Since, somehow, I managed to post this in a forum I don't actually read, and my help thread never bore fruit... Here it is in the proper forum.


As I slowly settle back into what might be called 'normal life' once more, my thoughts turn to, quite naturally, my hobbies and interests, specifically those most disrupted by my transitory and nomadic lifestyle, in short gaming.

Rather than turn to my vast and expandy sandbox setting for yet another round of ye olde same-old, same-old I have a mind to set my sights upon they stars and stir the wanderlust of my imagination upon the foundries of the stars.

Or, less poetically, to run a Traveller campaign.

While I am reasonably confindent of my ability to handle such an awesome burden alone, I had a mind to stretch my wings and free my mind from the constraints of conventional GMing practices. I have upon my plate a sandbox of unimaginable size, an entire galaxy and the tools with which to explore it, why not live a little?!

But, enough stalling with the purplish prose of my passing passions and alliterative aspersions of awesominity. To the meat!

Whilst shopping for random office supplies, a side hobby of mine, I happened upon a rather poorly assembled 'journal' book, nothing more than a blank book of pages with intent for entry, nothing fancy or unusual except that at that very moment inspiration struck and I was dumbfounded. Thus I laid forth the peices of silver necessary to purchase the gawdawful thing.

My plan: To put for the first date of the game on the first page, along with any relavent NPC activities that could impact the campaign setting, and thus too for every day after, leaving enough space blank upon each page to put forth entries for the player activities. Thus, in this way, I force myself as the GM to acknowledge the passing of days and weeks in a time that is, in fact, accurate to the campaign, and to allow myself to plan forward such notable events as... ship maintenance.

Exciting one, that.


So far, so good.

But, as I contemplate the vast and stretchy blankness of pages I realize I have no good idea for what events I truly wish to occur 'in the background' to draw the players away from the humdrum banality of filing space taxes and sweet talking tariff collectors into....(Drumroll, please!).... ADVENTURE!

None. Rather, while I have some vague notions of ideas, nothing that really resonates upon the squishy grey matter that fills my skull as good 'hooks', for I must start, perforce, from how to get the players to WANT to get involved, no matter how peripherally it may seem at that time.

Thus, I have turned upon the vicious pool of scoundrels and ruffians that is the RPGsite for ideas, knowing full well that keeping one eye upon the door, another upon my back and yet another on the denizens is, if nothing else, good for my creeping paranoia.

So, here is too ideas, and to try and keep them relevant my starting point for the campaign:

Day 1: We have a ship!

Type of ship? Player defined. Seriously, I get really annoyed at the common presumption that GMs should restrict player characters to cheap crap they may not actually want just because. Not because its a bad idea, but because it seems that EVERY SINGLE GAME I see proposed starts exactly the same. It isn't 'Traveller, with lots of ships' it seems it is 'Traveller with a Free Trader, and a bunch of cooler ships that you will never, ever have'. A pox upon your houses, I say.

Location: I intend to use that massive online map of Traveller sectors (you know the one), but I suppose somewhere in the Spinward Marches to start.

Setting: Default Imperium? Not tied to this for time or place. Star maps strike me as more setting neutral than you might imagine.

Special considerations: I may or may not use the Hyperspace Rules from the Babylon Five setting book I recently acquired, though not much else. I'm not adverse to jazzing the setting in various ways, such as making it more 'fading suns', or playing it straight. Part of this will depend upon the group I build for the game. Likewise I may play around a bit with ages and career paths so not every character is forced to decide between comptent geriatric or healthy idiot... but again, some/most of that will depend upon the group.

Scope: Any. While 'instant' adventure events without grander implications are welcome, I actually don't need those. I can have 'pirates attack' all on my own, I even have random tables for that should I chose. Given travel times, it is perfectly reasonable for events to play out over a handful of years from whatever hooks I provide, and while truly galactic scope events are feasible, the players still need an 'in' to make them work.

Setting: See also, Scope. I'm not adverse to playing it straight with the third Imperium, etc, I am also not wedded to it in any particular fashion. A truly innovative idea with clever hooks that requires a space cthulu to work is not out of the question, I can build the setting around that just fine if I like it.

Group/Medium: Undetermined. I have not yet assembled my group of players for this. I'm a bit gunshy about trying a PbP seeing how drastically badly my last attempt went at getting off the ground (as a player or as a GM I've failed consistently for four years at even starting PbP gaming...), but if there is interest I'm game to move it here instead.

