(2300AD) The Invasion campaign is here!

[MongooseMatt]

The much long-awaited Invasion campaign for 2300AD has landed!

You can grab your copy of Part One right here: https://www.mongoosepublishing.com/products/invasion-part-i-background-appendices



The French Arm is the most heavily-settled and best-developed segment of humanity’s extra-solar expansion, thanks to the efforts of the ESA member nations.

In 2295, a research station studying the red giant star Arcturus made contact with an unknown starfaring species. Attempts to communicate were fruitless, and the alien flotilla departed the system after a few days.

One year later they returned.

Invasion is a complete campaign covering the war against the alien Kaefers. The Travellers are swept up in this conflict, and find themselves becoming heroes.

Part One of Invasion includes descriptions of all colony worlds on the French Arm, the major outposts, new spacecraft, a compilation of animals and characters, and information on three alien species. Also included is a large section detailing Station Arcture.

All of this supports a campaign that follows the Travellers from humble beginnings as colonists on Aurore caught in the first alien assault, then across worlds of the French Arm. The focus is on the Travellers and the worlds and people they meet, showcasing the horror and heroism of an interstellar war for survival against a mysterious and terrible foe.

 

[ProfGrizzlyJon]

I just want to say "thank you" for your inclusion and integration of the Morale (MRL) stat. This is a key component (IMHO) to accurately capturing the horror and strangeness of Traveller and 2300AD.

 

[Sigtrygg]

Ok, negatives first.
I couldn't disagree with you more. The morale characteristics effectively make Invasion a different game system to Traveller and Traveller:2300. I won't be adopting it. Suggesting its use rather than making it a new core mechanic... If I want to use a game with a stress mechanic to run this then I have Alien, T2k4e, or Mothership... hmm now there is a thought.

Nor will I ever use any word other than Kafer (kaefer actually sounds more like the South African slur when spoken in my accent), I will stick to the original timeline, genders will be swapped back to their original, and some of Colin's more ridiculous politically driven inclusions will be expunged. I buy games for fun, not to be lectured to.

Not a fan of the art, the Kafer in particular lack the fear factor of the cover of the original Kafer sourcebook

PCs will not be rewarded with an entire term of service for one extended scenario, the whole point of the prior career system is that they were doing this sort of stuff in their past, standard XP for what it is worth is all they will get.

Now that I feel better.

It is a much better introduction and far better prelude scenario than I was expecting. I like the premise, the prelude adventure looks like it will be traumatic but great fun to run. I also like the set up for the future, pity the FFW hadn't adopted some of these ideas so that players and referees could feel like they were involved rather than just reading page after page of MJDs FFW after action report... now there is another thought...

so lots of useful stuff, more useful than not and some great ideas.

All in all more positives, I like it.

I am looking forward to part 2

 

[tytalan]

So this is part one of how many parts? And any ideal when the others will be released?

 

[Vormaerin]

I agree about the morale as applied to PCs and the package skills for "campaign points" systems. I'll give them more thought, but neither feels right to me at first glance. I don't have any loyalty to the original version so most of the rest of those negatives don't hit me. I didn't get any lecturing tone, at any rate.

I definitely have a more favorable view of the prelude and the apparent design of the campaign than I do anything put out for FFW. The prelude looks like it would be lots of fun to run and easily adaptable to some other colony invasion scenario one might choose to run in a homebrew. All in all, surprisingly more value in it than I was expecting. Quite pleased.

 

[Arnie1701]

This brings back memories.

 

[ottarrus]

1. We're finally back to calling them the Kafer. Yay.
2. I'm willing to see how the Morale score works out in play before I pass judgement. No matter how many times the writers of 2300 have tried to tell us, many players /fans seem to gloss over the existential threat and fear the Kafer pose to Humanity in 2300. These beings are supposed to evoke feelings our monkey troop ancestors felt when they knew they were being hunted, but everyone... EVERYONE... plays the Kafer like they're just another batch of Vargr or Aslan... a threat, but one that can be dealt with. In 2301, Humanity doesn't know how to deal with the Kafer yet. The Kafer are creatures out of nightmare and rumors follow every one of their attacks, that 'they eat humans' the least of which. All that being said, a Morale score is one mechanic that can illustrate the level of threat the Kafer pose. Again, I'm willing to see how it works at the table before passing judgement on it.
3. The naval battles of Invasion are gonna be a pain the butt using the current 2300 ship combat rules. I really do think that should have been fixed before Invasion came out.
4. I've looked forward to Invasion for awhile. I like MOST of what I've read so far. I'm looking forward to the next volume and I congratulate Colin Dunn on the obvious level of work this required.

