Referee How-To: Starting A Traveller Campaign...

[parmasson]

This is how I started my new campaign . . .

My players wanted to have mental powers. I said fine and gave them a straight up 2D roll and took that as their PSR. They were all very pleased until the Special Security Force raided the Psi Institute they were attending and identified them. Now they suddenly became hunted men desperate for a way to get off-world. I described the attitude toward telepaths as the same way we view pedophiles today.

That was a fun night.

 

[kafka47]

Creation usually for me started when I looked at the background of the players and weaved together how their background intersected together. This was done as a sort of brainstorming before the campaign. One off adventures, of course, we naturally just went with the flow.

By the time, I started Ref-ing Traveller, I was already an experienced DM and had a AD&D campaign going on for two years prior. In that campaign, I developed something called Intra-Campaign adventures...in which, I would focus on one character or group and really try to bring their character into being a full personality. Sometimes, the players liked it other times they did not. Because unlike regular adventures it was not scripted with numerous notes and graph paper and standard modules. Some of players only considered adventures when there was a Dungeon Crawl not realizing the potential of Wilderness or Urban settings - which is why I think Traveller was a hard adjustment plus there was no resurrection spell

Ref-ing is a thankless task but someone has got to do it. I will really look forward to the Ref. Guide, if it ever gets published as it seems Hunter & much of the C of I have lots of great ideas (which are light-years ahead of that essay in MT Ref. Companion...maybe thanks to White Wolf?)