What Would You Like For A Convention Adventure?

[Jeff M. Hopper]

I'm organizing now for conventions in both Feb and Apr, I will be running Traveller games at both and I am looking for suggestions. My question to all of you is this - What kind of adventure have you always wanted to play in at a convention?

 

[robject]

I'm organizing now for conventions in both Feb and Apr, I will be running Traveller games at both and I am looking for suggestions. My question to all of you is this - What kind of adventure have you always wanted to play in at a convention?

For quick newbie stuff: a boarding action -- say, being boarded by vargr pirates.

For seasoned veteran stuff: an assault on a small base (again, a vargr corsair base is handy). That gives players the opportunity to show off a variety of possible skill sets, including stealth, reconnaissance, sniper, demolitions, unarmed combat, and psionics.

My three players ran through the latter in about eight hours, but I also made them extract themselves from drop capsules and hike across the wastelands to get there, and afterwards I made them find their own means of escape. In other words, it was two preliminary scenarios followed by the real deal followed by another small scenario.

 

[Spinward Scout]

The Patron Encounter "Lady in white robes" from The Traveller Book/76 Patrons would make a good rescue op.

 

[mike wightman]

I'd just use Death Station. Print out the deck plans as large as possible, laminate them. Have miniatures available.

 

[Garyius2003]

Annic Nova with a different lay-out and an opposing boarding party in place of the disease threat and computer problems (which dragged on and on and on).

Make standard injections for all services grant immunity to the disease, but the medic in the party takes half the adventure to get that answer from the TL 14 med kit.

 

[rancke]

At least two ways to achieve the goals of the adventure, the hard way (lots of fighting) and the smart way (bypass most or all fighting).

(In a fantasy adventure I would add a third option, the magic way, but Traveller psionics being so limited, I wouldn't suggest that for a Traveller adventure. Perhaps 'the ultra-tech way', using nifty devices to solve problems?)


Hans

 

[leo knight]

Whatever scenario you pick, please be sure to have a clear goal for the PCs, and make sure the characters' skills are relevant to the adventure. Also, the characters should be able to affect the situation in a proactive manner.

I've come across the term "deprotagonization", or leading players to feel their characters' actions cause no change. My worst convention experience had this in spades. We began already infiltrated into a mercenary/ terrorist training camp, posing as recruits. The goal, such as it was, seemed straightforward at first, but proved maddeningly vague. We had to investigate and find the leaders of this group. The referee told us our characters to wait for an NPC ship to arrive. The referee spent at least half an hour describing the tedium of the wait, and the hazing and verbal abuse we received from mercs at the camp. In the interim, nothing we did had any effect. At least half the characters had mostly space skills, with no space ship present. Break into an office? Chat up a low level merc? Try to hack a computer? every attempt was met with, "You can't do that. You have to wait for the ship". Oy.

One of the best scenarios came from two friends of mine. It was D&D. A druid had gone over to the dark side, and had fortified his grove with all sorts of summoned and magically altered creatures. They had a clear goal: go in and kill him. They introduced time pressure, both in the scenario (the druid was going to cast one of those pesky world-ending spells) and real world, with a 3 hour limit to play. They stated the goal, and had a relatively straight path to it. They also included red herrings, such as non-threatening animals, rabbits, bears, etc. and side encounters, including treasure, to lure players off the path. If the players stayed focused on the goal, they had plenty of time to complete the mission. If they dallied, they might run out of time. They also made sure that each PC had at least one encounter their skills were useful for: e.g. traps for the thief, etc.

 

[Thanos]

All depends on what your objective in running the campaign is. Just for laughs? Run what ever will entertain you. If you are looking to draw in new players, you (I would think) need to run a rules set for something readily availble like T5 or Moongoose. That would also help determin what modual you pick.

 

[Jeff M. Hopper]

OK, this is for a convention. So I will have to deal with the limits of convention play which is typically time, like a 4 hour or 5 hour slot. This doesn't allow for a lot of dallying around, so the style tends to be railroad.

