Traveller Actual Play: R.A.V.E.N. ep 8, "No Time For Tolls"

In this episode:

• Chrome recaps the events of the previous episode in-character, and I hope it's amusing!
• I make a Fortunate Son joke that's completely appropriate, and then a horrible pun, and then a Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow reference that no one caught.🙁
• and there's an air/raft chase, and rampant disrespect for toll booths, and a space battle!

This episode and the one previous are my absolute favorite. There's action, there's humor, and of course there's the usual Player Character nonsense. 

Traveller Tuesday: Jumpspace is Psionic

Don't consider this a return to regular Traveller Tuesdays; they might happen, they might not. But playing in All Ones' Traveller campaign has me thinking about the system and setting again, so here's a notion which I've had for a long time and I've finally decided to write out. 

My use of Traveller setting and dress falls under
fair use guidelines for both Mongoose and Far Future Enterprises.

The crux of my argument that jumpspace is psionic stems from two canonical pieces of information. I shall use links to the Traveller wiki to support my thesis.

1. Continuous observation of jumpspace has been known to drive intelligent beings insane, so starship viewports are shuttered during jump.
• Yes, I am aware that this sounds a lot like Warhammer 40,000's Warp, but WH40K came out in 1987 and Traveller came out in 1977, and WH40K has a reputation for unabashedly stealing ideas from elsewhere for their setting. 
  
  
2. There must be at least one living being (definitely sentient, presumably sapient) onboard a ship to successfully jump. 
• If this weren't the case, then player characters wouldn't get contracts to deliver mail to planets, because mail ships (such as X-boats) would be automated. Instead, the IISS has at least one human being aboard an xboat per jump. 
• Jump torpedoes were a thing which existed in the early days of Traveller, but they have since been de-canonized. J-torps would be perfect for delivering non-physical mail to systems. 

So this tells me that there's something about jumpspace which requires a living being to perform a successful jump. To me, the easiest answer is that jumpspace is a quantum state which requires an observer in order to collapse the wave function successfully, which engages the jump. 

Why? Again, the easiest answer from my perspective is that jumpspace is psionic in nature. This means that any species which is capable of manifesting psionics -- and so far as I know, that's any sapient (self-aware) species -- needs to observe the jump in some manner. 

That these observers don't themselves need to be psionic means that they aren't causing the jump to happen. This means that there's something about the nature of jumpspace itself that prevents entry to ships without a sapient observer on board, resulting in a misjump. 

This must be linked to jumpspace's quality to cause insanity, which is presumably a psionic effect of some sort.

(Whether or not a long observer in cold sleep would count as an observer is an argument I'm not ready to have right now. I could see it going either way, frankly.)

So why is jumpspace like this? The easiest answer for weird, spooky stuff in Traveller is "the Ancients did it." Considering that the Ancients were a powerfully psionic species, they may have invented jumpspace in order to speed their spread across the galaxy.

Traveller GMs: yes, I am absolutely suggesting that a powerful Ancient device (maybe the undiscovered Ancient homeworld) is keeping jumpspace active. Which means that jumpspace could be controlled... or amplified... or even turned off. 

Want to have an instant disaster on par with or exceeding the Long Night, but not the Empress Wave or Virus? Here's your solution. 

Have fun. 

Traveller Actual Play: R.A.V.E.N. ep 7, "Banquets and Beatdowns"

This is a very Chrome-centric episode, so of course I like it. He was funny, he was sneaky, he had a juicy role-play opportunity, and he was useful in a fight. (Next session will continue this trend, but with vehicles.)

Because All Ones didn't include the picture of what Chrome wore to the Aslan shindig, here it is in all its glory: 

https://amzn.to/4h2xA3U

As you can see, there's totally room for a stunner pistol down that codpiece!

Traveller Actual Play: R.A.V.E.N. ep 6, "Solomani Salami"

This is my favorite session so far, because this is the one where it feels like everyone's character clicked into place and we all started role-playing as a group rather than a bunch of individuals. Denton is in full Dr Strangelove mode, and his invention of "salami" as an insult to Solomani was inspired. 

Also, Merry Christmas! Chrome has a very special present for all of you in the first 2 minutes of the video. 

 

The intro and outro was done by my friend Jay Peterson,  a professional actor. You can hire him at jaythebarbarian.com. He also has a novel, Renfield Blues: The First Grunt's Grimoire, available for purchase at Amazon in both Kindle and paperback format. It's a fun, fast-paced, and intelligent story that's also amazingly well-written.

https://amzn.to/41QSIFy

If you're a fan of urban fantasy like Dresden Files or Monster Hunter International, feel nostalgic for 1990s horror RPGs from White Wolf, or just like stories with competent gun use and/or magic systems more involved than "I cast fireball!", then this is a book you will enjoy reading.  I'm eagerly looking forward to the sequel.

And here's a standalone version of that segment, for you to use if you want to send it to friends and fans of Traveller. 

 

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a safe Jump. 

Traveller Actual Play: R.A.V.E.N. ep 5, "Veterans Without Borders"

 

This session is basically just tying up the first act of the adventure and then beginning the second act. There's no action (wait until next episode for that!) but there's a lot of good character development, including what I think are many fun Chrome-isms. 

 

One of these days, the other players are going to think to ask Chrome why his sense of aesthetics is... whatever it is... but so far it hasn't happened yet. 

Also, here's the stand-alone "KOYNZ" commercial that originally aired at the end of Episode 3. Those of you who are familiar with my work may have noticed the script is from this blog post. 

KOYNNNNNZZZZZZ!!!!!!!!!

Traveller Actual Play: R.A.V.E.N. ep 4, "Prometheus"

This week kind of disappeared as interest in Operation Blazing Sword and the Pink Pistols exploded due to the election.

Anyway, episode 4 of our Actual Play series is out. Don't worry if you're behind, because we missed playing last week and will miss this week, so you have time to catch up. 

 

As Chrome's player, I want to make it clear that it was never my intent to blackmail the rest of the party and I hope it wasn't taken as such. Alice said I was basically threatening them with mission failure, and I can honestly say that was never on my mind. Instead, Chrome's feelings were like this:

1. The Leader and the other Warriors of his kroyloss (fraternity) seemed set on killing all the droyne on the planet. As the only droyne in the PC party, Chrome took that personally, and he also thinks that Denton-Warrior-Friend is more than a little deranged when it comes to orbital bombardment. 
2. Within droyne culture, droyne who cannot contribute are encouraged to engage in a painless suicide ritual known as krinaytsyu. A sport that is ignored isn't contributing much. 
   
