Greetings

On Thursday night we met in the Dolphin for our thirteenth session of The Traveller Adventure.  As usual this is a hodgepodge of game report and my commentary as referee together with notes on the.real world environment etc.

Yes, we're finally out of the woods and completed the chapter The Wolf at the Door.  A slightly curtailed session as Lily, our attractive archaeologist hired to do "admin" for the Captain who hates it is having a new kitchen fitted, wasn't at work, had to come in specially, and got held up in traffic.  Also, our new player last time managed to forget (despite a reminder) that it was *this* Thursday and only remembered on Friday morning.  That was a shame as Kunal, the pilot, had a good moment at the end.  Our medic, too, returned to NPC status.  Not sure why.  Perhaps his rookie outing as referee at his first TravCon had put him off entirely - although as I'll report in the next issue of Freelance Traveller, I thought he did really well.

Anyway, as far as I'm concerned, we had one of our better sessions.  Again, not entirely sure why and it may only be from my point of view but perhaps because of three things: player engagement with a thing I'd come up with, the end of a section which has taken four sessions and which gave us a sense of completion, and a relatively exciting/not too long bit of combat at the end to provide a climax.

We were on our second outing in the Dolphin pub in Old Portsmouth, opposite the cathedral.  You may recall they gave us their upstairs function room last time as an apology for messing up a table booking.  They'd said we could book it for this time providing no one paying money booked.  Unfortunately they had but the pub had been very good in reserving us a couple of tables downstairs in a favourite spot by a window overlooking the cathedral which is a bit quieter than the rest of the place which can get loud with music and quiz night.  With reduced numbers, we only needed one of the tables.

We finally got to it after eating - I tried their pizza which I'm not usually a huge fan of but had come so warmly recommended after previous meals I had to give it a go.  Very nice.  And we continued with the food theme.

You may recall we left the PCs deep in the woods on Aramanx, somewhere in the border country of Renitza, Senled, Lovrenyi etc on their way to Mining Camp #5.  Desperately hungry because they've not eaten properly in a while, save for a haunch of raw pouncer that a couple of them couldn't even get down.  Oh, and Lily who'd been on the other side of the river with all the rations; she was fine.  Kunal the pilot had managed to be captured by Renitzan border guards and the climax of last time was that rescue - which left them with three dead guards and three prisoners.  (And most of the March Harrier crew injured in some way or another.)  At the end I'd promised them details of the contents of the guard post.

So on my day off prior to running it, I'd produced a plan of the hut, a list of the contents, and had had a bright idea.  I wasn't going to detail the food, simply say that there was some stuff in a small fridge and some tins and dried food in a cupboard.  But then I thought it might be fun to label the tins.  In Renitzan.  The PCs wouldn't be able to take them all with them, and would have to choose.  Blind.  And no helpful pictures; this was military issue stuff with just stencilled labels.  So with the help of Google Translate I whacked a few possible tinned food possibilities through the mill and turned them into Bulgarian.  Why Bulgarian?  Well, because I'd already been playing the Renitzans as vaguely Eastern European (I think the Union of Senled was represented by my best American accent - UoS.... US... see what I did there?!  And when I say 'best', I still don't mean very good.  Lovrenyi I think was a more gutteral German accent.)  Also, I knew that Bulgarian would a) not be Russian which seemed a bit obvious and meant I could say 'no' with a straight face when asked (and I was) and b) used a cyrillic alphabet which would be nicely difficult without being totally alien.  I was also pretty sure that none of my players would be able to read it straight.  As it happens I familiarized myself with the cyrillic alphabet at college, so it's not too opaque to me.  Oh, and one other advantage of Bulgarian is that there's a lot of commonality with Czech which I'm somewhat familiar with so it gave me a huge head start on being able to pronounce the words and even to remember things like butter and milk without having to refer to my notes which looked impressive!

Once I'd had this idea it was a but a short step to decide that some of the dried food like sugar and coffee were in hessian sacks, similarly labelled (though considerably easier to determine the contents of) and even some of the things in the fridge (like the maslo and vino).  So I essentially had four short lists (tins, boxes, sacks and fridge) and I printed them out at a reasonable size to become a handout (or four when I ripped the paper up to divided amongst the players so they could all have a bit to look up). 

