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Darwin's World?

R

RickA

SOC-12
My favorite way to jolt up a Travller campaign that is getting a bit stale is to misjump the ship and crash land it into a post-holocaust sort of Earth setting.

Probably pretty cliched, but it's fun.


Now, since Gamma World is long gone and GURPs continues to provide virtually no adventure modules for any of it's 1000 variants, I'm commited to keeping in the d20 product line. I purchased the manuals for Darwin's World from RPGNow as they looked like the best supported products from their pubisher (supported = modules are available) and was wondering if any of you guys have done any work on adaption for T20?
 
I don´t know Darwin´s World, but if I wanted to implement a post-apocalyptic world in Traveller, I´d probably start out with a Twilight2000-like scenario. That, or Wasteland (does anybody still remember that?).
 
Twilight 2000 would be good for a military oriented group.

Darwin's World is extremely similiar in setting to the Fallout computer games. Vault Dwellers, etc. Always loved those computer games, such a wonderful look/feel to them. Damn shame they aren't still being produced.
 
Fallout is good, too. And IIRC (It´s been a long time since Fallout 2, and longer still since Wasteland) there was no magic in either games what would have to be dumbed, diminishing the "feel" of the games.
 
Originally posted by RickA:
... and GURPs continues to provide virtually no adventure modules for any of it's 1000 variants...
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Rick,

I'll agree that SJG's GURPs products are designed more wih an eye towards towards providing a GM with the tools with which to creat his own adventure modules and campaigns and less with an eye towards providing a GM with 'off the shelf' modules and campaigns to run.

That's a good thing IF you have to time to create your own stuff. Sadly, few of us have that much free time anymore. Andy Slack wisely points out that time spent preparing to play is not time spent playing, and playing is what we all need to do.

There is a simple solution for your GURPS module fix. Get a JTAS and/or Pyramid subscription. The amount of 'off the shelf' adventures, campaign ideas, NPCs, and so forth found in the Pyramid archives is mind boggling. Every genre is covered and one year's subscription is cheaper than any single dead tree 'off the shelf' module you can buy.

BTW, I don't work for SJG! ;)


Have fun playing,
Bill
 
Not a bad idea Bill. But, for better or for worse, QLI has convinced me to support their product line in Traveller. How? They had modules.

SJG could have gotten my money, but they want to make me work to make a game happen. Like you said, time spent preparing for a game is not gaming.

I like the GURPs rules. /shrug/

But, Darwin's World... I've got the books now in .pdf and will start reading through them soonish. My T20 campaign isn't needing that sort of a shot in the arm currently so I'm not in a huge hurry about getting the DWorld campaign segue ready, but I'd hoped maybe someone else here had played in it and had some thoughts on using T20 mechanics in it.
 
I recently got d20 Modern Apocalypse. Not for the rules so much, as for setting material. Look it over, it has a few themes, i.e. post nuke, zombie, super-flu, alien invasion, etc. You just have to pick through the obvious 'monster and magic' type shyte, and keep what you can use. Also, if you like d20, well, that's what it is.
 
Originally posted by RickA:
Not a bad idea Bill. But, for better or for worse, QLI has convinced me to support their product line in Traveller. How? They had modules.
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Rick,

That's not only a good reason, that's a damn good reason to go with T20.

Face it, how much time do any of us have to create our own modules? Sure, taking a bit from here and a bit from there and tweaking it some doesn't take as long a writing one from the 'ground up', but it still takes time. I figure most people would want to spend that time playing and not preparing.

SJG could have gotten my money, but they want to make me work to make a game happen. Like you said, time spent preparing for a game is not gaming.
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True, very true. As much as I liked running Traveller as GM back in those days when dinosaurs still roamed the Earth; i.e. the late 70s, it was still a relief to run a GDW adventure right out of the box. Hell, it was a relief to shift gears completely, put in a few sessions of old D&D and run those nifty trilogies they published. Remember the Giants trilogy? Great stuff and I didn't have to do anything but open the bookelt to begin.

Anyway, if you ever do find the time to prepare AND play, SJG's Pyramid is a wonderful, deep resource.


Have fun playing,
Bill

P.S. SJG's e23 arm may eventually fill the modules gap, if it get's enough submissions. I also read that the e23 editor was severely hurt in a July 4th car crash. :(
 
I like spending my prep time on details.

I run my game every Saturday evening, starting at 6pm. From noon till then I spend preparing. I'm neck deep in Campaign Cartographer or Photoshop or just the .pdf of the module and making up good sheets for the NPC's to print out and have at hand during the game. Google Images for pics of anonymous humans I can throw in for an NPC picture for my group when they meet someone.

I've got an overhead projector in the gaming room so I'll be doing a sector map in Campaign Cartographer for display during the game on the overhead.

That sort of stuff takes time. Hours of it actually. Whether it's doing a Campaign Cartographer deckplan of the new ship the PC's got or photoshoping a picture of the pirate ship that's attacking this week, I spend hours preparing for each game.

