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Heroic Traveller

robject

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So I'd like your opinions and brainstorms. I want to write some Traveller scenarios that are heroic, and for some reason I'm having trouble getting the players into the middle of the action in key, heroic roles. How do I do this?

As I see it, heroic scenes don't railroad the players into one course of action, but they could (should?) be obstacles which dovetail nicely with the players' goals -- whatever those are.

And that's part of my problem. Players set their own goals. And I'm having trouble seeing how heroic situations will interest players -- who also may be risk-averse due to the deadly nature of Traveller.

I am just having trouble seeing what I can write down that can apply to the random players I'm going to get around the table.
 
The first thing that comes to mind is that old saying, "A hero is a coward that got cornered." Perhaps you'll have to trap your players so that they have no choice but to be heroic.

I did that once with a player who rolled up two SEH's during char gen. His character was already a famous hero, so people expected him to act that way. Having such a reputation can be hard to live up to.
 
This is actually a subject I've had a lot of discussions with my RPGing friends with over the years.

My observation I have about players is that they do things that they're incentivized to do. They don't do things that are high-risk unless the rewards are commiserate to the risk. While martyr-heroism (self-sacrifice) is a widely admired kind of heroism in real life (the person who saves people from a freezing river but ends up dying themselves), for the same reason why it's so widely admired IRL, players in RPGs rarely do it.

I also believe that most editions of Traveller are anti-heroic. As you pointed out yourself, Traveller is deadly. In fact, many GMs are strangely proud of the fact that Traveller can kill off players left and right, even during chargen. Traveller tends to produce, cautious, opportunistic, and often morally ambiguous characters because those traits are the ones that most often lead to success in Traveller; the game system has been chided for a long time in the RPG community about scenarios that revolve around immoral work to get ahead (Loren Wiseman comments about it in GURPS Traveller, in fact). Such games rarely produce heroism.

If, as a GM, you've ever thought "it's right for that character to die, he/she did something stupid" ... you're probably asking too much to have heroism. Heroism is subjective; players don't want to try something heroic and get slapped down by the GM because the GM thinks what they're doing is "unnecessary" or "stupid." Beyond martyr-heroism, one of the traits of heroism is "stupidity that someone got away with" - if you read many accounts of heroism, it's essentially someone doing something that would otherwise be insanely risky or outright suicidal for some noble end (usually for the sake of someone else, often a stranger) ... and getting away with it. As an example, in a simulationist and deadly system, running out to drag an injured comrade under fire from the enemy is simply stupid; you lose all of your cover bonuses, then you take a movement penalty once you grab your comrade, you may even grant the enemies to-hit bonuses for providing a slower and larger target. Then if you get hit, you're likely to suffer catastrophic damage and die. None of this even takes into account the natural tendency for games to ramp up difficulty levels of tasks in situations like this and tasks quickly require ludicrous target numbers like multiple checks that require 8+ on 2d6 even after factoring in skills. This clearly isn't a situation that a system encourages; multiple points of (likely) failure and high penalties for failure -- the system is telling you not to do it. You can't blame players for not doing it.

With that definition in mind, I think you'd have to adopt new rules that circumvent Traveller's heroism-discouraging system to incentivize heroism.

Not all RPG systems are anti-heroic; some of the more recent "story" based RPG systems incentivize heroism. None of these systems are perfect; some are prone to abuse, many lack the simulationism that Traveller GMs seem to like. But without some incentive and deadly penalties to being "stupid", most players will always take the safe route. Such alternative systems are worth checking out and trying. Even without adopting them, it is possible to adopt rules or concepts from these games to use in your games.

"Fate" points are a common method. A kind of "currency" they're spent to grant an automatic success to tasks or bump up a success rating of a task. Fate points may be regenerating (you get three per session and are lost if you don't spend them - this discourages hoarding) or they may be granted for doing certain things and saved (perhaps players get five to start with and gain more at the GM's discretion, perhaps one more per successful adventure). A particular twist on this system I've recently been investigating is the idea that several players working in concert to do some heroic end grant bonuses that a single player doesn't get or they get a larger payout.

"Causes" is another method I've seen. Players may optionally make a kind of "things I believe in" type code for their character. This should only be a few things (for instance, up to three or five) and the character does not need to have them. The GM should review these. You don't want too many or else it'll interfere too greatly with the character's freedom to roleplay. You also don't want causes that conflict with another character's, at least not without careful thought to the likely game-destroying consequences. When a character does actions further this morality or to protect threats to it, they get bonuses to task rolls in the form of large bonuses, inability to fail/fumble, etc. If they further or protect their cause during a session, they also gain things like extra experience, fate points, and so on. If they see a threat to their cause or a way to further their cause and don't take, they suffer penalties for their inaction in the form of skill penalties for that session, loss of fate points, and so on (some systems might force "willpower" roll to prevent the player from acting and I understand the reasoning but I dislike systems that take control characters like that and avoid rules like that as much as possible).

