Traveller Sunday

Flying back to the Cyan Port, there is a light snow covering the tarmacs, and the occasional craft launching or landing in the distance.  Boris, Travis and Li part ways with their Marine guards, and go to the Port Hotel where they have a few hours before their dinner with the Countess. Li leaves to get some shopping done, while Travis and the Doctor clean up and do some research on the Countess and try to catch up on local news.  Most of the local news is state-sponsored propaganda, but even there is little negative news on the Countess. The Imperial database indicates she has been a career diplomat and has moved up through the ranks consistently over the years, and is now the Imperial representative on Cyan. Her goals, as listed by her bio, are to bring peace and prosperity to Cyan. Knowing how the nobility works, our Travellers are aware that prosperity will also be coming to the Countess.

Li returns with several bags, and asks if she too is invited. As she was, both Boris and Dr Duk-Lyle almost appear affronted that she even made such a suggestion.  So quickly pulls out a fairly spectacular semi-formal gown, and returns.  Amidst the praise, a slight bump on her thigh is revealed to be a small holster and pistol. With a grin and "it doesn't hurt a girl to try" she quite easily leaves the small body pistol behind. 

They are met at the hotel entrance by a port taxi, and are quickly shuttled to the racing yacht. Met at the airlock by an austere butler, they are ushered into the dining area where they are met with delight by Countess Millie. A coffee and introductions are exchanged, and Millie offers a tour of the yacht before dinner. Travis recognizes the coffee from Trane, and finds to his dismay that the Countess imports it at a fair expense. The yacht is a Kitaro class racing yacht, so is not a typical Traveller yacht.  Fine yet subdued appointments show a refined taste. They are led to the large kitchen where Chef Waldo and is sous-chef are busy cooking. They are almost ejected from the kitchen by the same chef who is busy cooking some sort of fish.  The rest of the tour goes well, from the small pool with the complete holographic wall system, to the larger than expected engineering section. At the rear of the ship is the garage, currently with 2 grav speeders.

At pleasant chime announces that dinner is served. Returning to the dining room, they encounter the Marquis Juliette Sung Ottowald who they last saw on Trane.  A very pleasant dinner was served, and making rolls against social, Travis noted that the fish is exceptional and wonders if it is Lord Fish.  And indeed it is (note that Lord Fish is from the http://travellerrepublik.blogspot.com/ site - thanks!)  The Countess notes that she has an idea she would like to discuss after dinner.

So, after a resplendent meal, after dinner is served causing Travis to grimace at missed opportunity. Her plan is to finance Le Suroit to research keeping the Lord Fish tasty for more than a couple of days after processing. This fish is not only expensive due to its rarity but also that it has to be shipped live - once dead, despite any preparation, the taste and value rapidly declines.  She offers a cool Cr250,000, enough to pay for the fuel processor as well as purchase a fish or two at Kryslion, their next port of call. Li continues to elbow both Travis and Dr. Duk-Lyle, so they take an electronic copy of the contract to review it.

They end up hiring an advocate to review the document, and decide to modify it so that they will also get a cut of the profits going forward should they actually manage to find a way to preserve the flesh. The Countess readily agrees to the new contract. So now they have a six month window at Kryslion to see if they can do what has not been done despite more than 50 years of trying.

Now from the GM/Player perspective: this allows the players to finance the Cr180,000 fuel system they needed for the ship, as well as give them some additional incentive to explore Kryslion.   They do not have a definitive time to get to Selshor (the original goal of this adventure, to retrieve the Katydid. However, the Scouts would prefer a sooner rather than later).  The chances of them succeeding are pretty low but not impossible. It will be a weekly roll that has to be met each time. Success will move forward, near success may lead them to an incorrect research path, and failure may really mess them up. This is a task chain, so I need to read up on that.

Additionally, I had set up some maps to have Purity shot down in Startown. This was an option if they wanted to get some combat in. Combat being possibly fatal in Traveller. Also gives me a chance to bring out a Zombie game that has road and building tiles so we can have a tactical game. Zombies will be the opponents.  Just using the pieces...

Traveller Tracker - Foreign Keys

After the initial jubilation of being able to use SQLite with Entity Framework in a UWP application, I was dismayed to discover that foreign keys are not supported in SQLite.  EF has some nice tooling for database migrations, but sadly they will not work.

There are workarounds, which is what I am probably going to end up doing. I just have to be careful about the naming conventions so I don't accidently create a FK in the models.

But I have learned how to add additional tables into the migration path, and now knowing about some of the limitations, I can work around them. 

I must be getting excited by all this again - had the strangest dreams about the code base last night. Or perhaps that was the carrot cake...

Animal Encounters

There are a lot of interesting animals here on planet Earth.  One I like is the giraffe - just how unlikely is it for something like this to be?

A famous giraffe, April, has given birth to a baby boy.  But just watching her gives me some ideas for animal encounters (I may have to revive the PETA of Romar for the next chapter or two).

Traveller Tracker

Finally got some time to get back to this. And finally have it at least loading and running with an attached SQLite database.

Biggest issue was a naming convention: using Entity Framework and the SQLite stuff there are some assumptions about naming conventions. Fortunately MS/SQLite borrowed from the Ruby On Rails, and I've no idea where they got their ideas from.

Regardless, the screen comes up, and you can add a ship to the library.  Right now it has a hard-coded name while I was verifying things worked; next step is to allow editing and have a full ship detail page (the main page is just a list of your ships. An ugly list at the moment...)

I also updated VS2017 to the latest version and few other things, but now progress in theory should be a tad faster as I think I've got basic I/O in place.

And I learned a bit more about DB migrations. This is a code-first program, meaning the DB is basically defined in the code, and we use migrations to update the database. So the 1st migration just sets up the ship table, and you can see how ShipID is the primary key.

using System;
using Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore;
using Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.Infrastructure;
using Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.Metadata;
using Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.Migrations;
using TravellerTracker.Models;
namespace TravellerTracker.Migrations
{
    [DbContext(typeof(TravellerContext))]
    [Migration("20170416155153_initialShip")]
    partial class initialShip
    {
        protected override void BuildTargetModel(ModelBuilder modelBuilder)
        {
            modelBuilder
                .HasAnnotation("ProductVersion", "1.1.1");
            modelBuilder.Entity("Traveller.Models.Ship", b =>
                {
                    b.Property("ShipId")
                        .ValueGeneratedOnAdd();
                    b.Property("CargoCapacity");
                    b.Property("CargoCarried");
                    b.Property("FuelPerJump");
                    b.Property("Name");
                    b.Property("dTons");
                    b.HasKey("ShipId");
                    b.ToTable("Ships");
                });
        }
    }
}

Cyan Starport Impressions

Starport Impressions

Despite being around for several centuries, the Cyan star port has never received an official name.  Cyan government has not been actively pursuing interstellar trade.

The primary administrative complex is a rambling structure, added to almost randomly over the years. The original control tower was abandoned more than a century before and is used for storage and the rare sight seeing citizen.  The new tower, more than 80 years old, presides several stories above the old tower and give a good vantage over the entire port.

The massive customs building houses what appears to be hundreds of offices and officials. Security is very evident throughout this building, which is the primary way of leaving the port. Security checks are very thorough for a TL A egress. Returning to the port can also be a hassle depending on crowds, the mood of the local army at the time, as well as the latest edict from the dictator. There are dozens of warehouses nearby both inside and outside the fence, some of which are still not usable.

