Freelance Traveller

After-Action Report: North Star 8

by Timothy Collinson

This article originally appeared in the July/August 2025 issue.

Garrison Hotel, Sheffield
10th - 11th June 2025

North Star is a small UK convention, perhaps 35 or 40 people, focussed on SF role playing, organized by Dom Mooney and Graham Spearing.

Having missed two iterations of North Star thanks to cancer, its treatment and aftermath, it was good to book it once again and even better to find that this time I’d managed to get my act together in time to have a room at the Garrison rather than a taxi ride away. 

After the unpleasantness of the train journey up to Sheffield last time See https://www.freelancetraveller.com/features/stories/aarnorthstarv.html under ‘A Journey’ I had thought this would be an opportunity to exorcise those ghosts.  However, it turned out my work colleague Jane P was also attending and I could gratefully accept the lift she offered.  Having said that, the trip up wasn’t without incident either.  Jane had just a couple of days before got her car back from repairs following a shunt that had pushed into her a vehicle in front meaning both ends of her small ground vehicle were damaged.  It was therefore more than a little upsetting and quite frustrating when an American bumped into us whilst we were stationary in the car park of Cherwell Valley services.  He was apologetic enough and the damage was only superficial so we could continue onwards, but it was a stress and a delay we could have done without.  Well done Jane for persevering and not falling apart.

Unlike previous incarnations of TravCon there is no Friday evening game at North Star and I had been stood up by local friend once again for a meal out.  As it was a birthday, I suspect that it was the same family event proving a better option.  The Garrison has a good menu, however, and so a meal of fish and chips at the bar and an early night were just the ticket for the rigours ahead.  I retired to my room and slumped in front of an episode of Hawaii 5-0 and found myself taking notes for a potential Traveller adventure.  Can’t I ever switch off?!  Jane couldn’t switch off as there was a party going on late in a lounge not far from her bedroom.  I could hear the thump of the drums, but far enough away I could ignore them.

North Star takes its mornings very easily, so there was time for a bath, breakfast and some ‘catching up’ (like reading my adventure) before the first slot at 1000.  At breakfast I’d started picking up some shiny gem-like things off the carpet which I initially thought were bits of a broken bracelet but turned out just to be table decorations from a party the night before.  I couldn’t pick them all up, they were everywhere but was surprised when Jane snaffled those I had salvaged and put them in an impromptu napkin envelope. 

Cowboys and Xenomorphs

As it happens, the 10am slot was Jane’s refereeing opportunity, and she was running Cowboys and Xenomorphs as she had at TravCon back in October.  It was the only Traveller game in that slot, so having been disappointed to have missed it six months previously, it was a no-brainer for me to sign up for this time round.

Except that, unlike TravCon, you don’t sign up for each game an hour or so before it runs.  They were continuing their system of putting preferences into a spreadsheet well before the event and then an algorithm working out who gets what.  Fortunately, however, I was down to play and even more fortunately was glad to see that it was running in the ‘Cargo Hold’ venue down in the basement of the hotel where the acoustics are somewhat better for those with hearing issues.  Even better, there was no game on the other table in the ‘Hold’ so there was no problem hearing at all.

I’d very carefully not read Cowboys and Xenomorphs (a slender Mongoose 1st Edition adventure by Matthew Sprange and Gareth Hanrahan) before travelling to Sheffield so I could remember nothing at all of it from having bought it years ago and whizzing through it to put in the bibliography.  The only thing I could remember about it is that it must have – in my opinion – one of the most attractive character illustrations of any Traveller book!  The only prep I’d done for the game was watching Cowboys and Aliens on tv the week before just to get in the mood.  Terrific watching Harrison Ford and Daniel Craig doing a great job and taking it all very seriously.

Dr Bob, Udo K, Neil H, Tom P and I all randomly picked one of the character sheets Jane had placed on the table face down.  Much to my amusement, I picked up Candice, the aforementioned character.  Well, that’s another tick on the bucket list in a slightly weird sort of way.  Jane had been threatening, no, teasing would be fairer, around the work lunch table in the run up to the convention about giving me the prostitute to play, or the 17-year-old lad – knowing I was well past my teenage years.  Meanwhile, Tom who had been supposed to be running a Cthulhu Icarus game but had insufficient takers, was settling in for his very first Traveller game ever so I gave him the briefest of run downs on the rules while Jane got set up.  He evidently wasn’t too put off as he came back for two more Traveller games across the weekend and said that all three were very different but that he’d enjoyed them.

