Meldas Bama Teta Kehn

High points for me were:

  • Mr Lovegrove - it was one of the elements that immediately made this Traveller universe very different.
  • The 'perpetuation of what has gone before and yet to come' - we were surrounded by wonder and power that the autarchs of the 3I can only lust over.
  • Our interplay as a group.

A self criticism is that I took a back seat in terms of the decision making and drive towards goals, but there were reasons for that. I enjoyed my populist twist to the academic rigour.

In general it just felt different, but also Traveller. Nice!
 
My own ramblings for what they're worth, in no particular order:

The campaign was genuinely novel for me, which is a rare and valued thing. A group of high-tech academics from a race I've not played much with before, in a region of space I've not visited either as a player or a GM, lots of puzzles to solve and almost no combat. I feel I could've been more of a team player, but hopefully I was able to correct that as the game went on.

Mr Lovegrove and his recurring sidequest were one of the highlights of the game, and I'm sure there's a good deal more to him than we have worked out so far.

I've not read most of the material on the Florians, but this game's mashup of it is forever how I will see them now.

It was fascinating to see @Guvnor adjust the game on the fly to assimilate our various mad ideas; at least that's what I think was going on. The range of artwork was impressive, and made me feel quite inadequate!

I have the horrifying suspicion that this was a reasonably accurate depiction of life in academia, megastructures and gauss weapons not withstanding.

I find the Roll20 character sheet large, complex, and somewhat off-putting; but then I think that about most Roll20 character sheets. One thing I'd suggest for next time is suppressing the pop-up box which asks for modifiers on skill rolls, most people can apply basic modifiers easily enough, and screen real estate is at a real premium for me - I spent a lot of time hunting for the popup window.

I've had surprisingly little exposure to MgT2, and it was confidence-building to see that despite what feel like hundreds of skills and terrifyingly detailed rules, at its heart it is still as simple and straightforward as ever once you prune your way past the edge cases. The major obstacle for me turned out to be the character sheet rather than the rules, and I found myself creating a 3x5 index card 'cheat sheet' for Daldor which I found easier to process on the fly. @Guvnor was able to do most of the things I use SWADE's Adventure Toolkit for by adroit use of Task Chains, which were surprisingly flexible.

The game did reinforce my opinion that unlike CT, MgT2 is simply not intended to use random encounters, and is therefore less suited to sandbox or solo play. Everything we encountered seemed to flow naturally from the storylines, or to be a deliberate plot point. For further study, as any of the PCs would've said.

As @First Age said in the last session, it left me wanting to run Traveller again.
 
back seat in terms of the decision making and drive towards goals
I think it was an entirely valid way to play the character in that mix of character types - and Luthor didn't seem backward in coming forward when a media style opportunity arose.
despite what feel like hundreds of skills and terrifyingly detailed rules, at its heart it is still as simple and straightforward as ever once you prune your way past the edge cases
This. [however hundreds is an exaggeration]
CT, MgT2 is simply not intended to use random encounters
You may be right but it also maybe that is how I ran this game, you had a clear storypath from your mission: thus we had already agreed roughly where you were going.

I asked each session where you might go next, and had plenty of time to prep; that prep was often a mix of [very] random and intentional; I was responding within a fairly large path of possibilities the story was only 25% planned at any point; at 2.5 hours per session and each session valuable I wanted you to have the time to roleplay and have fun rather than be pushed from random encounter to random encounter.

I may also have got quite good at hiding/revealing the random in an RPG.. some tables I play at groan at my love of random!

You are right about the modifer pop up box, and yes it can be suppressed. It's foxed me more than a few times.

I can take no credit for the AI - Susag AG provided it.. ;-)
 
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