Gateways

Gateways is a 79-player weekend freeform larp set aboard Threshold Station in the far future. It’s based on many, many science fiction shows, movies and novels. (See here for a list of influences.)

Gateways was conceived and written by Martin and Helen Jones, and Nickey Barnard, with additional material by Alan and Charlie Paull, and Megan, Michael and Peter Jones.

Anyway, this is my post-game write-up. I was very busy, and things were non-stop. I’m only scratching the surface of what went on here – I had so much fun, and I can’t do justice to it in a blog. I don’t want this to be too spoilery, so to preserve some secrets, I’ve often used player names rather than character names.

Avery Grayson

Photo by TsiJon

I was Avery Grayson. According to the background, Avery is a Solar Federation Naval Science Officer and advisor to Angelina Cygni. Lead officer of the Roanoke expedition.

So, I’m doing science. 

My prep

Last year at Shogun, I was impressed by Tony’s little black book (see here for my thoughts on that), and so I thought I’d do something similar for Gateways. I was, however, unprepared for the sheer amount of detail in the game!

Gateways’ background is astonishingly deep. To start with, there’s a 22-page setting guide. Then there’s a 12-page who’s who, a 2-page universe essentials guide, and detailed faction/society briefings. Then there are the rules. Plus, of course, my 44-page character sheet.

Fitting that all into a little black book and still making it readable was going to be a challenge, but with the help of AI, I had a go.

I used two LLMs to help me prepare for Gateways: ChatGPT and Notebook LM.

ChatGPT

I used ChatGPT to create an overall summary of my character, to get a “big picture” sense of Avery. I just copied all the character text (minus the list of goals and who you know), and asked, “This is a character for a larp. Summarise the character, outlining major themes and objectives for the character during the game.”

ChatGPT gave me a really useful summary: “Avery Grayson is a brilliant, curiosity-driven Science Officer of the Solar Federation Navy: a fair-minded polymath with a lifelong weakness for mysteries, forbidden questions, and elegant solutions. Outwardly easy-going and collaborative, Avery is also someone who has repeatedly brushed against the edges of ethics—sometimes bending rules for what feels like the “right” reason, sometimes just because the puzzle was irresistible. That tension defines them.”

While all of that is in the character sheet, I found it really helpful to have Avery defined so clearly. (I like a character sheet to start with an overall summary, to help set the scene for everything that follows.)

Notebook LM

Notebook LM is Google’s research tool. Load documents into it, and then ask it questions. I uploaded my character sheet and the background, and then for each of my contacts I asked, “Tell me about…”

It then pulled together everything from across those documents and summarised it. I then gave it a light edit, formatted it for my black book, printed it, cut it out, and stuck it in the book. Doing all that helped me absorb all that background.

(It wasn’t perfect. I still needed to consult my character sheet for precise details.)

I know at least two other players used LLMs to help them prepare. One just used Notebook LM and created an audio summary that they. They used Notebook LM on their phone during the game instead of carrying their character sheet. Another used Gemini and, as they drove to Retford, conversed with Gemini and asked it questions.

Plot highlights

These are highlights from my favourite plots. All of these are way more involved than I suggest here, each of them involving many, many players and multiple layers. They are in no particular order.

The Shaleel and the Celestes

At the start of the game, I was heavily involved with the Shaleel and Celeste aliens. Avery had been the first to contact the Shaleel, and I think I was one of the few humans they knew in the game. Avery was their first contact because they appeared over Roanoke, where he was in charge of an investigation into the failed human colony.

My involvement was early on, as we tried to understand the mystery. Later on, while I was busy with something else, I discovered that we nearly had an interstellar war with the Shaleel over a misunderstanding. I don’t think I was responsible.

Nero’s nemesis

I nearly sabotaged Nick’s game by badmouthing his character early in the game. His character and mine had crossed swords in the past, and because of what he did back then, I warned a few players that he couldn’t be trusted – which meant they weren’t talking to him.

So, towards the end of Saturday morning, I found Nick glaring at me from about five feet away, which was rather intimidating. We had a chat, and he explained his predicament (out of character). We talked about it with Nickey (a GM), and Nick explained his character’s perspective.

It was persuasive, but I felt Avery would need something more, so I asked for a character reference, which Matt provided. I then told the other characters that I had been mistaken (well, partly), which reopened his game.

Nero and Avery were always prickly, though. (Not Nick and Steve – no falling out among the players!)

Romance

I had a lovely romantic arc with Kris Alice (playing waldo operator Kay Nightingale), which I thought would be complicated by a previous flame of mine, but ended up being much stranger (and more complex) than that.

The arc ended with a serendipitous use of Dust late on Sunday morning, and was the perfect ending. Maybe my favourite freeform romance.

Photo by TsiJon

The rehabilitation of Earth

About 250 years ago, a war devastated Earth, leaving it too radioactive to be habitable. Humanity fled to the stars and space habitats. But the dream of healing Earth lived on.

Towards the end of the game, my game became more about Earth. Late on Saturday evening, Mark invited me to visit Earth on a waldo mission (completely out of the blue, as I don’t think we’d spoken before). Discovering Earth was now open to waldos, I immediately booked another mission to Earth with Kris Alice to see if her plan to deal with the radiation would work. (It looks promising!)

Cool mechanics

There were lots of mechanics in Gateways, some of which I was involved with, many of which I didn’t touch. Here are a few that stood out.

Dust

I only found out about Dust right at the end of the game. Dust lets users see a (secret or guilty) memory of another character, which is a great way to reveal secrets and memories in a way that is likely to be more nuanced and sympathetic. It’s probably a good thing I didn’t find out about Dust earlier!