 

[Vormaerin]

Players are rarely inclined to accept any threat as existential unless everyone's set down to play a horror game. But I just generally prefer to demonstrate that the monsters are that bad over having a "roll dice to avoid losing control of your character's decisions" mechanic. And I think the prologue gives plenty of opportunity to establish that the kafer are *that* bad between their actions and the reactions of the NPCs.

YMMV.

 

[Vormaerin]

The things I like about 2300 are the detailed worlds that are not all happy ducky and travel friendly, the industrial design of the starships, and the emphasis on surface orbit interface operations. The things I don't like about 2300 are the way it felt like part of GDW's obsession with military RPGs (being linked at the time to Twilight 2000 and the emphasis on the Kafer War in most of the ads I saw) and the whole "The Future is the 19th Century Redux" pseudo-history.

Obviously, the fact that the 2nd meaningful product (after the really excellent Project Bayern) for Mongoose's 2300 is ...the Kafer War... did not thrill me. Doubly so because it's coming in the midst of the barrage of 5FW stuff.

That said, I'll reiterate that I was pleasantly surprised so far. I really, really like the prologue. If book 2 does prove to be a lot of military fanfic, that will fade. But there does seem to be a lot of actual adventures, so hopefully they will be for adventurers and not for soldiers.

 

[CordwainerFish]

GDW's obsession with military RPGs

James Davis Nicoll calls this Chadwickification: the process by which every game Frank Chadwick is involved with gradually becomes a war game.

 

[ottarrus]

Players are rarely inclined to accept any threat as existential unless everyone's set down to play a horror game. But I just generally prefer to demonstrate that the monsters are that bad over having a "roll dice to avoid losing control of your character's decisions" mechanic. And I think the prologue gives plenty of opportunity to establish that the kafer are *that* bad between their actions and the reactions of the NPCs.

YMMV.

There are times in any game where the players are NOT in control of their characters and are deprived of immediate agency. 'Charm spells', 'SAN checks', and yes, morale checks are all occasions where the referee has to impose actions on characters due to situational conditions. This is nothing new. We've talked about this a lot on the board here:
- Soldiers freezing up combat
- Psionic influence on a character
- The psychiatric consequences of being faced with the infinite [that one showed up in The Great Rift]
In 2301, unless a given character is a seriously hardened long-service ground military character, the Kafers present such a threat that it's entirely reasonable for characters to freeze up, flee, or make serious attempts to avoid combat with them. Morale is just a mechanic, an imposed disability on the players that will be mitigated as the characters face their fears. It's perfectly appropriate for the setting of Invasion.

 

[ottarrus]

James Davis Nicoll calls this Chadwickification: the process by which every game Frank Chadwick is involved with gradually becomes a war game.

But let me repeat that veterans were a large slice of GDW's and Traveller's fanbase in 1980. They were marketing to their audience, just like any other IP. I mean, it's not like you're not gonna have a wargame aspect when you're running a war event.

 

[Vormaerin]

There are times in any game where the players are NOT in control of their characters and are deprived of immediate agency. 'Charm spells', 'SAN checks', and yes, morale checks are all occasions where the referee has to impose actions on characters due to situational conditions. This is nothing new. We've talked about this a lot on the board here:
- Soldiers freezing up combat
- Psionic influence on a character
- The psychiatric consequences of being faced with the infinite [that one showed up in The Great Rift]
In 2301, unless a given character is a seriously hardened long-service ground military character, the Kafers present such a threat that it's entirely reasonable for characters to freeze up, flee, or make serious attempts to avoid combat with them. Morale is just a mechanic, an imposed disability on the players that will be mitigated as the characters face their fears. It's perfectly appropriate for the setting of Invasion.

Feel free to use it then. I don't find any of those mechanics particularly interesting. I prefer to make the Kafers so scary that my players choose to have their characters run away than go "eh, Joe, you are out of the combat because you rolled snake eyes. Wanna pick up the pizza? It should be ready now." To each his own.

 

[Vormaerin]

But let me repeat that veterans were a large slice of GDW's and Traveller's fanbase in 1980. They were marketing to their audience, just like any other IP. I mean, it's not like you're not gonna have a wargame aspect when you're running a war event.

OR.... veterans were a large slice of their audience because they made all their RPGs into wargames so folks who weren't into military sci fi didn't stick around. Who can say?

No one I know ever used a Mercenary ticket or found the 5FW or the Rebellion fun to play as a RPG. We all played Invasion: Earth and ASL and all kinds of miniatures wargames, but didn't want that in our RPGs. Obviously, there were people who liked that stuff. Perhaps it was because I was a teen in the late 70s/early 80s. So my friends and fellow club members were high school and college students during the CT era.

