Last night was game 3 for our old school Traveller game and it has inspired me to wear my favourite T-Shirt for the day! It was beyond a doubt my favourite session of the game yet and was filled with some nice memorable quotes and the rise of a new breed of horror in space. The vicious accountant… (insert Dum Duh Dah music here…)
For some reason (likely that the GM is an idiot) the hangout started an hour early while I was walking into the place where I game my phone alerted me to the fact that the hangout had started three minutes earlier. I was confused and then my phone started ringing to tell me I was being invited to my own hangout by none other than Mr +Jonathan Henry which amused me because I was having a chat with a member of my in person group who said he was everywhere… Apparently that is true! Anyhow I flipped open the screen of my macbook and there was nearly a full group awaiting my arrival which scared me a little as I had a bit to do before game time!
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| Impersonating Inigo Montoya today! |
I owned up to stuffing up and that I needed to do some stuff before game time and everyone seemed cool with that so we chatted while I worked away and I told the new players what had basically happened up until this point. We had three new players last night in +Scott Cadoo, +James Austin and +Justin Aquino. Our returning players were of course our intrepid captain +Seth Blumberg, +duncan mcphedran and +Matt Guyder. We were missing a few others from previous games but that is OK. I am beginning to get used to this game being a bit of a guest starring campaign, kind of like the Love Boat! Core crew shows up and a bunch of guest stars turn up to fill out the episode each week.
So, what actually got accomplished can be summed up in a brief paragraph. The Captain met his new crew, got one of them to find some wine to carry to Ruie, accepted buy ins to the ship speculative funds, bought heaps of diamonds and some ore. They then travelled to the new planet in Ruie and foiled an attempt to hijack the diamonds.
See, one nice short paragraph! But did we ever have fun doing it. At the start of the game James pitched me a character he already had prepared in very broad terms. Justin’s character I had created for him and I also put up a couple of pre-generated characters for Scott to choose from and he took the scout. As the game progressed James asked me if it was Mongoose Traveller we were playing and I replied it was as the original Traveller books had been reprinted by Mongoose. However I think he must have been using the more recent version of Traveller in print by mongoose as through the game he made comment about various skills and Seth would say “Looks like someone has used a different edition to make their character.” It was kind of funny but eventually we got James hooked up with the right edition and also helped clarify what we were playing to Justin as well.
James had Professor Babbage, a scientist of nine terms whilst Justin played a noble that had spent time in the sales arm of the merchant lines. Justin started calling himself an accountant which set the Captain a little on edge but he took him on and set the “accountant” the task of proving himself. Finally, Scott took on a Scout and became the pilot for the evening. The accountant began by trying to hook the Captain up with a commodity to take to the world of Ruie and also, forward thinking, to find a contact on Ruie that would give them something to take to the next destination. Baron Jia (as Justin’s character is known) gave gifts for good contacts and managed to secure some high class wines to take to Ruie that should be a good seller. The game broke down a bit at this point. I heard a lot of typing and normally when this is happening the Captain is looking for a good trade deal. There was some nice free form role playing going on so I decided to let it run for a bit.
About ten minutes later I asked if the Captain had found a good cargo to take and found out that it had not been him typing at all! I had assumed it was him doing his normal. It was not all bad though as I had spent the time reading the trade rules and so I leapt straight into a couple of options of what could be useful cargos and he started to work away until he had a cargo full of wine, diamonds and ore. Soon after that they hit hyperspace or “jump space” and were on their way to Ruie.
And it started, with a week to kill I asked what they were doing. Moloch (Duncan’s engineer) started to try and get more information from the artefact they found on the side of the ship the first game they played in. This caught the interest of the new players and they attempted to help out but a rash of bad rolls stopped them dead. Moloch did find out that the device appeared to carbon date at just over a thousand years old. With the attention away from the device and all checks made for the travel the Captain sat down to play a game of chance with the new pilot. The similarities to this moment and the point in star wars where chewie is playing space chess with C3PO was made and the quotes kept coming for the rest of the game. Star Wars, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and The Princess Bride.
Yes, that is right The Princess Bride. Bit of an odd one out isn’t it. By the way if you do not know what I am talking about when I say The Princess Bride go out and get it on DVD NOW! Do not even read the end of this sentence because your life journey is not complete. That said, the quote came because of our first bit of action that we had in the game. The ship docked at the orbiting starport and the group needed to hire a firm to carry the cargo goods to the surface of the planet to complete the trade. The group split in two with the main security expert, the accountant and the scientist travelling on the shuttle carrying the diamonds whilst the captain and the engineer travelled down with the wine. Once this was landed safely the ore was to follow.
Of course with a cargo hold full of diamonds someone was going to try something and the security detail Captain Darrock the ex-marine (Matt Guyder) noticed an excahnge between a pilot and the Stevedore loading the goods where the pilot did not seem to know him. Darrock approached him and checked his idea and found evidence of tampering. Baron Jia shot over to the situation and played 20 questions with the guy to see if he knew his stuff and was a planet local. Confused when the Baron gave the guy the all clear Darrock belted him in the face with his laser rifle butt. This did not knock him down, but the laser shot the next round dropped him dead. At this stage the shuttle was off course and Darrock moved to tell the pilots that if they had received an alteration to course to return to the original only to find the pilot with a gun to his head from the co-pilot.
Bursting in the marine shot and missed so the hijacker turned his gun and pulled the trigger. The slug thrower exploded in his hands with a critical failure roll and Darrock did not make the same mistake twice knocking him down with a blast from the laser rifle. It was at this point that I told him that this guy was not quite as dead as the last one, by which I meant that he was just unconscious but of course this is where the quotes started flowing. He was only “mostly dead” and be sure his purpose was “to blaaave” and lets get out the miracle pill. All quotes from the great movie The Princess Bride and inspiration for my T-Shirt today that has the words “Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father, prepare to die.“
So they get the guy revived with Professor Babbage’s help (who does not bind him and almost forgets to do a weapons check) and Darrock starts to try to intimidate the guy. He does a so so job but then the Baron (a.k.a. the accountant) comes over and starts to mention all these horrible ways of torturing this guy and how they need to chop him up small enough to fit in some containers after they are done so noone can find him. He even asks if throwing him in the Jump drive will make him disappear all together. The group was in hysterics with how bloody minded this “simple accountant” had become and the prisoner managed to negotiate a deal that involved keeping the accountant well away from him for the information they wanted!
Last night was a blast of a game. I have skimmed over some of the material to pick out my highlights but there were others such as;
- The medic (Professor Babbage) trying to revive the dead stevedore with a poor medical check not realising he was in fact dead (the hole through his chest may have been a pointer)
- Finally someone asked the Captain if they were getting a share of the profits! He replied he was paying them a wag, but they were more than welcome to invest with him!
- The Captain admitting that in the way of combat skills he has a pretty good “Squeal like a girl and run away roll”
- The jacuzzi bathing pilot the moment everyone is off ship…