Arion 1-01: A Glitch in the Matrix

"My mother, I dreamed a dream of stars that fell upon me." - The Epic of Gilgamesh

Elsewhere, date unknown

"Another instance?"

"Yeah. I have some predictions I want to check."

"What about the last one?"

"I've paused it. We can always restart it later... Aaannd it's fully initialised, here we go."

"This one, then coffee, okay?"

"Sure."

Jewell, 001-1105

Arion starts awake, and at first he doesn't remember getting into this particular bed. Shouldn't there be someone in it with him? Memories start assembling themselves, slowly and with a strangely unreal feeling at first, but gathering speed and fluency. He's had that a few times in recent years. After a moment, he remembers discussing it with the medic recertifying him for flight duty, who said it was called jamais vu and nothing to worry about. He realises he can't remember the doctor, just the diagnosis, but then reasons he has seen a lot of doctors over the years so that isn't too surprising.

He steps to the window of the hotel room - sealed against the atmospheric taint - and gazes out over the city lights. Only the brightest few stars are visible, and despite knowing rationally that he should recognise them instantly, it takes a few seconds; he recognises that as another symptom of jamais vu. A couple of them seem to be falling, but after a moment his experienced eye recognises them as inbound ships, radiating heat. Jewell has a big starport and this close to the border, it has a lot of military facilities too.

None of this is anything to worry about, he tells himself, and troops back to bed. Let's see how I feel in the morning.

The human equivalent of "Have you tried turning it off and on again?"

Jewell, 004-1105

Arion enters Godown 95 at the starport, and sees the man he's looking for; thirtysomething, unpolished shoes on the desk, cleaning his nails with a packing knife. In theory, it's illegal to carry a knife on Jewell; in practice, there are a lot of innocent things you need one for, like cooking, or opening parcels, so you still find them in a lot of places, and as long as you're in one of those places doing something innocent that needs a knife, you're okay, unless the police are looking for a reason to arrest you. The nametag on the man's chest says PHILLIPS.

"Good morning," Arion says. "I'm looking for a cargo, and people tell me you're the man to talk to."

"That's kind of them," Phillips says, with a genuine smile. "Ex-scout, just mustered out?"

"Guilty as charged," Arion smiles back. It's impossible not to like Phillips, even if you've only just met him.

"Any particular destination?"

Arion shrugs. "Anywhere I can reach with jump-2." Phillips makes a small noise to indicate he is thinking.

"I've got some luxury goods for Emerald," he says. "If you're running a Type S, you should make about 1200 Credits after operating expenses."

"That sounds good. You're familiar with the ship class, then?"

"Pfft. Second commonest in the Imperium, I wouldn't be much of a factor if I didn't know it," Phillips grins.

They shake on the deal, and thumbprint the contract on their commlinks.

"I'll get the cargo bots to load it up. What's the ship?"

"The Dolphin, hangar 87."

Jewell, 007-1105

Phillips comes to in darkness, tied to a chair. Gagged too, he thinks.

"There he is," a distorted voice says. A second voice, equally distorted, speaks to Phillips directly.

"Eshguurii, I take no pleasure in this, but I do need you to understand how serious it is." There is a bright flare of pain in Phillips' hand, and he realises one of his fingers has been broken. He tries not to cry out, because that might encourage them, but fails. The gag converts his scream to something more muffled.

"Now, I'm going to ask you some questions, some of which I already know the answers to. If you don't answer, or lie, that will cost you another finger. Once you run out of fingers, things will get more unpleasant and harder to repair. Nod to show that you understand." Phillips nods, wondering how they will be able to see that in the darkness. Obviously they can, as the second voice says "Good. Take the gag off." This is done, and voice number two continues.

"Where is my shipment?" Phillips weighs his loyalty to a man he met a couple of days ago against his loyalty to his remaining fingers, and the fingers win.

"It's in a crate of luxury goods bound for Emerald aboard a ship called the Dolphin, in hangar 87. It's scheduled to lift today, I don't know if it already has."