I won’t spoil the plot, but we moseyed on into town, started uncovering strangeness and eventually managed to help out the townspeople without getting ourselves killed.  Dr Bob was good at putting on an American accent and I wished I could do better but was too cowardly.  Jane did an excellent job of reining us in, keeping us on our toes, and introducing the ‘gems’ I’d picked up at breakfast as part of the secret we uncovered.  Nicely played.

In this slot you could also have been playing “Into the Blackwelt” (Electric State), “Project Galileo” (Trophy), “Game Night” (Star Trek Adventures 2nd Edition), “Night of the Pumpkin” (Judge Dredd, GW), “Return to Tatooine” (Star Wars, WEG d6), and “Sugar Daddy Syndrome - Men in Black” (Blade Runner).

Stops

One advantage of having a room at the Garrison and not elsewhere like last time was that I didn’t have to scratch round looking for an out of the way corner to do my ‘stops’ which help me get through a day with CFS.  Now I could just grab a snack lunch and retire to my proper bed for a half hour which was very welcome and which made the whole convention much more manageable.  Not that I didn’t still badly need the Monday following (my 60th birthday) and the Tuesday as recuperation days.  It seems to a race to see whether energy levels or hearing become the limiting factor on attending gaming conventions in the future.

A Road So Dark

I needed every ounce of attention for the next slot.  There was enough Traveller on offer that if you wished and if the allocations worked out you could have played nothing but Traveller in the five available slots of the convention.  With one to spare.  But in a moment of heretical excitement –  which may get me banned from the one-true-Traveller fan club – I had signed up for Graham Spearing’s Fading Suns adventure, “A Road So Dark”.  The main reason being it was Graham running it and I knew he’d be good from previous TravCon encounters, but the other reason being that I have had all the Fading Suns books on my shelves for four or five years and although I’ve read them (mostly), I have never had a chance to play the game.  From reading, I found the rules relatively complicated such that I wasn’t sure I at all sure I understood how it worked.  Still, the setting is fabulous and I really love that.

This seemed to be just the moment to see what it was all about.  I grabbed the chance.  I’m glad I did.  As did Dom M, Tom Z, John O and Guy M.  Just to make things fun, Dom played a character called Dom.  That shouldn’t have been confusing, should it?  Only one other player around the table was familiar with the rules, the ever-masterful Tom Z, so Graham had a full-time job on his hands introducing us to the basics, getting us adventuring and leading us to a satisfying conclusion all within four hours.  I was really impressed by how he combined the rules and an introductory scene to show us what we needed to know.  Although if I learned nothing else it was a greater appreciation of just how simple and elegant Traveller is.  I can see how a longer campaign and a group of familiar players might well find the detail and flavour fairly straightforward, but I can also see why I struggled with the system (a d20 roll under to gain Victory Points mechanism – don’t ask me to explain further).  I suppose what I really want is a Traveller ‘crossover’ supplement!  If it could be done for Mindjammer, surely this wouldn’t be hard?  You could certainly run the setting with Traveller rules.

This adventure had us as a mixed team of characters attempting to track down a fabled jump key.  I ended up with another female character, this one a religious type so I was able to (just barely) touch on exploring what ‘faith’ might look like in a game setting like this.  It was fun adding a prayer at one point (which mechanically helped another character do a task) and I would like to have done more of this kind of thing. Instead, it was appropriate for my character to check out the archives which may also have been rather playing to type, but I enjoyed trying to extract the maximum I could from them (and the nice young archivist) even when I was relatively sure the adventure wasn’t ‘here’.  Tom Z picked Tiv, a Decados character (think ‘decadent noble’), and really went to town with his depiction of a very odd personage!  At one point my notes say he was “half dressed as a nun” but I can’t quite recall why.  That sounds like Tom, sorry, I mean Tiv.  I could have sat and watched his role playing all day.

In this slot you could also have been playing “Recruitment Drive” (Strontium Dog), “The Steel City and the Scarlet Court” (Age of Wonder), “30K Rock” (Mongoose Traveller 2nd Edition), “Train in Vein” (Savage Worlds), “Knights of Absalom” (WH40K Wrath & Glory), “California Dreamin’” (Electric State), and “Silent Harvest” (Cypher System).  “30K Rock” was being run by Steve Hampshire who I’ve encountered before at the Faversham gaming weekend.  His teaser said: “A quick break on the resort station had seemed a good idea, until an emergency evacuation dumped you on this rather sketchy Far Trader for a jump to the next system.”  I can only hope I get a chance to play it another time.

