Well, Shannon, I'm glad you asked.
You see, I've run a number of non-Imperium games and campaigns
(Traveller being my favorite game system). I'll tell you about
a few of them. I also still have background notes for some of
them.
Anyway, here are the scenarios:
o Post-Nuclear holocaust. You've grown up in the wreckage. There
are mutant animals and such. First Contact. But the Aliens have
a SECRET, which you must discover. I ran this as a one-player
campaign (before Traveller:2300 came out). It started out more
like Gamma World than Traveller. Then the Aliens arrive and
promise to make everything better. Yet you don't seem to see any
real progress, only a few tokens of Alien goodwill. Why? A bit of
detective work is called for.
One this this campaign did was give me experience creating animals
using Traveller.
I tried to give the feel of a broken Earth, after being blasted
back into the Stone Age, with a few mutants thrown in for good
measure. The alien part caters to "detective" PCs, and could be
eliminated entirely if you wish. This campaign gives Traveller
players a chance to play larger-than-life heroes, such as are often
seen only in D&D-type games.
o Exploration mission. Aiuconium (Ay-You-Ko-Nee-Um) has been
discovered. It is a stable heavy element which emits rays which
stabilize nuclear reactions, making nuclear fusion a reality. You
are in an advanced Shuttle scanning the Moon for these ray
emissions. What you discover instead is a frontier cruiser.
Another First Contact scenario, only this time you discover that
the galaxy is at war and you must choose sides. I recently ran
the first part of this at a convention. It went over pretty well.
I made great use of impromptu skill rolls for this one.
The cruiser had a definite Imperial feel, although this was not the
Imperium. This was kind of a choice of the lesser of two evils --
an Empire which will plunder the Earth for its resources, leaving
its people alone, or a Federation which will bring its technology
to the Earth, but will bring it into the war as well, and actively
"assimilate" us into its culture. Real enterprising PCs might be
able to find a way to avoid both and buy the Earth a few more years
of anonymity.
o Another campaign I developed was non-Imperium, non-Earth, etc:
You are a human from a free Federation, which has been plagued by
attacks from a hostile alien race. Eventually, open war breaks out
between the two races. The problem is that you don't know where
the alien bases are -- they are a complete unknown. Meanwhile,
contact is made with another race, which promises to help you by
leading you to the hostile aliens' capital. What you don't know is
that they are trying to manipulate the war so that both sides are
destroyed and they can pick up the pieces.
This is a kind of grand campaign, where the players get to make
galaxy-affecting decisions. One thing that's very important to
this type of campaign is to provide LOTS of background material,
most of which will never get used. You also have to be able to
"wing it" pretty well.
As a point of interest: the characters in this campaign destroyed
the first envoy from the "friendly" race, thinking it was an attack
from their traditional enemies (they DID warn them with radio
messages, but the envoy used a different method of communication).
They then felt so guilty after learning of their mistake that they
fell right into the trap unprepared. They were so unconventional,
though (and you would not believe the lucky skill rolls they made),
that they managed to come through in the end. As an example, when
attacked by a type of battle cruiser/starbase, they realized that
their long range fighter would never survive, so blasted their way
into the hanger, then through interior walls until they got to an
access shaft to the core (like what Lando Calrissian did to the
second death star, only crazier).
I can't remember the other totally non-Imperium campaigns at this
time, BUT I'd like to point out another option: what about devising
your own sector/star/star cluster/whatever?
Here are two more background settings I have used:
o You are pirates in a star system on the edge of the Imperium. You
don't know about Imperial events, and don't care. You live off of
booty from passing ships.
This is a fun campaign to run, and to be in. I once played in one
of these campaigns as a deposed barbarian chieftain, who was
vicious with a sword. The GM put us on an Ancients asteroid base,
and kept trying to get us involved in Imperial matters. We only
paid attention to things that would help us in our piracy, ignoring
the rest. We didn't want that kind of campaign. We were PIRATES,
damn it, not research scientists. That was lots of fun.
o You are in a star cluster called The Barrens. They have a unique
atmosphere which makes them a rather unpleasant place to live, and
they have always been a bunch of backwater worlds, despite their
proximity to the sector capitol of the Diaspora sector. After the
assassination of Strephon, they find that The Barrens are squeezed
uncomfortably between Daibei, the Solomani Confederation, and the
Imperial Marines (which have a base a few parsecs away). Their
solution -- ignore everything that is going on around them, and get
ignored in return.
I've set up two campaigns in this setting. It is based in the
Imperium (although I've made a few minor changes here and there),
but they have no contact with it. Each of the five worlds has a
unique flavor to it, uncorrupted by Imperial tampering.
"Travellers' Aid Society? Are you joking?" -- you get the picture.
I also took a great deal of latitude in the way things work when
running these campaigns.
My point with the last two campaigns is this: if you place your
campaign appropriately, you can put it in the Imperial setting but
make it entirely your own, using only what you want from the
Imperium.
The advantage of the Imperium is the background knowledge you have
(it's tough to design a consistent universe, and keep it interesting).
Other good sources of background knowledge include using the Earth of
the near future (or present, or past), or books, or movies.
Star Wars is a good model for a universe, as is Star Trek. I've done
some background work using both systems in Traveller. You need to
use antimatter drives for Star Trek, but it works. This was before
the proliferation of RPG's though. Each of these now has its own
game system. There are also a number of campaign possibilities in
the Foundation universe, although I have not worked on any of them.
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Gerald Williams
[email removed]
[email removed]
[phone removed]
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