Solitare Traveller

[Loki]

Imagine my surprise when I did a SEARCH THE INTERNET last week looking for any information on one of my favorite games from years ago. Holy moly Batman! I suddenly found scads of TRAVELLER sites, along with the news that the bones had been resurrected and re-emerged under a new system.

I have been a gamer since AH's D-Day board game in '64. Since then I have collected magazines, board games, computer games, books and amongst my most prized toys was the Traveller material. I still have almost the entire collection of paper back sci-fi books in which many of the TRAVELLER concepts appeared. I played the two Megatraveller computer gmes and was saddened when the 3rd computer game died before ever getting published.

Has anyone developed some guidelines for playing TRAVELLER solitare? Yes, I know it is loads of fun to play as a group but frankly my job just doesn't allow me a consistant schedule for time to gather and play.

My idea (and yes, we all have our favorite styles, goals etc and mine is rather passive) is to put together a group of service retired folks and ply the space ways in a Far Trader or other merchant hull. Much like the FIREFLY TV program, the game will have lots of random events and many can be played out in miniature using figures and vessels.

There is an author who has developed a great set of solitare rules for a small British Colonial wargame (vs. Zulus, Mahdist etc) in Africa around 1879. I was just getting ready to try it out when TRAVELLER came back into view.

Now, I am curious if anyone has tried TRAVELLER in a solitare setting? I m now visiting every web site I can find and have ordered a lot of the new material to see what I can use in my campaign. The amount of existing info is overwhelming! Thanks!

 

[trader jim]

Outstanding!!!!...Welcome Back....are you gonna be suprised!!!....Tons of new Goodies!!!...GREAT STUFF!!...If you find any solitare stuff be sure to post it here...we all would like to see it.

 

[Loki]

Thanks Trader Jim!
I just scanned the "who are we" line and found that I'm not the oldest guy in the group after all. I'll be 55 next month so I guess you're my elder. There does seem to be a lot of followers in their 30's. That's good.

I've spent most of my time in the game forums following Civ 3, Divine Divinity, Jagged Alliance, JA2UB, Starships, Freelancer, lots of fantasy RPGs but pretty much avoid the RTS games. Getting too old to follow that sort and want to avoid carpal tunnel injuries!

 

[DaveShayne]

Originally posted by Loki:
Imagine my surprise when I did a SEARCH THE INTERNET last week looking for any information on one of my favorite games from years ago.

Welcome back.

Now, I am curious if anyone has tried TRAVELLER in a solitare setting?

All of the elements you need to play Traveller solitare are in the CT reprint books.

Generate the crew for a free trader and set off to make your fame and fortune in speculative trade. While in port you can search for patrons (and create scenarios based off of Supplement 6 : 76 Patrons or using your imagination.) After any patron based encounter has been played out gather cargos and passengers and head out for your next destination. Starship encounters may be benign or result in ship to ship combat or boarding actions. Don't forget the possibility of hijacking.

Admittedly you lose a good deal of the role playing flavour and of course there is no real scope for mystery type adventures but it can be done and done enjoyably.

 

[plop101]

1. Per David Shaynes advice, get CT Reprints.

2. Then,go to Imperial Scout Surveys section here. Pull up all stuff from last year. Burried in the debris is a file section called Solo Games. In that is a wonderfull flow chart that Brass Jester put together...I highly recomend it.

PS The flow chart is so good that it ought to be in T5, for those who are working on that.

 

[trader jim]

hey plop....i cant find that file for SOLO games...where is it???? i want to print out a copy of Everthing....cant find it...

 

[Loki]

Plop101 and DaveShayne:
I found a great site at http://www.pemaquidsolutions.com/bibliography/ that apparently lists nearly every product ever made for the various Traveller game systems. I have scanned only a part of it but it brings back such great memories, I can hardly contain myself.

Point of fact, I probably have a good portion of this material buried somewhere in my storage room and just need to dig it out. When you say “CT Reprints”, which company are you referring to? These are reprints from who’s line of material? Again, thanks in advance!

 

[Tom Schoene]

Loki:

Marc Miller's new company Far Futures Enterprises is reprinting almost all of the CT material published by GDW. Ther'es a link to FFE at the top of this page, or you can go to the web store run by QuikLink (the folks who run this website).