(Dust might have different effects on other species. I don’t know. And there were other drugs – I have no idea what they did.)

Waldos

Waldos were remotely operated vehicles that allowed players to go on missions away from Threshold Station. They were a great SF mechanic that allowed players to roam beyond just Threshold Station without handwaving time, which often occurs during freeforms.

Relationships

Gateways had an optional mechanic to track relationships of different sorts – allies, romance or rivals. So it built on similar mechanics we’ve seen before, and I think it was the best version I’ve come across, as it seemed to work equally well for all three types of relationships. I’d like to see it used again.

Mechanically, being an ally or rival gave you a card that gave you an edge (or penalty for rivalries) in skill checks – but it was the same for everyone, rather than needing unique heart/rival abilities for each character.

Printed materials

I really appreciated the fact that the A5 character booklets were readable at A5. Yes, that meant my booklet was 44 pages long, but the font was large enough to be readable. Thank you! (I know that’s not a mechanic, but I wasn’t sure where else to put it, and I wanted to acknowledge it.)

Favourite moments

A collection of small moments in the game that I enjoyed. In no particular order:

• Ray spotting me across the room and bellowing, "Science! Find out all you can about <something about Threshold blowing up, I think>". Then Ezzie shouted, "It's in hand!" "Good." I didn't have to do a thing (which was good, because I was in the middle of something else).
• Having a quiet chat with Ewan and saying to them, "But aren't you [redacted]?" "Ah, I didn't know you knew that."
• After inspecting and incinerating a dead alien with the Shaleel, Suey said, "Right. I'm nuking Roanoke." "Er, can I get my team off first?" (And later, in the break, Martin came up to me and asked about the Saurian grove ships that had landed on Roanoke. The Shaleel said they would warn the Saurians, but I guiltily realised I hadn't actually checked that they had done so...)
• Giving Jon the long-service medal that I was supposed to present (I had double-booked myself) to the Admiral, and seeing the gleam in Jon’s eye as he realised how he could use it.
• Tom’s attempted misdirection in our mission to find a missing waldo. (A side mission with Ewan, Lucya, and AJ.)
• A friendly-ish interrogation about advanced sensors by Dixon, Nick, and Natalie. I told them everything I knew, but it didn’t get them what they wanted.
• The frotoise (a frog with a tortoise shell) and terrifying monkey spiders on Earth.
• Taking Antonia, Rosemary and Kris Alice to see the dead alien cadaver, and soon after taking the Shaleel (Suey, Paul and Liz). The two sessions were very different…

Photo by TsiJon

Reflections

Often, I come away from a weekend larp wishing that I’d done something different, or been more proactive, or had some kind of regret. Not this time – I wouldn’t change anything. It’s not often I can say that.

I hope the GMs run it again – I can’t wait to play! Or maybe help them run it. (But I’d rather play.)

And maybe there will be other larps (shorter, perhaps), set in the same universe. I hope so.

Café Casablanca

And speaking of next time, 2027’s game will be Café Casablanca. This will be its fourth UK run. It was first run in 1995, and the first weekend game of this type in the UK. I played in that run, and it changed my life in so many ways. I’m still friends with people I met during that game.

This time, I’m on the GM team, as I was for the last run in 2014.

You can register your interest in playing in Café Casablanca here.

Trail of the Sky Raiders session #5: Rescuing Lorain

I’m running FASA’s 1982 Trail of the Sky Raiders, and this is my report of session #5 of Trail, or session #11 of our overall Sky Raiders campaign.

Click here to read my review of Trail of the Sky Raiders. (Or if you want to start from the very beginning, here’s my review of Legend of the Sky Raiders.)

Oh yes, spoilers ahoy!

The Travellers

Our players and their characters are Terry (playing ex-space pirate Sir Sidderon Dubois), Thomas (playing drifter Felix "Dusty" Pygrin) and Tom (playing Zhodani prole Mustafa Lama Doka).

(Jon has bowed out of the game for the time being.)

Standoff at the starport

We started the session with the Travellers in their G-Carrier after successfully finding an old Sky Raiders ship. As they approached the League of Suns starport, they saw on their sensors a Descarothe Hegemony Navy cutter. Luckily, they picked it up on their sensors before it saw them, so the PCs landed out of sight.

From their hiding place, they contacted Timo, who was aboard the Tyrant’s Fate (his Type-S scout ship). Timo told them the Hegemony wanted to arrest the Travellers for violating their airspace. The League were complying because they didn’t want to start a diplomatic incident (and they are outnumbered on Qarant).

The PCs decided to deceive the Hegemony into thinking they were aboard the Tyrant’s Fate, and once they’d done that, Timo took it into orbit. Whether it was successful or not, the PCs then turned back towards the archaeological dig to rescue Lorain.

First, though, they had to find her.

Finding Lorain

The Travellers identified four potential locations for Lorain: any one of three digging camps, or the command post.

Starting with the digging camps, they put the G-Carrier down nearby, then used their drones to try to spot Lorain. (We did this as a task chain using Stealth,  Electronics (remote ops), and Recon.) They eventually found Lorain at the command post.

(An aside. These drones are really useful. The players are making a lot of use of them, and they’re so useful I should probably give them to the bad guys as well. Maybe in a later game.)

So, how to rescue Lorain?

Rescuing Lorain

Under the cover of darkness, the PCs took out three sentries with their stunners, tied them up, and took their uniforms. (And aren’t stun guns good?)

They scouted around the command post, but failed to find Lorain.

