Adventurer Scale Traveller Ships & RPG Skills

[Ad Astra News]

We've posted a rules draft on integrating Traveller PC skills into an adventurer-scale Squadron Strike Traveller game. We're hoping for feedback to make this as useful and interesting as possible to Traveller players and GMs.

One of the holy grails of RPG design is to make it possible for the characteristics of an RPG character to influence the outcome of a miniatures game without rendering the minis game pointless.

It is particularly challenging when the characters in question are the “bridge crew” of a single ship rather than individual pilots of say, fighters, or giant walking tanks.

The traditional outcome of this is the GM and one player play a tactical minis game, while the other players sit and watch and periodically make a skill check that feels shoehorned in to the minis game.

We assume that a team of player characters are flying one spaceship, that the spaceship has limitations on what it can do (and thus resources to allocate), and the GM is running one to three ships against them as a challenge in an ongoing narrative adventure.

The draft is available to supporters of the Starships 'R' Us Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/posts/adventurer-scale-10116109

Q: Why are you making us pay to see this?
A: One of the reasons that people support the Patreon is to get previews of upcoming products. We're giving them this in exchange for their financial support.

Q: But you want playtest feedback!
A: Not yet--the adventurer scale ships aren't ready. Unfortunately, we've found that lots of people are excited to get playtest drafts for free, but don't send back any playtest reports.

Q: Isn't it really expensive to support a Patreon?
A: You can be a valuable supporter for as little as $1 a month!

Q: But Patreon will charge every month ...
A: You can cancel at any time, so you can check this out and then decide if you want to continue.

Q: I missed all of the earlier stuff!
A: When you become a supporter, you get access to the complete archive of material that we've posted. That's a great value, isn't it?