Favourite types of Traveller campaign

[JonMarkHicks]

Hi all - new member here. Long-time Traveller fan from the LBB days but I'm recently getting back into it with the new edition and I'm looking to create a fresh campaign.

I'm always looking for insight and ideas, so I'd like to ask the question: What do you look for in a Traveller campaign, and why? Is it the exploration? Is it the trading? The espionage and political upheavals? Do you just like the combat, or the social conflict, or do you like to mix it up with everything to keep the players/referee on their toes?

I've always been a fan of both exploring and the political side of things, the idea that as the Imperium expands it becomes even more fragile, with new star systems creating new dominions, which in turn creates new power struggles that need to be handled and/or quashed. I used to enjoy getting the players stuck in with the marvels of new discoveries coupled with the threat of new problems and discoveries.

 

[alex_greene]

I like to live vicariously through my characters, who often travel just to see things they had never even imagined before - such as the night sky of a planet right on the tip of the Great Rift, looking down its length, or checking out a ringed planet just to see if it matched the pictures in a book they'd read as a child.
Others aren't interested in the trade game, but they do love collecting interesting cargoes and bringing them to places that need them. To that end, refrigerated food supplies and medicines are always lucrative, but it's more about getting the stayathomes fed and healthy than turning a few creds more.
One bunch of characters I wrote about were a found family of psions, who took off in a modular cutter into interplanetary space, based on faith that they would be picked up by friendly psions (spoiler: they were). Another one I'm writing about is a leader of a sector-spanning cult called Believe, whose cathedral is a 20kt ship sporting unbelievable technology built by the followers.

All of my characters are driven to wander by their faith that there is a better way of living than staying back home, working dead end jobs. So call that a Faith Campaign. But other games focus on the Trade Campaign, the Mercenary Campaign, the Exploration Campaign, and so on. Even a Psion Campaign, where the adventures are even less conventional than the "run around shooting things" kind of adventures Travellers get embroiled in.

I guess you'd find it hard to deploy a Romance Campaign, but it could be doable.

 

[dragon3r]

Two words: Alien Ruins

lol j/k Though exploring weird ruins is always cool. Generally games wind up somewhere between grit and grift, there is an old saying that all traveller games eventually wind up as pirates, and often I have just skipped to that part. Otherwise, start as fixers, or contractors.

 

[Vormaerin]

I've run a lot of different types of Traveller games over the last 40+ years. But the most common is the space version of the A-Team. AKA a crew you hire when you can't solve your problems through normal channels, but you don't want corpses everywhere.

My current campaign is about 50% Leverage, 30% Tomb Raider, and 20% A-Team. The crew is nominally a self employed heist team stealing stuff for themselves, but they do take 'for hire' jobs fairly often.

 

[Sigtrygg]

Two words - bespoke setting.

I have two long running campaigns, the first and longest is a planet of the week sandbox where the characters set off into the unknown regions beyond their pocket empire that had emerged from a Long Night. The PCs have had the opportunity to own their own starship several times but usually end up selling it or giving it away because they can't be bothered with the hassle.

My second longest is a summer only campaign set against the background of my interpretation of Bank's Culture.

The scenarios I set within the "Imperium" use my interpretation of the original Spinward Marches.

I recently, a few months ago, began a new campaign for my family group (wife, daughter, daughter's boyfriend).

It started with Death Station, but I am leading them towards the events of the DNR campaign. I am using stuff stollen from other games with this such ad the Savage Worlds Seven Worlds setting and the Beyond Humanity game.

 

[ross]

Hi all - new member here. Long-time Traveller fan from the LBB days but I'm recently getting back into it with the new edition and I'm looking to create a fresh campaign.

I'm always looking for insight and ideas, so I'd like to ask the question: What do you look for in a Traveller campaign, and why? Is it the exploration? Is it the trading? The espionage and political upheavals? Do you just like the combat, or the social conflict, or do you like to mix it up with everything to keep the players/referee on their toes?

I've always been a fan of both exploring and the political side of things, the idea that as the Imperium expands it becomes even more fragile, with new star systems creating new dominions, which in turn creates new power struggles that need to be handled and/or quashed. I used to enjoy getting the players stuck in with the marvels of new discoveries coupled with the threat of new problems and discoveries.

