(3) [Traveller] Voyages of the R.e.d. Dusk

Game Master mdt

Broker: 2d6 + 1 + 2 ⇒ (4, 4) + 1 + 2 = 11

Once planet-side, Dev wastes no time in locating someone to take their cargo onward to its destination. He also examines the commodities board to see what might be for sale, and what they might be able to unload on this world.

Dev might want to work with Alison on brokering, she's got a +4 total on it

Alison accompanies Dev, see if her years in brokering trade can be of assistance... Broker: 2d6 + 4 ⇒ (1, 1) + 4 = 6

Yay, I knew one of my first rolls would be double 1's, was expecting it to the astrogation one

Moyasmedsev has no particular desires on this dirtball, so simply makes sure that Kektys is well fueled and cared for.

This is a giant field of flat stone, there's no fueling capabilities here. You'll have to use the giant.

"What a lovely spot we've found," gripes Moyasmedsev. "All the amenities of a barren rock."

"Well I'd rather have the amenities of a barren rock than the comforts of a pirate camp." Elrick takes a big breasts enjoying the not-ship air.

"Well I'd rather have the amenities of a barren rock than the comforts of a pirate camp." Elrick takes a big breasts enjoying the not-ship air.

This gets Elrick slapped

If you meant big breath, the planet has a tainted atmosphere, so you're wearing a mask and breathing filtered air. :)

Dev and Alison finally find someone willing to take on their contracted cargo (takes a week to find 3 people to take it in job lots). Fortunately, there's no docking fees for sitting on the stone lot. Unfortunately, because they are not delivering it themselves, they will receive no payment for the contracted cargo jobs.

The colony is mostly pressurized buildings, power stations, and large unpressurized warehouses. There are some mineral deposits locally that are mined by drones and sold out of the station, but not much.

Are you going to sell any of your speculative and/or pick up additional contracted cargo for your new destination, or just up ship and refuel/jump? The planet doesn't have much to recommend it other than that it isn't part of a territorial dispute at the moment.

Yes I meant breath, now quick, let's hurry up and refill a ship, we might be able to catch up with the joke.

Well, there's not a lot going on here, lets go

Moving on.

The group decides not to buy any more cargo, nor to take any of the cargo runs going to the system they are going to, passing up cash to make up for the cash lost on the cargo runs they had to hand off.

6d6 ⇒ (3, 4, 5, 1, 3, 5) = 21

There is no issues with refueling this time, no pirates, no nothing. The Kektys is refueled without any issues.

I need piloting and navigation checks from both ships, one each. DC for both ships is 8

Pilot: 2d6 + 2 + 1 ⇒ (6, 3) + 2 + 1 = 12
Astrogation: 2d6 + 1 + 2 ⇒ (6, 1) + 1 + 2 = 10

Dev stays with the ship and works on learning the controls a bit better, as well as what offensive and defensive capabilities he has at his disposal.

"Ok, let's get ready for the next jump. I hope we can make a little money from the next system!"

You have two sandcasters, empty, and two pulse lasers, one port and one starboard, both only fired at half power for testing

Cool...how many hardpoints does the ship have in total, or is that all? Also, we need to refill the sandcasters and test the lasers at full power.

Two double pop-up turrets, one laser and one caster in each turret

Is Alison still Kektys's pilot now that she's no longer an NPC?

Well considering that I am the pilot I'd have to say no.

Pilot: 2d6 + 1 ⇒ (5, 1) + 1 = 7

Alison is the Astrogator

Astrogation: 2d6 + 2 ⇒ (3, 2) + 2 = 7 Oh dear, Astrogation is Int and not Edu isn't it? If I could use EDU I've got another +1..

Going to a mapped location is EDU, going to an unmapped location is Int, so you use EDU for places in the star charts. I'll update later today.

For anyone new to Traveller, it is possible to use just about any ability score with almost any skill, if the situation is right. The Referee will usually call for a specific ability/skill combination in a given situation, but sometimes leaves it up to you where either route could be correct.

The INT/EDU divide can be thought of as improvisation versus training. In the above instance, you use your training to take you to known places (similar to driving using a roadmap), but fly seat-of-your-pants to unknown places (cross-country without a map).

