The Rationale

Paid Group, First Session, Mongoose Traveller

 

I call it Classic Traveller. Sure the combat system has been changed (for the better), and there are more fiddly character options, but it is the same game and plays like the old game. Entirely appropriate system for the genre and requiring the GM to use their creativity to make their game universe come alive.

The PCs begin the adventure with stout rolls in the Social Standing characteristic. So much for belters scratching a living or being roguish characters in general. I reset the introductory adventure material to reflect this. Introducing the Grand Transverse Spinward Summit, an economic conference of new beginnings and new growth!

In attendance are

Imperium Delegates. Princess Ashan Trel, Gram.

Darrian Delegates. Talas Vireen. Maela Soren. Jarath Enno. Selia Trenn. One of which is their suspected target, Subject Theta!

Mercantile Worlds Delegates; Paulo Song, CEO OMNI Corp. Excalibur. Jax Movan, Regional Manager Huron Industries. Excalibur.

Sword World Confederation Delegates; Lady Sigrid Valsdottir, Joyeuse. Sigrid Valsdottir, Joyeuse, Freya Skoldottir, Joyeuse

Spacing Guild Delegates;

Sir Alric Venn

Countess Mira Solen

Border World Delegates; Jarrla Venik, Toren Halvstrom,

Union Delegates; Bagger Vaas, Vandars Labor Union, Excalibur,

Various smaller entities and interest groups.

Subject Theta is a high-level Darrian official suspected of wanting to defect to the 3^rd Imperium. Subject Theta is believed to be one of the four Darrian delegates attending the conference. The Darrian presence sees a normalization of relations between Sword Worlds which has not been seen since the cold war subsided in 1116 3I (it is currently the year 1160 3I).

So, enough of the PCs have such a high social status, it warrants them to be involved in the summit in some manner. We have nobles, former diplomats, celebrated war heroes, and high-ranking navy commanders in the group. All except one character, he is an outlaw and a rogue. He is already at the summit working for muscle with one of the local drug lords. For the others, they approach Excalibur fresh off FTL jump from Gram in their own 200 ton safari-class jump ship. I forgot what name they gave it.

They have the privilege of delivering the Third Imperium delegates to the conference and attending the conference in an official capacity. On the orbital approach Sira Bren, one of the delegates asks Commander Frank Jr. as a professional courtesy to meet with an Imperial agent when they arrive at Red Cliff Raceway, the location of the economic summit on the planet Excalibur. He is with the Imperial Intelligence Agency: Orion Directive and needs assistance around sensitive diplomatic issues surrounding this important summit. After a few probing questions and hesitant consideration, Commander Frank agrees. V.V., the Excalibur native from a noble family, is excited about the prospect of making good money on a government assignment. Fenrir, the war hero has a part to play as well. His celebrity status makes him a VIP at the conference and give him access to mix with the other high-level delegates.

The streamlined ship glides into Red Cliff Raceway, slipping through the condenser field shielding the resort from the acid rainstorms raging on the surface of the planet, and they all debark to great pomp and circumstance. This is a new group and a new campaign, so the PCs want to explore a bit before they go and meet with the Orion agent. First stop is the largest and most popular casino on the plateau, Echelon Spire, a “floating” casino perched on tremendous anti-grav pylons with crystalline walls and floating luxury lounges with views of the enormous racetrack ascending into the neon-lit sky.

I populated the casino with futuristic gambling games and used the basic game of Craps as the mechanic to resolve racing bets. You either where betting the “Favorite” or “Not-the-Favorite”. With the standard throws and the pass/don’t pass rules of Craps we were able to establish whether the favorite won the race, paying even money, or not, and another entry wins at a 2x-10x payout on the wager. One PC played it safe while two others went for long-shots. The long-shots paid off! They mulled whether to continue betting the rest of the race card because they were low on cash. I informed them if they wanted to bet a bunch more races we would lump it all into a single resolution of the dice game and not do individual race bets. I did not want to eat up our game time with too much aimlessness. The other thing I did is have the floating luxury box they were in inexplicably shoot up towards the casino’s crystalline ceiling. With no indication of the luxury box stopping at their futile attempts to operate the box’s controls, the group sprung into multiple courses of action. Someone got on the comms with customer service, another PC ripped away paneling to get to the electronics, while another tried to hack into the box’s operating system. Customer service was no help, but the technicians were able to make their rolls and stop before impact. Just barely. Marginal success. Came real close to splattering them like bugs.