   
3. Therefore, Chrome's last-ditch action was more along the lines of a samurai performing kanshi to protest the decision of Roberd-Leader-friend the best way he knew how: "Well, if I'm so worthless that you won't listen to me, just leave me there to die with the other droyne you consider worthless."

Dramatic and passive-aggressive? Yes. That's how a lot of things are in caste systems. But I, the player, wouldn't throw the rest of the players under the bus of "Do it my way or fail the mission," and I really hate that it came out that way. I made sure the rest of the players knew that. 

Traveller Actual Play: R.A.V.E.N. ep 3, "Kilts, Coyns, and Kukri"

 

Chrome now has a kilt! It's a pity that Hero Forge doesn't have the complexity for tartan patterns. But speaking of Droyne with kilts, here's a tartan that they'd love, as they use Base 6 and this pattern is hexagonal. 

https://www.spoonflower.com/en/fabric/10056924-trueblue-hexagon-plaid-by-tallulahdahling

For the bagpipe music played during the battle, I chose "March of Cambreadth" by Alexander Adams. 

Traveller Actual Play: R.A.V.E.N. ep 2, "Red Tape Rendezvous"

The hijinks continue!

Traveller Actual Play: R.A.V.E.N. ep 1, "Combat Lawyer"

I joined a Traveller RPG group that plays on Mondays. If you're interested in listening, this is our first episode.

I play Chrome the Droyne, a weird little guy who is the ship's pilot.  For reasons which may never be revealed, Chrome likes wearing Hawaiian-print shirts.

Another Gaming Story

So, who wants to hear the story about the Traveller player character who took an anti-tank missile to the chest?

My use of Traveller setting and dress falls under
fair use guidelines for both Mongoose and Far Future Enterprises.

This is the same group as in my previous story, but it was earlier by several years. The PC we will call "murder machine" was your typical murderhobo who, during the course of play, had sold his soul to Naval Intelligence, and in return his brain was scooped out of his body and placed into the highest tech cyborg body possible. He then acquired a suit of powered armor which further enhanced his abilities. Basically, he wanted to be a Warhammer 40K Space Marine, and he got pretty damn close to that. 

In this adventure, the PCs found themselves up against a squad of trained commandos and their transport, a VTOL gunship which also carries troops, rather  like a higher-tech version of the Hind Mi-24.

This is the picture I used. Looks mean, doesn't it?

The player characters were hiding and under cover. The commandos fast-roped out of the gunship and set up lines of fire in hasty fighting positions. The gunship then flew off to blow up a compound (where the PCs had just been, and who had triggered the alarm which brought the gunship there in the first place) to erase evidence and leave no survivors. 

Once the gunship flew away, the players executed a fairly well-orchestrated ambush against the soldiers who had pretty impressive armor and weapons. It was a tough fight, but the players won, mainly by being smart. Then the gunship returned because its troops were dying. 

I, an intellectual, figured that the PCs know that they can't shoot this thing down, because it's armored like an A-10 Warthog (and they KNOW THIS because I've TOLD THEM) and they have no anti-aircraft or anti-armor weapons, just small arms and one SAW equivalent. The smart thing is to run away, seek cover, try to find another way to defeat it, and they've been smart so far. 

That's when Murder Machine decided to go full-on "STAND AND DELIVER!" by walking out from cover and shooting the gunship with the SAW.

He rolled. He hit. He rolled damage. I consulted the craft's armor, because vehicle-scale is different from personal-scale. 

I say, "You've chipped its paint."

Then, because I love drama, I give them a little cutscene. "Cut to the cockpit. The pilot says "We're taking fire!" and the gunner says "Nah, it's just small arms, nothing to worry about," and pulls up a video feed of the PC." (Who is in Battledress, which is what powered battle armor is called in Traveller.) 

The gunner goes "Holy shit! He's wearing Battledress!" 

The Pilot says "Kill it."

If you've played StarCraft 1, where there's a cinematic involving a Terran saying "Kill it!" and launching a missile at a damaged Protoss thingie, and when it explodes he goes "Yeah! YEAH! Feel that hot love right up your tailpipe!".... you've got the right idea, because the gunship is Not Fucking Around and launches what is basically a Hellfire at Murder Machine.

To our great surprise, Murder Machine DID NOT DIE. The anti-tank missile hit, and ablated his battledress armor to basically nothing in the chest area, but his augmented cyborg body is still functioning. Badly damaged, mind you, but  still functioning.

I said "The blast knocks you flat on your back. Your helmet is blaring all sorts of alarms as it suffers critical failure. But you're still alive, thanks to [all this stuff], although barely. In the gesture of universal defiance you shakily raise one hand skyward, then extend your middle finger." There is much laughter. 

I, an intellectual, figured that this has sent the proper message to Murder Machine who will decide discretion is the better part of valor. Murder Machine, a Marine, decides "I aiten't ded yet", so he STANDS UP AND TAKES ANOTHER SHOT AT THE GUNSHIP. 

Between his wounds and the full-auto penalty, he misses.

I decide that this stupidity must be punished. The gunship, now well and truly freaked the fuck out that someone survived an anti-tank missile, decides FUCK THIS and pulls a Kylo Ren on him. They launch another missile and follow up with the chin turret gun, which I think is a full-auto rotary-barrel grenade launcher.

They hit. The damage, when converted from vehicle scale to personal scale, is obscene. To use a D&D-ism, this would be well over 100 hit points worth of damage. 

I don't precisely remember what I said , but it was along the lines of "You explode into a fine red mist." Then I crack my knuckles, and in my cruelest Game Master voice I croon, "I've killed one PC. Who wants to be next?"

The other PCs wisely choose to learn from his example and unass the area immediately.

Post-Script: Murder Machine wasn't really dead, because a dead PC just means the player rolls up a new one. A crippled PC, on the other hand, is amusing and a learning experience.

