Key NPC Encounters (MY TRAVELLER PLAYERS READ WITH CAUTION)
Oct 30, 2016 17:36:10 GMT -8
Post by maxinstuff on Oct 30, 2016 17:36:10 GMT -8
NOTE FOR MY PLAYERS: The below is completely spoiler free, so you can read if you like. HOWEVER - it does contain quite a bit of "inside baseball" on recent sessions - so I would avoid reading if you don't like seeing how sausages are made.
Now, the below is not structured very well, it is a bit of a stream of conciousness at the moment - so I have put a bold question heading where the ACTUAL questions are. The rest is my ramblings
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||
So - I am running a Traveller 2e campaign. We have 5 players, playing weekly in roll20. I am pretty sure I know what I need to do about the below "problems" but I thought I would get this out here so as to hear some other perspectives.
First of all, finally having a weekly game on the go is absolutely fantastic. If my players read this - thanks for waking up on Sunday and playing, it's awesome
We are 5 sessions in (it's a campaign - yay!), and the drama/tension is ramping up pretty well I think. We have key NPC's from players' backgrounds causing problems and/or helping the group. More on this a bit further down.
As this was my first shot at running a Traveller campaign, I made it a "vanilla" sandbox game - the characters were rolled up, and mustered out in the normal way. The game kicked off at Rhylanor in the Spinward Marches.
The group ended up with a ship and quite a few shares. The ship contains a bunch of concealed cargo compartments and so there is good business for them in smuggling/illicit trade, with a complication being that there is a serious chemical taint problem in the cargo bay - it can be put at bay temporarily but the problem always comes back. Another complication is that they rolled quite a few enemies/rivals of a criminal nature, so choosing to play in this line of business increases their chances of having to deal with them.
All good so far.
The "issue" that I am having, is that I feel like some of the NPC encounters might be a little TOO coincidental. It's tough though because how do you randomly encounter an old enemy when space is so huge? So far it has been fine because they have stomped around in Rhylanor sub-sector where these particular characters could believably be encountered, but they are now talking about making themselves scarce.
There have been THREE main threads started off so far -
> A prospective mining installation off the main has a problem with a local population of arthropoid creatures. It is a privately managed installation, so not much information about them is publicly available, and the company likes it that way, although leaks are unavoidable. The characters took a specimen to see a biologist who examined it to determine if it was intelligent. It was. This scientist then absconded with the specimen to.... somewhere. He figured that if it was returned the company would destroy it.
This one has nothing to do with backstory, they went a bit out of the way, and the integrated stuff I had didn't feel like it could happen there - it was too far out of the way. They did fuck the guy over though (dropped him in the shit by doing a side-job for his rival), so they've made a "friend" there
> A small crew of pirates, captained by one character's old enemy (they foiled her attempted mutiny early in their naval career, and she is pretty butthurt about not getting a much bigger ship than she now has), and crewed by another character's estranged son - who happens to be romantically involved with this much older pirate captain (cries of "ewwww" ensue - he's half her age). This caused a rather entertaining argument about what kind of grenade to throw into the airlock as the door closed
Currently the status of the captian and crew are unknown, but they did successfully extract Vance's son, which will make things "simpler" if they DO encounter that crew of miscreants again.
> A rival smuggler (actually another character's ex-wife) causes difficulty and turns out to be part of the same smuggling ring that a different character's fence contact brings them into the fold on.
In the last session the smuggler rival caused the group trouble by having them inspected and subjected to a whole bunch of red tape by the starport administration, and they reacted to this by ratting her out (anonymously) to the authorities. They watched gleefully as she scuffled with a couple of officers and was frogmarched away. In a moment of hubris, the PC sent her a spiteful message so she knew it was him!
She later showed up at their meet with the smuggler fixer to speak with the boss (she either made bail, or got off completely somehow, who knows), but saw that the group was there with him already and awkwardly said she'd come back later.
The issue here is that there seems to be a repeating theme here. I am worried that the players will start to think "Oh dear, which character from my past will happen to be involved this time!" and be too paranoid to be pro-active. They also seem to assume that if they upset someone that they can never ever go back to that place.
question - how to believably integrate backstory into the game when space is so massive?
question - how to diminish the threat of reprisal enough that the players will risk going back to where the "conflict" is.
I am also concerned that the players might feel that I am deliberately fucking them over. They seem to have a knack for the double-cross though :I
I set up a situation and they do something I don't expect - "fun" ensues. This would not normally be a problem, but in Traveller it is super easy to just cut and run, and so now the players have started discussing moving on to a different sub-sector to escape the consequences.
Is that what Traveller is all about though? Seeing how long you can outrun your past?
I am thinking a break from the current chaos is currently in order - but I think they have sufficiently motivated certain parties to not let this go. If they want to run instead of dealing with it - MAYBE it will catch up with them eventually.
