Sunshine Blogger Award

The Michlin Guide has nominated Halfway Station and others for a Sunshine Blogger Award; I didn't know about those, but apparently this is "peer recognition to bloggers who bring positivity, joy and creative content to the blogging world". Goodness. Well, that is very pleasing; thank you Shelby! I'm glad you enjoy it.

This manifests itself as Shelby posing questions for me to answer, and then me nominating other blogs and posing questions to them. Let's be about it.

Q&A

Q1: What method of passive entertainment do you spend the most time with? I.e. reading, movies, episodic series, games. Why? What makes it so much better than the others?

A1: Reading, definitely. It broadens the mind, entertains, and distracts me from periodic bouts of curmudgeonly grumpiness. My diet is split between hard copy, ebooks, and audiobooks, and includes a lot of gaming materials.

Q2: What are your three favorite genres? I.e. Action/Adventure, Horror, Mystery, Crime, Drama, Musical, Comedy, Science Fiction, Fantasy, whatever. Give me a few examples of your faves within the three genres you picked.

A2: Only three? With examples? Well, in that case:

• SF: The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester; Babel-17 by Samuel R Delaney; The Man Who Folded Himself by David Gerrold; Accelerando by Charles Stross; The Winds of Gath by EC Tubb. See also Appendix N.
• Fantasy: Let's take Conan and LOTR as read; The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch; The Dying Earth quartet by Jack Vance.
• Non-Fiction: Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond; Reality is Broken by Jane McGonigal; Factfulness by Hans Rosling.

Q3: Consume entertainment socially or solo, and why?

A3: Mostly solo; my location and availability aren't compatible with social entertainment consumption.

Q4: Why do you write a blog anyway?

A4: Writing for an audience helps me frame and clarify my thoughts, it's a low-effort creative outlet, and hopefully it's interesting or entertaining for my readers.

Q5: Other than writing a blog, what are your creative outlets these days?

A5: Sadly, gaming and writing a blog about that are pretty much it. I used to play guitar, but my fingers aren't up to that any more.

Q6: What's your stance on “AI” use in creative fields?

A6: Ambivalent. Like a lot of contemporary life, it's ethically questionable, but it's convenient for some use cases and increasingly hard to avoid.

Q7: It's time to make your own movie, whatever you want. Who is your dream cast (at any age)? IE younger Marlon Brando, older Al Pacino.

A7: I think Earl Dumarest should have a series of movies. I'd start by making The Winds of Gath, with this main cast: 1980s Harrison Ford as Earl Dumarest. Late 1990s Arnold Vosloo as Cyber Dyne. Contemporary Scarlett Johansson as the Matriarch of Kund; might have to add some wrinkles in makeup for that. Contemporary Karen Gillan as the Lady Seena. 2000s Ben Kingsley as Brother Benedict. 1980s John Lithgow as Prince Emmened.

Q8: What is your favorite era for use as a setting in a creative project, either as a creator or a consumer? IE 1920s Chicago, French Revolution, Republican Rome. Why?

A8: The future, as imagined by Golden Age SF (which for me is the 1940s to 1970s); because it has hope, optimism, and a frontier to explore. We seem to have lost all of those lately; or maybe I'm just getting old.

Q9: You're holding an “expense is no object” extravaganza of a party, which five celebrities must be on your guest list? Tell me the funniest thing that happened at that party.

A9: Sandra Bullock, Henry Cavill, Anna Kendrick, Viggo Mortenson, Keanu Reeves. Viggo turns up with some roadkill and wants to start a fire in the garden so he can cook it and eat it. (If you know, you know.)

Q10: It's your birthday and you can have any live music you want, living or dead and at any age, because you're rich and famous and everybody loves you and this is a fantasy. Who do you get to perform?

A10: Slade as they were in 1980 live at the Reading Festival. There are better bands technically, there is better music, but the energy and good vibes at that gig were the best I ever saw.

Q11: Change the ending of any well-known story, from any medium. Which one, and how? Example, Hamlet: nobody dies, and only the bad guys are punished. King Hamlet the Younger and Queen Ophelia rule happily ever after because they are neither borrowers nor lenders. Polonius is proud.

A11: Star Wars. No additional movies are made after 1983; only Episodes IV, V and VI exist. I might unbend far enough to allow Rogue One and Andor to exist.

Nominations

I don't actually read that many blogs on a regular basis, but I nominate:

• From Poland to America for the writeups of a Twilight: 2000 game I wish I'd played in. (I have happy memories of working in Łódź in the real world.)
• Seed of Worlds for the analyses of gaming data.
• the180fantasyproject for the brick maps and general pulpiness.
• Uncanny Worlds for the solo game reports.

My Questions for Nominees

1. Why did you start blogging, and why do you keep doing it?
2. Why did you choose the blogging platform that you use?
3. Why a blog, rather than a YouTube channel or a podcast?
4. What are your favourite games and gaming genres, and why?
5. What game is criminally overlooked and should be more widely played? Why?
6. What RPG mechanic should be more widely known and used?
7. You're suddenly placed in charge of your favourite game and can make any changes to it you like,  money is no object. What's the game, and what are the changes?
8. You assemble your dream team of RPG authors to work together on a game, setting and campaign tailored just for you. Money is no object, so it can have any components you like. Who are the authors? Describe the game they produce.
9. What is the best size, or size range, for a gaming group?
10. What are your main interests outside gaming and blogging?

I shall be watching for the answers...

Aslan Route 26: Doctor Cash

Previously, on the Aslan Route... Having sold Irontooth’s expected location and recognition codes to GeDeCo for them to pass on to their pirate hunters, the crew of the Macavity make their way to Inurin to rescue Linda Cash, ship’s doctor of the Cash Cow and wife of Captain Cash. However, since Cash is a hothead, they have no faith in him sticking to the agreed plan and expect him to head straight for Inurin himself...

Inurin, 1107 Week 08

The crew's take on Captain Cash is that regardless of their agreement with him, he is not the type to sit out the rescue attempt on his wife, and is likely to go off half-cocked. Therefore, in the hope of beating him to the punch before he messes things up, the crew of the Macavity move at best speed from Byrni, through the Ergo system, and on to Inurin.

Scanning the system on arrival, they find no sign of Irontooth’s Meatgrinder, but the Cash Cow has landed in the boonies in the territory claimed by the gang holding Dr Cash for Irontooth. Contacting the other ship, they learn that the engineer (Brian Cash, the Captain’s brother) is keeping the ship ready for a fast getaway while the Captain and steward have gone after the hostage; they arrived a few days earlier and Captain Cash used the time to figure out an exact location, or so he hopes. Brian shares this location with Our Heroes, and leaving Rex to keep an eye on the Macavity, the rest tool up, pile into the air/raft, and head out.

Arriving at the remote hilltop farm where the Doctor is (they hope) held captive, they park the air/raft in a convenient copse and sneak up on the farmhouse. While they are still making plans by text message, a hulking thug carrying a slung SMG ambles out of the farmhouse and sits down on the steps to smoke a cigarette in the cool evening air. Dr Matauranga remains concealed while Vila aims a stun gun at the thug; Mazun sneaks up on him around the farmhouse and kicks him in the head, hard; down he goes, and Dr Matauranga makes sure he will stay down for some time using his selection of pharmaceuticals. Vila thoughtfully appropriates his SMG.

Ground Floor: Cockroaches, SMGs, brutish tattooed thugs, going down...