I can't think of any other questions to pre-emptively answer, and probably answered some no one would have asked.

Wait, you're going to keep track of NPC timekeeping in roughly real time? Or just timekeeping NPC scheduled events on campaign downtime (not necessarily related to real time, in case a scheduled game is skipped or PCs tally extra long)?

If it is the former, I worry. RPG time is fungible, it speeds up and slows down as necessary. To tally NPC behavior real time off campaign playtime might cause PC/NPC scheduling conflicts. Might incentivize punctuality and attendance for your games, but be a headache when unforseen interruptions force rescheduling.

I'm more interested in major events than specific NPCs per se. That said, travel times being what they are in Traveller, movement of significant NPCs can be tracked if relevant to an event.

In classic terms, if I wanted to involve the PCs in the assassination of the Emperor and the collapse of the Imperium... which would imply I was running a pure Third Imperium Traveller game, which is a stretch...

Then absolutely knowing when the Emperor trades places with his Body Double and goes to check on Longbow II (or whatever it was...) is utterly relevant to teh game, even if the PCs wind up not actually involved... simply because they MIGHT get involved.

Hmm... let me back up a step.


Assume I plan to include the assassination of The Emperor and the end of the THird Imperium.  So I want to have an entry of important dates like "Strephon shot, 6-19-1112 (or whenever), Vland (or wherever).  If the players are on or near vland (or wherever), even if they are in no way else connected to the plot, then they'll be there when 'shit goes down'.  If they wind up getting involved, no matter how peripherally ahead of time...say they wind up transporting a load of Imperial Soldier Imposters (or what have you) for the assassin (um...), then I'll want to start putting in more information from that point on about who and where, particularly as it has direct relevance to the Players.  If, on the other hand, the players remain out on the rim, then I need to track how fast the news will spread, so that when they arrive at Spaceport XYZ, on the appropriate day, they'll hear all about how the Emperor was killed... two years ago! (or whenever...)...

... because that shit is what everyone would be going on about.  The goal is to have a sort of reactive list of information I can track, adjust and filter to the players as it becomes relevant too them to keep the sort of clockwork sandbox running smoothly.  I'm sure its nothing too off the wall for other GMs, but I'm more seat of the pants, and I'm expanding my 'tool box'.

What I don't have, ATM, is hooks and general galactic (or more local) events to put out there for the players to interact with/react to.  

A part of it is to reinforce the illusion that the setting doesn't revolve around them personally, thus making them take the effort to have the sort of impact they want, I guess.  So, instead of landing on a stat port and hearing about a sudden gold rush thats about to start (because now they've arrived, the event can begin...) the events begin when they begin, player or no, and they get involved or not as they chose, rather than sitting back and letting me feed them current, fresh new stuff.

Am I explaining it well?

Since my only reply hasn't exactly generated any leads, but only expressed confusion I believe I should... expand?... my OP to provide a bit more clarity.

The Intent is to provide a clockwork-sandbox for the players.

Sandbox, in that they have a starship and thus the means of adventuring, but must provide their own motivations (in the main). I have no intention of wizened bearded men in cloaks to wait for them in taverns to provide some impetus. To keep the game from stalling on day 1, minute 1, there is the impetus to do something with the starship that will earn them money. Traveller kindly provides a few good starting points, such as trade, etc. Players choosing to base in a single system, or not, is up to them, as is everything else.

Clockwork, in that there are major events going on (as yet undetermined) that happen independently of the players, and without PC interference will continue on their own set schedule to completion.  In order to qualify, however, the event has to have an impact on the players, even if only indirectly. Collapsing the entire astro-political sphere for a hundred light years is just one example.

Thus I am both looking for events and any number of potential hooks that would explain how players might inadvertantly get involved (though not necessary. I can come up with hooks easier than I can come up with events...)

I'm not terribly interested in 'hooks' in the form of 'John Smith would like to go from a to b, he might be a pirate.'. First, because that's to small and localized to bother tracking, and B, because Traveller already provides thousands of those.

On the other hand: The Emperor has a mistress who is a Zhodani pyschic and spy... which when found out will cause a civil war and/or abdication of the throne. He travels regularly incognito, and by tramp ship, to meet her.

That provides a big series of events (Possible war(s)!), and a means of getting the players involved early on.

Frankly, I have no idea why I'm lacking in good ideas at the moment, or i wouldn't have this thread.

