Montca - A Different Image With Mechanics

 Trying something a little different. And thinking it would fit in my half-sheet sized referee shield/display/whatever they are I got way back in the Schlock Mercenary RPG Kickstarter (which they also offered as an add-on in the XDM book KS. Which why yes, I did back).

So we have a lot of the basic stuff, then a really long extended UWP. Essentially I took in the additional security profile and starport activity index from Mongoose's JTAS, and threw in a bit more. I need to recheck my math for the 100D travel time (and reformat that table to make it fit better). Pretty sure I did the math right, but it has been (cough) years since I've had to deal with math outside of writing software for accounting stuff. Using the old formula from book 2:

D is in meters, so for a size 6 world that is 6000 miles in diameter, or 9,654 km in diameter, or 9,654,000 meters, then x 100 for 100 diameters, and our acceleration is 10m/s for G1, that gives (loads up the calculator) 5.45 hours. 6G gets there in 2.23 hour. So you save 3 hours each way with a 6G ship versus 1 1G ship. 

Which is why I have that chart there! Once I get my math right (and I think I got it all straight!) Anyway, I don't want to be figuring this on the fly in games so figure that handy chart will come in handy.

Looking over the extended UWP:

A639993-C 200 A4-V S7D5-8 PAA-S SAI 9x3/5-10-20-30

We have the standard UWP, then the PGB for population, gas giant and belt adjustments. So no gas giants nor asteroid belts in this system and a population around 2,000,000,000. The S7D5-8 shows that the planetary law level is 7 as per the UWP, but near-space to the 100 diameter limit is really, really high at D, but past that is a 5. The PAA-S indicates that the planetary and orbital ports are both class A with standard amenities. The SAI (Starport Activity Indicator) are actual die rolls and percentages: roll 9 die and multiply by 3 for the number of ships at or near the port as your players show up, and the percentages are 5% are bulk carriers (50K tons+), 10% large freighters (10-50K tons), 20% medium freighters (5-10K tons), 30% small freighters (1-5K tons) and the rest are incidental ships such as the adventurer's ship. Obviously this breakdown can be adjusted to a smaller ship universe, back when the Kinunir was considered a pretty big ship.

So this means when players show up in system, we have several rolls for each visit. First at the security, if they jump outside the 100D range, a roll of 5 or less means there will be some radio communication from the authorities. Within the 100D there will always be security checks, including a boarding by customs inspection. While on the world, an 8 or less means that the security and law are a bit more enthusiastic in their response to issues. The normal law level of 7 is the daily check: 7 or less and they may be pulled over for a routine check,

For ship traffic, we roll 9 dice & multiply by 3 for the number of ships. 39x3 indicates when the ship comes in there are 117 ships (this is a high-tech system with an A port). Of the 117, 6 are huge 50,000 ton freighters, 12 are 10-50,000 ton freighters, 24 are 5-10,000 ton freighters, 35 are 1-5,000 ton freighters, and the remaining 41 ships are sub-1000 ton ships. Some of these could be cruise/passenger liners if those exist in your Traveller universe. So we have a pretty busy port apparently (and quite possibly approaching the GURPS Far Trader level of ships). 

We also know how long it will take the ship to go from the 100D to orbiting the planet. Once there, I usually end up doing some sort of roll for how long it takes to get permission and a spot to land. Pretty sure there was yet another article about this, and I know several threads over on COTI with a lot of suggestions as well.

Since this system also supports a class A orbital port, those larger ships are going to be in parking orbits near that high port, so there will probably be significant shuttle traffic as well. This helps us paint a visual image of just how busy this particular port is.

Then throw in starport encounters (which I need to break out in the solo installment - maybe tomorrow as my Sunday game has been postponed due to Halloween) and we have quite a number of things going on.

So a bit of prep ahead of time for each system that can be visited (and eventually I have a library of systems) and I can be a bit more confident about getting from jump to the planet.

And I am hoping to get my Sunday group to play Traveller as well. Not sure how will that will go as they are more fantasy than science fiction, but I can hope!

And finally, as per a previous post about the security, a good bit of this came from the Mongoose version of the Journal. More than half was simply re-doing the original JTAS articles, but there were some new things in there that are useful. And apparently, with the revised 2nd edition, they finally dropped those really stupid orthographic deck plans for flat 2D plans you can actually, you know, use. And there is a KS for the next set of journals. Which, though I really don't like where Mongoose has gone (it seems to me they are just redoing the same stuff over and over again, and I'm not impressed by the physical quality of the books as mine are falling apart and barely used!) I will still probably back. I am a sucker for that sort of thing, though I'll no longer get any of their adventures. And I've yet to use those giant deck plans of the cruiser. And not really satisfied with those to tell the truth: there was obviously a lot of copy/paste going on and the two halves of each module seem to simply be mirror images. And I wonder about the deck heights for some of those that carry shuttles. But perhaps I just need to spread them back out on the floor and wander those corridors again.

The Fantasy Trip: The Cave Not Taken

Well, now I cannot complain about my players skipping over parts of my semi-plans: the other players & I just did that to our Sunday game. 

We had just left the Boogle country after a longer rest than expected after taking care of the Boogles various threats. Being Prootwaddles, their threats were generally not as bad as the could have been. Tis was mostly a period to catch up on some hit points and prepare for the rest of the journey to Edge City. Our plan was to meet up with the Crimson Blade and report on what we found in that ravine. The first night out, Lurbgug took first shift and nothing much happened. Prentum's second watch encountered what appeared to be the Grim Reaper. Edging around the fire, he nudged Lurbgub awake, only to have the apparition disappear. The rest of his night did not go well, and sleep was not very forthcoming. 

Thunk's watch heard footsteps or something wandering the perimeter of the campsite, yet he never discovered what it was. After a restless night sleeping, Prentum recognized the prints as coming from a Sasquatch. Probably the one that stole Thunk's spiked shield a few days back. Deciding we still needed to get to the city, we continued the journey. Halfway through the day, the cries of something in pain caused us to go off the trail and through the woods. Seeing a giant elephant beast attacking a Sasquatch we decided to help the poor hominid as he was trying to crawl away, crying pitiful sounds. While Thunk and Lurbgub got behind the attacking beast, Prentum readied his bow. The battle was over quicker than expected, though Prentum's arrow had little effect against the beast. While I can shoot twice due to having a high dexterity, those arrows only do 1d+2, so against larger creatures or those with a thick hide, not always particularly useful. I will have to move up to a bigger bow: the light crossbow does 2d damage and with my high dexterity I can still shoot every turn. So perhaps I'll move my strength up next stat increase the one more point I need for that. 

After killing the elephant beast, we followed the trail of the bleeding Sasquatch, who seemed to be recovering a bit as he did become bipedal after crawling on the forest floor for a bit. We found his cave, and just inside was a pile of shiny things: we found his stash. And Thunk found his shield! Now, we could have followed the Sasquatch further into the cave: we were all at full strength, and it was what the GM thought we would do. Instead, we returned to the beast, cut off those giant tusks and continued to Edge City. We missed the apparently planned cavern delve and any potential treasure (and dangers) to be found in the lair of the elusive Sasquatch. We also talked about perhaps the 'Squatches have a natural blur effect, which is why they are so hard to track down and see. We also use a Lego Sasquatch that ironically carries a camera, and has been nicknamed the Flashsquatch.

Once at the city by the end of the day, we went to the market to see about selling our Gargoyle bladders and ivory tusks. We found a merchant and traded the gall bladders for health potions (which are really expensive at 15 gold each. We did a bit of haggling, and eventually also sold the tusks for the remainder of his health potion stock, including 3 "big boy" health potions (these do 1d4 of healing, and I introduced them in my games using a small bottle that has a d4 in it so we can roll that. See - I like props!)

Getting directions to the Crimson Blade, we find that guild hall and the Guildmaster. Reporting what we found, we also gave him the map with the 4 X's. Explaining that we had met Cornelius the Black Spider at one of the X's, the other was the ravine where we had somehow possibly died and come back to life (and Prentum still has this urge to seek out and destroy Cornelius the Black Spider though the others have not mentioned that at all). Given a place to stay for a few days while the Guild reviews both the map and our report, we rest that night. Though Prentum's rest is disturbed by the re-appearance of the Reaper. Who again says nothing and disappears before his eyes again.

