Our Classic Traveller campaign continued last weekend. My main take home was the really big effect that the dice have on the play of Traveller.
I'll sblock the (long) session report, before saying a little bit about what I mean by this.
[sblock]Before the session I'd done a reasonable amount of prep.
First, I wrote up a list of established facts - that is, information that had emerged over the course of the first three sessions and so was settled truth for the campaign:
That's a reasonable amount of backstory for three sessions of play (at least it feels to me like it is), but it still leaves a lot of questions unanswered, like What is Li's agenda? Who is she working for? How did Alissa get infected on Shelley? Etc?
Second, therefore, I wrote a list of possibilities/conjectures, reflecting both player speculation from the previous session and some of my own ideas:
Third, I had read up on the laboratory starship St Christopher, described in the scenario Amber to Red in an early White Dwarf magazine - as written in that module it's not quite clear how it fits into the ship building rules, but I rebuilt it using those rules - it's a 490 ton custom hull starship, with a 90-ton custom small craft orbital laboratory. I decided that this was the vessel Leila Lo had used to bring samples from Enlil and to carry material to Olyx.
Fourth, and following on from that, I rolled up some NPCs to be Leila Lo's team. At least some of these had to be the NPCs who were running the warehouse in Byron's domed city, and so who had been captured when the PCs revealed the location of that warehouse to the Byron authorities. I decided that, while the PCs (in the previous session) were outside the Byron dome raiding the outpost, Leila Lo had been able to bail her arrested crew members. Altogether, including Leila Lo, I had 14 crew members who were able to fill all the positions on the St Christopher, plus had the technical expertise to have been plausible (but less than top-notch) operators of a bioweapons storage/experimentation facility. (None had very good mechanical or medical skills, which helped explain Alissa's escape.)
The final bit of prep took place on the bus I caught to my friend's house where we were playing. The St Christopher has 15 staterooms, so on the bus I rolled up a final NPC crewmember to pass the time. This ended up being a naval enlistee with skill in Ship's Boat, Communications, Vacc Suit and Forward Observer. Which gave me an idea for how to I might start the session.
The last session had ended with the PCs capturing the outpost and interrogating the NPCs. But they had been debating what to do with them. So when we started, I first clarified a few things about the what equipment the PCs had loaded onto their own and the NPCs' ATVs (this was being done by some of the PCs while the others had interrogated); and then raised the question of the fate of the NPCs.
Two of the PCs (the nobles Vincenzo and Sir Glaxon) wanted to hand the NPCs over to the authorities on Byron. Three (Methwit the spy, Roland, and maybe Alissa?) were worried that this would alert Li and her co-conspirators to the PCs' actions in thwarting the bioweapons operation, and hence (a) get them into trouble, and (b) make it harder to infiltrate further. The other PCs were indifferent. Sir Glaxon has Leader-2, and none of the others have Leader skill, so I thought that probably balanced out the numbers; and Methwit has a high social standing (A) which meant I thought the nobles didn't have too much of an advantage in that respect; and so the debate was resolved by simple opposed throws - Vincenzo's player vs Methwit's player (who also is the player of Sir Glaxon, and so was rolling against as well as for himself). The nobles won, and so it was agreed to hand the NPCs over.
I then announced that I was rolling for the day's random encounter, with a 5 or 6 indicating something. I rolled a 5, and so announced that they heard a loud blast not far from the outpost. A quick scan with the periscope and video equipment revealed that they were under fire from an orbital triple beam laser. I also explained the game's directed fire rules, which require a forward observer for this sort of thing; with corrections happening in intervals of two-minute turns. (I had used Oslem, my bus-generated naval character, as my random encounter.)
This had the expected effect of triggering a degree of panic and mass exodus for the ATVs. I got the players to write up a list of who was on which vehicle, and then they headed off, trying to avoid being blown up by the starship firing on them. Max Attack - who has ATV skill (ie applicable to both wheeled and tracked vehicles) - drove the NPCs' ATV (which is tracked), while Methwit (who has wheeled vehicle skill) drove the PCs' (wheeled) ATV.
The resolution of the ensuing pursuit had two components.