After the casino manager grovels for forgiveness and comps them luxury boxes for the upcoming celebrity races over the course of the economic summit, the PCs decide to check out the lower levels of this massive complex perched atop a thick stone plateau. The lower levels are like the concessions at professional sports game. Going in a circle, the level looks up at the racetrack above. This level is for normal residents of Vandars Dome and offers affordable seating and lower buy-ins at the casinos on this level. Great place for the rogue PC to join the scene. He is approaching a certain Mon-Fey. The man owes his boss 300 credits and Thron is expected to come back with Mon-Fey’s money “or else!” Thron gets into the man’s grill at a small bar in the concourse, but a security drone comes up and identifies Thron as possessing an outstanding 600 credit parking ticket. He is to remain still until Red Cliff security arrives to receive prompt payment. Mon-Fey gets a kick out of this. Thron grabs the security drone and stuffs it down Mon-Fey’s jacket and takes off. Running smack dab into his old war buddy, the one whose life he saved from an assassination attempt! They duck into a janitorial closet and catch up on old times. All of them. We are looking at four PCs. The PCs decide they are going to use their diplomatic clout and money to bribe the nearest security guard to clear the ticket and the report of Thron present at the conference. His outstanding warrants would surely trigger the heavy security technology surrounding the conference.

The return to the main surface level of the complex and head to Hotel Null to meet with their Imperial contact. Agent Virell is looking at a possible Darrian defector among the four attending Darrian delegates. He needs the groups help to identify this “Subject Theta”, avoid Darrian counter-intelligence agents which are certainly here, and take off with the target to a remote jump location. There the transfer of the asylum seeker will take place and the PCs get paid their 100,000 credits (a piece) for a job well done in service of the Imperium and greater peace throughout the cosmos. The conference is a total of three days, and before it is up, Theta needs to be identified, blind spots in the Raceway’s security system need to be created and enemies avoided. Or neutralized.

This is where we ended the session for the night. This paid group picks up next week and it will be then time to plunge directly into the action. I believe a great way to build tension in an espionage/heist adventure is subvert the PCs expected timeline. To quickly increase the tempo of action in response to the PCs activities. This means turning their two-and-a-half day schedule into a quickly compressing timeline which forces them to act before they are “ready”. What that exactly looks like, I don’t know, yet. But I have a few more days to polish my ideas. Looking forward to the next session for sure.

Classic Traveller Rides Again!

 Okay, I am using Mongoose Traveller 2e, but this does not stop me from running the game old-school. Really, the only changes I can see between the original rules and this latest iteration of this fifty year-old game. 

Like all my games now it is a paid game. This is actually the second group to solicit me to run a game of Traveller for pay. Cannot say anyone has ever hit me up to run a game of Space Opera or Star Frontiers or the new Alien rpg. I guess Traveller is still topical today. I don't think it is the greatest science fiction ttrpg available, but it sure gets the job done. I have even come to peace with the Third Imperium campaign setting most people ascribe as the actual "game" of Traveller. 

Like many other original ttrpgs, there was no setting which came with the game. The game designer assumed you would do what they did and build your own imaginative fictional game world for your players to romp in. And I subscribe to this approach. Can't help myself really. I picked the role of forever GM immediately when I was first exposed to ttrpgs. I wanted to use my own ideas for what a science fiction or fantasy setting looked like. But offering my services as a game referee for pay I have decided what the fuck do I care? If the players want to play in the Third Imperium lets do it! I'm just adding it to my list of challenges I have presented myself with in the last decade to improve my skill as a GM. There is nothing stopping me from carving the Spinward Marches into my version of a sweeping space civilization with its attendant cosmic problems. 

This does not mean I have thrown out all my Outer Frontier and Lower Frontier setting information. I've just repurposed the planets for use in the Sword Worlds subsector and called it good. All my factions, npcs, site locations, planetary descriptions; all my nutso ideas will comfortably fit into the published setting. 

And it isn't like I can run any of the official Traveller adventures without wholesale changes. Let us be clear about one thing here at the Vanishing Tower. I think the original adventures which were published in the 70s and 80s, with a few exceptions, were unmitigated shit. "What's a great Traveller adventure to use for new players?" is a nauseatingly common question on game forums. "The one you come up with in your head!" Seriously, isn't this why you are taking on the role of Star Master? Because you have cool-ass ideas which demand to see the light of day? If not rethink whether or not you should be taking on the role of a science fiction game master. 