Next morning, we are given the task of clearing out the sewers of whatever that is that is killing stray dogs. Which is coming full circle as my second game with these guys was a sewer adventure. Sadly I have to wait a year for the sewer Kickstarter stuff to show up! The smelly adventure had us following the sewers, eventually finding a stream of blood in the effluence. Following that we encountered 3 fish people. We managed to kill them off with less trouble than expected: we had some good hits and Prentum switched to his short sword for close combat. While the damage is similar to the bow if considering the total, as the sword does it in 1 roll versus 2 he is far more likely to actually damage his foes! In the midst of this, a giant turtle creature attacked us from the rear! Fortunately Prentum managed to kill the fish thing in front of him, and turned before that creature attacked. While Lurbgub was finishing off the last of the fish creatures, Thunk moved to help Prentum. I actually managed to roll a 3 on 3d6 - critical hit! Triple damage! Woot! And sadly, Lurbgug tends to roll like I normally do, though he did not drop or break any weapons this session, there were a few close calls!  But it was exciting to roll 3 ones! After that combat, he put on his blur ring as the continued in the sewers. A larger chamber had what appeared to be a pool of yuck. Tossing a rock in, we saw a fin broach the surface, then were attacked by a shark creature (the GM had bought a lot of interesting minis and as all good RPG players do, is bringing them into play!). That battle caused a bit of damage to our tank Lurbgub but not as much as you would think. We managed to kill that beast, and drinking his "big boy" potion, managed to roll a 1. We believe the merchant short-changed us! Fortunately the shark creature had about a 12 DX so missed almost as much as he hit. A few good hits could have wiped any of us out.

Finding nothing else up this route, we returned to the fork in the sewers and it dead-ended in another cavern. While looking at the smaller cave to the rear, two strange creatures dropped from the ceiling and attacked. We forgot to look up. Never forget to look up! Prentum ducked back into the smaller tunnel to face the one that dropped to attack him, while Thunk took on a giant turtle beast of some sort, and Lurbgug attacked the one attacking Prentum. The battle took a bit more time, and it took all three of us to take down the turtle beast.

We dragged the shark thing back to the mouth of the sewer, and that's where we left this game off. 

\We had gone off the planned adventure so the GM made up the market and sewer bit. We're trying to get the boys to do a bit more role playing in the game, but it has not been easy. Really thinking if I can get my other friend to get vaccinated, he would make for an excellent 4th player as he is not only a great GM but also a great player. Having a bit more role playing may help them play their characters a bit more. But we'll see - there are moments when they really get into it and we all had a great time.

We forgot about experience points, so perhaps this week the GM will come up with some of that, and maybe enough to bump Pretnum to ST 12 so I can get a light cross bow. 2D damage will do a bit more damage than the 1d+2. Though we'll have to see if that quiver will take a crossbow bolt instead of an arrow - I can't remember if that quiver is attuned to a specific arrow or any arrow (or crossbow bolt) put into it will work. We'll figure that out when we get there,

Apex Session 12: On the River

Waking up at the base of the volcanic plateau, our heroes are on the south side of the river that leads back to Hafen Zweite and their sky yacht. Starting down the river, they hear German voices from across the river. Assuming it could be more Nazi's, they move further into the jungle as they make their way down river. The sound of a traditional farming song, and the voices of children also singing, did not make them feel any more secure. Even the sound of what sounded like a wooden cart and the slap of leather on hide did nothing to entice the group to even see what was on the other side of the river. They did miss seeing the Amish using dinosaurs as draft animals pulling a cart piled high with hay.

As they moved close to their goal of the Apex Queen, Ilsa noticed they were being tracked by 4 ornithomimus (ornithimimu? ornithomimuses?). Realizing they were both outnumbered and quite possibly out-weaponed (there are a lot of teeth there!) they took to climbing trees. While Archie managed a springy leap up, and Dr. Tong managed adeptly as did Ace, Ilsa, from years of smoking perhaps, had a more difficult time. After the 3rd die roll failure, Ace mananged to pull her up as the 4 dinos circled the trees. For the next 2 hours.

Not wanting to alert any Nazi scouts with gun shots, they stayed in the trees until the dinos decided that easier food could be found elsewhere, and they wandered away.

Moving along, they got to the bend where they could just see the Apex Queen. On the other side of the river, about 35-40 feet wide at this point. This should have been within reach of Archie's newly updated spring boots. However, while we did double the distance he could leap, anything over the original 30 foot distance required an action check. Which he failed. And failed re-rolling using his grit point. And failed his save roll. Fortunately, he did have a rope around him, and the crew managed to pull him across where he discovered that his landing had managed to break the left boot. Throwing the boot at the river in anger, it was swallowed by some river dinosaur immediately. Deciding to throw the other boot at the dinosaur, he had a critical failure. The boot flew past Ilsa and did not manage to break Tong's new Army camera. Note that these are my normal rolls as well - why I threw dynamite in the western game as it is hard to miss with exploding sticks of TNT. 

Replacing his now missing boots with sturdy boots that no longer allow him to leap, using a grappling hook and rope he actually managed an excellent throw and got the rope across the other side up a tree. All four managed to cross the river unscathed and not dropping anything, and Archie started on repairs in the Queen. What with the banging and stuff, Ace and Ilsa heard some rustling in the jungle and then Jungle Girl showed back up, eager for Archie, chocolate and some companionship other than her two dinosaur companions. 

an unlikely place for Jungle Girl

Getting the boat together and seaworthy took a bit more time, and they stayed one more night at this spot, leaving in the morning to get past the German fort and back to the port town of Hafen Zweite.

And this is where we left the group. They again managed to bypass a small side-trip full of Amish and pies, and only managed to lose Archie's boots in the progress so far. There was no combat in this evening's play mostly due to trying to be careful and knowing that they are usually out-gunned. I do want to get a bit of combat in for that pulpy feel, so we have at least one more chance as they pass the fort in the morning. We'll let the dice decide again as they go past: it may be similar to the movie African Queen when they got past Fort Shone - they just get on by. 

Next session may be the last for this particular arc - we'll see how they do, and if they get the Apex Queen back to Charlie and Rosy in one piece. And I do have some ideas for an epilogue assuming they get there. I've not decided if Jungle Girl will go with them or not - we'll let the dice decide next session. It could get a bit awkward, but if she follows along, I may have to get her vocabulary above the single ungawa she currently uses for everything. 

The Fantasy Trip: Back from the Dead

Wanting to continue the game he had started, and then managed to do a TPK, our fledgling GM and his wife came up with a brilliant solution. Through a sad story, we learn of Giesla, outside the Mage's Guild in the Elemental City of Athukthad, having sold all he had left for a major wish. Revenge against the Black Spider who had killed his entire family. The backstory is epic, and even moving. We're trying to get his wife to play as I think she would really bring in some in-depth gaming, but alas, so far she is not playing with us. But she and her husband came up with the backstory, and Thunk, our turtle man, Lurbgub, our Orcish brute, and Prentum all find themselves alive again. The raven about to eat Thunk's eye was not pleased at our sudden return to life. 

Seeing the Lizard Wizard involved in what looked to be a resurrection of one of the gargoyles, we all snuck up behind him and actually managed to kill him off, having surprise. Lurbgub took a few extra stabs in the corpse. Just to make sure. The wizard of course assumed correctly we were all dead. However, the demon's greater wish brought us all back to avenge the Black Spider. Which was of course the vampire from the first adventure day. We did not talk much about coming back from the dead, but Prentum did say there must be a reason. Waking up from death is not something any of us expected. I'll get to play my cigar smoking Dwarf in some game.

Rifling through the dead wizard's meager belongings, we find that he had a ring of stone flesh (which is why my arrows could not do anything against him) as well as a ring of dexterity. Prentum ended up with the golden dexterity ring, bumping his DX to 18. Now he can shoot twice per round. Though I do want to bring up his natural dexterity so that in the event he loses that ring he can still shoot twice a round. Then he can sell off that ring for some good gold. Plus this also puts him at 5 magical items: the enchanted leathers that give him a +3 protection for 5 total, the necklace of flight, gloves of heat resistance, the blur ring and now the ring of dexterity. TFT allows only 5 magical items to be active at a time. Hmm, and the quiver of replenishment makes 6...I forgot and will have to choose things now!

