OK, well, since I started this thread and it’s sort of about my journey with the ruleset, maybe it’s a good place to talk about the campaign. Two games in so far. Spent about half the first game on character work.
Two of my players in this campaign have been with me a long time. My long time (7-8 years) host of my various games, and a gal who has been a good friend and player in my games since around 1990. These two are the keystone players of the group, and three or four others who have played in my D&D for a year or so. With one player having to work a lot on game night now, and another gal player who is moving to another state in February, I decided to suspend D&D until we get a couple more players, and to do Classic Traveller as an alternative for now. I played it a bit in a game shop when I was a kid. They were really into it. Being a young teen I didn’t really “get it.” I wanted fantasy and only fantasy then. But as an adult a love of things like Alien, Aliens, Blade Runner, etc. got me in the mood for more hard Sci Fi. I’ll have to admit, even though imperfect Prometheus (especially that main theme from the move, that sort of felt like “deep, vast space” to me) inspired me to give CT a go. Doing something other than D&D can kind of be a hard sell for new players of mine, but my long time players played a lot of my other stuff (Call of Cthulhu, Champions, Gamma World, etc) that they knew it would be fun and interesting if I was doing it (a humble brag…like a lot of folk reading this I have decades experience, and pretty much can gauge what my players will have fun with if I present it in ways that inspire them in the way I get inspired by concepts).
A couple of things I had in mind right away was that the campaign would start towards the edge of a frontier. As per Dumarest “earth” is more of an urban legend, as are intelligent alien species (there would be some out there, but not in the core worlds and not common knowledge). This would be a human-centric setting.
So first session started with that fun mini game, character generation. I knew it would be like no Char Gen they had ever done. Just getting the stats going and making a few choices but letting the dice guide you. I stressed how they needed to attach significance to things that occurred during terms. And some interesting things came out of it. As I’ve said before, I only had book one so far (4 bucks pdf, would later get Traveller Starter pdf before game 2 as someone I think suggested in this thread or elsewhere) to see if we even liked the game. They really took to the character work. By the rolling of second terms of service they were almost electric. The beginning of any (or at least most) new campaign has that nice advantage ; lots of dice rolling before the game even starts, to get the juices flowing.
As I suggested they started seeing patterns and came up with reasons why this and that happened during a term. I only really did two things not fully btb (I think). Death in service would be an injury (I had yet to come up with a table or chart for this, so planned to wing it…but nobody failed the rolls anyway so moot point. No characters with eye patches or peg leg ). Also if a reenlistment failed early for anybody (first couple terms), I would allow a chance to enlist in the merchants, scouts, or of course just become a drifter and for Other. Oh, and one other things I offered – just be a non-military professional like doctor or lawyer and I would give you level – 3 in such skill, and maybe a couple others. Nobody took me up and that and went for the military gen though.
3 characters wanted to be Navy. One, our host, wanted Army. Here’s the most interesting to me. Keep in mind I don’t really memorize character names till 3rd or 4th session. I don’t have my notes with me, so lets see…I’ll give them nicknames for now:
Cassie – OK, I’m pretty sure this was the name of one of the girls characters. Cassie to me had the most interesting background when all was said and done. She had very high INT and EDU. Clearly a brainiac. With modest SOC she was clearly the star of her family and a favored child. She planned on a long successful career as a naval officer, perhaps to go into politics at some point in middle-age. The world is your oyster with those stats, right? We even decided as a teen she got a couple years of college in; one of those young genius’ you see in college who should still be in first year of high school. Anyway, after her second term (or was it the first?) she could not reenlist. Wha hoppen? The player quickly decided she must have been stymied by somebody. She settled on some superior who sexually harassed her, and when the dust cleared she found herself out of a navy career before it really started. Saddened and pissed off at the universe, she decided to go into the Scouts to “show them.” Kind of her own worst enemy there…cause I offered her the chance to go back to college and work on a medical or law degree (something I would have winged, though I saw a nice thread around here on college terms). So she spent the next decade or so as a scout. Her favorite skill is Jack of Trades, and very much makes sense for a smart lady like her to be able to “Macgyver” stuff.
Jack – I think his name is “Jack Smink” or something like that. Also did not last long in his service, the army. I allowed him to try and get into the Merchants service (with a minus on the enlistment roll) and he did. Not exactly a distinguished career, but he did get out of it all with, among a couple other things, Pistol 2 (he went for revolver), Streetwise, and a Free Trader (he was pretty excited by that. I did not know at the time he’d be paying for it his whole life, but that did not bother him when I found that out).
The other two characters so far (our workaholic player has yet to be able to make a game.) are:
Travellyn – yeah, his last name was a play on the system we were using. Highest stat was SOC, which made him a Marquis. Very distinguished navy career. Made it to Captain I think, and mustered out with around 70,000 creds and a high passage.
Katana – not her name, but the weapon she favors. Another distinguished navy career, and she made some high rank or another. From a planet that was primarily settled by Asians. She mustered out with a blade – 2, and she asked for it to be a Katana and I was like “what the heck.” Though as small girl, she had a STR of 11, so we’ve been leaning towards her planet having a slightly higher gravity.
With these two successful career navy folk around, Cassie the Scout is of course a bit resentful (though doesn’t really show it yet). They had the careers she felt she deserved, and they don’t even come close to her smarts or education. This could end up being an interesting dynamic in later games. Will she ever act on that resentment?
Another interesting thing here is it’s not a particularly skilled weapon using group. Jack has revolver – 2 and Katana is a hard hitting powerhouse with that sword of hers (that she much prefers to ranged weapons) and that’s about it. Some other useful skills among them will come in handy for work on Jacks Free Trader. Katana has ENG – 2, Jack has electrical – 2, and Travelyn has a good pilot skill. There’s a NAV in there somewhere, maybe Cassie. Most of the skills needed to run a ship are covered there.
OK, so I decided pretty off the cuff that they would be on a Free Trader, either working passage (Jack and Cassie) or in paid passage (Travelyn and Katana). Off the top of my head I decided they would be going to a corn harvesting planet. “Weber-Cornfield” is the name; I decided there would be this food corporation and that some planets in the sector would have the company name attached. Though I want to avoid a lot of planets that do only one thing for the most part, I thought I’d have a sort of “harvest belt” of planets under yellow suns that were perfect for harvesting this and that, and that it was Weber Corp that set most of that up many decades or more ago. In the back of my mind at the time, still sort of winging it, I thought about a couple of planets within a jump away that had to do with harvest food processing, and another that was dedicated to distilling. I was half-thinking that these would be good locations for the PC’s to start some product speculation. Whatever Weber Co. didn’t load onto big company ships, Free Traders would come in to get in on the overflow. In the future of course I would have planets that, like our world, have all kinds of possibilities that the trading tables could be used for, but for now this seemed like a simple way to get the campaign started without me having to delve into the so far unstudied part of the books.
I thought that I would have Jacks ship (and Travellyins money) be held up for a bit so I could ease into a little planetary fun. But both Jacks player and I kind of hit on the idea at the same time that the ship they are on would be his ship. The captain, himself a retired merchant service guy, would be retiring to a lake area near the closest township (maybe buying some land to make some dough on corn growing). Jack and the captain become fast friends, which would come in handy to introduce contacts and patrons who knew the captain. The ship, “Rainbows End,” would be going into drydock at the starport for a couple weeks to get it’s maintenance before Jack takes it over.
*OK, that was all the char gen and pregame prep work, which ended up having a lot of fun little bits of role-play. There was a bit of adventuring in the last hour or so of the session. I’ll go ahead and talk about that in my next post.
Any ideas or comments on any of this are more than welcome!