"Go get it back," the voice says to someone else, before turning to Phillips once more, dangerously gentle. "Now, Eshguurii, who told you to do that, and why did you think it was a good idea?"

It takes several more fingers before the voice is satisfied with the answers to those questions.

GM Notes

I'm in a low energy state at the moment, and while I want to do some more solo play, I want it to have the highest fun-to-effort ratio possible. So I've picked my favourite solo PC, solid rules I'm familiar with that allow me to operate at multiple different levels of abstraction, and a setting I know very well. To reduce the initial effort, the PC begins alone; more characters can always be added later.

In concrete terms, that means Arion's back in the Third Imperium, using a mixture of Savage Worlds and Traveller products, with One-Page Mythic in my back pocket to fill in the gaps. The character concept is "somebody who can operate a scoutship single-handed", and this time around I'm interpreting that as follows:

Arion Metaxas, human scoutship pilot

Attributes: Agility d8, Smarts d6, Spirit d6, Strength d6, Vigour d6, Wealth d6.

Skills: Athletics d4, Common Knowledge d4, Electronics d6, Fighting d4, Notice d4, Persuasion d6, Piloting d8, Repair d6, Science d6, Shooting d4, Stealth d4.

Pace: 6; Parry: 4; Toughness: 6 (1).

Hindrances: Heroic, Impulsive. Edges: Ace, Alertness.

Gear: Scoutship, pistol, leather jacket.

I haven't used the Jewell subsector in several decades now, but it fits the spies-in-space vibe that my SF games always gravitate towards; it's detailed in the Mongoose campaign Tripwire, and I think that would pair nicely with Zozer's Into the Neutral Zone as a future group game, so the secondary purpose of this first season is to familiarise myself with the region and maybe flesh it out a little more.

The encounter on 004 was generated by drawing a card every day as per page 144 of the SWADE core rulebook until I got an encounter; the Ace of Hearts told me the encounter was neutral or friendly, then I switched to Zozer Games' Solo and the Starport Encounter table on page 39, which confirmed it with a 53, potential Contact, and referred me to the Patron table on page 59, where I learn this person is a government official, who rolled an 11 (friendly, SWADE p. 33) for reaction to Arion and a personality of 7 (Lazy, SWADE p. 112). What kind of NPC is this? I pull out Classic Traveller Supplement 4 and take the first pregenerated Bureaucrat, which gives me an age and an easily-converted statblock. I roll high/low for gender, and get male. I generate a name for him using Space Corsair's language generators: Eshguurii Phillips

For trading, I'm looking for something simpler than the Traveller rules, so I turn to Veiled Fury Entertainment's Trader Voyages. Looking at the map, I think the routes around Jewell are busy, so draw 4 cards - the best one is an Ace of Spades, luxury items with a 20% bonus - $600 per unit. I also roll a success for Persuasion, meaning one Complication, which a d10 tells me is an attack; some Mythic rolls shed a little more light on that.

As I walk you through each use of the various rules, I'll let them fade into the background, so we can focus on the story.

Normally, I strive for the minimum number of products in a game, especially when playing solo, but for once I'm going to unbend and use whatever is most helpful, which will generally be whatever is most familiar and relevant.

More of this as the game unfolds.

Aslan Route 011: The House of Shrouded Mirrors

Previously, on the Aslan Route: The crew of the Macavity has learned that the swamp on Sink is an alien data storage device, with a secure satellite location on Pourne for sensitive data. Their eyewitness account of the fall of Torpol alarms a missionary from Sink, who asks them to take him back there to consult the Abbot. Now read on...

Sink, Paal and Pourne, 204-1105 to 245-1105

The abbot wants to charter the Macavity to travel to the House of Shrouded Mirrors on Pourne, but the crew say that’s risky and they want hazard pay. Complex three-way negotiations end up with the Macavity’s crew owning a share of the monastery gold mine plus all the gold on hand, while Prince Hteleitoirl and his followers provide military service to the monastery in return for land, which they will develop over time.

