Brains and Brawn
Our Traveller game this week was somewhat different to usual. The Deepnight Revelation was still at the Tradeport Consortium, and the crew had been invited to take part in some activities down on the surface. The first was an invitation to join a popular television show – Cats Out of Time (or CooT for short). The second was a sporting match with a local team.
The CooT episode was a mixture of maths and language puzzles, with some room for humour and good natured heckling between the contestants (who are often comedians) and the host. There were three teams, each consisting of two players. They have to answer puzzles before a clock counts down to zero. Those readers familiar with British TV shows may recognise the format.
For this, I came up with a simple mini-game so that the players could run through the show rather than just having a single simple die roll. There were three rounds, and each round consisted of:
- A ‘maths’ puzzle (random numbers need to added/subtracted/multiplied etc to get as close to another large random number as possible). This involved an INT + Science (highest) check.
- A ‘language’ puzzle (make the longest word from random letters). For this, they could either use EDU + Language (highest) or EDU + Art (Writing).
- Some bonus points from a SOC + Carouse check.
Each team member got to role, and whomever scored highest on the team got the points. Points for the first two parts were scored according to the following:
- 8: +1pt
- 10: +2pts
- 12: +3pts
- 14: +4pts
For the Carouse check, they got 1pt for a roll of 10+, and 2pts for a roll of 12+.
This gave a maximum of 10 points each round. The players also added in a ‘mascot’, for which they brought their alien avian Yip. I let Yip have a roll of a different skill each round, and if she succeeded then she allowed a boon on the final Carouse check.
I’d generated skill bonuses for the members of the other two teams, and we played through it round by round. I did give the players the option to quit after the first round, in case they weren’t interested, but they wanted to continue. There was a lot of roleplaying in this, with the players coming up with things they wanted to try. By the end of it, the scores were 19 (the players), 17 and 11. So surprisingly the players won. There was an after party following the TV show, in which the two contestants (Shiiguma and Khadashi, along with Yip) could ‘score’ if they wanted to.
That evening, back on the ship, there was some news which Amelie Kaliguuan and Albrinn Moss had obtained. It seemed that the Earl has been ordering in a lot of food and drinks from various traders. He was also obtaining some large cargo containers and refrigeration units. It was probably for the grand ball that was being planned.
The next day was time for a game of Push. This is the local sport, which involves six large magnets (a couple of tonnes each) floating on anti-grav being pushed around a pitch. Each team has three, and the idea is to get them to the opposing side of the pitch. The magnets could be used to ram other magnets back or out the way. It was a tiring game that could also be quite dangerous. Getting such masses moving when they’re floating on anti-grav isn’t too hard, but controlling them and stopping them is the hard bit.
For this, I had another mini-game, but this one ended up being much more complicated. I created a map with a simple playing field on it, with some tokens for the ‘stones’ and five players per side – plus someone representing the cheerleaders.
The useful skills were the three Athletics skills (STR, DEX and END), along with Tactics. Originally the goal was to get to 3 points, but after we started we decided to shorten it to 2 points. You get a point by pushing one of your stones across the opponent’s rear line, or by knocking an opponent’s stone back across theirs.
The pitch had four areas and 5 lines, and for the purposes of the game each stone could be in an area or on a line, and had to stay within its row. The actual (fictional) game has the stones going all over the place, and probably bouncing off the sides etc. But I wanted to try and keep this simple.
Most actions cause fatigue, which gives a -1 penalty to all future actions. This makes the game harder and harder as it goes along. There was concern amongst the players that this would make things impossible, but as it turned out, it was just about right for a 2 point game.
Each team does all their actions in their turn, then followed by the opposing team. At the start of a turn, all team members can change position. They are originally assigned to a stone, but can make a END check to swap stone. This gives them fatigue whether the fail or succeed.
The cheerleader can also make a DEX check to remove 1 fatigue from someone.
Then, the team gets to do two actions. Each team member can only perform one action a turn though. The obvious action is Push Stone, which costs fatigue. It is a STR check, and on 8+ the stone will move one space forward (from an area to a line, or from a line to an area). On a 12+, it moves two spaces forward.
If two people push a stone, then they both gain fatigue, and one of them rolls with a boon. This turned out to be probably the most effective way to succeed. Since the second team member wasn’t rolling anything, it also meant it didn’t matter how much fatigue they had.
On a collision with an opposing stone, both sides make a DEX check. The winner decides whether the two stones stop, or if they go ‘side by side’, which allows them to dodge around the opponent.
The other option is to Shunt which can be done if two stones are side by side. On a DEX check of 8+ the opponent’s stone is moved back one space. On a 12+ it is moved back two spaces.
Finally, the team leader can make an INT + Tactics check to allow someone on their team a re-roll. If the re-roll fails, then they gain two fatigues rather than one. The tactics check gets harder the further down the pitch you are (8+ if in your half, 10+ on halfway line or beyond, 12+ on 4th line or beyond).
I wasn’t sure how the mini-game was going to be taken by the players, but it turned out to be quite fun. There were enough tactics involved to make it interesting, without being too complicated. I made an animation of the game (the players were blue, the local opponents red):
I selected some of the NPCs from the ship who had the most relevant skills, and they were up against some reasonably skilled opponents. Not the best that the planet had to offer, but probably one of the better amateur teams.
The end result was quite close, which helped keep people’s interest. There were a couple of times where the rules were ‘broken’ by the players. They wanted to try something different (included an attempt at cheating in-game by Annalysee, but she failed so badly it wasn’t considered cheating) a couple of times, so I allowed it.
This pretty much rounded out the evening. The crew members of the Deepnight were now in quite good standing amongst the population of Tradeport, and the players seemed to have a good time.
