Our Classic Traveller campaign continued today (over Zoom). The last two sessions were in January and February, before lockdown hit. This was the fifteenth session of the campaign.
In the last session, the PCs had defeated all the Aliens on board the mysterious starship the Annic Nova, which had appeared unexpectedly in the vicinity of Novus. Novus is a developing, frontier world that is desirable location for settlers and primarily agricultural, but the PCs were there mostly because it was on their way back home after a serious mis-jump.
The Imperial Navy Cutter Modiphius had caught up with their starship (the laboratory research vessel St Christopher), but the wordsmith PCs - Methwit the "diplomat" (ie spy) and Vincenzo von Hallucida, the noble owner of the St Chrisopher who was being patched through from on-board the Annic Nova - were stalling Commander Lady Askol and her aide-de-camp Marine Lt Kadi.
We started the session with a recap - given the 6-month pause in this particular game - and then the players decided that more stalling was in order. Their computer programmer on board the Annic Nova, Zeno Doxa, would need a week to have a chance of deciphering the workings of the alien computer. And so Vincenzo proposed that there be further discussions onworld about the strength of his salvage claim over the Annic Nova. He figured that it must be possible to fill a week on a winery tour! With another strong reaction roll Lady Askol agreed to this, and so seven player-controlled characters (Vincenzo and his close friend Leila Lo, the former owner of the St Christopher from whom he won it in a bet; Methwit; the other two noble PCs Sir Glaxon and von Jerrel; and as hangers-on Bobby "the Robber" (handy with an auto-rifle and with Streetwise-1) and Alissa (handy with a cutlass)) and the two NPCs went down to Novus, where for Cr 2,000 per day they had a good time.
Meanwhile the more methodical members of the crew - Roland the navigator and xeno-archaeologist; Zeno; Tony the all-round tech guy (Mechanical-1, Engineering-1, Jack-of-all-Trades-4); Blaster McMillan, the not-too-bright but very well-trained former Navy technician; and Xander and Johnny (Bobby's brother) as muscle in the event of more Aliens appearing - stayed on the Annic Nova. The roll to understand the computer was successful, and the characters also examined and made sense of the vessel's power system: rather than a standard power-plant the vessel has a great "sail" that collects solar energy and stores it in an accumulator that is able to power to jump pods (one jump-2, the other jump-3). Roland studied the video recordings on the vessel, which included astronomical information, and once the computer was working was also able to study the navigation logs. What he worked out (which did not require any rolls: as GM I just told the players) surprised him: on its last jump, instead of travelling 2 parsecs (jump 2, or approx 6.2 x 10^16 metres) in 1 week (approx 6 x 10^5 seconds) it had travelled 600 km (ie 6 x 10^5 metres) and had jumped forward in time about 2 billion years (6.2 x 10^16 seconds). He was also able to identify the location of the alien's world: it was jump-3 distance away, at the edge of the galactic rift which the PCs had crossed in their mis-jump, and was now known as Zinion. Their main settlement was at about 60 degrees latitude; but there was reason to think that Zinion would be colder than it once had been, as its sun had been burning for 2 billion years.
The players decided that they must have this ship - no need for fuel, and time travelling! But they didn't want to open the sail, which would be a dead give-away of their plan to abscond, and so they came up with a new plan: the St Christopher refuelled and charged its own jump pod, and then with some jury-rigged cables this power was transferred into the accumulator on the Annic Nova. The St Christopher then returned to Novus and refuelled again. A successful reaction check by von Jerrel's player (he has Liaision-1) ensured that the naval authorities on Novus didn't notice the double refuelling. And as it turned out, this was the beginning of von Jerrel's play to seduce Lady Askol.
