Playtest Report of High & Dry

[allanimal]

I started GMing this with part of my normal traveller group plus a player new to traveller.
It is much too late and I am much too tired to write the whole report at the moment, but rest assured I will. Hopefully tomorrow...

I do have to say something tonight though... The new to traveller player is having a blast. He chose a Vargr at character creation, not knowing anything about the adventure. He spent most of his time on Walston so far trying to get the Vargr populace to rise up and revolt against the minority human dictator and population keeping his people down. He got pretty close to derailing the whole plot.

Anyway... More to come with what worked, what didn't and what needs more clarification.

 

[allanimal]

Flammarian:
They PCs all have connections, and a good reason to be on Flammarian together. They were resistant to do much exploring of the starport until they decided what they were doing as a gang of travellers. The place has tons of potential, I could have had tons of things for them to do, but I wanted to get on with the printed adventure, so I decided to just throw Mr. Casarii at them. One PC failed out of the scouts several terms ago, but this guy http://forum.mongoosepublishing.com/viewtopic.php?f=131&t=114181 had just left honorably. So I decided he was who Casarii contacts about the HighNDry.

The meeting goes well, and suspecting it's not the milk run Casarii describes, the PCs start making additional demands mostly to the tune of "we want weapons & armor". Super broker PC goes into persuasion mode and eventually Casarii agrees that the IISS will provide a TL10 Vacc Suit and a stunner for each PC, but they need to be returned with the HighNDry and the PCs need to pay for any damages to these items. With the job accepted, players have 2 days to research and gear up.

1st thing they learn is Walston has thin atmosphere, so everyone buys a TL10 breather mask. This becomes important later...
After some shopping (and making up rules on getting augments installed, see: http://forum.mongoosepublishing.com/viewtopic.php?f=135&t=114180) the PCs boarded the Autumn Gold and left Flammarian.

In general, the Flammarian section seems fine. It is free form and straight up role play, so no real issues here. GM can pace it as it works for the players.

Maybe some suggestions for the referee if:
A) the PCs already have a starship. Having their own makes a big chunk of the printed adventure trivial.
B) the PCs have a small craft or air/raft. These things can make a section of the adventure trivial as well.
C) if none of the PCs have a connection to the IISS. Why the heck would Casarii make his offer to them?

On to 567-908 in the next post.

 

[allanimal]

567-908

The PCs were pretty relaxed during the jump to 567-908, and didn't really get into any shenanigans.

Similarly, they didn't get to any trouble on 567-908 either. They seemed to just want to get to Walston. So while they waited for the Autumn Gold to refuel, they hung out in the galley & rec room, cooking dinner for the outpost residents, and singing Karaoke. A few scientists bored most of the crew to sleep.

This whole section could have some nice hooks, but nothing is listed in the adventure. I felt like the most of the PCs were not really interested in doing much, just wanting to get to Walston. But I think a quirky little diversion or two would have been nice.

I didn't run into any typos or any unclear text in this section.

Up next, Walston Startown

 

[allanimal]

Walston Startown

Disclaimer: It's going to be hard to proceed without spoilers. If you plan to play this yourself, you may want to skip this. I will try to warn you about anything major.

Upon reaching Walston starport, the PCs packed up their gear and bid adieu to the Autumn Gold. The two officers of the department of Customs and Immigration, Parks and Fisheries, & Railroad Maintenance that met the PCs asked for their IDs, checked their immigration forms and insisted upon the gang to hand over their weapons and armor as required by His Excellency President-For-Life Masterson. Oh, and the Cr10 per item weekly storage fee. The PCs reluctantly complied. One PC smuggled his tailored cloth armor in.

This is an area that I think the adventure could use some detail. What group of Travellers won't at least contemplate smuggling in weapons, armor or other illegal items. I decided it was a very difficult (12+) Deception check for the armor. I chose that difficulty because these are trained officials specifically looking for people sneaking contraband in. I chose SOC as the relevant stat, with the thinking that this traveller has to act like he was not doing anything wrong. Dex would have also worked, too. There should be a note either in the core rulebook or the adventure itself about what should be used to sneak things past the customs officers. A novice referee may need some guidance in this area and it is one of the first skill checks that will have major repercussions in the adventure if the PCs fail.

After the formalities at customs & immigration, the PCs tried to get information off of them. They were not amused, as they were due to fix a stretch of railroad later in the day and needed to get to work. So they suggested a visit to the port authority offices. The Vargr Traveller got a first dose of passive racism, and the player of the Vargr dealt with it well. There was a great, memorable exchange where the Vargr asked another of the Travellers "Did you see that? How they treated me?" and the other PC was all "Huh? You are imagining things. Don't take it so Personally. Those guys were really nice and friendly, especially considering how busy they were".

