Free Epic Campaign - The Pirates of Drinax

[MongooseMatt]

Being laid out this week, hopefully up before the weekend (very busy here at the moment though, lots of things going on at once!).

However, this one will be well worth the wait - I think it is the best one yet in the series

 

[Jame Rowe]

If I could get my group to do anything but Pathfinder and D&D I'd try to run this (after a game I've promised to run for a friend).

 

[MongooseMatt]

If I could get my group to do anything but Pathfinder and D&D I'd try to run this (after a game I've promised to run for a friend).

Just get them to roll up characters for it - with any luck, that will be enough to hook them...

 

[locarno24]

Just get them to roll up characters for it - with any luck, that will be enough to hook them...

That's one of the things with Traveller; rolling up the characters can be as much fun as the game itself.

The only thing we do is drop qualification rolls when we're doing a specific 'theme' campaign (so a where everyone needs to be a Naval officer, for example). Survival rolls still stay in, as do mishaps, but they don't throw you out of the career.

 

[Mytholder]

The only thing we do is drop qualification rolls when we're doing a specific 'theme' campaign (so a where everyone needs to be a Naval officer, for example). Survival rolls still stay in, as do mishaps, but they don't throw you out of the career.

Ok, you get to test for Psionic ability.

This will be very funny when you read Part 6.

 

[locarno24]

We've been doing some character generation recently, actually - we've just been overdosing on Stargate and Stargate Atlantis, and the players wanted to try a Stargate campaign.

I've essentially let them load up to their heart's content pre-mission on TL8 hardware. First time I've ever really had to use the encumbrance rules...

The evening's award for This Can Only End Badly(TM) :
"Why are you taking that much plastic explosive?"
"I dunno. Sure I'll find a use for it."

 

[MongooseMatt]

Adventure 5, The Treasure of Sindal, is now available for free download!

http://www.mongoosepublishing.com/rpgs/traveller/adventures-and-campaigns/campaign-2-the-pirates-of-drinax.html

 

[locarno24]

His landmark thesis on Vilani logistics during the Fifth Interstellar War is required reading for those suffering from chronic insomnia.

I think I may have been taught by this guy at university.

I must say I'm increasingly impressed by this campaign! Have a cookie.

 

[locarno24]

preferring to use her light Harrier- and Wyvern-class ships to attack enemy supply lines
and fuel dumps.

One question to Mytholder and/or Middenface: you don't have to offer any spoilers as to what it's capable of or what it looks like if you don't want to, but as a yes/no question do you have a specific appearance and description in mind for the Wyvern?

The players are talking about trying to 'properly' re-equip the star guard - or more accurately they're getting repeatedly poked by an increasingly irritable Lord Wrax whenever they're on Drinax and don't talk about it - and obviously 'properly' means they want to do so with a few actual Drinaxi/Sindalian light warships rather than a rag-tag bunch of armed prize ships suspiciously connected to pirate raiding.

I'm happy to come up with a concept for myself, but I don't want it 'wrong' if we're ever likely to see what the Wyvern should look like.

 

[Mytholder]

Hmm. I wasn't planning to stick a Wyvern into any of the later adventures, so you should have a clear field to design your own. It's probably a good bit bigger than a Harrier, while still being an Adventurer-type hull (<2000 tons) - the Sindalian Empire was formed as a coalition to beat up raiders, and you don't need giant capital ships for that).

 

[Captain Jonah]

Hmm. I wasn't planning to stick a Wyvern into any of the later adventures.

Hey you have started, you must finish. A nice 1,000Dton plus present for the players just before the end of the campaign as things are coming to a head (as the number of enemies they have created get together and come say hello in a fleet :wink: )

 

[locarno24]

Hmm. I wasn't planning to stick a Wyvern into any of the later adventures, so you should have a clear field to design your own. It's probably a good bit bigger than a Harrier, while still being an Adventurer-type hull (<2000 tons) - the Sindalian Empire was formed as a coalition to beat up raiders, and you don't need giant capital ships for that).

