Travellers, tell us about your experiences in the Pirates of Drinax!

[MongooseMatt]

Welcome, Travellers of the Reach!

This week, we have been having a bit of a promotion of that campaign favoured by so many Travellers, the Pirates of Drinax. We have been reading your comments carefully and it slowly began to dawn on us just how deep some groups have gone into this campaign. We already knew that there were groups who had been playing it for a couple of years or so, but it is becoming apparent that some of you are not far from having fought for (or against!) the Kingdom of Drinax for what will soon be getting towards a decade.

So, this is what we want to know now....

What have you all been up to in the campaign? What cool things have happened, what bits have you enjoyed, what other Traveller books and adventures have you been integrating into the campaign, and what new material have you created for yourselves?

I am sure it is not just us here at Mongoose who would like to hear your stories - your experiences may well provide inspiration for a campaign taking place on the other side of the world! So, let's hear your stories, suggestions and ideas centred on the Pirates of Drinax, from both players and Referees...

 

[alex_greene]

My character was an artist. She just wanted to photograph and paint scenes. Then she got pressed into service in the Travellers' piracy, and dragged into one adventure after another. I didn't really gel with the side adventure where we chargenned naval characters. I've never been interested in the military, or being a pseudomilitary / paramilitary type. I chose a female character because it felt right. She never raised a fist or a gun in anger, though she did paint someone in a most unflattering light.
I deliberately chose a non-violent person, even though it did run the risk of "doesn't play well with others." I guess I'm not cut out to play crazy, heavily-armed yahoos with a fixation for solving problems with guns. I was always the first to suggest some form of talking, offering some sort of art or gift. That turned out to be really great with the Aslan delegates, because of their fondness for really good art.

 

[BigDogsRunning]

I've been through three characters in our PoD campaign so far.

Number One was a Vargr journalist from Regina who fell into the campaign while looking for the big story that might finally get him published in the JTAS. Alas, he perished on Theev, falling victim to another PC's enemy.

Number 2 was a human mercenary, a career non-com, born on and employed by a unit based out of Theev itself. He left the party train an elite small unit for the Kingdom using the Imperial BD and weapons thoughtfully donated by the Imperium Marines.

Number 3, the current character, is a Vargr pirate who migrated from the Extents. With her background as an actual pirate, and later a covert operative for an Aslan noble, she is a dirty-work specialist.

We've tried doing piracy, outsourcing the piracy to Silverhand, worldbuilding, and now back to perhaps doing some piracy again. This game has been going off and on since 2017. Many of our current party members are non-violent types by choice, up to our Virushi medico.

edit: removed one word for clarity.

 

[CrispyGM]

Fantastic campaign.

We were a group of 5 players who started with the first chapter: Honor Among Thieves, and the crew actually recruited Krrsh and Miria to their cause, which I ran as NPCs. I gave them both personalities, and the canvas of play by post gave us TONS of opportunity to role-play and get to know each other and the crew. One of our characters was a Medic who had hemophobia, and another characters actually rolled up a psion. We completed Honor Among Thieves, and played The Treasure Of Sindal chapter next.

About a fourth of the way into that mission, we were attacked by Aslan ships and we blew up. Whomp whomp whomp whommmpp.

We would totally play again. Awesome artwork. Amazing lore. I would say the biggest point going for it is that all the steps in each of the chapter missions are beautifully described and laid out for GMs with enough detail that there's no question in what needs to happen, with leaving lots of open free form info in case you have players that want to go off the beaten path.

Phenomenal writing.

 

[Big Dumb]

My main character is Big Dumb (Mongo), and tales of the crew were posted regluarly on Facebook and Twitter by Lorekeeper Kit Kimble, at some point in the campaign, Big Dumb went to learn how to use psionics, so I was playing from then as Yorito (Hwol Yori’tyeao), who was an Aslan High Priestess.

We started as a party of three, we have since added a forth player to our TTRPG group, but the original three I got artwork commissioned of each character, from left to right, Dan Fentimore, Big Dumb, and Kit Kimble. Artwork by @alien_suns on Twitter.



Big Dumbs solution to a problem is to hit it, hard, she has a strength of 12, but an intellect of 4, so is often confused with being a male Aslan by other Aslan. On the other hand, my other character, Yorito, has an intellect of 11, and where she really shines is in social skills, with a base of 15, mostly working on advocacy, diplomacy and admin, her solutions require a lot less blood, unless it involves taking a treasure ship.

