One Damn Thing After Another (Play Reports)

[ishldgetoutmore]

Warning: Spoilers abound below for several published adventures, including several new ones from Mongoose.
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So I like to name my campaigns. Sometimes I pick the element that speaks to me, and then that later turns out not to be what really grabbed the players. That's okay, the naming is more so I have a "feel" for how I want the campaign to go -- it gives me a marker, where I can say, "This is where I'm running this campaign from."

Because of the birth of my daughter in 2023, my weekends have become complicated and the game I had been running then is now on hiatus. But I still wanted to see my gaming friends, so I decided to do a Tuesday game. I was thinking about what to run when I watched Seth Skorkowsky's video on the Flatlined adventure and he mentioned the idea of running Death Station afterwards.

I got to thinking about what a one-two punch that would be for the group, and then I got an image in my head of a group that's in the meaner parts of the Spinward Marches. Not the shiny, chrome parts, but the smoke-filled factory planets and the dirty, hardscrabble frontier worlds, and all that less-glamorous part, where opportunists flock because there are people they can take advantage of. And the image formed in my head of the scenarios I'd place in such a campaign, and I realized the perfect name for it is "One Damn Thing After Another."

 

[ishldgetoutmore]

So, Flatlined starts off with the players having been kidnapped from where they were going; they've been picked up by a Skilljacking ring that kidnaps Low Passengers mid-transit, and then traffics them to frontier worlds where their skills are in demand. Death Station has the laboratory ship experimenting on human test subjects outside the Imperium; they work really well together if you assume the ring is just expanding its market base for its product.

I moved both adventures to Ator (0729 Spinward Marches) in the Darrian subsector. It's just outside the Imperium, so a great place to do human experimentation without oversight. And it's the interface of three polities -- Darrian, Sword Worlds, and the Imperium -- so your Skilljacking ring can fly under the radar.

I'm not fond of the element in Flatlined, where the ship carrying the PCs crashes due to an EMP bomb placed by a rival corporation, mainly because it's a gimmick used in, like, three of four scenarios I intend to use; I believe Seth Skorkowsky mentioned his dislike of it in his review for similar reasons. As it is, it was easy to gloss over the exact reasons for the ship crashing, and the players decided that the ship must have collided with a radio antenna on takeoff, causing the issues that start the action in the module. It worked really well in practice, and the module definitely had an Aliens vibe.

At the end, the PCs, along with four surviving NPCs (fellow kidnappee Anson Kobleinz, Proving Site workers Corey Shiro and Katriona Starvni, and baddie Sayelle Mikolos), managed to escape to the starport, with nothing except the low berth jumpsuits they had on when they woke up, a very few guns they managed to recover, and some vials of some sort of substance they were apparently injected with. They left Sayelle in lockup with the heavily-overworked port warden, whom I played something like Dr. Marian Lazarus, Frances Sternhagen's character from Outland (1981).

 

[ishldgetoutmore]

At the starport with no money or other resources at hand, they were hired by the Bwap Dalglee Hahsh to repair a communications issue on his laboratory ship for a modest amount of cash; this is the opening for Death Station. Now, I had actually run the Classic Traveller version of Death Station for several of these players twelve or so years ago in a previous Traveller campaign. But this time, I had the benefit of using some excellent ideas from Seth Skorkowski's review, and also the party was much less well-off; when I ran it before, that group was much richer in resources that this group is now, and it makes a huge difference.

They did not end up exploring and clearing the whole of the Calendula laboratory ship. Instead they hightailed it back to Ator once they got some incredibly incriminating evidence against the owning corporation and their patron, including security camera footage showing human experimentation; when they reached the communications array, they found the message buffer, and the last message was from Dalglee after dispatching the PCs there: "Found your lost cargo, have sent it back to you."

They did not appreciate that. At all.