Imperial Measures

By the time we were done, I realized I had little appetite for another meal given how much I’d already eaten in the day (and my somewhat reduced appetite following surgery etc) so a bag of crisps and a pint of cider sufficed for ‘supper’ before another stop and then the evening game.  This was my other non-Traveller game of the convention, but this one not quite so much by choice.  I’d listed as my first pick Dom Mooney running the first bit of (the new) “Murder on Arcturus Station” but demand was high, and the algorithm had shunted me down to my second pick.  In fact, that wasn’t at all bad as I’d been really torn and might have easily swapped them round.  I bought into the Dune kickstarter from Modiphius recentlyish and absolutely love the books.  Probably more than I do any of the novels after the initial Dune.  In fact there’s no ‘probably’ about it; they’re great.  But again, I’ve never played the game and didn’t think it was very likely I’d get the opportunity back home.

So, John Ossoway running “Imperial Measures”, was not even a ‘second choice’ really.  I was looking forward to it and I wasn’t disappointed.  Also around the table were Guy M, Remi F, Bruce L, and K.  Once again, only one other player was familiar with the Dune rules although a couple more were familiar with Modiphius’ d20 system from John Carter of Mars (although there are some differences).  John, ably supported by Remi, got us going with the basics and got us right into the adventure and ‘momentum’ such that I wish I could have had much more of this.  Sir Theobald Hagal, a cousin of the Emperor, had gone missing and it was important for us to find him, not least because as well as a cousin he was also a spy. Amongst other other instructions were to not trust Harkonnens (obviously!) and to tread lightly and discreetly (has the patron never met role players?!).  I got to tick another thing off my bucket-list when we donned stillsuits when out in the desert.  I’ve travelled enough in parched lands, if not full desert, that I can only dream of doing this in real life.  One of my favourite lines of the weekend was a pilot we were hiring saying “I rarely crash.”  That’s encouraging.

Frustratingly at the end I had to step away from the table a couple of times for ten minutes or so, but that’s the price I occasionally have to pay post-cancer – especially if I’m not as strict with my diet as I ought to be; the price of being alive.  John was very patient and I didn’t miss too much as we were into combat segments by then.  I was also not too disappointed that we didn’t push on until the scheduled finish time of midnight.  It wasn’t that I wasn’t enjoying it, but I was ready for bed!

In this slot you could also have been playing: “The Third Horizon” (Starforged), “Horror Movie Mayhem” (Tales From the Loop), “Another Bug Hunt” (Mothership), “Break On Through (To the Other Side)” (Savage Worlds), “Mysteries On Arcturus Station – The Hunt for Sabre IV” (Mongoose Traveller 2nd Edition), and “Everlight” (Fading Suns).  Dom’s teaser for the new prelude to the classic Traveller adventure “Murder on Arcturus Station” read: “As experienced corporate troubleshooters, you’ve been hired by the mining company Lamarck Minerals, LIC to carry out an investigation to locate the Sabre IV, a 1500dT, 310 MCr, jump-capable ore-carrier, which has gone missing from Arcturus Station 3, a backwater system controlled by Banasdan in the Solomani Rim. Foul play is suspected, and recovery of the carrier and its cargo is a matter of urgency.”

Day 2

Day 2 began in much the same way as Saturday.  Garrison breakfasts at the weekend don’t start until 8am, so there was time for another bath.  An excellent way of forcing myself to relax because I can’t take paperwork in there with me and am reluctant to take tech!  But the temptation of a bath I can actually fit into (unlike the one at home) was too much to resist.  “You’re never alone with a rubber duck.”  Not that I had one.

Batch 24381

It was a good way of preparing for the 10am slot on Sunday which was where “Batch 24381” was fitting into the convention.  I hadn’t twigged when offering a game that some slots were shorter than others and I’d rather limited myself by things I definitely wanted to play in!  So now I was refereeing an adventure in just three hours, not the four I’m used to from TravCon and my previous outing at North Star.  It was rather daunting to see that Graham S had signed up (no pressure, then!) as had Eugene C, Dr Moose, Steven P, Andy S, and Tom P.  For those who don’t know the plot and without spoiling too much, an anagathics researcher has gone missing a troubleshooting team of academics are tasked with tracking her down. Various other factions are interested as well.