I reminded them that their stunned sentries might know something, and a little while later the PCs learned the layout of the command post (which I had to invent – why wasn’t there a map?) and where Lorain was being held.

Felix and Sir Sidderon went into the command post, while Mustafa prepared to steal one of the Hegemony’s air/rafts and disabled the other. (I had nudged them to think about their escape – the plan is to leave via the balcony.)

Inside the command post, Felix and Sir Sidderon got the drop on the guards outside Lorain’s room and stunned them both. They entered the room, found Lorain, and started to escape when another door opened – it was Kalamanaru himself. Kalamanaru hit the alarm button, and Sir Sidderon stunned him, dropping him like a sack of potatoes.

Yeah, not quite like this.

With the alarms raised, Lorain and her rescuers climbed aboard Mustafa’s stolen air/raft, but a bullet hit the air/raft, causing it to crash halfway between the command post and where the PCs had stashed their G-Carrier.

(I can’t remember now exactly what happened, but I think Mustafa failed his air/raft roll. We hadn’t discussed failure before the roll (I really should remember to do that), so I asked Tom to roll a D6, with 1 being the worst case and 6 being best. Tom rolled a four, so I decided that the air/raft made it some of the way.)

So with the Hegemony troops closing in, Sir Sidderon laid down suppressing fire while Felix remotely patched into the G-Carrier. With the G-Carrier running, Mustafa remotely piloted it to rescue them, and then they took it straight up into orbit to dock with the Tyrant’s Fate, and into jump.

Safe at last!

And that was pretty much the end of the adventure—the rest was exposition and setting up Fate of the Sky Raiders.

Lorain was pleased to be rescued, disappointed she didn’t get to see the Sky Raiders ship, but pleased with everything the PCs had recorded and taken.

At the university, she analysed the data crystals (Tom complained that she didn’t have to make a roll…) and I told them the history of the Sky Raiders and their asteroid ship. (Terry immediately picked up on the asteroid ship – perhaps it’s still out there! I assured him it was.)

I also explained that they are invited to accompany Lorain aboard the Inquisitor to find the missing asteroid ship. The asteroid ship is found, and it’s massive. But when Lorain, her team and the PCs go to board the asteroid ship, the Inquisitor backs off and jumps away, stranding them…

Which is how Fate of the Sky Raiders starts. We’re not playing next week, partly because Tom and I are both at a weekend-long freeform and I expect to be tired, but also because, having read Fate of the Sky Raiders, I need to work out how to run it. But more of that later.

Next time

I imagine the next couple of posts will be freeform larp-related, but after that, I’ll return to Traveller with my review of Fate of the Sky Raiders, followed by my session reports. (And after that, I think I’d like to be a player for a while.)

Coming soon: My review of Fate of the Sky Raiders.

Previously: Session #4 Island hopping on Qarant or start right back at the beginning with my review of Legend of the Sky Raiders (or my review of Trail of the Sky Raiders).

Trail of the Sky Raiders session #4: Island hunting on Qarant

I’m running FASA’s 1982 Trail of the Sky Raiders, and this is my report of session #4 of Trail, or session #10 of our overall Sky Raiders campaign.

Click here to read my review of Trail of the Sky Raiders. (Or if you want to start from the very beginning, here’s my review of Legend of the Sky Raiders.)

Oh yes, spoilers ahoy!

Oops…

As I prepared for this session, I realised I had forgotten something rather fundamental. In Trail, shortly after Lorain is kidnapped, the bad guys ambush the PCs and try to take the plate from them. The idea is that with Lorain and the plate, the bad guys can find the treasure they think is hidden in the city on Qarant.

Without the plate, though, there isn’t much point in kidnapping Lorain. (And arguably, kidnapping Lorain is an illogical thing to do – there are other people who can translate the plate, and kidnapping a high-profile academic is so much more suspicious than simply paying a scholar. But anyway.)

But while the PCs were having fun in Alzenei City, I forgot all about the bad guy’s plan and didn’t try to take the plate from them. (Which is actually a shame, as the PCs made 3D copies just in case.)

So I need to reframe Qarant. I think the bad guys’ plan is that by kidnapping Lorain, they hope to lure the PCs (and the plate) to Qarant to rescue her. They have spies in the League team who will report as soon as they see the PCs – and will also keep their eyes open for the plate.

So we’ll see what happens.

The Travellers

Our players and their characters are Jon (playing ex-Scout Timo Sosak), Terry (playing ex-space pirate Sir Sidderon Dubois), Thomas (playing drifter Felix "Dusty" Pygrin) and Tom (playing Zhodani prole Mustafa Lama Doka).

Jon can’t make it this week, so it’s just the four of us.

Island hunting

Before arriving at Qarant, the Travellers studied the inscription on the plate and realised they needed to find an island in a river. As Qarant has one significant river, the Zanatar, they focused on that and decided to conduct a survey along its entire length.

This is not in Trail of the Sky Raiders, so I rolled 2D and told them they had identified seven potential islands of interest (ignoring lots of tiny river islands obviously not worth looking at). Five of these are in the League of Suns-controlled area, with the final two being in Hegemon territory.

So they flew their Type S Scout to each location, then used drones and the air/raft to study each island in detail (a task chain involving Electronics (remote ops), Recon and Archaeology). While they planned that, I typed “Give me seven different descriptions for a large island in the middle of a large river (on an alien world)” into ChatGPT and used those descriptions.

Despite some excellent rolls, the Travellers failed to find anything of significance (because they were looking in the wrong place). For one island, I told them there were signs that the river had shifted in the 5,000 years since the ruins were built. (That was a hint.)