We also had our NPC doctor involved in some shady past, to which Yorito investigated, and it was a lot of fun to create a handout for the players, I love having physical things to go along with a roleplay game!



These are all side bits, but the main plot has been fun as well! We are currently on a break, playing a different game for now, but I am looking forward to going back to it, and making my return as Big Dumb!

 

[adzling]

I have been running PoD for our table every two weeks since 2020.
We are now about halfway through the campaign.
I have been folding in many of the published adventures in the Trojan Reach so it's a bit of an epic size.

Map of their travels before they started the PoD campaign proper <--link

I made this map of all the adventures in the Trojan Reach to help GM <--link

Adventure list so far:
Highndry
long ooc transit to Pax Rulin
Last Flight of the Amuar
BT-SHT 360
Marooned on Marduk
First Prize
Honor Among Thieves
Treasure Ship
iHatei
Death Station
The Treasure of Sindal
The Borderlands Run

+ many of the Patron & Opportunity encounters at the back of the PoD book (there is one for almost every system and each defines how they affect the system's attitude towards Drinax). These "adventure stubs" alone account for @50% of the table's play time.

The Corsairs of Drinax have grown their fleet to over 5 vessels now

We use custom graphics I made in Fantasy Grounds to track their crew positions amongst other things. <--link

Fleet Graphic <--link

Another graphic tracks the attitudes of the various worlds towards Drinax (an important part of the the end game). <--link

I use Traveller Worlds to build system maps for each system the party visits. <--link

Original Party <--link

We use spreadsheets to track all of the various ships, their alterations and the math around spacecraft chases<--link

Right now they are allied with Petyr Vallis and are spending considerable resources to divert Aslan interest to Sink and push the various system polities towards Drinaxian interests. This is done via a combination of pushing the false treaty recovered during Treasure Ship, doing favors and outright bribing in whatever combination is needed to sway the polities allegiances.

Because of the large amount of crew required to run a multi-vessel fleet the players are often running NPCs. I try to ensure the major plot elements are engaged with by their PCs but it's hard to do when your fleet is spread out all over the sector trying to swing it towards Drinaxian influence.

One of the core moral issues that our campaign is focussed around is the threat of ihatei invasion on the non-aligned humaniti dominated worlds in the Reach and the response to that threat by the polities. There is a lot of fear and loathing towards aslan taking their land/ worlds and the players are using that to bring planets into the sway of Drinax by offering protection and support as "the empire has abandoned them."

They are in an alliance of convenience with Petyr Vallis and forged a deal to give half of the WMDs at the end of Treasure of Sindal to Petyr's group in return for shifting a few planets allegiance towards Drinax. They went into the deal with eyes open but are now starting to run up against the downsides of their deal...

Overall, from the GM perspective, an amazeballs campaign that is challenging to referee as the scope is so large. If we kept it to a single ship with a single crew as most RPGs are designed to manage we wouldn't be touching the full scope of this thing. So I made the choice to sacrifice some of the focus on individual characters/ PCs, broadening the focus to their fleet and it's actions across the sector as they fight, trade and politicize their way across time and space.

 

[alex_greene]

Further musings on my character's role in the story.
In the end, she had two main roles - keeping Morale high, since we were running MOR rules - and keeping an eye and an ear out for possible targets. This, she would do by spending the weeks on shore taking portraits of random people, sometimes drawing sketches, caricatures, or painting them in 2D in oils. Some of them, she would take 3D holos of them, recording them and giving them the footage / paintings / sketches / caricatures.
Those overlooked Admin, Carouse, Deceit, and Persuade skills came in very useful when extracting valuable intel from the models. I guess that's why she ended up a Purser Aboard.
And why the Harrier never seemed to run out of money, because of all those bank accounts where I'd stash a chunk of the ship's cash with each landfall, in the event of a day full of meteors.

 

[alex_greene]

The grindwork scenarios, where the Travellers were actually doing pirating, were interesting. I worked with the ref to come up with a system where my Purser Aboard would gather intel about ships with rich cargos, I would roll my skills, and the ref would let me know what to encounter. It helped make the random encounters far less random, and there were a lot of "standard" rich merchant encounters.

