A friend of mine doesn't have direct access to the Net, so he has asked me
to post his messages for him here. As he is my Traveller Referee, I gladly
agreed (I don't want him to unleash the alien from the movie Alien on me
just yet). His name is Roger Sanger. Here is his first message:
JB
- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hi, my name is Roger Sanger.
I love this "mailing list" concept. Pen pals galore. More Travellers to
ramble to!
I've been playing Traveller and several other RPG's on and off for the past
12 years.
Of all of the approaches to running a campaign, I've found the following to
be the most enjoyable and least frustrating:
Simply wait until a campaign is fully developed (or at least extensively
developed) by the publishers before you start running it. That is, I
purchase each "module" as they come out, but don't start reffing a
particular campaign until there is sufficient background material.
A slant on this approach is to collect the entirety of a (large) campaign /
game system which has already run its course.
The pros and cons (as they occur to me):
Con: Waiting can be hard for the impatient.
Pro: Less development work for the ref.
Pro: You don't have to worry as much about published materials obsoleting
your custom changes to the campaign.
Con: Your "investment" lies dormant.
Con: Expensive if you try to collect everything at once.
Con: Many veteran Traveller players have already run through the
older adventures.
Pro: There are lots of role-players unfamiliar with Traveller
This approach occurred to me when running TSR's World of Greyhawk (fantasy
setting). I couldn't use much of the published material because I had by
necessity already developed much of the Flanaess -- I pretty much allow the
players to go wherever they want, and try to stay ahead of them whatever
direction they choose to head off in. Running Greyhawk was frustrating,
especially when the City of Greyhawk and the Council of Eight (Tenser,
Mordenkainen, Bigby, Otiluke, etc.) were finally described, because they
were nothing like their namesakes in my campaign. Also, waiting for the
Temple of Elemental Evil to finally come out put a major crimp on the
development of the related regions, especially since I had already run the
Village of Hommlet. Now that Greyhawk is extensively developed, it
wouldn't be a bad campaign to start up (assuming you could find its now
out-of-print supplements and modules).
I was having the same difficulties in my (Traveller) Spinward Marches
campaign, but on a much larger scale. Much of the material conflicted with
my custom developments and either had to be discarded or extensively
modified (especially world descriptions and rumors referring to worlds).
Also, it seemed like the material being produced for the game became
available in a mere trickle.
Eventually, for entirely unrelated reasons (reality impeding with its
demands upon my time), I put Traveller aside, and shifted my participation
in RPG's to being a player rather than a ref. Eventually, this led to a
serendipitous discovery.
Eight years went by...
Recently (about 15 months ago), I started getting involved in Traveller
again. I began by collecting as much material relating to Traveller as I
possibly could (my collection has just passed the 350-item mark). Then,
about 6 months ago, after I had collected almost everything pertaining to
the Spinward Marches that was ever printed, I started a classic Traveller
campaign.
I've found this approach to offer a wider range of gaming options, due to
the wider selection of support material that has accumulated over the
years. A large collection gives you many more options available
at-your-fingertips. Many more than a fledgling game, for instance.
I started the campaign in the year 1100 Imperial (the very beginning of the
Classic era of the Traveller time line), and have been having a blast
running the various original Traveller adventures (though I use the newer
rules sets, from MegaTraveller and Traveller: New Era). I have found much
of the background material developed in MegaTraveller (Rebellion era and
Hard Times era) and even much of the material in the New Era products to be
fully applicable to the "classic" era (the time frame of the adventures The
Kinunir, Twilight's Peak, Secret of the Ancients, The Traveller Adventure,
the adventures in DGP's Traveller Digest, etc.), simply because most
Traveller material (whatever-the-era) is written from an historical
approach about things that existed in or prior to the classic era (1100 to
1115).
Most equipment, ship designs, technology explanations, aliens, world
backgrounds, and much material on the inner-workings of the Imperial
bureaucracy and its various agencies, even though written for Meg or NewE
is quite applicable to classic Traveller settings.
I now have so much material to choose from (including literally hundreds of
adventures), that I've tried a new approach I call the "player survey." It
consists of a set of questions via which the player(s) decide what kind of
scenario and in which kind of setting they would like to game. I then go
through my collection, find the closest match (or design one), and about 2
to 3 weeks later, run them through it -- most of the time, I can find a
fairly close match. As I get more of the collection read, I'll be able to
do this on-the-spot. This process generally takes place simultaneously to
whatever other scenarios are currently being run (I spring the questionaire
on the hapless players during breaks, between sessions, etc.).
====================questionaire for your players=======================
-----------------------------------------------
The PLAYER SURVEY METHOD of scenario selection:
-----------------------------------------------
"I would like to run an experimental adventure and need to know your tastes
and preferences. I'll try to find the closest match, though the end-result
will likely be quite surprising, regardless of your answers."
