Freelance Traveller

After-Action Report: Mission to Mithril (Holy Rood Games Night II)

by Timothy Collinson

This article originally appeared in the July/August 2024 issue.

Date:	9th March 20243, 1700-2000
Venue:	Holy Rood Church, Stubbington
Game:	Mission to Mithril by Martin Dougherty
Referee:	tc.	Players:	Jane, Matt, Noah and V
Rules:	Mongoose 2nd Edition

Another Games Night

I’ve written previously about the Games Night that Holy Rood Church in Stubbington runs each ‘term’ or about three times a year. Generally, it is for people to bring board games, bring friends and find games to play as well as other players. I enjoyed a handful of these evenings before thinking it might be fun to try Traveller. You can read an AAR of the first of these when I ran One Crowded Hour – even getting the vicar involved as he tested the waters. I don’t think he was checking there was no satanism going on, but of course you can never be sure. :-)

The last Games Night I wasn’t up to running something so my work colleague Jane who has got into Traveller ran (part of) Signal GK which was fun.  I got to reprise the role of Professor Arnold Rushorin which I’m playing as she runs it for the group that, having finished The Traveller Adventure, is now giving me a break from refereeing while we try the Solomani Rim and defection.

It’s been a while since I’ve run anything and I’ve not run anything since cancer surgery so I was more than ready to give it a go. Having said that, I was feeling rather rusty and once again a newbie. I rather accidentally stumbled across Mission to Mithril at just the right time to think that it was just the right thing for a one-off slot. I was nearly right, as you’ll see.

My other writing work which has been dominating life these last few months and usually involves at least an hour or two of work each day either in the evening or commuting on the bus, had to take a back seat for a week while I got to grips with Mission to Mithril. For those who aren’t familiar with it, it is Marches Adventure 2 by Martin Dougherty from Mongoose in 2018 and then given some minor updates as one chapter of The Marches Adventures 1-5. It is both a sequel and a homage to Mission on Mithril which was half of Double Adventure 2 from GDW back in 1980. Thoroughly overhauled and updated with material added to bring it into line with modern sensibilities, perhaps the one complaint is that the cover of March Adventure 2 rather gives away an exciting key moment.

Spoilers will appear in the following. You’ve been warned.

I may run this at TravCon – newly announced for the first weekend in October 2024 – although we still don’t know where – so again, if you’re likely to attend, you’ve been warned.

I reckoned there would be rather a lot to cram into three hours but I thought that at a decent clip we could spend an hour on the introduction and exploring the starport, an hour on the overland journey and the final hour or a bit less on the ‘dénouement’. The latter would start with a truncated hunt for the missing starport pair and a trip back to the ’port we could largely elide over. I was rather optimistic in this assessment as you’ll see.

Seth Skorkowsky’s Review

In preparing for the adventure I’d rediscovered Seth Skorkowsky’s review of the adventure online. It is a 20-minute video which is worth watching if you are thinking of running this. I adopted his idea for a rotary autocannon on the ATV wholeheartedly, I primed the players they were going to be transporting a ‘man’ (they guessed he was an agent), I wasn’t so sure about his suggestion for moving the exploration team or the lost ’port staff and didn’t adopt them. Not that I could have easily done so in any case as the map is not adjustable and I couldn’t photoshop it. (I also wondered if the autocannon, perfect for the final scene of the adventure, wasn’t a bit overpowered when travelling overland against a likely opponent. I thought I’d take the chance.)

Also in preparing, I’d converted the entire text to a Word document so that I could print it out and highlight text, scribble all over it and add bits where I had ideas of my own. Or to put in rules I didn’t want to have to look up en route (fatigue, hunting, details on the rotary autocannon etc). This took a couple of hours but was probably the most valuable thing I did all week. For reasons you’ll see. (Yes, I suppose I could have scribbled all over my actual copy of Mission to Mithril but between being a bit of a librarian about such things and the pages being standard Mongoose glossy which doesn’t work well with pencil, I chose not to.)

