Urgent help needed - need ideas for a world

[ffilz]

My PCs are heading to a world tonight, B210683-C just outside my Imperium (not the 3I).

I've already decided it's a moon of the gas giant, and the civil service bureaucracy is a bunch of bureaucrats who inherited the world when the Imperium was no longer able to exert control. The charge through the nose for everything (including access to the Gas Giant, no free re-fueling here).

But I want it to be more than just a bump in the road for the PCs.

I guess I could run Exit Visa/Stranded on Arden there...

 

[jcrocker]

Always time for a Red Herring - "I know a guy who has a cousin, she found an old wreck from the Third Frontier War, ought to have some good parts worth having. See, no one around here has your modern gear, the local suits just won't stop all that radiation. Yeah, it crashed on an old mining post, one that had a fission power plant. Man, those things can sure make a mess." Or it could even work out, who knows.

If one of them has a hobby, the think they see a work by an Old Master in the thrift store window. The sticker says twenty credits, last authentic piece by that artist sold for a few hundred thousand ten years ago. Is it legit, or a local who liked the artist and did a copy? If it's a copy, how good a copy is it - think it might go for a few thousand on the next world?

Maybe it just looks nice, the PC wants it for their cabin? It was an accident that somoene shone a UV flash on it, else no one would have seen those numbers and that note from "Paperless Pyotr." Anyone you ask can tell you he was a local crime boss, famous for hiding things. But if you do ask, they want to know how offworlders heard about this guy, he had a pretty low profile and died about ten years ago...

 

[creativehum]

First (and this is just me, I know) don't run Exit Visa. It seems like the most no-fun situation ever created in RPG history.

I mean, do if you really want... but this is Science-Fiction Adventure in the Far Future. What else might you cook up?

The first point of attack, for me, is some sort science-fiction themed situation. Are there any issues of environment/biology/energy/technology that inspired you from any movie or SF book or article on science. There might be a terrorists (fed up with the price gouging) attacking with a biological weapon and they get affected and must help look for the terrorists with the cure. They might get rumors of a life forms in underground caverns with air pockets inside. There might be an ancient technology that was recently activated that is influencing the citizens with might control.

Anything that makes the world interesting apart from the bureaucracy or where that bureaucracy intersects with an SF theme.

Which brings us to the impersonal bureaucracy itself. What are the stress points within that bureaucracy? Who is mad at whom? Who wants revenge on whom? Who wants what someone else has? Who is keeping a secret? Who wants that secret? These are people who will literally contact the PCs when they realized a group of travellers with a particular set of skills have arrived on his planet. Don't be coy about this. Have a hoity-toity bureaucrat send an assistant or show up himself and say, "I have a proposition for you."

It might be to sneak into a rivals minion operation, seek out information on a rival political party's psionic research, or whatever. It might be checking out what happened to some prospectors who vanished -- while exploring heretofore unknown caverns with air and lifeforms no one yet knows about.

When I think about Traveller worlds I see the UWP as a baseline for beginning the world -- but then I figure out what goes on top of that to make it compelling in and of itself. To that end I really recommend rolling the dice on the Stars Without Numbers Tags. It generates local SF tropes in seconds and sparks adventure ideas to layer on top of the UWP.

You'll know what excites you. But the key thing is, what would be the thing that isn't in the UWP that you would want to add?

EDITED TO ADD: The Free Version of Stars Without Numbers can be downloaded here.

 

[Whipsnade]

Hmmm... millions of inhabitants on a 3200km diameter rock with a trace atmosphere...

I'd play up the Kowloon Walled City aspects of the place. You know, a densely populated habitat with a welter of customs meant to maintain enough interpersonal etiquette and personal privacy to prevent the crowded residents from snapping and killing each other.

Lacking physical space, the locals use customs to create a mental version of the "elbow room" they need. For example, people dressed in certain ways are deliberately ignored, your business life is strictly segregated from your social life, or there's a legal right to a certain hourly amount of physical solitude every week. Enforcement of the customs can range from social snubs to ritual duels to forcible exile.

The last might be an interesting adventure seed. Right after they arrive, the local government purchases all the middle and low passages the players' ship can offer plus a given amount of cargo space. The passengers arrive in the custody of law enforcement officials ready for their trip to exile and none too happy for it.

During their stay the players may have to hire cultural liaisons to avoid making huge and constant faux pas or may have to wear certain markings to designate themselves as clueless off-worlders who are absolved all social transgressions.

 

[kilemall]

Hmmm, maybe time to introduce a recurring patron?

Perhaps like Mr. Smith from this Eve machinima movie......

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEXKIvrbmTI

 

[Supplement Four]

First (and this is just me, I know) don't run Exit Visa. It seems like the most no-fun situation ever created in RPG history.

