Hi again,

Yes, it's that time of the every other month again...

tl;dr: Zilan Wine isn’t an easy adventure to run, but with the right group of players might be worth a go.  Once.  As ever, preparation was the key and much fun was had in the interstices of the actual adventure.

 

Well, it finally happened; I took the plunge; we appear to have survived.

 

Ever since setting off on The Traveller Adventure two and half years ago, I’ve rather dreaded this moment.  I’ve been apprehensive about the longish introductory exposition, fretted over whether I could make so many NPCs distinguishable and interesting, and doubted that I could make it all fun for the players.  Yes.  We’ve arrived at the Zilan Wine chapter.

 

For those who don’t know it well, it’s the one with the dreadful bureaucracy on a high law level world where the PCs are expected to obtain various forms from various government offices and dozens of administrators in order to export some valuable eiswein off planet.  (A long story in itself which I won’t repeat here – see the first couple of pages of the chapter, fully a page of which pretty much has to be read to the players.  Even “in character” as Lisa Fireau, as best I can manage, it’s a pretty long exposition.) 

 

You may have also come across it as Stranded on Arden or Exit Visa.  The former title was its first appearance which was in Adventure Gaming, no.6 in December 1981 as an eight page (US letter size) pull out adventure by Marc Miller.  It was then simplified somewhat to become Exit Visa in The Traveller Book, classic Traveller’s core rulebook, the following year in 1982 and first appeared as Zilan Wine in The Traveller Adventure, the year after that, 1983.  In 2001 the big floppy book Double Adventures 1-6+: The Classic Short Adventures republished Stranded on Arden and in 2012 the Mongoose version of Aramis: The Traveller Adventure, once again included Zilan Wine with updated Mongoose rules.  Sort of, there were some deletions and some carry overs.

 

(You may also have come across Stranded in Arden as (I believe) a completely unauthorized 20 page ‘reprint’ booklet published by one James Shipman who I understand to have illegally published a lot of Tunnels and Trolls material.  That volume doesn’t even bother to credit Marc Miller at all.  It’s dated 1993 if that means anything.)

 

In case you were thinking of running it in the standard Traveller setting, you should note that it changes location with title.  In Stranded on Arden it is set on Arden obviously - Spinward Marches 1011 (C5549CB-8 originally and now B5549CB-9 at travellermap.com).  Exit Visa is set on Alell - Spinward Marches 1706 (B46789C-A originally and now B56789C-A).  The Zilan Wine chapter of The Traveller Adventure is naturally set on Zila - Spinward Marches 2908 (was E25672C-7, now E556727-7).  So pick your subsector (Vilis, Regina or Aramis); pick your world.

 

Of course, you may be wondering after this bibliographic and astrographic diversion, why I just didn’t cut out the chapter if I was so concerned about it.  Great question.  Three reasons.  Firstly, I’ve been trying to run The Traveller Adventure as much ‘by the book’ as possible.  I’ve long owned it but never played it so it had taken an almost mythical quality in my mind as the classic adventure.  Well, strictly a campaign of course.  While there are some problems with it, particularly the beginning and various bits of railroading, it’s easy to see why it’s hailed by many fans if not all of them as a ‘great’.  It certainly gives a great overview of various aspects of Traveller.  Secondly, I’ve kind of presumed from the various incarnations mentioned above that this particular chapter is a favourite of Marc Miller’s and, I would guess, one that he has had some success with running personally and some fun for his gaming group(s).  So, difficult as it looks, as potentially dull as it seems, there must be something there.  Thirdly, related to that, it is of course a challenge; and one I decided I wanted to at least try.  You’ll probably be aware that I write a small ‘Confessions of a Newbie Referee’ column over at Freelance Traveller and this would be one example where I still feel very much a novice.  Corralling all those NPCs, creating variety and interest in something that’s a bit too close to the real life problems of university bureaucracy for comfort, actually managing all the strands you need to keep in mind.  It’s in the Traveller Book as if it’s an introductory adventure and I’ve heard people describe it that way.  Personally, I’d rate it as ‘advanced level’!  (I suppose I can see how it could be fairly easy if run rather mechanically in the way that old dungeons might have been.  See my worries above as to why I think it’s difficult.)