The PCs explored town and eventually visited the Port Authority. Between their explanations and the Port Authority visit, they found out about the former crew of the HighNDry's shameful behavior in town, the strange circumstances of their comings and goings as well as the ship's status with the planet's government.

By this time, the Vargr Traveller was quite irritated by the treatment of him and "his people". He and a human companion sought out the local Vargr bar where there was a major hoe down in progress, dancing and drinking and feasting in progress. The Vargr traveller got the local Vargr's perspective of the situation and the state of Walston, and didn't like what he heard. He started suggesting they unionize and eventually ratcheted it up to full on rebellion against the dictator. The Human Traveller with them managed to calm things down before things got out of hand or the secret police showed up to quell the insurrection before it started.

Again, no major issues with this section, other than the suggestion that guidance be added about sneaking things past customs.

Next - on to Central Lake.

 

[allanimal]

Central Lake

Once again, spoilers...

The train to Central Lake was uneventful. The Travellers found the palace and eventually met Alan Greener – the Minister for Offworld Affairs, Public Relations and Fisheries. Negotiations ensued and eventually the Travellers agreed to complete the HighNDry's mission in exchange for the ship's location.

When they got the location, they proceeded to buy gear that they needed for the trip to the ship. Let me run down the summary of the conversations:
"Are there any starships on Walston?"
"No."
"Small Craft"
"No"
"Air/Rafts? Aircraft"
"His excellency has one, but don't even think about asking to use it."
"ATVs?"
"None that you can use."
So they went shopping for survival gear. And black market items.

Like almost everything before this point, there isn't really much wrong with this section. The town has plenty of role-play opportunities, and maybe it would be nice to have a patron or two dropped in to allow the place to have more dimensions.

Next: Mount Salbarii

 

[allanimal]

Mount Salbarii

This is the part that so far I have had the most trouble with.

1) There are various references to climbing, but there is no statement of difficulty.

This segment of the climb is ... not unduly difficult for a Traveller with Athletics skills.

Great! So what's the difficulty level? Average? Routine? "Unduly Difficult" is not in the list of difficulty levels, and even if it was, all we know is the climb isn't it.
Also, which athletics speciality and which stat to use?
This happens several times in this chapter. Needs alignment with the current rules.
2) Altitude sickness & Breathing Gear. All this talk of high altitude and thin atmosphere is great, but what if they are wearing Respirators, Breather Masks or Vacc Suits? The first thing the Travellers did when they heard Walston has a thin atmosphere is shove their TL10 Breather masks up their noses. The adventure seems to assume the PCs have no air supply and no indication what to do they are prepared. These things are so small and cheap, I can't imagine a group not having them. The text for a rebreather states:

This rebreather concentrates inhaled oxygen, allowing a Traveller to breath in worlds with a thin atmosphere.

The adventure really needs to tell us how the altitude and the breather interact. Also, what if they climb in their vacc suits? No altitude sickness but harder climbing?
Maybe since the atmosphere is thin, then the travellers need a breather no matter what and the assumption is that they have one. In that case, please state it.
3) The frequent END checks for altitude sickness. On the good side, the difficulty levels are clearly sated. On the bad side, there are too many of them and they get too difficult, too fast. Early on, there is a way to avoid the rolls by taking things easy. The later rolls should also be easier or avoidable under the same circumstances. I ended up giving them a boon because they were taking it easy.
4) The whole thing seemed like too much of the same thing. Something in there to break up the climbing and hiking and END checks would make it more interesting. I say this totally in hindsight - I did not get it from reading it in advance. Something in there to break it up... Not sure what without changing the whole nature of the world of Walston.
5) I have pointed the out before, but to keep it all in one place, the bookmark in the PDF lists this chapter as "Mount Salbar II" instead of "Mount Salbarii".

The Travellers did get up. They had plenty of gear to help them out, but not sure if it should have helped them less or more.

Next up: In The Crater. We started this yesterday, but barely. It got late and we called it a night. So the full report on this will have to wait until we can finish this up in a week or two or three.

 

[Scratches]

I've only read through H&D but the sole reliance on altitude that allanimal brought up is a very good one. Maybe build in some variety that a referee can use, something like an encounter table with DMs if the Travellers have brought along some breathing gear so the ascent is a challenge for them regardless. It'd help with the monotony too.

 

[MongooseMatt]

A) the PCs already have a starship. Having their own makes a big chunk of the printed adventure trivial.

For this, check out page 3 - basically, with starting characters, they do not begin with their ship. It is theirs, but they must go an retrieve it

Looking into your other comments!

 

[allanimal]

A) the PCs already have a starship. Having their own makes a big chunk of the printed adventure trivial.

For this, check out page 3 - basically, with starting characters, they do not begin with their ship. It is theirs, but they must go an retrieve it

Looking into your other comments!

