Mystery of BT-SHT 365: Ep. 1 - The Bank Heist

Part One of my Review/Game Diary for the Traveller campaign The Mystery of BT-SHT 365. It's a world-hopping adventure where the heroes face off against raiders, killer robots, and a corporate conspiracy in search of a lost planet.
Find it on DriveThruRPG: www.drivethrurpg.com/product/...
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Guest starring Jack the NPC.

[@fredricknoe3114]

See's Seth Skorkowsky: aw yeah. See's that it's part one:AW YEAH!

[@Reaver34567]

I have never been more creeped out than seeing Jack the NPC's voice come out of a hinge-mouthed dog head lmao

[@robweb2928]

Harrowing

[@ElionMars]

You need to go to more interesting cons. Once those are a thing again.

[@jesternario]

You kidding? That was the best part!

[@obsidianjane4413]

@@ElionMars Where do you think he got the furry head from? ;+) But yeah... Pretty much don't remember anything said because I was going, "ya know, too bad he couldn't dub that with a woman's voice, even a 'bot voice." If you're going to try, do.

[@kevingooley9628]

@@obsidianjane4413 maybe that was a female Vargr voice? (Shudder)

[@GreenwaterGuildhall]

Thank you and I love the review! "Bat Shit 365" is the correct name and, yes, it was on purpose. Side Note: The town of Binyamin has special meaning. Binyamin in Hebrew means "Son of the South."

[@GreenwaterGuildhall]

Also, I apologize for the maps. I'm terrible at making maps.

[@SSkorkowsky]

Hey, Christopher! Thank you very much. I do confess a spike of terror whenever the author sees my review of their baby, so I'm glad you're enjoying it.

[@GreenwaterGuildhall]

@@SSkorkowsky When an author releases something into the wild, it no longer belongs to them. Only through honest critique do we improve our future projects. I was humbled to see that you took time out of your schedule to run my little module!

[@NefariousKoel]

BaT-SHT 365: The Crate Pirates. "Good? Bad? I'm The Furry With The Gun."

[@Raxapheon]

that wolf mask....

[@AlluMan96]

Grista's re-enactments might just be the best thing that has happened on this channel. I friggin' love that costume, it's so dopey.

[@thepants1450]

The voice makes it perfect.

[@berzerk130]

When she's looking away, awesome. When she's looking at the camera? Straight out of my five nights at freddy's nightmares

[@tomkelly00]

@@berzerk130 this!

[@lastditch7434]

I've really really been looking forward to this. The Two Headed Serpent diary is one of my favorite things on youtube as a whole, and I'm completely stoked to get another like it. Thanks for the content, Seth.

[@richmcgee434]

Seconded. Or Forty-Firsted, judging by the current thumbs-up on the comment. :)

[@KuyVonBraun]

“So you begin in a tavern....actually you begin on the wrong planet” 😊. I love this format, it makes me feel like I’m playing along. And the Character portraits are fantastic 💜

[@shanelorrison5224]

This adventure sounds totally BT SHT crazy...

[@Kreln1221]

A whole year's worth of BT SHT crazy...

[@antoniusbritannia8217]

Well played.

[@harmonlanager2670]

I know I’m late to the party but one way to motivate the players is for the sheriff to be like “Hey, I had one of my guys tail you throughout the day so we have your names, your ship ID, and all the info we’d need to hunt you down. If you leave, I’ll hand it over to the mining corporation and they’ll come after you ruthlessly. Or you can help save my daughter, in which case you can keep the money and we’ll tell the company the raiders took the money.”

[@jasonshortt7]

I'm very impressed with Seth. When he's talking as the various npc's I really just see those npc's, not him playing that npc. Well done sir, well done.

[@Turntwobounceland]

Not gonna lie, I also thought the adventure name was "Bat Shit 365," too.

[@PaulGaither]

Me too. I deleted my comment after seeing yours.

