Tell me about Traveller Actual Plays (or recommend AP threads)

[Wolfwood2]

I'm interested in hearing what people have done with Traveller official "Third Imperium" setting. Specifically what kind of campaigns you've run, how they progressed, what the characters did, where they started, and where they finished. Any "Actual Play" threads you could link to would be great as well.

I'm looking to play with Mongoose Traveller, but games run with previous editions will still be plenty inspirational. Oh, and if you did anything fun with Hivers, that would be good too.

 

[Psion]

I'm interested in hearing what people have done with Traveller official "Third Imperium" setting. Specifically what kind of campaigns you've run, how they progressed, what the characters did, where they started, and where they finished. Any "Actual Play" threads you could link to would be great as well.

Well, ENWorld's Shadowdancer had the exploits of a group in a Traveller D20 PbP, the Bray Keaven:

http://www.enworld.org/forum/story-...t20-tales-bray-keaven-updated-12-20-05-a.html

I'm looking to play with Mongoose Traveller, but games run with previous editions will still be plenty inspirational. Oh, and if you did anything fun with Hivers, that would be good too.

Well, I did use QLI's Gateway to Destiny setting book for Traveller D20, and I like the region well enough I am liable to use it again for Mongoose Traveller. It's the trailing edge of the Imperium, and the Hive Federation protrudes into one of the sectors on the map. It's easy to work them in there.

The alien books published for MegaTraveller and GURPS Traveller also have some good info on hivers, but were I to use the hivers, I'd use Larry Niven's Known Space stories as inspiration, as the puppeteers seem to have inspired the hivers.

 

[The Green Adam]

Where to start...

I've been playing Traveller for years and must've run at least a dozen campaigns of it more or less. They've ranged between fairly hard science war stories to more swashbuckling space opera adventures. I almost always set my campaigns in the Third Imperium at different periods in its history.

I ran one game where the PCs were the crew of an independant scout vessel working for the Imperial Interstellar Scout Serivce to complete a project called The First Survey. For those not familiar with Traveller canon lore, the First Survey was a monumental project undertaken by the Imperium to try and identify and catalog all the planets within its sphere. Many of these were little more then a set of numbers or planet names in the Scout databases and had never really been explored. IMTU, the Scout Service becomes overwhelmed at some point and starts hiring independant vessels to help out, especially those whose captain's are former Scouts. This is wear the PCs come in. Imagine Star Trek in a more hard science universe.

My next campaign was set nearly 600 years later and for all the players knew it was completely unrelated to the first one. This new campaign followed the adventures of a corporation that served to supplement the thinly stretched forces of the Imperium on its distant frontier. The PCs were troubleshooters of a kind, fighting pirates, performing search and rescue missions, negotiating with aliens and many covert operations against enemies of the Imperium (sometimes the Imperial government was their client). There was always some indication that the company had rights and powers it shouldn't really have but the upper-ups (CEO, Vice President, etc.) had some major connections and were owed major favors. The major arching plots and reoccuring villains were a fleet of pirates who were more like an organized crime cartel, a competitor corporation with a hidden aggenda, a search for Ancients arifacts and the political manuverings of the companies friends and rivals. The origin campaign influenced this one in subtle ways...family nanes from the original popped up from time to time and the discovery of an ancients site in the original played a major role in this second one.

Its late now but I'll try to remember some of our other campaigns as soon as I can.

AD

 

[Wolfwood2]

Thanks for the responses. I was kind of wanting something on the microscopic level as far as how Traveller pacing goes. Does every day get played out, or is it more like, "Three months and three planets later...."?

 

[qstor]

Thanks for the responses. I was kind of wanting something on the microscopic level as far as how Traveller pacing goes. Does every day get played out, or is it more like, "Three months and three planets later...."?

Check on the Mongoose forums. There's a new thread on 1 on 1 combat. Someone posted a thread on Hiver's as NPCs too. Not sure if that was you The GURPS Traveller book on Hivers is still in print.

GURPS Traveller: Aliens 3

Mongoose is planning alien races books for Traveller but it might be a while before they get to the Hivers. The Zhodani and Aslan books for Mongoose Traveller are planned for 2009 IIRC. So it might be worth picking the book up. It has some material for GURPS but the rest is well written for the Hiver and generic to Traveller.

I played MGT at GenCon the system was pretty easy to learn. We didn't have any combat but combat can be very deadly.

Mike

 

[Psion]

Thanks for the responses. I was kind of wanting something on the microscopic level as far as how Traveller pacing goes. Does every day get played out, or is it more like, "Three months and three planets later...."?

In Traveller, your characters spend a lot of time in jump space. This is a great time for "Orient Express" type isolated murder mystery or strange phenomenon type games. But 9 times out of 10, the time just passes, and gets used for training by the pcs (well, in editions that give you that option.)

Sometimes, you can handwave a whole route away, or just roll random encounters and trade rolls at each system until something interesting happens. Which is okay if the GM has a good idea when something interesting will pop up.

 

[The Green Adam]

I find that the time spent in Jump Space is a great time to flesh out subplots and character development. In thesecond of my two campaign previously mentioned, the PCs' main vessel was big enough to have a mess hall, a lounge and a gym as well as several other, albiet small, recreational areas.

As a result, we learned of one Solomani character's obsession with pre-Jump Earth, another's collection of books and maps written by one of the other PCs ancestors and romantic subplots among several PCs and NPCs.

AD