Adventure - The Pratai and the Crown

[Keklas Rekobah]

I'm writing an adventure, for which the major action takes place from 1245 to 1248. The relevant history spans the years 1000 to 1400. I've worked out the chronology of major events for that time, which take place across at least two systems in a somewhat autonomous region. Events earlier than 1000 are also noted, but are not important to the time span of the adventure itself.

Basically, the adventure involves a human major race having progressively subjugated a human minor race over the last few hundred years, and an adventuring team (of perhaps 4 to 8 members) that has the opportunity to become involved for the oppressed, the oppressors, an as-yet-unknown third party, just themselves or any combination thereof.

I had thought to place it on the edge of Solomani space, given their "Earth First, Foremost, and Forever" culture, thus making the oppressors a Solomani offshoot, and the oppressed a "seeded" minor human race.

How do you-all develop, from the same adventure, parallel versions like the following:

- A grognard's dream: Strategy, tactics, combat and gear.

- A role-player's dream: Encounters, personalities and decision-making.

- A tech-head's dream: Gadgets, gimmicks, and what's that shiny thing over there?

- A problem-solver's dream: Clues, mysteries and suspects.

Also, do you see any overwhelming conflict with Traveller "canon" regarding what I've stated so far?

 

[TomeGnome]

It seems as if there wouldn't be any serious conflict with "canon," (not that I'm a big fan of following "canon" in any case...).

I think the bigger problem that you're addressing, how to meet all of those needs in one adventure, is probably the key Referee Question Of The Ages. I've found that there are two main solutions:

1 -- Focus different sections of the adventure on different aspects of the game. So, if you are running (say) a Mercenary Ticket for a small commando group, you have some role-ply info-gathering, some TL 16 shopping (or raid on a Research Base), a combat "set-piece," and, likely within the lab, a series of deductive or inductive puzzles required to proceed.

2 -- (This is far more common, and probably what I do most often) Wing it. No adventure is going to have a perfect balance of all of the aspects of Traveller that we enjoy. If you know your players, you can guess which element they are going to be most/least interested in. Also, in the sens of "parallel," I'm a big fan of the flow-chart and the note-card (or computer-equivalent for those of you under 30). Just figure out the makor options at each point, and draw from there. It's labor-intensive, since the tree gets bigger and bigger if you want to have the whole adventure plotted out first, but if you are just staying two or three sessions ahead of the players, it is manageable.

 

[Keklas Rekobah]

I forgot to mention that this adventure is for publication.

Decision-tree ... hmm ... this side of the tree is for action-adventure ... that side for mystery-roleplaying ... a few crossover branches here and there ...

It might work!

 

[FreeTrav]

If it's for COMMERCIAL publication, good luck; I hope you make oodles of money from it (or at least enough for a couple of pizzas and a case of beer)! If it's free/FANAC, would you allow Freelance Traveller the privilege of being the release vehicle?

 

[Keklas Rekobah]

If it's for COMMERCIAL publication, good luck; I hope you make oodles of money from it (or at least enough for a couple of pizzas and a case of beer)! If it's free/FANAC, would you allow Freelance Traveller the privilege of being the release vehicle?

How's the April issue coming along?

 

[FreeTrav]

How's the April issue coming along?

Starting to sort through articles for it, and pouring the ones I'm certain of into the page layout program. PDFs won't be generated until just before release, which is generally about a week before the end of the prior month (as you've seen). So, expect to see it probably the weekend of March 20/21; if my new computer comes as scheduled (that is, if Dell doesn't delay it AGAIN), I might kick that to March 27/28. But it will DEFINITELY be available for download before April 1.

 

[Keklas Rekobah]

Pratai and the Crown

I need some help with astrography.

The system is similar to Alpha Centauri AB-C, with some modifications. So far, I have the following (plus the UWPs):

Trinary Stellar system
Eccentricity no greater than 0.1
No Oort cloud
Jump-3 from nearest system

3 Stars:

Primary: G2-V
No gas giants
No planets farther than 2.1 AU / Period is 3.0 years
Life Zone at 1.3 AU / Period is 1.5 years

Secondary: K5-V, Near Orbit, 19 AU / Period is 80 years
No gas giants
No planets farther than 1.1 AU / Period is 1.2 years
Life Zone at 0.7 AU (?) / Period is 0.6 years (?)

Tertiary: M0-V, Very Far orbit, ~6300 AU / Period is ~500,000 years
Only star in system to have gas giants (2xSGG)
No planets father out than ?? AU / Period is ?? years
Life zone at ?.? AU / Period is ?? years (Tide-locked world).

The question marks represent all of the items I'm having trouble with. I'd like the values to be nit-pick proof, but every time I run the numbers, I get different values.

Can anyone help? Thank you.

-KR-