Frustrated by his inability to take down the thug’s medical records, Matauranga removes his shoes and trousers, and slits his shirt open up the back, so that at first glance he seems to be wearing hospital garb. When he wakes up, he will no doubt hope that the photographs never enter the public domain.

The crew make their way into the house, and discover it is lived in but devoid of other life, unless you count cockroaches. In one corner, a stone staircase leads down, so they follow it.

Below the house is some sort of complex cistern network, apparently full of rainwater for farm use, although in Vila’s opinion the layout is excessively complex and probably intended for something else originally. The large supporting pillars have been hollowed out and repurposed as underground chambers.

Basement Floor: Gangsters, hostages, automatic weapons, going down...

They spend some time sneaking around, finding a pair of gangsters playing cards, one asleep, and four eating a meal and drinking in various rooms. The hostage, if present, must be in the one room they haven’t been able to access. Dr Matauranga removes the snoring gangster from the equation by sneaking up on him and administering a sedative, then takes his SMG and uses it as an impromptu dipstick to see how deep the water is. Even fully extending his arm, he can’t touch bottom.

They then agree a plan; Mazun and Vila will distract the gangsters at table by shooting them with automatic weapons, while Dr Matauranga leaps agilely across the canals to the presumed location of the hostage and frees her. Off he goes to get into position.

Just as Matauranga is steeling himself for the jump, a patrol of gangsters comes into view, walking past the dining room in front of Mazun’s and Vila’s guns.

"Go loud!"

Mazun has taken the law level of “all firearms prohibited except shotguns” literally, and is carrying a fully automatic close assault weapon loaded with 12 gauge all brass; he opens up, massacring everything he can see, namely the patrol and those diners he can get at through the western opening of the chamber. Vila notices Mazun has missed one and plinks away with his borrowed 9mm SMG, grazing them. The boss gangster, who has been expecting some kind of trouble, takes cover in a corner of the room; the other surviving diner decides she is not being paid enough for this and runs out of the chamber’s north exit, towards the stairs.

The card players react to the sudden appalling noise by grabbing their guns and charging towards it; unfortunately, this requires jumping across a canal, and they both fail to make the leap in the darkness, falling into the water with a splash no-one can hear over the gunfire.

Meanwhile, Dr Matauranga is approaching the east entrance to the hostage room, where he finds Captain Cash and his steward (and son), Tomasz, crouched by the door with their hands over their ears. Not wanting them to mistake his intentions, the good Doctor slaps a patch of fast-acting relaxing chemicals onto the Captain’s neck, calming him down to the point where he can just about walk on his own but sees no reason to shoot anyone.

Vila shoots the surviving patrol member, then goes on overwatch while Mazun runs north, then east, then jumps south over a canal. At this point he sees Vila lining up on something around the corner ahead of him, and steps around, using his backup weapon (a 12.5mm auto pistol) to kill the runaway diner.

While that’s going on, the gang boss decides if he can’t have the hostage, nobody else can either, and bursts into the easternmost chamber from its western entrance at about the same time that the Cash family and Dr Matauranga enter from the east. The gang boss squeezes off a couple of rounds, grazing the hostage, then decides honour is satisfied and legs it through the north entrance to the dining room. Dr Matauranga administers first aid to the wounded Dr Cash and oversees the family reunion – Captain Cash being remarkably unconcerned thanks to the earlier medication, which causes some friction, although as the first person into the room he will later claim that the Macavity’s crew are merely assisting him.

Mazun shoots the fleeing gang boss, rendering him unconscious; Dr Matauranga patches him up, gives him a stern lecture about shooting hostages, then injects him with a hideously addictive drug without telling him what it is. His future looks bleak.

As the Macavity's crew have control of the battlefield, they search the various spaces, finding much that would be of interest to rival gangs, confirmation that this gang was dealing with Irontooth, and a data crystal he left with them for some unknown reason.

When cleaned up and installed in a firewalled VM aboard ship, this turns out to be a treasure map of sorts. It appears that in the runup to the (nuclear) civil war on Ergo, a number of the planet’s wealthiest families took themselves and their most treasured possessions to an underground bunker in a secluded spot. Sadly, it appears this was not as bombproof as they hoped; they are likely dead after many decades, but their treasure is believed to remain, protected by the natives’ inability to get at it and spacefarers not knowing where it is… until now…

To be continued...

GM Notes

Credits: Maps - Loke Battlemats. Tokens - Fiery Dragon, Runehammer.

Lack of motivation meant that five hours before kickoff I still had nothing ready. I have a couple of ideas for Ergo, but since they were on a timer - they had to get to Inurin before Irontooth figured out the Cash Cow is no longer responding to orders - I thought they'd go there first. So, we already have a mission objective; rescue Doctor Cash from the gangsters on Inurin who are holding her for Irontooth. Next, a location; I drew a spread of cards using a combination of The Scheme Pyramid and Modern Traps and Obstacles, mused on what sort of gang HQ-cum-prison that might be and selected a map from my collection of Loke Battlemats. In case they blindsided me and went exploring on Ergo instead, I made both sufficiently vague that by changing the MacGuffin they would work on either world. Thanks to the power of reskinning and trappings, I've been using the same handful of stock NPCs and monsters throughout, and I see no reason to change now, so no time spent on those.

I scattered some PEFs (Possible Enemy Forces) on the map, one of THW's best ideas; these are a fast, simple alternative to messing about with fog of war. I drew up a very simple encounter table for what the PEFs might be, allocated each card to a place on the map, and was good to go. Total elapsed prep time: 35 minutes.

Apart from Rex, this group doesn't like getting into fights, but I discovered in this session that they're happy to sneak around setting up ambushes. Then the light bulb came on; rather than basing my approach on First Person Shooters (like Half-Life), this group would enjoy First Person Sneakers (like Splinter Cell) more. Incoming paradigm shift...

Retrospective Review: Traveller

This is Free Trader Beowulf, calling anyone...
Mayday, Mayday... we are under attack... main drive is gone...
turret number one not responding...
Mayday... losing cabin pressure fast... calling anyone... please help...
This is Free Trader Beowulf...
Mayday...

Here's the second of my game system reviews based on extensive play; in this case, 48 years of Traveller. I still get goosebumps reading that text from the box of the original edition, just like the first time I read it.

Core Mechanic

Roll 2d6, add modifiers, meet or beat a target number to succeed.

These days, the most common modifier is a character's skill level, but that introduces a problem, namely that each skill improvement significantly changes the chances of success and you can't do it often before you run out of road. Initially, this was addressed by making improvement very hard, but later additions deal with the problem by adding skill specialisations - to get the equivalent of Engineering-1 in Classic Traveller you now need to take at least four different skills to that level.

Damage varies between editions, but usually involves rolling damage dice for the weapon and deducting the result from the character's physical attributes. Armour might or might not soak damage, depending on which edition you're using.

The Editions

Classic Traveller (1977, 1981, 1983): My fondness for the 1977 edition is well known, although I think it missed a trick in not using range bands for ship combat - that was in the 1983 Starter Edition. The 1981 edition is perhaps the most popular "Classic Traveller", and updated quite a few areas of character creation and equipment, not always for the better in my opinion; it also shifted to a consistent use of the metric system throughout, rather than the previous mixture of metric for most things and Imperial for tabletop ship combat.