I don't think it matters, and here's what I mean by that. In my Traveller series (I don't really liked the term campaigns) I let the players decide. The referee can create the setting, the maps, and maybe even the mcguffin, but the players and the characters they generate truly create the series. If the players are mostly scouts who have retired or might be trading in the rugged frontier. That way the players can use the skills and contracts they've developed to help them succeed. If the players are mostly nobles or politically motivated maybe they are assigned as administrative staff of a frontier colony (in the same areas that the scouts series would have taken place). If they are military maybe they are mercenaries guarding some facilities in that area, etcetera. Any of these kind of series can discover alien ruins. Have first contact with some civilization, or some other wrinkles.
Players always drive the action and direction through their characters in my series.
Best of luck!

 

[Ol'Weedy]

I ran a re-contact campaign. Was a home-brew setting, but similar to the idea of a year0/Long night. The player's home world, had just attained J2 technology, and the player's jobs were to re-contact the surrounding worlds and help them back to civilization, or fix their existential problems. Kind of like a Dr Who crew. With guns.
(BTW, if it hasn't already been stated, old Dr Who episodes are gold for mining one off world ideas)

 

[ross]

Hi all - new member here. Long-time Traveller fan from the LBB days but I'm recently getting back into it with the new edition and I'm looking to create a fresh campaign.

I'm always looking for insight and ideas, so I'd like to ask the question: What do you look for in a Traveller campaign, and why? Is it the exploration? Is it the trading? The espionage and political upheavals? Do you just like the combat, or the social conflict, or do you like to mix it up with everything to keep the players/referee on their toes?

I've always been a fan of both exploring and the political side of things, the idea that as the Imperium expands it becomes even more fragile, with new star systems creating new dominions, which in turn creates new power struggles that need to be handled and/or quashed. I used to enjoy getting the players stuck in with the marvels of new discoveries coupled with the threat of new problems and discoveries.

Later to the party... I was actually doing research of my own. The bespoke setting was mentioned and I think that is the true center of any game. How I did it back in the dark ages still is the best way to build a Traveller Series*. The things that I think are most important are setting, style, and starships.

The setting...
Don't overthink it. The setting is preferably as small as 25 hexes square. Whether you use basic Traveller style hexes or some other idea is dependent on the setting as well. The interstellar government, if there is one, is up to the Referee. I have always preferred to randomly develop the setting with a little "English" when things seem to stretch credibility. So if that is a Third Imperium series someplace out on the fringes then you have to put it somewhere. Now Traveller has mapped the stars to death, but that doesn't matter. Put it where you as a group want it, and feel free to eschew 'canon'. One of the most important decisions a referee can make is what equipment is available to the players. I have never liked players starting out heavily armed and armored because it discourages roleplaying.

The style...
Style is some generalizations about the setting. Is it pulpy, gritty, optimistic, or dystopia? one up with a half dozen words or concepts the make it interesting to you as the Referee. My previous series was based on some of the ideas from Hard Times and H. Beam Piper about crumbling society. So my series was Dystopian, political, roguish, non-military series. I even actually asked the players to try to ignore Military Careers except for Scouts. The broad parameters of the setting are the purview of the Referee.

The starships...
Traveller is known for the incredible diversity of the ships presented. From the tiny wedge-shaped Scout Courier to buffered planetoids and pristine spheres. Ships available to the players are generally very small and exceedingly cramped. Crew rules and technical assumptions are vastly larger than that of other Starships in film and fiction. The Referee has complete freedom to change the nature of star-travel, technology, crew, and conflict. Although many of these changes might make the Third Imperium unplayable as you setting, and of course there is nothing wrong with that. Having a set of design and technological tropes for your setting can very much define it.

There's a couple of other things that might come from the referee...
Every series needs a MacGuffin. The Maltese Falcon or the Loc-Nar, or maybe even the Letters of Transit. the MacGuffin keeps the story moving. The villain can be an idea, a shadowy conspiracy, or a non player character. Many games need a villain to keep things tense.

Everything else comes from the players. The connections they generate in character generation, Allies and Enemies, theme, arc, and story come from the characters and not the referee. Too much I think in RPGs the referee develops a huge complex series that completely ignores the characters that the players create. Are they pirates, or are they just desperate? Are the exploring, or are they running away? These are things the players should decide and the Referee and the players develop the series together.

*As an aside, I dislike the term "Campaign". It is a holdover from the War Game roots of RPGs. I prefer the term series, referencing the anime idea that each season is a discrete thing. It has a beginning, middle, and an end. After all you might get cancelled after one season, or you might have multiple seasons.

One man's opinion, your mileage my vary...

 

[Sigtrygg]

Talk to the players - what sort of game are they expecting to play in...