For the two islands in Hegemony territory, I created a countdown clock with five markers. I told them that each time they failed a roll in the task chains, I would mark the clock and apply the negative modifier to the next roll. The first island went smoothly, and I made only one mark. But then bad rolls on the last island meant that I filled the rest of the clock (despite succeeding overall on the task, thanks to a heroic last roll) – and a Hegemony air/raft appeared, causing the PCs to flee.

Once they had come up blank, I suggested (via Drew) that they might look at the ruins, as wasn’t that where the artefacts were found?

A couple of minutes later, Terry said, “I’ve found it.” He had spotted the hidden island on the map Dumaer’s girlfriend gave them several sessions ago. (It’s nicely done – it’s really obvious if you know what you’re looking for, yet hard to see if you don’t.)

The temple

Back at the League starport, Drew arranged a G-carrier for the PCs and their equipment. They then headed off to the Hegemon dig and the temple on the island. (Drew asked, “Aren’t we rescuing Lorain?” “Not yet,” was the reply.)

The PCs evaded any patrols and made it to the temple on the island, where they worked their way through it to find the treasure (a Sky Raiders ship) at the bottom. I didn’t worry about the event rolls or anything like that – there was no time pressure because the Hegemony troops had no idea they were there.

Once they had taken anything of value (lots of photographs, computer memory crystals, some trinkets and old bones), the Travellers headed back to the League starport to plan their next move.

Next week

Trail of the Sky Raiders is pretty much done. There’s only the loose end of Lorain to tie up, and the players plan to rescue her next time.

However, I am going to throw them a few curveballs:

• When they arrive at the starport, they find the Hegemon Navy’s cutter there. The Hegemon want to arrest the PCs for violating Hegemon airspace. (They really want the plate, though.)
• Gant Sprech, the starport’s General Manager (and the League’s head honcho on Qarant) will require evidence that Lorain is present on Qarant and is being held against her will before they can act.
• And finally, should the PCs ever return to Alzenei, they discover that Felix’s house has been burgled (Kalamanaru’s goons broke in to look for the plate).

So we’ll see how all that pans out. And I’d better read Fate of the Sky Raiders and work out how to run that.

Next: Session #5: Rescuing Lorain

Previously: Session #3: Not breaking in, or start right back at the beginning with my review of Legend of the Sky Raiders (or my review of Trail of the Sky Raiders).

Trail of the Sky Raiders session #3: Not breaking in

I’m running FASA’s 1982 Trail of the Sky Raiders, and this is my report of session #3 of Trail, or session #9 of our overall Sky Raiders campaign.

Click here to read my review of Trail of the Sky Raiders. (Or if you want to start from the very beginning, here’s my review of Legend of the Sky Raiders.)

Oh yes, there will be spoilers. A lot of them.

The Travellers

Our players and their characters are Jon (playing ex-Scout Timo Sosak), Terry (playing ex-space pirate Sir Sidderon Dubois), Thomas (playing drifter Felix "Dusty" Pygrin) and Tom (playing Zhodani prole Mustafa Lama Doka).

Jon can’t make it this week, so it’s just the four of us.

Alzenei Day 6: Lokhav’s apartment

The Travellers suspect Lokhav of kidnapping Lorain Messandi and have decided to break into Lokhav’s 17th-floor apartment using their air/raft. (We left it last session with them outside the apartment block.)

Between sessions, I decided that Lokhav lived with his girlfriend, Ket, and that she would be at home. But the players didn’t know that yet.

So, as we started, I wondered aloud what sort of measures a typical TL 12 apartment block might take to prevent ne’er-do-wells from using air/rafts to break in. And Tom suggested a 3m-wide anti-antigravity field to repel air/rafts. Plus, there are air/raft garages on the roof and a reception with a concierge-bot on the ground floor. (And they are structurally designed with air/raft impacts in mind. It’s not often I call for a civil engineering roll!)

(In hindsight, I should have said that Alzenei’s air/rafts were all autonomous vehicles – so there would be no garage as people would just rent one when they needed it. Maybe I’ll save that for the next TL12 city .)

While the Travellers are dithering in the air/raft, working out a plan, one of the apartment windows closes. There’s someone inside! Is it Lokhav? (The windows are TL 12 privacy screens, so they can’t see inside.)

The robo-concierge

Felix decides to bluff his way past the robo-concierge, so I channel Total Recall’s Johnny Cab. The robo-concierge is extremely helpful, but won’t let just anyone in – and eventually puts Felix through the Lokhav’s apartment.

Felix then has a slightly awkward conversation with Ket, Lokhav’s girlfriend. I rolled really low on her reaction roll (3), so she was extremely suspicious of Felix and his frankly sketchy reasons for wanting to come up. Felix made a great Deception roll, but it wasn’t enough to overcome Ket’s hostility. (Which is a shame, as Ket would have told him that Lokhav was home and had called to tell her he was going off-planet with work for about a month.)

So Felix then hacks the robo-concierge and gets up to the 17th-floor hallway, with doors to three different apartments. There’s nowhere to hide, but there are cameras, so Felix listens at the door. It sounds like Ket is talking on a vidphone (she is!), but Felix can’t make out the words.

After scrubbing the robo-concierge and camera files, Felix leaves, and the players decide to call it a night.

Alzenei City: Day 7

Alzenei starport

After failing to get very far with Lokhav’s apartment, the players are a little despondent, so I reminded them that at the end of the last session, they said they wanted to investigate the starport, talk to the police and translate the inscriptions on the mysterious plate.

