Please, don't get me wrong, it's just that Traveller is huge, I love it but I'm afraid of mismanaging my books, my time and my players game.
You want too much out of one campaign.
You're operating on all sorts of different levels, high, middle, and low. You want to play a high level generational, build/develop a company, economic game which has turns measured in years and have it mesh with very low level
ACQ personal combat game with turns measured in seconds. Plus space combat. Plus nearly every alien Major Race. Plus the 5th Frontier War. And the Rebellion. And terraforming. And a bag of chips apparently.
Pocket Empire, the closest thing
Traveller currently has to
ACKS, has turns measured in
years. The PCs make high level decisions which effect high level things like diplomacy, treaties, trade, fleets, armies, strategic warfare, and planetary development.
In
PE it can take a decade or century to upgrade a world's starport. Are you going to play out every day in all those years? After your players make a high level decision regarding RU allotments, are you going to make them slog through 365 low level days before they can see the results?
GT:Far Trader has rules for corporations, stocks, and other "build a company" type play. Turns, actions, choices, and results there are measured in
years and
months too. Again, are you going to play all the day-to-day or week-to-week level sessions while your players wait the in-game months and years necessary for the consequences of their decisions to result?
You're trying to do too much across too wide a scale. Your group includes wargamers, right? Ask them if they'd like to play
Advanced Third Reich with it's quarterly turns and army/corps-level units meshed through
Advanced Squad Leader with it's turns measured in minutes and individual leaders, squads, tanks, artillery pieces, and what not?
Trying to do too much is a well know problem with RPGs generally and
Traveller specifically. The first thing anyone does when they get their hands on
LBB:3 or
GT:First In is roll up a sector or more with hundreds, if not thousands, of worlds. They bury themselves so deeply in preparation that they end up not playing the game at all.
There's some wise advice from
CT which says that
two subsectors can provide
years of play. Heed that advice. Pick a level of play and stick to it. If your players are building a corporation, you're not going to need the detailed personal combat found in
ACQ. If your players are flying trade routes, they'll be working for someone else who is building a corporation and detailed economic rules won't be needed.
You want a campaign which is long, far ranging, and manageable while also featuring trade, combat, and the Aslan? This is what you need to do.
There's a substance grown in the Marches called Dustspice. You can read about it
here. Both the Aslan and Vargr covet it greatly because it acts as an euphoric for them. It can be produced artificially which helped meet demand, but the real stuff is still highly prized and the best is harvested on Romar/Glisten. Another variety is harvested on Keanou/Lanth and it's coveted only slightly less.
There are Aslan in the Darrian Confederation. While they can be found on most worlds there, their biggest numbers are on Roget/Darrian. Like their brethren in the Heirate - but much closer - the Aslan in the Confederation will pay very well for Dustspice from Romar and Kenaou.
Someone who can set up a regular import from Romar and/or Keanou to Roget could make a lot of money. So much so that someone should have done it before your players thought of the idea. So, what's happened?
Someone (or several someones) either with money, muscle, political influence, or all three has cornered the market on Romar and Keanou. Dustspice is still exported from those worlds. It just doesn't make it to the Confederation anymore. Every lot sold ends up in the Heirate or Extents.
Your players, either on their own or at the behest of a patron, are going to travel to Romar and/or Keanou to find out who's cornered the market and figure out how the monopoly can be broken. They're going to break into the market, begin exports of Dustspice to Roget again, and then defend that new trade against whatever consequences arise.
The play in this campaign occurs on pretty much the same level throughout. This campaign will give your players a plausible reason to crisscross a big chunk of the Marches. This campaign will give your players a plausible reason to meet and interact with the Aslan and Vargr. Most importantly, this campaign is
manageable.
You're not going to drown in prep work. You're not going to over burden yourself. You're not going to be juggling and translating dozens of books. Your players' actions will have both immediate and long term consequences. Your players will be working towards a long term goal but they'll be dealing with near term events.
Buy the
CT CD-ROM from
FFE. It's all you'll need.
Good luck.