One involved communications - the PCs used their access to two different communicators in moving vehicles to triangulate the position of the spotter (who they worked out was in a small craft several km above the surface), and tried to jam her communications to the main vessel. This didn't work out (failure in an opposed check), and so they then shifted to a different strategy of making radio contact with the Byron air force (Max Attack, as a former Byron Army colonel, knew who to call), (i) calling for assistance against an unlawful orbital assault, and (ii) passing on all their information about the illicit bioweapons activities. (This required skill checks to further adapt the communicator they had modified in the previous session.)
The NPC in turn tried to jam this communication, but the players succeeded at that opposed check, and so their message go through. At one point one of the NPCs in the tracked vehicle tried to break out of custody and take control of the communicator, to radio in a surrender, but Xander - the rather tough ex-pirate PC - was able to stop this insurrection (our first hand-to-hand fighting in the campaign). And the NPC spotter made an offer to the PCs - that if they all stopped their vehicles and disembarked, they would be taken into custody on the St Christopher - but the PCs declined that offer, fearing that in these circumstances surrender would be tantamount to death. They therefore continued their attempt at escape.
The vehicular escape was the other component of this episode, and resolution of it was a bit ad hoc: I used a combination of the rules for directed fire, the general rules for using land vehicles, and also the single-roll resolution rolls for small craft encounters with starships trying to blow them up (but using vehicle skill rather than Ship's Boat skill). One player complained that it was "roll until you fail", but with the small craft rules it was more like "roll until you succeed" - which another player pointed out. The sequence of rolls under that system is - roll to evade; then roll to escape; if the former fails, you're blown up; if the latter fails, go back to the start and roll to escape again. The wheeled vehicle succeeded on both rolls first time round, but the tracked vehicle failed the first escape roll and so had to make another evade roll before successfully escaping (on the rugged terrain of Byron, escaping meant finding your way into a chasm or similar protective overhang (where the spotter can't spot you, and so the vessel in orbit can't fire on you).
Given that Byron's atmosphere is some combination of unbreathable corrosive gases, we had already established that its (tech level 7) air force uses propeller-driven rather than jet planes. When I suggested 300 kph as the rough speed of such planes, that was accepted by the table (a quick Google now reveals that to be something of an underestimate, but the techie-types and military history buff at the table didn't query it!). So it was clear that they had to hid out for a while before the air force would come to their rescue. We resolved the hiding until nightfall, and then the subsequent drive back to Byron, via simple narration.
When it came time to re-enter the dome, the players debated a bit what story they should tell. In the end they decided to go with the story that they were undercover Imperial operatives - with Max Attack as their local contact - who had been sent to uncover the bioweapons operations. Methwit forged some Imperial documents to this effect, and a successful Admin check meant that their story was accepted without the papers being scrutinised too closely. They forfeited their prisoners, the NPCs' ATV, and the NPCs' firearms, except for a laser rifle which Alissa retained for her personal use!
The rest of the session was mostly downtime - at first Alissa (who needed hospitalisation to recover from having been shot) was denied entry to any hospital (the hospitals being busy trying to deal with the outbreak of Enlil virus which she had precipitated), but after they insisted that she was an Imperial hero who had helped saved Byron from further bioweapon-caused outbreaks she was admitted and treated at public expense.
The players then decided that they wanted to find a new patron, so they hung out at the Travellers' Aid Society (both Roland and Sir Glaxon are members) and made a roll (with the +1 for Methwit's Carousing-1, they needed 4 or better on 1D). The roll succeeded, and then I let them make the roll on the random patron chart to see what sort of patron they encountered. They rolled a diplomat, and after the initial interaction got a good enough reaction roll to be offered the mission.
The diplomat approached them on the basis that they were agents of the Planetary Rescue Systems Inspectorate, which is an Imperial agency introduced in the old White Dwarf adventure The Sable Rose affair, and which I had determined was part of the Imperial Interstellar Scout Service. (My one-and-a-half page write up of the Scouts, which I did after our first session when I thought it might come in handy, incorporates ideas from Andy Slack's old Traveller article on the Scouts, plus some of what is in Book 6 on the Scouts, plus other stuff like the PRSI.) It was left ambiguous whether he really thinks this is the case, or is instead playing along with the cover story the PCs gave to the Byron authorities.