[@shanelorrison5224]

I think most people see that. I did and the comments section will show that after the video has been up for a while. 😂😂

[@Tony-dh7mz]

KZbin search: “Cat Shit One”

[@gnarthdarkanen7464]

Having written up a handful of adventures that get often repeated with different (and occasionally the same) Player groups over the years... This title being purposefully "BaT SHiT 365" would be the kind of thing I'd use in title for two reasons. 1. It's a quick alpha-numeric to jump to mind for such a title. When you've racked your brain a few times for titling an adventure/campaign, you get to a point of just whatever dumb shit comes out first gets printed down as a holding card until (unless?) something better comes up. 2. The mnemonic is SOOOooo simple and easy to remember. When you've got a few compendiums of random monsters, bosses, and whole countrysides full of crap to "piddle with", it gets easy to lose stuff in the clutter. SO easy and memorable devices like this (and funny) are great ways to keep track of what module or campaign construction has which particular adventure hooks for future references... recycling, reusing, reskinning, etc... for example. A LOT of GM's often purposefully make up alphanumerics like this just for an "easter-egg" for those Players and other GM's who might notice and "get" the joke. ;o)

[@lesterforney6200]

Me too

[@paulh3892]

Please tell me at some point Grista will say “can’t let you do that, Starfox!”

[@Judasdfg]

Where did you learn to fly?

[@Lobsterwithinternet]

“Oh, great! Star Wolf!”

[@pretentiousname01]

That grista cosplay though

[@madmadameminx]

Grista x Sonic 4EVA!

[@spritelady4669]

YOU'LL BE SEEING YOUR DAD SOON, FOX.

[@euansmith3699]

"Jerry... Jerry was a great guy!"

[@theears995]

I’m not gonna lie, when I got to the part where they shoved Jerry into “the freezer”, I could only imagine him doing a “Han Solo in carbonite” pose 😂

[@mackbonham1]

Ah, the airlock... every Traveler's favorite negotiation tool.

[@gmradio2436]

Ever pull the negotiations in reverse?

[@OttawaSoldier]

Love the Barbara Bain pics for your mysterious Coraleen Petrovski NPC. Man, I remember watching her in Space 1999 and Mission Impossible!

[@nvfury13]

14:33 Holy crap! A Photon blaster? I’ve still got my two full sets of the gear for those! Fun fact: Firing one of those babies at a wasp makes them crash, think it blinds them for a moment.

[@singingReaper]

I love the dedication to storytelling to create a version of Jack that's a furry. This is why I come to the channel.

[@marcar9marcar972]

14:43 rolling out to a bank heist in a dingy helicopter seems like a classic villain move

[@gnarthdarkanen7464]

As much as I like your regular game and module reviews (among others)... I LOVE these adventure diary style reviews, Seth!!! ;o)

[@Fuzzy_Barbarian]

As soon as I heard Ignus, I figured he was gonna be the party's cook, coming up with new recipes after every fight.

[@smjsuperscott]

I assume Dweebles is playing the furry, something about him makes me think that :P

[@364dragonrider]

To be fair both the default races in the game besides human are anthropomorphic animals so i doubt it was intentional. Hell even the races outside the corebook are at least somewhat based off of animals. It just kinda comes with the territory.

[@Coophack6584]

Wolf mask FTW

[@piece1309]

He looks so happy talking about that chase!

[@FuriousJorge]

He loves a good chase scene. Inevitably the driver will try a normal maneuver and fail it, but then try a crazy maneuver and ace it! Makes for some great gaming!

[@troyimlach1453]

This is sounding a lot like the movie Serenity so far. I wonder how much of an influence that movie was for this adventure

[@SSkorkowsky]

Act 1 is pretty much Serenity. Act 3 is The Black Hole.

[@TheSmart-CasualGamer]

@@SSkorkowsky Act five will be Tron at this rate.

[@NefariousKoel]

Well.. Joss Whedon publicly stated he loosely based Firefly on an old sci-fi RPG he played in college during the early '80s. Which pretty much narrows it down to Traveller if he was going to school in the UK. I guess it all comes around full circle if this was based on something based on Traveller. I wonder when this BT-SHT campaign was developed.

[@brianperkins2123]

Stumbled onto this. Have Ref'd/played the game since '77. Great summary and presentation.

