Mongoose Traveller: Hard Times on the Solomani Rim: Session 4

Cast of Characters:

• Baron Khoiayahelu (Aslan noble (Imperial rank is much greater than his Aslan standing) whose family's mismanagement of the family holdings has sent him travelling; keeps the rest of the party from becoming total murderhobos)
• "Chrome" (Droyne Sport pilot who has been separated from his kin and finds new families among various merchant ships he works on; moonlights as the baliset-playing "Red Devil")
• Alex Cross, M.D. (Rough around the edges former technician who became a medical doctor; his lechery is only kept in check by the fact that he has no game)
• Mihai Greenman (Perennial underdog. Former Marine, Arms Dealer, Broker, and Vagabond; always delighted when other people's bad luck matches his own)
• German Carrick (Incredibly popular baliset player who has been laying low the last couple of years after an alleged sex scandal)
• Stanislas Kubik (Very old administrative assistant and steward)

The Story So Far:
While at Bailey, the crew of the Princess Diana were able to help out a soiled dove in distress, fighting off an overzealous fan of her fan dance act. They moved on to the Mercy system, where they encountered the tail end of a Solomani raid on the system. Afterward, they ended up helping out one of their passengers deal with a creepy neighbor. In addition to passenger work, they have become quite the experts at space salvage. In the Uterobi system, Chrome managed to help a local musician drum up some business by donning a bright red wrestling singlet (with his Safety Orange Hawaiian shirt tucked into it) and a luchador mask (meant for a human, so it didn't quite fit the Droyne right) and playing some dueling balisets.

Session 4: Jackson
The trip from Uterobi to Jackson was uneventful. Upon arrival at Jackson, Mihai immediately attempted to find passengers, using German and his baliset skills to help drum up business. Unfortunately, it reminded the conservative citizens of this hot world too much of the ancient Freecreditreport.com jingles and no passengers seemed to want to go to Grant. However, the following morning, a businessman named Denton Angelo contracted a stateroom in the ship while it is berthed at Jackson Station while he furnished pink slips to General Products employees on Jackson.

That night, the gang hit the local hotspots in force, attempting to find information about the potentially lucrative Shulusish - Hayt - Diomedes corridor (noted by Chrome as 3 B-class starports in a 2-parsec separated line). While lots of money was spent on drinks and lots of fun was had, not really any information was found. The conspicuous spending of credits didn't go unnoticed, however. Famous talent scout Edward Noting recognized German Carrick and tapped him to find the next big music thing.

The crew decided that a liberty to Entertainment City in the hinterlands of Jackson was in order. At an all-access and, more importantly, open bar party, the party got to see all of the hot up and coming bands  that Jackson had to offer. Flaccid Bagel, a powertry band, managed to get signed that night by Noting, netting German some extra cash. (I describe powertry as Motorhead meets Aesop Rock).

After a hungover trainride back to Jackson Station, the party returned to the ship. German was happy to receive a royalty check from his publisher and Doc and Chrome went off to check the station's scrap pile. And found scrap. The next day, the party was approached my a besuited man known only as Mister Johnson, who contracted the crew to deliver an attache case to an associate in Grant.

Mihai, after a week and a half of wrangling buyers, was able to sell the fuel system they found in Mercy. They were finally able to find some passengers for Grant. The day before they were to disembark, they were approached by a panicked PFC from the Imperial Army. PFC Babcock missed his flight to the transport which was leaving system shortly. The Princess Di  managed to make orbit in enough time to save Babcock's skin. However, there was a brief moment of panic when the good doctor almost got arrested for assaulting military personnel. Thankfully, the Baron was there to smooth things over.

The following day, the low berth passengers boarded the Princess Di and the ship left for Grant.

What We Learned:

• You can fit a lot into a little over three hours. Four patron encounters and a little bit of trade.
• As Mihai's player mentioned as we closed, we are "getting our sea legs" and can probably now start kicking the game up a notch. I've been adding in layers as I learn about them. For example, this was the first session where the party had to start paying docking and berthing fees. Granted, the whole time they were on Grant it was like Cr150, but still.
• The players keep either lucking our or missing out on some nasty random encounters. One day, I'll get you. :)
• Some nice seeds for future adventures were planted.

