Planning a 1 Shot

There is no lack of guides for setting up a 1 shot. 1 shots are handy for introducing new players to a game or just having a quick game of something new between a longer running session.

Going by the guidelines set out by the Frank GM here, we need a simple hook, a simple goal, and simple encounters. I don't have any of the background of the players, all two of them, but I do know we'll have 1 blacksmith Dwarf, and one roguish Elf. Normally in the Fantasy Trip Elves and Dwarfs do not get along too well - they only thing they agree on is their opinion of Orcs apparently. However, I know the players both love dogs, so I can wrap a hook around that: the dogs from the village are starting to go missing. A distraught child wailing in the streets should bring the Elf's attention, and the Dwarf, why, his hunting dog Old Blue seems to have disappeared as well. The lad's father, inn keeper of the Fat Pear, one Johann Schmidt, is willing to pay into the pot: several of the villagers have put forward some coinage as a reward to see where the dogs are disappearing to.

Unless one of the two pick up some tracking skills, I may throw in a woodsman NPC to help guide them and maybe play the red shirt should something dangerous come up. And lo, I've created a base character:

William Ask, 18 year old male from the town of Hamor. Farmer, hunter, and general good guy.

ST: 10 DX 12 IQ 10
Talents are Farmer, Area Knowledge, Bow, animal handling and tracking. He actually knows one spell, detect magic, learned from his mother who was a travelling wizard. He has not seen her in years now. His father has a small farm north of Hamor where William lives. He has lost two hunting dogs in the last few weeks and is getting concerned.

They will meet at the inn, where they will see a party of Dwarfs, humans and one very messy Goblin eating (last game for those interested - somewhere on this disorganized blog are those adventures). William is looking a bit lost and this is when Festus comes in, wailing about his lost dog.

The smith, whose forge is a nearby, was trying to have a quiet drink at the end of the day, also worrying about his missing pups.

So, the hook: missing dogs and other animals. Goal: find the missing animals. Encounters: to be determined but I need to scale them to basically 2 players. William may or may not make it out...and he may be wearing a red shirt.

And while I have posted the map before, here's the area involved. This takes place at the Pear Farm, which is basically the village of Hamor. The village consists of the inn, a small smithy, several small houses and surrounding farms. The inn maintains the largest farm where pears for its signature Peary drink are harvested. There is brewery behind the inn, and farther off are various woodsman huts, where wood and timber are cut down to be sent to Edge City to the south. It is an honest little town, where folk come in every few days for a drink and conversation. There are hills and caves to the north and east, a few temples scattered about the woods here and there, mostly deserted and crumbling.

I'll have to read the various publications I've been getting - toss in some fun rumors that have no direct bearing on this story, things like that. Maybe a bit of politics as there is some unrest in the area, and I've never really thought about tiny duchies and whatnot that may have their own laws.

The Fantasy Trip Overview

I'll be running a game for a friend and his son starting this weekend. As my games run to PG-13 at the worst, pretty sure an 11 year old will be just fine!

First, the broad definition of a role playing game: it is a game where you can take on the persona of a different person and have an adventure. Some games have very extensive rules that can detail just about everything you can do, some are very rules-light. It is at its core improv theater with some rules. And most RPGs have a rule 0: it is YOUR game, play it as you see fit.

Anyway, the Fantasy Trip is a fantasy role playing game, where you can play fantasy races or humans. Unlike a lot of RPGs, there are no classes. And the game is what is called a point buy system: you start with so many points and create the character you want to. There are two basic archetypes that can be played: fighter and magic user. The only difference is in the cost of using those points to get skills or magic. A magic user can learn spells at a cost of basically 1 point per spell; a non-magic user costs 3 times as much. On the other hand, a fighter can learn talents which take at least 1 point at the stated cost, but a magic user has to pay 2 times as much. So you can mix and match talents and spells but it will cost.

Spells are just that: throwing fireballs, creating illusions. Talents are what allow you to swing a sword well, or ride a horse, or even read. A magic user should really learn the literacy talent...

RPG characters are generally composed of stats, which I believe is short for statistics. The Fantasy Trip (TFT) has 3 basic stats: strength, dexterity, and IQ. Strength determines how much you can carry and how large a weapon you can use. Dexterity determines if you can actually hit something with that sword, as well as avoid traps or not fall off the cliff you are climbing. IQ determines your level of spells and talents you can know, and how well you can disbelieve illusions.

TFT is a 3D6 game, that is, it is based on 3 six sided dice. To hit something, you need to roll 3 dice and have a lower total than your dexterity. Dexterity can also be affected by armor: the stronger the armor, the lower your adjusted dexterity but the more protection you have. Armor is a damage soaker: it subtracts from the damage done.

Your base characteristics, ST (strength), DX (dexterity) and IQ (err, IQ), all start at 8 each for a human. You then have an additional 8 points to add however you like to your character. Starting characters start at 32 points (the 8x3 = 24 for the base + the 8 additional points). You can learn up to your IQ level in talents and spells. All characters speak the common tongue; it takes 1 point to learn a new language. Starting characters, as mentioned, can get a total number of spells and talents as their IQ. As you adventure, you gain experience points and can increase your characteristics or learn new talents or spells.

Combat is at the core of most RPGs. Combat in TFT is based on Melee, a microgame of the 70s. Facing matters, distances matter. The board is made of hexes, and friendly fire can happen. If you shoot an arrow and miss, it keeps going, If anyone is in that line, you have to roll to see if it hits that person. Spells work in the same process: roll 3 dice, if less than your DX you succeed. Spells do take fatigue ST from you, though, so early on you have to be cautious with your magic. Later, if you have the staff spell or a power stone, you can store magical energy to be used later.

Healing is a lot harder in TFT versus a lot of games. You can heal 1 point of damage every day or so. Healing potions are pretty rare by the rules although I have had games where payment was sometimes via magical healing potions.

Now, for the game we're doing the father wants to be a Dwarf Smith. Dwarfs start with ST 10, DX 6 and IQ 8 with 8 points. He is probably going to want the armourer talent, which is an IQ 10 talent. So at least 2 points will go to IQ. And he will want some fighting talents, such as knife, sword. Being a Dwarf, probably the ax/mace talent. And the shield talent. And maybe additional skills such as alertness, animal handling to help with the shoeing, maybe business sense if he is running his own forge!

The son wants to play a dark elf. Elves in TFT are your typical Elves. They start with ST 6, DX 10 and IQ 8 with 8 additional points. He is going to want leather armor probably that absorbs some damage and subtracts 1 from DX. They also have a higher movement allowance than humans. If in the roguish style, he may want to pick up the dark vision spell to be able to see in the dark, and lock.knock spell that allows him to magically unlock magical or mundane locks. A few weapon skills, and some stealth skills, and things like alertness.

We'll spend the 1st part designing characters, although I hope to loan them one of my books so they can read over it the next few days. Being an 11 year old I think it will read more than I have and tell me how to play!

I may start this one off from my last map - there are some good potential adventures there. And we can scale them for a 2 party of beginning adventurers so it won't be insta-kill.