[@FirstLast-le2rf]

Thank you so much for making some of the best content on KZbin.

[@samprastherabbit]

Seth with Jane's generous chest while wearing an animatronic wolf head. It's fine, I needed to go to therapy eventually anyway! :-P. I freaking love the part where Jack is drunkenly telling a frozen Jerry he's his best friend! I think these campaign diaries with some hilarious war story stuff are my favourite things on the channel, and that's me talking about my favourite channel! Awesome as always, Seth!

[@DoTheDoop]

Currently running this as a side game for my tabletop group, for anytime we're missing a party member for our main game. I borrowed the chase in the desert, but they solved the problem of getting the party on-board with rescuing the townsfolk for me. A raider had jumped from a grav bike and onto the party's vehicle (a partially-assembled Gecko from the vehicle handbook) while the others shot out the front wheels - one Traveller climbed onto the roof to fight the raider up there, while a second player stunned the driver on one of the other grav bikes. That grav bike crashed into the players' car, launching the unsecured raider and Traveller off the SUV. The raider was killed on impact but one of the surviving grav bikes picked up the player character and carted him off to the corral.

[@RevRaak]

That Vargr mask is fantastic.

[@danielramsey6141]

Seth, you don't know how good it is that have a new video come along after a crappy day 😁

[@therealbfunke]

Your reviews are always dope, and I get inspiration for my own games from your vids no matter the genre. I’d like to see some more reviews of those adventures you have from cyberpunk though! Whatever you do I’m here though

[@jackleg2007]

Another great review. Also showing how Mongoose Traveller is different from GDW's.

[@Tysto]

I LOVED the Two-Headed Serpent game diary. I’m sure I’ll love this.

[@jfridy]

You were not kidding about the poor layouts that define Mongoose. I recently got the High Guard book from Mongoose, and they copy pasted the table of contents from Mercenary, the previous book in the series. So the table of contents is completely worthless. Amazing.

[@tobygettins7627]

An obvious way to strengthen the 'soft' link between Act 1 and Act 2 would be to have the raiders capture someone the Players care about (as well as the various Homestead natives such as the Sherriff's daughter). For instance: one of the crew might meet an old flame: a lady doctor who is now running a free clinic on Homestead. We meet her in an early scene, where she upbraids the PC in the main street: "Jack Zelazny Laserburn! What are you doing on Homestead ... (suspiciously) are you up to your old tricks?". Or if the PCs have a high-value/much loved and defenseless NPC crew-member, then the GM could arrange for that NPC to be snatched up. E.g. my PC's crew includes a wierd little blue-skinned alien who acts as the ship's savant engineer. "Looks like yer little friend was fixing the hydraulics on the town MagTractor when the damn raiders grabbed 'im. Poor little guy."

[@williamfawkes8379]

I was glad you immediately said bat shit, that took a load off my mind.

[@williamaitken7533]

I saw Grista's profile picture and was like "huh, that's cool that you can be a wolf person in space." Then the fursuit head came out. Now it all makes sense ;)

[@Bhegtvedt]

I really like this format.

[@olschoolgamer1869]

All I can say is …yay!!

[@ArawnNox]

Adventure writer banking on a bunch of PCs working for a crime boss to steal a bunch of money being altruistic enough to go help the people they just robbed. Did they even double check what kind of adventure they were writing? Sounds like a recipe for "And you leave the planet and the campaign ends." Like when you make the wrong choice in the old Choose Your Own Adventure books. I remember a few having non-endings like that.

[@stephenohanlon1671]

The two headed serpent diaries were what encouraged me to sub to your channel and then binge watch all of your videos over a couple of weeks, so very excited for another diary!

[@stephenclements6158]

LOL, love Jack's Grista costume!

[@Papercut337]

I’m starting my own Traveller game and one of the players essentially rolled the Count of Monte Cristo in space (I watched him roll his checks, everything was kosher). I’ll be adapting this adventure for his story. He’s the only one who really wants a story to tell, and the other players just want to do commerce or combat and we’ll do plenty of that.

[@jameswhite3799]

That image used for Grista is kinda creepy.

