Scope and Magnitude of Adventures

[Blue Ghost]

I keep reading about players on this website whose adventures were all aimed at big events in the 3I scheme of things. The defrocking of major nobles, major political power shifts, destruction of worlds and alternations of interstellar politics.

I mean, Traveller is supposed to be a bit more vanilla flavored, but it seems like a lot of folks desire self-import of galactic or even universal proportions. The kind of thing you read in comic books. Do you all really find that necessary for you gaming satisfaction? What drives you to the operatic scale verse the more mundane?

 

[Darley51]

Hmmmm....

Actually, I go for the more mundane myself.

I'm not too interested in the lives of Nobles and such...would rather move around unnoticed, "mostly harmless" mode...

Besides, I wouldn't know how to act in the upper echelons of society....

 

[jatay3]

I went for the mid-level. The characters are helping to found a new civilization which is great enough but is not cosmic.

 

[aramis]

I've often had PC's who were Soc 13+ career nobles. I've also had a bunch of Rank 6 Navy and Marine officers, and one PC was a Sector Scout Administrator...

When your players are playing the sector level movers and shakers, they don't have pisant trivial adventures... they move and shake worlds and subsectors. They know all the powers that be and all the enthroned who represent them in the moot.

So a fairly typical campaign might revolve around being trouble shooters for the subsector or sector duke. Or while "retired and slumming" they might come across something untoward... and take umbrage with it. Sometimes even getting the Imperium involved.

In my current, non-3I, game.... the PC's include the son of the head of the Space Patrol, a member of the ruling council of the local polity, and the man heading the Jump 2 project.... Yes, shaking the universe...

 

[sabredog]

Mine, though not the OTU, evolved along similar lines as Aramis' as my players aged in RL as well as some PC's of theirs have in my game.

So, when I was younger (as were the players) adventures were more simple and took less time to run through. The overall campaign might have been more complicated as far as the "Big Picture", but I wasn't getting the players involved in the higher end, more political events because they weren't as interested in that and because their PC's weren't suitable. We preferred more of the standard Traveller sci-fi fare of finding alien worlds, getting in gunfights with bug-eyed monsters, discovering high tech gadgets, and getting into regular trouble.

Now we are more into the sort of things that interest us in RL (or at least have the age and wisdom to understand) like politics, plots and conniving among the powers, espionage, and getting rich as wannabe merchant princes (with all the above machinations) by striking out for unknown territory.

As a result the gunplay is more serious but less often, a lot more NPC interaction is involved, and more in-depth roleplaying is required than a bunch of 16 year old kids used to do. So I think its more a function of maturing RPG tastes on both the player and referee ends. I mean, there's no way, for example, that I could have run Call of Cthulhu when I was first running Traveller in the '70's - I didn't have any sort of life experiences to use as grist for the creative mill. Same with doing a properly layered Traveller espionage mystery that doesn't just come off as another Find-The-Deathstar type rehash.

 

[aramis]

Now that you mention it, almost all my players have played retirees... or scouts.

 

[Icosahedron]

My games are often about ordinary people facing problems which for them are huge, but are fairly inconsequential in the greater scheme of things. They may find themselves uncovering corruption in a planetary government, or chased by Men in Black, or trying to survive the outbreak of a nuclear war whilst marooned on a planet, but they won't be leading a rebellion to dethrone the Emperor.
I follow the guidance found in one of the early CT books, that the sure way to destroy a game is to let it grow too big.

 

[sabredog]

Now that you mention it, almost all my players have played retirees... or scouts.

Yeah, we've often reflected on how in my earlier games we used to have a hard time getting our heads around the concept that we were in our late teens - early 20's playing characters in their late 30's-40's. So we played like kids in grown-up's costumes.

Now we are playing characters either slightly younger than we are or at least the same age. It's easier to relate now to the characters so it's a major shift in their motivations.

 

[sarpjanth]

Can you correct for grammar?

" I would recommend Carter Hawley Hale Incorporated report the losses sustained due to the earthquake as an extraordinary item. Although the company is located in the state of California which is expected to experience hundreds of small earthquakes each year,

 

[Whipsnade]

Gents,

I've often described the role of the players in my Traveller campaigns as "mice in the wainscotting". I never attempted to run a "high powered" campaign and my players never asked for one or moved a campaign in that direction.