Accommodations are adequate, but not up to high passage standards. And in the current siege mentality, things are crowded. Most merchants do not leave the port, relying on local brokers for cargoes. The Marine squads are housed in one of the hotels, leaving even fewer spaces for visitors. Marines patrol the perimeter constantly, primarily to maintain a visible watch over the occasional crowds outside.

There is the constant sound of grav vehicles loading and unloading cargo. Despite being a class C port, it is on the leg to the subsector capitol so has a larger than expected number of ships. Additionally, the local SDB fleet is housed here, and make trips daily. There are two airport style runways, so that local aircraft can transport cargo or people.  All has to be inspected by customs prior to leaving the port.

Startown was damaged in the riots of 5 years ago, and several buildings remain burnt out husks of buildings. Military patrols are constantly roving through the city, with more near the port boundaries.  It is not as rambunctious as many startowns are, but still has quite the variety of people.  There are still several brokers and trading guilds available in startown.

Traveller Sunday - planning

Starting to look towards the end goal of Selshor, and looking at gravity anomalies:

Lateral variations in gravity anomalies are related to anomalous density distributions within the Earth. Gravity measures help us to understand the internal structure of the planet. Synthetic calculations show that the gravity anomaly signature of a thickened crust (for example, in orogenic belts produced by continental collision) is negative and larger in absolute value, relative to a case where thickening affects the entire lithosphere

Our next session will start as you approach the Countess' yacht (sadly the Kickstarter for this ship just started so we won't have the fancy poster) and go from there.  I'll try & have a few possible paths for you.  You will need to decide if you want to have Li along.  She is somewhat persuasive as you have noticed...Dinner is a few hours off, giving you some time to explore the star port if you like.  Li may want to buy some more clothes - she has a simple ship suit and boots, and that's about it. Plus, in talking with Travis, she likes to trade as well. She could be persuaded to keep on the legal side of things...Purity gets in contact and will return in 4 days. Her job is almost complete but she will accompany the group to Selshor and back to Glisten, then head off into her retirement.

Getting some local rumors: you do hear on the news about a massive manhunt for dangerous escaped criminals. Urban areas have increased police and army patrols.  On the flip side, listening to your Marines (who are accompanying you on your return to the starport) there is also an Imperial Marine search going on with a little more finesse.  You will notice flying over the port boundary that there does seem to be larger crowds, and squads of riot police.  The prison has been on light alert.

All the above occurs in the grav APC flight back to the port. The APC is utilitarian without much in the way of comfort.

You will also notice a fair number of ships in port, several merchant vessels, one of which is of Aslan design. And near the Countess' yacht is another yacht, a Prosperity class vessel.  You can always access the port net for public information about vessels, including flight plans if published (Imperial law does not force a flight plan, but it is strongly advised. Additionally a flight plan can be made but flagged as private, indicating only SPA [Star Port Authority] can review it).

Le Suroit is docked at one of the Vanguard stations, getting refueled and restocked. Dr Duk-Lyle's comm has several stored messages asking about better rations.

Traveller Sunday - Prison Escape

As we last left our Travellers, Dr. Duc-Lyle and the Warden, accompanied by Corporal Pagille Ortirez and Warden Brownartz, were heading to the site of the missile explosion. Travis, Purity, Pennity and the Level 1 Warden (whose name escapes me as I never came up with this one!) were also headed there in another grav APC.  As were 4 Imperial SDBs. They must have timed it well as they pretty much all arrived at the same time.

The Renegade (Scout ship) was missing it's mechanic/Engineer, who was driving the 4 wheeler with the additional sensors on board to help triangulate the mole vehicle. There was a smoking 30-40 meter crater in the jungle, with trees pushed back along the edges. Some terse communications later, there was a Cyan SDB settled on one side of the crater, an Imperial SDB parked on the other side, close to the Scout ship.  The two grav APCspark near the edge as well. Hoovert Brownartz, the chief warden, is in direct communication with both the Countess Barout (recently elevated to a Countess as that's what was needed by T5) and Aphix Irteepini, the xenophobic dictator of Cyan. While the diplomats parlayed, the Scouts were getting frantic about their missing crew mate. Travis, being an ex-Scout, volunteered to help search, as did Dr. Duk-Lyle. The guards were flying the grav vehicles in a spiral search pattern, and finally after half an hour, Travis saw the glint of metal in the jungle. Setting down nearby, they found the overturned 4 wheeler, but no sign of Og (Ognuearz Giokga) nearby.  A search finally yields the Vargr Scout, unconscious on the ground. The good doctor stabilizes our furry friend, and using a stretcher from the grav APC they rapidly transport him to the Renegade where there is a med-bay waiting.  It was a concussion with a hairline crack, but Og will make a full recovery.

Finally peace is made between Aphix and the Imperials, and the SDBs, except for 1 Cyan SBD, leave. The Cyan SDB is monitoring the Renegade, where a conversation in the common area is being held.  The warden thanks the good doctor for uncovering some shady drug losses, and verifying that medical treatment is fair, consistent and meets Imperial standards. There is some evidence of some brutality towards political prisoners, and the data will be further reviewed. Travis' efforts are also praised as he found some hostilities between Cyan and non-Cyan guards that HR should be better aware of. Purity will be returning to the Level 1 facility for a couple more days to finish up her research.

Li Brewster is getting early parole for her good behavior, and has offered her services as an additional engineer for Le Suroit. The parties separate: the Renegade launches for the starport with the SDB following, the grav APC, a bit crowded, takes our party back to the prison to interview Li and do a final farewell for Travis.  Li, who resembles Sally Field, and has Persuade-2 along with her winning smile, convinces Dr. Duk-Lyle that she would be a fine addition to the crew.

The prisoners in the mole vehicle, meanwhile, have disappeared. Imperial Marines are searching Brigham and the nearby jungle as they have discovered the abandoned vehicle, with tracks that lead out from a small truck or other personal vehicle. They are hoping to capture them before the Cyan police do. 

Our Travellers will be heading back to the starport. Here they will be greeted and feted by the Countess on her yacht, and by her personal chef.  She has a Kitaro class yacht.

I'll need to come up with some rumors, possible cargos to buy, and stuff like that. They are also seeing if they can outfit the lab ship with a fuel purifier: they have been lucky in that the Scouts have been getting their refined fuel the last few systems, but that is about to stop. And wanting to avoid a misjump, even with a new Jump engineer on board, they are looking into that. It will cost Cr180,000 and take 35 tons according to Book 5/High Guard. As they don't actually have that amount of cash on hand, and they will have to pay Li's salary at some point (she is happy to get a job and out of prison, so will work for free for the 1st jump, but she will want her salary after that.  The Scout engineers (this is a Way Station, so they do have a lot of engineers!) think the purifier is do-able, just figuring it out where to put it.  The current plan is to actually add a new spoke to the ship, and mount it there along with some extra tankage to continue to allow the Jump 2.  Putting it there makes some sort of sense - it will reinforce that single spoke, as the pinnace often is used as a fuel shuttle there are already fuel lines in the spoke, so they can purify the fuel before it gets to the tanks. Plus it make my mini we've been using for Le Suroit a closer model!

Traveller Sunday - Scout Crew

Still working on the stats for the Renegade class Scout ship, but I'm going with a 500 ton ship. I think I've a sufficiently large crew although there will be some specialists added at some point.  There is room for 9 by counting bunks.

Crew is mostly women - when generating characters I roll and even are female, odd are male. In 5000 years I am assuming the pay gap no longer exists or is even a memory :)

Holleng Giambice, 89C9A7, age 29 Scout 3, pilot of Renegade Class Scout Vessel. Near the end of her third term, she commands the Renegade class ship and is currently at Cyan, waiting to transport the Travellers to the Way station. Then off to explore space more.