MegaTraveller (1987): Many hold this to be the best edition, but the approach of throwing every rule ever written for the game into one set of rulebooks didn't do it for me, and I really didn't like the Rebellion Era soft reboot of the setting. However, the task system was a great idea, if somewhat over-detailed, and a worthy addition to the game. I played this edition a little, but never really ran it as a GM; I found it bigger and more complicated than Classic Traveller without being any more fun.

Traveller: The New Era (1993): I tried very hard to like this, but failed. The hard reboot of the setting didn't do it for me; and converting the game to the poorly-named "GDW House System" - basically second edition Twilight: 2000 - nerfed all the fun bits of the game while introducing even more complexity and detail. My perception was that this was not so much a game as it was the "series bible" for a series of novels, and indeed there were some written. I did run this for a few sessions before switching to 2300AD as the game engine.

Marc Miller's Traveller (AKA "T4", 1996): I always felt this was released before it was finished; there seemed to be a lot missing, and a lot of elements which didn't integrate together well. This was the point in my gaming career where I shifted from "there's a bit missing here, no problem, I'll write something to fill the gap" to "Mr Publisher, I am paying you for this game and I expect it to be complete and consistent within its advertised scope". I ran this for less than a year before switching to GURPS.

GURPS Traveller (1998): At this time, I was playing and running quite a bit of GURPS 3rd Edition, including a game in the Stargate universe and an unusually large Traveller-related campaign set in the Dark Nebula during the Aslan Border Wars, with a huge story arc being pursued by multiple groups of face to face, play-by-post, and play-by-email players. Good heavens, that was a lot of work, but it spun off my contributions to Alien Races 2 and Alien Races 3, which I think were the last gaming materials I wrote for money, because around that time I stopped enjoying that.

Traveller20 (2002): I looked at T20, and liked some of the artwork and deck plans, but Traveller with a class-and-level d20-based system just feels wrong to me.

Traveller Hero (2006): I'm aware this exists, but I've never actually seen it. One gamer I know waxes lyrical about how wonderful the Champions RPG and its successor the Hero System are at every opportunity, and keeps trying to persuade me to try them; but for some reason, neither interests me.

GURPS Traveller Interstellar Wars (2006): I looked at this one, as I quite like this part of the setting; but it was intended for GURPS 4th Edition, and I'd checked out of GURPS a few years earlier. Having leafed through a copy, it seemed to be chiefly setting material which didn't interest me with no supporting adventures.

Mongoose Traveller 1st Edition (2008): I've played and run this, a little, but didn't much like it, for three reasons; first, dynamic initiative, second, the artwork, and third, skill creep - there are hundreds of skills, many of them specialisations of other skills. This had a kind of Open Gaming Licence which resulted in the Cepheus Engine being released as a clone ruleset, making it easier for third parties to produce content; that produced the kind of explosion in products we saw a few years earlier with the D&D OGL, exploiting the potential for Traveller to be used in a wide range of settings - something GDW never pursued, although Mongoose and the third parties did.

Traveller5 (2013, 2019): I bought the 2013 edition of Traveller5, and decided it wasn't so much a game as a toolkit for making your own SF RPG. My gearhead days are far behind me now, so the T5 PDFs languish on a CD in one of the darker recesses of my bookshelves. The chief impact this has had on my gaming is making the Traveller Map and Traveller Wiki steadily less usable at my table as they are gradually rewritten using T5, burying what I care about under mounds of detail I'm not interested in.

Mongoose Traveller 2nd Edition (2016, 2022): I've both run and played this, and while I consider it an improvement on the 1st Edition, the galloping skills creep still puts me off; I'll happily play it, but I don't expect to run it again. The 2016 edition had no ship design rules in it, but it's been over 40 years since I used anything except the standard designs, so that wasn't an issue for me. I hated the isometric deck plans - useless at the table - but thankfully the 2022 edition did away with those.

Pros and Cons

If you know any SF RPG at all, it's likely to be Traveller. It wasn't the first, but it keeps chugging away, assimilating new ideas and game systems as they arise to better serve the needs of the collective.

Like most first generation RPGs, it's very simple to learn and teach. Most editions have random encounter tables and core gameplay loops which make them well-suited to co-op or solitaire play.

All editions are highly modular, with a core rulebook, and supplements allowing you to expand in the directions you're interested in - this started with Book 4, Mercenary, expanding the weapons lists and military character creation, adding mass combat and mercenary operations.

However, it takes a long time to create a character, and due to the lifepath creation method adopted by most editions, you have no guarantee that the resulting character will fit into the group or indeed be anything you'd want to play. Mongoose editions deal with this by handing out extra skills from a package tailored to the chosen campaign type, so that every PC has at least one skill that will be of some use.

SF is a broad church, and there are some things that are harder to do in Traveller than others. It was originally intended to emulate the Golden Age SF of the 1940s to 1970s, and it does that well; you can adapt it to cover cyberpunk, but AI, nanotech, and transhumanist Nu Space Opera get increasingly difficult to fit in without breaking the setting, if not the rules.

Changes Over the Years

In some ways, Traveller is more a setting than it is a set of rulebooks. The Third Imperium has a wide range of sectors of space and time periods in which you can run almost any kind of adventure, and you can interface with this core using any one of the editions. MegaTraveller broke the Imperium with a civil war, with the intention of creating more factions (which drive adventures) and borders (which are where adventures happen). TNE razed it to the ground to deal with how hard it was for new players to get up to speed with all the setting material. T20 and T4 (and later, GURPS Traveller Interstellar Wars) sidestepped the issue by picking times and places far away from the contentious bits. GURPS Traveller, and later Mongoose Traveller, took place in a universe where the Rebellion and subsequent Virus never happened, or at least haven't happened yet. Would that DGP and GDW had taken that path.

Setting aside forks of the game like GURPS Traveller and Traveller Hero, the core rules from GDW and DGP grew steadily more complex and less fun, with Mongoose trying hard to produce something that marries the look and feel of Classic Traveller with more modern sensibilities as to rules, and I think largely succeeding.

At its core, the game is still roll 2d6, add skill level, aim for 8+.

My Future With Traveller

I think this is where I get off the Traveller train, at least as a GM. I feel I am being steadily pushed out by ever-increasing levels of detail in both T5 and Mongoose 2nd Edition; I can - and have - taken a stand, saying that a specific set of products are considered canon for my campaign and anything else is what the PCs heard from a bloke down the pub and not to be trusted. This is easy to justify, as Traveller products are no more consistent with each other than they are with my vision of the setting; but I feel increasingly uncomfortable all the same.

If I were a hedgehog knowing one big thing, that one big thing would be Classic Traveller; in hindsight, every later edition has been a step away from what I love about the game.

Periodically I read through it and think "I want to run it again, but I'd have to change this bit, and that bit..." and what I had at the end of that wouldn't really be Traveller. My current approach is to run Traveller adventures using Savage Worlds. Is that still Traveller? I'm not sure. It feels like it to me, and the players still refer to my game as "Traveller", so maybe it is.

Regardless, scratch the surface of any of my SF games, and you will see Traveller shining through underneath. In some ways, I can never leave it behind.

Appendix N

This year I've seen a number of people posting their version of Appendix N, the list of fictional inspirations mentioned in Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. Here's my take on that, but naturally I'm looking at science fiction rather than fantasy, and out of the numerous works I've read, I'm focussing on those that have had the most impact on my gaming.

