Mysteries of the Ancients

[chibiko]

I'm loving this update of Classic adventures so far, but spotted a couple of minor errors.

p.89, second column, first paragraph, "She will not leave her this world unless absolutely unavoidable." The "her" is superfluous.

p.136 & p.137 The Fuller Station staff numbers are inconsistent.
On p.136, it tells us that 12 escaped and four died, while on p.137, it tells us that 9 escaped and seven died.

 

[chibiko]

And the description for Technicians on p.268 says they're "intended for mental and technical tasks." Maybe that should be "menial".

 

[Asuma]

Copied from the thread in the Traveller forum for visibility:
Page 48 & 49 - Giiala Larkhen and Luude Pinrosaqu are listed as having identical skills, except that Luude's Vacc Suit level is cut off.
Page 77 - the standard scout deck plan is used for the Garnette, but the text says that several ship components (air/raft dock, probe drones etc) have been replaced with others
Page 115 - Caroline Lidu and Dan Kepaku are listed as having identical traits and skills.

 

[Geir]

If it's not to late (never saw an update come out) then the map on page 59 should be Hex Scale 1436km (or just 1400km to round it off).
And same as above on the deck plans on page 77. We already have a default scout ship plan - this one should reflect the modified configuration - as should the table on page 76 (and the Purchase cost and Total don't match... I'm sure its just the 10% discount, but it's confusing).

p.100 Calefaction is given Caledonia's UWP in the table... or The title should be Caledonia as for the system since it has the full system stats. But placing the table between and across from Calefaction (blue box and map) entries is...confusing.

p. 101, speaking of the map, the settlement is listed as being near the south pole, not the equator. (at least the scale is correct based on the hex count - if it were a totally locked world, I would suggest tilting the whole map so the bright side was at the top and the cold at the bottom (of the rotated map - now it gets confusing... and the direction of rotation would be.. not really sure... need to cross my eyes and rotate my head to see it).

p. 102: 'the canon begins' should be 'canyon' (Freudian slip there?)

 

[Space Smurf]

Some feedback after I prepared a bit of the campaign and refereed a first session.

For the errata:

p 37: The regeneration ability of G482 is described as giving it '1D energy reserve for every point it reduces its maximum hits by'. The example that follows states that 'the creature loses 1 from its maximum hits and gains 2D energy' and consequently sums up that burning 7 hits will give 14D points. Below the example the reverse process is then again described as 1D energy will give 1 hit.
Which way was it meant? I suppose things got changed during development and test, and the example was not adapted?

And two comments regarding the contents:

In Ancient Hunters at Egypt:
Aish Nirka, the Captain of Knowledge, has a collection of Ancients items (replica) he likes to proudly present. It is only given a vague description. As Ancients item descriptions are scarce, it would have been nice if some suggestions were given. It is a bit of work for the referee to come up with some - or at least for someone like me, who tackles the Ancients seriously for the first time

In In Fleeting Memoriam:
Edkiku Lam has completely forgotten his family without ever encountering G482, due to the effect described in the "Worse than death" box.
Aside from the fact that, being a more of a "hard SciFi" guy I find a general whiping of memory on the mind of absent people too far fetched, even for the ancients (I can accept peoples minds constructing things afer a triggering encounter with G482, but some far reaching effect overstretches my suspension of disbelief), the effect seems to be very selective: While Edkiku is affected, his friends and Ammegash are not and remember his wife and child.
You could make up some reasoning that the effect is only on those who are emotionally very close to the victims, but phew ... I'll just change the events so that he witnessed their demise and then the "acceptable" (to my SoD ) mechanism of repression set in.


But these are nitpicks, overall I like the adventure very much so far (players just arrived on Callia and I've read/prepared play of the campaign up to the end of the Callia section.

 

[Au-Zee]

Page 166: Weiss is spelt both Weiss and Wiess, changes back and forth across the entire chapter.
Should be Weiss

218: Mercedes disintegrator.
maximum range of 122.74
effective range of 30.68m

I'm sure these numbers are a reference to something, but for the life of me I couldn't understand why.

 

[Nuke16]

Page 15, Left Column, Paragraph 4. "There are no good answers, lthough certain Ancient 'experts' claim." "lthough" should be "although" or "though". Either seems to work in this case, but guessing the "a" is missing.