------------------------ about your character: -----------------------
Would you like Custom characters, Prepared characters, or Special?
("Special" means anything the ref wants it to mean).
If your answer is "Custom", answer the following (indented) questions:
What species and race of character would you like to play?
What would you like your PC's Strength to be?
Your PC's Dexterity?
PC's Endurance?
PC Intelligence?
PC Education?
PC Social Status? (For group gaming, no higher than B.)
Your PC's Career?
How many terms do you want your character to have served?
How about your PC's apparent (biological/physical) age?
His/her/it's true (chronological) age?
Roll 1d6 to determine the number of skill levels your character gets per
term (1-3=3/term, 4-5=4/term, 6=5/term)
Choose your skills and divide your skill levels between them
(no skill is to be higher than level 8, even after Mustering Out).
Choose your mustering out benefits (or roll them if you desire).
What is your character's name?
On a scale of 0 to 5, where 0 is completely biological and 5 is
completely synthetic, what do you want your character to be?
Do you want your character to be from the Imperium, from an Imperial
colony or client state, from a territory allied with the Imperium, or
from a non-Imperial region?
------------------ about your scenario preferences: ------------------
Grade your preferences on the following scales: Answer:
Beginning (1-2) --> Intermediate (3-6) --> Advanced (7-10) _______
Human (1) --> Mixed (2-9) --> totally Alien (10) _______
Imperial 1 --> Imp Ally 2 --> Neutral 3 --> Imp Enemy 4 _______
Sane (1) --> Insane (5) _______
Non-robotic (0) --> Heavily Robotic (5) _______
Familiar (1) --> Exotic (5) _______
Low Tech 0 --> High Tech 15 _______
In between adventures 0 --> Starting in the action 1 _______
Water-based --> Land-based --> Orbital --> Starship-based _______
Habitable Environment 1 --> Hostile Environment C _______
Peace 0 --> War-torn 5 _______
Low Law 0 --> High Law C --> Oppressive in the Extreme L _______
Male-oriented M --> Gender Equality E --> Female oriented F _______
Uninhabited (0) --> Low population (1) --> High pop (2) _______
Inside the Imperium (0) --> Outside the Imperium (1) _______
Suggestions for the genre (espionage, cutthroat, piracy, _______
mystery, action-adventure, law-enforcement, commando,
WWII, post-holocaust, Ian Flemming (James Bond-like),
Frank Herbert (Dune-like), archeological discovery,
natural distaster, cat-and-mouse, "Psycho", sci-fi horror
("Alien", "Life Force", etc.) or "surprise me", etc.
==========================================================================
Well, there you have it.
Caution: The above survey can cause you a lot of work if you don't have a
large collection to draw upon (because you'll have to design adventures to
fit), or if you haven't read your collection.
Note that the interpretation of several of the scales can overlap or even
contradict each other, depending on the answers chosen. Thus, another reason
for the emphasis on finding the "closest match."
I've found the survey method of scenario selection to trigger thought about
adventure scenarios in much the same way the UPP (Universal Planetary Profile)
triggers ideas on the make-up of a world.
The use of the survey in my campaign has had some interesting results:
- ---
One player, who chose an "insane, exotic, heavily alien (9),
starship-based, start-in-the-action" scenario, wound up as the human
captain (of Solomani descent) of a ship with a crew of aliens and
minor-race-humans, and an even more bizarre passenger list, with a few
rather exotic pets thrown in. (The aliens on-board consisted of a potpouri
of published "official" aliens, of both major and minor races, from the
vast array of Traveller products written over the years, along with a dozen
or more aliens of my own design).
The cargo consisted of exotic foods, medical supplies (including drugs),
anagathics, and some weird zoological specimens. Placed in the Far
Frontiers Sector (two sectors spinward of the Spinward Marches, and thus
out of familiar territory for the player), the ship had just misjumped into
deep space (an empty hex), and had completely short-circuited its
jump-field-grid, yet it had enough fuel for a long sublight journey. It
would take 130+ years to get back to civilized space, or more depending
upon the duration and degree of acceleration chosen.
The player's character was very old chronologically speaking (102),
and so had already maxed-out on anagathics. Since he was growing an extra
thumb as a side-effect of his anagathics use, he had to decide between
either dying in deep space (he obviously didn't have that many years left
to live), or go into cold sleep. He was also faced with the dilemma of
saving the rest of the sophonts on board, and had to (while avoiding a
potential mutiny) determine who got to go into cold sleep, who had to take
anagathics (assuming he broke into the cargo), who had to go into
hybernation (with medical "fast" drugs), and who had to live through it on
meager rations.