Never playing a high powered campaign was our loss however.

As Sabredog cannily surmised, I think our avoidance of high powered campaigns was due, at least in part, to our ages. I also think it was due, at least in part, to the types of adventures being published for Traveller and the types of campaigns we had experienced with other RPGs.

GDW and most of it's licensees didn't "do" high powered campaigns or adventures for Traveller. The outcomes may have been important, like uncovering the Zho base on Fulacin, and the NPCs fairly high ranking, like the battlerider admiral in SMC, but the players were neither movers and shakers nor rubbed elbows with movers and shakers.

I subconsciously followed this example when crafting my own campaigns. The longest brush my players had with movers and shakers occurred during a campaign set in the Islands subsectors and even then the players were more often being moved and shook than the other way around.

The usually negative example of high powered campaigns in other RPGs helped shape my opinion too. I'm sure all of us of a certain age played those early versions of D&D and quickly became kings, war leaders, or high priests with tons of gold and thousand of followers. That wasn't the fault of D&D mind you, it was the fault of the 16-year-olds running the sessions, but the experience of easy advancement to high levels and the "boredom" that occurred once there soured many people on the idea of high powered campaigns.

This "blind spot" of sorts still effects me today. While I can quickly crank out Amber Zones and whatnot from new items, I have trouble juggling high powered adventure and campaign ideas from any source. Wil's excellent suggestion of noble or retiree troubleshooters is usually the form my attempts take as I can't quite grok the idea of high powered characters or create a problem for them that I think is suitable.

I've no trouble casting high powered NPCs as patrons, but dropping the "N" gives me no end of trouble. It's like I'm colorblind or tone deaf.


Regards,
Bill

 

[sabredog]

My games are often about ordinary people facing problems which for them are huge, but are fairly inconsequential in the greater scheme of things. They may find themselves uncovering corruption in a planetary government, or chased by Men in Black, or trying to survive the outbreak of a nuclear war whilst marooned on a planet, but they won't be leading a rebellion to dethrone the Emperor.
I follow the guidance found in one of the early CT books, that the sure way to destroy a game is to let it grow too big.

I heartily agree about the too big thing, but oddly enough I've found that while I'm running a more "high-level" campaign right now, with all the potential for abuse, the players are still not wanting to go in the direction of carving out a piece of the Empire for themselves or any other "big" enterprise.

For a while they on the cusp of being able to lead a minor rebellion and try to form a micro-empire on the frontier outside the Terran Empire (in MTU) but they told me they didn't want any part of it when approached by some NPC's involved in such a plot. They said they wanted to stay as independent as possible (something that didn't happen in the days when they were pawns of some mega-corp or other power) and the wealth gathering and power-broking where to be the means to that end. Once they get enough of what they need they intend to build an exploration ship, hire a good crew, and head off for unmapped space to do pretty much what they used to do. Except this time it'll be on their terms - not some patron's.

I still influence decisions and events as before - I just have to be more subtle (a softer cluebat is needed now) and can explore a lot of things that used to just be background color I'd come up with mainly for myself. It makes for a nice change of pace.

And I've found that a lot of the potential for abuse is self-limiting. The best "Ah ha!" moment I have had in a long time was when I was playing their current Duke patron describing to one of the players what stepping up into the ranks of the wealthy and powerful can mean: I told the player that "it can mean that when you are confronting some enemy it won't just be some faceless goon, they will more likely be someone like yourself, and backed by the sort of resources you have now." They all decided that they might not really be ready for that sort of challenge, and that keeping a lower profile might better enable them to reach their goals in one piece.

And despite their current wealth, power, and influence, they are about to lose it all when we next play because they'll find when they return to their homeworld (after a 3 month circuit chasing down and cleaning out the last vestiges of the opposing privateer forces in the trade war) that their Duke has been arrested on charges (trumped up by one of his enemies who was getting bankrupted by the war from backing the losing side) of treason. His estates have been seized, funds confiscated, and the players will have prices on their heads.