 

[arthurg]

I am running a campaign and am running the Fuller adventure this weekend and I noticed a discrepancy in the book.

In the Project Gannessa section (page 34) it reads:

Project Gannessa has several covert facilities, one of which is operated under the cover of the Fuller Experimental Mining Installation on Calefaction. This installation is sufficiently remote to make security a minor problem at most and is concealed within real research. Only a few of the personnel there are connected with Gannessa; most are genuinely engaged in planetology and extreme-conditions mining research.

The specimens transferred from Research Station Gamma were installed at Fuller several months ago, not long before Sorrel arrived. Their containment facility displaced some other equipment, to the annoyance of the base staff, but the peculiar effects of the creature meant there was an easy solution to that problem. Most people seeing a G482 immediately forgot its existence and lost any interest in going into the part of the installation used to study them. However, the mental strain caused by this shift in perceived reality was detrimental to the health of several workers. Combined with the stress of the working environment and other tensions, the introduction of G482 to Fuller was a time bomb.

But reading through the Fuller Experimental Mining Installation (Hell) section I see no reference to the G482 or the containment facility.

Are there G482 at Fuller or is it just robots and survivors?

 

[Gnorr]

Glisten 2237 is mislabeled on the provided subsector map as "Hell". That name should be "Wurzburg".

At the beginning of the text, the ship later known as Garnette is spelled Balevney instead of Baleveny.

Page 100: „the ship itself will become irradiated.“ Why is that a problem, could it not be de-irradiated again using the nuclear dampers at Shelter Canyon Settlement, where that appears to be a standard procedure for their ATVs?

Page 104, Map of Shelter Canyon Region: The circled label „7“ appears to be misplaced. It should be a bit to the south-west, close to the rectangles indicating the buildings of the Shelter Canyon Settlement, at the actual end of Shelter Canyon.

Page 116: should be „six narrow tracks“ to be consistent with prior sentence.

 

[harunmushod]

Way too late to change now, but the Callia section of the campaign is written of the basis that the population is 800K. But the population code in every canonical source is 8 (including in Mysteries itself), and two other sources (Travellermap and Dougherty's own MGT1 publication Callia) puts the population between "hundreds of millions" to 900 million, so that whole bit of the campaign is based on a different world background with a population density 100 times smaller than canon OTU.

Less critically, at some point after MGT1 the world size changed from 1 (size from CT through to MGT1) to 5. Sticking to the original size would further increase the population density by another factor of 25.

 

[WHULorigan]

Way too late to change now, but the Callia section of the campaign is written of the basis that the population is 800K. But the population code in every canonical source is 8 (including in Mysteries itself), and two other sources (Travellermap and Dougherty's own MGT1 publication Callia) puts the population between "hundreds of millions" to 900 million, so that whole bit of the campaign is based on a different world background with a population density 100 times smaller than canon OTU.

Less critically, at some point after MGT1 the world size changed from 1 (size from CT through to MGT1) to 5. Sticking to the original size would further increase the population density by another factor of 25.

I haven't looked at the actual adventure, but is making the location in fact a size=1 moon of a size=5 Callia a simple fix?

 

[harunmushod]

I haven't looked at the actual adventure, but is making the location in fact a size=1 moon of a size=5 Callia a simple fix?

Not sure I understood the question. Are you asking if making Callia size 1 would affect the adventure?

 

[WHULorigan]

Not sure I understood the question. Are you asking if making Callia size 1 would affect the adventure?

No. I am suggesting that maybe you could leave Callia as Size=5, but set the adventure material on a moon of Callia that is Size=1 (with the lower population value of 800,000).

 

[harunmushod]

No. I am suggesting that maybe you could leave Callia as Size=5, but set the adventure material on a moon of Callia that is Size=1 (with the lower population value of 800,000).

That doesn't resolve the problem that Callia's size is still wrong in canonical terms and adds the complication of a gravity that is likely to be 0.05g, again totally changing the environment in which this section of the campaign occurs. The least bad options in my view are either: a) ignoring canon, changing the UWP population to 5 and accepting the Size error and keeping that at 5; b) redesigning this aspect of the campaign or c) don't buy it.

