Adventure "paths" (I don't know what to call it)

[robject]

Us grognards, we've been playing Traveller for decades. We've also read the old sci if that inspired it. So we know what we can do. We know the Solar Queen, the Mercenary, the Merchant Prince, van Rijn. We know the ultimate Traveller, Dumarest. We know that Citizens of the Galaxy turn out to be more than expected.

Maybe younger people don't know these. Maybe they are at a loss when playing Traveller. Maybe they don't even know Firefly. They live on JJ Abrams' Star Trek, or Disney's Star Wars. Or Guardians of the Galaxy. None of those are particularly Traveller.

Ok I've suggested a problem. Now my pitch. I think part of a Player's Handbook could suggest goals or development paths for players. It could do it via checklists or simply telling stories.

That segues into the point of this post. What do you think are likely paths for players to think about, to riff off of?

For example, a merchant character may start out on working passage, eventually buy a ship, then become a privateer, and finally broker a peace deal on a world... for a title and land. Four long goals, with plenty of diversions or course changes available along the way.

A mercenary would start as a grunt, then a squad leader or cavalry, then a platoon leader, perhaps work up to general. Or perhaps something a little less orthodox would be a better illustration.

Different paths for the scholar, scout, spacer, entertainer, and so on. The Rogue would try to score ever larger cons. Although some characters might be harder to pin down - like the Agent.

And as always, examples should serve as springboards for the imagination, not strait jackets.

 

[aramis]

Advenutre paths is a bad name.

Why? Because it's used for linear adventure series in the D&D and pathfinder terminology space. As in 1-3 big hardcover long campaigns covering levels 1-10+

as for "We know the Solar Queen, the Mercenary, the Merchant Prince, van Rijn. We know the ultimate Traveller, Dumarest"... not all of us. I've never read anything by Norton, can't stand asimov, never read dumarest. The only Merchant prince I can think of is the villain in a Niven and Pournelle novel. Do not assume knowledge of 1960's novels by 2000's and later readers. Not even amongst the grogs.

 

[The Pakkrat]

The Entertainer

Fame is the name of the game for the Entertainer. Whether through performance, masterpiece works, or covering the next bigger scoop, the Entertainer wants their name written among the stars.

My Vargr character, the Dame Qithka Cannagrrh, had originally intended to cover her younger brother's escapades with a mercenary group of troubleshooters. Goal 1: cover someone's adventures who has potential. And her brother had as a Senior Scout and Courier that potential. Then, she, her attaché, her magazine's robot and her brother were swept up in the Fifth Frontier War. Goal 2: Cover a major event and be on location when it happens. More than once Qithka found herself on the front row seats of space battles between the Third Imperium and the Sword Worlds. Later, she was able to cover the states caught up in the War. Goal 3: Cover state-sized actions and reactions to interstellar events. Then the pre-Maghiz site, an Ancients artifact, and a mysterious psionic syndrome struck Bowman and Qithka found herself caught up in the chaos. Goal 4: Cover something interstellar and unexplained.

The Journalist Entertainer seeks to raise public awareness of the truth (before it is covered up by a government to keep the peace and prevent panic) while garnering Fame for doing so. Performing Arts awards and recommendations, Masterpieces, Journalism awards, titles and sheer star power are the goals of the Entertainer. To be famous throughout the planet, world system, stellar cluster, subsector, sector and throughout the empire are the milestones of career progression. At the pinnacle of such ambition is to be standing somewhere important when something big happens. What if the Journalist was standing in the Iridium Throne room when Archduke Dulinor crossed that fateful threshold to gun down Emperor Strephon, his wife and daughter and the Aslan Emissary? To be on hand and recording everything as it happens makes your editor happy. You are the Entertainer that knows where important news happens.

A Career campaign for the Entertainer is to become caught up in events, trying to stay objective and report, survive the event, topple The Man and maybe - just maybe - become a hero right alongside those the Entertainer is covering.

The pen is mightier than the sword.

Live via satellite, from the Editor's Desk on Roethoeegaeaegz Orbital, this is the Pakkrat.

 

[pendragonman]

Also, where does the Stainless Steel Rat, The Dorsai, Methuselah's Children, and We Also Walk Dogs fit in?

 

[Nathan Brazil]

The only Merchant prince I can think of is the villain in a Niven and Pournelle novel.

