TRAVELLER-NOIR

[Sifu Blackirish]

Some years ago, a work companion and occasional TRAVELLER player turned me on to a film that quickly made it to my "watch anytime" list. In fact, now that I have my own copy, it is in my laptop right now, ready to play at a moment's notice.

DARK CITY is a head bender of a movie. Full of 'film noir' cliches along with a great explanation for them. I really can't describe any of the movie enough to do it justice without including massive spoilers. I enthusiastically recommend it to anyone tired of the same old thing.

As a mental exercise, I have been looking at alternative sources for TRAVELLER adventure, and I find the film noir fascinating. Han anyone tried this approach to their adventures, and could you share some of your techniques with the rest of us?

 

[Baron]

Ha ha, I tried running a pbp Traveller game a few years back. I thought I'd roll into Adventure 12, Secret of the Ancients. Many of the players were in my face-to-face campaign years prior, and we played Twilight's Peak, so I thought a few might pick up on the story arc. Anyway, the players came up with a diverse party including some Imperial cloak-and-dagger types and a Vargr spy, and with all the background tweaking I had to do to bring them together, the adventure went off on its own. We spent quite a few months in a murder mystery with a femme fatale who coincidentally looked like Halle Berry. They dredged up one mystery inside another, got involved with some underworld types, and even had some epic adventures involving an underwater city. We never left the initial planet! I just kept scrambling to keep ahead of their inquiries, making sure to allow myself free reign and a lot of creativity.

It may have helped that I ran the same guys in Call of Cthulhu for years, which I also ran like a noir movie. I miss those guys.

 

[Whipsnade]

Noir figured in many of my sessions and campaigns. I suppose that was because I was reading a lot of Hammett during the period I was GMing the most.

In this thread I described a campaign which featured several "noirish" adventures. IIRC, a few of the campaign's adventures were stolen from Hammett short stories.

Lately, I've been reading quite a bit of Edgar Wallace's various Sanders and Bones short stories while squinting at Tionale...

 

[mike wightman]

I have a guilty confession.

I too am a fan of noir (I have a library of RKO films taped to VHS that would make you envious) and Dark City is a favourite of mine also

I have used Daredevils adventures, converted to Traveller of course, and many of the patron encounters in 76 patrons become noir if handled right.

The trick I have found works is to play to the players paranoia, and make sure there are no true good guys or bad guys, just lots of grey.

 

[Shonner]

As a mental exercise, I have been looking at alternative sources for TRAVELLER adventure, and I find the film noir fascinating. Han anyone tried this approach to their adventures, and could you share some of your techniques with the rest of us?

All the time. Make an NPC a Dana Andrews character and you're getting there.

 

[Spinward Scout]

I always thought adventures like Shadows and Annic Nova could be played darker. Shadows is close enough to the original script for ALIEN and the current movie PROMETHEUS that some of the suspense of those movies could be incorporated.

 

[aramis]

I always thought adventures like Shadows and Annic Nova could be played darker. Shadows is close enough to the original script for ALIEN and the current movie PROMETHEUS that some of the suspense of those movies could be incorporated.

Several franchises look very much like Traveller games:

• Alien/Aliens/Prometheus
• Riddick
• Firefly/Serenity
• Andromeda

Two of those have some clear noir influences (alien/aliens/prometheus and Riddick), and andromeda has some more subtle ones in the footage - especially for shooting the Nietzscheans.

 

[savage]

Several franchises look very much like Traveller games:

• Alien/Aliens/Prometheus
• Riddick
• Firefly/Serenity
• Andromeda

Two of those have some clear noir influences (alien/aliens/prometheus and Riddick), and andromeda has some more subtle ones in the footage - especially for shooting the Nietzscheans.

Farscape, Stargate...

 

[Sifu Blackirish]

...let me contribute to this 'noir' sandwich...

"Andromeda" would certainly qualify. They are thrust into a bizarre situation, with everything they know obliterated.

Who do you trust? Where can you be safe?