(I’m not sure whether this is a function of my GMing or Trail’s design, but the players' despondency surprised me, given how much more Trail had for them to find out. Trail has loads more information they can learn, albeit not all relevant at this point.)

So the PCs headed to the starport, which (as established before) consists of a highport and downport, connected by a beanstalk. There, the PCs learn that there are two ships in port - theirs, and an A2 Far Trader called the Diamond.

However, another ship, the Type A Free Trader Golden Dreamer (operated by Kalaman Enterprises) had left earlier this morning. It filed a flight plan for Desaekhe via Qarant. Most suspiciously, a family of four was bumped from the Golden Dreamer just before it left, replaced by some Kalaman Enterprises operatives. 

The Travellers hack into the starport’s CCTV systems (using a skill chain) and see Lorain, Lokhav and a couple of thugs boarding the Golden Dreamer. Lorain looks under duress – she’s not going by choice.

All the signs are pointing to Qarant…

And I still can’t say “hegemony.”

The Institute

The players are all for jumping into their ship and heading straight to Qarant, but I suggest they do a bit of research first to learn more about the situation they are getting into. A quick check of the library data reveals that Qarant is jointly administered by the League of Suns (who have an E-class starport and a dig run by the Institute for System Studies) and the Descarothe Hegemony (who have another E-class starport next to their archaeological dig). Qarant’s entire population consists of the archaeologists and their support teams, and we have a short discussion about tech levels (which I’ve mentioned here before).

So the Travellers head to the Institute for System Studies for a letter of introduction, and bump into Drew Kensing, the useless noble who is in love with Lorain. Felix rescued Drew from a snikersnak on Mirayn, so I’m sure that will come up again. Anyway, it is agreed that Drew will accompany the PCs to Qarant and get in the way make introductions at the Institute dig site on Qarant.

Then the PCs go shopping and load up with TL12 goodies.

Jump

Finally, en route to Qarant, Sir Sidderon translates the text on the plate. Will the players spot the clue in the text, or will I need to use Lorain? We’ll find out next week.

And there we leave it. I think we have maybe one or two sessions left – and then onto the finale, Fate of the Sky Raiders.

Coming soon: Session #4: Island hunting on Qarant

Previously: Session #2: Alzenei City,  or start right back at the beginning with my review of Legend of the Sky Raiders (or my review of Trail of the Sky Raiders).

Trail of the Sky Raiders session #2: Alzenei City

I’m running FASA’s 1982 Trail of the Sky Raiders, and I’m already improvising wildly! This is session #2 of Trail, or session #8 of our overall Sky Raiders campaign.

Click here to read my review of Trail of the Sky Raiders. (Or if you want to start from the very beginning, here’s my review of Legend of the Sky Raiders.)

Oh yes, there will be spoilers. A lot of them.

The Travellers

Our players and their characters are Jon (playing ex-Scout Timo Sosak), Terry (playing ex-space pirate Sir Sidderon Dubois), Thomas (playing drifter Felix "Dusty" Pygrin) and Tom (playing Zhodani prole Mustafa Lama Doka).

Jon can’t make it this week, so it’s just the four of us.

Alzenei City

The Travellers are in Alzenei City, and we started with some unfinished business from the last session.

The map and calling Lorain

We left the Travellers in possession of a map. At the end of the last session, Terry suggested running the map through an LLM-style AI to identify where it might be. Alzenei is TL12, so it seemed eminently feasible, and a successful roll later, I told them that the map showed an archaeological dig on Qarant, a nearby planet operated by both the friendly League of Suns and the hostile Descarothe Hegemony. Unfortunately, the dig is on the Hegemony side of the border

The PCs also called Lorain and arranged to meet her the day after tomorrow at their ship, the Tyrant’s Fate.

The call was interesting. At this point, the PCs already suspect that there is a mole in Lorain’s office, because Margayle told them that Ben Dumael died after calling Lorain’s office. So they were acting really cagy in arranging a meeting with Lorain. And despite all my attempts, they refused to show the plate during the call (which is what Trail needs).

So Lorain agreed to meet them on their ship in two days.

Killing time in Azenei City

With a day to kill, the PCs went their separate ways.

• Timo went into orbit and brought their ship, the Tyrant’s Fate, down to the lowport.
• Felix took his daughter, Josine, to the zoo. He pampered her with presents and promised to write more.
• Sir Sidderon had Lupin seen to (claws clipped, vaccinations updated, that sort of thing). He checked to see if they were being followed, but couldn’t see anyone.
• Mustafa failed to find cargo for Qarant, but learned that there is growing tension between the League of Suns and the Hegemony, which is bad for business.

Meeting Lorain

Finally, Lorain turned up at the Tyrant’s Fate, and the players had an incredibly awkward conversation with Lorain where they tried not to reveal too much, making Lorain suspicious. The conversation is awkward until the PCs open up and show Lorain the Sky Raider plate.

So the PCs explained to Lorain how they got the plate – and what happened to Dumaer. (Lorain had heard of Dumaer, but not seen him since before the Mirayn adventure. She certainly wasn’t aware that he’d tried to contact her recently.)

Lorain wanted to take the plate for study. She was interested in its origins, as it might justify her father’s theory that the extinct civilisation on Qarant was the victim of the Sky Raiders. (This is buried in library data, but luckily I remembered it.)

