It doesn't matter what edition/version/whatever. I like Traveller quite a lot and was just curious what kind of anecdotes people have about it.
Whether you were running or playing, just give me whatever you've got that you think is interesting enough to share.
Traveller - mmm, my first true love.
Once, upon discovering a huge sublight sleeper ship full of Chinese colonists from Earth, dispatched many centuries in the past, and currently in orbit around a water-world, my character found and unlocked the controls to the hundreds of beam laser turrets around the circumference of the disc-shaped craft.
And activated them. Boiling the ocean of the world below, and wiping out thousands of sentients. Oops!
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GMing a game when a player was running a set of twins, hunting down a criminal who was in the process of escaping from the group, dashed into a bus full of civilians - and they opened up with shotguns to kill the bad guy.
Yeah, they ended up on a prison planet.
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Had an Aslan special forces veteran whose gauss rifle skill was so high, he could shoot the wings off a fly at ungodly distances. And the best part is, he was totally compliant with the rules.
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DalCon 1983 (the regional convention that year, prior to Origins coming to Dallas, back when it was a travelling show) - my friends and I entered the Traveller tournament and won 1st place and an automatic bid into the next year's tournament (Origins '84). We lost the next year due to bad GMing - it was a case where the characters were offered a mission in a bar; once we accepted it we were paid and then told not to worry about it. Turns out, we had already done the mission, been mind-wiped, and the "clues" that something was amiss were presented poorly. The "main" clue was the extra set of gear in our ship - there were 5 of us, with six sets of gear (Vacc suits, etc.). We all assumed that it was just a spare set of equipment, since that's how we would normally do it anyway to account for malfunctions, etc. However, the gear belonged to a missing member of our crew we didn't remember anymore. But the GM didn't give us the full details, and we lost.
Not bitter. Not after all these years. :P
On the plus side, got to playtest "Autoduel Champions" with Steve Jackson himself - name is in the book, in fact, along with my friends. We tested the concept of autogyros and belly-mounted turrets for helicopters - neither of which made it (belly turrets became "universal turrets").
There's more - oh, so much more. God, I love Traveller.
Just wanted to say "thanks" for this thread. I often hear about how great Traveller is, how wonderful it is to play, etc...
But I could never figure out what you actually DO in Traveller, what a game might be about. Sometimes it seemes like "you can do anything", which never helped me much.
These specific examples of games not only sound awesome, but fill in some gaps for me.
Werekoala, sorry about you getting cheated out of another win. That scenario actually sounds pretty good (and easily stolen for other games).
Thanks.
There's so much I could write... but right now, don't have a lot of time.
In the interim, please check out the Traveller actual play thread linked in my Sig... it was a lot of fun for the players. (And me, too!)
Running "The Traveller Adventure"...PC's split up on Psaydi. Atmosphere tainted with heavy doses of spores and NO2. Half are out gathering howwood (illegally), and half at the ship. Well, of course they get latched onto by a family of anolas, and that results in several crew being imprisoned. So, in order to rescue them, they gotta disable the locals. The guys left aboard ship decide to do a mach 3+ flyby at 300m AGL over the town in their ship, and use the shuttle to grab the PC's. And, of course, they wind up bringing along the anolas, who had been locked up with them.
They get away...
3 memes populate traveller's scenarios:
1) Merchants - think firefly. (The 'Verse started as a game, and by the era and tech, it was Traveller.)
2) Mercenaries
3) Troubleshooters/agents
2 and 3 blend together, but mostly it's a matter of scale.
Cracking dead crewmates body water for hydrogen to power the fusion plant...
Mounting a mass driver cannon in the cargo hold and surprising the CRAP out of some pirates...
Those are the ones that stand out the most.
The First Game.
They mustered out of the Marines and immediately started shooting up some backwater. Then the Polis arrived. And they all died.
The Second Game
More mercantile activity before misjumping, losing two crew and then the remaining guys, unable to fix the drives, hunted each other around their Beowulf Free Trader until there was one guy left. Who was then rescued.
The Third Game
All of them started as being dishonourably discharged and being exported back to their home planets. But, they were accidentally freed during a political prisoner raid and they found themselves in an liferaft rescued by a mysterious benefactor. I gave them a cool ship (a lost Darrian crusier), a bucket of enemies (The Solomani and the Zhods were after the ship) and each of them had reasons to go places. Rescue family, avenge brothers, reclaim family seat...