Later on, the surviving PCs found that an emergency locator beacon was transmitting. Upon investigation they discover Murder Machine's head inside the battledress helmet, which ejected to safety and put his head into cryosleep. The thinking here is "Save the brain, and the body can be cloned later." Of course, that depends upon access to cloning technology, which the PCs don't have and is damned expensive, so they have to improvise. 

By "improvise", I mean that when they get back to the ship they assemble a basic life support system for his brain (remember, everything else on him was cybernetic) and mount it and his head to a maintenance robot, which is basically a Roomba with manipulator arms. Think one of the skutters from Red Dwarf, crossed with 790 from Lexx. 

What followed was a nearly year-long side quest where the PCs slowly upgraded can't-call-him-Murder-Machine-anymore's body into a less impressive, but at least bipedal humanoid cyborg, frame. 

To the player's credit, he learned his lesson and was much less foolish after that. Also to his credit, he had a sense of humor about being the ship's Roomba for a while. He's a Marine in real life, so he can laugh at himself. 

Traveller Thursday: Life Support

I'm not 100% back to writing about Traveller. I just happened to have a sudden realization about something that has been bugging me for years and I wanted to write it down before I forgot.

My use of Traveller setting and dress falls under
fair use guidelines for both Mongoose and Far Future Enterprises.

The thing which bugs me most about ship design in Mongoose Traveller is that there's no mention of life support. I realize that life support has been ex post facto folded into stateroom tonnage, but that doesn't quite make sense because stateroom tonnage has already been explained as covering both the rooms themselves and the common areas.

(Quick digression for those who don't recall what I'm talking about: in Traveller, staterooms displace 4 tons but in most deckplans they are displayed as only displacing 3. That extra dton is allocated for corridors, common rooms and the like. The problem is, when you get anal and decide to count how many dtons of corridors and room space there are, it adds up to way more than the number of staterooms in the ship.)

What's funny is that I realized the actual number of staterooms doesn't matter. What matters is "How many people can you cram onto a ship", and that's actually a completely different question than "How many staterooms are there", because you could fit a bunch of refugees into an empty cargo bay. No, what matters is how much food, air and water they consume. In other words, we need to calculate how many dtons of life support one person requires.

So let's work this out:

• One person in a low berth displaces 1/2 dton and requires no life support. 
• Because people who aren't in cold sleep need food, water, oxygen, and space to move around, let's double that for human-sized crew. 
• K'kree and other livestock-sized animals displace twice that amount. 
• Hivers also displace the same amount of space as humans; we just think they take up more space because their longest axis is horizontal whereas ours is vertical. 
• Since everything is based around the standard jump time of 1 week, let's assume that life support dtonnage is done by the week. This reflects food that needs to be bought, filters that need to be changed out, waste that needs recycling into water, etc. 
• Don't forget that transit time to and from the jump point, so you probably should have 2 weeks per person. This could probably be extended in an emergency through rationing and depressurizing non-inhabited parts of the ship, but that's a subject for a different article. 
• This gives us a hasty figure of 2 dtons per person for a commercial ship -- or half a stateroom, which is in line with the core rules when they say "No stateroom can contain more than two persons, as it would strain the ship’s life support equipment." This seems reasonable and tells me I'm on the right track. 
• But what about ships that stay on station for weeks or months at a time, like Scouts on survey or the military on patrol? Well, this is handily addressed in High Guard (1st edition High Guard, to be clear -- I don't play 2e Mongoose Traveller) when it talks about endurance and nicely accounts for food packs, oxygen scrubbers/filters, and other assorted spare parts that are needed for basic maintenance and are stored in compact form:

Endurance
Ships are able to operate for one month without needing to go into a spaceport for maintenance, assuming an adequate supply of fuel. This is increased by one month for every 1% of total tonnage dedicated to cargo. If fleet support vessels are in attendance then another three months can be added to the time needed before maintenance is required.

• In other words, each 1% of total tonnage dedicated to supplies represents an additional month of life support as already allocated. If you have more people than your life support is rated to handle, you're going to be dipping into supplies early.  

At this point I imagine some of you are saying Whoop-tee-doo, Erin. If life support requires 2 dtons per person for an average trip, how is this any different from stateroom tonnage? and my answer to that is this:

1. It frees up tonnage from the obligatory "The captain (and sometimes senior officers) always get their own private stateroom aboard ship";
2. It allows the Navy to pack crew in tight (1 dton/person) for maximum warfighting efficiency, because fleet support ships exist to solve this very problem;
3. It adds realism, and possibly dramatic tension, to scenarios where a player character's ship is used to rescue a bunch of people and/or has a cargo hold full of live animals;
4. It gives ship designers one less thing to worry about. Staterooms stop being gameable spaces and become set dressing like common rooms. 

Maybe no one will care about this. Maybe this was all a waste of time. I don't know. What I do know is this: Something which had been bugging me is no longer bugging, and that makes me happy. 

I just make the free ice cream. Whether or not you eat it is your business.

Traveller Tuesday-Thursday: That Way Madness Lies

I'm not even going to explain this, because it would take too long.

My use of Traveller setting and dress falls under
fair use guidelines for both Mongoose and Far Future Enterprises.

I started working on it.... a while ago... and thought for sure I'd be done on Tuesday. Then Wednesday. Now it's early Thursday and I've already passed through "This won't work the way I want it to", "What a stupid idea," "I've wasted too much time on this already to give up now," and am not camping out at "Screw it, I've done this much , I might as well post it and get partial credit. Maybe someone will have a brilliant idea about how to make it work."

400 quatloos to whomever not only recognizes this chart but also figures out what I'm trying to do with it.

(Hint: it's not complete)

Traveller Tuesday: Legally Dead in Low Passage, Part 2

Last month I wrote an article about how the Imperium considered someone legally dead while in cold sleep, which caused a bit of a stir. One person on a Facebook group asked me, "How does this affect marriage?" and I had to admit I hadn't considered that. It also got me thinking about legal contracts (which is what a marriage is) and if someone could break a contract just by going into stasis long enough to be considered dead.

I have now given it due consideration, and this is my answer.

My use of Traveller setting and dress falls under
fair use guidelines for both Mongoose and Far Future Enterprises.

Marriage and Other Contracts
Even though marriage vows specifically state " 'Til death do us part", cold sleep is still seen as temporary death pending revival, and therefore not a nullification of a contract. If legal death nullified contracts, then someone whose heart stopped for several seconds on the operating table could say "I died, and so all my contractual obligations died with me." Since that doesn't happen (and would make poor business sense), it's clear that contracts end only after permanent death.