As I explained to the players - but the characters Methwit and Roland already knew this - the PRSI is an inspectorate responsible for inspecting and making recommendations on measures taken by planetary governments in finding and aiding survivors of crash landings, and thus has a more general information-gathering and oversight role in relation to planetary systems monitoring of take-offs and landings, entry and exit of crewmembers, etc. It is also a cover for various covert intelligence squads.
The patron diplomat - who presented himself as a civilian Imperial agent - explained that there were concerns about whether a number of Naval, Marine and Scout personnel had gone missing on Olyx. In respect of some of these personnel, and also some Scout vessels associated with them, there were irregularities in records being maintained by the various bureaucracies (including the Scout's Detached Duty Office). This, as he explained, generated concerns about whether Olyx was properly monitoring the arrival and departure of vessels and personnel to its Scout base, so that - if required - planetary rescue functions might be properly performed. Hence the need for a PRSI team to make an inspection, and the PCs were clearly the team for the job!
The players didn't really indicate what their PCs guesses were as to exactly how much this NPC knew about Lt Li's bioweapons program and scheming in relation to Olyx, but I think they recognised that the description of the mission had a strong euphemistic aspect to it. This was probably confirmed when the NPC inquired whether or not their starship had weaponry fitted, and - when they answered that it didn't - he then arranged for a twin pulse laser turret to be shipped to Byron and fitted to Vincenzo's yacht. The turret, plus the software necessary to operate it (both the Target and the Gunner Interact programs), cost Cr 3.5 million (1.5 m for the hardware, 2 m for the software - computing in the Traveller universe is very expensive and not very efficient) - but we all agree that that, plus a Cr 490,000 payment, bringing the total to MCr 3.99 - was still cheaper than risking an Imperial Scout ship being shot down over Olyx, and hence made some sense within the context of the fiction (while also constituting the throwing of some buffs by the GM to the players!). While waiting for the turret to arrive and be fitted - about six weeks - most of the PCs paid to do some training with friendly instructors (much of this was organised by Max with his old army contacts), and so Alissa developed Tactics skill, Xander Recon, Tony Mechanical and Vincenzo Carousing.
The 490,000 on top of the money for weaponry was 400,000 to help Vincenzo meet mortgage payments on his ship (a bit more than 200,000 per month, and the escapades so far plus waiting for the arrival and fitting of the turret took the overall period of his ownership to the third month, which he hasn't paid yet); and 10,000 per head for 9 members of the team. The ninth member - in addition to the 8 PCs - was the NPC Zeno Doxa, a computer expert whom the PCs had captured in the outpost, and whom they now helped successfully defend against his initial charges to be released on bail. Computer skill was the one area of expertise that the PCs didn't fill, and they thought that they would need someone with that skill to hack the computer systems should they manage to land on Olyx.
Zeno also passed on an interesting bit of information to Roland, in an effort to ingratiate himself into the group - when studying subjects from Enlil in the cold berth equipment that was part of the bioweapons experiments, he had discovered that their DNA was not fully human. This was exciting to Roland, because his main goal in travelling the universe is to learn about alien artefacts and activities. And Enlil is on the way to Olyx.
The session ended with everyone reconciling their finances after gear purchases and training and upkeep costs, and the party ready to take off for Olyx.[/sblock]
So why do I say that the dice have a big effect on Traveller play?
First, PC building is dice-driven. PCs are randomly generated. You have to roll to enlist in an occupation. If you fail, you have to roll for the draft (the PCs Alissa wanted to be a doctor but found herself drafted into the Imperial Marines). And improvement is also dice-based: the self-improvement rules require rolling 8+ to succeed, and if you fail that roll you can't try again for one (in game) year. At our table the player of Methwit and Glaxon succeeded on a roll for both his PCs; the player of Tony and Vincenzo succeeded for Tony only; and the other two players both failed for both their characters. (Though the player of Max and Alissa subsequently succeeded on a roll for Zeno Doxa.) And when undergoing instruction, a check is also needed to see if the character actually learned what the teacher is teaching. (As well as the instruction mentioned in the session report, Roland paid for a medical course, but the player failed the required roll, and so Roland didn't pick up anything new.)
