Editing SGA 2006 Archive (section)

=The Voyage of the Olympic=
[[Image:Olympic.jpg|thumb|The ''Olympic'']]

; Game System
: [http://www.heliograph.com/space1889/ Space: 1889]
; Pitch
: The adventure will take place on a ship called the S.S. ''Olympic'', a massive cruise liner making its way to Mars. The ''Olympic'' is swinging high above the ecliptic to make the very first close-range observation of Rackham's Comet.  This shall be a Triumph of British Spacemanship and result in all kinds of juicy advances in Science.
::<blockquote style="background:aliceblue; border:1px solid black; padding:1em">My original concept was 1889 + Aliens + Deep Impact + Fred Saberhagen.</blockquote>
; Game Master
: Johnzo
; Players
: 6
; Characters
: Edmund: MAJOR KENTEGERN TROUBLEFIELD, VC, CMG, DSO, a soldier en route to his post on Mars.
: Kev: DOCTOR ALFRED MOUSER, an expert British zoologist and a bit of a tippler.
: Sophie: DOCTOR KORNELJA BREZINSKA, a Polish doctor and scientist, now residing in France.
: Laura: MISS GEORGINA FINCH, a photographer from America.
: Kerri: MRS. MADDIE STOCKTON WEST, a rich widow from America.
: Mark: CAPTAIN SIR NIGEL S. S. WENTWORTH III, M.V.O, Master of the ''Olympic.''
; Date
: November 27 and December 4, 2006
::<blockquote style="background:aliceblue; border:1px solid black; padding:.5em">This game was scheduled for two nights so that in the first night, the characters could break something, and the second night, they could try to put it right.  I figured this would be a good way to drive emotional investment.  I'm still trying to figure out how do a good single-session game.</blockquote>
; Technical Notes
: Streamlined version of the system; the rules for Invention were not used.  All characters were pregens, based on  players' requests.
::<blockquote style="background:aliceblue; border:1px solid black; padding:.5em">The 1889 rules were tough to read and understand, and it didn't seem like a worthwhile use of our time to explore, so I used only one rule in the game: the roll-1d6-under-your-score-to-succeed.   We freeformed off those results.  I tried to remember to set stakes in advance of the roll but often failed to do so.''</blockquote>
::<blockquote style="background:aliceblue; border:1px solid black; padding:.5em">The first session was mostly traditional and simulationist, with a fixed scenario presented by the GM, although the "whatever sounds good" solution to the worm infestation was No Myth, as I understand that.</blockquote>
; Recaps
: FIRST SESSION
The PC's were passengers aboard the ''Olympic'', except for Mark, who was the ship's captain of the ship.  All were seated at the Captain's table for the close approach to the comet.
::<blockquote style="background:aliceblue; border:1px solid black; padding:.5em">The player characters were the only interesting people on board.   Everyone else was an ineffectual aristocrat or an untested spacer.  I've been on a no-NPC kick for awhile, and this was part of that.</blockquote>
: The approach revealed something unexpected, though -- a series of artificial installations built into the ice of the comet, and a small crashed Earth ship not far from them.
: The ''Olympic'' investigated, sending the PCs down aboard her auxiliary, the ''Ajax''.  
::<blockquote style="background:aliceblue; border:1px solid black; padding:.5em">Everyone at the table had a good reason to join the expedition, and Mark brought them all along.  I hate those things in Star Trek where people wind up split between the ship and the surface, so this was nice.</blockquote>
: They discovered an unconscious Persian, apparently concussed, aboard the derelict ship.  In the pockets of his spacesuit, they found two long, extruded hexagons of pure ruby.  These piqued interest.
: The Persian became delirious and had seizures.  The crew restrained him, left him in Maddie's care and went on to explore the other installations.
: The comet contained an observation viewer showing a perfect, real-time high-resolution view of London and other Earth cities.  Other installations contained perfectly preserved dinosaur and mammal specimens from the Late Triassic era.  A great wide shaft led into the core, where the characters found a difference engine as big as a palace.
: Aboard Ajax, while Maddie watched, the Persian's head detached, grew spider legs from its stump, and ran for the ship's head.  Maddie took a shot at him and missed.  The crew barricaded him into the ship's head.  He chewed his way out through the toilet gasket and disappeared onto the surface of the comet, where he skittered away.
: Down in the shaft, Troublefield, Wentworth, and Brezinska explored the interior of the difference engine -- it had gaps large enough to float around in.  They found the ruby-rod hopper and an engraving machine and deduced that this was some kind of data storage system.  
: A peculiar species of inchworm floated in the zero gravity of the cometary interior.  These worms were attracted to the carbide mining lanterns of the spacers.  The spacers didn't take any notice of these worms until they snuffed out the lanterns.
: Then a worm got into Troublefield's air tube and from there into his helmet.  As he flailed in his helmet, it chewed a hole in his cheek.  He bit it in half and swallowed bits of it.
::<blockquote style="background:aliceblue; border:1px solid black; padding:.5em">I was hoping someone would be infected with the worm, and Ed was the lucky recipient.</blockquote>
: As they retreated, the Persian's head scuttled past them into the depths of the difference engine.  It had observed enough of the Terran's technology to decide to trigger the comet's berserker protocol.  The characters, too freaked out by their worm encounter, and without their carbide lights, did not pursue it.
: The comet's thrusters fired up as the ''Ajax'' was egressing.  ''Ajax'' was slammed into the side of the shaft.  
