Adventure 13: Signal GK

Signal GK is GDW’s last LBB (little black book) adventure for Traveller. It was published in 1985 and written by Marc Miller, with additional design from J Andrew Keith.

1985 is over 40 years ago. Why am I reviewing it now? Well, I recently ordered Adventure 14: Travel Hazards from Mongoose. I’m waiting for the physical booklet to read the adventure in detail, but I couldn’t resist taking a peek at the pdf. And I noticed something slightly odd about the layout – unnecessary indents on paragraphs that follow a heading. 

I’m sure Mongoose know better than to do that to a layout, so I got Signal GK down off the shelf, flipped it open, and sure enough, Mongoose appear to be replicating the old GDW format exactly – even down to the pregenerated characters and the unnecessary indents.

And having taken Signal GK off the shelf, I started reading, and here we are.

So, anyway, this is a first-impressions review. I haven’t run Signal GK – and as we’ll see, I probably won’t. 

Oh, and spoilers ahead.

A physical copy of Adventure 13? Really?

Some years ago, probably longer than I care to admit, I got rid of most of my old Traveller LBBs. I wasn’t playing the game, I wasn’t reading them, and they were just taking up space. So I got rid of most of them.

I kept the books I really liked. Twilight’s Peak. Secret of the Ancients (not that I liked that one, but it had Ancients in it). IISS Ship Files (in my opinion, the best Traveller deck plans ever). The alien modules. And Signal GK.

I’m not sure why I kept Signal GK. I certainly never ran it. I can only think that the central premise in it (the silicon-chip lifeform) was sufficiently appealing that I wanted to keep it. Or maybe it was that those lifeforms led directly to the controversial Virus and the destruction of the Third Imperium. I really can’t remember, but either way, I still have my original copy of Signal GK.

All this is preamble! Where’s your review?

Patience, I’m getting there. 

Before starting to write this, I thought I’d check and see what other reviewers had to say about Signal GK. And the answer is… nothing. At least, not in text. I found a single video review of Signal GK – and that’s it.

So this is my text review of Traveller Adventure 13: Signal GK. Maybe the only one on the Internet.

Overview

Signal GK is a 48-page booklet for Traveller set on the border between the Solomani Confederation and Third Imperium. The adventure is broadly in three parts. First, the PCs must help Dr Roshorin, a Solomani researcher, defect to the Imperium. Then the PCs accompany Dr Roshorin to Cymbeline to confirm his theories. There, they find an intelligent silicon-chip-based lifeform. Finally, the PCs accompany Dr Roshorin to Terra aboard the Ad Astra, a 600-dton Subsidized Liner, where a Solomani agent tries to kill Dr Roshorin.

(Signal GK is also the Vilani interstellar distress call. I imagine that the title of the adventure refers to the Ad Astra’s distress call after the bombing.)

Maps, deck plans, library data

As well as the adventure, Signal GK provides plenty of supplemental information:

The Ad Astra: 14 pages of details of the Ad Astra liner, including illustrations, room-by-room descriptions and deck plans. This is rather nice, and I imagine that back in 1985, many referees bought the adventure just for the deck plans.

The Solomani Border: A two-page spread showing the area in question. The map is subsector-sized, but straddles four subsectors to show all the worlds it needs for the adventure.

Library data: Two pages of library data.

The Biology of Natural Chips: Four pages about how natural silicon chips evolved on Cymbaline. This is lovely – I’m all for weird alien lifeforms.

All that adds up to 22 pages. And when you include the contents page, the front matter, and a boilerplate introduction (another five pages), that means less than half of the book is actual adventure material. Not that I’m complaining; as I’ve said before, I find a lot of adventures are overwritten. Signal GK isn’t one of them.

The adventure

The set-up is that after failing to find gainful employment on Scandia (just because…), the PCs are hired by Colonel Joachim Sanchex, the head of the Imperial Army Intelligence, to secure the defection of an important Solomani scientist. They are well paid and given a Type S scout for the mission.

Now, quite why Sanchex would choose a group of ne’er-do-wells like the PCs isn’t well explained. Deniable assets, perhaps. I think this is so that GMs can just drop Signal GK into their regular Traveller campaigns – although that has never made sense to me. The number of Traveller groups running campaigns in that neck of the Solomani Rim was probably in the low tens. If that.

I imagine that if anyone did run Signal GK, they either moved it (in which case they’d be rewriting all sorts of stuff) or ran it as a one-shot (which is what I would do). And with a one-shot, we can let the players create Imperial Army agents with the skills they think they will need. 

(I would start the game with Sanchex briefing the players and instructing them to plan the mission and assemble a team. The players would then create and equip those characters to suit the mission profile – and then play them.)

Pedant’s corner: The introduction on page 5 says, “the players may use pregenerated characters supplied later in this adventure. A complete roster of available characters is supplied in a specific section of this booklet; these can be used both as player and non-player characters.” Unfortunately, there is no such section. The only characters in Signal GK are the main NPCs.

Structure

Before I get into the adventure proper, I just want to comment on Signal GK’s weird structure. I’m sure it made sense to GDW, but it doesn’t make sense to me. These are the sections:

1. Introduction
2. Referee’s synopsis
3. Characters (actually the NPCs)
4. On Ochre (the first part of the adventure)
5. The Ad Astra (14 pages of description and deck plans of the Ad Astra)
6. The Solomani Border (the subsector map)
7. On Cymbaline (the second part of the adventure)
8. Disaster (part three of the adventure)
9. The Biology of the Natural Chips
10. Library Data
11. Referee’s Notes

That’s not how I would structure the book. The section on the Ad Astra, in particular, breaks the flow of the adventure. I would rearrange it so that the adventure is kept together and the supplemental information (Ad Astra, Chip Biology, and Library Data) is pushed to the back.

I would move the Solomani Border section directly after Characters, as it helps explain the overall political situation.

Anyway.