Lorain took a holo-recording of the plate and agreed to approach her sponsors and try to get funding for an expedition to Qarant for Cr: 500,000. She had a meeting with them in two days, at which point she would call the PCs. (I realise that any academics in the audience are laughing hysterically at this super-compressed funding timeline…)

Alzenei Day 5: The writing on the plate

With a day to kill, Sir Sidderon had the bright idea of fabricating 3D-printed copies of the Sky Raiders plate. (I have no doubt nobody considered this as a possibility in 1982…)

While cleaning it for copying, the fabricating facility discovered writing on the back. Without knowing what the writing said, the PCs instructed the fabricators NOT to copy it onto the replicas.

Trail of the Sky Raiders points the PCs to a learned NPC who can help them. However, between Felix’s Archaeology and Sir Sidderon’s Linguistics skills, they decide to have a crack at deciphering the writing. They roll well, but I decide it will take a couple of days of focused study.

Alzenei Day 6: Lorain kidnapped

Finally, I get to kidnap Lorain! 

So Lorain failed to call the PCs, and doesn’t answer her phone. So the PCs headed to her workplace, and discovered that she had been kidnapped. Also, her assistant, Lokhav, is nowhere to be found.

Suspicious of Lokhav (and rightly so), the players decided to break into his 17th-floor apartment using their air/raft.

But as we are approaching the end of the session and I haven’t planned for this (and Trail of the Sky Raiders doesn’t even mention Lokhav’s apartment), we end the session there.

Coming soon: Session#3: Not breaking in

Previously: Session #1: Leaving the railroad or start right back at the beginning with my review of Legend of the Sky Raiders (or my review of Trail of the Sky Raiders).

Trail of the Sky Raiders session #1: Leaving the railroad

We’ve started session #1 of the 1982 FASA adventure for Traveller, Trail of the Sky Raiders, and the players have already taken us in a direction the adventure didn’t expect!  (Or session #7 of our overall Sky Raiders campaign.)

Click here to read my review of Trail of the Sky Raiders. (Or if you want to start from the very beginning, here’s my review of Legend of the Sky Raiders.)

Oh yes, there will be spoilers. A lot of them.

The Travellers

Our players and their characters are Jon (playing ex-Scout Timo Sosak), Terry (playing ex-space pirate Sir Sidderon Dubois), Thomas (playing drifter Felix "Dusty" Pygrin) and Tom (playing Zhodani prole Mustafa Lama Doka).

We’re starting with three players this week, as Jon, who plays Timo, couldn’t be with us as he was stranded in Shropshire.

A bar on Nomael

Trail of the Sky Raiders starts on Nomael, where the PCs spot a familiar-looking artefact in a bar – it is a Sky Raider’s artefact!

So that’s where we started, eight months after the last session. The Travellers had been paid for their adventure on Mirayn, were reunited with Timo’s Type S scout ship and were now on Nomael for some reason or other.

In the bar, they saw the artefact, realised it might be Sky Raiders' treasure, and bought it from the barman. The barman told them that an ex-Scout called Dumael had sold it to him. He didn’t know where Dumael had got it from.

First mistake

I made my first mistake in this scene.

The idea in Trail is that the players spot the Sky Raiders trinket, buy it, and then go to Alzenai to show it to Lorain Messandi. I thought that that would be enough, but Tom asked what his character’s motivation might be. So I mentioned that the similar-looking piece they saw back on Mirayn had been valued at Cr: 500,000. “Ahah, that’s my motivation,” said Tom. I should have led with that…

Chasing Dumael

Before leaving Nomael for Alzenei, the PCs decided to see what they could find out about Dumael, the mysterious scout who had sold the Sky Raiders trinket to the barman. They quickly learned that Dumael hasn’t been seen for a while, that he is based out of Alzenei, and that his ship is a Type-S called the Blue Viper.

The PCs also learned of the connection between Kalamanaru and the Descarothe Hegemony. It turns out that I find “hegemony” really hard to pronounce, which is unfortunate as I know it’s going to come up a lot…

(At this point, I’m already dipping into the Trail’s clues. Trail states that the barman remembers the name of the person who sold him the artefact, but it feels very early for this information to be coming out. Never mind, I’m sure it won’t be a problem…)

Alzenei City and TL 12 wonders

Trail describes Alzenei City in slightly pedestrian terms: “With ground transport obsolete, buildings are separated by wide, parklike malls; transportation is now largely tied to the network of subshuttle lines that apply grav technology to an underground mass transit system with great economy, efficiency and pleasing aesthetic effects.”

I wanted something a little more futuristic and different, so with my player’s help, we fleshed out Alzenei City:

• A beanstalk connects the ground and orbital elements of Alzenei’s starport.
• Alzenei City is partly submerged, and a kind of coral is a common building material.
• Genetic gill modifications are common (although Felix, who comes from Alzenei, could never afford them).
• A common form of transport is the personal G-tube, a two-person anti-grav sphere.
• Felix owns a small bungalow, which is probably a bit cramped with all four of them.
• Felix’s ex-wife and 12-year-old daughter live in Alzenei City, somewhere.
• Aquaria are popular on Alzenei.

And with that little bit of world-building done…

Chasing Dumael (again)

Rather than tell Lorain about the Sky Raiders artefact (as Trail expects), my group decided to learn more about Dumael first.

At the Scout base, they learned that he hired himself out for various unnamed duties, but that he had turned up dead in an alley three months ago. He did, however, have a girlfriend, Margayle Sharnon, in startown.

Felix knew of Margayle's, and led the PCs to it. There, they found a run-down lounge bar that had clearly seen better days (the aquarium had guppy-blight).

Margayle was out when they arrived, but told the PCs about Dumaer when she turned up. She told them that he vanished after arranging a meeting with Lorain’s office. He had seen her broadcast about the Sky Raiders, and had got excited about some artefacts she had. Then he died.