:The ship emerged from the comet to discover that the comet's thrust had knocked the ''Olympic'' spinning off into space, and that the comet was now on a collision course with Earth!
: SECOND SESSION
::<blockquote style="background:aliceblue; border:1px solid black; padding:.5em">When I prepped this, I didn't have a concrete plan at all for session two, just for session one.  We'd put enoughterrain into play in the first session; I was confident that people would do interesting things with it.   Also, there was no Kerri for this session so her character faded into the background.</blockquote>
: The ''Ajax'' five reboarded ''Olympic'' and commenced damage control.  The ship was in bad shape; her boiler was unable to hold pressure, her interplanetary heliograph was destroyed, and her first officer was dead, leaving the inexperienced second officer in command.
: The scientists remained in quarantine aboard /Ajax/ with their experimental subjects -- Troublefield, the headless Persian, and worms they'd picked off their suits.  Troublefield's temperature and blood pressure were both abnormally high.  The scientists suspect he's infected.
: Men sent out to patch up the ''Oly's'' boiler were brought under rifle fire from some unknown sharpshooter.  Wentworth brought his men in just as a night-black pirate ship swooped between them and the sun, revealing itself.  This was the Persian's mothership.  
::<blockquote style="background:aliceblue; border:1px solid black; padding:.5em">Between sessions, I prepped the encounter with the Persian pirates.  They were not part of my original planning, but were added after Mark asserted that the smaller ship could not have possibly made the journey from Earth to the comet.  I like to play off character assertions like that.</blockquote>
:The ship scattered English leaflets in its wake, demanding that ''Olympic'' turn over the six most wealthy passengers on board, for ransom.
::<blockquote style="background:aliceblue; border:1px solid black; padding:.5em">The pirate leafleting was something I planned to draw Maddie in.  If Kerri had made the second session, she would have needed to take point on any of the pirate negotiations.  She spoke Farsi, and the pirates would not have spoken English at all -- they hired an English speaker to print the leaflets on Earth.  But since Kerri wasn't there and the Captain had to negotiate with the pirates, they spoke English, and the leafletting was just an oddity.</blockquote>
: There was a great deal of debate about what to do about this.  In the end, Major Troublefield was released from quarantine, and he and the Captain and Miss Finch journeyed to the Persian ship, intending to cripple it.  
::<blockquote style="background:aliceblue; border:1px solid black; padding:.5em">I was hoping the Captain would consider trading the six proposed hostages.  I'd prepped all of them heavily.  They were a diverse bunch--a noble, a woman, a child, an elderly man, a foreigner, and a clergyman.  I was hoping to get a discussion going on who it was okay to trade, and who it was not okay to trade.  But the Captain wasn't willing to compromise on that and went for the total win instead of the compromised win.</blockquote>
They succeeded with some daring zero-gee sabotage of the Persian ship's guns by Major Troublefield, which included an untethered leap across space and a standoff with pistols pointed at an ammunition hopper.
::<blockquote style="background:aliceblue; border:1px solid black; padding:.5em">The ammunition hopper standoff -- next time I do something like that, I'm going to use the Riddle of Steel red die / white die initiative rule.</blockquote>
: Crippled, the Persian ship moved off, and repairs on ''Olympic'' proceeded. 
: The scientists aboard ''Ajax'' determined that a shock of electricity would cure the worm infestation. 
::<blockquote style="background:aliceblue; border:1px solid black; padding:.5em">I knew the scientist players -- Sophie and Kevin -- would come up with a fun and genre-appropriate way to treat the infestation.  I was waiting for them to do so before I triggered Ed's hallucinations.
: Troublefield started hallucinating, seeing his Brigadier interrogating him about the capabilities of Britain's Royal Space Navy.  He refused to answer and volunteered for shock treatment.  The worms' motives remain curious...</blockquote>
::<blockquote style="background:aliceblue; border:1px solid black; padding:.5em">I was hoping to create a situation where Ed had to choose between curing his problem or communicating with the aliens.  This didn't seem to be a very hard choice for him.  :)  In retrospect, I would've liked to move the halluncinations to the standoff scene with the Persian.  C'est la vie.</blockquote>
: Repairs are completed.  ''Olympic'' overtakes the comet.  The plan is this: while the other auxiliary, ''Achilles'', draws off the cloud of worms with carbide heliograph lanterns, Troublefield and Brezinska and Wentworth will attempt to disable the difference engine.  They do this by triggering another massive thrust burst, but before this operation is completed, the Achilles founders as the worms chew through her rubber seals.  
:The comet trembles.  Its reactors fire up.  Steam starts pouring from its surface.  Within the comet, superheated rods start heating the ice.
''Ajax'' pauses in the retreat to try to tow ''Achilles'' out of the comet. 
::<blockquote style="background:aliceblue; border:1px solid black; padding:.5em">Mark and I rolled off.  His d6 indicated how quickly he could bring Achilles under tow; my roll showed how long before the comet underwent catastrophic acceleration.  I won that roll, and the comet rocketed away, out of the ecliptic and into deep space with the ''Ajax'' five still aboard her...  
:Because the ''Olympic'' got away to report the events, everyone got posthumous medals.
::<blockquote style="background:aliceblue; border:1px solid black; padding:.5em">This TPK was an improvisation, and a dangerous one.  It could have screwed up the entire adventure, but no one seemed to mind.</blockquote>
; Player Thoughts