Ref surprises during Traveller creation

[Ol'Weedy]

Anyone else spend weeks planning a campaign, only to realize most of it will need to be changed, as soon as the players finish their characters?
Two new players to the game, one chooses Thief, the other Merchant. When the merchant got to Broker-4, I realized there was going to be a lot of trading.
But the Thief....never have I seen such dice luck. he hits '5' twice on career events (+2DM to 1 benefit roll). Last term, he hits '10', and decides to gamble 6 BRs, and wins, giving him 3 more. He survives 6 terms without a scratch, and makes rank 5. Total of 12 Benefit rolls...all at +1, and 2 at +3.
Between the 2 of them, they will start with Cr260000, 50% of a free trader that they will never fly....and 57 ship shares!
Crime in Traveller pays well.

 

[Reisender]

Anyone else spend weeks planning a campaign, only to realize most of it will need to be changed, as soon as the players finish their characters?
Two new players to the game, one chooses Thief, the other Merchant. When the merchant got to Broker-4, I realized there was going to be a lot of trading.
But the Thief....never have I seen such dice luck. he hits '5' twice on career events (+2DM to 1 benefit roll). Last term, he hits '10', and decides to gamble 6 BRs, and wins, giving him 3 more. He survives 6 terms without a scratch, and makes rank 5. Total of 12 Benefit rolls...all at +1, and 2 at +3.
Between the 2 of them, they will start with Cr260000, 50% of a free trader that they will never fly....and 57 ship shares!
Crime in Traveller pays well.

Well, the Thief has now 2 enemies as well. I would be suspicious about the dice used with so much luck. At least I would have an eye out during the next sessions.

 

[Stingray_tm]

I did not expect our Vargr Space Marine to be a highly talented psion with access to all psion skills but teleportation...

The chances of that happening are so small that I decided to run with it and build it into my Ancients campaign as a plot point.

Oh, he is also a cook.

 

[Vormaerin]

Weird stuff happens all the time. I had a Marine turned Law Enforcement turned Prisoner who ended up serving 9 terms (because of the prison sentence) and made every one of his aging rolls. That crew as a whole ended up being a bunch of characters whose careers all ended in some kind of disgrace or scandal. And when they looked at the group skills at the end, they realized this was some kind of skeezy private investigation group because their best skills were Advocate, Streetwise, Investigation, Recon, and stuff like that.

 

[alex_greene]

Well, the Thief has now 2 enemies as well. I would be suspicious about the dice used with so much luck. At least I would have an eye out during the next sessions.

Nah, let them enjoy their dice. If they're loaded, they're loaded. If not, he'll get a run of bad luck with them one of these days.

 

[Bense]

What ship the Referee plans to use for the campaign can always override the benefit rolls. Either all the Ship Shares go to the ship the players will end up owning, or you can simply say "the Scout already ended up with your ship - reroll any Ship Shares benefit rolls".

 

[Garran]

I wouldn't force a reroll of the shares. That's liable to sour things (especially if someone ends up rerolling 10 shares into 1000 credits or the like) and it hits some career muster outs harder than others. They're just income-generating shares in ships other than the one that the PCs are currently using.

 

[Bense]

You could allow extra rolls on the Cash table (more than 3) for careers that have lots of ship share entries on the benefits table.

Any campaign where the Travellers will be isolated from wherever their income-generating ships are operating could use the same rule, since if you can't receive the payments it's not much of a benefit.

 

[Vormaerin]

Consider that ship shares are on the same table as "you get a free gun worth Cr1000 or less" and "you get a toolkit".

Not every benefit needs to be constantly valuable. If you have a pile of ship shares you don't need, that's a great story hook. "Crap, our ship got hit by three missiles and the engine is blown. What do we do? Ugh, I've got these shares in the MV Notsuchagoodthing. Maybe I can arrange a deal." Or "You hear a distress call from Alpha Crapula IV. What's really shocking is that its the free trader, Not Soon Enough. Don't you own like 10% of that ship?" And the players can use it too. "Damn, we need a ship that folks won't associate with us for this job. There's a few dozen merchants in port at the moment. Any of them one I have a share in?"

If you are setting up a campaign with a very specific premise that would make ships or ship shares not a good fit, then you should state that upfront. "Hey, any ships or ship shares are gonna be this other benefit idea I have, because you are all going to start as the crew of this rescue ship in a red zone." Or whatever the reason PC ships and shares aren't relevant.

 

[TrippyHippy]

I actually, think it is best to treat you ‘Session 0’ as a brainstorming process before you consider the campaign or to set reasonably strict parameters over what chargen restrictions need to be applied.

I was irritated when I ran a Pirates campaign after I had encouraged players to choose 'tough guy’ careers for their characters and one player chose to roll a Scholar till he was about 60+ years. I wouldn’t have minded so much, but he got killed in the first combat exchange and the player started to complain about how tough it was!

 

[Vormaerin]

Scholar isn't intrinsically not a tough guy. Indiana Jones is a scholar But being 60ish is likely to make you squishy in Traveller unless you roll amazingly well.

But combat in Traveller is not for the faint hearted, especially if you are playing with military grade weapons and not just blades and pistols.

 

[Stingray_tm]

In my campaign, ships and shares as benefits are being treated as a pension bonus, just as suggested in the rules.

On topic: Another strange thing that happened with our Engineer: He tried several times (via Academy and regularly) to join the Navy. He failed all qualification roles. After drifting on a tramp ship where he immediately got attacked and almost killed by pirates, he got drafted. Into the Navy... Where he had a auccessful carrier, mustering out with EDU 15...