Party Time

After the previous session’s games of TV competitions and sports, it was time for the Ball being arranged by Earl Egrane for the crew of the Deepnight Revelation. For this, I had planned another mini-game. There would be a number of people at the ball who could be spoken to, and they’d each have information that they could divulge.

The rules of the game were that each would have a preferred skill that could be used. This wouldn’t always be a social skill, but could be something like Admin, Science or Tactics, depending on the interests of the person. They would each be easy, medium or hard to get information out of, plus there would be a bonus requirement which would allow the skill to be rolled with a Boon if it was met.

For example, Earl Egrane was easy to get information out of, could be spoken to using Diplomacy and you’d get a boon if you had an Art skill of 1+.

Each would have three pieces of information, and each success would gain access to them in order. Success would give a chain bonus for the next roll (assuming the same PC kept talking to the same person), and an effect of 6+ would get you two pieces of information. The difficulty when up by +2 for each extra piece of information.

Up to six crew members from the Deepnight Revelation could take part, and they’d each have 5 goes (over a course of 5 hours) to talk to people. Very probably not enough time to talk to everyone, so they’d have to pick and choose.

I allowed the players to see who the people were, and what their needed skills were, ahead of time. This allowed them to pick suitable crew members. They would also have time to organise anything they wanted to before the Ball that evening. Part of this involved tweaking the permission handling in my Foundry MgT2e system, so that different levels of permissions allowed players to see different levels of details on NPC actors. I’m not sure how permissions are used in other systems – I should probably do some research on this to see what is considered standard.

It had been noticed that the crew of the Imperial warship Avenger seemed to have left the station, heading back to their ship. This was a suspicious sign that something was up. The Deepnight crew wanted to ensure that they had some security people at the Ball for protection, and that there was a heavily armed team on standby in a fast shuttle in case something bad happened.

They were allowed to carry weapons – blades and light sidearms since they were nobles – and ensured they all had comm beads as well.

The Attendees

I’ve included a list of the major NPCs at the party below. Each has their openness, primary skill needed to get them to divulge information, and the requirement to get a boon when rolling that skill. For those which got influenced to provide information during the session, I’ve also included the information that they divulged.

Character portraits are via Midjourney. I wanted a fashion style that was colourful for both men and women, and which was light on covering for both. Midjourney was quite capable of showing women with lots of flesh, but struggled for a sort of formal shorts and t-shirt type suit for men which was what I had in mind. For portraits that will get used for one or two sessions, I wasn’t going to spend that much time on it.

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Earl Egrane

Representative of the Empire of Envais.

Openness: Easy
Preferred skill: Diplomacy
Boon: Art 1+

• He is a rising star amongst the nobility back home. Tradeport was seen as an important commerce centre which could be used to help expand the Empire.
• He needs to make a good impression back home to gain influence and power. He’s more than happy to be generous to those who are willing to help him. Just a tour of the Deepnight through Envais would be amazing.
• Since coming to Tradeport he’s realised that it’s not all it was meant to be. Now it’s better off dying. It won’t last another five years, and that will be five years of wasting everyone’s time, include his own. Better it ended sooner.

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Countess Fiona Egrane

Wife of Earl Egrane, she has a reputation of being a noblewoman and little more than that. She spends her time socialising, shopping and relaxing.

Openness:  Easy
Preferred skill: Carouse
Boon: Male

• The Earl is a very determined and ambitious man. He tends to get what he wants, and isn’t above using any means necessary to get them.
• To survive in the Empire you need to be keeping one step ahead of everyone else. If you’re always striving, then you’re falling behind. That often means taking big risks.
• This post is seen as something of a joke. My husband wasn’t keen on when it was awarded to him. Probably done to get him out of the way. But he has a plan. A big plan.

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Captain Lydia Holdman

Captain of the Envais Military Ship Avenger. She was the daughter of a marine general in what passes for the Envais Army. She is bright, but doesn’t have the experience of many of her rank.

Openness: Medium
Preferred skill: Pilot (Capital Ship) or Tactics (Navy)
Boon: INT 10+

• The Avenger is one of the more powerful class of ships in the Empire. It may be small, but it is heavily armed and armoured.
• If we had a ship like the Deepnight, then we could bring order to our border regions. If you wanted to stay, it could be made worth your while.
• Oh, is that the time, I really must be going. We have a, um, status report that I must attend.

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Baron John Regis

A noble from Envais, nobdy is quite sure what it is that Baron Regis does. He works as a manager in the hanger bay, but rarely turns up for work.

Openness: Easy
Preferred skill: Carouse
Boon: Female

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Lady Jessica Grey

Partner to Baron John Regis, she is seen as little more than a courtesan by others. But then, the same could be said of Baron Regis. It sometimes seems that she’s more capable than she lets on though.

Openness: Hard
Preferred skill: Deception
Boon: INT 10+

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Marcus Fiesler

Director of Tradeport Consortium.

Openness: Easy
Preferred skill: Broker
Boon: Bridge Crew

• Marcus is really grateful for everything that the Deepnight Crew have done. He would like them to stay a lot longer. Several of the other powers are jealous though, and seem to be plotting together.
• Earl Egrane especially is up to something. There’s a lot of materials gone into this section of the station over the last few days – more than what would be required for a simple party.
• They have been suspiciously useful over the last week, helping to fix parts of the station and provide some of the electronics the station has been requesting for months.