I probably spent all of about half an hour preparing this and it was relatively fun, (oh, and while I was at it I'd looked up "My name is... my rank is..., my number is..." and a couple of "who are you?" and "what do you want?" type lines), but I had thought that the food would occupy about five minutes of game time - in line with the time they might have in reality.  How wrong I was.

I set the scene in the hut for the players - three dead bodies (one out in the woods), three prisoners they've tied to chairs and me presuming there'd be an interrogation.  But nope, role playing to the hilt they were *hungry* and went straight for the food.  Partly driven by our 7 ft ex military Fred (played by mild mannered cataloguer Jane) being keen to improve his Steward skill, he started putting together something for them all to eat.  At which point I produced the labels and basically got to sit back for perhaps a half hour or more while the players deciphered what they could (they detected 'tomato' and I think had cottoned on to 'soup' by the end, as well as recognizing that 'bean' occurred in more than one place even if they didn't know what it meant) and the characters bickered about their best course of action.  I didn't just tell them what was in the hessian sacks either but described stuff like sugar as best I could and let them decide what it was through smell and taste.

In short, what I'd thought would be a bit of throw away humour for a couple of minutes or so turned out to really engage the players and give a sense of what the heck am I about to find and/or eat and seemed to really work.  I've tried to describe it more fully above in case anyone wants to replicate something similar.

Anyway, they finally did get to looking round the hut and found what they reckoned (correctly) was a weapons locker.  With a padlock on it.  Our inimitable Captain Loyd decides to shoot the padlock off.  Now with a good roll I'd have probably allowed it, but he didn't get a good roll.  Particularly as he still doesn't have any formal weapons skill.  (You may recall from previous sessions that he was the one wildly firing a pair of SMGs and even inflicting some friendly fire on poor Egon.  And yes, he's still calling them OMGs in his faux-ignorance.  It's a running joke that hasn't gone stale over three sessions - six months).  So everyone has ducked from the ricochet around the room - Tess, the engineer, looking aghast as a bullet lodges itself in the door lintel just a metre from her head and the Renitzan prisoners turning pale.  Their leader, still tied to chair, now desperately trying to jump and down and 'offer' a pocket to Loyd shouting "Klitch, Klitch" in a terrified manner.  We've established they don't speak Galanglic much.  Of course, this was something easy to role play although what the rest of the pub thought as I manically tried to get the attention of the gung-ho captain calling out in Bulgarian, I've no idea.  Fortunately I had my back to them.  Everyone, and I mean everyone, knows exactly what "Klitch" must mean and persuades the Captain not to try again but use the key they find in the Serznt's pocket.  (Of course, it was largely empty as all the soldiers had their weapons with them, but  I did decide there could be a TL9 laser pistol in their just for the fun of it.  And some ammo.  Oh, and a few grenades as Lily used up her explosives on the bridge a session or two back and because, well, Lily.)   (Give a PC explosives skill so they can take down the howood trees back on Pysadi; don't expect them not to come up with other uses for it....)

Meanwhile Fred's produced some warming broth which is restoring them considerably. and they might have been about to interrogate the prisoners, but I felt that they'd spent enough time faffing around that the big radio chirps into life and (in Bulgarian of course) is now trying to check in with the guard post.  "Come in post number 9.  Come in post number 9.  Come in post number 9.  Are you receiving me?"  Again, not sure what the pub made of my loud Bulgarian...

Tess tries sending back some gibberish in static and then just unplugs the radio. But this still large and not very subtle hint still doesn't seem to get the PCs moving very quickly.  I think I said last time the players (and so the PCs) can be a bit indecisive.  So while they finish up their soup, finish raiding the locker, I decide it's probably time they can hear helicopters again and that does prompt them to get going... fortunately in a different direction at first than they eventually want to go (North East to the mining camp.)

Well, we'd spent quite a bit of time in the forest previously and a fair bit of the evening had passed by now, so I decided we weren't going to live out every moment of what I reckoned was still a couple of days hiking - particlarly with wounds and Bannerji on a stretcher still.  We did have one stop so that I could deliver the Kfouzorr plot thing (about the vargr ship being built to take a meson gun that they wouldn't have access to) and one or two players did begin to join up the dots that they'd heard 'meson gun' a few times now.  The immediate suspicion was that the Kforuzeng mercenaries were going to nick the one on display in the Museum of Aramis - until I pointed out it was just a 'display' and not an actual meson gun.  Nice thought though.