If I wrote modules from scratch I could kiss all that detail and handout sort of thing away. I just don't have unlimited time these days. Not like back in the days when dinosaurs roamed the earth (lol Bill) when I was a care free high school kid. /shrug/

So, I support (financially) games that produce modules for their game systems. I think I now own every single T20 product that QLI has produced which is available in .pdf format.

I'd pay them $100 for a multi-session mega campaign that was detailed out enough to keep my group occupied for a few months.
 
Traveller = OTU

I would, Flykiller but, hey, QLI will pay you $250 to write one for them.


I wish I had the time and energy. Argh. My group went through about 2/3rds of Chimera Saturday night. They had a lot of fun but I can't keep a campaign running for long when one night eats up a significant fraction of all modules available for a game system. I'll be out of T20 soon at this rate. :(
 
I would, Flykiller but, hey, QLI will pay you $250 to write one for them.
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don't do so well submitting material to publishers - don't have much of a feel for business ettiquette. I only do this for fun.

tell you what, have a couple of things ready to go in about a week. also have lots of free time coming up soon and a great idea been meaning to lay out. send you what I have, and draw up the other and send that when it's done. your payment will be to tell me how they go, strong points and problems, and suggestions for improvement. how's that sound?
 
Rick,

What kind of things would you want in a "multi-session mega campaign that was detailed out enough to keep my group occupied for a few months"?

Would this be an introductory mega campaign akin to the Traveller Adventure put out for CT so long ago? Or are you looking for a more involved storyline?

Should it attempt to introduce alien races? Psionics? Various branches of the Imperial military and government? Other polities? Megacorporations and merchant wars?

I'm curious as to what you would want to see in such a product. Also, how often do you guys play T20, and how long do the sessions last, on the average?

With Regards,
Flynn
 
yes, flynn is taking a much more organized and sensible approach. but I'm thinking that by the time ricka says he wants, specifies all the assumptions behind it, explains how the players will relate to it, and describes how it will fit into his pre-existing TU, he will have planned the adventure himself rather than having simply scooped it up ready to run.

it's a difficult thing to step into an established campaign.
 
Flynn always does that.


That's okay, it's a valuable thing to have someone who bounces stuff back atcha.

What would it have to involve? Nothing's mandatory, eh? It could be a Imperial politics thing, or a military scenario like the two Golden Age books that QLI has out. Or exploratory Ancients on a DnD sort of feel, heck.

Just like any game, the subject matter or meta plot can vary, if done well it doesn't matter.

Look at Horror on the Orient Express for CoC or Masks of Nyarlothotep. Look at the original Dragonlance modules for DnD even, or Oone Games Seven Avengers modules.

Huge variety there in plots and styles, but heck, anything on that scale would be a wonderful thing to see for Traveller.


How often does my group play? Once a week, 7 weeks out of 2 months on average. Game sessions are from 6pm to midnight, with about 5 hours of actual game play per session. There are 7 players so no one element of the game can be focused on indeffinitely. This is probably the case with most game groups.

In other words as the referee you'd have some trade play, but it can't be 100% what the game is about. You'd have some combat (land and space) but it can't be a military game all the time. Variety and shifts of focus (RP, Combat, puzzle solving, investigation, etc) all take their turn in a well made mega campaign.

The key is to come up with a clever plot, and then make sure it's strong enough to hold up a really large framework of details and subplots, characters, mysteries. Then fleshing those out, in detail, in a way that will be fun at the table.

Frankly, that's a bill I'm not fit to fill. I'm not a professional writer. I buy books to read, I don't write my own.
 
Adding a point:
The current modules produced by QLI as EPIC adventures? We've played through several now and I've read through the rest. Those are worth about a game session and a half in my experience. By the time you get through the reprinted boilerplate that is taking up page count in each one you've usually got maybe 12 pages of adventure ideas and scenes. :(
 
I understand where you are coming from, Rick.


Just to let you know, though, I asked the questions because there are people interested in QLI's eventual Limited License deal, and they might be interested in undertaking such a task. (If they are, I would want to make sure they knew what some of their audience would be looking for.)

Since your specific request requires an OTU thing, such individuals may have to consider approaching Hunter or Martin with their idea, if they wanted to be able to offer people of your tastes and finances the opportunity to buy such adventures.

For me, it's an intellectual exercise at the moment. In theory, to meet your needs, one would have to provide approximately eleven to thirteen sessions worth of adventuring, at roughly five scenes per session, or approximately sixty-ish individual scenes. That's a lot of room to play with, and a lot of writing, too. (This is based on WOTC's assumption that one encounter occurs every hour of playing time. Variations in these assumptions will lead to different numbers, of course.)

Personally, I think an introductory campaign of this magnitude would probably be a good seller, but as you have said, it needs a clever plot or plots. That's always the hardest part of these things in my eyes.

Enjoy,
Flynn
 
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