New Links

For some reason I am on a link-adding spree. Just added Traveller Jim, which has some cool posts. And somehow they are from the future! Not sure what is going on but he has posts from 2020 and beyond! And I am going to have to find a use for the armed shuttle


Armed Shuttle

Painting Interlude

While participating in the Reaper Bones V Kickstarter, and ending up spending more than I thought I would, with the full knowledge I will be spending even more over the next several months while the pledge manager is open, I bought one of their learn to paint sets. This was the layering set, and it comes with 3 minis and the directions on how to paint them as well as the paints.

I started with the easy one, Aniron the Wood Elf Wizard. Laying is more subtle than I expected, but easy to do when following the directions. Coming up with the colors to combine myself will only take time and practice. I am actually pretty happy with how he came out. While the washes I also use do some of the same things, actual shading and highlighting by varying the paint seems to work out better. I need to improve my wash technique some more, but that is true of all my painting techniques.

For a paint review, I cannot say that the Reaper paints are significantly better than the cheap acrylics I get for about 1/10 the cost at Wal-Mart. With the techniques I am learning and practicing we'll see if they are indeed any better. They do have really good names, and there are colors I cannot get otherwise (pretty sure the paint stores will not carry a color named Fresh Blood!) so there is a significant higher variety. After I've worked a few more painting sprees I'll probably be better able to compare paints.

I also started following back on some of the people who are following me - hello people! There are some good posts out there, and without the extra push we got from Google Plus sometimes it feels we're talking to the void. For me that's okay as most of my ramblings are just that, ramblings. I do have my game notes here as well for the games I am playing but some of my fellow players are not quite as on-line as I am.

I also feel I need to be more productive in these posts and not just ramble. You know, helpful hints to gamers and things. Except that there are already so many of those. The newest blog I added a link to is the Frank GM. More general fantasy gaming, but good advice. The other blog I added today deals with the Solomani Rim. I've never played Traveller there - pretty much the Marches or MTU. There is some interesting posts there as well. As my next game (yay!) is in the Rift area, we will be closer to the Solomani Sphere so some background may be useful.

The blue is the stick stuff I use to stick the mini to the tube I use to paint with. I even use a wet palette, which for the Reaper paints thins them out more. I had to adjust the directions a bit for when they add water as the paints are already on a fairly damp surface. The advantage is that the paint stays usable much longer. Acrylics dry out really fast.  For a wet palette, I took the advice of one of the videos I watched. Used a container, stick a paper towel in it, get it wet, drain out the excess and stick a piece of parchment paper on top. As I also bake (I have a weakness for muffins!) I actually have parchment paper. Reusing a yogurt container, so being thrifty!

Traveller 2020 Game Prep, version 0.1

Just starting to think about what I'm going to do with the next game. As this will be the 4th game I've run for the club, I've created the book cover below from the wonderful  ZhodaniSpace website.

I do know it will be out on the Great Rift someplace as I need to use those supplements I bought. And there should be some Element Cruisers in there. I've got to get with everyone to see what sort of game they want to play from the previous list.

My next steps are to read some of those supplements to find a good starting spot, then do my normal overboard world background information dump that no one reads but is fun to generate.

I've also been reading the blog from the Frank GM which has some interesting ideas. While aimed more towards fantasy, they do apply. Hopefully I've added those websites to the bloglist on the right as they are quite useful.

Edit: so it IS the Great Rift, not Great Reft. Reft actually means: past tense of reave. I'll have to generate a new cover!

Traveller Game 2020

Looks like I will be running a Traveller game January and February of next year. The general consensus was for a new game and Classic / OTU. So somewhere in the existing Traveller universe. As I have these wonderful maps of the Great Reft, I believe we'll go out there somewhere on the edge of the edge of the Imperium. And somehow throw in those Element Class Cruisers.

Most of the people have played before, either with me or in years past. For those who have not, I found a really nice 2 page summary of Traveller on the Ace and the Dog site, ace-dog.com. It is a good overview and more succinct than I would have had. We've yet to decide on a theme, so I'll generate another survey for that. Seeing as I only got 3 responses from the last one asking for a Traveller or Fantasy Trip game, the few who like the internet will hold sway!

But basically you can have a general theme to start out with at least. While I do sandbox games where the player characters can do anything they really want to, it helps to have a general consensus of the sort of game to start off with. Using the Mongoose book skill packages as a good starting point, we have:

•  general Traveller - wandering the universe with no real goal in mind. This is where the classic Patron encounters can really come into play. 
•  Mercenary, focusing on heavy combat oriented games. I'll admit I am not particularly good at running these, having no real background in military doctrine (I got into role playing because, while I really like playing games, I have no tactical nor strategic abilities!)
•  Traders - buying cheap and selling high, then still having to take on interesting jobs to make the mortgage. Firefly is the shining example of this style of game (and rumor has it that Whedon played Traveller in college and Firefly is basically from that)
•  Explorers - your Scouts and research people. Can be hard to play for those who don't enjoy getting into world building.
•  Diplomat - government operatives, and I would go as far to say Black Ops could fit into this so I can see a split party of high ranking people aligned with not so high ranking...
•  Investigator - jinkies, figuring out things. Another genre I would have hard time refereeing
•  Criminal - lead a life of crime, one step ahead of the coppers
•  Bounty / privateer - not actually in the Mongoose books, but definitely a possible way to go. I have several deck plans that would work for bounty hunters.

I do like the skills package idea and the concurrent character generation to somehow link the characters together before the game even starts. The skills package is a nice bonus to even out skills. Two games back two players only went through 1 term, so they did not really get the characters they wanted (I was allowing them to start all over and they could have gone on the different careers, but they did not). 

A Note on Psionics

I am not a big fan of this, but if a player wants to try this we can. Note that psionics "age". Unless you are a Zhodani, psionics is feared and illegal in the Imperium. Your abilities will decline as you age unless you get training. So a possible adventure is the search for a psionic institute before any ability you have goes away. You start with 2D6 potential, and every 4 years after 18 it decreases (can't recall how much, only that it does). This is not a Star Wars game with the Force, but ostensibly a hard SF game. 

Races

As for races, I allow the following races to be played. The problem with playing the non-human races is that the players really need to read the books or something to get into the characteristics of that race and not just play furry humans. Sometimes it is hard to step outside of yourself.

Playable

Human. Within humanity there are various origins:

•  bog standard Imperial. 
•  Vilani. A bit conservative :) 
•  Solomani. Better than everyone else, and they do uplifting
•  Zhodani. A peaceful psionic race. Would be an interesting challenge to play

Aslan. There is a strong sexual dimorphism between males and females. Males do not do scientific type of work and are primed for physical battle and acquiring lands. Females handle negotiations and technical things. Do not be disturbed if the Aslan calls all pilots female...A stereotype is the noble samurai. 

Vargr. Your dog-based species. Mongoose splits it up a bit more than my preference with 3 main types. But basically your chaotic, pack-based mentality. 

Droyne. Relatively rare, and the player type most likely to be used would be a Sport. This would require the player (and me!) to read up a great deal on them. They are small, usually winged reptile-like with hidden psionic abilities. Lots of rumors on them.

