Traveller Alternate Spinward Marches Campaign Idea Query

[Hopeless]

Been thinking about running a campaign but a little different.

Only really have the pocket handbook and the spinward marches book and thought this might make an interesting campaign but need to fine tune it slightly.

Keeping it humancentric I simply explain that humanity discovered the means to travel immense distances with the jumpdrive but did even better with what was called a Hypernet Gate.

However something or someone caused those gates to detonate effectively stripping the Marches of most of the highest tech, military forces and governing forces.

The players take the part of adventurers' who are looking to survive in this new era a sort of Firefly meets Andromeda if you will except no aliens and what passes for a government in this era is more Empire than Republic.

What do you think?

Too much or too little?

 

[MarkB]

I'd tweak the idea into the hypernet gates simply mysteriously stopping working all at once, and nobody having been able to figure out why. That way, if you ever want to use them as a specific plot point, they're still out there.

 

[Hopeless]

I'd tweak the idea into the hypernet gates simply mysteriously stopping working all at once, and nobody having been able to figure out why. That way, if you ever want to use them as a specific plot point, they're still out there.

Been reading the Lost Fleet and wondered what would happen if they were actually blown up and what would be left afterwards.

Was thinking of eventually revealing one gate didn't explode and that there was a reason why it didn't but wanted to develop this idea further as I saw this as a potential climatic reveal for the end of a campaign season where it introduced why humanity was the only race currently in the spinward marches and that the history they think they know has been largely outright lies or fabrications to help protect the populace from something they really should know about.

Maybe too much but still worth considering

 

[rust]

I think it is a good idea, but you should take care to build up the mystery
slowly over time, with rumours, strange bits of information, and so on, to
make the players (and their characters) really curious about the truth be-
hind all that, and not waste much of the idea by revealing it all in one go
at the end of the campaign season.

 

[Lord High Munchkin]

A good example (also regarding jump-gates) of slow release is in Iain M Bank's 'The Algebraist'... two billion+ years of chasing rumours (although the events in the book are the end denouement).

Take your time, and if the PCs never actually work it out, it doesn't matter either (as long as they enjoy the journey).

 

[Egil Skallagrimsson]

Terrific idea, Hopeless, but why set this campaign in the Spinward Marches? I would be inclined to create an entirely new sub-sector or two, tailoring the planets to what sorts would best fit in, and off you go (probably best to assign values for atmos, pop, law level etc rather than relying on random numbers). A varient could be detailling one system at top TL9 carefully, and look at their struggles to achieve jump drive (c.f. Mongoose trav adventure Beltstrike!).

I'm not great believer in canon, Spinward or otherwise, but the 3I etc is based on a specific set of assumptions, if you are knocking them away, then why not go the whole hog? Good ideas on worlds, systems etc can still be used from Spinward Marches book, though perhaps with some renaming, just don't try to publish it!

Good luck

Egil

 

[tneva82]

I'm not great believer in canon, Spinward or otherwise, but the 3I etc is based on a specific set of assumptions, if you are knocking them away, then why not go the whole hog? Good ideas on worlds, systems etc can still be used from Spinward Marches book, though perhaps with some renaming, just don't try to publish it!

If he scraps the 3I terms and doesn't just copy&paste stuff from other people's work to it why couldn't he publish it?-) That's pretty much what traveller developer's pack is for

 

[Lord High Munchkin]

Personally, I drop the whole 3rd Imperium—I always thought it a bit "rubbish".

Go for something more original, less rooted in 1960-70's assumptions of what the future will be like.

And no samurai-lions.

 

[locarno24]

The hypergates (almost) all blowing up made me think of Escape Velocity Nova, in fact. Sounds like a cool idea.

If you want to do something significantly different (and 'gate' system does make for significantly different operating concepts* for the universe), then there's something to be said for dropping the 3rd imperium as a setting. That way you get to have the gate network blow out all the way back to Earth, and get to have the various disparate chunks of humanity still within jump distance of one another try to pick up the pieces, and no-one has any whines or disappointed preconceptions about the universe (and therefore may pay attention when you describe something rather than assuming they'll just do what they always do!).

Of course, one or two gates can have survived, giving you the ability to start reconnecting them as the campaign goes on, allowing for creation of massive trading centres around a scarce handful of still (mostly) functioning gate links, which would be equivalent to Panama/Suez canal importance (Or DS9 wormhole/HH Manticore Junction if you'd prefer sci-fi)

As this goes, on, of course, you can have hints start to drop about why someone felt it necessary to blow away the gate network in the first place. Maybe someone or something was trying to access it from the outside?




