Best and worst Classic Traveller adventures?

[nats]

I am starting to look at collecting some Classic Traveller adventures together for some games with the family and was wondering which are the best adventures out there that really stick in peoples minds and why? ...and are there any adventures I should stay clear of? I was thinking of Simba Safari and Across the Bright Face?

And in association with the above are there any Judges Guild packs or supplements that you cannot do without?

Would help me to build up a picture what is the best Traveller stuff out there there is so much of it!!

 

[Gray Lensman]

Okay, I'll go first, if you have access to it I would say CT Module 03, The Spinward Marches Campaign. Not really complicated and easy to branch off of. Should be easily convertable to any version of Traveller rules you are playing by.

Of course, there are gonna be many opinions about this :rofl:.

 

[soloprobe]

I got a lot of use out of the Judges Guild Materials. I used the safari ship in "Simba Safari" for the Player characters. I got the most use out of "Doom of the Singing Star" It has 11 adventures in it. "Fifty starbases" is good ,when you need a starport/startown map. And of course, there's the BIG,GREEN G.M. Screen. The only screen I know of that was made for Classic Traveller.............

 

[far-trader]

Worst:

The classic Classic Traveller adventure most often nominated as Worst is probably Exit Visa. I don't think it's so bad myself but apparently a lot of people suffered through it under unimaginative refs who ran it too much by the numbers. I think it's got tons of hidden gold. In that way it's like pretty much every CT adventure I can think of; long on fill-in-the-blanks and colour-outside-the-lines potential, short on run-as-is-off-the-page completeness.

Best:

Nothing leaps to mind. In my experience all of them needed a bit or lot of work which depending on your needs is good or bad.

Caveat:

The Spinward Marches Campaign adventure has great potential but suffers from huge plot holes to fill and confusing/contradictory information. It's like they changed things in mid composition and then made a mess of the editing attempting to fix it. Like most CT Adventures it's more like several adventure nuggets with the ref required to edit and weave them together into a proper campaign/adventure.

 

[HiverLord]

I got good use out of the boxed set "Tarsus". It was weak in some areas, but had a great amount of detail. And for a 'young' (i.e., inexperienced at the time...) referee, gave a lot of useful hints into worldbuilding. For me, anyway...

My favorite CT adventure was definately the Chamax Plague... (that was CT, right?...)

["You know, the memory's always the second thing to go..."]

 

[aramis]

Just get the CD's...

For me, TTA is THE campaign. some of the best removable bits, however, includ Zilan Wine and the incident on Psaydi.

Worst is a toss up between exit visa, Signal GK, and Prison Planet, in a 3 way tie.

Most of the stuff in JTAS is good to very good.

 

[rancke]

["You know, the memory's always the second thing to go..."]

"What's the first thing?"

"I can't remember."


Hans

 

[The Oz]

Hmmm. Best CT adventures?

Legend of the Sky Raiders (one proof of its quality is that you can't find this easily for sale: people who have it don't want to part with it).

Nomads of the World Ocean.

Night of Conquest (it's even better if the ref takes the time to flesh it out some).

Worst CT adventures?

Shadows (too much like a dungeon-crawl to me).

Prison Planet (takes too long; really a mini-campaign).

 

[Madmax]

Glad you mentioned Across the Bright Face. That was the best adventure I ever ran, though admitedly it had more to do with the players I was playing with.
Here is how I set it up.
I had one character be a Noble, another a Scout and a couple of other hanger ons of the Noble.
I told the Scout, separatly, that he had served in the Courier branch of the IISS, and had really been nothing more than a glorified mailman. Whenever he stopped over on Regina he would visit his cousin, the Noble, and tell him tall tales of exciting space adventures (none of which the Scout ever actually participated in). Now that he is out he is hoping his really rich cousin, worth around 40 M ImpCr, can get him a cushy job in one of his companies.

I then tell the Noble player that he has become tired of business, and wants some excitement in his life. So he has liquidated almost all his assets and bought an Interstellar Yacht (which costs ~40 M ImpCr). He is now going to surprise his Scout cousin with the news they are going to go adventuring, with the Scout as the Pilot.