Some of them were happy to land on barren moons and dump their cargoes, knowing that those cargoes weren't really theirs, but were freight paid for by some corporate interest - and both the corporation and the merchant could claw back the money through insurance.

Consequently, that meant that our Harrier remained in fine financial health, and it allowed the ship to continue a-piratin' and make a tidy profit, pay for maintenance, take on jobs for interested parties on some planet called Thieve, and even be selective with their prey - coming in to help out ships which misjumped and are running out of air and power, not attacking skips where the Captain is travelling with their family (including kids) aboard, and so on.

I think that this was the more appealing part of my end of the campaign. Actual fighting never appeals to any of my characters. It suggests a weakness of character.

 

[stevenpoore]

My main character is Big Dumb (Mongo), and tales of the crew were posted regluarly on Facebook and Twitter by Lorekeeper Kit Kimble, at some point in the campaign, Big Dumb went to learn how to use psionics, so I was playing from then as Yorito (Hwol Yori’tyeao), who was an Aslan High Priestess.

We started as a party of three, we have since added a forth player to our TTRPG group, but the original three I got artwork commissioned of each character, from left to right, Dan Fentimore, Big Dumb, and Kit Kimble. Artwork by @alien_suns on Twitter.

View attachment 1157

Big Dumbs solution to a problem is to hit it, hard, she has a strength of 12, but an intellect of 4, so is often confused with being a male Aslan by other Aslan. On the other hand, my other character, Yorito, has an intellect of 11, and where she really shines is in social skills, with a base of 15, mostly working on advocacy, diplomacy and admin, her solutions require a lot less blood, unless it involves taking a treasure ship.

We also had our NPC doctor involved in some shady past, to which Yorito investigated, and it was a lot of fun to create a handout for the players, I love having physical things to go along with a roleplay game!

View attachment 1158

These are all side bits, but the main plot has been fun as well! We are currently on a break, playing a different game for now, but I am looking forward to going back to it, and making my return as Big Dumb!

Kit Kimble, meanwhile, is a former "reality show" privateer (Real Privateers of the Spaceways, on Channel 6b, series 1 only) who got the push and fell on hard times before being hired (without a contract or pay) as replacement pilot by Captain Mongo, after her original crew had got themselves killed in a bar fight.

Kit Kimble is a man out of his depth, seduced by the glory promised by King Oleb, and tending to believe his own hype. He's quite fond of shooting people in the back, where possible, but his loyalty to his own crew runs as deep as the Mariana Trench. He has a tendency to the paranoid, which isn't all that surprising after all the practical jokes Mongo has played on him, combined with the fact that the beautiful blue avatar of sentient starship River Of Dreams only ever appears when he's alone on the Harrier's bridge...

Kit's biggest moment so far was rolling snake eyes in a gunfight and ejecting his magazine instead of firing. The footage has gone viral.

 

[alex_greene]

Okay, so in the "Honor Among Thieves" chapter, my character basically led the investigation. The rest of the crew were all just gung-ho, so I was left to my own devices to gather information. Amazing, what a few carefully-placed questions over a bottle of some really nice beverage can bring to light.
So, we ended up chasing some Vargr to a system called Borite, I think, and there was some sort of abandoned space station. I only went in late, after the gunshots and screams, and there was this big bug thing.
Did I tell you my character had Animals (Handling) skill?
So, this acid-spitting bug thing was now a pet on board the Harrier, and the Vargr started giving us all sorts of useful information when I suggested that the Captain put the Vargr into the freight container we'd improvised as a kennel for the bug thing.
After that, we were on our way to some planet called Thieve. We had some sort of code, and the Harrier landed, and I managed to broker a nice profit to someone who really wanted to study the bug thing. It was sad to let the bug thing go, but I'm sure it went to a good home.
Edit: A reminder of life aboard the Harrier with my character's little pet, Pixie.

​

 

[Shadowblayde99]

I've thought about doing PoD for some time but my players and me are generally law abiding citizens. The idea of piracy never appealed. I really wish there was some campaign of the same depth and reputation for those of a law abiding nature.

 

[Vormaerin]

You aren't pirates, you are privateers with a letter of marque from your government .

