Shadowdancer
SOC-14 1K
Last weekend (Sept. 28) I ran a T20 demo game at an EN World game day in Denton. There is a little bit more information about it here, in this older thread. This was the first time I had attempted anything like this, and I just wanted to let people know how it went.
As I said, I had never run a game for people I did not know before. So I was a little concerned about what to do. I didn't want the players who had signed up to have a negative experience and think "That game sucks. I never want to play it again." But I wanted to give them a representative experience of what Traveller is, and try to make it fun so they might want to play it in the future.
My biggest problem was an adventure to run. I quickly decided my first idea, mentioned in the other thread linked above, had some merit, but wasn't exactly the way to go. After some good advice from Flynn and Ron Vutpakdi, I decided to make some changes in my adventure idea. I streamlined things, to keep it simple, and to give them a mixture of role-playing and action/combat. I also decided that, in keep with the focus of T20, I would set the adventure in the Gateway Domain, specifically the Linkworlds Cluster since I could get lots of free information off the website, and could refer the players to it if they wanted more info after the demo.
I went with a pretty standard adventure idea: starship crew needing to make some extra cash takes on a shady job. I decided to make the characters the crew of a far trader in the Linkwordls, currently sitting at a starport doing nothing because of a stevedores' strike. No cargo going in or out. They are approached by a patron with a job offer taking place on another world in the Cluster. Basically, there is a scientist working at an secret underground facility who wants to defect to a different company. That company wants to hire some people to get him off planet. I prefer to improvise when I run a game, and basically make the adventure details up on the fly. So I just wrote a brief outline of the adventure, and I didn't do that until the night before I was going to run it, although I had been thinking about it a lot in the time leading up the game day.
For pregenerated characters, I borrowed six characters from the PBEM game I play in that Ron runs, and added a couple of more to round things out. There were six players signed up for the demo, but I wanted to have a couple of extras just in case.
When I got to the game day, there were more people overall than I was expecting -- I think the final count was 50. The room was all open, and there were plenty of tables. In fact, most of the groups were using two tables, which I was happy about because I have some to-scale 25mm ship deckplans as well as floorplans for an underground research facility I wanted to use with miniatures.
About 20 minutes before my demo was to start, I found four of the players already waiting. Three were college students, the other was older -- I'm not sure of his age, but he was probably in his 30s. The older player was the only one who had played Traveller before -- once, when he was 9, the father of a friend had run a CT game for them. He said it was basically them running around on the levels of a big, Death Star-like outpost.
I had just finished a D&D game and was hungry, so I gave them the pregenerated characters so they could pick who they wanted to be, and went to the 7-11 next door to get something to eat and drink. When I got back, we hadn't picked up any more players -- two of the people who had signed up to play never showed, and I was a little bummed about that. A GM who was about to start another game at another table (not sure what it was, some type of D&D game) came around making a last-minute pitch for more players. Seems he had the same problem I did -- people signed up for the game, then didn't show. He only had three players show up, and was worried the party wouldn't survive the adventure because he had built all of the encounters expecting there to be 8 players. That's another reason I like to improvise when I'm running a game rather than plan it out ahead of time -- it's a lot easier to scale the encounters to the party.
Anyway, I was a little peeved that this guy was coming around trying to steal some of my players for his game. One of the college students said he was interested in playing that other game, but he was already here at the Traveller game and he would stay at the table. That made me feel good. Also, after the other GM left, one of his players -- another college student, I think -- came over and asked me, "Are you running the Traveller game?" I told her yes. "If our game doesn't make, can me and my friend come play in your game?" I told her certainly, we had plenty of room. Then she asks, "Can your character still die when it's being generated?" I explained to her, and to my players, that in T20, characters do not die during prior history.
So anyway, we got no more players. But I was sort of glad because with four I knew I could take the time to explain things more in depth and concentrate the adventure on those four characters and keep everyone involved. I kept two of the characters that weren't chosen to use as NPCs on the ship (you have to have an engineer and a co-pilot) and we got started. Since all of them were familiar with d20, they picked things up pretty quickly, which I knew they would. I explained the important differences involved in T20 (the two new abilities, using dex for all combat attacks, two sets of "hit points," how armor works in combat, etc.) and ran a brief example of combat just to show them how it all worked. Then we jumped into the adventure.