Handouts

I went into my usual overdrive regarding handouts. My usual fear of not being prepared and wanting to give the players a good experience drove me to possibly doing a bit much. Not for the first time. Fortunately, I’ve a spangly new(ish) printer and where that wasn’t adequate the local print shop and the church office could help out. The main thing I wanted was as big a map of the overland route as possible and ideally have it laminated so we could draw routes on it. The church office could do up to A3 (see appendix on paper sizes) which was perfectly adequate and big enough for the players to sit around making decisions. If A2 was feasible, I might have gone for it although it starts becoming hard to transport. It certainly won’t fit into an A3 document folder I have from an art shop. 

It also seemed obvious to have the world map and the map of the starport from the book as well as the ATV floor plan/spec sheet. In the ‘nice to have’ but not actually necessary was the Sword World subsector map (and UWPs), the illustrations and stats of the cold weather gear and shelters. Those are all provided in the adventure. I wasn’t wrong in suspecting that the innards of the four starport buildings would give a sense of place in their exploration, so I sketched some simple designs which I knocked up in PowerPoint as they are not given in the book.  All of that little lot, I printed out. 

I thought some of the illustrations in the two books (they are not identical) might lend some atmosphere, but I was reluctant (for which, read too miserly) to print them out in colour, so I copied them out of their text and put them all (on individual pages where appropriate) into a PDF which I then displayed on a tablet set up on the table for the purpose somewhat like a picture frame. That worked well until the battery died just a bit before the end due to the game length.

Now, here is perhaps the moment for a slight digression into the original Mission on Mithril adventure.  (Note the subtle title difference!). Essentially this is an exploration of three sites on the planet which gives the PCs the excuse to go off in the ATV. It is rather a procedural hex crawl managing ATV power (energy) levels and using animal encounter tables to supply the food the PCs require. (I’d forgotten the handy little rule of 1D×5% of an animal’s weight being edible. Brilliant. Until you remember that Mongoose creatures don’t have weights but Hits. Bother.) With a group more into role playing than roll playing, I can imagine such a hex crawl might be a lot of fun, but I was quite glad for the Dougherty update giving a bit more ‘normality’ to what the players might be willing to sit through. Interestingly, the ‘plot’ of the original, such as it is, becomes a bit of backstory for the exploration team in the Mongoose edition which I quite like. It gives proceedings a depth that might not otherwise have been there. One major difference between the two eras of adventure however, is in the world maps.  The original world map for Mithril is black and white, very clear, easy to read standard map with key. Even better, the version on the Far Future Enterprises CD is in colour and very attractive. The Mongoose update is a triumph of design over utility. Yes, it looks very pretty but it is much harder to read and has a completely useless key (that doesn’t relate to the map). There was no question but I would be using the classic version to give to the players. Not that for this adventure it is actually needed except to set the scene and provide a sense of the ice and cold. The one thing to be said for the newer version is that it does feel ‘colder’.

One other change from the classic version which I think is disappointing, is that there is some small amount of predictability about the weather in Mission on Mithril. Not a lot, but it is there and I like that observant players can pick up on this. In Mission to Mithril it is pretty much completely random (not quite, there is an increasing likelihood of a storm if you’ve not had one).

You won’t be surprised to hear, perhaps, that I wasn’t quite done with handouts. Naturally I had a set of PCs for the players to choose from. Once again, my ‘set’ from The Traveller Adventure would do the trick although I was quite open to anyone having brought their own – especially as the two lads had borrowed rulebooks after the previous game. I knew I was off to hospital and a long recovery and wouldn’t need them. No one had had time, however, so I wasn’t dealing with any characters that I wasn’t familiar with or who might have been a marginal fit. I also decided it would be easiest, fastest and fairest if I let the players see the terrain speeds and Mishap likelihoods so I put them around the edge of the overland map. I thought about putting the weather on the map edge as well and getting them to help roll it (Seth suggests pre-rolling it as is done in the classic version but it is dependent on what terrain the PCs are in and only takes one roll so I decided pre-rolling wasn’t necessary. However, in the end I decided not to have them involved in the weather determination partly because it felt as if should be ‘behind the scenes’ and partly because I wanted to be able to fudge it if necessary. I only had two real aims in running the adventure – aside from the obvious one to try and make it as fun as possible. Those were to encounter an ephemeral glade which was about the only thing I clearly remembered from the original adventure, and to encounter a snow-worm which is new to the Mongoose edition. I was perhaps influenced by having just the week before seen Dune II in the cinema. As a complete aside, I contemplated digging the worm riding rules out of my Dune: Adventures in the Imperium book from Modiphius just in case the players fancied giving it a go. If anyone cares the rules are in “Sand and Dust” (p.47). My Travellerised version of them might look something like this:

Worm Riding

Task Levels:

Experienced Rider: Difficult (10+)

Fremen novice: Very Difficult (12+)

Offworlder novice: Formidable (14+)

Stage 1

Set thumper and take good position: [difficulty above] Animals (handling) check (1D×10 mins, Education). Failure at this point makes later stages harder rather than inflicting injury.

Stage 2

Focus as worm bears down: [difficulty above] Tactics OR Survival check (1D mins, Morale). Failure here can result in injury and loss of Social Standing.

Stage 3

Run to worm’s side, plant maker hooks: [difficulty above] Athletics (dexterity) check (1D rounds, Dexterity). Failure now results in serious injury or death.

If the extended Traveller Companion characteristics aren’t being used, replace Morale with Endurance. Sanity could also be an option!
You may not be surprised to hear that I scrapped this idea mainly because I thought time would be far too short but also because it seemed out of keeping with the rest of the adventure. Not to mention that clearly the snow-worms on Mithril rear up unlike the sandworms of Dune.  (See cover illustration).

Anyway, the final addition to handouts was to grab, just before play, my own ATV Schematics as I thought that would provide more fun than just a plain old dice roll in the event of one of the Mishaps being ‘ATV Malfunction’. I could still use the repair rolls but it would be more fun to know what we were repairing, perhaps give more interest in identifying the fault if it just starts as a blinking light on the dashboard, and might offer role playing opportunities. This paid off in spades as although we only encountered one ATV Malfunction on the journey out, the random roll decreed it was a leak in the ’fresher. As well as everything else the PCs were dealing with, we had the fun of a small flood in the ’fresher turning into slightly bigger flood getting into the ATV proper and then under the floor plates where some of the food is stored and (rather critically) the power plant is located. Cue characters frantically trying to stop the water, salvage the food, make sure the water doesn’t get anywhere critical and so on. I was perhaps a bit mean in deciding that the water had shorted something out. Another random roll on my tables settled on the comms system which the engineer then spent some hours failing to fix and some more hours the next day managing to fix. Only just before they needed the comms to hone in on the distress signal’s exact origin. This worked really well and I’m still very proud of my ‘blueprints’ which give engineer/mechanic inclined players something to explore beyond the map.

On the Night

So, the evening arrived and I took my daughter and her board games for 1630 to help set up al-though this was largely done by the time we got there. Jane had brought V and they had arrived early. It was V’s birthday – what a way to spend it! At 1700 we sat down in a separate room so our noise doesn’t disturb the boardgamers in the main hall where an impressive display had been laid out by my daughter and a couple of other regulars who are serious about their games. The separate room has the added benefit of letting me hear. The acoustics in the hall are terrible. To say nothing of my hearing which seems to grow more terrible by the day and may be the limiting factor on me playing Traveller socially in years to come.

The two mature ladies and I were joined by two of the youth, two young lads who have played in the couple of games we’ve run before but not otherwise I believe. They were keen and one returned one of the Traveller books he’d been borrowing. Perhaps I should be readier to just ‘let go’. I offered them the set of March Harrier crew I’ve used before and Mats chose Kunal the pilot, Noah picked Lily the archaeologist, V picked Shell the engineer and Jane fancied a change from Fred and picked Loyd the Captain. One thing I’d stipulated was that it would best if someone took Captain Kitman so I wasn’t driving things as much by playing him as an NPC. (Of course, we could have just declared Kunal or one of the others as captain.) The snag is that I knew Fred is best of that set of characters with Recon skill which is rather useful in this adventure. So, I suggested she took on two characters which she was willing to do although I’ll confess it was hard to differentiate between them. It is perhaps more of a skill doing that than I imagine. I put the other character options (Gvoudzon, Egon and an unnamed marine captain) away but kept out Adma the Medic as an NPC. “You never know,” I teased them, “when a doctor might be useful.”