Second, many of the setting elements are dice-driven. The default is for worlds to be randomly generated - and that is the process I used to create Ardour-3, Lyto-7, Byron, Enlil, Shelly and Olyx, which are the worlds that have figured in our game so far. (Although I have not generated their locations via the random process that Book 3 suggests - I've placed them in relation to one another as has seemed appropriate to support the unfolding action.) The two patrons have also been randomly generated; and while I think it's pretty likely that nearly any patron they rolled up might have been able to be given some link to the bioweapons/Olyx affair, the particular flavour that has taken on - building on the players' early cover story about being Imperial agents to get them to mount a surprise inspection on Olyx - is a function of them rolling a diplomat as a patron rather than, say, an arsonist.
Third, action resolution involves a lot of dice rolls, some of which are pretty crucial. The players were rather tense when making their checks for the characters to escape in their ATVs, as they were pretty sure that a hit from the lasers on an ATV would be game over. (I don't know if I would have been that brutal; or perhaps instead have had the lasers blow up the ground right in front of the ATV so they fell in, or perhaps blow off the back and so kill the prisoner NPCs but let the PCs in the front survive. As it turned out, I didn't have to decide.) If the PCs had failed in their cover story, then they would probably have been detained on Byron and things would be developing in a different direction.
This effect of the dice rolls is on top of the normal stuff that follows from player choices (eg they could have chosen to surrender to the St Christopher and tried to ingratiate themselves back into Lt Li's and Leila Lo's schemes). I know other systems use dice too, but the effect seems particularly marked in this system. Compared to 4e the dice matter more, because there's no capacity for managing randomness via metagame resource deployment. And compared to Burning Wheel there's less of a "say yes" element to action resolution, and so dice come into play even when the dramatic stakes aren't quite so high; and there is not as much control by either players or GM over outcomes (eg in BW looking for a patron would be a circles check, and so wouldn't have the same degree of randomness relative to earlier established elements of the fiction as does rolling on the Traveller random patron table).
It's quite an interesting RPG experience.
I'll sblock the (long) session report, before saying a little bit about what I mean by this.
[sblock]Before the session I'd done a reasonable amount of prep.
First, I wrote up a list of established facts - that is, information that had emerged over the course of the first three sessions and so was settled truth for the campaign:
* Lt Li (the PCs' original patron, who got them involved in her bioweapons operation) had a team on Ardour-3 (the starting world for the campaign) who had flown hi-tech medical equipment to Byron (the world the PCs currently are on);
* Those NPCs lost their spaceship to the PC noble Vincenzo in a gambling game (hence Vincenzo started the game with a Type Y starship);
* Hence Li had to recruit the PCs - including one whom she knew from his time in the service, the naval enlistee Roland - to fly a further load of equipment to Byron;
* Li had recruited a bunch of NPCs (whom the PCs captured and interrogated in the previous session) at the naval base on Shelley, a world in the general vicinity of Byron;
* The PC Alissa had been in the naval hospital on Shelley (forcibly mustered out of the Marines due to failing her first term survival check by 1), but had then - about the same time that Li was travelling to Ardour-3 to meet the other PCs in the first session - found herself in a cold sleep berth in a warehouse in Byron, infected with the Enlil virus (before being found and cured by the other PCs in a previous session);
* Li was the one who had brought Alissa in a cold sleep berth from Shelley to Byron, and the other NPCs on Byron didn't know that Alissa was infected with the virus (this came out under interrogation of said NPCs);
* The operation on Byron involved experimenting on bodies (both live and dead) acquired by some NPC rogues (who were among the NPCs the PCs captured), using samples that had been brought from Enlil (the world where the virus is endemic) to Byron by another team headed by the retired merchant first officer Leila Lo (who, we had decided last session, had a backstory with Tony, a PC retired merchant third officer), and with hi-tech medical gear integrated into the cold sleep berths;
* Materials had also been taken by Leila's team from Byron to a Scout base on the world of Olyx;
* The Byron-based group (ie the NPCs the PCs had captured and interrogated) had decided to break away from Li's operation and try to set up their own independent bioweapons franchise, which was why they had taken the hi-tech gear the PCs had flown to Byron to the out-of-dome decommissioned army outpost that the PCs had assaulted in the previous session.