Admin, Astrogation-1, Electronics [Comms-1], Explosives, Gun Combat, Language, Mechanic, Pilot [Small Craft-1, Spacecraft-2], Stealth-1, Survival, Vacc-1

McKennoz Langlert, 74CCD3, age 30, Scout 2, Astrogator Renegade Class Scout Vessel. Graduate of the Imperial University of Pixie, McKennoz always dreamed of being a Scout.

Astrogation-2, Carouse, Electronics [Comm-1], Engineer [J-Drive-1], Gun Combat, Language, Science [Linguistics-1], Survival, Vacc

Ognuearz Giokga (Og) 868875, age 25, Scout 1, Shuttle pilot, Mechanic, back up astrogator. Coming from the ice-capped plant of Najar, Og never wanted to go back. The lone Vargr on the crew.

Astrogation, Drive, Gun Combat, Mechanic, Persuade-1, Pilot [Small Craft-1, Spacecraft-1], Survival, Vacc-1.

Desision Thaddice, 98ABE7, age 34, Engineer, Medic. From the toxic Mithras system, Desison has lived a life of adventure and romance. A sailing accident two years ago has not slowed him down. He dropped out of college to join the Scouts.

Art, Astrogation, Carouse, Engineer (J-Drive-1], Gun Combat, Language, Mechanic, Medic-1, Science [Biology-1], Seafarer [Sail-1], Survival, Vacc-1

Alisiella Vereto, 86B9D7, age 31, Chief Engineer. Graduate of the Imperial College of Yori, her diploma hangs proud in the engineering section. She has large scars on her back from an accident she does not like to talk about. She has an antique pistol from a gambler she saved years back.

Animals, Astrogation, Electronics [Comouters-1], Engineer [Life Support-1, Power-2], Gun Combat, Language, Mechanic-1, Navigation-1, Survival, Vacc-1

Traveller Sunday - some interesting people of Cyan

Characters with stats were generated via software (RPGSuite) using Mongoose rules. Part of the game in play. This link should take you to the WIP for the Cyan system:  Cyan Guide 

The 3 Cyan Rebels listed below were part of a daring escape that our young Scout Travis was witness to, and Boris and Warden Browartz are on their way as we last left our game.

Aphix Irteepini, Dictator of Cyan  5C8A96, age 42. A ruthless dictator who rose through the army ranks, Aphix is terrified of off-worlders. She has attempted to close off the starport but enough people are against her rule that it can be done.  Admin-0, Athletics-0, Carouse-1, Drive-0, Gambler-1, Archaic-0, Energy-0, Slug-2, Heavy Wpns-0, Melee-0 [unarmed-1, blade-1], Recon-3, Steath-1.

Irel Onzatt, Port Warden. 737A96, age 53. Irel faces the unenviable job of maintaining an Imperial star port on what has recently become hostile ground.  He is assisted with the Marine garrison, but the local regime does have a large squadron of system defense boats much larger than Imperial forces. He is in daily contact with the Count in his attempts to defuse the tensions.  Admin-3, Computer-1, Sensors-2, Pilot-2.

Wie Johnson, Marine Commander (Force Commander) A997C8 (age 46). A career Marine from Boughene, Wie was in Ground Assault and prefers an up front assault over nuance. He commands 3 50 soldier platoons.

Admin-0, Athletics-0, Drive-0, Engineer-0 [Power-1], Explosives-1, Gun Combat-0 [Energy-1, Slug-2]. Heavy Weapons-0 [Vehicle-1], Language-0, Leadership-2, Medic-1, Melee [Blade-2], Pilot [small craft-1], Recon-1, Stealth-0, Survival-2, Tactics [Military-1], Vacc Suit-2

Marquis Milueala (Millie) Barout of Rhylanor, Imperial Representative for Cyan 78865D (age 43). Having served as a diplomat for her career, Marquis Barout has settled down on Cyan as the Imperial Representative. Currently living at the starport in her yacht, the Aedil, she is brokering peace between Aphix and the Imperium. Her current duties are focused on the prison situation, which has escalated recently due to the underground escape of Janet Soo, Macahim Kaitloy and Ellina Hailion.  She does want to get back to her residence, hoping that it has not been damaged since the 1099 uprising.

Admin-2, Advocate-1, Carouse-1, Diplomat-1, Electronics, Gambling-3, Gun Combat [Archaic-1], Melee [Blade-2], Persuade

Warden Hoovert Brownartz, Commissioner 558D56, age 51. A small Asian male with over 30 years of law enforcement, Hoovert rose through the ranks and is now the Warden for the Cyan Prison.  He is also past the requirements for retirement, and plans on retiring sometime in the next year.  He also has reservations about the current political situation on Cyan and the Imperial Prison located on such a volatile world, and welcomes the review by our Travellers. He is close friends with the Marquis of Cyan as well as the starport administrator.

Admin-1, Deception-1, Drive, Flyer [Grav-1], Gambler-1, Gun Combat [Energy-2, Slug-3], Melee [Unarmed-2, Blade-1], Recon-3, Streetwise-2, Vacc

Janet Soo, Cyan Rebel. Former Army career officer who was disillusioned by some of Aphix’s treatment of non-Cyans. Refusing to take part in the attack of Startown, Janet has been in Level 1 for several years.

Macahim Kaitloy, Cyan Rebel. Janet’s trusty assistant, Macahim was also thrown into prison. He is as disillusioned as Janet, and has secretly (unknown to Janet) blown up more than 1 government building. No casualties as he was careful to choose times when people were not present.

Ellina Hailion, Cyan Rebel. Ellina was an actress who wanted to get more than local fame. Getting cut off from the wider Imperial audience she felt she deserved, she made several public announcements which eventually lead to her incarceration. There she met Janet and Macahim, and using her contacts, managed to stage the entire escape, basing it off one of her early adventure movies.

Traveller Sunday

Through a series of real life/miscommunications, we've managed to miss one of the 2 players the last two sessions.  As the characters had separated anyway, it worked out, and we've managed to pull them back together.

So, resuming on day 245 of 1104, Travis has been carousing with the guards and staff.  Few rumors of any import arose, although Li did communicate that something big was going to go down soon.  Dr. Boris found no widespread corruption or abuse, but inventory of certain drugs did not always match.  Purity's research found no systematic abuse.  There was a higher number of injuries to non-Cyan prisoners which was some indication of the hostilities from the often xenophobic Cyan natives.

The morning of 245 was muggy, with the constant sound of insects loud against the jungle noises surrounding the Level 1 facility.  Suddenly, the sound of shouting and screams rent the air.  Travis, his 2 Cyan guards and his Marine guard Pennity rushed back to the guard station to the sensor ops room.  There, Almill, one of the remote drone monitors, seemed to be having problems with the drone that was near the area of disturbance. Purity and Travis got a call from Li about a mole vehicle breaking the ground.  Without footage, the players had no idea what was going on.  Travis, in his youth and inexperience, did not notice the furtive manner of Almill, but Corporal Mell did.  Drawing her firearm, she requested the drone operator to step away from the console.  He did so with some speed, and the operator next door got the video going in time to see the drone digging its way back underground, escaping from the approaching APCs.  Almill was arrested on charges of aiding and abetting, while Travis and his guard retinue went out to view the new hole in the ground. 

