The Schamel Affair: A Traveller Braunstein

It all started in week 16 of year 929 of the Space Age when Tyrian von Stolberg arrived on Schamel. He was under orders from Count Murietta to explore for ways to boost the Schamelian economy. this was meant to get into the local's good graces and allow Murietta room to negotiate with them for mutual economic benefit. Two weeks later, von Stolberg's prospecting team hit the jackpot - a lode of gadolinium, possibly as much as a million tons of it. In-game, gadolinium is an important component of jump drives, so it's in demand by the ship-building powers: Lanzhou, Stavanger, Dekalb, and the Empire.

On the Traveller Trade tables, metals/alloys go for 10,000 credits a ton, so this mine was billions of credits waiting to be dug up.

What Happened?

Six Factions showed up on Schamel to negotiate and deal for access to the gadolinium mine.

• Count Murietta
• Baron Namsos of Stavanger
• The Lycosky Trade Protectorate Director of Operations, Corridor Region
• The Dekalbian business director for Thetford Aerospace
• Mr. Tarpov, Assistant Secretary for Trade at the Talaveran Consulate (a Boss for the ICO, the Sakamoto Ring)
• Baron de Quintero, another Contender who has a lot of money in mining already, and might see Murietta as competition.

and the Governor of the Schamel Habitation, Gov. Castberg, played by the Referee. In retrospect, it should have been a player running Castberg. The Referee had too much to keep track of to play him effectively.

The Referee assigned each faction a primary and a secondary objective. this front-loaded some conflict into the game. Each faction would, at the end, be assessed on how well those objectives were accomplished. 

Each turn, the players handed to the Referee a card explaining their plans for the following turn. Then they had 20 minutes to interact with the other players in negotiation, argument or whatever. The time limit kept things from bogging down, but we could have made it 30. We only had the afternoon to play it out, and we wanted to get through as many turns as we could, to get to some kind of resolution. We did. See below. 

'I think I did a TARDIS' - a First at the Gaming Table

 Huh?*

This past weekend, we had two firsts at the table while playing Traveller. This despite that I've played this game since about 1982.

First, the simple one. My older son was playing a new character, Dismas, an ex-Flyer. He was on Narok, a non-Imperial world in the Corridor. While there he found himself in the middle of a public protest against the Empire and its various evils. Remember that from the Empire's POV, everyone in the Corridor are barbarians. 

Dismas was minding his own business but stumbled into the midst of the protest anyway. Some protesters noticed him and moved to attack. As is typical at the start of combat, we rolled for Surprise. Neither side gained surprise. I asked if Dismas wanted to fight or escape.

Escape and Avoidance: Encountering parties may attempt to escape from, or avoid contact with, an encounter. A party which has achieved surprise may always avoid an encounter by so stating. Non-player character parties which have surprise and are outnumbered will avoid an encounter on a throw of 7+ (no DMs). If two parties encounter without surprise, either may attempt to escape immediately (before any combat or contact occurs). Roll

9+ to escape (DM allowed based on range: -1 if close or short range, +I if medium range, +2 if long range, +3 if very long range).

Update for the Table Group

 I received a request for the status of all PCs that are/have been in play at the table. 

To the best of my record-keeping knowledge, this is all correct. Week 24 of year 929 of the Space Age began on August 9th. I continue in my quest to keep the game clock running. 

Player                      Character                  Location              Week, Year

Drew	Logan	Holtzmann	9 929
	Gen. Chen	Holtzmann	9 929
	Chuck	Dekalb	18 929
Aidan	vonStolberg	Holtzmann	9 929
	Rudolph	Dekalb	18 929
Genevieve	Boss	Holtzmann	9 929
	Vicky	Holtzmann	9 929
Katherine	Demo	Holtzmann	9 929
	Sharkey	Holtzmann	9 929
Caleb	Cal	Holtzmann	9 929
	Victor	Worosha	18 929
Sam	Nathaniel	Holtzmann	9 929
Michael M.	Count Murietta	Schamel	23 929
Joel	Mac	Holtzmann	9 929
	Trevor	Dekalb	18 929
Zach	George	Worosha	18 929
David M.	Turpov	Schamel	23 929
Gabi	Dr. Vivian	Holtzmann	09 929
Marius	Carter	Holtzmann	27 928

I strongly recommend that this Friday we pick up some of the PCs on Holtzmann back in week 9, so that they can begin to catch up. The Schamel Affair (which I will post about one of these days) went from week 16 to week 22. Your PCs who have yet to catch up to week 16 will learn about those events as the calendar indicates. Remember that in space, news travels at the speed of Jump.  Imperial news moves at Jump-4, most Corridor powers move at Jump-2 or 3. 

This is complicated, but not as bad as it may seem. The game calendar will keep moving. Players can run multiple characters provided that they don't interact with each other out of time order. Players cannot impart to characters in the past information their other characters further in the future already know. The two PCs must be at the same week in time, and the same planet in space at minimum to share intel.