Like a waitress in a space diner

[pyat]

I have a number of old Traveller books in PDF format. I recently shoved them onto my Sony eReader, and have been reading them when I don't feel like reading public domain 19th century stuff

Comments

[doc_mystery]

I never ran players through The Argon Gambit (which is more rail-roady than most Traveller adventures I played); nearly all sessions we played one player whose PC had a ship, usually a beaten up Scout or a grubby Free Trader with a big mortgage.

::B::

[pyat]

The ship that inevitably sucks up all your income as you drift aimlessly across the universe! I played in a year-long campaign in high school, and never managed to buy a ship. We just robbed banks to buy tickets to the next system, where we'd rob more banks.

[doc_mystery]

You could always run a campaign where all the players are space hoboes traveling in cold sleep via low passage! After arriving at a planet, they make *just* enough money with the cheap patrons to meet to meet the price for low passage to another world where they rinse, wash and repeat the process.

This is essentially the theme of the Dumarest of Terra series of E.C. Tubb, complete with the names of just space hoboes being travellers.

::B::

[pyat]

Astro-Bums! Star Grifters! Pack your anti-gravity spacebindle and hop a freezer tube express to Big Rock Candy Planet! I like it.

[shadow_maze]

These types of scenarios assume a VERY regular play schedule. Getting together once a month or every other month, you'd game a year without accomplishing anything.

What's the motivation for these short-order cook type characters anyway? Scrimp and save on this anonymous hell hole so I can get Low Passage to the next anonymous hell hole? Surely they will have more going for them than that?

[pyat]

No, you just work at the diner until a mysterious patron comes in. It's like a film noir, or perhaps even a caper film. The cab driver picks up the mysterious lady, the miner finds the strange artifact, and so on.

The job in the first session is just what the character is doing, not his career - most people were running things like space marines or CIA agents.

And of course, as Brian pointed out, the average game group would like have access to an elderly mortgaged spaceship to putter around with.

[shadow_maze]

Of course, if this is just the opening scene, at the diner, or wherever, that's fine. The Firefly model is great. It's the thought of a "few sessions of play" at the diner, as well as the "few more sessions" mining asteroids before the action starts that worries me. As someone mentioned below, that reminds me too much of real life, grinding away day after day. Let's pretend this is Eidolon looking in at this situation from the Maze... why is he going to incarnate himself into your world? So he can wash dishes, get indentured into mining asteroids, be poor and starving? He'll be right over...

[pyat]

Okay, let me clarify still further. You are not roleplaying the act of making toast for truckers for three sessions. Things happen while you are working at these jobs and the player group as a whole reacts to them. Crimes, conspiracies, and the like. And presumably any player is going to be proactively seeking things to do when he's not working as a space janitor, right?

Do you remember the "Level 0" campaign suggested for AD&D players in one of the core books? It suggested the players start out as apprentices, mucking out stables and filing scrolls for their master. Yet, while this was happening they'd be hearing rumours of larger events in the world and working to help with things like thefts and stable fires and the like.

If you look at things from the perspective of Eidolon, why is he going to do anything except teleport to the Universe of Available Maidens and Comfortable Sofas?

[paka]

I have really mixed feelings about this. Would I hate playing through this because it's so close to a real life that offers just the same poverty and lack of hope while other people get the expansive universe? Or conversely would I love it because the player characters actually get a chance to leave the situation?

[pyat]

A friend had that issue with GURPS Goblins, wherein you play a really poor Dickensian goblin. He was enthused by the concept but found in practice the "hand to mouth" aspects of the game reminded him strongly of life as an unemployed art student.

[epi_lj]

Oddly enough, this makes me want to buy more Traveller books. (Although likely not the old ones. I do have a small set of the old books, but I had just started to buy the spanky new edition and sort of petered out on that after the first book due to other things demanding my money.)

[pyat]

The new edition is pretty good! The system is more in line with what current players expect from a game. And, it's mostly compatible with the piles of old books. They're good for deckplans, adventure hooks and planet codes at the very least.

[katepufftail]

That sounds remarkably like the Star Wars campaign that I played through high school. A failed jedi, a deserted storm trooper, and a ship that could only just hop from one system to another, and ever quite getting enough money to do anything but keep the ship in parts. Good times, good times.

Traveler's one of those games that always intrigued me, but never got around to playing. Any game that it's possible to lose a character in the creation process is something that needs to be played at least once, I think.