• Poul Anderson: The Polesotechnic League and Flandry stories, covering trade pioneers (civilian scouts) and Imperial intelligence respectively. Together, these form the bulk of Anderson's Future History, and are notable for the focus on solving puzzles; they had more influence on my earliest Traveller campaigns than anything else. Also consider The Star Fox, a yarn of interstellar privateering.
• Christopher Anvil: Mind Partner, a short story which was one of the original inspirations for Arion's strange meta-narrative; the others were Nick Bostrum's Simulation Hypothesis and my periodic dreams of other worlds, when on waking I briefly wonder which is the dream and which is reality.
• Isaac Asimov: The original Foundation series (the collapse of an interstellar empire) and Robot stories (the Three Laws of Robotics and how to circumvent them), which were not originally connected. I'm not as fond of the later sequels.
• Iain M. Banks: The Culture novels; space hippies with really big guns, meddling with other civilisations - it's for their own good, honestly. Megastructures, AI, strange weapons, weird aliens; start with Consider Phlebas. Also consider the stand-alone novel Against a Dark Background; mind-linked combat teams and the Lazy Gun, a super-weapon right out of Looney Tunes.
• James Blish: The Cities in Flight quartet, of which my favourite is Earthman, Come Home. Gives a good feel for the scale of the galaxy; follows the adventures of a flying New York City as a migrant worker among the stars, providing industrial and research services to backward planets. My copy includes an appendix offering a handy guide to Oswald Spengler's Decline of the West, in which Cities in Flight was rooted and which I used to sketch out the timelines for my own campaigns, back in the day.
• Lois McMaster Bujold: The Vorkosigan Saga. This one has a bit of everything; soldiers, spies, weird societies, clone doppelgangers, interstellar politics, even a Regency-style comedy romance involving a sex change operation at one point. Can be read in any order, but start with Shards of Honour, although it's not the first, nor does it have the hero of the saga in it. Bujold is very good at writing from a male viewpoint, and the main protagonist - a crippled dwarf tactical genius - is unique.
• John Brunner: Interstellar Empire (explaining how you could have a galaxy of planets at wildly differing tech levels), The Shockwave Rider (cyberpunk before it was cool), Stand on Zanzibar (overpopulation, TVs that use CGI to insert the viewer into the story, a US-China war, mind-programmed assassins before they were cool, and lots of other plausible near-future stuff).
• C.J. Cherryh: The Alliance/Union universe, especially Merchanter's Luck (in which various factions help the protagonist for their own purposes), Downbelow Station (warfare among colonies), and The Pride of Chanur (the closest thing to Traveller aslan in fiction). To my mind this is the fictional universe most like 2300AD.
• James S.A. Corey: The Expanse novels and short stories. Hard SF with interesting takes on building an interstellar empire, vanished precursor aliens, and FTL travel using jump gates.
• David Drake: The Hammer's Slammers and RCN stories, dealing with mercenaries and naval personnel respectively. The protagonists of the RCN novels are definitely PCs. Drake's writing is also a masterclass in taking older stories - such as the Odyssey - and reskinning them for SF.
• William Gibson: The Sprawl Trilogy; Neuromancer, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive. Cyberpunk done right.
• Joe Haldeman: The Forever War (powered armour troopers and the rise of a relativistic civilisation), All My Sins Remembered (high-tech espionage).
• Robert A Heinlein: Starship Troopers (powered armour troopers vs arachnids, and a militaristic society); Citizen of the Galaxy (free traders among strange cultures); The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (revolt in a lunar prison colony, and AI before it was cool).
• Frank Herbert: Dune (political machinations and factions in an interstellar empire); The Dragon in the Sea (SF submarines); Hellstrom's Hive (a very strange human society). I'm not as fond of the sequels to Dune, and having read one of the prequels, I wouldn't touch the rest with a laser rangefinder.
• Murray Leinster: The Med Ship stories (an unusual take on scoutships, their lone pilots, and the societies they encounter).
• Linda Nagata: The Red: First Light (corporate armies and the most credible take on a friendly AI I've yet read).
• Larry Niven: The Known Space stories, most famously Ringworld. Megastructures, weird aliens, strange human cultures. Chaosium's Ringworld RPG was such a good implementation of this setting that authors writing stories in the universe were given it as a "series bible".
• Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle: The Mote in God's Eye. The definitive story of first contact with aliens, with lots of detail about interstellar navy life.
• H Beam Piper: The Future History, including the short story collections Federation and Empire. Best known for Little Fuzzy (first contact with creatures like ewoks) though my personal favourite is Star Viking (I suspect the inspiration for Traveller's feudal technocracy government type and the Sword Worlds in the Spinward Marches).
• Jerry Pournelle: The Future History stories, especially the ones about Falkenburg's Mercenary Legion. The History covers a thousand years of warfare, politics and sociology, and has multiple spinoffs written by others.
• Christopher Rowley: The Vang Trilogy - Starhammer, The Military Form, The Battlemaster. If you've played the Halo games or read/watched The Expanse, you might wonder whether the creators had read the Vang books.
• Eric Frank Russell: Next of Kin (lone scout taken prisoner schemes against his captors), Wasp (interstellar saboteur).
• James H Schmitz: The short stories about Telzey Amberdon and Trigger Argee, all set in the Federation of the Hub; they are periodically collected, and there's also a short novel, The Lion Game. These are about psionics, espionage, and strange societies; Schmitz is unusual for the era (1960s) in having strong female leads.
• Neal Stephenson: Snow Crash. Cyberpunk done right again, arguably even better than William Gibson. Interesting take on a balkanised planet, and a very memorable supersonic cyborg dog.
• E.C. Tubb: The Dumarest of Terra novels. This is as close to Traveller as fiction gets, at least the pre-Third Imperium Traveller of the late 1970s. Often criticised because it takes Dumarest 30+ novels to find Earth, but that's missing the point; his quest is simply a reason for him to move on to the next planet and the next story, much like Star Trek's five year mission.
• Jack Vance: The Demon Princes quintet (a saga of revenge against crimelords lurking beyond civilised space), the Planet of Adventure quartet (marooned scout wanders across a multi-species planet to find a way home). Adam Reith of the latter series is the quintessential interstellar scout.
• Peter Watts: Blindsight. A first contact story which asks some big questions about intelligence and consciousness, and comes up with some disturbing answers. Also the ship's captain is a vampire. This was a major influence on my Dark Nebula campaigns.
• David Weber: The Honor Harrington novels, at least the first dozen or so; I lost interest eventually. Interstellar navy, marines and politics; unusual in that the titular heroine begins as a navy Captain and rises into the nobility, Hornblower-style narratives usually start the protagonist as an Ensign and follow his climb to Admiral. Many, many spinoffs.

I've only scratched the surface of the vast clade of genres which is science fiction, but these are the ones which have influenced my games the most. What would you add to the list?

Retrospective Review: Dungeons & Dragons

"...we are not loath to answer your questions, but why have us do any more of your imagining for you?" - Dungeons & Dragons, 1974

Normally, I review games based on a detailed read-through. How about we go to the other extreme and review ones I've played or run for ten years or more? In chronological order, that select group includes Dungeons & Dragons, Traveller, 2300AD, Savage Worlds, All Things Zombie, and 5150. Playing any RPG for that length of time inevitably involves more than one edition, and looking at the differences between them - and my changing attitudes to gaming - may be entertaining, or at least interesting.

Are you sitting comfortably?

Then I'll begin.

