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Into the Void Ref’s Notes Sessions 49 and 50

Sessions 49 and 50 were important to our campaign for a couple of reason, but primarily because SESSION 50! I never ran a campaign nearly this long in terms of number of game sessions or years played in my youth. In the last week both this campaign and my D&D campaign reached session 50. I am very happy about that.

It’s not just the fact that we’ve played a lot of session now. We started this campaign in April of 2018. So we’ve been playing, in just a few days, for 8 years. In those 8 years we have, as a group of friends, endured job losses, severe illnesses, loss of parents, a global pandemic, and other challenges, but we have kept it going. This past year, after 7 years of play, we added a great player and friend to the group. I could not be happier with all of this. It’s about more than the game. It’s the friendships.

As I have gone on and on about before, the long-form campaign has allowed the player characters to be developed in a way that you just can’t do with limited (but fun) campaigns. The players have taken these very on-paper-simple characters and breathed life into them. In a game in which the characters don’t really change very much mechanically (not “levels” and not much skill improvement), I feel like the PCs are all valuable and irreplaceable. One might look at Classic Traveller and say “oh, if my character dies I can just roll one up who is just or good if not better”, but I think that misses the value that a real in-game history brings to the character. It’s more valuable than “character improvement” because it requires real world time to create. It’s just so cool and amazing, and over time it’s made my job as referee easier as well.

I wrote about this over on my 2d6SF blog a while back. 

OK, the last two sessions the PCs were split up into two groups. One group was the crew of a ship involved in a race through an asteroid belt. The other was back on-world in a casino, interacting with NPCs.

The race was challenging to run. Even just concentrating on 4 ships (including the PCs), there was a lot to keep track of as the Ref. In session 49 we played the first 2 rounds. I thought I was ready for the complexity but I wasn’t. So before session 50 I created some “control sheets” for each round, that would help me keep track of the happenings as well as make the whole thing run faster. It worked. I thought session 50 ran really well. I probably made a few mistakes, but overall it was good. Bopping back and forth between sets of PCs kept things lively and for the most part everyone engages. With the race happening I’ll admit the PCs in the casino probably got less of my attention, but what they did get was put to good use.

We used the ship combat rules from Cepheus Light (in a simplified form) for this race. They worked really well. I am going to play with creating a Ship Combat Round Control Sheet for normal ship and vehicle fights that takes into account all the possible crew actions. However, I don’t really want to dwell on ship combat. It is a fun thing to happen, but I want to make sure the roleplaying stays the center of our game.

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ITV Session 50: Asteroid Race!

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SAFCO begins where we left off, with Lucky, Barney, and Roger aboard their race ship out in the system’s asteroid belt, 2 rounds into the race. Caliban, Flint, Fardt, and Jinx are in the casino watching the simulated (and delayed) race displays.

Out in the asteroid belt, the ships are piloted skillfully around the rocks, pilots seeking advantageous positions in relation to each other while moving toward the next beacon. Note: a lot happened. I’m not going to try to remember every single move.

In the Casino, Caliban notices the leader of the mercenaries having a drink. He sees another merc come up, whisper something to him. The leader looks upset. Caliban gets up and starts moving the bar to a refill, conveniently very close to the merc’s table.

Flint has been keeping an eye on Jinx and Fardt. He notices an entourage coming through the casino. 4 serious-looking people in nice black suits, and in the middle of them Baroness Galaxia Hood-Raxon, of Zapata. He keeps on eye on her, as she is an ally of the team and also prone to getting into trouble.

Meanwhile, the ships have made it to Beacon #3. Roger’s pilot skill is proving pivotal, as SAFCO manages to almost always gain advantage on the other 3 nearby ships. Combined with evasive maneuvers, Barney redlining the engines when in-transit to the next beacon, and Lucky’s level 3 Gunnery skill, SAFCO is doing well.

At beacon #4, all four ships miss their sensor roll, so none are able to immediately pinpoint the beacon and fire a shot. So they shoot at each other. In the next round, all but one ship find the beacon and hit it, and begin moving to beacon 5.

In the casino, Caliban eavesdrops on the mercenaries. Apparently the spaceport authorities have discovered their ship’s horrible maintenance records (planted in the last game by Caliban), and it looks like they will be delayed by quite a while before they can leave for Uetonah. The leader is worried that he’ll not be able to pay the troops, and will lose them to other ventures. Caliban is pleased to hear this.