High-tech adventure

One thing that’s striking about Signal GK is how high-tech it all is. Well, it would be striking if it actually felt high-tech…

Looking at the map, pretty much every world is TL 9 or higher – often much higher. Signal GK starts on TL 15 Scandia and moves to TL 14 Ochre and Cymbaline. By 2026 standards, these are magical worlds full of technological miracles. TL 15 has black globe generators and anagathics. TL 14 has cloning and robots. And that’s just what I can find in 1982’s The Traveller Book. Mongoose’s core rules add floating cities, implants and high-energy weapons and probably more if I looked a little harder.

But Traveller in 1985 hasn’t quite worked it out. (As an example, on Ochre, a research facility is described as being reachable via a dirt-track road, which is used as a visual aid by grav vehicles. I’d change that. In a TL14/15 society, why would there be any roads at all?)

But I think the very high-tech environment has interesting implications for smuggling defectors.

Part 1: Ochre

Ochre is a small desert world with its population clustered around the polar regions. It is two parsecs from the nearest Imperial world (Tamarind), and being so close is a focal point for traffic (and smugglers) between the Solomani Rim and the Third Imperium. The local government is relaxed about smuggling (despite its strict law level) because of the income it brings in from passage fees and inspection duties, and the Solomani Confederation tolerates the smuggling because it is a channel for acquiring Imperial goods and technology. So it’s a leaky border.

So the PCs must cross the border, arrive on Ochre, find and make contact with Dr Roshorin, convince him that they are genuine, and then smuggle him out across the border without the Solomani authorities finding out.

And while Signal GK describes the overall situation on Ochre, it gives no details on how any of that is to be done. I think that’s for the best – letting the GM and players define the world of Ochre will lead to a memorable game. If nothing else, it gives the players huge freedom in how they approach their mission – they’re not constrained by preplanned set pieces or scenes.

Traveller's politics

The Solomani are the bad guys in Signal GK. So who are they?

It’s 1110 now, and the Solomani Rim War was in 990-1002. So 108 years ago, which by coincidence is how long ago WW1 ended, measured from 2026. So the Rim War is pretty much in living memory – particularly given the anagathics users present on all those TL 15 worlds. (I would make Colonel Sanchex a veteran of the war.)

The war erupted when the Solomani attacked the Imperium in a land grab. However, the Imperium fought back and won, and now occupies half of the previous Solomani territory. (So Scandia, our starting world, is, to many eyes, an occupied world.)

The Solomani Confederation is described as having “belligerent and extremist policies,” but Signal GK says little more than that (and I’m reluctant to dig into the wider Traveller background just for this review).

I have the impression that the Solomani Confederation is a bit like the Cold War-era Soviet Union or East Germany. (Although the Imperium are the occupying force here…) And that’s probably how I would play it.

Defection

Defection is a loaded term. Dr Rushorin doesn’t want to leave the Solomani Confederation; he wants to defect. That reinforces the sense of East/West Cold War tensions that I get from the politics.

So while smuggling might be easy (as discussed above), defecting must be harder.

Presumably, the Solomani Confederation considers Dr Rushorin a valuable asset that they don’t want to lose. And having valuable assets working near the border means he will be watched (with TL 14 surveillance). And presumably, he is prohibited from leaving Solomani space.

One of the challenges that real-life defectors faced was what happened to their families. (Although I say this as someone with no personal experience of this!) I imagine defection is much harder if you suspect your family would be threatened.

Unfortunately, Signal GK lacks this dimension. All we know is that Dr Rushorin is a professor at a university on Aquitaine, and is on sabbatical. He is on Ochre, working on an electronics research project and wants to defect to the Imperium before he has to return to Aquitane. Still, it would be easy to give Dr Rushorin a small family that he has brought with him to make the PCs' task harder.

Back to Scandia

Anyway, after all this, the PCs smuggle Dr Rushorin across the border and to Scandia. Solomani Security are soon in pursuit, however… (How soon depends on how effective the PCs have been.)

Part 2: Cymbaline

Dr Rushorin has another reason to visit Imperial space – he wants to go to Cymbaline to prove a theory about naturally occurring semiconductors. So Colonel Sanchex greenlights this (probably to keep the professor out of trouble), and sends the PCs to keep an eye on Dr Rushorin.

Cymbaline is a massive world with a thin atmosphere – the only human-habitable land is at the bottom of vast canyons. Rushorin’s chips, though, aren’t to be found at the bottom of the canyons – his theory puts them on the slopes of outgassing volcanoes.

So this part of the adventure is an exploration into a hostile environment. Unfortunately, Signal GK provides no support for hazards, encounters, or events. Fortunately, Rushorin finds exactly what he is looking for in little over a week – naturally occurring semiconductors etched onto crystal wafers!

(The speed of their discovery by Dr Rushorin suggests that these natural semiconductors are common across Cymbaline.)

Introducing 10987

Remarkably, not only are these naturally occurring semiconductors alive, but some of them are intelligent. And one of them, 10987, is in one of Dr Rushorin’s samples. At which point Signal GK becomes a first-contact scenario, with the PCs meeting a brand-new lifeform.

I’m a sucker for first-contact stories, and classic Traveller didn’t do this very often.

Anyway, obviously, the PCs report this to the authorities (via Colonel Sanchex), Cymbaline is promptly quarantined so that the chips can be studied… Er no. Well, that could happen, but probably doesn’t. Signal GK is silent on the Imperium’s reaction when they learn of the chips, which is a shame.

Instead, the PCs are ambushed by Solomani Security forces intent on capturing Dr Rushorin.

Rather optimistically, Signal GK assumes that the PCs will connect 10987 to a computer. 10987 then warns of the attack moments before it happens. Except that, who in 2026 is going to connect 10987 to a computer? Even in 1985, I’m not sure players were that naïve – that was the era of The Terminator (1984) and Wargames (1983), not forgetting 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). We weren’t short of warnings about intelligent machines!

So I’d probably change this and have 10987 already connected itself to a computer before the PCs discover it.

Assuming he survives, Dr Rushorin states that he has confirmed his theories and wants to return to Scandia – and part 3.