Another thing new Traveller does the same as old Traveller is creating the kinds of characters the original game did. No, that is wrong. There are changes, and not all for the good. Mongoose got rid of death on a failed survival roll. Instead it becomes a roll on a mishap table. This means there is nothing outside of boredom from a player maximizing their terms of service to load up on skills. So character creation can take longer. But the changes to the combat system, I think they are an improvement over the original. But back to what I said, even with an expanded character creation system with more detailed character options, you still get the same result. So added chrome for not much return.

I have taken the group through a session zero and it was like 4 hours! To be expected. I wasn't surprised. I think we are going to start at Red Cliff Raceway during a high-level economic summit being held at the popular resort, track, and casino. This is because they ended up with some PCs having a very high Social Standing score. So all the scummy gang members, low-lifes with complicated issues, cheap hustlers and space pirates get tossed aside for the elite and politically connected. Sweet, another change of pace, another challenge.

Oh yeah, another character passed a psionics test. They have potent psionic powers! And three other members of the group have insane gambling skills. Money should not be an object with this crew. So it is all going to be about the intrigue, the espionage running behind the scenes of all the other campaign-changing forces out there pursuing their agendas. I'm seeing this campaign going straight at the big universe-sized threats with the high level connections they have as opposed to small crimes and misdemeanors which lead to bigger conflicts. 

To prep for the session I am coming up with various NPCs and matching them with motives you might find at a subsector-sized economic summit. Gamblers, human-trafficking, deadly spy vs. spy action, pleas for peace and prosperity, marginalized peoples clamoring for attention, sabotage, blackmail, political postering... these are some of the elements I see being front and center at Red Cliff Raceway.

Five-Second Richtofen's War

 Reviewing my old blog posts I wrote up on my play of Richtofen’s War, the venerable war game from the now defunct Avalon Hill. Specifically, the posts are a review of all the “variants” I tried which were printed in The General magazine, AH’s house paper which came out on a regular basis for like ever.

And many of the variants were good. They all attacked the problem in the game of circling each other trading shots on each other’s tail. And no fancy maneuvers to pull off, or so it appears, in the game rules. While yes, you can do fancy maneuvers with the base game, I don’t want to spend time on defending this position because it is not germane to today’s post.

No, this post is about the one variant I never tried, the 5-Second Game! I distinctly remember stating I wasn’t going to test this variant. From all the different variants I have read I concluded the 5-Second rules were going to be the least interesting.

And I was absolutely wrong! I have just started playing the campaign game again solo, and this 5-second variant really nails it. Brings the game out of some of its frustrating ahistorical events occurring on the game board. The 5-second variant cuts the time scale for a game turn in half, from 10 seconds to 5 seconds. What this does is limit the ability to swing back and forth shooting at each other’s tails. It is also more difficult to shake off an attacker with the reduced time scale. The net effect is it is harder to get on your opponent’s six, but once there it can be difficult for them to shake you off.

Here is a good picture of what I mean.

The photo/recon Allied plane is running hell-for-leather to get off the north edge of the board. Two d3’s barrel after it, closing distance and starting to do damage. Right after the Huns comes the two Nieport 17’s trying to defend their lightly-arm ed photo/recon plane. And in the rear is the last Albatross. Everybody is firing at everybody! Well, not quite. This photo shows an Albatross and Nieport 17 stacked on top of each other. But don't worry, these guys have been trading shots. A splendid fight I must say. 

And here is a photo of the whirling dogfight which erupted while the photo/recon plane took their photos of the road network. The development of the encounter felt much more satisfying, that proper coordination with a wing man, and overall squad tactics feel achievable with the 5-second time scale.

Deflection, you will want to use the Optional rule on Deflection. It is a simple -1 combat modifier, but it makes that six o'clock position all the more valuable. Combine this with the rules for a flying "Ace" and you get better dogfights. Basically use all the optional and tournament rules for the game. 

There is math you must do to convert the planes in the game to the new time scale. But fear not! There is a great sheet on board game geek which has all the stats written up. So, I am saying I was wrong, the best of the variants is the 5-Second Game. It came out in the General Volume 23, issue 1. And it makes Richtofen’s War a fun game to play again.