Not playable.

Races that are not great for playing and I probably won't allow unless a strong case can be made for it include:

Hivers. A manipulative race, very technologically advanced in robotics. A pentapod that uses gestures and translating devices to speak. I just don't know enough to be able to referee them well.

K'Kree, the militant vegan centaurs. First, the player would have to play an entire family as a solitary K'Kree is by definition crazy. And secondly they are extremely claustrophobic and there is no way you could get them to enter any human building or ship just about.

And more

Additionally, I have several other races that possibly could be played (Virushi, Ael Yeal are interesting choices and I have played them way back in the day), as well as a few others. And if a player wants to create an alien race we can do that. Within reason of course. I could even see uplifted apes or bears as they are canonical. 

Careers

A lot depends on what sort of game the players want to play. But I think any of the below are good. I seem to collect career books!

Pre-career options:
 College
 Medical College (somewhere I've got rules on that)
 Military College
 Navy College

Military
 Army (support, infantry, calvary)
 Navy (line/crew, Engineer/gunner, Flight)
 Marine (support, Star Marine, Ground Assault)
 Space Patrol

Science/Exploration
 Scout (courrier, survayor, explorer)
 Scientist (field researcher, scientist, physician)

Adventurer (Hunter, Pioneer, Relic Raider)
Agent (law enforcement, corporate goon, intelligence)
Arts (artist, collector, critic)
Assassin
Belter (asteroid miner, prospector, worker) - at least 2 different career versions available
Bounty Hunter (hunter, repossession, support)
Citizen (corporate, colonist, worker)
Clergy (evangelist, minister, monk)
Craftsperson (architect, tradesperson, labor)
Drifter (Barbarian, Wanderer, Scavenger)
Entertainer (artist, journalist)
Fringe Marketer (black market, fence, pawnbroker)
Gambler (casino, sports, track)
Hunter
Instructor (professor, teacher, tutor)
Investigator (not quite Agent; forensics, inspector, PI)
Merchant (Free Trader, Line, Mega, Merchant Marine, Corporate Shipper[crew, engineer, gunnery])
Noble (administrator, diplomat, dilettante)  - requires 10+ social)
Organized Crime (hitman, enforcer, operator)
Other (rogue: thief, enforcer, pirate)
Police (beat cop, patrol, strike force)
Politician (candidate, manager, operative)
Port Authority (control, inspection, stevedore)
Prostitute (prostitute, hetaerae, streetwalker. here for completeness?)
Psionic (*)
Rebel/Insurgent/Partisan
Scavenger (junker, picker, restorer)
Skyport Authority (aka port authority, I've at least 2 character systems for this)
SORAG (Zhodani intelligence *)
Surface Navy
Thief (con artist, hacker, intruder)

T5 Careers (I've not gone through these enough to generate characters easily, and T5 is not really compatible with Mongoose / Classic that we'll be playing. But we can adjust as necessary somehow)
    Craftsman
    Scholar
    Entertainer
    Citizen
    Scout
    Merchant
    Spacer
    Soldier
    Agent
    Rogue
    Noble
    Marine
    Functionary

Shadowrun Van

Looking around, I did find the official image of the fairly expensive van Jupiter has. It is a bland sort of van but really good stats. He did manage to drive it cross country and arrive alive after all. The quote from the site I found says:

Bigger and more powerful than it needs to be, this luxury van is the top-of-the-line in its class, and just as much of a status symbol as the Bentley. On top of that, it packs intimidating size and all the accessories for cruising through the wilderness. Or, more commonly, through elite urban neighborhoods. This expensive vehicle is gaining more and more popularity with discreet security details for its combination of status and security. 

HANDL	SPEED	ACCEL	BOD	ARMOR	PILOT	SENSOR	SEATS	AVAIL	COST	SOURCE
3	5	3	15	12	2	4	3	10	68,000¥	Core

Now, this one is a tad beat up, and does have a Boris or Frazeata air-brush style painting on the side of a Viking on a Pegasus or unicorn. We're currently at what appears to be a high-end fixer, so I'm aiming towards armoring up and expanding my small, and recently diminished, fleet of drones. If you can call 2 drones a fleet. Although it may already be fairly well armored, but not knowing the Shadowrun rules not sure how a 12 stands up.

The official image is:

Poking around there are some other vans that I'll have to ask about that I think look a bit closer to what I have in mind. While the 1st is a fire truck, it would have the space for drones. I imagine my arial drones are on a roofrack that is also a charger, and the Lynx drone folds a bit but does take a chunk of space in the rear area. The 2nd van down is pretty close and may work. And finally, that last one is really interesting - a "van" if you stretch the definition, but with a variable payload or stripped down for some real speed I would imagine.

Next post I'll try & find som Vikings on mythical beasts. There was also an interesting email exchange for the 8 track sound track system installed. Magic-proof and matrix-free so no elf-induced feedback to worry about. Just the pure sounds of Tin Lizzie apparently...

Shadowrun game

We've started a game of Shadowrun. I am playing Jupiter Jones, a human rigger. And, as everyone knows, I tend to get carried away with background (which is why I want to come back to previous games, but so far, in the few years I've been playing more actively with my current group, I've yet to continue a characters journey.).

Regardless, I've created 4 SIN cards for my character, 3 with matching drone registration cards, a real card, and a drivers license. Our story is taking place in Atlanta of 2075. Not a great place to be, and all we eat is soy apparently due to massive food shortages or something.

So for those who may recognize the name, Jupiter Jones was one of the three main characters in a series of books, the Three Investigators. As I was not sure if I was going to play male or female, the name works either way. But chose male. Looking for some character art and found one that was close enough to what I was looking for. Sorry I can't attribute it - one of the issues I have with Pinterest is that we don't always get to see where the image is from!  Regardless, he does have a proficiency for jury rigging and loves junk yards. I want to make one of the junk yards in Atlanta his lair. Not a great one, but a place to park his sweet van with a pegacorn and Viking painted on the sides, and plush shag carpeting inside. No, he does not get many dates.

The drones will be named for various characters in the books. As I've not read them in 40+ years, it is Wikipedia to the rescue. The lynx drone is Bobby. I need to get back to my character sheet and work that up a bit more.

But, here is the card sheet which I'll probably print on card stock and have ready for the game.

For what SIN cards are, I found this link to be useful: shadowrun.fandom.com wiki

Weekend catchup: Tracker, solo Traveller, and more!

So the weekend slipped by faster than expected. I did manage some light yard work, scrubbed the basement bathroom, and washed the bamboo floors upstairs. So housework was out of the way. I managed to start painting a few of the Sine Tempora game's minis, but I fear badly. I really need to watch some more instructional videos and slow down. I did order a "learn to paint" kit from Reaper along with some minis. Broke the $40 part so free shipping and a free mini along with the paints and their guide. We will see if those paints work any better than the 50 cent acrylics I get a Wal-Mart.