The St Christopher then returned to the Annic Nova, accompanied by the Modiphius. The players had estabslihed a crew roster for each vessel - the St Christopher and the Annic Nova - which was workable, although it left the Annic Nova a bit understaffed on the engineering front. Von Jerrel invited Lady Askol on board the Annic Nova to be personally shown around the vessel; and with another successful check he was able to blow off her aide-de-camp, so she was not accompanied by any other Navy personnel. His reaction roll when he went to kiss her was a natural 12 (on 2d6) and so she didn't notice when the jump drive was activated. It was only when he took her up to the astrogation dome that she realised the vessel was in jump space. Another two strong rolls meant that von Jerrel assuaged her initial outrage and was able to continue his seduction ("I thought that you wouldn't want us to be separated!") - but she did continue to insist that, from the point of view of her official duties, it was a kidnapping and not a desertion.
The Annic Nova module describes the astrogation dome thus: "At the top center front of the ship is a transparent astrogation dome with a bearing race along the front half of its circumference. Mounted on the race is an electro-mechanical sextant connected to the computer; whenever the ship's power is on, this sextant is in constant motion." I told von Jerrel's player that von Jerrel - who has Psionic Strength 6 though no psionic talents - could sense that the sextant was a psionic amplifier. A successful throw (adding his psionic strength) allowed him to "attune" to it, and realise that this device enabled converting travel in space to travel in time (and vice versa).
Von Jerrel - who is extremely strong - carried the (now) sleeping Lady Askol down to a stateroom, and brought Roland and Alissa to study the sextant. Alissa, who is also psionic (and has some rudimentary talents), was able to sense the power of the sextant but did not attune. But with a successful throw based on Intelligence she was able to intuit that the device would permit travel backwards as well as forwards in time, but with a very significant degree of dilation in the former case. (None of us has sufficient command of general relativity, let alone quantum gravity, to do anything but handwave this stuff in the sci-fi context.)
The throws for misjumps and drive failure all succeeded (despite the short-handed status of the Annic Nova), but there was another problem onboard the St Christopher. While exploring the Annic Nova Vincenzo had inadvertently inhaled some dust/spores from some bales of vegetation in the cargo hold. Now he found himself afflicted by terrible pain; but he made a solid throw on Endurance, and so the condition had not progressed very far when Leila (who is a surgeon as well as former starship owner/operator) was able to operate on him: a growth had begun in his lungs and tendrils had broken through to his abdominal cavity, but she was able to remove it. Unfortunately he was still very week when she restored him to conscious (another successful throw on Endurance after she injected him) and so stuck at 2 rather than his normal 7 Endurance.
The two vessels came out of jump space at Zinion, which is the satellite of a gas giant. The first thing that was done was to use the St Christopher's ship's boat to skim unrefined fuel from the gas giant and ferry it back to fuel up the two pinnaces that also serve as "tugs" for the Annic Nova (it has no inherent manoeuvre capability). Then the St Christopher sent a signal down to Zinion. A scan with the vessel's sensors revealed that it was extremely cold (average surface temperature around -90 degrees Celsius) but that there was an area of warmth at the equator, suggesting a settlement of some sort. The signal - "We come in peace" - was transmitted in both the alien language (as best it had been deciphered) as well as in standard Imperial form. A welcoming return signal was received, in standard rather than alien language. The St Christopher landed - the "starport" was just a patch of ice kept clear and hard-packed, and the settlement included many greenhouses for the cultivation of food. The PCs was greeted by Isle and Cassie, who explained that Zinion is a free planet - so while the noble von Jerrel and the others were welcome, they would have no special status here - settled by people who had found Novus to socially/politically demanding. They called themselves "Greenlanders", alluding - as they told the PCs - to a movement of free peoples to a new land on old Earth. Cassie was a former Scout and had the use of a surplus Type S vessel, and so occasionally, if supplies from off-world were needed, she would do a run to Novus for them.
Von Jerrel - not used to deception - explained that the travellers had come here looking for an ancient alien civilisation, maybe billions of years old. The locals knew nothing of this. They had done some planetary surveys, from Cassie's ship, and so were able to give the PCs some maps and other basic cartographic/geological data; but the warmth of at least some of the waters on Zinion suggested seismic activity, and with no working model of the tectonics of the world there was no way to correlate a present to a past map and get a sense of the longitude of the alien settlement. But it seemed pretty clear that it would be buried under ice, and so once a possible location was determined they would have to blast through the ice with the St Christopher's beam lasers (luckily Johnny is handy with an ATV and is trained as a forward observer).
