Spinward Marches Campaign

[zonk]

Don't know how I missed this back in the day. Way back then I bought all the Traveller supplements but, somehow, I never knew this one existed until someone mentioned it here a year or so ago.

So what's it like? Was it any good?

ADDED: What was the ship on the cover of the supplement?

 

[Whipsnade]

So what's it like? Was it any good?

Zonk,

It's one of my favorite CT supplements, but that fact that it is a CT supplement means it is over 20 years old and, when compared to more recent supplements, was written in a certain way for certain expectations.

It contains a single campaign, and a rather bare bones campaign at that but GMs were always supposed to fill in the blanks during the CT era. The book is more of a sourcebook than a pure campaign supplement anyway. It expands and updates the earlier Marches materials in S:3 by applying LBB:6 Scouts where S:3 only had LBB:3.

It also contains:

- A history of the Marches complete with settlement maps and before/after maps for each of the Frontier Wars.
- The expanded and updated UWPs I mentioned plus thumnbnail descriptions of a few worlds in each subsector.
- A history of the Fifth Frontier War complete with fleet dispositions, strategies, and maps.
- A depiction of a battlerider squadron complete the tender, riders, escorts, and fighters. The designs of many of those ships is broken however.
- A history and depiction of the Duke of Regina's Huscarles complete with TOEs and descriptions of the equipment.
- A history and depiction of the Al Morai shipping line complete with route maps, operations, and a design for the line's signature vessel.
- Several other HG2 ships designs

So, you get a campaign, a lot of history, a squadron, a regiment, a shipping line, ships designs of varying utility, and a sector's worth of UWPs.

ADDED: What was the ship on the cover of the supplement?

No one knows. Seriously.

The ship has the Huscarles' crest on the fin and the scene is one found in the campaign, but the Huscarles only fly a few SDBs and it's the battlerider squadron that investigates the derelict ship in the campaign!


Regards,
Bill

 

[zonk]

Thanks!

Uh oh, nanny bot, too short. Well then

Thank you very much Bill!

:rofl:

 

[mike wightman]

It also contains the chracter generation rules for the careers previously published in S4: Citizens of the Imperium.

A word of warning though - there are serious cut and paste errors with table duplication. You are better off using S4, the tables are correct there.

 

[Supplement Four]

Plus it has weapon tables for bow & arrows and crossbows.

 

[beowulf2044]

And the accurate damage tables for Guns and Blades

 

[Vargas]

No one knows. Seriously.

The ship has the Huscarles' crest on the fin and the scene is one found in the campaign, but the Huscarles only fly a few SDBs and it's the battlerider squadron that investigates the derelict ship in the campaign!

This was discussed here quite a while back and I believe there is a reference in SMC itself stating that the ship is one of the gunboats associated with the battle rider in the book.

Personally I find SMC to be a better reference source than serious adventure.

 

[Jame]

One of the guys in my Traveller group has it, and until he moved out-of-state he was running it for us. While I never looked at it (he wanted to keep it a surprise, and I only disagreed because of player curiosity), his presentation was good.

If he actually reads this, I hope he understands that I hope he comes back-to-state and finishes it.

 

[Whipsnade]

This was discussed here quite a while back and I believe there is a reference in SMC itself stating that the ship is one of the gunboats associated with the battle rider in the book.

Vargas,

Which doesn't explain why the unit crest of the Duke of Regina's Own Huscarles happens to be in the gunboat's tailfin.

Personally I find SMC to be a better reference source than serious adventure.

Agreed. The adventure or campaign is pretty thin and would require a lot of work from the GM.


Regards,
Bill

 

[the angle]

Personally I find SMC to be a better reference source than serious adventure.

Ditto. Unless you're fascinated by the minutiae of Imperial military organization, the Fifth Frontier War, and obscure ship design, you're likely to be disappointed with this. Adventure-wise, it offers almost nothing.

Steve

 

[Supplement Four]

Adventure-wise, it offers almost nothing.

Completely disagree.

Like so many GDW adventures (and adventures for other games of the day), the "adventure" is really an outline--a base the GM can use to rest his thoughts and adventures he attempts to take the players through.

Because of D&D, so many people think of an "adventure" as a fully fleshed out and very linear scenario with NPC stats, maps and specific encounters.

Much of early Traveller took the opposite approach, just providing the over-all scope of the adventure, leaving room for the GM to customize the scenario to his group.

There's a lot of background info in the SMC. It was a delight when it came out, and there's plenty there for a creative GM to use and turn into a superb set of encounters.

