I had some time today, so I started working on the plans for session 3 of Into the Void, my classic Traveller campaign.
As I’ve noted before, playing 2-3 hours, rather than longer games, is helping me come up with good ideas without getting overwhelmed. It also helps me produce about the right amount of content for the session, rather than feeling like I have to have absurd amounts of prep done.
I was talking with my gaming group tonight, and thinking about how the old Traveller games I played as a kid were all “murder hobos in space” kind of games. Then I thought about the rule books. The books are not only very dry, but they don’t give a single example of play! Of course, there were a lot of adventure supplements, but let’s face it, they were dry as hell too, and also contained no examples of play. So it’s no wonder a bunch of 15-year olds could only think of going berserk with plasma guns. In fairness, our Ref did do some sessions based on some science fiction novels. Jack Chalker’s “Well of Souls” novels come to mind. Those were fun games. But as players, we were not very helpful in collaboratively creating an interesting universe.
Well, I’ve got a fair amount of prep to do, but at least Traveller characters are easy to generate. The work is mostly thinking of scenarios, possible contingencies, clues, encounters, rather than a lot of mechanics building NPCs and whatnot.
Oh, here’s a cool picture someone did of a standard Traveller Air Raft.
