[TML] Space Piracy

[Richard Aiken]

On Fri, Jun 6, 2008 at 12:43 AM, Jerry W Barrington
<jerry.barrington at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm thinking survey data would be fairly easily hidden.  At the least,
> duplicated & encrypted, with some copies hidden where pirates won't have
> time to find them.

Historical pirates never seem to have actually made anyone walk a
plank.  That was an invention of 19th century novelists.  But they
certainly did (and still do) enthusiastically torture anyone suspected
of holding out on them.

Of course, this is a game.  So we can say Traveller pirates *do* have
a version of walking the plank.  Imagine the following scene, once the
pirates have successfully boarded the survey ship:

Armored pirates pass around a vacc suit helmet among their prisoners,
telling each to draw out a marble.  Each PC draws out a white one.
Then the first NPC to get the helmet pulls out a black one.  The
pirate's grab him and space him.  Just like that.  Then they say to
the remaining prisoners: "Where's the data?"  If nobody talks, the
helmet starts around again.  How long will the PCs hold out?

-- 
Richard Aiken

"Never insult anyone by accident." Robert A. Heinlein