OK, so it's essentially creating a living world that is in motion, yes? So you're going to have the NPCs run off of a "Regular Scheduled Programming", er, program, if you will. You just want hooks on what would be interesting to spectating players.

Hmm, that's incredibly dependent on setting, premise, and type of players you have. If you gave them more guidance than "it's a sandbox! go forth and do anything!" you'll avoid analysis paralysis, so I recommend that for the start. I'm assuming you've already established this, so I won't belabor it.

I also recommend a mix of hooks related to near and far (a la Grover from Sesame Street) along with a variety of now and later. In Traveller this'd likely mean hooks on or near base planet (star system?) of various now through later immediacy, along with distant hooks (different star system? sector? nebula? quadrant?) of naturally longer but equivalent time spectrum. I'd probably keep the danger factor of nearby hooks low so as to not scare off PCs into the 'far marches' as it were.

Given that, I'd probably break things down into two prime categories: Near Hooks and Far Hooks. Then I'd break those with sub-categories based on necessary response time (i.e. 2 sub-cat: now & later; 4 sub-cat: now, soon, later, eventually...). Then I'd try to provide the Carrot of twice as many Near Hooks so as to incentivize staying roughly in one manageable region.

So, if N Star System was Home Base, here's what I'd try to shoot for as parallel NPC Hooks...
Near
2x Now Hooks -- 1 High Profit High Danger, 1 Low Profit Low Danger
2x Later Hooks -- 1 Mid Profit Mid Danger, 1 High Profit Low Danger (the time consuming set up creates expensive opportunity cost)
Far
1 Now Hook -- Mid Profit, Highest Danger (more consequences to abandon)
1 Later Hook -- Mid Profit, Low Danger (chance to entice PCs into Far areas to later introduce more NPCs and hooks)

That's six hooks with background NPCs for each, time limits to give at least a few to reach scheduled triggers, and incentives for both staying nearby and temptation to stray further. After that sort of conflicting spread your players will have to make a choice of prioritization. And even if they choose to ignore things you as GM will have NPC toys to cause consequences in the setting background.

I have a (clunky) beginning method on how I run my NPC/hook automated programs. This was before re-reading through AD&D 1e DMG now that I'm older. I'll have to dig it up, there were a few things I liked...

Oh, and you have to establish for us a bit of setting, premise, and player attitude for us to really brainstorm some interesting hooks for you. i.e. A biologist needing to collect xenobiotic samples (which may later help abate a spreading epidemic) might have no setting relation, premise relevance, or player cache to work for you.

Well, its Traveller, which establishes some premises from the start. The Default Assumption, as I understand it, is that attempting to keep up on the costs of running a star ship using just the conventional trade rules (for example) is an extremely marginal business, thus temping the players to do increasinly unusual jobs for extra money is easy.... *

... that's more or less how it worked in the last campaign I played in. The one prior to that used the whole 'lost in space' gig, of flinging us 'off the map' via 'warp accident railroad' pretty early.

In neither campaign did we have a home base system. In the second we started with a home base, registered our ship, but instead of looping or what have you, we just sort of wandered from port to port as we went, so after only a few sessions we were pretty far from 'home'.

As far as setting, I'm okay with using the default Traveller setting assumptions, I just don't want to tie myself to them too hard during brainstorming for ideas.  As noted in the OP I'm tempted to import some ideas from Fading Suns (which can play in Trav pretty straight I think), Jump Gates/Hyperspace from B5 (maybe) and so forth.


So I'ma spitball out something just to see if I can work out the format of an idea.

Ships along a major trade route between Sector X and Sector Y have been hit by some sort of 'Space Monster', called a Void Kracken. (Fading Suns ripoff!).   This will occur in 3.27 (month and day) (and several other events) in systems 123 and 124. (systems reasonably close to likely player activity).

If the players are IN those systems on those days, they are likely to be attacked. If not, then they'll hear about it as rumors travel the jump lanes. THe Imperial Navy will be out in force by 5.14, and will remain on patrol in those systems for x months, with no more attacks in those systems.

Rather than actually writing a big block of texts, however, the relevant days in my 'planning journal' would have the attacks noted.

If the players get involved (They get attacked, they go investigate on their own, whatever...) they will eventually learn that the Void Krakens are: A: Pirates spreading rumors and lies to obscure their attacks, B: actual cthuluesque void monsters that drive men mad, or C: a new, powerful alien race that uses living bio-ships that has been trying to figure out how to contact those 'weird aliens flying around in rocks'...

