Back in Black

Unexpectedly, I found myself running Classic Traveller again last weekend.

It happened like this; everyone who turned up for the family lunch was a gamer and a Firefly fan, we discussed the theory that Firefly is based on Joss Whedon’s game of Traveller, and then it seemed like a good idea to try out the game. I’m confident in playing CT off the cuff; I’ve been running it on and off for nearly 40 years now, and I can do it in my sleep.

In fact, I’m pretty sure I have, at some point.

I didn’t want to deflate their enthusiasm by taking them through the complex mini-game which is character generation, so I did a quick on-the-fly conversion of the archetypes in Savage Worlds (it’s just as easy going that way as they other, takes me less than a minute for each one) and let them pick the ones they wanted. So it was that we wound up with a party composed of a Marine and three Others:

• Captain Joe "Cap’n Crunch" Williams, ex-Marine, hot-headed veteran of a war with “the space bugs”, who is AWOL and wanted for desertion.
• Fromar the scientist.
• Ms Posey Avril, retired pirate, whose pension represents the income from the gastropub franchise and doughnut shop she started to launder her ill-gotten gains, and who has taken her lucky gun “Elmira” out adventuring in search of more money (as she needs extensive dental work).
• Lisa Andrews, healer with secret psionic powers.

I know. Roll with me on this.

THE HEIST

The party found themselves mustered out on Regina in search of work, and I dropped entry 15 from 76 Patrons on them; break into a corporate executive’s mansion, swap his prized US $1 purple postage stamp for a fake, and return the original to the patron (who was called Mr Johnson as a nod to everyone’s experience with Shadowrun). I also dragged out GDW’s Merc: 2000, which I keep around for the generic location plans, and used the Mansion and the Remote Estate for the target’s mansion.

After lengthy debate, the party hires sturdy mounts (which they decided were giant riding beetles, so now there are giant beetles on Regina) to case the joint, persuading their random police encounters (park rangers on grav belts) that they were tourists. Armed with knowledge of the general layout, they spend about 90 minutes brainstorming and discarding plans, until they settle on sealing themselves in crates and having themselves delivered by courier to the mansion while the boss was away on business.

We’re now about two hours in, and the only dice rolls necessary so far have been the check against law level for police harassment, and police reaction rolls to the PCs’ story. While they were discussing their approach, I discarded the rest of the situation and dreamed up a couple of plot twists.

Cautiously cutting their way out of the crates, they realise they are in a garage, under camera surveillance, with a  couple of air/rafts to hand. With a cunning plan and a couple of lucky Computer rolls, they gain access to the network via a cable under a workbench and set the cameras to loop yesterday’s surveillance. They realise the shortcomings of this, but it’s the best they can do. While the scientist dismounts the GPS and tracking devices from one of the air/rafts to give them a getaway vehicle, the others poke their heads out of the skylight and observe the unexpected return of the target and a couple of other suits.

(I know, but they do not, that the business trip was a diversion to cover a meeting with other corporate types about insider trading.)

Fromar ransacks the garage, A-Team style, and comes out with a long list of items including glue and a nailgun. Captain Williams then leads the motley crew stealthily across the garden to the stables, where a pair of riding dinosaurs (actually poni, the six-legged brontosauri in the Scout Service logo) are minding their own business in stalls. The party now shoots them with the nailgun, causing them to stampede out of the stables past the mansion.

With the occupants thus distracted, Our Heroes move up to the mansion and gain entrance through the rear door, finding themselves in the kitchen with the catering staff, who are preparing cocktails and canapes for the meeting upstairs. Swiftly discarding their plans of violence, they pass themselves off as frightened delivery men, looking for somewhere to hide from the dinosaur stampede. Manufacturing an excuse, they check the mansion plans they found online earlier and rule out the entire ground floor, deciding that the stamp must be either in the master bedroom or the office, then scuttle upstairs towards those rooms.

At the top of the stairs they find the three suits, but given that there are stampeding dinosaurs outside and one of the bodyguards has panicked and opened fire on them, it seems logical that the suits are looking out at the carnage from the balcony. Thus it is that the party manage to sneak up behind them, intending to knock them unconscious (by this point they have forgotten they are supposed to get in and out without being noticed). Using Hands at Close range (+2) against non-combatant NPCs (+3) in no armour (+1) means they can’t miss, and they start to understand how deadly CT combat is. However, none of them do enough damage to put down their targets.