Caliban sees the Baroness and her group. He makes a Social Standing roll and picks a nice, sophisticated drink to bring to her. He does not know her — he just wants to meet the noble. Her guards stop Caliban. Flint comes up behind him. The Baroness lets them through. Introductions are made. They find out that after their last parting, Professor Zal Twist continued on to Zapata, but the Baroness decided to see what other excitement the frontier offered, and lagged behind. She’s spend the last 3 months enjoying herself rather then returning to her boring noble life.

At beacon #5, SAFCO and the yellow ship find the beacon and hit it, moving on. The red ship is still trying to find beacon #4, and green is unable to find #5. In transit to #6, Lucky fires on the yellow ship, scoring a hit. When they both arrive at #6, yellow’s sensor are out — they have no way to find the beacon. Barney scores a massive success in finding the beacon, and Lucky fires the deciding shot, hitting the final beacon and winning the race!

Back on Overon the casino erupts in excitement. Caliban calculates that he’s won – GASP – 600,000 credits. Flint has won over 100,000! The Baroness, not winning but having been made aware of the crew of the winning ship, congratulates them and says she is looking forward to being reunited with the rest of the team! Mergatroyd is also quite happy.

End of Session
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Elapsed time: 467 game days (1 year 92 days)

 

 

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ITV Session 49: Get Set, GO!

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SAFCO is still on Overon, getting ready for the race.

The team goes to the Mooch Mine’s casino and places bets. Barney, Lucky, and Roger get details of the race ship and spend the evening prepping for the race.

The next day. The team notes that the spaceport is not well staffed, as everyone is preoccupied by the race. Caliban finds an insecure computer terminal and plants some incriminating information about the mercenary ship’s maintenance records.  Flint and Caliban, along with Fardt and Jinx, go back to the casino to watch the race. They see their old associates Mergatroyd, from Mylar, and Persius Pringle, the salvage dealer from Overon. Flint chats with them, and confides that SAFCO has replaced the RCMP team, but to keep it quiet. Mergatroyd place a bet on SAFCO to win. Fardt keeps Jinx from getting his ass kicked after he starts winning a bit too much at roulette. Caliban places a bet on SAFCO’s ship, playing the rube.

The race teams are taken out to the asteroid field, where the 16 identical 4G race ships are docked and ready,  and have an hour in their ships before time to start. The team prepares for some antics. Barney preps the ship to divert power to the sensors if needed for a +1 to their sensor roll, and gets the engines prepped for redlining as well.

The race starts. SAFCO is one of the 4 ships with a chance to win.

Action goes back and forth between the race and the PCs in the Casino.

In the casino, holographic displays render the ships positions and progress, though with time lag due to the distance. The idle interplanetary rich of the subsector mingle with loud mercenaries and gamblers. Ships must find and hit with data-stream laser turret beacons placed on 6 asteroid surfaces. Only with a successful hit may they move to the next beacon. They can target each other, hits resulting in simulated temporary damage, such as sensors down, reduction in the normal 4G thrust, etc. The beacon must be located with a sensor (Computer) roll of 8+, and then can be targeted.

All ships make it to Beacon 1. SAFCO and one ship miss the sensor roll. Ships fire at each other and begin moving to next beacon if they can. We leave the session moving into Round 3.

More to come.

End of Session:
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Elapsed time: 467 game days (1 year 92 days)

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Into the Void Ref’s Notes Session 48

Well, we are closing in on Session 50. We are already way beyond any campaign I’ve ever run in the past. My current D&D campaign is at session 48.  But in the old days, probably because our group rotated DMs, I probably never got past 15.

I’ve decided to move both of my campaigns to alternating weeks. I can’t keep up the weekly pace on both, and the truth is I haven’t anyway, so I’m making the schedule I can actually maintain official.

This session went well.  I think we have set up some very fun situations. It’s always interesting to me how much we can get done in about 2 hours. This session was really all roleplaying, sneaking around, information gathering, and interacting with NPCs. I’m always pleased that my players seem happy with such a game, and don’t require constant shooting and fighting.

 

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ITV Session 48: SAFCO to the Rescue!

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SAFCO is still on Overon. They’ve been back less than a day. They notice that the city is crowded with tourists. They talk around, and find out that they have returned just a few days before the Overon Gran Prix, a space ship race through the asteroid field in the system. While at the starport they see what appears to be a troop transport.

