#420

Pioneer

This week I ran the adventure from the Pioneer rulebook, Rescue at Low Earth Orbit, in which the players are called for an emergency rescue mission. A tourist vessel has been struck by space debris which damaged its heat shield and vented most of its atmosphere: they can’t return to Earth, and they only have enough oxygen for 36 hours.

Despite being mechanically almost identical to Traveller, it felt very different in practice. We focussed on the little details so much more: the countdown before takeoff, adjusting the ship’s trajectory to avoid its own set of space debris, performing a spacewalk to fix a bent actuator, performing a Hohmann transfer between orbits, and so on. And at the end no gratitude, just a grilling by the oversight committee probing into all the decisions they made and questioning how even minor mishaps could have been foreseen and prevented.

I could imagine running this more in the future.

Worldbuilding

I started building my Bronze Age setting this week. I’ve decided to focus on the kingdom of Larsa, which is in the south by the Persian Gulf, for now. The Lions of Tell Arn will be nearby Isin, as it’s suffered from a period of decline and has been recently conquered which feels like a good fit for the city of Kurhan in the module. I’ve made up Akkadian names for the other important locations in Tell Arn:

• Makkalet, a settlement that sees a lot of trade: Tamkār, “merchant”
• Lambsblood, a small village near the Tell: Dāmimrum, “lambsblood”
• Tell Arn: Tīl Qubūrī, “Mound of Graves”

and the real historical city of Uruk will fill the role of the nearby town of Isa.

Let Us Build a Tower will, obviously, be in Babylon. I haven’t thought about what else is going on there yet, but I have some sources to read.

I did some research into trade routes too. I couldn’t find a good map, but I could find where goods come from, and so inferred how they would arrive in Mesopotamia. From the Persian Gulf I have copper, ivory, pearls, and semiprecious stones; from Egypt, precious metals; from both Elam and the Levant, wood; and from Afghanistan (via Elam), lapis lazuli, gold, and tin. International trade was a huge deal in the Bronze Age and I want it to be a big part of my setting.

I’m wondering if I can draw ideas from Ultraviolet Grasslands or Traveller for a trader campaign, treating the setting as a pointcrawl with overland and river routes between cities and other points of interest. I’m not really sure what the “default action” of the setting will be, but that’s very important to figure out.