Of course, this doesn't mean that you're suddenly back on the hook for bills plus compounded interest if your emergency low berth is recovered after 20 years. If you are reported lost in a starship accident and rescue efforts cannot recover you (or your body), you are declared legally permanently dead and a Death Certificate is issued. On the other hand, if you just disappear for years in order to escape a contract or debts (see below), that's considered fraud.

But in order to get around that specific "until death" clause, a special exception has been written into Imperial Law which states the following:

1. A marriage is not dissolved during cold sleep without either a death certificate or one party filing for divorce. 
2. Marriages are specifically exempt from dissolution if both parties are in cold sleep. (This is specifically to prevent abuses such as next of kin dissolving the marriage while having power of attorney, or a lawyer serving divorce proceedings while both are in stasis.)

Savvy readers will no doubt notice that there is still an opportunity for legal shenanigans though clever use of timing. Don't think of this as a loophole; think of it as a plot hook instead. 

Debts
Debts are slightly different than other contracts, because most contracts are a case of "I get something from you and you get something from me" whereas debts are "I already gave you this thing, so now you owe me." It's all very well and good to say that someone's debts don't disappear in cold sleep unless there is a death certificate, but what about the companies that are out very real amounts of money if the aforementioned person lost for 20 years comes back?

The answer is "Imperial Relief Provision." In short, it states that if someone in low passage is certified dead (death certificate issued) as a result of accident or misadventure while in transit, the Imperium will buy that debt from the creditor. This also means that if you fake your death to get out of debt, that debt will be owned by the Imperium -- and if they investigate and discover you defrauded them, they will come after you for redress.

Relief Provision, either Imperial or local, is also a handy way to encourage colonization. People swimming in debt with no way to pay can become colonists, with the government buying their debt and allowing them to work it off at a generous rate (10 cents on the credit and with no interest, for example), or with all debt being forgiven after a set period of years (usually in multiples of 5, depending on the amount involved.)

Traveller Tuesday: Cepheus Engine Vehicle Design System

Short version: If you play Mongoose Traveller, get this book.

My use of Traveller setting and dress falls under
fair use guidelines for both Mongoose and Far Future Enterprises.

Longer version: Mongoose cannot make a good vehicle book to save its life. The first version of the 1e Vehicle Books (split into Civilian and Military volumes) was a complicated mess involving cubic meters, mass per cubic meter, mass multipliers, and percentage of base volume. It was in fact so bad that the publisher had to re-work the design mechanics and issue it as a new version.

This combined version was all right in that it was merely an awkward if workable kludge instead of a tedious exercise in mathematics, using conceptual "spaces" -- the vehicular equivalent of using dtonnage to design a spacecraft -- instead of absolute volume. While a good idea in theory, the execution was terrible because each vehicle had a fixed number of spaces based on chassis type. For example, a light grav vehicle (like an air/raft) could have no more than 10 spaces; any more than that and it was forced into the heavy grav category, which increased its cost and decreased its performance. What's more, those spaces added up very quickly. I could never make the kind of vehicle I actually wanted; I just had to find a design I could accept.

I never tried the Mongoose 2e Vehicle Book, because I refuse to pay $30 for a PDF, and so should you. In fact, all of the 2e PDFs are overpriced.

But then there's the Cepheus Engine Vehicle Design System, and it is good. So very, very good.

Why is it so good?

• It's based on the Open Game License Mongoose 1e game, not the terrible 2e version.
• It's less stingy with spaces: you get 12 per dton of vehicle. 
• It doesn't pigeonhole craft into categories. Instead, you just choose how large you want your vehicle to be using a handy chart that says "chassis code [whatever] displaces this many dtons, has this many spaces, and has a base cost of that much."
• It tries to make vehicle design as close to starship design as possible. For example: performance is based on a familiar matrix of chassis and engine code. 
• It's only five dollars. Actually, that's not quite true; it's "pay what you want", but the average price was $4.61 last I checked, so I rounded it up to $5, which is essentially my threshold for an impulse buy. Based on what I see here, I got my money's worth and then some; in fact, I was so happy I went and bought the Cepheus Engine core rules as well. 

This isn't to say it's perfect. The layout isn't what I'd call optimal, as charts aren't ordered in an intuitive way and the order in which material appears doesn't match the sample checklist at the beginning. But it's five dollars, and more than that, the vehicles you can design with it are better than the ones from the 1e book. 

As an example, here is a grav speeder done using the 1e Vehicle Handbook, and here is the same speeder using Cepheus Engine. Performance is nearly identical (the Cepheus version is actually slightly better), it only cost half as much, and -- this part is the critical bit -- I was able to design a craft I liked without tearing my hair out. 

Buy good games and good rules, not overpriced crap. The Cepheus Engine isn't crap. Buy it.

Traveller Tuesday: Legally Dead in Low Passage

In my Traveller game, anyone who is cryogenically frozen is considered legally dead under Imperial law for the duration of their freeze. There are several good reasons for this, mainly to to preserve financial institutions and help enforce criminal law.

My use of Traveller setting and dress falls under
fair use guidelines for both Mongoose and Far Future Enterprises.

Finances
Let us assume that you are a member of the Imperial Navy or Scouts, and your ship is critcally damaged. You send out a distress signal, set the power plant to run as long as possible while using as little fuel as possible, and crawl into a low berth to await rescue. Unfortunately, due to the vastness of the Imperium and the speed of light, you aren't rescued for a century. When you are rescued, you petition for 100 years of back pay, along with everyone else on your ship who survives. After all, you were in the service when you went into cryostasis, and you're still in the service when you wake up. It wasn't your fault that your century of service was spent in suspended animation, but the fact remains that you've lost time that could have been spent with family and friends, so you're due compensation. And with a century of back pay, you can retire from the service and never have to work again. Or perhaps you'll go into politics, funded by this handy war chest.

Well, no. The Imperium is a conservative society, and the entrenched nobility really doesn't like the idea of ships full of fresh, eager bodies becoming instantly rich through an accident. They also don't like the idea of someone with just enough income to rent a cold berth for a few decades to make some investments and then go to sleep, hopefully waking up with millions in stock options. (This would be akin to buying stock in Apple, Microsoft and Nike in the 1980s and then waking up today.)

