Same here ... hoping for some kind of settlement, but don't see much hope for it.
I am going through Hong Kong airport on weekends ... apparently the weekend sit-ins are limited to the arrivals level, so would only be affected if I decide to do a layover tour on the way to Australia when I have 10 hours in the airport.
However, the government has been requiring Cathay Pacific to submit personal information of crew members who fly over / to the mainland (which includes all flights to / from North America) with the banning those who have participated in demonstrations from flying. Which might mean not enough aircrew for the flights ...
Be safe, Buddy!
All flights grounded at Hong Kong airport...
At least it happened now instead of the day you leave? Something tells me this doesn't end well. The patience of the mainland gov't is wearing thin.
Switched to Air Canada through Vancouver and Sydney. More time flying, one extra stop, but get there earlier.
About 36 hours total, either way.
Let’s hope the Vancouver Resistance keeps quiet.
To all the players in my games:
I'm sorry for my spotty attendance lately. It's been a fairly awful week at work. I haven't been home before 10:00 or seen my kids awake in the evening in days.
It's short term, though and I'll be back at it soon. Thanks for your patience.
Thank you for bearing with me. I'm leaving tomorrow for a legal conference out of state and won't be back until Sunday. I'll have no Internet access. More accurately, I will have no laptop. I'm not nuts enough to try to GM on an iPad. So I'll just see you on Sunday.
Cheers!
Headed on a trip with likely bad internet for about a week. Please play Mascot as needed. As long as no threats present themselves, he'll continue making the way to the bridge.
Hi! I just got my Internet connection back after four days of outage. I'll be posting soon!
Happy Thanksgiving to all my American friends!
Everyone else, happy Thursday!
Merry Christmas!
God Bless Us, Every One!
Family emergency means I'm going to be AWOL a bit.
Leaving tomorrow to take my daughter to a squash tournament. Won't have access to boards until Sunday night.
Feels like nobody's too eager to keep this going.
Shall we call it a day?
I am still interested, but will bow to the will of the group.
The world is in a weird place. I am interested in playing, but I understand if you are disappointed in the pacing and would rather focus on other projects.
I'll admit this isn't my focus on my game slate. I'm also getting ready to move, so expect more schedule disruption for me. However, after we get there, I might have lots of time on my hands...
I'm not sure if that's a vote for or against proceeding, Tim.
Guys, I have plenty of games. I won't cry if one stops. Believe me, I'm in one PFS game right now I wish I'd never started. I have no idea what's happening and the GM doesn't seem interested in the experience.
Is this fun enough to continue? Is the slow-down just the weirdness of 2020? Or because the game isn't holding people's interests? Maybe Traveller just isnt' what you'd hoped? Or could it be the New Era? If you guys want a more traditional Traveller game, I can do that, too.
What say you, Nick? I know you've been very busy lately.
Although I am still busy at work, in the past 2-3 weeks the busy-ness has mostly stopped spilling over into my off hours. Thankfully.
I am not sure how much of it is because of the weirdness of 2020, but it does feel like we've lost our momentum with this game. I am happy to continue, but I do usually find myself going to my other games before this one.
I would agree with losing momentum.
My busyness goes up and down ... not cutting into off-hours, at the moment, but that will change in a month if I cannot get the VP to agree with getting a contractor to replace a subordinate who is going on maternity / parental leave for the next year.
So let's talk turkey.
Yeah, this side story really slowed us down. I won't do that again!
The TNE (Traveller: The New Era) setting hasn't had a new adventure written since 1994 and no updates to the setting since 2012, and that was just a setting update to 46 years later. I'm using the general outline of an adventure written in 1994, and adventures -were- a little more linear back then.
So I'll give you some options. Tell me which one interests you more. Honestly, I'm not going to be hurt if no one wants to continue this game. I'll probably just offer something else.
So here are my thoughts. Please tell me which if any interest you.
1) Continue on with the story of MS-7 and the vampire starship factory as before, but with no more side treks.
2) There -has- been a lot of new stuff written for Traveller in the last few years, just in a different setting. We could scrap this, start a new campaign and try something new. I have lots of cool Traveller adventures set in the classic Third Imperium setting. I started -this- campaign before all that shiny new stuff came out.
3) I'm interested in trying other gaming systems, too. I enjoyed Star Trek Adventures and The One Ring and although I haven't played it, I'm intrigued by Call of Cthulhu.
4) There's this little thing called Pathfinder and I'd be willing to give it a whirl. Either a shorter adventure or a nice long campaign.
1) No side treks would be necessary if we continue with the story of MS-7 ... we are slow, to start with, and get bogged down pretty easily.
2) Maybe moving into the 3rd Imperium.