They brought back Haris Slocombe, the navigator; a TL12 computer and medikit; and a bunch of vials of various compounds the corporation was experimenting with. The laptop had security camera footage, and full information on the drugs they were using: formulas, experimental data, test results, etc. They found Dalglee in a local watering hole, in the middle of some sort of tense conversation with locals. I decided, for the locals, to use the Darsh, from Jack Vance's novel The Face, the fourth of the Demon Princes novels. I figured Dalglee was the representative of Lysani Laboratories who purchased Pedersen's creepers from the Darsh for the use by the Calendula crew; the lab uses them to manufacture the amnesia-inducing drug they use to pacify their test subjects, and they sell the excess to the Skilljacking ring for use on their "products." Darsh, in the Vance novel, are a fairly unpleasant group, mildly xenophobic; so the situation with Dalglee in the bar seemed tense, as I decided the Darsh didn't much like the Bwap and only tolerated him for his money. The PCs didn't know what was going on with the locals, and the locals didn't know what was going on with the PCs, and Dalglee was feeling very exposed being with both groups. So he paid off the PCs and they left as soon as they could, deferring any further revenge for later.

Back at the starport, they left Haris Slocombe with the poor port warden. They didn't even really explain what was going on with him. I have to figure out where best to use his reappearance; he will definitely show up again in the campaign, possibly as a very successful serial killer...

 

[ishldgetoutmore]

When the PCs shook down Dalglee, they got him to spring for Middle Passages off of Ator, to Flammarion (0930 Spinward Marches), which is just jump-2 away. One thing I plan to do differently this time around, is describe other merchant crews more, to give a feeling of the ecology of trade in the Marches. Last campaign, the PCs basically ignored almost every other merchant crew and I suspect it made it too easy -- rivalry between crews should be fierce in the Marches, with razor-thin profit margins.

This comes from the scenario "High and Dry," from The Marches Adventures 1-5 by Mongoose. (Yes, Seth Skorkowsky did a video on this one as well.) I've made some substantial changes to this one.

At Flammarion, they met with Anders Casarii, a Scout who used to crew with one of the PCs and had a job for them; they had taken passage to Flammarion to meet him when they got kidnapped in the first place. Anders explains that he works for the Intelligence Branch; this is one of the two Branches that make up the Detached Duty office. He suspects a plot against Imperial interests going on in the Sword Worlds, but he has been unable to convince any of his Imperial Navy contacts to investigate. He's getting frustrated, and he has a plan he hopes will get him the intelligence he is looking for.

He told them about the Highndry, a Detached Duty scout that is apparently broken down on Walston, and that he has been informed the previous crew has been arrested. He wants to PCs to get the ship and bring it back to Flammarion; the IISS will perform needed maintenance and repairs (which they do anyway to Detached Duty ships), and then he will give it to them to use, with the understanding that they'll head into the Sword Worlds "conducting trade" and secretly getting him intelligence from the various systems.

I made a few changes to the adventure structure. I decided the crew had not been actually arrested, but made up that story to cover their tracks when they stripped the ship of everything salable and made off, knowing that they were going to be found in default of their contract with the IISS. I will be giving the PCs a brief dossier on what the locals of Walston knows about the previous crew, and they will definitely show up again; by the time they finished the action bits (just yesterday evening) they hated those jerks even more than the locals did!

I also am using a modification I found on the Citizens of the Imperium board for the Type S3 Far Scout/Courier. Effectively, the previous crew had changed out the Jump Drive, Power Plant, and Computer for refurbished, heavily-used TL12 versions at one point (in some editions of Traveller, TL12 upgraded versions are just about the same size as the TL10 base versions of those components), and then modified the fuel tankage so that 10 dtons of the fuel tankage could be converted into additional cargo space instead; it works because the higher-TL drives require far less fuel. So they could do a jump-3 and have 3 dtons of cargo, or a jump-2 and have 13 dtons of cargo.

This whole rigamarole of getting this particular ship is because, IMTU, the previous crew did a lot of trading in the Sword Worlds for several years. The ship is already in the registry in many worlds there, and should be able to fly around with somewhat less fanfare than other Imperial ships might. And, also, Anders Casarii has reason to believe the previous crew was involved in some way with the shady espionage stuff he wants to find out about. In which case, the PCs are basically going to be bait...

But first they have to get back. With their rolls, the ship is currently only capable of jump-1, which means its going to be 4 weeks getting back to Flammarion for service at the Way Station there. Now I have to figure out what trouble they can get into on the way there, because it's always One Damn Thing After Another.