I also managed to get the Traveller Core version to work as it was, and some research indicated that yes, I can distribute the whole thing as a single exe. There are 3 options, and I'll go for the smaller of them which assumes you have the .NET Core installed on your local machine. If you keep up with the MS updates, that should be the case. I suppose we'll find out at some point. I still want to style the big main menu buttons, and for some reason the images are not showing up there. I will hopefully get that figured out, and may put the exe file out there for others to see what happens. Just because it works on my machine...

The Traveller solo game has slowed down, so I decided to expand out a bit more for Krim. The pilot's guide has been slightly expanded, and I've added a high-tech medical company, Meditech LLC (no, not an imaginative name). Created a bad logo and will have the company overview posted below. There will be more adventures of the No Refunds and her crew, just need to get more motivated.

And finally, I've also stalled on the Death Test game I was solo playing. Want to get back to that but time and motivation don't seem to overlap for many of the things I want to get done.

Traveller Tracker - Core Edition?

So when I got the new computer, part of the process was also installing .NET core (and don't even try to keep up with all the .NET naming. While I know I am horrible at naming things, MS tends to be all over the map).  Anyways...for some reason the previous project thought it was and was not .NET Core. I was targeting the most recent Windows .NET which is 4.7, and honestly, while it will be around a while is really at end of life as they move everything to the unified "this will work on everything" process (which they tried originally with the UWP: write it and make sure the view ports were flexible enough and it would run on Windows computers, tablets, Xbox and phones. If you are not in the development world: it pretty much died. )

Anyway, I spent another hour trying to get the packages to work (the packages are libraries. In Ruby, they are gems, on C they are libraries, and that's about all the languages I use that use packages). I could not get it to work.  So, moving on to a new version. Again. With .NET Core. I've got it almost back to where it was (which was not too far anyway). There seems to be some difference in the Entity Framework (one way of talking to the backend database for the program). There is that final piece and I should be good to go again.

One of the advantages of moving to the newer framework is that in theory I think I can generate a single .exe file that is the whole thing: no installers, just download and run. In theory...if so, that would solve the biggest issue I have - getting it to run for other people. Not that there is a high demand for this, but hey.

And just to preen a bit: the last computer would take at least 2 minutes to load the project. The new computer has the IDE (integrated development environment where I can write the code, debug and run it) on the boot SSD and it is ready to go in less than 5 seconds. Having an SSD and twice the memory (16GB vs the 8GB) makes a huge difference for a lot of things.

Hopefully I will have some time to get that going this weekend and another post. I want to actually make those square buttons more SF like - chop off an edge or something.

And also, I've joined the Reaper Bones V Kickstarter. I fear I will spend far too much money for minis now that I am starting to paint them. Just have to actually USE them in a game...going for the core set and just bumped up for 2 expansions. As the pledge manager will be open for a long time afterward I fear I will have far too many minis. But I need those dragon columns! And that Greek expansion set - oh my!

Shadowrun - Session 0

With 5 people and 2 books, character creation was an interesting challenge. Plus the 5th edition books tend to not be well organized, and instructions somewhat vague and spread across multiple pages. 

Regardless, I did manage to get my Rigger, Jupiter Jones, set up. Background from before knowing anything about the mythos and world of 2075 Shadowrun:

Jupiter Jones from Rocky Beach, CA originally. Dumpster/junk yard diver to create interesting drones. Should have high IQ and technical/mechanical background skills, perhaps socially awkward. Per conversations should be early-mid 20's.  Moving to game location due to a "request" from local authorities to prevent him from "looting" various dumps.
Will name his drones Petey, Bobby and other names from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Investigatorsm (I think I read most if not all of those back in elementary school). Has an affinity for creating "lairs" in junkyards.

I'll post the stats later, but as I picked the most money, we'll add he comes from an above average middle class family. I did get a sweet van and 3 drones, still have money left over. The van is going to have a pegasus painted on the side, either a Boris or Frazetta inspired air brush image. I may do that with all the drones - I also picked artisian as a skill.  Also picked jury-rigging and a few other skills to make my background work. I still think I prefer random character generation, but I can see the appeal of designing a character to specs within a limited array of choices.

Here's a Boris Pegasus to see where this is going. Pretty sure they will be shag carpeting, beaded curtains as well.

The Fantasy Trip Pantheon: Mim, God of Rain

Mim, God of Rain

Mim is the 1st son of Monta, God of the Elements, and Alamia, Goddess of the Earth. While Dwarves are the most attuned to Mim and Alamia, many other races venerate these gods as well. The ancient histories indicate that Mim created the Dwarven race. Whether or not this is true, it is what the orthodox Dwarves believe. Humans tend to think the God of Rain is why Dwarves are often so dour.

Mim does not have any particularly required devotions or holy events, so most adherents tend to make their own up. Mim will often send his avatars throughout the world, and there is always an aspect of water to these visitations (see Mim's Herald) Mim tend to the soulful, but is also the bringer of life: without the rains, life would soon cease to exist. He is known to bestow graces upon his clerics, and has answered farmers' prayers for rain, or even to cease the rain. 

He will rarely get vengeful but when he does, he brings down elements of his father upon those who have enraged him. 

Dwarves will more often prayer to his mother, Alamia, Goddess of Earth. Yet they also have respect for Mim and his life giving rain. They just prefer the earth in many ways. Often their underground shrines have aspects for both Mim and Alamia. 

The symbol that most adherents use is the knife on a cross, the knife being a vine encrusted hilt. It is often in a pool of running water in most shrines, open to the skies for rain to fall upon it. The saints for this religion, when done in statuary, are standing in a bowed position, arms outstretched as to receive the rains. They are depicted in armor, hands free of gauntlets but wearing rings. Usually guarded by 3 wizards for an active shrine or temple, those in neglect often are protected by wizard's spells to protect any holy items. As per the mid-winter festival that meet in the grove, offerings are not only ale and other grain-based drinks, but also leaves and flowers.

Prayers to Mim can bring down the rains, and higher level clerics may be able to ask for lightening and flash floods. Mim can also stop the rains - he does not generally mess with nature's own rhythms but may as needs arise. 

From Pinterest, could not find the original post

Adventure

At the junction of a smaller path heading west, the adventurers see the pillar of water with the frolicking puppies. The avatar, its voice bubbling with emotion, pleads with the crew to visit the temple of the grove.

"Please, my lord Mim can no longer hear the priest who was in the midst of our mid-fall festival. The prayers were suddenly silenced and we fear nefarious intentions." The puppies, who were playing about the base of the flowing water column, stop and growl. They are amazingly cute. Mim's avatar continues: "I am the Beloved of Mim, and alas, whilst I can communicate his holy words, I cannot see what has happened."

Should the adventurers ask, the avatar will indicate that the grove is only a few miles down that path. It is not wide enough for the horse and cart (our group is with the Dwarf Mage and her protector, Heinrich, along with another pony pulling a cart piled with timber and barrels of peary). If they ask what is in it for them, the Herald will first wave its tentacles in the air, the puppies looking up at the adventurers with wide, puppy eyes. "I am but a poor herald, a voice among many. A young voice that fears I have nothing for you."  If pressed, the tentacles will droop, and one will move into the flowing column of water and bring out one of the treasures from the Deck of Many Things (another KS I did; feel free to drop in any small treasure. But by golly I want to USE those things I keep getting!).