CT Reprints

 

[DaveShayne]

Originally posted by Tom Schoene:
Loki:

Marc Miller's new company Far Futures Enterprises [/URL]

What he said. And if you're like me you probably do have a good enough chunk of it. Of course most of my originals are sadly showing the effects of decades of hard usage so it's nice having them available again so I can avoid further damage to my hallowed originals as well as to fill in gaps that I didn't quite have the money to justify purchasing back when they were new and I was still a poor student.

The reprints are available as omnibus volumes. The first including all of The Books, the second The Supplements and so on.

 

[Loki]

Thanks to each of you. Your comments inspired me to start digging around in my basement and I came across three boxes of Traveller related stuff as well as a pile of magazines from the past with Traveller material. Even found a copy of "Star Smuggler" and "Star Viking".

This 'blankety-blank' three day weekend has really slowed up the mail. I've got about 17 items coming but so far not a thing has arrived. I can only hope that Tuesday is my lucky day!

Looked over those solo game ideas and will start tearing them apart and expand them to address the conditions in my Traveller universe. They remind me of those solo Brits vs. Zulu game rules I was getting ready to play. The guy did a great job addressing weather, effects of heat, building a small stockade, daily hunting for provisions (to include expenditure of bullets), random events (including lost expeditions, roaming wild animals, slavers, supply ship arrivals, searching for the Lost City, effects of disease, trade with the local natives, etc) and all played out with miniature figures as needed.

I look forward to trying to get the same degree of detail out of this resurgance on Traveller. Kind of like the many weeks I spent trying to get the "Rules of Engagement 2" computer game interfaced with "Breach 2" so I could play some boarding engagements. I guess I prefer the small scale as opposed to the sweeping fleet sized engagements such as David Weber uses in his Honor Harrington series.

Again, thanks!

 

[plop101]

Trader Jim:

hey plop....i cant find that file for SOLO games...where is it???? i want to print out a copy of Everthing....cant find it... [Cool]

Sigh...

1. Go to Imperial Scout Surveys
2. Pull down the tab that says 'All topics from last year'. Then press go or enter.
3. The Solo games file is right between the poll for "music to play Traveller by" and the "Trader Jim Triad War" poll. It is easily found because its one of the few files in the surveys that ISN'T a poll.
4. Once you've found that, just peruse the posts in that section till you find Brass Jesters flow chart it'll be a big long post.

Bon appetiet!

 

[trader jim]

....and a great big...Thankyouberrymuch!!!

 

[plop101]

Ok, just as a example of the fun you can have solo.

The scout with no name, starts off on Emerald/Jewell with detached duty scout ship. Spends first day checking ship out in the morning,posts a notice on the local web for starship crew mid-day, and going on a equipment shopping spree in the afternoon.

Ref: From flow chart, we get event 'exit visa'.

The next day, our scout is summoned to see the commander of the operations office at the Emerald Scout base. He regrets to inform the scout that the detached duty ship he has been assisgned has been transferred to another squadron, which will then be sent to the base at Zircon. The scout with no name now has to go through the scout bureaucracy in order to get his ship back.

Ref: Roll patron: A researcher...

Later that day, while talking to a clerk over in the detached duty office, scout with no name runs into Simone Garibaldi [ref: from JTAS Casual Encounter] who is looking for a small ship to transport her to Jewell and Mongo. She does NOT want to use civilian merchant transport; she will assist scout with no name in getting his ship back if he helps her get to her appointments on Jewell and Mongo.

The rest of the week, Simone and Scout with no name run around the various Scout offices. Eventually, they find a leader in the Scout Admin office who will cut orders for the ship to remain in detached service provided that they carry a important cargo to the scout base on Jewell.

ref: role out 4 npc's for possible ships crew.

On the last day of the week, scout with no name checks his web post for ships crew; there are 4 entries. After reviewing them, he decides to call Miki Kidishi, an ex-navy spaceman, for an interview. Kidishi has experience as a engineer. The interview goes well, and he is hired as ships engineer.