Part 3: The Ad Astra

Back on Scandia, Colonel Sanchex decides things have become too hot for Dr Rushorin and sends him straight to Terra. But before the PCs can take him on their Type S, it is blown up by Solomani terrorists. So Colonel Sanchex books them all onto the Ad Astra, which leaves the following day.

Unfortunately, the Solomani bad guys are thinking ahead and are already on the Ad Astra…

Partway through the journey, in the middle of skimming fuel from a gas giant, the Solomani agent makes his move. He captures Rushorin and escapes in the launch while detonating three bombs that cripple the Ad Astra, condemning it to crash into the gas giant…

GM advice here is painfully thin, and Signal GK breezily says, “The referee must generate a number of different passengers (and insert the <Solomani agent> among them, and then have the entire group interact with the adventurers and Rushorin.” That’s it – no suggestion for potential scenes or ideas for characters or anything else. (And the poor referee has to invent the crew as well – they’re not described either.)

The big problem with this section is that players are reacting to events. They don’t really get to be proactive. As written, the PCs have very little to do until the agent makes his move. And then, once that’s over, while they can help the crew fix the damaged liner, they’re unlikely to be in charge of repair operations because, well, it’s not their ship and the crew is presumably better qualified than they are at fixing the Ad Astra.

(It’s probably telling that Signal GK spends longer on repairing the Ad Astra after the bombing than it does on the characters aboard the liner.)

To be fair to Signal GK, it does say “…the adventures will probably be monitoring their fellow passengers in order to protect Rushorin.” But that’s all it says.

I would make this stronger – just before they enter jump, they receive a message from Colonel Sanchex saying he has intelligence indicating a Solomani agent is on board, but he doesn’t know who.

But then I’d also need summary details of passengers and crew, along with scenes and events. (I’d have one crewmember be suspiciously new, as well.) 

And to prevent the PCs from just hiding in their staterooms for the whole trip, I would have Colonel Sanchex instruct the PCs to identify and capture the agent for questioning.

I don’t know how I’d run this. Previously, when I’ve run Traveller, we’ve skipped most jumps. I ask the players what they’re doing for the week they’re spending in jump space, but we don’t go through it in detail. Managing 20+ NPCs and making the journey interesting? That might be beyond me. (Might be the basis for a fun larp, though.)

What do I think?

It’s probably best to think of Signal GK as three linked adventures. You could run them completely independently.

Defection on Ochre

The first adventure, “Defection on Ochre”, interests me most. It’s the adventure where, as written, the PCs are actually proactive.  And it’s fascinating thinking about TL 14 surveillance and countermeasures, and how the players might help Dr Rushorin defect.

I can’t even imagine how TL14 systems would work, so my approach would be to have my players help set the scene – and have some fun in the planning session exploring future systems and how to beat them. And then we’d run the mission.

Expedition to Cymbaline

Part 2, on Cymbaline, is the weakest. There are few opportunities for roleplaying and few decisions the PCs have to make. This section only gets interesting when 10987 appears – followed by the firefight. (This is potentially an exciting high-tech firefight with plasma weapons and battledress. I mean, Solomani Security are hardly likely to be armed with SMGs.)

So to make this more memorable, I’d introduce events and scenes and maybe even a random table or two. And perhaps a map of the volcano slopes for the PCs to explore.

Signal GK

And the final part, which I would call "Signal GK", could be about flushing a Solomani terrorist out from the crew or passengers from the Ad Astra. But you’d need NPC details and ideas for scenes and events to make it more interesting at the table.

Conclusion

I can’t remember what I thought of Signal GK when I first got it. I never ran it, never used the deck plans, so I don’t think I was that impressed.

Re-reading it 40 years later, and I find myself intrigued by the ideas it contains, but frustrated by how much is missing. How much the referee needs to invent just to make the game work at the table.

Am I asking too much of a 40-year-old adventure? Maybe. I mean, I am reading this with 40 years more life experience than I had when I first read Signal GK. But all of this is stuff that popped into my head when I read it again. I’ve not spent 40 years thinking about Signal GK.

Anyway, it’s unlikely that I will run Signal GK. Or if I do, it will probably only be the first part (on Ochre), because I can see how to run that with minimal prep. Which is a shame, as with a bit more work it could have been a cracking little adventure.

North Star 2026

Last weekend, I returned to Sheffield’s Garrison Hotel for North Star.

North Star is a two-day SF ttrpg convention, but I was only there for Saturday. I met lots of friends, chatted about games and other nonsense, and played two good games.

The Last Caravan

I didn’t know anything about The Last Caravan before we started playing, but according to the website, it’s a “cars and aliens tabletop role-playing game about a midwinter road trip in the wake of an alien invasion.”

Alien invasions – right up my street!

Neil Gow was running it, and my fellow players were Dom, Jag and Josh. We played family members – I was the responsible father (high school science teacher, Jeff) with my two sons, Jacob (Josh) and Pearson (Jag). Dom played the family dog, Cherokee. Dom didn’t get to name his character – and I left that to my sons.

(I’m not sure how much fun playing the dog would be in a campaign. For a one-shot, fine. But for much longer? Probably not for me.)

So that immediately created a fun family dynamic, which we played on during the game. As for the game itself, Neil gave us a quick rundown of the alien-invasion background, and then I received a text calling for help from my ex-wife, Sarah (who I only referred to as “your mom”). That was followed by an alien attack that destroyed our house (and stopped us dithering over what to take), and so we hit the road, where we fought an alien and rescued terrified citizens from a crazy militia.

As the start to a campaign, it would have been great. I can imagine how the relationships would have developed, and the truth about how Sarah and I had split up would have come out. (We didn’t develop that – but I had chosen “regret” as Jeff’s inadequacy, and I’m sure that had something to do with his ex-wife, but I hadn’t decided what that might be, and inspiration didn’t strike until we were almost done, so I never got to explore it.)

And apparently, there’s plenty in the book to explore. But not in three hours.

My character sheet - and a typical dice roll!

Mechanically, The Last Caravan is a FitD game. I’m sure it was fine, but I failed every single roll but my last one, so I might be feeling a bit sore about that…

Anyway, a lovely session to start the day with. Really enjoyed it.