No, when you are in cryostasis you are effectively dead, and so all forms of income revert to your next of kin and/or stop paying out (in the case of salaries and pensions). There is a bit of legal "wiggle room" built into the concept of low passage, in that such passage usually only takes between a week and a month, and the amount of paperwork to declare a passenger dead, only to then declare them alive again after they've arrived, is considerable and annoying. Therefore, most corporations have a 30 day "grace period" before they begin the paperwork. This can lead to inventive investors doing things like entering cold sleep for 3 weeks before being thawed out for one week in an attempt to extend their lives cheaply. However, this is known as financial fraud and is frowned upon by the authorities.

Sidebar: Financial Trusts
Someone will inevitably ask "Why don't people just create a trust to receive the finances, with the person in coldsleep being the beneficiary of the trust? This is a good question, and while there are probably loopholes to be exploited here due to my ignorance regarding finance law, there are two broad provisions which make this a less than ideal solution for the miserly

First, if it's a familial trust, then other people will have access to those funds while you are asleep. How much do you trust your kin? Because this is a great way to wake up suddenly poor.

Second, if it's just you in the trust, then someone needs to be managing it while you're legally dead. Someone like a financial adviser. Someone who knows how your money works, and for how long you're going to be asleep, and how to embezzle and hide funds.. or, alternately, someone who controls the payment to the people who are keeping you in cold sleep.

Remember, if you're obsessed with money, you're obsessed with keeping it and you're obsessed with making sure people don't take it away from you, so distrust (if not outright paranoia) is part of the package.

Criminal Law
When crimes are too severe for a fine, but not so severe that the demand death, the traditional punishment is either imprisonment or involuntary servitude. In effect, these sentences are saying "We are taking years away from you as punishment for what you took away from others." Invariably, some felons with rich friends or political connections would seek to do their time in cold sleep, thereby evading the actual physical punishment of the sentence. However, you cannot make a corpse do time, so under this rule the timer on the prison sentence is put on pause until such time as the prisoner comes out of stasis.

Interestingly enough, though. time spent in cold sleep does count towards the statute of limitations on crimes. This is because the statute of limitation applies to the crime, not to the person, and it's generally believed that if you were willing to lose that portion of the lives of your loved ones to avoid doing time, you've already paid your sentence. It's also worth pointing out that the most heinous crimes (rape, murder, slavery, genocide, treason, etc) have no statute of limitations to them.

Passage Between Star Systems
This is where the law sees the most use, and the reasoning for that is fairly straightforward.

Revivification Liability: If you're legally dead in low passage, then the ship's doctor who fails to revive you is not legally liable for any medical negligence. In fact, part of the act of purchasing a low passage ticket is signing a waiver saying "I acknowledge that I will be dead for the duration of my low passage."

Effectively Cargo: There are specific laws against treating sapient beings like cargo, most of which are anti-slavery in nature. If low passengers are dead, then they are legally cargo, and as such can be (and often are) stacked like cordwood, don't require as many crew to look after them, etc.

Abandoning Ship: There are also Imperial regulations for live passengers in the event of an emergency, such as "There must be enough escape pods or rescue balls for all of them" and "All passengers must be taken off the ship before the crew can abandon it." It would be ridiculous to demand escape pods for people already frozen, and lethal to everyone if they had to be defrosted before abandoning ship. Since they are considered cargo, they may be abandoned with impunity.

This is not quite as monstrous as it sounds, however; remember that emergency low berths exist as a method for crew members to await rescue. This means that a low passage berth is, effectively, its own non-mobile escape pod and requires only a trickle of power. Therefore, unless the ship was catastrophically lost (exploded, crashed, fell into a gas giant, etc), both the Imperium and any corporate entity under which the ship the flying will make good-faith efforts to locate and revive passengers and crew in cold sleep.

But what about the Frozen Watch?

Good question. I have three possible solutions:

1. The Frozen Watch is a form of non-judicial punishment that is assigned to crewmembers. This is especially useful if the ship doesn't have room for a brig. Loss of pay is also a time-honored form of NJP which dovetails nicely with not drawing a salary while being legally dead.
2. Crewmembers can also volunteer for the Frozen Watch, usually as a means of earning extra points towards promotion, or as a way of being RIFed out, or to avoid a worse assignment while waiting for a vacancy in a school or aboard a desired ship. In this case, the volunteer is presented with what is essentially a "signing bonus" that is equal or greater than the pay he'd miss. Given that most volunteers for the Watch are either junior officers or non-senior NCOs, the long-term effects of being declared legally dead for up to a year are minimal. 
3. In the absence of personnel from 1 and 2, time in the watch can be considered just part of regular service. It's a crap assignment that no one wants (and again, no one with seniority has to spend time in "the cold barrel"), but everyone has to perform  as part of paying their dues. In this case, time in the watch is probably around a week, and the Navy just never files the legally dead paperwork because of the aforementioned administrative hassle -- essentially, "What happens aboard ship, stays aboard ship."

Traveller Tuesday: the Potato Sack Principle

Yes, it's Monday. I feel like writing this today because tomorrow is slated for a complex piece that I've been working on since last week and I don't want to break my flow.

So deal with it. It's Tuesday somewhere.

My use of Traveller setting and dress falls under
fair use guidelines for both Mongoose and Far Future Enterprises.

The Potato Sack Principle, as put forth by Karr Tsonka, Esq., states that "To claim the Rite of Assassination, the assassin in question must, at the very least, be more deadly and do more to end the Emperor's life than a sack of potatoes."

I shall explain.

For those who don't feel like following the link, the Rite of Assassination in Traveller is "an archaic Imperial law providing for leadership succession according to the dictates of power politics."

Although the rite of assassination has fallen into disuse, it is generally agreed that for the method to be a valid route to the Iridium Throne, certain precedents must be followed:

1. the assassin must be a high noble; 
2. the assassin must kill the Emperor by his own hand in the presence of witnesses; 
3. the Moot must approve of the new emperor (just as with any successor).

Thus, the reason for the assassination must be well founded, or Moot confirmation will likely be denied. Moot confirmation can make all the difference - depending on what the Moot says, the assassin could be hailed as a courageous hero or prosecuted as a seditious murderer.