I admit I sort of ignored this series when it appeared. I stumbled onto this one Saturday when I actually possessed my own basement inner sanctum, where I could watch and tape. This series actually grew on me, especially the second season.

A devious playground for the enlightened referee.

 

[aramis]

Farscape, Stargate...

Stargate: I don't see it as "travelleresque" at all. The only thing it shares is that the main characters are armed with slugthrowers, and there are spacefighters; unlike the default traveller assumptions, it's a still-in-service setting, with lots of zapguns for everyone but the main characters. Further, very little of the Noir trope-set is used, even when it would be appropriate. And, until mid-run, it even lacked good guy space craft... and the spacecraft aren't even Travellerish. The Earth ships are actually sub-like (as they should be), while the spacefighters are a size-efficient way of projecting force quickly via stargate, as opposed to the much slower FTL drives (which don't resemble Traveller Jump as much as they do Star Trek Warp Drive)

Farscape: no clue. Never got into it. But the adverts do nothing to give it a Travellerish look other than "it involves ships in space".

By comparison...

Andromeda: Medium-Big capital ships (comparable to CT capital ships), fighters are pointless but exist, merchants are small tramps, pirates tend to be ethically challenged merchants or Naval Raiders, every system has a habitable world or two, zapguns are rare, bridges are big but cabins aren't, human navigators are needed to calculate jumps. The jumps don't take as long as Traveller, but... pretty much everything I saw in season 1 looks like TL16-TL17 peak, with a lot of TL12 remnants, due to the collaps of the big empire (The Commonwealth). In other words, TNE-ish, with a much faster jump drive. Even the Navy was called "Commonwealth High Guard"... And the aliens were more than simple "Man in suit" types; more or less, they did about as well as Traveller did. Nietzscheans are a gene-mod human subspecies with a very extreme psychology (slightly more than "Proud Warrior Race", but not much - Aslan analogue, complete with claws...), Magog (Xenophagic and monosexual, relying upon the host for their eggs to provide some adaptive DNA... and mostly psychopathic, but not all are...)... And LOTS of other species.

I don't think Andromeda was a Traveller game, unlike the genesis of the Firefly 'verse, but the parallels do imply that one or more of the writers/developers may have had some familiarity with traveller and/or it's inspirational sources.

 

[savage]

Farscape: no clue. Never got into it. But the adverts do nothing to give it a Travellerish look other than "it involves ships in space".

Good point about Stargate. They do seem to warp. However, if your TNE minded, Fire Fusion and Steel opened up other options.

Yes. Farscape has a lot of Traveller-like adventuring. They call Jumping a Starburst with small and very large ships. Check the starship comparison website.

 

[leo knight]

Someone adapted the Al Amarja setting from the "Over the Edge" RPG to a science fiction setting. Here's a link:

http://www.rpglibrary.org/settings/edge/

The above website feels a bit perfunctory, probably for copyright reasons. As such, it doesn't capture the sense of weirdness and angst of Al Amarja. It has a lot of pulpish/ noirish elements. The government is deliberately ineffective, law enforcement hopelessly corrupt. Shadowy conspiracies vie for dominance. Almost everyone lies, cheats, or steals. "On the take' is a lifestyle.

The original setting, an island in the Mediterranean, had quite a few science fiction, or even occult, features: puppet master type aliens that take over human hosts, a device that alters reality to make more weirdness possible, all sorts of mind and body altering substances, a building erected by aliens that actually occupies its own pocket dimension. Here's a link to the original:

http://www.atlas-games.com/overtheedge/

Enjoy!

 

[Whipsnade]

Thank you for those links, Leo.

 

[Blue Ghost]

Some years ago, a work companion and occasional TRAVELLER player turned me on to a film that quickly made it to my "watch anytime" list. In fact, now that I have my own copy, it is in my laptop right now, ready to play at a moment's notice.

DARK CITY is a head bender of a movie. Full of 'film noir' cliches along with a great explanation for them. I really can't describe any of the movie enough to do it justice without including massive spoilers. I enthusiastically recommend it to anyone tired of the same old thing.

