THROWBACK THURSDAY: Nick's Traveller Campaign

Until the formation of the Tuesday Knights in 2008, our longest running campaign was Nick's Traveller game, which began when we were still in school.

It followed the intergalactic adventures of Jamus Dirkson (a suave, big game hunter, Roger Moore-wannabe and ladies' man, played by Steve), and his stunted, ne'er-do-well comrade, Marcus DeChambre (a psychotic, trigger-happy, bargain basement-Wolverine, mercenary/scout, played by me).

As much as I enjoyed the gun-fu, hack'n'slash of Marcus at the time, in retrospect I realised I role-played the character very poorly and Nick was extremely tolerant of my juvenile violence obsession - no matter how much it must have screwed with his carefully plotted adventures.

Pete made guest appearances every now and again - but always playing different characters as was his M.O. during that period.

This campaign ran for years and years and only came to an end because 'real life' got in the way and meant regular gaming meets were exiled to the waste bin of history.

After Dungeons & Dragons, Traveller was the first game system of any substance that I played regularly, thanks to Nick. I would hazard a guess that, with substantial breaks, this particular campaign ran for about a decade.

As a side-project Nick also invented the Grav-Ball boardgame (kinda American football in zero-G), which in later years of school became a mainstay of the after-school games club, when we created a league. I'm not sure if we ever finished a season of that, though!

Years before Eden Studios suggested framing games of their Buffy The Vampire Slayer RPG as a television show, Nick was presenting us with Traveller adventures as on-going seasons of futuristic vid-casts.

Back in 2007, Nick kindly unearthed his log of our various adventures over the years, with annotations where appropriate.

Season 1

• 1. Loggerheads (an old Journal of The Travellers Aid Society adventure)
• 2. Rumpus on Ranther
• 3. Yo-ho-ho (river pirates in Apocalypse Now-style boats)
• 4. Wheel of Fortune (the first appearance of the Corsair Casino, a popular haunt, and Grav-Ball)
• 5. Hot Spot (archaeology in Vargr space...)
• 6. March or Die (... results in 'volunteering' for the Vargr Alien Legion)
• 7. Night-time on the Khanate (... from which I believe you ended up deserting!)

Season 2

• 1. The Mission (captured by Claw, the Ho Chi Minh of Vargrdom)
• 2. The Shooting Party (hob-nobbing with the local nobility)
• 3. We're Leaving on a Jet Plane (making their getaway...)
• 4. The Night After the Morning Before (... back to the casino)
• 5. Age Concern (a spot of big-game hunting)

Season 3

• 1. Unlucky for Some (fighting the Vargr invasion on an iceworld)
• 2. Dirkson's Dogfight Demise
• 3. Royal Dirk (in which Jamus becomes King of Andrex...)
• 4. King Kang: The TV Movie (a diplomatic mission to a mad Vargr ruler, which also involved rescuing the Marquessa, Jamus' recurring romantic partner [although he had to keep dodging the Marquess] from the harem)

The Mini-Series

• 1. Adventures in Baby-Sitting (a luxury liner - Pete was B'zarr, the head of security - escorting the Archduke's young niece and nephew home)
  
• 2. Day of the Knight (a hijack attempt - well, there had to be really)
• 3. Farewell to Arms, Hello New Order (the all-time quote of the game from Marcus de Chambre: 'I grab a beermat and rush into the toilet..' Dirkson is knighted on Deneb, Marcus deChambre gets proper bionic arms, aahhhh!)
• 4. Dirkson's Dirk (into the desert; velociraptors are mentioned)
• 5. Bungle in the Jungle (possibly some big game hunting to finish off?)
  

What I always loved about Traveller - besides the character generation system where you could kill off your creation before he'd even got to adventure - was the simplicity of the whole system, something sadly lacking in many of the modern inspired systems.

You had a handful of skills, rolled 2d6 for task resolution and your physical attributes were also your "hit points"... it really couldn't have been any easier.

Logan (2017)

It's 2029 and mutants are an endangered species, with no new mutants being born. Logan (Hugh Jackman) is making a living as a chauffeur in El Paso, Texas, keeping his head down and nursemaiding a 90-year-old Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart).

Both men are well-past their prime, sickly, and losing control of the abilities that made them such key members of The X-Men.

Charles is battling dementia, meaning that his mental powers go out of control when he fails to take his medicine and has a seizure, while Logan finds his healing power is not what it was.

The world isn't exactly post-apocalyptic, it's just bleak and run down. Like the film's protagonist.

Thrust into this mix is a young mutant, Laura (Dafne Keen), whose talents seem very similar to Logan's.

And she is being pursued by the paramilitary Reavers, led by Donald Pierce (Boyd Holbrook), the head of security for biotech company Alkali-Transigen.

It turns out that Transigen has been creating clones from the DNA of known mutants, to be trained as soldiers, only the children had no interest in fighting.

One of the nurses at the company's research facility managed to spirit Laura away before any further harm could be done to her.

But Transigen wants its "property" back.

Beyond just the strong language and graphic violence, Logan is unlike the majority of mainstream comic book superhero movies.

Director James Mangold has a singular vision for this unique take on the genre. There are no superhero costumes, everything is very down-and-dirty, tired and almost drained of colour.

The world isn't going out with a bang, it's just running out of steam... unless a new generation can be found to get things going again.

There is, as you would expect, plenty of action in Logan, and some grand special effects sequences, but this is a more contemplative and cerebral movie, examining such themes as the power of mythology and labels, for good or ill; the consequences of violence; the ravages of time.

It's a road movie crossed with a contemporary Western, set against a desert backdrop, stirring up echoes of Unforgiven, Shane (which is acknowledged in the film), Badlands, Mad Max (particularly Fury Road and Beyond Thunderdome) and others.

Interwoven with this is the family dynamic of Logan, his "daughter", Laura, and his father(figure) Charles, coming to terms with the reality of their situation, their places in this new world, and their destinies.

Given the size of these personalities, the villains of the piece (Pierce and his boss, evil scientist Rice, played by Richard E Grant) play a distant second fiddle to the protagonists, but that doesn't really matter.

It's all about closing a major chapter in the cinematic world of The X-Men in the most visually elegiac and lyrical way possible.

Logan is a live-action encapsulation of a Johnny Cash song (which is why his The Man Comes Around over the end credits works so well).

James Howlett, aka Logan, isn't the Wolverine we know from the earlier X-Men films, age is finally catching up with him and he no longer feels indestructible, but this gives Hugh Jackman the opportunity to give the character everything he's got.

This is a magnificent, and tonally perfect, heart-breaking yet optimistic, send-off for the superhero that he has played since 2000, and will - forever - be associated with him.