* Those NPCs lost their spaceship to the PC noble Vincenzo in a gambling game (hence Vincenzo started the game with a Type Y starship);
* Hence Li had to recruit the PCs - including one whom she knew from his time in the service, the naval enlistee Roland - to fly a further load of equipment to Byron;
* Li had recruited a bunch of NPCs (whom the PCs captured and interrogated in the previous session) at the naval base on Shelley, a world in the general vicinity of Byron;
* The PC Alissa had been in the naval hospital on Shelley (forcibly mustered out of the Marines due to failing her first term survival check by 1), but had then - about the same time that Li was travelling to Ardour-3 to meet the other PCs in the first session - found herself in a cold sleep berth in a warehouse in Byron, infected with the Enlil virus (before being found and cured by the other PCs in a previous session);
* Li was the one who had brought Alissa in a cold sleep berth from Shelley to Byron, and the other NPCs on Byron didn't know that Alissa was infected with the virus (this came out under interrogation of said NPCs);
* The operation on Byron involved experimenting on bodies (both live and dead) acquired by some NPC rogues (who were among the NPCs the PCs captured), using samples that had been brought from Enlil (the world where the virus is endemic) to Byron by another team headed by the retired merchant first officer Leila Lo (who, we had decided last session, had a backstory with Tony, a PC retired merchant third officer), and with hi-tech medical gear integrated into the cold sleep berths;
* Materials had also been taken by Leila's team from Byron to a Scout base on the world of Olyx;
* The Byron-based group (ie the NPCs the PCs had captured and interrogated) had decided to break away from Li's operation and try to set up their own independent bioweapons franchise, which was why they had taken the hi-tech gear the PCs had flown to Byron to the out-of-dome decommissioned army outpost that the PCs had assaulted in the previous session.
That's a reasonable amount of backstory for three sessions of play (at least it feels to me like it is), but it still leaves a lot of questions unanswered, like What is Li's agenda? Who is she working for? How did Alissa get infected on Shelley? Etc?
Second, therefore, I wrote a list of possibilities/conjectures, reflecting both player speculation from the previous session and some of my own ideas:
* Alissa has expertise of 4 in cutlass, whereas the ambitious Lt Li has only expertise 2 - maybe they were fencing rivals, and Li infected Alissa both to (i) get an experimental subject and (ii) get rid of an unwanted rival! She could have done that, and taken Alissa to Byron, right before she then flew on to Ardour-3 and recruited the PCs;
* How did Alissa escape from the warehouse on Byron? Most likely just carelessness and/or malfunction, with the cold sleep unit having stopped working (perhaps damaged by the corrosive atmosphere of the world);
* Is Li working for (some branch of) the Imperium? Or is one of the players correct in speculating that she is running an entirely private operation, with the Scout base on Olyx having become - in effect - her own fiefdom.
* How did Alissa escape from the warehouse on Byron? Most likely just carelessness and/or malfunction, with the cold sleep unit having stopped working (perhaps damaged by the corrosive atmosphere of the world);
* Is Li working for (some branch of) the Imperium? Or is one of the players correct in speculating that she is running an entirely private operation, with the Scout base on Olyx having become - in effect - her own fiefdom.
Third, I had read up on the laboratory starship St Christopher, described in the scenario Amber to Red in an early White Dwarf magazine - as written in that module it's not quite clear how it fits into the ship building rules, but I rebuilt it using those rules - it's a 490 ton custom hull starship, with a 90-ton custom small craft orbital laboratory. I decided that this was the vessel Leila Lo had used to bring samples from Enlil and to carry material to Olyx.
Fourth, and following on from that, I rolled up some NPCs to be Leila Lo's team. At least some of these had to be the NPCs who were running the warehouse in Byron's domed city, and so who had been captured when the PCs revealed the location of that warehouse to the Byron authorities. I decided that, while the PCs (in the previous session) were outside the Byron dome raiding the outpost, Leila Lo had been able to bail her arrested crew members. Altogether, including Leila Lo, I had 14 crew members who were able to fill all the positions on the St Christopher, plus had the technical expertise to have been plausible (but less than top-notch) operators of a bioweapons storage/experimentation facility. (None had very good mechanical or medical skills, which helped explain Alissa's escape.)