You should have seen the expression on the Scout player's face when the Noble told him the news!!

The Noble's only remaining assets are about 2 M ImpCr worth of shares in the Dinom corporation, and there just happens to be a stock holders meeting and new technology demonstration on Dinom in a couple of weeks, so that becomes their first destination.
After Across The Bright Face, where the characters were constantly bickering with each other (not the players, the characters, which was hilarious), the players were completely broke, and had to start using their Yacht as a Free Trader. The Noble was not in any way skilled to deal with this change of fortune, so his Valet, an ex Merchant Steward, ended up running the show.
They struggled to make a living, due to the unsuitablility of a Yacht to commerce, but had a great time.

In conclusion, the most important thing in having a good adventure is playing with people you can have fun with, and being as inovative as possible to keep thing interesting for the players.

 

[HiverLord]

Nomads of the World Ocean.

Agreed. I forgot about this one. It was very good.

 

[nats]

I got a lot of use out of the Judges Guild Materials. I used the safari ship in "Simba Safari" for the Player characters. I got the most use out of "Doom of the Singing Star" It has 11 adventures in it. "Fifty starbases" is good ,when you need a starport/startown map. And of course, there's the BIG,GREEN G.M. Screen. The only screen I know of that was made for Classic Traveller.............

Yes I got the ref screen myself and it is good but it isnt as good for weapons tables as the Snapshot weapons table - that covers all of the Merc weapons' various ammo modes etc in great detail. If you get the chance get a copy of it I find mine invaluable.

 

[Vargas]

One factor is that in a skilled ref's hands, just about any adventure can be turned into gold. Another consideration is that GDW's classic adventures were written rather broadly, making it kind of hard to judge each solely on their own merits.

Personally, I had great success with Death Station and Safari Ship and always believed that Murder on Arcturus Station was a very well written adventure.

 

[mike wightman]

I'd second Death Station as best CT adventure - I have used it loads of times often with interesting little twists to start a campaign.

I also like the original Kinunir adventure - plenty of scope for fleshing out to a full campaign - and Twilight's Peak.

Worst is most definitely Exit Visa.

 

[fredofmars]

I like Twilight's Peak. None of my groups ever got through it, but I've had several starts that were fun.

 

[mike wightman]

I've never known a party survive it

 

[the angle]

My vote always goes to Safari Ship, because it's a good adventure AND it has some of the best H. Beam Piper-style science fiction going on.

Steve

 

[beowulf2044]

Research Station Gamma is a good way to gently wean D&D types out of the dungeon by sticking them in a Sci Fi 'dungeon'. Once you've got them hooked, then you can drag them out ot the stars.

 

[fredofmars]

Research Station Gamma is a good way to gently wean D&D types out of the dungeon by sticking them in a Sci Fi 'dungeon'. Once you've got them hooked, then you can drag them out ot the stars.

Shadows/Annic Nova (D.Adv. 1) both have "dungeon crawl" elements, as well as the end part of Twilight's Peak (Adv. 3).

 

[by_the_sword]

My favorite adventure will always be Adventure 4: Leviathan. I loved that ship and though I could never get the adventure to work for me in it's intended format I found so many useful things in that book. The Merchant Cruiser has made numerous appearances in my games.

The Traveller Adventure was pretty awesome too. Unlike most adventures it was quite thorough and most parties went off the beaten track.

Nomads of the World Ocean was like Mad Max at sea with a hint of Dune thrown in. Loved it, never played it though.

Horde and Chamax Plague were truly visceral and exciting.

Expedition to Zhodane was good because you could use the opening part to start a campaign... with a bit of improvisation.

From the Travellers Digest, two adventures really stood out, namely: A Dagger at Efate and Food Run, both of which gave the Player's a ship as the prize, though of vastly different quality.

Traveller adventures were modular, you could break them up, steal from them, swipe maps, characters and alter plots as you needed them. I can't think of any that weren't useful to me. They were at their worst, unremarkable.

 

[Vargas]

From print JTAS, two adventures really stood out, namely: A Dagger at Efate and Food Run, both of which gave the Player's a ship as the prize, though of vastly different quality.

Fixed your typo.