Boris and the head warden were now on their way from the main administrative/hospital area, almost 200 kilometers away. Via a grav APC it would take under an hour to get there. In the meantime, the Renegade class ship in orbit started using its gravatic sensors to see if they could track the mole.  Resolution was not ideal from orbit, so the ship was fast approaching to get closer and perhaps find the fleeing prisoners.  Looking into hole, Travis wondered about a drone going in after the felling vehicle.  The drones at Cyan prison are large, grav drive based drones about 2 meters long, with audio and video capabilities.  The hole in the jungle dirt did not look stable enough for another vehicle to follow.  The drone followed the tunnel for almost a kilometer when the radio signal started getting too low.  They retrieved the drone and by now the Scout ship was significantly closer and had an almost 80% probability to the location of the mole.  The Scout ship was being flanked by 2 system defense boats from the local dictator, Aphix Irteepini.  Weapons went hot when the mole vehicle was located, and a missile was launched.  Several Imperial SDBs were heading out the confrontational area.

The primary issue is political: Cyan has its own government, a non-charismatic dictator who controls the army.  While the starport is an Imperial domain, the planet, while part of the Imperium, does have its own government. While there is some contention, what with a small rebellion, the Imperium normally stays out of local politics.  However, the prison is an official Imperial Prison, and so there is some grey legal areas. Additionally, the three escaped prisoners are leaders in the rebellion, and Irteepini would rather have them killed than returned to prison.  They are local Cyan but were interred in the Imperial prison along with hundreds of other political prisoners.

Apparently the prison break was well thought out: while the jungle and air space were monitored, no one thought about tunneling at that scale. The molepod was constructed locally in secret, using plans from the Imperial Army Corps of Engineers.  Cyan, being tech level A, had the tooling and wherewithal to construct this vehicle.

Traveller Sunday, part 2

While our Travellers are exploring the prison, interviewing staff and prisoners alike. their ship, Le Suroit, is being transported to the inner planetoid belt for its refueling and refurbishing for the next leg of the journey.  The primary reason is that Cyan and the Way Station are moving further apart, and the 1G lab ship will take too long to get there if they wait much longer.  The 2nd reason is that I may as well use the deck plans I've bought over the years, so the Renegade class Scout ship (which is 4G as of now :) ) is waiting to take them to the station when they have completed their jobs on Cyan.

And I've got the Renegade from 0-Hr / Ryan Wolf, both the deck plans and the miniature.

Traveller Sunday - At the prison

Due to a miscommunication, Thomas missed Sunday's game. As the two characters had actually split locations, that worked out okay.

We've dropped Dr. Boris off at the admin/hospital complex at the main gate (the only gate) of the prison. He has an attached Imperial Marine and 2 guards at all times for local protection as needed. His task is to verify that there are no abuses in the legal system on the medical side - i.e., patients are cared for and all that.

Travis and Purity travel on almost 200 km to the Level 1 section, with Li and another prisoner in the back of the grav APC. Li will be infiltrating the local prison population, which will clear the rest of her sentence. Purity is heading into the administrative side of things, to review the paperwork and personnel files.  Travis is to use his carousing skill (level 0, but it is there) to wander around and get a more general feel for things.  After an all too aggressive beginning, he relaxes more into the role of low-key snoop.  In the first week he picks up a rumor of one of the drone/sensor ops guys having a far too nice condo back in Brigham.

Li has found that something big is to occur soon but she has not had enough time to find out any details yet.  Purity has not found anything of obvious interest other than some petty thefts and minor guard abuses that have been recorded. She is pursuing some leads on potential guard/prisoner collusions.

On average, the local Cyan guards & staff, despite getting paid by the Imperium, are not forthcoming about much. About 70% of the staff are local Cyans, and have various levels of the native xenophobia traits.

So at this point I've rolled up Travis' Marine guard, one Pennity Mell, Corporal, along with the sensor ops guy and a bruiser thug that was in the back of the APC getting transported to the Level 1.  I'll need to generate some doctors, Boris' Marine guard, and a few other NPCs, and deal with reactions and all that.

We'll have to cover what Boris does, and we may do that via email to get the timelines synchronized.

Traveller Sunday - to the Prison

After a day of rest and non-ship food at the at least adequate hotel and dining establishment of the Class C starport on Cyan, our intrepid group, accompanied by Li Brewster from the prison ship, make the flight to the Imperial Prison known locally as the Jungle.

Dr. Boris is expected to inspect the hospital facilities, and question some randomly selected prisoners.  Travis, Purity & Li are flying over to the Level 1 prisoners to begin with.  They plan on inspecting various locations and seeing if there is any truth to the rumors of abuse and maltreatment.

So...yesterday's game play was fairly slow as I've not really had the time to get a lot of the background into place despite the 2 week hiatus between sessions.  As the prison is almost 200x200 kilometers, houses 100,000 prisoners, and has almost 10,000 personnel, it is a bit of an undertaking.

Hopefully this week I'll have time to get more details, gen up some interesting prisoners, figure out the hospital complex, the fusion complex, some sample guard barracks...at least I borrowed some deck plans that work well enough for the prison cells.

BTW: Li is getting a free trip as she was most helpful in the prison ship, she is nearing the end of her prison term, and she actually has some useful skills that may be of use to the players.  I need to flesh her out a bit more with emotional characteristics, maybe an interesting image or something.

And no - I've not had time to get back to the software development. Maybe when Bryson goes to college...

Traveller Sunday

After a longer hiatus than expected, we resumed our game.  Travis & Boris both failed to maintain the required concentration while studying to improve some skills. Travis' jump coordinates were far off the intended plot: instead of coming out of jump near the planetoid belt housing the Scout Way station, they emerged from jump at the 100 diameter limit of Cyan itself.  While this is not necessarily a bad thing, coming out of jump less than 45 minutes away from a captured Imperial Prison ship, was not fortuitous.

At this point, Purity Truth came out to let Boris and Travis know she is actually an Imperial Intelligence Agent, at the point of retirement but doing one last mission to inspect rumors of the Imperial Prison on Cyan.  While she was hoping for a more clandestine approach to her investigation, events compelled her to help out.

As the prison ship was approaching, the ISS Renegade was also approaching from the Way Station. Sadly it was still more than 2 hours out.  Knowing the prison ship only had 2 missile launchers for defense, Le Suroit opened fire with her pulse lasers in an attempt to disable the launchers. Sadly this was an epically bad night for dice rolls: the shot went wild, and they were notified by the prisoners that another attempt would be fatal. Part of the reason for the miss, despite having a gunner, is the pulse lasers on Le Suroit are more akin to mining lasers as well as having a more limited firing arc. That and rolling a 3 on the to hit did not help.

The two ships docked, but our crew could hear fighting in the background of the prison ship.  Communicating with the Imperial Starport below, our crew was deputized under Purity's command. A face to face parley was requested by Star, the leader of the prisoners currently in charge of the ship.  Docking was a bit problematical as the ships were at a 90 degree angle to each other do to the location of the docking ports (the lab ship really does not make it easy to get in and out of!).

At the upper jump pod, where the ships are joined, our crew hears knocking at the door.  An Imperial prisoner is on the other side, hands up in the universal sign of don't shoot me please.  They let her in.  The situation on the prison ship is explained: there are 3 groups, two of which are not really that violent. Star, the leader on the bridge, is one of the not violent ones who as requested the parley.

So our players, after removing all weapons as per Captain Boris, along with Purity, head to thge bridge of the prison ship. While Travis and Boris managed the athletic transition, Purity, despite being an Aslan and one would think land on her feet, was not as graceful (she has a lower dexterity due to failing a couple of aging rolls).