Barney and Caliban seek out some information and business. Caliban manages to get a great price (50% of base price) on 48 tons of industrial polymers, which he thinks they can turn a profit on at their next stop. The crew has found out there’s a Jump-4 starliner in orbit. Barney sees the landers at the starport. He inquires about job openings on the ship, as it is going to return to Prometheus via Listo after the race. That would cut at least two weeks off their projected transit time to Prometheus. At the union hall he finds that yes, they are looking for a better pilot, gunner, steward, and engineer. He tells the lady he’ll be back regarding the jobs. She says “don’t wait too long, sweetie.”

The rest of the crew has gone to the Mooch Mine to chat people up about the race and relax. As they approach the tavern they see three men being tended by medics on the sidewalk, and four burly-looking guys in custody of the local authorities.  Roger sees a pilots pin on one of the hurt guy’s collar. Flint gets a good look at the other guys, and decides they are mercenaries. He’s seen plenty like this before.  Roger speaks to the injured pilot, and finds out he and his two friends were to be the crew of RCMP-Overon’s ship in the Gin Prix. Roger asks if he thinks they might want to hire a new crew, and the guy says sure, he should speak to RCMP administrator Robert Tilton. Roger, Flint, Lucky, Fardt, and Jinx enter the tavern and see a bunch more of the mercenaries. They chat with locals and learn a bit more about the race.

Barney and Caliban, at the starport, make some inquiries about the troop transport ship. They find out it has come, after a couple of jumps, from Pelucidar, a notorious tough and criminal planet that is interdicted (poorly). They also find out it has filed a flight plan for Uetonah. Not surprising.

Flint and Roger go to RCMP headquarters to find Admin. Tilton yelling about the injury of his race team! Flint says he may have a solution. Tilton’s jaw drops when he finds out that Roger is rated as Pilot level 4. With Barney ranked at Engineering 3 and Computer 2, and Lucky at Gunner-3 (the ships shoot “data streams” as mock combat), Tilton agrees to split any prize money they might win — the purse for the winner is 200,000 cr.  They make the deal.

Back at the ship, they inform Silvonius of the great cargo deal they have made for the ship, discuss the race, and begin discussing possible ways to delay the mercenaries who, after they see the race and gamble their last paychecks away, will be heading to Uetonah to cause problems.

End of session
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Elapsed time: 466 game days (1 year 91 days)

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Into the Void Ref’s Notes Sessions 46 and 47

These two sessions involved the team fleeing from a planet, pursued by a System Defense Boat. They were aboard a Jump-2 Maneuver-2 Far Trader with 1 double beam laser turret and 1 sandcaster. To say they were outgunned by the SDB, with its Maneuver-6, two triple laser turrets, and two missile launchers is quite an understatement.

These sessions were a learning experience for both me and the players. We haven’t done much space combat. With the SDB starting 150,000 km away, the players had a couple of rounds to start a getaway, though really according to Classic Traveller ship combat rules they weren’t even at long range at that point.

A challenge I have found with Classic Traveller ship combat has been making it exciting. For the most part I feel like we’ve managed to do that by doing it very cinematically, using different home-brew rules over the years. I want the ship combats to still have lots of personal actions in them.

The ship combat rules from Cepheus Light have some great actions for each position in a ship during combat. They have some things that I had not considered and my player’s hadn’t either. The rules, however, highly abstract combat. While I generally have no problem with this, for about half this combat there was just no substitute for the Classic Traveller vector movement system. It was critical for maintaining the feel of the chase.  So we used the vector system, but we mixed in the rules for Advantage and the crew actions from Cepheus Light, with a touch of me (the Referee) simply deciding when a skill roll was need to accomplish something (like make a difficult vector turn while moving at 8G). I always feel “guilty” when I port rules into Classic Traveller from…well…anything. I love the game so much. I think the tradition of the game is improvisation from both the players and ref. However, with ship combat I think having some minimal framework is needed, and it needs to be fun. The Cepheus Light rules are, in fact, very fun.

Now, while those rule are fun, it was the actions of the players NOT in any rulebook that were really interesting. Example: Barney trying to use his Engineer-3 skill to get one more safe redline out of maneuver drive. Or Flint and Caliban trying to send the SDB a fake message from base. Or Roger using the planet and then the moon as cover. Or Lucky’s compassion for Silvonius after the team really put him at risk he didn’t sign of for.

