I'm preparing a new Traveller campaign, a single subsector - the only subsector in MTU. I've got the backstory to explain how the humans here are the last of the human race, 250 light years from a dead Earth, surrounded by malign alien species. Now these humans are inward looking, defensive and scared, I may use the old Solomani Alien book to represent them.
Anyway, while thinking up my first few scenarios, and plot hooks, I'm thinking I might start the campaign with 3 one-shots, using pregens to explain the turning points in human history.
1) 2078. Scientists on Mars discover a fossil that looks remarkably like Troodont (relative of the Deinonychus) at Terra Sirenia. They name it the Sirenosaur. Game 1
2) 2190. Man's machine intelligence turns on him and wages a solar system genocidal campaign. The last remnants of humanity (including the PCs ship) utilise an ancient stargate recently discovered at Saturn's moon Iapetus (and created by the space-faring Sireonsaurs 65 MY ago) flee to some unknown interstellar destination. All human and plant life is destroyed behind them, so is the stargate. Game 2.
3) 2220. First contact in the new subsector. The PCs are explorer scouts that encounter an alien craft the first ever. They meet the modern imperial derivatives of the Sirenosaur (who resemble the Skeksis of Dark Crystal) and must fight to escape and warn the newborn human colonies of the awful threat that they have followed through the Stargate.* Game 3.
Has anyone tried to cut out pre-game exposition in this way? I feel it might make a good introduction, and explain far more than a few paragraphs of text. In the OTU it would be like gaming the first contact with the Vilani, taking the message of Vland's final surrender to Estigarriba, being one of the commercial explorers of Sylea, and so on.
* I know this isn't about MTU; but vigilant readers will spot a 65 My discrepency here. Fear not. The Sirenosaur tech was groundbreaking but flawed and the stargate suspended the intelligent dinosaurs in limbo for around 65 My years before spitting them out 250 My away. Humans retro-engineering the Iapetus stargate had better luck, and gained only a 6 month limbo suspension before they were spat out. All in all as the game starts, the Sirenosaurs have been there 40,000 years, the humans arrived a couple of hundred years ago, after having fought a war with the inteligent dinosaurs and another with a hubris-laced reincarnation of the machine intelligence they fled Earth for in the first place.
Anyway, while thinking up my first few scenarios, and plot hooks, I'm thinking I might start the campaign with 3 one-shots, using pregens to explain the turning points in human history.
1) 2078. Scientists on Mars discover a fossil that looks remarkably like Troodont (relative of the Deinonychus) at Terra Sirenia. They name it the Sirenosaur. Game 1
2) 2190. Man's machine intelligence turns on him and wages a solar system genocidal campaign. The last remnants of humanity (including the PCs ship) utilise an ancient stargate recently discovered at Saturn's moon Iapetus (and created by the space-faring Sireonsaurs 65 MY ago) flee to some unknown interstellar destination. All human and plant life is destroyed behind them, so is the stargate. Game 2.
3) 2220. First contact in the new subsector. The PCs are explorer scouts that encounter an alien craft the first ever. They meet the modern imperial derivatives of the Sirenosaur (who resemble the Skeksis of Dark Crystal) and must fight to escape and warn the newborn human colonies of the awful threat that they have followed through the Stargate.* Game 3.
Has anyone tried to cut out pre-game exposition in this way? I feel it might make a good introduction, and explain far more than a few paragraphs of text. In the OTU it would be like gaming the first contact with the Vilani, taking the message of Vland's final surrender to Estigarriba, being one of the commercial explorers of Sylea, and so on.
* I know this isn't about MTU; but vigilant readers will spot a 65 My discrepency here. Fear not. The Sirenosaur tech was groundbreaking but flawed and the stargate suspended the intelligent dinosaurs in limbo for around 65 My years before spitting them out 250 My away. Humans retro-engineering the Iapetus stargate had better luck, and gained only a 6 month limbo suspension before they were spat out. All in all as the game starts, the Sirenosaurs have been there 40,000 years, the humans arrived a couple of hundred years ago, after having fought a war with the inteligent dinosaurs and another with a hubris-laced reincarnation of the machine intelligence they fled Earth for in the first place.