3) I would also be interested in other settings. As you know, some of us are also in a Pathfinder campaign ... I am always open to learning another system.
I'm good to keep going with MS-7 (with or without side treks), but if we decide to wrap it up I don't know that I would want to add anything new to my slate of games.
I will say that I am more of a fantasy guy. But I am happy with sticking with this.
I'm willing to stick with MS-7 if people want to keep playing a space game. I've heard fun things about Call of Cthulhu too, so I wouldn't mind trying that out.
It seems like there's moderate consensus on staying with our Path of Tears campaign. I'm going to try to work in some elements from more modern storytelling.
I'll be at GenCon Online all weekend. I'll check in here as time allows.
I've written Tarondor's Guide to the Pathfinder Second Edition Rogue.
You can find the discussion page HERE.
Does anyone think abandoning ship is a good idea?
I really had hoped to slug it out, but we're a round from it destroying us, and I highly doubt we can do enough damage to kill it this round. However, the escape pods sound like we'll be sitting ducks, or if we do manage to get to a moon, then we're playing a survival game until someone stops by and we only hope it's not the people who live a planet away. We have no reason to believe any RCES ships are coming.
Maybe we should go out in a blaze of glory.
I also feel like the escape pods would be death traps in this scenario, and I am inclined to go down swinging. Taking it out before it finishes us off isn't entirely out of the question - if we win initiative next round we will get two rounds of attacks on it before it can return fire.
I am not looking forward to another cruise on a Virus ship.
Flatfoot also votes for going down fighting.
I was thinking “Survival on an ice Moon”, but if fate goes that way, I’ll honor your choice to go down swinging.
Sadly, it’s difficult to fudge rolls in favor of the PCs in this format.
Sorry folks. I'm having a pretty crazy week. I have a project due Saturday, and until that's done my posting will continue to be sporadic. Bot Spideras needed.
Folks, I need a bit of planning time. I'll check back in a few days.
Sounds good.
Happy Thanksgiving to all my American players!
Happy Thursday to everyone else!
Thank you for your patience.
I was going through various options. The adventure I had originally planned to adapt ("Deepnight Endeavor") wasn't sitting right with me. It was just too far removed from our current story to really integrate well and would have been a substantial adventure in itself, not just a side quest (and I don't want to get too far off our present adventure with the Viral starship factory). I looked at many alternatives but found nothing I liked, so I've worked out some details I think fit the story and I'm now ready to proceed.
Merry Christmas, my friends! And Happy New Year!
Merry Christmas and Happy New Years!
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Happy Christmas!
Haven't forgotten you. Just busy.
I haven't been able to sign in for days. I'll get back to this today.
Folks, I'm overwhelmed preparing for a major jury trial this week. I probably won't be able to give this game any attention until the middle of next week. My apologies.
Wow, only 80 years? I guess I forgot that our team was essentially created right after the RC formed, but still that seems super short for being in a 'rebuilding civilization' phase. I mean, Virus essentially ended most of the life in known space and simply severed most connections between worlds and technology, right? And it's still around killing people. 80 years sounds super short for even Star Vikings to be venturing out there.
Or maybe I need to re-orient my thinking of our situation. Vikings might be a bit generous. We're random raiders who just have enough for a sword and shield after the fall of the Roman Empire. The RC is like 5 villages who decided to band together and told some kids to go and take things from even smaller villages who are already starving to death.
Yeah, I followed the official timeline for TNE, but I had the same thought. If it were me, I'd have written it to be at least two centuries later. Perhaps the idea was that one or two very old Imperial citizens might still be around.
Megatraveller (the Rebellion) and TNE (the Virus era) were highly beloved by some, (TNE was 1994's Game of the Year) but hated by many, who wanted the old Imperium back. Author Martin Doughterty created the "TNE 1248" setting in the early 2010's which shows a resurgent Fourth Imperium, but whether that's canon is anyone's guess.
When original Traveller creator Marc Miller got back the rights to Traveller after the collapse of Games Design Workshop he set the disastrously bad T4 and T5 editions in earlier centuries. There also exists a "Lorenverse" (after author Loren Weisman) aka "Imperium Eternal" in which the rebellion never occurred and the Third Imperium kept on going.
There was even a prospective setting (that never got made) set in 1900 called "The Galaxiad".
So our Path of Tears game follows TNE canon (such as it is) up until 1202. Then it borrows bits of the details Doughterty wrote up for TNE 1248 as background, but we're telling our own tale here, loosely based on the "Guilded Lilly" series of adventures written in 1994-1995.
Apropos of nothing, I'm looking for players in my online Sunday game.
Tempting, but the time doesn't work well for me.
Yeah, Sundays are family days. So it would be awesome, but that falls into too many other things for me as well.