It’s at this point they notice the large, newly-arrived, black air/raft outside, with the cargo doors sliding back, and the men in black ski masks inside with auto rifles pointing at the group on the balcony. Williams, Avril and Andrews grab the suits and drag them away from the window towards the stairs, while Fromar dodges away into the office, where he sees the stamp in a nitrogen-filled display case.

(Beyond thinking someone wants the suits dead, I have no idea what’s going on here. One of the joys of sandbox play for the GM is you can do stuff like this and leave the players to come up with a reason for it.)

This leaves everyone except Fromar in the beaten zone for the auto rifles, and Posey, Andrews and one of the suits are hit and knocked out while all six are tumbling down the stairs. Thinking quickly, Williams browbeats the two suits still standing into helping him drag the wounded into one of the servants’ quarters.

Fromar smashes the case, reasoning that any investigation will blame the firefight, and swaps the stamps before picking up one of the suits’ tablet PCs and escaping through the office window. While in the garage earlier, he had thoughtfully set up the air/raft’s autopilot for remote operation, and now summons it to the windows by the servants’ quarters. Everyone piles in, while outside the ski masks are abseiling down from their air/raft and finishing off the staff and bodyguards.

The autopilot starts heading back to the starport, but the black air/raft turns in pursuit. Fortunately, one of the suits can fly, and seizes the controls, swooping into nearby woods where they might evade pursuit. Unfortunately, he gets shot in the back of the head and dies. Fromar takes control and pulls back on the joystick to avoid crashing into the trees; he can’t fly, but anyone knows that will pull the nose up. Everyone falls out of the air/raft except Williams and one of the suits, who manage to grab onto something, and Fromar, who knew this was coming. Their pursuers take advantage of this to start walking auto rifle fire down from the nose of the air/raft into the passenger seats. Fromar wrestles wildly with the controls, but has no idea what he is doing and winds up flipping the air/raft broadside on and spinning it along the long axis. Everyone jumps clear as the two air/rafts collide and explode.

(This saves me from revealing the third plot twist, which is that one of the hired killers at the mansion is an old war buddy of Williams’. I’ll save that for later.)

A few minutes later, as the wounded recover consciousness, the party explains that they are members of a super-secret counter-terrorist unit, acting on a tipoff to protect the suits. Leaving the suits where the park rangers can find them, they vanish into the night and repair to the starport to lick their wounds.

Mal Reynolds would’ve been proud of them.

REFLECTIONS

Classic Traveller, even the 1977 edition, still does the job. It’s noticeable that the players came up with detailed backstories and personalities with no Edges, Hindrances, Ads/Disads or whatever you want to call them. You really don’t need rules for that stuff, you know.

Play is very liberating once people get used to the idea that it’s all about player skill, the character statistics are largely incidental, and going off-piste is not only permitted but actually expected and encouraged; everyone focussed on the story and their cunning plans.

The party psionic forgot she had psi powers and didn’t use them. I don’t know why this happens in my CT games, but it almost always does, whoever plays the psion; it’s one reason I’m relaxed about allowing them in the game.

None of us felt the need to pull out any figures, whereas with Savage Worlds or Shadowrun we always do that instinctively.

I’d intended this to be a one-off, but the players loved the speed of play and freedom of action, got really attached to their characters, and they want to carry on with them. In addition, all of them want to try Original D&D as well now, with a wilderness adventure. I’ll probably use Labyrinth Lord; OD&D as written is just too disorganised. So I guess 2014 is shaping up to be the Year of Retro Gaming.

One of the group, who runs a Shadowrun game with about a dozen players and has been complaining about how long it takes them to do anything, took the battered 1977 rulebooks away to read, saying he would try converting his campaign to CT to speed it up.

All of this just reinforces my long-held belief that the rules don’t matter. We had just as much fun in the 1970s, and last weekend, with the simplest of rules and scenarios, as we do with any current RPG.