Classic Traveller AAR, part two (Saars storyline)

This is a continuation of the serialized after action report from my last live game session, playing Classic Traveller in my OTU, The Shattered Worlds campaign.

Stab pulled out a multi-tool containing a monofilament blade and the battery powered saw sliced through the duralloy fencing with a wave of his hand. He peeled back the fence from one side of the cut and stood back. Dab stepped through, weapon up, and posted up in a crouch several meters onto the grounds. Captain Green slipped through followed by Saars. Stab joined the troupe.

"You two go right, Saars and myself go left. Assess whether we got threats from each of these grow houses. We meet up in front of the control tower at the south end. Comms open, count off your buildings." Green gave his orders clearly without letting his voice carry. The rain had let up and more of the grounds could be seen through the lightening haze. Rumbles of the next weather system could be heard above black swollen rain clouds. The squad broke up and they made quick splashing sounds as they trotted through the mud. 

Green and Saars had just passed the second of the three long buildings on their side of the complex when Dab's voice crackled over the coms.  

"We've got the door on the west side open. No lights or power, all quiet."

"Post up, we'll come to you. We are going to cross straight over just south of you between building two and three." Green and Saars splashed their way across the grounds and caught up to Dab and Stab who were up against the wall, one on either side of the open door. Captain Green popped on the light attached to his carbine and shined it through the open door into the dark building's interior. Without a word he slipped inside, Dab right on his heels. Green gave the all clear and the other two men entered as well.

It was a typical farm outbuilding. There were six slug pools spaced evenly on the floor of the thirty meter long building. Normally the circulating equipment would be running, churning up the brown slop and feeding nutrients into the tub full of wriggling Skalvil mud-slugs. But the machines were off. Green and Dab were scanning the surface of the first large grow tub with their gun-mounted lights. 

"What the hell?" Dab stated flatly. The slug tubs were not all that deep. A meter or so of organic brown slop. This made it easy to see the fermenting pool of compost was jammed with eight or more naked bodies. All appeared dead. They had been soaking in the slime for more than a week, if the bloated bodies and loose, rotting skin were any indication. 

"Pull them out. I want to look at them." Green ordered his men. Saars looked on as the dead were pulled from the mud and laid like wet lumps onto the concrete floor of the building. Non-descript, men and women. Four of each. No obvious signs of death. No bullet wounds, cuts or blunt trauma. 

"I've seen that mark before," Saars says. He points to one the deceased's chest. A curious symbol is carved into the soggy flesh. Like a stylized lower-case "n" with three circles clustered within the upside down arms of the n. The terrorists which we killed at Oh-Rif. They all had this same symbol carved on their chest. And recently, like these poor bastards. This definitely ties the theft of the dead scout from the water plant to these slug farmers."

"Stab, scrape a skin sample off a couple of these stiffs. I want Collice's lab rats to test for poison and possible psycho-actives." Green ordered. "Dab, looks like your guess on cult looniness is close to the mark."

"What do you expect, living out on the wastes making your own clean water and clean air? Sooner or later something breaks down under corrosion and everyone starts huffing fumes and shooting their neighbors." Dab finished his statement with a quick scan of the ceiling with his light. 

"Okay, I've recorded some images." Saars put the pocket vid device back in his coat. "We should get into the control tower. If anyone is still alive around here they will be there. Or below in the living quarters."

Classic Traveller After Action Report

A "regular" in my mostly on ice Classic Traveller campaign was up for continuing his adventures last week and I was stoked to get to have more action "under the dome" on the planet Skalvil. We scrounged up a new player to join him, and after he printed his auto-generated Traveller character (ex-army) we got cracking. This is a continuation of Saars adventures. He was on the first adventure with three other players. They were cops and Saars was their contract computer hacker. After that first session Saars parted ways with his cop friends and has continued the starting adventure thread on his own. He has a current patron, the owner of a successful racing family. Very wealthy. Saars is trying to help him figure out what is wrong with his son. This means getting a hold of the corpse of a scout which has been kidnapped by colonists living on the Skalvil Wastes...

When Saars finished his debrief he waited for Collice to reply, rattling his ice around in his glass. He backed the last of his drink and sat back, waiting.

"I would like to send in a recovery team. If we have been able to locate the likely location of the stolen corpse this fast then OHRIF won't be far behind." Collice announced after completing his thoughtful pause. I have a team of three specialists ready to go. Very good at what they do. I would like you to lead them in. You'll be well-paid of course."

"What does 'well paid' amount to, exactly?" Collice smiled and stated a number which Saars definitely considered meeting the criteria for well paid. 

"I'm sure your comms and computer skills are going to be necessary.. Your crew will handle anything dirty so hopefully you won't have to shoot at people. They also have strict orders not to let you get killed. Deal?"

