Timed Events ?

[rust]

Timed events were mentioned in another thread, one which I already
did my worst to derail through thread drift, and so I thought it would
be better to give this its own thread.

I very often use timetables with major background events for my set-
tings. They include all those events that are normally beyond the in-
fluence of the characters, but are important for the setting's develop-
ment as well as for the "feel" that the setting has a life of its own and
independent from what the characters are doing.

Typical events of this kind are natural desasters, epidemics, deaths of
important personalities, the outbreak of a war or the signing of a peace
treaty, a new company entering the market to compete with the exis-
ting ones, a major company going out of business, and such stuff.

Such events can serve to offer options for activities and decisions to the
characters, but also to demonstrate that the characters are not the cen-
ter of the universe and that not everything that happens there happens
because of them.

 

[BP]

Excellent idea - especially for campaigns...

Events in my games are, by and large, character driven, though I do introduce sort of 'timed events' of this nature to keep things moving and avoid that center of universe feel - but they are usually only half planned in advance, or are still, at least indirectly, triggered by character decisions.

 

[CosmicGamer]

Nice post rust. Hope you don't mind if I add it to my collection of GM tips which I sometimes post for others.

Why the ? in the title of the post?

 

[Dave Chase]

I use the same concept, but never considered naming it.

Timed Events is a good, easy to understand title for.

In my games, there are certain things that are going to happen no matter what the players do. The question is, how do they react, use, benefit or get hurt over it.

Sometimes some of the smaller details will be effected by how the players have played before and during the incident.

Some incidents are grand, large and world/game encompassing.

Some are just a personal fight between NPC's; Like a couple breaking up, a major NPC gets hurt in a bar fight or accident (nothing life threatening but causes changes in the routine or plan), or something that is very news worth that has lots of peoples attention for a while.

Dave Chase

 

[rinku]

I mentioned this on the other thread that sparked this one: It's important to factor in the information lag that J-Drive imposes (assuming you are using J-Drive) if the timed events are happening outsystem, and the lag imposed by lightspeed for events insystem.

If a ship is bounced by pirates (or as last night, a Zhodani stealth scout...) somewhere between the Gas Giant and the mainworld, they could easily be over a light hour distant from help. That's 20 space combat turns for them to even get an acknowledgement of their mayday, and physical help could take days to get to them.

 

[Egil Skallagrimsson]

Timed events were mentioned in another thread, one which I already
did my worst to derail through thread drift, and so I thought it would
be better to give this its own thread.

I very often use timetables with major background events for my set-
tings. They include all those events that are normally beyond the in-
fluence of the characters, but are important for the setting's develop-
ment as well as for the "feel" that the setting has a life of its own and
independent from what the characters are doing.

Typical events of this kind are natural desasters, epidemics, deaths of
important personalities, the outbreak of a war or the signing of a peace
treaty, a new company entering the market to compete with the exis-
ting ones, a major company going out of business, and such stuff.

Such events can serve to offer options for activities and decisions to the
characters, but also to demonstrate that the characters are not the cen-
ter of the universe and that not everything that happens there happens
because of them.

Agreed, a very handy GM tool, especially if an adventure becomes a long term campaign. Must admit I tend to use the the more large scale events as background colour, but smaller events (though very significant to the characters!!) can also be timelined as well. This can really help develop a sense of narrative and, sometimes, urgency!

Egil

 

[rust]

Why the ? in the title of the post?

As a shorthand version of "... what do you think about it ?".

 

[rust]

I mentioned this on the other thread that sparked this one: It's important to factor in the information lag that J-Drive imposes (assuming you are using J-Drive) if the timed events are happening outsystem, and the lag imposed by lightspeed for events insystem.

Indeed. In my Pandora setting the information time lag between Terra
and Pandora is about 4 months, despite the fast hyperdrive used in the
setting.

This time lag can also be used for some unpleasant surprises for the
characters - imagine the starship engineer of a Terran ship telling the
proud colonial pilot of a new Hopper launch that all new Hopper grav
vehicles on Terra had to be grounded months ago because their grav
units proved to be extremely unreliable and there were a number of
deadly accidents ...

"You did survive piloting this for three months - that may well be an
interstellar record ..."

 

[Captain Jonah]

Why the ? in the title of the post?

As a shorthand version of "... what do you think about it ?".

Well I suspect that aside from refs who run unrelated or stand alone adventures most of us use scripted events and timelines in campaigns.

No matter what your players do, the fifth frontier war breaks out, the rebellion happens, some highly suspect CEOs get together and agree between them to hire corsairs to crush all non megacorp trade in the sector.

Having a timeline and a plot line covers big stuff and little stuff. Timeline covers stuff players cannot influence. Plotline is stuff they can. FFW kicks off on time, nothing players can do about it as its in the timeline but that suprise attack by a handfull of Zho raiders against civilian shipping on the border can be changed by player actions if they warn the civies or arrive with help to defend them. Saving those merchants will not change the timeline but it makes your players feel good.

As rust said his volcano goes bang regardless, that is a timeline thing. The deaths of colonists and the destruction of the camp on the volcanic island is a plot line thing. Players could spot the warning signs, siesmic activity etc in time to warn the camp or they could respond to the eruption, racing there with risky speed to save the lives of those under threat.

I use timelines and plot lines all the time, just because the players don't see things happening doesn't mean they don't happen. If a tree gets blown up in the forest and no player see's it does it still go bang.