They are met by a Vargr who leads them to the elevators, past some bloodstained walls that were witness to the bloody uprising from the prisoners. The elevators still play musak in the far future it turns out.  A brief parley, and confirmation that the prisoners will be held at the Imperial starport pending investigation of the prison situation, and the ship is yielded to Purity.

While Travis goes back for Cudgel and his stunner, Star and Boris make for a quick survey of the ship to let the other prisoners know what the deal is.  There are a few bodies scattered, and a few prisoners still in there cells, refusing to come out.  In the starboard prison pod they find the remnants of the most xenophobic and violent prisoners. They refuse to be handed over to the Imperial scum, and one of them lunges at Boris with a hidden shiv. it was at this point Travis returns, and hearing the ruckus, fires his stunner. Sadly, another horrible roll and he takes out Star. Meanwhile, the good Doctor and the shiv carrying thug are tussling but both are inept at physical combat.  Finally our thug cuts the doctor, causing 4 points of damage. Travis has managed to get behind the struggle and attempts to pull off the thug. Sadly he is not nearly as strong, and only manages to distract him for a moment. Using Cudgel he attempts to smack the guy on the head. He does actually hit but does only 1 point of damage.

At this point, 2 ISS security guards (yes, my Scout Service has a security division) show up and the fight is shortly over.

And that's pretty much where we left off.  I'll try and get a better synopsis with names and all that in place, and the fallout of this.  Le Suroit is still orbiting Cyan, the amber zoned world, and may be there a while for legal proceedings.

Game and Software Update

Our Traveller game has slowed down - we've not actually played in a month or more. Between holidays, illness and other aspects of real life, we've been unable to meet up. Either that or my players are not really enjoying the game.  And I've been a bit out of contact myself for a variety of personal reasons. While next weekend (end of Jan) I am unavailable, perhaps we'll be able to play the following weekend.

On the software side, I've restarted the Traveller Tracker a few times.  Trying to get my head wrapped around the MVVM aspect of things.  I've got yet another restart in process where I've the basic MVVM set up, I've installed the SqlLite DB and tools, and I'm about to at least see about getting the various other models I had ported into the new program.  The Entity Framework sample I am following has migration built in it appears, so that my database will be maintained via the program.  So that's good.

I've got the basic idea for the main screen. Each button on the left loads the appropriate view.  Not sure how to implement this just yet, but I'll get there.  Eventually....

Software update

While I was making progress on the revisited UWP, I've decided I also want to learn some new things, not just keep rehashing the old things.

So...I will endeavor to make this a MVVM style software (Model - View - View Model) and embed SqlLite into it rather than using text files.

So, up front this will radically slow things down initially.  Long term, however, it should actually speed up things.  So Traveller3 is sort of stopping production, and I'll start on Traveller4 :)

If anyone wants the sort of functional Win32 version, I may be able to package that so it can be installed. I'm not really sure where I left it, other than replacing the IE8 web control with EO Chrome (with the nag screen as I had not paid for it) browser to verify if the TravellerMap API would still work (mostly, just need to adjust the call a bit).

As with all personal projects, I've no idea about an end date. I want to get it out before the year ends - I did state that as a goal on COTI after all :)

Traveller Sunday

Alas, one of my players was sick. So the rest of us (all 2) went to see Star Wars: Rogue One.  It was enjoyable.

And I got more work done on the Traveller Tracker. Finally got the support files to load although I am not exactly happy with the technique.  And the regex did not work on the new SEC files. So I am deciding that only files as exported from Traveller map will be used, and using a fixed width file format (which frankly is a lot more efficient than regex anyway; especially since my knowledge of regex is pretty much copy/paste!).

So I've added the initial data template for the worlds of the sector. Needs work but it is at least working.  And I think I'll save off the last ship used and load that on start up automatically as well. But at least I am making some progress.

As for the game - I did collect enough Lego minifigs I think to handle things. I'll have to recheck before we play, as well as look into BITS At Close Quarters to handle the combat.  Ill work up a cheat sheet for the players.

UWP Traveller Tracker

Slow progress, but at least I am now loading the support files. I've expanded the ship class a little, and added at least the lookup to load a sector file.  Not processing it yet...Also the selector for the version (T5, Classic, Mongoose - I have those rule sets).

Traveller Game for Jan 1

We'll probably be playing Sunday, January 1st. Welcoming the new year in with Traveller. This round may curtail some combat, so I need to research that a bit more to see how we want to play it. T5 and abstract range bands, or use BITS Close Combat, or Snapshot....

No matter which way, I'll need character tokens and something to place them on, even if it is just abstract (although I do have my ancient hex mat, just need to get some erasable markers).  I'll probably use Lego minfigs. As I must have a few hundred by now, and enough of the same ones to take sides, that will probably work. I did search for some paper minis which may be an option later on.

And hopefully I'll have time to work on the Traveller tracker a bit more this weekend. I'd like to be able to load in the support files at least, and expand a bit on the various classes.

In the meantime, here's Cyan:

Traveller 3: Tracking our Travellers

I've vaguely resurrected the 7 year old Traveller tracking software. I've got basic functionality in the Win32 version, but I am now re-writing it for UWP - Universal Windows Platform.  Most of the logic will just move over, although I am replacing all the XML with JSON and serializing things - way too much work the older way.

I've got a very basic (and ugly) start going. It can now save off & reload my ship data. Not much shows up on the screen shot below, but getting asynchronous I/O working was (as always) harder than expected. I also have the data binding in place, and that seems to work.

So, many steps to go, but the plan is:

1. Expand out the various classes (ship, world, etc)
2. update the regex to handle the new SEC file format (that should be interesting)
3. verify that I can use the TravellerMap APIs (the win32 version used an older version of IE and that was not working; swapped it out for a 3rd party Chrome engine and it worked, but the AP has changed a little since I last used it 7 years ago...)
4. and several more things I've not really thought of

I plan on probably redoing everything that was in the old version, and that let you use, for trade at least, Classic, Mongoose and T5 trade rules/world trade codes.

And I plan on actually getting this into the Windows store - something published is always a good thing to add to my resume! 

And the code is available on GitHub - see my COliver988 account if curious.

Cyan Propoganda Poster

Just trying to think like a xenophobic dictator...

Off to Cyan

Well, despite having a small book of potential adventures, the adventurers are off to Cyan.  As this is an Amber Zone world with a Prison, I small something adventuresome to occur.  I believe I have the deck plans for something that could be a prison transport....

Dr. Boris gets a gun

Using the UWP Gunmaker program I generated the following gun. Then looked around for some SF revolvers.  I should have saved off where I got this image from...

Oai-ko thanks

After helping with the saving of his son, Oia-ko, the ahriy (pride) leader, celebrates with a lavish meal at the Saealin Geki Plantation, and gives a more formal letter of gratitude, as well as a replacement air/raft for the one the dustspice pirates (yes, we can have pirates) took.  The air/raft is from the local Scout base, and is an upgrade from what they had previously.

After the meal, Oia-ko extends an invitation for a hunt: there is a herd of hoioye that are grazing and destroying some prime geki bushes a few hundred kilometers from the plantation.

(Air/raft from Moon Toad Publishing - Pukharra Fast Scout)

Session 4 - on to Romar

Travis goes a-shopping. Unable to purchase normal cargo quantities measured in the dTons, Travis scours the down port for various items he hopes to sell for profit at Romar. After a pleasant evening with the Marquis Juliette Sung Ottowald of Mercactor on her yacht the Bonnie, the crew returns to Le Suroit for what was to be a peaceful evening.