Mongoose Traveller: Hard Times on the Solomani Rim: Session 03

Cast of Characters:
Baron Khoiayahelu (Aslan noble (Imperial rank is much greater than his Aslan standing) whose family's mismanagement of the family holdings has sent him travelling)
"Chrome" (Droyne Sport pilot who has been separated from his kin and finds new families among various merchant ships he works on)
Alex Cross, M.D. (Rough around the edges former technician who became a medical doctor)
Mihai Greenman (Perennial underdog. Former Marine, Arms Dealer, Broker, and Vagabond)
German Carrick (Incredibly popular baliset player who has been laying low the last couple of years)
Stanislas Kubik (Very old administrative assistant and steward)

The Story So Far:
While at Bailey, the crew of the Princess Diana were able to help out a soiled dove in distress, fighting off an overzealous fan of her fan dance act. They moved on to the Mercy system, where they encountered the tail end of a Solomani raid on the system. Afterward, they ended up helping out one of their passengers deal with a creepy neighbor.

The Session:
The session kicked off with an expedition into a debris field, where Dr. Cross and Chrome were able to secure some salvage--an old fuel system for a capital ship. The crew of the ship then made the jump to Uterobi. Upon arrival, they were immediately hailed by Port Authority and ordered to stand down at Heskott Station for a full inspection--ripping up floorboards, looking in panels, and leaving everything but the airframe touched. Meanwhile, Mihai attempted to find a buyer for the fuel system, to no avail. He was able to fill the Far Trader with lucrative high-passage tickets, however.

After turning down a job offer from a corporate psion, the crew took on a much more entertaining, albeit nowhere near as profitable, gig--drumming up business for a street musician. In order to announce the arrival of Terront Pace to the startown, they had him duel with the devil for the right to be the best musician around.

Just, in this case, "the devil" was Chrome in a wrestling singlet and luchador mask, attempting to play the baliset from the example shown by German on the last few jumps. Not much money was made, but plenty of talk was heard about the crazy new busker in the startown.

Another quick jaunt into the salvage arena allowed the crew to come into possession of some components, to include some couplings for capital ship batteries. The passengers were loaded on the Princess Di and off for Jackson they went.

What We Learned:
In some ways a less productive session, but all of us are starting to get the hang of the Mongoose Traveller economics subrules. We didn't have the Baron for this game, and German's player had to take off for a hockey game, so the players left weren't always the most conducive for some of the operations presented.

There were some events planned that didn't get triggered that could have been a big deal. The crew doesn't realize how lucky they are sometimes. ;)

Mongoose Traveller: Hard Times On The Solomani Rim, Session 2

Cast of Characters:
Baron Khoiayahelu (Aslan noble (Imperial rank is much greater than his Aslan standing) whose family's mismanagement of the family holdings has sent him travelling)
"Chrome" (Droyne Sport pilot who has been separated from his kin and finds new families among various merchant ships he works on)
Alex Cross, M.D. (Rough around the edges former technician who became a medical doctor)
Mihai Greenman (Perennial underdog. Former Marine, Arms Dealer, Broker, and Vagabond)

German Carrick (Incredibly popular baliset player who has been laying low the last couple of years)

Stanislas Kubik (Very old administrative assistant and steward)

The Story So Far:

While at Bailey, the crew of the Princess Diana were able to help out a soiled dove in distress, fighting off an overzealous fan of her fan dance act.

The Session:

After the brawl at the Sinner's Feast, the crew did a little bit of shopping with their newfound reward. The good Baron wrote some Aslan poetry (which you can read here) for Tania, a treat she absolutely adored from her burly old noble cat-protector. The rest of the crew did some shopping and got the ship ready for some passengers. The five poor souls who flew low passage were tucked into the stasis tubes and the first three passengers showed up no problem. The last passenger showed up in a decked out luxury grav car and negotiated with the crew to arrange passage for the grav car in return for his steward duties. Thus, Stanislas Kubik became the first employee of the Princess Di. He wowed passengers and crew members alike with his cooking skills as German regaled everyone with his Baliset skills.

After a week in jumpspace, the crew arrived in Mercy. Just as it was being raided by the Solomani. Chrome's deft piloting allowed the Princess Diana to quickly avoid the crossfire as Imperial Missile Fighters pursued the fleeing Solomani Raid Cruisers. Zipping away from the conflict, the Solomani were eventually driven out of the system, with one Raid Cruiser being boarded by marines from the Imperial Fleet Carrier Donovan Trent. The fighters from that carrier took notice of the Princess Di and sent over a squad of marines to make sure that the Far Trader was legitimate. After a routine inspection, the Princess Diana was cleared to land on Mercy.

