Tested a Chat app and ran a Traveller game too

[Gene]

Hey everyone, just wanted to share our epic Friday night – it was a total blast! The guys and gals from the sci-fi group joined me for some fun adventure. We dove into our first Traveller game session using the https://battleward.com website, and let me tell you, it was something else! We were testing out this new chat system that's got video chat capabilities. It’s called Rocket chat, an open-source thing that you host yourself. It means you need your own website and web hosting service to get it going, but once you do, it’s like your own secure little corner of the internet. You can set up public chat rooms or even go secret-agent style with password-protected private rooms. Pretty cool!

Our main goal was to give this Rocket chat a whirl, but we also wanted to dive deeper into a Traveller adventure. And guess what? The night was a massive hit! It was only our second time playing Traveller, and it totally knocked our Discord experience out of the park.

So, our adventure ended up being set on this ancient, unknown 300-year-old Merchant/Freighter, Type-MJ, just floating around a massive asteroid. It had been damaged, either by hits with asteroids and meteors, or energy weapons. Or both! I put together some custom deck plans for the ship so everyone could keep track of where they were, especially when they decided to split up (which happened quite a bit). Picture this: no power on the ship, pitch-black everywhere, and no air to breathe – spooky, right? So, our explorers had to suit up in these low-tech TL-10 vacuum suits (that was all they had available on the players ship!) to venture through this eerie, derelict ship. It felt like they were astronauts on some long-forgotten space mission. The suits' lights were the only things piercing through the absolute darkness, creating these intense, shadowy scenes as the adventurers explored.

The Traveller session was chock-full of exploration and surprises. There were dangers lurking around every corner! I kept the ship layout under wraps, so every time the players entered a new stateroom or compartment, I had to do a quick roll on this nifty table I whipped up. The thing’s a game-changer – it ensures that no two playthroughs will ever be the same.

The real kicker was in the engineering section. I rolled and they got an encounter... The crew ran into this space fungus called solominous kreupanan fungi – nasty stuff (Yeah. I made the name up on the spur of the moment). It probably hitched a ride on some cargo or stowaway and managed to spread like wildfire, even in the vacuum. Turns out, this funky fungus was likely what knocked out the ship’s power. The twist? This plant had a mean defense mechanism. Our adventurers found out the hard way since they totally skipped reading the onboard database, which, you know, had all the important details on this space plant.

Two of our players got injured by the fungus when it managed to get on their suits, and while they made it out without kicking the bucket, after they patched their vac suits, every time they did something strenuous, they had to roll against an average of their STR & INT just to stay conscious from the pain. Spoiler: nobody passed out, but there were some close calls.

We had our fair share of other close shaves and a ton of laughs. The game kicked off at 6 pm and we rolled all the way through to 2 am, with a few pit stops for food and bio breaks. And get this – the players didn't get to explore the whole ship. There were whole sections they didn't even touch because it was pitch black and nobody wanted to rush in blindly. Was the ship empty of crew and other "things"? Only time will tell.

So, was this a full-blown gaming session? Well, not exactly. It was more about testing out the new chat system, but hey, any excuse to game, right? And the chat system? Worked like a charm, just as it said on the website. I'll still keep looking around for a simpler but just as versatile live voice chat system, however.

Can't wait to see when we can do this again!

Until then, keep those dice rolling!
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The stats for the ship are as follows:
Ship: Aster
Class: Rose
Type: Merchant/Freighter
Architect: Brant & Michaels
Tech Level: 11
USP
M-B223352-240000-45000-0 MCr 1,559.935 2.5 KTons
Bat Bear 1 12
Bat 1 12
Crew: 34
Passengers: 12
Low:10
Cargo: 310.000
Fuel: 1,075.000
EP: 75.000
Agility: 1
Ships Troops: 2
Craft: 1 x 10T Ship's Launch, 1 x 50T Ship's Shuttle
Fuel Treatment: Fuel Scoops and On Board Fuel Purification
Cost in Quantity: MCr 1,247.948
Architects Fee: MCr 15.599

Detailed Description

• TONNAGE
  2,500.000 tons standard, 35,000.000 cubic meters, Flattened Cone Configuration
• DIMENSIONS
  30 meters Wide x 15 meters High x 60 meters Long, 5 decks
  98.4 feet Wide x 49.2 feet High x 196.8 feet Long
• CREW
  11 Officers, 23 Ratings
• ENGINEERING
  Jump-2, 3G Manuever, Power plant-3, 75.000 EP, Agility 1
• AVIONICS
  Bridge, Model/5 Computer
• HARDPOINTS
  2 x 50-ton bays, 4 x Hardpoints
• ARMARMENT
  2 x 50-ton Plasma Gun Bays (Factor-5), 3 x Triple Beam Laser Turrets in 1 Battery (Factor-4)
• DEFENCES
  1 x Triple Sandcaster Turret in 1 Battery (Factor-4), Armored Hull (Factor-2)
• CRAFT
  1 x 10T Ship's Launch (Crew of 1), 1 x 50T Ship's Shuttle (Crew of 2)
• FUEL
  1,025.000 Tons Fuel (4 parsecs jump and 30 days endurance)
  On Board Fuel Scoops, On Board Fuel Purification Plant
• MISCELLANEOUS
  32 Staterooms, 10 Low Berths, 310 Tons Cargo
• COST
  MCr 1,575.534 Singly (incl. Architects fees of MCr 15.599), MCr 1,247.948 in Quantity
• CONSTRUCTION TIME
  136 Weeks Singly, 109 Weeks in Quantity

Pretty nice ship. If it hadn't been for... HA! I'm not telling.

