Last Friday, Group II of James Maliszewski’s Riphaeus Sector gang started out on the first adventure of what we hope to be many more. A fair amount of the session was spent on get-to-know-you kibbitzing and a few technical glitches, but a reasonable amount of actual play happened, including an exciting prelude action scene and a solid hook for the next steps in future sessions.
Backdrop and positioning
Play for the Group II characters starts in the Sanjaa subsector on the mostly desert world of Q’Lor, a resource-rich world neatly positioned between two major polities (not within either) and being exploited by off-shore corporate mining concerns. It became clear to all of us as James presented the required backdrop sketch-out that Q’Lor was potentially a flash-point between power-groups on several levels: the interests of native Q’Lorians versus off-worlders, Sanjaa Defence League versus Empire of Nagoya, and finally the mining companies that are both working claims themselves, and leasing out their claims to other smaller companies (and leasing out equipment to those companies as well). Rampant rail-baronism at its finest, probably, in other words.
Opening action
James invited people to suggest how they might have found themselves on Q’Lor, and where they might be and what they might be doing. I suggested that my character Rendan Bardle might very well have found himself here using his Administrative and Leadership skills as a fixer/coordinator of labour for the mining companies, especially within the realm of “security” – making use of his military contacts to match skill-sets with corporate needs on Q’Lor.
Action for Bardle began in a cantina of some sort near the docking bays for the massive sand-crawlers used to mine materials out of the southern deserts. At least one other PC was near where the action began: a group of people dressed in the garb of deep-desert native Q’Lorians hanging around a crawler, armed, and “hassling” some others. Suddenly another figure popped out of the crawler, and most of the native Q’Lorians began to run away from the crawler.
The inevitable explosion followed, and then the inevitable plume of smoke began rising up into the air.
Upon hearing the blast, Bardle immediately looked out a window in the cantina, and seeing the smoke put down his drank and started running in the direction of the event.
Other PCs also gave James signals that they, too, would be heading towards the action.
Responding first
Without too much surprise, the collection of player characters, most of whom had not really officially met one another, arrived on scene next to the crawler before any kind of official security or other first responder personnel from Q’Lorian governance. Much to my surprise, Bardle seemed to assess immediately that action needed taking, and he used his seasoned eye to see who among the new arrivals appeared “capable” (i.e. other PCs all of whom had some degree of service training), and then immediately tried to take some leadership of those capable people in opposition to the saboteurs.
Bardle’s thoughts immediately were to get the saboteurs to:
Immediately desist in assaulting the old man they were pummelling with rifle butts.
Surrender at best, or withdraw at worst, without further risk to the health of the people around the scene.
To the good side, he had several capable veterans, some of them armed; to the bad side, only one of them knew him, and had any kind of confidence in his leadership. Happily, Maj (ex) Wilfred Dargan (the one who knew him) backed him up and was well armed with a sub-machine gun.
The saboteurs broke and started to run, and Bardle was willing to take that as success. One of the men on his side, understandably, decided it would be a good idea to capture one of them (the one who looked more in charge) for questioning and tried to shoot him in the leg. This lead, inevitably, to an escalation and it might have been an escalation that would have severely wounded some of the player characters (Bardle guessed). He immediately attempted to fire across their bow (literally, getting the Major to fire near them, but not at them) and bluster their retreat. The saboteurs took the choice and withdrew.
One of the player characters (Athard Robak, Merchant Second Class, ret), luckily, had a carbine with a scope on it and used the scope to observe the saboteurs once they were too far away for simple naked-eye observation. He was able to spy that the saboteurs were not what they seemed when one of them took off his “deep desert filter mask” to reveal an obviously off-worlder face underneath.
A new patron?
After the standoff, the young woman standing by the old man (his daughter?) approached Bardle to thank him for his assistance, and to suggest that she’d like to meet him later, more privately. Bardle immediately forecast a potential opportunity for employment, agreed, and handed her his business card.
Afterthoughts
James was able to neatly balance the obvious expectations set up by “mining on a neutrally located desert world, with deep-desert native inhabitants” with a twisting outcome (the “natives” seem like they’re actually off-worlders in disguise, and potentially members of a rival mining company). This kind of deployment of inter-textuality and confounded expectations is a simple and delightful narrative device that most starting adventures and campaigns could capitalize on.
In retrospect, I think I took more than my share of the mic-time in the first adventure, but given the situation, the lack of existing player character organization, and the obvious indication that boot-strapping of some kind to get everyone moving could benefit from someone stepping up and taking charge, I spontaneously found that Bardle’s character seemed to fit that situation. Before play, I had kind of envisioned Bardle as a much more relaxed officer and less interested in leadership, but the character himself seemed to decide otherwise. A quick scan of the characters stats after the adventure let me see that Bardle does seem to have the “highest” rank among the PCs, despite the characters coming from different service branches.
If Bardle’s role is to be a leader of this group, so be it; I therefore think my challenge will be to try to ensure that all the other players get mic-time in the future sessions, and if Bardle is not leading from behind, he will certainly attempt to get opinion and contribution from all the PCs before he might have to make a decision on something.
Traveller is of course not a simulation of a military unit, but a game about a bunch of people who might once have had some sort of service background. Therefore, chain of command isn’t naturally in place – the group will need to (sooner, rather than later, I would guess) come to some joint agreement on what decision making structure we’d all like to live with.