Gee Cows to the Rescue!

And after lunch, something completely different: Traveller.

Gee Cows to the Rescue! was written and run by veteran Traveller player/ref Timothy Collins. We were playing the crew of a rescue organisation a bit like a cross between Thunderbirds and Médecins Sans Frontières. (This was inspired by an article in JTAS, and the organisation’s acronym, GKAO, led to the “Gee Cows” in the title. Timothy had copies of the article for us to read, and gave us neat patches for our ship uniforms! See the photo below!)

I played Chief Medical Officer Sion Alman, with the other four players (Steve, Jane, Josh, and Chris) playing the rest of the crew. We were a player down, so we had one NPC. Given we only had 3.5 hours and it was quite an involved game, I think we would have struggled with six players.

The scenario was in two parts. It started slowly, at a GKAO fundraising event. I found this a little underwhelming – but luckily we were then summoned to our ship to deal with a distress call (two ships had collided), and then it was all hands on deck as we had to rendezvous with two different ships, avoid collision debris, and treat the wounded.

My favourite bit was choosing whether to prioritise the Type S Scout with no comms, the Long Liner with many injured passengers but an onboard medic, or the four rescue balls with limited air. We went after the rescue balls, dropped a launch off at the Scout and docked with the Long Liner.

The GM carefully timed everything and had a detailed timetable in his notes. (The effectiveness of our dice rolls affected how quickly we did things.) That felt very OSR, and I prefer a more narrative approach – if you’re going to have a countdown, make sure the players understand the implications of their actions. The one time this worked was with the rescue balls – we knew they had only two hours of air, and it was touch and go whether we would rescue them all.

Notebook, character sheet - and patch!

There was an interesting subplot about smuggled battledress, which we got hints of. Some of the other players tried to investigate, but I was focused on the rescue. (To make more of the subplot, I would make one of the PCs an undercover agent. Probably not the Chief Medical Officer, though.)

Amusingly, everyone who tried to diagnose the Long Liner’s captain’s injuries failed their roll – badly. (I rolled snake eyes.) So it became a running joke that the captain was hiding his injuries very well.

Anyway, a fun game and a very different to The Last Caravan.

Overall

So that was North Star. I had a lovely day and look forward to returning next year.

Immersion in ttrpgs and larps

Every now and again, I see on Reddit and other places talk about immersion in ttrpgs and larps as being really important.

And because I’m not sure what that really means, I’ve tried to figure it out. 

(Clearly this isn’t the first time anyone has tried to do this, but this is my take on what immersion means to me.)

Define: Immersion

Asking Google (in April 2026) for a definition of immersion brings up this response:

Immersion (noun)

1. the action of immersing someone or something in a liquid.

2. deep mental involvement in something.

Google’s source is Oxford Languages.

#1 Immersion in a liquid

I’m pretty sure nobody in these discussions uses “immersion” to mean being immersed in a liquid. (Although Bubbles is an anthology of hot-tub larps, and Prawn is a larp set in a fish tank and held in a swimming pool. No doubt that players have joked about how immersive those games are. I know I would.)

Immersive experiences

But a broader interpretation of #1 would include immersive experiences, such as immersive theatre (such as Punchdrunk). The closest thing I’ve come to trying one of these was Alien War in London, back in the 1990s. (I’ve written about Alien War before.)

Sometimes these immersive experiences stretch the meaning a little. I think the idea of Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience is that you feel as if you are inside the painting. (I don’t know, I’ve not actually been – despite there being one on my doorstep.)

I’ve not done Bridge Command either. I hear it’s good, though I suspect you have to visit regularly to get the most out of it. If I went to London more regularly, maybe I would try it.

ttrpgs and larp

While I can imagine this kind of immersion in a larp, I don’t for a moment believe that this is what ttrpgers mean when they say immersion. Not unless the ttrpg they are playing is a game about modern-day folk playing tabletop roleplaying games.

And as far as larp goes, I think the idea is that a fully immersive environment lets players inhabit their characters without anything getting in the way.

Which sounds great, but I don’t work like that. I’m never not playing a game, and even immersive environments have elements that arguably drag players out from their immersion. (Some examples: Magic. Tracking wounds. Spectacles. Wheelchairs. Contrails. Power lines. Double-glazing.)

Worse, this kind of what-you-see-is-what-you-get feels a little too re-enactment-y to me. I remember watching magicians in a larp spend minutes casting their spells (drawing patterns in chalk, chanting, etc.), and it looked so boring to me. Can’t I just roll some dice? (And larps where you sleep in character? Ugh – I need breaks!)

Immersion of that sort isn’t a particular draw for me, but what about the second definition?

#2 Deep mental involvement

So this is the kind of immersion that works for me. I can get lost in a book. I can get lost in a video game. And yes, I can get lost in a ttrpg or a  larps.

But strangely, the immersion is different for ttrpgs and larps.

ttrpg/larp immersion as a player

Playing ttrpgs: In ttrpgs, I rarely experience immersion as a player. As a player, there are too many distractions for me to be completely immersed – and that’s not helped by the spotlight nature of ttrpgs. With four players and a completely fair GM, then I am only “playing” for 25% of the time. The rest of the time I am waiting and watching – which is fine, but not particularly compelling, and I’m unlikely to feel “deep mental involvement.” (I hate combat in ttrpgs for this reason. It’s so dull.)

Playing larps: But in larps, the percentage of time that I’m actually playing (rather than waiting or watching) is much, much higher. In the larps I enjoy, pretty much everything I need to resolve my character’s goals is held by other players – so there’s very little downtime. (In a weekend-long freeform larp, I will typically interact with the GMs for only a few minutes in total.) And so I find them much more involving and therefore immersive. The times I hate larps are when I’m bored – which usually means I don’t have enough to “do.”

ttrpg/larp immersion as a GM

As a GM, things are flipped.

GM-ing-ttrpgs: I find GM-ing a ttrpg completely absorbing. I’m fully focused on the players and on managing the game, the rules, and everything else. I’m completely immersed in the game – I don’t have the time to be distracted.