One of the things I asked of my four players at this point, given that this was our third outing and that almost counts as a regular group, was whether they wanted to take this in a leisurely fashion and perhaps go on to finish next time, or whether they wanted to get on with and be fairly driven along in order to finish it one go. Given these evenings are months apart it was probably wise that we picked the latter option. More skilled referees might have had a better grasp of how much material there was and how much time available. Although having said that, I was pretty sure by now that it would be tight fitting it all in.

By the time we were ‘going’ it was a bit after 1715 so I knew there was no time to hang about. I had spent the afternoon highlighting the text which I thought was crucial to set the scene, explain the plot and give a sense of where/what/who. I’m really glad I did that. Mission to Mithril is just a fraction short of 20,000 words and there was definitely not time for it all in the time available. Putatively, three hours – plus the setting up time, plus some packing up time and the possibility of a bite to eat in the middle. I didn’t mess around with Jump events save to make sure they’d done any actions they cared to. I randomly gave Jane, as it turned out, a slip describing the request from Imperial agents to pick up the agent and his data files on Mithril (as suggested by Seth) and had two more slips that I realized were not really relevant due to the PCs that had been picked, so those slips could be put aside. (They were really there just to ‘cover’ the secret message to The Captain in case he chose not to tell his crew).

So, we spent perhaps 75 minutes doing the landing, EMP and exploring the starport. Again, listening to Seth’s advice, I’d made sure to have in mind where the data files were hidden and described two marker poles between landing pad and buildings.  Unfortunately, the player that decided to check those out only checked out the one where there was nothing, so the data cache got missed and made me wonder how much I should force the issue. I perhaps should have done, but I’m not entirely sure it mattered. Things were slowed up a little by The Captain ordering his engineer and pilot to stay on board the March Harrier while the others investigated. They got on with as much repair work as they could do without the relevant grav doohicky but then spent their time peering out the windows to see what was going on. I rather undermined The Captain’s authority by pointing out to the players that they didn’t have to do what he said. That may have been a bit mean to Jane. They explored everything, including the Pit before they found the ATV which was going to be my trigger for the incoming distress message. Everything was pretty much as book and generated good discussion about what had gone on. Mats came close with his theory that it had been pirates.

One wrinkle was that Fred decided to climb down into the Pit, despite the risks I kept pointing out, to retrieve the ID of the corpses. Irritatingly I’d not come up with names for them but elided over it. Ripping his coat rather badly on a jagged bit of metal it seemed a great moment to introduce the crystallice on the exposed skin. Jane really played this up very nicely. Fred is a big guy however, so they had some difficulty fishing him out of the Pit. They eventually got the job the done. V had a great moment when, as a newbie to Traveller and without any prompting at all put 2 and 2 together to ask if the Air/Raft grav unit could be used to (at least temporarily) fix their own grav drive. This is of course a key bit of the adventure so I felt that that bit of brilliance deserved a ‘benefit’ or ‘benny’ I think they’re called. She could reroll any one roll later in the game if she chose to.

Into the Wilderness

It was about 1830 by now. Describing the ATV, I was careful to mention the tarpaulin on top, covering the turret, but no one chose to peer under it. The distress call comes in and they realize they are going to have to drive out to help whoever it is.  The two back on the March Harrier finally get to join the action and off they set. (No checking on food quantities but I’d decreed that there was 5D meals per person on board already – which I think I got from the classic book). I got Jane ticking off days and meals and she quickly saw how things were going and put them on one meal a day. Which meant fatigue rules kicked in which was fun. (And failed Endurance rolls meant bickering – certainly from Adma who seemed most prone to fail his rolls). It was a probably a moment for the Morale characteristic from Traveller Companion. I got them to set up a driving and navigating rota so it was easy to determine who was doing what when certain things happened.