D'oh! I remember reading that page but totally forgot it a week later and after the excitement of character generation.

 

[IanBruntlett]

Due to time constraints, the game wasn't run. However, I do have some notes from my preparation work...

Feedback – MgT2 Traveller – High and Dry.

Page 4
* Table of information about systems. The Travel Code column is empty. Is this the same as “Travel Zones” from MgT1's p167?
* Previously mentioned table has a “Location” column that does not match up with the map on p5.

Page 5
* Title of map is District 286 – it should be District 268
* For ease of use, label the sides of the map “Coreward, Trailing” etc.
* On the map have some kind of indicator where Sword Worlds ends and District 268 starts. There is an attempt to show that border with white lines but it just doesn't look right

In general.
* From a harassed GM's point of view, labelling the maps and diagrams is a necessity.
* Be a good idea to mention that all this is happening in the Spinward Marches sector & more information can be found from the eponymous book.

HTH

 

[allanimal]

Today, we managed to finish up the scenario that we started a couple weeks ago.

We started in the crater. The crew decided they didn't want to risk the spare parts & diag computer getting wet, so they made a floatation device with the waterproof ponchos in their field survival kits. One PC swam across the lake with ropes to help guide the float across. This alone character did not spot Kimbley, who decided the PC was dinner and attacked. The battle was ugly - Kimbley was ruthless which was especially bad considering the PCs armor an weapons was taken at customs. They did manage to find some black market pistols in Central Lake, so they did manage to defeat the beast, but not before the PCs was badly hurt.

At this point in time, as a GM, there were very few NPCs, so I didn't get to role-play much. Once there were NPCs to interact with, there wasn't time to do much. So, I felt like this last half was a bunch of formulae and skill checks. But I think the PCs enjoyed what was going on - I know there was plenty of roleplaying between them.

The steps to get the ship flyable again and do the survey were presented in the book as a fairly linear timeline, but the PCs wanted to do things in other ways (mostly doing things in parallel which were presented as serial in the book). As an experienced referee, I was able to handle it, but with all the jumping around, it may be hard for the novice.

Once the eruption starts, things start getting tense. The skill checks are getting hard, and the chance to take extra time just isn't there.

Most of the PCs wanted to ignore the distress call from the 3 Vargr after successfully saving the group of 11. But the Vargr in the group was piloting and refused to take no for an answer.
This resulted in the dramatic and dangerous situation after their rescue [trying not to add too many spoilers]

This was very, very difficult for the Travellers. They only thought of 2 of the three possibilities presented in the adventure. The third (and safest) was not something they even considered, and perhaps there should be some guidance for the referee here : maybe a pilot check to even think of that option. Because it really seems counterintuitive.

The series of skill checks that resulted from the final decisions here were hard. The initial effect caused so much damage to the crew (and passengers), that the remaining difficult skill checks join the three subsequent phases were nearly impossible (damage + negative DMs due to the conditions + difficult checks as is). In the end, most of the PCs were unconscious and nearly dead, one PC was dead. Most of the civilians they "rescued" were also dead. It was a victory, but a nearly a pyrrhic one.

It was very dramatic and tense - I think they liked it, even though it ended badly.

Question: Should armor have prevented some damage in the final sequence when everyone on board was being tossed about the ship? We didn't even think of it at the time (one PC had smuggled cloth armor onto the planet, and some were wearing Vacc suits).

During play, I did spot a typo in this half, but looking through it, I don't see it ... Ugh. I will try again and report back when I find it.

Anyway, the 2nd half was very much a tense game of quick decisions and tough skill checks. Much different from the 1st half. I think they all enjoyed it. I did.

The players afterwards questioned why a ship with 2G acceleration would not be able to outrun the pyroclastic flow or even the grav limo. Yes, the ship wasn't in tip-top shape, and atmospheric maneuvers are different than piloting in space, but maybe a note in the adventure could try to explain this.

 

[Belisknar]

I was one of the players in this game. (the one who wound up dead) So I'll give some of my thoughts from the players perspective.

Overall, enjoyed the scenario. I feel there is a lot of flavour written in but nothing to do with it. By that I mean the places were well described things seemed to be going on in the world but it was all the mundane. It was nothing for the travellers to latch onto.

We each had 2 characters that we could use, a primary and a backup. My primary character, Sheh, was not very well suited for this scenario. she was a 30 year old, very skilled broker with no combat skills, the only shipboard skills she had were Pilot (smallcraft) 1 and Steward 1 and electronics 0. She had Science 0 which did help out with some of the background info we gathered for the volcano.


A little linear/Nothing else seems to be going on. As the PC's you're asked to go and pick up the ship. That's fine, perfectly acceptable way to start off a scenario. Though, there are no other hooks on Flamarion at the beginning. There's 1 stop along the way 567-908 where nothing happens... at all. What is the point? Especially since they have to stay there for a day to refine the fuel.