Margayle gave the PCs a map that she thought was linked, but didn’t know exactly where it was of.

(All this seems to be coming out extremely early. The players are already suspicious of someone in Lorain’s office, despite me trying not to signal that too hard.)

My other mistake

I wish I had played up Margayle’s grief more than I did. My defence is that the players had gone off piste and I hadn’t prepared Margayle in as much depth as I might normally have done. (Arguably, Trail itself pays lip service to her grief as well. She’s not even included in the NPC list.)

Next time

My top tip for anyone running a continuing ttrpg is, at the end of a session, ask the players what they plan to do next. So that’s what I did, and this is what they’ve told me they want to do.

• Work out where the map comes from. Scan it and let a computer match it with existing features (like giving it to a LLM).
• Talk to Lorain (at last!)
• Ask the police about Dumaer’s murder
• See Josine (nice – a bit of character stuff)

We’re taking a week off (because I will be recovering from Consequences), but we’re playing again at the start of December.

Coming soon: Session #2: Alzenei City

Previously: Session #6: Tomb of the Sky Raiders or start right back at the beginning with my review of Legend of the Sky Raiders (or my review of Trail of the Sky Raiders).

Trail of the Sky Raiders review

Trail of the Sky Raiders was written by J Andrew Keith with art by William H Keith Jr and maps by Loren Wiseman. It was published by FASA, way back in 1982. It is the second part of a trilogy for Traveller, preceded by Legend of the Sky Raiders and followed by Fate of the Sky Raiders. 

If you’ve been following my blog, you know that I’ve completed Legend of the Sky Raiders with my group, and we’re about to start Trail of the Sky Raiders. This is my first-impressions-ish review of Trail, and it's a bit too spoilery, so I’ve delayed this (and the subsequent session reports) until my players are far enough through the adventure for this review not to spoil it.

Physically, Trail of the Sky Raiders was a LBB-sized 56-page book with extra maps. I am using pdfs.

Oh, spoilers ahead…

The plot

The Sky Raiders is a semi-legendary culture which flourished 5300 years ago in the Far Frontiers sector. Almost all evidence of the Sky Raiders is derived from oral traditions, myths, and legends from a number of separate worlds in the Jungleblut subsector. Their origins, fate, and all details of their culture remain unknown…

Trail of the Sky Raiders picks up a few months after Legend concludes. Trail does include a way for those who haven’t completed Legend of the Sky Raiders to get into the adventure, but that’s not my group. (I imagine most groups play this as a trilogy.)

Anyway, Trail starts with yet more contortions to get the Travellers to where the adventure wants them. Some months after their adventures on Mirayn (in Legend), the Travellers are struggling as the ship they have stolen has turned into a money pit, when they spot an old metal plate in a bar that they recognise as a Sky Raiders artefact…

Except that my group of Travellers didn’t steal their ship, and they have their own Type S Scout ship anyway. Still, I didn’t worry too much about that – I knew that I just had to introduce the artefact. My players would recognise a McGuffin when they see one and would do the rest.

The PCs go to Alzenei to show the artefact to Lorain Messandi, their patron from Legend of the Sky Raiders. Unfortunately, before they meet her, she is kidnapped, and ruffians attempt to steal the artefact from the players.

Their investigation then takes the players to Qarant and an archaeological dig, where the players learn that a) the bad guys have the other half of the artefact, and b) their information is incomplete.

“They’re digging in the wrong place,” to quote Raiders of the Lost Ark. Yes, the artefact is the Staff of Ra, and the dig on Qarant is Tanis...

Anyway, our heroes have to rescue Lorain and then solve the puzzle, leading them to the treasure that sets up episode three, Fate of the Sky Raiders.

The investigation

The first part of the adventure is an investigation into Lorain’s kidnapping.

The investigation is split into locations – the Institute, the Starport, the Scout Base, Startown, and so on. In a couple of cases, there are core clues (hey, we’re playing Gumshoe), but the PCs can uncover many others. 

Unfortunately, the general advice for running an investigation is a little overwritten: 

While searching for clues and information, the general guidelines presented below should be followed, modified by the referee as needed to cope with unexpected player actions. In every instance, however, the referee should be ready to improvise heavily, to drop clues into the course of the game that will set players on a new, profitable path of thought or action, even when their own inquiries would not normally give rise to this information.

Unfortunately, Trail doesn’t make it easy to “improvise heavily” as the clues are written as if they are found in specific places. For example, some clues are found on Lorain’s computer. However, the information could just as easily be told to them by a member of staff, or found in a news report, or some other way. So I’ve taken the text and (where I can) stripped it of its context so I can respond to my players’ approach.

I guess I can forgive Trail this – ttrpgs weren’t even a decade old by this point, and this would have been one of the first published investigations.

Anyway, there are enough clues to point the PCs to their next location: an archaeological dig on Qarant.

Qarant

Getting to the dig on Qarant is complicated by the fact that the planet is occupied by both the League of Suns (Imperial-leaning good guys) and the Descarothe Hegemony (Zhodani-leaning bad guys). And the dig is on the wrong side of the border.

So the PCs need to figure out where to land, how to get behind enemy lines, rescue Lorain, and find the treasure. Because there is treasure, which, if all goes well, the PCs will find before the bad guys. And that treasure leads specifically to the trilogy’s climax: Fate of the Sky Raiders.

So Qarant is broadly a sandbox – it’s up to the PCs to make a plan, and it’s up to the GM to react and respond.