In the morning, one of the two air/rafts was discovered AWOL, checked out by our young and apparently brash Quentin. Not long after the discovery, an Imperial Marine captain contacts the ship, with Quentin in custody. They retrieve the scientist, who is now no longer allowed on Trane. Travis shops and picks up items that may be more valuable at their next port of call, Romar. Among the items are several barrels of water - there is an Artesian Water bar on Romar where imported water goes for high prices, according to the Marquis.

Bidding farewell to Trane, they pilot the lab ship beyond the 100D limit as Travis creates the jump route.  With a flash, they enter jump spaces, lights dimming in the traditional Vilani manner.  The week in jump space goes quietly - Boris has some time to study physics this week, whereas Travis does not manage to successfully study his astrogation texts. We're assuming avarice thoughts occupied his mind this week.

Coming out of jump, they approach Romar. Romar is within the jump shadow of the primary star, so the trip to Romar in normal space takes most of a day.  Upon approaching the planet, there is the equivalent of an amber alert: a troop of Aslan scouts (Tyeyo Aueeah This is the Aslan Explorer Scouts) are missing! While the clan has ground vehicles searching, the addition of flying craft would greatly aid in the search.  Loading one of the air/rafts into the pinnace, the group flies down to 

Arlyehyas to coordinate with the clan.  Quite fortuitously (rolling box cars) Travis spots a couple of shotgun wielding Aslan in a ravine, near the geki bush plantation.  Holding position in the pinnace, he radios back to the command center and Dr Boris.  The air/raft arrives shortly after that, as does the ground vehicles from the clan. They have the clan leader who attempts to parley with what is an illegal dustspice processing camp that the Tyeyo Aueeah managed to run into on their hike. 

Initial parley did not go well as the clan leader got wounded by a shotgun.  Realizing that they had nowhere to go, the dustspice pirates made a deal: the air/raft for the Aslan children.  A quick decision was made, and Dr Boris relinquished the air/raft to the six well armed Aslan.  The children were reunited with their pride and families, and that's where we left off.

Current game

We did not play last weekend - there is always a lot to do in real life.

I'm hoping we'll get together after Thanksgiving this coming up weekend, finish up on Trane and make the jump to Romar.

Here's the link to the current WIP for the Romar guide. Pretty sure Romar is intended as Dune-lite, between the desert world and dustspice...  Romar Guide

Romar - climate map

It's a chilly world.

And after this weekend's Boy Scout backpacker, I'm working on Aslan Scouts. And a lost patrol that our heroes may have to do search & rescue on (fortunately our troop did not get lost despite me being directionally challenged!)

Romar

Romar is next on the flight plan. According to the Wiki (and Behind the Claw, and Mongoose Spinward Marches), Dustspice is harvested there. And there is a large population of Aslan.

So I am starting on the guide next.  A desert world, yet there is a 5% covering of very briny lakes where the geki plant thrives, which is where the dustspice comes from.

I believe I have far too much fun detailing the worlds, and most of the details never actually come into play.

Session 3, wrap up

The Lysani Labs representative made it clear to call the starport and prep for the incoming scientists and crew. Loading them onto the shuttle took a couple of trips, and then, patients in the cargo area, Travis flew gently back to Trane where emergency vehicles were ready to take the survivors to Casphan's hospital.  Getting cleaned up, the crew also went to the hospital via a port grav vehicle, and got checked out to verify there were no ill effects from their experiences other than several bruises.

While there, the lab representative finally arrived from the island where the primary lab was located. Giving profuse thanks, our heroes got a financial reward.  They duly shared the reward amongst the crew, giving more shares for those who went to the Death Ship.

Released from the hospital, they plan to spend a few days enjoying the sites, and perhaps a bit of shopping with their cred sticks filled up.  They were visited with the Imperial Knight in Residence, Sir Craig (another Craig, not me. Really...) who also thanked them for their efforts in halting questionable research in Imperial space.  Who is also keeping an eye on these visitors.

---

So we'll do a bit of site seeing and shopping on the planet while the ship gets restocked and refueled. I've got a few equipment catalogs that they can peruse to see what sort of toys they want to get.  There is an Ancient site on the planet, well guarded, but Quentin (NPC archeologist on board Le Suroit) may really try to visit despite that.  And I'm expecting the Marquis they met on Glisten to show up in her yacht. She may or may not be headed to the same destination as our adventurers.

Then I'll get started on the next planet and detail that out far beyond what they will probably do. While T5 has the MOARN concept (Map Only As Really Needed I think)  the planet detail stuff is my fun thing to do.

Trane, A Guide

Current WIP:  Trane

Session 2, Part1 and Session 3

Our intrepid adventures starting exploring the lab ship, a sister ship to their own. The lights were smashed or working, and the suits were cumbersome.   They found blood-stained floors, the blown up auxiliary lab, and the piles of bedding and tables. Eventually they found one of the scientists on board, Vanessa. With their lights shining, she went beserk due to the combat drugs in her system.  A brief scuffle ensued, but with four against one, they managed to subdue her, and with a tangle net found in the main lab, she was secured.  Immediately afterward they found the walk in freezer, complete with 16 partially eaten bodies hanging up.   Quentin, one of the NPCs, recognizing a former work mate, managed to throw up, but at least not in his helmet.  He stood watch over the scientist, while cleaning up, while the remaining party continued exploring.

Footsteps were heard running to the nearby cargo bay.  Catching the site of feet running up the curvature of the ship, they rushed after the receding boots to find the iris hatch closing behind them.  Cautiously opening the hatch, they call out to the other side, and speak with a somewhat paranoid, tattered crew member.  They subdue him and bring back to the stateroom with the scientist.

With significantly increased caution, they continued to explore the ship, now knowing there were two other survivors who may react badly.  With the dimmed or broken lights, Travis returned to the bridge to see about establishing the emergency lighting. Unfortunately, he ran into Mario, the surviving engineer. Reflexively he shined his lights at the other man, and triggered the beserk reaction. Clubbing the engineer only slowed him down again, and with a couple enhanced punches Travis was out cold. Fortunately, Franklin and Boris were running up the corridor, and with stunner blaster managed to knock out the engineer.  Witht he aid of science fiction smelling salts and the good doctors ministrations, Travis was back on his feet albeitly a tad fuzzy in the head. More tangleweb, and they dragged Mario to be with Vanessa, both getting blindfolded and locked into a stateroom with Quentin, mostly recovered, standing guard.  Returning to the bridge, Travis, having previously checking the security cameras (which were broken) checked the audio.  They heard noises in the second drive pod.  Deciding they needed to rescue the remaining crew, they started traversing back through the ship.  A quick check up the stalk to see if anyone was in the ship's pinnace, and they were outside the drive pod.  The lower deck was empty.  Knowing there was another crew member, the navigator on the upper deck, Travis climbed the ladder and gingerly opened the hatch.  A brief conversation, and the remaining crew member jumps down the hatch, missing Travis but landing a punch on Boris.  Franklin shoots the man with his stunner, but does not knock him out.  Another punch on Boris, and our good doctor is out for the count.  Another stun shot almost takes out the beserk navigator, who manages to take out Franklin who was still a bit dazed from the last encounter.  A good pipe to the rear of the head from Travis manages to finally get the crewman knocked out.

All four of the drugged crew were then locked up in the stateroom as our adventurers, bruised and battered, make contact with Trane below.

Session 2, part 1

210-1104, Glisten, Spinward Marches.