Would that would be Horace Hussein Bury, merchant and revolutionary who wants to genocide the Moties of Murcheson's Eye for making the perfect coffee maker? :coffeesip:
:coffeegulp: I thought him savior of the human race in The Mote in God's Eye

To aramis point not all our experiences are the same. The designers may have had your references in mind, but they are not mine. While I read LOTS of Asimov, I read no Andre Norton and a little Poul Anderson. I read Niven and Heinlein. So...
When I think Navy officers, I think of Commander Roderick Blaine of the same book. Not Anderson's Flandry.of the Diplomatic Corps
When I think Black Globe generators and planetary sieges. Same book.
Battledress and marines? Starship Troopers.
And as for the Major Races? Known Space mostly. Kzinti, Puppeteers, Pak, and the Thrintun and psionc humans (and the Moties too). The similarities to the Droyne, Hivers and Aslan and Zhodani are mixed up and superficial, but they were what someone with my experiences could latch onto.

 

[Timerover51]

It might be easier to put together a reading list which can be used for ideas. There is a fair amount of Andre Norton online at Project Gutenberg, along with H. Beam Piper. Also there is a good collection of the early Astounding magazines, and a lot of Murray Leinster's books. All of them are good for adventure ideas. There are a few stories on Asteroid Belt living as well.

I am not a fan of Asimov's fiction, nor have a read Dumerest or watched Firefly. I have read a far amount of Van Rijn and Pournelle's books. There is a lot online for free at Project Gutenberg, just search science fiction.

 

[Nathan Brazil]

I understand your goal Rob. To promote thought:

To get a better feel their game Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu 6th edition actually posted the story at the beginning of the book before any rules and did so for some of their adventures. Is this what you are looking for? Easy for them. Much of Lovecraft, if not all by now, is public domain.

 

[Ulsyus]

I understand your goal Rob. To promote thought:

To get a better feel their game Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu 6th edition actually posted the story at the beginning of the book before any rules and did so for some of their adventures. Is this what you are looking for? Easy for them. Much of Lovecraft, if not all by now, is public domain.

That's the technique used by White Wolf in their products, in pretty much all their book I believe. Rules, supplements, adventures, the lot are filled with fiction.

In some recent online Runequest chatter I saw agreement about how much people liked Rurik's Tale, the narrative rules examples winding through the first two editions of RQ. Not purely stories as in the WW material, but still great ways to provide examples within the rulebook.

When I think of mercenaries and soldiers I revert back to Starship Troopers but also Dorsai and and William H. Keith Jr's (as Ian Douglas) Heritage Trilogy. For merchants I think on C.J.Cherryh's Alliance Space stories. For the Navy I recall Elizabeth Moon's Familias Regnant novels. I just add those to add to everyone else's points about the spread of our reading experiences that is wide and not necessarily going to give us the same ideas about what a career looks like. Just, I suppose, the same way we all view the 3I a little differently.

For Adventurer Arcs (feel free to use the term if you like it) maybe colourful narratives that illustrate what's going on would be good dual-use pieces in the book. They provide a common picture, to readers, of what's going on in that career at that point, but they also illustrate how the rules work.

 

[aramis]

Would that would be Horace Hussein Bury, merchant and revolutionary who wants to genocide the Moties of Murcheson's Eye for making the perfect coffee maker? :coffeesip:
:coffeegulp: I thought him savior of the human race in The Mote in God's Eye

To aramis point not all our experiences are the same. The designers may have had your references in mind, but they are not mine. While I read LOTS of Asimov, I read no Andre Norton and a little Poul Anderson. I read Niven and Heinlein. So...
When I think Navy officers, I think of Commander Roderick Blaine of the same book. Not Anderson's Flandry.of the Diplomatic Corps
When I think Black Globe generators and planetary sieges. Same book.
Battledress and marines? Starship Troopers.
And as for the Major Races? Known Space mostly. Kzinti, Puppeteers, Pak, and the Thrintun and psionc humans (and the Moties too). The similarities to the Droyne, Hivers and Aslan and Zhodani are mixed up and superficial, but they were what someone with my experiences could latch onto.

Yes Horace Bury. Was too tired to look up the name. He's the villain in Mote, and the savior in the sequel - an interesting flip flop.
I have to admit, tho', that the Sten series, which I read in the mid-90's, affected my TU far more than Mote/OTGH... because I only read them in the 2000's. (Still haven't coughed up to read the 3rd book)

Am reading Fire with Fire - the first of Chuck Gannon's Caine Riordan series. (Plug plug - I got it free on amazon last week. At free, it's worth the DL time, at least the first half is.) The Traveller nods are pretty heavy. IRIS... and a plausible backstory therefore. It has a vibe near Traveller, 2300, and Starfire... (Note: Chuck wrote a bunch of stuff for MT, and with Steve White wrote a Starfire novel, and IIRC, a traveller novel in the TNE era.)