While that's useful to know - at least in the 2e mongoose version I couldn't find anywhere that actually called out which ability to use for Astrogation. Which seems odd for something that's a common skill check... Of course I may have just missed it.

Sorry everyone, bad weekend for me, no sleep

The two ships ramp up into warp space, and head out to their next destination. 2 more weeks toward skill gains, and reduce food by 2 weeks

The two ships come out within a few hundred thousand miles of each other, on target for their new system. The trip to the planet will take 1d3 ⇒ 1 day, as they managed to warp out above the plane of the ecliptic, and lucked out being near the planet.

1d6 ⇒ 3

Upon approaching the planet, they are hailed by the local station (A large modern class B station), and they find a Military base orbiting the planet as well beyond the ring system. The local planet has a rocky ring system and a half-dozen moonlets (really asteroid sized rocks). Both stations are asteroid stations, and were likely pulled out of the ring system into higher orbits.

Trade Data is available once the group approaches the stations. Moyas can dock the Kektys at the military base for free maintenance, if he chooses to. The Phoenix needs it's life support and routine maintenance done. That's 56,000 credits and a weeks worth of time for the maintenance, 12,000 for the life support, and the crew's salaries add up to 20,000 credits (Alison gets 5,000 of that, and Elrick earns 6,000 of it, the rest goes to the NPCs). The Kektys' costs are covered by the local government (with regards to the ship, the crew costs are already included).

The base costs 500 credits to dock, and 200 per day (no cost to Kektys, but the Kektys crew will need to take a shuttle to the main high port).

Having consigned his ship to the base for maintenance, Moyasmedsev leads his crew to the shuttle, reminding them about Vargr protocol. "Never stare at a Vargr unless you want a fight. Remain in groups where possible. They are generally social and outgoing, but view weakness as an invitation to trouble. At least for humans. I think they see non-mammals as strange enough to leave alone, and I am generally not required to move in a pack."

They take the shuttle over to the high port where the fussy little droyne reminds everyone about the departure time and goes off in search of trading opportunities.

GM: To be certain I'm using your trade goods link correctly, are we now at Verundzogz?

You are, the rolls take into account your broker skills already.
So the trade info is based on Alison's searching and spending 2-3 days trying to make deals. You can't buy something for less than it's currently selling for on the open market (that is, if the link sows Widgets for sale for 1,000 a ton, you can't buy widgets for less than that (even if you got a good roll). Nor can you sell widgets for more than 1,000 a ton, even if you got a critical success on the broker roll that would normally net you 5000 a ton for them.

GM: I'm not sure of our plotted route. What is our next stop from Verundzogz so I can figure out which freights would be best. I'm guessing we're headed to Inudak?

GM: Please confirm that our passengers are not getting off and we have no room for more? I think we're taking everyone to the Imperium? Or am I wrong about that?

SPACE AVAILABLE: We have 223.7 tons of cargo space between the two ships. At present, we have 12 tons of “Basic Consumables - Food Grade Vegetation”, 28 tons of “Basic Consumables - Survival Rations and Storage-packed Liquids” and 6 tons of “Advanced Weapons - Slug Weapons (TL 12)”. This leaves us 177.7 tons of empty cargo hold.

OTHER CONSIDERATIONS: Before we fill up on items for speculation, it makes good business sense to fill most of our hold with freight contracts. They’re not sexy, but they pay consistently. There are 101 tons of freight available for transport to Inudak (I think that’s were we’re headed?)

___________________________________________________________________________ __

Stuff we can’t make a profit on at Verundzogz:

Basic Consumables - Food Grade Vegetation

Stuff we CAN make a profit on at Verundzogz:

Advanced Weapons (slug weapons) - We have 6 tons purchased at 60,000 per ton. The market will buy them for 115,000 per ton. We will make a 91.6% profit. Nice! - Profit: cr330,000

Basic Consumables - Survival Rations and Storage-packed Liquids - We have 28 tons purchased at cr1350/ton. The market will buy 9 tons at cr2550/ton. That’s still below average, but we can make a quick cr10,800, so why not?

