Games Workshop used to create adventures for Classic Traveller, most notably Adventure 4 Leviathan and many articles in White Dwarf magazine, which is the basis for Rogue Trader. The entire Warhammer 40K universe is just Warhammer set in the Official Traveller Universe with the GrimDark turned up to 11.

The long-time Traveller campaign I was in during college was a Firefly-ish campaign, if with a bit more money.  What we did was smuggling, under the guise of running charters on a small luxury casino packet.  Our most lucrative runs were drug smuggling, involving a planet with outstanding hashish, and a number of our adventures revolved around that.  Our hash contacts were a rabbit-like race rebelling against their oppressive overlords, and we'd run arms in to them and do the occasional combat sortie for them (they completely lacked air support).

Beyond that, we eventually had to skip lightly around the Imperial Navy, given that we'd used our arms contacts to have illegal pop-up triple turrets and genuine war shots in our missile tube ... something of a mixed blessing, since thereafter we had to avoid being boarded by the authorities.

When all is said and done, we played a crew of thrill-seekers: we weren't in it nearly so much for the credits as for the rush.

As far as my character goes, I still have the character sheet, thirty years on.  (I'm a packrat.)  Marc Teruzumi was an ex-aerospace colonel, an expert air raft pilot and a wizard with computers.  (Seeing a "Filmmaking-1" skill, I have this vague recollection that we shot bootleg pornos for blackmail fodder.)  My equipment list runs the eclectic range from the usual adventuring fare to a purple hat with an ostrich feather, a silver fur cloak, a copy of the Imperial Interracial Kama Sutra, a case of Glenfiddich, and a copy of the Necronomicon.  (Seriously.)


Good times.  Here's to you, Kevin -- our GM -- whereever you are!  

My best Traveller campaigns have been as a player; Starting an Interstellar  Luxury Starliner Megacorporation, and then running that business on the frontier of the Second Imperium.

As a GM; running a Firefly style campaign where the players started with a 200 ton Merchant ship and worked their way up, all the while exploring Interstellar space, and re-establishing long forgotten trade routes, after the collapse of the Second Imperium.

I've had three experiences with Traveller. The first was a buddy running the classic rules back in the late 80s / early 90s. We never got past character creation. He'd only run Tunnels & Trolls and Bunnies & Burrows for me before, and at that point I'd only played D&D on my own. The players kept dying during creation, and it was awesome.

Second time I played was a hybrid of classic and new empire (or whatever it was called). It was great, but another player made it into "stock market: the game." Every session turned into finding planets to resupply from, what could be traded for, what we could get cheaply, and so on. Kind of took the drama out of adventures, but per rules as written it made sense.

Last time was about three years ago, with Traveler D20 and a rotating GM chair. It was awesome from start to finish. A good base of supply and gritty "what-do-we-need-to-find-this-session" and pure space opera privateering.

I think the Firefly mention is worth repeating.

Most Traveller campaigns I've played in have resembled that setup quite closely: where you have a disparate group of people ostensibly working together to forge a new career in trading, ending up having all sorts of adventures that often detract from the simple goal of making money.

The thing I personally never really liked about the system was that the characters often weren't all that accomplished (in my mind), considering that you could end up with a crew comprising an ex-marine brigadier, an ex-rear admiral, the heir of a planetary system and a pirate.

That's a very personal dislike, however, the game is a pretty firm favourite with most of the gamers in my group. The D20 version was the one that I ended up feeling the most comfortable in when we played it. We were probably a bit too pokey though, all things considered.

Folks,

Just wanted to check in and say "Thanks."

I'm reading through the posts and checking out the various links and free material online.

I'm re-watching Firefly -- it'd been several years since I'd seen it and it really does nail the "adventuring party in space" concept.

One thing that's clear is that the economics model is very important. There needs to be enough money to keep the ship going (and get upgrades over time) but not so much that the characters retire after a couple of runs.