 

Anyway, enough of my angst and attempts to defend something I could have just skipped.  How about the evening itself?  The last gaming session had left us on another two-day, refuel and refine as quick as possible stopover on Carsten.  After their adventures and encounters last time (see Two Days on Carsten) the PCs were keeping their heads down.  Egon was pretty much out of things and in his cabin.  The doctor was trying to work out what was wrong with him with a bunch of physical and mental tests.  Lily and Captain Loyd were bickering about why the latter had turned down passengers and full cargo to take just 56 tons of medical supplies back to Zila.  Not to mention Loyd wasn’t keen to run into Mrs Bertand again with her pretty young thing daughter The Captain had been chatting up.  Tess was trying to sort out some engineering problems, Pilot Kunal was trying to get her couch back in a position she liked and their steward, Fred, having been caught short in the ‘fresher had ordered more toilet paper.  Unfortunately, a clerical error meant that 40 tons of the stuff was now crammed into every nook and crevice of the hold – even filling up their ATV – and Fred was debating how and what to tell the Captain.  That was last time for those read the write up back in July (https://archives.simplelists.com/tml/msg/8980705).

 

I’m known for perhaps overpreparing to run a session of Traveller but this time I’d started early as I knew it was complex.  I’d named all the dratted officials and given them brief descriptions; I’d created a few more where job titles (e.g. “Assistant to…”) implies there are others knowing full well my players would want to meet them as well; I ran simulations of the trail through the offices and bureaucrats to feel I had a handle on how it might work; I tried to come up with little flashes of colour so it didn’t all feel so samey (an official related to another one, one with bloodshot eyes because he’d been up all night with baby, one who insisted on a ‘walk and talk meeting’ and so on).

 

I’d also worked out that in the first of the Jumps between Carsten and Zila, it would be Fred’s birthday.  This was really nice because our chosen date for this session just happened to be the actual birthday of our engineer Tess.  Fred’s player, Jane, is an expert chocolate brownie maker and had offered to bring provisions along to the pub once we’d eaten a main meal.   I gave each of the players a slip at the start telling them their comm had reminded them of the birthday “tomorrow”.  I deliberately had this happen in Jump so they’d have limited resources to prepare anything.  Except for Fred himself who got a slip telling him that the toilet rolls weren’t a standard size but twice as heavy as usual, so they had half as many actual rolls as they were expecting.  (Yes, I really was sad enough to spend an hour with google finding out about size and weight of toilet rolls.  Where I discovered amongst other things, that toilet rolls typically in the USA are twice as heavy as in the UK (227g vs 107g).  Apparently you guys like your wipe to be softer… I won’t comment.  I decided it would amuse Jane and the others to not only discover this, but to find that their 40 tons of loo rolls won’t fit standard ’fresher fittings.  They might be harder to sell…  And yes, we had some pedantry about tons being mass and displacement tons being volume.  To be honest, we often have more fun with this kind of stuff than anything that’s actually published in the book (see previous write ups).

 