As the passengers disembarked, three things of note happened. First, one of the low passengers was unable to be revived by the good Dr. Cross. One out of five, while higher than average, is still okay. Second, Stanislas was offered a full time job as ship steward and grav car driver. Third, a passenger named Rhonda Willet approached German with a proposition (just not the kind he got when he was on tour back in the day).

It seemed that a neighbor had been creeping Rhonda out. When the Princess Di jumped into system, she received a message from her landlord noting that this neighbor had been very interested in her return. The fact that he is a convicted sex offender only heightened her anxiety. All she wanted was the crew to check out her apartment ahead of time and make sure he wasn't sitting in the closed with a knife or anything.

Never one to shirk away from chivalry, the Baron accepted the task and the whole party went to investigate. German noticed someone spying on them from nearby--likely the sex offender. Upon inspection, it turned out that someone had been in the house while she was gone. Some ideas of vigilante justice were floated, but cooler head prevailed. The police were called and an investigation was underway.

With a little more money in their pockets, Chrome took the Princess Di to a nearby gas giant to refuel as Mihai negotiated some cargo (a few tons of Magnetite Ore and Prepackaged Ramen Bowls) and passengers (a few low-berth souls desperate to get away from the warzone). At that point we called it a night.

What I learned:

• Players can have fun without a single combat.
• The subsystems in the game are both numerous very complex and I need to get smarter about them, particularly the trade rules governing everything from freight, passengers, speculative cargo, and now salvage and mining operations.
• Prestaging a lot of the trade information, just waiting for the dice rolls was useful. I didn't include all of the information I needed, though, so it was a good learning experience.
• We're getting more comfortable with the Mongoose rules. I like them.

More Thoughts On My Cyberpunk Game

Max Headroom is continuing to blow my mind.

I watched "The Blanks" today and if you're not familiar, the new "Elected Representative" starts rounding up "Blanks," people who literally live off the grid--they don't exist in the government/network computers and they own televisions WITH OFF SWITCHES! In response, the Blanks hack the city's computers, causing a shutdown of television broadcasts, telephones, and even household utilities. Basically, Anonymous--the 1987 sci-fi style.

I watched this show religiously when I was a kid (I was in 6th grade when "The Blanks" aired) and watched the hell out of the original TV-movie. The show predicted many things that I find rather distasteful about modern society. Prescient is the best way I can describe this show.

Since watching Max Headroom is what got me on this Cyberpunk game kick, it's only right that what I watch works its way into my game. Both shortymonster and Phil mentioned Transmetropolitan in the last blog's comments. I, too, am a fan of Warren Ellis's gonzo sci-fi masterpiece. I think it's arguably the best written comic of that turn of the century period. The 90s were a transition time, from the heady optimism of the end of the Cold War to the reality check that was 9/11. Not too many people knew where we were heading, but if you read Transmetropolitan, you see Warren Ellis was one of them.

Max Headroom and Transmetropolitan. Two amazing glances into the future that show where we're heading if we don't start taking some control over our lives from elected officials and corporations.

So what does all of this mean for my game?

It means I have a LOT of work to do.

rainswept mentioned in his comment that Traveller and Max Headroom are chocolate and peanut butter. Yes, they are. While I've been looking at how I can add in cyberpunk elements to my Hard Times on the Solomani Rim game, the Third Imperium isn't a terribly cyberpunk future. That said, I really dig the Mongoose Traveller system. They have a pretty restrictive OGL, but I might be able to work the system. As it stands, I'd need special permission to use the equipment and cybernetics I am gathering from Supplement 4: Central Supply Catalogue and Supplement 8: Cybernetics, unless I'd want to rewrite the whole thing from scratch. I'm not that creative. However, necessity is forcing me into basically creating all of the careers from whole cloth. Here are some other things I've been kicking around:

• Reducing the term length from 4 years to 2. Cyberpunk is largely about youth. My current Traveller game has characters with 20-24 years experience. 10-12 is probably where I'd cap it for cyberpunk characters. Let adversaries, contacts, and mentors be appropriate.
• I've thought about adding in a Twilight: 2000-esque roll at the end of the term that determines if it's time to stop character generation. I'm thinking of using a mechanism similar to the aging mechanic--after three terms, roll a d6 and subtract the terms you have completed. If you hit zero exactly, you get ONE more term. If you are in negative numbers, you're done. Muster out, bucko.
• I've debated adding an event table to roll when you are done with everything, kind of the "what just happened that might have steered you to the freelance world" of the game. Make one for each career, and it'll be more social, giving Allies and Enemies more than skills.
• Neuromancer-style netrunning is out. I have never found a way to properly integrate Gibsonian hacking into a game. The attempts made in Cyberpunk and Shadowrun get an A for effort, but are just too clunky to be bolted onto a game that will mostly have non-hackers. Bryce never needed to jack in, so neither will you.
• There will be considerable matrices to govern social interaction. Suits and hobo gloves aren't meant to mix. What you wear, how you look, and what you look like you can spend will all have effects.
• Transmetropolitan had some gonzo shit in it. My game will too.
• My social and political beliefs will have a huge effect on the game world. More than any other game I've run, this will be a reflection of ME. I won't rant or beat you over the head with stuff, since player fun is ultimately the goal of any referee worth a damn, but it will be there.