 

[Gnorr]

p. 174 "her captain is listed as Master Starfarer Aedhko Ueang. The Travellers may correctly deduce that he is a Vargr."

However, the image shown for the good captain on p.180 is clearly a human. The Race in his statblock is "-", as it is for all Glisten Pearl crew.

 

[steveh]

I also spotted a few typos and errors in Mysteries of the Ancients

Page 6 - "...same creature encountered at Callia." Except there’s no sign that the creature was ever at Calefaction. (It’s mentioned in a blink-and-you-miss-it reference about Project Gannessa on page 34. But if Project Gannessa is on Calefaction, and Omicron know it's an Ancients site, why is security there so lax?)

Page 9 - "Yet there are truths within the text; a shipment really was ambushed and the crew did find shelter in a strange octagonal building. There, they were able to enter a mysterious base where they observed wonders." Well, no. It seems the strange octagonal building is one of the many lies, not a truth. (Although there is an octagonal building in the campaign, it's not at Twilight's Peak.)

Page 13 - "… caught up with the creature at Callia" - I think Callia is supposed to be Aster, based on the last paragraph of that page.

Page 47 - In Fleeting Memoriam makes a big deal of the system not having a gas giant - but unfortunately, there's one shown on the map on page 47.

Page 144 - item 16 is not highlighted in the text (although it's not unclear - it's the entire sublevel).

Page 198 - as far as I can see, Mercedes and Sorrell were never crewmates.

Page 217 - Inner Secure Area (10) is actually 11 on the floorplan.

Page 239 - On the top-down map, item 8 should be item 6.

Page 247 - the Reception Chamber is on page 246, not 263. (There is a reception chamber on page 263, but that's not the one this page is referring to.)

I also spotted the question about Callia (but I hadn't noticed that its size had been amended - presumably part of the Second Survey. Page 70 says Callia's population is 800,000 while the stat box says "hundreds of millions" on page 71. The Traveller wiki says 800 million. However, Callia has plenty of land, and a back-of-a-fag-packet calculation suggests that even with a population of 800 million, Callia has a similar population density to a country like Mauritania. If my calcs are right, the village as presented isn't too unrealistic.

 

[steveh]

Also, I've just noticed that the Library Data is odd - it seems to be a lot of information from Secrets of the Ancients, but omits entries for the various planets (Callia and others) in Mysteries.

 

[PeterFdH]

Appreciate that some of these will have already been spotted but figured I'd add my list to this thread:

Page	Para	Errata
Throughout		Ship is spelled Balevney 9 times and Baleveny 15 times. Which is it?
Throughout		Weiss is spelled as Wiess incorrectly 15 times
Throughout		Traits are missing from all the stat blocks
13	2	Reference to Calia in line 1 cannot surely be correct. Is this meant to be Aster?
15	4	Typo: lthough should be although
66		Image at the foot of the page should be in the next chapter. It fits the description of Bernadatta’s office on the Garnette. It has nothing to do with the Museum.
68	Stat block	Persuade 6 – this must surely be lower?
77		The Garnette deckplan contains an error: the rooms containing an air raft and probes should have been converted to a living area
115	Stat blocks	Caroline and Dan’s skill blocks are identical which must surely be an error. Dan’s species should be human.
124	Line 4	An extra ‘the’ should be deleted
135	Para2, line 3	An extra ‘the’ should be deleted
172	Line 12	Relieve not relive
172	Line 15	Either a comma or ‘then’ is missing after ‘economy’
175	Last para	The Central Supply Catalogue reference is incorrect
180-183	Stat blocks	All of the stat blocks are missing the species entry
183	Stat block	Amkish’s stat block is missing. Instead, Ilya’s stat block has been duplicated
184	Para 1	There are five attendees (not four) and four are Wannabees, not three
193	Para 1, 2nd last line	The word ‘tells’ is misaligned
222	Stat block	Species is missing
233	Line 7	Typo: pattern, not patten
239	Bottom map	Area 8 should be marked ‘6’.
267-268	Stat blocks	Species is missing
269	Para 2, line 2	Typo: Twilight’s Peak -apostrophe missing
273	Para 2, line 3	Should be ‘metre’, not ‘metres’
277	Para 6	‘emissions’ and ‘invisible’ are misspelled.
277	Para 8	‘disintegrator’ is misspelled.