Pirates of Drinax - GMs thread

[mac40k]

Let's add another pedantic question:

1): Pirates of Drinax starts in the year 1105;

2): Honour Among Thieves and Treasure Ship both take place in the year 1105;

3): The Vorito Gambit is supposed to happen seven years after the destruction of Vorito Highport (1105, again).

Hmm... But how many months or years we need to complete a Pirates of Drinax campaign? And the Fifth Frontier War (1107), the Rebellion (1116) and Virus (1130) are supposed to happen in Mongoose Traveller too?

I guess this is a case of YTU will differ from OTU based on how your campaign goes and whether or not you plan to try to use any of that other material once you complete PoD.

 

[ochd]

I don't know about that Dan. There is a precedent in space opera: We came to know Han Solo as "hawn" in "A New Hope," and then suddenly, in "Empire Strikes Back," along comes Lando and he's "han." You can switch. It's not too late.

:lol: I seem to recall reading that fans were upset about the way 'Landsraad' was pronounced by Brad Dourif in Dune.

 

[steve98052]

Except for words with a clear linguistic home, I generally pronounce names with classical Latin vowels.

 

[paltrysum]

Found a little problem with the adventure "Ihatei!" Keaih, the planet the two warring clans came from, is described as a water world: "The Hkaaiheir and the Htyowao are both respectable clans within the Hierate. The Hkaaiheir are considerably more powerful, but the Htyowao are close allies with the major Ahroay’if trader clan who rule most of this subsector. Many centuries ago, they settled the water-world of Keaih together, and began a long-term engineering project to boil off some of the seas to thicken the atmosphere."

Keaih 0210 CAA5887-9 Fl. Not a water world. :shock: In fact, it only has a hydrographic percentage of 50. And I seriously doubt they boiled off 50% of its seas in a few hundred years, thereby creating the exotic atmosphere it has today. If they did, the tale of the planet would be the ecological disaster they created, thereby creating a fluid atmosphere planet, not the war between two clans. More likely the author saw that "A" for the atmosphere and mistook it for an "A" hydrographics percentage. I guess you can just kind of hand wave this away, but it does take a little out of the story that the two clans were fighting for the scarce land on the planet's archipelagos and therefore one of them had to win, and the other is motivated to seek new lands.

 

[Baldo]

More likely the author saw that "A" for the atmosphere and mistook it for an "A" hydrographics percentage.

Or maybe he mistook the 'FL' (Fluid) trade code for the 'WA' (Water World) code instead.
If you go to page 92, you find this: "Toiho intends to win glory outside the Hierate, but has not yet decided where to plant his claw. He is contemplating the planet of Pourne (Tlaiowaha/0704) – like Keaih, it is a waterworld". Unfortunately, Pourne is a 'Fluid' world (A9B2887-A)...

Another Keaih question:

The reward for the 'Keaih Patron Mission' (page 266) is "a shipping contract with the Company of Profits That Rise Like Mist. This contract involves shipping roughly 1,000 tons of cargo between Keaih and Vorito every month, at a rate of Cr2200 per ton". But Keaih is 5 parsec from Vorito, and the Freight Costs table in the core rulebook gives bigger rewards for your efforts (Cr7700). Am I missing something?

 

[paltrysum]

That must have been it: he confused fluid (Fl) for water world (Wa). It's a tough retcon to engineer. Aslan aren't likely to leave a challenging, fluid-atmosphere environment for another challenging fluid-atmosphere environment if they have better choices. In addition to its fluid atmosphere, Pourne has one of the higher populations, tech levels, and an A-class starport, making it a tough one to conquer...but then again, the Aslan like it when their prey fights back!

I would think it more likely that they would go after Paal, Sink, or Fantasy, worlds that could support the lush hunting grounds that Aslan so desire.

 

[Klooth Quethos]

Another Keaih question:

The reward for the 'Keaih Patron Mission' (page 266) is "a shipping contract with the Company of Profits That Rise Like Mist. This contract involves shipping roughly 1,000 tons of cargo between Keaih and Vorito every month, at a rate of Cr2200 per ton". But Keaih is 5 parsec from Vorito, and the Freight Costs table in the core rulebook gives bigger rewards for your efforts (Cr7700). Am I missing something?

I am assuming an overage of Cr2200 per ton over the standard rate (i.e. Cr9900)?

