POLL: Naval Campaigns

[paltrysum]

As the author of one Naval Adventure and another almost in the can, I'd like to know more about players' and referees' experiences with the Element Cruisers set and naval campaigns in general. In addition to participating in the poll, I'd love to get more information from you. If you have purchased the Element Cruisers set and read the materials inside,

• Have you used them to run a naval campaign? If so, how did it go?
• What things do you like about naval campaigns?
• What things could you do without?
• What would you like to see more of in Naval Adventures? Specific types of stories? More "Travel where no sophont has gone before" or more "Fire spinal weapon when ready, lieutenant!"
• Anything else you'd care to add about naval campaigns.

I get to write these things every so often and would love to hear more about what you'd like to see in them.

 

[MyndkryM]

I haven't picked any of the Naval Campaign items, but I'm very interested and hopeing that there is a tie-in for the future Fifth Frontier War products.

 

[Erias]

For the time being, I'm not running a naval campaign (I'm still learning to master the rules and getting a good grasp of the spirit of the game).

 

[Geir]

I haven't picked any of the Naval Campaign items, but I'm very interested and hopeing that there is a tie-in for the future Fifth Frontier War products.

There's an idea! A Naval campaign boxed set for the Fifth Frontier War. Some sort of independent ship, like a commerce-raider or intelligence asset would make an interesting choice.

 

[Sigtrygg]

I am not a great fan of active duty military campaigns - the rank structure causes a lot of problems at the gaming table in my experience.

That said I am looking forward to the Deepnight Revelation campaign.

The Element class deck plans are pretty but useless, I can still use my old AHL maps at the table but I can not use the ECC deckplans as a battlemat. If only Mongoose had a game where you could detail smaller sections of the ship and it was to the same scale as figures...

 

[EwanS]

I am not a great fan of active duty military campaigns - the rank structure causes a lot of problems at the gaming table in my experience.

That said I am looking forward to the Deepnight Revelation campaign.

The Element class deck plans are pretty but useless, I can still use my old AHL maps at the table but I can not use the ECC deckplans as a battlemat. If only Mongoose had a game where you could detail smaller sections of the ship and it was to the same scale as figures...

They did a Kickstarter back in 2018 called Vanguard: Boarding Actions in the Fifth Frontier War but unfortunately it got cancelled (I was backer number 2). Hopefully it might get released one day in some fashion.

 

[Baldo]

"Not My Cuppa Tea" here . I do have Element Class Cruisers in my collection, but it's only because I'm an Amazon customer, and the box set is very cheap there . Military campaigns are not my thing, not even the latest Star Trek bundle got my interest...

 

[Putraack]

ooops, too late to vote, but I plan to run a naval game some day, possibly Star Trek influenced

 

[Reynard]

If a group wanted a naval campaign, I'd be all for it whether to ref or play. I just prefer the simpler aspects of the trader/explorer game. You can observe lots of sci-fi movies and shows featuring a naval theme and can imagine done as Traveller.



McHale's Navy....

 

[Yatima]

I'd love to run an active-duty Naval campaign, and have considered getting the elements class box set several times, even had it in the shopping cart once. I didn't buy it because I feel like I'm mostly paying for the deck plans, which I don't see much use for. I'd love to be able to buy the rules for the naval campaigns separately to the rest of the box set, and would probably snap that up if it were offered.

What I really would love is smaller scale Naval campaigns - Traveller is historically a small-ship game, when it comes to the PCs that is, and a Naval campaign as a lieutenant in charge of a Patrol cruiser or a Captain with a destroyer command would seem much more appealing to me than a cruiser, which has a much larger roster of crew and NPCs to manage. There's precedent for small ship Naval camapigns - the Keith brother's Flight of the Stag adventure, the naval campaign premise in Zozer Games' Solo book (which I played and enjoyed as skipper of a Patrol Cruiser). That's a format I'd love to see more of.

Just my 2c

J

 

[Old School]

Yatima, the Naval Campaign rules do incorporate running a small ship as much as a large one, although I’m not sure how necessary they would be for a small ship. A lot of the campaign rules are about abstracting the crew and the ships’s performance. Its a good setup for moving through the aspects of what a crew of hundreds is up to, but its different than roleplaying a small group.

A see a similar challenge with the Deepnight Revelation campaign. I would love to run it, but I think I’d have to do it troupe style, where each player could be one of several different PCs.

 

[Yatima]

Yatima, the Naval Campaign rules do incorporate running a small ship as much as a large one, although I’m not sure how necessary they would be for a small ship. A lot of the campaign rules are about abstracting the crew and the ships’s performance. Its a good setup for moving through the aspects of what a crew of hundreds is up to, but its different than roleplaying a small group.

A see a similar challenge with the Deepnight Revelation campaign. I would love to run it, but I think I’d have to do it troupe style, where each player could be one of several different PCs.

Interesting - I didn't know that was in there. My point still stands that I'd buy that rule set if it were available independent of the huge set of deck plans. I'd love to see a deeper extension of the naval campaign rules to that small ship 'Das Boot' in Reaver's Deep type campaign, then, is my feedback.

 

[paltrysum]

Great feedback on this thread. Naval adventures are designed with flexibility in mind. The Travellers can operate a ship anywhere from a destroyer (about 3,000 tons) to the largest battleship or dreadnought in the fleet. The Element-class cruiser was selected in order to provide a mid-sized capital ship that would engage in missions most likely to be fun and entertaining for a group of players. Cruisers engage in varied mission types from diplomacy and showing the flag, support for larger ships of the line, exploration, and small-scale conflict, just to name a few. The Naval Campaign Sourcebook makes it clear that serving on a larger warship is, well...more about fighting wars, and not as likely to be fun fare for players. That said, I'm sure that serving on a Tigress-class dreadnought could be interesting if it occurred during a Fifth Frontier War campaign. There are ways of making a variety of campaign types work.

The capital ship should be an interesting setting unto itself, and the referee should be prepared to mine its nooks and crannies to make the ship an additional NPC of sorts in the adventure. Heck, throw in an Intellect program and the ship can talk back to you, simulating sentience. Where the crew sits on the bridge, the interesting foibles of the ship, its highways and byways, those pesky jump capacitors that keep going offline in Engineering, and the best card game to join in the commons are all things you'll want to develop to breathe life into your naval adventures and campaigns. While the Travellers still travel in a naval campaign, the ship they serve on becomes unto a "planet" itself—meaning, it is a setting where a lot of action happens, perhaps even more so than with your tramp trader crew on their Beowulf. After all, in a naval campaign, we're talking about a capital ship, a small city in space. If done right, whole game sessions might occur within the confines of the ship and still be fun and entertaining. As the players get more adapted to the ship being their go-to, those gaming sessions might even become the best ones depending on how your group takes to the concept.