Criminal Minds

[MT++]

My efforts to plot a sequel to Research Station Gamma have been stymied by the fact that most people seem to get arrested in the first scene in the bar..

Many times I have seen campaigns degenerate into characters turning to scofflaws

How many campaigns have turned your characters into criminals? Is it inevitable?

Whether they be smugglers, saboteurs or assassins, is this fate?

 

[T. Foster]

The 'criminal issue' is a longstanding problem in Traveller, and I think it's mostly to due with the disconnect between players' expectations based on other milieux (be they brigand-and-graverobber fantasy and 'street samurai' cyberpunk games, or most Hollywood action-movies) and the structure of the Traveller setting.

I've faced the same sort of problems in Call of Cthulhu (the only other rpg I can think of off-hand where the PCs are, at least to begin with, 'normal' members of society), and I've found that what works best is to 'educate by example' using one-off adventures: let the players royally screw up a couple of adventures and unleash the full appropriate consequences of their actions upon their characters, so that by the time you start the 'real' campaign they'll have a better idea of the genre's expectations and the fact that they'll have a lot more lasting fun if they don't always turn to murder and robbery as the solution to every problem.

And it definitely helps if your players are neither 12 year-olds nor idiots, and you're not trying to run one of the '76 Patrons'