The path to the grove is winding. The mage and her guard will stay with their wagon and wait for perhaps an hour or two. The other cart will continue its journey to Edge City. This is also the place where I can bring in other players: there could have been all sorts of people staying at that inn for whatever reason.  The adventurers will hear the sounds of birds and squirrels in the trees at first, but as they approach the temple in the grove, the sounds seem to dwindle until there are no more natural sounds. They come upon what appears to be the grove, a small, square building with a well outside in rough but serviceable shape. There appears to be a small garden outside the door, and a couple of chickens scratching in the dirt. There are trees and brush, and a well-worn area near a statue. Looking past the statue, then can see what appears to be a cleric tied to the tree.

At this point, start with the attacks. Have any scout-like character roll to hear for anything - a succesful roll indicates roll to initiative as normal, else the thieves will have the initiative for the 1st round.

The thieves are a mix of humans and goblins, ill-dressed and ill-armed. There will be 1d6 more attackers than adventurers, and they will be 32 point people. There are a lot of 32 point fighters out there - use some of them. Armor will be limited to leather, and there will be no fine or magic weapons. There are 1d6 coppers per brigand (they are poor thieves) and the weapons and armor are ill-made and not worth anything.

When the battle concludes, assuming the adventurers are the winners, they can release the priest. He is an elderly human male, tonsured.

"We were starting the feast of thanks when those brigands arrived." The group may notice that there appear to be no other supplicants around. "Oh,", says the priest. "It is just Gerty and Francine for this feast this week." He points to the chickens. "It is the peary harvest and people get busy. Mim is not so picky to require a full house other then the mid-winter celebrations."  He is bruised, battered, and first aid would help.  

The cottage aka temple is a rough-built square house with a thatched roof, a simple table with two candles and an open book. A small chest is to the left of the table, and a bed to the right of the door. 

"I am Reginald Oosterman, and I give my thanks to you for saving me." He rummages about in the small chest and brings out what looks to be a small knife. "As Mim gave this to me when I saved a young lass, I can grant you this knife as well."  It is a small dagger, the hilt appearing to have vines wrapped around it. It is blessed to do +1, so does 1d6 damage. It may fetch $20 rather than the normal $10 a dagger costs. "This, and a feast of thanks." Outside next to the well, on a stump, is a small meal. While enough for 1 frail old man, it would be just a few bites each for the group. But Reginald will be insulted if they don't partake of the meager portions he sets aside for each player. 

If the adventurers check out the brigands, other than smelling bad and having nothing of value, each of them has an intersesting tatoo on their right forearm. It is a snake wrapped around a sword and what looks to be a rune or writing in a language no one here can read. Reginald has no idea what this could mean or say either. 

If anyone makes a 4D roll against IQ, they may recall seeing that painted on some of the walls in the caves they were mushroom hunting in. They are part of a larger group...

Reality Trip part II

New computer, everything seems to be installed and back to working. Except: for some reason the Traveller Tracker program is having issues (nuget, aka the package manager, seems unable to find some of the packages). It is probably a solvable issue and I did spend some time on it but after more than an hour, got nowhere. There are, of course, several options: keep trying that, start fresh and maybe the transition will be okay, or just stop entirely. It has been a bit more difficult to do software in my spare time lately, I think part of it is that I am just tired of coding after almost 40 years of doing this. Could be a mid-life crisis! So off to a new hobby - painting miniatures! :)

I plan on working out at least one of the gods of my little corner of Cidri, expanding on the avatar I did a few weeks ago. I'll try & actually make a mini-game, something with maps, encounters, all that. Try my hand at writing a generic OSR module. If I got good enough, maybe aim to get one done at least once a month, switching between Traveller & The Fantasy Trip. We'll see.

So hopefully there will be another post today, extending the map to the shrine and having some encounters along the way.

And there is also interest in Traveller at the gaming group. I'll post an email for the Jan/Feb game slot to see if there is enough interest.

And: a 32" 4K screen is....large for a monitor. But really nice!

Reality Trip

The hard drive on my computer at home decided to die. It was not even 8 years old. Being an all in one sort of thing and being a few years old, rather than replace the drive I am going PC shopping this weekend. Need to bump up the specs a bit more as I still use Visual Studio and several graphics programs that would benefit (8GB works but it could be better). So 16GB, at least an I7 of recent vintage, and an SSD for at least the boot drive with maybe an additional SATA drive for slower storage. And I will get better about backups - last one was at least 6 months ago. And supposedly I am an IT person (well, I am a developer, and all my source code is safe up in Github, so there is a back up!)

Good news is most of my stuff I save on-line. Not even sure what is on that hard drive, but I'll probably pull it from the machine and maybe get an enclosure to get access to it if possible.

Bad news is I have to reinstall everything, including Heaven & Earth, the 20+ year old Traveller software that still worked for me running in XP service pack 3 compatibility, And i need to find the installers for the various planet generation software, Campaign Cartographer, all those fun things.

So my already spotty updates may be spottier as I really don't think I'll find what I want this weekend, and even if I do, there will be hours spent reinstalling software and configuring the system to work the way I want it to.

So, digging through my on-line storage, here are some images of Krim, a high tech world in the League of Independent Worlds. Sadly, the color mapping was one of the things on that hard drive - that program can use color maps, so I took the Mars mapping and added some additional layers for a more interesting color. But I do have all the seeds for the various planets saved online I think - each planet has its own directory with everything related to that planet stored there.

Fantasy Trip Pantheon

Resurrecting some old notes (as in 35+ year old notes - somehow I managed to hold on to a lot of handwritten, drawn and typed stuff from the halcyon college days!).  The pantheon of my fantasy world with a bit of stuff added to see if I can work with it.

There are 5 primary gods and goddesses, who between them only have eight gods and goddesses of the next level. I would think there may be a bunch more gods and goddesses, demi-gods and demi-goddesses that are not listed. Sort of an open-game world: establish the big structures and everyone can fill in things as they want.

And apparently various races are more directly connected to the gods and goddesses. Not to say that there is 100% compliance, but at a guess, if you worship "your" god you may get better results. Not really sure what I was thinking at the time.

The big five are Tionna, God of All Living Things. While that covers a lot of ground, we'll just go with that. His wife or consort is Blizria, Goddess of All Demons. A ying-yang of the celestial world perhaps. Blizria was also attached to Slamia, God of Might. Guess a burley, he-man of a god. Monta is God of the Elments, and married to Alamia, Goddess of the Earth. I imagine a hippy god couple here...

Tionna and Blizria have two children: Tona, Goddess of the Lesser Creatures. Druids tend to pray to her a lot. Tinma is the God of Plants, and apparently female warlocks have an affinity with him.

Blizria and Slamia also have two children, Bizmia, Goddess of Fire. Demons and imps really like her. Her sister is Blaon (and I have a typo in the document below), and is goddess of lightening. Ogres and giants dig her.