"Karma" is a thing where if your character dies in furthering cause or doing something heroic, they get a sizable bonus on their next character for dying for their principles. For a Traveller character, this may be in the form of a sizable number of "choose your rolls" during the next character's chargen ("you need a 7 to get that? yep, imagine that you got a 7"), bonuses to stats, and additional rolls on the mustering out tables. This removes some of the sting of losing a character.
 
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So I'd like your opinions and brainstorms. I want to write some Traveller scenarios that are heroic, and for some reason I'm having trouble getting the players into the middle of the action in key, heroic roles. How do I do this?

As I see it, heroic scenes don't railroad the players into one course of action, but they could (should?) be obstacles which dovetail nicely with the players' goals -- whatever those are.

And that's part of my problem. Players set their own goals. And I'm having trouble seeing how heroic situations will interest players -- who also may be risk-averse due to the deadly nature of Traveller.

I am just having trouble seeing what I can write down that can apply to the random players I'm going to get around the table.
The simplest way - they haven't mustered out.

As in, "As you approach your retirement date, you get summoned to the local subsector Duke's office, with a notice of involuntary extension..."
 
So I'd like your opinions and brainstorms. I want to write some Traveller scenarios that are heroic, and for some reason I'm having trouble getting the players into the middle of the action in key, heroic roles. How do I do this?

As I see it, heroic scenes don't railroad the players into one course of action, but they could (should?) be obstacles which dovetail nicely with the players' goals -- whatever those are.

And that's part of my problem. Players set their own goals. And I'm having trouble seeing how heroic situations will interest players -- who also may be risk-averse due to the deadly nature of Traveller.

I am just having trouble seeing what I can write down that can apply to the random players I'm going to get around the table.

Big Dam Heroes have to chose it, and very few RPG players want to do the heroic unless the reward is obvious and huge. In which case it is no longer heroic.
 
If you've achieved most things that you want in your career, you should immediately retire after twenty years, since that's actually the optimum retirement payout.

Surprised they don't include disability, since military can claim that.

Karma allows you to avoid a catastrophic result or increase the chances of success.
 
So I'd like your opinions and brainstorms. I want to write some Traveller scenarios that are heroic, and for some reason I'm having trouble getting the players into the middle of the action in key, heroic roles. How do I do this?

As I see it, heroic scenes don't railroad the players into one course of action, but they could (should?) be obstacles which dovetail nicely with the players' goals -- whatever those are.

And that's part of my problem. Players set their own goals. And I'm having trouble seeing how heroic situations will interest players -- who also may be risk-averse due to the deadly nature of Traveller.

I am just having trouble seeing what I can write down that can apply to the random players I'm going to get around the table.

I do not think that you can force or try to program players to be heroes. One of the fastest ways to win a Medal of Honor is to jump on a hand grenade to save your buddies, but those medals tend to be posthumous. John "Killer" Kane leading his B-24 Liberator group into the burning hell of Ploesti at an altitude of 50 to 100 feet was clearly a hero, and lived to wear his Medal of Honor, but I doubt if you could expect a random group of players to do anything like that. The same for Rodger Young's Medal of Honor, where he saved his patrol at the cost of his own life. Audie Murphy climbing onto that burning tank destroyer to use the .50 machine gun and also call artillery fire in is not something a random group of players is likely to do.

You could try something like the boarding party of the U-505, where they were frantically trying to close up all scuttling valves before the sub sank, except have it be a starship heading into a gas giant or sun. The problem there is if you have a random group of players, they just might all die, or refuse to go.

Quite simply, for an action to be heroic, there has to be a fairly high likelihood of not surviving. With an established group, you might have one or two players who might be willing to do that, but a random group, I would view that as unlikely.
 
I prefer to make them the anti- or reluctant hero to outright Dudley DoRight hero. That is, they are heroes by accident or by circumstance rather than by choice.

That works better 99% of the time than having a Hollywood super soldier or some other "action hero" be the focus of a game.
 
I'm glad you all see my dilemma.

I think the best I can do is figure out likely obstacles with high visibility (if that's the right word), and assume that they (the obstacles) can be adapted to work with the motivations of the players when they (the players) show up.
 
Heroism - selfless acts that against the odds benefit others. And as timerover rightly points out most heroes are dead heroes - unless you opt for cinematic.

What sort of things do heroes do?