In the shack at the end of the crevasse, we find 3 healing potions along with a map of the area with 4 X's. Where we had  almost captured the vampire was one of the X's (it helps that at least two of us have literacy, though not sure if that directly relates to be able to read maps).

And this took place near Hamor, where my original Fantasy Trip game took place with my other group. There is a pear farm there where peary is made and shipped down to Edge City.

I'll see about posting the entire story, but want to check with them to make sure it is okay to post it first. It's about a 4 page story and does make a good introduction to a lot of things. And it is well written and works well for a lead-in to adventure of revived characters!

Heading back to Hamor to get a rest and recover, we come upon the Prootwaddles we had brushed aside earlier, Boogle Bob and Boogle Bill. To make up for our rudeness, as well as get a good rest, we helped kill the giant alligator that been eating the Boogles. Apparently we were in the Boogle Kingdom as they liked to think about it. After having a some good gator and meeting Boogle Betty & Boogle Bess, we rested a few days with the Boogles when they said there was a Boogle Bane snatching and eating the Boogle Babies. Yes, the GM had a good voice for these Prootwaddles, and yes, we alliterated a great deal as it was a good deal of fun. Turns out the Bane was a giant bird, of which he brought along a huge mini of a hawk - it must have been 8" from wing tip to tip! We did manage to kill this beast, though it turns out that Lurbgug, who loves eating chicken, is not so fond of giant chickens eating Lurbgug! He was not much help in our endeavor. Though he had no issue eating the giant bird afterwards at the Boogle Bash. 

And then we headed back to Hamor, each of us with full bellies, all our strength, rations for days upon days, and a map to hunt down Cornelius the Black Spider. Which will ultimately fulfil Giesla's wish, just not in the way he thought it would. And we've no idea as characters about this wish, but it is driving the story and I'm making Prentum feel it is the right thing to do. 

It was a fun afternoon. Though now I worry that the GM is swinging too low: as players we just need to be a bit more judicious about how we attack our foes, or even if we do. The Fantasy Trip is a lot deadlier than most RPGs (well, Traveller can be as bad as you can die in character generation!). Regardless, it was a lot of fun and we're slowly building up our characters a bit more: I think he should have given Lurbgub some extra XP for his sudden fear of being on the wrong side of the chicken rotisserie - playing up a character like that is what it is all about.

Now to see where I stashed the book for Ankh-Morpork as it has that giant map which is our Edge City. It is buried in the bookcase somewhere, behind all the boxes of minis I still need to figure out how to organize so I can find them. And get all my maps of my game world into a single place: I have them scattered in too many folders to find! Bane of my existence: order in the chaos. Been trying to figure out how for years, and nothing really works for me. Making me think it is entirely me. I even have this issue with writing software: where do you stick the various things? So yeah, must be on me entirely.

Hamor is that little town north of Edge City, and is the location of the Pear Farm above

And (if you get down this far!) I have three more followers! I have no idea when that happened, but hey, thanks for following! I know this is not as much Traveller as I originally intended but I do enjoy other games and did not feel like creating a new blog. I do tag most of the entries (which I need to prune a bit I believe) so things are sort of searchable. I'll probably do another Traveller post soon: started yet another view of Montca and trying to incorporate a few of the things from a few of my other posts into something cohesive and hopefully useful at the table (or at least the virtual table).

Apex Session 11: Sometimes it is better to run away

The characters all leveled up, gaining new traits. Our gadgeteer actually turned down the atomic ray gun to double his sprinting boots. So he can now leap up to 60' and I think 20' straight up. However, the caveat with that is it is no longer an automatic feat for anything over the standard 30/10 foot leaps. Our resident smoker Ilsa chose sharpshooting, making her a crack shot with her Mauser. The academic has been studying the scrolls that were like a Rosetta stone, and while not quite fluent in Linear B, he can read and write a bit of it. Ace, our adventurer, now is a die hard character, meaning once a day, he can come from a 0 hit points to 1.  

After we got that all straightened out, the group heads back to the center of the badlands, an ill Jungle Girl managing the trip. A few miles from where they land they do see a dead triceratops. This puts them close to dead center in the badlands, and they have quite the lengthy discussion on which way to go: back north to where they left our feral child's dinosaurs, or back to the river, to see if the dinos had returned home.

Tong makes some pictures on the ground and they seem to make sense to her, and she starts her call of the jungle. It is still ungawa, just louder and, well, louder. Ilsa, our raider who is never caught by surprise (a nice class attribute), noticed a few miles off what looked to be 3 people on dinosaurs watching. The group hides a bit while Ace starts moving to the group, but coming from a diagonal to keep the original location hopefully secret. Two of the trio head towards Ace, and he can see that they are the Nazon, our triceratops herders they bypassed before. Only they don't know the name of the people (see this post for a description of them). Meanwhile, Jungle Girl is still yowling, so hiding does not seem to be really effective. Ace and the two Nazon get within shouting distance, and they dismount.

After some gesturing and an entire lack of communication, the group decides that they are not going to get eaten or attacked, so the eventually follow the duo back to the third rider, who appears to be wearing a hat or crown big enough to make Ilsa quite jealous.

The follow this group back, and the trio point to the dead triceratops. Up close, they could see it was full of bullet wounds. A bit of communication does seem to clear the air that it is not our adventurers' fault, so the group continue on and end up at a camp. 

The village has leather tents, more wigwam style, and some cook fires going. Everyone gets some food, and there is a bit of gift giving. Correctly thinking that the woman in the head dress is the one in charge, Tong manages to get Ilsa to give her Archie's sword. The woman seems quite pleased by the gift. She was not so pleased when Tong wrote some Linear-B in the dirt after (finally) noticing that she had some markings on her clothes in that language. And in hindsight, now I wish I had made that actually work as a way of communicating: while Tong can do basic read/write of Linear-B as part of the the level up, he can't speak it as the phonetics may or may not correlate well to the written language that he has been studying the last couple of weeks. 

Anyway, everyone gets their fill, and they are offered a space to sleep. The first two shifts go quietly, but Isla heard, just as dawn was breaking, the distinct sound of a diesel engine heading to the camp. Alerting the group as well as the Nazon, they all get packed up pretty darn quickly. Not long after that, they can see a Nazi half-track with a squad of soldiers as well as something Ilsa was concerned about: weaponized dinosaurs!

Being severely out-matched. the group decides to flee. They head back to the east, to get to the river. Behind them, they start to hear the sounds of guns as well as a stampeding herd of triceratops. There was carnage behind that they did not see as they were moving as fast as they could away. Perhaps the players, after I talked about a TPK in another game, decided wisely to not face up to a dinosaur carrying a large caliber weapon. Though honestly there was a chance they could have taken them. Perhaps not a large chance though!

By the end of the day, they were back in sight of the tower. Jungle Girl stopped, and then took off. Running to her were her two dinosaur companions! Everyone got met back up, and Archie managed to convince our feral woman to go back to the jungle. Along with a handful of chocolate. Deciding to not stay at the tower in case the Nazi's followed them, they followed the path Jungle Girl took to get down the precipice to end up at the jungle. Finding a good spot to stay, and with the smell of pie wafting through the jungle, our group settles in for the evening.

And here is where we stopped that session. I've a few ideas (and yes, there was a pie aroma. A running joke about liking pie so of course it needs to be in the game) for going forward. In theory we could finish the game at a good spot in the next session, but I think it will actually be 2 or even 3 more. But we'll see how it all goes. They are almost a week of hiking through the jungle if they follow the river to Hafen Zweite. Getting the boat repaired, and back to Charlie Allnut, will take a few days off that. But the end-game for this game is getting the boat back. Then we may be able to continue the adventures, following Tong's map to the center of the Earth for the next adventure. But we have to get back first!

Apex Session10: Cleanup at the temple

 After much discussion, they called in the army from Fort Allen. Ace and Archie had made previous trips there, usually miscellaneous supply runs, the occasional Army officer who may have been a been late in getting back from Cape Coleman, It took a fair amount of persuading to get Jungle Girl on board the giant metal flying thing, but once on there, she...well, actually got airsick. They hauled everyone out of the temple area, include the two German flight technicians. 