 

[ishldgetoutmore]

Since the players finally have access to a Library data program, I'm going to provide them a Tiddlywiki file I've been building with campaign-specific information. Looking at the map, it looks like I have some great opportunities here, as I believe Bowman was the subject of a mini-campaign book by Mongoose.


In addition, I've just picked up Murphy's Law - Adventure in the Bowman Belt by Don Headrick, and I am an Old so I have the original Beltstrike by GDW as well. Time to read up on options for Bowman adventures!

 

[ishldgetoutmore]

From a fast scan, I'm thinking, assuming the PCs go to Bowman next, I will probably run "Archaeology," from the Beltstrike box set. It ties in very nicely to the Sword Worlds, and it familiarizes them with some archaeological spots relevant to the Sword Worlds-Darrian conflicts, which they might revisit later.

Murphy's Law is strongly tied to the outbreak of the Fifth Frontier War, and I've set my campaign in 1100, so that's years away. Some good ideas here, though, and I like how much math was done to work up time tables and vectors. Feels like something out of The Expanse!

Spinward Marches 1: The Bowman Arm is disappointing for this. Bowman gets some extemely generic adventure seeds. Frankly, most of the same territory was covered by the GDW Beltstrike book, but in more detail and with more character. On the other hand, if the PCs want to stay at Walston longer, there's some more scenarios for that world in the book so it'll come in handy in that case.

 

[ishldgetoutmore]

So, I've gone through my various PDFs from buying many of Marc Miller's CDROMs, and from various Bundles I've picked up. As far as I can tell, Asteltine has never been the setting of an official adventure. I may need to go to the Mongoose forums, where they have a separate subforum for their Travellers Aid Society program on DTRPG, and see if anyone's written on and published it on there.

567-908 has, of course, one very famous adventure -- Classic Traveller Adventure 10: Safari Ship. It's been reprinted by MGP, I believe

And now I'm torn. I was hoping to run "Search & Rescue" from The Marches Adventures 1-5, with my PCs as contractors sent to 875-496. The original scenario sends them to Gorram, but they'd be, like, 8 weeks minimum in-transit, and that doesn't make any sense. Instead, I've redefined 875-496 as a Red Zone instead of Amber, and decided the Scouts have interdicted it to protect the native culture (descended from a crashed generation starship headed for the Sword Worlds region). The adventure is great for introducing players to a variety of Imperial regulations regarding interdiction, and it has some nice twists in it, and the chance for players to be Big Damn Heroes.

On the other hand, Safari Ship has a First Contact situation. On the other other hand, it also pays extremely well. Too well. They're still supposed to be living hand-to-mouth at this point in the campaign.

So, their current trip to 567-908, I think I need to just emphasize how little the planet is used. The Mongoose books have a small research outpost there. Maybe I can do some sort of short thing with scientists.

 

[Geir]

So, I've gone through my various PDFs from buying many of Marc Miller's CDROMs, and from various Bundles I've picked up. As far as I can tell, Asteltine has never been the setting of an official adventure.

It (or really its highport) gets a one page entry in Skandersvik - page 64, the Sword Worlds merchant ship adventure.

 

[ishldgetoutmore]

It (or really its highport) gets a one page entry in Skandersvik - page 64, the Sword Worlds merchant ship adventure.

You know, I forgot that Skandersvik had a District 268 element. I'll be cannibalizing it extensively for Sword Worlds elements later! Thanks!

 

[shirgall]

My players went in a slightly different order. High'n'Dry to get the Scout for the detached duty Scout in the team and later on Death Station because the Scholar in the crew had an interest in a lab ship that had gone missing and Dalglee reached out to her for help finding and recovering it in order to save the Lysani Labs lease on the Calendula. But what you are missing is in-between they went to Bowman for a little bit of Beltstrike! Some love lost for LSP. A mysterious Darrian ship encased in rock. Introduction to both a trader's guild and a Darrian spy. Much to offer in the belt.