But regarding law abiding... Most of the Traveller merchant mini campaigns are pretty law abiding. Skandersvik, Leviathan, the Traveller Adventure. They aren't quite a sprawling as PoD, but it is very easy to turn The Traveller Adventure in particular from a 12-15 adventure mini campaign into a larger epic. And that's been a defining sort of Traveller campaign (see the name!) since 1983. It has a Mongoose 1e update, too. Downside is that the dozen or so adventures do not have quite as much detail with maps and NPC stats as PoD. Upside, it is $20 to $25 to buy it, not $100+.

 

[Gavain]

Both my groups that are going through PoD have chosen not to be pirates, but have taken the Harrier and are pirate hunters. They track down ships and pirate groups that may interfere with the "all pirates in the Reach answer to Drinax" concept. Working out well with them, I have included Makergod in this as the Oghman raiders are a source of unregulated pain for Drinax.

 

[stevenpoore]

There's a lot of scope for diplomatic adventuring as well as anti-piracy (and Kit Kimble's anti-anti-piracy). That's the beauty of the sandbox.

 

[alex_greene]

My character did get to hold a gun.
There was a boarding party clamping onto the hull of the Harrier. I was part of the team repelling the boarders. The team gave me a big ACR to hold. The one thing was, I'd had a quiet word with the referee.
My character squeezes the trigger. Nothing happens. The boarders laugh. One of the crew tells my character how to disengage the safety.
She disengages the safety.
So, one combat round or two later, the crew are finally able to approach my character. She is lying on her back, the smoking hot ACR pointing straight up into the air, spent. There are bullet holes all over the place, and there is no sign of the boarding party.
That was the first time I saw religion get a mention in Traveller, when the player of the Captain says "For GOD'S SAKE! NEVER put a GUN in her hands AGAIN!"

 

[DickTurpin]

Our group has been playing PoD for several years and have only committed a few acts of piracy. We started with four players, lost a couple along the way and have recruited a new player in the last year or so. Currently we have my character Andre, a Free Traer Merchant, Kassandra, a former 3I Marine, and our newest recruit, Dramas an excellent Engineer that had almost no combat skills when he joined the crew.

Our pirate acts include a bloodless takeover of the Treasure ship, participating in a multiple ship ambush of an Aslan convoy, the destruction of a smuggler running supplies to an Ihatei group, and a retaliatory strike against a Baron on Cordon who had just assassinated a rival baron along with his entire family as his rival was flying to a peace conference we had brokered in an attempt to settle a war. Some might point out that the war was started when we fanned the flames of a border dispute, but why quibble over minor details. The evil baron felt he was quite safe from retaliation barricaded in his castle, but three nuclear torpedoes dropped from orbit proved him wrong. That was probably an overreaction on our part, but our patron, who was left as the sole ruler of the planet, was in a forgiving mood and felt it was not worth reporting the incident to the Third Imperium.

The final bit was a theft of an aslan merchant ship taken as part of an escape/rescue mission freeing a score of humans, Andre among them, who had been enslaved by a Clan from the Glorious Empire. Andre felt that the ship was fair compensation for several months of enslavement and the damages suffered when his far trader was captured and stripped to the hull plates. The aslan ship, renamed The Paycheque, is now a member of Andre's merchant fleet.

Andre has a total of eight armed merchant ships in his trading fleet, mostly salvaged and rebuilt hulls with a few new-built ships added in, as well as two small space stations. The stations are an automated refuelling depot at Ace to allow Jump-1 ships to continue spinward from Number One and a mining/manufacturing station in the Drinax planetoid belt. A second mining/manufacturing station is being constructed on Tech-World, and a TL-16 construction ship is being built way up on Pashus in the Zeng subsector of Deneb (I do not think small, my friends).

Kass has a smaller fleet of three ships, and Dumas flies a salvaged and repaired Ekawsiykua-class Escort, also from the Glorious empire. The official Drinax fleet consist of three operational Harrier class ships and a Rorix-class Command Ship. We are also trying to purchase some surplus military ships from Tobia to give Drinax a bit more defensive capability.

Our GM has used all the PoD materials except the final chapter and has thrown in everything he could find in the Trojan Reach plus a bit of homebrew. We are nearing the conclusion of the campaign and are focused on building up the economy, technology, and security of the region as well as cleaning up some of the mess left behind on planets like Noricum and the surface of Drinax. We are rebuilding the region, not preying on the inhabitants. If we can manage to do enough before we run out of time, we just might leave the galaxy a somewhat better place than we found it.