On the way back, they were trying to figure out how to get Jungle Girl back to her jungle: civilization was not the place for her. Ace was thinking about bailing via parachute on the way back, but in looking at the maps, Fort Allen was almost due north of the temple, and the jungle and badlands where they left Jungle Girl's two dinosaurs was to the west. He was talked down from taking over the plane and having the US Army become an adversary to the group. While I commend the comic book thinking, my games generally have repercussions for that sort of thing. Though it would really change the arc of the game a good deal. Though Ace may not be able to get back to his sea plane if that had happened, there would have been a lot of different adventures than I was originally envisioning!

Landing at the base, they off-loaded the Germans, and Ilsa knew she could never go back to Wissenschaftliche Kreidestation, nor could Dr. Mader. There was talk about Project Paperclip, but technically that happens at the end of WWII, not a few years before it starts. But Dr. Mader was the poster child for that, so she will remain at the base to be debriefed before heading to the USA to work for the Army scientists. She left her atomic ray gun in Archie's capable hands.

As Captain Mills of the Army base owes them, he is transporting them to an area in the badlands where a plane can land. It is about in the middle, so they can look to either direction to see if Jungle Girl's dinos are still near the crevasse, or have moved back to the jungle. It has only been about 2 days since they left.

I also bumped everyone up a level at the Fort (hey, it was a very good debriefing!), and now realize I need to update the character sheets for those 2 players who do not have the book or PDF of the game. And done. And everyone also gets a new trait, so we'll have some discussion on that. Basically, for me, they have achieved the primary goal: destroyed the temple and the crystals (well, they actually have the crystals) and keep the Nazi's from getting them.

Also hard to believe we've had 10 sessions, 11 counting session 0 way back when. There is at least 1 or two more in this game to get to a good spot as they want to get Charlie Alnut's boat back to him, Jungle Girl back to the jungle (though she may have other ideas). And they've yet to meet Rosie, Charlie's wife. Not that I can do Bogart & Hepburn justice, but they are who these two are after getting back from Africa. But I have several ideas for adventures in getting Jungle Girl back, and I really want to have dino-riders in here as that was why we really started this game, and oddly no one picked that class. So, we do need to have them in there. And as they have yet to meet the Nazon (which is oddly similar to Nazi but I was not thinking that when I used a random name generator to pick a name. Promise!)

There are also many more games to be had: Dr. Tong has a map that may lead him to the center of the earth, those coins are still a mystery (and one of the players came over briefly, and I managed to at least show him the physical coins. I really do miss face to face, but we're still not there for this group). And of course, the adventure of getting a feral child back to the jungle where she is apparently well-equipped to stay alive. So it may well be more than two sessions, though I am looking forward to playing my centaur Athagio of the Cephates Herd of the Perry Fields.

And yes, the recap is a bit brief - it has been a week since that session and I've not been keeping notes, so this is coming from my memory. I need to write things up the next day, but unfortunately work is getting in the way of playing! And my memory, well, where was I again?

World Building - Windmere Continues to Grow

Seeing as my group will be soon (probably!) seeing Windmere, I figured I could get back to a bit more world building. While I am actually getting to play, the GM has introduced several characters and a guild into the shared world we're building. And I thought, hey, I can add a guild (and pretty sure I have a book on guilds eventually showing up as I seem to collect world building books!).

Previous posts to Windmere are here:

• https://traveller-ct.blogspot.com/2020/11/world-building-windemere-crossing.html
• https://traveller-ct.blogspot.com/2020/12/windemere-crossing-people-and-keyed-map.html
• additional characters generated that may be found there:
• https://traveller-ct.blogspot.com/2021/01/character-11-of-31-fantasy-trip-elf.html
• https://traveller-ct.blogspot.com/2021/01/character-20-of-31-fantasy-trip-dwarf.html

I realize that I also tend to the optimistic and hopeful view of my fantasy worlds, and that for there to be something for the players to do, there also needs to be some darker undertones. This is a trading post town, built on the ruins of an older fort for the lost city of Tuvano to the north over the mountains (this is described in the Fantasy Trip Adventures volume 1; leaving breadcrumbs for my players so we can eventually get to play that adventure). 

The Sea Elf pirates have taken over the town (really mostly half-Elves at the Silver Pirate tavern). It is surrounded by a couple of kingdoms that have not been defined but may be at the brink of war. We have a rare raid from Ogres to the west. We also, being on a trade route, get a lot of traffic through the town. And an occasional trapper from the south, bearing furs as well as rumors of things that happen up in those peaks to the south of Windmere.

And not all traders are the good kind: perhaps there are slave traders (generally outlawed in my world, but could be some places allow slaves and you have to get them from somewhere [and adventure hooks]), animal traders, fur traders trading in furs from intelligent beings such as the Taer (see TFT Old School Monsters). And even good merchants may hire guards that tend to get rowdy and boisterous. 

Built on the ruins of a guard post, there may well be some secret underground tunnels and treasure vaults. And the remains of battle long ago in the desert to the north or along the trade routes. So lets throw a few more things into Windmere.

First, I think there should be a small mercenary guild here. They offer protection services to the various caravans that pass through. In fact, the group's guide (which I never actually figured out much but used a card from the TFT Deck, so will expand on her background a bit here, along with the Guild of Feathered Guards. 

Sonji Tho of the Aster Clan

ST: 10

DX: 16 (15)

IQ: 9

MA: 10

Weapons

Small bow (1d-1)

Saber (2d-2)

Dagger (1d-1)

Cloth Armor (1)

Talents

Bow

Sword

Area Knowledge (Kalor Desert)

Alertness

Missile Wpn x2

Hailing from the desert Aster Clan, Sonji grew up in the Kalor Desert, learning the ins and outs of living in the desert. Her clan wiped out by a roving ogre raiding party, she moved to Windmere. Knowing little else, she offered her services as a guide through the desert. Eventually she joined the Guild of Feathered Guards, giving part of her fees for guild membership, but also getting a place to stay when in Windmere. She usually takes groups along the Trail of Lost hopes that winds through the desert, passing through Ceawla on the way to the Elemental City of Athukthad . Ceawla posts: here, here, and here. Maybe I need to add an index to the blog. She is taciturn, does not talk about her past, but is quick to defend her charges. She can also shoot her bow twice per combat round with astounding accuracy. Between the high DX and the missile weapon skill, she only misses on critical fails for targets in range. 

Guild of Feathered Guards

Named for their skills with the bow, the Guild is a small mercenary guild based in Edge City. It has small guild halls throughout this area of Cidri, including repurposing the old barracks in Windmere. The Guild offers services for guarding and guiding trade caravans or adventure groups. Rates are generally 1 gold per day per guard, but may vary based on the route and hazards. For those going along the Trail of Lost Hopes through the desert, usually 1 guard/guide is sufficient for the 3 day journey from Windmere to Ceawla, and the additional 2 days north to the Elemental City. They may charge an additional hazard pay if the group does something dangerous against the protestations of the guards. The guards keep half of the fee, the rest going into the guild coffers. 

The guild is considered honorable for those who know about them. There presence is mostly in towns or cities that have a trade route passing nearby. They rarely use magic users, though they are not averse to using magical items. A favored magical device is the Quiver of Replenishment (p 159) that more senior members may have, along with a +1 DX arrow. 

The trademark bows of the guards are carved with a feather along the shaft. The number of feathers indicates the rank of the guild member. Ranks are also indicative of the missile skill up to 3; above that it indicates a higher rank as missile skill is only allowed to go to 3:

• Recruit - no feather. Always part of a larger group.
• Member - one feather. May be solo on easier duties, part of a larger group for more dangerous journeys
• Sargent - two feathers. May be solo for minor and easy trips, or in charge of 1 or more other members up to 7 for more dangerous journeys
• Leader - three feathers. Can lead a few groups, generally in charge of the local guild hall 
• Guild Leader - four feathers. In charge of all the guild halls, and generally does not leave Edge City unless needed. The Guild Leader only stays in power for 8 years, then steps down. Rarely has a previous Guild Leader rotated back into that position.