Selling this stuff frees up 15 tons of space and nets us cr340,800.

Stuff we can buy below market at Verundzogz:

If we take on all the freight and sell as above, we’ll have 91.7 tons of avialable space for speculative cargoes.

Our best price is Bauxite ore and Personal and Commerical Computers, available at 70% of market standard each. We can buy all available 31 tons of bauxite at cr21,700 and all available 18 tons of computers for cr126,000.

However, bauxite is dirt cheap and we have operating expenses, so we might be wise to fill up on some higher-value items. There are 35 tons worth of Residential Applicances available for 85% of market standard. It’s not as good a deal as the bauxite, but is worth more than ten times as much. So I’d recommend we take all 35 tons for the price of cr 297,500 and ditch the bauxite.

Other good prices are on Rare Wood, Chemical Solutions and Compounds and Pre-packaged Food and Drink. They’re available at 75% of market standard. We can buy all available 13 tons of rare wood for cr19,500 and 7 tons of Chemical Solutions and Compounds for cr63,000 as well as 13 tons of food and drink for cr48,750.

Other good prices include 1 ton of reactor-grade uranium at 80% standard (but a price of cr800,000!). But like last time, it’s a poor idea to sink our entire operating budget into a single item we may or may not be able to sell.

If we buy everything above (not counting the uranium), we’d be taking up 86 tons of space, (leaving 5 more tons of available space). We’d be spending cr576,450.

Hoping to fill up those last 5 tons of available space, I recommend we pick up 3 tons of fibre-optic cable (90% of market standard) for cr135,000 and 2 tons of VR Computer and Sensor Packages (95% of market standard) for cr190,000. We will now have full holds at a cost of cr 770,500.

We had cr830,000. We made 150,400 for the last freight run. We spend 100,000 month on operating expenses. We’ve been flying for a month, so we have 830,000+150,400+340,800-100,000=1,221,200 to spend.

_____________________________________________________________
TL:DR: We should do the following:

Take every freight contract available and head for Inudak.

Sell: 6 tons of slug weapons and 28 tons of Survival Rations and Storage-packed Liquids.

Buy: 18 tons of Personal and Commerical Computers, 35 tons worth of Residential Applicances, 13 tons of rare wood, 7 tons of Chemical Solutions and Compounds and 13 tons of food and drink, 3 tons of fibre-optic cable and 2 tons of VR Computer and Sensor Packages.

Keep: 12 tons of “Basic Consumables - Food Grade Vegetation”

Net Result: Fill up the hold, gain cr491,200, spend cr770,500. We keep cr450,700 in our account.

Per Dev's post on page 20, your path is now Oukhsoureghz to Verundzogz to Rongaerrg to Ansana.

You only have one passenger, a 14yo girl you are escorting to an Imperial Embassy on Ansana

You didn't make the 150,400 for the freight run, as you had to offload them onto other freighters, since you didn't go to your contracted destination.

Sigh. I'll recalculate tomorrow. The calculations on speculations are still good.

Grumbling about the cost, Dev still ok’s the refit and restocking of the ship. He talks to Alison about the sale and purchase of cargo, with Mo adding his ideas as well.

Okay. Reworking this from the start to account for the fact that we’re headed to Rrongaerrg, not Inudak. I’m actually glad for the opportunity because I screwed up a basic assumption in the earlier one. Cheaper is not necessarily better if the price/volume is low.

CARGO CAPACITY: We have 223.7 tons of cargo space between the two ships. At present, we have in our holds the following:

* 12 tons of “Basic Consumables - Food Grade Vegetation”
* 28 tons of “Basic Consumables - Survival Rations and Storage-packed Liquids”
* 6 tons of “Advanced Weapons - Slug Weapons (TL 12)”.

This leaves us 177.7 tons of empty cargo hold to fill.

CASH: We started with 830,000 credits.

1) We lost 50,000 credits to the pirates
) We spent 100,000 credits on one month’s operating expenses.
3) Assuming we’re on Verundzogz for three days, we’ll spend 1100 credits on docking fees.