Points 1 and 3 are clear-cut; it's point 2 which has caused much discussion among law students within the Third Imperium. On the face of it, it seems obvious enough: the assassin must kill the Emperor without help. This makes sense, because otherwise a group of people (read: player characters) could gang up on the Emperor, dogpiling him while the highest ranking noble administers the coup de grace. While certainly efficient, it would bring the legitimacy of the assassin into question as it could be argued that the noble who delivered the killing stroke could not have done it without the help of the others, and so the other assassins would present an equally-valid claim to the throne ("Sure, Poncey actually killed the Emperor, but I did the hard part! I should be Emperor, not him!")

Multiple claimants to the throne are how civil wars start, after all.

However, when considering assassinating the Emperor, it soon becomes evident that unless the assassin is with the Emperor's family, some outside help is required in the form of conspiracy in order to get close enough to deliver the killing blow. Since logistical assistance is clearly required, conventional interpretation of point 2 works out to "It's fine to have help getting to the Emperor, but everything after that must be done by the assassin himself and no other." This is still vague enough to cause problem with legal scholars, though, who busy themselves with such academic questions as "Well, what if a conspirator calls the Emperor on the telephone and distracts him so that the assassin can deliver his killing blow?"

Karr Tsonka, Esq. has solved this conundrum with a splendid bit of legal simplification by presenting this hypothetical: "What if the assassin were replaced with a sack of potatoes?" In such a case, would the Emperor still be under threat of death?  In other words, has the assassin done anything to imperil the Emperor's life, or is he just a passive thing being lugged around and then metaphorically tossed at the Emperor?

It is ultimately a statement of agency. A weapon cannot act on its own; it must be wielded. Similarly, if the assassin was effectively wielded by another, the assassin effectively had no agency.

Therefore, if a claimant cannot adequately demonstrate a difference between his action and those of a sack of potatoes hurled at the Emperor, he has not satisfied the conditions of the second point of the Rite of Assassination. Q.E.D.

Traveller Tuesday: Heatflec

It's taken me a while, but I have finally been convinced that a reflect coating on starships is a bad idea.

Not only are these good points, but consider also the following:

• Reflec needs cleaning/polishing to maintain efficiency
• That polish would be damaged by the thermal effects of atmospheric exit and entry
• Micrometeorite impact would also damage the mirror coating
• After taking hull damage, the coating logically ought to be reapplied

So fine. This post is me throwing up hands up in despair about reflec. Let us eschew magically perfect mirror technology and instead embrace magically perfect heat dispersal technology. As was pointed out to me, most Traveller ships are heat traps and the heat has to go somewhere or else it'll boil the crew. So I'll go with the option that makes my life easier.

Thus: Heatflec. (I needed a word for it and it's catchy.)

My use of Traveller setting and dress falls under
fair use guidelines for both Mongoose and Far Future Enterprises.

Not that we're dumping heat* instead of redirecting light, that meant heatflec needs to work against fusion and plasma weapons as well. Just to keep things familiar, I'll keep the same bonus as reflec did for lasers.

Of course, this increase in performance needs to come with an increase in price as well. Let's increase it to MCr 0.25, which puts it at the same price point as 1e radiation shielding (which to my mind has always been too expensive for what it actually does. 2e changes it to MCr 0.025, which is a little too much in the other direction, I think; switching the numbers with 1e reflec -- MCr 0.1 /dton -- seems about right).

If a GM doesn't want to give armor vs heat but still wants to have a way to radiate heat away from ships without fins, I think it would make sense to steal the numbers from 1e's self-sealing coating and make non-armor heatflec MCr 0.01 per dton.

The delightful part of all is that since we aren't reflecting laser energy with a mirror but are instead absorbing thermal energy, heatflec is 100% compatible with stealth coatings and does not require my configurable hull workaround.

Therefore, we have this as the finished product:

Thermal Dispersion Coating ("Heatflec")
TL: 9
Cost: MCr 0.25 / dton of hull
Effect: This coating provides +3 armor against lasers, plasma and fusion weapons.
Restrictions: This coating may only be added once.


Additionally, I present you with this house rule: When the hull has taken 1/3 damage, reduce heatflec's armor bonus by one. This means that when hull has been dropped to zero (using 1e mechanics; I still like the difference between hull and structure), the ship has no bonus to resisting thermal damage. Of course, at zero hull points the ship has no hull integrity and is completely open to vacuum, so heat buildup is the least of its worries right now.


*No, I have no idea where it goes. I'm good at handwavium bullshittium, but I'm not that good.

Traveller Tuesday: 2e High Guard Screens

I've been complaining a lot about something the nonsensical things Mongoose has done with 2e. But sometimes Mongoose gets things right, in which case I embrace my fully heretical anture and not only cherry-pick the bits I like, but then I graft them onto my own game.

I have an example of each in today's article.

My use of Traveller setting and dress falls under
fair use guidelines for both Mongoose and Far Future Enterprises.

So in 2e High Guard *, meson screens and nuclear dampers are now 10 dtons, instead of the previous 20 dtons from 1e High Guard -- which was itself a correction from 1e Core where they were 50 dtons.

Dropping screens from 50 dtons was something I approved of, because I couldn't see them taking the volume of a bay weapon while only reducing damage by 2d6, and 20 dtons seemed much more reasonable. But dropping them to 10 dtons seems questionable to me. Sure, it's unlikely to be an issue for player character ships, because the cost is exorbitant and they need to be stacked in order to be truly effective. But the big problem is with Navy ships -- mainly capital ships, but perhaps with escorts in the 1k to 3k range -- who have both the money and the space to give tens or hundreds of dtons to shields.
In 1e, the number of screens a ship could carry was limited. For non-capital ships, that limitation was based upon power plant performance; for capital ships, the limitation was this table:

But with 2e ships construction rules, which were designed as a unified system spanning small craft to dreadnaughts, all shields displace 10 dtons, with the only limitation being available volume and the power available. It worries me to think that a 2e capital ship could have enough power and dtonnage available to power sufficient number of screens as to make it essentially unkillable outside of spinal mounts. 