Every 8 years, those who wish to become Guild Leader travel to Edge City. An archery contest, as well as a review of the applicants previous years of duty, are used to determine who becomes Guild Leader for the next 8 years. All guild halls have an archery range as well as fletching and bow making materials. However, they will often purchase bows from reputable crafters if they do not have their own bow mater. In Windmere, they will often get the Goblin merchant Jesp Zrag to procure good bows and arrows. They get a bit of a discount due to volume trading with the diminutive trader. Often the discount is increased if they parley information about the trade routes and their customers. Dugal Corbett, the local Guild Master, allows this to get better rates. 

In Windmere, the Guild of Feathered Guards has been revitalizing the barracks at the east gates. They keep their riding animals at Lurbuk's stables outside the eastern gates so that they are nearby. While the barracks does have some stable space, it has fallen into disrepair and not yet rebuilt. Rennor often stops by the Guild House, but she is more interested in the small town guard than in becoming a Guild member. They also pay a small tithe to the half-Elves running the town, and members can often be found at the Silver Pirate tavern, looking to see who may need guarding.

orange 24 for the Guild of the Feathered Guards

Rumors

And of course, there should always be rumors. I have plopped down several other Kickstarter settings around Windmere. to the south, across the mountains, is the lost city of Tuvano. Getting there though means getting through the mountains, which have their own set of perils, such as sasquatch from the Wampus Forest. Below Tuvano are the Yol'Najj ranges and all that. Or if they skip that, I'll come up with things that go east or west of Windmere.

Rumors would be like:

• there are hidden catacombs below the city. And Jesp's store is sitting on the entrance!
• the raiding Orcs are related to Lurbuk
• trappers have gone missing in the mountains
• there's a sandworm in that desert!
• there are buried temples in the Kalor Desert just waiting to be plundered
• a lamia is stealing children at night
• the Silver Pirate has a portal to the sea in the back room - can't you smell the sea salt and hear sea gulls?
• a battle almost a century ago between armies has left a stash of magical weapons on the eastern route. I have a map...

I have several PDFs of rumors. I need to go through those (and the various city encounter books/PDFs I have) to see what will go there. I also need to update the "index" page for Windmere to have a centralized location to find everything.

Total Party Kill: The Fantasy Trip

I finally get to play the Fantasy Trip as a player instead of a GM, and two sessions in we have a total party kill. There are, of course, reasons.

First, the group I am playing in is a father and his 2 sons. Teen agers are not known for their caution, so we played a bit more dangerously than the players in my other group, which is mostly 50+ year old gamers who have been gaming for decades, would do. Though that group will also take some pretty heavy risks (I need to do a recap of the last session, and one of the players did get talked out of doing something that would have been, if not a most of the party dead, most of the party in a military prison). 

The GM, his first game, has a pretty solid campaign, and while we managed to beat the vampires in the previous session, we did not manage to defeat the Lizardman Wizard in the 2nd session. Now, as those who play TFT know, it can be a very deadly game. No resting and magically poof your hit points all come back. The GM was overly generous with healing potions (enough so to possibly distort the game, so that part has been pulled back a bit). We were a bit worn down from a gargoyle attack (and planning on going back to collect the gall bladders) when the wizard showed up. Rather than retreating, as most of us were at least a bit wounded, we made a full attack. Prentum, who almost can't miss in normal range with arrows, managed to plink him several times but never seemed to hurt him. Our bruiser got killed by 3 (yes, 3) lightening blasts. Pretty much the same for the other character, and, knowing if I turned tail & ran, Prentum could never live with himself even assuming he could get out before getting zapped, charged and died.

Turns out the wizard had a 20ST power stone, a ring of stone flesh, and a +4DX ring. So even if my short bow managed to hit him, I would have had to roll a 5+ to even hurt him. And as you all know by now, I do not roll well! Plus he was a 52 point wizard. So, from our 35 point characters, vastly overpowered. 

He was upset, especially as his son has had his 3rd character die in our games (twice because of me). Game balance is important, but also over-rated. We should not have attacked this character, but we did not know enough to see that he was far more powerful than us. A better solution would be to run away to live and fight another day. I've read some interesting takes on 5th edition, and glad I don't play that often. If you can't die in the game, there is no real point to me to play: no consequence and may as well play make believe and get everything we want. Not that you can't die, but the mechanics (of which admittedly I've only read about and not actually read) seem to make the monster points something that the players should be able to defeat. Now, I may be misremembering what I read, so perhaps it is not quite like that. But that does remind me that I also want to run or play the Blackest of Deaths:

Caution: This game was designed by using a unique mix of  Modern and Classic game  mechanics; however, this  game is very old school in it’s  principles and philosophies.  The  Blackest of Deaths has no modern sensibilities from a tonal standpoint. For those who have never experienced the old school way of play or for those who have but have now forgotten through the years, please understand this before continuing:  YOUR CHARACTERS WILL DIE.

Now, having died, we actually have 2 options. Our group had encountered members of the Crimson Blade, a witch hunting group from Edge City (yes, we are playing in my world, and he made up his own guild! So very cool!). I said we could play members of that guild, off to see what happened to that group we sent to Dead Man's Gulch. I've already rolled up a character for that:

Eyes are down here, bub!

But we could also play ghosts in the Spiral Isles, and possibly get those characters back. I've not heard back which way they want to go: if Spiral Isles, I'll have to read it through a bit better. And maybe even do a game review of sorts.

I got it from a Kickstarter, of course: Spiral Isles by Jere Hart — Kickstarter So we'll see if we play as ghosts in the land of the dead, or guild members trying to see what happened!

Traveller Expanding World Info

 I've not made up an ISS world map recently - I tend to do that when running games to give the players something to look at. And I have fun with it. But in looking at a few things the last few weeks (I've been re-reading some of my game stuff from my esoteric library) I've had some thoughts on expanding out the descriptions a bit.

First, I think a nice little chart for travel times may be useful. Rather than calculate this on the fly, there would be a listing for specific travel times based on G-rating of the ship. I am thinking something like:

The orbit time is based on the rules and is a simplification. Mongoose added some additional rules based on how fast you are actually coming in, which in most cases I think would be referenced if you were trying to escape something, so not a published value. However each world may have differing times based on the government and tech levels so that these base values may change per system. A highly regulated system may not allow a ship to accelerate more than 2G for instance.

And that leads us into one of the articles in the Mongoose Journal of the Traveller's Aid Society, volume 5: World Security Profiles. While in theory I really like a lot of code-looking things, without a lot of use or an application to expand them out, they can be hard to read (though I admit I used to be able to read the High Guard string and use it, but that was a long time ago). But from a player's perspective, I think it could be a useful tool as well, and aid in setting expectations. 

So looking at the code for additional info given, it is based on the system's government and tech level, and has the classic coding structure:

Spos-s

Where: 

• S is for security
• p planetary presence
• o orbital presence
• s system presence
• -s stance

Of course, these are all hexadecimal values, and like the law level, indicate a roll to avoid attracting system security. Basically, it is adding a more nuanced approach so that the planet may have a different level of security than the orbital areas out to the traditional 100 diameters. If the presence is less than the law level, it indicates that the security forces there are slower to respond. Essentially, this would be S333-s under the classic law level 3 for a system if not using this extension. But S300-s says that on the planet, it is the same roll for getting noticed, but in orbit there is no security presence (such as a world not having a high port nor a naval presence) and the 5 for presence means that they also have nothing past the 100D limit 

Now, that stance (the last -s). Stance indicates how proactive the forces are. If the stance is higher than the law level, routine questioning of Travellers is to be expected. Less than the law level, and you may not even notice them. These values are rolled using flux and a table for DMs to adjust from the base law level.

A system may well have multiple security profiles: the port, the world, an Imperial facility such as a Naval or Scout base, or even the resident noble's estate. 

Does this help the player? And would they even have access to this information? I would not imagine the ISS will be publishing this sort of thing, though it may well be available for Imperial security forces, or even some clandestine groups (and depending on your view of the the Imperium, may be bought for a price) It would help a bit if they are planning something nefarious. Other than that, it is just a more detailed expansion of the law level for various rolls.

Does this help the referee? I would say yes, as it gives a more detailed view of the world. If the rolls come out interesting, the law level is no longer a bland one size fits all: it can vary depending on where the group is at. And of course, I always like coding like that. One of my many incomplete versions of the trade program had the BITS cargo codes in there. Now there is some detailed code!