I'll begin with Dungeons & Dragons, as most of us did... If only I could figure out how to do a wavy dissolve to grainy black and white images on a blog post. You'll just have to imagine that, as well as a voiceover from Humphrey Bogart telling you the following...

Core Mechanics

These were many and varied initially, but stabilised as roll 1d20, apply modifiers, meet or beat target number to succeed. If you hit a target, roll damage dice and deduct the result from the target's hit points; depending on the edition, it probably dies at zero hit points.

Spells follow the Vancian model, or if you prefer, aircraft stores loadouts; you have a variety of spell slots (launch rails) which you can load up with specific items, but once they're gone, they're gone until you can reload.

The Editions

All the editions I know of, and my experience with them.

Original Dungeons & Dragons (1974). I started with the White Box, which I bought in 1976, but I understand there was also a Brown Box before that. I game mastered OD&D for about three years, and played it for almost fifty. I got the 50th anniversary edition of the White Box in PDF format, which has better artwork and removed a number of things which these days would cause copyright lawsuits, notably monsters from Edgar Rice Burrows' Barsoom; I've never used those PDFs, nor do I expect to, but it sparks joy to know that I have them.

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (1977). I owned this, and played it for something like five years, but never really ran it. It seemed to me that the publisher had taken everything ever written for the game and smashed it together, without much thought for how the various pieces interacted or what sequence would make sense to the reader. Too complex for me; a lot of people consider it the best version of the game, but then you can find stalwart defenders of any edition.

Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set (1977). I bought this and found it considerably easier to understand and explain than OD&D, but my regular groups had moved on to other games by then - one group to homebrew rules, then The Fantasy Trip, and eventually GURPS, while the other converted to RuneQuest - and I spent the period 1977-1982 moving around a lot, never really settling anywhere long enough to join or form another stable group. When I did run games in that period, it was mostly Traveller or Empire of the Petal Throne.

Dungeons & Dragons BX (1981). I bought this, liked it, and managed to persuade my regular group to let me run one session of it. That's all she wrote, but I think this was the most successful edition; many of the current generation of RPG gurus cut their teeth on it, and it's the game engine underlying much of the OSR - for example, everything Sine Nomine Publications produces is some variant of this game. This is the poster child for race-as-class, which I have mixed feelings about; it's fast and simple, but players inevitably want to play (say) a hobbit thief - the hobbit as written in BX is basically a short, chubby ranger.

Dungeons & Dragons BECMI (1983). I didn't buy this one, because I didn't understand the difference between BECMI and BX. I'm still not sure I do. Never ran it, never played it, but only because I thought I already had. Or was. Or something.

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition (1989). This one had my favourite artwork of all the editions, although the three-ring binder version of the Monster Manual was a lot less practical at the table than I hoped. I ran it for less than a year; the party was entirely composed of thieves, as the Usual Suspects were quite taken with the idea of customising their PCs by allocating skill percentages. By this time, though, they had settled in to a thorough dislike of class and level based systems, and I never persuaded them to play D&D again. Decades later, I played in a short-lived campaign of this edition with a completely different group of people, which broke up after a few sessions when the DM moved away. That latter campaign was where I developed trust issues with online shops; I had just bought 2nd edition in PDF when WotC pulled the licence and I lost the books for some years - when they reinstated it they had changed the item codes, so while they did reinstate some files, they were not the files I'd actually bought. Since then, I've always kept offline backups for anything I actually care about.

Dungeons & Dragons Rules Cyclopedia (1991). This collapsed all the BECMI rulebooks and some Mystara setting material into one hardback book. After not playing it for over a decade, I sold my copy, and I have regretted doing so ever since.

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition Revised (1995). I didn't even know this one existed until I started researching this post.

Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition (2000). This is the edition I used to introduce my children to D&D; it is the single most internally consistent version of the game, and also the easiest to compare with the real world. Unfortunately, it was so complex that I couldn't run it effectively without software support, which meant we could only play where my home PC was. Nonetheless, those sessions in the study with my children, using Lego mini-figures on homemade dungeon tiles, are a highlight of my gaming career, and I look back on them with fond nostalgia. This was also the edition that brought in the Open Gaming Licence, and the consequent explosion of third-party products and, later, retroclones; I have mixed feelings about the former, but the latter are on the whole a good thing, I think.

Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 (2003). I upgraded my children's game to 3.5 when it came out because I thought it was an improvement, although after two decades I can no longer remember why I thought that. Something to do with the Player's Handbook, I think. That was around the time both my daughters left home for University, and while my son and I carried on playing and enjoying 3.5, it wasn't the same with the girls gone. It was my son's favourite edition, and languishes on my bookshelves to this day.

Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition (2008). This is a good game, and one I played with my children and their friends over the school holidays for a year or two; we had a great time with it. It's an attempt to merge tabletop RPGs with collectible card games and MMORPGs, and it's a good game when viewed in isolation, on its own merits; but I'd argue it isn't really D&D. We found ourselves drifting gradually into Pokemon-speak... "I play this card in Defence Mode, and end my turn!"

Dungeons & Dragons Essentials (2010). This is the first one I consciously decided not to buy, as "edition fatigue" started to set in. I understand it's an improved 4th Edition, but I couldn't tell you what the differences are.

Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition (2014). I played a few sessions of this, and ran a couple from the free quickstart downloads, but found it verbose and detailed to the point of being unusable, as well as having theme, tone and underlying philosophy that had drifted too far from what I loved about the game to be fun. Seriously, I have entire RPG systems that are smaller than the quickstart for 5th Edition. My children, my friends' children, and their friends play this edition; sadly, it's a language I don't speak, and they have their own lives and session slots which no longer include me. Such is the inevitable nature of growing old. My continuing involvement with 5E consists of playing the PC game Solasta: Crown of the Magister, which is an extremely faithful implementation of the rules, and offers me all the fun of solo D&D while keeping track of all the fiddly details for me.

Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition (2024). This is where I officially checked out of D&D. I didn't buy the 2024 editions of the rulebooks, as not even my immense love for the game and nostalgia for players and campaigns long gone could draw me back in. However, I'm unlikely to live long enough for any other game to surpass the 48 years I played D&D. Ave, atque vale.

Pros and Cons

This is the 800 lb gorilla, dominating the marketplace and with a brand you're probably aware of even if you've never played it or even met anyone who has. If you want to find a new RPG group or drop into a pickup session at a convention, chances are this is what they're playing.

The core concepts of D&D are easy to explain to newcomers, even now, when they are buried under hundreds of pages of edge cases and infrequently-used details; roll high on a d20 to succeed, chip away at the enemy's hit points until you take them out. They form a lingua franca for gamers everywhere; you might not like them, but if I tell you I played a 12th level ranger in a campaign loosely based on Mediaeval India you have some idea what I did for fun for twenty years.

Changes Over the Years

The game is very different now from when it first began, both in detail and in philosophy. The changes that stand out to me are:

Rules vs Guidelines. This changed dramatically in 1977 with the arrival of AD&D and tournament play; before then, every campaign was different, there were gaps in the rules which the GM was expected and encouraged to fill in himself, and the guidance from the publishers - as you see above - was "Why have us do any more of your imagining for you?" After that, the view was that there was One True D&D, it was AD&D, and if you weren't playing that you were having Bad Wrong Fun.