Monta and Alamia have four children: Mim, God of Rain. Dwarves are apparently attuned to Mim. Maion is the God of Wind, and Elves appear to be attached to that particular god. Miniatria is Goddess of Air (and how that differs from wind exactly is a celestial question!), and is favored by pixies and fairies. Aronius is Goddess of the Land and the Centaurs truly believe in her.

Now - the race/creature affinity grew out of which miniatures I had at the time (and still have). So that is part of the explanation.

I'll have to write up more aspects of the gods and goddesses as well - I think the next adventure I get to DM, that avatar from a previous post may belong to Mim or  one of his progeny, and it may be his temple or grove that has been messed with in some way.  Maybe throw in some of the other things I keep getting: deck of silly things has some good treasures, and the Delayed Game blasts also have some really fun things. I need to make the adventures more fun and out there. I tend towards the conservative in gaming it seems, and really need to learn to let go.

Pear Farm

Here is where our Fantasy Trip adventure had their mushroom adventure. Decided there may be more in the woods and forests round the tiny farmstead/village. After rolling up the avatar a few days ago, I've stuck it in the fork in the road and added the Temple of the Grove. I'll see about writing up my old pantheon today or tomorrow.

I don't think I ever played TFT much back in college, it was mostly D&D with the main group, and Traveller with the sub-group. Traveller I liked as it was in the vein of proto-Traveller and a lot simpler, and anything could go. My primary character ended up with a 200 ton Scout ship with an artificial intelligence, a short range transporter system and the eternity chip (Merchants and Merchandise: expensive but would repair your ship), a deadly speeder designed with Striker and really based on the Blade Runner cars. That ship was TL 17 for some things: the AI was a true AI and of course transporters are way up there. And, due to an accident, both legs were bionic, giving him endurance F. Not sure I would allow a lot of that until a LOT of playing had gone on now.  And of course, I was reading a lot of the Well Worlds series so that character's name was Nathan Brazil. Interestingly, Jack Chalker, the author, I believe lived in Norfolk at the time, and I was going to Old Dominion University. I believe he showed up for various local cons, but I could well be misremembering.

My point being both games were fairly straightforward and simple in mechanics. It was only later that Traveller got significantly more complicated (and T5 is significantly more complicated!) Probably why I've backed the Fantasy Trip so much: rules are pretty straightforward and easy for anyone to pick up. I'll have those game aids for combat when the Decks of Destiny show up, and most of that is also on the DM screen and various other places.

Not really happy with this map: I had some issues with the layers getting wonky and the affects being odd. But I wanted a smaller 25x10 mile map and the overland maps are all 1000 miles wide...

Still not done with it but figured I would get something out there today. Seeing as I now somehow have all of 13 followers :)

The Fantasy Trip, a side trip with a religious herald

While we've not yet returned to the Fantasy Trip adventure, the group will be heading back to Edge City, probably along with a cart bearing a fair amount of lumber and several peary casks (peary is a drink made of fermented pears. It was the only alcohol served at the inn they were at, what with all the pear trees in the back). I really hope we can continue that adventure: the place where we are at we can add or remove new player characters pretty easily.

Anyway, one of the (far too many) Kickstarters I backed was The Lesser Key to the Celestial  Legion, a sort of do-it-yourself religion book. Finally decided to roll up at least a herald to one of the many religions on Cidri, at least one of the ones in my part of that immense world.  I actually have an entire pantheon from the college days, so will try & get that in here at some point.

So, after rolling on the many interesting tables, the herald that came up is a 6 foot column made of water, with metallic eyes and very long tentacles. It has wolf puppies around it as this is a 1st level herald. Not that TFT actually has levels per se, but going with a low-level herald. The religious symbol for this god or goddess is a stone cross with a plant-encrusted knife planted in the middle of it. There are two religious aspects for this religion: ancestor worship and quiet prayers. Probably to the delight of the players, the sacrifice is wine, mead or ale. The religious texts are painted on linen cloth. There is only 1 celebration a year in the winter, celebrating a martyr's death. Costumes and masks are worn starting at midnight for 3 days in a grove, starting with the 1st full moon of winter. The odd relics are petrified toes of the martyr, which can grant +1d3 save against poison as well as +1d3 for a divine aid check (which I am not sure how that would translate to TFT but we can wing it). The toes are usually in a stone cross and knife reliquary.

So a distinct possibility is for the group to meet this young six foot column of water on the way back to the city, asking for aid perhaps in recovering the petrified toes, or investigating something.

And yes, I do need to get back to Traveller, the primary reason for this blog. But I've been side-tracked a lot lately by various other things. Including dying in yet another attempt at Death Test...

the spiders in the chest actually did 4 points of damage to 1 character. A bad start for the 1st room!

Miniatures Painting

I watched a couple of videos so far, and have started painting minis after a few decades...big difference is back in the day it was enamel paints. Now I am using admittedly cheap acrylics (50 cents a bottle) and some more expensive shaders/inks for post painting.

Some things I think came out well, some not so well. But as I am just starting, practice should hopefully improve what I am doing.

The last few games I've tried to get a mini to represent my character. Sadly, most of our games don't get down to any tactical level for the most part - theater of the mind. Although I had some difficulty with envisioning how all 6 players managed to attack a mimic door in a narrow corridor that was only 5 feet wide... This is why I really like The Fantasy Trip (and why some of my group does not): you need to think tactically a bit more. After some friendly fire hits last game we played, the players were a bit more careful about bows and line of sight!

Pilot's Guide to the D'Arlee Subsector

Working on the Yontin subsector now, as my solo game will be at Krim whenever I get out of jump space...

Here is my attempt at embedding the PDF. And the link: Pilot's Guide

(edit: I noticed that Chrome, and possibly other browsers, may disable that embedded link)

And just to have an image, here's the J4 map:

Traveller Tracker - test installer

So what I've done is published the app to my OneDrive. I've set that to be a shared directory with a setup in there. I've not tested this yet - need to go to my tablet to see if it works.

At the moment there is not a whole lot to the program (I hate calling things apps. Application is okay, app just seems trivial, even though this is trivial :) ) You can add ship classes and ships. The ships use the ship classes.

So, why push this out? To see if there is any interest other than me plugging away so I don't forget the .Net stuff (work is Filemaker and Rails. Still need to learn Ruby & Rails but I've got too much crap to deal with on that Filemaker system).

So, not even knowing if this will work (if not, I believe my Charter account gives me some web space & I could push to a web site), if anyone wants to try this Windows-only program, here is the link to the installer:

Traveller Tracker installer

Traveller Ship Tracker Progress and Miscellaneous

Making some progress on the basic ship tracker, MK near infinity...The basic class editor is in place, and adding a new ship is in place. What is not yet there is selecting the class for the ship & saving that, and editing existing ships. I've got a button for the class editor list but I am unhappy with that: I'd rather the row act like a button so that clicking that loads the class (and eventually, ship).

Hoping to get those details done soon - while this was a long weekend (Happy Labor Day to those who can celebrate it!) my son was also back from his first week in college. So I've been trying to spend as much time with him as he will allow me to!