Saars nodded. "We'll need another grav vehicle. The last one is trashed by plowing through a Wempeer flock. It will need some bodywork before you send it up again."

Saars assault team was made up by a Captain Green and "spiff-jacked" pair of brothers, Stab and Dab. You could tell by their comm units being implanted in their neck. These would be feeding someone on Collice's end the pair's vital signs, live video, tracking beacon, etc. All wore high-end tactical gear (lacking any kind of insignia, of course), auto rifles built to withstand Skalvil's constant acid rain, sensing equipment, targeting shells, "air-eaters", and plenty of clips of armor piercing rounds. Green was a dry, somber man who served in the Inner Systems. Straight army. Dab and Stab apparently served under Green and followed him to the Outer Frontier in search of high paying merc jobs.

Dab did all the talking. To Green. Stab didn't say jack. Phlegmatic and sneering, the most noise Stab would make was a slight clucking sound in the back of his throat. Off and on. He looked bored to be there. Dab went down preferred landing and approach vectors with Green one more time and got into the new grav vehicle. Stab stored a bag of rifles and assorted small arms in the rear hatch. The grav unit was another high performance, all terrain jeep fitted out to tackle the cracked and splintering canyons of the Skalvil Wastes and not break down under the strain of the acid rain storms which were constant on this planet. Saars could tell it was clad in heavier armor. He stuck his auto-mag in his jacket pocket and climbed in next to Green, who was driving.

The garage doors sealed, the roof peeled back, and the Grav lifted into the purple, cloud-choked sky. The lights of Kazawan City were quickly lost behind a screen of drizzle. The heads-up 3D diagram gave a luminous depiction of the ground they were flying over. Green and red lines displayed the canyons, elevations and weather patterns on the windshield. The purple haze and mist ate up the arc lights. Green flew fast and steady. 

"Their is a decent sized bluff crowding the farm from the north. Land on the backside of that." Saars instructed. "This rig have good jamming equipment?" 

"Please," Green replied, not taking his eyes off the wet, purple slop they sailed through. "Tell me something about these slug farmers." he asked. 

"Not much to tell. The place has been a low output farm for ten years, maybe. The only anomaly I can find is they stopped doing business a month ago. Stopped shipping protein, turned back regular suppliers. I mean, it isn't anything they can't do, but hard to make a living if you aren't selling anything. Besides, these places have a clan size of 15-30 people. How much slug protean does a farm family need?"

"They've gone looney. Someone licked the wrong slug. We are going to find a colony of tripping sub-surface farmers. I sure hope I don't have to shoot one of these farmer raving and waving plasma cutters on a three-day burner." said Green shaking his head. Dab and Stab fingered and inspected their carbines again and again. The grav unit had to endure a sudden acid rain surge. It burnt out the exterior antenna and tight-beam transmitter. This meant communication between the squad and Collice was severed. Couldn't be helped. Once inside the compound Saars was sure he could hook something up and get back in contact.

"Strap in." Green announced. He cut speed, dropped the generator and the grav plummeted downwards. Ten meters from the ground, if the display was to be believed, Green popped the grav generator back on and the vehicle settled with a practiced, sudden stop. Green was able to make a slam landing without so much as a meter skid. They all pulled down their protective hoods and stepped out onto the rain soaked hill. Gravel-thick mud slurried around their boots and the rain came straight down. Their goggles pulled the disorientating purple of the atmosphere from their vision. 

It was a short walk to the crest of the hill. The farm laid below them. Rain bathed the grounds. Marking lights winked from their perch atop the perimeter fence. No could be seen moving on the surface and no lights appeared to be on in the slug hatcheries. At the opposite end of the farm from where they looked down they could see the communications tower. This concrete, two-story bunker would also harbor access below ground where the colonists would be living.

"Looks quiet and clear. Only signal coming from the tower says the farm is closed to landings." This was Dab. He was looking at his scanner wrapped in a tough, clear plastic. 

"Okay, lets descend in line, three meters apart. Once at the fence line Stab cuts it open and we walk right in. Any one approaches you, wants to talk to you, you put them down. We are here to pick up the package and assume the farmers don't want us to take it. No fracking around." 

The squad picked their way down the slippery hill and in ten minutes were standing in the shallow puddles along the slug farm's northern fence line. 

(to be continued)

Cartoon Olympics, Toon! solo-play

Trying to get a pickup game going this afternoon and someone suggested Toon! Needed to be played. Now I must confess I never played a game of Toon! When it came out in 1984. I did see it flopped out at my high school gaming table and I remember reading the rulebook. At 68 pages that was light for a rule book in the mid-eighties.

