What's going on in your SOLO?

[Clone95]

What it says on the tin. Your one-stop-shop for discussion of events in your Cepheus SOLO campaign.

I'm currently trialing it with 2300AD, testing out a military campaign in the Ukrainian Continent of Aurore.

The PCs are proto-Marine Raiders as written by D Hebditch on Etranger, part of that 1st Marine Special Forces Company that'll eventually become 1st Raiders.

They've made a paradrop into Ukrainian Aurore, operating in the 'Purple Zone' ahead of amphibious landings circling the Coldpole's hyperglacier, just prior to the Second Kafer War's attack on Hochbaden. PCs are a Squad-sized formation of US Marines initially lead by SGT Mike Abernathy, but he decided on a Shaky/Dangerous plan to draw off a Kafer Deathsled from a friendly platoon and not only failed his tactics roll for a bonus, but also failed the plan AND got himself killed on a death consequence roll.

I replenished the team with some stragglers from 1st Platoon, mostly to get back up to 6 PCs. I find the system naturally gravitates to having 6 PCs, so you can roll 1D for who reacts or who gets injured/dead.

 

[sfchbryan]

Nothing yet - just got it last night.

We'll see what happens this weekend.

 

[Mithras]

When I wrote the SOLO 'minigames' I used a couple of different settings: my favourite was what I called "The Neutral Zone"' that piece of space between Zhodani and The Third Imperium in the Spinward Marches with a scatter of non-aligned worlds, such as Zenopit and Arden. It was just after the Fourth Frontier War and had a real anti-Bellum, Firefly feel about it. I could use the war to create all kinds of Stories, from lost ships to rumours of massacres, Zhodani spies, and experimental weapons.

 

[Adam Dray]

Revelation

WE make ourselves a place apart
Behind light words that tease and flout,
But oh, the agitated heart
Till someone find us really out.

’Tis pity if the case require
(Or so we say) that in the end
We speak the literal to inspire
The understanding of a friend.

But so with all, from babes that play
At hide-and-seek to God afar,
So all who hide too well away
Must speak and tell us where they are.

-- Robert Frost

(I love that people need a discussion thread for their SOLO play.)

 

[setimike]

Clement Sector

I have some ideas to put together a collection of related SOLO adventures in John Watts' Clement Sector, based around the Dade subsector.

An exploration mission, and a merchant adventure that sometimes provides support/transportation/resupply for the exploration mission.

 

[Clone95]

I have some ideas to put together a collection of related SOLO adventures in John Watts' Clement Sector, based around the Dade subsector.

An exploration mission, and a merchant adventure that sometimes provides support/transportation/resupply for the exploration mission.

I think the key with any supplements or errata for SOLO should be to create more Tell Me d6 or Random Roll tables and tailored writing rather than formed adventures. Cepheus is more like an 'Adventure Engine' in that regard, since a whole adventure in regular tabletop might be a Plan and a few skill rolls.

 

[Reban]

I think the key with any supplements or errata for SOLO should be to create more Tell Me d6 or Random Roll tables and tailored writing rather than formed adventures.

This was one of the things that appealed to me when i read through SOLO; the tables are written with a bias towards the small ship universe, but its easy to extract those tables and write new ones tailored for my universe.

I assume it might be possible to write SOLO expansions based on published campaign settings in this way.

 

[setimike]

I think the key with any supplements or errata for SOLO should be to create more Tell Me d6 or Random Roll tables and tailored writing rather than formed adventures. Cepheus is more like an 'Adventure Engine' in that regard, since a whole adventure in regular tabletop might be a Plan and a few skill rolls.

Whoops, sorry, I didn't mean to imply I was making adventures for publication, just, the stories I was coming up with for "my campaign".

 

[Kilgs]

I've been using SOLO to playtest my Silhouette hack of Traveller. It's a great product! I have also scoured the web and sources to try and put together a master hack of cool Patron tables, adventure seeds and such... each product comes so close... yet is incomplete. SOLO may be light but it's consistent. I spent a weekend trying to fix Campaign Supplement 9 and/or injecting some of its tables into SOLO and about lost my head...

CURRENT PLAYTESTS (All in Glimmerdrift/993 IY)

Far Trader-
-Worked well but focus was way too much on mercantile. Not a SOLO issue but because, duh, it's a far trader campaign. It was fun but scrambling for money made it less likely that the Travellers would pick up fun odd jobs. Main reason was to test the Merchant Prince mechanics in conjunction with Silhouette hack. Worked like a charm. Used MP for commercial activities and SOLO for adventures/random events.

Scout Trader
-So I switched to a retired Scout. No mortgage and minimal cargo space although with the new Mongoose HG, they can actually hold a decent amount of cargo. The group has only made it a few months and now has enough capital that they can kinda coast and look for odd jobs.

Bounty Hunters
-Decided to test out the Mongoose Bounty Hunting system from Agent... totally broken. Completely, untested, broken.

PLANNING
-Bounty Hunters-
I've decided to hack a bunch of SWN mechanics for bounty-hunting. It's pretty narrative but allows for SOLO play. It does require additional mechanics though so not sure if they're balanced or not. I'll be starting this one up soon and running through it. (Note, this would be a rerun of the aforementioned team since I liked them!)

-Criminal/Smuggler/Bounty Hunters-
The aforementioned idea spawned from this group. I thought it might be fun to play SOLO with a group of bad guys. They were originally going to take all kinds of jobs including bounty hunting (for bad guys). In working on the bounty hunting idea, I decided to spend more time on it and (as noted above) started working out mechanics... got sidetracked.

 

[Nathan Brazil]

I am thinking of doing the journey of the ISS Talon as mentioned in Agent of the Imperium.

The Imperium is a different place in 426 and it will be interesting to play with the limitations placed by having a TL D 40K dTon J-5 Scout Cruiser.

Yes, that's right. Capital itself is TL D at this time and it is a J-5 cruiser (pg 51).

 

[doomhunk]

Revived from Low Berth after a Long Silence

Haven't played anything much in a while, and especially have not been playing Traveller. I hankered after my old Mythic rules which had been stored carefully somewhere I couldn't find them. Not sure how I ended up stumbling upon Cepheus and SOLO, but thank the stars that I did

So I am just about to decide on my setting and era, and gen the basics of a SOLO campaign story. Exciting times!

 

[egor045]

I've been using SOLO to test out a myTU pair of subsectors with a trader campaign. It's currently kind of on hiatus while I work on some cargogen and planet/system tooling (T5 cargogen vs CT LBB2 vs Cepheus vs CT Merchant Prince; T5 worldgen vs CT LBB6 vs MT WBH). I'll be making the tooling APIs generally available once they're a bit further developed.

I've been having as much fun with the characters as I have with the game mechanics. I put some effort into the crew's personalities and that gave me the impetus to make notes of the dialogues. I now have a slacker captain who didn't want to give up starfaring, an engineer with a chip on her shoulder, a cargo officer/steward who loves cooking and punching people and a gunner with a murky past and a peculiar family situation. I also have a bunch of worlds with a reasonable degree of detail.