Also, since the ship will be carrying security cargo, the leader in the Admin Office has authorized the ship to be armed.

ref: see post in Fleet forum: "Installing weapons FAST"

Now there's a week of fun, with more to come:

1. Simone's issues to deal with...
2. What is that 'security cargo' we're carrying...
3. What will they find at Jewell and Mongo...
4. What kind of trouble may Miki Kishisi cause...
5. Who is scout with no name anyway...

Enjoy!

 

[Loki]

Adding to the issues this 'scout with no name' has to face is the "4 npc's for possible ships crew." Who are these people? Are any of them on-board to impact/affect the patron's plans? Maybe someone knows the contents of the mysterious delivery? Sabotage? Pirate activity? Espionage? Kidnapping? Ransome?

I can see that the possibilities are widw open here. Interesting!

 

[plop101]

Loki states:

Adding to the issues this 'scout with no name' has to face is the "4 npc's for possible ships crew."

Actually, no, that was sorta dealt with in the prior post:

ref: role out 4 npc's for possible ships crew.

On the last day of the week, scout with no name checks his web post for ships crew; there are 4 entries. After reviewing them, he decides to call Miki Kidishi, an ex-navy spaceman, for an interview.

Here's how I did that. From the MT folio adventure "Assignment: Vigilante" we have a section on recruiting [page 10]. This gives you a format for figuring out how many people you can recruit and for which skills sets your looking for [whether their going to be army/marine people or folks with space experience]. In this case, because of Emeralds population, we get only 4 people [pop 5-5space aplicants plus dm's per dice rolled+4, no dice rolled, so only 4 folks]. These four are 0-1 term folks. At this point, fearless ref pulls out the character generator, spits out four possibles. Scout with no name is looking for a engineer, a gunner, and a medic. Two of the four run through the generator have no experience atall. The third one had just college, no service. That left Miki Kidishi who has both Engineering-2 and Turret Weapons-1, amongst other skills. The assumption here is that the four posts on the port web have resumes, and that Scout looked em over and picked Miki. One could change that, of course...maybe Miki resume isn't what it should be. Borrowing a dice roll from the psionics section, roll 2die for 12 if Miki is doing something wrong, or something along those lines. Miki also has a dex of 2, so he's a bit of a fumbler; he has gambling-1, so he likes the holopoker. IIRC, his stats are something like A25556, he's just a real mess.

Another thing, which Loki alluded to in a prior post, is that one should always look for solo material that can be ported to this game. A favorite that I often borrow from is the Captains Game in Starfleet Battles. Whenever you hit one of those "predetermined" slots in the ship encounter tables, run a captains game scenario. For the above example, instead of having a Federation CA fighting a Klingon D7, we would have a Type S scout vs a Zhodani Zhidits raider. Substitute monster encounters with adventures... or borrow a monster encounter...see what a Type S would do against the giant amoeba... whatever.

 

[jzeitlin]

Originally posted by DaveShayne:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Loki:
Now, I am curious if anyone has tried TRAVELLER in a solitare setting?

All of the elements you need to play Traveller solitare are in the CT reprint books.

Generate the crew for a free trader and set off to make your fame and fortune in speculative trade. While in port you can search for patrons (and create scenarios based off of Supplement 6 : 76 Patrons or using your imagination.) After any patron based encounter has been played out gather cargos and passengers and head out for your next destination. Starship encounters may be benign or result in ship to ship combat or boarding actions. Don't forget the possibility of hijacking.

Admittedly you lose a good deal of the role playing flavour and of course there is no real scope for mystery type adventures but it can be done and done enjoyably.</font>[/QUOTE]There is some scope for mystery-type adventures; there's at least one author at Freelance Traveller that has done a "Choose Your Own Adventure"-type supplement, Scout's Honor, and while I don't recall the plot of that adventure, I do know that CYOAs in other genres have used mystery scenaria.

 

[Loki]

Thanks! I just downloaded Scout's Honor and plan to look it over.

I'm still waiting for all of the Traveller material I ordered via the internet and started digging through my game store room. Forgot I had so many of the original Traveller material items as well. Lots of reading and research ahead.

I am reading the latest Honor Harrington novel and again it has touched on another interesting theme. Pirate hunting with Q ships. I can see that this could bring up some boarding actions, looting, police actions, slave trade disruption, special spin-off adventures etc.

I'm a little weak on ship-to-ship combat. What vessel would make the best type for a Q-ship?