Quote from: GRIM;340163Cracking dead crewmates body water for hydrogen to power the fusion plant...
Mounting a mass driver cannon in the cargo hold and surprising the CRAP out of some pirates...
Those are the ones that stand out the most.
My players stole a used battlefield meson artillery piece, and used it on the unsuspecting pirates. (BTW, the conversion on that is it's a factor 1 meson for HG purposes...)
In the near-culmination of playing out
Adventure 3: Twilight's Peak, my players discovered the anti-matter energy weapon in the hidden Ancient base, figured out how it worked, then proceeded to:[list=a]
- Wipe out the Zhodani forward invasion force;
- Break two of their friends out of jail by disintegrating the whole jail;
- Carve their initials in the planet's surface so they could be seen from orbit.
They did many other horrid things, many of which involved involuntary manslaughter.
!i!
The Bay Area Cons are blessed with an awesome Trav GM who is also a professional author. His games always get big crowds and he's such a nice guy that he packs the room with 10-12 players.
With so many people, most skill sets become redundant quickly. Thus, my buddy and I always go for the "personality" character instead.
A couple years ago, I made a ninja and my buddy made a backwoods chef. By the end of the 6 hour session, my ninja took over a small planet and installed himself as Emperor and my buddy turned various aliens into gumbo. My fav part was when the ship went underwater and the crazy cook scraped out the engine intakes to make dinner.
The GM was used to our antics so he told my buddy to throw the dice. If he botched, the crew would be poisoned. My buddy says back, on a 12, I've just created a new taste sensation that sweeps the Imperium.
He rolled a 12.
At the next convention, our characters made sure to order a bowl of "Engine Gumbo" at every starport! Which coincidentally was replayed in real life when I toured the Oregon coast eating clam chowder three times a day!
We played through Twilight's Peak and thanks to a very luck reaction roll we had some Ancient assistance with the unpleasantness toward the end and escaped Fulacin. We'd already been kicking major butt by speculating - to the point where finding the Gyro Cadiz was something of a hobby for us, not a main focus - so the ref decided our reputation preceded us and we were hired aboard the Leviathan for a cruise into the Outrim Void. We fulfilled out contracts, did okay, but decided what we really needed was a bigger ship and more cargo capacity.
We set up a chartered company on Glisten and raised enough money to buy a big star merchie, a few thousand tons displacement, J-2 drives, nothing special really, but a hold that could carry several hundred tons of cargo. While the ship was being repaired, two of our crew set themselves up as factors, to buy really good industrial and non-industrial cargos - computers, radioactives, all the high ticket trade stuff - then the rest of the crew speculated up and down the Main to raise cash for the factors. Took us several months to outfit, but when we were done, we headed spinward, beyond the Imperial border, into another referee's Foreven sector.
Basically it was everything you'd expect from Leviathan but on a much bigger scale. We battled pirates, mediated a trade dispute, rescued refugees from a civil war, were fired upon by a local navy ship that thought we were a commerce raider, spaced a couple of stowaways, prospected a bit, and traded and traded and traded. Our TL 15 Imperial industrial goods were in high demand, and we loaded up an luxury items and high-value natural resources for the return trip. The last jump before reaching any thing resembling a safe haven we were attacked while wilderness refueling at a gas giant by a pair of corsairs - they went for our engines, we went for their turrets. We disabled one and the other bugged out when its laser turrets were fragged, rendering it defenseless to our missles. After we made our own repairs and buried our dead, we returned to Imperial space (four years after our departure), sold the cargo we brought back (our balance sheet for the trip put us just a smidge under a billion credits profit), and then sold the ship. After paying off the investors and the crew shares, all of the adventurers (who amazingly managed to survive the complete trip) ended up each earning in the high seven figures.
That's where the campaign ended. I've always wondered what happened next to my character, actually. The guy had the gelt to buy himself a title and settle down to a comfortable retirement, but somehow I think the captain was ready to outfit a bigger ship, and a couple of escorts, and really stretch his legs to see who was at the edge of Charted Space and sell them a few air/rafts or Model/2 computers . . .