It was also established that the locals had no submersible for underwater exploration; nor do the PCs.
VIncenzo's player decided that, if ever there was a world with a branch of the Psionics Institute, this must be one: and so he suggested the characters look for it. I showed them the relevant rules (via screen share):
The world's population rating is 5 - so as I explained, to get 20+ on 2d6+5 would require a further significant modifier to be introduced by the referee. But the players decided nevertheless that Alissa, Bobby and von Jerrel would spend a week working their way around the settlement - of some 10s of thousands of people - looking for signs of the Institute's presence. So they did; and the throw at the end of the week was a 9 (7 on the dice +1 for Streetwise and +1 for Liaison). I rolled the encounter checks (5+ on one die) for 7 days, and got four encounters: two with fugitives, one with peasants, and one with a religious group. Partly for reasons of real-world time (ie the session had to finish soon) and partly for reasons of pacing and framing, I made some fiat decisions here: I narrated the fugitive and peasant encounters just as colour, to help flesh out the character of the "Greenlanders'" society; and I narrated the religious group as the final encounter.
The 8 worshippers called themselves the Temple of Assar - which the players might have noticed resembled the name of the world Ashar, where von Jerrel comes from and where the PCs first encountered psionics as more than just hearsay. Their leader calls himself “Enli” - reminiscent of "Enlil", a world where the inhabitants have a mixture of alien and human DNA, and which was a major focus of activity earlier in the campaign. Alissa wears a religious amulet she acquired on Enlil, and that was manufactured on Ashar, as a focus for her psionic powers. Their doctrine holds that the worlds of the Imperium will gradually come to an end as their atmospheres become poisonous and their temperatures too hot - whereas Zinion is the cold and pure land where survival and flourishing will be possible. There is a noticeable degree of similarity between this doctrine and the information in the prayer book that Alissa acquired on Enlil, according to which there are three worlds – a middle world, toxic hells (places of death), and a cold pure paradise (with no death or sickness, and travel by teleportation).
I also explained that the worshippers produce drawings when they go into ecstatic or trance-like states. Vincenzo's player asked "on spherical surfaces?" and I did answer that the drawings have a possibly cartographic appearance. A successful reaction roll meant that the worshippers showed these drawings to Alissa, who was able to remember them (Intelligence 11) and reproduce them (Dexterity 12) back on the St Christopher, for Roland to study.
My roll of one die indicated that it would take 6 weeks for the Annic Nova to fully charge from its solar sail; Roland's player's roll of one die indicated that it would take Roland 6 weeks to use the maps to work out a conjecture as to the tectonics of Zinion sufficient to get a sense of what the longitude might be of the alien settlement; and consulting the psionics rules indicated that Methwit (who together with Sir Glaxon as pilot and Olya, a NPC engineer in Vincenzo's employ, had remained on the Annic Nova) would be able to scan for life from orbit using his telepathy.
We finished up there, with Vincenzo's player saying that he didn't really want Cthulhu buried under the ice; I suggested that he might read At the Mountains of Madness.
********************************************************************
There was a fair bit of GM exposition in this session: the time travel, and the information about Zinion.
There was also some key decision-making by the players: to escape with the Annic Nova, taking Lady Askol with them; coming up with a way to keep both their starships together; and looking for the Psionics Institute on Zinion, which in conjunction with the encounter rolls led to my account of the Temple of Assar.
I was the one who decided to mix the Annic Nova with the theme of Alien, aliens and psionics. The players have turned this into an expedition to find alien ruins (?) in my ice-bound world.
I'm not sure I can explain why, but I am continuing to really love Classic Traveller as a RPG.