To make matters much much worse, there were many idiosyncracies within the
crew members and passengers. One of the sophonts was a photosynth (i.e.,
he needed light for energy), which had to be taken into account when
considering the conservation of the ship's fuel and use of emergency
lighting. There were couples or "mated-for-life-pairs" onboard who didn't
want to be seperated, and a passenger who had a symbiotic relationship with
his pet (i.e., he didn't want it sacrificed for food). There was
bickering/fighting over supplies and equipment, the use of luggage, etc.
And the details went on-and-on.
While taking into account the language-barriers, the cultural differences,
the physiological characteristics (one of the passengers consumed
carbondioxide and produced oxygen when he "breathed"), the racial
prejudices and preferences, the uncertainties (at first, it wasn't even
clear that there were enough resources for them all to survive), and the
personal agendas and conflicts, the player was almost driven out of his
mind. I however, had a blast. And I loved his reaction when he came out
of cold sleep and saw how the situation had changed in the intervening
century! (There were several interesting cross-breeds on board, and one of
the mated pairs had bred like rabbits; fungus had gone rampant, and his
ship was a total wreck)!
- ---
Another scenario inspired by the survey form above where an "exotic,
ship-based" scenario was selected, follows the adventures of a mercantile
captain who raised a litter of Vargr pups from shortly after birth to young
adulthood, giving them his (notably human) culture. They're his crew.
- ---
The answer "Surprise Me" to the genre suggestion question resulted in my
running "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" on the planet Junidy in the Aramis
subsector of the Spinward Marches. For practical purposes I set the
adventure 50 years in the past (circa 1050 Imperial). None of the players
escaped, but one came close -- though he sacrificed himself to save the
starport from falling to the pod people and thus saved the Imperium. In a
future scenario, if the players ever visit Junidy again, they'll see the
giant memorial statue erected in his honor.
Those players of mine that did not participate in that night's session,
have been extremely paranoid that I shall spring the same scenario on them.
This makes it almost impossible for me to run a pod-people adventure with
as much impact (it caught the original group of players completely by
surprise), but I intend to use the atmosphere of paranoia to my advantage
by springing another closely-related movie-based scenario upon them, say
"They Live", or that episode of Star Trek NG where everyone got hypnotized
by a videogame brought back by Riker from his vacation-leave. Zhodani mass
mind-control is another possibility. The players' misassumptions could
have an interesting effect on play.
- ---
The survey has also been quite useful in selecting worlds upon which to
adventure. "Imperial, Orbital, High Population, Heavily-robotic,
High-Tech" describes Glisten to a tee. The selection "In-the-action,
War-torn, moderately Alien" resulted in a scenario dealing with the
evacuation of the Darrian bread-basket planet Roget, which had been
mysteriously infested with the Chamax Plague. "Familiar, Imperial,
Mid-Tech, Non-robotic" fits Regina quite well, especially if you use it as
a standard mustering-out location. Venejen works well as a "moderately
exotic, low-tech" setting, but adds even more playing options when
Adventure 2 is used.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Another benefit of an extensively developed game setting is that you can
accomodate just about every combination of players that turn-out to your
gaming sessions. My campaign typically has 20+ branches going at any given
time, each one accomodating a different combination of the 8 players who
participate in the campaign. Having hundreds of scenarios available makes
all the difference.
Thus, I've had to keep a "Campaign Roster" listing the combinations of
players and the scenarios currently being played by each. The roster
includes the names of the players, a title for the scenario, the date that
branch of the campaign started, and where in the Traveller universe it
started. When the players show up for a session, I simply look up on the
roster the scenarios applicable for the particular assortment of players
present, pick one, and away we go.
Of course, they're not always in the mood for a particular adventure (e.g.,
bug-hunting hordes of little nasties can get old real fast), so I always
have several scenarios in reserve, and can always fall back on the player
survey method.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Now that there is a lot of material available for the Traveller game
setting (albeit most of it out-of-print), it gives the referee who has it
more of a feeling that there's "a whole universe out there to explore"
rather than the ominous chore of "there's a whole universe that's supposed
to be out there that I need to create".
Any comments?
Roger Sanger
P.S.: A comment concerning punctuation: My peculiar usage of quotes is
on-purpose. I use for them the same logical rules as pertain to
parentheses. This is to avoid the ambiguity that can be caused by placing
punctuation marks such as commas, periods, colons, and exclamation points
within a quotation, when they actually belong to the overall sentence and
not the quote itself. Therefore you'll see such symbols inside and/or
outside the quotation marks, depending upon context. Simply stated, the
customized grammatical rule followed is: "Don't include anything within
the quotation marks that is not a part of the quotation!"
Standard quotation punctuation is just a little pet peeve of mine.
o o
\___/