Right. Although if it's the bigger warship, possibly needs a slot for an ortillery railgun bay or a small hanger. After all, the Star Guard had to be lanching those orbital bombardments from something.

Thank you very much for the reply. Will have a play around and see what I can do.

 

[AndrewW]

Hey you have started, you must finish. A nice 1,000Dton plus present for the players just before the end of the campaign as things are coming to a head (as the number of enemies they have created get together and come say hello in a fleet :wink: )

Oh there's a fleet coming in part 6...

 

[locarno24]

Right, but that's something faaaaaar scarier than some leftover Sindalian junk.

 

[tanksoldier]

the Sindalian Empire was formed as a coalition to beat up raiders, and you don't need giant capital ships for that).

Not to get all up in your campaign, which is really great BTW.... the Sindalian Empire may have STARTED that way but (based on the background info given) 1000 years later when it ended it was something quite different.

 

[Captain Jonah]

the Sindalian Empire was formed as a coalition to beat up raiders, and you don't need giant capital ships for that).

Not to get all up in your campaign, which is really great BTW.... the Sindalian Empire may have STARTED that way but (based on the background info given) 1000 years later when it ended it was something quite different.

Given that one of their worlds ran to 100,000,000,000 population and was so dependent on outside supply that half the population died of hunger when the Empire fell which I suspect means 100,000Dton plus mega freighters just to carry that much food plus they were flying fleets of 50,000Dton warships they were the 3rd Imperium on a small scale.

Describing the Wyvern as a light raider when compared to 50,000Dton line of battle ships could easily mean a few thousand Dton frigate/Destroyer sized ship.

The State of the Kingdom of Drinax or the size of the Harrier are not an indication that the Wyvern should also be a midget. The star empire was over half a sector in size at the end.

 

[crazy_cat]

Is it too soon to start asking about the next instalment?

 

[enderra]

Given that one of their worlds ran to 100,000,000,000 population and was so dependent on outside supply that half the population died of hunger when the Empire fell which I suspect means 100,000Dton plus mega freighters just to carry that much food plus they were flying fleets of 50,000Dton warships they were the 3rd Imperium on a small scale.

Let's see. Use http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanitarian_daily_ration as a baseline.
Says it contains 2200 calories, as well as a few accessories, but no heater. 850 grams of mass, volume unlisted. Google search says they are 3x5x9 inches or 0.00221225 cubic meters. A Traveller dTon of 13.5 cubic meters can thus hold just over 6100 such rations, let's call it 6000 to account for packaging containers and so on.

That's 16.43 man-years of food. Assuming 100 billion people, a cargo volume of 6,097,560,975 dtons is needed to transport food for a year.

That of course assumes no domestic production of food at all. Let's halve it, because you said only half the population starved (probably a simplistic assumption, but it'll do). Round it down to 3 billion dtons shipping capacity per year.

Assume a round trip takes 4 weeks (one week to load/prep, one week jump, one week to unload, another week to jump back) means each ship can do 12 trips per year. So we need ships with a total cargo capacity of 250,000,000 dtons.

I am not well-versed in OTU, not to the point of knowing who the Sindalian empire was, but unless I misplaced a lot of decimals here (which won't surprise me), they were clearly an economic powerhouse.

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

Personally, I would reduce the volume to 10% of what is listed (25 MTon per year) and say that they had highly-concentrated food packs (a brick can feed a family of four for a month, longer if'n they don't like the kids very much).

Still 25 Megatons per month is about 50 ships in the Mega-ton range or 500 ships at 100,000 tons which seems like a LOT, but then, you are talking about a HUGE population.

 

[MCEvans]

What was the actual boundaries of the Empire of Sindal and its subdivisions (duchies & counties). This could make for some interesting homemade subplots if known. This could be made as part of the background downloads.

The main reason is I have the old CT Adv 4 & and wanted to see there was a way to overlap the two even if it just meant boundary overlap into one of the subsectors