1/3 : How to 1) establish recurring characters in a campaign and 2) have PCs put down roots?

IanBruntlett

Emperor Mongoose
This is the first of 3 questions I have about running a Traveller campaign rather than disjointed one off adventures...

1) How to establish recurring characters in a campaign?

2) have PCs put down roots?

I'm finding that difficult, what with the weeks worth of delays for information and people to get from one system to another.

TIA!
 
Assuming you are doing a sandbox style game where the PCs have a ship, I find that the most effective way is to set the PCs in a fairly contained area. Whether that is geographically contained by rifts or a starting set up like The Traveller Adventure, where the PC's ship is subsidized to operate in a general area (saving them oodles of money).

For instance, my campaign is set in the Islands subsectors, which are in the Great Rift. The PCs don't have a jump 4 ship, so they aren't wandering too far afield. It is still a pretty large area (2 subsectors). But that's contained enough that the same organizations are feasibly involved most places they go. And New Home is an obvious "central spot". Some of my recurring characters are roaming about like the PCs and some are in fixed spots the PCs visit repeatedly.

If you are doing a "campaign" in the sense of an Adventure path like Secrets of the Ancients or Pirates of Drinax, then you should build a rationale for your recurring characters into your storyline. They are all chasing you around the galaxy in SoA and you have a home base you return to regularly in PoD.

As far as putting down roots goes, one way is to make their Contacts/Allies etc have roots in a location that makes sense for the PCs to operate out of. Another way is to talk to the players about the kinds of things they are interested in seeing regularly and let them have opportunities to build up a hub location near the kinds of action they want.

Ultimately, it's going to depend on your players though. You can't *make* them stay in one spot or care about any NPCs/locales/storylines. So you need to observe what they get excited about and/or just talk to them. It may be that the idea of a home base never occurred to them.
 
For our game I started the players off with the knowledge that:
A - This was a sandbox game for them to explore any where, any way they wanted to
B - For guidance we were using PoD to give everyone a starting point
C - I told them that I have zero expectations on how they would decide their futures, it was up to character interactions with each other and the Contacts established in Character Discovery

This gave them the comfort to feel each other out as players, establish previous history between the Travellers, and see what they discover that want to build the campaign around. Help out Drinax rebuilding an empire by piracy? by diplomacy? take the Harrier and run with it? Giving them both large overarching themes and small personal Contacts to interact with.

I call character creation Character Discovery because people are discovering who their characters are through the random rolls. Then once we have a group of Travellers work on the Connections going backwards to find out why they know each other, when did they work together in the past, etc. Stepping Stone One for any new player is Character Discovery. Here are some of the interactions the various Travellers have had prior to the start of play in Stepping Stone Two:


We do play by post on this site, then pair it up with FG for rolls as needed as well as occasional live sessions when everyone can get together. Currently spread over all the time zones in North America.
 
For the second part of putting down roots I agree with @Vormaerin that most Travellers will be very happy to have a ship as their place to put down roots on/in.

One of my players rolled up a Lab Ship during Character Discovery. Knowing it would be a weird match for a traditional PoD game they turned it into a keystone of their Career and built the history around it. A Mad Scientist who took her ship through the Fourth Frontier War, visits interdicted systems, fills her ship with researchers and gets co-credit on every paper they publish as a way of paying the bills. Plenty of space for the rest of the Travellers to join in and the ex-military Travellers are flabbergasted at how lax the ship is run and how has she survived this long?

Walking your core starting players through Discovery together can create bonds both in and out of character that will keep people coming back.
 
Similar response.
1) I create a lot of key characters for the players to interact with (primarily as Contacts, Allies, Enemies, Rivals, Patrons). These include Factions and Organizations. These people have lives of their own, so that incentivizes the PCs to either visit or communicate with them.
2) Think of why we establish roots ourselves. I have a couple of starports and space stations that are “in network” and provide highly reduced medical and starcraft repairs, or favorable trade benefits. Many of my PCs end up on the criminal fringe, and that leads to a closed loop as well (that syndicate only works in this subsector or system, and doesn’t tolerate outsiders well). Certain trade goods are only available in certain areas, which provides for another way to set roots. If you have a good contract for delivering Saurian Brandy, why risk it by going somewhere else?
 
Names.

I have a notebook with given names and family names copied from just about every sci fi scenario I own.

Every NPC encountered gats a name and I make a note of them - name, job, reaction to PCs.

When the PCs return to the same location they have a chance to meet them again and again. Over time the players themselves develop the attachments.
 
Last edited:
Similar response.
1) I create a lot of key characters for the players to interact with (primarily as Contacts, Allies, Enemies, Rivals, Patrons). These include Factions and Organizations. These people have lives of their own, so that incentivizes the PCs to either visit or communicate with them.
2) Think of why we establish roots ourselves. I have a couple of starports and space stations that are “in network” and provide highly reduced medical and starcraft repairs, or favorable trade benefits. Many of my PCs end up on the criminal fringe, and that leads to a closed loop as well (that syndicate only works in this subsector or system, and doesn’t tolerate outsiders well). Certain trade goods are only available in certain areas, which provides for another way to set roots. If you have a good contract for delivering Saurian Brandy, why risk it by going somewhere else?
I should also mention that I use Obsidian.md to track and manage all of these connections. This has lead to some fairly amazingly deep connections and matrices.
 
