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

[Sigtrygg]

You play your game your way, I will play mine my way, to each their own.

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?

The Spinward Marches was such a setting at first.
The far frontier of an old corrupt empire, with limited Imperial control over the goings on, and considerable resentment for curtailing freedoms that tighter Imperial rule would bring.

Sadly this setting disappeared as the Imperium was made all powerful, and the Spinward Marches have been settled for a thousand years.

A Long Night is a much more open setting...

I still refer back to the end notes of LBB:3

Traveller is necessarily a framework describing the barest of essentials for an
infinite universe; obviously rules which could cover every aspect of every possible
action would be far larger than these three booklets. A group involved in playing a
scenario or campaign can make their adventures more elaborate, more detailed,
more interesting, with the input of a great deal of imagination.
The greatest burden, of course, falls on the referee, who must create entire
worlds and societies through which the players will roam. One very interesting
source of assistance for this task is the existing science-fiction literature. Virtually
anything mentioned in a story or article can be transferred to the Traveller environment.
Orbital cities, nuclear war, alien societies, puzzles, enigmas, absolutely
anything can occur, with imagination being the only limit.
The players themselves have a burden almost equal to that of the referee: they
must move, act, travel in search of their own goals. The typical methods used in life
by 20th century Terrans (thrift, dedication, and hard work) do not work in
Traveller; instead, travellers must boldly plan and execute daring schemes for the
acquisition of wealth and power. As for the referee, modern science-fiction tradition
provides many ideas and concepts to be imitated.
Above all, the players and the referees must work together. Care must be taken
that the referee does not simply lay fortunes in the path of the players, but the
situation is not primarily an adversary relationship. The referee simply administers
the rules in situations where the players themselves have an incomplete understanding
of the universe. The results should reflect a consistent reality.

Welcome to the universe of Traveller!

The players are in the driving seat, what do they want to do?

 

[Nelphine]

And to be clear, what does the ref do, when one player wants to stride forward free of all chains; one player says 'i have no chains, so im retiring, and want to play out growing a vineyard' and one player says 'no chains? Omg i rob our Patron blind cuz they're an idiotic naive sap!'


What do you do when the players.. raze the keep on the borderlands, and hide among the ruins for fear of orcs and humans?

 

[Nelphine]

The chains you so vehemently protest are not there to control characters and prevent you from being free. They are there because problem players.. dont play the game, they dont adventure or Travel.

 

[Vormaerin]

If all your campaign hooks are coercive deals, then you are either playing cyberpunk or you should probably relax a bit. But the idea that you can't use them at all is just as ridiculous.

What works for one group of players doesn't work for another. I have exactly zero interest in playing or running any kind of "Adventure Path". But they are super popular. I have friends who flat out don't like sandbox play. They don't want to be free to go wherever they want. They want to be able to pick their own path through the story, but they want that overarching storyline and framework. We don't play in the same campaigns, for obvious reasons.

Some people want to play "Scum & Villainy", where if you don't ever get any faustian deals, you probably aren't getting the game you want to be in. Others want to be spreading utopian Federation across the universe. Faustian deals make no sense in that campaign.

People draw inspiration from the fiction they enjoy. One of the reasons modern D&D is so different from old school D&D is because modern fantasy is very different from the old pulp swords & sorcery that informed the original version of the game.

Adjust the campaign to what the table mutually enjoys, whether that's hardscrabble or superheroic or somewhere in between.

 

[tytalan]

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."

You do realize this is just another of those Faustian deals

 

[tytalan]

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 debaseme

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.

No Strings attached. Doesn’t exist your Allies and Contacts expect you to help them when they ask and you probably just racked quite a few favors. That trust fund is going to have requirements that need to be met and the Believers are going to require you to do something for them.

Now i understand the dislike of the Faustian Deals but
1) the players don’t have to take them that’s the nature of such a deal.
2) the players can often turn the table on the deal offerer. Example get a hold of imperial intelligence and arrange a sting for the slavers the players get the ship or another as part of the deal. Anytime they are trying to get you to do something you have options.
3) Betray the deal offerer take that shipment of slaves to a safe world and than harass the slavers.