So we have 678,900 as working capital.

SELLING:

1) We can’t sell the Vegetation at a profit here, so it stays in the hold.
2) We can sell the Advanced Weapons (slug weapons) - We have 6 tons purchased at 60,000 per ton. The market will buy them for 115,000 per ton. We will make a 91.6% profit. Nice! - Profit: cr330,000.
3) Basic Consumables - Survival Rations and Storage-packed Liquids - We have 28 tons purchased at cr1350/ton. The market will buy 9 tons at cr2550/ton. That’s still below average, but we can make a quick cr10,800, so why not? This leaves us with 19 tons still in the hold.

After selling these two things at Verundzogz, we’ll have 1,019,700 credits and 162.7 tons of empty space.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

BUYING:

There are two types of buying to do: Freight and Speculation. Freight isn’t sexy but it pays the bills, while Speculation contains the possible seeds of fortune. I’d like to keep at least 300,000 credits on hand, so we can spend no more than 719,700 on Speculation.

SPECULATION: Speculation is harder than freight because you have to weigh the discount available, the value of the cargo (a great discount on dirt-cheap commodities is worth less than a slight discount on valuable commodities) and the market at the next few stops.

Rrongaerrg is in the market for Basic Machine Parts, Basic Manufactured Goods, Advanced Electronics, Precious Metals and Uncommon Ores. Looking at the Verundzogz market, we can get Fiber-Optic Cable and VR Computer and Sensor Packages (both Advanced Electronics) at a good price. We can get Residential Applicances (Basic Manufactured Goods) and Silver (Uncommon Ore) at a good price.

However, this ignores the awesome deal available on Personal and Commerical Computers (30% off!). They have 18 tons of this available. Even if it’s not on the hot list for Rrongaerrg, they’ll make a nice profit somewhere!

So I’m going to suggest that we purchase the following for Speculation:

) 18 tons of Personal and Commerical Computers for 126,000 credits.
2) 3 tons of Fibre-optic Cable for 135,000 credits.
3) 4 tons of VR Computer and Sensor Packages for 380,000 credits.
4) 7 tons of Chemical Solutions and Compounds for 63,000 credits.

This will use up 32 tons of space and cost 704,000 (leaving 315,700 credits and 130.7 tons of empty space.)

FREIGHT: When considering Freight, the question is the Fee/ton. Examining the Freight schedule, we can see that every cargo pays 1600 credits per ton, so we’re free to take whatever cargoes best fill up our space budget and seem like the least trouble (we will not be taking “untrained guard beasts”, for instance!)

Since we’d like to take 130 tons of freight, we can look at the docking manifest and choose the following:

1) 50 tons of cotton-based fabrics
2) 30 tons of air vehicle components and
3) 30 tons of workable alloys
4) 20 tons of Cinnamon/Marjoram/Wasabi

Those freight contracts will be worth 1600x130=208,000 credits to us.

Wow! Thank you for doing the math on this, Moya. It all looks good to me.

6d6 ⇒ (2, 6, 6, 4, 3, 6) = 27

1d6 + 1d6 ⇒ (1) + (5) = 6

Day 2

As Alison and Dev are trying to gather up some contracted cargos from the exchange, the clerk, a human woman with a bored look on her face, takes her time looking over their credentials. "You got any proof you are who you say you are? Not sure I believe this story that you're all corpsicles who got woke up."

1d6 + 1d6 ⇒ (3) + (5) = 8

Day 3

Moyas, Elrick, and Glitch are walking around the station, window shopping, when a pair of odd looking aliens with big eyes and long arms and fur and a tail stop them. The first one looks at the group. "Who are you people? And what are you doing here?"

1d6 + 1d6 ⇒ (6) + (4) = 10

Day 6

To be completed after Day 3 and 2

Jenni immediately assumes a defensive posture. "Is there a reason that we can't be here?" she asks.

Moyasmedsev assumes a ready posture, weight resting partially on his tail, ready to fight or flee. Then, realizing that his human companions probably do not recognize the message conveyed by his attitude, clicks, whistles and hoots. His translator says "Good Day, Officers. I am the captain of a vessel docked at this facility and these are members of my crew. We are engaged in buying and selling cargo, but just now we are looking for lunch. Is there a problem?"