* Distance is the big limiting factor - fundamentally increase the point-to-point speed and you remove the time delay in managing events in a different sector, meaning (assuming this is a long-standing technology) much less need to delegate absolute authority and hence significantly less impetus for the re-emergence of a nobility with absolute (local) authority in the name of a remote central government. In fact in EV Nova this was what triggered Omata Kane to do this - trying to isolate the bulk of humanity from an increasingly totalitatian central government.

Obviously the extent of this effect varies with the gate-to-gate speed, maximum gate separation, maximum transit dtonnage, availibility (was it X-boat rare? Jump engine common?) and date of invention relative to the 'conventional' jump engine.

 

[Hopeless]

Terrific idea, Hopeless, but why set this campaign in the Spinward Marches? I would be inclined to create an entirely new sub-sector or two, tailoring the planets to what sorts would best fit in, and off you go (probably best to assign values for atmos, pop, law level etc rather than relying on random numbers). A varient could be detailling one system at top TL9 carefully, and look at their struggles to achieve jump drive (c.f. Mongoose trav adventure Beltstrike!).

I'm not great believer in canon, Spinward or otherwise, but the 3I etc is based on a specific set of assumptions, if you are knocking them away, then why not go the whole hog? Good ideas on worlds, systems etc can still be used from Spinward Marches book, though perhaps with some renaming, just don't try to publish it!

Good luck
Egil

I was tempted to run a precursor game where they play members of the crew of a free trader and run them through a day in port at say Regina or Jewell and then as they jump out having to use the old method rather than the insanely popular hypernet gates they find themselves suddenly dropped out of jump space just short of their destination and forced to cobble together a means to travel the rest of the way since it would otherwise take years or even generations to cover that "short" distance.

So far the players have got as far as generating where they've come from with one born in transit to Beck's World, another was raised on Fulacin in the Rhylanor subsector and the third from Bronze in the Sword Worlds subsector.

I'm using the X-boat route as the indication where all the hypernet gates were located but am waiting to see whether the PCs want to start after the destruction or before it happened

 

[Hopeless]

My reasoning on keeping the imperium wass to simply explain there had been a number of wars waged since humanity left earth.

One shut down the gate that linked the spinward marches to those across the great rift and earth.

The rift would be otherwise untraversible without the gates, but rather than collapse the remaining Imperial government took a more martial approach to control and the hypernet gates made that altogether more easier to do since nobody wanted their supplies to arrives weeks or even years later (watch the first episode of Kiddygrade for an example of that!).

However the gates blew up and this took alot of the Imperial forces with them leaving very few scout, naval and research bases left.

The resulting marches has a number of new governments and due to the shipping left travelling any distance more than say a couple of hexes or parsecs would be a considerable expense for the far smaller new realms.

Am allowing psionics but have no intention on wallowing in the dark and light side a certain other franchise delves into but am thinking it could be used to explain why humanity wasn't wiped out like the older alien races that preceded them although thats still a long way off if it ever gets that far!

 

[Lord High Munchkin]

One thing you could consider would be that all active jump-gates blew... those in transit/under construction/switched off for maintenance survived.

That would allow for out-lying regions with delivered/near completion, but not yet-activated gates are able to switch them on, meaning you could have "islands" of interstellar activity. The long-established core gets hammered, but the fringe regions less so.

If you wanted to keep the Imperium purely for ease of use (having a book at hand), all you would need to do really would be to use an online random-name generator to rename anything 3rd Imperium. Just pencil in the changes into your book. In any case your campaign will likely soon diverge anyway, so don't feel bound by "canon" (which can be frankly pretty silly).

 

[phavoc]

You could also keep the tech and everything else intact by creating a barrier to jump space. Say in the corridor connecting the Marches to the rest of the Imperium a super-massive star goes supernova, causing all kinds of problems, including inhibiting jump drive travel in the affected sectors.

Kind of like the same thing the Darrians went through, but far more massive. Depending on where you want the detonation to occur, you could affect different areas. Of course, since jump drives are faster than a supernova, there could be all kinds of adventures for players trying to get into/out of systems before they are cut off, political destabilizations due to populations influx/refugees, even civil war as people fight for a place to live.

 

[Hopeless]

The way I was thinking of going is that when humanity first found the hypernet gates they had spread out until they found the gate that led to the Spinward Marches.

They used it to spread even further but found signs that there had been life on this side of the gate but it had inexplicably ended several millennia ago with evidence of a similar extinction event even further back than that.