GM-ing larps: But in a larp, particularly the freeform larps I like to write and run and play, GM-ing is often a very passive activity. Once the game is set up and running, players often don’t need the GM. I am often only there for when the players need to interact with the world, and often they don’t need me much at all.

Immersion ≠ staying in character

It’s worth noting that for me, immersion does not mean staying in character. When I’m playing a larp I drop in and out of character quite often – but I’m still completely immersed in the game. (I find it hard to actually stay in character – I’m always playing a game.)

Other forms of immersion

So far so good, but “immersion” seems to have other meanings in ttrpgs and larps.

Immersion = staying in character

Having said that, for me, immersion does not mean staying in character; I recognise that the opposite is true for others. (As I’ve said, I’m lousy at staying in character.)

In fact, the Nordic Larp Wiki has this definition for immersion: Immersion" refers to a state of mind where a player does not need to actively suspend disbelief in the fictional universe, and where role-playing flows as naturally and easily as if you really were the character.

So I think this is about how much a player feels like they are their character and that they are in the game world. How real does it feel in their imagination?

If so, then immersion-breakers are things (in the rules or how the game is played) that pull players out of the game and their characters. (I’m not quite sure why things like rolling dice don’t pull you out of character, but presumably they don’t.)

While I see this in others (or hear about it in larp stories), it’s not something I experience myself. That’s because it’s always a game; I’m always just Steve. (Some people cry. I’ve never cried in a game.)

But maybe it’s a campaign thing? I suspect that over a number of sessions, ttrpg players become attached to long-running characters and may experience this kind of connection. I’ve never played a campaign longer than a dozen sessions or so; I’m usually itching to play something else by that point. So that’s never been me.

Anyway, as I’ve explained, that’s never been me.

Breaking immersion: collaborative world-building

When I am a GM, I like my players to help build the world. I’m a fan of Jason Cordova’s “paint the scene,” so when my PCs enter a new location or meet a new NPC, I might ask them something like, “What tells you that the owner of this store is struggling to get by?” 

But some players don’t like this. As far as I can tell, they feel that the GM should come up with these details. It’s suggested that answering meta-questions like this will break their immersion. 

(As a player, I like this sort of thing.)

Is immersion a player-only thing?

There may also be a player/GM difference. I’ve seen it suggested that those of us who are GMs first and players second (which is certainly true of me), don’t lose their GM-mindset when playing, so they still think about the metagame rather than getting wrapped up in their character.

And as a result, the feeling of character immersion (however you measure it) may be less important to them than to someone who is mostly a player.

But that’s just a theory. I don’t think it’s been tested.

Immersion: Am I any clearer?

Yes, I think so.

For me, immersion is important – but for me it’s the kind of immersion that means I am fully absorbed by something. (And even then, I don’t get that from all aspects of playing ttrpgs and larps.)

The other kinds of immersion? Not so much.

Peaky 2026

I played two great games at Peaky 2026: Triremes in Space and Grease Point Blank. (These are working titles and may change.)

Triremes in Space

Triremes in Space is a 12-player game of Ancient Greeks in space, written by Helen Jones, Megan Jones, Michael Jones, and Ewan Munro. 

Hang on, Ancient Greeks in space? Yes - and this isn't even an original idea! As Megan explained to me afterwards, she was inspired by the second-century travelogue/novella A True Story by Lucian of Samosata, in which Lucian and his crew are blown into space and have a series of adventures. I've never heard of it before, and it's arguably the first ever SF story. 

Spider battle from A True History by William Strang, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Anyway, I was playing Selene of Luna, leader of the Moon people. And I was meeting humans from Terrus for the first time - Spartans, Corinthians and Athenians. All hated each other, and yet I somehow needed to get them to help me with my problem with the sacred cows on the Morning Star...

Structurally, Triremes in Space starts with four factions, with three characters (broadly a leader, a ship's pilot and a warrior - although some factions may have had a different mix). The factions may be enemies or allies – or in the case of the Moon people, unknown.

The Moon people were delightfully alien, and as I was meeting humans for the first time, I enjoyed misunderstanding them and (hopefully) being unclear.

Amazingly, I achieved all my important goals - although it turned out that one of my advisors was deeply dodgy, and I had no idea!

It was also helpful having one of the authors (Ewan) as my other advisor. Inevitably, we hit bits of lore that hadn't been fully explored, and he provided the explanation while also filing the question and answer away for later.

Grease Point Blank

Grease Point Blank is a 12-player 1969 high-school reunion game inspired partly by the movies Grease and Grosse Point Blank. It was written by Nickey Barnard, Philippa Dall, Heidi Kaye, Tony Mitton and Christi S.

I couldn't believe my luck when I opened my character sheet: I was playing the John Cusack character! Okay, I'm trying not to spoil this, so I'm not going to say who I was playing or what happened. But it was so much fun, there was angst, drama, unexpected attention and maybe even murder.

I think my favourite moment was a completely unexpected conversation with Graham, but the game was filled with lovely moments.

Other games

Two other games were also written at Peaky 2026. I didn’t play them, but it sounded like they went well.

For The Greater Good by Adam Hayes, Kirstine Heald, Kevin Jacklin, Peter Jones, and Julie Winnard. Strange goings on in an English village for 8 players.

Lord Gount's Expedition by Clare Gardner, Martin Jones, Alli Mawhinney and Rich Perry. Sailpunk, for 8 doomed players. (I may have got the title for this one wrong.)

And you'll notice I didn't write a game this time. That's because I started, but it didn't work out. That happens sometimes. I ended up talking about Cafe Casablanca and helped proofread For the Greater Good.

Sunday game scheduling

And I have to say, Sunday was lovely. Only four games were running, and that meant that instead of trying to cram three sessions and lunch into about seven hours, everything was much more leisurely. 

So our schedule was:

• 8:30-9:30 Breakfast
• 9:30-12:30 First game slot (Triremes in Space and For the Greater Good)
• 12:30-13:30 Lunch
• 13:30-16:30 Second game slot (Grease Point Blank and Lord Gount's Expedition)

So that was a very leisurely three hours for each game. Nothing felt rushed, and we had loads of time for feedback and relaxing between games. 

