Friday, January 25, 2019

Edge of Night Sector Session #1 - Checking References

General Shipyards of Tortuga

DRAMATIS PERSONNAE
Navy Lieutenant Raj Kundra - 4 terms - UPP 758C8C
Mechanical-1, Pilot-1, Medical-1, Jack-o-T-1

Other Durjam Hammill - 3 terms - UPP A69467
Gambling-3, Forgery-1, Brawling-1, Shotgun-1

Army Lieutenant Bill Fisker - 1 term - UPP C643C9
Rifle-1, SMG-2

Navy Lieutenant Alex Kurigane- 2 terms - UPP AB8579
Vacc Suit-3, Ships Boat-1, Sword-1


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While sitting around a grubby startown bar after mustering out on Tortuga [2126], the characters are approached by a gentleman dressed in a finely cut suit, flashy waistcoat and a bolo tie. He notes the characters look like just the type of folks he needs to do a special job for him. The characters decline to discuss in public, so he invites them to his room at the nearby Travelers Aid Society hotel.  

Meet with the gentleman (who declines to give his name) in his suspiciously unlived-in looking hotel room. Tells them he represents Tschadi Shipyards of Rastafar [1827], who are interested in gathering some commercial intelligence from General Shipyards on Tortuga. Looking for technical information on Kinunir class battlecrusier. Specifically: the actual measured fuel capacity, location of the jump drive fittings, size and configuration of the maneuver drive/power plant couplings, and location of black globe generator fittings. Baron Kundra has served as an aide-de-camp aboard a Kinunir class cruiser so he understands what the man is looking for. He needs the actual data, not the publicly available information. And needs at least two corroborating statements for each fact. He will pay 50000Cr for each item of corroborated information.  Payment will be by bank transfer from an anonymous account or in the form of plasticredits  if preferred. Characters decline to take the job right away; need time to discuss. He concurs, and tells them to meet him at a restaurant in Tortuga city the next night if they wish to take the job.   


Once they leave the still-nameless gentleman, the party splits up to try learning who he really is and who he really represents before taking the job:
  • Mr Hammill heads to an an appropriately seedy startown dive to play some cards with the local rift-raft and inquire about the mystery man. He wins quite a few credits gambling, and learns the man had been in the bar a few days ago. Seemed to be sizing people up while siting quietly at the bar; didn't recall him talking to anyone at the time.
  • Baron Kundra does a public computer search to find information on Tschadi Shipyards. Seems the company went out of business about 25 years ago at a time of political upheaval on Rastafar. No one has made jump capable starships on Rastafar since (hence the 'B' classification of the starport). No other useful information available on the public network, and efforts to hack into the registry of joint stock companies network (see below) to get more information is unsuccessful.
  • Mr. Fisker heads for the office of the registry of joint stock companies to get information on Tschadi Shipyards.  Lucks out, as it seems one of the shareholders in the company lives on Tortuga. Normally the local planetary government would not have information of extra-planetary companies. The stockholder, a lady by the name of Aya Cheung, is apparently still alive and kicking though well into her nineties now. A later computer search reveals two children; a daughter Silvia who does not seem to have anything to do with the family business, and an older son Jordan who runs the business on his mothers behalf. Information filed away for future use. 
  • Mr Kurigane meanwhile sits in the lobby coffee shop at the TAS hotel to watch for the mystery man. After an hour or so he comes down to the desk and speaks a few words, then writes something down and passes this to the clerk. Then goes out to the taxi shelter to await a cab. An air/raft cab arrives shortly and the mystery man heads into Tortuga city. Mr Kurigane notes the cab number and tries to hail one so he can follow, but it takes too long for the cab to arrive. 


Characters get back together to compare notes. Decide to question the cab driver to see where the mystery man went. Calls cab company to request the same cab. Cab arrives, Baron tries to sweet talk the young lady cabbie into divulging said information, but she refuses and takes off. 

In the end, characters decide to take the job and continue investigation into their employer later. Meet with the mystery man as previously arranged and close the deal. He still refuses to give his name or even a location where he could be contacted. Instead gives them a locker number and combination at the starport where they can leave a message if they need to reach him. Meanwhile, Mr Fisker snaps a picture of the man with his hand computer. Baron Kundra uses that image to do a later computer search. He gets a hit on a newsreel about 5 years old, showing raiders from the Iagonn Suzerainty. It would appear their mystery man is part of the personal entourage of one of the Sky Dukes of Heilithium, the semi-piratical, rampaging and raiding rulers of the Suzerainty. So they have been hired not so much to perform commercial espionage as treasonous espionage. All good ...