I am also re-reading the GURPS Far Trader book, and I think the trade info in there, though I would scale it down as they do posit a big ship universe. But it would give some additional economic info, in particular, trade between the neighboring systems. It may have been this book but I recall reading about a merchant star map which basically has this info encoded. Not sure how far down this rabbit hole I may go, but it is a fun one. It would be more fun if either my group were more into Traveller or I was a better referee to allow them to enjoy the game more. I'll just keep practicing!

And I also want a more nuanced starport system. There was a lengthy discussion on COTI that I don't think ever really went anywhere (as most discussions do). And while I thought I had expounded on that in a blog I could not readily find it (though I did find some of my old Traveller Tracker notes, and it had some really good things in there...maybe when I retire I'll try & spend a couple of hours a day to do that all over again with whatever technology is current. I mean, I have actually restarted it yet again, but this time was the more classic Winforms. Though I'd like to do something so that both Windows and Macs can use it, just not a website though it may end up being a localized web application you run without the internet. Perhaps I'll re-expound on that later. 

So in a final UWP expanded for our solo game on Montca:

Montca A639997-C S7D5-8

The security profile shows that the planetary presence is the same as the law, 7. However, up to the 100 diameter limit they seem to have a much higher presence. In fact, you WILL be stopped on the way in. Which did not happen in my last solo session except for a brief call from the port and an escort in. Beyond the 100 diameter limit they are not as present, despite Montca having a couple of research stations on its two moons. Finally, the stance of 8 implies that they will stop and check with Travellers more often than most law level 7 systems. So I'll keep that in mind for the next session.

Apex Session 9: Temple Attack!

For all my preparation, I actually had no idea what I was going to do once they actually reached the temple. So session 9 I just let momentum carry the game and made up stuff as we went along. 

They went back the the secret stairwell, and using a coin opened the door and went up the stairs. Dr Tong pulled the coin back but failed both his athletic roll then the save roll. Rather than squash the academic under a few tons of stone door, his camera instead got crushed. Death was perhaps preferable to the good doctor....

A quick search in the upper floor of the temple yielded a chamber with large crystals and a stone table with a patterned notch that looked to fit the crystals. In the meantime, they started to hear the Germans yelling for Dr. Mader, who is now with the group. While most of the group searched the room for anything else, Ace (or was it Archie?) moved some stone tables to block the stairwell a bit. After clearing the room of everyone else, Isla took a crystal and placed it in the groove. Suddenly, the ceiling seemed to disappear, and fresh air flowed through the room. They recognized the constellations as being the ones over Apex Island, so they were not seeing some strange new world. The next crystal made the walls in front of Ilsa seem to go away: they could see some lights from the guards as they were searching, and voices saying that she must be in the temple. Fearful that the disappearing walls and ceiling may also make the floor go away, yet needing to know what the crystals did, she picked the next one. This made the floors transparent, and they could see Captain Heinlich (yes, there is a Heinlich in every game I run. And sometimes play...) and a coupe of soldiers preparing to blast the secret door with charges. It was going to take them a few minutes to do so, and it appeared that while our group could see and hear them, the Germans were unaware of being spied upon. 

The next crystal caused a great beam to pierce the skies: the ceiling was again gone and this 4" wide beam seemed to reach the heavens. Ilsa stuck a dagger in, and it sheared off the blade. The handle was not hot, nor was the beam emitting any heat. Tong thought to see if the blades did the same, and with great trepidation, she put the point in, edgewise. It felt like an oar in the water, but did not seem to affect the crystal blade. Taking the next step, Tong placed one of the charging or sharpening crystals on the flat edge of the blade and gingerly passed that in. It was not the player's night for rolls as he failed that one, and the blade twisted in the beam, dropping the charging crystal. No damage and no one was hurt, but they noticed the beam changed direction with the angle of the sword. They managed to slice a slot in the temple walls in short order.

After hearing the secret door get blasted, they put the floor-seeing crystal back in. Using that, Archie managed to get a good shot at the first German up the narrow stairs: killed him with a single headshot. The Captain started yelling up the stairs that there was no way out, and to surrender. The group decided otherwise, and with some good rolls they managed to fashion a sort of parabolic surface from three of the swords. Using that, they started to basically destroy the temple in their attempts to kill the soldiers down below. They did kill the first group, including Captain Heinlich much to the player who hates my Heinlics (there is a history there) great satisfaction. Killing the remaining soldiers, and having the temple start to become very unstable, they used the floor clearing one to take another look.

The zeppelin crew and remaining two soldiers were running off. Turning the beam on the zeppelin, they destroyed that but not before seeing one of the soldiers run into the tent with the radio. Collecting the crystals, the used the wall clearing one to get out of the temple. While Ilsa and Dr Mader took off after the soldiers to prevent their escape, the others tried to get the remaining crystal out. Using a rope, they tied it to the crystal, stepped outside the walls, and attempted to pull it out. As soon as it lost contact with the base, the walls became solid, and the rope was neatly cut at the walls. 

Ilsa kills the soldiers but ties up the zeppelin crew. With the sun rising to the east, and the zeppelin burning brightly behind them, a pack full of the remaining 5 crystals, we close that chapter. 

So...I do have a few ideas what to do next. They do want to get back to the town, so we have a few more sessions to manage that. Of course, there are those crevasses to get back across, an escarpment to get back down as they took an ornithopter the way in, and a weeks worth of jungle to hike through. And of course, there is a German fort just below where they left their damaged boat. Archie does have the tools to fix it now at least. And I have 3 groups of NPCs that may yet be encountered, perhaps even four. We do know that Archie wants to find the source of the apple pie scent they encountered at the tower.

On a side note, I'll probably do another Traveller post: trying to work out the travel times for D10 and D100 based on planet size and maneuver drive. Actually did it in a spreadsheet. I know there must be a chart out there somewhere that already does this but heck if I can find it. Though I am using the straight formula T = 2 √ D /A where D is the distance and A acceleration. All in meters and seconds, so it really works out to Hours = (2 √ (planet size * 1609 / man drive ) / 3600. The planet size * 1609 is the conversion of kilometers to meters. Units matter.... Anyway, I'll go into this in another post with a table. I've just been guessing on transit times as it really does not matter a whole lot in my case. But an interesting thread on COTI has a comparison of a classic free trader with 1G vs a faster ship travelling the same trade route. And if time is money, then the faster ship in a few months of travel is several days ahead simply by shaving off the transit time to the jump point.

Solo Traveller: Montca 270-1106

 Another week in jump, another interesting week. While comms are down for the week in jump space, and with no passengers I had more time than normal on my hands. We had an issue with one of the cooling processors for the jump drive [rolled on the jump encounter chart and managed to get an engineering problem requiring all crew to help replace a large component; then rolled on a combat table and it was power plant. Now, whether or not you actually need a power plant in the jump has created some interesting discussions over on COTI, from the it just opens the jump space portal and you coast to  it maintains the jump bubble and is needed throughout the jump. I lean towards it is needed in jump to maintain the jump bubble as well as power all the systems. It just does not draw nearly the same amount of power needed to open the jump space portal].  It took most of the week to get the maker to generate the parts and to shift things around. Fortunately Egg amd Lando had things well in hand and we were not powering maneuver drives. But we will need some maintenance and replenishment parts when we get to Montca. Our engineers say it is more than good enough, but the League has its own inspections apparently, and we will need to get this recertified before we can take on more passengers.

We came out of jump almost exactly at 168 hours, just over 100 diameters or 600,000 miles. We're about 4 hours from orbit as the port squawks for ID. Passing along the No Refunds transponder code. Heading out towards the jump perimeter the crew of the 400 ton frontier trader Boudicca hails us. We exchange a bit of gossip, letting them know what was happening back on Tryonas while they give us some info on Montca. Apparently, we're just in time for a planetary celebration of Council Day, when the various social councils of Montca celebrate their purpose with renewed vigor. I have no idea what that really means, but apparently it is a big thing and we'll have a good time when we get there.

A system patrol vessel meets us partway there. We give our doctor approved ladings and pratique info, and were directed to land on pad 11 of Beta Complex. Apparently they could have interesting celebrations but bland landing designations. 