(For the record, I'm not fond of meson screen dtonnage in 1e, either. Nuclear dampers seem fine, starting out at regular size and increasing, but meson screens starting at 50 dtons is not only a waste of a bay, but also a challenge to logic. If screens for ships of 100 up to 2,999 dtons all displace 20 tons, and if nuclear dampers for ships 3k to 7.5k dtons are 20, why then are meson screens 50? Personally, I'd peg meson screen size to nuclear damper size while keeping the price difference.)

However, the 1e rules for Black Globes were asinine. Check out this table:

Now go back to the previous table, and see that per rules, a ship carrying a TL15 Black Globe device -- a shield derived from Ancient technology -- could only mount 3 of them. Not only does this do a disservice to black globes, which are supposed to be OMG ANCIENT TECH!, but 1) renders half the flicker chart completely unnecessary and 2) it says that BGGs for capships actually weigh less (10 to 30 dtons) than they do for non-cap ships (50 dtons)!

In this case, the 2e changes make sense. BGGs are back to being 50 dtons, and given their benefits I am completely comfortable with them taking up a bay's worth of space. In fact, I wonder if they ought to displace more volume, using the numbers from 1e meson screens instead.

But look! Using these rules, BGGs are actually useful  in combat! They have drawbacks, sure, but this chart balances those against the gains while not making BGGs useless (I'm looking at you, 2 measly points of armor per 10% flicker rate).

I like this, so I'm going to use it in my game. And that's what it means to be a Fully Heretical GM:  I can cut and graft as I see fit.


* Which, after nearly 10 months of development and six months after 2e Core came out, was finally published a few days after I mentioned their lateness in this article.

Traveller Tuesday: the Tech Level Characteristic

This is just a wild hair notion up my nethers. I'm not sure if it's a good idea or not; I'm just getting it written down so I can ponder the ramifications.

My use of Traveller setting and dress falls under
fair use guidelines for both Mongoose and Far Future Enterprises.

Determination

Before characteristics are rolled, the starting Tech Level of the character is determined by rolling 3d6-3, with a DM of +1 for Darrians and perhaps a penalty or level cap (at the GM's discretion) to other non-Imperial races. This gives a range of 0-15, which nicely matches the range of TLs available within the Third Imperium. 

The TL stat is used to determine the tech level of the character's homeworld, and therefore the level of technology that he is familiar with. The player should select that character's homeworld accordingly. 

During character creation, any opportunity to increase INT or EDU may be used to increase TL instead with the GM's approval. For example, it makes sense for a low-TL conscript within the Imperial Navy military to increase his TL; it may not make sense for an entertainer.

Using This Characteristic

TL is not rolled for skill checks. Instead it has the following uses:

• A character injured in the course of a career uses the DM of the TL (+3 for TL15, +2 for TL 12-14, etc) in both the roll for injury severity as well as the roll to see if medical bills are paid by patron or employer. 
• This DM is also used when rolling to avoid aging effects. 
• In both of these cases, if the employer is the Imperium, the military of a system, or otherwise has a logically higher TL than the character, then use the TL of the system [15 for the Imperium] instead.
• It provides a base for the Tech Level Familiarity rules as found in the 1e book Scoundrel, pp.134-135. 

Definitions

• Primitive: TL 0 to 3
• Industrial: TL 4 to 6
• Prestellar: TL 7 to 9
• Early Stellar: TL 10 to 11
• Average Stellar: TL 12 to 14
• High Stellar: TL 15 to 16
• Advanced Stellar: TL 17-19
• Beyond: TL 20+

Familiarity and Comfort can be easily extrapolated to further categories as needed. The pattern is:

• C for TL and TL-1
• F for TL+1 and TL-2 to -4
• U for everything else

U, F, C

Paraphrasing from Scoundrel:

Unfamiliar

A character unfamiliar with technology will not understand it or know how to operate it due to its alienness, advanced design, or his own technological ignorance, and suffers a -3 DM to his roll when trying to do so. Naturally, this does not apply to lower-tech items which are still in use on that character's homeworld; for example, the knife and fork are TL 1 tools, but even a TL 15 character will know how to use one. However, that same TL 15 character will likely be unable to start a fire using flint and steel without appropriate training in primitive technologies (such as the Survival skill).

DM penalties stack; attempting to manipulate unfamiliar technology without a relevant skill results in a -6 DM.

Familiar

A character familiar with technology may not necessarily understand how the item works, but he is comfortable with using it and does so without penalty -- so long as he has skills in it. For example, a TL 2 musketeer could grasp the basics of using a gauss rifle after instruction, since he knows Gun Combat, but a farmer would have a -3 unfamiliar technology penalty (likely on top of a -3 unskilled penalty). 

Familiarity is on an item-by-item basis, not blanket across a TL: just because that TL 2 musketeer knows how to operate a TL 12 gauss rifle does not mean he can operate a TL 9 air/raft. Familiarity with the air/raft will also have to be acquired before he can use it, and until then he will suffer from a -3 DM (assuming the GM is feeling charitable and allows his Drive: Carriage skill to apply; if it doesn't, or if he doesn't have the skill, he's back at -6 DM). 

Comfortable

A character comfortable with technology can operate items of that technological rank because he understands the basic principles behind them. He does not need a skill to operate an item, although there is still a -3 DM unskilled penalty. Comfort extends across the entire TL, rather than on a case-by-case basis. 

Current Drawbacks to this House Rule

1. There is definite benefit to coming from a higher TL (specifically in regards to aging and injury), with no commensurate benefit to coming from a lower TL other than comfort/familiarity with primitive technology. Given that TL is a stat and the conventional wisdom is "High stats good, low stats bad", this limitation may not be a fundamental flaw. 
2. Players will have to keep track of familiarity and comfort levels for their characters through gameplay. 
3. Given a term within the Imperial Navy/Marines, TL-as-stat may become meaningless, or at best a range due to 4 years' exposure to high technology. A stat of TL "9 to 15" is so broad as to mean little. 
4. Given the main benefits of this stats exist during character creation, to adding this retroactively to existing player characters is rather pointless unless your campaign trends toward exposure to TL 16+ technologies. 

What do you think? 