 

[robject]

For Adventurer Arcs (feel free to use the term if you like it) maybe colourful narratives that illustrate what's going on would be good dual-use pieces in the book. They provide a common picture, to readers, of what's going on in that career at that point, but they also illustrate how the rules work.

Yep, I'm resonating with that idea. I think that will not only feel natural, but it will let me develop the story lines in broader strokes. It won't feel like railroading. It demonstrates setting and adventure and development by examples. I like that. Yeah. That might give it a kind of Piper-esque feel to things, maybe; if it did, it wouldn't be bad.

Only now do I realize how much I owe to H Beam Piper.

 

[khadaji2002]

I like the idea of a suggested reading/watching list. For me, Firefly is the touchstone for MTU's look. Cherryh's Alliance space heavily informs my merchants and Heinlein my Marines. I read some Asimov, more of Niven, a LOT of Heinlein, some Elizabeth Moon, and a bit of Pournelle. I'm always looking for new inspirations and possible story arcs that make sense for the characters in the group.

I read some Asimov, more of Niven, a LOT of Heinlein. I'm not a scientist, or even an IT guy (as many of my Traveller fellow players were) so the hard science isn't my thing. A well-told story however....that gets me every time. And having snippets of those stories in my role-playing book?

Priceless.

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

For example, a merchant character may start out on working passage, eventually buy a ship, then become a privateer, and finally broker a peace deal on a world... for a title and land. Four long goals, with plenty of diversions or course changes available along the way.

I don't funnel player characters towards certain types of adventures or paths. I let players do anything they imagine their character would do in a given situation.

 

[kilemall]

Almost sounds like retrofitting motivations/goals of latter day RPGs, or even the T:2000 system.

 

[Original_Carl]

Are we assuming that the character is still working within their career when adventure starts? I have always played that when adventure starts, whatever career you were in is gone. You're now an intergalactic drifter, essentially. You're either living out your retirement or you're into a more entrepreneurial/independent phase of your life.

That aside, I think the best thing to offer new players and refs are short, exciting adventures that can be chained together or run singly and take less than 3 hours to complete. Adventure Arcs is a nice name for this. Each of these should showcase a particular game mechanic to act as a teaching tool for players and refs.

Exposition, rising action, conflict, falling action and denouement make for a great adventure. Great adventures are what make great role-playing game sessions.

 

[Ulsyus]

I don't funnel player characters towards certain types of adventures or paths. I let players do anything they imagine their character would do in a given situation.

...but I do talk about it to them as a group, so that if they're going to play a ship-based game at least one of them is a pilot, and preferably with an engineer and a gunner in there as well.

But the important thing, for this thread at least, was that as a group of characters, during the development of their Adventure Arcs, they all touched upon each other in some way. That way there was justification for them knowing each other and being together at the start of play. Character generation was a pre-campaign campaign.

As I was typing this an idea has formed: add lifepath events as an optional element to add during character development. That way you don't get a bunch of 38-46 year old singletons with nothing but five to seven terms of work behind them. Nothing else happened in their lives in that time? Purely optional of course. Rob, want me to put something together for you as an example?

 

[robject]

As I was typing this an idea has formed: add lifepath events as an optional element to add during character development. That way you don't get a bunch of 38-46 year old singletons with nothing but five to seven terms of work behind them. Nothing else happened in their lives in that time? Purely optional of course. Rob, want me to put something together for you as an example?

Like Mongoose v2 has.

I wasn't really thinking in that direction; although, there are tables of these things in T5 already (I have to remember to include them in the Handbook!!).

I was instead thinking of narrative points to touch on for the various careers, to show how the OTU works, but also how a post-career life can develop.

 

[Timerover51]

Are you looking for something like this? All quotes are taken from material on Project Gutenberg, and are in the public domain.

Jason downed a large mouthful from the mug and bridled his temper. He was fast with a gun—his life had depended on it more than once—and this was the first time he had been outdrawn. It was the offhand, unimportant manner it had been done that irritated him.

"I'm not prepared to do business," he said acidly. "I've come to Cassylia for a vacation, get away from work."

"Let's not fool each other, dinAlt," Kerk said impatiently. "You've never worked at an honest job in your entire life. You're a professional gambler and that's why I'm here to see you."