 

[Kulthea]

I've been DMing the Pirates of Drinax for over a year (and in-game it's just ticking over to year 3). Initially we were 1e Mongoose and then moved to 2e hybrid with the core 2e books, then full 2e with the Drinax books. It's been a blast and there's still a lot of material to go, so this could easily be a 3 year campaign if interest levels remain high.

The starting point was Honour Among Thieves and then The Treasure of Sindal, where they discovered the space station almost intact but in need of extensive repairs. Along the way they've revisited various contacts on Theev, done missions for Lady Yemar of Palindrome, investigated the strange ship for the government of Pourne, assisted the inhabitants of Fantasy and met up with the council on Tech-World. We've also started some Navy characters for The Game of Sun and Shadow and there's great tension in knowing that a fleet is coming, but not being able to react to that.

I've tweaked a few things and straight-up changed others. Firstly the Harrier has morphed a couple of times but is now pure 2e with a medical bay module. Early on the party captured a far trader, a frontier trader and the Eakhau-class trader from Taihlokh's Raiders (may they rest in peace). The Far Trader they set up to do trading between Drinax and Torpol which has given them a little spending money from time to time. The other two have their own crews too. The Treasure of Sindal got them two more Harriers, which at great expense they finally got working. (As a reward I ruled that with the extensive sensors and computing power they have a bonus to acting in concert, so if they have three Harriers linked together they get +2 to attacks, sensor checks and counter measures - one for each additional Harrier up to flights of three).

My campaign is combat-light. I prefer them to think and act intelligently rather than just fight. They've had a few combats, and more ship fights (the Harrier is deadly) but on the whole the universe is a lot less antagonistic than Traveller campaigns I've been in in the past. That may change.

Currently my Travellers are finding people to help them repair and make operational the Treasure of Sindal space station which I designed using the High Guard books to be a mini military refuelling base with some manufacturing and repair facilities, and most enticingly a 600t ship construction yard.

I have kept a (poorly-worded) blog of the party exploits because while we play every week (more or less) my players have terrible memories. If anyone wants more information about how I've approached various aspects I'm happy to help.

 

[MonkeyX]

Would love to see the stats for the Old Sindal station. I kept the info fairly vague when the PCs got there, focusing on the 2 extra Harriers and the missiles rather than any other part of it but the players want to go the same route and use it as a home base.

 

[paltrysum]

The space station is pretty far from Drinax. Do the players intend to change their area of operations? If their goal is to recreate the original Kingdom of Drinax, or some facsimile thereof, it's not an ideal location. Of course, it is a sandbox campaign. Could be that the players change their objectives after making the find.

 

[PsiTraveller]

IMC I had the hidden station be a treasure trove of Harrier specific gear. Fab shops with all Harrier specs in the files, specialized tools and equipment etc. Since there were a few other Harriers attached it made sense. My group copied the data and grabbed the hardware and set up a new repair base at Drinax. They also hauled the Harriers back to Drinax for repair and gave them to Wrax to start a Drinaxian Navy.

 

[JMISBEST]

Maybe if you think it right and the characters and Drinax by extension, either can't possibly win or can't possibly lose change it so they can possibly win or lose

 

[paltrysum]

The Harrier (called Ghost of Sindal in our campaign), got into a bit of a scrape in our run of "Treasure Ship" and I can confirm that while it is a wily and dangerous ship, it is not invulnerable. It got pretty banged up fleeing patrol corvette Sincerity and then denied the ability to escape after receiving a level-2 jump drive crit by close escort Komino. The captain had to surrender and got boarded by Imperial marines from Sincerity.

A lot of the outcome hinged on Sincerity being lucky enough to find the Ghost what with its virtually insurmountable stealth, but they got lucky and rolled high before the ship could make it to jump point. Another key problem was that while fast, the Ghost can't return fire (when fleeing) with its forward-mounted particle accelerator. I think the players intend to amend this, putting the gun on a barbette so it can deliver its nasty bite whether attacking or retreating. Sincerity, which ended up not only finding the Ghost but feeding that data to Komino, whose poor, military-grade sensors would surely never have found them without assistance. High Guard lists the patrol corvette as having military-grade sensors as well, but "Treasure Ship" indicates that Sincerity has better sensors so I gave it a slight boost. Once Komino got into the fray, it's particle beams and missile turrets sealed the victory for the Imperials. The Ghost barely survived intact, suffering multiple crits and retaining only 13 hull points by the end of the combat!

Previous to this event, I was wondering how anything short of a destroyer could catch and destroy the Ghost. I believe I now see some of its vulnerabilities.

