I'd really like to run a short campaign set on a nobles yacht, probably a converted safari ship. Problem is, I'm not really sure what missions the ship will perform. Why is it jumping from world to world, how can I inject any tension into what sounds a bit like a pleasure cruise ......?
Travelling Noble Campaign
- Thread starter Mithras
- Start date
The noble is on an imperial mission. Checking up on other nobles suspected of aiding Vargar raiders or the Ine Gevar or simply suspected of being corrupt or incompitent. As cover the noble must attend hunts, balls, sporting events and so forth. Inevitably there will be a mystery unrelated to the mission that must be solved. The noble will at some point discover something that will cause one of his stock portfolios or other investments to collapse, reveling it will be crucial to the mission creating a moral dilemma. Throw in the romantic interest who may be a Zho spy and you should be good to go.
Trouble
Trouble
O
Omnivore
Guest
One good (and free) resource that should give you quite a few ideas is Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga (free ebooks: The Cryoburn CD 2010).
Nobles have just as many (perhaps even more) troubles (opportunities for adventure) as any other social class. One quick and easy hook into a short campaign might be 'gambling debts' where a noble finds him/her self forced into a situation due to pressure from the debtors. Another might be some sort of 'inheritance crisis' - a playboy/girl noble off on a binge suddenly finds that through a series of 'accidents' they have become the head of a company/estate but only if they can reach a certain point in time to press their claim. The company/estate may have all sorts of associated problems. The 'accidents' may not be accidents, other possible claimants may seek to delay or harm the character.
It is actually quite a bit easier to GM a campaign where at least one of the player characters has an easy hook like a noble might well have. A hook you can use to drag them into the plot more easily than you can do with say a party of footloose and fancy free characters who can, at will, go herring off in any direction at a whim.
Nobles have just as many (perhaps even more) troubles (opportunities for adventure) as any other social class. One quick and easy hook into a short campaign might be 'gambling debts' where a noble finds him/her self forced into a situation due to pressure from the debtors. Another might be some sort of 'inheritance crisis' - a playboy/girl noble off on a binge suddenly finds that through a series of 'accidents' they have become the head of a company/estate but only if they can reach a certain point in time to press their claim. The company/estate may have all sorts of associated problems. The 'accidents' may not be accidents, other possible claimants may seek to delay or harm the character.
It is actually quite a bit easier to GM a campaign where at least one of the player characters has an easy hook like a noble might well have. A hook you can use to drag them into the plot more easily than you can do with say a party of footloose and fancy free characters who can, at will, go herring off in any direction at a whim.
Or they could just be inspecting the zone for a higher noble, akin of the progress nobles made in medieval Europe http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_progress
Winterwolf
SOC-5
travelling Noble
Another reason for a noble to be travelling is that he/she is a remittance man/woman. that is they are paid by their family to stay away. anyway just a thought.
Another reason for a noble to be travelling is that he/she is a remittance man/woman. that is they are paid by their family to stay away. anyway just a thought.
Enoki
SOC-14 1K
A variant would be that the person in your story inhereted his / her wealth. That wealth is based on variously, patents, propriortory corporate information, etc., and these are held by his / her parent(s) (ie., father and or mother).
They have been unheard from for some time now and the company / corporation that uses those patents / information wants to declare them dead and take legal ownership of them. This means our hero(ine) is now facing becoming destitute as they have no real employable skills (the character would have to be rolled up such to some degree) or means of supporting themselves without the cash from the intellectual information coming in.....
Off you go to find daddy (and mommy)....!
Gray Pennell
SOC-12
Combined with all of these is the playboy/playgirl partying across the subsector. I can get in to trouble as an unemployed librarian imagine what a noble with money in their pocket can get into. This is actually a great game for just travelling around.
Be warned lots of worlds to create and fierce places to see.
Be warned lots of worlds to create and fierce places to see.
And then, of course, the remittance man who suddenly is called back to answer for some crime about which he had no idea...
Enoki
SOC-14 1K
Or, the variant: The megacorp that wants those patents sends a squad of hitmen and assassins after him / her.....
graymask1120
SOC-9
The noble is/are from a very sheltered noble house, and have only an acedemic knowledge of the universe. The crew of the yacht are commoners sworn to the House to keep the kids out of trouble...Problem is, none of the crew have a great deal of experience outside of their own system...
...This is the point where the ship is undergoing maintenance at the Class C "Planet X" downport for a busted gluebelflexor, when the nobles meet a distraught young woman who claims that she has been stuck here, trying to hire mercenaries to retake her throne on Planet Y, but she's running out of money...
...None of the noble have the slightest experience with the military or mercenaries beyond the people standing guard at their own palace...OTOH, they have a ridiculous amount of money, and are after "adventure".....
