"I'll Give You What You Want, IF You Do This For Me ..."

[alex_greene]

There is nothing worse than hearing some Patron come up with this line.
"I'll get you off this rock, IF ... you smuggle is cargo container full of slaves for me."
"I'll pay for your ship's repairs, IF ... you arrange to kidnap this person for me so I can hold her Dad to ransom."
"I'll get you telepathy, IF ... you agree to put this bomb inside your skull, which I can detonate at any time."

I have a deep seated revulsion for Faustian deals. There are many better ways of getting Travellers into an adventure, which don't involve suspending a Sword of Damocles over their heads and forcing them to debase themselves for money, or just to get their ship off the ground.
Referees, take note. I've torn up character sheets and walked away from the table for less than this.

I'll reveal some of my favourite non-debasing hooks in the comments.

 

[alex_greene]

1. No Strings Attached
The Patron's actions are in your hands. Referees, if your Patrons are conniving, and pull stunts like forcing the Travellers into debasing themselves, don't be surprised if players tell you, the ref, what you deserve and walking from the table.
No prize, reward, or payment is worth debasement.

 

[alex_greene]

2. Connected
Did you guys forget the bit about getting yourselves Allies and Contacts? They can do things the Travellers cannot. The Travellers want a new ship to replace the one that got seized by Customs? An Ally can get them to a government auction, where they can make a successful bid on a brand new 1000 ton luxury ship at a fraction of its cost. Where did they get the money from? That Contact found out about this charity trust fund run by Believers, who put up money to help Travellers get into space, no strings attached.

 

[alex_greene]

3. No Implants
Some sensitive missions require that the INI train up psions to send them into the field without cortex bombs in their heads. A cortex bomb can be detected. Even the knowledge that a psion has a tiny bomb planted next to their spinal cord can be read. If a suspect is a psion, they can arrange to remove and defuse that bomb, or they could decide that the person is too great a risk to let them live and psionically detonate the cortex bomb themselves. Or maybe use non-psionic means to do the same thing, such as putting a gun to the cop's head.

Same goes for any situation in play where the Patron needs the Travellers to do a job for them. If the job involves any kind of undercover work, the suspects are going to use whatever tech they've got to scan for wires. If they see any kind of anomaly - a scar on the back of the neck, for instance - they'll assume it's a wire, and take care of the implant with a bullet.

So ... no cortex bombs.

 

[ottarrus]

Alex, my friend, may I suggest that you're taking all this way too personally?
Well, let me be more clear... With all respect, I think your reaction to some of this is very visceral.

There are gonna be times in every campaign where the Travellers are going to have to make moral choice. And sometimes the players are gonna make the wrong one. As referees, we have to be prepared for that. Better than 90% of the combat in a Traveller game could be portrayed as Aggravated Murder by any halfway skilled government lawyer [in the US we call them District Attorneys, in the UK I think prosecutors are called King's Council?].
And given the lag time between the crime occurring and the authorities finding out about it, you can bloody well bet that by the time the cop catch up with the PCs they're probably have forgotten all about the crime.

 

[alex_greene]

4. "Help Me, XYZ! You're My Only Hope!"
An old classic, this one can be found as the plot hook for a certain movie which came out around the time Traveller came into being. You may have heard of it.
The Travellers must answer this plea for help. It's the decent thing to do.

 

[alex_greene]

Alex, my friend, may I suggest that you're taking all this way too personally?
Well, let me be more clear... With all respect, I think your reaction to some of this is very visceral.

There are gonna be times in every campaign where the Travellers are going to have to make moral choice. And sometimes the players are gonna make the wrong one. As referees, we have to be prepared for that. Better than 90% of the combat in a Traveller game could be portrayed as Aggravated Murder by any halfway skilled government lawyer [in the US we call them District Attorneys, in the UK I think prosecutors are called King's Council?].
And given the lag time between the crime occurring and the authorities finding out about it, you can bloody well bet that by the time the cop catch up with the PCs they're probably have forgotten all about the crime.

... if I'd committed a Great Train Robbery, I doubt I'd forget my first major heist.
If I'd committed a string of them across the Spinward Main ...

