Fifth Frontier War: How's your war going?

[MongooseMatt]

Abandoning the "your players can make a difference!" approach and adopting the Dragonlance method

But that is... not what we are doing.

There is no set ending that we are headed towards. At all. What happens in the adventures released will have an effect. We have never deviated from this.

In general, in the early part of the war, Travellers are placed in more minor areas and their actions can have more minor effects - but those can snowball later on. It is about planting seeds. Tilting the balance towards one side or the other on a backwater world may just seem to be a mark on a map, but when one fleet later has to dedicate fleet resources that it had planned to send elsewhere to take advantage of or shore up that world... that has an effect on the big picture.

That said, there have already been some fairly major points that Travellers can alter. Opening Moves springs to mind and, if this is the sort of thing you want to feature in your games, then by the Iridium Throne, keep an eye out for Favourites at Court...

As an aside, someone mentioned wanting to keep track of fleet positions and resources on the strategic side. This was never going to happen. That is not an RPG. Now, it could happen at some later point, either as a boardgame or video game maybe, but the whole point of this series is to strap your players into the front seats of the war where they will see what is happening and, yes, begin to alter things.

 

[Sigtrygg]

As I said on another thread I have been getting into Kreigsspeil of late.

It strikes me that the FFW wargame could be run along those lines. each side has their map and knowledge of their units.

The main map is under the control of the referee who keeps track of movement, plotted movement and interactions.

These are revealed on the main map as the game progresses and the conflict in contested hexes resolved.

 

[MongooseMatt]

As I said on another thread I have been getting into Kreigsspeil of late.

It strikes me that the FFW wargame could be run along those lines. each side has their map and knowledge of their units.

It absolutely could. And it would be awesome. And it could even be integrated, to a degree, into an RPG.

You could have the overall arching strategy, and then run the adventures we are releasing with separate Traveller bands, each having some effect (large or small) in the strategic positions.

And I really don't think many people would commit to that Right now they get to dip in and dip out of the FFW as thy see fit, doing the adventures they want to do and having an effect, even if they do not always see it at the time (something we touch on in The Infinity Suite, incidentally, but then how aware are interstellar rock stars going to be anyway?).

That is a lot more approachable. What you are proposing is staggering in its awesomeness, but maybe not... commercial, as they say.

 

[Jame Rowe]

My 5FW ended by Grandfather taking Zhdant, Daryen, Regina, Capital, Terra and (somehow) Tattooine and turning them into a gigantic Newton's Cradle.

 

[Endie]

But that is... not what we are doing.

There is no set ending that we are headed towards. At all. What happens in the adventures released will have an effect. We have never deviated from this.

You might want to work on the messaging there a bit, however: you have products that came out many months into the line that have asserted "this system will be attacked and the Zhodani badly defeated resulting in a major retreat on this specific day in 1107. Soz if you didn't do that." There is a whole lot of that in both narrative and maps. And the title of a product due out in almost a year is a reference to the turning tide, which suggests that the war should be going one way by then (and will then at least be presumed to go the other way.) If not, then that is a marketing failure, not a product one.

With those key dates dribbled out over time it's a fun graphical novel and I've enjoyed both reading the three products I bought. But it does seem very like the Dragonlance adventures in that you could lock yourself out of adventures if you let the war progress in the months between releases. Except that the DL series at least told you stuff like "tempting as it will be for the party to try, don't let them kill this hyper-annoying NPC. Because they totally will try."

Without basic stuff like "this is the basic status we presume for each year that the war will last, and here is the war aim of each side" then I honestly think that the line presumes people will only read it as lore or dabble in it as one-offs. The evidence is this thread: one person says "hey is anyone else playing the new FFW campaign?" Eight people reply with variations on "no, but I'm kinda reading bits of it/there's some stuff going on in the background of my campaign", two people say "no but I played the boardgame/used the CT one" and literally nobody so far has said "hell yeah here is where my party have reached!" Which is a contrast with similar threads for Deepnight, PoD, Singularity and even Cluster Truck to an extent.

If it's a passively-consumed set of lore books then the secrecy and reveals are fine. If it's meant to be a living campaign that large numbers of customers actually play at the table then there's some marketing work needed.

 

[pholus96]

I have a deep seated loathing of using published material that is incomplete and doesn't tell me enough to know what is happening, why, or where it might go. This is probably because I don't generally use things as is, so I want to know how changing things will affect the overall structure.

At some point, the 5FW material might tell us enough to be usable, but so far it's just cool lore books for the bookshelf.

The lessons learned by "Dragonlance" DM's everywhere back in the 80's.

 

[pholus96]

You might want to work on the messaging there a bit, however: you have products that came out many months into the line that have asserted "this system will be attacked and the Zhodani badly defeated resulting in a major retreat on this specific day in 1107. Soz if you didn't do that." There is a whole lot of that in both narrative and maps. And the title of a product due out in almost a year is a reference to the turning tide, which suggests that the war should be going one way by then (and will then at least be presumed to go the other way.) If not, then that is a marketing failure, not a product one.