 

[collins355]

OR.... veterans were a large slice of their audience because they made all their RPGs into wargames so folks who weren't into military sci fi didn't stick around. Who can say?

No one I know ever used a Mercenary ticket or found the 5FW or the Rebellion fun to play as a RPG. We all played Invasion: Earth and ASL and all kinds of miniatures wargames, but didn't want that in our RPGs. Obviously, there were people who liked that stuff. Perhaps it was because I was a teen in the late 70s/early 80s. So my friends and fellow club members were high school and college students during the CT era.

Just to show that one swallow does not make a summer...

...we played numerous military-oriented Traveller RPG games and campaigns in our group of teens in the early 1980s. We played the whole of Adventure 7: Broadsword. We ran a few of the Book 4 tickets - I especially remember the Porozlo one, and the one where you are escorting a religious group through badlands.
Of course, we also played The Traveller Adventure and ran a tramp freighter through the Marches.

I personally don't find trade-oriented adventures or scout-oriented adventures particularly exciting, but I don't diss them or call for them not to be published.

 

[Condottiere]

Dungeons and Dragons originated as a wargame.

Militarized adventures in science fiction appears to be a popular aspect.

 

[ottarrus]

I remember my friends and I playing Broadsword and the JTAS adventure Soft Berth. Part of that was, of course, the Starship Troopers and Jerry Pournelle influence. It was fun to play with the big guns for a change. But our ref was an adult [we were teens] and made sure that command decisions were part of play and never let it get it into 'Duke Nukem' territory.
In one situation, we were forced to order one of our battle-dressed fusion gunners to hold off an assault in order to get a mixed batch of troops and civilians out of the area. The player fought them until he was nearly overrun and then detonated his BD suit to prevent the Zhos from capturing his armor and weapon. A very Rico's Roughnecks moment.
Later on, I played the troops leader on a Broadsword that hired out as a starmerc outfit. We did have a squad of profors troops, but used them to board pirate ships rather than merc tickets. That's how our party spent the 5FW.

 

[Sigtrygg]

James Davis Nicoll calls this Chadwickification: the process by which every game Frank Chadwick is involved with gradually becomes a war game.

I call is a wargames company doing what a wargames company does - make wargames. The vast bulk of GDW output was wargames.

 

[Sigtrygg]

There are times in any game where the players are NOT in control of their characters and are deprived of immediate agency. 'Charm spells', 'SAN checks', and yes, morale checks are all occasions where the referee has to impose actions on characters due to situational conditions. This is nothing new. We've talked about this a lot on the board here:
- Soldiers freezing up combat
- Psionic influence on a character
- The psychiatric consequences of being faced with the infinite [that one showed up in The Great Rift]
In 2301, unless a given character is a seriously hardened long-service ground military character, the Kafers present such a threat that it's entirely reasonable for characters to freeze up, flee, or make serious attempts to avoid combat with them. Morale is just a mechanic, an imposed disability on the players that will be mitigated as the characters face their fears. It's perfectly appropriate for the setting of Invasion.

But every player character is John Wick mixed with Ethan Hunt and a touch of Jack Reacher thrown in.

More seriously the prelude says you generate prior history for your character with the last term being colonist, so having prior service in the military is possible.

As I said, having morale as a core stat changes the game from T:2300 to Invasion, and I have games that are better designed to incorporate such rules - Alien, T2k4e, Mothership...

 

[ottarrus]

But every player character is John Wick mixed with Ethan Hunt and a touch of Jack Reacher thrown in.

More seriously the prelude says you generate prior history for your character with the last term being colonist, so having prior service in the military is possible.

As I said, having morale as a core stat changes the game from T:2300 to Invasion.

What I would do with Glorysky is fiddle with the Morale success thresholds a bit.
Even ground military characters are liable to panic during the initial adventures. As the characters get more accustomed to combat and more sure of themselves, the threshold decreases as their confidence grows. But I definitely want the first time the whole party keeps their cool against a determined Kafer attack to be a 'Hell yeah, we did it!' moment.
The thing that is important here is that Kafer have no 'quit' in them. Once they commit to combat and smarten up, they go until they don't have any more blood to leak. The only reason a Kafer retreats is because they want you deeper in the kill box. I want characters to fear that level of commitment.
To quote from 1997's Starship Troopers,
"Don't like it? You disapprove? Well, too bad. We're in this for species, boys and girls. It's simple numbers. They have more. And every day I have to make decisions that send people like you to their deaths." - - Col. Carl Jenkins, Military Intelligence