And I doubt any rogue worth their salt would sit still for anyone to put a bomb inside their heads, when it'd be so much easier for them to use their Streetwise skill, Contacts and Allies to find a truly underground Psionics Institute which didn't use such despicable options to keep their customers under their thumb.

Of course I take it personally. The Travellers are an extension of me into the game universe. I don't like my Travellers to be under anybody's thumb, any more than I would want to be living to serve somebody else in the real world.

 

[ottarrus]

4. "Help Me, XYZ! You're My Only Hope!"
An old classic, this one can be found as the plot hook for a certain movie which came out around the time Traveller came into being. You may have heard of it.
The Travellers must answer this plea for help. It's the decent thing to do.

Well, if you take conflict out as motivating factor all you're left to move the campaign along is generational debt... defaulting on a millions-of-credit loan does NOT look good on your credit report.
Conflict is integral to the any RPG and conflict naturally involves morals and ethics.

 

[alex_greene]

5. "... And Seem A Saint, When Most I Play The Devil."
You want your Travellers to roam about the galaxy, lying, cheating, and stealing.
Referees ... let them be rogues. Let them look into the depths of space and say "Shiny. *take out their guns* Let's be bad guys."
They may be wrong 'uns, but that's the core of their being. If the raven knew of your intent to domesticate it, it would resist your efforts to clip its wings.

 

[alex_greene]

6. Poachers Turned Gamekeepers
There's an ancient TV show, Alias Smith & Jones. Don't worry if you're too young to remember: the show died fifty years ago.

The premise was this - TV legend Glen A Larceny stole Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, one of his many IP "borrowings," and turned it into a TV show. In that show, the outlaw characters - renamed from Butch and Sundance - were brought to heel by the law. Once in the law's clutches, they were told that they would be granted a pardon by the Governor if they did certain things for him.

Harry Harrison used a similar plot in The Stainless Steel Rat, where legendary rogue Slippery Jim diGriz got trapped like a rat in a cage and forced to work for legendary cop Inskipp of The Special Corps.

Somehow, your Travellers keep getting involved with the INI or some Agency, and the Agency has no choice but to put them in their books as "Special Scientific Advisor" or "Contractors For Hire," because they're worth more to them working outside of the system. The Travellers keep working for the Agency out of loyalty and earned trust and respect. Also, the pay is fantastic.

By the way, this conforms with Cannell's Law, the law of nature discovered by Stephen J Cannell, which states You could pitch a series where the hero is the Devil His Own Self, as long as your pitch includes the magic words "And he works for the Police, solving crimes."

 

[alex_greene]

7. Accident and Mystery
The Travellers know that their ship was in need of repair. The psion knew that they were faced with a dreadful choice of being a slave if they went into the Psionics Institute.
And yet somehow, here they are, flying their ship without a care in the world, or in full possession of their psionic abilities without anyone chasing after them.
How? Even the Referee may not know, unless the next adventure brings with it sudden and shocking revelations about "The Truth Behind Your Freedom."

 

[Condottiere]

Is this from a specific adventure book?

Anyway, it's a sandbox, the dungeon master narrates the circumstances, and it's up to the player characters to figure out if they go along with the obvious solution, subvert it, or find something else.

 

[Arkathan]

My group wanted to be PI's specializing in rescuing trafficked humans. All of their "cases" are voluntary. But sometimes there is only one lead... or three leads that lead to the same place.
I DID railroad them on their opening adventure. Kidnapped like the people they were supposed to be helping and going through Flatlined, Zozer's Sitrep 4 Psychosis, and Death Station before making their way back to Sword World space. Once that happened, they flashed back to the chronological start of the campaign with their starting gear, and progressed up until they were kidnapped.
While they KNEW they were GOING to be kidnapped, it did serve to place the proper paranoia to every action with criminal and shady elements they encountered for several months.

At the moment, they are checking out a research station that one of the player's contacts asked them to go to and check on his cousin.
If you have seen Starfield's Entangled mission, that is the one. Upon exiting jump space, they get a distress call that no one else in the system heard, accompanied by weird flashes and the sudden disappearance of half of their jump drive. The cousin's husband is Schrodinger's cat. Oh, and their main ship is on the bad universe's side.

