The Campaign Starts

A few weeks ago Carl had his annual game weekend.  Once a year he has all of his gamer friends over for the weekend and everyone plays games, swims in his pool and eats too much junk food.  This year, aside from a game of Munckin, the big event was that I started a new Traveller Campaign.  We used Chaosium's Basic Roll Playing as our rule set with Traveller's Spinward Marches as a setting.

The game is about the continuing adventures of the crew of the starship Skylark as they travel around the fringe of the Imperium, hauling cargoes and overcoming the various obstacles that I put in their path.

The players had all rolled up their characters in advance so we started the first session with everyone introducing their characters, assigning crew positions and naming their ship.  They named their Manta-class cargo ship the Skylark with the idea of picking a fairly common, unmemorable name for those times when they may be on the run.

The characters are:

• Kipenzi Momoh, played by Kay. The Pilot and 2nd engineer.
• "Fig" Newton, played by Carl. Astrogation and gunner.
• Medicus, played by JoJo. Doctor and 2nd Pilot.
• Leon Cruz, played by Mark. The Chief Engineer.
• Samuel Penny, played by Bryce. Cargo master, astrogaton and 3rd shift pilot.

The Skylark and its crew.

The players’ ship is docked at Vilis High Port on Vilis Station, a large space station in geosynchronous orbit around the planet Vilis.  The ship is docked at Green 12B, on the outside rim of the station.  The Skylark was in port having just completed having it's annual maintenance done.  The date is 002-1100 on the Imperial calendar, about 5621 AD.

Samuel and Kipenzi meet with Victor Romeo, Shady Dealer.  Romeo looks about 31, heavy set, wears dark suits and has a black pointed beard.  He is known to offer jobs that are dangerous but pay well. 

He gives the players information about the Haunting Thunder:

With the outbreak of the Fourth Frontier War, the commander of the Haunting Thunder was on routine neutrality watch off Zircon in the Jewell subsector. Upon notification by emergency dispatch boat, she opened sealed orders and jumped to Rapp's World via Frond. Operating in conjunction with two Kinunir class battle cruisers (Enki Kalamma and Markashi) and four Gazelle class close escorts (Abracone, Cillien, Kudebeck, and Swiftie), the Haunting Thunder began commerce raiding among the Zhodani cluster of worlds in Querion subsector. The region is a perfect setting for hit-and-run raiding, as all are within jump-2 of each other, and have gas giants. The task group would enter a system, raid, and then refuel if possible. Generally they carried a reserve of fuel to enable an emergency jump out-system if unexpected resistance was encountered.

Gradual attrition picked off the Gazelles and the Haunting Thunder detached the two battle cruisers on emergency orders from 212th Fleet in Rhylanor. Soon thereafter, Haunting Thunder met with disaster.

Jumping with half-empty tanks, Haunting Thunder hit Querion just as a Zhodani fleet was massing, and an emergency refueling proved necessary at Querion's secondary gas giant. With all turrets and sensor arrays retracted, Haunting Thunder, ran directly into the ambush of a flight of system defense gunboats lying doggo deep inside the gas giant. As the skim began, they made their move and riddled the ship. The Thunder never pulled out of its long arching dive.

The Haunting Thunder now lies adrift, tail down, in an ammonia sea on the gas giant, buoyed up by its empty fuel tanks and assumed destroyed beyond chance of recovery by the Zhodani.

One of the four fighter squadrons of the Haunting Thunder was equipped with a new model fighter, the Rampart RF-128C, and this squadron was located in the hangars on deck 69. Even given its violent end, there is a high probability that if the cruiser itself has remained intact, at least one of the Ramparts may be in close to operational condition. Numerous factions would pay a fortune to examine a reasonably intact Rampart.

After doing some research, the players accepted the job.

They spent the rest of the session taking out a 2nd mortgage on their ship to get some working capital and buying the equipment they would need.  They picked up some spacesuits that would handle to extreme cold temperatures they would be working in, some antigravity lifters for loading the fighters into the cargo bay and cables and other equipment that they might need.

Their target was only 7 parsecs away, but due to gaps between the stars greater than the two parsecs that their jump drive could make and fuel considerations, their path would need to be much longer.  There were also opportunities for trade along the way, buying items at one starport and selling them in the next system, hopefully at a higher price.

On 004-1100 they pulled out of Villis, headed for Margessi a star system two parsecs away with a full cargo hold and four low passengers in suspended animation.

The Second Session:

During the second session we discovered how time consuming the Traveller trade system could be.  It is an entire sub game in itself.  I had written a program to automate the dozens of die rolls needed to generate an available cargo, but it was still slow.  Since then I have automated more of the steps, so it should go a bit faster.

Slowly the players advanced across the Querion Subsector, Buying and selling cargoes and trying to avoid trouble.  They had decided that the only passengers that they would carry would be Low Passengers in suspended animation.  Traveling by Low Passage is fairly high risk, of the thirty or so passengers that they carried, three of them did not wake up after jump. Medicus was able to save two of them with a successful medical roll.

One thing that became apparent was that none of the characters had put enough skill points into Astrogation.  They always arrived in the right star system, but often came out of jump well away from where they intended to.  After the first jump they almost collided with an orbatal scout base and once they arrived at one of a planet's trojan points and found only an asteroid where they expected the planet to be.  I was proud to them, no one made any Death Star jokes.

On 029-1100 they ran out of luck at Winston, still five jumps from their target.  Winston is a Balkanized world where several factions are locked in a cold war that threatens go hot at any time.  Samuel Penny was in the pilot seat when they flew over the local equivalent of the Korean DMZ after getting lost in a thunderstorm on the way to landing at the local space port.  They took two hits from missiles and landed with a hole in the starboard fuel tank and damage to the rear cargo bay door. 

After being arrested and having their cargo searched for contraband (none found) they had to pay a fine and then scrounge up parts to fix their ship, not an easy task at a class "E" starport.  Leon Cruz was able to fix the damage in a couple of days and they were once again on their way.

Looking for spare parts at Winston Down.

On 068-1100 they arrived in the Attica system, one two parsec jump from their destination. After successfully  landing the ship, we broke for the day and decided to continue on Sunday the 4th of September back at my place.

Continued in Chapter 3