My first Traveller adventure (at long last!!)

A

adders

Mongoose
Hi everyone.
It's been several weeks since I joined this forum. And it's been the same since I bought the core rulebook pocket edition.
With one thing and another I have only just got my act together in the last 2 weeks or so and digested the rules.
I started out (obviously) with chargen, on my own. I find it very straight forward which I wasn't expecting (for some reason). Tasks and combat were next and I think I have the grasp of them. I will find out this weekend as I am starting our first adventure with my brother and my 3 kids.
I took onboard the really helpful advice of everyone here about how to approach Traveller with resepct to kids and which adventure to get the ball rolling.
I'm going to be GMing this, a first for me. Back in the '80s I never got to GM any games. So I'm really looking forward to it, as are the kids.
I chose 'Across The Bright Face' as our first adventure but I have added a mini-adventure to it which will be set in an underground lab somewhere near one of the mines.
For eye-candy (especially for the kids' sake) I made my own version of the Dinom map and printed it out as a large mat. It's about 4 feet long! So the the hex tiles are big enough to use minatures on. Unfortunately I have no minatures so I improvised using a plastic Sherman tank from 'Axis & Allies' that I found in a charity shop. So that is going to represent the ATV. It will be something visual for everyone to use.
One other very important thing I have found very difficult to obtain here in the countryside of Ireland is DICE!!! Yes D6s have been almost impossible to obtain. Luckily the same charity shop that I found Axis & Allies in also had some other cheap boardgames which I bought, took the dice then threw the rest away.
Anyway, I will post a report next week of how the session went and any GM mistakes I made (should be a long report).
Also, in my attempt to get the kids hooked on the idea of an RPG game session evening, I have bought a nice stash of Doritos, sweets, Cola and various other munchies.
Thanks everyone for your advice recently. I can't wait to get started.
 
Welcome to the game!

One tip for obtaining dice are Yahtzee sets. But Traveller doesn't usually need loads and loads - around 6 dice is usually enough anyway.
 
Welcome and best of luck!

Very jealous, I've been wanting to get a game going with my niece and nephews for quite some time... (un)fortunately the moms and dads keep them all quite busy...

Please do post how it goes.
 
Very best of luck!

Sounds like you have things well in hand! Small piece of referee advice of something to keep foremost in mind - Don't ever let the rules get in the way of having fun!

Enjoy!
 
Small piece of referee advice of something to keep foremost in mind - Don't ever let the rules get in the way of having fun!
Click to expand...

Seconded. In case of any conflict between the rules and the GM's opinion, it should be understood that the rulebook is wrong.... If you want to bypass something to keep the story flowing ("that plan is so awesome I'm not going to make you roll dice for it" or similar)

around 6 dice is usually enough anyway
Click to expand...
Playing a Mercenary campaign at the moment - seven words which inspire dread in the players like no other: "Can you pass me some more dice?"

At the risk of having stuff thrown at me for mentioning Games Workshop, can you mail order the GW dice cube? It's one of the few 'hobby supplies' items that's actually pretty good value.
 
"Across the Bright Face is an outstanding choice for a starting adventure. Let me second the other comments regarding the letter of the rules: If the detail of the rules conflict with the Awesome, go with the Awesome. No real GM runs a Rules As Written campaign anyway.
 
locarno24 said:
At the risk of having stuff thrown at me for mentioning Games Workshop, can you mail order the GW dice cube? It's one of the few 'hobby supplies' items that's actually pretty good value.
Click to expand...

I second that. The standard of GW dice is pretty good, too. Flames of War ones are nice too, as long as you don't mind one of the faces having a symbol (usually the "6" side these days, but it used to be the "1").
 