Jason forced down his anger and threw the gun to the other end of the couch so he wouldn't be tempted to commit suicide. He had hoped no one knew him on Cassylia and was looking forward to a big kill at the Casino. He would worry about that later. This weight-lifter type seemed to know all the answers. Let him plot the course for a while and see where it led.

Jason dinAlt in Deathworld, Other/Gambler career.

Wolverines, the ancient "devils" of the northlands on Terra, were being tried for the first time on Warlock. Their caution, a quality highly developed in their breed, made them testers for new territory. Able to tackle in battle an animal three times their size, they should be added protection for the man they accompanied into the wilderness, and their wide ranging, their ability to climb and swim, and above all, their curiosity were assets.

Shann had begun contact by cleaning their cages; he ended[Pg 9] captivated by these miniature bears with long bushy tails. And to his unbounded delight the attraction was mutual. Alone to Taggi and Togi he was a person, an important person. Those teeth, which could tear flesh into ragged strips, nipped gently at his fingers, closed without any pressure on arm, even on nose and chin in what was the ultimate caress of their kind. Since they were escape artists of no mean ability, twice he had had to track and lead them back to camp from forays of their own devising.

Shane Lantee from Storm Over Warlock, Scout Service

Dane Thorson licked his own lips, tasting salt, and plodded back through the sand of the spaceport to the berth of the Solar Queen. This had been a long day, and one with more snarl-ups than he cared to count, keeping him on a constant, dogged trot between the ship and the fitting yard where riggers labored with the slowest motions possible to the human body—or so it seemed to the exasperated acting-Cargo-Master of the Free Trader. Captain Jellico had long ago taken refuge in his cabin to preserve the remnants of his temper. Dane had been allowed no such escape.

The Queen had a schedule for refitting to serve as a mail ship, and that time allowance did not allow for humidity playing the devil with the innards of robot fitters. She had to be ready to lift when the Combine ship now plying that run set down and formally signed off in her favor. Luckily, [Pg 6]most of the work was done and Dane had given a last searching inspection before signing the rigger's book and reporting to his captain.

The air-conditioned interior of the Queen comforted him as he climbed to his quarters. Ship air was flat, chemically pure but unappetizing stuff. Today it was a relief to breathe. Dane went on to the bather. At least there was no lack of water—with the local skinners filtered out. It was chill but relaxing on his gaunt young body.

Dane Thorson from Voodoo Planet (one of the Solar Queen series) Merchant Service

 

[jcrocker]

The current version of the T5 book has how many pages, exactly? I think it could spare half a page of "for your consideration and or inspiration" listings of books or tv shows or movies.

 

[GypsyComet]

I've never read anything by Norton, can't stand asimov, never read dumarest. The only Merchant prince I can think of is the villain in a Niven and Pournelle novel. Do not assume knowledge of 1960's novels by 2000's and later readers. Not even amongst the grogs.

Media influences, whatever the media might be, alter one's perception of the canvas of Traveller. Some people realize this, and some have no idea what my signature is raving about...

 

[Major B]

...but I do talk about it to them as a group, so that if they're going to play a ship-based game at least one of them is a pilot, and preferably with an engineer and a gunner in there as well.

But the important thing, for this thread at least, was that as a group of characters, during the development of their Adventure Arcs, they all touched upon each other in some way. That way there was justification for them knowing each other and being together at the start of play. Character generation was a pre-campaign campaign.

As I was typing this an idea has formed: add lifepath events as an optional element to add during character development. That way you don't get a bunch of 38-46 year old singletons with nothing but five to seven terms of work behind them. Nothing else happened in their lives in that time? Purely optional of course. Rob, want me to put something together for you as an example?

Rob, maybe the section should be called "Player Goals" rather than paths. Start with describing how the referee should sit down with each player and establish a long-term goal and a number of intermediate steps to get there, like Ulsyus described.

Are you looking for something like this? All quotes are taken from material on Project Gutenberg, and are in the public domain.

Then, include some examples like those Timerover outlined...

I wasn't really thinking in that direction; although, there are tables of these things in T5 already (I have to remember to include them in the Handbook!!).

I was instead thinking of narrative points to touch on for the various careers, to show how the OTU works, but also how a post-career life can develop.

And finally, for those new to the game, include some tables where you can roll for goals at random.

And finally end with mentioning that there is nothing binding about the process. Just as in life, goals can change over time and as the players learn more about the setting. Failing to achieve an intermediate goal can lead to even more rewarding ideas that lie in a different direction. Communication between the player and the referee is the key to adjusting goals over time to ensure the players maintain enthusiasm.