In the last session, the PCs had defeated all the Aliens on board the mysterious starship the Annic Nova, which had appeared unexpectedly in the vicinity of Novus. Novus is a developing, frontier world that is desirable location for settlers and primarily agricultural, but the PCs were there mostly because it was on their way back home after a serious mis-jump.
The Imperial Navy Cutter Modiphius had caught up with their starship (the laboratory research vessel St Christopher), but the wordsmith PCs - Methwit the "diplomat" (ie spy) and Vincenzo von Hallucida, the noble owner of the St Chrisopher who was being patched through from on-board the Annic Nova - were stalling Commander Lady Askol and her aide-de-camp Marine Lt Kadi.
We started the session with a recap - given the 6-month pause in this particular game - and then the players decided that more stalling was in order. Their computer programmer on board the Annic Nova, Zeno Doxa, would need a week to have a chance of deciphering the workings of the alien computer. And so Vincenzo proposed that there be further discussions onworld about the strength of his salvage claim over the Annic Nova. He figured that it must be possible to fill a week on a winery tour! With another strong reaction roll Lady Askol agreed to this, and so seven player-controlled characters (Vincenzo and his close friend Leila Lo, the former owner of the St Christopher from whom he won it in a bet; Methwit; the other two noble PCs Sir Glaxon and von Jerrel; and as hangers-on Bobby "the Robber" (handy with an auto-rifle and with Streetwise-1) and Alissa (handy with a cutlass)) and the two NPCs went down to Novus, where for Cr 2,000 per day they had a good time.
Meanwhile the more methodical members of the crew - Roland the navigator and xeno-archaeologist; Zeno; Tony the all-round tech guy (Mechanical-1, Engineering-1, Jack-of-all-Trades-4); Blaster McMillan, the not-too-bright but very well-trained former Navy technician; and Xander and Johnny (Bobby's brother) as muscle in the event of more Aliens appearing - stayed on the Annic Nova. The roll to understand the computer was successful, and the characters also examined and made sense of the vessel's power system: rather than a standard power-plant the vessel has a great "sail" that collects solar energy and stores it in an accumulator that is able to power to jump pods (one jump-2, the other jump-3). Roland studied the video recordings on the vessel, which included astronomical information, and once the computer was working was also able to study the navigation logs. What he worked out (which did not require any rolls: as GM I just told the players) surprised him: on its last jump, instead of travelling 2 parsecs (jump 2, or approx 6.2 x 10^16 metres) in 1 week (approx 6 x 10^5 seconds) it had travelled 600 km (ie 6 x 10^5 metres) and had jumped forward in time about 2 billion years (6.2 x 10^16 seconds). He was also able to identify the location of the alien's world: it was jump-3 distance away, at the edge of the galactic rift which the PCs had crossed in their mis-jump, and was now known as Zinion. Their main settlement was at about 60 degrees latitude; but there was reason to think that Zinion would be colder than it once had been, as its sun had been burning for 2 billion years.
The players decided that they must have this ship - no need for fuel, and time travelling! But they didn't want to open the sail, which would be a dead give-away of their plan to abscond, and so they came up with a new plan: the St Christopher refuelled and charged its own jump pod, and then with some jury-rigged cables this power was transferred into the accumulator on the Annic Nova. The St Christopher then returned to Novus and refuelled again. A successful reaction check by von Jerrel's player (he has Liaision-1) ensured that the naval authorities on Novus didn't notice the double refuelling. And as it turned out, this was the beginning of von Jerrel's play to seduce Lady Askol.
The St Christopher then returned to the Annic Nova, accompanied by the Modiphius. The players had estabslihed a crew roster for each vessel - the St Christopher and the Annic Nova - which was workable, although it left the Annic Nova a bit understaffed on the engineering front. Von Jerrel invited Lady Askol on board the Annic Nova to be personally shown around the vessel; and with another successful check he was able to blow off her aide-de-camp, so she was not accompanied by any other Navy personnel. His reaction roll when he went to kiss her was a natural 12 (on 2d6) and so she didn't notice when the jump drive was activated. It was only when he took her up to the astrogation dome that she realised the vessel was in jump space. Another two strong rolls meant that von Jerrel assuaged her initial outrage and was able to continue his seduction ("I thought that you wouldn't want us to be separated!") - but she did continue to insist that, from the point of view of her official duties, it was a kidnapping and not a desertion.
