Running a one-off T5 session

[mvdwege]

Today at the monthly RPG meetup in the Netherlands I ran a T5 game.

Using a simple plot seed (noble heir gone missing on a border planet in the Spinward Marches) with pregenerated player characters, I sent out my players to follow up leads and find themselves embroiled in a an intricate duel in the dark between Imperial and Zhodani intelligence services, with a double-cross thrown in for good measure.

I was pleasantly surprised at how smoothly T5 actually runs in play. For all the unclear bits and sloppy organisation in the rules, the core mechanics appear rock solid, and the players (who were by necessity completely new to the system) picked it up within minutes.

I was also impressed at how well the tools work to make things up on the fly, once you are used to the organisation of the Big Black Book.

The nicest thing was the Personals. I am a bit of a sandbox player, and I tend to run my adventures on a minimal skeleton, playing off the feedback I get from my players. Since a lot of the adventure was sleuthing after clues and doing lots of interaction, I got to give the Personals system a good workout, and it works like a charm. Do 3 cross-references on a table, and you have a ready-made Target Number to resolve an interaction with a dice roll. The Strategy, Tactics and other modifiers are immediately evident from the roleplaying.

T5 may not be perfect, but it works, and it works very well indeed.

 

[Daddicus]

Thanks for the report!

I'm a bit of a rookie referee, and I'll have basically all new-to-Traveller players as well.

Can you comment on some of these:

• How long does a "typical" combat situation take?
• In an hour of play time, how much mileage can a group travel (including stops for combat).
• Did you have to create mercantile places so the team could buy weapons, armor, etc.
• If so, how much time did they spend there?
• Did you spend time creating characters? Or, pre-roll them?
• How did your players like it?

 

[mvdwege]

Thanks for the report!

I'm a bit of a rookie referee, and I'll have basically all new-to-Traveller players as well.

Can you comment on some of these:

• How long does a "typical" combat situation take?
• In an hour of play time, how much mileage can a group travel (including stops for combat).
• Did you have to create mercantile places so the team could buy weapons, armor, etc.
• If so, how much time did they spend there?
• Did you spend time creating characters? Or, pre-roll them?
• How did your players like it?

Ok, in order:

• I didn't manage to get my players to the at least 2 combat confrontations I had planned. We were running out of time, so I ran a simplified short combat at the end, and that ran pretty smoothly, but I can't say that it was representative.
• Most of the first three hours of play was spent on a single planet. In that time literally a score of NPCs was interviewed, but players didn't travel further than to a single settlement just outside the planet's Downport.
• I didn't send my players to a weapons shop. I did however fill the ship's weapon locker on the fly using GunMaker; which produced whoops of joy from the guy playing the ship's Engineer, as he had the Gunnery skill and so could take out the portable Gauss Gun I had rolled up.
• Essentially it took me no time at all to create the weapons in the ship's locker. I rolled them up while listening to the players making their plans. All in all it took about 5 minutes.
• I pre-rolled 6 characters with the occasional outright selection instead of rolling to tweak them to fit my planned adventure, in about 2 hours.
• Everybody enjoyed themselves immensely.

 

[robject]

I've run four T5 games so far, and have a fifth coming up in 2 weeks, so I'll chip in my comments here.

Can you comment on some of these:

• How long does a "typical" combat situation take?
• In an hour of play time, how much mileage can a group travel (including stops for combat).
• Did you have to create mercantile places so the team could buy weapons, armor, etc.
• If so, how much time did they spend there?
• Did you spend time creating characters? Or, pre-roll them?
• How did your players like it?

Our typical combat sessions lasted 15 minutes, and ranged from hand-to-hand highly role-played situations, to combats between two armed groups -- twelve to sixteen people on each side. T5 abstracts combat nicely when dealing with large groups of enemies, and the fire suppression rule works GREAT.

