I once again got tapped to run a game. I decided I've been itching to run Mongoose Traveller, so offered to rolled up a few characters and run a short game. The group had never played Traveller before, except one who had reported a negative experience. He said that the group did boring trading. To which I reported that's a good place to start, but the idea is you are supposed to do fun stuff along the way. ![Big grin :D :D](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)
To those who had never played, I summed the "typical Traveller tramp trader" type campaign as being "like Firefly, minus so many western references." That seemed to get the message across.
We had 3 players and one book, so we had to walk through chargen one term at a time. I like my chargen a bit more heroic, so I offered them "reroll chips". I hadn't (and still haven't) decided just how this works, but basically I told them, they can ask for a reroll, but they get a chip which I tally up at the end of chargen, and acts as a sort of "luck debt" I use to inflict problems on them. That seemed to work alright.
I told them a limit of 5 terms; they all took all 5 terms. We ended up with:
Darko Milozich - 5 term merchant
Omar Baroddy - 5 term navy engineer
Trillian Albright - 1 term noble (dilettante), 3 terms entertainer (journalist), 1 term scout (explorer). (Yes, I made jokes about whether their ship would be named the Heart of Gold.)
I liked the way that the events worked. Generating the characters term-by-term made it easy to invoke the "connection rule", and we had some interesting connections. The merchant marine had taken the noble for a cruise to an exotic alien world where they both learned sophontology. The engineer got assigned to train the noble in gun combat on a diplomatic mission, and they ended up having a tryst.
My players played Spirit of the Century with me before, so they idea of connecting characters came naturally.
None of the characters ended up having skills over 2. The big fear over on the Citizens of the Imperium boards was that the connections rule would be used to parley into high skills, but my players were interested more in getting skills they wanted but weren't rolling, than bloating their skills into uber-leetness.
Mustering out, the players got 11 ship shares in a commonly owned ship, which worked well. I like the new ship share thing. It's something that was got shoved into adventures with pregens, but never supported by chargen. I let the merchant use his Free Trader shares at full value for a Far Trader because J-2 gives me a bit more flexibility at tugging the players around the universe.
We played a short session after finishing characters. I used my first "bad luck" chip to say that the seller that the players got their ship from hosed them and annual maintenance wasn't done (incidentally, MongT assumes you do maintenance monthly; I reverted to the old way of having it only be an annual requirement.) I allowed the merchant and admin roll to file a complaint. He recouped the cost of the maintenance, but they were still stuck in port while the maintenance was being done.
For activities... I pitched two patrons at them, from the (no longer available) patron encounters by ComStar games. One patron was the port authority who needed a crew to man a rescue cutter due to staffing problems. The other was a clerk who came to the world for a college reunion who lied about being a merchant captain, and wants the group to pose for pictures and come help bolster his story.
They took both jobs. I allowed the merchant (again) make an admin roll to work their schedule so they could do both.
Of course nothing's ever simple. In the rescue cutter scenario, the ship ends up rescuing a free trader with a malfunctioning maneuver drive. A junior drive hand messed up and tried to cover it up. The merchant pilot and engineer set about making repairs while the dilettante stayed in the cutter. Well, it turns out that the junior drive hand messed up, covered it up, and is now in a panick. He grabs a body pistol and decided to try to hijack the cutter. The silver-tongued noble after a short altercation convinces the drive hand she doesn't know how to pilot it. He runs off and locks himself in the stateroom; the crew extracts him, and the group turns him over to the port authority.
They get back in time to go to their college re-union. The noble's holography (photography) skill actually came in handy manufacturing the evidence. But again, things can't be simple, can they. Really, the clerk never graduated, but came to the reunion to try to get back a romantic rival, who happens to be a noble with several bodyguards. The group talks him down before he does something really stupid, and earn themselves a new ally on a nearby world.
For a setting, I used the Gateway to Destiny book for T20. I ad hocced some details for the worlds we randomly chose as homeworlds... but found out they all had details in other books. This played to my benefit and chagrin. On the good side, I have more background data to work into the player's backstory, AND one of the adventures I want to run (the Linkworlds cluster book for T20) feature two of the PCs' homeworlds. On the downside, those 2 PCs have backstory elements to make them not want to go back, so I might need to do some finagling to get them back there.
