High & Dry transplanted.

[bluekieran]

I'm looking to run "High & Dry" for my players, starting tomorrow night. But as there's more material out at the moment for the Reach than the Marches, I was thinking of transplanting it, and have basically dropped my extremely Walston-like "Waltham" near Theev.

It does occur, though, that it's a long way from Vargr space, and so I'm thinking of using Aslan instead. I've started doing a little reading on Aslan and Vargr both, and the biggest issue I've hit so far is that the "meekly oppressed" Aslan might not be too plausible if they aren't allowed to own land. I'd be interested in hearing any advice from more experienced refs, though.

 

[Reynard]

If aslan are not allowed to own land, they're being oppressed.

 

[steve98052]

This reminds me of an adventure seed that I didn't get around to developing:

An admiral succeeds in battle partly because of his deft diplomacy with Aslan allies, whose combat ships and his own fleet jointly defeat a powerful enemy.

After the battle, he wants to reward his allies, but little good land is available. Instead, he secures huge tracts of land on seemingly worthless worlds. The Aslan would of course prefer good land, but they understand that it's the best the admiral can do, and accept the land as the reward it was meant to be.

However, it turns out that one of the seemingly worthless worlds was worth more than it seems.

 

[bluekieran]

Have just spotted the Drinax: Theev PDF and realised that Theev's reputation as a hotbed of piracy may make it an unsuitable neighbour for Waltham... I'd stuck it there largely because it didn't notably change any jump routes. On the other hand, it may just make the "offer" central to High & Dry less attractive; given that none of my travellers actually rolled a ship, they shouldn't expect an easy ride!

 

[Juums]

I'd offer a word of caution: Mucking about with the astrography of the Trojan Reaches is not to be done lightly if you intend to keep using the published material. As, more so than most sectors, astrography is destiny and the particular political dynamics in play are largely the result of which jump routes are available. So just dropping Walston into the Theev Cluster might well have unintended consequences, depending upon where you set it.

If you want to set the adventure in that area, the simplest solution would be to replace Palindrome with Walston. Which is fairly easy, as they're broadly similar in UPP terms anyway. Realgar would then function as your Flammarion expy. And if you like Palindrome's flavor, turn Vume into Astrogo. (...but I'm biased there, as Vume's bit is probably the least inspired flavor bit which has been republishedd from 1e Trojan Reach and Pirates of Drinax.)

 

[bluekieran]

[...] So just dropping Walston into the Theev Cluster might well have unintended consequences, depending upon where you set it.

I dropped it just above Palindrome, so as to not create a jump-2 route on the other side.

If you want to set the adventure in that area, the simplest solution would be to replace Palindrome with Walston. Which is fairly easy, as they're broadly similar in UPP terms anyway. Realgar would then function as your Flammarion expy.[/quote]

I did consider swapping out Palindrome... I think I decided against it purely so I didn't have to re-draw the sector map rather than just scribble a bit on top; admittedly that wouldn't be hard to do with copy/paste in an image editor.

I guess the third option would be to just run it where it's set, which is certainly tempting, but does mean that if there are Trojan Reach adventures I really want to run that are harder to transplant, such as if Pirates comes out soon, then I've got 50+ parsecs to get them across. Admittedly I'm probably making my life a little more difficult than it needs to be by insisting on having plenty of (2e) pre-made stuff available, but I want a bit of time and practice before I take the training wheels off.

I did also look briefly at some 1e materials, includes the Pirates campaign, and I must admit they don't look terribly hard to convert; I made a 2e Drinax Harrier just to help test my spreadsheet. What made me reluctant is that having never played 1e, I wouldn't know what I was mangling.

 

[Manfred von Bek]

The easiest option to handle all these problems would be to make Walston a non-main world. The Traveller Starmaps only map the "main" world - the one that most of the intersteller traffic deals with. There are other worlds in every system that are often ignored by travellers. Walston is really well set up for being a secondary world - 3000 inhabitants on a small island on the planet, all perfectly content to live quiet pastoral lives.

I remeber Chamax (from horde/chamax plague) is in a system that is listed as an asteroid belt, just with an explanation of that is the 'starport'.

 

[egoaz2ca]

As the crow flies (20 jumps @ J2 / 8 jumps @ J4), you are only moving it about 2 subsectors. The caution about moving things around is echoed. I'd instead suggest you just manufacture an excuse for the party to be in that sector, or after High & Dry, give them an unavoidable hook to go to Sindal if that is where you want to run your campaign.