Tarsus

[mancerbear]

I'm wanting to use The Tarsus adventure for my Travellers, and I have to admit my adventure-design-fu is currently weak, so I'm asking for a touch of help.

Tara's assumes that one of the characters is related to the victim in the adventure, and is called back home to help via a "letter". This doesn't work as all my characters have designed their backgrounds and their home worlds have been assigned. I'm looking for ideas to get the PCs involved. I've come up with a few, but was wondering if anyone had any better ideas?

1. The victim is an old friend of a PC, or even better an ally. They receive the "letter".
2. The PCs pick up a ticket to transport a relative of the victim back home after she received the "letter". They then become involved once their passenger asks them for help.
3. The PCs arrive at Tarsus with freight, and a relative of the victim asks them for help.

As you can see, my well has run somewhat dry. Let's, for a moment, forget about the incongretuity of the "letter" concept, as considering Travellers slow transport speeds of mail, and that the PCs could literally be anywhere, the idea of a letter reaching them is faily silly. One option is that the letter is actually an electronic package sent out via X-boats/tramp freighters, etc, and uploaded to each Starport it arrives at. This would assume though, that each Starport has mail terminals that all PCs could access. It's a bit of a pickle.

Any ideas?

 

[fusor]

Maybe starports have a BBS-type system where people can pick up missions, like you see in a lot of online space simulator games?

 

[phavoc]

Change family member to someone one of the PC's knew or met during their career. Maybe a buddy who saved their life or an old commanding officer. Traveller mail works a bit different and the sender can send it to a number of locations where it may be picked up once they check their mail at a starport.

 

[Tenacious-Techhunter]

One of my pitches for MT2E was that “Mail” was just an encryption and storage card you stuck in the ship’s computer that stored the mail in an encrypted form, and would wirelessly transmit it to everything the moment you arrive in a system and allow it to turn on. You would be paid for merely having it active for a minimum period of time within a new system, since there was no way to be sure you ever delivered anything (or didn’t). There would be rewards for bored crew members who successfully decrypted the mail, but didn’t read it, and reported how the decryption was done; of course, sometimes what’s in the mail is more interesting...

This is how mail can plausibly reach your players; frankly, nuts to the old mail, which made no sense to begin with.

 

[NOLATrav]

The Imperium maintains an X-Boat network, one assumes that is how most 'mail' gets delivered, along with news, gossip and so forth. Also, delivering 'mail' is a highly-paid option for speculative traders going all the way back to CT (branching out from the X-Boat termini IMTU). What's been missing IMO is the player routine and role-play of checking for messages/packages once back in a decent port, like in that Firefly episode where Jane gets a hat and a letter from home and Mal and Zoe get...

If 'checking the mail' and 'keeping in touch with folks' is not a regular thing your campaign, you could build a mini-adventure or patron encounter to get them closer to District 268, or to Tarsus itself (assuming you're in 3I, if not I'm sure you take my point). At some point during this the pertinent PC can receive the message, through whatever contacts or allies the group may have in play as they try to complete the mini/one-off. Idea being, as PCs are closer to the origin of a message, it is more likely they will receive it.

Making the ship's monthly mortgage payment is a great reason to 'get mail', so is monthly maintenance.

Being 'close to home' as a motivator to check in with people (bonus points for good role-play).

BTW, I think making the writer of the 'letter' (i.e., vid-clip or hologram with appropriate guilt-inducing footage) an Ally of a PC is a great idea. The potential loss of an Ally should always be of great concern to any Traveller worth their salt. And it's probably a better way to motivate player action than 'long-lost relative' especially since you've said PC backgrounds and homeworlds are already established.

Scouts I think more than any other service would pass along messages and info to whatever ports or bases they visit, as well as any outgoing Scout ships, sort of 'free mail' as it were, since so many Scouts spend so much time alone on the fringe. So if the PC in question is a Scout it wouldn't be a big stretch to find out there's a message from home waiting for them at the local starport's Scout watering hole/base/service desk.