By the way, I wrote a TAS publication on how to 3d print the Calendula for Death Station and further adventure here -> https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/511131/building-the-calendula?affiliate_id=689196

 

[ishldgetoutmore]

My players went in a slightly different order. High'n'Dry to get the Scout for the detached duty Scout in the team and later on Death Station because the Scholar in the crew had an interest in a lab ship that had gone missing and Dalglee reached out to her for help finding and recovering it in order to save the Lysani Labs lease on the Calendula. But what you are missing is in-between they went to Bowman for a little bit of Beltstrike! By the way, I wrote a TAS publication on how to 3d print the Calendula for Death Station and further adventure here -> https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/511131/building-the-calendula?affiliate_id=6689196

I picked up the Second Dynasty Scout Ship but I haven't had the chance to find someplace to print it. Although, I think one of the local libraries have a 3D printer with very modest fees for use. But we're mostly playing online, so it makes less sense sadly...

So, I don't want to distract too much from the current thrust of the campaign: to get back to Flammarion to get the ship repaired. So I'll be doing the first part of "Archaeology," where the PCs meet the Imperial scientists, and fly a few back to their base.

I figure, one of my players was really into the Darrians last game, so he'll be interested. I can lay the groundwork for them reaching out the next time the players are on Bowman -- it's a major hub of the area, so they'll probably be back. I can run the rest of "Archeology" later on, since they will probably try to claim the ship!

 

[shirgall]

I picked up the Second Dynasty Scout Ship but I haven't had the chance to find someplace to print it. Although, I think one of the local libraries have a 3D printer with very modest fees for use. But we're mostly playing online, so it makes less sense sadly...

So, I don't want to distract too much from the current thrust of the campaign: to get back to Flammarion to get the ship repaired. So I'll be doing the first part of Archarology, where the PCs meet the Imperial scientists, and fly a few back to their base.

I figure, one of my players was really into the Darrians last game, so he'll be interested. I can lay the groundwork for them reaching out the next time the players are on Bpwman -- it's a major hub of the area, so they'll probably be back. I can run the rest of Archeology later on, since they will probably try to claim the ship!

Yeah, online makes the fun of printing the ship less compelling unless you set up a camera and miniatures.

If you have purchased the STLs you can go to a commercial printer to get it done as well, you don't need the commercial license unless you are printing them to sell to someone else. I definitely did the same High'n'Dry scenario you laid out above.

I loved Bowman for the Belter adventure possibilities there.

 

[ishldgetoutmore]

I loved Bowman for the Belter adventure possibilities there.

Yeah, I hope they go back sometime.

 

[ishldgetoutmore]

Doing 1 jump-1 at a time, the PCs went to Bowman. They are buying refined fuel at all starports to avoid taxing the jump drive even further. Asking for work to pay for the fuel, they flew three scientists to the Darrian Dig Site on Bowman Epsilon, the highly-eccentric moon. I'm saving the rest of "Archaeology" for a later session, but they were intrigued by the thought of pre-Maghiz Darrian artifacts. They ended up doing a deep scan of Epsilon with their new Scout ship's Survey Drones and sold the results to the head of the Dig.

Next stop was 567-908, where they visited a corporate research site. The corpos weren't interested in giving non-employees a tour, but one of them was interested in having them transport a 1-ton cargo module to a buyer on Asteltine. The crew talked him into letting them tank up from the fuel supply for the research facility's power plant over a few days.

In transit, one of the scientists in the crew became overly curious and used the drones to do a scan of the crate. I described how the image gradually formed of some sort of "weird robot arm, maybe?" with writing on it in no language they could recognize. It's, of course, part of a Shrieker rig, but, again, I'm saving "Safari Ship" for later. This was a teaser.

 

[shirgall]

Did your players keep the densitometer from High'n'Dry or return it to the University? I had thought of a hook in Bowman to get the characters to use the densitometer on the dig site but like your group the "archeology" was saved for another time.

 

[ishldgetoutmore]

Did your players keep the densitometer from High'n'Dry or return it to the University?

Ooh, they kept it! The characters are definitely on the roguish side.

 

[ishldgetoutmore]

I think, for the game tomorrow, since they've just met a shady collector-type figure, I might run the scenario "Filch" by Michael Brown from Freelance Traveller #20 and have the target be Mr. Gelin Hrey, the receiver of the illicit cargo.

 

[ishldgetoutmore]

So, they didn't bite. They actually, wisely, considered that I had Gelin Hrey as a Sword Worlder, and didn't want to possibly impact their future endeavors in the region. Smart actually.