(Sometimes we have six games running at Peaky. So that means an additional slot, and all the slots are only two hours long with very little space in between. And lunch is either very early or very late. And no, we can't push into the evening because some people have to leave, and others want to just chill after a busy weekend.)

I'd like to suggest we do that every Peaky, but that means having more games that aren't ready to be run. Is that a bad thing? Maybe not.

Click here to learn more about Peaky.

Fate of the Sky Raiders session #4: Confrontation with Kalamanaru

I’m running FASA’s 1982 Traveller adventure Fate of the Sky Raiders, and this is my report of our fourth and final session (which is also session #15 of our overall Sky Raiders campaign).

Last time was session #3.

Not too many spoilers here, although I’ve included my overall feelings of how the campaign went, so that will be more spoilery.

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).

The players are also playing some of the NPCs: Technologies expert Dr Heinrich Chandragora (Terry), Vargr geologist Dr Goezghae (Tom), and linguistic archaeology specialist Dr Viedistart Mirost (Thomas).

The situation

I spent the gap between sessions working out the results of last week’s montage.

I decided that Kalamanaru arrived aboard the 800-ton Explorer-class ship the PCs had arrived on, along with a 400-ton subsidised merchant and two obsolete (but still dangerous) 400-ton Zhodani destroyers.

The PCs lured Kalamanaru to a docking bay of their choice, and once Kalamanaru’s modular cutter had docked, the PCs opened fire with the refurbished pulse lasers. The asteroid’s guns quickly knocked out one destroyer and crippled the other, but the two other ships moved out of the laser turret’s firing arcs.

However, inside the docking bay, things weren’t so great as training hadn’t gone so well, and the Gardeners turned out to be terrible shots.

So, we have Kalamanaru’s cutter in the docking bay (now pressurised, with the docking bay doors sealed), with his men trapped inside while the PCs watch from outside. Meanwhile, Kalamanaru’s other two ships are out of sight, doing something.

What do the Travellers do?

The firefight

A brief chat with Kalamanaru made it clear that negotiations weren’t going to be easy, so the Travellers decided to take a more forceful approach.

They knew their weapons were no use against the cutter’s hull, so they decided to remove one of the pulse lasers from the asteroid ship’s turrets. (They had manufactured/printed replacements for these, so dismantling the laser wasn’t a huge job.) They jury-rigged a mount for it, and wheeled it to the end of an access shaft – and shot at the cutter.

In response, Kalamanaru sent two men to attack the pulse-laser crew, but the PCs got the drop on them and fired the pulse laser again. The second shot ruptured a fuel tank and boom; the battle was over.

(I hadn’t expected they would use ship-mounted weapons, so there was lots of flipping backwards and forwards through the rules as I looked up pulse laser damage and critical hit locations for ships.)

After that, Kalamanaru surrendered, ending the campaign.

Aftermath

We talked generally about what would happen next. Clearly, the societies aboard the asteroid ship would be in turmoil as news of outsiders spread. (Plus turmoil created as scientists come to study the ship.)

The asteroid ship itself is within the borders of the little-documented Mnemosyne Principality, and I like to think that they are granted some space on one of their worlds. (Curiously, there’s nothing about the principality in Fate of the Sky Raiders.) But for our heroes, it was time to retire.

I wish I had remembered to cap the campaign off with an epilogue from each of the players – a scene from the future. But the discussion rambled into a general look back at the campaign, and I forgot.

Reflections on a campaign

Although short by many GMs’ standards, this 16-session ttrpg campaign (including session zero) was the longest I’ve ever run. I was starting to tire of it by the end, but that may be because I found Fate of the Sky Raiders so hard to run.

(My players kindly said that they hadn’t noticed that I was finding Fate difficult.)

So while I thought that the first two parts were great, I didn’t enjoy Fate of the Sky Raiders. My initial instincts from 1982 were that it would be hard to run, and I was right.

We talked a bit about the asteroid ship and whether it should have had a robot maintenance crew. That’s very SF, but that’s not very Traveller. 

I mentioned that the original book had jump-capable ships aboard that the PCs could potentially find, but that I’d removed them because I couldn’t imagine someone not taking them 5,000 years ago, when the ship was adrift with no engines. Terry pointed out that things can be lost for unknown reasons, but while I can accept that there might be jump-capable ships aboard, I need the adventure to explain a) why they hadn’t already been taken, and b) why the PCs would now be able to find and repair them (as opposed to anyone else).

Overall, I think Fate of the Sky Raiders needs a lot of work. (I know Mongoose are working on an update.) Some thoughts if I were rewriting it (and not changing it completely):

• I would include an overall map of the ship. Perhaps a nodemap, but at least something to give the players a sense of scale and space.
• I would include examples of the different societies, their relations with one another, how they have survived for 5,000 years, and dilemmas and challenges for the PCs. If I were including random tables, I’d make them easy to use during play. I wouldn’t leave it all to the poor Referee!
• I would create a plan for Kalamanaru’s forces, with a series of events. I would have him arrive at a specific location, meet specific inhabitants (who react accordingly), and then move on. This would give the GM something that the characters can hear about and react to.
• I might even plant the seed of something valuable in the ship in the earlier adventures to give the PCs something to aim for. A specific treasure or technology, perhaps.

And of course, actually think about the ship and make it more realistic than it currently is. It has been drifting for 5,000 years and is still inhabited; what does that actually mean?

Colony ships

Here’s a recent YouTube video that examines three entries to Project Hyperion, which explores the feasibility of crewed interstellar travel via generation ships using current and near-future technologies.  Not quite the same as our Sky Raiders’ ship (if nothing else, the Sky Raiders can use artificial gravity), but the concept of keeping a vast ship and its crew and passengers viable for hundreds of years is the same.