And I was pleasantly surprised to see how quickly they started role-playing their characters, and got into things. The older player was really having a good time (he told me later that he doesn't get to play as often as he would like. He plays with several people he works with, but real life keeps intruding on their gaming time). I also was pleased to see that three of the four players had taken my advice that Traveller was a "skills first, combat as a last resort" game to heart. One of the college students seemed anxious to try out the new weapons on his character sheet, but the other players kept him from doing anything rash, so he settled for using as many of his skills as possible.
The adventure ran pretty smooth. Once they had accepted their new job and were leaving to make a jump into another system, I sprang the little ship-trapped-in-gas-giants'-atmosphere scenario from the Linkworlds minicampaign. They were all impressed with the Scout/Courier deckplans and painted minis I broke out. Then they got to the new planet and started making plans to break out the scientist. They're characters were able to meet with the researcher to help plan things. I had the researcher tell them a plan he had thought up, just in case they were stumped for something that would work. But they came up with a better plan, and went with that.
I built up some tension for them by throwing some small roadblocks into the mix, but nothing they couldn't overcome. I let them get away with some things I never would if it were a campaign I was running with my regular group, but this was a demo, so I tried to keep things fun for the players. Anyway, there was a small shootout late in the adventure, then I surprised them with a little rat bastard ref twist that they then quickly turned into a blackmail opportunity for the future, and we wrapped things up five hours after we'd started.
All in all, I think things went pretty well. The players all seemed to enjoy themselves and have a good time. I was glad to learn, in talking with them, that three of the four were looking for games that A) had a more modern setting than D&D and B) weren't as combat-oriented as D&D. The older player was disappointed to learn I live a two-hour drive away; he was ready to start playing in my Traveller game on a regular basis. He said he's trying to get his gaming group to play Spycraft, but the others have been resistant.
I know I had a lot of fun. As soon as the demo ended, I had to pack my stuff up, grab something quick to eat, then drive home two hours. But I was in such a good mood, the trip home just flew by in no time. I'm already thinking about running a T20 game at a larger gaming convention.
As I said, I had never run a game for people I did not know before. So I was a little concerned about what to do. I didn't want the players who had signed up to have a negative experience and think "That game sucks. I never want to play it again." But I wanted to give them a representative experience of what Traveller is, and try to make it fun so they might want to play it in the future.
My biggest problem was an adventure to run. I quickly decided my first idea, mentioned in the other thread linked above, had some merit, but wasn't exactly the way to go. After some good advice from Flynn and Ron Vutpakdi, I decided to make some changes in my adventure idea. I streamlined things, to keep it simple, and to give them a mixture of role-playing and action/combat. I also decided that, in keep with the focus of T20, I would set the adventure in the Gateway Domain, specifically the Linkworlds Cluster since I could get lots of free information off the website, and could refer the players to it if they wanted more info after the demo.
I went with a pretty standard adventure idea: starship crew needing to make some extra cash takes on a shady job. I decided to make the characters the crew of a far trader in the Linkwordls, currently sitting at a starport doing nothing because of a stevedores' strike. No cargo going in or out. They are approached by a patron with a job offer taking place on another world in the Cluster. Basically, there is a scientist working at an secret underground facility who wants to defect to a different company. That company wants to hire some people to get him off planet. I prefer to improvise when I run a game, and basically make the adventure details up on the fly. So I just wrote a brief outline of the adventure, and I didn't do that until the night before I was going to run it, although I had been thinking about it a lot in the time leading up the game day.
For pregenerated characters, I borrowed six characters from the PBEM game I play in that Ron runs, and added a couple of more to round things out. There were six players signed up for the demo, but I wanted to have a couple of extras just in case.
When I got to the game day, there were more people overall than I was expecting -- I think the final count was 50. The room was all open, and there were plenty of tables. In fact, most of the groups were using two tables, which I was happy about because I have some to-scale 25mm ship deckplans as well as floorplans for an underground research facility I wanted to use with miniatures.