Coming in, I used the external cameras to watch as we approached the planet. Its sun was a speck in the sky, and some vast mirrors in orbit reflected more light down at the planet to help heat things up a bit. Most of what little land the planet had was snowy tundra, except for a small section around the equator. Reading up on things, the majority of people lived in large undersea cities, and had vast undersea farms where they got most of their foods from. Ewo was complaining about the berthing fees being higher here on Montca. Hopefully we'll be able to sell our 5 tons of electronics for a good price. Ewo is talking about looking for a broker: we would pay a fee but a good chance of getting a better price. 

Landing on pad 11, our ship cast multiple shadows from the orbital mirrors. It was a rather odd experience looking out over the landing area. As I signed off the comms, Lynwood came through, gave a brief smile as though he was thinking about something else, and went down the stairs to the docking ports. I followed Ewo to get started on selling our cargo and offloading the freight we had picked up.

[and I've no idea about passengers...I need to follow those rules about tracking these things. I do have a spreadsheet I've been using, but need to add a column to track passengers. we'll just go with no passengers. And actually re-read the last post for this, and nope, no passengers. The Captain "has a plan" which I've yet to figure out!]

The captain, accompanied by Egg, had already left by the time I got the cargo bay situated and the unloading started. Had to wear a breather mask: it was so cold, and the air was very thin that I would have passed out pretty quickly! Fortunately for that, we did not have a full bay, so unloaded all the containers. I was not sad to see those radioactives unloaded and moved off to some warehouse farther away. Ewo found a broker, one Bobbis Elber. We met in his office in the administrative complex at the main building. The tube trains were warm at least as we travelled from our landing site to the main complex. I couldn't really tell Bobbis' gender: mascara lined their eyes and they had purple shoulder length hair. Sometimes going to strange worlds with stranger customs really threw me off. While there was no huge need for the electronics here [no DM based on the only trade code we have, high population] they did mange to get at least the going price [broker 3 so +3 for a 5% cut; I rolled a 7, so +3 = 10 so 100% sale price, Cr500,000].  We paid Bobbis his C25,000 and still made a profit at least of more than Cr100,000. Unfortunately I was pretty sure that a good chunk of that may go to the maintenance and recertification we needed from that cooler we fixed while in jump.

Okay, managed to get to Montca finally. And did bring in higher berthing fees due to the class A port. Sold off the bit of speculative cargo they did have. Did not make out as well as I was hoping: trade can be hit or miss, which is the entire point. Wondering if I should see about getting Malik some broker skills. 

However: the broker thing I think breaks the trading. The way I see brokers is more at a system level: you have broker at your level only for that system. If I wanted to get technical, I'd probably re-read the Far Trader book and calculate the trade potential for the nearby systems. Far Trader as some really cool things going for it, though it does posit the big ship universe. But the broker DM would be reduced the further away from your home system you are, based on the trade routes. Part of being a broker is keeping open communications to know what is needed. With Traveller, ships are the open communications and out of date due to a week in jump to get to another system. Could make it simpler by just -1 per each parsec away, but I do like the idea that systems that do trade would perhaps help maintain your brokerage levels.

So I think I'll work out the trade codes and stuff for the League. My original trade program did all that as well. Wonder if I can find that code - it may still be on Github. Anyway, at least I managed to get back to this a little bit. Hopefully next solo session we'll get to explore the world of Montca as Malik & Ewa go off to look for cargo! And we've added a new contact for Montca, our ambiguous broker Bobbis.

And this is really the joy of Traveller for me: so many things you can do on a solo level. Wish I had some grognards to play with: we'd spend more time messing with the rules and figuring things out like the travel time from 100 diameters and all that. Think I'll also make that chart so I have it handy. I sort of half-guessed at the time based om a 2G ship. But really, a simple chart of planet size / G drive to get to 10 and 100 diameters should be easy enough. Right?

Traveller Costing - Berthing

 I was poking around various blog posts, and found this one at the Great Dungeon of the North about Traveller starship fees. I've always sort of glossed over the fees for a few things, but as with my other gaming, costing things is a challenge for me in fantasy games and Traveller (the only SF game I actually run or play)

Costs should vary, though in the Traveller universe, at least in the Imperium, there are rules and regulations to standardize that pricing. Mongoose has introduced a few variants in pricing that I sort of like: jump costs are not a flat Cr1000/jump for cargo (though that too is always contested). I've not looked at the T20 rules - I don't think I have those on CD (yet! as I also don't have one of the GURPS CDs, if I can find a 3rd and there is a 443 thing for 4 CDs for the price of 3, I may have to go there after all!) But a few topics in COTI have indicated that there are some really nice changes in T20. Poke through the Classic forum about what would you change in Classic for that. Some interesting discussion.

I do like that different ports will have different charges: after all, you are probably getting better and more up to date equipment at a class A port versus a class C or even a D. 

And that list also gives me warehouse fees. I do have the GURPS books and at one time I had read through the Starports book. I don't recall fees being variable in there, but I may have missed it. But there is a lot of info that can be useful even for Classic games. How GURPS describes warehousing:

Starports possess a large amount of empty space for the purposes of holding cargo until claimed and transported. In most cases, these are simply large, enclosed facilities. They may be located above or below ground at a downport, depending on needs and conditions. A transit shedis a warehouse located at a berth, for temporary storage of cargo just prior to loading or after unloading. In standard free standing berths (see p. 76), the transit shed is simply the space around the landed starship, but still inside the walled berth. Other warehouses are used for long-term storage, particularly of duty-free goods passing through the starport’s XT zone. They are normally centralized, away from the high-traffic sections of the port, some within the XT line and some outside in the local startown. Those outside the XT line will be local, usually commercial, property and not operated by the SPA. In all cases, warehouses are secured against theft by a variety of means. SPA realizes that the security of cargo awaiting transport is an important concern of merchants and corporations using their facilities. Standard SPA warehouse security measures are heavily automated, with a computer program linked to a variety of TL10+sensors providing the first line of defense, and human security personnel only summoned when a problem is detected. Port directors have the authority to customize their security measures, however. A thief with all the electronic countermeasures for standard SPA sensors might find a not-so-easily-spoofed security guard on site . . .

In looking for fees. either I can't see them or they are not there. I also looked in the GURPS Traveller core book (which I've never done as it is only in PDF and I just don't read PDFs the same way as something on paper). Anyway, I do recall that Classic had the flat Cr100/week for the first week regardless of port level. Assuming I can get back to my solo game (where does the time go?) I may do that as part of the world exploration I am doing in MTU.

In fact, I may even add yet one more straight multiplier: a rich world would be 1.5x the amount in those charts, a poor world .5x the costs. If I really wanted to get picky, you could also adjust based on the world government.

All this is part of the joy of Traveller for me. There are systems that a solo player can really get into. Traveller is a game that consists of several games, and I don't think its world building, as part of the rules, is matched by any other RPG I've seen or played. I think there are some extensive rules in Castles and Crusades for some world building, but it is all for a fantasy world. Traveller encompasses all the worlds. And the space between worlds. And the stars. And planetoid belts. Societies from stone age to incomprehensible future societies. And originally in 3 small A5 sized books!

Need to get back to my Travellers Guide posts, and perhaps add the berthing fee charts. I miss making planets for that. So now I am really hoping to get back the Malik and his adventures in the League of Planets. As I am playing instead of running the Sunday games, maybe I'll have some time!

And no wonder Traveller is often considered accountants in space :)

Finally, a picture of the still WIP of my character for the Fantasy Trip. It is the one on the left, though the mini is an Elf, my character is a regular human. The other archer is wearing chain and Prentum only wears leather. And by the way, we cleared out a vampire nest in our first session! Using a couple different shades of green, and I reversed the colors for each. Elf Green and Army Green from some Zombiecide paint sets I got.

everyone loves pictures

Apex Session 8: To the Temple!

Our intrepid adventurers waited until dark, then snuck around the German camp. Archie, followed closely by Jungle Girl, snuck over to the experimental jet and took apart enough things to make it unusable. He also found a box connected to the engines labeled Kristallbehälter. Fortunately, Archie does read German, and recognizing this as a crystal bin, decided it may make for a good jet pack. (note that in Apex, gadgets are ruled by level, and jet packs are not available to a level 1 gadgeteer. But he is planning...and thank goodness for on-line translators! Of course, I am still probably screwing up the German, but close enough for game purposes).

