Adventure Types/Campaigns

[Murph]

We started off with the Classic "Hard Science" Traveller type game which over time evolved into a more "space opera" type game.

We saw moments of pathos, anger, and High Comedy; One of the players had a psionic who caused a pesky newswoman to disrobe and perform immoral acts upon a member of the party, while in the starport concourse.

An unfortunate occurance is that the rules almost require the players to be in the wrong side of the law. However, that being said play can be rewarding without actual overt lawbreaking. But I must admit that we skated REALLY close to the edge more times than not.

I feel that campaigns should not be deadly serious things, but fun.

I also remember more times than I can count that the prepared adventure went right out the window as the players decided to do something completely different than I had planned. A GM MUST be adaptable.

Comments?

 

[Murph]

Some great resources:

Anything written by H. Beam Piper

Warlord's World, Pandora's Planet, and Strangers in Paradise by Christopher Anvil

David Weber: Honor Harrington, and with Steve White: In Death Ground.

Post your favorite reference material....

 

[FlightCommanderSolitude]

I'd suggest The Three Musketeers: a million and one plots, amenable milieu, aristocrats and rapscallions, danger at every turn, spies, kings, quick cash etc.

how could you miss?!

-fcs


[This message has been edited by FlightCommanderSolitude (edited 07 May 2001).]

 

[Clay Bush]

I suggest anything set near the turn of the last century. Imperial society has nobles but a lot of diversity. So a look at how the British Empire was run is useful for inspiring ideas.

The Four Feathers, Gunga Din, Prisoner of Zenda, 55 Days at Peking, Isandlwhana (more than Zulu).

 

[Darium]

I would recommend the series by David Weber ; Mutineers' Moon , The Armageddon Inheritance and Heirs Of Empire
The second book especially deals with an Imperial bureaucracy and can be a useful model.

 

[Murph]

Film Noir- Casablanca, Maltese Falcon, 33 Rue Madeline

High Comedy- Duck Soup(?)

 

[Uncle Bob]

In no particular order, except this is how I thought of them

Dashiel Hammett, especially his "Continental Op" stories.

Eric Ambler

Gavin Lyall (except Moon Zero Two; I blame his co-author)

George MacDonald Fraser, especially the Flashman stories

Hans Hellmut Kirst

James Schmitz (curious how far I got without a SF author) I prefer the stories without Telzey Amberdon

Keith Laumer. Bolos, but especially the Jaime Retief stories.

Jack Vance, especially the Demon Prince books

H. Beam Piper (he should be higher, but Murph has alread mentioned him. And Christopher Anvil)

Robert Lynn Asprin


[This message has been edited by Uncle Bob (edited 09 May 2001).]

 

[Gyro Ginot]

Look to the works of Robert Heinlein, H. Beam Piper, or The Dominic Flandry series.
My campaigns are in the Darrian /District 268 Sectors of a CT universe, in the aftermath of the 5th Frontier War.

 

[Christopher Jennings]

Check out either CS Forrester or Alexander Kent. For adventure ideas and how to set a mood their hard to beat. Especially if your adventures sometimes lead into high-adventure, nothing better for player moral then to succeed against bad odds - you sort of have to give the PCs a little credit for being daring. If the rewards for taking chances, especially in a good cause, are poor than its no surprise that PCs often turn to the "Dark Side"(tm) and adventures turn into crime sprees.

 

[Murph]

Some excellent resources:

FTL:2448 by Tri Tac Systems. Very nice.

Space Opera Universe books (If you can find them). Offer an alternative universe. Casino Galatica is a nice place for adventures to start/end.

NASA has the Gliese data available

Also Winchell Chungs great site:
http://www.projectrho.com/starmap.html

 

[Murph]

For an exploration campaign, you must either use the Solomani and go rimward, or go out past the Spinward Marches into Foreven, and other sectors.

 

[hunter]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Murph:
For an exploration campaign, you must either use the Solomani and go rimward, or go out past the Spinward Marches into Foreven, and other sectors. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Or Gateway Domain....

Hunter

 

[Vargas]

My players never really had to break the law to have fun; they did quite well as adventurers for hire/wandering speculative traders.

And fun is always a good thing. These same players were considering using the word "throbbing" to go with their Animal-class starship named the "Python".

[This message has been edited by Vargas (edited 11 June 2001).]

 

[GypsyComet]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by hunter:
Or Gateway Domain....

Hunter<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Dunno. You're either playing around in a rather active "Client states" zone (just re-read Lords of Thunder, yikes!), or trying to sneak past either lots of Vargr or lots of K'kree to work your way up the lesser rift. What fun. Not much of an uncivilized frontier to work with (depending on your definition of the Vargr and K'kree of course...)

 

[Mår Ekkertsen]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally silofled by GypsyComet:
...in a rather active "Client states" zone...lots of Vargr or lots of K'kree...What fun.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Sounds like a wonderful place.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Not much of an uncivilized frontier to work with (depending on your definition of the Vargr and K'kree of course...)<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Put 'client states' Vargr, K'Kree and whatever else together with a few Naval ships some scouts and merchants. Shift the political climate on an irregular basis. OOh. I'm excited already.