The final bit of prep took place on the bus I caught to my friend's house where we were playing. The St Christopher has 15 staterooms, so on the bus I rolled up a final NPC crewmember to pass the time. This ended up being a naval enlistee with skill in Ship's Boat, Communications, Vacc Suit and Forward Observer. Which gave me an idea for how to I might start the session.
The last session had ended with the PCs capturing the outpost and interrogating the NPCs. But they had been debating what to do with them. So when we started, I first clarified a few things about the what equipment the PCs had loaded onto their own and the NPCs' ATVs (this was being done by some of the PCs while the others had interrogated); and then raised the question of the fate of the NPCs.
Two of the PCs (the nobles Vincenzo and Sir Glaxon) wanted to hand the NPCs over to the authorities on Byron. Three (Methwit the spy, Roland, and maybe Alissa?) were worried that this would alert Li and her co-conspirators to the PCs' actions in thwarting the bioweapons operation, and hence (a) get them into trouble, and (b) make it harder to infiltrate further. The other PCs were indifferent. Sir Glaxon has Leader-2, and none of the others have Leader skill, so I thought that probably balanced out the numbers; and Methwit has a high social standing (A) which meant I thought the nobles didn't have too much of an advantage in that respect; and so the debate was resolved by simple opposed throws - Vincenzo's player vs Methwit's player (who also is the player of Sir Glaxon, and so was rolling against as well as for himself). The nobles won, and so it was agreed to hand the NPCs over.
I then announced that I was rolling for the day's random encounter, with a 5 or 6 indicating something. I rolled a 5, and so announced that they heard a loud blast not far from the outpost. A quick scan with the periscope and video equipment revealed that they were under fire from an orbital triple beam laser. I also explained the game's directed fire rules, which require a forward observer for this sort of thing; with corrections happening in intervals of two-minute turns. (I had used Oslem, my bus-generated naval character, as my random encounter.)
This had the expected effect of triggering a degree of panic and mass exodus for the ATVs. I got the players to write up a list of who was on which vehicle, and then they headed off, trying to avoid being blown up by the starship firing on them. Max Attack - who has ATV skill (ie applicable to both wheeled and tracked vehicles) - drove the NPCs' ATV (which is tracked), while Methwit (who has wheeled vehicle skill) drove the PCs' (wheeled) ATV.
The resolution of the ensuing pursuit had two components.
One involved communications - the PCs used their access to two different communicators in moving vehicles to triangulate the position of the spotter (who they worked out was in a small craft several km above the surface), and tried to jam her communications to the main vessel. This didn't work out (failure in an opposed check), and so they then shifted to a different strategy of making radio contact with the Byron air force (Max Attack, as a former Byron Army colonel, knew who to call), (i) calling for assistance against an unlawful orbital assault, and (ii) passing on all their information about the illicit bioweapons activities. (This required skill checks to further adapt the communicator they had modified in the previous session.)
The NPC in turn tried to jam this communication, but the players succeeded at that opposed check, and so their message go through. At one point one of the NPCs in the tracked vehicle tried to break out of custody and take control of the communicator, to radio in a surrender, but Xander - the rather tough ex-pirate PC - was able to stop this insurrection (our first hand-to-hand fighting in the campaign). And the NPC spotter made an offer to the PCs - that if they all stopped their vehicles and disembarked, they would be taken into custody on the St Christopher - but the PCs declined that offer, fearing that in these circumstances surrender would be tantamount to death. They therefore continued their attempt at escape.
The vehicular escape was the other component of this episode, and resolution of it was a bit ad hoc: I used a combination of the rules for directed fire, the general rules for using land vehicles, and also the single-roll resolution rolls for small craft encounters with starships trying to blow them up (but using vehicle skill rather than Ship's Boat skill). One player complained that it was "roll until you fail", but with the small craft rules it was more like "roll until you succeed" - which another player pointed out. The sequence of rolls under that system is - roll to evade; then roll to escape; if the former fails, you're blown up; if the latter fails, go back to the start and roll to escape again. The wheeled vehicle succeeded on both rolls first time round, but the tracked vehicle failed the first escape roll and so had to make another evade roll before successfully escaping (on the rugged terrain of Byron, escaping meant finding your way into a chasm or similar protective overhang (where the spotter can't spot you, and so the vessel in orbit can't fire on you).