Ideally, I would actually pick one of hte possibilities (I'm partial to C, personally, but if I had a lot of 'weird space' ideas, B might be better. If I had a lot of Straight Hard Science, then the scooby doo A is best).


Note too, this is just the brainstorm idea. It gives me a couple of likely hooks, but isn't exhaustive (that's the players job...). The actual entries in my game journal would have names of relevant ships/people based on whatever the backstory is, and would probably involve some sort of unfolding plot (Except maybe the actual void-kraken choice. Space monsters generally don't have a plot to follow. They eat ships, that's their plot.). So if it were C (aliens using a radically different technological assumption, eg biotech), then eventually the navy and the void kraken aliens would have a skirmish, then possibly escalating to a full blown war due to a lack of communication.  Player involvement can, and should, be able to acerbate or disrupt the future events based on their choices.



* This lack of money thing is less certain than it seems at first glance. Between random events, some of which allow significant salvage, and the sheer brokenness of some of the mining rules, simply flying around in space for a couple of months scanning rocks and looking for random events might actually pay better than trade OR adventuring...  Luckily, most players don't want the tedium of actual work for their fancy space ship crews...

Quote from: Spike;646387Well, its Traveller, which establishes some premises from the start. The Default Assumption, as I understand it, is that attempting to keep up on the costs of running a star ship using just the conventional trade rules (for example) is an extremely marginal business, thus temping the players to do increasinly unusual jobs for extra money is easy.... *

I will stop you right there.

You have a major NPC driving your journal-writing. Make the primary patron of the Players be another major NPC trying to thwart the machinations of the first major NPC. The Players are catspaws, supported to an extent by patron NPC. This takes care of the "tedious" starship upkeep because the patron is footing the bill.

Except that this is Sandbox.  I want the players to decide if they want a patron, and if so to seek one out.


I do think I should establish some scales and numbers.

So I can have one 'galactic' scale significant event, with 'distant' hooks... making the players really have to want to get involved. So, galactic civil war brewing, major alien invasion, rise of the Ancients...whatever. This provides a framework for the setting, the idea that the world keeps spinning regardless of what the characters are doing.

Then I can have two or three separate, unrelated, or distantly related, 'sector wide' events, like a major terrorist/guerilla operation pushing for seperation, a smaller scale war (sword worlds/space viking invasion?), a resources rush...

Then some half dozen or more subsector wide intruiges and events...

and if they base out of a single system, a dozen or more local NPCs and their intruiges and actions, like a load of guns being smuggled into the system/station, which might be used for future gang warfare for control of, say, the drug trade.

The closer to the players, the more hooks and faster it runs, and the more flexible I have to be with it, like smaller gears in a watch spinning faster.

I tend to design from macro-to-micro so I prefer to start with rough structures before I brainstorm hooks. One of the big reasons is that sheer player engagement will often spawn tangential hook ideas soon after a session. So providing a starting premise and sprinkle of hooks tends to be enough while leaving me flexible to add on the fly.

It sounds like a generic calendar program will do a lot of what you want. I mean, drop some NPC calendar routines into iCal, note some special events for each, and then keep time as you normally would in a campaign. Before a session just script out a week's worth of relevant events or so, anticipating players are not going to play out that many days in one go.

I still need more setting info for hooks. Like brightness, contrast, humor, density, realism, etc. For example, an "optimistic game with well defined moral lines, relatively serious, crowded and intense world, with hard sci-fi basis." The Cthulhu-esque stuff does throw my classic hard sci-fi expectations, so I'd like a bead on what it is I'm brainstorming about.

Well, I am hoping to start with the 'big picture' framework, the macro scale NPC driven events first, and work my way down.

As for the setting, since I'm obviously not stepping on any ideas being tossed out here, I did start another thread where I start brainstorming the setting a bit.  It should still be on the main page.

All I ask is throw out "end of the world (or known universe)" ideas. They almost always shit up a sandbox when offered in the beginning. Nothing is more annoying in a sandbox than upkeep actions removing any real element of choice.

Explosions may be big, but try to avoid the all-consuming ones.

Quote from: Opaopajr;646566All I ask is throw out "end of the world (or known universe)" ideas. They almost always shit up a sandbox when offered in the beginning. Nothing is more annoying in a sandbox than upkeep actions removing any real element of choice.

Explosions may be big, but try to avoid the all-consuming ones.

These can be ok, as long as they're done right, which usually means doing them slow.

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