Plus I've started painting minis. Some are coming out well, others, well, not so well. I'll try & post pictures at some point. I started with the easy things: some chests. I am really happy with how those turned out - the gold was a base coat of yellow, then a red wash, then a gold dry wash. The wood chests were a base of brown then either a dark brown wash or a light brown wash. The dark wash made the wood look older I think.  The rogues and Paladin, a mixed success. Not entirely sure I like how they turned out but they are better than just plain plastic! And doing some experiments on Zombicide:Invaders xenos. Base coat then a few layers of wash: one is pure dark green, the other two a mix of purple and green. Need to do some additional painting. probably some dry wash of darker green, and we'll see how they come out. I have plenty of those to play with!

I need to get back to the solo play but there is just so much time available to me. Plus I do like to sit back on the days I have off, enjoy my coffee and a book for a spell. I've managed to finish off about 4 books the last week.

Krim 0904 D'Arlee, first look

I've been on the computer way too long today, especially considering I was off today.

Looking at Krim, our next stop in my solo adventure.  B318AA8-E, meaning:

Diameter: 3 or just under 5000 kilometers. Less than .5G.
Atmosphere: 1 trace atmosphere. 0.06 atm so you will need a vacc suit!
Hydrographics: 8, 78% water. Going with the Europa approach here. And in T5 this is not even possible - if I am reading that chart right hydrographics is flux + atmosphere, so the max would be 7. And in T5 this does translate as an ice-capped world as well.
Population: A, tens of billions of people! On this ice ball!
Government: A, charismatic dictatorship. Must be awfully persuasive to get people here.
Law Level: 8 High Law, no open display of weapons

Class B starport and a tech level of E, so a very advanced system yet oddly just a class B port. Is that due to this port being in the League and not part of Imperial space and politics are involved?

Looking over the Heaven & Earth (aka Grand Census) info, 6 have what seems to be too common so I'll ignore the xenophobia aspects. But I do like unusual sleep times, fixed time for visiting (there are game possibilities there!), segregated during meals, live in special conditions, unusual significance of smells (maybe from the earlier days and the methane slush smell was a bad sign of your hab leaking!), and unusual cosmetics in certain occupations.

I'll expand on that later and make more ISS style maps. In the meantime, I also played around a little with the color mapping for the planet program to see if I could make something interesting. I think this little ice ball floating in space came out okay...

Traveller Ship Tracker - v5

I actually broke down and restarted this project. I've managed to get the SQL backend back in place using Entity Framework Core and SQLite. So far it does nothing but I have created the two classes, ShipClasses and Ships, and created the main screen.

I'll probably need to get some consistent images. The Beowulf image is from the Traveller Wiki, the Navy symbol for the ship classes is from the T5 font set from the original T5 Kickstarter. 

I may try to make my own images to not have to worry about copyright issues or stuff like that, and to get a consistent look.

The next step is to make those buttons actually go someplace. I was just happy to get Visual Studio 19 up to date and to be able to create a new Windows WPF program, and wire up the SQLite stuff again. The schema maps to the preview I did, so that does not need any updating (schema).  And I am also designing with the default 800x450 size but the layout is reactive. That size should fit on all tablets - my last experience was using the full screen but as my main screen is a quad HD I ended up putting way too much in there. 

I'll also be establishing the resource library for shared templates and things such as the back arrow button to go to the previous screen.  This is NOT a single page type of application - I honestly have a hard time wrapping my head around that (basically there is a controller page and you just load up the layout. I sort of did that with the last one, having a main page and swapping out the internal content based on the buttons clicked. I was not entirely happy with the results).

So the next steps are to get the ship classes list in place, and an editor for the classes that fits in the size allotted. Then the same for the ships. Then play with that a bit, then once I am happy, figure out how to get it to anyone who wants to install it. The previous UWP process just did not work well for non-developers. I am hoping for a simple installer or something.

Source code is on GitHub if anyone wants to look and cringe.

Solo Session 6 - 238-1106 / Preacep

With the textiles impounded by the local authorities, we have a few choices. See if there is a fine to pay, and if so, how reasonable is it? If no fine, do we pursue getting our credits back as those textiles were sold to us in good faith? Do we break bad and do raid the warehouse, grab our cargo containers, somehow load them up and take off? That would not let us return to Preacep anytime soon, and as this is the gateway to the League on the core-ward side, that is not a good option. Additionally, there is that Space Patrol vessel a few pads over....

So, first lets see if there is some sort of fine or something we can pursue in a legal way. I'll let the die decide as I don't want the deux ex machina via me to solve the issue. And we lucked out - rolled a we're good result. So there is a small fine to pay to ease the conscience of those wishing to maintain planetary heritages. Make it 10% of the purchase price, or Cr6,600. Our coffers are a bit on the bare side at the moment, but assuming we can sell off the cargo on Krim we should more than make up for it.

So a small court date with Stoddy and the local council for World Heritage, we pay our small fine, the engineer has fixed up the No Refunds from the rude cargo removal process, and we are about ready to leave.

Recalling that the Ptolemy Traveler was headed this way as well, and should already be here. Deciding to let the die control her fate, and wanting to average out a few rolls, I got 1 bad stuff happens and 2 we're okay rolls. So: the Ptolemy was behind us a few hours and much further out: the astrogator did not dot all his i's and cross all his t's apparently when plotting the course. But they got into an orbit and have been ferrying down the goods via shuttles the week we've been here.

And now I am also realizing the truth of the SOLO book's advice about getting a notebook to track things. What I am going to try is OneNote yet again, and keep a notebook for this game, and a page per planet to track contacts and other notes. I tried that on the first Traveller game I refereed in decades a couple of years ago, but it did not go so well. I do better with a real notebook I think (well, they don't call it pen and paper RPGs for nothing!) .

So moving on with the game (and I may embellish later with a in-person viewpoint. Or not...) We're up to step 4, paying any warehouse fees. As we've not overstayed our welcome, we have no fees. Checking for contacts, and having none on-planet other than our merchant friend Stoddy, we meet no one else. Had I made the roll, then I think the Patrol ship would have been the Wyvern, and Malik would have met up with some of his old Patrol buddies from that term spent cruising the system and writing about the Quadrant. Clearing the port, we launch back into space with our 4 mid-passage passengers and a not-quite full cargo load. Rolling on the ship encounter table, there is a 400 ton Scout surveyor. In a bid to make new friends, we hail them. Sadly, the reaction roll was bad, so these taciturn Scouts want nothing to do with us. Could it be because our flight plan is for the League, a political entity not part of the Imperium? Are they in the middle of a long and tedious survey of the system? Was it the two escort craft following us to the upper atmosphere? Who knows...

So we enter jump to Krim after the good doctor has plotted the current jump route, and we'll leave here. Malik will be tending to the 4 passengers and checking lockers, as well as working on his book.

I never did make a map of the island. While not really needed, I do like maps and think they are fun. But Krim is coming up, so I'll spend some time detailing that planet.

Traveller Tracker - Designing the interface

I want to keep the interface simple, and the database backing simple. I've got a trial to Adobe XD which allows me to create prototypes and designs, so I am playing with that. Below are the screens, and here is a link to the actual prototype: Tracker Prototype  This link may die in 3 months as I've only a trial of the software.

