Apologies for the delay. Had an out of town guest for the past week. He was an old gaming buddy that I haven't seen in almost 20 years.

Just had minimal opportunity to post. When we weren't doing ftf gaming, we went out to eat a lot. Stayed up until one of us fell asleep.

In my 20+ years of PbP gaming on various sites, it was generally accepted that posting between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day diminished considerably due to Holidaze, work schedule changes, family, shopping, putting up decorations, etc. For that reason, expectations for timely posts was kind of put on hold.

In my case, this didn't usually apply to me, but this year, I seem to have hit a down cycle. It's probably a combination of age + health + meds + diet + environment + Holidaze. So, just bear with me while I sort it all out and hopefully get back on track in the new year.

In reply to Space Control (msg # 299):

Merry Christmas everyone!

So, end of the year, time to thank our GM and all the players here :) Space Control taking over in the middle of an assault was an excellent news. We overcame some players' departure, but I'm happy to roleplay an old character - something I never did before ! - I'm looking forward to next year's adventure and character développement ! :)

Holidaze over and a New Year, along with a new brain. Oh, wait. No, I didn't get one. I asked Santa for it, but all that was under the tree was a note that said 'Not my department'. So, now I'm looking that damned yellow brick road...

I know what our GM is thinking... ;)
"Beto's message stated the Aslan slavers were running the ship. Carmichael's inspiration made him tell the Aslan slaves to take control of the ship. So when the cops arrive, they'll start shooting... the slaves" (rubs his hands with glee) ;D

Taking into account the players who haven't connected since more than 3 months :'(, I suggest this more or less flexible Chain of command

while travelling in space
(in other situations : the more skilled leads)

sharing the shifts of the watch

Baris Dahl (Captain) (ill)


1. Beto Arark (acting captain)
   
2. Lady Arslan (pilot)
   
3. Bannacor (acting 1st officer / navy equivalent commander)
   
4. Nicodemus Trask (acting 2nd officer / lieutenant)
   
   off the watch
   
   
5. Yuri Argonov (acting 3rd officer / sublieutenant)
   
6. Carmichael
   
7. Anzha
   
8. Oscar and Khor'ruhn

That's as good as anything else I can think of.

In reply to Yuri Argonov (msg # 305):

Now that the Beyond sector is finally out, maybe we can go there! ;-)
This message was last updated by the player at 17:30, Thu 20 Jan 2022.

In reply to Bannacor (msg # 306):

Hey Bannacor; may I suggest you resurrect the game by specifying what you intend to do? :) Because Beto actually laid a choice :
"- will you choose to hang around the ship and see what happens,
or
- rather retreat and make detours to be sure you're not followed?"
or any other action you see fit ! :)

I am sure our GM is waiting for the description of what Bannacor does, to entertain us with descriptions of what happens next ! :)

In reply to Beto Arark (msg # 307):

 rather retreat and make detours to be sure you're not followed?"

Well baring some contrary statement from our Starmaster, we come back to the ship, in which we barricade, ready to sustain a counterattack from the Slavers.

@Carmichael player : Carmichael was the designated broker of the group (with a support from Beto). Do you know the rules about trade and transporting cargo? :)
There was also a link to a program on the Net somewhere, where you could have all that pre-determined, with even a list of passengers with their plots... :)

Yep. Was already working on it but then RL got busy again.

That program sounds interesting. I'll see if I can find it.

Lost track of things. We have as many passengers as we can take. Do we have High Passage capability? I thought we discussed this before and the answer was NO, but I could be wrong.

Also, we're going to Vadada next, right? High tech world. Mostly what they are going to need is raw materials.

Completely empty cargo hold now, right? We sold the Aslan catnip?

We're squeezing ourselves on narrow bunks in shared cabins in order to bring more passengers aboard ; see #92 of thread "A3Lc Far Trader Old Lady's Hope"

(how do we link to messages on RPOL? I saw someone do it)

So, after the redesign, we can transport :

1 high passage
2-3 middle passengers (1-2 on the lower deck, 1 on the upper deck)
4 basic passengers
8 frozen meat


Yes ! and congrats for the azurewebsites.net link, it was the one I was thinking about (and it was in my favorites ;))

If this works, you have to open that message and then copy the URL up on your control bar, then paste it here in the new thread. RPoL automatically turns it into a link.

Link back to this game

Anyway, I just wasn't sure that we had made that 'permanent'.


So, we've got 1 High Passenger signing on, 3 Middle Passengers signing on, 4 Basic Passengers signing on (3 of which are would-be slaves we freed), and 8 Low Passengers signing on (Vadada is much preferred to Iryao).


The freight had all been lined up before we set off to rescue the slaves, so it's sitting outside the cargo just waiting to be loaded into the ship.

Unless someone wants to deal with an on-board adventure while in transit to Vadada, I wasn't going to bother detailing the individual people or deal with which ones we accept (lottery!).

