ct adventure problems- spoiler warning do not look here if intending to play ct ads

[Elliot]

I recently went up some mountains in Switzerland and saw some shelters for people stranded (they were in effect good quality wooden sheds).

I have no problem with why, just why randomly put one octagon shelter on a number of worlds with no seeming rhyme of reason!

And why build it on a Ancients base"!

 

[shield]

Why build it on an ancient's base?

Cause you are using the disintergrator pistols to cut the stone tower out of the mountain top.

obvious really )

Cheers
Richard

 

[hirch duckfinder]

ACROSS THE BRIGHT FACE ?
or
"along the monorail line" -

both times i have run this , players have travelled the shortest route --- alongside the monorail track . they know the route as they have travelled on the monorail , and they don't realise that they will encounter fewer persuers if they go away from it ( how would they know ? ) .

anyone else ?

 

[FrancoisUldry]

In the Traveller Adventure itself *** SpOILER ***

The characters get a 1% interest in a real important business venture. Anyone has a clue how much would that be worth each year / month / whatever ?

Francois

 

[Elliot]

Across the Bright Face or how to fill an evening with Random Encounters - and apparently Loren Wiseman has criticised DGP for not giving up their day jobs!!!

 

[Nellkyn]

Originally posted by Elliot:
Across the Bright Face or how to fill an evening with Random Encounters - and apparently Loren Wiseman has criticised DGP for not giving up their day jobs!!!

I’m not just defending it because I’m a bit of fanboy but it was written back in 1980. What else was out there then? Also I’d rather not think about what I did claiming it was role playing in the same year.

Be Lucky,

Nellkyn

 

[Vargas]

Originally posted by Elliot:
Across the Bright Face or how to fill an evening with Random Encounters - and apparently Loren Wiseman has criticised DGP for not giving up their day jobs!!!

I believe ABF started life as a convention scenario. Lots of random encounters makes sense in that case.

If you don't like just filling a session with random encounters then get your players involved and personalize the adventure; throw in a mcguffin, a few hints of some Dark Secret (tm) of one of the PC's (or of an NPC), in other words, give your players some lead and let their paranoia/assumptions/preconceptions work for you and the game.

 

[hirch duckfinder]

Originally posted by Vargas:

Originally posted by Elliot:
[qb] Across the Bright Face or how to fill an evening with Random Encounters - and apparently Loren Wiseman has criticised DGP for not giving If you don't like just filling a session with random encounters then get your players involved and personalize the adventure; throw in a mcguffin, a few hints of some Dark Secret (tm) of one of the PC's (or of an NPC), in other words, give your players some lead and let their paranoia/assumptions/preconceptions work for you and the game.

---------oh yes . the adventure ran well with tweaks . some of the randomness was removed , especially with respect to persuers . also , all the persuers were pumped up on experimental combat drug , phials of which were to be found in their atvs . streen's girlfriend was present on the transport off dinom , and death station ( moved to phlume ) was the source of the drugs.......
..................it just didn't run across the bright face .

 

[Whipsnade]

hirch duckfinder wrote:

"ACROSS THE BRIGHT FACE ? or 'along the monorail line' - "


Mr. Duckfinder,

Yup, ABF is rather thin. It is part of a Double Adventure though and you do get nifty stats and operational tidibts concerning ATVs.

"both times i have run this , players have travelled the shortest route --- alongside the monorail track."

No one with at least Nav-1 in the group? Or a relatively high INT or EDU stat? The monorail isn't the shortest route, arcing 'up' into the Bright Face or 'down' into the Cold Face are the shortest routes. Why? Because Dinomn isn't a flat map, it is a sphere. Check out all the Great Circle oceanic shipping routes marked in various atlases.

"they know the route as they have travelled on the monorail , and they don't realise that they will encounter fewer persuers if they go away from it ( how would they know ? )."

How would they? Perhaps because there are fewer people shooting at them? I had a group set off along the monorail route once. After the second attack on them by people dropped from monrail cars, they wised up and struck off across open country. Bullets can teach very quickly.

Another group bugged out of the ATV lot, put some kms between them and the city, and then stopped briefly to plan and take stock. One of them told me he was specifically examining the tourist map with an eye towards plotting an escape course. I had him role against his INT stat and, when he succeeded, passed him a note with a "Great Circle Route" reminder on it. he then had to convince the other PCs of 'his' idea about striking off Across the Bright Face being the shortest route; a nice little bit of role playing!


Sincerely,
Larsen

 

[hirch duckfinder]

Originally posted by Larsen E. Whipsnade:
[qb] hirch duckfinder wrote:

"ACROSS THE BRIGHT FACE ? or 'along the monorail line' - "


No one with at least Nav-1 in the group? Or a relatively high INT or EDU stat?

----clearly not me ( d-f )


The monorail isn't the shortest route, arcing 'up' into the Bright Face or 'down' into the Cold Face are the shortest routes. Why? Because Dinomn isn't a flat map, it is a sphere. Check out all the Great Circle oceanic shipping routes marked in various atlases.

