We have had a lot of questions regarding the whereabouts of the Traveller Campaign Guide. Originally slated for a release earlier this year, it mysteriously disappeared from the schedule altogether. So, what has happened to it?
I thought this would be a good time to examine an area of games design/development and reveal where this book is right now.
The premise of the Campaign Guide was simple - it should be a fairly large tome designed to spark the imagination of a Traveller referee and basically make his life easier when running a game. So, lots of tables to spark ideas, a few patrons, maybe some maps, and hey presto! One Campaign Guide, done and dusted.
Then the Big Idea came along. This was already planned to be a fairly large book (around 200 pages), so why not take it to the logical conclusion?
The idea of Automatic and Semi-automatic Campaigns came into view.
The premise for an Automatic Campaign is this; a Traveller referee, with no prepared notes at all, should be able to run, not just a seamless session, but a seamless campaign. All actions the players take on board would be covered by the Automatic Campaign system, with the referee effectively managing things. It would cover all the 'standard' Traveller bases, such as trading, encounters, jobs, and so forth. The referee would simply need to carry with him the main rulebook, the Campaign Guide, and have a sector handy (possibly meaning a third book, the Spinward Marches or Reft Sector, say). Nothing else would be required but, for greater variation, the Campaign Guide would also be useable with Traders & Gunboats, 760 Patrons, 1,001 Characters (actually, a really good book for this kind of campaign), and so forth. Ultimately, this could be used as the basis for a solo campaign, if required.
Using these resources, a referee will be able to tell the platyers exactly what other ships they see when they jump in system. He will be able to relate what facilities, services and shops are available at the starport. If the players decide to deal with the shady patron that was quickly generated, the referee will have pretty much the full scenario laid out before him (including maps and NPCs), but he will need absolutely nothing pre-prepared. You can go a long, long way on just this system and it means you can just dive into Traveller one evening, even if the referee is completely unprepared.
The Semi-automatic Campaign (which is what I guess most people will use) has a similar structure, but allows for the referee to inject more of his own personality into the camapign. At its most basic form, a Semi-automatic Campaign will run like its Automatic cousin but when an encounter or patron is generated, the referee can leap in with an adventure he has prepared.
This allows the referee to conduct a campaign with absolutely minimum stress, running adventures when he has had time to prepare, but still having enough material for many enjoyable evenings if Real Life has intruded. He can literally turn up to a long-running campaign with no notes or prep and run games, until he has enough time to get back into the saddle on the creative side.
Of course, I imagine there will be plenty of players who will pick and choose from the Campaign Guide's systems to plug into their own games as they see fit. And that is cool too!
That, then, is the grand idea for the Campaign Guide and, as you can see, it has somewhat spiralled out of the original brief! This, in turn, delays things as other projects take precedence while we go back to the drawing board and figure out exactly how to go about the Big Idea. However, you should still see it towards the end of 2010 or thereabouts.
Bummer.