...This is the point where the ship is undergoing maintenance at the Class C "Planet X" downport for a busted gluebelflexor, when the nobles meet a distraught young woman who claims that she has been stuck here, trying to hire mercenaries to retake her throne on Planet Y, but she's running out of money...
...None of the noble have the slightest experience with the military or mercenaries beyond the people standing guard at their own palace...OTOH, they have a ridiculous amount of money, and are after "adventure".....
Lots of extremely wealthy folks travel because they can, or to stay away from those who would befriend them for the purpose of taking advantage of them. Part of it is to keep yourself socially safe, the other part is to frankly see the world. Or, in the case of Traveller, that local region of the galaxy.
There are also wealthy types who put a portion of their wealth to good use in foreign lands. And by that, I don't always mean Red Cross endeavors, but attempt to overthrow or resist local abusive governments. The most famous being the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan during the 70s and 80s. Corporate interests have always done this, but private individuals (more contemporary that is) have put their wealth to more "humanistic" overthrows and resistance movements. Read that as they're not investing in a country for the purposes of hoping to benefit from its natural resources, but because they believe it the right thing to do.
Travelling keeps those individuals away from office politics, away from headaches and security issues of having to have their homes guarded and such. There's also a spirit of adventure, and it's pleasurable and fun to be able to go to different lands and experience new and different cultures.
Marc Miller (Avery) has taken that aspect of high-society, and templated that onto a sci-fi setting, with some sociological mapping efforts on the large map that is known space.
leo knight
SOC-12
Courtly intrigue instantly comes to mind. Take almost any Shakespeare play, change the names, voila! Instant adventure. The most cliche, of course, is Romeo and Juliet. Is your noble a Montague or Capulet? Some years ago, I was in a production of Richard III. What if your noble is a budding Duke of Gloucester? Or, on the side of right, Richmond? How about The Tempest? Prospero is an exiled Duke. Perhaps your noble could be a stand-in for Antonio and Alonso, looking for their lost brother. If it was good enough to become Forbidden Planet...
The other posters have all made excellent suggestions, so here's another one!
IMHO, any noble who is off jumping around is a noble who either doesn't have a fief or will never have a fief. Putting it another way, your Travelling Noble is neither the Ruler or the Heir. Instead, they're the Spare or, most likely, the Spare's Spare. This means that, beyond the usual handwaves and supermarket openings, they've nothing really really official to do. All the really official stuff their family is responsible for is being handled by the Ruler and being leaned by the Heir. They've nothing of importance to do...
... yet they've born into, raised, and educated as part of the class which does all the important stuff. Quite a problem, right?
If there's nothing of importance for them to do, they can work the Old Boy's network to find something important to do and, hopefully, become so useful doing something somewhere that they'll be granted their own fief.
So here's what you're Travelling Noble is doing...
He's the Spare or Spare's Spare of an ancient, but currently lackluster, noble house. Dad is busy running the family's groat ranches and buggywhip manufacturing facilities, Big Sis is learning the ropes for when she inherits, and it took most of the family's remaining social and political capital to get Big Bro into a Navy. Not much was left for our Travelling Noble aside from a meaningless title, good table manners, and contacts throughout the regional nobility.
In prep school however, our Travelling Noble's very best friend happened to be the Heir of a neighboring duchy and that person was facing a delicate problem. Relations between the Ruler and Heir in that particular duchy have historically been on the "frosty" side, google the Hohenzollerns if you don't quite get the idea, and relations between the current Ruler and Heir are downright hostile. How hostile? Well the Ruler has cut the Heir completely out of the loop regarding the state of the duchy, the policies being pursued, and the decisions being made. If it were up to the Ruler, the Heir would be totally in the dark regarding the duchy he is to inherit. However, it is not just up the Ruler.
The Heir has his contacts within the Ruler's court and they keep him appraised of what is occurring there. What the Heir needs are his own set of eyes out in the Duchy and that's what his old school chum is going to be.
The job is going to be a thankless one. The Travelling Noble is going to have the play the role of feckless playboy to all but his closest associates. He's going to have to be nosey without seeming to be nosey. He's going to have to go wherever and look into whatever his friend the Heir deems important. He's going to actually look for trouble. He's going to have as much or as little money as the Heir can occasionally send his way, meaning the Travelling Noble will have to scrounge around for paying jobs every so often. And he's going to have to do all this without raising the suspicion of the Ruler and most likely in the face of low grade harassment from the Ruler's men.
There you have it. You've got every reason now to send that yacht wherever the campaign demands it to go. Your players are going to be actively looking for problems, actively prying into the reasons behind those problems, and they won't have a unlimited credit line to buy their way of out problems either.
Good luck and tell us how it works out.
E.D.Quibell
SOC-13
Bravo!
Nice one Whipsnade! Plenty of great ideas here! Now I'll go and weave them together
Thanks everyone
Similar threads