The night before jumping, Dr. Duk-Lyle takes the crew to Banfi Starport to dine and the fabulous restaurant.  This was fine dining to fill up before a week of ship's food.  The restaurant was a fine establishment, with a slowly rotating floor surrounded by aquariums.  In fact, seafood was the speciality, and one could choose items from those same aquariums.  The food was exquisite. Towards the end of the meal, the party noticed some minor altercation between a couple at a nearby table.  Not particularly raucous or loud, there was, nonetheless, a fair amount of arm waving. Ferdinando recognized the two as being the Marquis Juliette Sung Ottowald of Mertcator, and Baron Brigham Fernlucky of New Rome. Both had been in the diplomatic core years before, although neither were currently in public office.

Fernlucky, a foppish younger man, stormed off in a fit of pique, but the Marquis approached the group.  A brief round of introductions, some very expensive chocolate deserts, and she left, with the hopes that they may meet again at Trane, the groups next port of call.

The group travelled back to the ship for a good nights sleep.

211-1104 -> 218-1104, in jump between Glisten and Trane

Travis, using his journeyman astrogation, plotted the jump, and with the traditional dimming of the lights, Le Suroit made a successful transition to jump space. The week passed relatively smoothly. There was a minor incident of interesting smells wafting from the main lab, and the minor calamity of running out of coffee.  Travis was studious in his studies to improve his astrographic skills, whereas Dr. Boris Duk-Lyle was constantly interrupted in his attempt to pursue his physics studies. Being the captain of the ship had a few responsibilities and more paperwork than expected.

218-1104, Trane, Spinward Marches

Travis' jump was successful, and there were near the destination plot points.  After getting cleared with Trane Starport, they approached and made orbit. There were a few other vessels in orbit, mostly traders of various sorts. Ferdinando took down the cargo in the ship's pinnance, and the starport sent up a refueling shuttle to start the refueling process.

One of the ships was another lab ship, leased by Lysani Laboratories. Quentin, one of the scientists on board, had worked for that company years before.  The donwport representative had worked previously with Quentin, and asked for a favor: the ship had not been communicating for the last few days.  Would the crew of Le Suroit be so kind as to visit and check up on them?  Shuttle service at the class C port was limited, and merchants seemed to have priority over a research vessel.

After agreeing, Dr Duk-Lyle, Travis, Quentin and Franklin successfully loaded one of their air/rafts into the pinnance, and took the hour trip over to the other lab ship.  Boris managed not to get sick - he does not have vacc suit nor zero-G.  It was similar to the scene in 2010 when Lithgow was hyperventilating.  Travis clumped along the hull, peering into the ports, and noticed light fixtures had been smashed.  After contacting the downport manager, and getting the access codes, they first attempted to get into the lab via one of the air/raft bays.  Sadly, that bay still had the air/raft clamped inside, and despite 2 tries, Travis, having the smallest vacc suit, could not get past.  Regrouping, they next went to the main lab's cargo port.  That was a successful entry, and the excursion into the new lab started.

Notes

Being close to Halloween, I decided to run Death Station.  And I managed to use the BITS 101 Rendezvous for the restaurant.

So far everyone seems to be having fun - it was 6 before I realized it, and we had to stop the play before completing that particular segment. I was hoping to have some sound affects to make the station a bit more eerie but could not find the web site in time.

Also, so far they have not done any research using the ship's computer, and they left the pinnance just hanging out there, next to an orbiting, rotating ship.  I'll be rolling to see how far off it managed to drift.

Accountants in Space. Or not.

Traveller does have a reputation of being Accounts in Space...as this is a new game, i'm bypassing that part of things in the following manner (this is important as the players have their own ship, and those are expensive to maintain)  But once the Selshor mystery has been solved, then they will have to start looking for ways to keep up the ship.

As for the financial state of things, in character:

The scientists are getting paid either by GLIPS or the Scouts, so for the next few months that is not a financial concern.  The ship supplies (life support, maintenance, etc) will either be handled via the Scout bases on the way, or via the to-be-determined ship's vault that has a stash of credits in it.  Dr Duk-Lyle is the only one with access to the vault, and it does carry significant cash reserves as well as credit sticks.  The crew (Ferdinando, Franklin) are also currently salaried by the Scouts and GLIPS, again for a few months (not sure yet when the contracts will expire, and then you will either offer them a job or find new crew).

Le Suroit

The Lab Ship, your standard 400 ton lab ship, is named Le Suroit.  Part of the supplies in the ship include several lab coats and light cloth jackets.  On the lab coats, the ship  patch is on the left breast, on the jackets on the left shoulder.  The patches are the same except for the border: crew jackets have a red outline and science has blue.

Going through the staterooms, starting next to the bridge.

9 is Travis' room, as he is the pilot and expected to be available.

10 is currently empty; normally the navigator's room.

11 is Dr Duk-Lyle, taking the normal medic's stateroom, as well as being close to the bridge.

12 is Ferdinando's stateroom. On inspection, he has two duty coveralls with the appropriate patches, several sets of formal wear, a few sets of what he calls informal wear yet is expensive and hand tailored.  Also hanging up is his Navy dress blues in a protective bag.

38 is Franklin's stateroom.  His Naval uniform is hanging up as well, but not in a protective bag.  He has a couple of the standard issue ship coveralls, work out clothes, well worn comfortable casual clothes. He also has cloth armor without the ship's insignia, and on closer inspection you can see that it is smart fabric as well, allowing for limited chameleon-like attributes.  He also has a small locked arms case with small body pistol, and hanging on the wall is a rapier.  A case of beer is also sitting in the bottom of his closet.

26 is Purity Truth's stateroom.  Her room is extremely neat, with few personal items.  Her clothing is functional and bland.

27 is Quentin's stateroom. He has various archeological studies scattered about, his clothing, while clean, is somewhat shabby and wrinkled.

29 is Tricia Odonnel's stateroom. She has the usual array of clothing, everything is neatly in it's place. On her desk is the safety manual for Le Suroit, looking well worn. 

30 is currently empty, a standard stateroom with a bunk bed, small desk, and personal fresher.

31 has apparently been converted to a gym: a compact exercise machine takes up most of the space.

Post Game Session 1, part 2

Dr Boris Duk-Lyle has promoted Sir Ferdinando Depallia as second in command, and tasked him with assembling the dossiers of his fellow crew.

Meanwhile, Le Suroit is on-loading additional scientific gear, as well as some Scout cargo.

Lab Ship Notebook

Some metagaming info:  John has mentioned that we may get one more player, so there is plenty of room for more people before we leave at the next session.

Game Session 1

The first gaming session was a bit slow in some ways as we started to explore the characters, and get a feel for what everyone wanted to do.  There are 2 players, and each managed to roll up a character with a ship.  Rather than taking one away, my initial plan for play with a single player borrowed from an adventure I've read about.

Travis, recently mustered out from the Scouts, and Dr. Duk-Lyle, recently retiring from his career at various scientific and medical institutions but most recently from GLIPS (Glisten Institute of Planetary Studies) met in the office of the Scout Director. Alongside was the vice president of GLIPS, with an offer for them both.

GLIPS was to give a lab ship, Le Suroit,  to Dr. Duk-Lak for his years of service and for research.  There were two conditions involved in this: first was the standard contract for returning to Glisten every 18 months to upload any data and research done by the ships crew and scientists. The second was to venture to Selshor, a Red Zone world outside Imperial space, the recover the Katydid, a Scout ship that was lost there.  The official Scout version is that the ship crashed. This contrasts with the story of one of the Scout crew who returned to Glisten believing sabotage was to blame.  The Katydid crashed just six months ago.  Travis will take the Scout as Detached Duty as soon as he can get the ship.