PC Creation and Character Death. Death was frequent in OD&D, to the extent that explaining how new PCs joined the group partway through a session was an essential skill; that paired well with creating a new PC in five minutes or less. Now, it takes hours to create a PC, and it's almost impossible for a PC to die. I've seen it argued that this is a shift from wargaming ("we have a mission, and some casualties are inevitable") to storytelling ("I have plot armour until at least the next milestone"); personally, I think it's more about character investment - if you've already spent a couple of hours working out the perfect PC build before you start playing, you can't help be more invested in that character than one you rolled up a couple of minutes ago.

Player Challenge vs Character Challenge. Initially, characters were more or less the same, and everything except combat was handled by conversation with the DM. How exactly were you looking for a trap? What were you saying to convince an NPC to help? Over the years, that gradually drifted into making skill rolls because your character knows this stuff even if you don't.

Themes and Tone. OD&D was sword and sorcery, written by and for readers of Conan, Elric and The Lord of the Rings. Over the years, the hero's journey shifted away from starting as Kick-Ass and ending up as The Batman; now, you start as members of the Justice League and finish as gods, everyone has pointy ears and darkvision, and the game is written by and for people who enjoy Harry Potter and the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Are any of those changes bad? No, not as such, they're just a different style of play.

Do they result in a game I'd want to play? Also no, but that's a matter of personal taste.

My Future with D&D

D&D has become a place where I don't feel welcome any more, so I can't see myself playing actual D&D again, much less running it. Mind you, if my old gaming buddies called me up and asked me to play 1974 D&D one more time, I'd be all over it.

If you see me running "D&D" in future, look more closely, and you'll see it's either Old School Essentials or Tales of Argosa. Are those D&D? Well, they're d20-based, roll high, class and level fantasy games with wizards and dwarves; to non-gamers, they look a lot like it, and our debates about what is and is not D&D seem as relevant to them as arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

Aslan Route 25: Byrni

Previously, on the Aslan Route: The crew of the Macavity have rescued most of the crew of the Cash Cow, all bar the ship's doctor who is being held hostage on Inurin by Captain Hroal Irontooth of the corsair Meatgrinder. They decide that the Meatgrinder will have to be dealt with, but not by them, and make for Byrni, where they intend to sell Irontooth's location to GeDeCo pirate hunters. Now read on...

Byrni, 1107 Week 04

While Troisei goes off to look for a suitable cargo, the crew of the Macavity descend en masse on the office of the GeDeCo branch manager, and try to sell him the location of Hroal Irontooth and the Meatgrinder. Their arguments are that piracy is bad for GeDeco, and a branch manager who suppresses it should find his next bonus and promotion chances improved; that Irontooth's ship is damaged and low on crew, so now is a good time to strike; and that they know where he is going to turn up and have recognition signals which will allow the pirate hunters to get close.

The branch manager agrees to spread the word among the pirate hunters, but comes up with some cock-and-bull story about not being able to pay them a finder's fee until the location checks out, which will take a minimum of two months. Vila is extremely disappointed, but the others accept it as the cost of doing business; taking out Irontooth is valuable to them on its own.

Troisei returns with news that she has obtained a great deal on some good cargo for Ergo, their next port of call, but there is a catch; her interest in duelling came out, and is apparently shared by the broker she was dealing with, Ftaia of Clan Hkaaiheir. The discount is contingent on her champion duelling Ftaia's bodyguard, Iroioah. Once Rex learns this there is no stopping him, and a duel to first blood is arranged for first thing the next morning.

Troisei, Ftaia, Mazun and Vila observe from an elevated gallery while Iroioah and Rex face off in an arena below. Dr Matauranga is watching from the sidelines at ground level, ready to offer medical aid if needed.

After a series of tentative passes from both duellists as they assess each other's capabilities, Rex strikes for effect - and hits one of the statues adorning the arena, breaking the strap on one of his ayloi and dropping it.

Iroioah calls a time-out to the duel, observing that he would not have it said he only won because Rex had lost a claw. There is polite applause at this honourable behaviour, and Mazun tosses Rex one of his own ayloi. In return, Rex insists Iroioah makes the first attack when they recommence, and he, too, hits something and dislocates one of his dewclaws. Rex stops the fight, and calls Dr Matauranga over; the good doctor does something quick and uncomfortable, and pops the dewclaw back into place.

The fight restarts, and after a few more exchanges of blows Rex lands an unexpectedly brutal swipe which drops Iroioah in his tracks, and will leave an interesting scar. His opponent is at his mercy, but Rex stays his hand as the fight is to first blood only.

Honour is contagious, and the Macavity's crew thus begin to build a reputation among the Hkaaiheir as well as the Iuwoi and the Ahroay'if.

Next stop: Ergo...

GM Notes

A short session this week, as I was feeling a bit under the weather and called it early. We were also one player down, which means the group chews through plot even faster than usual for SWADE.

The negotiation with the branch manager was handled as a Social Conflict, led by Mazun (who is optimised for that kind of thing) and supported by the others. The duel was a means to give Rex's player the combat he craves without distorting the narrative too much; it's more dangerous than it seems, because Rex has the Berserk Edge and is quite likely to go off the deep end if hurt. Killing his opponent would have been very awkward. The byplay around broken claws came out of consecutive critical failures from both duellists - most PCs run by Rex's player have a surprisingly high incidence of crit fails. Dr Matauranga's player tends to roll ridiculously high on one skill for each PC he runs, and this time it's Healing; I don't think he scored below 20 on a Healing roll all night.

I must come up with something more creative for Ergo, although everyone seemed to have fun, and as we age, a more relaxed pace of play seems to come more naturally to us. After all, we're not ending world hunger here, we're just having a laugh.

I often feel that the main purpose of our games is to give us an excuse to talk, and a shared topic to talk about.

28 Months Later: Morgan, Z+51

“Nothing is impossible to kill. It's just that sometimes after you kill something you have to keep shooting it until it stops moving.” - Mira Grant, Feed

The Cabin, Z+51

Map: Loke Battlemats. Tokens: Fiery Dragon. Rules: ATZ, SWADE.

Fun though yomping through the countryside is, Morgan has been looking for some time for a place to hole up, and he thinks he may have found it; a small cabin in a lightly wooded area, not too obvious but with good sightlines, easy access to a road but not visible from it. Hopefully it will have some supplies, as what he has left will last 11 days at best; but if not, it will at least give him somewhere out of the rain. Before he can settle in, though, he'll need to flush out anyone - or anything - lurking in the woods.

Setup: PEFs in sections 1, 1, 2; Morgan enters in section 9.

Morgan walks quietly up the track to the cabin. He's fairly certain there is something in the woods off to his left front, but can't make out what or where. As he moves closer to the building, he sees a lone zombie to his left and readies his weapons; it charges at him, but can't quite get close enough to attack.

End of turn 2: First two PEFs resolved.

Morgan realises he should've opened fire earlier, but still has just enough time to do so now; one round of the three he squeezes off scores a hit, staggering the zed, as he moves up to the cabin; the door is stiff, but thankfully unlocked, and he shoulders his way inside, slamming the door behind him and leaning back on it for good measure. The zombie races after him and claws ineffectively at the door. Morgan is sure there is still something else in the woods, but his attention is more focused on the noise from the next room.

End of turn 3: Inside yes, safe - maybe.

