Need help with the middle of my Traveller Hero plot.

[azato]

I am going to set up the players with a contract to ship goods between various planets in the District 268 subsector in the Spinward Marches sector. One of the planets (Forine) the players are being contacted by a person who want to travel to Milagro looking for a lost father.

 

Here is what I (the GM) knows...

Forine is sending dissidents and various people to Forine as contract workers. In many ways Consider Forine to be somewhat like China, or in this case North Korea. The people are shipped to Milagro to work for Ling Standard Products. LSP pays Forine for the workers and Forine, in turn, pays the workers VERY LOW wages. Thus Milagro gets cheap labor, Forine makes good money off their excess population, and the common people suffer.

 

While travelling from the port city (only one) to the factory city, the "bus" containing this woman's father and a load of Forinians got lost.. got on the wrong road and came too close to a cache of illegal drugs. This cachet was set up with either automatic defenses...or the road was simply mined. The bus blew up and the survivors froze to death.

 

Because of the low value placed on the people...and the lack of significant technological resources (1970's ish) ... and the low population (i changed it to 90,000)...and the severe conditions on the planet (cold)...there was no search party or any significant energy put out to find the survivors.

 

My plan is to get the party to that place (by wheeled or tracked vehicle), suffer the same kind of event and work out how to survive...plus they will likely find the drug cache)

 

 

That being said....what is a reasonable way for them to find the trail to lead them to where I want them to go.

[Sundog]

Re: Need help with the middle of my Traveller Hero plot.

 

How about this: Standard procedure on Milagro is for the "new workers" to be bussed to their worksite barracks immediately, with their luggage being brought by cargo truck later (after being offloaded from the ship). To ensure cargo oes to the same location as it's owner, the bus and truck have the same ID number.

Bus 181 never arrived, but Truck 181 did. Not overly caring, the luggage was simply dumped in the "unclaimed goods" area by the company.

The PCs can find the father's suitcase (stamped with a big red "181" at the spaceport), and asking around, learn about the missing bus. The road to the facility has only one major side road leading off of it, to a disused airfield...

[Ternaugh]

Re: Need help with the middle of my Traveller Hero plot.

 

Was the population reduction an in-game thing (like failure of the life support systems of several cities, or mass starvation of 99.9% of the population), or was it based on the assumption that the last "colonization" waves never happened, or something in between? If it's closer to the former, then there may be scattered "ruins" that are extremely well-preserved in the low temperatures. It would be possible to check older maps and find likely places that a vehicle in trouble would go. Note that Forine would most likely only show the currently occupied construction on official maps--so some bit of hacking or recon would be required. These old cities would also provide a place where folks on foot could try to seek shelter before their heatsuits fail, and would also provide a place to salvage parts or vehicles to get back to the main city. It could also be used as a base of operations for the folks associated with the drug cache.

 

JoeG

[Christopher]

Re: Need help with the middle of my Traveller Hero plot.

 

Some ideas:

A character with contacts to the not so legal world hears of this planet being used for illegal stuff. He listens around and hears of an "area you should not trespass" very close to the route the busses have to take.

 

Perhaps the bus had a tracking beacon but some natural phenomenon interferes with it. Once you start going the same way a little bit you should be able to detect and follow it.

 

The busses could be in disrepair, maybe it leaked something that leaves a trail (like radioactive cooling liquid - "They use THAT stuff? Are they crazy?")

 

How do you plan on preventing the Characters from using their ship? (especially having in mind that this area is used for smuggling, so there might be a way to sneak in).

 

How do you plan on disabling the Characters Vehicle? They could just wait in to much distance to ever activate a mine. One idea for that: The smuglers are there at the moment, when they see the characters closing in they lay an ambush. Maybe they have already relocated the bodies so the Heroes stil have no body (and during the search for the body, the charactes vehicle get's disabeled).

 

How much time is between the father being lost and the characters reachign the planet? Could be anything from one day (she got the money to buy him out of his sentence one day to late, after him) to multiple weeks (he said he writes as soon as he can, that was three weeks ago).