I have a lot of work to do.

Thoughts on a Cyberpunk Game

I've been watching a lot of Max Headroom lately. FUCKING love that show. I would love to see it updated a bit more.

But more to the point, I want to run a game in it.

I've been on a Mongoose Traveller kick lately. I'm thinking it's time to get my blowtorch and solder out and see where I can go with this.

Mongoose Traveller: Hard Times On The Solomani Rim, Session 1

Cast of Characters:
Baron Khoiayahelu (Aslan noble (Imperial rank is much greater than his Aslan standing) whose family's mismanagement of the family holdings has sent him travelling)
"Chrome" (Droyne Sport pilot who has been separated from his kin and finds new families among various merchant ships he works on)
Alex Cross, M.D. (Rough around the edges former technician who became a medical doctor)
Mihai Greenman (Perennial underdog. Former Marine, Arms Dealer, Broker, and Vagabond.)

The Story So Far:
...This is the first session. This *IS* the story so far.

SESSION ONE: PORT OF CALL: BAILEY

So the crew of the Far Trader "Princess Di" settled down into the backwater port of Bailey, not far from the fighting between the Solomani Confederation and what is left of the Third Imperium. Upon entering the main concourse of Fenian Station, the Imperial Starport on Bailey, they witnessed the huscarles of Duke Gaius Pol, the Hammers of Sarun, execute the staff and patrons of a brothel who were allegedly disloyal to Emperor Lucan. Shocked, they went to the Sinner's Feast, a local watering hole where they were approached by a smuggler named Xero (who Chrome and Mihai knew of) who offered them a job to sit on some contraband for a few days. The Baron nixed such dishonorable work.

While Chrome was attempting to secure passengers for a trip to nearby Mercy, the group was approached by Tania Llotman, an exotic dancer who was looking to the players (most notably, the burly one-eyed Aslan) to help her give an over exuberant fan an idea of what's up. Unaware of the concept of the Soiled Dove, Baron Khoiayahelu jumped at the chance to defend this woman's... honor.

The next day, the gang attempted to track down some cargo to go with their passengers. Unfortunately, most of what was available was too rich for their blood.

That night, they returned to the Sinner's Feast to fulfill the job they promised to Tania. She set them up at a VIP table while she danced. They realized that Christoph Ghuran was a drunk who didn't appreciate the party spending quality time with his woman. He eventually mustered up enough liquid courage to approach the table. Chrome, using his Droyne ability to not be seen attempted to administer a hypo filled with a sedative to Christoph, but missed. It wasn't quite a good old fashioned Texas-style bar fight, but a fight did ensue, with the Baron grappling and brawling with Christoph, Chrome getting inadvertently involved in a brawl after throwing a drink at Christoph to distract him. Eventually, the Baron took down the drunk. Tania was ecstatic and the party went on all night.

WHAT I LEARNED:
You can minimize the level of murderhobo in a group by having one noble who has an Aslan sense of honor.
When you're drunk and in a bar fight, it's really insulting to have drink thrown at you by a Droyne.
I need to stage some of the commerce stuff ahead of the dice rolls.
I need a better, more detailed map of the sector for the players.

Welcome to Northumberland

So, I'm almost done with my Adventurer's Guide to Northumberland, an approximately 64 page guide to the Frankensteined Swords & Wizardry White Box game I'm hoping to run in the near future.  Unfortunately, the family I was going to spring it on has dropped off the face of the Earth, leaving me with a neat set of rules to test out and no one to play it with.  I've been playing in Joseph Bloch's Adventures Dark & Deep playtest for about a year now, and I'd like to get back into running a game, even if my Lamentations of the Flame Princess game never really seemed to click with myself or the players.

Anyway, here is the map.  The players will begin in hex 1948, in the border village of Camney.