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     Hullo, folks,

     I've got a question about portal travel in the game.  

     I understand the game mechanics for portal travel and the description of it provided in the Beta PDF, but...  If common sense says the crew is in cryosleep for the portal trip, so as to avoid all the side effects of portal travel, who actually does the portal jump on board vessels?

     Thanks, in advance.

Hi,

The pilot and crew makes the calculations for the jump, most often taking help from the portal stations. Then they set the autopilot to make the jump as soon as the cryo caskets have put everybody in stasis. Som ships hav a cryo bed built in to the pilots seat, but this is ost common on naval ships. 

You can of course try to go thru without stasis, but it isn't recommended... Many military labs hav tried experiments with fast or shallow stasis, but so far with out any good results. This is at least what the general public believes.

Hope that answers your Q

/Kosta

Hullo, Kosta,

Thanks for posting that reply so quickly!  Wasn't expecting it right then, but I guess the time difference between Canada and Sweden makes things so interesting in this regard.

This is what I had thought might be the case in how the portal jumps work, but wasn't certain on this.  I assume that the cryobeds are programmed to shut down when the jump is complete, right?  Although in a star system on a war footing or perhaps with other stuff (such as pirates or raiders) waiting on the other side, the ship arriving after a portal jump can be in serious trouble, since the crew is still in stasis.

Given some of what's written about the effects of portal jumps on human minds in the main book, yeah, I'd say that going through a portal awake is a bad idea.

And yes, that pretty much answered the question quite nicely.  I do wish that had been clearer in the rulebook itself in the section on the portals and jumping, but such is the size of the book.   Thanks again.

It's interesting that the book doesn't have mechanics for what happens if a player chooses not to stay in stasis (or is forced into not going into stasis through sabotage or whatever). But having just read about them, I think I'll have the Hounds of Tirides waiting for any of my players foolish enough to try. 

It's interesting that the book doesn't have mechanics for what happens if a player chooses not to stay in stasis (or is forced into not going into stasis through sabotage or whatever). But having just read about them, I think I'll have the Hounds of Tirides waiting for any of my players foolish enough to try. 

I like that idea There are more suggestions what to do in the Swedish section of the Coriolis forum (probably readable with G-translate):
http://frialigan.se/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2473

Hullo, The1TrueFredrix,

I could have sworn that I did see game mechanics for what happens if a character is not in stasis when the portal jump is made.  And if I'm wrong about this, I'll be quite disappointed, as this is something that should have been included in the main rulebook in the section on portal jumps.  (Don't have my book handy, as I'm at work at the moment.) 

Hullo, The1TrueFredrix,

I do like the idea about the Hounds of Tirides waiting for the character who foolishly doesn't go into stasis during the portal jumps.

That said, I'm also inclined to handle it in other ways, depending on the level of success of the task to mitigate the effect on the human mind and body.  At best, maybe a critical injury of some sort, to the mind of the person (and some psychological problem).  In the middle, maybe some sort of inflicted psychological problem that has lasting effects on the character, as well as Stress damage, and perhaps a permanent reduction to how much Stress a character can take.  Not sure yet what I'd inflict on the character for failing the roll altogether.

How's that for the basis of something here?

Hi John,

I've just come across the bit I think you'd seen, which does give a very basic mechanic:

HYPER SICKNESS

People who are exposed to the portal fields for too long or without being in stasis will suffer hyper sickness, or bad stasis as it is also called. The condition is permanent and comes in many forms, from madness to having one’s mind or limbs twisted by the darkness. The latter can at least be remedied with prostheses. A person traveling a portal field without stasis rolls D6, a result och 1-2 means he or she has been affected of hyper sickness.

So there's stil scope for your ideas, even for rolling on the Physical critical hits table. Though I think I'll still go with my Hounds idea, if I ever get the chance

Hullo, The1TrueFredrix,

That may well have been the section I was referring to.  Truth be told, I think that everyone running the game should use what works for them in this regard.

That said, I won't be changing anything or making house rules in this regard until I've run the game a few times.   That's my policy all the time when it comes to running rpgs. 

This may change depending on whether players and their characters are crazy enough to not go into stasis for the portal jumps, of course.  

It's interesting that the book doesn't have mechanics for what happens if a player chooses not to stay in stasis (or is forced into not going into stasis through sabotage or whatever). But having just read about them, I think I'll have the Hounds of Tirides waiting for any of my players foolish enough to try. 

I know it's 8 years old discussion, but in case someone, like me, is just starting the journey into 3rd Horizon - it's mentioned in diseases section (page 339, but I have localized book, so not sure if it's the same in EN one), right before the chapter on campaign play. In short: mental disease/madness or physical mutation/degradation. Personally I see it like in the "Event Horizon" movie.