 

[MonkeyX]

Our group has been playing PoD for several years and have only committed a few acts of piracy. We started with four players, lost a couple along the way and have recruited a new player in the last year or so. Currently we have my character Andre, a Free Traer Merchant, Kassandra, a former 3I Marine, and our newest recruit, Dramas an excellent Engineer that had almost no combat skills when he joined the crew.

Our pirate acts include a bloodless takeover of the Treasure ship, participating in a multiple ship ambush of an Aslan convoy, the destruction of a smuggler running supplies to an Ihatei group, and a retaliatory strike against a Baron on Cordon who had just assassinated a rival baron along with his entire family as his rival was flying to a peace conference we had brokered in an attempt to settle a war. Some might point out that the war was started when we fanned the flames of a border dispute, but why quibble over minor details. The evil baron felt he was quite safe from retaliation barricaded in his castle, but three nuclear torpedoes dropped from orbit proved him wrong. That was probably an overreaction on our part, but our patron, who was left as the sole ruler of the planet, was in a forgiving mood and felt it was not worth reporting the incident to the Third Imperium.

The final bit was a theft of an aslan merchant ship taken as part of an escape/rescue mission freeing a score of humans, Andre among them, who had been enslaved by a Clan from the Glorious Empire. Andre felt that the ship was fair compensation for several months of enslavement and the damages suffered when his far trader was captured and stripped to the hull plates. The aslan ship, renamed The Paycheque, is now a member of Andre's merchant fleet.

Andre has a total of eight armed merchant ships in his trading fleet, mostly salvaged and rebuilt hulls with a few new-built ships added in, as well as two small space stations. The stations are an automated refuelling depot at Ace to allow Jump-1 ships to continue spinward from Number One and a mining/manufacturing station in the Drinax planetoid belt. A second mining/manufacturing station is being constructed on Tech-World, and a TL-16 construction ship is being built way up on Pashus in the Zeng subsector of Deneb (I do not think small, my friends).

Kass has a smaller fleet of three ships, and Dumas flies a salvaged and repaired Ekawsiykua-class Escort, also from the Glorious empire. The official Drinax fleet consist of three operational Harrier class ships and a Rorix-class Command Ship. We are also trying to purchase some surplus military ships from Tobia to give Drinax a bit more defensive capability.

Our GM has used all the PoD materials except the final chapter and has thrown in everything he could find in the Trojan Reach plus a bit of homebrew. We are nearing the conclusion of the campaign and are focused on building up the economy, technology, and security of the region as well as cleaning up some of the mess left behind on planets like Noricum and the surface of Drinax. We are rebuilding the region, not preying on the inhabitants. If we can manage to do enough before we run out of time, we just might leave the galaxy a somewhat better place than we found it.

Well remembered

 

[alex_greene]

Ah, yes, the Treasure Ship. A huge chapter, filled with space battles, a fake Treaty, sabotage, intrigue, and the pirates faffing around somewhere on the outskirts.
Too bad none of that happened in the game as it ended up.
Instead, in this version of the game as played, there was no Treasure Ship. Just a lot of deliberately spread rumours, a few bribes, a huge favour from the pirate world of Thieve, and a three billion cred shipment of lanthanum in a secret vault on Arunisiir.
And one of the biggest performances of stage magic the universe had ever seen.
More to come soon ...

 

[carlc]

I've thought about doing PoD for some time but my players and me are generally law abiding citizens. The idea of piracy never appealed. I really wish there was some campaign of the same depth and reputation for those of a law abiding nature.

We've been going for 3 years. Not pirated anything at all. The group just aren't interested.

However - Deepnight Revelation looks tasty (mine's still in shrink wrap to stop me starting a fourth Traveller game to referee)

 

[carlc]

There's a lot of scope for diplomatic adventuring as well as anti-piracy (and Kit Kimble's anti-anti-piracy). That's the beauty of the sandbox.

Definitely. My group have been diplomats, spies, disaster relief workers, humanitarian aid providers. Huge amounts of opportunities for anything that a group wants.

I've been running Traveller since 1981 (with a deep freeze for kids and life in between 1992-2006) and this campaign is the best I have ever had the pleasure to run. I have given up on the official campaign book for the moment and just make stuff up using all the goodies in the books.