So it'll be back to the old days of ducking the law, out-running the Navy gunboats, and trying to clear their names (by clearing their patron's) while hunted and harried. There will be frustration expressed and gnashing of teeth but they'll have fun. The rewards should they succeed will be great and satisfying....I just have to find a way to get them into a duel with the bad guy while at court somehow....swords before the Emperor and all that Errol Flynn In Space stuff...

 

[Seriayne]

I've always seen my games as 'big for the scope of the player's experience at the time'. And generally the 'grand schemes' I run are roughly scaled 1 factor smaller than the overall game area the players are going to be tooling around in.

ie. If the accessible/familiar universe is a subsector, players will end up involved in plots affecting 1 or 2 worlds history dramatically. If its a sector, then the players will be affecting/involved in the affairs of 5-10 key systems and their relationships with each other. 4 sectors is generally my 'playable map' for a campaign, even if its set against a much bigger backdrop. Player actions/expectations eventual projection of power are generally in the 4 subsector range at that point, and only after 2-3 years of regular play from my experience.

My current 'coming out of hiatus before returning to the 'Popular' campaign' campaign is scaled back in tech level (Mid Interstellar Wars era) and range of ripple effect, but the players, after about 3 game sessions, are already making waves on two worlds - helping depopulate the base they were born on, and becoming the first 'alien citizens' of a Russian/Czech colonized world. On their new 'homeworld', they've signed book deals and given away movie rights to their escape from a GenAssist laboratory.

The players have access to an old ship, but its about half a year's travel from the closest settled world at J2. Their newly adopted 'home' world is TL7, Type C starport, and about to give up on interstellar trade if the players and other merchants they're starting to ally with don't do something quick. All of the other merchants ships are aging and it looks like the Charismatic Dictator is preparing to have his world fall completely off the rest of inhabited space's radar.

They're looking at an easy to witness prequel to the Long Night well outside the perimeter of Terran trade, colonization, protection or even regular communication. Exploration/Exploitation of their own main and the unvisited worlds accessible from it deep in Hanstone's pretty much the planet's only hope of not stagnating - and it'll be the players that do or don't do something about it, ultimately. (Already cracked the numbers via Pocket Empires, and it produces less than 0.4 RU a year.

Whatever they do will affect their known area of operations for generations to come - maybe even becoming legends on more than one world, in song, story, and Special Tri-D Miniseries, but Terra, the Imperium and the Solomani and Aslan, their eventual closest Traveller Empire states, will never even -hear-, much less care about them. Even GenAssist will have erased (due to some plot points) their involvement in the affair, at least officially, in the Terran Confederation.

 

[Icosahedron]

This "blind spot" of sorts still effects me today. While I can quickly crank out Amber Zones and whatnot from new items, I have trouble juggling high powered adventure and campaign ideas from any source. Wil's excellent suggestion of noble or retiree troubleshooters is usually the form my attempts take as I can't quite grok the idea of high powered characters or create a problem for them that I think is suitable.

I've no trouble casting high powered NPCs as patrons, but dropping the "N" gives me no end of trouble. It's like I'm colorblind or tone deaf.

Yep, I can identify with your findings, Bill, and maybe you're right, playing action rther than intrigue was down to a teenage perspective, but the bit I snipped above probably sums up the case right now - it takes a lot less Referee time and effort (always at a premium ) to drum up a shootout with the goons scenario than a court intrigue scenario. I don't think I'm colourblind or tone deaf - just bone idle and perennially busy.

 

[aramis]

Yep, I can identify with your findings, Bill, and maybe you're right, playing action rther than intrigue was down to a teenage perspective, but the bit I snipped above probably sums up the case right now - it takes a lot less Referee time and effort (always at a premium ) to drum up a shootout with the goons scenario than a court intrigue scenario. I don't think I'm colourblind or tone deaf - just bone idle and perennially busy.

That really depends a lot on HOW one works the court intrigue scenario... Best campaign in terms of intrigue I ran was a board of directors game... we played out bits-n-pieces of the actions they caused, but they were very intently RPing the board meetings and not all aligned to each other... united by stock holdings, not common purpose...

Very little GM work. Players came up with far more than I did.