With those key dates dribbled out over time it's a fun graphical novel and I've enjoyed both reading the three products I bought. But it does seem very like the Dragonlance adventures in that you could lock yourself out of adventures if you let the war progress in the months between releases. Except that the DL series at least told you stuff like "tempting as it will be for the party to try, don't let them kill this hyper-annoying NPC. Because they totally will try."

Without basic stuff like "this is the basic status we presume for each year that the war will last, and here is the war aim of each side" then I honestly think that the line presumes people will only read it as lore or dabble in it as one-offs. The evidence is this thread: one person says "hey is anyone else playing the new FFW campaign?" Eight people reply with variations on "no, but I'm kinda reading bits of it/there's some stuff going on in the background of my campaign", two people say "no but I played the boardgame/used the CT one" and literally nobody so far has said "hell yeah here is where my party have reached!" Which is a contrast with similar threads for Deepnight, PoD, Singularity and even Cluster Truck to an extent.

If it's a passively-consumed set of lore books then the secrecy and reveals are fine. If it's meant to be a living campaign that large numbers of customers actually play at the table then there's some marketing work needed.

Ooops, made MY Dragonlance comment too soon I see. I haven't started FFW because I have lots of other material AND I just don't start anything without knowing where it's ending (so I can change it while the changes are little if I don't like it). It's been an enjoyable read though!

 

[Terry Mixon]

But that is... not what we are doing.

There is no set ending that we are headed towards. At all. What happens in the adventures released will have an effect. We have never deviated from this.

In general, in the early part of the war, Travellers are placed in more minor areas and their actions can have more minor effects - but those can snowball later on. It is about planting seeds. Tilting the balance towards one side or the other on a backwater world may just seem to be a mark on a map, but when one fleet later has to dedicate fleet resources that it had planned to send elsewhere to take advantage of or shore up that world... that has an effect on the big picture.

That said, there have already been some fairly major points that Travellers can alter. Opening Moves springs to mind and, if this is the sort of thing you want to feature in your games, then by the Iridium Throne, keep an eye out for Favourites at Court...

As an aside, someone mentioned wanting to keep track of fleet positions and resources on the strategic side. This was never going to happen. That is not an RPG. Now, it could happen at some later point, either as a boardgame or video game maybe, but the whole point of this series is to strap your players into the front seats of the war where they will see what is happening and, yes, begin to alter things.

If this is to be the case, wouldn’t it have made sense to at least spell out what the Zhodoni strategic goals were? As it is, they a fleet or thee pulled up, a noble stuck his head out, and said “get in, loser, we’re raiding the Imperium.” Know not only why but what they consider victory and even an acceptable draw would be nice.

 

[Anstett]

It absolutely could. And it would be awesome. And it could even be integrated, to a degree, into an RPG.

You could have the overall arching strategy, and then run the adventures we are releasing with separate Traveller bands, each having some effect (large or small) in the strategic positions.

And I really don't think many people would commit to that Right now they get to dip in and dip out of the FFW as thy see fit, doing the adventures they want to do and having an effect, even if they do not always see it at the time (something we touch on in The Infinity Suite, incidentally, but then how aware are interstellar rock stars going to be anyway?).

That is a lot more approachable. What you are proposing is staggering in its awesomeness, but maybe not... commercial, as they say.

I am working on just such a thing for the future when I have more time and more/all of the books are out. 2027?

A grand campaign of play by post starting with the Naval adventures, building a crew through to the FFW. Then posting fleet movements on locked pages that are only revealed after communications delays are over.

Player A - post send ships from X to Y (page locked to only player A)
Player B - just living their life, when a fleet appears in the sky (page locked to only player B)
Communication delay time complete - Unlock the page(s) so that everyone can see the status/history of what was happening.

Meanwhile events continuing on locked pages for each Player as different things happen, slowly revealing older dates as the various players have moved forward in time enough to have heard the news.

Complicated to organize and run, definitely not easily commercial/monetizable.

 

[Vormaerin]

But that is... not what we are doing.

There is no set ending that we are headed towards. At all. What happens in the adventures released will have an effect. We have never deviated from this.

That may be, but at this point in the releases there is nothing for the GM to actually work with. There may come a point when all this material serves a playable purpose, but we aren't there yet.

The 5FW overview book should have laid out the broad strokes of the whole campaign if it was expected that people use the material now rather than at some future point.

And I would have liked to see a campaign tie ins for the Naval Campaign Guide, the Mercenary rules, and for "this is how to make the war feel real and impactful in your regular campaign that doesn't revolve around the players deciding the war's outcome.".

Right now we have some interesting lore books and some decent stand alone adventures, but nothing to help turn all of this into actual story at the table. In another year or two, we may have such. I don't know. But we don't currently.