Travellers Needed - The Future of Traveller

[G'Naakbusters]

Personally I would love to see more official work on areas outside the third imperium. K'kree and Hiver space both have a lot of fan work with little official information...

I would love to see a Hiver-centric campaign, perhaps with a rough set of rules for depicting competing Manipulations; your characters taking on certain jobs, making certain choices, playing into different schemes, and the status of different Hiver patrons changing accordingly. I imagine it would be quite fun, because there's room for all manner of odd tasks that might not seem serious on the surface but are being placed in motion as part of some exercise in curiosity or to provoke certain reactions. Hivers are a great excuse to make silly things genuinely meaningful, is what I suppose I'm saying. Now that Aliens of Charted Space 4 has fully fleshed out the Gurvin and Za'tachk, we have enough published information on all of the Big Four federation races to populate a Hive Federation-based campaign...

 

[Shadowblayde99]

There have been so many sourcebooks coming out lately. What I'd like is adventures that are setting neutral i.e. ones without references to specific systems or the Third Imperium. These would be ones without loads of background information but rather just good plots......and no reimagining of classic Traveller adventures.

 

[Arcanum]

There have been so many sourcebooks coming out lately. What I'd like is adventures that are setting neutral i.e. ones without references to specific systems or the Third Imperium. These would be ones without loads of background information but rather just good plots......and no reimagining of classic Traveller adventures.

I disagree. The best adventures are firmly installed in a universe. The setting is very important. The players need the setting to live around them.

So an adventure in the Third imperium need details on the places of the adventure. An adventure in 2300 AD need others details and even if the scenario is similar the two must be very different to play. So why not differents settings, and scenarios in each, but generic scenarios are bad.

Sorry if my english is bad, i'm a french player.

 

[OriginalCaruso]

This comes down to the style of play. In long term campaign style of play then stand alone adventures become more useful. In single adventure style of play a theme focus ie single book works well. I prefer the former where stand alone modules are more useful

Your English is fine!

 

[Seffix]

@Arcanum, I agree, your English is orders of magnitude better than my Français.

Also, I prefer to play sandbox style games. Whilst I can herd players like any other GM, I personally prefer to give them a situation and see where they go. It's usually better (or at least more interesting/amusing) than what I would come up with on my own. For that reason, I am more interested in scenarios, settings, or other pieces of inspiration that can get the characters out doing "whatever it is they do best."

 

[Arcanum]

@Arcanum, I agree, your English is orders of magnitude better than my Français.

Also, I prefer to play sandbox style games. Whilst I can herd players like any other GM, I personally prefer to give them a situation and see where they go. It's usually better (or at least more interesting/amusing) than what I would come up with on my own. For that reason, I am more interested in scenarios, settings, or other pieces of inspiration that can get the characters out doing "whatever it is they do best."

Thanks, but even when a scenario is not a sandbox, a good plot needs a good setting for me. Pirates of Drinax is great because the plot is great but the setting of the Trojan Reach too. For Warhammer, Power behind the throne is nothing without Middenheim. For Dungeons and dragons Curse of Sthrad is nothing without Barovia, and etc... And it's the same for others scenarios who are not a sandbox, they too need a great setting.

 

[Nelphine]

I think if you look at original Raveloft though, you get what a generic adventure is. The characters get swept away from their home, regardless of where that is, and land in a fog filled village with an adventure to complete and a villain to defeat.
The location of the adventure is highly detailed, but its specifically distinct from the rest of the game universe, which allows it to fit into any campaign.

Similarly, you could easily drop Alien into either the third imperium, or 2300 AD, or any other universe, and it would make perfect sense - it doesnt rely on the universe for its effectiveness.

Adventures which are highly detailed, but which can fit into any campaign without needing to say 'oh, if youve already ran pirates of drinax, then.. youll need to modify all these things because this is set in the trojan reach and assumes that a different group was hired to be pirates' are very helpful.

 

[Arcanum]

I think if you look at original Raveloft though, you get what a generic adventure is. The characters get swept away from their home, regardless of where that is, and land in a fog filled village with an adventure to complete and a villain to defeat.
The location of the adventure is highly detailed, but its specifically distinct from the rest of the game universe, which allows it to fit into any campaign.

Similarly, you could easily drop Alien into either the third imperium, or 2300 AD, or any other universe, and it would make perfect sense - it doesnt rely on the universe for its effectiveness.

Adventures which are highly detailed, but which can fit into any campaign without needing to say 'oh, if youve already ran pirates of drinax, then.. youll need to modify all these things because this is set in the trojan reach and assumes that a different group was hired to be pirates' are very helpful.

But for me Barovia is clearly not generic. Yes with the mists, the players could come from any other universe, but the other universe is not the problem. All the adventure is in Barovia, and it is a setting detailled, with each location, the people, their motivations etc..
A generic scenario could be in a land with a vampire, choose the vampire you like, choose the land you like, but it's not that. So we haven't the same meaning to a generic adventure. It's not possible to separate the adventure from Barovia, not without a considerable work of writing.

Having a rich setting is not the same as campaigns that follow each others. I prefer too different campaigns. A campaign that need to have played Pirates of Drinax is not the best choice for me too. But a campaign as rich as Pirates of Drinax in another sector, like Vland perhaps or another is good. I like what they have done so far whith the campaigns published by Mongoose, and the adventures too. They are firmly entranched in a setting, but are each their own thing. Pirates of Drinax, Project Bayern, Deepnight Revelation, the Order of Prometheus or Secrets of the ancients are all great.

Ah and for Aliens. Yes it is possible to use them in many settings, but it should be better if they have a link to the setting, a reason to be, because their presence is a major change to the Third imperium setting per example or Star wars if you prefer.

 

[Nelphine]

Sure, its a change to add in things. But the main idea is to have everything detailed be self contained - no matter how rich barovia is, and it is very rich, its self contained. I can run it, without having to add in the neighboring ravenloft realm thats run by a Rakshasa. I can put Alien in, and they can be a minor race, and it doesnt need to change much - the third imperium or the death star will annhilate the aliens, but only after the players can get someone to pay attention. It doesnt need to be a big change to the broader setting - the setting and lore required are completely self contained, while still being extrairdinarily detailed.

I could even add Alien to a greyhawk campaign (i have) or Strahd to a third imperium campaign, because neither of them impact the broader setting in any way.

 

[Vormaerin]

I move stuff around all the time or import stuff from other places. I honestly don't see the difference between something like Mongoose's Beltstrike, which isn't connected to any particular setting, and the Borderworlds write ups, which are. I can move either of them equally easily.

As far as redoing old adventures, it's tricky. I mean, I own all of the CT adventures, but lots of new players don't. Besides, I don't run adventures per se, I just steal and repurpose them. But the new versions have much better art and maps to steal . And they are making entirely new adventures in reasonable quantity, imho, so that's pretty nice. Which are just pieces and parts to steal anyway.

 

[Galadrion]

I'm glad to see others doing the same sort of thing I do - mining other game systems for transplantable ideas. Personally, I like raiding Shadowrun (pretty much all editions) for (mega)corporate intrigue - I have to do a fair bit of filing-off of identifying marks and bashing to make pieces fit, but the overall plots and schemes work quite well, especially once you factor in that Imperial (mega)corporations aren't quite as far "above the law" ("I AM the law!") as they are in the Sixth World. (They have to operate with a lower profile, not only to prevent their rivals from interfering, but also any authorities which might disagree with their actions... which means the assets have to be extra-deniable... whether the assets realize that or not...)