I had a handy grid to fill in for the overland travel to help speed things up and let us know what was what. Jane took over keeping this filled in so I could either direct their rolls or make my own and keep things moving. I took the advice of the book (and Seth) to make this an interesting part of the adventure and not just a series of rolls. Fortunately, there is enough scenery, enough critters, enough Events and enough planning/discussion/bickering amongst the characters that this really isn’t a problem. It would, I think, have been fun to let this breathe and perhaps make three sessions of the whole thing with this as a middle section, but it perhaps doing it at pace kept the tension and interest up.

I was happy to let the dice fall where they would but was keen to ensure we did two things. Firstly, I wanted to encounter an ephemeral glade, just because. Unfortunately, the weather remained poor – although no storms interestingly, which in dry runs during the previous week, I’d had endlessly as I crossed the icy wastes by myself – so I had to fudge a roll after a bit to make the warmer weather the glades need happen. Secondly, I’d had the bright idea of foreshadowing the worms by having them bump over a metre wide but quite low ridge in the ice and snow they were crossing. Noah, playing the curious archaeologist, had the foresight to get the ATV stopped and check the first of these out, but between the crystallice and not seeing anything beyond a tunnel when Lily poked her rifle in, they didn’t linger. There’s no hint of these ‘tracks’ or worm casts in either of the Mongoose books or Seth’s review, so I was particularly pleased I’d thought of them.

Crossing the river that is on the map was a good test of their confidence in the ‘all-terrain’ part of the ATV but although I ratcheted up the tension, they crossed without incident. However, on the far side, encountering a small herd of large beasts further down the river, they finally twigged they could try hunting for meat. Cue checks of the Library Data to see how edible it was which I thought was a smart idea and then three with weapons skills trying to hit one from the airlock of the ATV. Two misses and then almost as if it was written for drama, Fred brings one down. Saying it is a 400kg animal I haven’t thought things through as they then roll a 4 for 80kg of it being edible and Jane arguing that that is certainly enough food for a good few days. Of course, it’s not quite that simple as a) they’ve no where to keep it and b) it’s not actually that edible so they’d need to eat a lot to get much nourishment. I decided they could eat the stuff but might be getting stomach trouble in a few days’ time, if not lower intestinal problems. Perhaps I have this too much on my mind due to my own medical condition and dietary limits. Perhaps it’s a good job we didn’t get into that! I suppose, too, that they could have stored the meat on the outside of the ATV but there were two problems with that as a) they’ve not got anything to put the meat in and I suspected it might attract critters and b) it’s not always freezing outside.

Anyway, they muddle through making quite good progress and even doing a couple of night shifts to make up some lost time. Good progress until the ATV Malfunction and the ’fresher flood mentioned above. That kills their comms just when they would have been useful. But V has her engineer set to and after some difficulties makes the repair. (It was a little harder by virtue of it being an unfamiliar Sword World ATV and no help from manuals).

At some point in the middle of this food was announced. We were in the middle of something exciting and decided to spend five minutes wrapping it up before going to get our plates. Of course, five minutes turned into fifteen and by that time the chef du jour was seeking us out wondering where we’d got to. But seeing we were a bit wrapped up, Beth very kindly offered table service and bought five plates of macaroni cheese to the table. Memo to self: thank Beth and the kitchen crew. Other Memo to self: try and schedule in a break in future. 

Left With the Keys to the Church

Even with some minutes saved from a break we still spent an hour or so on this and it was a little after 1930 that the vicar came in offering a large bunch of keys. It turned out that all the other board games going on had come to a natural end and everyone was packing up and going home but we were welcome to stay on until the scheduled finish time of 2000 and lock up after ourselves. This suited myself and all the players as we were just on the verge of getting to the distress signal. We were left to it, but it did seem a good moment, now there was no particular pressure to finish, to find out how willing everyone was to go on. I reckoned I could ‘wrap up’ this segment and come to a reasonable end point in the next half hour but it turned out there was more enthusiasm than I might have expected. No one was in any hurry to leave. We pressed on.