Overall I felt like it went well. I got a little confused a few times and made mistakes, but my players corrected me when appropriate and that was appreciated. Now, having done this two session chase/non-battle, I think we could do a similar one in half the time with a lot fewer mistakes.

I think that when you start talking about combat a lot of players and refs start down the road of increasing complexity to better mimic “reality”, even if reality involves shooting lasers from the cargo bay of a starship travelling at 140,000 kph. I think that for any campaign, game session, or encounter there is an appropriate level of detail, and that includes space combat. For a Traveller ref it is a matter of finding the right level.

Original Carl, from a Traveller Discord server I participate on, mentioned the Traveller: Out of the Box series of blog posts. I am particularly found of this post: TRAVELLER: Out of the Box is Driven by ADVENTURE, not Hard Science. It’s a great article, and good to read from time to time to really remember that it isn’t a tactical war-game. It is for adventure, and agonizing of minute details can really destroy adventure.

Here’s the thing. Admitting that Classic Traveller doesn’t include every single possible thing and that you have to make some stuff up doesn’t mean the game itself is flawed. It is exactly as it needs to be, as it was designed.

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ITV Sessions 46 and 47: Space Chase

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The Fortunate Son clears that atmosphere of Uetonah and Caliban detects a System Defense Boat at the very edge of their sensor range — about 150,000 km. Knowing that they are going to be nearly impossible for that ship to observe while they are in low orbit, they move to the other side of the planet and start for the 100 planetary diameter jump point.

They monitor Samson Mining ground control instructing the SDB to come in and pursue the Far Trader Fortunate Son.

Roger uses his pilot skill to keep the planet between the two ships but with 6G acceleration the SDB is able to reach Uetonah and get the FS in sight after two rounds. SAFCO begins trying various getaway strategies. Flint uses his tactics and leadership skill to help with flight tactics and rev up the crew.

Roger takes evasive action, using his Pilot-4 skill to make up for the Fortunate Son’s slow speed relative to the SDB. Caliban moves to the cargo deck and starts removing the battle dress from the crate. It is very heavy and he needs help.  He informs the crew that each suit is accompanied by a big rifle. He describes the guns and Flint identifies them as highly illegal for private ownership PGMP-13 plasma guns. Fardt and Jinx join Caliban to help unloading the gear. Barney redlines the engines for a round, gaining an extra 1G of speed. Flint and Lucky man the sand caster and laser turrets.  Lucky fires the sandcaster to give them some cover.

The SDB hails them, telling them to decelerate and return to the spaceport with the stolen gear. It fires warning shots.

System Defense Boat

Barney attempts to prep the strained Maneuver Drive for another redline but it is simply not safe.

Roger decides to head for the small moon slightly off their vector to attempt too use it to shield them. He makes a difficult Pilot roll and is able to make the vector change. The SDB is traveling much faster, and the pilot misses his roll. The SDB overshoots the turn, giving the FS temporary safety.

As the FS continues out they are again vulnerable. Lucky fires the sandcaster again. Flint heads to the cargo deck and preps the now empty battle dress crate with a transponder, and positions it to be jettisoned.

A panicky Silvonius Janx takes over at the sensors and notices they are acting weird. Barney takes a look and see that they have been scrambled by the SDB.

Flint and Caliban take advantage of the connection Flint’s tablet still has with the Samson Mining computer network. They compose a message telling the SDB to stand down, that there has been an error. Having no computer kill, Caliban uses Jack of All Trades -1 to try to route the message through the system properly to make it look legit. He fails his roll. The SDB captain is not fooled by the message, and again threatens the FS with warning shots and instructions to return to the star port. Barney sees that the SDB is attempting to use its sensors to target a specific system on the FS, probably the Jump drive.

Roger continues evasive manuvers.

Flint jettisons the now empty crate. Barney hails the SDB, telling them to let them go or they will destroy the gear with their laser if they are not allowed to leave.

Round 6 arrives. The FS reaches 100 diameters. Roger activates the previously plotted course for Overon and hits the big red JUMP button. The Fortunate Son transitions to Jump Space, escaping with no damage.