Thanks very much everyone. It's great to be in the company of knowledgable people!!
There are many many aspects of the rules I will have to absorb and some stuff is going to be bypassed in our first few games.
I have delayed asking any questions of any of you because most of the answers I was loking for were already on the forum, and some bits and pieces I had managed to get my head around anyway.
So I thought it best to actually get the game going before asking silly questions.
I had thought of Yahtzee and my local Argos (30 miles away) doesn't stock the game!!
There's a toy shop down the road but most games are 25euro a pop. (12.50 per die!!). Actually the toy shop owner tried to sell me deluxe scrabble when I said I was looking for dice, or something containing dice.
I actually ended up getting Axis & Allies, unopened, for 5euro from a charity shop and there was a bag, still sealed, containing 12 d6s. Black with white spots. Perfect.
Anyway folks, thanks for all your kind and wise words. I'll post up here next week with some kind of report. Til then, have a great weekend.
 
adders said:
I have delayed asking any questions of any of you because most of the answers I was loking for were already on the forum, and some bits and pieces I had managed to get my head around anyway.
Click to expand...

If you do have some questions feel free to ask.
 
You have inspired me to do the same! I have a young family and never introduced them to Traveller yet but I am buying back all my Classic Traveller books with a view to doing a game soon.

I will take a look at the Bright Face adventure (never had that one), another good one is Marooned. And you cant beat Chamax Plague for fighting hundreds of bug monsters with your boys (like Starship Troopers), and Safari Ship is a good one for the girls!

And other recommendations anyone?
 
Thanks for those recommendations nats.
We played the 'Across The Bright Face' adventure a couple of weeks ago and I have to say that it was a big success. As I mentioned earlier, this was my first ever time GMing a RPG (let alone Traveller), so I was quite nervous about it. I missed a few details in the rules, mostly to do with combat and initiative, range etc, but I stuck as close as possible to it. I made my own ref screen with photocopied bits and pieces from the rulebook, so I kept refering to them but in general, I tried to keep the game going at an exciting pace. I also threw in a mini 'dungeon-crawl' which had nothing to do with the official ATBF adventure but was a nice contrast to the whole 'vacc suits on the moon' type adventure. This mini game actually got the lads really excited so if I can recreate something like that in the next adventure, but maybe a city environment instead of the dungeon, then that would be good.
All in all the session lasted about 3 hours and everyone had fun.
Many thanks again to everyone on this forum who has given me advice about starting up.
Now, onto the next adventure. It should have happened last week but then one of my kids got sick and spent a few days in hospital. So Traveller has been on the back burner. Oh, one thing I meant to mention was for the ATBF adventure I gave the players a choice of the pre-generated characters from the book. Now just last Saturday, as we were supposed to be playing the next adventure, I decided to keep everyone (and myself) interested and up to speed and so we rolled up characters for everyone. Again, this was a good 2 and a half hour session and was a great evening's fun. So now everyone has their own character, and a general feeling for the Traveller universe, we are all itching to play again. To be continued....
 
Adders,

If you're after accessories such as dice and miniatures for your games I can recommend the13thfloor.co.uk to order stuff on-line.

You can save money on miniatures by using paper miniatures instead. There's plenty of free download stuff out there. One Monk Minaitures comes to mind.

An even cheaper idea for markers - instead of using miniatures is to get hold of a bag of plastic counters and surf the net for the sort of images you want to represent your characters and beasties - print out the images in small sizes, cut 'em out and glue 'em to the plastic counters. Its cheap and cheerful and you can make an abundance of counters to suit your every need.
 
Garuda said:
You can save money on miniatures by using paper miniatures instead. There's plenty of free download stuff out there. One Monk Minaitures comes to mind.
Click to expand...

You're a Star!

Just what I've been looking for ever since I found the stuff by by Patrick Crusiau.

Many thanks and best regards,

Ewan
 
I've used multi-colored magnets shaped like thumbtacks (dollar store specials) and a magnetic dry erase board.

Very convenient and keeps the pieces in place for easy storage and can even be used upright.

You could certainly tape cutouts to them - I just use the colors and they can represent people, ships, etc.
 
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