Shell, the engineer (a thinly veiled version of Tess from The Traveller Adventure as her name seems too personally tied to the character) finally got the comms working again and they were able to both hone in on the signal and make contact with the Bothildr family. Now I know that the Sword Worlds are really based on an Icelandic culture and language sensibility but unfortunately I’ve never managed to visit the country or, indeed encounter, Icelanders – although my landlady in London for a period had a string of Faroese au pairs. Not the same thing. So, as a substitute, it seemed just the moment for the (fairly basic) Swedish I have. It seemed to do the trick and gave a certain something to the early interactions with Eric and his family. Well, I had fun with it at least. I did find some ‘fun Icelandic phrases’ which seemed to work perfectly in Traveller in various situations they were in.

We spent some time meeting the family, seeing their campsite, eating with them and getting some of the plot explained to us. (I split up some of the chunks of text by giving it to the various family members at different points). Myntelle did her covering sniper bit when the PCs first approached but then joined them when Eric felt they were safe enough! Fred turned down the offer of alcohol, as he’s teetotal, but that didn’t go down well with Eric who thought he should be a man’s man and drink up. On the other hand, when Myntelle arrived, Loyd’s reaction was… well, it couldn’t have been funnier for those of who have known him for a while. He rolled a «12». Well, she does look pretty cute in the Update version (2023) – much less severe than she was in the earlier edition. Eric wasn’t impressed with that either. On the whole it was a good job that Eric wanted to get his family out of the sticky situation. In an effort to ingratiate themselves with the family, Kunal starts showing Egino, the 11 year old son, some of the weapons they have on them. He shows them the revolver he has. 

From Beneath the Ice

Shell asks about the grav part they are after and where the Air/Raft is and they explain that bit but time was pretty much up so we ventured forth to find the pair from the port and encountered another of the odd tracks that put the occasional bump in their path. Lily was just asking Eric what they were when the answer became apparent. A snow-worm was emerging from the snow and rearing its mouth, its maw right over them. Eric shouts to Adma, driving, to put his foot down. He does. On the brake in his panic. (I rolled 50/50 but presumably it is all backwards on a Sword Worlds machine.) There is no room between rocks and other terrain to get past it anyway. The worm is looming over them. I show them the picture from the front cover of the book.  There’s suitable awe.

Fred and Shell (throwing off her normally risk-averse personality as she realizes the danger and the need to save everyone) along with Eric, are all try shooting at the beast from the airlock but there are too many of PCs in a small space on the side of the vehicle and the beast is too much in front of the ATV. So they have to step out of the ATV to get a shooting angle. They are not aware of little Egino joining them with his revolver which he fires at the snow-worm along with their various rifles, carbines and so on. It is all relatively ineffective. (The snow-worm is 75 Hits remember. Perhaps a good job I was saving the supposedly mythological Giant Snow-Worm as a climax for later!) As for initiative, everyone scores well – except the snow-worm. I roll a «3» and it gets another -2 DM for a Slow Metabolism trait. Still, that gave the players time to act.

Lily (or Noah, playing Lily) finally remembers the turret and tarpaulin and chooses this moment to peer under it. The rotary autocannon is revealed. As everyone pops off their bit of Damage here and their bit of Damage there, it takes her a moment to get on the roof, get the cover off and figure out what she is doing. She fires off a speculative shot after everyone else has tried a second shot and only received a squirting bit of ichor for their trouble. The cannon is helping, but it’s not enough. The ice blue ichor hits Shell and I inflict 2D worth of damage on Shell which seems mean but doesn’t put her out of the fight. The worm is still coming; the maw getting closer. Fred is trying an aimed shot which is having little additional effect.