 

The weather can be used very well for lasting trail/vanished trail things. When you drive in a snow storm your trail vanishes quickly. If there is no storm, trails can last forever.

 

Range:

Vehicle range on snow Plantes can be planetwide. Since water=hydrogen=fuel. As long as you take care to not run completely dry the bus could be "just lost" instead of blown up. The same way the characters vehicle could get damage to the [water to fuel converter].

 

When you need some ideas for things you could meet in the snow, try to find "Mission on Mithril". It is about surveying a ice-planet. It can be found as part of this collection too:

http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product_info.php?products_id=80190

 

Try to search for both things, maybe you have luck and get it for free like I did.

[azato]

Re: Need help with the middle of my Traveller Hero plot.

 

Thanks all!

 

Ternaugh - The high population didn't fit my needs (I would rather this be a low population world) nor did it make sense since there are several other far more hospitable frontier worlds within a parsec or two that have no population, like, why not live there instead? . However... I do like the idea of an unused city. It is quite possible that, just like in real life, towns and cities are abandoned, especially when work moves on to other areas. This is probably even more true with the amount of energy required to maintain a population is so high.

 

Time wise it has been many weeks. A jump basically takes two weeks (.5 Week to get out of gravity wells, 1 week to jump, .5 week to make it to the planet) and I figure that after a month, or so, families would get worried and then raise money to send one person to Milagro. So I would say 6 weeks to two months.

 

 

 

Sundog - Thanks, I will use that.

 

Christopher - The characters will have a hard time using their ship because the terrain because the terrain is rather rough and spotting a small vehicle may be a bit difficult. They also do not have an air raft, and any means of getting to the location if they should find them from the air....But that is a possibility....that they could scout around with the ship and if they do find it..then rent a vehicle to go check out the wreckage.

 

Thanks, all.

[azato]

Re: Need help with the middle of my Traveller Hero plot.

 

Sorry, Chris....i need to give out more rep before I can give you any more.

[AlHazred]

Re: Need help with the middle of my Traveller Hero plot.

 

Well, based on the little bit of information on canonical Milagro, you have a number of options. The extremely high Law Level makes it easy to justify why it might not be possible for PCs with their own ship to go directly there, or even investigate thoroughly -- that level of control probably precludes getting the proper orbit to do a thorough search of the planet's surface for anomalies.

 

If you're trying to emphasize the dehumanization, then there are other possibilities. When the PCs arrive at the Milagro Downport (with E-class facilities, there's not going to be a highport), the landing procedures undoubtedly include registering their manifest of cargo and passengers. When the woman's name is sent to Milagro's government, it sets off an alarm -- her father's luggage is still waiting at the depot to be picked up, and has amassed a high amount of demurrage fines. Naturally, some greedy local official will probably try to get this money from the woman; maybe he's initially ignorant of her father's disappearance/possible death, but even when he finds out he insists she pay the fines as "that's the Law."

 

Another possibility would be the Milagro government keeping tabs on all non-citizens. Even at 1970s tech level, it's feasible to keep tabs on the Forinians, which is undoubtedly something the conservative Milagran political elements would want to do. So, the PCs can probably find the guy through some judicious bribery of relatively low-level government officials.

 

It appears somebody on the Citizens of the Imperium boards has been doing stuff with Milagro as well.

http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Discuss/showpost.php?p=355937&postcount=55

http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Discuss/showpost.php?p=356229&postcount=57

http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Discuss/showpost.php?p=356229&postcount=58

http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Discuss/showpost.php?p=356229&postcount=59

http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Discuss/showpost.php?p=356229&postcount=62

http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Discuss/showpost.php?p=356229&postcount=67

[azato]

Re: Need help with the middle of my Traveller Hero plot.

 

Thanks Al....I will check that out.

 

I may get to use this, but my party just took a drastic turn. Some various tensions between members of the party has created a situation that may not get resolved and may end with most going to jail. (sigh). They will get to Milagro...but it may be with different characters. This stuff is worse than a TPK. AARGGHHH!!!