Interestingly a good game

I ran traveller last night and it turned out unexpectedly well. I normally take hours to prepare a game but I resisted the temptation to over prepare and followed through with my own style where I don't know how the adventure will go, but will try to find excuses for the PCs to do what they are good at and in the imagining and role-playing every scenario discover a down and simple murphies that can be found in the situation.

It was so unprepared I didn't really have an excuse or a background story thought up. I started using character names in the Vorkosigan Saga and various attempts of random names making sure that there is no pattern. (Like when there was an almost all Jon or J name for a bunch of npcs, there must have been anchoring names affecting my judgement).

Anyway the cast was fairly simple.

• A Ship Owner is John Daniel Doe, retired Captain with Mash for brains and a sadistic streak is played by William Shatner. Imagine a Denny Krane with unkempt and marked officer uniform that is unbuttoned.
• The Ship Captain is Dona Alejandro dela Joya, is highly competent drag queen who happens to be obsessed with women and everything about them. Imagining antonio Banderas but in a captains "Prince-purple" uniform with knee high boots with pumps and a gadget captains baton/walking stick. His crew are loyal ladies from some tragic past "el Kapitan" had saved them from and helped train them to be brilliant officers. Among his other collections is the luxurious and indulgent fashioin lines of several Captial Worlds (like in confessions of a shopaholic) which when he gets tired of them sells them off as speculative cargo.
• We have Jack Thron, imagined as Owen Willson. All around wheel man and ace pilot. His contribution to the mess is that his a total-Enabler.
• Then there is the Brains of the outfit, "Vince" imagined as Val Kilmer of the Saint. Former Intelligence Field Operator. as such he is trained in disguise, inflitration, sabotage, and surveilance.
  

The mission was simple and made up on the spot (after reading Ethan of Athos): Dr Echart Quillian is paying them to get his fellow researchers out from Quarantine which is being buffered by an unknown enemies red tape. The quarantine is just a legal excuse to hold them and force them to lose precious time. The party have a ship a modified courier the scale of an Airbus A380 but with a more blended-wing body design.

Anyway I broke down their project int Sub Projects (as i've learned in management) and each PC has a given task and have to make a Blind Roll for each task with the key skill.
Ex.

• Casing the Facility- Surveilance and Intelligence Analysis skill
• -> Compromising the the Facility communications net- Communications skill
• Fake Leave (make it the ship has documents that it left already and re-enter stealthily in)- Intelligence Analysis for those who will look for a suitable blind spot to hide the ship and enter; the Pilot's skill to make a very stealthy but very powered down entry (like a rock falling from the sky).
  
• Transportation (get away arrangements)- Administration (Organizing enough paper trail to hide them)
• Enemy Direction and Resources (who could stand to profit from this sabotage)- Politics roll
• Fake Papers- Forgery skill
• Back up Plan- Computer Electronics skill (mimicking a high level security override, 1 use only as part of a Bioweapon Control Colonel (highest possible field opertor rank).

After getting their rolls which is at Task Difficulty Modifier -5 for non-regular skill with some skills, I put each step neatly with each corresponding roll. When they executed the plan, we went through all the ropes and as a GM I had to present all the arguments and the little things that one would unlikely but reasonably do in scenario because realistically a plan never survives first contact of the enemy.

One was the response of the "Patients" as they were being herded to a higher security quarantine facility because of the threat the virus has mutated and is still potent but temporarily latent (the PCs orchestrated that bit). The Patients were panicking as well as the Quarantine Facility since they Cannot detect what it is and if they might have it. Then the Quarantine Facility basically kept trying to communicate with the Main Health Dept and eventually overrode all the automatic responses Vince had in place. This cut their safety margin, BUT they did get away with the passengers and now have to race on a Fan-Propelled Air-Truck to the way point, as they can only travel as much as 100kph. mean while the bad guys were finally able to react and sent a "clean up crew" on a drop stealth shuttle with unmarked corporate security.

The fun part that gave the game is the classic tavern scene, instead of a tavern it was in a Port side Pub called Taverna: The Blue Oyster Grill (that latter added by the player of the Ship Owner). Where the PCs meet each other, the Captain seduces a woman and tries to get away by having exhibitionist sex but his boss the Ship Owner tries to spoil it ending up with a brawl which leads to further craziness i have no time to talk about. Suffice to say the guys were on the floor laughing.