Running the March Harrier (*Spoilers!*)

[kurtis]

I think The Traveller Adventure must be the Temple of Elemental Evil for Traveller. I read this topic last summer with interest, but only decided last week that I would run this campaign. I bought this book when it came out, yet this is first time I've attempted to actually run it! /boggle

I thought it might be best to start a new topic with explicit license to discuss spoilers and swap stories and suggestions. If you haven't played or run this campaign before, read on at your own risk.

Morte, if you see this, I'd love to know how your game is going...

I have a regular group of players I've known for years (it looks like I'm down to four for the start of this one), none of whom have more than limited exposure to Traveller from many, many years ago (CT/MT days). They are basically a blank slate Travellerwise. They are otherwise very experienced gamers, however, so I like to fine-tune published material before I feed it to them. They'll tear the adventure to shreds if it relies too much on the usual cliche's -- they've earned the rat bastard treatment:

Rat Bastardry
Pronunciation: 'rat bas-tard-ry
Function: noun
1: A philosophy that asserts that a role-playing game's capacity for providing enjoyment can be greatly increased by weaving a complex web of psychological challenges, moral or ethical dilemmas, frequent plot twists, and unforeseen consequences to create a gaming environment with verisimilitude that rises above the mundane with the ultimate aim of creating an atmosphere of awed paranoia for the players.

(Courtesy of The Rat's Nest)

With that in mind, any suggestions or experiences running or playing this classic are greatly appreciated!

 

[daryen]

My biggest suggestion is that Gvoudzon must have a history (a good one) with at least one PC. Even better, make it such that the PC owes him big time. Gvoudzon needs to talk them into robbery, and you need a better reason than altruism.

 

[mike wightman]

Daryen's idea is a good one.

I would suggest gaming for a few weeks to get the characters settled, and possibly to meet some of the other NPCs that will figure in the adventure - the guy they have to buy the fuel tanks from springd to mind especially.
Use rumours, patron encounters, possibly some short adventure, before starting on TTA proper.

 

[Chuck Anumia]

Aye!
Thats the ticket...get their feet wet before you drown them!

 

[sinistral]

Don't let them use the ship lasers to cut down Howood. IMTU the players just loaded up the whole bay with this method. And started a VERY big fire.

 

[kurtis]

I'm going with the idea of making Gvoudzon a PC. While I usually let my players create any character they want, I'm making this an 'intro to Traveller' game with some limits on their character choices. While new to Traveller, they've all seen Firefly (my boxed set has been around, hehe), and that's kind of been my inspiration for running TTA. Many of them read Honor Harrington novels, too, so I can make comparisions there, as well.

Anyway, I'm giving them a set list of character outlines to choose from, and "Vargr Spacer - former corsair and diplomat" is second on the list.

I'm already planning on changing the museum breakin on Leedor, since a museum buying a trinket of unknown providence from a pawn shop sticks in my filters. I'm swapping out the museum for a wealthy merchant estate. When I say merchant, I mean "business man", with a "family business", which is to say, the kind of guy that might "own" a number of pawn shops. Ahem.

This would make the target much less sympathetic to the PCs, and could spawn a whole new subplot involving a 'Aramis Trace Syndicate', perhaps...

Regarding padding out the early going, I read in the earlier topic that there was some additional TTA material published in Challenge? I have most of the JTAS issues, but lack a lot of the later stuff. Anyone know what issues this appeared in?

The overhaul on Aramis still makes the best starting point for me -- that's when I intend the PCs to take possession of the March Harrier. What I might do is have the PC captain recruit Gvoudzon at the get-go, and during the wait for the ship, he's mugged at random and the brooch is taken then. The players can then track the brooch to the pawn and from there to my wealthy-but-unethical dealer of dubious property. Everything else in that chapter, the Titan crash and so forth, can wait. Any suggestions on how to stretch that out would be welcome.

Originally posted by sinistral:
Don't let them use the ship lasers to cut down Howood. IMTU the players just loaded up the whole bay with this method. And started a VERY big fire.

LOL!

Actually, I was think of taking the turrets off the Harrier from the beginning, and let Oberlindes offer ship weapons as part of the deal for the trade war sequence. Would that place the PCs in too much danger up to that point?

 

[FlightCommanderSolitude]

Originally posted by Silent Cartographer:
...A philosophy that asserts that a role-playing game's capacity for providing enjoyment can be greatly increased by weaving a complex web of psychological challenges, moral or ethical dilemmas, frequent plot twists, and unforeseen consequences to create a gaming environment with verisimilitude...

This is a great definition to keep in mind. The only way I've found of achieving it is by making everything up as I go along and ignoring every die roll. It works for me, but probably won't with more experienced players, unless you're an excellent story-teller, in which case they shouldn't care!

 

[kurtis]

That came from a group of D&D DMs from ENWorld who excel at that kind of stuff. Not that it doesn't equally apply in other genres, but if the D&D style fantasy doesn't bother you, check out some of the Story Hour threads on enworld.org: http://www.enworld.org/forumdisplay.php?f=14

There's a great Traveller thread there, too. Tales of the Bray Keaven is a good read. Pretty deep into the story, there is a scene where the PCs are placed in an ethical dilemma that results in them losing a chance of a very profitable patronage from a powerful Marquis. It was genuine Rat Bastard moment, hehe...

 

[Shadowdancer]

Originally posted by Silent Cartographer:
There's a great Traveller thread there, too. Tales of the Bray Keaven is a good read. Pretty deep into the story, there is a scene where the PCs are placed in an ethical dilemma that results in them losing a chance of a very profitable patronage from a powerful Marquis. It was genuine Rat Bastard moment, hehe...

