Previous Session: The Broken Dreadnought
We’re back and I’m going to need to create a larger subsector and map it out. I’ll get to play with the Traveller tools I haven’t touched yet. Can’t wait.
Why do we need to know more? Because shit just imploded.
We ended with the crew of the Silver Dogstar’s crew coming to a space station above Hades-23 to get the rich-boy heirs the captain had to take back home to get paid. After a solid throw of dice on his Forward Observer skill, Ersatz could read data and comms and radiation discharge to realize one of the Destroyers docked to the Dreadnought they had been on, had crashed into the space station. Ship’s comms were howling with the alien whistling that was on comms anywhere near the alien-zombie-goo-disease.
What to do now? We’ll decide that next week.
Wait, so, did this game matter at all?
All of the important decisions will be made next week.
Long story short: the Silver Dogstar unlocks from the broken Dreadnought but not before taking in a stowaway marine, Private Esther Reed in a Low Passage cryotube. She’s infected with whatever space-zombie-black-goo nonsense that was running rampant through the Dreadnought. Dr. D’Turin (“He’s like a cross between Dallas and Bones (or maybe Bones).”) made a solid Medicine throw, making sure Private Esther was in a safe sleep. The crew talked about what to do over a meal in the ship’s mess.
Mess! Get it? Double meaning!
Dr. D’Turin left some electronic-missives at the prestigious Tonkin University. We learned that Ersatz hid the barcode on his chest and that he doesn’t want publicity. Don is rudderless without the direction the army gave him and needs to find out what he can do besides break things. The captain wants to do the right thing to a point but also has bills to pay.
We went in and out of game, figuring out what the players wanted, what the characters wanted. What did everyone bring to the crew potluck? Were the computers so cartridge-tech because of some kind of Butlerian Jihad? What was up with earth? Gravity on ship because space magic like Star Trek or quasi-gravity with thrust generated g’s like The Expanse?
This game didn’t just matter to me because we made throws (that is what Traveller calls dice rolls) that had consequence. It didn’t just matter because we talked about how we saw this science fiction world.
“What is happening with earth in this setting?”
“The book doesn’t say shit about it; we get to decide. It is a myth. I bet some people don’t even believe in it.”
Us, chatting
This game mattered because this session my dear friends, going in and out of game, sometimes describing their characters in third person, sometimes doing voices in first person – they became the crew of the Silver Dogstar.
More Thursday Night Science Fiction presents…
If you would like to get an email notification when blog posts are published, please subscribe below:
