Jeff M. Hopper
SOC-14 1K
Did a Traveller demo yesterday, didn't turn out as expected. Only one person showed up, so we did character creation for him and started a campaign. He rolled up a Noble who controls a small start-up colony and has a rival of the previous colony administrator and an evil younger sister with suitor as enemies. Oh, and this is all near the Zhodani border, so the colony is considered a client state and not a full member of the Imperium.
I'm writing up the entire world using Grand Survey and Grand Census still, but it and the subsector should be a lot of fun.
Did I mention that I'm allowing the Noble to have nuclear missiles?
While it seems haphazard, this is what I usually do in games I run. I let the Players make decisions on where they want to adventure with their characters and then I provide them. I am a Referee who reacts to the Players' direction, I do not have any kind of overarching campaign plot I need to run them on, just a sandbox that gets filled in as the game goes along.
I have to say, if we wanted, the entire campaign direction could have been mapped out in character creation. That is one of the strengths of Mongoose Traveller.
For example, the Player's Noble was an administrator of the colony on Marisa starting out, during which time he inherited a yacht and did such a good job that the colonists found him to be a great leader that caused his evil younger sister and her suitor to become his enemy. After eight years of that, he became a dilettante and drifted around enjoying the Good Life, gaining an ally of a Party Bro. He then recontacted the colony on Marisa only to find that the current administrator has been badly abusing the colonists, so he returns to politics and has the abusing administrator ousted by the Imperial Colonial Office and the Ministry of Colonization, gaining a rival. The feudal technocracy of the colony has three factions - the majority that supports the Player, the minority that supports the former administrator, and the fringe group that supports the Player's evil little sister and her suitor.
All done during character creation using only the Core Rulebook.
I'm writing up the entire world using Grand Survey and Grand Census still, but it and the subsector should be a lot of fun.
Did I mention that I'm allowing the Noble to have nuclear missiles?
While it seems haphazard, this is what I usually do in games I run. I let the Players make decisions on where they want to adventure with their characters and then I provide them. I am a Referee who reacts to the Players' direction, I do not have any kind of overarching campaign plot I need to run them on, just a sandbox that gets filled in as the game goes along.
I have to say, if we wanted, the entire campaign direction could have been mapped out in character creation. That is one of the strengths of Mongoose Traveller.
For example, the Player's Noble was an administrator of the colony on Marisa starting out, during which time he inherited a yacht and did such a good job that the colonists found him to be a great leader that caused his evil younger sister and her suitor to become his enemy. After eight years of that, he became a dilettante and drifted around enjoying the Good Life, gaining an ally of a Party Bro. He then recontacted the colony on Marisa only to find that the current administrator has been badly abusing the colonists, so he returns to politics and has the abusing administrator ousted by the Imperial Colonial Office and the Ministry of Colonization, gaining a rival. The feudal technocracy of the colony has three factions - the majority that supports the Player, the minority that supports the former administrator, and the fringe group that supports the Player's evil little sister and her suitor.
All done during character creation using only the Core Rulebook.