The problem with your statement is you present it a the only option.

 

[Condottiere]

You have some role playing games where Faustian deals are part of its inherent genetics.

And then you have Traveller, where a bunch of retired guys are having a midlife crisis, and decide (collectively) on a change of lifestyle.

So, unless they are clearly forced to do so, where the other side has something on them that would be very damaging if revealed, they're pretty much free to refuse such bargains.

 

[Garran]

It *is* annoyingly common for published adventures to declare "your ship broke down/was impounded/you were falsely accused" out of the blue and, look at that, there is exactly ONE way out of it, entirely on someone else's terms. Other possible options? They're arbitrarily shut down/removed (usually along with all of the PCs gear).

While something like that can be okay if it's done very sparingly and the players buy into it, having it be the default setup for almost everything quickly becomes obnoxious. It's not even a case of tearing up the character sheet; it's a case of having better things to do with my time than slog through yet another rails-on-rails script.

Leaving aside problem players - who are going to be problem players no matter how much of a control freak the GM and/or adventure writer tries to be - it's much better to have scenario openings that give the PCs a reason to want to get involved even though they don't have to. Yes, credits are an obvious one, but actual characters should have personalities and motivations beyond that. If they don't then that's where the problem with your game lies, not the lack of a narrative sledgehammer.

 

[Midnightplat]

Sword of Damocles is being wielded the wrong way as a descriptor for the dynamic or motivation under critique here. Unless the players are the sword and the assignment is to deflect the players as a threat to their patron's power.

A Faustian bargain isn't "you get a good in exchange for doing something unpleasant or debased", it's "I'll grant you power, but as a consequence we'll be forever tied together, far after that power is of any use to you." At least that's how it works in Goethe, Marlowe, Mann and both versions of Bedazzled.

Both of these, used prudently, like any powerful tragic/dramatic device, can make for good gaming and character arcs. But, yes, abused in frequency to the point that they become cliched tropes in a campaigns can frustrate folks seeking more thoughtful story supporting their game (but let's also acknowledge that great or sophisticated story need not be the goal of playing any TTRPG, and I'm sure there are plenty of Traveller tables that simply want to spec out their ship and pew pew pew with only the flimsiest rationale for "why").

But I don't think this thread is really about the utility of the Sword of Damocles or Faustian bargains, so let's turn to "You gotta do dirty work to get something out of hock." This is simply a hard bargian, and the mildest form of putting the plot in motion through coercion, which is what I think this thread's intent is trying to resist. One can recognize reasons summoning characters to action through coercion or otherwise rock and hard placing characters media res should be used sparingly. Of course, if desperation and scarcity and want are explicitly the themes of the game, say like some forms of cyberpunk or dystopian worlds discussed recently, or even something like the Rockford Files or the noir Jim Rockford evolved from (and then taking that to the stars with Connery's character in Outland or Miller in The Expanse) ... and without even talking about Alien it becomes apparent down on your luck extremis can be a game enjoyed by many.

Good and the elusive great gaming comes down to players signing on for what their characters will be signing on for. In a game like Traveller, what's sometimes called the gaming social contract should quite literally dictate the working conditions to which player characters may be expected to sign on to. A player shouldn't find themselves feeling pressganged, nor should a GM face a mutiny of torn up character sheets. Some call it Session 0 and plenty has been written for folks who want to formalize the process; but, really, when someone asks someone if they want to play Traveller, asking "what sort of game do you have in mind?" pretty easily defuses the potential for table dramatics thus making sure compatible players are able to maximize the drama of their game so that every member of the ensemble finds their invested time worthwhile.

 

[steelbrok]

At appropriate points in the campaign I will ask my players which of the dangling plot strands they'd like to focus on. My preparation time can then be focussed on that plot. I they suddenly decide to go of course then it might be a short or poor session as I've nothing prepared.