Outside, the zombie continues to batter at the door, but it doesn't seem as if it will break through any time soon. Checking the door is securely fastened, Morgan steps into the next room, rifle at the ready, but there's nothing there; the noise must have come from outside. Sure enough, there's a pair of zeds shambling around behind a low stone wall; they must've turned up recently, otherwise he would've seen them on his approach.

GM Note: There's always a Possible Enemy Force inside a building, but during its turn it moved one table section away, then Morgan moved up to get line of sight on both it and the remaining original PEF; I drew cards to resolve them as two zombies and nothing, respectively. Fortunately, the gunfire didn't draw any more.

End of turn 4: Ah, there you are...

Morgan steps to the window, opens it quietly, and lets off another short burst, dropping one of the brace of zeds outside. This time, the shots draw another zed from the southeast; it runs up to join its compatriot at the door, where they gouge at it without inflicting more than cosmetic damage. The survivor from the group Morgan fired on runs to his window and makes a wild attack at him through it, shaking him.

End of turn 5: "Trick or treat?"

Quickly composing himself, Morgan realises he is too close and in too awkward a position to use the rifle, so draws his knife and hacks at the zombie, doing enough damage to kill it. Is that even the right word? he wonders. Maybe destroy it is better?

Something will have to be done about that persistent scraping at the door, though.

End of turn 6: "It has been knife-work up here."

Morgan slides out of the window as quietly as he can manage, and pads carefully through the grass until he has a clear line of sight on the zombies. Unfortunately, they notice him, and charge. Morgan is far enough away to shoot before they can engage him in melee, and he cuts one down, with a round left over to hit the second and stagger it. It seems he has already drawn all the zeds nearby, as no more emerge.

As the closest one drops, he fires again, gunning down the last.

End of turn 9: That's the last one, for now.

A search of the area reveals nothing else lurking, so Morgan drags the bodies away and moves in to his new home, where he finds some luxury goods, specifically a bottle of whiskey. He holds it up to the fading light, and debates whether to drink it, or keep it for antiseptic or trading purposes.

Bookkeeping

Episodes: 5. Bennies: 1. Ammo: High. Food: 11 days. Luxuries: 1.

I've started tracking supply levels for Morgan, so I set his ammo level to Very High at the start of the session and allowed him a Survival roll every game day since Z+39; although he is unskilled and thus has only a d4-2, the dice have been kind to him recently.

GM Notes

Here, I'm drifting back towards All Things Zombie. The campaign and scenario system for Grimdark Future Star Quest is pretty good, but requires more brainpower than I have available late in the evening when I usually play. The ATZ rules for PEFs, and the GFSQ NPC AI, are simple and familiar enough that I have them more or less memorised, although I should probably reread the rules at some point. I continue to use the ATZ R&R Deck to resolve PEFs as it's the fastest and easiest method I have to hand.

That combination was more enjoyable for me than the previous one, and that is after all the point.

Last time (Z+39) I interpreted the notation "Vampire (2)" to mean that each vampire on the card was actually a pair, but in hindsight that notation probably meant they were Stage 2 vampires, so there should only have been three of them. The difference is that Stage 1 have animal level intelligence (Smarts d8A), but Stage 2 have human level intelligence (Smarts d8) and can use firearms. Noted for next time we meet them.

Aslan Route 24: Cash Cow

Previously, on the Aslan Route... The crew of the Macavity are on a long-term charter to Troisei, trader of Clan Aftei, who wants them to begin by taking her to Sink to visit her sister, Elehasei...

Sink, 1107 Week 02

While Rex delivers Troisei to the landhold to visit her sister, Ahoakhi the Port Authority takes the rest of the crew aside and says she has some suspicions about the other ship in port, another Far Trader called the Cash Cow. Showing them the collection of holograms over the bar, depicting the bar's regulars in front of their ships, she points out that one woman is missing from the crew, and has been replaced by a handful of aslan; also, none of them are coming ashore. As the woman is the captain's wife she thinks something is going on; can the PCs discreetly investigate for her?

After a discussion of possible situations and approaches, the crew decided to run surveillance on the ship. This told them that the aslan are members of Hroal Irontooth's crew, holding the woman hostage to ensure the good behaviour of her husband, brother-in-law, and son, who make up the rest of the crew. The captain and engineer are stalling, the aslan grow restless, but the captain insists he cannot dock at the next port without a cargo, it would be suspicious.

The Macavity's crew call in a favour from the Abbot of Sink's monastery; he invites the captain over to discuss a cargo, and when he and two aslan minders turn up, they find Dr Matauranga, Rex and Mazun waiting for them, and the minders shuffled off to wait in a lobby with snacks and drinks. Mazun's portable bug sniffer discerns that Captain Cash (for it is he) is wired for son et lumiere, but they hack the body camera and feed in a previously prepared video loop which runs while the Abbot and humans discuss a fictitious cargo and the two trader captains communicate by notes, confirming and extending the crew's understanding. Meanwhile, Dr Matauranga has spiked the minders' drinks and by now they are snoring gently in the lobby.

Propping up the unconscious aslan in the Cash Cow's air/raft, Rex, Matauranga and Mazun conceal themselves in crates, and Cash flies them back to his ship. He radios ahead to explain he is returning with cargo, but that his minders have overindulged and are sleeping it off. The Cash Cow's engineer is sent out under guard to finish refuelling - a task he has contrived to stretch out to several days - and Vila emerges to join him, after all the Macavity needs fuel too. He tries to pass a note to the other engineer explaining what is going on, but the female aslan watching over him catches him at it, and a scuffle begins, ending when Vila drops her with his stun baton. He is spotted trying to drag her away and hide her, and without a responsible female adult to keep them in line, the two male aslan aboard charge out of the cargo hatch to deal with the problem.

Mazun, Rex and Dr Matauranga choose this moment to pop up and engage while Cash is bent on ramming the aslan with the air/raft. At this point, it should be mentioned that Sink is a law level 0 planet, and the Macavity's crew are boon companions of the local aslan landholder and have been engaged by the monastery to protect it against pirates. They are therefore at liberty to carry whatever they like; Mazun is sporting a 12-gauge full-auto shotgun, Rex has a brace of laser SMGs, and Dr Matauranga has a medical kit, reasoning - correctly - that the others are able to take care of most situations, but will do so in a way which generates work for the ship's medic.

As the two aslan charge Vila, Cash's mad charge forces them to drop prone as Mazun walks automatic shotgun fire towards and through one of them; Vila meanwhile has unlimbered his stun gun and fired at the second, who unfortunately suffers a heart attack and dies. Rex is inconsolable, until Mazun points out that they have prisoners who can doubtless be executed by him in some judicial duel.

Dr Matauranga's medical kit proves to contain aslan truth drugs ("Just in case," he says) and while Rex intimidates one of their three prisoners, Mazun soft-talks the others. From this they learn the pirate's names and recognition signals and roughly where the captain's wife is being held - the fortress of one of the smaller groups on Inurin, which has made a deal with Irontooth - and that she is well-guarded as Irontooth expects someone to try and rescue her, or at least kidnap her for another group. The survivors and Cash know they were going to Tyokh, but only the pirate who died of a heart attack knew why.

The Macavity's crew decides this is not an insurmountable problem; they are now accustomed to paying the monastery in the dead bodies of sentients, so they deliver the new casualties to the Abbot and explain once he has processed the corpses, they need some answers from one of them. The Abbot agrees, but all they get out of the dead pirate is that he was meeting someone on Tyokh as part of a recruiting drive - credible to the party, who by their count have killed over half Irontooth's crew already and expect more may have left him since. The Abbot apologises, saying that it takes some time for newcomers to acclimatise to being dead, and even longer to come to terms with being part of an ancient hive mind. "It's especially confusing for aslan," he says, "Because they don't believe in an afterlife."