The Macavity makes its way to Pourne and enters the dome containing the House of Shrouded Mirrors, which proves to be full of shrouded mirrors. The crew is informed this is because there is a miniature swamp (“the Pool”) in the basement and the mirrors show what various parts of it are thinking about. After some difficulty, the abbot obtains an interview with the Sage of the Stars; between that and Dr Matauranga’s stealthy peeping into mirrors, the crew learns the following:

• During the Ancients’ War, many of the factions used human troops and servants.
• One faction developed a menhir-like weapon which emits a field known as the Fury, which distorts human minds, making them xenophobic and militaristic; this was used to suborn the human troops of other factions. The fondness for black and silver uniforms is an unintended side effect.
• By kidnapping people and throwing them into the Pool, which absorbs their memories, the House has learned that archaelogists on Drinax uncovered one of the menhirs; Mazun hypothesises this is what started the problem. The Drinaxian Star Guard then emplaced a menhir near the south pole on Torpol, thus gaining control of the downport and later the rest of the planet. (The field propagates at lightspeed, so for rapid expansion menhirs must be transported by ship.)
• The field is only effective on sentients genetically engineered by the Ancients, chiefly humans and vargr. The Sage believes aslan should be unaffected. He doesn’t know if droyne are affected, but there are none in the Area of Operations so that’s not relevant.
• A few years ago one Mike Matin visited the Sage and asked similar questions, though as hypotheticals rather than based on eyewitness testimony. Mazun recognises him as a Scout Service covert operator.

While the discussion turns to questions such as how many menhirs does Drinax have, how do you destroy one, and would that help or would converted people stay converted, an aide interrupts to point out that a vargr corsair is cutting its way in through the dome.

As the corsairs barge in, Mazun offers the Sage and the abbot a ride, which they accept; if the Pool is destroyed, the Sage will be the only repository of certain data, and if not, he can always come back. Mazun leads them away at a run while Vila and Dr Matauranga sneak away, hiding behind shrouds and pilfering small objects of monetary and scientific value respectively, and Rex roars defiance at the pirates in the hope of intimidating them; it doesn’t do that, but does mean they close into melee to fight him like men… errm, vargr.

Mazun joins the fight to help Rex while the others look for a way back to the ship. Mazun uses his tactical skill to identify a line of retreat, Vila locks the doors against pursuit, and Dr Matauranga injects everyone with useful but probably illegal substances to sharpen senses and reflexes. Rex continues to hurl threats over his shoulder as the party falls back to their ship.

The corsairs appear chiefly focused on looting, and Rex jams the desultory missile locks while Vila crash-starts the engines so Mazun can fly the ship out through the new holes in the dome.

Mazun takes aboard as many of the staff of the temple as can be herded on without substantially slowing us, up to the number the Macavity can safely convey to the starport.

As soon as all are aboard, they call for help from the PDF - something that Matauranga can do while Mazun flies, Vila works the engines and Rex mans the weapons.

To be continued...

GM Notes

Having completed The Borderland Run, and being (as they say) low on spoons at the moment, I switched over to the Bulldogs! campaign Heart of the Fury as the core of the second phase of the game. I prepared for this session by working through it and seeing what could be salvaged and adapted, and sadly it's less than I hoped; part of that is how suitable the various scenarios are for the Trojan Reach, and part of it is that I've already tried to run it and one of the current players was in that game. I had to do more surgery on the setting and campaign background than expected; I'll probably wind up using less than a third of the product as written, but that's better than it languishing unused on my hard drive.

Of the 16 adventures, the first four need to be ditched because Rex's player has already played them. The next three are covered by the last couple of episodes and so are not really needed. This session merged scenarios 8 and 9. Scenario 10 is not something that the players or I would enjoy, so I scratched that one. Scenarios 11-14 I'm not sure what to do with, although that is a problem for Future Me, and the last two look viable if I relocate them to Drinax.

You'll probably see spoilers coming up, but Heart of the Fury was published in 2016 so I regret nothing. I think it would work better as a Bulldogs! game with the various free one-sheets folded into it, but I've used most of those already with other groups.