I'll try to post the deck plans and some pictures of the ship.

[Gene]

Located within the Dark Nebula sector, Khtoaikta subsector.

CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE

The green line is the route the players took to get to the search area. The white dots are where they either stopped or had a directional change. The red dot is where they found the derelict. I have to say, they weren't looking for the derelict, they were looking for something else but totally forgot about it when they saw the abandoned freighter. The fuchsia circle is the location of the parsec where the object in question (no, not the freighter) is supposed to be located.

[Gene]

The silhouette of the mysterious ship.

Unknown_Ship_Silhouette.png (11.46 KiB) Viewed 1046 times

[Gene]

This is for those who players who couldn't visualize the derelict ship that we had our most recent Traveller game aboard. So, to help in visualization I finished the line drawing of the derelict ship. I began drawing the derelict ship a few weeks before the Traveller game. I just didn't finish it before the game. Sorry. The little smudge on the lower left corner is a human figure, used as a size comparison.

Also, we still don't have a name for the ship, and no one asked if there were any identifiers on the hull. So, without further ado, the unknown ship...

Derelict ship

CLICK ON THE IMAGE TO ENLARGE

Note: It's an approximate visual, but it's closer to the size and shape, than the silhouettes I posted.

[Gene]

I hope what's explained below helps someone with their CT adventure. Honestly, it was cobbled together at the spur-of-the-moment, but sometimes those kinds of things work out better than those that are meticulously planned.

In the vein of low berths and staterooms, in a recent unplanned gaming session, a tense scenario unfolded aboard a TL-10 freighter in deep space. The vessel, carrying six player characters and four NPCs – forming a crew of ten – found itself in the crosshairs of a rogue Aslan Hierate force, better known as “space pirates”. The character's Solomani registered freighter was in the Khtoaikta sub-sector, one jump north of the system Sequel.

The skirmish was intense, lasting several nerve-wracking hours. The freighter's captain, drawing on years of hard-earned experience, masterfully orchestrated his ship's defenses. His tactical prowess inflicted enough damage on the assailants' vessel, that the pirates were forced to retreat. However, victory came at a cost. A nuclear missile unleashed by the Aslan got a proximity hit on the freighter, knocking out the jump drive and decimating the rear upper cargo hold and practically obliterating the food stores. Luckily, no one was severely injured or killed.
In the aftermath, a few of the crew, clad in vacuum suits, mounted a desperate and probably hopeless salvage operation. However, their efforts bore fruit, recovering several days' worth of provisions from what was left of the wrecked cargo hold. And one of the food processors looked repairable!

To assess the gravity of their situation, I crunched some numbers based on standard space travel provisions: I figured each crew member requires 2 kg of food per day. Considering the typical duration for a jump (7 days) and an additional 30-day loitering period, plus a 3-day emergency ration, the crew would need 40 days' worth of sustenance.

For a crew of ten, that equates to:
2 kg (4.4 lbs)/person/day × 10 people × 40 days = 800 kg (or 1760 lbs)

As for storage, the food supplies would require a pantry with the space of about 3m x 3m x 2m. However, to facilitate easy access and organization of base food, a more spacious arrangement, say 5m x 5m x 3m, would be ideal. As to why the base provisions were located in the rear upper cargo hold? It's near the mess deck and food processors are located in the rear upper cargo hold. One day's worth of base provisions are preloaded into the processors and are kept that way by whomever has mess duty.

In a gesture of generosity, I considered the dire circumstances and decided to moderate the impact on the crew's provisions. From the original 800 kg of food obliterated in the missile strike, a fortuitous 200 kg were miraculously salvaged from the chaos. This left them with a tenuous 10-day lifeline of provisions. Fortunately, the freighter's potable water supply was undamaged.

The crew, in a bid to secure their suddenly precious cache, opted to repurpose an empty stateroom as their makeshift pantry. The room was promptly sealed, its entrance locked to safeguard their dwindling supplies. The need for refrigeration was moot. The freighter's marvel of engineering, the ship's food processor, was a culinary champion. These base provisions, though humble in form, could be transformed to mimic any desired flavor or cuisine. With a few button presses, the processor promised to deliver a semblance of gastronomic normalcy, even as the shadows of scarcity loomed. Although the crew might go a hungry, they wouldn't starve. If the food processor could be repaired. And in a dire emergency, the base provisions could be eaten as is, they still provided nutrition and some bulk, despite being tasteless with the texture and consistency of wet clay. Regardless, the provisions could be stretched out until they could get to a port.

Eighteen days later, after barely being able to repair the jump drive, sans the food processor, the freighter safely limped into port at Sequel. And the adventure continued...