1 High Passage (3 parsecs) 20,000Cr
3 Middle Passage (3 parsecs) 45,000Cr
4 Basic Passage (3 parsecs) 17,600Cr
8 Low Passage (3 parsecs) 17,600Cr

30 tons of freight (3 parsecs) 48,000Cr
30 tons of freight (3 parsecs) 48,000Cr
30 tons of freight (3 parsecs) 48,000Cr
 2 tons of freight (3 parsecs)  3,200Cr

TOTAL: 247,400Cr

I'm not sure about that...  Our goal was to free the slaves, not transport them abroad.
IIRC, what I (intended to) wrote, we had to make sure that if we returned the children to their families, the latter wouldn't immediately sell them again for debts or under pressure or whatever.

So there could be a scene where we quickly investigate, roll a little Streetwise tests, get to know what happened and how, and/or interview the family by videophone (roll Psychology) to know how they'll handle the aftermath.

Also, some legal spot checks should be in order, to estimate if the government will not recapture the escapees and assign them back to the slavers... for some judiciary reason.

At some point, we may have to offer passage, not only to the escapees, but also to their families - we assume they are poor, and we don't have time for them to organize a kitty...

However, my wild guesses must halt there, for we're freewheeling for a month now; our actions have repercussions, NPCs react, push back or support; the setting lives.  It is time for Control to step in (or declare the game over, or in hiatus, or...) :)

The freed would-be slaves that want passage on the ship are paying passengers. It's not like the ship is transporting escaped slaves, whether for free or not. Technically, they weren't slaves yet. If they escaped the ship, they were free people again.


Legally, there is Aslan Law that applies to Aslan and Human Law which applies to Humans. The two don't mix very often. If an Aslan can't hold his property, he doesn't have any legal recourse. He's S.O.L. and ridiculed by those stronger than he is... unless he challenges them and wins. In Aslan culture, a Slaver is no different than a Butcher, a Baker, or a Candlestick Maker. It's a dirty job but someone has to do it.

It gets back to Aslan history. If you raid another clan and kill them all, then who's going to haul all that loot back to your clan? It only took a few such incidents before someone figured out to keep some of the defeated clan as slaves to do all that dirty work.

Depending on how 'annoying' Humans get, they could be classified as vermin or pets or just someone's slaves (depending on who they are working for). This is where the embassies get involved... trying to mitigate these situations and coming up with an equitable resolution for both sides. It doesn't always work, but the alternate is WAR. Great for the Aslan, but Humans like to avoid that. It's bad for business.


Anyway, that's my interpretation of Aslan/Human relations.


The planned jump route for the Old Lady's Hope has been uploaded to Game Map 2.

Excellent!

Am I correct in understanding that our ship has gravity control, that prevents us from feeling twice as heavy? Because with their 2 in STR, Baris and Beto would feel the Gs! ;)
What is the price to pay for this acceleration? Fuel consumption? Do we have this extra?

If there's no disadvantage, why don't all ships in the Traveller universe do it?

All ships build at TL 9 and above have inertial dampers that compensate for the extra g-force from acceleration... up to a point. It's usually one above what the ship is capable of, since maneuvering can momentarily increase that.

Ships also have a gravity-based Maneuver Drive, rather than a rocket fuel base. The ship still has to decelerate at the halfway point. It can probably do more at the expense of g-forces, but those are usually only done by fighters.

While it requires more energy to accelerate faster, you also don't do it for as long a period of time. It's a mild trade-off, since it doesn't quite cut the time in half.

The ship has weeks of operating time on its standard fuel after jump, so that's not a problem.

The two main reasons it doesn't get done as a 'standard' operating procedure is due to in-system traffic and the fact that you have less time to react to any problems. A fast ship is a harder target and generally signifies that you are up to no good (raider, pirate, enemy, etc.). Requesting a faster vector generally alleviates that, particularly if you have some sort of timetable you need to stick to.

If you were heading to an outer planet in a system, you'd definitely want to accelerate as fast as you can so it wouldn't take weeks or months to get there.

Unfortunately it seems our broker, Carmichael, has caught the rpolbordness disease, (as its player did not connect since February...) and is comatose on his bunk.

Beto has Broker-0. Did someone develop a higher skill ?

Does anyone want her/another best to dabble into "speculative trade"? Or shall we just carry freight? In the first case, I suggest to use the "Local Brokers and Guides" rule in MgT2 p.209 :  "A local guide will have a Broker skill equal to 1D-2. [1D-1 if] 5% of the total value of the trade ...is given to the guide", so we have a broker with a 0 to +5 skill.

Finally, does any player with time on their hand want to roll the dice and/or participate, and go through the charts and process :)

Still here. I was just taking a 7-day vacation courtesy of Nirvanitol...

Not really much to post for while we're in J-space. I think the game is supposed to be handwavium in that regards. You leave one planet, *poof*, you're on another planet.

You can only polish the hubcaps so much before they fall off. The adventures aren't ever supposed to be during J-space transit. That would get repetitious and boring real fast.

If anybody has any good ideas about dealing with that, though, I'm game.

That being said, nobody's gotten off the ship yet anyway. Dump our cargo, load on the new stuff, and we're off and running again?

In reply to Carmichael (msg # 320):

Back, I was without computer for the last week.

In reply to Carmichael (msg # 320):

Welcome back, bro{k|th}er ! :) We were - well, I for one - was filling the quiet chat waiting for the GM to tell us when the jump was over ;)

Please do the rolls for the trade!