One player even started talking about what they want to do if their current character is killed!
tl:dr; I am having heaps of fun running this game and seeing what the characters do, the usual GM self-doubts and imposter syndrome is creeping in, but I am sure I will figure it all out
Now, the below is not structured very well, it is a bit of a stream of conciousness at the moment - so I have put a bold question heading where the ACTUAL questions are. The rest is my ramblings
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||
So - I am running a Traveller 2e campaign. We have 5 players, playing weekly in roll20. I am pretty sure I know what I need to do about the below "problems" but I thought I would get this out here so as to hear some other perspectives.
First of all, finally having a weekly game on the go is absolutely fantastic. If my players read this - thanks for waking up on Sunday and playing, it's awesome
We are 5 sessions in (it's a campaign - yay!), and the drama/tension is ramping up pretty well I think. We have key NPC's from players' backgrounds causing problems and/or helping the group. More on this a bit further down.
As this was my first shot at running a Traveller campaign, I made it a "vanilla" sandbox game - the characters were rolled up, and mustered out in the normal way. The game kicked off at Rhylanor in the Spinward Marches.
The group ended up with a ship and quite a few shares. The ship contains a bunch of concealed cargo compartments and so there is good business for them in smuggling/illicit trade, with a complication being that there is a serious chemical taint problem in the cargo bay - it can be put at bay temporarily but the problem always comes back. Another complication is that they rolled quite a few enemies/rivals of a criminal nature, so choosing to play in this line of business increases their chances of having to deal with them.
All good so far.
The "issue" that I am having, is that I feel like some of the NPC encounters might be a little TOO coincidental. It's tough though because how do you randomly encounter an old enemy when space is so huge? So far it has been fine because they have stomped around in Rhylanor sub-sector where these particular characters could believably be encountered, but they are now talking about making themselves scarce.
There have been THREE main threads started off so far -
> A prospective mining installation off the main has a problem with a local population of arthropoid creatures. It is a privately managed installation, so not much information about them is publicly available, and the company likes it that way, although leaks are unavoidable. The characters took a specimen to see a biologist who examined it to determine if it was intelligent. It was. This scientist then absconded with the specimen to.... somewhere. He figured that if it was returned the company would destroy it.
This one has nothing to do with backstory, they went a bit out of the way, and the integrated stuff I had didn't feel like it could happen there - it was too far out of the way. They did fuck the guy over though (dropped him in the shit by doing a side-job for his rival), so they've made a "friend" there
> A small crew of pirates, captained by one character's old enemy (they foiled her attempted mutiny early in their naval career, and she is pretty butthurt about not getting a much bigger ship than she now has), and crewed by another character's estranged son - who happens to be romantically involved with this much older pirate captain (cries of "ewwww" ensue - he's half her age). This caused a rather entertaining argument about what kind of grenade to throw into the airlock as the door closed
Currently the status of the captian and crew are unknown, but they did successfully extract Vance's son, which will make things "simpler" if they DO encounter that crew of miscreants again.
> A rival smuggler (actually another character's ex-wife) causes difficulty and turns out to be part of the same smuggling ring that a different character's fence contact brings them into the fold on.
In the last session the smuggler rival caused the group trouble by having them inspected and subjected to a whole bunch of red tape by the starport administration, and they reacted to this by ratting her out (anonymously) to the authorities. They watched gleefully as she scuffled with a couple of officers and was frogmarched away. In a moment of hubris, the PC sent her a spiteful message so she knew it was him!
She later showed up at their meet with the smuggler fixer to speak with the boss (she either made bail, or got off completely somehow, who knows), but saw that the group was there with him already and awkwardly said she'd come back later.
The issue here is that there seems to be a repeating theme here. I am worried that the players will start to think "Oh dear, which character from my past will happen to be involved this time!" and be too paranoid to be pro-active. They also seem to assume that if they upset someone that they can never ever go back to that place.
question - how to believably integrate backstory into the game when space is so massive?
question - how to diminish the threat of reprisal enough that the players will risk going back to where the "conflict" is.
I am also concerned that the players might feel that I am deliberately fucking them over. They seem to have a knack for the double-cross though :I
I set up a situation and they do something I don't expect - "fun" ensues. This would not normally be a problem, but in Traveller it is super easy to just cut and run, and so now the players have started discussing moving on to a different sub-sector to escape the consequences.
Is that what Traveller is all about though? Seeing how long you can outrun your past?
I am thinking a break from the current chaos is currently in order - but I think they have sufficiently motivated certain parties to not let this go. If they want to run instead of dealing with it - MAYBE it will catch up with them eventually.
One player even started talking about what they want to do if their current character is killed!
tl:dr; I am having heaps of fun running this game and seeing what the characters do, the usual GM self-doubts and imposter syndrome is creeping in, but I am sure I will figure it all out