As a mental exercise, I have been looking at alternative sources for TRAVELLER adventure, and I find the film noir fascinating. Han anyone tried this approach to their adventures, and could you share some of your techniques with the rest of us?

This is how I presented a couple of adventures; one of them was a major reworking of CT "The Argon Gambit", where player had to figure out some illicit operations permeating the city, and clamp down on them.

This video kind of captures the theme of the adventure, as most of the operations were conducted during the night (for some reason...cinematic effect I suppose);

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RScZrvTebeA

An even BETTER video describing the mood of the adventure I ran;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VgNoKc_Gdw

 

[Shonner]

This video kind of captures the theme of the adventure, as most of the operations were conducted during the night (for some reason...cinematic effect I suppose);

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RScZrvTebeA

An even BETTER video describing the mood of the adventure I ran;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VgNoKc_Gdw

Funny. You couldn't just say Blade Runner?

 

[Blue Ghost]

I thought I had.

 

[Lord Iron Wolf]

Traveller is Noir

I read something a while back where the poster said that classic traveller was noir. If you look at it, the characters are a few small points of light in a large sea of darkness. The patrons they deal with are often the powerful with dark secrets to hide or cover up. The work the characters do is often quasi-legal at best if not a capital offense. They are barely scraping by most of the time and often desperate for money. No matter what they do, things aren't going to get better. Noir it is.

Lord Iron Wolf

 

[AramisSockPuppet]

CT stopped being noir about Adventure 5...

 

[rancke]

CT stopped being noir about Adventure 5...

Research Station Gamma was caper/special ops; Twilight's Peak was merchant adventure mixed with treasure hunt. Leviathan was exploration. None of them were particularily noir. Quite a few of the amber zones and patrons were, though. Lorn once said that that was mostly because those were the kind of items people submitted.


Hans

 

[aramis]

Research Station Gamma was caper/special ops; Twilight's Peak was merchant adventure mixed with treasure hunt. Leviathan was exploration. None of them were particularily noir. Quite a few of the amber zones and patrons were, though. Lorn once said that that was mostly because those were the kind of items people submitted.


Hans

Twilight's Peak and Leviathan both have their noirish elements in the library data, and at the time, the lack of advice to interpret them any other way.
In adventures 1-4, the imperium isn't portrayed as particularly "good". It's almost "downright villainous".

Though the Imperial core may be decaying and to some extent introspective, in the Spinward Marches at least, the trading spirit still burns fiercely. Large multisystem cartels continue the ages-old Terran tradition of cut-throat trade rivalry for materials and their markets in and beyond the Imperium. One such cartel is the Baraccai Technum (BT).
(A4 p.4)​

THe tone is noirish. Many of the rumors and patrons are very easily noir-toned if not borrowed from Bogie movies..

A3 has a number of rumors tending towards a noir feel. Looming war, marines in large numbers on a majorly hostile planet without listed bases (Wypoc/Lanth), new red zones... If one is in a noir mindset, A3 will reinforce that.

A1 has a rumor that the Imperium is actively suppressing political dissent in the marches. As with A4 and A3, the rumors overall tend to be easily in line with a noir approach.

One not a fan of Noir as a genre is unlikely to see it and go "ooh! Ick! Noir!", but one who likes noir is likely to catch the subtleties and read it as noir.

One key element of Noir fiction is the "even the heroes are not nice guys"... That, and that investigation is a natural consequence of being even normal folk in unusual places and times. And everyone's got a secret somewhere.

The ever-present bribery, as well, is part of much noir fiction - anyone but the villain and the protagonist has their price, and even the protagonist might. And that's right in line with all 4 early adventures.

Noir might not have been the intent, but early Traveller was (to me and those I gamed with, at least) Star Wars Noir Edition. Plots like Bogie movies (in some cases direct lifts), secrets hiding everywhere, corruption the norm, cops hassling you for no reason, and silly outrageous accents...

In many ways, finding the OTU in the later adventures resulted in a less fun game.