Monster slaying - where the monster could be a megacorportation, rampaging corsair band, corrupt noble, evil scientist, zombie apocalypse - take your pick.
Selfless acts - the players must defeat the threat(s) without thought for personal reward.
Overcome adversity/risk - there should be the real threat of serious consequences that the hero knows about ahead of time but takes the risk anyway.

Oh, and someone has to live to tell the tale, or there has to be evidence of what happened so the heroism can be recognised.

Defeat the entire extra-dimensional vorz fleet by sacrificing your ship and your lives in order to close their hyperwarp tunnel and save the whole of the known galaxy is definitely heroic - sadly there is no one to tell the tale ;)
 
I want to jump in on this discussion but my communication skills are not really up to the job. I happen to be one of those players that try to play the hero. Unfortunately for me the GMs I had tended to not be cinematic in inclination. Heroes need things to go their way, even if they don't know it did. That is squarely in the GMs purview. Taffy 3 comes to mind, the destroyermen that charged the Japanese fleet were definitely heroes but most survived a suicidal situation because the Japanese commander (The GM) made the decision to retreat. I look at this topic in frustration because I'd much rather be the hero that saves the day instead of a "murder-hobo" as some players have been described as. I am sure that timerover51 can come up with many examples of hero's surviving the experience just as I am certain that there are far more that did not. And btw, the epic defeat of the Vorz was known by the Vorz and maybe even grudgingly respected a little ;)
 
As a player, if you truly want to be the hero, then you will probably need to learn to love the "this is hard" rule. If you are not facing a situation where the outcome is not more than a little in doubt, then you are probably not a candidate for doing something 'heroic'.

With respect to the question in the OP and writing adventures for 'heroes' ... my advice would be to start with your :devil: Ref hat and try to figure out a way that someone MIGHT overcome the scenario. Just don't be surprised if the world does not beat a path to your door to thank you. ;)
 
Hmm, here's an incentivization I just dreamt up.

Have the Big Damn Hero event up Social Standing, and make SOC meaningful IYTU.

Then, even if the character dies, the kids inherit the SOC and the player takes them over.

That way they get to earn their SEH and eat it too.

In other words I guess, build a noble family, many of whom came up the ranks by a founder of the line doing something insanely heroic.
 
I'm glad you all see my dilemma.

I think the best I can do is figure out likely obstacles with high visibility (if that's the right word), and assume that they (the obstacles) can be adapted to work with the motivations of the players when they (the players) show up.

And be prepared with a Plan B, C, and D if they decide to do something different.

Edit Note: My tendency in playing is, if the Game Master is pushing me in one direction, I will start pushing in another, under the assumption that whatever is coming up is going to be nasty or overly complicated.

Remember, the players are supposed to have fun and enjoy the game.
 
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How about working with the players in advance to have them part of an organization with "heroic" missions. They don't always have to be reluctant heroes, and they don't always have to be altruistic heroes. It could be their job.

Take a look at the TV show Leverage for an example.

Cheers,

Baron Ovka
 
Another option that I have used (aside from the make it the focus of the campaign) is to use character background.

Why should I rescue the damsel in distress? Because she is my sister.

Why should I raid the planetoid to rescue the generic guy being held prisoner, when my old army buddy is being held prisoner on the next planetoid over?

You just have to be careful, and allow the background to be used the other direction as well. Who better to provide me with weapons for a break-in at the megacorporation outpost than my old army buddy? Who should I turn to for aid when I am being chased by the authorities? My sister?

Make sure each character has a goal, and you can make a particular adventure provide a step toward at least one character's goal. Then they can feel like they are being selfish (working toward their own ends) while still being heroic.

Good backgrounds are great for weaving characters into the storyline, and great for giving characters a reason to be heroic.

Cheers,

Baron Ovka
 
Another point at issue would be how are you equipping the players? Someone in street clothes with an automatic pistol is going to view a situation quite a bit differently that someone in full battle dress with a FGMP-15.

If you are trying to write this for use by a Game Master with a random group of pick-up players, as you would find at a convention, then you are going to need to have a pre-generated cast of characters for them to use. Otherwise, you could end up with a group that has skills and background which at totally at odds with the scenario.
 
Hmm, here's an incentivization I just dreamt up.

Have the Big Damn Hero event up Social Standing, and make SOC meaningful IYTU.

Then, even if the character dies, the kids inherit the SOC and the player takes them over.

That way they get to earn their SEH and eat it too.

In other words I guess, build a noble family, many of whom came up the ranks by a founder of the line doing something insanely heroic.
I actually like +1 Soc as the reward for a Heroic Adventure ... an interesting concept.
 
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