AH . great circles . yes .

i just had a quick recount , and you appear to be correct . thing is , you weren't there when i was running it
next time , if you could pass me a note.......

 

[Whipsnade]

hirch duckfinder requested:

"next time , if you could pass me a note....... "


Mr. Duckfinder,

Only if you promise to remind me to bring the dice next time. Yes, Whipsnade the GM actually did forget that once!

Back to Great Circle Routes in ATB; I had a group choose not to travel a Great Circle Route! They ran into their first lava flow or something on the Bright Face and decided that handling ambushes along the monorail line was less trouble.

Their 'plan' was to zap any trains they saw with their mining pulse laser... After the bruises faded, they eventually ended up aboard the Gash; the Kinunir cruiser used as a prison hulk, though one of them did walk funny for the rest of his life. The miners had been really angry and the Imperial Marine squad looking for Streen(1) arrived just in time to stop an old-fashioned lynching. Hehehehehehehee....


Sincerely,
Larsen

1 - A Whipsnadian addition to ABF. Do you actually believe that Streen's backers would have let him and his briefcase tour Dinomn without any real bodyguards?

 

[plop101]

Hirch Duckfinder writes:

---------oh yes . the adventure ran well with tweaks . some of the randomness was removed , especially with respect to persuers . also , all the persuers were pumped up on experimental combat drug, phials of which were to be found in their atvs . streen's girlfriend was present on the transport off dinom , and death station ( moved to phlume ) was the source of the drugs.......
..................it just didn't run across the bright face .

Gotta love those extras, like having the Great Grand Daughter of the Professor from Adventure 2 show up.

 

[hirch duckfinder]

[/QUOTE]Gotta love those extras, like having the Great Grand Daughter of the Professor from Adventure 2 show up.

[/QB][/QUOTE]

now you are frightening me .
sure you don't mean the great grandaughter of that one from adventure 12 ?

 

[Colonel Mac]

I have run ABF several times for different groups and the PCs always choose to go by the monorail lines. I solved that one after the second time seeing that pattern developing by have a "derailment" or major malfunction to the system, causing them to go by foot and acquiring new transportation. CT fact of life: bad judgement equals

 

[kaladorn]

Originally posted by Larsen E. Whipsnade:
I'd take care with any other HIWG pronouncements. Afrter all, they and DGP did give Traveller the Rebellion and that whole rat's nest of problems.

You really mean 'opportunities' but you mispelled it.

 

[kaladorn]

Originally posted by hirch duckfinder:
ACROSS THE BRIGHT FACE ?
or
"along the monorail line" -

both times i have run this , players have travelled the shortest route --- alongside the monorail track . they know the route as they have travelled on the monorail , and they don't realise that they will encounter fewer persuers if they go away from it ( how would they know ? ) .

anyone else ?

Once they've interrogated the first prisoner, you'd think that would give them a clue. Someone with Recon might spot the enemy and be able to reach the rational conclusion "Look, they seem to be following the rail lines." (and then let the players figure out that not doing so is actually safer!)

 

[kaladorn]

Originally posted by Colonel Mac:
I have run ABF several times for different groups and the PCs always choose to go by the monorail lines. I solved that one after the second time seeing that pattern developing by have a "derailment" or major malfunction to the system, causing them to go by foot and acquiring new transportation. CT fact of life: bad judgement equals

The thing to keep in mind is even if you want to stick with the known navigation of the the monorail line, there are lots of places where you could parallel it just out of sight and just check up on it every-so-often (even by sending over a single scout with binocs). So you should be able to dodge the encounters, mostly.

At the same time, you should deter the *use* of the monorail line and granting the players some insight into planetary courses (Great Circle Route) is probably approrpiate for Army vets and Scouts, at the very least.

I think collecting the meat of this thread (problems in the classic adventures and some fixes, along with some alternative suggestions on running them) would make for a wonderful article. I may just have to embark on such a collection task. Of course, this would require the permission of various contributors (and of course, due credit would be advanced).... might be a good tool for new CT players and to old CT players just coming back to pickup the GM's reins.

 

[chrisr]

I was thinking of converting some of the classic adventures to T20 and running them in Gateway domain. We're just about to begin playing Traveller again after many years and a couple of false starts. I was looking to run the classics between the new epics, with suitable alternative locations.

 

[mike wightman]

The beauty of the CT adventures, IMHO, is that they are not actually tied to any overall backstory, but they can be run in virtually any "MTU" setting.

 

[kaladorn]

Most of them could be portable with a few name changes, something not so true of the otherwise interesting DGP era adventures. I much prefer the portable adventure. Lee's Guide To Adventure was a great product because it had adventures and for each adventure only specified the digits of the UWP (usually as ranges) that were actually important. thus you knew the requisite for location. They also cited examples that would suit in the Spinward Marches and the Solomani Rim. That, to me, is a great way to setup a suitably generic location or adventure.