[@johngleeman8347]

Could've hooked Seth up with a much nicer one. XD

[@danielramsey6141]

@@johngleeman8347 I like it for being silly and unrealistic :) hehe

[@michaelcottle6270]

Loved watching that, can't wait for more. This is the first time I've ever hit the bell on KZbin...

[@Wallach_a]

Love the celebrity rock star, great pic!!🙌🏻🙌🏻🙌🏻 Late edit and Barbara Bain!

[@tomkelly00]

people were leaving reviews on this adventure basically saying "seth didn't like this so it sucks" - clearly they didn't actually watch your review. fortunately there were only a few of them like this.

[@playwars3037]

18:15 That is SO true. I ran a Cyberpunk 2020 session where the focus was robbing a bank, where there were many personnal strong boxes. The employer wanted them to open a specific box that contained documents they wanted to get their hands on, presumably inside of a suitcase. The rest of the robbery was to cover up the fact that the documents were a specific target, so the players were encouraged to open as many boxes as they could before either the police or the corp security showed up. They found two suitcases inside of the box, and never questionned why there were two, they just picked up both, and kept them closed for the whole session. At the end of the session, they met up with their employer, and delivered the suitcases. At which point their employer, who has advanced cybereyes and scanners (read : Scenarium powered equipment), realized that one of the two suitcases was booby trapped with C-6 and rigged to activate a short timer, then detonate if opened (the short timer was so a deactivation code could be entered if the people that made the case wanted to disarm it or it was opened by accident). This lead to a short scene where their employer essentially said that she would have accused them of trying to kill her, if she already didn't have enough proof that their...direct approach to problem solving and fulfilling contracts meant that they were unlikely to try something like that, and very much wouldn't care what was in the cases as long as they got paid (the players were very shocked that they'd been hauling around a bomb this whole time, although they were a bit disappointed that they couldn't salvage the explosives, as they had effectively already turned it in to their employer, who kept it).

[@Colouroutofspace4]

Holy crap. I was buying into some source books for Traveller from Mongoose and this video was on the front page

[@SSkorkowsky]

Holy crap! Damn. I guess they're enjoying it, then. :-) Thanks for the heads-up.

[@kevingriffith6011]

I'd actually be very interested in hearing some more pointers for people interested in trying their hand at writing TRPG modules and other content.

[@Raknarroth]

I was thinking bat shit year, but that's just me

[@troyimlach1453]

No it's not just you.

[@jamesloucka1952]

I really enjoy these longer extended reviews with both the review and story!

[@bighara]

Nice Space 1999 shout-out with the NPC portrait!

[@andersonoliv8980]

You are awesome

[@TheodoreMinick]

Wait, what? Church of Pelor?

[@SSkorkowsky]

I mean't Peror. It has to do with the old Sindal Emperor.

[@Torvik40]

I was going to ask the same thing.

[@MaxWriter]

Very cool. I love how you incorporate the backstory of the characters. I try to do this as much as I can as well. Sounds like you have some great role players too. Looking forward to more of this.

[@bradhoover1644]

I love these stories. I have watched several times and these never get old. I haven't had a role-playing group for a few years I miss sitting around reminiscing of games that went off the rails. I look forward to more game diaries.

[@weedanwine]

I am really glad you're doing another one of these series! Although I'm conflicted between watching now, and waiting until you have more episodes out so I can binge through them like I did the Two-Headed Serpent. I am glad I didn't have to wait between those episodes.

[@tinglestingles]

I like your campaign reviews - I've seen some other channels playthroughs and I get either bored or just plain annoyed at players inaction or just going off subject??? Keep em coming.

[@gmradio2436]

Might be because we are getting the highlight reel and an actual story. Not 16 hours on brewing tea for profit.

[@OscarTangoWhisky]

Stoked that you're doing another campaign diary!

[@Dorian_sapiens]

That Vargr mask, wow! This channel always has a new trick up its sleeve.

[@spritelady4669]

NEW MULTIPLE PART REVIEW HYPE!!!!!!! This review had me at "there's a bank heist and a ship called The Shenanigans".