We also had Lily walk into some hanging moss that was a bit more active than moss, but with our medic as an NPC we didn't linger on this or other animal encounters.  Shame... I'd prepared a quick and easy hit location or wound sheet so he'd have something to do treating their injuries.  I was also going to have Bannerji catch a local critter for food while he sat there at a break on his stretcher off to one side, but again I'm hopeless at remembering all the threads I'm trying to manage and although I had him ask to be put down in a likely looking spot a few metres off on an animal trail, I forgot to come back to that after we'd had the chat about the meson guns.  Still, the whole bit about him wanting to be put down apart from the PCs did nicely raise their paranoia levels and make them check they had his comm unit and he wasn't up to anything nefarious.  I did get them to give me a marching order when they moved off - mainly to have Gvoudzon at the front sniffing out any more of the dodgy hanging moss which he reckoned smelled like jasmine.  Again, nicely paranoia inducing even though there was no reason to ask particularly.  :-)

So we moved on to somewhere in the vicinity of the mining camp and of course Bannerji is directing them there and not to his ship a km away.  I'd also prepared a local area map for this bit which I was quite pleased with - it even had contours on it for the map librarian who plays Gvoudzon  I'd spent far too long putting trees on the thing for effect.  Without too much prompting from the NPC Kfouzorr, they do finally think to recce before they just walk in and of course with a map now know that this is *the next bit*.  So they're spotting the guard movements around the perimeter and working out wind direction and deciding how best to sneak into the camp.   I'm keeping quiet.  I know my players rather live for the moment and hardly concern themselves with the bigger picture that is TTA, but I'm just waiting, waiting.  Wondering if I'm really going to have referee either an assault on the camp (knowing there's lots and lots of guards) or work out the details in my head - I have nothing planned - of what walking in or sneaking in might involve.  But no, surely they'll get it...

Finally, someone looks up and asks "hold on a minute, why are we doing this?  why are we here?"  And the place collapses as they all realize they're a bit too focussed on the detail and missing the bigger picture.  "We're trying to get off the planet and Bannerji said his ship was here."  "Ah yes, that was it."  So at last they get their two advance scouts (Gvoudzon for his nose and Fred who actually has reconnaisance skill) to see if there was any sign of Bannerjis ship.  Nope they report.  And it couldn't really be hidden behind one of the converted container 'buildings'.  They sit on Bannerji's leg some more and eventually he points away from the camp.  "It's not too far from here."

Which means there's just time for us to head towards the ship, begin to meet crew members and have the Kforuzeng pitch up on masse (well, I had three squads of five) pitch up to try and retrieve the AWOL Kfouzorr.  As it was mainly a 'fire off some shots as we race up the ramp onto the ship' kind of combat, it wasn't too stretched out.  Gvoudzon took a hit, Tess, also unskilled with a weapon managed a second lucky shot with her ACR and took our one of the vargr.  You may recall that she managed a 12 when the mercenaries were attacking the mansion and took out their leader.  Lily found out how effective handgrenades could be.  The first fell a bit short, but the second had a quite deadly effect on one of the vargr squads and effectively 'suppressed' the others.

Now in an idle moment a few weeks back, I'd thought I might write a March Harrier Publishing adventure for the ne'er-do-well crew of the Wolblutn.  I've not, yet, got round to writing the adventure, but I had got round to doing full work ups of all the crew.  This paid off wonderfully now as the PCs asked about who they were meeting.  Instead of just a name and maybe a detail or two, I had full stats, skills and bios.  This meant it was much easier to role play them (although I was teased for *reporting* the swearing of one of them, rather than doing it).  Particularly so when Lily gets into the ship's computers and starts looking at their CVs etc.  It looked really impressive to have all that kind of detail to hand.  I should remember that for another occasion although it would be horribly time consuming to do it for all NPCs, even just those I thought might be interacted with a bit more than just in passing.

Anyway, Bannerji finds he can't pilot with his broken leg, so Kunal is invited to help out.  Bannerji enters his codes to activate the ship.  Someone else stays on the Bridge too but I've forgotten who - I must find out on Monday before everyone forgets.  Tess goes off to find the engine room and Delilah their engineer who's not overly keen on having help.  Everyone else congregates in the crew lounge to stay out of the way and although Gvoudzon first notices her, the Captain - of course - is now planning on chatting up the rather delightful Portia by finding out why she's on board.  Bannerji's crew reckon it's because Bannerji fancies his chances with her; they say she says its for her weapon skills.  You may recall that our failed lothario Captain Loyd wouldn't be above hiring someone for their looks and in fact may have been influenced to take on Lily for just that reason.  So when, with a completely straight face, he responded to the cynicism of the Wolblutn crew about Portia's hiring with a "well, I wouldn't dream of that kind of behaviour", I nearly choked. Gvoudzon, in high dudgeon goes off to man(?) one of the turrets while Portia is in t'other. (I'm not sure she actually was one of the gunners but I was stressed/tired/confused.)

