redrick
First Post
I started a Traveller campaign for a small group last night. This is my first introduction to science fiction gaming — we usually play fantasy or Cthulhu — but my wife has been very excited to give the system a try and put together the group. Not knowing much about what "a Traveller adventure" should feel like, I wanted to start with a published adventure, and ended up grabbing Type S, a more recent outing by Martin Dougherty. This seems to come highly recommended on a number of Traveller forums.
I ran into a few problems with the adventure right off the bat, and was just curious to hear if others had any experience with it.
First off, the setting of Walston. The main adventure takes place on a barely populated remote planet. The particular planet has an apartheid-like 2-tier racial structure, where the minority humans hold all important positions, with the majority Vargr (space-wolves) holding only menial jobs and shut out from the government. The adventure goes to great length to clarify that, yes, this is a racially stratified system, but everybody is totally chill with it, including the Vargr, and maybe the players should not be so quick to stick their noses into things. Anyway, yech.
Walston's "but everybody is cool with it" apartheid aside, the adventure also seems to be set up on a de-facto railroad. The author points out that player characters will, of course, do whatever they want, and should be encouraged to wander off the rails, but the first 2/3 of the adventure seems to consist of a series of situations for which there is only one possible outcome. In fact, there are two scenes at the beginning of the adventure where the DM is encouraged to "let the characters wander around until they get bored" and then advance the adventure. Even once the preamble is taken care of and the Travellers are actually in the thick of things, they are still mostly just hoping to roll well enough to advance forward, and the referee is often encouraged to narrate the tension of their success/failure, but without any actual effect on the outcome of the next event. Only at the very end of the adventure are the players actually presented with a seemingly meaningful choice (to save themselves or to do something stupid and try to save somebody else).
I decided to yield to the author's judgement and not totally rework the structure of the adventure, with the exception of the whole apartheid situation. (I'm gonna leave the apartheid in place, but, just because everybody on this planet is "chill" on the surface does not mean that the Vargr are actually cool with what is happening, and there is a lot of tension bubbling beneath the surface, with corresponding violent and repressive actions beneath the surface. Which might be more than I can actually pull off, but it feels better than the alternative.) Unfortunately, the first session mostly consisted of the players not being sure what they were supposed to be doing, because they were mostly be faced with a series of no-choice scenes. Yippee.
Anybody else run this adventure? How did you handle everything up until they are actually on top of the volcano? Were the scenes on Flammarion, the Autumn Gold and 567-908 interesting?
I ran into a few problems with the adventure right off the bat, and was just curious to hear if others had any experience with it.
First off, the setting of Walston. The main adventure takes place on a barely populated remote planet. The particular planet has an apartheid-like 2-tier racial structure, where the minority humans hold all important positions, with the majority Vargr (space-wolves) holding only menial jobs and shut out from the government. The adventure goes to great length to clarify that, yes, this is a racially stratified system, but everybody is totally chill with it, including the Vargr, and maybe the players should not be so quick to stick their noses into things. Anyway, yech.
Walston's "but everybody is cool with it" apartheid aside, the adventure also seems to be set up on a de-facto railroad. The author points out that player characters will, of course, do whatever they want, and should be encouraged to wander off the rails, but the first 2/3 of the adventure seems to consist of a series of situations for which there is only one possible outcome. In fact, there are two scenes at the beginning of the adventure where the DM is encouraged to "let the characters wander around until they get bored" and then advance the adventure. Even once the preamble is taken care of and the Travellers are actually in the thick of things, they are still mostly just hoping to roll well enough to advance forward, and the referee is often encouraged to narrate the tension of their success/failure, but without any actual effect on the outcome of the next event. Only at the very end of the adventure are the players actually presented with a seemingly meaningful choice (to save themselves or to do something stupid and try to save somebody else).
I decided to yield to the author's judgement and not totally rework the structure of the adventure, with the exception of the whole apartheid situation. (I'm gonna leave the apartheid in place, but, just because everybody on this planet is "chill" on the surface does not mean that the Vargr are actually cool with what is happening, and there is a lot of tension bubbling beneath the surface, with corresponding violent and repressive actions beneath the surface. Which might be more than I can actually pull off, but it feels better than the alternative.) Unfortunately, the first session mostly consisted of the players not being sure what they were supposed to be doing, because they were mostly be faced with a series of no-choice scenes. Yippee.
Anybody else run this adventure? How did you handle everything up until they are actually on top of the volcano? Were the scenes on Flammarion, the Autumn Gold and 567-908 interesting?