Silvonius is furious! Barney explains that they had to take the powerful weapons due to the genocide Samson was planning. He’s still furious. Roger mentions they might make a massive profit from selling the gear and Silvonius suddenly gets a new attitude.

The crew has a talk with Silvonius about his share of the profit from selling the gear. Caliban tries selling him on the idea of each member of SAFCO and him getting an equal share. Sil is rock solid that for the danger they put him and his ship in that SAFCO as a whole gets 50% and HE personally gets the other 50% . Lucky feels that they really did him wrong with their actions and they owe him. Sil reminds them that they need him and his ship to complete their trip to Prometheus. They agree, to his terms, subtracting any SAFCO resources used. Caliban already had side deal with Sil for a percentage of any of his profits, which Sil agrees to.

They get to Overon.

Barney begins maintenance on the ship, nursing the maneuver drive back to health after abusing it so badly! Lucky relaxes. Caliban uses his Admin-4 skill to sell the 10 grav bikes, 10 tons of machine tools, and 5 tons of booze for a huge profit. Sil will be VERY happy.

Then Caliban, Flint, and Roger meet with Samson Mining admin Robert Tilton, a friend from Flint’s previous career with RCMP. Flint levels with him about the origin of the gear. Tilton tells them that the consortium has been having trouble with pirates, and that the Battle Dress and plasma guns would be useful. With skillful negotiation with a friendly admin, SAFCO gets over 2 million credits for the gear. After deducting Caliban’s 5% from Sil’s share, Silvonius will get over 900,000 credits from the deal.

Back on the ship, having gotten the news, Silvonius is grinning from ear to ear. All is well aboard the Fortunate Son, as SAFCO, Silvonius, and Jinx begin to plan the next leg of the journey.

End of session
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Elapsed time: 466 game days (1 year 91 days)

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Into the Void Ref’s Notes Session 45

Session 45 was our first ship combat in a long time. SAFCO wisely avoids ship combat.

In this case the pursuing ships were not really ships. They were patrol speeders. Tougher than an air raft, and with one ship-power laser, and with 3G acceleration (or it’s in-atmosphere equivalent), but no jump drive, etc. Essentially fighters.

The ship the PCs were on, the Fortunate Son, is a Far Trader. No armor. One dual pulse laser turret. One sandcaster. 2G acceleration. Not a bad ass ship.

What made the FS superior was the crew. Using the excellent and fun ship combat rules from Cepheus Light, each crew member has something to do each round. Something of real value that can help in a fight. The “advantage” rules allow you to run the combat without worrying too much about actual positions. You and the players can describe the flying to your heart’s content. It is cinematic, for lack of a better term.

Note: the Cepheus Light rules are currently only $4.20 for the PDF. Just buy them. The soft cover is less than $20. Great streamlined rules.

With Pilot-4, Gunner-3, Gunner-1, Engineering-3, and an effective Comp-1 on Sensops, the rules really bring to light how good a good crew can be. For each position there are a number off possible actions, each requiring a roll.

This was our first time using these rules. The session, including roleplaying and combat, took about 1.5 hours. I spent about 20 minutes before that going over the rules a bit and answering questions, so that each player understood that in the possible upcoming fight each would have possible meaningful actions.

The rules worked well for Classic Traveller, but of course not perfectly. There are details that need to be dealt with, but I’d say overall it was smooth. I’m hoping Omer Golan-Joel will do the same thing for ship combat that he did for vehicle combat in his Quick and Dirty Vehicle Combat book for Classic Traveller.

Now, if you want a detail ship combat wargame experience, these are not the rules for you.

I made a few mistakes. Sandcasters should not work in-atmosphere. I forgot, let it happen once, so I just let it continue. I forgot that the dual pulse laser turret should get two attack rolls. Had it become important, I would have also forgotten that pulse lasers do more damage and get two effect rolls on the hit chart.

I made this first use of the rules easy on myself by making the pursuing craft very simple. Not a lot of rolls to do. Pilot and Gunner. They rolled for advantage. Could then roll for a Pilot action. So there wasn’t too much for me to keep track of.

Looking forward to next week.

 

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ITV Session 45: Escape from Uetonah II, part 1.

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SAFCO, aboard Silvonius Janks’s ship the Fortunate Son, with travelling youth urchin Jinx on board is lifting off from the Uetonah spaceport. Flint sees from a his window the cargo controller freaking out about the missing crate of Battle Dress armor.