Overall, I like it pretty well. I still think that T20's way of giving you a bit more choice in chargen, and the more competent characters it makes, is something I'll miss. However, I really do like the way the events and connection rule works in building a backstory. We also are used to playing with fate points/action dice, so I may introduce something like that soon.
To those who had never played, I summed the "typical Traveller tramp trader" type campaign as being "like Firefly, minus so many western references." That seemed to get the message across.
We had 3 players and one book, so we had to walk through chargen one term at a time. I like my chargen a bit more heroic, so I offered them "reroll chips". I hadn't (and still haven't) decided just how this works, but basically I told them, they can ask for a reroll, but they get a chip which I tally up at the end of chargen, and acts as a sort of "luck debt" I use to inflict problems on them. That seemed to work alright.
I told them a limit of 5 terms; they all took all 5 terms. We ended up with:
Darko Milozich - 5 term merchant
Omar Baroddy - 5 term navy engineer
Trillian Albright - 1 term noble (dilettante), 3 terms entertainer (journalist), 1 term scout (explorer). (Yes, I made jokes about whether their ship would be named the Heart of Gold.)
I liked the way that the events worked. Generating the characters term-by-term made it easy to invoke the "connection rule", and we had some interesting connections. The merchant marine had taken the noble for a cruise to an exotic alien world where they both learned sophontology. The engineer got assigned to train the noble in gun combat on a diplomatic mission, and they ended up having a tryst.
My players played Spirit of the Century with me before, so they idea of connecting characters came naturally.
None of the characters ended up having skills over 2. The big fear over on the Citizens of the Imperium boards was that the connections rule would be used to parley into high skills, but my players were interested more in getting skills they wanted but weren't rolling, than bloating their skills into uber-leetness.
Mustering out, the players got 11 ship shares in a commonly owned ship, which worked well. I like the new ship share thing. It's something that was got shoved into adventures with pregens, but never supported by chargen. I let the merchant use his Free Trader shares at full value for a Far Trader because J-2 gives me a bit more flexibility at tugging the players around the universe.
We played a short session after finishing characters. I used my first "bad luck" chip to say that the seller that the players got their ship from hosed them and annual maintenance wasn't done (incidentally, MongT assumes you do maintenance monthly; I reverted to the old way of having it only be an annual requirement.) I allowed the merchant and admin roll to file a complaint. He recouped the cost of the maintenance, but they were still stuck in port while the maintenance was being done.
For activities... I pitched two patrons at them, from the (no longer available) patron encounters by ComStar games. One patron was the port authority who needed a crew to man a rescue cutter due to staffing problems. The other was a clerk who came to the world for a college reunion who lied about being a merchant captain, and wants the group to pose for pictures and come help bolster his story.
They took both jobs. I allowed the merchant (again) make an admin roll to work their schedule so they could do both.
Of course nothing's ever simple. In the rescue cutter scenario, the ship ends up rescuing a free trader with a malfunctioning maneuver drive. A junior drive hand messed up and tried to cover it up. The merchant pilot and engineer set about making repairs while the dilettante stayed in the cutter. Well, it turns out that the junior drive hand messed up, covered it up, and is now in a panick. He grabs a body pistol and decided to try to hijack the cutter. The silver-tongued noble after a short altercation convinces the drive hand she doesn't know how to pilot it. He runs off and locks himself in the stateroom; the crew extracts him, and the group turns him over to the port authority.
They get back in time to go to their college re-union. The noble's holography (photography) skill actually came in handy manufacturing the evidence. But again, things can't be simple, can they. Really, the clerk never graduated, but came to the reunion to try to get back a romantic rival, who happens to be a noble with several bodyguards. The group talks him down before he does something really stupid, and earn themselves a new ally on a nearby world.
For a setting, I used the Gateway to Destiny book for T20. I ad hocced some details for the worlds we randomly chose as homeworlds... but found out they all had details in other books. This played to my benefit and chagrin. On the good side, I have more background data to work into the player's backstory, AND one of the adventures I want to run (the Linkworlds cluster book for T20) feature two of the PCs' homeworlds. On the downside, those 2 PCs have backstory elements to make them not want to go back, so I might need to do some finagling to get them back there.
Overall, I like it pretty well. I still think that T20's way of giving you a bit more choice in chargen, and the more competent characters it makes, is something I'll miss. However, I really do like the way the events and connection rule works in building a backstory. We also are used to playing with fate points/action dice, so I may introduce something like that soon.