Yes a referee could have added something but normally you expect there to be some kind of info or patron on the planet that needs something done. I've only recently started running games myself and having additional information in these scenario books helps immensely.

The same can be said for Walston. There was nothing going on outside of things directly related to the ship. If we hadn't had a Vargr on the crew I doubt we would have even realised there was anything going onin that regard on the planet and likely would have missed out on about an hour or more of entertaining quazi-rebellious roleplay.

I had no real issue with the climb Allanimal's notes on it are pretty on point and there is nothing I can really add. I've read through the book and if we had been going by the raw words several of the party would have been suffering from severe altitude sickness before we reached the ship.

We unfortunately all had terrible Recon rolls so no one saw the wolf, and if we hadn't managed to acquire weapons while on planet I'm pretty sure it would have gone very differently. Folowing that it was standard progression to get the scout up and running some crew fixing the ship, others off setting up the charges to get ready to scan the mountain.

At this point, I'm perfectly fine with things being linear. We've gotten to the ship and there are clear tasks that need to be done, interparty roleplay came into play more at this point. Again, if we hadn't had a Vargr, I don't know how much it would have played up since he was accusing the human crew of siding with the Walston Government against the Vargr population.

The initial erruption seemed a little anti climactic, I know that's the point but without our pilot freeking out I don't know if it would have been as big an issue. Maybe if it were to happen before you get the final diagnostic finished so you aren't entirely sure that the ship is going to take off?

During post erruption survey, Sheh was basically benched. We had more skilled Pilots and sensor operators. All she was good for was roleplay opportunities. I swapped over to my backup character, Clark, and put him on Comms for the remainder of the session.

During the rescue portions.. We didn't and likely never would have thought of the safe option after trying to save the 3 Vargr. Maybe someone who has a keen grasp of aerodynamics might think of it but I certainly would never have.

I'm actually okay with how punishing the hit on the ship and the crew is. I'd like there to be more ways to mitigate it though. Yes, strapping people into bunks and crash seats is fine. But exactly how many Crash Seats are there? If you try to rescue everyone, you've got a minimum of 14 people on board before you take crew into consideration.

Is all the damage that you take getting knocked around armour defeating or will your trusty vacsuit/cloth/flac save you those vital characteristic points?

Again, I'm okay with how much is there, and the resulting. 'We're so screwed.' that comes with losing those characteristic points. I'd just like to have all the information.

 

[allanimal]

little linear/Nothing else seems to be going on. As the PC's you're asked to go and pick up the ship. That's fine, perfectly acceptable way to start off a scenario. Though, there are no other hooks on Flamarion at the beginning. There's 1 stop along the way 567-908 where nothing happens... at all. What is the point? Especially since they have to stay there for a day to refine the fuel.

I just want to pipe in as the GM - as an expireienced Traveller GM, I would have been able to provide some interesting goings on for the PCs to run into on 567-908, but didn't because I was wanting to be sure we were play testing the scenario as written, not my group's creativity.
Some pointers for the new to Traveller GM would be nice here, as well as on Walston.

Knowing that this was a one off scenario for my group and wanting this to not encompass too many sessions, I didn't develop these worlds / encourage the PCs going off script like I would in my normal game. But still, a couple patrons or some rumors, info, etc would go a long way to making the places seem like there is something going on apart from the Travellers and their story.

 

[allanimal]

During the rescue portions.. We didn't and likely never would have thought of the safe option after trying to save the 3 Vargr. Maybe someone who has a keen grasp of aerodynamics might think of it but I certainly would never have.

Another comment on this. If the players received a different ship type as a mustering out benefit, say a Far Trader, the note at the beginnings of the adventure states that instead of a scout ship, the Travellers are recovering the mustering out ship.

In that case, depending on the ship, "safer option 3" may no longer apply, as the different ship's aerodynamics are completely different. A lab ship in the same situation would have no hope, I would think.

 

[MongooseMatt]

Cheers for these comments, much appreciated - looking into them!

 

[CosmicGamer]

I'll mention again what was said here and what someone already mentioned in another thread. It would be nice if the adventure included with the core rules was set in the Sindal Subsector provided in the rules.

 

[MongooseMatt]

I'll mention again what was said here and what someone already mentioned in another thread. It would be nice if the adventure included with the core rules was set in the Sindal Subsector provided in the rules.

We do have such an adventure in the works!

 

[DanDare2050]

I'll mention again what was said here and what someone already mentioned in another thread. It would be nice if the adventure included with the core rules was set in the Sindal Subsector provided in the rules.

We do have such an adventure in the works!

Yeh but this one is the introductory one, so it should be this one in that sector. It gives new GMs better connectivity which helps them out.