Over the next few weeks, I need to give some serious thought to where the campaign goes next.

Andy, R+1,459

 

"Once I retired… I realised that nobody cared. Nobody was keeping track of what I did! There was no big prize at the end for people like me who followed all the rules and did what we were supposed to do with our lives." - Susan Hayes

It's four years since I retired now, or it will be in a couple of days. Wow. It's weird being the same age as old people.

In theory, I should have a lot more time now to play games and blog about them. In practice, it doesn't feel like that. Partly my wife and I are travelling a lot while we still can; partly I'm not feeling very motivated at the moment. I've been playing RPGs for almost 50 years now, and there are days I feel I've exhausted the possibilities and should hang up my dice. That will probably pass. It always has before.

Progress Towards Objectives

This year I made some New Year's resolutions, which I don't normally do, since it's depressing when I break them. (It stings less if you think of them as experimental observations rather than targets.) Achievements to date:

• Intentionality. No impulse buys; joining new games is within parameters. On track.
• Play with 15 different people: So far it's 14. Ahead of target. The Friendly Local Gaming Shop did ask for someone to run "anything you like", but that turned out to mean "any official D&D 5th Edition campaign you like", and the one available player slot is also for 5E.
• No campaign reboots. This one will fail, as I'm using moving the blog from Wordpress to Blogger as an excuse to reboot my solo SF game.
• Play 300 hours in 100 sessions: To date I've played 96 hours in 30 sessions, so I'm ahead of target. The breakdown is All Things Zombie two sessions and 0.7 hours; Cepheus Engine one session and 4 hours; FATE 3 sessions and 6 hours; Mongoose Traveller one session and 2.25 hours; and SWADE 23 sessions and 83 hours. That puts SWADE in the lead by a long way, at 77% of sessions and 87% of hours played.
• Read 50 books, 5 in Italian: I've read 19 in English, and I'm halfway through the second one in Italian. On track.
• Videogaming: I'm a decade late to the party on this one, but I am absolutely blown away by Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. My 'two games this year' could morph into 'two playthroughs of Skyrim this year', it's that good.

I also added a new goal, boycotting companies which support people and causes that I disagree with; voting and protesting haven't changed anything, but if enough of us reduce their revenue maybe that'll work. Due to existing commitments, it will take me another two years to make all the necessary changes, but I feel better for starting on it.

Finally, I need to figure out how best to use the new blogging platform; likes, comments, and whatnot. Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.

Campaigns

As a GM, I was very pleased with The Pirates of Drinax, The Dracula Dossier, and the various solo games I played over the previous four years or so, but I feel the current batch are not going as well. I thought at the time that Pirates and Dracula would be tough acts to follow.

• 28 Months Later is bulletproof; I never get dissatisfied with the setting, probably because it doesn’t really have a setting, the rules slip on like comfortable old gloves, and none of the characters survive long enough for me to lose interest in them.
• The Aslan Route is tripping over too much stuff from the earlier Pirates of Drinax game; using Charted Space still looks like a good shout, but I should’ve picked a subsector we haven’t used before, maybe moved into a new sector entirely. Going forward, I think each campaign should be limited to a single subsector, probably a different one each time.
• There were good reasons I moved away from the Dark Nebula before, and they’re still valid. Although I'd dabbled in solo SF gaming earlier, I didn't get serious about it until 2008, and that was using a Savage Worlds/Classic Traveller mashup. I've tried a lot of other systems since, but I think that is overall the best combination for what I want to do, and it's a solo game so I may as well do what I like; as Ms Hayes says, there's no big prize at the end of your life for doing what you were supposed to.
• It’s good that I got Hayastan out of my system, as I’ve been meaning to use it for years now; but for the moment Skyrim meets all my solo fantasy needs, and when that changes, I think Gold & Glory and Ruins of the Undercity would be worthwhile experiments – setting-free dungeon crawls are where I started in 1976, and though they have drifted out of fashion, I still miss them.