Still going ahead with the job, everyone decides to apply for a job at General Shipyards so they can get inside and poke around. Everyone except Mr. Kurigane get Mr. Hammill to whip up some forged ID papers for them first. In the end, Mr. Kurigane gets hired by Security and Baron Kundra gets a job with industrial safety. Both jobs allow them some freedom to roam unquestioned about the shipyard. Baron Kundra notes that there is no Kinunir class ship on the ship ways; not a surprise as the Concordance is suffering a shortage of the necessary high technology items required for such construction.  He does note a pair of merchant vessels under construction (a 200ton free trader and a 400ton subsidized merchant) as well as a nearly compete 200ton yacht on one of the final workup pads. There is also a 300ton close escort under construction for the Navy. 

Sunday, January 13, 2019

Edge of Night Sector .. or How I Spent My Christmas Vacation

After running D&D for my face-to-face game group for the last seven years, I decided needed a bit of a break from swords and orcs for awhile. For various real life reasons, I also needed something that required little or no new game prep and no need to gronk new rules. I'd put together a short Classic Traveller game about a year ago that never quite got off the ground, so we decided to try a reboot (the original campaign background is here). It was pretty much ready to run right away, and after several years of playing Classic Traveller myself,  I'm starting to internalize the rules much like I've already done with B/X D&D. So no problem, no prep ...  

And of course I then proceeded to spend untold hours over Christmas rolling up a full sector, of which the players will likely never see more than 2-3 systems. Behold, the Edge of Night Sector!



To be fair, a few of the sub-sectors were all ready done. That said, 453 worlds and 5889 rolls of the dice later (not counting trade routes), a few thoughts on the process:

  • Rolling up Traveller worlds is  really fun mini game all in itself. I'm continually amazed at how enjoyable it is to just play with all the little bits of Traveller (character generation, spaceship construction, world generation, etc) even with the knowledge that most of it will never see the light of day game-wise. That is true of all role playing games, but for some reason I find it especially true with Traveller. 
  • There is some thing cathatic, relaxing, oddly satisfying or whatever of taking that mass of numbers and molding it into a somewhat logical whole. Plop it all down on the map, add some trade routes and suddenly all sorts of connections and adventure possibilities pop out. Why is there a super high tech planet sitting out by itself in the edge of nowwhere? What's up with that sub-sector full of airless rockballs of all shapes, sizes and populations? 
  • I have now internalized the world generation process to the point where I no longer need to look any the book when rolling up systems. Not sure how useful that is in terms of a life skill, but there it is. But I still can't keep the &#$%(^ atmosphere types straight in my head.
  • Progress was slow at first, but by the end I could whip out a sub-sector in a couple of hours, map and all. 
  • Going strictly by the word generation rules,you end up with a lot of Mars-size and smaller planets. Those in the size range of Earth (size 8) are relatively rare.
  • Speaking of which. Earth-like worlds, defined as those planets with earth-like size, atmosphere and hydrology [i.e 867 for the first three numbers of the UWP], are exceedingly rare. Out of 453 worlds, only 3 met the criteria. And one of those I fudged to fit a particular idea I had in mind. 
  • On the other hand, worlds with hellish insidious atmospheres abound; 14 'C' type atmospheres, and  5 'B' types. And there were more, but I decided to re-roll a few as it was stretching the realm of believably with that many really awful planets. You'd think there weren't any nice, comfortable planets available ...
  • However, as a general rule, with just a few exceptions (minimize number of hell-holes as noted above, and adjusting technology levels so there weren't too many tech level 1 civilizations on worlds that required air tanks to breath), I went with whatever the dice gave me. Yeah it's kind of hard explaining a population of 80 billion on an airless rockball, but that's part of the fun.
  • Determining trade route as per the 1977 rules really helped tie it all together in a big picture. Made laying out sensible interstellar borders easy, and offered up lots of ideas about who got along (or didn't) with who. The pattern of Navy bases helped too. The 'Pact of Iron' and "Kazzarian Warlords" came about when I noted the large concentration of navy bases in that area. Obviously must be a lot of conflict going on there. 
  • Number wise, each world is unique. Not one repeat in the UWPs. Not even close. I'm sure someone with a better statistics background than me could show that's not surprising, but to me after rolling all those dice, it's pretty damned impressive. 
  • Coming up with 453 names that wouldn't make me cringe in a months time was a challenge. A huge chuck are random made up spacey type names. There are a few clusters of worlds with related real word names (ex: Arthurian hero, metals, characters from Greek tragedies, trees, etc). Some whimsical names in a Niven's Known Space vein (Onward-Upward, It's Ended), references to classic science fiction writers and the folks at GDW. And one system called 'Name'; obviously some poor scout filled out the form wrong.
Now, where to put that creative energy now ...