The Annic Nova module describes the astrogation dome thus: "At the top center front of the ship is a transparent astrogation dome with a bearing race along the front half of its circumference. Mounted on the race is an electro-mechanical sextant connected to the computer; whenever the ship's power is on, this sextant is in constant motion." I told von Jerrel's player that von Jerrel - who has Psionic Strength 6 though no psionic talents - could sense that the sextant was a psionic amplifier. A successful throw (adding his psionic strength) allowed him to "attune" to it, and realise that this device enabled converting travel in space to travel in time (and vice versa).
Von Jerrel - who is extremely strong - carried the (now) sleeping Lady Askol down to a stateroom, and brought Roland and Alissa to study the sextant. Alissa, who is also psionic (and has some rudimentary talents), was able to sense the power of the sextant but did not attune. But with a successful throw based on Intelligence she was able to intuit that the device would permit travel backwards as well as forwards in time, but with a very significant degree of dilation in the former case. (None of us has sufficient command of general relativity, let alone quantum gravity, to do anything but handwave this stuff in the sci-fi context.)
The throws for misjumps and drive failure all succeeded (despite the short-handed status of the Annic Nova), but there was another problem onboard the St Christopher. While exploring the Annic Nova Vincenzo had inadvertently inhaled some dust/spores from some bales of vegetation in the cargo hold. Now he found himself afflicted by terrible pain; but he made a solid throw on Endurance, and so the condition had not progressed very far when Leila (who is a surgeon as well as former starship owner/operator) was able to operate on him: a growth had begun in his lungs and tendrils had broken through to his abdominal cavity, but she was able to remove it. Unfortunately he was still very week when she restored him to conscious (another successful throw on Endurance after she injected him) and so stuck at 2 rather than his normal 7 Endurance.
The two vessels came out of jump space at Zinion, which is the satellite of a gas giant. The first thing that was done was to use the St Christopher's ship's boat to skim unrefined fuel from the gas giant and ferry it back to fuel up the two pinnaces that also serve as "tugs" for the Annic Nova (it has no inherent manoeuvre capability). Then the St Christopher sent a signal down to Zinion. A scan with the vessel's sensors revealed that it was extremely cold (average surface temperature around -90 degrees Celsius) but that there was an area of warmth at the equator, suggesting a settlement of some sort. The signal - "We come in peace" - was transmitted in both the alien language (as best it had been deciphered) as well as in standard Imperial form. A welcoming return signal was received, in standard rather than alien language. The St Christopher landed - the "starport" was just a patch of ice kept clear and hard-packed, and the settlement included many greenhouses for the cultivation of food. The PCs was greeted by Isle and Cassie, who explained that Zinion is a free planet - so while the noble von Jerrel and the others were welcome, they would have no special status here - settled by people who had found Novus to socially/politically demanding. They called themselves "Greenlanders", alluding - as they told the PCs - to a movement of free peoples to a new land on old Earth. Cassie was a former Scout and had the use of a surplus Type S vessel, and so occasionally, if supplies from off-world were needed, she would do a run to Novus for them.
Von Jerrel - not used to deception - explained that the travellers had come here looking for an ancient alien civilisation, maybe billions of years old. The locals knew nothing of this. They had done some planetary surveys, from Cassie's ship, and so were able to give the PCs some maps and other basic cartographic/geological data; but the warmth of at least some of the waters on Zinion suggested seismic activity, and with no working model of the tectonics of the world there was no way to correlate a present to a past map and get a sense of the longitude of the alien settlement. But it seemed pretty clear that it would be buried under ice, and so once a possible location was determined they would have to blast through the ice with the St Christopher's beam lasers (luckily Johnny is handy with an ATV and is trained as a forward observer).
