I've been working my way through a lto of old Traveller adventurers, and have noticed a few things. First of all, they are remarkably low on plot. The adventurers are mostly ship deck plans, subsector space maps and rumors and patron encounters. Most of the details are just left open.
Second of all, most of them are remarkably low on action with the exception of the two I actually bought back in the old days (Broadsword and the Chamax Plague), which are just chock full of action. There are almost no space battles at all. Broadsword has one big space battle, and Leviathan involves wandering around in a big merchant cruise, loaded for bear, with the possibility of stumbling into hostile spaceships.
There are also a bunch of neat adventures and adventure seeds online. I'm in the process of stichting together an online adventure with one of original adventures, with an overall background plot suggested by an episode of MST3K.
From my tests, I'm thinking that the actual adventures might go quite a bit differently than our typical campaign. There might end up being fewer gun fights overall, since they can be so deadly. Space battles might be preferable since they aren't so lethal, even if they are much more expensive. I think its better to have flunkies involved if you want to have lots of gun battles..
My plan for Sunday is still:
Step 1) several test scenarios in space and ground using pre-gens.
Step 2) create characters
Step 3) I'll have a shorter adventure ready to go (one that can be used whether the PC's have a ship from character gen or not).
Character gen is not time consuming. I'm even thinking that we may roll 3 guys each, choosing the best one. If the test scenarios go quickly, then we may get a significant amount of adventuring in.
Oh, one more thing. I think I've finally found a use for a pair of "averaging dice" I bought years ago. These are 2 d6's which have no 1's and no 6's, instead they have two 3s and two 4's apiece. Its normal to roll 2d6 for ability scores in Traveller, and I'm thinking of allowing the option to use the averaging dice for those who fear getting low rolls.
Just as long as the mst3k episode you use isn't 'Prince of Space'. Because short oriental men, flashing their tightly outlined wippers around would be very disturbing.
ReplyDeleteAnd I could see the group doing stuff that whoever wrote the published adventures never really imagined. Or getting itself wiped out through overconfidence.