 

[Vormaerin]

It *is* annoyingly common for published adventures to declare "your ship broke down/was impounded/you were falsely accused" out of the blue and, look at that, there is exactly ONE way out of it, entirely on someone else's terms. Other possible options? They're arbitrarily shut down/removed (usually along with all of the PCs gear).

While something like that can be okay if it's done very sparingly and the players buy into it, having it be the default setup for almost everything quickly becomes obnoxious. It's not even a case of tearing up the character sheet; it's a case of having better things to do with my time than slog through yet another rails-on-rails script.

Leaving aside problem players - who are going to be problem players no matter how much of a control freak the GM and/or adventure writer tries to be - it's much better to have scenario openings that give the PCs a reason to want to get involved even though they don't have to. Yes, credits are an obvious one, but actual characters should have personalities and motivations beyond that. If they don't then that's where the problem with your game lies, not the lack of a narrative sledgehammer.

Published adventures traditionally have terrible hooks because they don't know anything about your characters or the situation in your campaign. And the older ones not infrequently have obvious railroads at points. "Don't let the PCs kill this NPC!" "They must be captured here!" "Make sure their vehicle crashes, so we can go to phase 2". A lot of it coming from those early adventures in the 70s being written initially for convention play or one shots.

Traveller has a few coercive starts in their classic adventures, but most of them are standard job offers. Even if you use pre written adventures, most often they have to be significantly rewritten to suit your exact campaign and players and fixing the hooks is part of that. Unless you save them for that time the players do get themselves caught smuggling or had their jump drive destroyed in space combat.

 

[RajunCajun3025]

I see it as a two way street. I need to give my players a game they can have fun with yet be challenged at times. On the other hand I can't tell you how many times I have shut a game down due to power gamers sucking all the joy out of the game for me. That said I never try to force my players into anything if I can help it. Because as a player I would tear up my character sheet as well.

 

[RajunCajun3025]

While I love published adventures and campaigns I have never felt the need to follow them to the letter. If I want to change something I will. Most of my players are old organized play veterans and we all get the "railroad/plot hook" cliche. If that's what we need to do to get the adventure rolling then that's how we do it. And always try to cater to your players needs. If you hear them talking to another player about an item they want, look for a way to put it into the adventure. As long as said item does not "break" the game. "No you are NOT getting your own Tigress class Dreadnought!"

 

[steelbrok]

While I love published adventures and campaigns I have never felt the need to follow them to the letter. If I want to change something I will. Most of my players are old organized play veterans and we all get the "railroad/plot hook" cliche. If that's what we need to do to get the adventure rolling then that's how we do it. And always try to cater to your players needs. If you hear them talking to another player about an item they want, look for a way to put it into the adventure. As long as said item does not "break" the game. "No you are NOT getting your own Tigress class Dreadnought!"

I'd add to that that I often use adventures/campaigns in completely different genres. A good campaign can easily be altered to suit another setting.

 

[Midnightplat]

I'd add to that that I often use adventures/campaigns in completely different genres. A good campaign can easily be altered to suit another setting.

Most def, and even Traveller "classics" do that. Death Station is basically a Agatha Christie / Hercule Poirot who dunnit.

 

[Sigtrygg]

That's Argon gambit, Death Station is the exploration of a lab ship full of cyberzombies (ok, not cyberzombies - but the great thing about death Station is you can change the threat inside the station to suit the paranoia of your group)

 

[Tom B]

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.

Called a procurator fiscal in Scotland

 

[Tom B]

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."

Staring Pete Duel and Ben Murphy (1st series), Starring Ben Murphy and Roger Davies (2nd series)

 

[Vormaerin]

That's Argon gambit, Death Station is the exploration of a lab ship full of cyberzombies (ok, not cyberzombies - but the great thing about death Station is you can change the threat inside the station to suit the paranoia of your group)

I was wondering if he meant Mystery on Arcturus Station.

 

[Sigtrygg]

Ah, that is even more likely.