I've got specific demo adventures set up for Mongoose Traveller with copies of Book 0 as handouts (One I ran last time was how I met the good guys at Gypsy Knights Games). I'm still thinking about running Traveller5 because to show off its best points would require much more time than is allowed.

I am looking for adventure ideas. Those adventures that you have always wanted to be in as a Player, but were never offered. The one-shots that you wish somebody would run, but haven't.

 

[flykiller]

ine givar terrorists hold a full upper-class passenger liner. imperial marines assault to rescue.

 

[Jeff M. Hopper]

I'd just use Death Station. Print out the deck plans as large as possible, laminate them. Have miniatures available.

Annic Nova with a different lay-out and an opposing boarding party in place of the disease threat and computer problems (which dragged on and on and on).

Make standard injections for all services grant immunity to the disease, but the medic in the party takes half the adventure to get that answer from the TL 14 med kit.

I'm liking both of these ideas, but would be tempted to include Chamax in either of them....

 

[mike wightman]

Th beauty of the Death Station adventure is that you can make the threat on board anything you like, you don't have to stick to what is in the book.

Who's to say the scientists on board weren't studying chamax...

I'v had everything from killer robots to Cthulhu beasties - the really memorable games are the ones where the players own paranoia and fears were much worse than the actual threat

I wouldn't go with a military skirmish game - Traveller combat can be a bit "deadly". Problem solving, the threat of violence, the timer in the background are all good for suspense and adventure.

 

[flykiller]

I wouldn't go with a military skirmish game - Traveller combat can be a bit "deadly". Problem solving, the threat of violence, the timer in the background are all good for suspense and adventure.

deadly combat in a highly-restricted friendly-occupied AO presents a good level of problem solving, threat of violence, and time pressure.

in any case some would welcome a full-on shoot-'em-up.

 

[robject]

The beauty of the Death Station adventure is that you can make the threat on board anything you like, you don't have to stick to what is in the book.

Who's to say the scientists on board weren't studying chamax...

This. I ran a game like that - SuSAG experiments-gone-wrong with chamax bugs in a 30 kiloton research vessel. That was fun.

 

[Duke Craig]

tournament game synopsis

Following is a synopsis of a tournament game that I obtained at an open game day during the 80’s. It is a variant of the mole. GMs would need to design and map a base and come up with victory conditions for a tournament game.

PCs are hapless employees of a ruthless mining megacorp. They are situated on a small airless world in a SAROB (survey & astronomical research and observation base). The world is about to be swallowed up in 48-72 hours by a rogue mini black hole moving through the system.

The megacorp needs a team there to be able to say that they didn’t know about the black hole so they can claim insurance.

PCs include an astronomer, a vargr corsair (perhaps NPC), a station administrator, a security officer, a maintenance tech, and a surveyor/vehicle driver. Make them really amateurish with maximum skill level of 2 or 3 in their respective trades but give them enough skills like Demo and Computer etc. to get the job done (maybe). The vargr corsair has actually been employed by the megacorp to sabotage the station landing pad to explode when the supply craft arrives in 24-48 hours and has a launch hidden behind a mountain range far from the base to escape. Perhaps surveying might find the launch. The roles of the others are more obvious.

Additionally the base computer goes insane and starts shooting people with its beefed up security cameras become laser pistol. Initially the computer works fine but it starts to behave erratically and just before the black hole swallows the world it goes insane and starts shooting.

Let the PCs fight and squabble amongst themselves while they should be doing astronomy and base maintenance. They may work together to find the bomb and the black hole and defeat the computer and the saboteur and try to get off the planet.


Thanks for reading. Enjoy!

 

[Timerover51]

My recommendation is that if you have the time, prepare three short adventures, each with a different focus. Perhaps one combat oriented, one travel oriented, and one mystery oriented. For some ideas, you might want to think about an abbreviated Chamax Horde adventure for combat if your players are so inclined to that, with either something like Annic Nova or Death Station for the mystery one. For the travel or more problem-solving one, something like Mission to Mithril or Across the Bright Face, with some NPC competition for the Mithril-like adventure.

That would give you the ability to somewhat tailor the adventure to what your players are most interested in.