A little over a century and a half prior to the campaign's start a war on the other side of the gate forced the Imperial forces to wage a bitter battle to take back the home gate in the spinward marches and a lone warship succeeded in disabling the gate ending an invasion from the homeside.

With no means of repairing the gate other than to keep it under careful watch the remaining imperial forces restored order by assuming martial law.

However their forces was too far stretched to enforce such an action forcing them to consolidate and over the following decades gradually found other ways to recover the lost territory.

Then at about fourteen years prior to the start of the campaign the hypernet gates all went nova, the only survivors were on ships heading out of the system at the time the event occurred and very few of them escaped the resulting shockwave that knocked ships out of jump in the parsecs surrounding these systems.

A decade later and things are still being rebuilt, the imperial forces was almost completely annihilated since for their purposes the gates were their main assurance of keeping power and what is left is trying to recover from an almost total extinction event.

Fortunately there are still many worlds with an inhabitable biosphere and these are swiftly becoming home to an irregular stream of refugees looking to rebuild their lives since most of the technology they once depended upon has been all but lost due to the monopoly of the gates and whats left is being slowly fought over.

Now thats where my campaign idea starts from with a small group of PCs one of whom has inherited the deeds to an ancient scout class mining ship along with a decrepid copy of an old spinward marches star chart that just happens to hold the general location of the various naval, scout and research bases in the marches prior to the war and unknown to them someone knows they've got it...

Now at this point I'm going to have to figure out what they plan to do since no game I have ever run has ever stuck to what I assume they would do...

The PCs so far include two survivors from the Sword Worlds which was all but annihilated since they had gates at all bar a couple of their systems due to their general troublemaking nature...
The other two include one from a more technologically wise system and the other a psion what type has yet to be decided but at least thats a start?

Still nice ideas so far, still thinking of leaving the home gate in one piece and explaining the gate destruction reset it meaning there is one operational hypernet gate left of course that still leaves the question of which side uses it first... and who won the war on the home side...

 

[rust]

Some of your ideas remind me of MJD's Far Avalon setting, and I think
you could use some of it for additional background ideas:

http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product_info.php?products_id=63419&filters=0_0_40050_0

 

[Hopeless]

Been wondering about system generation.

So the spinward marches book lists the various worlds in each subsector but not how many planets, gas giants and so on present and got thinking just how much detail do I need to go into to get this up and running?

As it stands I was thinking that the opening adventure deal with how they all met up and more importantly where they want to go since I could try and figure out all of the details for each sector or just develop it as I go along but keep an eye out for opportunities where it can be more detailed just not overload me because I certainly can't keep ahead of them when I do start this game.

 

[rust]

So the spinward marches book lists the various worlds in each subsector but not how many planets, gas giants and so on present and got thinking just how much detail do I need to go into to get this up and running?

Systems are not really a problem, unless you are afraid of contradictions
with published material later on all you need is a couple of pre-designed
systems, and you can use them almost everywhere in the setting - just
replace one of the planets in the habitable zone with the mainworld from
the book, and there you go.

 

[BP]

Yep, Traveller is still sadly haunted by the Apple II days and its roots...

Certain details on solar bodies in a system are of importance to anyone actually RPing traveling in Traveller. While stellar detail is nice for fluff (and system gen 'realism'), travel times to planetary bodies (at least GGs) is a must have. Its also nice to have moons and other planets in a sci-fi game, as well as multiple GGs and other sources of fuel (ice balls) along with crude orbital details (i.e. distance/time is largely related to relative orbit - especially useful to know when bodies are on opposite sides of a star).

Minimal info should have included 'distance' to GG and number of moons of primary planet. Other details would certainly be nice (and features like binary planetary systems), but not essential.

Personally, prefer full system details (planets, moons, etc) along the lines of what Scouts LBB provided. Sadly, many get hung up on 'realistic' generation of these extra details. Which is silly given that this is a game of fiction, and considering that in real life there is not enough information to make up a realistic system (only constantly changing theories and based on new data from almost every probe).

 

[Hopeless]

Mind if i discuss details regarding the game I was planning on running?

Mostly to do with tinkering with whats been noted in the spinward marches as a means of fine tuning what I was planning?

One of which was having each subsector map be an actual solar system so rather than go all out to redesign what hasn't been stated simply use whats provided but in a manner that might make things easier to handle...

Of course that route would mean the gates didn't nova only blow up sufficiently to effect those worlds closest to it and make it a campaign covering 16 or so systems rather than 16 subsectors...

Needs thought of course but perhaps a good place to discuss.

 

[BP]

Its a public forum - feel free...

As to using subsector maps as solar systems - that doesn't really hold the suspenders of disbelief up very well at all.