 

[TrippyHippy]

The easiest thing to get into is a ‘picaresque’ style, free-tradin’ & heist-of-the-week, sandboxy game. To a degree, Pirates of Drinax runs with this idea but puts a meta-narrative arc around it, but there is plenty of scope to brazenly ignore all that and just build up an illegal network.

I think the Doctor Who analysis above is quite right, and others have always pointed to the similarity between Firefly/Serenity and Traveller, although my go-to sci-fi source at the moment is Blake’s 7. You could also just run it like Guardians of the Galaxy or some of the spin off Star Wars shows.

If you want something less pulp action-esque, then getting a few scouts/scientists on board a Scout ship (as per the Explorer’s edition) does work, especially if you treat it like a sandbox again and make copious use of randomised tables to generate planets, encounters and so on. It is very easy to run this, although the lack of meta-narrative arc sometimes might curtail longer term interest. Similarly, a sandboxy Mercenary game might run well if you are into that type of game (and possibly like to mix it with some skirmish level miniatures games, I suspect).

Epic campaigns of the nature of Secrets of the Ancients also work easily enough, although they are more scripted. The big epics like Deepnight Revelations take a lot more work, although you can break it down by using Troupe-style play. However, you may get frustrated that campaigns like that are built for sustained long term play (of years) and you really need a stable group to pull that off.

 

[Saladman]

My favorite in principle remains the fairly typical set up of party have/are crew of a ship, do jobs both requiring a ship and not in between bouts of trading missions (the last usually time skipped or handled between sessions).

But, having already done that, recently I've had a couple of ideas for street level or Dumarest level Traveller adventures. So probably set somewhere on one planet or station at first, party would start with gear at the level of handguns or tools but no ship or heavier weapons or armor.

With time to flesh out those adventures I'd like to run them some day. But I can see I'd want to tell the players the deal in the game pitch, and allow for advancement by gear and credits after each adventure, not try to keep them completely broke and hungry for a whole campaign.

 

[Seffix]

I try to see where my players want their characters to go (both in the astrographic and character story sense), and then help the mayhem* ensue.

*Nature of mayhem varies a lot depending on the nature of players.

 

[Galadrion]

As usual, I seem to run counter to the prevailing trends. Mostly trade, some exploration, and the occasional anti-piracy. (Closest I've every really come to a piracy campaign was a sustained Letter of Marque situation where the targets were pirates. I tend to be fairly law-abiding and run with mostly the same.) Politics doesn't really interest me (actually, it goes a bit farther than that, but let's try to keep the language family-friendly...), and criminal activity in general... well, I don't tend to succeed very well with that. (The dice seem to actively take the side of law enforcement. Even when the odds say they shouldn't. I can take a hint.)

 

[alex_greene]

Nandi: "If they've got guns and brains at all ..."
Inara: "They have guns ..."
My campaigns tend to run to mysteries, rather than shoot-outs or crime. My Traveller characters, and I have chargenned many of them living in the same time stream, scattered about Charted Space, are the sort fo seek out a nice planet somewhere, sit down in some isolated wilderness, and gaze up at the stars.
In the games I run, there are few interruptions by people, and no sudden attacks by hostile fauna requiring use of Gun Combat skill. My characters are philosophical types. One of them, Ahrain Windspeaker, is a budding vlogger - a Truther, gallavanting about the galaxy with a ship full of Believers. Deep down, Ahrain is searching for her mother, whom she believes to be a scout.
Another one has left Tureded with their found family of psions and disappeared off the face of the Spinward Marches after a faction of anti-psions became militant nazis and attempted a psion pogrom as part of their failed attempt to seize power on a populist platform.
One of my earliest characters was last seen on a planet in the star system on the very tip of The Claw, looking right down the Great Rift.
So the themes are exploration, investigation, and any excuse to get space beneath your feet and travel.

 

[MonkeyX]

Blake’s 7 is very much an inspiration for my Traveller game.

 

[ross]

Blake’s 7 is very much an inspiration for my Traveller game.

Three cheers for Blake's 7!

 

[Seffix]

In the games I run, there are few interruptions by people, and no sudden attacks by hostile fauna requiring use of Gun Combat skill. My characters are philosophical types. One of them, Ahrain Windspeaker, is a budding vlogger - a Truther, gallavanting about the galaxy with a ship full of Believers. Deep down, Ahrain is searching for her mother, whom she believes to be a scout.

My most active campaign is about a human journalist/cook and a vargr food scientist from Emerald hopping about the Spinward Marches. I describe it as Gilmore Girls meets No Reservations in spaaaace.