In one particular hour of play time, our group traveled about 50 kilometers, including two stops for obstacles, neither of which resulted in combat (but one could have / should have). At the end of that session, there was interplanetary travel, which of course covers a great distance, but it's quite abstract as a distance -- how can you "tell" you've flown half an astronomical unit, unless something else makes it memorable?

Though I did have a low-tech general store in one adventure, I did not have to create any true stores for equipment, and as a result, the players didn't spend time shopping. I may have to do that this time, though.

I had imported character sheets from other editions of Traveller (one from Classic Traveller, one from T4, and one from Mongoose Traveller); these characters had been rolled previously by their players. One character, a Scout, was rolled up using T5 rules, and he was rolled up some time ago by his player and I, before the current campaign started.

My players and I have been enjoying the game. All of us are driven by storyline: the rules system used is only truly important to the referee. As long as I give them interesting obstacles that at least tangentially tie in to their characters' strengths, they're happy. But we were all happy with how well the T5 task system works, and how intuitive it is.

 

[Licheking]

I have been running T5 now for about 4 months and i started out with the Leviathan adventure (4?). I didn't change any of the encounters or stats and it ran as smoothly with T5 as it did with MT when i last used it.

Combats tend to be quick in my game, although i have tweaked combat to suit my own style and my interpretation of the rules as they stand now. The longest fight we have had so far and that was 4 PC's versus 24 cannibal devolved people was 30 minutes.

I have created an entire Weapons, Equipment, Vehicle and Spaceships catalogs for my group so shopping is never a problem, but with their mustering out money they are pretty well equipped so rarely visit shops now.

It took around 4 Hours one Saturday to create the characters for the campaign, but that was doing 4 characters at once with only the one book (My preference by the way).

My players are loving the game, it feels smoother than MT which the majority have played before, but the new comer to Traveller picked it up very easily and finds it fast and simple. The only thing that the newcomer can't get his round is the mish-mash of technologies and why some things can't be used or done unless you have the very specific item to do it. For example why he couldn't he use the communicator to jam the enemy comms, my reply, because you don't have a jammer and no-one on board has comms skill above 0. But that is universe specific not rules specific.

 

[cym0k]

The only thing that the newcomer can't get his round is the mish-mash of technologies and why some things can't be used or done unless you have the very specific item to do it. For example why he couldn't he use the communicator to jam the enemy comms, my reply, because you don't have a jammer and no-one on board has comms skill above 0. But that is universe specific not rules specific.

I take it that is a technology level issue as well? A TL 10 wouldn't be able to block or affect TL 11 communications? (sorry, dumb newb question)

 

[Licheking]

To some extent yes, although it doesn't stop it completely, only that the higher TL device has a better chance of getting through or blocking the lower TL device.

 

[Daddicus]

Thanks guys! Great information.

Oh, and I forgot to congratulate the OP: Good job!

 

[Draconian]

T5 may not be perfect, but it works, and it works very well indeed.

Good to hear that. I was looking for the "Like" button but there isn't one...

 

[Draconian]

I didn't send my players to a weapons shop. I did however fill the ship's weapon locker on the fly using GunMaker; which produced whoops of joy from the guy playing the ship's Engineer, as he had the Gunnery skill and so could take out the portable Gauss Gun I had rolled up.[/LIST]

By the way, weapons designated Portable indicate big weapons with large recoil that can only be handled by someone in BattleDress (suits of powered armour). BattleDress is the skill needed to handle those weapons. Gunner skill is for larger weapons mounted on starships. You may have confused it with regular "guns" in English?

 

[mvdwege]

By the way, weapons designated Portable indicate big weapons with large recoil that can only be handled by someone in BattleDress (suits of powered armour). BattleDress is the skill needed to handle those weapons. Gunner skill is for larger weapons mounted on starships. You may have confused it with regular "guns" in English?

No indeed, I fudged that. I found out that our Engineer didn't have any useful skills in combat, so I basically fudged using his Gunner score for Heavy Weapons.