I’d been thinking about what I might chop out for some weeks as it was quite apparent from running the adventure at TravCon that the book as written (i.e., what you get on DriveThruRPG) does not fit into four hours.  Not by a long shot.  Realistically it’s probably three or four sessions, if not more.  I knew I could cut out much of the introduction on Leystroak and take much of that as read (literally, as I summarised the setup).  I could scrap any idea of playing out time in Jump and limit myself to just the short paragraph of the dream for one of the players.  However, I know that it’s quite useful to have the ship’s NPC crew as a resource for the PCs to relay on later, so I didn’t want to elide over them entirely.  I compromised by putting each of them on a card which I could put on the table for any players who felt their characters would have chatted with/up, got to know someone, or otherwise interacted, so that they were available as potential allies later in the game.  This seemed to work and they weren’t forgotten subsequently but didn’t take up more than a minute of time.  Another thing that could go was the elderly ‘next door’ crew on the berth next to the PCs.  At TravCon this lot had been fun to roleplay and had nearly caused a derailment of the plot as one group of players developed a suspicion about the plot involving time travel.  Spoiler: it doesn’t!  The fusties got a mention, but we moved on.  Another thing that I thought we could bypass was all the detail of the heist on Minson Tower although it seemed a shame.  We reduced that to a PC using their ‘Network’ mustering out benefit, two others coming up with ways to get in, and then took all the computer hacking as read.

Despite all the surgery and large chunks of my precious creation lying on the cutting room floor, it did not fit into a three-hour slot either.  Which meant the last few moments on the Marchioness’ fief were also curtailed but there was just enough time for the PCs to see what the deal was and decide whether they were going to forcibly ‘rescue’ the professor they’ve been chasing or let her decide.  We finished dead on 1pm but I still can’t work out where all the time goes!  (Five minutes I could have reclaimed was the ATV breakdown which isn’t required but I’d dragged the big laminate sheet of schematics up to Sheffield, along with its d66 table, and couldn’t resist the fun of putting it in.  I think the technician player enjoyed his moment in the sun – or at least up to his ankles in ’fresher water – and we didn’t spend too long on it.) Several times it was pointed out that really, I should bring a game to LongCon which Graham and Dom also organize where there are only a handful of games but you play just one all weekend! 

I also got a fair amount of ribbing from Graham, quite deserved, about the detail of handouts I’d prepared (there’s a separate booklet of them available with the PDF if you buy it in on DriveThru – as well as the ATV schematics).  Amongst other things, Graham took great delight at the monastery, trying to establish whether the monks they were following were genuine or just dressed as monks, in asking how many robes were in the place.  Which was actually a good question.  That I didn’t have an itemised inventory to hand made his whole day.  (Next time I revise it, I can remedy that…)  As ever, I kicked myself after we’d finished that in all the excitement I had, again, failed to take a photo of the game and players.

In this slot you might have preferred to be playing: “Strontium Dog: Love is in the Air” (Haunted West), “Life on Mars?” (Trail of Cthulhu), “Succession” (The Sprawl), “Triangle Agency” (Dead Quiet), “Takedown Crisis: A Mirror Cracked” (Star Trek, Last Unicorn), “Who really killed the CEO?” (Genesys Android), and “You Are the Heroes.  You??” (John Carter of Mars).

Flatlining

What I had completely forgotten from TravCon is just how downbeat the ending of “Batch 24381” is. Themed, as it is, around old age and aging it leaves me exceptionally flat I feel after running it.  Probably not helped by the ending not providing as much choice for the players as I might wish.  Which probably wasn’t helped by rather abbreviating events and some of the choices they might have made.  The players, including one new to Traveller that weekend, were kind enough not to say it had been disappointing, but it took me an hour to ‘decompress’ and poor Jane, who found me in the bar after we’d finished, was patient enough with my self-flagellation.  Still, I doubt I’ll ever run the game again as I’ve used up the two venues where I could obviously do so.  Perhaps it’s best if I just tuck it up in its retirement home and let others worry about it if they will.  I still think there’s mileage in a proper adventure about anagathics which seems strangely lacking across nearly half a century of Traveller, but I’m not convinced my contribution is what anyone has been waiting for all these years.

Surprise!