As a player, the lion’s share of my time is going to Deadlands, and I enjoy it immensely; it turns out I like to play SWADE as much as I like to run it. It's early days for Leaves of Chiaroscuro, but I suspect it is going to focus too much on narrative for me; I like a certain amount of crunch in my games, and FATE steers away from that.

Where Next?

By this point, I have a pretty good handle on what my players enjoy, and the Aslan Route should continue to provide it for a while yet.

It seems logical, then, to use my solo games to explore aspects of gaming which I enjoy and my players don’t. That list includes survival horror, combat, magic and psionic powers, and dungeon crawls. I'm also tempted by the Nimble 5E-adjacent RPG, and might pick that up later in the year.

Adding new rules to my group games needs to be done sparingly, and on the GM’s side of the screen.

The Aslan Route: The Story So Far...

"Traveller is a game about space truckers that sometimes solve murder mysteries." - Rick Stump

This campaign has been rolling for a few months now, and rather than repeat the session writeups so far, here's a quick summary. (If you want the full details, you can find them here under the Aslan Route heading.)

The rules are Savage Worlds Adventure Edition, the setting is the Trojan Reach of the Official Traveller Universe, Charted Space; we finished The Pirates of Drinax campaign a couple of years ago, and now we're playing in the sandbox.

The first phase of the campaign was based on Reach Adventure 5: The Borderland Run, and it has just taken a sharp left turn into the Bulldogs! campaign Heart of the Fury. Who knows where it'll end up?

Dramatis Personae

• Captain Mazun Ashran, an IISS agent posing as the captain of the far trader Macavity.
• Vila Restal, ship's engineer, on the run from the Shugaka crime family.
• Dr Theosopholous Matauranga, ship's doctor, exiled from Tech-World for breaching the Council's ethical standards, such as they are.
• Grrrrshagrikrigggggrrsh AKA “Rex”, Vargr ex-corsair. Or so he claims.

Episodes

Time periods shown include jumpspace travel, takeoffs and landings.

