Ever run a military campaign? How'd it go?

[Poppyseed45]

Like, did you ever run a Traveller campaign that was based around the military? None of that free trader thing that seems to be the default.

For example, I'm reading the Honor Harrington series now and I remember the old Book 5 HG character generation, and I thought, wouldn't that be a nice fit?

Anybody ever done it?

 

[aramis]

I've done several active duty games - one Imp. Marines during the 5FW. One Imperial Navy. One Serving Noble as Diplomat game (A duke and his entourage in service to the 3I.) And one Space Patrol game.

The Space Patrol one was in a custom MgT ATU - it went well enough.

The others were under MegaTraveller in the OTU. The IN one sucked. the others, decent enough. The Marine one was actually pretty fun. MT was the right choice for doing it, due to the integration of large scale combat.

 

[Poppyseed45]

I've done several active duty games - one Imp. Marines during the 5FW. One Imperial Navy. One Serving Noble as Diplomat game (A duke and his entourage in service to the 3I.) And one Space Patrol game.

The Space Patrol one was in a custom MgT ATU - it went well enough.

The others were under MegaTraveller in the OTU. The IN one sucked. the others, decent enough. The Marine one was actually pretty fun. MT was the right choice for doing it, due to the integration of large scale combat.

Any particular reason the IN campaign didn't do well? Too boring? Or what?

 

[Reban]

Military is my thing, but I'm more of a ground combat guy.

Naval campaigns I've run have worked like this:

Campaign 1
Newly minted Lt. Commander with fame and decorations gets posted to an experimental unit using a variant of the Firey Class. The rest of the party are already assigned as the crew.

The unit was commanded by an Admiral (with his own (media/political) agenda) and run day to day by a Commodore as unit XO. I ran these both as NPCs. That way I could issue orders to the Lt. Commander to implement.

The campaign consisted of three main parts: Shaking down the new ship and knitting together the crew into a team, proving the concept behind the Fiery variant (it was for raiding and special forces co-operation with the Imperial Marine Commandos), and finally once that was done by pulling off a few missions the ship and crew became an "odd job gang" being used by (me as) the Admiral to further his political ambitions. The crew had fun frustrating him while still getting the job done. It sort of developed an A-Team flavor.

Campaign 2
I had a party of new Ensigns who had gone through the Academy together assigned to an old Heavy Cruiser. The Cruiser was the center of a small task force undertaking a good will tour of a neighboring star republic. While there it was supposed to gather intel on pirates. Each of the ensigns got assigned to a department suited to their skills. This was probably a mistake on my part because it split the party up a lot, but they did get to interact and help each other out with routine tasks. I got them back together again when I gave them all roles in the assault on the pirate base; cutter pilot, forward observer with the marines, computer-tech hacking the pirate base. It was good, perhaps more soap opera than military.

Campaign 3
I tried to run an Academy based campaign based on a JTAS article but that one was hard to find a good hook for.

Have I any tips? Well as Ref you control the superior officers who command your PCs. Best way to do this is order them to do a job or mission but leave it up to them how they do it. You also get to use experienced NCOs as NPCs who can shepard the PCs into not going absolutely mad in a non military way.

Navy can be less shooty than other games so let PCs tag along with Marines on boarding and landing parties. Let the party get away from direct control when you can, but remind them they have to answer for their actions. If they really do something silly and "break you game" you can always court marshal them :smirk:

 

[aramis]

Any particular reason the IN campaign didn't do well? Too boring? Or what?

Too limited autonomy. Partly my fault, partly player choices. Partly the "A 2kTd ship doesn't matter when the cruisers are 100KTd" factor

I just remembered one other- TNE, active duty RCES game. The engineer killed the game due to really sucky die-rolls.

 

[flykiller]

http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Discuss/showthread.php?t=14400

I thought it was going well, but the players lost interest.

 

[Dagrill]

Like, did you ever run a Traveller campaign that was based around the military? None of that free trader thing that seems to be the default. Anybody ever done it?

I was running a Naval CT campaign in the early 80's using the 5FW map and
we did about 2 years, but stopped when MT came out and the Virus hit as it sort of made everyone feel it was pointless.

Regards

David

 

[gregcaires]

What JTAS article are you referring to?

 

[Poppyseed45]

I was running a Naval CT campaign in the early 80's using the 5FW map and
we did about 2 years, but stopped when MT came out and the Virus hit as it sort of made everyone feel it was pointless.

Regards

David

What did you do in the campaign? What sort of missions/scenarios/adventures did you get up to? Looking a little for ideas as well...

 

[Dagrill]

What did you do in the campaign? What sort of missions/scenarios/adventures did you get up to? Looking a little for ideas as well...

Hi,

it was based on a Task Force around a Lightning class cruiser (as I had the deckplans), with each player taking 3 characters, a Naval Officer commanding a ship, or a senior position on the cruiser; a marine or army officer; and the third choice was up to them as a conscript for landing parties.

The TF moved from D'Ganzio to Vilis along the Sword world border, fighting small scale ship or Striker actions, or just landing parties to assess the political situation & limit Zho/Swordie influence. I tried to provide a mixture to satisfy all tastes.

Apologies for delay, just returned from holiday.

Regards

David

 

[Reban]

What JTAS article are you referring to?

I assume you're asking me? It was Challenge/JTAS 26 Military Academy by Marcus L. Rowland.

I wanted Hogwarts with better uniforms I got exam stress :rofl:

 

[Poppyseed45]

Hi,

it was based on a Task Force around a Lightning class cruiser (as I had the deckplans), with each player taking 3 characters, a Naval Officer commanding a ship, or a senior position on the cruiser; a marine or army officer; and the third choice was up to them as a conscript for landing parties.

The TF moved from D'Ganzio to Vilis along the Sword world border, fighting small scale ship or Striker actions, or just landing parties to assess the political situation & limit Zho/Swordie influence. I tried to provide a mixture to satisfy all tastes.

Apologies for delay, just returned from holiday.

Regards

David

That's kind of what I'm thinking of doing, down to doing it on the Sword/Zhodani/Imperium border (I plan to use Spinward Marches). That's good then, thanks!

 

[gregcaires]

Thank you. I had forgotten about that one.

 

[Quint]

Sort of, I've run a series of adventures where the characters were often a mix of nobles and/or active duty (sometimes reactivated during play) service personnel doing work for various levels of the Imperial hierarchy. Often quite fun games, sometimes with quite a significant military theme (depending upon what services and the focus of the campaign).

D.

 

[sabredog]

I have run a lot of them, actually, but they tended to be mainly irregular conflict type stuff. That way the players could be more like some kind of special forces units and the focus was on teaming up as advisers to the lower tech locals, or as a spec ops team "dropped" behind enemy lines for recon/kidnapping/assassination/sabotage stuff. I usually keep it small on the players end with some grander backdrop to keep them properly terrified and motivated. You know, the invasion depends on them knocking out the "Meson Guns Of Navaronne-12" and their ships are getting knocked out of the sky left and right.

I did have one campaign centered around a group of six players who formed a tank platoon (3-tank) in a mercenary unit hired for a small brushfire war. They had two players to a tank with two NPCs in each to do the boring stuff like loading and driving. It was when I was gorging myself silly on the Hammer's Slammers stories back in the 70's. I suppose that puts it back in the wargamey days of my Traveller experience.

Oh, and lots of private wars type of things: colonials needing protection from the howling barbarian "indigs", or a corporation fighting a low-grade medium-hot war with mercs for control of someplace, etc.. It's not original but that sort of thing satisfies the appetites of most military-minded players.