Luckily for the pirates, their ship was "clean" of plundered booty and the captain called the Imperials out for a) attacking a sovereign ship of the Drinaxi Navy (as the players call themselves), and b) operating out of their jurisdiction. Whew! The players kept the Ghost and got it repaired on Arunisiir. :shock:

Anyone else have combat scenes with the Harrier to share?

 

[ochd]

Another key problem was that while fast, the Ghost can't return fire (when fleeing) with its forward-mounted particle accelerator. I think the players intend to amend this, putting the gun on a barbette so it can deliver its nasty bite whether attacking or retreating.

Wait a sec. Have I missed something? Where does it say the Harrier's particle weapon is only forward facing? And it's already on a barbette.

Dan.

 

[paltrysum]

Wait a sec. Have I missed something? Where does it say the Harrier's particle weapon is only forward facing? And it's already on a barbette.

Hmm. Glad I posted then. I'm not sure how it crept into our campaign, but I seem to recall a passage somewhere stating that the Harrier was designed to attack targets head on and therefore the forward-facing particle accelerator was part of the design. That the pilot must bring it about to bear. But damned if I can find the passage now. I distributed Mongoose's Harrier supplement to the players and we've been running it with that limitation so far. I might have to retcon it in my campaign that it was broken and capable of being repaired.

The captain got the thrashed Harrier fixed on Arunisiir by the technically savvy granddaughters of Ekaft, the Aslan who claimed they were on his property when they landed at Arunisiir Down Starport (see "Pirates of Drinax" Book 1, page 56).

That would have changed the outcome of the fight considerably!

 

[CaladanGuard]

I feel like someone must have mentioned something about it somewhere...because something similar crept into my campaign. The dorsal barbette only has a 200ish degree forward field of file in my campaign. I have a feeling that the players might have actually started it themselves. Based on the look of one of the pictures in the book. It's been over a year, but I vaguely recall listening to them once As they convinced each other that it couldn't have 360 degrees of fire with the raised aft section on the Harrier.

 

[Old School]

Restricting the field of fire makes no sense when looking at the deck plans, but it does make sense when looking at the art work.

And here is what is in the text for the Harrier supplement:

Armament layout seems unusual at first glance, but there is a logic to it. Most small vessels carry dorsal, ventral or side-mounted turrets for a defensive style of combat, but the Harrier-class is a strike ship. Her two turrets are restricted to a forward arc when using direct-fire weapons, but this suits both the image of the ship and her intended role – the common tactic is to make a sweeping gun pass and then a rapid escape if unsuccessful, or a hard deceleration and boarding if necessary.

In my campaign, we ignore this. Mainly because its a bad ship design that can’t be logically defended. If the turret is blocked its in the wrong place.

 

[paltrysum]

Ahhhhh. There it is. I knew there was something like that. In any case, that kind of contradicts what they say about the ventral turret in another section: "The entire turret mechanism for the ventral weapon mount was destroyed by a direct hit from a fusion weapon. Repairing the turret to the point where it can fire into the ship’s frontal arc only will require 1 Structural RU and 1 Technical RU. A full repair, enabling the weapon to fire in any direction will require
an additional 1 Structural RU and 2 Technical RU."

So you can repair the ventral turret to work like turrets are designed to work but not the more important dorsal turret?! Kind of goofy. In any case, if you do install a missile system in the ventral, it doesn't matter which direction it's facing since missiles have their own thrust. You can shoot them in the opposite direction of your target and they can turn themselves around to go in the desired direction.

 

[ochd]

Seems like this is a case of the first-edition content not being consistently updated -- the first-edition Harrier from memory had port and starboard forward-facing turrets. Another example is that the Harrier supplement references locations onboard the ship (e.g. computer room) that appeared on the first-edition deckplan but not on the second.

That's not by way of moaning -- just glad that I haven't necessarily overlooked a crucial bit of information about the Harrier. Well, I suppose I did, but it's not entirely my fault

Dan.

 

[ochd]

SPOILER ALERT: while the subject of this thread is 'GMs thread', so good, decent and upstanding players should not be reading this, nevertheless the following question -- and hopefully lots of answers -- contain info for GMs' eyes only.

In Treasure Ship, the vault of Martin II contains mail drums of secure electronic communication, as well as various legal documents relating to Imperial diplomacy and mercantile ventures in the Hierate. I'm trying to think of some adventure hooks I can spin off from information gleaned from these documents, and would welcome any ideas people want to share.

Thanks,

Dan.