Given that Byron's atmosphere is some combination of unbreathable corrosive gases, we had already established that its (tech level 7) air force uses propeller-driven rather than jet planes. When I suggested 300 kph as the rough speed of such planes, that was accepted by the table (a quick Google now reveals that to be something of an underestimate, but the techie-types and military history buff at the table didn't query it!). So it was clear that they had to hid out for a while before the air force would come to their rescue. We resolved the hiding until nightfall, and then the subsequent drive back to Byron, via simple narration.
When it came time to re-enter the dome, the players debated a bit what story they should tell. In the end they decided to go with the story that they were undercover Imperial operatives - with Max Attack as their local contact - who had been sent to uncover the bioweapons operations. Methwit forged some Imperial documents to this effect, and a successful Admin check meant that their story was accepted without the papers being scrutinised too closely. They forfeited their prisoners, the NPCs' ATV, and the NPCs' firearms, except for a laser rifle which Alissa retained for her personal use!
The rest of the session was mostly downtime - at first Alissa (who needed hospitalisation to recover from having been shot) was denied entry to any hospital (the hospitals being busy trying to deal with the outbreak of Enlil virus which she had precipitated), but after they insisted that she was an Imperial hero who had helped saved Byron from further bioweapon-caused outbreaks she was admitted and treated at public expense.
The players then decided that they wanted to find a new patron, so they hung out at the Travellers' Aid Society (both Roland and Sir Glaxon are members) and made a roll (with the +1 for Methwit's Carousing-1, they needed 4 or better on 1D). The roll succeeded, and then I let them make the roll on the random patron chart to see what sort of patron they encountered. They rolled a diplomat, and after the initial interaction got a good enough reaction roll to be offered the mission.
The diplomat approached them on the basis that they were agents of the Planetary Rescue Systems Inspectorate, which is an Imperial agency introduced in the old White Dwarf adventure The Sable Rose affair, and which I had determined was part of the Imperial Interstellar Scout Service. (My one-and-a-half page write up of the Scouts, which I did after our first session when I thought it might come in handy, incorporates ideas from Andy Slack's old Traveller article on the Scouts, plus some of what is in Book 6 on the Scouts, plus other stuff like the PRSI.) It was left ambiguous whether he really thinks this is the case, or is instead playing along with the cover story the PCs gave to the Byron authorities.
As I explained to the players - but the characters Methwit and Roland already knew this - the PRSI is an inspectorate responsible for inspecting and making recommendations on measures taken by planetary governments in finding and aiding survivors of crash landings, and thus has a more general information-gathering and oversight role in relation to planetary systems monitoring of take-offs and landings, entry and exit of crewmembers, etc. It is also a cover for various covert intelligence squads.
The patron diplomat - who presented himself as a civilian Imperial agent - explained that there were concerns about whether a number of Naval, Marine and Scout personnel had gone missing on Olyx. In respect of some of these personnel, and also some Scout vessels associated with them, there were irregularities in records being maintained by the various bureaucracies (including the Scout's Detached Duty Office). This, as he explained, generated concerns about whether Olyx was properly monitoring the arrival and departure of vessels and personnel to its Scout base, so that - if required - planetary rescue functions might be properly performed. Hence the need for a PRSI team to make an inspection, and the PCs were clearly the team for the job!
The players didn't really indicate what their PCs guesses were as to exactly how much this NPC knew about Lt Li's bioweapons program and scheming in relation to Olyx, but I think they recognised that the description of the mission had a strong euphemistic aspect to it. This was probably confirmed when the NPC inquired whether or not their starship had weaponry fitted, and - when they answered that it didn't - he then arranged for a twin pulse laser turret to be shipped to Byron and fitted to Vincenzo's yacht. The turret, plus the software necessary to operate it (both the Target and the Gunner Interact programs), cost Cr 3.5 million (1.5 m for the hardware, 2 m for the software - computing in the Traveller universe is very expensive and not very efficient) - but we all agree that that, plus a Cr 490,000 payment, bringing the total to MCr 3.99 - was still cheaper than risking an Imperial Scout ship being shot down over Olyx, and hence made some sense within the context of the fiction (while also constituting the throwing of some buffs by the GM to the players!). While waiting for the turret to arrive and be fitted - about six weeks - most of the PCs paid to do some training with friendly instructors (much of this was organised by Max with his old army contacts), and so Alissa developed Tactics skill, Xander Recon, Tony Mechanical and Vincenzo Carousing.
