days. So, not a pressing event but it will be an issue before we get out of jump. I'll go with a fool-proof plan then: we have plenty of time to check and recheck what needs to be done. However, the gas system is highly pressurized and this is a dangerous level as a result of that. This is my attempt to balance things out a bit. So, roll for the plan with a 6+. However, we do have an excellent engineer on board:

Lando Dietgard, 697BA8, age 29, Engineer
Engineer (Jump 3, Man-2, Power-1, Life Support-1), Carousing-1, Sensors (Comms-1), Trade (Space Construction-1), Advocate-1

I'll go with a +1, leaving us with a 5+ for the plan. Rolled a 7, so we make it and the gas build-up is corrected. As a result, there is a good consequence, and we get a rumor or discover a valuable piece of information. What could we have found in the middle of jump? Antares is a fairly large corporation based in the Imperium. Perhaps there is some tracking devices added to the system. While tracking cannot work in interstellar distances, and Traveller has no FTL communication other than via ships, a tracking device could be used to track where the ship has gone, and if it is connected to any of the sensors, be able to know more about the surrounding areas. So is this a nefarious plot of some sort by the home office? Was this added at Preacep where there was that delay? And was it Antares, the Imperium or some other group? There are no easy indicators. Lando's reaction roll to finding this is 8: middling but not too upset (2D6 Classic Traveller reaction roll, where 2 = attack and 12 = hi, friend). Out of all the characters once this is brought to everyone's attention, the worst response was a 5. So no out-and-out anger. According to our good captain, this is pretty much expected behaviour. Nonetheless, the device is detached and flushed out to the jump space void.

Lynwood Laux 776DB6, age 48, ship Captain
Pilot (Spacecraft-3, Small craft-1, Capital Ships-1), Admin-1, Carouse-1, Electronics (Comms-1, Remote Ops-1, Sensors-1), Flyer (Grav-1), Gun (Slug-1), Gunner (Turret-1), Leadership-1, Melee (Blade-1), Tactics (Naval-1), Animals-0, Athletics-0, Language-0, Vacc Suit-1

And yes, I am digging back through the blog to get all the character stats back. Going to print up a hard-copy for a folder to better track this info.

Okay, enough for this initial foray back to the solo game. Next session, which may well be tonight, will be going through the character-character interactions during the jump. Which is why I need my list of characters! While probably not singing Kumbyah or anything, we'll see.

And closing with a modified T5 form for Krim.