[@jkl1110]

oooooooo another adventure multivideo. - SO EXCITED!

[@waisrainy]

To pile on to other comments. This format is my favourite although it obviously takes way more effort really worth it.

[@geoffdewitt6845]

Holy shit this is funny! Also I love Grista's art.

[@jefferydraper4019]

As usual... Jack delivers. I love the Jack the NPC portions. Seth as a GM you explain the ins and outs and problems so well, but your Jack alter-ego brings the game to life. I can see the scenario unflold through his eyes. Keep up the great work.

[@sword522]

Seth I love all of your work! The comedy, the information, the production of your videos! I have a request: Please make a playlist with your multi part videos all together without any other videos between them. Marathoning gets tedious when I have keep grabbing my phone to skip vids and whatnot. Love your work my man, you’ve inspired my games in many ways as a newbie DM/GM.

[@NmyLogan]

Seth furry confirmed

[@TheeOK1]

I was wondering if we were just gonna let that slide.

[@yakirchernin6015]

Woho!

[@handlebarfox2366]

Can't wait till Episode 2!!

[@japevicho3117]

One of the last things I would have expected is Seth becoming a furry. Dark times.

[@Gruoldfar]

I was thinking to myself “I love these guys…”

[@lucethedoormat81]

Yessssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss, I loved the last one and now I'm big happy lol.

[@scottknudsen6611]

Love it! Can't wait to hear about how the Travelers actually do become big damned heroes.

[@OviD11111]

Oh I'm going to love this series!

[@luke.friesen]

Those sets & costumes (lighting) are my favourite thing.

[@danielpucher3367]

Jerry is a great guy...

[@notoriouswhitemoth]

@2:10 seems to me like it's self-evident that that's exactly what you're supposed to call it.

[@thedroidwhisperer2699]

Just finished the first session of this using some of your suggestions and a few tweaks of my own to fit the party. Because my players are awesome/terrible they found the Raiders camp as part of their recon prep for bank job. Now they want to get rid of the raiders before the bank job, then use their equipment to cover their identities. Sneaky bastards

[@SteveWhipp]

Oh I remember Traveller! I loved the character creation the most.

[@101Hitman]

Yes another series!

[@krootmen]

You have got to be the best reviewer

[@GoT_17k]

I have been pondering a comment you made concerning the 'new' star that is BT-SHT 365... and what I came up with justification is that mathamaticians finally cracked the mystery that was the Jump Route to BT-SHT 365 allowing universal Jump access to this known but effectively unreachable star. So all the stars in the heavens are visible but only those with the jump routes 'worked' out can be reached by J drive technology. The others can be reached but only by M drives. So generational ships to go any distance. also would allow pocket empires to appear out of nowhere as they 'worked' out the J drive technology just my thoughts

[@shanelorrison5224]

Hello Moto...lol 😂

[@locke4049]

Yay!! Seth is back. 😀

[@DavidFeig]

So, what character will Martin Landau be playing in act 2?

[@squeethemog213]

You're making another game diary? This one about travel? Oh this is gonna be awesome :D Edit: I cannot wait for next exciting part Seth. :)

[@zeedar412]

This was a lot of fun :)

[@fpanch0]

Nice more travellers

[@ARC1701A]

Raiders!? So cool! I wanna play some Traveller, but I don't have a close game shop! 🤓

[@sebita4]

Love me some Traveller content

[@atomicwoodpecker0123]

He always says "Hello Internet" and never, "How's internet"...

[@andrewspears8891]

Shenanigans is a great word.

[@tylerh2548]

'Wold'-hopping good time!

[@marcar9marcar972]

15:56 but a classic villain move

[@ferkyferky3996]

Love the wolf head

[@TheLoremistress]

Looking forward to act 2

[@Graham-ce2yk]

Good review/Playthrough. I am looking forward to seeing how the next parts work out. As for the 'plot hammer' at the end of Act One, I can only ask, was this even playtested before it was published?

[@PyramKing]

Why play the adventure - when you can have fun just watching Seth's videos! Thanks! Note - I played Traveler back in 1980s and loved it!