But moving swiftly on before the entire evening was flushed down the pan, we had some fun with trying to find presents on board a ship in Jump and even more fun trying to wrap them.  Of course, Traveller rule books have no clues as to what the odds of finding an old bit of wrapping paper in the ship’s locker might be so I set it as an Average task and they failed.  Much consternation.  Until of course they recalled there was a ton of paper of another sort down in the hold!  Meanwhile, Tess has decided she’s going to bake a cake but doesn’t want to do it in the galley which is normally Fred’s domain.  So cue her and Pilot Kunal talking to me elliptically about the stove they were jury rigging down in engineering.  Kunal’s player, Jonathan – our newest newbie – clicked immediately as to what Tess meant.  Jane, Fred’s player, didn’t until the in game cake was ‘unveiled’.  Whereupon we set to on the actual cake and sang Tess (the player) and Fred (the character) happy birthday.  Eventually we did actually arrive at Zila, retained the same legal firm as before rather than go through all that again and saw the advert about the free wine tasting.  With a couple of our players AWOL (the good captain and Lily who unfortunately had been waiting for just such a moment to use her Admin-2 skill!), everyone was happy to run with imagining that Captain Loyd’s care-free approach would mean the wine tasting was a sure thing.  Good job.  I’d bought a bottle of wine at the bar to share around the table just for the occasion.  Well, for that and the birthday.  It all came together nicely.

 

Oh, just as a side note, on arrival in the system and while they’re making planetfall we had some news items and adverts (locally Tukera buying up some ballots on Zila, the wine tasting, a special offer from their former legal reps; Imperium wide: court news regarding Strephon doing some uninteresting planetary visit off in core sector), but heading it up, news reports of Zhodani apparently doing something psionic to some Imperials on the border between the Marches and the Consulate.  This was to try and give a hint that Egon’s problems might be psionic in nature rather than physical or mental.  Not sure it worked but at least it was a reminder about psionics existing.  We also had a chance to review the basics of Zila (from the earlier chapter) for the two players whose characters might have been there but as players hadn’t actually joined us by then.  Cue a retelling of the bar fight in the Dead Spacer.

 

So, we did the tasting – nice wine it was too!  Lisa Fireau took them into her office.  No real way around the exposition except to read it.  Much longer than I’d like but just about within the bounds of doable and no flies on the players as they started wondering, “we’re not going to be able to just fly over there and pick up the wine, are we?”

 

But Lisa had prepared a list of the forms they required, found a tourist map of the starport and Cresence so they could see the Merchants’ Guild, Zila Port Authority, Zila Trade Authority, Bureau of Offworld Affairs, Department of Commerce and Imperial Consulate.  And off we went.  In fact I had actually prepared physical copies of the five forms – thank you Word templates and some faffing a week before – as I thought it might nicely mark their progress through the adventure as I ceremonially handed each one over and subsequently, if they found the right official, signed them with a flourish.  I think this went down well.

 

The players soon worked out that splitting up would be the best option.  With only four of them plus the two being run as NPCs, they split into pairs and thus three groups.  I could live with this – I had teased them with throwing my toys out of the pram if they all acted individually.  One of my other bits of preparation was realizing that it would be  handy to have a diary/calendar of the Morning, Afternoon, Evening and Night slots divided into the Periods that Zila has.  Essentially four per morning and four per afternoon.  So basically this was a simple grid of empty squares to track who they were meeting, when and who they were directed to or had made appointments with.  I even offered a copy of this simple sheet to the players selling it as the latest ‘all the rage’ software on their brand new TL7 computers to help manage the bureaucracy.  (Inspired by the way, IIRC, Lotus 1-2-3 made early PCs sell like hot cakes.)  The players didn’t bite and didn’t take a sheet so I let them make their own notes as best they could when they realized they’d probably better do so!

 

More helpfully, I’d also prepared a map of the starport/city (as a rough ‘tourist’ map rather than a detailed Ordnance Survey type thing) to show the locations of the ZPA, Merchants’ Guild, ZTA, DoC and BoA.  Well, not so much to show their locations as to show the five existed and let us put character markers in the right places so we knew who was where and doing what.  (Some el cheapo starport folk or something print outs I’d printed out earlier.)  Cue a detour into whether there was a figure that would do to represent Tess who’s been pretty accurately described earlier.