Barney, Flint, and Caliban know about the theft. Flint, apparently not wanting Silvonius to be upset, turns down the speakers from the comm system.

Jinx makes a Streetwise roll, approaches Barney, and says “OK, what did you guys do? Something’s up.” His instincts are good. Barney gives him a very reasonable story without too many details, and tells him he might want to strap in. Which he does.

As the ship climbs, Caliban takes the Sensor Ops position. He scans for any ships following them, and indeed a ship has launched is gaining on them. He quietly informs the rest of the crew.

Lucky makes up a reason to go check out the laser turret.

The crew, expecting trouble, takes positions. Roger – pilot. Caliban -SensOps. Lucky – dual laser turret. Flint – sandcaster turret. Barney – Engineering. Fardt stays on the bridge.

Roger begins evasive manuevers.

The pursuing ship hails the Fortunate Son. “Far Trader. This is Samson Mining Security. You are in possession of stolen property. Return to starport immediately or we will open fire.”

Caliban returns the message with his own line of fast talk. The pursuing ship answers with a warning shot from its laser.

Another shot comes in, this one barely missing. Not a warning shot.

A battle follows. Barney redlines the engines to gain enough speed to keep ahead of the pursuer. Roger easily rolls and gets Advantage of the other craft. Lucky uses the turret targeting array to get a good look at their pursuer. It is a small craft — essentially a laser turret with a cockpit and engines.

At SensOps, Caliban makes a “target systems” roll, giving Lucky the ability to pick a system on the other ship to aim for. He picks the laser. Both ships fire. The security speeder, at disadvantage misses the Fortunate Son. Lucky, on the other hand, has advantage and Gunner-3. He fires and disables the enemy’s weapon.

As the crew begins to breathe a sigh of relief, and Silvonious starts losing his mind, Caliban makes another Sensor roll and detects two additional security speeders coming at them from opposite sides and above. The right’s not over yet.

Barney determines he can probably redline the engines for a total of four rounds before getting into really dangerous territory. He makes his roll again and succeed in maintaining the power.

Roger continues spinning and weaving the ship, easily getting advantage with his Pilot-4 skill and succeeding with evasive actions. Flint uses the computers at the sandcaster turret to time his sand bursts, helping them be effective, and increasing the ship’s defense. Caliban and Lucky use the same tactics, making every roll for “target system” and to-hit. Lucky disables a second pursuer.

Barney hails the remaining ship. “Break off pursuit or we’ll blow you out of the sky.”

The two disabled craft having already disengaged, the remaining pilot peels off and stops the attack.

Cheers in the Fortunate Son. Jinx is impressed! Silvonius is angry! “What have you idiots done?”

Caliban talks him down. For now.

As the ship clears the atmosphere, Caliban makes another sensor roll and detects what is probably a system defense boat at the very limits of sensor range.

The fight – is – not – over.

End of Session
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Elapsed time: 458 game days (1 year 83 days)

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Into the Void Ref’s Notes Session 44

I can’t overstate how well weekly short (2-hour) sessions are working for us. And the virtual tabletop. Everyone is tired after work, especially me, and the idea of going BACK out into the world after work is totally implausible. Well, maybe not totally, but it is an impediment. I don’t think we’d have such good attendance in-person. The ability to sit down after dinner, log in, and play for a couple of hours is great.

I introduced the NPC Jinx a couple of games back. I think Jinx is a great example of how Traveller gives you plenty to work with, without having long character sheets full of stuff. The character’s stats are, in words, small and not that strong, good dexterity and endurance, high intelligence, low education and low social status. 4 skills, all at level 1. A belt pouch with some stuff in it, possibly a dagger in his boot, no armor. Because he is clearly inspired by a young Flinx, from the Alan Dean Foster novels, he has a very low level psi talent that he really doesn’t understand and can’t control.

It is easy for me to get into character as Jinx, as I’m currently about 40% through the Pip and Flinx novels. Even without the psi talent he’d be a good NPC. It has driven home the point that good NPCs are perhaps the most enriching thing in an RPG session, and that Classic Traveller gives you what you need.

The players on our campaign are doing things “not on their character record sheets.” By that, I mean they are taking actions that are impactful in the game, clever,  and fun, often without resorting to their skills. It’s really great to see.

I have some other ideas to write about, but it is 7:11am and I’ve gotta get ready for work. More later.