Saturday, July 12, 2014

Traveller Session - The Love Boat

Last night's Traveller session started off with a quick rules investigation in order to find the cost of refuelling their starship at the last port of call. Turns out it was 10,000 creds. I decided to start tracking the team's money as they are currently wallowing in a bundle of 45 million and with that kind of money in the bank I feared they might lack motivation. As it turns out I don't think I need have worried.

They emerged from jump into the Gefar system (A325489-E) and immediately had to take evasive action as a huge ship by the name of "The Pacific Princess" came tumbling towards them, apparently out of control. As the ship passed they picked up the transmission of a hand held radio. The man calling identified himself as a body guard for Shadalla Tie, he and his fellow guards were defending her but were backed into corridor. Then the signal faded as the ship roll on by.

After a rules clarification about the standard Imperial policy towards salvage the PCs decided to close on the ship, board it, and go about saving poor Shadalla.

I should point that the players each have two PCs on board ship. One as part of the home team (bridge crew), and one part of the away-team. Thus after a nifty bit of piloting to get the ships locked together and an air-lock across, we had an amusing moment one player had a conversation with himself, having to convince himself to go on board the other ship.

The away team stood bemused outside the Princess' airlock as it failed to open. An engineer was called who took apart the lock and sadly only managed to leave it in smoking ruin. Pry bars were used to no avail and eventually the PCs gave up. They decided to move the ship to a different air lock. A piloting roll failed and a minor collision with the Princess stove in the PCs observation deck. A second attempt went better and soon they were standing at the new airlock.

Once again they failed to open it, but decided to fall back on a different type of brute strength. They donned the Aslan-Robot-Control-Helmet (ARCH) and brought up one of the highly advanced Aslan robots they had captured. The robot started pulling fist sized lumps out of the door until a hole big enough to crawl through had been made. The away team ducked through and had the robot climb into the hole and lock itself into position thereby blocking the exit.

In the airlock they spotted an angry bearded man on the other side of the door. Threatening him with a laser sent him on his way. They opened the lock and emerged in a corridor. The beardy, was at the far end of the corridor and sent a hail of lead ineffectually towards them before disappearing round a corner.

They followed him up but found that he was beyond the corner with a buddy, laser beams and lead stopped them from making progress. Rather than just stand around looking cool they opted to raid a stateroom and found to their joy a small table. As an experiment this was lobbed around the corner and immediately shot to pieces!

They were wishing they had grenades when lo and behold another angry beardy gentleman appeared behind them...with grenades! He ineffectually threw one, and was shot for his trouble, but now the good guys had the grenades. They threw one around the corner and heard a lot of screaming when it exploded. Popping round the corner they found the had taken out two bad guys and one civilian (the Pacific Princess being a cruise-liner after all). There was a crowd of civvies here, all cowed by the bad men and now rather scared by the good guys turning up. One of the crowd emerged and claimed to be an Ambassador, and promptly tried to force the PCs to get him to safety. They eventually drew a cutlass and he backed down. A volunteer was found amongst the crowd to take the bad guys weapons and defend the civvies.

Now it was time to find the people who had called them on board. They called him up and he reported himself and his friends as being trapped in a corridor on deck B behind the casino. A ship map was ripped from the wall and PCs headed down that way.

As they descended the plush staircase into the casino they spotted a bad guy patrolling behind the slot machines. They both took aim and one of them got a hit, knocking him down. Noise and smoke identified the corridor where their target was to be found, so they crossed the casino. The shot that had missed the bad guy happened to have cracked open a slot machine so of course one PC helped himself. :)

At the corridor they could make out a bunch of bad guys half way along it but beyond that there was too much smoke. Bullets were flying to and fro through the smoke. In went a grenade, knocking three fellows to the ground. Then shots were exchanged with both of the PCs taking multiple hits. At that moment they spotted the beardy bloke they had sniped at from the stairs, climbing to his feet behind them. It seemed like a good time to bail, so they ran for the cashiers desk and took cover. Bullets started punching through their cover and things were looking grim when they remembered the robot and donned the ARCH.

Minutes passed with the PCs playing dead, or at least remaining very quiet. A beardy bad guy crept up to the counter and was just peering over when the robot came crashing down the stairs. A PC tried to shoot the bad guy in the back of the head (rather unsportsman-like) but found his rifle cumbersome and missed.

The robot didn't have the same problem. The bad guys shot at the robot but missed, or hit, but didn't do any damage. The robot hefted a slot machine as it charged across the casino. It threw the machine at the bad guy, crushing him underneath but not killing him. He lay there choking as the coins poured out and into his face. (Death by money!)

Thus we ended the session. Who are the angry beardy bad guys? Why have they taken control of the Pacific Princess ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075529/ ) ? Who is Shadalla? Will they be forced to skewer that upperty ambassador? Tune in two weeks from now for the next exciting episode of ..."The Bastards ran away from my campaign and it still burns."

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