Meanwhile, on the Bridge Bannerji pulls out a pistol on Kunal mainly because I remembered he said he did in the book.  My notes on the chapter were now well and truly buried under a zillion sheets of paper that had come but not gone in the interim so if I hadn't wanted to keep things moving i suppose I might have had the details to hand.  One of the players (out of character as he wasn't on the bridge) asked 'why? there's no reason'.  And having given it no thought until that moment was rather thinking I agreed with him.  I clutched at the idea that the PCs wanted to hightail it out of there, but Bannerji wanted to go and get some of his Sternmetal colleagues from the mining camp.  That seemed to satisfy.  I haven't yet gone back to the book to see what it says on the subject.  Also, this was supposed to be our new player's big moment what with the flying and the dealing with Banneji and pistol but of course as an NPC there was much less point in making a big deal of that bit.  Ah well.

I did remember to have the RPG that you all so kindly helped with a while back fired at the ship as it got going.  I'm not entirely sure everyone realized the significance entirely except maybe Tess the engineer.  When it patters like gravel on the hull, they're relieved in any case.  (I thought I might get more flack, hah!, from the player there, but it seemed to be accepted).  And off they went to orbit headed for their own ship once again.

Which is where we finished save to get some idea of where they might head next so I don't have to prepare *everything* in the vicinity.  Although I had worked out some cargo sheets and passenger possibilities and even some rough plot options just in case we got to that and needed to go on immediately.  Fat chance.

One thing that did come to me as I tried to get to sleep later than night - always difficult after the rigours of reffing and adrenalin high - was that I'd completely forgotten about Kfouzorr.  In the book he's supposed to die in the Kforuzeng attack.  But stupid me randomly determined that Gvoudzon got hit (and I was lucky not to kill him) and even that didn't remind me.

I could just start the next session with those in the lounge thinking he's on the bridge and those on the bridge thinking he's in the lounge and no one realizing that he's been left, presumably dead, on the ground near the ramp in the melee of boarding.

Or I could ignore the book and have him still alive (I'm not sure there's any actual *need* for him to die).  (Save the fact it's another NPC to keep forgetting about).

Not sure what's best dramatically there.  Or what's 'fair' to the players in terms of what I did/didn't describe.

Anyway, I think we had fun - I certainly did although I can't help feeling i could have made more of the drama at the end, and perhaps more of the atmosphere of the forest and so on.  And maybe there was more I could have got the players to do.  As ever I'll probably never know, but I still ask the questions.  Date of next time is already set and now I can switch off for a month or so.  But lots of decisions to make:
How much I'm going to make of Egon and whether his increasing catatonia spreas to the other crew
Am I going to encourage them to go back to Zila so we can do the Zilan wine chapter or just write it off  (it might not be much of a loss).  Or do the chapter on another planet?
How exactly do you do the next 'bit' of TTA as it seems to become more wandering and covering lots of worlds quickly.  I'm not sure.
Do I insert one of the classic adventures at this point as a sideshow just because it would be fun to do one of them at least and I might never get another chance? [1]
Do I invent my own side show for their next destination because there ought to  be 'something' or do I just allow them to have a boring couple of worlds that we just elide over?
I don't know!  And I'm not sure how you work out how to work out what's best?!

Ah well.  Till then...

tc

[1] I did have one bright idea.  How about Murder on Arcturus Station as a holoadventure they decide to experience on a say, TL12 planet?  Full immersion virtual world.  (Would make it easy to explain the lack of cameras and other security features on the station - it's a period piece!)
Annic Nova is for some reason calling to me as well - although I'm not sure I'd want to confuse the issue by them then having to choose whether to 'take' the ship.  I guess I could just have it impounded at the end, but it seems a shame.
I'll have to take a look at the CT adv, JTAS/Challenge options. 
After this last session I think I should avoid combat and Carsten was a bit 'people' oriented.  So what's left?  Exploration I guess.