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Janice Fiesler

Mostly known as the wife of Marcus Fiesler, she is also one of the engineering team leads at Tradeport. She’s had the job for several years, and it was how she met her husband. She’s a competent team lead, but prefers to keep involved in real work.

Openness: Medium
Preferred skill: Leadership
Boon: Engineer 1+

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Lady Aeron Mikendrik

Head of Fenling University. Her speciality was in biology, but she’s been little more than an administrator for the last twenty years.

Openness: Medium
Preferred skill: Admin
Boon: Science 1+

• Earl Egrane is a real cunt. He’s all gifts and smiles up to the point where he doesn’t get what he wants. He’s an odious back stabbing snake.
• There are a number of Ancients ruins in the sector, but most have been broken into and ransacked long before any real science could be done. The one at Opadajo needs a DNA lock.
• Fiesler is making sure money flows into the education system, but it’s the training resources that we lack. We have a few Commonwealth trained professors, but not enough. There are higher tech worlds in this sector, but they are fiercely independent and don’t want to be helpful.

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Dr Paul Mikendrik

Husband of Lady Aeron Mikendrik. He is one of the lead biologists working in the Gardens. He doesn’t do social stuff, and prefers to keep to science.

Openness: Medium
Preferred skill: Science (any)
Boon: INT 8+

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Hanna Delmont

Head of Security at Mortown on Giselle, she obtained her position after many years of working as a bounty hunter. She has experience with dealing with both criminals and officials.

Openness: Medium
Preferred skill: Investigate
Boon: Gun Combat 1+ or Melee 1+

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Jacob Wiseman

CEO of the Trade Union Federation, a mercantile company that manages a couple of dozen small trade vessels in the region. He used to be a pilot himself, then worked his way up the ranks until he took over the company some years ago.

Openness: Medium
Preferred skill: Broker
Boon: SOC 10+

• Trade in the area is difficult. Pirating and raiders make it difficult, plus you can’t always trust the places you land at. It’s almost as if we need some sort of organisation to manage and protect the starports, independent of the world governments. But that would never work in practise.
• Everyone needs trade, even the Empire. They just bought a dozen or so large containers from us. Normally we rent them out, but they must have long term plans if they need to own them. They also wanted freezer units.

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Anna Yamis

Diplomat from Wildwood, Anna isn’t taken particularly seriously at Tradeport. Wildwood is seen as a backwater rural world full of uneducated yokels. Their wood and food exports are seen as worthwhile, but taken for granted rather than appreciated.

Openness: Medium
Preferred skill: Science (Biology)
Boon: Male

• Wildwood has a mostly rural economy. We provide food, wood and other organic goods to some of the less fertile worlds in the region.
• Life has been hard recently. We’ve had failures with the machinery and several workers have gone missing. There are things that lurk in the forests.
• There’s a hill where a large number of blood petals have recently blossomed. It’s where old bits of not-quite machinery have been found whilst beginning to clear the region.

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Peter Sheffer

Diplomat from Ahecof, a high tech world with a Theocratic Dictatorship He doesn’t seem to be enjoying himself.

Openness: Hard
Preferred skill: Diplomacy or Science (Philosophy)
Boon: Sober

• This place is decadent, and we wouldn’t allow it back in the Kalsara. I have been given these clothes by Countess Egrane, and it would be an insult not to wear them. I prefer a simple black garment though. That is all that AMTRAK demands. AMTRAK is our god. He provided us knowledge and gifts that allowed us to survive.

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Yanas Obley

A diplomat from the asteroid belt around Elaca, where there is a prison outpost.

Openness: Medium
Preferred skill: Leadership
Boon: Profession 1+

• I represent the Ilaca Prison System. We have about 300,000 inmates housed in an asteroid in close orbit around a red dwarf. There’s little water, and no gas giants, so the only way out is via our regulated ships

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Alexander Ning

Diplomat from Muhe Major, a mostly barren world which has recently exchanged nuclear warheads with Uquot/0626.

Openness: Medium
Preferred skill: Art (any)
Boon: Science 1+

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Some of the information that got divulged changed on the fly, as I realised it wasn’t interesting enough, or just repeated what was already known. Last time I did anything like this (Pathfinder), I’d worked out the details over several months. That gave me time to work out relationships between people (with getting bonuses on one person, if you’ve persuaded another) and better fine tuning of the information. This time it was done over a couple of evenings.

Very obviously, Earl Egrane is “up to something”. We played through three rounds (up until 2200, so still two hours until midnight). As we ended the session, a cargo tug left the station and headed towards the Deepnight Revelation. It was loaded with a dozen large cargo containers. A quick scan showed that they were freezer units and difficult to see inside with IR. They hailed the Deepnight, claiming to be a gift of luxury food and wines from the Earl. The crew were very suspicious and wanted to do an inspection before they let anything oboard.

The Captain of the Avenger has left the party, heading out to her ship. Apparently there’s an important meeting she has to attend. Plus of course the Empire has been helpfully installing electronics and other things in the Tradeport station. The players have their suspicions about what is going on, some of which may even be right.

I originally planned that there would be four attempts for everyone to get information, but upped it to five just before things kicked off, to give the players a better chance at getting what they needed. The thing with a mechanic like this, is that the players need to make a choice about who to talk to, and they don’t have time to talk to everyone. There will be some information they’ll miss out on. Some of that information will be things they’ll have wanted to know. But that’s fine. Even if they miss all the useful information, it won’t stop the mission from going ahead. They may just be a bit more surprised later on.