1. Self-Loading Cargo. Fist, 001-1105 to 003-1105. The crew of the Macavity are chartered to take an aslan ihatei, Prince Hteleitoirl, from Fist to Tyokh. They discover that several other parties are looking for him, with unknown intentions, but eventually track him down and sneak him aboard. Vila recognises him as the leader of the recent failed conquest of Arunisiir, thwarted by mercenaries.
2. Blue-Skinned Space Babes. Iilgan, Exocet and Blue, 006-1105 to 035-1105. The Macavity delivers a cargo of tailored bacteria to a vegetable grower on Iilgan, which cargo they know has been tampered with. The crew come up with a scheme which allows them to leave without getting embroiled in the investigation. Dr Matauranga is kidnapped by blue-skinned space babes on Blue.
3. Death by Snu-Snu. Blue, 036-1105 to 043-1105. Rescuing Dr Matauranga from the temple of a nymphomaniac cult on Blue, the Macavity lifts off without an approved flight plan and jumps to Clarke. The crew are now wanted on Blue for traffic violations, contempt of court, and suspected aiding and abetting of known terrorists.
4. Scavs, Bounty Hunters, and Mercs. Clarke, 044-1105 to 054-1105. While looking for cargo on Clarke, the Travellers encounter bounty hunters looking for their passenger, Prince Hteleitoirl, who offer to split the bounty with them if they turn him in. Returning to the ship, they find the Prince about to fight a duel with a member of a rival clan, and assist him in obtaining an honourable draw. Later, in hyperspace, he talks about the abortive attack on Arunisiir; it seems likely he was set up, and the leak is either from a clan factor on Sink or some old friends on The World.
5. Black is the New Black. Torpol, Drinax, Hilfer and Sink, 056-1105 to 090-1105. Relaxing on Torpol is interrupted by the appearance of the Sindalian Empire Reborn, which annexes Torpol and the Grehai Movement by unknown means. Moving on to Sink, the crew of the Macavity sneak into the residence of the aslan factor while he and the Prince are out on a sightseeing tour. Vila, Mazun and Dr Matauranga are discovered by the household staff, but Rex remains hidden.
6. Unclogging the Sink. Sink and The World, 091-1105 to 103-1105. Escaping the household staff, the Macavity arrives at The World, where Prince Hteleitoirl’s old friends are on a security contract. His fiancee Elehasei secretly explains to the crew that they are taking the Prince home to be executed, and asks them to take him somewhere else instead. While everyone else is at a feast held in the Prince’s honour, Vila is working on the ship. A shadow falls across him and a slurred voice accuses him of snubbing the Prince by staying away from the feast.
7. Cui Bono? The World and Tyokh, 104-1104 to 112-1105. Vila talks his way out of trouble. The crew of the Macavity deliver Prince Hteleitoirl to his family estate on Tyokh in the nick of time, and convince the independent arbiter that he was betrayed by rivals in the Htyowao clan. He is declared innocent, and Rex fights the clan champion to first blood so that the people who came to see a duel are not disappointed. The Prince’s father, the Iuwoi clanlord, gives them prosthetic duelling claws they can wear to demonstrate their honour, and asks to meet them privately to discuss future employment.
8. Attempted Betrothal. Tyokh, 113-1105 to 126-1105. The crew of the Macavity fail to successfully conclude marriage negotiations between Prince Hteleitoirl’s clan, the Iuwoi, and that of Elehasei, the Aftei. They carry the Prince into a one year exile on Sink.
9. Monastic Disorders. Sink, 127-1105 to 136-1105. Investigating the monastery on Sink, the PCs discover it has a gold mine and jewellery shop supporting a hospice. Their former free trader contact has probably been impressed into the Drinaxian Star Guard, so the Macavity offers to take over that run. At night, Vila breaks into the monastery and copies all their digital data.
10. Swamp Thing. Sink, Byrni, Ergo, Tech-World, Paal, and back to Sink, 136-1105 to 210-1105. The Macavity takes over cargo runs from Sink. The purloined records indicate the cult is an offshoot of Buddhism, and believes being buried in the swamp allows one to pass directly to nirvana without death and rebirth. The missionary on Byrni, Brother Christian, is concerned by the Sindalian Empire Reborn, saying "the Fury is on the move again" and asking to be taken back to Sink. With almost two months for the crew to wheedle secrets out of him, they learn that the swamp is not a hive mind, but something closer to a data storage unit, hungry for information-dense input; the monks recruit the terminally ill, saying they can live forever in the nirvana of the swamp, and it records their personalities; they are not entirely part of a hive mind, but nor are they entirely individuals. Sometimes, the swamp needs direct contact with the monastery, and it regurgitates one of the hospice patients; this is how abbots are made. Some stored data are highly confidential, and kept in a secure satellite facility on Pourne: The House of Shrouded Mirrors.

Clean Slate

It's a new dawn
It's a new day
It's a new life for me
And I'm feeling good
- Nina Simone, Feeling Good

Welcome to the fifth and latest incarnation of my roleplaying blog!

This is where I share my thoughts on roleplaying games, partly because some people find them useful, and partly because the act of writing them down helps me clarify them.

My science fiction games are the most enjoyable for me and the most popular with others, so I'll focus mainly on SF RPG material; I expect the blog to have these main categories...

• 28 Months Later: A solo campaign of life in the zombie apocalypse; the rules and characters change periodically, and there is no setting to speak of.
• The Arioniad: A solo campaign about the ongoing adventures of Arion the scoutship pilot, which are not only fun but also let me experiment with things before inflicting them on my players. The characters in this game are constant, but the rules and settings change from time to time.
• The Aslan Route: Savage Worlds adventures in the Official Traveller Universe; session reports from my current group game.
• Experiments: Prototype rules and trial sessions; these may be "promoted to live" later.
• Reflections: Occasional thoughts about gaming and life in general.
• Reviews: Reviews of gaming products old and new. This is the most popular section by far.

Normally there will be posts twice per week, "Traveller Tuesdays" and "Solo Saturdays".

Let's be about it, shall we?