 

[beowulf2044]

Compleatly agree with the above disagreement.

Traveller has 'Travelling' as a basic, central concept. This means that players can find many various ways to approach an adventure. The framework concept allows for the mobility and creative problem solving that's a hallmark of this game. In the early days of D&D, players were often dropped into a dungeon/castle/killing floor and had to procede as the closed enviroment dictated. So the rooms/traps/monsters(how in the hell did that dragon get all the way down here anyway?) were designed and fleshed out, but the players usually only had the choice of proceeding or running back the way they came.

 

[far-trader]

...but the players usually only had the choice of proceeding or running back the way they came.

Railroaded?! Hah!

The adventure in SMC is a classic example of just that (...only with plot holes big enough to fly an Al Morai CE route protector through )

(not disagreeing with the disagreeing, just saying, it needed some work to make it work, and even then it was a bit of a linear adventure)

 

[Supplement Four]

Railroaded?! Hah!

The adventure in SMC is a classic example of just that (...only with plot holes big enough to fly an Al Morai CE route protector through )

(not disagreeing with the disagreeing, just saying, it needed some work to make it work, and even then it was a bit of a linear adventure)

I still have to disagree. It may be a bit more linear than most GDW scenarios, but because the GM is expected to flesh out the details, he's got plenty of room to make the scenario either more or less linear, depending on his players' likes/tastes/needs.

If the players go off in a direction that doesn't support the SMC story, the GM can allow this. He'll figure something out that will make the players decide, on their own (or, at least the illusion of free will is there), to stumble right back to where they need to be to continue the SMC campaign.

Remember how Twilight's Peak is written, or sections of the Traveller Adventure? Very non-linear.

Same can be done with SMC.

 

[the angle]

Sorry, but I don't find your disagreement persuasive.

The book is 49 pages long. Six of those pages are the outline of an adventure (and over a page of that is illos).

Of the remaining pages --
1 is boilerplate introduction;
9 are a history of the Fifth Frontier War;
13 are recap and raw data about the Spinward Marches from Supplement 3 and a few other sources;
2 are background on Al Morai;
10 are organizational data and history of the 154th Battle Rider Squadron and 4518th Lift Infantry Regiment;
8 are a reprint of info from Supplement 4.

I don't think it's a bad adventure -- in fact, it's a pretty good one, what there is of it. But the balance of actual adventure material vs. background is very poor, especially in light of how much of that background is reprinted from other books and only loosely useful to running the adventure.

If you don't have the original supplements from which so much of this information was taken, then this would be a valuable book. But I'd take Twilight's Peak, Research Station Gamma, Safari Ship, or just about any other Traveller adventure over this one.

Steve

 

[Whipsnade]

Sorry, but I don't find your disagreement persuasive.

Mike,

Let me agree with your disagreement. The Spinward Marches Campaign is more of a sourcebook than a pure campaign supplement. We should also remember when it was produced too.

It's 1985 and the world is a very different place. There's no internet, no pdfs, computers and word processors are the exception and not the rule, RPG materials are sold in hobby ships along side HO trains and model rocket, and mail ordering is only possible if you already know the supplement you want exists.

I'm a compleatist. I routinely got LBBs like Scouts or Merchant Prince years after they were released and I didn't own LBB:8 Robots until after MT was released. I saw single copies of books like the K'Kree Alien Module and 1001 Characters but chose to spend my gaming dollars on something else. I never even saw most of the issues of JTAS until the Reprints came out.

This lack of access meant that a book like SMC was wonderful. It gave me Citizens of the Imperium chargens without having to find S:4, it gave me expanded system data for the Marches without having to find S:3 or LBB:6, and it gave me the history of the Fifth Frontier War without having to track down several issues of JTAS. On top of all that, it gave me a shipping line, a navy squadron, a grav infantry regiment, archaic weapons tables, and an expanded history of the Marches as a whole.

That made SMC a nice compilation or summary for any GM wanting to set her campaigns in the Marches. It gathered pertinent facts from disparate sources and made them much more accessible. When examined as part of the CT CD-ROM, the book seems to be repetitious. When examined in the context of when it was published, the book was excellent.

As for the actual campaign in SMC, it was bare bones even by Traveller's standards. I never ran it, although I stole ideas from it.


Regards,
Bill

 

[Vargas]

Which doesn't explain why the unit crest of the Duke of Regina's Own Huscarles happens to be in the gunboat's tailfin.

I can't argue with that.

For what it's worth, the gunboat reference is on Page 4, left hand column in the paragraph marked "ADVENTURES".