I particularly like Proximum, the asteroid ship, which has a governance system based on The Fourth Turning by Strauss and Howe. The Fourth Turning argues that every generation fails to learn the lessons from two generations back. Proximum takes a nicely SF approach to deal with this by having a three-part governance structure:

• The council: Elected representatives making day-to-day decisions.
• Apollo: An AI supporting those decisions – containing all the records so that nothing is lost.
• The Chorus: At age 65, members can enter hibernation and be periodically revived as advisors. These advisors carry the lived memory – while Apollo knows that a famine happened, it cannot convey what it feels like to ration food to your children.

I know that’s way more sophisticated than I have any right to expect from a 45-year-old Traveller adventure, but it’s the sort of thing I hope Mongoose are thinking about.

As for me, I’m glad I didn’t come across this before running the campaign, as I might have been tempted to rework Fate of the Sky Raiders even more than I did, and that’s not really what I want when I’m running a published adventure.

The Sky Raiders campaign in numbers

So anyway, that was the longest campaign I’ve ever run. It was enough – I don’t know how other groups run and play campaigns for much longer. I was ready for a change.

Here are some numbers.

• 32/16: We started on 11th August 2025 with character generation and ended on 23rd March 2026. That’s 32 weeks of calendar time, but we only played for 16 sessions. We try to play every week, but there are occasional breaks. (I think we had a break of over a month for Christmas.)
• 7/5/4: Of our 16 sessions, we spent seven on Legend of the Sky Raiders (including session zero and character generation), five on Trail of the Sky Raiders and four on Fate of the Sky Raiders. In theory, Fate could have stretched out for many more sessions, but I was tired and wanted to draw the campaign to a close.
• 2/30: Our sessions are two hours long, but they often start a little late, and we are easily distracted. I suspect we played for around 30 hours.
• 3/4/3: Most of the time, I had three players. I started with Terry, Jon and Thomas. Tom then joined in September, and Jon dropped out in November.

We’re now taking a break for the Easter holidays, and when we return, we will start something completely different…

Previously: Session #3: To the bridge!

Or start right back at the beginning with my review of Legend of the Sky Raiders. (And here are my reviews of Trail of the Sky Raiders and Fate of the Sky Raiders.)

Fate of the Sky Raiders session #3: To the bridge!

I’m running FASA’s 1982 Traveller adventure Fate of the Sky Raiders, and this is my report of our third session (which is also session #14 of our overall Sky Raiders campaign).

Last time was session #2.

I have deviated drastically from the text, so this isn’t very spoilery now.

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).

The players are also playing some of the NPCs: Technologies expert Dr Heinrich Chandragora (Terry), Vargr geologist Dr Goezghae (Tom), and linguistic archaeology specialist Dr Viedistart Mirost (Thomas).

Exposition dumps

This episode was full of exposition dumps. At the end of the last episode, the Travellers had helped the Gardeners of Continuance by fixing their nutrient problem. But this took time, so I asked the players for a scene involving their characters. This turned into a protracted discussion session as they and the Gardeners shared knowledge.

Here’s what we discussed. (Or at least, this is what I remember based on my memory and my notes. I expect I missed things.)

• The PCs continued to learn the language, and we left that in the background. (Nobody had an appetite for roleplaying that.)
• The PCs are still interested in getting to the bridge, which they learn is controlled by a faction called the Synod. They control signals to the processing equipment the Gardeners need, and in return for use of the machines, the Gardeners trade food with them.
• This is one part of the ship – other factions control other areas of the ship. The Gardeners are conservative and haven’t explored the ship much. They are happy where they are.
• There are designs in the 3D printer software that the Gardeners no longer have access to. (These include weapons and components that haven’t been needed for thousands of years.)
• The Gardeners do have some antique Sky Raiders artefacts and items – including masks made of precious metals and jewels. These are sacred objects.
• The PCs explain that bad people (Kalamanaru) will be coming, and they will want to steal the sacred artefacts.

At this point, the players are wondering if this has turned into the Magnificent Seven…

The main bridge

After a failed attempt to hack into the printer software for more useful components (eg better weapons), the PCs realise that they need to speak to the Synod (who occupy the main bridge), and they are escorted to the main bridge and the Synod. (Lorain and all the NPCs are left behind as captives to ensure our three heroes don’t do anything foolish. This also means I can concentrate on the PCs without having to worry about the scientist NPCs.)

We are in danger of repeating everything again, so we cut it short and jump straight to a skill roll, with Sir Sidderon’s social standing and Mustafa’s stewardship supporting Felix’s persuade roll. If the roll failed, we agreed it would mean the PCs were locked up, and we would put the NPC scientists in the spotlight. Fortunately, it succeeded!

(We’ve been talking about printing advanced weapons and armour using the 3D printers, and it’s at this point that I realise that, as I’ve been assuming that the ship has been repeatedly patched and components replaced, the Sky Raiders ought to have been able to completely rebuild their jump and manoeuvre drives. Ah, well, too late to worry about that now. I don’t mention this to the players.)

An amazing TL 9/10 control room

The plan that didn’t quite come together

The players then spent a while creating a plan to deal with Kalamanaru. Their eventual plan involved creating a Sky Raiders-y signal to lure Kalamanaru to a particular location where he could be ambushed.

Tom suggested this could be a montage, and because each player had two PCs, I suggest it had six steps. If they succeeded in four, then the plan would work!

Prepare the signal: Dr Mirost prepared a Sky Raiders signal that would draw Kalamanaru to the right place. (We didn’t actually specify exactly where. If it all works, we won’t need to know where.) 

Printing better weapons: Dr Goezghae used his computer skills to print better quality weapons. Guards aboard the ship had been using cheap-to-print assault rifles (AK-47 type things), but they started replacing them with advanced combat rifles and grenades. And they printed armour.

Refurbish the laser turrets: Dr Chandragora printed new components for the laser turrets and refurbished them, focusing on where Kalamanaru’s forces were expected to be lured.

Training the locals: Sir Sidderon trained the locals in the more modern weaponry.

Sensors: Mustafa used his drones to monitor Kalamanaru’s progress once Kalamanaru arrived.

Ambush tactics: Felix planned the ambush using the local forces.

And how did they do? Well, it wasn’t great.