 

[CordwainerFish]

The Travellers must answer this plea for help. It's the decent thing to do.

Hey, the Arisians wouldn't have given them Lenses if they weren't Boy Scouts.

(That is the franchise you had in mind, yes?)

 

[alex_greene]

Hey, the Arisians wouldn't have given them Lenses if they weren't Boy Scouts.

(That is the franchise you had in mind, yes?)

One of the universe's greatest heroes could never ignore a cry for help.

Whatever body they are wearing.

 

[alex_greene]

I mean, why do the Referees ever seem to be under the impression that they have got to keep the Travellers under somebody's thumb in the first place? Contract work for some Patron, or a mortgage, or on the run from bounty hunters, or a psion being chased by the Imperium (a non-psion's power fantasy if ever I heard one).

Traveller works even better if they aren't compelled to grovel and debase themselves for a few credits to keep flying for one more jump: if the Travellers set the agenda and pick their battles for themselves.

 

[Shadowblayde99]

If the Travellers have no reason to do something then why do anything at all?

I do remember Alias Smith and Jones. It's a great premise for a TV show or a set of RPG adventures.

All Refs are doing is making it obvious why the characters are doing something. Whether it's to pay a mortgage on the ship or because the evil bad guy has kidnapped your dog, there's always a reason.

For those players who are heroic, the reason for doing anything is because it's the right thing to do. Knight Rider is a good example. Magnum PI are good examples.

We tend to use familiar tropes to get players to want to do something. It doesn't matter what system is used.

There is no reason that Refs have to use the ones listed above. They could be really subtle. Hooks are all over the place but if the players don't bite then a good Ref will do something else. The worst thing a ref can do is force players to bite the hook if they don't want to.

There is a place for grovelling and debasement to earn cash. Firefly did it for a whole season. I do it from 8am to 4pm 5 days a week. It's an incentive to keep a roof over my head. In a game we don't have to do that. Star Trek would be a good example of not needing money.

In Traveller, there will always be mortgages and fuel expenses. Any time a player does something that annoys an NPC, that may result in a bounty. Players must accept the consequences of their actions.

Everything costs. No one does anything for free. And if they do help out a character then at some point, that NPC is going to ask for a favour. And if the player turns them down then no more help.

If a player doesn't like what the Ref is giving then feel free to work with the Ref. Explain what it is that you want your character to be doing. Help the Ref with some ideas.

And if some players want that obvious hook then so long as they're happy then who are we to complain.

 

[Nelphine]

While i agree, a ref should maintain standards that match their players expectations (not the characters), the players also have to do this. And from my experience, it is more likely that some of the players break that socual contract. Unfortunately, one of the blatant ways to prevent this is.. to put the characters in positions where the players cant beak that contract. And when you can get dozens of players for every ref, it can be easier to try to control the characters, rather than sift through all the players until you find ones that match your game.

I wouldnt try to fault the refs in game rules, until youve identified all the social expectations of both the ref and all the other players, as well as your own, in a manner that all particapants understand and agree with. In game rules happens to be a very clear and effecient way to do that.

 

[alex_greene]

I don't like referees who control the Travellers. It's not their power fantasy. It's the players'.
As a player myself, I play Traveller to experience what it's like to be free. And I think there should be an understanding that there are many other players who live for that vicarious experience to wander where they will without the chains of debt, slavery, or obligation to hold them back.
After all, what is the name of this game?

 

[alex_greene]

If the Travellers have no reason to do something then why do anything at all?

If the slaves refuse the yoke, whose chains shall they wear? What master shall they serve, if they are allowed to go where they will?

There's an old saying I live by. "If you cannot serve yourself, then surely you shall be made to serve another. If you cannot master yourself, then somebody shall certainly master you."

Don't worry about finding incentives to keep the Travellers flying. I'm sure they can motivate themselves to take their ships into the Void and go as far as they can. Traveller's not supposed to be a game about coercive control over people, but the opposite: it's about the breaking of those chains and leaving them behind forever.

So refs, next time you feel tempted to offer a Faustian deal, don't be upset if we tear up our character sheets and tell you where to disembark.