Schrodinger's cat aside having a timeline puts players in part of a bigger world. Events are happening around them. Just like the real world.

Do any of you go to the extent of doing mail headlines etc for your games, a bit like the TAS ones from the clasic adventures. I tuck in plot clues and hooks for new adventures along with all sorts of fluff that way. Just the headlines and maybe a snippit but I can flesh out anything the players want more info on and maybe that becomes another adventure if they seem interested.

Hearing that an Imperial MOJ investigator has been sent from the sector capital to deal with reports of corupt nobles in the area may be old news (6-8 weeks old in fact) but weeks later coming across the theft of a prototype guass sniper rifle as part of another adventure then finding that a dodgy noble has hired a master sniper when the players ransack his office puts 2+2+2=8 :twisted:

I always enjoy having a player say"wait didn't we hear about that weeks ago on the news". Mind you I also fake newspaper cuttings for my horror and modern games so maybe I'm just sad

 

[rust]

Do any of you go to the extent of doing mail headlines etc for your games, a bit like the TAS ones from the clasic adventures.

I do not use newspapers and thelike, because they do not really fit in well
with my colonial settings, but whenever a ship arrives at the starport the-
re are also news and rumours, and the planetary events usually get com-
monly known through the comm network almost as soon as they happen.

One of the characters' problems is to find out who among the visiting spa-
cers is a trustworthy source of news, and who has a tendency to sell his
opinion as a fact, to believe any silly rumour he hears, or even to make
up things.

"Of course it is true, almost the entire population of the Veritas colony
has been abducted by aliens, and a fleet of the alien warships has been
seen to move towards this sector - I will be gone as soon as we have un-
loaded those machine parts, I do not want to be used for sadistic experi-
ments by some stinking aliens."

 

[Captain Jonah]

Newspapers are not realy for traveller but the Tas headlines are.

Still with so few ships visiting your colony and with so much time between them I guess you can have a page or two of news or gossip ready for each one. Just get ideas from the evening news and make notes about events and disasters then move them to your other colonies

 

[Fovean]

Great stuff, rust, I've often done timelines as well, and still do... I really like the "life of its own" sense it lends to a setting.

What I've been doing the last few years for my ATU is a timeline reaching backwards from the game start... so that way events and mission experience in char gen have a basis in the setting's reality... so a lot of Army characters served in the Penance Wars while the big Naval actions happened in Tiga Alley...
the backstory serves the char gen and the char gen helps develop the backstory... pretty fun, especially when the gang is in a real roleplaying mood rather than roll-play.

But sometimes it's hard to know when to stop so I've limited myself to 50 years forwards and backwards. No PC's older than 40 IMTU!

 

[rust]

What I've been doing the last few years for my ATU is a timeline reaching backwards from the game start...
so that way events and mission experience in char gen have a basis in the setting's reality...

A very good idea, thank you.

While I do have a history timeline of my setting, I did not think of connec-
ting it with the biographies of the characters. This would probably require
a few changes to the various career events tables, to replace the events
that do not fit into the setting with setting specific ones, but this is not a
major effort, and the results could indeed add more depth and colour to
the game.

 

[BP]

Yep, excellent idea.

The connections and events in MGT chargen are a big hit, and for RP, background is great.

 

[FreeTrav]

"Timed Events", as they're being referred to in this thread, should be a part of any campaign that runs for more than one or two gaming sessions - and the timing should be such that communications lag figures into when the players get the news. In my own adventure, "Saving the Throne", while I did not specify detailed events subsequent to the setup, I did strongly imply that such events should happen, and would naturally be out of the control of the players (and could well affect their mission).

If your adventure has a deadline, the use of timed events, not just "watching the clock", has a salutary effect on the characters as far as reminding them that there IS a deadline, and that the clock is ticking.

I would consider them a useful tool for a campaign, especially if I'm also using Contacts (or Allies, or Enemies, or Rivals) as is explicitly supported/encouraged in at least two editions of Traveller.

 

[rinku]

What I've been doing the last few years for my ATU is a timeline reaching backwards from the game start...

Yep. Do this myself. One of the current group did 10 terms (I don't impose a term limit) and was in his 20's during the Fourth Frontier War (but as a young biosurgeon at Macene belt - didn't see any action). I laid out all their careers and located those events likely to allow their connections.

Space:1889 was the game I can remember encouraging this, especially for military types. There was a list of what campaigns the various regiments had served in and it was easy to pick a regiment and work out your battle honours based on age. Hmmm... I should have a go at MGT-ising that one some day...

 

[Sturn]

What I've been doing the last few years for my ATU is a timeline reaching backwards from the game start...

I've had a timeline of past events in old campaigns for other games, but ran in to difficulties when incorporating it into a Traveller character generation. What I wanted was a list of events by time and place that could coincide with the terms of character generation. A.i., "you were on the world of Xenoth when the plague of '54 hit, you receive a bonus of Survival-0".

The problem with doing this in Traveller is it would need to be retrofitted after character generation or you must choose your character's starting age before rolling up a character.

 

[rust]

The problem with doing this in Traveller is it would need to be retrofitted after character generation or you must choose your character's starting age before rolling up a character.

Our first character creation step usually is to decide the type and age of
the character (e.g. Scientist, 38 years), which gives us the birth date of
the character, and this should make it easier to connect the setting's his-
tory with the character's biography - but one either has to make charac-
ter creation a bit less random or risk that one might have to create more
than one character (or use the optional point buy system, although this
very much reduces the fun of character creation).