The 490,000 on top of the money for weaponry was 400,000 to help Vincenzo meet mortgage payments on his ship (a bit more than 200,000 per month, and the escapades so far plus waiting for the arrival and fitting of the turret took the overall period of his ownership to the third month, which he hasn't paid yet); and 10,000 per head for 9 members of the team. The ninth member - in addition to the 8 PCs - was the NPC Zeno Doxa, a computer expert whom the PCs had captured in the outpost, and whom they now helped successfully defend against his initial charges to be released on bail. Computer skill was the one area of expertise that the PCs didn't fill, and they thought that they would need someone with that skill to hack the computer systems should they manage to land on Olyx.
Zeno also passed on an interesting bit of information to Roland, in an effort to ingratiate himself into the group - when studying subjects from Enlil in the cold berth equipment that was part of the bioweapons experiments, he had discovered that their DNA was not fully human. This was exciting to Roland, because his main goal in travelling the universe is to learn about alien artefacts and activities. And Enlil is on the way to Olyx.
The session ended with everyone reconciling their finances after gear purchases and training and upkeep costs, and the party ready to take off for Olyx.[/sblock]
So why do I say that the dice have a big effect on Traveller play?
First, PC building is dice-driven. PCs are randomly generated. You have to roll to enlist in an occupation. If you fail, you have to roll for the draft (the PCs Alissa wanted to be a doctor but found herself drafted into the Imperial Marines). And improvement is also dice-based: the self-improvement rules require rolling 8+ to succeed, and if you fail that roll you can't try again for one (in game) year. At our table the player of Methwit and Glaxon succeeded on a roll for both his PCs; the player of Tony and Vincenzo succeeded for Tony only; and the other two players both failed for both their characters. (Though the player of Max and Alissa subsequently succeeded on a roll for Zeno Doxa.) And when undergoing instruction, a check is also needed to see if the character actually learned what the teacher is teaching. (As well as the instruction mentioned in the session report, Roland paid for a medical course, but the player failed the required roll, and so Roland didn't pick up anything new.)
Second, many of the setting elements are dice-driven. The default is for worlds to be randomly generated - and that is the process I used to create Ardour-3, Lyto-7, Byron, Enlil, Shelly and Olyx, which are the worlds that have figured in our game so far. (Although I have not generated their locations via the random process that Book 3 suggests - I've placed them in relation to one another as has seemed appropriate to support the unfolding action.) The two patrons have also been randomly generated; and while I think it's pretty likely that nearly any patron they rolled up might have been able to be given some link to the bioweapons/Olyx affair, the particular flavour that has taken on - building on the players' early cover story about being Imperial agents to get them to mount a surprise inspection on Olyx - is a function of them rolling a diplomat as a patron rather than, say, an arsonist.
Third, action resolution involves a lot of dice rolls, some of which are pretty crucial. The players were rather tense when making their checks for the characters to escape in their ATVs, as they were pretty sure that a hit from the lasers on an ATV would be game over. (I don't know if I would have been that brutal; or perhaps instead have had the lasers blow up the ground right in front of the ATV so they fell in, or perhaps blow off the back and so kill the prisoner NPCs but let the PCs in the front survive. As it turned out, I didn't have to decide.) If the PCs had failed in their cover story, then they would probably have been detained on Byron and things would be developing in a different direction.
This effect of the dice rolls is on top of the normal stuff that follows from player choices (eg they could have chosen to surrender to the St Christopher and tried to ingratiate themselves back into Lt Li's and Leila Lo's schemes). I know other systems use dice too, but the effect seems particularly marked in this system. Compared to 4e the dice matter more, because there's no capacity for managing randomness via metagame resource deployment. And compared to Burning Wheel there's less of a "say yes" element to action resolution, and so dice come into play even when the dramatic stakes aren't quite so high; and there is not as much control by either players or GM over outcomes (eg in BW looking for a patron would be a circles check, and so wouldn't have the same degree of randomness relative to earlier established elements of the fiction as does rolling on the Traveller random patron table).
It's quite an interesting RPG experience.
