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NEW TRAVELLER 5 CAMPAIGN: Cirque des Sirkas:Touring the Spinward Marches T5 Style

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Spaceresearcher

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http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1324922092/cirque-touring-the-spinward-marches-in-traveller5

With the very first set of adventures being the new campaign Cirque des Sirkas, touring the Spinward Marches as part of an intergalactic circus, having achieved funding and due out in a couple of months, I thought I'd start a forum section for discussing aspects.

PLEASE NOTE: In terms of spoilers, if we keep the discussions solely on mechanics etc, that shouldn't give away any of the surprises for fellow Traveller referees who haven't read it yet. In short if you can't resist putting up some spoilers because you love it or whatever, then please put a Spoiler alert at the top of your post before doing so, thank you.

I look forward to discussing it with fellow Travellers when the cargo arrives on our doorsteps. :)
 
Mine showed up last month. I enjoyed it!

Even if you never use it for the campaign as written, it gives you background info on a lot of worlds in the Marches.

I'll be ordering another one soon to give as a Christmas gift.
 
So far I'm finding it good, the maps are a touch too small in the printed work, but thankfully there's the CD-ROM to print larger maps in any case.

Have a fair bit to wade through yet though. Fun times. :)
 
There's about 16 pages on the ships - deckplans, text info, T5 game stats.

About 14 pages of characters - stats and big text descriptions for the main characters, stats and a short intro for goons. But they've got the whole Circus and key adversaries.

7 pages of animals, both with the Circus and on some of the planets.

About 9 pages of all the background routine stuff to run the Circus. Checklists.

Then it's adventures - it has a section for each world the Circus stops at, each opening with a quote from Admiral Lee.

It opens at Rhylanor and details the Old Station - lots of detail! Turns out Station Security, in the aftermath of the Fifth Frontier War, kinda takes its time when the Zhodani diplomats are being pelted by food. (They shoulda seen it coming...)

There are about twenty stops, heading rimward through Mora subsector, across Lunion, touched the Border Worlds at Hofud, coreward through Villis and Regina.

Not much in the way of hard Library Data - it's got the world's profile stats in the chapter header, and that's about it. The rest is text description.

He's made an effort to vary the worlds and the situations.

Is that too general, were you hoping for more specifics?

It's got a good layout, lots more pictures than the T5 book. I picked it up because I'd found a copy of the original Lee's Guide in a bargain bin twenty years ago, enjoyed it, and found the Cirque book to be as good.
 
Cirque

I finally got a copy of Cirque and was looking through it. Great series of liked adventures to make this a great campaign.

One thing that surprised me is the low level of Pilot skill for some of the key NPCs. Highest is a 1 and one of the pilots just has a 0 level skill in Pilot.

Was it intended to slot in PCs as some of the ship pilots?
 
I went through the extended edition of Cirque and saw the character gen results for the Cirque's top pilot. Kiimmuu served 3 terms in the Engineering branch and acquired Astrogation-2, but did not get any Pilot skill beyond the default (Small Craft-1). Is the pilot just the navigator on ships in T5 now.

Geshruk, the former Scout, is the primary helm officer and has Pilot 0 (ACS-1). Interesting that as a Scout, there is no longer a default Pilot-1 skill in the first term.

I suppose this creates openings for PCs, but wonder how this would irritate these existing crew members.
 
Ok, I see the skills systsm in T5 is a bit different from CT.

However both of the Big Top pilots have Small Craft-1, which is applicable to ships under 100 tons. Their two Big Top ships are definitely over 100 tons but without jump drive.

Does Small Craft-1 also apply to non jump capable big ships?
 
In Cirque's 'credits and acknowledgements' section, the author thanks another person for rolling up the characters. At the time it was written, I'm not certain T5 had even been officially released yet, or if it had, what version, or if Mr. Lee had access to a preview copy.

It's entirely possible some of the characters are doing jobs that they're not qualified for. Feel free to tweak as necessary - or regard those characters as prime targets for PCs to replace.
 
Yeah...about that.

pzmcgwire said:
Ok, I see the skills systsm in T5 is a bit different from CT.

However both of the Big Top pilots have Small Craft-1, which is applicable to ships under 100 tons. Their two Big Top ships are definitely over 100 tons but without jump drive.

Does Small Craft-1 also apply to non jump capable big ships?
Click to expand...
Well, according to the rules as written in T5.10 Pilot-n (Smallcraft-n) is for spacecraft smaller than 100 tons, so yeah congrats you have found errata. Not sure how to go about fixing that other than what jcrocker noted below.

It was some time ago.

jcrocker said:
In Cirque's 'credits and acknowledgements' section, the author thanks another person for rolling up the characters. At the time it was written, I'm not certain T5 had even been officially released yet, or if it had, what version, or if Mr. Lee had access to a preview copy.

It's entirely possible some of the characters are doing jobs that they're not qualified for. Feel free to tweak as necessary - or regard those characters as prime targets for PCs to replace.
Click to expand...
As the "other person for rolling up the characters" I seem to recall we had T5.0 floating about and used that. And yeah there was thought about Players having the primary skills which is why they get hired as I recall. I mean it was years ago and I have forgotten a lot of the how and why things got done as they did. But yeah, there was always the idea that the Player Characters were to be the stars and primary Skill and Knowledge people. You know so they could adventure and stuff. :D
 
Thanks for confirming it as errata.

I was wondering if it was Naval nepotism that had those two in roles they weren't skilled for especially considering the Big Top 1 pilot . Aparmarsha, spent her naval tours in Engineering per the extended generation notes, while Kimmen was in Gunnery and then Engineering.

Could be a nice backstory if they had served together during the 5FW.
 
Grrrrr, dangnabbit.

pzmcgwire said:
Thanks for confirming it as errata.

I was wondering if it was Naval nepotism that had those two in roles they weren't skilled for especially considering the Big Top 1 pilot . Aparmarsha, spent her naval tours in Engineering per the extended generation notes, while Kimmen was in Gunnery and then Engineering.

Could be a nice backstory if they had served together during the 5FW.
Click to expand...
Wow, I had forgotten they all had names and stuff, as for their history, feel free to make something up. By the setting of the game and novel it seems probable actually. Run with it and have fun.

And if I am feeling up to it, I might even see if I still have their CharGen and see, they did have individual homeworlds and service records after all.
 
Bravery in combat

Yep both Big Top pilots have 3x MCUFS in their 3 tours of service respectively.

Just noticed that the Cargo Master has Pilot-1 with no specific other skills, so plenty of backups onboard if necessary to fly the ships.

I noticed that there were no Vargr in the Cirque crew and the only NPCS are potential corsairs!
 
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