Yeah, we're still kicking ourselves over that one.

 

[vutpakdi]

Originally posted by Silent Cartographer:

There's a great Traveller thread there, too. Tales of the Bray Keaven is a good read. Pretty deep into the story, there is a scene where the PCs are placed in an ethical dilemma that results in them losing a chance of a very profitable patronage from a powerful Marquis. It was genuine Rat Bastard moment, hehe...

Hehe, thank you! The story would have likely taken quite a different arc if they hadn't accepted the offer (and therefore gained the patronage. Would have given me a useful adventure hook since the crew would have essentially been "on call" for missions for the Marquis. Oh well...

Payback could be hell though : Paraquat Johnson is taking over as Referee for an adventure, and I'm going to get a chance to play.

Ron

 

[aramis]

Making Gvoudzon a PC has worked for me. I'd suggest, really, using the pregens. Especially if doing the "Intro to Traveller" thing. That way, EVERYONE has a similar amount of input into PC creation, IE, none!

The dangers of de-weaponing depend upon how often you, as Ref, roll on the ship's encounters table,, how you roll, and how hostile the hostiles really are. I wouldn't, myself. I would, however, have that first tree they cut fall straight at the ship, and shatter into much less valuable pieces. (Fire's not that likely...)

Oh, and if they're going to do that, fine, let them... and let them get caught firing dirtside by the loud thundercracks of 250MW lasers!

 

[sinistral]

It's been so long since I ran the adventure that, much, much later, I had a vargr char called Gvoudzon, and I thought I made the name up. Only realised when I read this thread.

 

[kurtis]

Finally got my players sorted out with their characters this past weekend. Even with a set list of established character outlines, there were surprises, as usual (hehe).

First off, I want to state a quasi-relevant caveat, here. My group is very experienced with Shadowrun rules, which we mostly like. A new version of SR just came out (4th ed.), and so to kill two birds with one stone, we're play-testing SR4 game mechanics while playing Traveller. So if I mention something that seems out of place in CT/MT/T20, its because it isn't traditional rules.

The Gvoudzon character (who isn't going by that name -- the player has no idea of this character's central nature to the written scenarios) was picked by one of the most devious-evil gamers I know. So any kind of pre-scripted goings on with the big G is strictly touch-and-go. This guy can smell a rail-job a mile away, so finesse, and reframing encounters is the order of the day.

I expected zero psionic PCs. I got two. That's half the party, lol. The G-wolf (!) is an untrained, unconcious telepath. Another player picked a spacer/tech/bridge monkey character outline. He not only went with a Darrian racial background, he went whole hog into psi, buying into three talents (for which he paid dearly), Awareness, Telepathy, and Special. He's already trained, and we cooked up a Machine Empathy skill for his Special talent.

My RealLife(tm) ex-Navy player went with the Harrier's Captain/Owner character role, who is ex-Imp Navy Intel, which I think will work out well. This character has lots of hooks into the campaign.

There is also an ex-Imp Marine slash ship's steward (the character outline was titled, "The Cook", hahaha). This is in the hands of my least experienced player, so I want to find some easy narrative hooks for his character to encourage interest.

This means the PC captain will need to hire a medic and an engineer as NPCs.

Looking forward..., I am going through my CT collection looking for more adventures either set near the coreward-trailing part of the Marches or which can easily be reset into that region for the campaign.

I'm also very interested if anyone familiar with the EPIC adventure pdfs thinks any of them would be a good match for this campaign story arc. Could something like Stoner Express be recast into the pre-FFW Marches?

 

[Anthony Emmel]

Chello!

Dude, your game sounds sweet....sounds liek you're going to have a blast...I love TTA, but the last time I ran it was 1989 when i was in the Army and I don't (unfortunately) have a copy anymore. So it is kind of vague in my mind.

I love the "family businessman" angle. :thumbsup: Sounds like the PCs might end p being hunting by somethng even wose than the interstellar gov't...

Tony

 

[DElrick]

One of the adventures in the (CT) K'Kree Alien Module is set on Nasemin and fits pretty well into the Traveller Adventure.

76 Patrons (and 101 Patrons from BITS) are also very useful.

Hope this helps.

Cheers

David

 

[hirch duckfinder]

Originally posted by David Elrick:
[QB] One of the adventures in the (CT) K'Kree Alien Module is set on Nasemin and fits pretty well into the Traveller Adventure.

Been busy with that book lately david?

 

[DElrick]

Originally posted by hirch duckfinder:

Originally posted by David Elrick:
[QB] One of the adventures in the (CT) K'Kree Alien Module is set on Nasemin and fits pretty well into the Traveller Adventure.

Been busy with that book lately david?

It still cracks me up: "We get this wrong and 'My little pony' gets it"...

Cheers

David

 

[kurtis]

As an aside: when the group found out (this past weekend) that true owner of the pawn shop in question is a local business man "who owns the Leedor city garbage collection contract", everyone in the room just about herniated!

Hehehe.., contemporary pop culture adventure in the far future...

 

[aramis]

Last time I ran the TA, the ship's purser was a cannibal... try explaining why your purser is loading body bags to the local muscle.

 

[Peter Newman]

Don't let the players ship randomly misjump to a location far from the setting of the adventure. They may not decide to go back and if they do by the time they return too much game time and real time (unless you gloss over the return) will have gone by for them to effectively finish the adventure.