Solitaire
- Thread starter houghs
- Start date
The first part of solitaire play is to get the feel for the character generation process; I'd recommend doing it the hard way, i.e: failed survival roll = death, first. Try rolling each character as though they wanted to live, and see how that informs your decisions in career choice and how long you want to stay in service.
Then, bounce over to book 3, and go ahead and roll up a subsector. Just slog it out, roll the dice - Do it by hand, first! You'll understand it better that way. Oh, and watch out for typos. I think there's some contradiction in some editions whether hydrographics is 2D-7 + Size, or 2D-7 +Atmosphere. Go with Size.
By the time you're done with that, you'll have a brace of characters, and you'll have the beginnings of a setting.
Now, go to book 2. Learn it - and become maddened by the gaps regarding missiles and sand. Shake it off, and assume that missiles and sand take effect the first friendly movement phase after they've been launched. Maybe one of your characters has a ship? If not, give them a free trader and find a jump-1 main in your subsector. Start from a promising A port and play around with buying and selling. Set up encounters a la book 3 each time you make landfall, and make the ability to buy/sell cargo contingent on the positive resolution of the encounter.
Just hash it out.
My thoughts. YMMV.
Then, bounce over to book 3, and go ahead and roll up a subsector. Just slog it out, roll the dice - Do it by hand, first! You'll understand it better that way. Oh, and watch out for typos. I think there's some contradiction in some editions whether hydrographics is 2D-7 + Size, or 2D-7 +Atmosphere. Go with Size.
By the time you're done with that, you'll have a brace of characters, and you'll have the beginnings of a setting.
Now, go to book 2. Learn it - and become maddened by the gaps regarding missiles and sand. Shake it off, and assume that missiles and sand take effect the first friendly movement phase after they've been launched. Maybe one of your characters has a ship? If not, give them a free trader and find a jump-1 main in your subsector. Start from a promising A port and play around with buying and selling. Set up encounters a la book 3 each time you make landfall, and make the ability to buy/sell cargo contingent on the positive resolution of the encounter.
Just hash it out.
My thoughts. YMMV.
far-trader
SOC-14 10K
That sounded almost sarcastic 
I expected more response, and would contribute to the chatter myself but I'm hit and run posting lately.
A search for "solitaire" should turn up some past posts on it for you to read. Good hunting!
I expected more response, and would contribute to the chatter myself but I'm hit and run posting lately.
A search for "solitaire" should turn up some past posts on it for you to read. Good hunting!
If you scroll down to the bottom of this page you will see past links where the subject has come up.
Also you may try searching for Solo Traveller, Solo Play, etc.
There has been a lot of discussion about this here over the years but be forewarned, the topics sometimes diverge quickly and there are a number of subjects with solo on the title that are not necessarily about solo play in traveller.
The best way, albeit the most time consuming way, to find topics is to comb thru the pages one at a time starting with the oldest. Since you are interested in primarily Classic Traveller, go the oldest page of subjects and start looking. The reasoning is that the search function here isn't the smartest search and returns a lot of *Huh* results.
Might also try a deep COTI search on Google. But my google-fu is weak so I usually just go back to the page by page.
Jerry
Also you may try searching for Solo Traveller, Solo Play, etc.
There has been a lot of discussion about this here over the years but be forewarned, the topics sometimes diverge quickly and there are a number of subjects with solo on the title that are not necessarily about solo play in traveller.
The best way, albeit the most time consuming way, to find topics is to comb thru the pages one at a time starting with the oldest. Since you are interested in primarily Classic Traveller, go the oldest page of subjects and start looking. The reasoning is that the search function here isn't the smartest search and returns a lot of *Huh* results.
Might also try a deep COTI search on Google. But my google-fu is weak so I usually just go back to the page by page.
Jerry
far-trader
SOC-14 10K
I'm always forgetting about that handy little feature of the new board :nonono:
Excellent suggestion, and reminder to me, it's gotta sink in some day right
Well, solitaire play is definitely the way I learned Traveller (ct).
What I did was to sit down and roll up about 4 characters. Enough to have a variety of skills but not too large a group to work with. 3 of them were scouts, because it took me that long before I rolled one that got a ship when mustering out. The other was a marine.
Then I sent the 4 of them travelling around Jewell subsector. (Nice place on the border with the Zhodani and the Vargr, but any mapped out area will do). Used the random encounter tables to practice interactions with different groups (mostly in seedy startowns), and eventually a bit of gun combat when the interactions went south.
When the group ran out of money they sold the ships air-raft and used the proceeds to try a bit of trading. The empty air-raft bay helped to supplement the scout-ships meager 3 ton cargo bay, but it was still a bit tricky to make much profit. If I did this again I would probably try harder to get a merchant with a Free Trader.
As the party traveled from system to system I would also roll for random starship encounters. Eventually ran into some pirates. This gave me a chance to try some space combat and a boarding action. By great good luck most of the group survived the encounter, and found themselves in possession of a slightly beat up Corsair to boot!
I probably could have done more with the group, but by that time I had run through most of the important game mechanics. (Generating star systems has never been of interest to me, although I know many others enjoy that creative process).
Once I knew how to run combat and interactions the rest was easy. A week or two later I started running my first Traveller campaign with a bunch of friends. I used one of the characters from my solo play as a central NPC to help organize and orient the new players. We had a blast!
Hope that helps, houghs.
What I did was to sit down and roll up about 4 characters. Enough to have a variety of skills but not too large a group to work with. 3 of them were scouts, because it took me that long before I rolled one that got a ship when mustering out. The other was a marine.
Then I sent the 4 of them travelling around Jewell subsector. (Nice place on the border with the Zhodani and the Vargr, but any mapped out area will do). Used the random encounter tables to practice interactions with different groups (mostly in seedy startowns), and eventually a bit of gun combat when the interactions went south.
When the group ran out of money they sold the ships air-raft and used the proceeds to try a bit of trading. The empty air-raft bay helped to supplement the scout-ships meager 3 ton cargo bay, but it was still a bit tricky to make much profit. If I did this again I would probably try harder to get a merchant with a Free Trader.
As the party traveled from system to system I would also roll for random starship encounters. Eventually ran into some pirates. This gave me a chance to try some space combat and a boarding action. By great good luck most of the group survived the encounter, and found themselves in possession of a slightly beat up Corsair to boot!
I probably could have done more with the group, but by that time I had run through most of the important game mechanics. (Generating star systems has never been of interest to me, although I know many others enjoy that creative process).
Once I knew how to run combat and interactions the rest was easy. A week or two later I started running my first Traveller campaign with a bunch of friends. I used one of the characters from my solo play as a central NPC to help organize and orient the new players. We had a blast!
Hope that helps, houghs.
There's a neat article on the web called Travelling Alone, by Dave Cooper, which I just found here - http://www.freelancetraveller.com/features/rules/alone.html
I've worked through it, and it's an interesting way around the bigger cycle of getting the characters from adventure to adventure, but the first time they get into an encounter, you'll have to figure out how the process works by going back to the books.
And while you're on Freelance Traveller, check out the "Doing it My Way">"Character Detailing Rules" section for "Get a Life: Generating Character Background Life Events".
I had a look at this while playing a sologame to acquaint myself with the MongTraveller character generation system. Basically, it gives you a result and the fun is working out the 'How' and 'Why'. As you do this, ancilliary characters and associates begin to emmerge who enrich the story you're telling through your character.
David
Similar threads
