Fourth Session Notes

Fourth Session

We covered chapters 6 and 7, which seemed to have far more exposition, aka reading passages, to the players than I had realized. I am sure that other people have run these sections more successfully. That said, the section I had been most worried about actually seemed to run rather well.

Last session, the stewart, Adam Henning, was caught as a saboteur and handed over to the authorities in Melbourne. However, there was one piece of sabotage that had not been caught: Henning had carefully poured acid on the undersides of the straps holding two airplane engines in place in one of the cargo holds. These broke loose during a major storm as the ship sailed ever further south.

In the scenario as written, the only way to spot this sabotage is to say that one is specifically examining the undersides of the straps and then to roll a critical success on a Spot Hidden check. This struck me as too extreme. Sure, I wanted to deprive the PCs of a plane and spare engines, but, as others have pointed out, it isn't utterly necessary to do so.

Before folks started rolling dice to find the various bits of sabotage, I decided, based on what the players had said, what was necessary to spot this sabotage. I concluded that any of the following would work:

1. Julian rolling either a crit on whatever skill he used as Engineering or an ordinary success on Spot Hidden. Damon had said that he was checking over the planes and engines very carefully.

2. Pamela rolling a crit on a Spot Hidden for Alicia, whom everyone knew had sharp eyes and was a grad student grabable for all sorts of scut work involving spotting things.

3. Josh rolling a crit on a Spot Hidden for Julia. This was stretching a bit, but she might well have given the engines an extra once over.

Chaz said that this made sense, avoiding both what I considered too extreme in one direction and what he considered too extreme in the other. None of those rolls were made.

So, Erica Hunter woke first, hearing the sound of the loose engines rolling around. A group of people was quickly assembled, consisting of all the PCs not too sea sick (*) and a bunch of NPCs.

(*) Josh notes that the BTMOM rules for nausea don't take into account any way for someone to acclimatize and have to make fewer rolls after a while for seasickness or airsickness. Did I miss something?

I think that Julia and St. John were too sick to leave their cabins, as was Starkweather. Josh and Dave rolled for several of the NPC sailors and expedition members. At least two of these wound up dunked in the water and had to go back. I couldn't find rules for what happened if someone fell in, as far as rescue went (double check notes), but we winged it.

Damon fell in as well, but I decided to invoke PC privilege. I said that he could go back with the others, which was the sensible thing to do, or press on. Of course, he decided to press on.

I knew that Julian would choose that, and I felt that it was important to let Damon be effective. I know that there's a purist school of not fudging dice and playing everything by the book, but I think that folks with this ethic would have a terrible time with BTMOM, as it is written to encourage, if not outright railroad, a course of events most dramatically suitable. In other words, it seemed to me that the campaign has an unspoken rule of privileging what would make a theoretical movie of the adventure better and cooler. And, I don't like making players twiddle their thumbs and feel useless. I made some decisions I'm not sure about later on in the session, but this one felt right.

So, Damon, his crew of strong men, and Erica and Alicia went down into the hold. Rather than holding one engine, tying it in place while dodging the other, then holding the other engine, both engines were held, one by three people and one by four, I believe. I think there's a maximum of four people who can hold down an engine with ropes and such. As soon as the one with four people was tied down, one person went to help hold the other engine, while Damon headed for the doctor, who made sure he stayed in bed for the next several days.

Starkweather refused to turn back, despite the loss of two engines and one plane (lost to the rolling engines).

Starkweather: Three planes, two, or one -- it makes no difference!

Damon (out of his earshot): He'll just tell us to flap our arms.

For the rest of the voyage, the crew made airplane wing motions with their arms behind Starkweather's back. (Hm, they may also have made leapfrogging gestures once the expedition disembarked in Antarctica.)

I then ran the Wallaroo segment. This is considered optional, but I wanted to keep it in. The ship encounters a derelict vessel embedded in the ice. There is no mythos element, except perhaps in a question about where some gold found on the ship came from. The people on the ship died because of ill luck and the harsh conditions of the Antarctica region in the winter.

The problem I discovered is that this section is a bit talky. Also, one of the PCs got dunked into the water, and the way the text handled this was, of course, different than my earlier fudging. No real problem, and finding the lifeboats that didn't make it after all later got the reaction "That's so sad," from Pamela, which is what I'd hoped for.

The ship got icelocked, but blasted free with dynamite, and made it to the Ross Ice Shelf. This is the part I was most confused about when I ran it, though, naturally, it seemed clear on a read through. Somehow, at some point, the ice overturns and something like half the fuel is lost. Julian pegged this as inevitable, and didn't object, but I just couldn't visualize how it worked, given that everyone was working well aware that this was coming from cracks in the ice. I mean, I understood that the planes couldn't help, given the weather. What wound up happening was that I called for luck rolls, and ruled that some of the fuel was saved. This, I think, was a mistake, though hardly a critical one. None of us intend to keep that close track of every drop of fuel. But, there was no reason to fudge here. I think I would not have succumbed to temptation if I had a better understanding of what was going on, and if I'd realized that I didn't have a clear enough idea, I could have asked Chaz or did a bit of research on my own.