 

[jappel]

What one views as fun is also a big factor here. To paraphrase part of a GM's manifesto that was posted a couple years ago, I spend a fair part of my day dealing with bureaucrats and weasels, and thus "court intrigues" and such simply aren't things I consider recreation.

 

[sabredog]

What one views as fun is also a big factor here. To paraphrase part of a GM's manifesto that was posted a couple years ago, I spend a fair part of my day dealing with bureaucrats and weasels, and thus "court intrigues" and such simply aren't things I consider recreation.

I deal with people who will lie to me even when the truth will save them. I also, as a union rep, have to deal with a certain amount of internal politicking that can get surprisingly vindictive and petty. It is incredibly frustrating at times and leads to a daily struggle on my part to minimize the corrosive effect these things have on my soul.

But in my campaign, when these things go on, there is at least the ability to attain a certain justice in overcoming the the bad guys who try to destroy you or your friends. All the grays are there, but the outcomes can be more black and white - with the good guys winning more often than the merely politically or financially powerful. All it takes is courage, intelligence, a little luck, and a little help from some friends and you can take down the bad guys. Usually, anyway...sometimes a quick draw is as good as quick wits.

We live in a mean and nastiverse that gets worse all the time for a lot of reasons. In playing in adventures where people can overcome the countless small tyrannies that beat people down everyday in the real world by the cathartic (if vicarious) experience of overcoming larger than life dangers, machinations, and intrigues one can find a little sanity to bolster the will for the next day's battle with reality.

And let's not forget the romantic aspect of the adventures we run and campaigns they take place in. While there is plenty of fertile ground in exploring new worlds and sword n' blaster adventure, there is equally enough in court intrigues and plots. Who wouldn't want to be some intergalactic secret agent or troubleshooter factor sent by the Emperor to quietly quell rebellion on some frontier world? Or help lead the rebellion of innocent and oppressed colonists on some world being bled dry by some corrupt noble, perhaps culminating in a duel between the noble and the accusing PC?

You don't get personal satisfaction like that in real life; isn't that what these games are for?

 

[Blue Ghost]

Thanks for the honest answers, everyone.

I don't want to start a D&D leveling system debate, BUT, and I do mean BUT, I want to touch on it briefly to express my disdain for that particular game mechanic, and why I think it misleads Refs and players to an un-wise gaming experience.

My perspective is that the leveling system was meant to simulate increased skill through knowledge and experience gained in adventures. You bump off one warrior in a fight, and suddenly you know a certain move you can trust with your sword or weapon of choice. Fair enough. But, at some point that kind of skill levels out, or reaches an apex of maximum "skillness". Yet the leveling system says otherwise; "Know ye, that if you keep bumping off giant instectoid critter-Xs, then you'll receive Y-amount of EXP points, so you can increase your skill by Amount-Z, and continue the process.

There's a certain logic to that, but when you put that kind of stuff ahead of the game itself, that is the players see the experience points and leveling up as the reward, and not completing the game goals, then you have a problem.

The reason this is pertinent to this thread is because I think the 16-year old D&D "let's grow munchkin" characters mindset translates to a system that was never designed to embrace such an elaborate and overpowering experience-reward mechanic. Hence players going off to do Strepheron's bidding and shattering the 3I may become staples of games. I don't know. I haven't seen any like that.

But, it seems like the adventures I played in and ran pale in comparison to the ultra-profound "let's shake up the empire" campaigns that some folks here seem to run. And I can't help but think, feel and believe that the D&D mindset of turning your character into a virtual unstoppable entity with vast powers, has somehow polluted some aspects of Traveller.

One of the things I like about Traveller is that the adventures are fairly prosaic and straight forward. But, maybe there's room for bigger stuff. I don't know.

 

[sabredog]

Good point, and that's a lot of why I felt that age of the players and referee had an effect on the kind of campaigns and adventures played. As one gets older collecting bright shiny things might not be as appealing as something a little grander, or at least less ordinary. Maybe not, it depends on individual tastes. But the whole D&D chase the Exp-points and Vorpal Sword thing was most definitely a strong motivation when Traveller first came if only due to immaturity within the gaming community. Age and experience with the medium-wise with respect to life experience and how to translate it all into a good game with the system preferred.