About 20 minutes before my demo was to start, I found four of the players already waiting. Three were college students, the other was older -- I'm not sure of his age, but he was probably in his 30s. The older player was the only one who had played Traveller before -- once, when he was 9, the father of a friend had run a CT game for them. He said it was basically them running around on the levels of a big, Death Star-like outpost.
I had just finished a D&D game and was hungry, so I gave them the pregenerated characters so they could pick who they wanted to be, and went to the 7-11 next door to get something to eat and drink. When I got back, we hadn't picked up any more players -- two of the people who had signed up to play never showed, and I was a little bummed about that. A GM who was about to start another game at another table (not sure what it was, some type of D&D game) came around making a last-minute pitch for more players. Seems he had the same problem I did -- people signed up for the game, then didn't show. He only had three players show up, and was worried the party wouldn't survive the adventure because he had built all of the encounters expecting there to be 8 players. That's another reason I like to improvise when I'm running a game rather than plan it out ahead of time -- it's a lot easier to scale the encounters to the party.
Anyway, I was a little peeved that this guy was coming around trying to steal some of my players for his game. One of the college students said he was interested in playing that other game, but he was already here at the Traveller game and he would stay at the table. That made me feel good. Also, after the other GM left, one of his players -- another college student, I think -- came over and asked me, "Are you running the Traveller game?" I told her yes. "If our game doesn't make, can me and my friend come play in your game?" I told her certainly, we had plenty of room. Then she asks, "Can your character still die when it's being generated?" I explained to her, and to my players, that in T20, characters do not die during prior history.
So anyway, we got no more players. But I was sort of glad because with four I knew I could take the time to explain things more in depth and concentrate the adventure on those four characters and keep everyone involved. I kept two of the characters that weren't chosen to use as NPCs on the ship (you have to have an engineer and a co-pilot) and we got started. Since all of them were familiar with d20, they picked things up pretty quickly, which I knew they would. I explained the important differences involved in T20 (the two new abilities, using dex for all combat attacks, two sets of "hit points," how armor works in combat, etc.) and ran a brief example of combat just to show them how it all worked. Then we jumped into the adventure.
And I was pleasantly surprised to see how quickly they started role-playing their characters, and got into things. The older player was really having a good time (he told me later that he doesn't get to play as often as he would like. He plays with several people he works with, but real life keeps intruding on their gaming time). I also was pleased to see that three of the four players had taken my advice that Traveller was a "skills first, combat as a last resort" game to heart. One of the college students seemed anxious to try out the new weapons on his character sheet, but the other players kept him from doing anything rash, so he settled for using as many of his skills as possible.
The adventure ran pretty smooth. Once they had accepted their new job and were leaving to make a jump into another system, I sprang the little ship-trapped-in-gas-giants'-atmosphere scenario from the Linkworlds minicampaign. They were all impressed with the Scout/Courier deckplans and painted minis I broke out. Then they got to the new planet and started making plans to break out the scientist. They're characters were able to meet with the researcher to help plan things. I had the researcher tell them a plan he had thought up, just in case they were stumped for something that would work. But they came up with a better plan, and went with that.
I built up some tension for them by throwing some small roadblocks into the mix, but nothing they couldn't overcome. I let them get away with some things I never would if it were a campaign I was running with my regular group, but this was a demo, so I tried to keep things fun for the players. Anyway, there was a small shootout late in the adventure, then I surprised them with a little rat bastard ref twist that they then quickly turned into a blackmail opportunity for the future, and we wrapped things up five hours after we'd started.
All in all, I think things went pretty well. The players all seemed to enjoy themselves and have a good time. I was glad to learn, in talking with them, that three of the four were looking for games that A) had a more modern setting than D&D and B) weren't as combat-oriented as D&D. The older player was disappointed to learn I live a two-hour drive away; he was ready to start playing in my Traveller game on a regular basis. He said he's trying to get his gaming group to play Spycraft, but the others have been resistant.
I know I had a lot of fun. As soon as the demo ended, I had to pack my stuff up, grab something quick to eat, then drive home two hours. But I was in such a good mood, the trip home just flew by in no time. I'm already thinking about running a T20 game at a larger gaming convention.
