Secrets of the Ancients

[IanBruntlett]

Is anyone running the Secrets of the Ancients campaign (TSOTA)?
http://www.mongoosepublishing.com/home/detail.php?qsID=1843&qsSeries=51

I've ran the MgT adventure books (and ran Prison Planet twice), the Signs and Portents adventures and so I'm branching out.

I'd like to know what experiences people have of running TSOTA. In particular roughly how much gaming time does a particular episode require? Are there any gotchas I should be aware of?

TIA


Ian

 

[Emeketos]

when is part 3 of this campaign going to be out?

 

[IanBruntlett]

I'd like to know what experiences people have of running TSOTA. In particular roughly how much gaming time does a particular episode require? Are there any gotchas I should be aware of?

Well, I ran a TSOTA gaming session today and we covered a lot of ground in section 1. The only gotcha I have is that as a GM, you have to comb through the material in detail, looking to weave encounters, investigation and combat into a comprehensible whole.

This gotcha applies to other campaign books. I've bought an A5 spiral bound notebook to note personae dramatis and other items of interest.

 

[superc0ntra]

I ran part one until after the meeting with the professor in one session. Will continue next weekend.

 

[alex_greene]

Of course, if we get to the end of this current scenario before the third segment comes out, I'm gonna have to wing it and come up with something that'll take it completely out of left field.

So that's this Saturday night, then. No pressure. In your own time.

 

[IanBruntlett]

We've just finished playing section 1. Sincerely hope 1) future sections aren't as complex and 2) I don't run out of adventure to run - when will section 3 be ready?

One flaw I've found so far is that two key characters have very similar names - Vlen Backett and Ven Yasha. In the end I stopped referring to Vlen Backet and referred to him as Uncle Vlen instead.

 

[alex_greene]

The Backett family name goes back to Trow Backett, one of the characters from the original SOTA, and Trow's first appearance as one of the pregen characters in the Tarsus boxed game in CT.

I dodged the bullet this week. Thursday night, last thing, half of my gaming group suddenly remembered they'd had a bank holiday weekend getaway booked for weeks, and play was postponed the night after.

But only postponed for one more week. It's back on this Saturday.

 

[AndrewW]

If the next part isn't out by the time you need it. Through your players for a loop and give something else a try that session. Doesn't even have to be an RPG, could be a boardgame, miniature game or something. Just a change of pace.

 

[alex_greene]

If the next part isn't out by the time you need it. Through your players for a loop and give something else a try that session. Doesn't even have to be an RPG, could be a boardgame, miniature game or something. Just a change of pace.

Two days into the Jump:-
"Guys ... I think there's something in the ship with us. I haven't seen it, but Jones the cat gets very twitchy in the engine room, and then there's that large patch of melted deck that looks like it's been dissolved with acid and also this long piece of shed skin that I found ..."

 

[zero]

Funny you should talk about that, I've been working on bringing Alien into Traveller, I made up a world profile for the Planet with the Eggs on, located in the Zeta 2 Reticuli system (39.2 light years aka 12 parsecs from the Sol system).
Originally I planned to use alot of this with a Cstars one-shot when its released in October, but having the eggs in Zeta 2'll mean it fits base Traveller better.

Currently statting out the Alien creature (as an animal encounter stat line), I'm going through each Size until it grows to its max size of 7 (I've done the facehugger and playtested it already).
I'm basing it on Dan O'Bannon's original script (on Disc 2 of the Alien Quadrilogy box) so the alien eggs are in a pyramid indiginous to the planet (cut due to budget restraints), not the crashed Derelict (which is there to explore too).

Anyways, the point of this post, when complete I'll post up what I come up with if anyones interested

 

[IanBruntlett]

Anyways, the point of this post, when complete I'll post up what I come up with if anyones interested

I'm interested

 

[Burocrate]

Anyways, the point of this post, when complete I'll post up what I come up with if anyones interested

I'm interested

Seconded! All in favor? <pause to count hard drives being warmed up for file saving> Your Grace, the motion has been passed; the mob would like to see stats and pretty pictures of Aliens posted on this site immediately, if not sooner. Thank you, m' Lord.

Seriously, the Traveller net crowd will happily save any freely offered work. Oddly enough, the fan based material posted on line is typically pretty darned good. So post those ideas; hard drives are standing by.

Thank you. :lol:

 

[Ommadawn]

I'm interested too.

 

[zero]

I'll make a topic for next week with the Planet's Universal profile and some alien stats. :wink:

I still got some work to do on the alien, but the Facehugger and Planet will be up on monday.

 

[alex_greene]

And when you do, we will rearrange the letters of the acronym of "The Secret Of The Ancients" to TOAST.

 

[badpixie]

I kind of thought this was a really odd choice to do as an adventure. If there was one classic Traveller adventure I would NOT run or redo it would be Secret of the Ancients.

It is simply an adventure which revelas far too much of the Ancients backstory, and destroys any sense of mystery surrounding them. In other words it is a massive campaign spoiler.

It is much better to keep the Ancients shadowy and vague; the old adventure Shadows was a good example of how to hanfle them; SOTA was a not-so-good one.

 

[badpixie]

As regards Alien, one of the GDW Journals of the Travellers Aid Society had stats for this (Reticulan Parasite). Some of the details of the Alien Life cycle would need readjusting as the stats were based on Alien before it became 'a francise' (lovely word, meaning, I think, total lack of Imagination on the part ofProducers).

 

[alex_greene]

Rather than kill everybody on board, I decided against using Xenomorphs.

I used a Chirper instead. I decided that Alell was home to a Chirper colony, and that one of them had managed somehow to sneak on board. Apart from stealing food from the characters, he was starting to damage some of the ship's components, meaning that they had to find him before he inadvertently broke the atmo processors and everybody suffocated.

Also, because they'd Jumped so far into the gravity well, this was a really good time for me to give them a slight Misjump. They emerged, five days into a seven day Jump, and found themselves way out in the middle of nowhere. The nearest star was about two days' travel time away - spectral analysis showed that it was in the solar system of Feri, Jump-2 from both Beck's World and Boughene (they'd originally planned a Jump to Uakye).

I'm planning on an encounter with a vessel on the way in - a Zhodani scout ship, a minor distraction. The Zhos will not have seen a Chirper before but they will have heard of them in legend.

After that, a layover in Feri, a Patron encounter and another minor adventure until the Alahir arrives and they have to make up their mind as to where to go next.

*Big Bad Alien Ship.

 

[zero]

I've updated my Alien thread with Facehugger stats. I've tried to make them less lethal than they could be by making rules for removing them and also chestburster removal surgery.

As always, take what you like, change what you dont, but the thing is playtested and works IMHO perfectly.

 

[alex_greene]

I've updated my Alien thread with Facehugger stats. I've tried to make them less lethal than they could be by making rules for removing them and also chestburster removal surgery.

As always, take what you like, change what you dont, but the thing is playtested and works IMHO perfectly.

There is precedent. Judge Dredd got infected in Incubus, the Dredd/Alien crossover, and he survived.

I guess the med tech of Nostromo was not as advanced as it could be - it was just a carrier vessel, not some high tech medship - and of course in the Traveller universe, they don't have lifelike androids to sabotage the crew at every turn because they were programmed to keep the beasties alive to take them to The Company.

At the very worst, of course, there is always disintegrator therapy ...