There’s even a complicated bit about exploring an ancient temple that involves abstractly tracking how much time everything takes. (There isn’t a map – that would be too much like D&D, I guess.) This is needed because the bad guys are also searching for the players (the Referee rolls dice for that). But that’s a bit OSR for me – I expect I will montage the temple exploration, and I’ll bring the bad guys in when it makes dramatic sense.

My thoughts

Overall, Trail seems less railroady than Legend of the Sky Raiders. There’s a similarly artificial set-up, but once you’re over that, the adventure seems pretty solid: an investigation part to figure out what’s going on and where Lorain is, followed by a tricky situation to rescue her and a neat prize at the end of it.

(And frankly, that’s the model for so many other investigative scenarios. Most Call of Cthulhu scenarios follow that model.)

I think it’s also going to be shorter. There’s less stumbling about in the jungle, but we’ll see.

Criticisms

Trail of the Sky Raiders is pretty good, but it’s not perfect. Some fairly significant problems could derail the adventure, and I have a few minor criticisms. My minor gripes:

• The link between Legend and Trail adventure is pretty clunky. Once again, the PCs are down on their luck and desperate for cash. Thinking about it, it might have been nice if Lorain had remembered Dumaer talking about the plate and sending the PCs on a mission to track it down. (Or even just asking them to keep an eye out for anything Sky Raiders related, and to bring it to her.)
• While the clues are nicely grouped by location, they are still cluttered and overwritten. Clues are presented as being in specific places, without considering that the same information might be found elsewhere. (I know I should make allowances given this was 1982, but I see the same mistake being made today.)
• A clearer layout would help manage the clues, particularly mixing them up with the narrative. (I copied everything into a MS Word document, edited it down and simplified it to make it easier for me to run.)
• I was confused by references to the Serendipity, which turns out to be the name of the PC’s ship. But that assumes the PCs have the ship as described in the setup – my group doesn’t.
• As I discussed in an earlier post, the tech level on Qarant makes no sense.

What’s missing?

I felt a few elements were missing from Trail.

A countdown clock. Or at least some timed events. The investigation on Alzenei tells the GM to break each day into four periods (morning, afternoon, evening, night) and that the PCs can investigate one area at a time. (And must sleep for two periods in eight.)

But there’s no actual time pressure. It doesn’t matter if the PCs dawdle. There are a couple of events, but basically nothing really happens if the PCs take their time. 

Drew and Talia. Where are Drew and Talia? Drew is the noble who funded Lorain’s expedition in Legend and is in love with her, and Talia is Lorain’s friend and colleague. I would expect both to make an appearance here, as they already have a connection with the PCs. (I will add them if I can.)

Really big problem #1: The Sky Raiders plate

There’s a structural problem with the Sky Raiders plate: it has writing on the back.

The players aren’t told this when they first get it; it’s something the Alzenei research team tells them. The bad guys mustn’t get this writing first, so the players aren’t told about it until after they have transmitted a telefax of it (I’ll get to that below) to Lorain. (The telefax is then intercepted by a bad guy, which starts events moving, but crucially, the telefax doesn’t have the writing on it.)

This is never told to the GM. The bad guys must not learn about the writing – as that will give them the key clue that means they find the treasure before the players.

I only worked it out when I realised that I would need to describe the plate to my players, without mentioning the writing. Annoyingly, the image on page 4 of the book shows writing on the piece, but maybe that’s different writing. (It’s not an image to show to the players, as it shows both pieces together. But still.)

I don't think the players are supposed to see this...

During our game, the players wanted to make 3D copies of the plate. I ummed and erred, and one of the players suggested that the writing only appeared when the plate was cleaned up ready, for scanning. I readily agreed. Phew.

Really big problem #2: Sidestepping the adventure

Another issue is that the PCs could completely sidestep parts of the adventure. I’ve started running this, and my players have already got the map of the dig and worked out its location before they spoke to Lorain.

They then discovered the writing on the back, and thanks to having the right skills (and some good rolls), can translate without anyone’s help. So they can go straight to Qarant and find the treasure without involving Lorain at all. (In which case, she isn’t captured, and that part of the investigation doesn’t happen – and neither does her rescue.)

Now, that didn’t happen and Lorain was kidnapped, but at one point it was a possibility. And it’s more of an issue that Trail doesn’t really allow for that in its writing. It assumes that the players will follow the path as directed.

(Hmm. Does that make it a railroad? I don’t think so. Trail expects the PCs to take a definite path through the adventure, but it doesn’t take agency away from the players, which to me defines a railroad.)

Really big problem #3: The link to Fate of the Sky Raiders

Perhaps the biggest problem is the link to the Fate of the Sky Raiders, which is contained in some data tapes the PCs find.

If the dice roll badly, the bad guys might arrive early and capture the PCs, leaving the data tapes in their hands. 

And for Fate of the Sky Raiders to start as written, Lorain must end with the data tapes, and the bad guys must not know they exist.

If that doesn’t happen, the GM needs to rewrite Fate of the Sky Raiders to make it work. I’m sure that’s possible, but it’s a lot easier if the game goes as expected.

The far future in 1982: telefaxes

The far future was even further away in 1982 than it is today, and Trail features a marvellously futuristic device: the telefax. “She requests, strongly, that a telefax of the artefact be transmitted by phone (a standard feature of the Alzenei phone system) so she can begin work on screening it at once.”

Telefaxes, eh? How tech level 12!

Overall

Despite the niggles, I like Trail of the Sky Raiders, and so far, my players appear to be enjoying playing through it.

Next: Session #1: Leaving the railroad