Gunfight at the Extraction Site
Our second session of Traveller set in the Milieu 0 timeline. The Travellers are on the world of Kain, where they are heading off to try and find the one person who can sign for their delivery. It appears he may have run into difficulty due to some local political machinations.
One small change I made since last session was that I decided to give the Travellers some extra skills. For each term they had, they got a free Profession skill related to that term. The first term gets them level 0, then +1 for each further term in that career. So the doctor got some levels in Academia, the Navy and Marine got some levels in Military, the Entertainer got Entertainment and Journalism, and the noble diplomat got Politics.
This would give them a skill to use to demonstrate basic knowledge of the type of organisation they are used to working with. I don’t think it will affect game balance, but gives a bit of colour and extra options in some situations.
The Travellers have pinned down the most probable location of their broker, Jacob Reese, and decide to take their ships launch. It will be smaller and quieter. Their destination is a disused mineral extraction site out in the scrub desert in the ‘Morning’. Given the world is (mostly) tidally locked, the location is where the sun is always low in the sky. The climate will be hot, with high humidity and strong dusty winds.
Their desire is not to go in guns blazing, but to try and use diplomacy. The plan doesn’t survive contact with the enemy, but they did try.
I did produce a map for this encounter. Given Traveller and the range of weapons, I used quite a large map. It was 100×100 squares, at 128px resolution. I split the map into four images to cut down the size of each image. I then used another image as the Fog of War image. This was at a much lower resolution of 32px per square. I’m trying to keep the image sizes down where possible, whilst still having large map areas. Another way I could have done it, would be to have a ‘ground terrain’ map at a low resolution, and the central buildings as a separate image at higher resolution.
The dust storms hide their approach, and they land a couple of hundred metres away, taking care to avoid the mildly radioactive waste near the extraction site. Dmitry takes a rifle and heads around to the other side of the building, whilst the others sneak up towards it. There is a radio jammer based somewhere on the site, but Nashu is able to set up their comms to set up a chain relay to give them some level of communication. Dmitry is too far away, but they have contact back to their launch.
There’s a shot up tracked truck near the site, and as they get closer, they hear voices inside. Parked on the central concrete area is a buggy with some radio gear on top. Nashu recognises it as a jammer, and disables it, giving them all clear comms.
There are a couple of armed guards inside, complaining about having to wait around for the ‘others’ to make a decision. Dmitry spots that near the shot up truck are a couple of bodies. This puts the Travellers on edge, and probably what leads to the following set of events.
Nashu tries to take some video of inside the main building, but one of the guards spots her phone poking around the doorway. He yells out, and the second guard goes to get into cover. Up until this point, Dmitry had both of them in his sights, so he shoots before the second can disappear from view.
One guard goes down, wounded, the other then dives for cover against the sniper fire. He returns fire towards Dmitry, missing.
Initiative was a bit tricky. I don’t have an easy way to handle surprise in Foundry. Having not really done much combat, it’s not something I’ve thought too hard on. Back when I ran Pathfinder on Roll20, I had some macros that allowed the character that started the combat do a Take 20, giving them a very high chance of going first. In Pathfinder, being surprised means you simply don’t act in the first round.
In Traveller, you get +6 if you have surprise, and -6 if you are surprised, but only in the first round. After the first round, the bonus/penalty is then removed, so everyone’s initiative order could shuffle around. A bit odd, and I’m not yet sure how to implement that. Possibly I can add a status effect, and remove it when the round ends.
Anyway, combat was brief, the second guard was shot by Dmitry, and went unconscious. Irian charged in with her mono-blade sword, missing the wounded (but conscious) guard, but taking a chunk out of the wall he was hiding behind.
He decided to surrender. Sometimes taking a sword to a gun fight works. Gan came in, looking for someone to threaten. A third guard stepped out, pointing a rifle at everyone, and ordering them to surrender. He didn’t actually want to shoot when his mates were in the line of fire.
With both Gan and Irian threatening him though, he decided a better thing to do was to put down his gun and surrender. None of the mercs were really willing to give up their lives, so they surrendered quite quickly. Their hope was maybe to trade information for getting off world before the locals got hold of them.
As Dmitry headed in, so two more people came out of one of the smaller buildings. They weren’t armed – and they quickly surrendered after a bit of “Do you know who I am?” demands. One of them was Minister Joseph, the other his aide. People were rounded up and gaffer tape was put to use.
Checking the two bodies outside, they were dead. Both had bullet wounds in the body, plus a close range wound in the head.
The guards were quick to provide information – indicating a side room where Jacob was tied up. Jacob was most happy to be rescued.
After some conversations, it seemed that Joseph had hired the off-world guards for protection against ruffians, though the job turned out to be kidnapping a local businessman (Jacob). When Jacob’s friends turned up, and brandished weapons, there was a firefight in which both of Jacob’s friends were shot. The aide then shot them in the head.
The who operation had been to give Jacob a bit of a shakedown to frighten him, plus also offer him shares in the Export company that was putting restrictions on trade. Jacob was wanting to open up the world to free trade with the Imperium, those in control of the export restrictions were happy to be making money from the money they were getting from that. They could make more with free trade, but that would mean everyone would make more. According to Jacob, Joseph and the others preferred to be in a position of power over the rest of the planetary population.
There was also a discussion about Minister Ling. Jacob was expecting her help, but he’d overheard something earlier which suddenly made more sense when the Travellers said that she’d helped Joseph’s friends, and told him what had been said about her. He didn’t want to share it with the Travellers though.
So, nobody killed (at least not by the Travellers), and it was time to squeeze into the Launch and head back to the ‘City’.
There’s no real official legal enforcement on this world, but the people would decide what to do with a Minister who had tried violence against their own. The mercenaries were handed over as well, and the delivery sheets were signed.
So, things were all good, and the Travellers were ready to head off to Sylea. Before they left, they picked up some freight and 1 ton (all they could afford) of speculative trade. They also got a passenger in the form of Minister Ling and her daughter, who seemed to be keen to leave the planet.
On the flight to Sylea, Irian would find out that the daughter was not Ling’s husband’s. Something which started due to their small population size, knowing exactly who everyone was descended from was considered very important, so the world had a very serious thing against women having children outside of marriage. Enough so that Ling decided it best to leave – at least for the time being.
This ended the first scenario for the new campaign. It seemed to go well, and next up the Travellers will get a chance to pick up their real ship, sign a big contract, and begin a shake down cruise. That will be in a couple of weeks.