 

Along with my 16 page booklet of bureaucrats, one other single sheet I’d prepared for myself was a series of boxes representing which officials were in which building and which forms they handed out (or signed).  This made it much easier to refer to officials on the fly when asked questions about who was where than the numerically ordered list I had (which TTA gives you).  This was definitely the most helpful thing I did along with the map.  I did prepare a ‘blank’ one that had all the buildings, departments and offices but without any names of job titles and I was wondering about giving that to the players.  I didn’t, thinking it was too helpful, but perhaps I should have done a day or two into their travails as a way of letting structuring their encounters and meetings.  (Oh, and one other thing I did was create an index of all the officials by first name, second name and birthday order.  That last was so I could see if they arrived in an office when there might be banners up or cards in evidence and so forth.  I could just squeeze these three lists onto one page although I thought it was a bit extravagant and a waste of time.  In actual fact, it was really helpful.  The players of course weren’t ever privy to the numbers of each official given in TTA as I was dutifully telling them about the namebadges of receptionists, the desk nameplates of clerks and the door nameplates of supervisors.  So of course, they would refer to officials by their names and without those lists I might have been foundering in a sea of ‘who the heck was that?’  As it was, I could slickly look as if I knew exactly who they meant with just a moment’s thought.)

 

So, into the bureaucracy…  I could list all the NPCs we met and the route through the offices they took, but I suspect that would make dull reading.  I’m not even 100% sure I was interpreting the rules absolutely correctly (still not very clear on whether underlings can direct PCs to other offices to be seen relatively immediately or whether there’s an intermediate step of having to create an appointment with a higher officials’ minions (not mentioned in the text) for the 1D6 days (or whatever) till an appointment.  Never mind.  Time was passing, they knew they only had a couple of weeks at most.  Two of the PCs had headed out to the Provincial Offices across the continent – the Captain in a night sleeper bunk but Kunal in a recliner[1] – and although they were having a hard time getting to see the District Administrator (three failed rolls I think it was), they were getting on famously with an underling who the captain was making good progress in chatting up.

 

Meanwhile, back in Cresence, one PC was officially “mooching about” (his exhausted player falling asleep regularly, much to the amusement of those opposite at the table) while the others did the work.  One player tried to sidestep the Visa Applications by saying it was Lisa Fireau and Boris Dree’s job.  I quite liked that actually and nearly went with it, but a very poor roll reaction made me decide that Lisa and Boris were busy on getting the wine shipment ready and the PCs could just “get them while they’re in the building”.  I was a bit surprised I didn’t get more objection to this and might have caved.

 

Other bits and bobs were going on too.  One evening was spent back in the Dead Spacer wining and dining one of the cheaper officials.  Unfortunately Adma and Gvoudzon had been rather drunk under the table by her and Adma had to be carried home by Fred.  Tess who’d elected to remain on the ship and keep an eye on things was also helping coordinate some of the meetings.  She was also doing some window shopping for coveralls and dresses and accessories.  (This is our trans player, now on hormone treatments, so our female players love giving tips in moments like this – not that she needs them but always graciously accepts them.)  When the PCs discovered that one of the high up officials (#44 Vice Consul for Visas, Pensions, and Veterans’ Affairs – who I had randomly decided in my preparation was the mother of #16 Clerk in the Special Permits Bureau (PGAO) and was the one chatting very companionably with the PCs out there – could perhaps be encouraged to help with a bottle of eiswein, they remembered they had a bottle or two as ‘samples’ from their previous visit.  Tess was working on getting some ‘encouragement’ to the Vice Consul.  This time with proper gift wrapping, not some cast off toilet roll.  Adma, the medic doing the mooching and also having a lie in , was keen on selling the toilet rolls but not having much success.  (As far as he knew.  The task time frame I’d had him roll had success in 6 days, but they hadn’t got as far as six days passing.  So far, then, he thinks he’s failed.