I completely disagree.

But, I wouldn't run it for a first-time group.

And, the adventure requires a Ref who really knows Traveller, is big on roleplaying, and is comfortable with playing out social skill rolls.

Exit Visa (and the similar scenario included in The Traveller Adventure) can be a real hoot in the hands of the right Ref.

In Hollywood terms, it's a peculiar film looking for the "right" director.

 

[jcrocker]

Please let us know what you finally went with! Hope everyone had fun.

 

[flykiller]

thunderdome. "who run bartertown?"

 

[ffilz]

Well, there was a suggestion on Google+ for a life form in the gas giant, since we didn't get to skimming this week, I have more time to flesh that out...

We had plenty to occupy ourselves this week for entertaining game even if there wasn't much obstacle this week (they are discovering some of the costs of travel like the 20k life support cost of their newly acquired Scout modified Safari Ship).

For those interested, the Scout mod of the Safari Ship:

Drop 1 stateroom, increase M-Drive to B for M-2, Add 1 hardpoint, add a 1-ton autodoc, upgrade drives to military spec. Take the Adventure 10 deck plan, and make the following mods:

The capture tanks are increased to 10 tons each (taking away the two 3 ton storage lockers) and have been fitted to also carry fuel.

One of the storage lockers becomes the Autodoc.

The two small staterooms off the bridge become 1/2 staterooms (solving the -1 stateroom in the deckplan).

The rest of the deckplan impact is basically absorbed as fudge since deck plans are never that accurate for space.

 

[creativehum]

I completely disagree.

But, I wouldn't run it for a first-time group.

And, the adventure requires a Ref who really knows Traveller, is big on roleplaying, and is comfortable with playing out social skill rolls.

Exit Visa (and the similar scenario included in The Traveller Adventure) can be a real hoot in the hands of the right Ref.

In Hollywood terms, it's a peculiar film looking for the "right" director.

You know what. I grant you all that.

I re-read the adventure from The Traveller Book after reading your post and I thought, "This really could be fun." But I see it as a respite and change of pace of other adventure styles.

I think my frustration with it is that it was one more nail in the presumed style and purpose of Traveller, since it was published in The Traveller Book. It sets an example of play and what to do with the game.

This is my own frustration of course. Lots of people want an Official Traveller Setting to be about dealing with bureaucratic red-tape, and if they are happy with it, great.

But for me it leads the entire game line down a weird path. Many of the pulp SF stories that are at the root of original Traveller clearly involved bureaucratic shenanigans (see Dumarest, see The Demon Princes, see others). But they helped break up the rhythm of the action.

If you have a book that:
1. Introduces the game's rules
2. Introduces the game's setting
3. Introduces two adventures (one poking around a deserted, alien installation, the other dealing with a long chain of bribes to get off planet via bureaucratic shenanigans)

Then those two adventures help establish the setting in the mind of the reader, and that setting helps establish what to do with the rules in the mind of the reader. Since a lot of people came to Traveller with the TTB, it helps establish an approach to the game about dealing with red tape.

Now, again, bureaucratic shenanigans can be fun. Dealing with oddball cultures and rules should be part of a Traveller game as the PCs travel from world to world. For me, thinking about it, it was the emphasis on that quality in the core rules from 1982 that is more my problem with the adventure. Which might be a concern only to me that I'm overselling to myself, and certainly no fault of the adventure itself.

 

[sabredog]

One of the adventures in Azhanti High Lightning involved a cruiser 'sinking' in the atmosphere/gravity well of a gas giant. You could do something similar about some Flying Dutchman wreck spotted sometimes by ships skimming for fuel.

Assorted rumors could point to a flying berg of frozen gases here or there. Eventually they could point to some grizzled old madman who hangs out drinking himself into a stupor every night was the only survivor of a wreck that got his license pulled...claimed he the Flying Dutchman (or whatever) clipped his own ship, tore out her belly and the crew was killed. He survived in the wreckage for 6 months before anyone found him, and he was gibbering about the ghost ship while surrounded by the eaten remains of his crew.

Have it turn out the Dutchman had a rich cargo (and rumors have made it impossible to know what it really is by now, but something worth the risk) when she went down and has been caught in some eddy or anomaly in the gravity/atmosphere for years. Once in a while she surfaces to the higher elevations and might be spotted with the right gear. The crazy old man has gone all Ahab on the thing and has a ledger with all his calculations for when it will next appear and the general area. He knows how to get the gear he needs to spot it and track it.

All he needs is a crew as crazy as he is to help him get it and share in the reward....

Be sure to add some kind of beasties in the swirling colors to hassle a player or two.