The blue buttons should go back to the previous screen. From the main screen, Ship yard brings you to the list of ships you've created; clicking the first name will get you the ship details.  Ship classes gives you the list of classes. and I've added the Beowulf as a link.

Need to get back to the solo play but thought I'd restart this software project again. It will end up being a Win10 program only. The other option is to see if I could write a phone-based one via Flutter or some other language, but I don't want to forget about c#.

I did get Visual Studio 19 updated, so I need to get back into that, and see about starting the project all over. This time with a way for any interested readers to download and install. That UWP process sadly was not good for that.

While I will re-use a lot of that code, I do plan on trying to keep things as siloed as possible. I always start with good intentions at least!

Main Screen

Ship Classes

Beowulf Info

Ship List and Details

Traveller Tracker

I am slowly making the decision to start over. Again. The UWP program got too messy too fast. And when testing on a smaller screen, it did not work particularly well. Plus messy code.

So, starting anew means a bit better planning. I am also going to see if I can make it work on Mac & Windows via Xamarin forms, which in theory should work across platforms. And it has to be easy to install: the various test beds for UWP programs were designed more for developers than for general users.

So, various phases:

1. Test getting the forms to work for both Windows & Mac. I can test on my tablet, and at work I use a Mac. 
2. Start small
3. I'll start with just the ship class and ships, so that a user can easily view, edit and create a new class or ship
4. try to design for multiple screen resolutions

Down the road, I'll put back the whole TravellerMap API as I really like that, but I won't futz around with locally storing the data, nor allowing for the milieus. Maybe down the road as I did have a way of doing that but it got ugly. 

So starting with a pretty simple schema - this all of phase 1 will have in it. Then I need to explore Xamarin forms to see how to make that work and if it will work on Macs as well as PCs. If not, I'll fallback to just Win10.

Solo Session 5: Preacep 234-238 1106

Preacep, 234 through 238 1106 at the Port

The next four days Malik & Ewo check for cargos. Two are found, a 55 ton lot of textiles that, despite getting a good purchase DM due to the non-industrial nature of Preacep, we still only get at 90% and costing us Cr148,500. The other option was 2 tons of crystals at 100% of the base cost, C40,000. We could dip into the ship reserves for the textiles, but none of the systems available to us to jump to next have any beneficial selling modifiers. Now, as a player / ref of the game, I could indicate that ASB&TS has a broker in the system. So I am going to allow a re-roll for each with a -1 applied due to our broker: miraculously I really rolled snake eyes, so we can get the textiles at 40% or Cr66,000. The crystals are at 80%, or  Cr32,000. So Cr98,000 for both lots and only having to dip a bit into the reserves to cover those costs. We still have about 50 tons of storage space left if we include the ship's shuttle or vehicle bay. Rolling on for general cargo, we have 3 tons of major cargo and 2 tons of minor cargos. There were no incidental cargos. So that will be a payment of Cr5000 for the 1 jump into League space.

Checking for passengers, we can get 2 high passage passengers or 4 mid-passage. Going with the 4 mid-passage may be stretching the rules a bit, but I can go with that. There is an excessively large common area after all, and we also have the entire vehicle bay empty. We could spend some more time trying to find cargo but we are really out of credits.

As we are also trying to save money, and paying for the life support, the ship's crew will sleep on-board, but roam the port to stretch their legs and get out and about. Unfortunately, despite being an island, the tainted atmosphere prevents any real site seeing on the island. Few people to see the mighty fluketails leap in the tainted oceans, or see the majestic isheer frolic in the oddly shaped and colored trees.

Looking at the map, we've got 6 possible systems to jump to:

• Back to Yllom  A689997-A
• To Finnigan's World, bypassing Yllom C694566-9
• Finnigan's Beta A568201-B, non-industrial
• Finnigan's Gamma E672AAA-3
• Krim, red-zoned by the Imperium but part of the League AND having a Naval base B318AA8-E
• 010-705 E576698-7

As I am really wanting to head into the League to explore that a bit, I do have to come up with some justification on getting there. And Krim is a TL E world so should be a lot of fun to visit: with that atmosphere and that population, there must be huge arcologies that are entirely self-contained, floating grav cities, huge stations. 

Looking closer at the map, turns out that Preacep is actually a non-aligned system: although in the Imperium, it is not of the Imperium. Now, whether that was a mistake or intentional, as I originally made up this system 30+ years ago I could not say. But it does work its way wonderfully as a port between systems. I'll have to expand out the description, making this a more neutral territory somehow, the gateway to the League. Maybe they sell t-shirts with that on them in the few shops available in the class C port...

But back to our destination, now decided, Krim. A very high tech-level planet, meaning (if I interpreted the book 2 rules correctly) I add 4 to the roll for passengers, so likely we'll get the max of 2 passengers we can carry, maybe 4 if double-bunking the staterooms. Technically, no cargo due its being a red zone when we do get there. 

So after 4 days, we have 4 passengers, some speculative cargo, and some freight we are shipping across the border. The ship has been refueled and two week maintenance performed, the larder restocked with whatever foods Preacep can offer. Deciding to go ahead & roll on the world encounter table, I get seller is involved in legal trouble and we risk getting involved. Not knowing how bad this could be, I'll go ahead and roll on some more interesting tables in the SOLO book. The seller turns out to be a decent enough person, and he was up front with us on the textiles purchase (perhaps why we got this at 40% of cost?). The textiles were produced by a small group of people in the Free Egalitarian Party's country. Apparently not all people are equal, and this small group wishes to maintain its cultural heritage a bit more than the general Egalitarian wants. Some are just more equal than others....regardless, these textiles are considered a cultural heritage by some, and with the system's prohibition on contact with off-worlders, some see this as breaking the law. However, the textiles were purchased legally, and sold legally to the No Refunds, and another roll on a table indicates that we're ok for now. So no mad dash off-planet, or enemies created. Just some of the population not happy with  Regardless, we'll add another contact:
Contact: Stoddy Johnson of Preacep, textile seller
 As we've only the 2 planets so far, rolling for contacts is not a thing that needs to get done.

Rolling on the port encounters, we get something that actually fits in with the above legal issues: the ships crew is in some sort of trouble, perhaps legal.  We will need to come up with a plan. Being a legal issue, seeing as Eaaia has several skills that apply (Advocate-1, Diplomat-1, perhaps even the Admin-1 and Persuade-1 can all work in here) we will get a bonus for that. However, this world is not a part of the Imperium, so her legal acumen may not entirely be as advantaguous. However, I'll say she comes up with a solid plan with the +1 bonus. And...I roll a 5, meaning the plan failed! The textiles are currently in legal limbo. And rolling for consequences, we get damage to a useful or valuable piece of kit. As this was a legal tussle, the only thing I can think of is that perhaps the ship was damaged when the local enforcers decided to forcefully take back the textiles. So we're into deeper trouble than I thought!

I've a number of choices to make: do we just pay a fine and look for another cargo? Retry the legal process? And it looks like we'll be on Preacep another few days while I decide what to do next.