Fairly straightforward session. The troubles that keep building triggered a few times: We needed to deal with an intensification of the Cold War (the USAF and some Soviet soldiers arguing over a weapon test in no-man’s land between bases), we had an issue with one of the vehicles, and a personal Trouble. This all worked quite nicely, and having the players make the choice of which one of a few gives control over pacing, or lets more appropriate things happen.

Looking forward to how these escalate.

This is something that I am quite liking about Freefallers so far, but it will be interesting to see how this translates to other settings: for this campaign, all troubles increment once per day. For a longer campaign, or one with a longer cycle (actions over weeks) this would obviously need to be changed. I am looking forward to Sammy’s advice for this, since I think that it will be quite important for how the game is meant to run.

The other big question that comes to mind is how someone who is not Sammy would run the technical challenges. These are where the campaign is shining for me, so far. While there are a couple of posts on running technical SF things, one needs to have enough of a handle for what sort of things can go wrong, so how Sammy is able to download their brain’s contents into another referee’s brain instead is going to be interesting to see.

Session Notes

• Satellite is early end of life, needs to be picked up and find some interesting rocks.

• Agramonte checks out for snakes in science 4.

  • Seems to be from multiple places
  • Uses some light paper to see where things are pushed by are currents.
  • Finds a pair of leaks (boo! boo!) due to micrometeorite passing through opposite walls.
  • Computer in here also has a problem of some kind, will need repair.

The Satellite Expedition

• Supposed to be some military exercises in the area, so we need to be careful

• Route is between Soviet and USAF bases

• Cold War trouble triggers! dramatic sting

• Big plume of regolith shooting up just over horizon as we exit the crater.

• Is in the direction we are travelling or will want to travel.

• Plume has some debris in it - rover or spacecraft?

• Getting closer: seems to be a MOLAB

  • Missing fuel-cell trailer
  • Walls curled inward - hit by something
  • Near to us is a USAF astronaut and a cosmonaut - both armed, but shouting at each other (over radio)
  • If anyone else is looking, we can not see them
    • Jean-Jacques can see some additional glints and things to the east, heavy equipment to the west
  • Exploded MOLAB seems to be a dummy - target practice
  • Argument is between Majór Peshkov (Soviet) and Maj. Anderson (USAF)
  • Managed to broker a compromise that the USAF will be clearer about the area being used for testing to avoid danger to bystanders

• Came across some solar panels on the way, but left them in place

• At crater, is a large chunk of propulsion system and hopefully central computer

  • Might still have some propellant - not sure if compressed air or hypergolic
  • Computer is main goal, but would be good to have everything else as well
  • Sanchez is able to remove hydrazine fuel system without getting into trouble
    • Not much left, so mostly safe
    • Able to get the computer free

• One way back, something breaks: smoke in the cabin

  • An extasy of fumbling, getting suits on
  • Agramonte starts pulling open the life support
    • Finds some embers in a filter - smouldering for unknown reason
    • Smothers the flames, letting Sanchez and Jean-Jacques take a look
      • Seems to be covered with a combustible substance of some kind, eventually ignited
        • Might have been some explosive residue from the USAF test?
        • Could also lithium hydroxide in the fitler, lithium separated out and ignited
          • Might need some additional checking - good to know for the future