Traveller Tuesday: Stealth and Hull Coatings

I was looking over the 2e High Guard playtest document -- by the way, how are all you 2e converts doing? Still using 1e for ship generation? How does that make you feel, 6 months on without a ship generation system? -- when I noticed that this version of the rules had multiple options at varying tech levels for stealth. I found this interesting, for a variety of reasons:

1. There's been some re-balancing of TLs and numbers;
2. The lower TL stealth stacks with a higher level version;
3. A TL 10 holographic hull costs exactly the same as a TL 10 stealth coating, only without any of the bonuses, even though you'd think that the ability to camouflage the ship against visual sensors would count for something; and
4. I wondered how I could balance the new rules with the (unofficial) advanced stealth rules in Apparition Class Starship, because those are good rules and prior to the 2e HG playtest, they are the ones I used. 

So obviously I'm going to putting together some House Rules with chainsaws and heresy. Everything that follows after this is decidedly not canon. 

My use of Traveller setting and dress falls under
fair use guidelines for both Mongoose and Far Future Enterprises.

NOTE: These rules have not been playtested and are a work in progress. 

They may be changed as necessary!

TL 8 Emissions Absorption Grid
This comprises wires placed in a pattern throughout the hull that capture electronic emissions and store them in capacitors. This grants DM-2 on any Technology (Sensors) checks to detect or lock onto the ship, and will stack with higher-TL Stealth coatings. Adding an Emissions Absorption Grid costs MCr 0.05 per ton of hull and consumes 2% of the total hull tonnage for the capacitors.

TL10 Stealth
This is a stealth coating that absorbs electromagnetic radiation (radar, lidar beams, visible light, etc) and disguises heat emissions, but is highly dependent on the Tech Level of the ship and that of enemies trying to find it. This gives DM-2 on any Technology (Sensors) checks made to detect or lock onto the ship, with an additional DM-1 for every Tech Level the ship is higher than the sensors trying to locate it. Stealth cannot be used at the same time as Reflec, but see Configurable Hull for a way to have both -- just not simultaneously). Adding Stealth costs MCr0.1 per ton of hull, and can only be added once.

Included for sake of completeness:

TL 10 Reflec
Reflec coating on a hull increases the  ship’s Protection against lasers by +3, but it cannot be used at the same time as Stealth. Adding Reflec costs MCr0.1 per ton of hull, and can only be added once.

TL10 Holographic Hull
Multiple holographic projectors are embedded within the hull allowing the ship to change hull colors, add graphics and adopt a different appearance (though its shape remains the same). Changing the hull color or adding a stored graphic can be done by anyone with access to the ship’s computer. Creating a complex color scheme from scratch requires the talents of a skilled artist.

Some young nobles try to outdo one another by changing the schemes daily or hiring artists to create the most complex scenes imaginable. Some pirates have made use of this system to simulate visual hull damage and lure other ships in with a GK distress call. However, most private ship owners use it for the purposes of advertising.

The military, however, makes extensive use of hull holography. During peacetime, the hull wears the bright colors and distinctive insignia of its fleet; during war, the hull blends in with the background to confuse visual sensors. This gives an additional -1 DM to detect the ship, but only against passive sensors, and is able to stack with both Stealth and Reflec as the projectors are embedded within, not on top of, the hull.

(Yes, you read that correctly: a hologram over a mirror doesn't stop the mirror from being reflective. Sure, pointing a laser at a ship with a hologram over reflec is still going to make the laser reflect off it, but now we're talking about the differences between active sensors and passive.)

A holographic hull system costs MCr 0.1 per ton of hull. The projectors are small enough that they do not consume tonnage themselves.

Also included for sake of completeness:

TL 12 Configurable Hull
This option allows a craft to switch between hull coatings. This is an outer-layer only change, and therefore it does not interfere with armor, the jump grid, or atmospheric integrity of the ship. It does not allow the addition of the same coating more than once. It costs MCr 0.1 per ton of hull, in addition to the coatings. It takes one turn, during the Ship Action phase, to switch hull configurations. 

GM ruling so I don't have to repeat it in every entry: regardless of TL, Stealth hull coatings do not and cannot stack DMs. 

Stealth also cannot be active as the same time as Reflec. 

TL12 Improved Stealth
Improved stealth enhances the traditional stealth coating by providing anti-masking measures through deployment of active emitter elements across all hull surface area. This protects against methods for detecting a ship by finding an absence or shadow in a sensor field.

Improved Stealth is a hull wrapping that contains millions of TL 12 3-D emitters, added underneath a specialized stealth coating that allows them to operate. They redirect and transmit multiple wavelengths EM radiation simultaneously from multiple viewing angles, allowing the vessel to transmit environmental EM signals “through” its space, manipulate its thermal signature, and ensure that it doesn't interrupt its background visual field.

This gives DM-4 on any Technology (Sensors) checks made to detect or lock onto the ship, with an additional DM-1 for every Tech Level the ship is higher than the sensors trying to locate it. Improved Stealth also has Holographic Hull as part of its suite.

Adding Improved Stealth costs MCr 1 per ton of hull and requires 1 ton of control hardware. It can only be added once. Improved Stealth requires the ship’s computer to run specialized software (Stealth Control/5) which comes bundled with the install.

TL14 Enhanced Stealth
As Improved Stealth, but the active emitters are blended with the stealth coating and the specialized control hardware is no longer needed, but more powerful software is required.

This gives DM-6 on any Technology (Sensors) checks made to detect or lock onto the ship, with an additional DM-1 for every Tech Level the ship is higher than the sensors trying to locate it. Enhanced Stealth also has Holographic Hull as part of its suite.

Adding Enhanced Stealth costs MCr 3 per ton of hull and can only be added once. Enhanced Stealth requires the ship’s computer to run specialized software (Stealth Control/10) which comes bundled with the install.

Summary of Results

• Emissions Absorbtion Grid gives Minor Stealth (-2 DM to detect). 
• Combines with Stealth Coating for Basic Stealth (-4 DM to detect, in line with 1e stealth).
• Holographic Hull gives an additional -1 DM to passive detection only, and is included in later stealth versions. 

• Improved Stealth Coating gives Improved Stealth (-4 DM by itself and -6 when combined with EAG. Also gives additional -1 DM against passive sensors per HoloHull).
• Enhanced Stealth is -6 DM by itself and -8 with EAG. Again, also has HoloHull.
• These last two are both ridiculously expensive and require computer bandwidth. 

I don't know how well these balance within a game session, but they look okay to my GM sense. I'll have to test them to be sure, however. and I welcome input from readers.