Names.

I have a notebook with given names and family names copied from just about every sci fi scenario I own.

Every NPC encountered gats a name and I make a not of them - name, job, reaction to PCs.
I've got a wiki setup for an ongoing D&D game and have an NPC section on that I add to as we encounter new NPC's.
 
17067.png


Give them something to get attached to.
 
Random ideas to root players and keep NPCs in the loop:

  • Start the PCs near families or allies (perhaps those from character creation) . If they come under threat or need taking care of, PCs might want to stay around.
  • Have various official blockades that restrict movement (the new Frontier War would be good excuse)
  • Have their current world get involved in a civil war or some other disaster that limits movement.
  • If they have their own ship, have it temporarily 'borrowed' and make it their quest to find it which keeps them in one area.
  • Without money they won't be travelling far. You can get tough and mean with cash rewards or find other ways to drain it.
  • Develop extensive stories that takes ages to solve (Dungeons, if you will) and will keep them rooted.
  • Set the campaign (as others said already) in an isolated region or even a singular isolated world or moon.
  • Have them 'find' (or capture from villains) an empty base that really is superb as a base of operations.
  • NPCs can still be featured even over delayed "email" messages. They might still get job offers, requests for help, and updates to keep them in contact. Not all jobs are "must do now".
  • Have them come to the aid of a local community that is in dire straights (the episode of Firefly where the blockade and defend the house of ill repute, or the plot of Seven Samurai) that might make them care about the people they save, and those people might persuade the PCs to stay around and can offer them more work.
  • If you are in a more scientific type of campaign, they could get involved in a major project that involves them going about the are to collect various random 'ingredients' or equipment.
  • Give them an amazing patron who only gives jobs locally, but is generous, kind, and can offer tech or something as a reward that is hard for them to get hold of normally.
  • Have them actually join a group larger than themselves that might provide a base and jobs that will keep them local. For example, a pirate gang, a local militia, a merchant corporation, a search & rescue team. These can all provide multiple ongoing NPCs.
  • Set the campaign on a huge generation or research vessel. The ship is their world.
  • Set the campaign as a new world colony type (either from the start or have this happen later by design or choice or accident), where survival is not easy and they have to build up their community and base.

The actual name of the this game suggests movement, but I know that when starting out, it can be overwhelming for the GM and players if they just Jump every 5 minutes. It is easy for players to just abandon your beautifully laid plans, either on purpose or by chance. So, I agree, keeping them in an area for a while is a good way to make it more fun for all. Some of the ideas above enforce this, but there are only so many times this can be done. Ultimately, the players need motivation to stay around. It is your job to supply that motivation.

Luckily, Traveller is so versatile that you needn't even play the 4-men-in-a-ship type of game, as per some of my suggestions above. I am currently running a campaign in which all the players are barbarians on a backwater world. Not a gun or ship in sight yet...
 
If you haven't looked at the Mythic GME system, it has a section on setting up recurring characters and threads which might be helpful for your needs. It's designed for solo play, but can work well to help steer players back into having to deal with recurring characters and situations without you having to "plan out" who you want them to encounter.
 
[*]Start the PCs near families or allies (perhaps those from character creation) . If they come under threat or need taking care of, PCs might want to stay around.

I strongly advise against this one. Yes, some GMs treat it as a go-to, and the result is that it is the leading cause of brooding loners whose village(planet) was destroyed and family is all dead, because that's the only defense against having it used as a chain-yank in the future.

If you want to involve their family members then it should instead take the form of creating opportunities for the PCs. Sure, those opportunities could be ones that need some care in handling to use effectively (your sibling just happens to be dating someone who works for the corporation that we're trying to infiltrate, etc), but they nevertheless provide additional options rather than limiting them.

That way they're people that the players want to have around, not get away from (or get rid of).
 
It works very well. I have run 2 campaigns where the PCs have old war allies/crew/corporate contacts/ various family not so far away. It gave lots of opportunities for character relationships and nice hooks into various adventures. It sort of extended the character creations process into something ongoing and organic. I am not suggesting it as some kind of control mechanism, that would be a very simplistic view. The OP was asking how to increase ongoing NPC interaction and keep players from straying endlessly. This is one option that I know works for that, It will not suit all people or campaigns.
 
One artificial mechanism was, at some arbitrary level, you gain followers and a freehold.

Which usually meant that you were stuck at some place, defending it, and developing the local economy.

If you are V(i)argr(king), the point is to get followers and a (long) starship.
 
Thank you to all for your replies. I have read the Core Rulebook (2016) quite a few times and produced an extended contents for it (see attached PDF file) which might be of use to some people.

I am currently (slowly) reading High Guard Update 2022.
 

Attachments

Names.

I have a notebook with given names and family names copied from just about every sci fi scenario I own.

Every NPC encountered gats a name and I make a note of them - name, job, reaction to PCs.

When the PCs return to the same location they have a chance to meet them again and again. Over time the players themselves develop the attachments.
That's what I call dedication.
 
Back
Top