At this point, I asked if folks wanted to break or push on. People wanted to push on, as things had been exposition heavy. The expedition settled its campsite, despite a couple of incidents of temporarily freezing an ungloved hand to something and the like. Thiw was based on Polar Survival rolls, I think, and we agreed that Damon would probably wind up that way as he stopped to fix something and took off a glove for greater flexibility.

Then, the news came over the radio that the rival expedition of Acacia Lexington was under attack. Starkweather, gentleman and unable to resist one-upping his rival, organized a rescue mission. Here, things were a little bumpy, due to my missing one paragraph of text and to all of us not quite understanding the limits of the equipment brought on the expedition.

Damon and Julia insisted on doing an aerial reconnaissance, and Starkeweather's insistence on a ground rescue made no sense. Naturally, this turned out to be my missing a paragraph about how the weather conditions were too severe for flying. As we didn't know this at the time, we figured the plane would do a flyover while Starkweather and others came on dog sleds, and the plane could communicate with the sled crew via radio. Actually, this would not have been practical, given that the radios the expedition had required a lot of wire and antennae to set up, so that the sled crew would have had to stop the sled and spend an hour or two setting things up before they could receive a message via radio.

Again, though, no big deal. Part of the art of running a massive campaign is realizing what matters and what doesn't matter. Planes and radios really didn't matter, one way or the other. Getting to the Lexington expedition and getting to meet the people there did.

The Lexington expedition had had even more trouble than the Starkeweather-Moore expedition, and Lexington's people were convinced that the other expedition was behind it. A couple of people were rude enough that Professor Pembroke was quite ready to return, with all the supplies. He did find Dr. Anthony, the expedition doctor, more friendly, although, to Alicia's dismay, Dr. Greene of the SME did not like him at all. She had hoped they would be friends.

Two members of the Lexington expedition had suddenly cracked. I think one fired a gun several times, winging someone, and the other set a fire. One was convinced that the expedition was being overrun by spiders, the other that it was being overrun by snakes. Both came to their senses after some time, and both were dismayed at what they had done. Snow craze? Shell shock? Poison?

A couple of members were willing to talk to St. John, one of whom explained that Lexington's previous experiences with Starkweather had not been good. The man had been utterly reckless and irresponsible.

St. John: Now, that I believe.

In fact, said the man he was talking to, he understood that Starkeweather had gotten Lexington "into trouble", i.e., pregnant.

Meanwhile, Starkeweather went into a tent to speak with Lexington. Their conversation went neither well nor softly, and their insults for each other rang out through the camp. The women of the SME went into the tent to calm things down.

Erica physically interposed herself between the two walking egos that were Starkeweather and Lexington, while Alicia tried to restrain Starkeweather. Julia came in then.

In the scenario as written, Starkeweather and Lexington stalk away from each other, and, over the next couple of days, Moore negotiates a truce and unification of the two expeditions. I wasn't comfortable with how much "And then your leaders closet themselves to have a scene you can't influence" there was on the surface, so, like others who have run this campaign, I opened things up.

Julia had two major advantages. First, Lexington liked what Julia had said about hoping folks would not find it so surprising that women did this sort of thing. Also, Lexington and Starkweather could unite against Ego #3, Mrs. Julia Stiles, a Famous Explorer in her own right. Folks weren't sure the tent could hold all 3 egos.

Starkweather wondered when his expedition got taken over by the women. The general consensus, out of character, was, "When he hired them."

I had one of the characters, Lexington, I think, talk scornfully about the very idea of working with the SME, and Julia grabbed the opportunity to press for just that. After all, Lexington had lost many supplies, and without aid, her expedition would probably be unable to continue. Her pilot, Kyle Williams, explained to one of the SME people that Lexington just hadn't planned.

The players and PCs noted with disgust that Lexington had brought not only a photographer, but also a grip. The players assumed that the whole expedition was an ego thing, and not necessarily one driven by a competent ego, given the lack of dogs and ponies. I later checked with Chaz, and he said that Lexington was using only planes, and that the only unusual thing was that she was doing a lot of this herself.

In any case, the two expeditions joined together, thanks to Professor Moore and the women of the SME. Of course, this had its consequences.

Damon: So, we're adopting a saboteur.

People wondered who it might be. The two men who had cracked were sent back to Lexington's ship, which was both a disappointment and a relief to them, under the circumstances. People were pretty sure that they were not deliberately sabotaging the expedition. Perhaps Dr. Anthony? Probably not Acacia Lexington herself. Probably. Damon did some math.

Damon: We outnumber them about 3 to 1. We make sure that we keep this ratio.

And so, we broke for the night.