Finally, Lily switches the autocannon to full auto and opens up.  6D damage with Auto 5. I make that 30 dice to roll. It’s late and the player has a bit of dyscalculia so we simply roll 6D once and multiply by five.  I give the player a 50/50 chance of it being 2D more points than average and he lucks out with 10. Suddenly the worm is not doing so well and Noah’s father has entered the room. It turns out he has been patiently waiting in the hall to take his son home. (I had understood I was doing lifts for the two lads). The 75 Hits had been matched and then some. I decreed the last of the burst had entered the snow-worm’s approaching mouth, hit something vital in the back of its head and exploded. That was the good news. No more threatening worm. The bad news: 2D ichor damage to everyone not in the ATV. Kunal had just been stepping out but I decided her way had been blocked by Eric having given up shooting trying to hustle his son back into the ATV and that Shell only received half the damage due to having half turned away from her previous injury. Fred, Shell and Eric all had need of Adma who had finally got out of the driver seat to come and help.

It had just turned 2100 and it really was time to wrap up. That seemed an eminently climatic point to call it a night and decree that they had been able to find the Air/Raft and the two ’port staff stranded with it, fix the Air/Raft and ship everyone back to the ’port post-haste. Even if it did mean leaving the ATV in the wilderness. Lily (i.e., Noah) looked a bit stricken at realizing that they were leaving her/his new found love of the rotary autocannon with it. On the other hand, it really was quite fun that that only got revealed at the climatic moment and probably helped save the day. On this occasion, Seth’s idea of having the Air/Raft a bit closer to the camp didn’t really matter as we were not doing that in detail.

Another evening?

Of course, we didn’t even begin to tackle the ‘final third’ of the adventure with the baddies arriving at the starport, but I did not mention that to the players. It seemed better to leave it as if we had tackled a complete thing. It felt more satisfying. It is just possible they will change their mind and want a ‘continuation’ next time. I’ll sell it as a sequel, rather than a continuation. If not, Search and Rescue, the next Marches Adventure, looks like it could be fun for a one-off. It wouldn’t be quite as easy to fit into a campaign as the text itself hints. Of course, the other route to not having to spend so much time getting to know 20,000 words of text is to run my own thing.  It is not like I’m short of pre-written material or ideas new things.

We left the question of where the agent might be (or if he even existed) for another time and began packing up. I always find it hard to judge but I think it had gone over well and a thoroughly good time was had by all. I certainly enjoyed it although I did note to myself that the weeks’ worth of preparation had really paid off in knowing what was vital, what could be skipped and in knowing the material (which I’ve not written) well enough to be able to keep things moving. It could have been very different if I’d just tried winging it direct from the book. (That might have been possible had we been going at a slower pace, but not at the speed we were going).

I’m sure it would work spread out across several sessions but there was also something to be said for making it a complete thing. I certainly feel that in the last ten days I’ve really visited Mithril and added another classic adventure which has been sitting on my shelves for years to my knowledge bank and ‘been there, done that’ CV. Jane and V at least emailed subsequently to say they had had a good evening and a good birthday respectively. Perhaps another Games Night will reveal whether the two lads enjoyed themselves as well but my impression was that they did. If nothing else, I was impressed with their role playing, their ideas, their endurance and I’d probably better prepare apologies for their parents.

In short, there is a lot of fun to be had with Mission to Mithril but it does not fit into a three-hour slot and barely fits into a four-hour slot so I’m not quite sure how I might run it at TravCon if I do. Preparation is the key. Listen to Seth S whose ideas are not without merit! Trust the players to take things and run with them – wherever it might lead. Maybe next time we’ll get to ride a worm. Would sandworms fit into Uragyad’n of the Seven Pillars do you think?

Appendix: Paper Sizes

European and American paper sizes differ, though there are some sizes that are “close”. European sizes are based on A0 being 1m² of paper, with an aspect ratio such that if one cuts it in half parallel to the short edge, the aspect ratio of each of the two halves will be the same as that of the whole, and cutting any European paper sheet in that manner yields two of the next size “down” (which actually increases the A-number). There is no equivalent rule for American sizes. The most familiar “correspondence” is US Letter to European A4; A4 is slightly narrower and slightly longer than US Letter. European A3 is the same sort of close correspondence to US Tabloid or Ledger, and A2 to US Broadsheet.

 

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