I recall, specifically, Traveler's rules for speculating on commodities (a table of commodity types with a base cost-per-ton and then a roll for the world's mark-up / mark-down).

I... cannot recall rules for cost-to-run-the-ship, but I am absolutely certain they must have existed.

Did, in fact, the rules strike that perfect balance where the costs for running a merchant vessel were aligned properly with the speculation rules so that savvy and lucky players could have an interesting game?

Cheers,
-E.

Probably not, E.

Truth be told, sustaining a Firefly model is hard.  That paradigm lives and dies on privation: that the group is pretty much permanently not more than two bad runs in a row from being derelicts in space.

One clever lady on the old Waves in the Black forum (the original forum for the Serenity RPG) came up with this concept: to take numbers out of the equation altogether.  Jobs would be expressed in "KEFs" (for "Keep 'Er Flyin').  A 2xKEF job would, of course, keep the ship in fuel, spare parts and grub for two whole runs.  A 1/2 KEF ... well, better have had a touch of a cushion.

Quote from: -E.;687839Did, in fact, the rules strike that perfect balance where the costs for running a merchant vessel were aligned properly with the speculation rules so that savvy and lucky players could have an interesting game?

The cost of operating a type A free trader is slightly exceeded by the revenues generated by cargo and passengers. IF the ship ran full consistently,  then it was possible to turn a small profit; more importantly, however, if anything added to the costs of operation - damage, fines, whatever - or if revenues were less than optimal, that small profit margin quickly disappeared.

You might, if you were lucky and played it very safe, break even without speculating, but you were just one malfunction or failed inspection away from running in the red. Careful speculation could make up that gap.

Aggressive speculation is how you become a merchant prince, though.

-E, you might want to check out our (regrettably short-lived) pbp Traveller campaign here on theRPGsite: ooc thread | ic thread

My last Traveller game was all merchant trading all the time. In three years of gaming I think they got into three fights.

Mm ... I think the biggest fight I got in in Traveller was in the aforementioned civil war -- there was a big, static trench battle I won for our guys by buzzing the enemy lines in my spiffy armed air raft, doing Mach 3 at NOE, and then strafing the deafened, dazed enemy with gauss fire so as to open up a three hundred yard gap in their lines.

HTH?  Not a whole lot of that.  You could get killed that way.

Quote from: -E.;686978I had the original game with the black half-sized books (1, 2, and 3), and we played that quite a bit (as well as other games)...

But one thing I never really got was how you were "supposed" to play it.

Generically.

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;688743Generically.

Care to elaborate?

Quote from: Black Vulmea;688002The cost of operating a type A free trader is slightly exceeded by the revenues generated by cargo and passengers. IF the ship ran full consistently,  then it was possible to turn a small profit; more importantly, however, if anything added to the costs of operation - damage, fines, whatever - or if revenues were less than optimal, that small profit margin quickly disappeared.

You might, if you were lucky and played it very safe, break even without speculating, but you were just one malfunction or failed inspection away from running in the red. Careful speculation could make up that gap.

Aggressive speculation is how you become a merchant prince, though.

This kind of perfect, economic balance is really impressive. As I look at my old traveler stuff, I'm more appreciative than ever of the kind of thought that went into the game.

-E.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;688002The cost of operating a type A free trader is slightly exceeded by the revenues generated by cargo and passengers. IF the ship ran full consistently,  then it was possible to turn a small profit; more importantly, however, if anything added to the costs of operation - damage, fines, whatever - or if revenues were less than optimal, that small profit margin quickly disappeared.

As you point out, it's a big IF! In my experience, that's not a bad thing, as "this and that on the side to make ends meet" has been where the really exciting adventures came in.

I've never tried much financing of a scout-courier's operation by means of normal commerce, but it's clearly not built for that.

Owning a ship with a small jump range can be a bit of a drag when you want to go where it can't. Some people prefer to buy passages and hire ships as necessary.