 

By the time we got to the end of the evening and people needing to get on the road – about 3 hours all told (as usual we’d eaten first) – they had spent about five game days and obtained all the forms and had maybe a third of the signatures.  We’d worked through a fair chunk of the administrators but perhaps not even half of them.  I never did feel very comfortable giving them the information about what would ‘work’ on an official in terms of getting them on side and helpful.  There seemed to be no way of doing this in character and I could only resort to simply giving them the info for each character.  I’d fondly imagined I might be able to provide clues in speech, or office accoutrements and so on, but either a failure of imagination, a failure of time, or a failure of the PCs asking the right questions just seemed to mean this was impossible.  I’d love to hear of anyone who has managed this.

 

We decided to call it quits for the night, but I had to ask – I couldn’t bear this hanging over me for a another couple of months – whether they wanted to finish off the signatures next time or simply call it ‘done’ (and I might game it out in the intervening weeks just to see how it went based on the kinds of things they were doing).  Unanimously it was agreed that they’d had a good evening, but they’d also had enough of that particular game process.  Which seemed a fair enough outcome.  I felt I’d given it my best shot and even I was quite happy to take the rest of the bureaucracy as read and move on to the next bit.   I hope the players weren’t just being polite in saying they’d had a good evening at all!

 

In the days running up to the adventure as I worked on preparing it, I wondered if I couldn’t make the most of all the labour and perhaps run this scene along with a couple of others that we’ve done in three slots at TravCon next March.  Rather than try and run the whole of The Traveller Adventure, offer those who, like me, have always wanted to play it, ‘scenes from’ TTA.  In the deflated state I often am the evening and the following day after running an adventure, I decided maybe I wouldn’t bother with Zilan Wine after all.  I’m actually reconsidering that now – although still dubious – wondering if firstly, having done it once I might do it better another time and secondly, given experienced Traveller players might it run completely differently?  We’ll see.

 

Overall, I wouldn’t say don’t bother with this chapter.  It made a change from all the running around in the woods on Aramanx and it gave another view of Traveller and we made our fun with it as usual.  But I suspect you need the right group of players and perhaps a much better, or at least more experienced referee than I to do it justice.  Somehow I can just see Marc Miller himself running this with panache and engagement and a Rich Decision Making Environment that somehow makes the whole thing a lot more fun.  What I’m *really* glad I didn’t do was to add in the options offered in the old White Dwarf article called A Few Small Formalities… even though it says it accompany this chapter of The Traveller Adventure quite nicely.  I think that would have been a deathknell.  I’m glad I tackled it, I learned a lot (I think), and I probably beat myself up too hard immediately afterwards about “could have done better”.  We had fun, and that’s the main thing.  Our newbie player commented afterwards, “it’s like being in a film and getting to choose what happens”.  I think he liked it.

 

 [1] This was a nice bit of role playing.  Remember Loyd, the Captain, is being played as an NPC whereas Kunal, the pilot is being played by our newbie player who’s only had this and one previous session of TTA as all of his role playing experience ever.  I was letting him ‘play’ Loyd according to what he’d seen last time and what we’d told him about the character (see stuff about the Loyd’s Ladies tables in several previous write ups).  It was Jonathan, the player, who decided the Captain might pay for a berth for himself – perhaps imagining he could chat up someone to keep him company[2] – but leave his pilot to sort himself out.

 

[2] This gave me pause for thought.  A decade or so ago, I actually did catch an overnight sleeper train from Cologne (in Germany) to Prague in the Czech Republic.  I had a nice berth with door and sink etc, but passengers in the next carriage had 4 berth compartments with just curtains and no doors.  In the next carriage I think it was 6 to a compartment and a carriage or two later it was reclining seats, further down it was just seats (headed to Russia after the train split), and so on.  At one point, out in a corridor, I was asked by a Dutch backpacker about where her recliner might be and I could point her in the right direction like a good librarian with an enquiry.  There was just a slight air of disappointment in her demeanour as she moved off – or maybe I imagined it.  Now I’m left to wonder if I could/should have played my cards differently…