They decide recognition signals are a good idea, and set up a simple code for "acting under duress" with Ahoakhi.

A council of war follows; Vila wants to know where the profit in all this is, and is told GeDeCo will issue a finder's fee for the location of the Meatgrinder. This may even be true. The plan is to visit Byrni and sell the location to GeDeCo for passing on to local pirate hunters, who can do the heavy lifting of taking out the corsair, then go to Inurin via Ergo to rescue Cash's wife. Vila tells them that after their last encounter, the Meatgrinder will need some time in a class A or B starport for repairs, and Dr Matauranga calculates that the Macavity can get to Inurin before Irontooth realises the Cash Cow has gone missing. Troisei - who has bonded with Rex over a shared interest in duelling - is easily persuaded; these are the same pirates who assaulted her sister's clanmates, and as a trader she is against pirates in general.

Next stop: Byrni...

GM Notes

"That's the first time I've seen Speak With Dead used in a Traveller game," said Vila's player.

"You just haven't been playing with the right groups," Mazun's player replied.

It's interesting that whatever SF game I run, the players refer to it as Traveller.

-o0o-

I began preparation for this session by rolling up a mission using Interstellar Rebels. This gave me the following:

• The PCs decide to: Steal plans or intel.
• Which leads them to: A backwater planet.
• But they must also deal with a: Dangerous spaceship.

The second and third questions were easy; the PCs were already headed for Sink, which is a backwater planet, and the Law of Conservation of NPCs dictated that the dangerous spaceship should be the Meatgrinder, bringing Captain Hroal Irontooth back into play.

What plans or intel could they steal, and why would they want to? I slept on that, and woke the next morning with the idea that Irontooth has seized control of a free trader; he deposits loot in a prearranged location, the free trader picks it up and sells it legitimately, then buys supplies and takes them back to said location, leaving them plus some cash for him to pick up. This intel covers the rendezvous location and schedule for pickups, and they got it by talking to Cash and interrogating their prisoners.

The hook was that their friend in the Port Authority on Sink knows the crew, sees there is one missing and a few thuggish additions, and becomes suspicious. IMTU, crews of small freighters are often related, running the ship as a family business, so crewmembers make good hostages.

Then, inspired by Brass Jester's use of a modified version of the SWADE Chase rules for abstract combat - which I envision as working something like range bands in Classic Traveller - I spent most of my prep time working out a suitable card layout (borrowed from 5150 Fringe Space in the end) and rules mods for sneaking aboard (basically, using Stealth as the manoeuvring skill). I was quite pleased with how well that worked out, and looked forward to trying it; naturally, therefore, the PCs did something else entirely, luring the pirates outside and shooting them. I'll park the boarding rules for the moment, I'm sure one of my campaigns will use them eventually. Tracking this under the Interstellar Rebels scene progression rules, I decide to give the party 2 VP for this session and count it as a Dramatic Task. I think the work on Byrni can be a Social Conflict. When they rack up 10 VP, they have dealt with Irontooth - for now. I think he and his pirates will make a good recurring villain.

Mazun made good use of Bennies to gain narrative control by invoking flashbacks in which he prepared for the meeting with the other captain. The others were so certain that of course Dr Matauranga, with his well-known interest in catgirls, would have previously researched "aslan rohypnol" that of course he had some with him. The crew as a whole also made good use of their burgeoning knowledge of the aslan code to manipulate assorted aslan into doing their bidding.

The thing to remember with all this is that our joint objective is to have fun playing the game, not exercise any specific rules or situations.

28 Months Later: Morgan, Z+39

 “There are no heroes here. Just a few men and women running around in the dark with half-empty magazines.” – The Forever Winter

Setup: Primary - Area Search. Objectives at centres of top right/bottom right table quarters, and table centre. Secondary - Scavenge. Two objectives within 6" of top right corner. Three search tokens, two within 6" of top right corner, one within 6" of bottom left corner. Sentries (4 zombies) begin in top right corner. Hero starts within 6" of top left corner.

City Docks, Z+39

Shortly after the last mission, Morgan's unit disintegrates; too many casualties, too much horror, not enough rations. Morgan considers his teammates, decides he doesn't trust any of them enough to cover his back in the apocalypse, and fades away one night. Almost a fortnight later, he finds himself alone, picking his way through the docks, one last foray through the city before he heads out into the countryside to hole up and review his admittedly limited options; it's getting too dangerous in the urban areas.

Setup: Sittin' by the dock of the bay...

Morgan fails to notice that most of the loot and all of the zombies initially in the area are on top of a building to the northeast of the docks, and so wanders towards the waterfront. The zombies mill around on the roof, attracted to something in one corner.

As Morgan makes his way around a pile of crates, he finally sees there are zeds on the roof. He also sees something interesting just off the boardwalk and moves up to investigate - but before he can do so, he hears a noise in the warehouse behind him. At the same time, the zombies, not the most alert of opponents but too smart to walk mindlessly off the edge of the roof, realise he is there and start racing down the stairs to the ground floor.

The vampires in the warehouse - for such they are - don't need to risk emerging into the daylight, for they have pistols, and all of them fire at him. Miraculously, only two hit, and neither does more than graze him; he ducks into cover behind some nearby crates. The noise startles a stealthy survivor who was searching behind a pile of crates to Morgan's southwest, and he sticks his head cautiously around the corner.

End of turn 4 - enter the vampires

Morgan considers his options for a heartbeat. Half a dozen guns between him and the exit from the docks; four zombies charging at him from their tower; a survivor with unknown intentions also between him and the exit. He needs to get away from all of them, and that means diving off the docks into the cold water below. He runs as far as he dares along the nearest jetty and dives in, hoping he can swim better than the zombies.

The new survivor decides that discretion is the better part of not becoming part of a Zombie Feast, and runs away from the docks, hoping the zeds will go for Morgan.

By the time the vampires get line of sight on where he was, Morgan is swimming out to sea, intending to circle back to shore once everyone else has given up on him.

End of turn 5 - "He's fallen in the water!"

As it turns out, he can swim better than zombies, and for reasons he is unaware of, whoever was shooting at him doesn't follow up.

GM Notes

Well, Morgan's Bennies didn't last long, but they did save him from being gunned down by vampires; he has one left to last him until episode 8. Since vampires in the ATZ R&R deck can apparently come in six-packs with firearms, I decided they should be the most junior kind, which means they are not Invulnerable. They can still be injured by sunlight, though, so opted to stay in the warehouse in the hope of bringing Morgan down with gunfire. (I realised partway through writing this up that actually his Bennies shouldn't refresh until the end of this session, but "no do-overs" works in the solo PC's favour as well as against him.)

All SWADE zombies can run and use firearms, but Morgan was lucky on his "running" dice on the first couple of turns in the water, and while SWADE zeds can also swim, on average luck a human will pull away from them a couple of yards per turn, so I called it after a few dice rolls.

This time, I decided not to bother posting screenshots of turns where all that happened was Morgan moving across the map, only showing what happened once combat was joined.

Credits: Map - Loke Battlemats. Tokens - Fiery Dragon. Rules - SWADE, GFSQ campaign rules, ATZ R&R deck.