In any case, I was able to extemporaneously plant the hook for the scenario "Heiress" by Ewan Quibell, from Freelance Traveller #23. Since they were going to Flammarion next, it worked very well for that. By the time the rest of "Heiress" hits, they should be done with "Search & Rescue".

Speaking of which, when they emerged from jump space, they heard a BANG and started losing atmosphere through the faucet in the galley. I had rolled an event, and thought this would be cool. They did a space walk and patched the exterior hole, but the object had entered the landing gear bay. When they retrieved it they discovered it was a jump torpedo. I'm using the Avenger Enterprises/Comstar Games idea, where j-torps (being sub-100-dtons) are extremely unreliable, and that the company that made them faked the performance tests to get sales. MCr 15+ for something that misjumps more than half the time is a losing proposition. I had it be an encrypted message from a Leviathan-class Merchant Cruiser, destined for McClellan Factors.

And there I did a misstep. I had it be from the Amuar, because I thought I remembered that cruiser being lost in 1100 in the Outrim Void. But it didn't -- it was taken by pirates in 1102.

So, now I have to consider how to handle it when it eventually comes up (I mentioned a reward for return to McClellan Factors, and they're really poor, so they'll remember). I see an interesting possibility. The Historical Documents (i.e., the LBBs) mention it being lost in 1102, but that could have been the final move by the pirates. It's probable that was the last step in a complex heist; this is an 1800-ton vessel with a crew of almost 60, so an Ocean's Eleven-style heist could easily have taken place. In which case, the j-torp might have been reporting whatever the preliminary step was. Maybe the captain used this method to securely send HQ a proposal by a group of Outrim pirates to cooperate for profit at the expense of the Barracai Technum? He wouldn't want to send such an incriminating message through ordinary channels.

Anyway, after docking at the Way Station, they got down to brass tacks. I had Anders offer them two options: they could polish off the work in a few weeks with the parts available, which would "reset" the Highndry back to "factory defaults". Or, they could keep the higher-TL parts, and he would have to source them and have them shipped, which would probably take upwards of 16 weeks. They opted for the latter. Then, Anders offered them temporary employment enforcing the interdiction of 875-496*; I've decided the Scouts interdicted the world to protect the natives from Imperial contamination. They accepted, so next week we'll start "Search & Rescue". I'll try to set a cliffhanger with the crash of the liner. We'll see how far they get. I expect them to be wowed with the SAR toys!

*For my game's purposes, I made it a Red zone instead of Amber, and decided the Scout service interdicted it (officially, anyway) to protect the native culture.

 

[ishldgetoutmore]

The players jumped at the salaries offered as they are still desperately poor. Once they got to the 875-496 station, they were pleased with their new toys. Sar Aylen gave them a tour and went over her expectations as XO. They got to meet the Station Commander, Chrix Derison, who told them the station crew is "like a family" which immediately set off red flags with the players. All good stuff.

We roleplayed a total of five weeks so far of relatively boring Search and Rescue patrol duty. I made sure to give them a taste of the Navy's Dindy codes, where Naval vessels can enter the interdicted system surreptitiously, being automatically edited out of any of the system's sensors, even live feeds; the PCs will almost certainly try to figure out a way to bypass the Dindy coding in the systems, but they're not willing to mess too much with equipment that isn't theirs, because they know if they brick it they'll have to pay for it.

They are already thinking of ways to have some of the cool SAR gear be "misplaced" so they can retrieve it later. Which is fine, they're not Battle Dress they're just really, really good Vacc Suits. But to this point in the campaign, they've been making do with the disposable Pressure Sleeves and Rebreathers (they're that poor). It's been a while since I ran a game where the PCs started out this far down to the bottom of the barrel.

I ended with a teaser of a random encounter on the Station when they came in after their patrol. A bunch of religious types were going through and decided to do a ceremony and preach to the godless masses of the Station. As the PCs came in, spoiled vegetables started to be thrown and the mood turned ugly. I will use this as a teaser for a Patron encounter I found online; they aren't really in a position to move on from the system, but if they help any of the pilgrims they'll be remembered for a future service.