Mongoose Traveller: Jumping Home

Back again with our Travels, and you can visit the Campaign Hub here! 

I've really enjoyed the space opera so far, and we're having another session soon.  So, I thought I'd provide an update on the LAST session.  Again, our summary comes straight from our GameDoc!

The Kingfisher's vital statistics.  NOICE.

The Travellers continue to explore their salvages ship, the “Kingfisher.” Finding it lacks enough fuel to make a jump, they descend to the unnamed planet and take in water to process into fuel, which will take approximately 48 hours. In the meantime they confirm to once other ships capabilities.

They also continue to review the research notes from the science lab and the ship’s computers. It is clear that the ship that rendezvoused with the Kingfisher had no transponder identification and did not exchange in any radio or electronic communication with the ship.

About 40 hours into their fuel processing, two small fighter craft appear from the far side of the plant and maneuver to attack. But the Kingfisher’s gun batteries are more than a match for the small craft and immediacy blast them apart.

The Travellers take the remains of the ships into the cargo bay. After a lengthy examination they determine the ships were designed to be operated by A.I. The circuitry is very similar the the type of A.I. designs in the late Professor Warwick’s notes, which does not appear to be based on any know principles of design for such technology.

The Travellers scan the planet but find no signs of intelligent life, technology, or artificial structures. They decide to jump back to Tinath. The jump is successful but almost immediately upon exiting jump space, the maneuver drive stalls out and the ship behind hurtling uncontrollably towards the planet. To make matters worse, a fire breaks out in one of the electrical conduits.

In a mad dash, the Travellers are able to extinguish the fire, reset the maneuver drive, and make a hard landing at the spaceport on Tinath.

Crystal Caste Combat Mats

In long days of yore, I had no miniatures for RPGs.  Nor did I have terrain for such, but it mattered little since most of what we did was 'mind's eye' type games in one buddy or another's house.  However, one of the first things I acquired when I decided to lean into the hobby was the Chessex Reversible Battlemat.  It was truly indispensable, and even in recent years these ancient scrolls have been unrolled quite a bit.

These are simply blank battlemats marked in 1-inch squares, and on the reversible side, in hexes.  They are usable with dry-erase markers, so really any terrain can be depicted simply by drawing on it with such a marker.  This is quite serviceable if you don't have anything else, and with pawns or other markers can really up your game.

One of my biggest campaigns made heavy use of the battlemat.  Miss Anthropy and I made some home-made dungeon walls to mark out areas rather than using dry-erase pens.  Not only was this easier and faster when building dungeon corridors, the 3d effect really helped with the verisimilitude.  The wall pieces themselves only took a few hours to build and draw in, and more than paid for that by being the main terrains of the entire 16-session campaign.

Of course, they make special tiles just for this kind of thing, and there's nothing stopping you from using multiple terrain types together.  Using D&D miniatures tiles, or simply Dungeon Tiles, you can really set up a nice looking dungeon area.  This kind of setup can also be used to show transition areas too - such as from outside to inside a particular dungeon or location (and vice-versa).

Honestly, having these in the vault has been a great boon.  You never know when you're going to need to use them, and for a basic tactical setup you can't get any more potential.  In other words, you probably need one (or more) of these mats if you're a serious gamer of any kind.  It's just too useful, especially when space for gear (terrain / miniatures) is limited.

Rolemaster

So at some point waaaay back in the early 90's, I got into Iron Crown Enterprises line of games.  I started with Middle-Earth Roleplaying (the 'red' box), but I learned that that was only part of the larger line of Rolemaster games by the time I was done reading it.

It was one of the first systems I owned, and by golly we enjoyed it.  Tales of fights against orcs, meetings with ents and such.  Elves and magic.  

One night while we were playing, something like 26 or 27 years ago, my buddies' dad happened to overhear our game.  He was listening to the conundrum, and then broke in with something I'll never forget:

"If it's just one orc, why don't you just kill it?"  

I had no idea he was a Tolkien fan until that moment, but I've lived by that maxim ever since.

Rolemaster has always had a spot in my heart, and a friend of mine started hunting down I.C.E.'s M.E.R.P. for his collection.  He found some great gems, but there was no big push from anyone to actually play the game (except for maybe me).  Anyway, it would be nearly 30 years until I actually got to play again.

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We join our second session of Rolemaster, already in progress.  A playtest featuring playtest characters by my new friend GM Bobby.  GameDoc introduced us a few weeks back, and we've gotten to play a few sessions on Fantasy Grounds in the last months.

It all started with a vicious string of mysterious murders in the capital city of Thelum.  Strange events have been occurring all around the Kingdom, and it's time to put a stop to it.  It seems that chaos is breaking out all over, and more horrible events are sure to follow.

Troll tribes have been going berserk and killing everything they come in contact with.  In an isolated town, mania seized everyone and they lit everything on fire.  Following this horrible chain of events,  emissaries of the various portions of the Kingdom thus afflicted have arrived at the Regent's court.  

Our party consists of these Emissaries.  We are outsiders whom the old regent decided to trust instead of his own court, since he suspects rampant corruption therein.  He was not wrong, and very soon the Regent of the Kingdom had been assassinated.

I get to be Demin, the Mentalist.

The assassin was brought to justice, but the murder of the Regent matched the modus operandi of the original string of murders.  

The new Regent, son of the recently assassinated, entreats the Emissaries to undertake a dangerous mission to stop a dangerous cult he believes is behind this.  The party must retrieve an ancient artifact buried with a long dead king and return it to the Regent.

I can cast the level 2 spells if I strain my mind-muscles...but it hurts.

Girls only want boyfriends who have great skills!

Our party is now en route to a town called Nerit.  The artifact is called the Last Flask of Tosem, and it lies in the tomb of the ancient king Elam.  The Regent believes the cult behind the murders needs the flask to awaken some ancient entity named Azimir.  Everyone believes this is something that should be stopped, so we set out to do so by getting there first.

Yet nothing is ever easy, and upon the road to nethir we were accosted by a group of peasants with farm tools standing in the crossroads.  They ask us to leave, but when we produce our papers and ask for theirs they suddenly don't want to talk and start using their shovels and hoes on us.  My companions don't take this well and start killing them.

Well, they wouldn't get out of the way when we asked nicely.

Careful what you wish for, Demin.

Rekt.

I used some magic to stun one, but attempted to flank them to help out.  I had a cool halberd.  Anyway, it didn't go so well since the place where I decided to flank was the place on the field enemy reinforcements arrived.  I decided there was no where to run, so tried to stand my ground.

Sucks to be flanked.

Probably should have ran.

Not sure if dead, but still here anyway.

I (Demin the Mentalist) ended up watching most of that combat from my place in the mud, but it was still loads of fun.  I relearned Rolemaster stats pretty quickly, and it only took one dead mentalist.  Well, I'm not sure if he's actually dead but he's so cut up I'll be switching to a new character anyway in order to continue this adventure.

Once again, I am impressed with the versatility of Fantasy Grounds, but more so the near-seamless modular adaptability.  It makes a lot of the fiddly calculations Rolemaster asks for very, very easy.  After this second game in Fantasy Grounds, I'm actually quite interested in it for myself.  I've seen there's a fan-made Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2nd Edition module, and probably quite a few others.  Skillsets being what they are, I might go far enough into it to design my own.  Hmm.

We'll see...