Who all out there has tried traveller solo? Advice? Table suggestions?
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Solo traveller
- Thread starter Ridley
- Start date
Timerover51
SOC-14 5K
Basically, you need to develop a large number of encounter tables for various conditions, and decide if your PC can have additional hirelings to assist. The supplements that you will need are 1001 Characters, Animal Encounters, Citizens of the Imperium, 76 Patrons, and Veterans to give you some encounter lists to work from to generate your specific encounter table. Then determine what world or worlds you are going to be adventuring in, and what character class fits you the best. Once you know what world or worlds you are operating in, you can generate encounter tables for those worlds from the above supplements, without adding your own biases. That is if you wish to generate the entire set up yourself.
Some of the published adventures lend themselves to solitaire play, one being the Chamax Plague, as the Chamax can be run as automated attackers, and there is a range of situations to deal with. Just assume that you are one of the off-world commanders of local units, and have at it with one of the characters provided.
I used this system while playing Basic Blue Book D&D at Walter Reed Army Medical Center (which no longer exists) when I was spending several months there in a hospital bed. I have played some Traveller the same way. You have to be honest with the die roll though. If it says that you are in trouble, you are, and if you are killed, you are dead.
Also, using some form of miniatures helps too.
Some of the published adventures lend themselves to solitaire play, one being the Chamax Plague, as the Chamax can be run as automated attackers, and there is a range of situations to deal with. Just assume that you are one of the off-world commanders of local units, and have at it with one of the characters provided.
I used this system while playing Basic Blue Book D&D at Walter Reed Army Medical Center (which no longer exists) when I was spending several months there in a hospital bed. I have played some Traveller the same way. You have to be honest with the die roll though. If it says that you are in trouble, you are, and if you are killed, you are dead.
Also, using some form of miniatures helps too.
If you ever come across a game called Battlelords of the 23rd Century, there's a bunch of tables that you'd probably like. These are sections in the book called “Everyone is a Little Freaky”, “I was just growing up”, and “The Fickle Finger of Fate”. These are all random event tables - mostly for character generation. But I'd bet they could be modified for your game. I wonder if I could scan them for you under Fair Use.
Where are you at that you have to play solo? Or do you love Traveller and just don't like other people?
It's easy to find Players, it's hard to find Referees.
Where are you at that you have to play solo? Or do you love Traveller and just don't like other people?
Can't speak for the OP, but I'm in southern Sweden, where I don't know much of anyone (never mind other gamers) and, as an immigrant, I speak next-to-no Swedish. (Granted, pretty much everyone here speaks English, but I always feel guilty making them use English for my sake.)
So, in theory at least, I play a good bit of solo Traveller. Lately, though, I've been doing more writing software to streamline playing Traveller than actually playing.
Well, OK, and I try to not like other people, too...
I have done Robinsonade scenairos where a charcacter is alone on a world. These work OK as a solo and use mainly the animal ecnounter tables. I have used the event roll to redirect to a second table specific to the world to indicate ruins or other unusual finds. It isn't great but it works to fill lunch time on the night shift.
Trouble
Trouble
I've used Mythic Emulator to develop a few planetary systems and subsectors. Fifty year turns or similar, gives them a very organic feel in terms of growing them from a frontier region to a more established part of the campaign. Usually start with a government or a service, then a colony group appears or a megacorp starts mining somewhere. Things definitely go in unexpected directions, which is great because it's easy to fall into a routine when paying solo.
I find you have to make tough choices with ME or the "NPC" counts can rise quite quickly and all the little story threads can get to be a bit overwhelming. So I let a few die out every so often to keep things manageable. But I really like that style of solo play because if I then want to do a crew of adventurers or even a single PC, I've got a ton of story lines and historical time tables to inform what happens at the character level.
I find you have to make tough choices with ME or the "NPC" counts can rise quite quickly and all the little story threads can get to be a bit overwhelming. So I let a few die out every so often to keep things manageable. But I really like that style of solo play because if I then want to do a crew of adventurers or even a single PC, I've got a ton of story lines and historical time tables to inform what happens at the character level.
I'm doing it as a webapp and setting up a public copy is on my to-do list, I've just gotten sidetracked with implementing features that I wouldn't allow anyone else to use - world generation, T4 Pocket Empires, that sort of thing. (I'm happy to release source so that other people can set up their own installation and use these features, but I'm obviously not going to let random people on the internet make changes to my ATU.)
It definitely will happen, in any case. Just a question of when...
travelling alone
I assume you've read http://www.freelancetraveller.com/features/rules/alone.html
I've used a somewhat extended version to cover details of mundane employment on-world, and have elected for some of the characters in a party to be employed and earn an honest cred at times, although it makes for more complex departures when the whole group happens on an interesting patron.
I assume you've read http://www.freelancetraveller.com/features/rules/alone.html
I've used a somewhat extended version to cover details of mundane employment on-world, and have elected for some of the characters in a party to be employed and earn an honest cred at times, although it makes for more complex departures when the whole group happens on an interesting patron.