 

[kilemall]

Along the beastie line, you could have the traditional hunters and floaters of gas giant fauna.

Generally speaking they don't mess with ships or boats on refueling runs, too fast noisy metallic and not tasty.

However, the treasure ship in question could have become a nest. I'd use a floater form of life, partially why the ship rises and falls as different floaters grow and expand. But then there is a pack of hunters always working the nest......

If the players get past the hunters going in or out, the floaters should present a dual threat- both some sort of surprise defense, say a flamethrower instead of squid ink, and when the last floater is dead or driven off the ship starts sinking.

Other classic tropes is most targeting equipment doesn't work well in all the huge charged gas and strong magnetic field environment, specialized suits for greater pressure/poisonous atmo, and of course all those Gs for getting in, stabilize on the target, encumberance/firing problems, and getting out.

 

[aramis]

My players in my current campaign wanted exploration and sociopolitcs, not major mysteries...

So I skipped the first half of Adv12...

 

[sabredog]

Along the beastie line, you could have the traditional hunters and floaters of gas giant fauna.

Generally speaking they don't mess with ships or boats on refueling runs, too fast noisy metallic and not tasty.

However, the treasure ship in question could have become a nest. I'd use a floater form of life, partially why the ship rises and falls as different floaters grow and expand. But then there is a pack of hunters always working the nest......

If the players get past the hunters going in or out, the floaters should present a dual threat- both some sort of surprise defense, say a flamethrower instead of squid ink, and when the last floater is dead or driven off the ship starts sinking.

Other classic tropes is most targeting equipment doesn't work well in all the huge charged gas and strong magnetic field environment, specialized suits for greater pressure/poisonous atmo, and of course all those Gs for getting in, stabilize on the target, encumberance/firing problems, and getting out.

I have "greeblies" IMTU. They are the usual assortment of explosive gasbag floaters and flyers that have been like the invasive aquatic species of space. They have spread to nearly every gas giant by hitching rides on ships in the fuels scoop systems (eggs, etc..) and either thrived or couldn't make in some depending on the atmospheres.

As a result, ships almost always have what are called "bug-screens" in scoops to keep the greeblies out for various reasons. Once a really lager one got stuck in a jammed screen during a group's skim and the engineer had to suit up and go get it out. This version (there are twelve different kinds determined at random) was an armored gas bag floater with tentacles and hook-like claws. It also shot hydrogen out of it's jet siphon that would ignite and be the very flamethrower you described.

The player got the greeblie out after he inadvertently tore its sac, causing a huge jet of flame to flash out of the scoop, blasting out nearly 50 yards past the bridge's windows and the startled pilot because the gases set off more in the gas giant atmosphere. If the engineer hadn't worn his combat armor for the chore he'd have been flash-burned to ash, but as it was he got the fright of his lifetime.

None of the greeblies are intelligent, and some are friendly-ish and will float alongside a ship if you fly slowly enough, clustering around it and feeling it with their tentacles while flashing lights and colors at it. Nobody knows why, either they are trying to mate with it, worshiping the ship, or think it's just a really huge greeblie, but sightseeing ships from a planet called Kimpali will take tourists out to te gas giant there to see the greeblies up close while they swarm the craft. What with the distant lightening and occasional gasberg going by it's pretty spectacular from what I hear.



As for the ship 'sinking' I'd use that as a timer for the session. The ship is always going down, but if it were say, jammed in a frozen gasberg maybe once the players got on board and started warming up? Maybe encourage that by having the power plant operable to bring up the lights and such? Or some other reason.....anyway, have the ship lurch and make scary grinding sounds to help add tension. Figure how long it will take till they reach the point of no return, and then figure out the crisis points between then and when they board it for special events and as markers to cue sometime that will hurry them along more.

The players will try to figure out how long they have before they go own with the ship, so just tell them based on the crisis points: like...they board and the ship shortly after makes a gut-wrenching lurch as it bounces off a gasberg or is hit by lightning.

Players: Can we determine how long we have?
You: Your engineer does some calculations (roll) and he figures about an hour.

10 minutes later another bad lurch and something falls off the wreck, unleashing a flock of angry, frightened, flame-throwing floaters to attack the players....and the engineer now says you have only 15 minutes.

Then it's 10 minutes...then something happens and "could be any second, hard to know"....

 

[kilemall]

Hmm, that gets me thinking, maybe some gas giant species would think of l-hyd tanks as one great big feeding trough- or a perfect egg-laying habitat...

 

[sabredog]

Why not? both fresh and salt water species do that today when they are sucked up in ballast tanks and then discharged someplace else. If some eggs or animals stayed behind and it was a safe, accommodating place for them?