It was also established that the locals had no submersible for underwater exploration; nor do the PCs.
VIncenzo's player decided that, if ever there was a world with a branch of the Psionics Institute, this must be one: and so he suggested the characters look for it. I showed them the relevant rules (via screen share):
Throw 20+ for a branch to exist on a given world (DM + world’s population);
If a branch exists, throw 9+ to locate it after a one week search (DM +1 per extra person participating (up to +3 if 4 or 5 people in total, or +4 if 6 or more); +1 per level of Admin. Streetwise and/or Liaison expertise); each participant is subject to separate encounter checks while searching.
The world's population rating is 5 - so as I explained, to get 20+ on 2d6+5 would require a further significant modifier to be introduced by the referee. But the players decided nevertheless that Alissa, Bobby and von Jerrel would spend a week working their way around the settlement - of some 10s of thousands of people - looking for signs of the Institute's presence. So they did; and the throw at the end of the week was a 9 (7 on the dice +1 for Streetwise and +1 for Liaison). I rolled the encounter checks (5+ on one die) for 7 days, and got four encounters: two with fugitives, one with peasants, and one with a religious group. Partly for reasons of real-world time (ie the session had to finish soon) and partly for reasons of pacing and framing, I made some fiat decisions here: I narrated the fugitive and peasant encounters just as colour, to help flesh out the character of the "Greenlanders'" society; and I narrated the religious group as the final encounter.
The 8 worshippers called themselves the Temple of Assar - which the players might have noticed resembled the name of the world Ashar, where von Jerrel comes from and where the PCs first encountered psionics as more than just hearsay. Their leader calls himself “Enli” - reminiscent of "Enlil", a world where the inhabitants have a mixture of alien and human DNA, and which was a major focus of activity earlier in the campaign. Alissa wears a religious amulet she acquired on Enlil, and that was manufactured on Ashar, as a focus for her psionic powers. Their doctrine holds that the worlds of the Imperium will gradually come to an end as their atmospheres become poisonous and their temperatures too hot - whereas Zinion is the cold and pure land where survival and flourishing will be possible. There is a noticeable degree of similarity between this doctrine and the information in the prayer book that Alissa acquired on Enlil, according to which there are three worlds – a middle world, toxic hells (places of death), and a cold pure paradise (with no death or sickness, and travel by teleportation).
I also explained that the worshippers produce drawings when they go into ecstatic or trance-like states. Vincenzo's player asked "on spherical surfaces?" and I did answer that the drawings have a possibly cartographic appearance. A successful reaction roll meant that the worshippers showed these drawings to Alissa, who was able to remember them (Intelligence 11) and reproduce them (Dexterity 12) back on the St Christopher, for Roland to study.
My roll of one die indicated that it would take 6 weeks for the Annic Nova to fully charge from its solar sail; Roland's player's roll of one die indicated that it would take Roland 6 weeks to use the maps to work out a conjecture as to the tectonics of Zinion sufficient to get a sense of what the longitude might be of the alien settlement; and consulting the psionics rules indicated that Methwit (who together with Sir Glaxon as pilot and Olya, a NPC engineer in Vincenzo's employ, had remained on the Annic Nova) would be able to scan for life from orbit using his telepathy.
We finished up there, with Vincenzo's player saying that he didn't really want Cthulhu buried under the ice; I suggested that he might read At the Mountains of Madness.
********************************************************************
There was a fair bit of GM exposition in this session: the time travel, and the information about Zinion.
There was also some key decision-making by the players: to escape with the Annic Nova, taking Lady Askol with them; coming up with a way to keep both their starships together; and looking for the Psionics Institute on Zinion, which in conjunction with the encounter rolls led to my account of the Temple of Assar.
I was the one who decided to mix the Annic Nova with the theme of Alien, aliens and psionics. The players have turned this into an expedition to find alien ruins (?) in my ice-bound world.
I'm not sure I can explain why, but I am continuing to really love Classic Traveller as a RPG.