After a very light lunch and another stop to recover some energy, it was time for my final game.  Well, not until the convention raffle and wrap up.  Dom and Graham had some Patriot Games vouchers (a gaming shop in Sheffield) to give away and all our badges were entered into the draw.  I managed to win a £20 voucher which was a nice birthday present as I turned 60 on the morrow.  There was a bigger surprise however when Graham, in cahoots with Jane and the hotel staff, produced a lovely big chocolate cake for someone celebrating his 10.5 terms.  It took me a moment, I’m that slow, to work out he meant me.  Still, it was very kind of them.  After which it only remained to announce that North Star would be happening again next year.  Also, Furnace would be happening in October.  That covers not just SF but all RPG types. They are planning on expanding slightly by using one of the function rooms, so Graham and Dom were keen for everyone present to think about offering at least one game if they were going to attend.  It’s a pity it’s my busiest teaching time of the year at work or I might be persuaded to attend.  Perhaps given the distance Sheffield is, it’s best that I don’t try to fit in another thing.

Deepnight Legacy

Then it was time for the final game.  One I’d really been looking forward to because firstly it was being run by Dom who I know is always excellent value as a Referee, and secondly he was running “Deepnight Legacy” - which is an introductory adventure to the massive boxed set (and more) of Deepnight Revelation. 

Now, I’ve had this on my shelves for a while and I’ve gone through it with enough attention to add it to my bibliography (i.e., looking out for ships/plans, world maps, new rules and that kind of thing), but that was some time ago and I’ve not read it properly since.  It’s on my ‘to read’ pile but I’ve been put off by its sheer scale.  But that was perfect for this moment as it meant I came to the slot as a blank slate and only the very vaguest idea that it involved distant travel and some weirdness I couldn’t quite recall.  Other players around the table were: Graham S, Massie H, K and Tom Z – so it felt as if I was playing with old friends.

“Deepnight Legacy” is, of course, a perfect example of what does fit into a convention slot and with Dom’s confident hands at the helm, we were soon discovering the shamblers, avoiding the shamblers and ultimately rescuing poor Tass who had been stuck in her ship for 60 days.  It was great fun and just the quantity of body horror that I could cope with without feeling too disturbed.  (X-cards had been put on all the convention tables at the start of the weekend but I never saw one used or even heard of such usage.)

One interesting moment was when a player said there was no obvious reason that Tass should have been locked into her ship.  That was like a red rag to the bull.  My brain – or at least that part of it that seems to enjoy creating d6, 2d6 or d66 tables – kicked into overdrive and I immediately gave him one reason and over the next ten minutes, five more possible reasons.  (Two of them admittedly a bit off the wall).  At that point I quit because another part of my brain was deeply suspicious that this wasn’t likely to be welcome anymore.  Either way, K was very patient with me and Dom just looked on with wry amusement as he knew, each time, how close or far I was from the mark.  I had to check afterwards, but only one reason was vaguely close to the actual published text, so there was nothing half remembered from glancing through the book years before as far as I can tell.

Also in this slot you could have been playing: “Lost in Dark Space” (Ironsworn Starforged), “Stormfront” (Storm Furies), “Assembly May Be Required” (Mothership or Those Dark Places), “Project Arrow” (Space:1999, 2d20), and “Bad Times in Oculus City” (Mothership).

Wrap Up

And that was North Star.  I feel ashamed there are so many game systems I’ve never even heard of, much less that I’m familiar with, but it was great to see Traveller so well represented.  It seems the Mongoose version is well loved and developing quite a following, I even heard some encouraging words that someone who’d stepped away from Traveller had checked out a Mongoose bundle of holding and had been drawn back in by the books being published.

The friend who’d stood me up on Friday night, messaged in the middle of “Deepnight” to say she could fit a (lovely Turkish) meal in that very evening.  Some of us stayed one more night because of the travel distance so I got to breakfast with Dr Moose who I’ve met a couple of times.  I still treasure his Esperdish Campaign which has its (unpublished) place on my shelves (and yes, I encourage him to put it ‘out there’ whenever I see him, I’m sure others would enjoy it).  I’m not sure what Jane made of theological discussions about liturgy that we got into over cornflakes, but there you are.

The journey home was only eventful in the sense that it was sloooow.  And just five miles from home and desperate to stop travelling, we spent an inordinate amount of time doing the last ⅔ of a mile of motorway trying to get to our exit in the face of more than half a dozen rescue vehicles attending a two-car crash in the inside (fast) lane.  We could only hope no one was too seriously hurt as the vehicles didn’t look too badly damaged, but it did give pause for thought that our ‘bump’ on the way up could have been much worse.

Which feels as if it makes my frequent sign off even more apposite: safe travelling.

 

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