The first three rolls were really good – with results of 12, 12 and 11 (a total effect of 11). And then it all went wrong, and the next three rolls failed badly (results of 4, 4 and 6), almost wiping out the overall effect. We ended up on an effect of 1, which I ruled was a stalemate with a slight advantage to the PCs.

So Kalamanaru created a beachhead aboard the massive asteroid ship, and we would resolve the situation next week.

Next time

It's time for the campaign finale! But first, I need to figure out what the current situation is. My instinct is that Kalamanaru is trapped on board, and the players have crippled (but not completely defeated) Kalamanaru’s flotilla. We’ll see.

Next: Confrontation with Kalamanaru

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

Fate of the Sky Raiders session #2: The Sky Raiders' descendants

I’m running FASA’s 1982 Traveller adventure Fate of the Sky Raiders, and this is my report of our second session (which is also session #13 of our overall Sky Raiders campaign).

Last time was session #1.

I am now deviating from the text a fair bit, so I’m not sure how spoilery this is.

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).

I started the session by asking the players to also play one of the NPCs, as I was struggling to juggle everything, and they were being forgotten. So Terry took alien technologies expert Dr Heinrich Chandragora, Tom played Vargr geologist Dr Goezghae, and Thomas played linguistic archaeology specialist Dr Viedistart Mirost. I love how those names just trip off the tongue…

With that sorted, we did a brief recap, and the PCs resumed their push to the main bridge. Next module: an industrial complex.

ChatGPT preparation

Between this session and the last, I had done a little prep. I’d decided that it and the agricultural module behind it would be inhabited by the same group: the Gardeners of Continuance, a conservative faction who didn’t like change. However, their plants were suffering from a nutritional deficiency caused by an unknown defect in their fertiliser production process. They were also slavers and used slaves (from the Pilgrimage of the Silent Vector faction) to operate the machinery in the industrial complex. The PCs would encounter the slaves first.

I had spent a fair bit of time with ChatGPT trying to work out what was going on in the asteroid ship. I decided I didn’t want the ship to be failing – it made it a bit too convenient for the PCs to arrive just in time to save the inhabitants.

So instead, the ship (they call it Elan, or home) is in a delicate balance. Everything is recycled, nothing goes to waste. There are signs of repairs everywhere. However, this also meant that anyone who couldn’t contribute (the old and injured) would be ruthlessly recycled. Elan isn’t Utopia.

Of course, this also meant that the inhabitants would have guns – easily repaired or printed using the 3D printers.

I’m now well off-script as far as Fate of the Sky Raiders is concerned.

First contact

I had a list of slave characters the PCs could meet, and I decided that the first two they would encounter were Virel (who thinks the Travellers are rescuers) and Orren (who wants to escape slavery).

First though, I had to decide what to do about the language. Not wanting to force the players to spend half the game tediously learning the language, I decided that the language was a highly corrupted form of old Vilani and that the scientists (especially the linguists) would quickly be able to translate. So once we had a couple of successful rolls under our belts, I dropped any further rolls, and we roleplayed normally. (I may force occasional rolls in critical situations, however.)

So Virel and Orren met the PCs and found them a hiding place away from the guards. Over the next couple of days, the slaves would pop back when they could and explain what was going on. (So Virel and Orren explained much of the situation described above, including the problem with the fertiliser production process.)

Player discussions

That prompted an interesting discussion among the players about whether they should interfere in the ship’s society. (Particularly over things like slavery and recycling the old.) Of course, one of them noted that when Kalamanaru arrives, the society will be interfered with anyway…

We also discussed the Travellers’ big-picture goal, and they decided they still wanted to reach the main bridge and determine what was actually working to prepare for Kalamanaru’s arrival.

The agricultural complex

To reach the main bridge, they needed to pass through the agricultural complex. And that meant meeting the Gardeners. (Perhaps there was a way around, but the Travellers didn’t have a map, and who knows what they would have encountered had they tried that…)

However, they asked their friendly slaves if there were any overlooked access tunnels they could use, and sure enough, there were. That brought the PCs to a maintenance hatch looking out onto one of the huge dodecahedral farming voids, filled with plants, vertical farms, livestock, more slaves working the fields, and armed guards.

The PCs need to get to the other side of the farming void, so they decide to bluff it out and march across the farms as if they belong.

It works for a bit, but soon they draw a crowd, stopping their progress. As the crowd pulled at their spacesuits and unfamiliar gear, Nysa, the habita governor, approached. She brought them to a central room, which was much more lavish than the Travellers had seen previously, with Sky Raider art and valuables. There, the PCs asked for Nysa’s help in leading them to the ship’s main bridge. In return, Nysa asked for help in fixing the problem with the crops.

So that allowed us to create a skill chain (we like skill chains) to identify the problem, source an appropriate mineral supplement and fix the fertiliser production machines.

Of course, it was going to take time for all this to have any observable effect, but it becomes apparent that it has worked. Hurrah!

We are now on day 14. Kalamanaru might arrive any day now (but I reckon the Travellers have a few more days yet).

Sandbox problems

Tom mentioned that he was having trouble parsing the game because there was no map of the asteroid ship. (And there is no overall map in Fate of the Sky Raiders – just some fairly useless deck plans.)

And it’s a fair point. I don’t actually know where they are in the ship right now. I hope it doesn’t matter…

But my main issue is the scale of the ship, the vast cast of NPCs (both the scientists and the inhabitants) and how little support the GM is given. Frankly, I’m finding Fate of the Sky Raiders itself almost unusable, as I’m finding I need to invent so much. That’s not why I run published adventures! If Mongoose ever get around to their rewrite of the Sky Raiders trilogy, this final third needs a thorough rethink as it is by far the weakest.

Next time

With the machinery fixed and the plants returning to health, the PCs plan to continue on to the main bridge. Assuming that Nysa lets them, that is…

But first, given that they’ve just spent over a week in the company of the Gardeners, I might get them to narrate some scenes showing what they’ve been up to.

Next: Session #3: To the bridge!

Previously: Session #1: The asteroid ship, or start right back at the beginning with my review of Legend of the Sky Raiders.