So, seeing as a game of something didn’t look like it would get off the ground this afternoon, I decided to roll up a pair of Toon characters.  I used random rolls and got Kasper Kangaroo and Clock-a-Doodle the Time-Sensitive Chicken. Kasper wears boxing trunks, believes she is the best boxer of all time and is extremely possessive of anything she has in her pouch. Clock-a-Doodle believes being on time is very important and wears an alarm clock around his neck and a Christmas sweater for clothes. I have thirty points to spread around a character’s skills and this is a simple process.

Now thumbing through the actual rules on how to do things I come across an introductory adventure, the Cartoon Olympics. Some solo roleplaying in order, perhaps? Why not, it is only Toon, this cannot be too complicated (side note, the slim rulebook comes with this adventure and four additional. That is five adventures in one game book of a very short page count. Sure, they are short, but that is in genre. So my hats off to Greg Kostikyan for going the extra mile and giving the new player something to play with. More rule books should include five adventures in their pages.

Let the Cartoon Olympics begin! Our first contest of the games is a boxing match. How fortunate for Kasper. She packs one powerful kick and is a natural in boxing gloves. Poor Clock-a-Doodle had a woefully inadequate Fight skill but has a very high Dodge skill. This could turn into a bit of a running circle. Obviously, the object of the first contest is to knock the other player out.

The ref is an old blind mole, and she is responsible for firing a starting gun at the beginning of each contest. But this is a boxing match, you ring a bell. The adventure calls for the blind mole to randomly shoot, accidentally, at one of the PCs when they pull the trigger of the starting gun. Now this is a big, exaggerated, cumbersome revolver and the old thing can barely raise the pistol. The ring side announcer yells for her to stop. You are supposed to ring the bell for a boxing match, not shoot the gun. Blind grandma mole can’t hear either, apparently. Mole shoots at Kasper who blows her Dodge roll. The bullet ricochets off Kasper’s head (causing 3 points of damage) and strikes the bell to start round 1.

Clock-a-Doodle takes advantage of the reeling Kasper and tries to talk her into lying down. “You just took a bullet to the head. Why don’t you just rest right down hear on the mat and get back your strength.” Clock-a-Doodle clucks. If he can get Kasper to lie down, he can win the match due to knock out! But Kasper is too cagey of a character.

“Wise cracking chicken, I’ll show you who needs a rest!” Kasper winds up and throws a haymaker. Clock-a-Doodle easily dodges and the bell rings concluding round one.

Round 2 begins with Kasper keeping a good eye on old blind grandma mole and sure enough she lets loose an errant shot to begin the round. Fortunately for the boxing cartoon animals her shot this time goes wildly amiss, eventually finding its way back to mole, knocking her out, then striking the bell to begin the round. Clock-a-Doodle yanks out from under his feathers a cracked Bic pen and with a mouth of sloppy spit wads fires a volley at Kasper. The chicken has no fighting ability so is going to have to win this fight at a distance. Kasper Kangaroo leaps and bobs around the shots and lands on her feet unscathed.

“Try and dodge this!” Kasper pulls out from her kangaroo pouch a stick of dynamite, lights it, and lobs it at Clock-a-Doodle. She figures it will be hard to dodge an area effect attack. She also neglects to figure she will probably be in the blast radius to.

With a terrified squawk Clock-a-Doodle flaps his wings and flies up above the ring and the lit stick of dynamite. “Not going to turn me into a six-piece McNugget.”

Kasper screams, “Disqualified. Besides not being able to wear boxing gloves, the damn chicken has left the ring. But her plea falls on deaf ears, literally. Grandma Mole still snoozes away, knocked out from her own gunshot. KABLAM. The dynamite goes off and Kasper takes another 3 points of damage. She only has 2 more. As for Clock-a-Doodle, he has so far come through the fight unscathed. This is starting to really work Kasper up. The round is concluded and the two cartoon animals return to their corners.

Both these characters took enemies at character creation, Clock-a-Doodle listed a fox and Kasper Kangaroo put down a crocodile. So these characters pop up as their respective trainers in their corner’s. The each get some respective fight advice which amounts to nothing more than oblique references and non-sequiturs.

As the third and final round begins both boxers plead with grandma mole to hold off with the starting gun. Their plea goes unheeded, the gun is fired, everyone ducks (including mole) the bell is struck and the round begins! Clock-a-Doodle looks at his watch. “Ah, right on time. Make way for the nine o’clock speedball express!” He pulls out a train whistle and gives a long blast. Grandma Mole lifts up the ropes to the boxing ring and lets a steam locomotive come barreling into the ring straight at Kasper Kangaroo.

This is when my Discord server starts binging and a couple of players have gotten together and want me to run another session of Classic Traveller in my Shattered Worlds campaign universe. Off to Vandars Dome, but before I go, I just want to give a nod to this nifty game from way back when. What is Toon good for? Besides a lighthearted break from any serious dark gaming you may be doing, the elastic nature of the cartoon universe will keep you on your toes improve-wise. Which is always a good skill to continue to develop in any of your games.