At least I know it took me a good while of wince-factor (when looked back on now) game sessions I ran and played in both D&D and Traveller. I shudder to think...

I switched early to Runequest in like 78 (I think) and it got me out of the whole levelling-up mindset (since the game doesn't have levels, you just increase your skill in things) and more into the personal-story/character-driven motivation method of gamemastering. This really helped enhance and deepen my Traveller campaign writing since I was forced to come up with a means of motivating players that didn't just involve hanging shiny baubles in front of them; they instead had to build on their personal story within the context of my evolving campaign with a more open-ended approach. I stopped telling the players what they were going to have to do and switched to having them tell me what they wanted to do. No more "canned" adventures - it was all homemade to go with my homemade universe. got into the aspect of enjoying playing all my various NPCs, who then I began to treat like my army of PC's. That shift made a huge difference to me.

While I have a grand backdrop that generates the overall direction and history of my game, there is little the players could do that would influence things on that level, at least within their lifetimes. Mainly the players have more effect on the smaller scale which can influence the actions of the movers n' shakers, but the players might not rise to that level themselves unless I really want them to. If the players want to work towards becoming patrons and such then I can certainly, and have, provide the background for it.

The players don't become all-powerful; no suits of +5 plate and Dancing Vorpal Swords of Sharpness. They have the same skills they always did, they might even have less in the area of physical ability than they started with. I can't recall a single time when a player ever had battle dress, or instance, where it lasted more than a single adventure. Without it the player would have failed so it was worked into the plot.

Mainly their power just comes from who they know, who they trust, and who owes who favors and/or can be bought. Powerful patrons well-served become influential friends in high places who can get you the papers needed for moving the "delicate" cargo that can make you rich. Or provide you with information about a rival you can use to your advantage. Of course the same thing is going on on the other side of the ref's shield so the players have to stay on their toes if they want to roll with the big dogs - but that's always their choice. if they just want to go back to trying to scrape up the next payment on the Free Trader they can do that, too. My campaign is big enough for all kinds of adventures now so I really don't care as long as they have fun.

Which translates to fun for me since I don't really want to stress over the ego-involvement that I think works against you when running against the players because I am afraid they will ruin MY GAME because they are taking full advantage of what they can do within the imaginary universe. It was that way when I was younger, but as I grew up it changed to OUR GAME.

Besides, I get bored sometimes too by running the smaller scale adventures and want to try something a little more grand to keep things fresh.

 

[Blue Ghost]

Nothing wrong with any of that. Good healthy stuff.

I mean, these are after all only games. But I think scope of narrative very important. Call if the fiction-writer/screenplay-artist in me, but I get passionate about good story telling. And when stuff gets too big or out of hand it's almost like you're not really playing anymore, but engaged in some kind of wishful fantasy or something.

 

[sabredog]

"Wishful fantasy or something" in the way you use it seems an odd sort of way to describe playing a fantasy (or sci-fi) roleplaying game, doesn't it?

These are, after all, different games from the usual board game...they require a lot of suspension of disbelief from all the participants, good story-telling to create the mood and set the stage (again, from all involved), building over a long period of time a complex alter-ego to act as your avatar within the the game environment, etc.. And these things can last for as long as you want within the context of a campaign.

I have always thought of them as less game (though there are gaming elements to maintain the continuity of the rules and game environment within the RPG structure) than as a co-operative process of an evolving storyline. The ref sets the ground rules, the players add the uncertainty as the process moves along, and both sets tie it all together and "write the book".

Granted, that may be a fancy way of saying RPG's are just another sort of game, and certainly I've seen and played ones that felt like that's all they were. But I'd like to think that the reason I've had so many players compliment me on the depth, interest, and fun of my campaign being something suitable for fiction is that I treat it more like a movie I'm directing or book I'm writing than like a game of Princess Ryan's Star Marines.

But in the end it all fits into a couple of cardboard boxes to stash in my closet and I return to my real life at the end of a session (or after spending some quiet time writing and drawing things that are in it) just like I would when finishing any hobby. If that's what you mean. And I stopped feeling like I have to remind people "it's only a game" a long time ago - heck, all my hobbies are "only games" in one way or another is you want to go that way.