Both accepted the job, and were introduced to Le Suroit, a standard 400 dTon Lab ship. After meeting the crew and the scientists who had also recently boarded, Travis and Franklin headed to Glisten City, to visit the Blue Turtle, a bar Franklin seemed to go to often.  A few drinks later and he was starting to be belligerent to the Naval personnel there; fortunately Travis managed to parley the situation down, and pilot the shuttle back to the lab ship.  In the meantime, Boris was doing any research on the crew and scientists to see if there was going to be any character conflicts or issues he needed to be aware of

Le Suroit:

Travis (John's character) is the lead pilot / astrogator, Dr Duk-Lyle (Thomas' character) is the medic and has basic command over the vessel. There are 2 additional crew members and three scientists on board.

Franklin is the ships gunner, mechanic, security and back up pilot. An ex-Naval officer with a grudge against the Imperial Navy, and cannot apparently hold on to his liquor. A short, young man of 34, he has a relaxed attitude and talks to everyone.

Ferdindando Depallia is a former Naval officer as well, who transferred into the world of diplomacy.  Having a Vilani background as well as coming from noble parents, he is the primary engineer on hand. He has an upper class accent, is always polite, and dresses impeccably. He is also very fond of tradition.

Quenten "IQ" Sotherby is the youngest scientist on board. Seemingly reclusive as he spends a lot of time on his data pad, he can be quite passionate when you get on the subject of archeology.  He entered school after 4 years as a field researcher, he tended to party a bit too much in college.  He did graduate, then joined the Scouts in the Survey branch, and is part of the mission to Selshor.

Purity Truth is the only woman on board, and an Aslan as well. She was the primary investigator at Travis' accident, but is also a scientist, dealing mostly with physics and planetology. She is aloof, has  a low tolerance for light banter, and seems somewhat clumsy.

Dr Francine Occa is the lead planetologist of the science group, and is the Scout to have returned from Selshor.  She went to the Imperial University at Glisten but there was a scandal about a prank gone horribly wrong. She graduated and did 8 years of field research before getting stranded.  She returned, and joined the Scouts, and three years later she crashed on Selshor in the Katydid.

I'll be generating the public NPC dossiers at some point.

MTU - My Traveller Universe

The basics of My Traveller Universe

Pretty much a vanilla clone of the OTU (Original Traveller Universe).

Start date is 1104, a year before the 5th Frontier War, so giving us some play time before anything major happens.

The Imperium is a vast feudal system, mostly harmless, neither good nor bad. Among the 11,000 worlds it controls, some are good, some are evil.  It is still a feudal style system, run by the nobles.  While a few are elevated to nobility for various deeds, most of the actual ruling nobles are hereditary. There are a lot of bureaus and groups in the government, some highly competent, some not so much. Pretty much reflecting our world.

Technology is as per Classic Travaller mostly: the shotguns in space is still a good description. Energy weapons are available at higher tech levels, with varying degrees of power requirements.  There are no force fields, tractor beams, light sabers - this is not Star Trek or Star Wars. Psionics are possible, but I keep with the Imperium's distrust of those with mind powers.  I also use Classic rules for those, so they are not particularly useful.

Everything is still speed of jump: a jump can cover 1-6 parsecs per week.  Larger jumps require larger amounts of fuel: 10% of ship volume per parsec.  So high-jump craft don't have as much space.  Communication between systems is via ships carrying the messages.  The X-Boat route is of more historical than current relevance: while still used, there are enough other ships moving about that sometimes it may be faster via private courier.

I run a small ship universe.  There are big ships out there, but they are not as common. Ships are still expensive, but there are a lot.  I'm leaning towards GURPS Traders for ship traffic - even if they are expensive, they do last a long time. Ships are tough.

Computers and communications are more up to date than Classic - going with Mongoose or T5 rules probably. True Artificial Intelligence starts emerging at TL 14 or so, but until then it is more a very good simulation. Robots are not particularly common or uncommon - not nearly as common as Star Wars, but more of a background sort of thing.  Think of Roombas.

I'm not a gearhead, so I won't be detailing a lot of the ships, vehicles and things out.  While I do like Classic High Guard for ship designs, things will work at the speed of plot for the most part.

Within the Imperium, the credit rules. I've basically a tamper-proof Imperial credit card so that transactions are easier to deal with. Outside the Imperium, credits may or may not be accepted, and cash is king there.  More likely it will be trading goods or services to get things purchased.  So try and plan ahead: you may not be able to eat on the next world unless you bring along cold, hard cash.  Gems, rare metals may not be worth anything either, so some initial research may be needed.

As for languages, most systems speak Anglic. A few die-hards still speak Vilani. Universal translators do exist, and get better at higher tech levels. But only for known languages: a completely unknown language will take time to learn even with machine intelligence. 

Standard aliens (Aslan, Vargr, Droyne, Hivers, K'Kree) are all there, along with a multitude of minor races. This is mostly a human-centric universe, at least in the Imperium.  But strange new worlds are out there.

I'll be using mostly Mongoose 2e rules, with a smattering of T5 things in there.

Refereeing a new game

Looks like I managed to drag John into a game of Traveller. We're using the Mongoose 2e version for character generation, and he survived 1 1/2 terms of being a Scout until a severe injury forced him out of the service. However, he managed to ace his mustering out roll and has a Scout ship on loan.

I'm placing the mustering out at Glisten (link) which is close to the edge of Imperial space.  He will be exploring strange new worlds.

All links to the game I'll try and stick a label (current game) so that if I actually use this blog, any players can keep up.  This will only be public info, so no referee only info.

Here is John's character (which has not yet been named: John

Here is a draft of the ship papers: ISS Scout Ship

And sometime soon I'll generate a brief synopsis of MTU.

Wow. Just realized that this blog, although mostly empty and unread, is almost 10 years old. I've gone through quite a lot in the last ten years, but not enough gaming sadly.

So now I am also a Duke, out of the Solomani Rim. Langelos, to be precise.  So lets take a look at this world I have some domain over.

A4249A6-F

Starport A - we have a magnificent starport, with all the facilities one could wish for. Being TL F, we can produce any starship currently available in the Imperium.

Size 4 - 6,400 km planet, about the size of Mars.  The natural gravity is about 1/3 Imperial normal. Most populated areas have grav plating turned on to help maintain normal strength and growth. However, large indoor parks and recreation areas often do not have this, allowing for interesting sports.

Atmosphere 2 - very thin and tainted. You will need a respirator and a filter to leave the domes and arcologies.  You will last your endurance in minutes outside without these devices, taking a point of endurance per minute.

Hydrographics 4 - 35-45% liquid oceans. What with the atmosphere, I am leaning towards more ice-covered oceans.  Or perhaps a much earlier Mars-like world.

Population 9 - Billions and billions of people. A large labor force for the starport!

Government A - charismatic dictator.  Don't look at me - I'm just the Duke, I don't actually rule the planet. I am known to make suggestions on occasion though.

Law Level 6 - personal firearms are not allowed. most drugs are illegal.

Tech Level F - cream of the crop for technology. That helps with the soaring arcologies, massive bio-domes, and deep water cities that house our billions of residents.

In addition, there is a Naval base out near the gas giant. They have quite the fueling station there as well as a few smaller posts throughout the system.  Some are left over from the old Rim War, and have mere skeleton staffs to maintain the systems.

Travel codes are:

Hi - High Population
Ht - High Technology
In - Industrial