Then, Isla and Ace sneak into Dr. Mader's tent. Ilsa wants to convince her of the evils of the SS and the longer term plan to conquer the world We did some role playing, and I really should have had the player do a charisma check. I always remember too late! Anyway, she was convinced, and they snuck into the temple. They also put a tarp over the front hallway, to prevent any light leakage. A good idea as there is a patrol circling the camp, but not really paying enough attention. After all, there is no one else out here in the volcanic cauldron. 

Once in the temple, they start exploring. 

I used blocks to cover what they could not see, but I think there is a lot of room for improvement over a Skype channel for this. And I should have done a better narrative (and I point these things out to remind me of these things, not as a self-flagellation exercise). They go through the hallways and small chambers. Dr, Tong is ecstatic over the urns in the one chamber that have matching glyphs and images from the tower they stayed at. He took a lot of pictures (and so far has not failed any of the usage rolls: he must be carrying a LOT of film!).

There was a brief battle against a large feather dinosaur. Crystal swords swinging, and unfortunately for Jungle Girl and Archie, they tended to miss (I usually roll badly and the player behind Archie does as well. Reminds me of way back in college, my D&D monk somehow got an intelligent scythe during character generation. And even then I rolled badly: that scythe kept yelling at me to get used as a weapon and not just to cut the grasses. I missed a lot back then as well). Anyway, Ace kept swinging with his wrench (which we determined does 1d6 damage, as a club does 1d6-1 and this is a heavy metal wrench) and Dr. Tong seemed admirably fit to be hitting as much as he did with his sword. Again, only Ace managed to get hurt in this scuffle. Jungle Girl, who managed to leap astride the dino in round one, got broncod off, failed her dexterity roll despite being lithe, and fell on her butt in the spreading blood. It has not been her game for fighting. But after a few rounds the dinosaur was killed.

The room with the mummies was a bit different: there was the remains of a map that shared several aspects of the odd map they had found before. There was a match to Ilsa's coin, the Fifth Pentacle of Mercury:

I picked these as I actually have the 44 coins, and would have used them at the game table (and honestly, should get 2 sets, so that I can keep a full set and actually give the players the coins rather than getting them back at the end of each session...) Plus they seem interesting.

Putting the coins on the matching symbol on the wall did nothing. However - there was an indention fitting the coins under each of the three mummies! Putting her coin in the first one, there was a rumbling as the temple shook a bit, and the glyphs on the wall glowed yellow. Ilsa went to the wall to touch the glowing symbols. but to her surprise her wand went through the wall! She caught herself but managed to glimpse on the other side a bright green meadow in the middle of the day. Dr. Tong immediately wanted to see and leaned in, taking pictures. He also noticed that there were 2 suns in the sky. 

No one else wanted to look (and yes, caution does well because perhaps it is a 1-way trip, or the portal may fail and kill the character...). The next slot had the walls glowing blue. Tong leaned in to look but fell to his feet: the gravity was actually different on the other side, about 1.5 times what is Earth-normal. It was also dark other than a mass of glowing red eyes! Backing out quickly, the others saw a large spider claw reaching through. Quickly pulling the coin from the slot, the wall stopped glowing and the spider leg dropped to the ground. With a look of glee. Jungle Girl grabbed the claw and started peeling off the flesh. It was a very pointy claw. Tong also was successful in not dropping or breaking his camera.

While she was cleaning that and wrapping the talon with a leather thong for a handle, the last slot revealed a red glow. The other side was cold, cold enough to about freeze methane (it was the first chemical that came to mind...). Tong about had frostbite from the brief moment he was peering into this freezing hell. 

With no more slots, they also decided that this temple needed to be destroyed to prevent it from falling into the Nazi's hands. These are the good guys after all! And I am also not sure if I went too far in the weird worlds idea percolating in my brain. Probably need to concentrate on Nazis and dinosaurs first.

They did a bit more exploring and found a small flock of chicken-sized dinosaurs which were easily defeated. We left the group next to the hidden passage, which they had found, that lead to the upper floor of the temple as it was, for me at least, getting late.

Despite having more time to prepare, I actually did less preparation than normal. I think part of that is after 8 sessions I do tend to start flagging a bit for running games. And I also worry about the group having a good time. Next session they will hopefully get to the second level, and I do need to think about bringing the core ideas of the game back into focus as well. Not sure what will happen next session yet: the players have skirted around a few of the things I laid out, which is to be expected. But next session they will be at the top of the temple and maybe finding the secrets of the people who left it behind. Or just go out in a blaze of glory!

Apex Session 8 Preparation

Despite a 3 day weekend, I've not managed to get a lot of stuff done (mostly took some nice naps, so I must be more tired than I thought). And I did give platelets this morning, so got to watch the 1st couple of episodes of season 2 of the Mandalorian. And then realized I never finished watching the 1st season as I dropped the subscription before I had to pay for it. And also realized that if you don't watch a lot of stuff, it is no longer particularly important or even that entertaining. But I digress...

I've got the basic battle area for the upcoming session. There may not even be a battle, but I wanted to have things sort of displayed so they all have an idea of what they are facing (or at least, what they can see).

The background on the right was what I was using as a background, but then I could not see anything else I placed on that. And it is actually a metallic tile or something, but I liked the way it looked. Close enough to a volcanic basic. 

Anyway, I also found that searching for Nazi soldiers does not return a lot of actual hits for gaming. German soldiers worked, and now I wonder if I am on some watch list somewhere (but as I am not playing Paranoia, I'll just continue on with my life).

So we have the temple. the troop carrier zeppelin, the experimental jet and our soldiers. Color coded for me so I can tell the general soldier from the captain and Dr. Mader. We last left our adventurers peering over the escarpment and seeing the scene as it is mostly displayed in the image. I again sort of managed to leave us on a cliffhanger (almost literally as they did have to climb a bit of a cliff to get there!)

Still wish we could get back to face to face playing: I have nice battle mats and stuff, and enough Lego minis that I could do this (though as I don't have many Indiana Jones sets, I only have a couple German Lego characters somewhere in that giant pile of boxes and tubs next to me or in the closet under the stairs (and no, Harry Potter is not living there: it would be noisy as that is where the heater/AC system is). So I would probably use Star Wars Stormtroopers as I have a large number of them, and they are basically the same thing just from a galaxy far away. Plus we could avoid some potential misunderstandings: having voice only we can miss out on some of the nuances of the group (I may have to publish my mea culpa post from 2 months ago, but maybe add an addendum. I know I suffer a bad case of foot in mouth: I seem to be able to say the wrong thing without even knowing. I fail all my diplomacy rolls in real life as well as gaming!)

Anyway, I've not done a whole lot more than set that up, and considering I've had two weeks to prepare...

I'll dig back into my maps for a temple map. I had one on Tong's handout (which was just a PDF even though I printed a copy on parchment paper and it looks pretty durn nice!). Need to find that one and do a bit of work. I won't publish that one here as we are playing tonight, and who knows, maybe my players DO read this blog before I send them the link for the game recap :)

And this sort of segues into a semi-random thought: way back as a player, I used to map the dungeon as we explored it. First, as you may all know, I like maps. But more importantly, it actually served a couple of in-game reasons. First, it allowed us to get back out faster if we needed to. While I use the megahexes for the Fantasy Trip games for a lot of things, I've just allowed them to know how to get back out (and of course, that last adventure was not a particularly large temple labyrinth so it would have been hard to get lost). But it can also give you a sense of missing rooms or chambers. Large blanks areas on the map may be more than simply a large blank area. Not sure if "modern" gamers still do this. The group I am now does not, but we rarely have dungeon crawls. The last one we had, Delve, we were going one way to get through the remains of the castle. We were not going back to the beach. Though I do hope we get to play there again: Featherstone has leveled up, but with my rolls it hardly matters that technically he would be a level above the others. But we'll see what that GM says when we get back around to that game. And I even bought the book and compendium!

Anyway, not having watched any of the videos of people playing RPGs (and I just don't see why people want to watch others play, but then hey, I don't watch sports games or Twitch games. If I am not playing, why would I care? Guess I am not tribal enough!) I've no idea if players still have a designated map maker. And someone with a 10' pole.