Pity the unfortunate assistant engineer detailed to check why the L-Hyd pump keeps stuttering like it has a clog or something... I can't imagine sloshing around in hydrogen slush wrestling with some space monster that has grown too big to get out of the tank and is pretty hungry now.

 

[aramis]

Hmm, that gets me thinking, maybe some gas giant species would think of l-hyd tanks as one great big feeding trough- or a perfect egg-laying habitat...

Canonically, the Jagd-il-Jgd take a severe dislike to the hypersonic skimming runs....

 

[mike wightman]

My PCs are heading to a world tonight, B210683-C just outside my Imperium (not the 3I).

I've already decided it's a moon of the gas giant, and the civil service bureaucracy is a bunch of bureaucrats who inherited the world when the Imperium was no longer able to exert control. The charge through the nose for everything (including access to the Gas Giant, no free re-fueling here).

But I want it to be more than just a bump in the road for the PCs.

I guess I could run Exit Visa/Stranded on Arden there...

Looking at the stats you have the population living in domes or underground.

Is the population spread around many population centres or is there just one big city that runs the starport and traffic control for the gas giant?
What is the local economy based on - ecodome agriculture, mining the moon/planet, mining the gas giant's rings and moons?

B starport so manufacture of spaceships - useful for gas skimming, exploiting system resources etc.

Are their alien ruins scattered throughout the moons and rings?

Is the gas giant inhabited?

Does part of the population make its money from exploiting other worlds or belts in the system?

What are the conflicting social groups?

I could make a campaign out of just this system...

which is something I have oft been guilty of, a single system became so interesting to the group they stayed for months of real time gaming.

 

[Keklas Rekobah]

I'm a little tardy to the party, but here's my Cr0.02 ...


"Ffilz' World" B210683-C - Na Ni A921 In K5-V

Caution: This world is an Amber Travel Zone, with an environment, laws, customs, life forms, or other conditions that are not well understood and might be a danger to visitor.

Ffilz' World lies just outside the enforceable border of the Imperium (thus its Amber Zone rating). It is non-aligned with any polity, and has a reputation for doing business without asking too many questions, as long as the proper paperwork is in order and the appropriate fees are paid.

Starport

The starport is a good quality installation, with orbital facilities, navsats, a TAS facility, and a downport with landing beacons. Refined fuel and annual maintenance overhaul are available. The shipyard is capable of constructing only non-starships.

Environment

The world is approximately 2300 miles (~3700 kilometers) in diameter. It orbits a small blue-green gas giant, which in turn orbits its primary at approximately 11.3 AU.

The atmosphere is trace, with a pressure of less than 0.1 atmospheres, requiring the use of a vacc suit.

This world has no surface water; which is surprising, considering its close proximity to a hydrogen-rich gas giant.

Society

The stated population is approximately 9,943,000 sophonts, although an official census would be hard-pressed to turn up even a tenth of that number actually living on the world (See 'Comments' below).

The government is a civil-service bureaucracy, by agencies employing individuals selected for their expertise.

Law level is low, and prohibits only weapons of a strict military nature, portable energy weapons, poison gas, explosive, and undetectable body pistols.

Technology

The native technology of this world is roughly analogous to an Early Stellar Empire. While classifiable as a "High-Tech" world, production of TEC-C items (i.e., Grav Belts, Jump Drives, et cetera) is extremely limited.

Bases

This system hosts no known bases of any kind.

Trade Class

A non-agricultural world that is unable to produce quality foodstuffs and must import them. Non-agricultural Worlds are good sources for asteroid belts, and non-agricultural, desert, and vacuum worlds. Non-agricultural worlds are good markets for industrial worlds.

A non-industrial world that has yet to develop a large manufacturing capability and must import much of its finished industrial goods. It is a good source of cargoes for industrial worlds; but its goods sell poorly on other non-industrial worlds. It is a market for goods from industrial worlds.

Comments

The Bureaucrats of Ffilz' World make a large portion of their income in the registration and re-registration of persons, spaceships, starships, and otherwise traceable property. For the right price, a new identity can be forged for virtually any person, any starship, and any weapon, as needed. However, such registration must be made to the Revenue Enhancement Bureau of Ffilz' World, which requires a yearly tax rate of Cr10,000 or 10% of gross income, whichever is greater.

The TAS facility may not be up to Imperial standards in some respects (i.e., only 20 rooms, a communal dining room that doubles as a library, entertainment modules that are at least a year old and that may be missing their authentication seals, et cetera). However, Imperial TAS membership is honored, and the usual perks may be had. This facility is not licensed to accept membership applications.

 

[ffilz]

Thanks a couple good ideas there. Hmm, my players might appreciate the alternate registry, since they have a salvaged scout ship that probably is still imperial property...