------------------
mark ayers, philosopher serf, editor of n2s; the journal for an empty mind
<http://www.users.qwest.net/~n2s/>

 

[GypsyComet]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by n2s:
Put 'client states' Vargr, K'Kree and whatever else together with a few Naval ships some scouts and merchants. Shift the political climate on an irregular basis. OOh. I'm excited already.

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Don't get me wrong, it's a great place for adventure, but the Gateway Domain is not the right frontier for the whole "where no one has gone before" shtick.

 

[Mår Ekkertsen]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally meliastied by GypsyComet:
Don't get me wrong...<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
How could I really. You write well. I just enjoy my side trips through unfiltered reaction.
<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>...for the whole "where no one has gone before"....<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Whole heartedly agree. But then really where in the Traveller universe can a traveler go for that. Rimward. For an Imperial focussed universe that isn't easy. I have a long standing itch to find a good explanation why the rim is so lightly documented.

[This message has been edited by n2s (edited 23 June 2001).]

 

[GypsyComet]

Rimward of the Solomani/Aslan/Hivers? Yeah, I've wondered about that one myself. I don't much like the Valkyrie (GURPS: AR4) as the explanation, frankly, but that could be due as much to suddenly falling off the top of the food chain as much as anything...
But something must be keeping the Aslan from exploding Rimward, because you know they would...

 

[danejohnson]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Murph:
For an exploration campaign, you must either use the Solomani and go rimward, or go out past the Spinward Marches into Foreven, and other sectors. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Well, not exactly...

For direction, you have basically four directions, not two: coreward, spinward, trailing, and rimward.

Remember that any of the "Alien" governments can have human citizens through the miracle of human minor races...

For explorers, you could be:

o Zhodani core explorers

o Vargr coursairs escaping the long arm of the law...

o Aslan Ihatei searching for new lands

o A member of a Hiver topical club interested in exploration

o K'Kree Gnaak<sp?> hunters

o Solomani explorers

o Imperial Scouts on deep survey missions

o Megacorporation employees (or tramp freighter operators) looking for untapped markets or unclaimed natural resources and uncontacted markets (Nicholas Van Riijn, anyone? This is a particularly good rational since megacorps transcend political boundaries... How much business do you think SUSAG or GsBG do in the Confederacy?)

o A Droyne Kroyloss looking for:
o An Ancient site their oytrip knows about
o Chirpers to "uplift" back into casting
o Something inscrutable (Droyne are weird)

o Darrians looking for some relic of their TL 16 past that recently uncovered records indicate was a long ways off.

o Employees of a scientific institute investigating anomolous stellar spectra from a distant region of space

o Colonists from ANYWHERE looking for desirable and unclaimed worlds to settle on.

o Pirates or smugglers searching beyond the grip of most governments for a place to establish a safe haven

o Explorers from a client state beyond the borders of the "Big Guys" who can be a mixture of aliens and humans (minor human races are all over the place. And Misjumps make for convenient plot devices to locate human worlds in odd places)

o Heck, explorers from a minor human race that is a good distance from the "Big Guys" and who have (recently) gained jump drive from a misjump, or an Ancient artefact. (I once considered running a campaign in Rim Reach at an Ancient constructed Rosette system populated by Humans, Vargr, and Droyne...)

o "As a gesture of peace and goodwill (and in the interests of scientific discovery), the ISS Grand Survey, the Imperial College (Core/Core), Stanford University (Terra/Solomani Rim), and the Solomani Navy will be jointly sponsoring and organizing a survey expedition rimward to the Tracerie Sector. Dr. Nina Wang-Torvalds of Stanford University has been working on organizing an expedition to the blackhole at 0721 since 1107 when she and her associates first observed the site."

And so forth.

If you can find a copy, the Traveller 2300/2300AD module Bayern is an excellent resource for running long range deep space scientific missions.

The Unknown Space is there to be explored. You just have to have a rational to get your explorers (from the 3I or otherwise) to it.

 

[danejohnson]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by GypsyComet:
Rimward of the Solomani/Aslan/Hivers?
(snip)But something must be keeping the Aslan from exploding Rimward, because you know they would...<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Here's an off the wall idea: How many star systems did the Ancients need to loot for raw materials? Maybe there is a swath of empty star systems to rimward of the Heirate? Maybe it's big enough to discourage exploration ("There's nothing but dead worlds as far as we have been able to travel. We must turn back or risk having no fuel!")

Since their starships use a whole solar system inside them, though, maybe the Great Rift is a result of the Ancient's "solar system clear cutting"...

If it's hard to imagine the Ancients actually using hundreds (thousands?) of worlds as raw materials, maybe there are one or more automated "Solar System Raw Material Extraction" machines still running on autopilot. Depending on how long it takes to break up a solar system into it's component parts, maybe they've got a really really big stockpile...

Or maybe there's a huge swarm of Ancient "Santa Claus" machines that have been replicating out there for 300,000 years... I'd like that better than Virus or the Valkyrie -- which remind me a bit too much of Heinlein's puppeteers or Chalker's "intelligent bacteria" from the later Well World books. But, then again, maybe the Santa Claus machine idea is too similar to Mandred's plot from Lexx...