The first alien tilts it's head, and looks at Moyas from a different angle. "You're engaged? To which one?" It asks, looking from Glitch to Elrick. "And if there's a problem with that, wouldn't you be the one to identify it, not I? I'm not an interspecies relationship psychologist."

The second one looks at Glitch, both big eyes blinking slowly. "Probably, there are so many laws on the books, that I'm sure you're breaking one of them. Are you wearing clothing made of sapient being's pelts? Or do you have a tattoo of one of the clan Eldar's on your buttocks? Perhaps you have a can of shaving cream in your pack? Or perhaps you have said the word 'Perish' in the last 24 hours?"

The other turns to look at it's partner. "You just broke the law."

The second turns to the first. "Which law?"

"You said Perish."

"So did you."

The two blink at each other for a moment, and then turn back to the group.

Trying to cajole these strange beings, Moyasmedsev plays along, peering up at the odd giants. "While I stand in great reverence of the law, I shall agree not to report this infraction this one time provided you both solemnly agree not to use that word again until it is legally acceptable to do so. Let this be a warning to you both." He bares his many tiny teeth in an unnerving rendition of a human smile.

Int+Diplomacy: 2d6 + 1 + 0 ⇒ (1, 6) + 1 + 0 = 8 +1 if the Referee thinks it should be an EDU roll.

Both creatures look at each other, and then back to Moyas, and then back to each other. They both turn to look at Moyas. "What word?" They ask in perfect unison.

Erick is confused by the flow of the conversation for a moment but decides to use this lull to speak up, "So this has been in interesting conversation but is there a reason you stopped us other than for the obvious fact that we're breaking some law that we're not aware of?"

Both creatures look at each other, and then back to Moyas, and then back to each other. They both turn to look at Moyas. "What word?" They ask in perfect unison.

Moyasmedsev laughs. "I like you two. Can we buy you a completely legal and in-no-way-a-bribe lunch?"

The two creatures blink at Elrick, look at each other, and then turn back to Elrick. "Which law are you breaking?" The first one asks.

"We consider it highly improper, not to mention, immoral, illegal, and ill considered, to break laws." The second responds solemnly.

"Especially if you don't know you're doing so."

"Isn't that also against the law? Not knowing the laws?" The two look at each other, blinking slowly.

"I am unsure..."

"Perhaps I should arrest you then?"

The two blink at each other, then turn back to the crew.

"We have already eaten." One finally responds to Moyes.

"Yes, we find it easier to do so before patrolling for vile law breaking humans and droyne."

"Good luck in finding some of those! Sadly, we're just the ordinary law-abiding sort. Good day!"

Dev looks at the human woman and shrugs.

"Well I guess if you had access to Imperium records it would not be difficult to tell that we are being truthful. My id card and, well everything else I own, is a few centuries old so I am not too sure how to prove we are who we are. Again DNA and such, if you could access the records, would help!"

Moyas, Elrick, Glitch

The two blink at each other. "We shall watch for you." And then the two aliens continue on their way, chattering in an alien language.

Dev & Alison

"Do I look like the high imperium consul? You think I get paid to hyper jump to other systems to look up imperium records?" The woman says, still idly swiping through your records. "I don't have access to Imperium records. So how do you suggest I confirm your identity?" She demands indolently, glancing toward the clock on the wall and sighing.

"Well if you want to get out of here any time soon, I would simply add a fee for the search onto our bill and call it a day. Otherwise, it might take much longer than either of us want to spend on it. What do you say?"

"I'd say you're trying to bribe me, and then I'd call station security, have you arrested for attempted bribery, and then deal with a bunch of paperwork." She says, now sounding annoyed. "Quit trying to add paperwork to my life..."

"Well then tell me how I can make it easier for you? Believe me, I am not doing this to inconvenience you in any way...I wish I could be back in my own time, but that is not likely to happen, so here I am. I am trying to make my way back to Imperial space where I can then prove my identity."

Dev tries to sound as sincere as possible, as well as helpful.