fenriswolfe
Mongoose
I have been "volunteered" to run Mongoose Traveller for my group of fantasy RPG players. I haven't played or ran Traveller in 15 years so I wanted to stick with pre-published adventures to limit some of the GM prep. We are also doing character generation together as Session Zero. The game style I would like to stick with is a Firefly type game. Episodic in nature and a crew trying to get by as they fly the space lanes.
After reading a bunch of reviews and posts about good starting adventures, I think I would like to kick off the game with the opening scene from the Flatlined adventure. The smallhauler they are on is slowly sinking into a lake and they have no immediate memories of who they are and how they got there. It will require a little suspension of disbelief for the players to lean into the amnesia aspect as they wake up forcefully from cryogenic sleep in their low berths but they are all great players so this shouldn't be too hard. Their memories and shared connections will slowly come back as they recover. At the conclusion of this adventure, I want to flashback to months prior to finding themselves in a deep cryogenic slumber aboard the smallhauler.
This brings me to the Death Station adventure. I really like the idea of this adventure taking place BEFORE the Flatlined adventure. It provides a really good opportunity to be double crossed at the end. The players are contracted by a representative of the Lysani Corporation to investigate the loss of communication from the laboratory ship Calendula. The players are down on their luck workers indebted to the company store and stuck in a corporate contract in a backwater world. The job seems promising and the mere possibility of the patron canceling their debt and offering passage off this backwater world is almost too good to be true. But bills have to be paid.
This brings us back to the flashback theme of using the Death Station adventure as the reason why they found themselves crash landed later. The Flatlined adventure uses "skill-jacking" as one of the potential reasons why the players were kidnapped and placed into low berth. The small crew on the surface of Stenmore Minerals Incorporated Proving Site Nine (PS9) are operating a side hustle as part of a skill-jacking ring to traffic people that have value but would not be missed by anyone.
I'm trying to come up with some logical connections with the Lysani Corporation patron who would could have sent the group to the Calendula to check on the communication loss and fully intended to use them as new test subjects to the combat drug operation rather than paying them. Who's going to miss a handful of backworld employees? But when they survive their encounter with the laboratory ship crew, their patron has to deal with them. Perhaps they received their promised passage offworld and were actually sold to the skill-jacking group. That's a win-win for the Lysani Corporation patron. Their immediate problems on the Calendula were resolved and the contractors proved themselves to be more capable that believed. Skill-jackers pay top cred for that kind of person. Both the Lysani Corporation and the skill-jackers engage in illegal drug manufacturing (combat drugs and incapacitating psychoactive drugs for trafficking people) so perhaps they are connected.
At the conclusion of Flatlined then the Death Station adventure, the group will have plenty of options to go forward. Do they want to go after the Patron that betrayed them and sold them to the traffickers? Did they make decisions that have them on the run and they need a change of venue in the galaxy? What did they do with the crew at PS9? Who is coming to rescue them? Lot's of options after these two adventures. I just want to make sure I can tie them together, especially in reverse order.
So that's my initial brainstorming in preparation for this game. I'm looking for any advice or suggestions to flesh this out more and to make sure I address any potential pitfalls with the standard GM caveat that no plot survives first contact with players.
After reading a bunch of reviews and posts about good starting adventures, I think I would like to kick off the game with the opening scene from the Flatlined adventure. The smallhauler they are on is slowly sinking into a lake and they have no immediate memories of who they are and how they got there. It will require a little suspension of disbelief for the players to lean into the amnesia aspect as they wake up forcefully from cryogenic sleep in their low berths but they are all great players so this shouldn't be too hard. Their memories and shared connections will slowly come back as they recover. At the conclusion of this adventure, I want to flashback to months prior to finding themselves in a deep cryogenic slumber aboard the smallhauler.
This brings me to the Death Station adventure. I really like the idea of this adventure taking place BEFORE the Flatlined adventure. It provides a really good opportunity to be double crossed at the end. The players are contracted by a representative of the Lysani Corporation to investigate the loss of communication from the laboratory ship Calendula. The players are down on their luck workers indebted to the company store and stuck in a corporate contract in a backwater world. The job seems promising and the mere possibility of the patron canceling their debt and offering passage off this backwater world is almost too good to be true. But bills have to be paid.
This brings us back to the flashback theme of using the Death Station adventure as the reason why they found themselves crash landed later. The Flatlined adventure uses "skill-jacking" as one of the potential reasons why the players were kidnapped and placed into low berth. The small crew on the surface of Stenmore Minerals Incorporated Proving Site Nine (PS9) are operating a side hustle as part of a skill-jacking ring to traffic people that have value but would not be missed by anyone.
I'm trying to come up with some logical connections with the Lysani Corporation patron who would could have sent the group to the Calendula to check on the communication loss and fully intended to use them as new test subjects to the combat drug operation rather than paying them. Who's going to miss a handful of backworld employees? But when they survive their encounter with the laboratory ship crew, their patron has to deal with them. Perhaps they received their promised passage offworld and were actually sold to the skill-jacking group. That's a win-win for the Lysani Corporation patron. Their immediate problems on the Calendula were resolved and the contractors proved themselves to be more capable that believed. Skill-jackers pay top cred for that kind of person. Both the Lysani Corporation and the skill-jackers engage in illegal drug manufacturing (combat drugs and incapacitating psychoactive drugs for trafficking people) so perhaps they are connected.
At the conclusion of Flatlined then the Death Station adventure, the group will have plenty of options to go forward. Do they want to go after the Patron that betrayed them and sold them to the traffickers? Did they make decisions that have them on the run and they need a change of venue in the galaxy? What did they do with the crew at PS9? Who is coming to rescue them? Lot's of options after these two adventures. I just want to make sure I can tie them together, especially in reverse order.
So that's my initial brainstorming in preparation for this game. I'm looking for any advice or suggestions to flesh this out more and to make sure I address any potential pitfalls with the standard GM caveat that no plot survives first contact with players.
