Author: lkh

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Gaming Miniatures

This is a short one. It might be useful though. Just a couple of days ago, Ghoul posted a link to a web store carrying model figures of various kinds and scales. I’m not sure whether theses are primarily produced, to people diaoramas and other model scenery, they apparently make great gaming miniatures and seem to be rather cheap when compared to those that are marketed as proper gaming minis.

So here’s the link: https://plastic-models-store.com/. I like the 13-12th Century Sea People for example. Scales are given as usual for scale models, i.e. 1/72, 1/100 and so on, not in those mm scales, gamers are more used to. So here are some handy conversions:

Gaming Figure SizeScale Model SizeModel Railway Gauge
15 mm1:100roughly TT Scale
1:87H0 Scale
25 mm1:72
28 mm1:64S Scale, Matchbox and Hot Wheels Cars
32 mm1:57

Links to other sources

If you think something is missing from this list, just add a comment. I guess, I’ll add to this post now and then, anyway.

Scales in general

Wikipedia has two interesting pages about model scales:

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#dungeon23: The Nexus

There’s a new idea whirling around in the virtual rpg community. Here’s the original post by Sean McCoy: https://seanmccoy.substack.com/p/dungeon23.

Dungeon23 Logo, CC BY 4.0 by Lone Archivist

The basic idea is to develop a Megadungeon, and create one room for each day of 2023. An area for every week, and a level for every month, so 52 themed areas on 12 levels. While I have a few doubts, like “will I really do a room every day”, or “will this ever be played”, I have come to like the idea. I’m curious, how it will feel to have done the first twenty or so rooms? what ideas will come up, once the first half has been done? What will it feel like, to do the very last room by the end of next year? I guess, there’s no other way, then to just do it.

I think, I’ll call my dungeon23 The Nexus. I like the crossover of Science Fiction and Fantasy, and I’m very fond of weird, multiplanar, n-dimensional, dream-like adventures, so I already have an idea what the first area will look like. Probably something like a stone circle … a circle of seven monoliths that’s been there as long as anyone could remember. No one knows why it’s there or who put it there. Individuals with a profound want for knowledge seem to disappear into nothingness, when they enter the stone circle at certain times. They enter the Nexus.

Depending on the observers point of view the Nexus will look like said circle of monoliths, a space station, a decaying industrial complex, a chaotic system of caves deep down in the underworld, a perfect sphere, or an underwater vulcano. Maybe the number of possible morphologies of the Nexus is infinite.

While experienced travellers commonly state the nexus is somewhere in the astral sphere, some scholars discuss, whether it’s all a microcosmos on the back of a camel. Still others believe the Nexus to be beyond all known galaxies, and even larger then our universe. But let’s wait until January 1st before I let it settle to paper.

I like the idea of 52 weekly prompts as inspiration for each area, but I guess, it’s a good idea to come up with my own set of prompts. This morning had me brainstorming about those prompts, so here’s my list:

  1. portals
  2. planes
  3. hospitality
  4. crystallization
  5. spheres
  6. stars
  7. enmity
  8. friendship
  9. light
  10. darkness
  11. gravity
  12. hunger
  13. water
  14. liquid metals
  15. atomicity
  16. atmosphere
  17. population
  18. decay
  19. life
  20. nebula
  21. perception
  22. purple
  23. teeth
  24. blood
  25. ooze
  26. alabaster
  27. moons
  28. conduits
  29. mirrors
  30. verticality
  31. heat
  32. death
  33. marbles
  34. green
  35. vacuum
  36. currents
  37. aggregation
  38. horror
  39. polyhedrons
  40. time
  41. finitude
  42. reversal
  43. geometry
  44. planets
  45. sublimation
  46. sound
  47. earth
  48. radiation
  49. love
  50. safety
  51. cognition
  52. infinity

Since I feel, that play is important, I’m thinking of ways, to embed it into my ongoing campaign. Also, I think I’d like something system agnostic, or maybe even something having it’s very own system. So I’ll keep that open for now. In fact everything about this project is open for change.

Also I’m still not settled which medium to use. These days I do most of my writing in some version controlled, plain text format on my computer. The paper calendar notebook is more charming in any case. An infinite multidimensional dungeon nexus in my pocket?! Who wouldn’t want to have that?! 😀

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Appendix N on Project Gutenberg

Readers of this blog most likely will know the Appendix N. In short, it’s a list of suggestions for inspirational reading given in Gary Gygax‘s 1st Edition Dungeon Masters Guide. For more Details on this, check out this post at the Goodman Games site.

As in turns out in 2022, quite a few of the texts mentioned have made their way into the public domain, and are available as freely downloadable ebooks. What follows, is the original Appendix N list, spiced up with links to Project Gutenberg for all texts that are available at that site:

Anderson, Poul: THREE HEARTS AND THREE LIONS; THE HIGH CRUSADE; THE BROKEN SWORD

Bellairs, John: THE FACE IN THE FROST

Brackett, Leigh

Brown, Frederic

Burroughs, Edgar Rice: “Pellucidar” series; Mars series; Venus series

Carter, Lin: “World’s End” series

de Camp, L. Sprague: LEST DARKNESS FALL; THE FALLIBLE FIEND; et al

de Camp & Pratt: “Harold Shea” series; THE CARNELIAN CUBE

Derleth, August

Dunsany, Lord

Farmer, P. J.: “The World of the Tiers” series; et al

Fox, Gardner: “Kothar” series; “Kyrik” series; et al

Howard, R. E.: “Conan” series

Lanier, Sterling: HIERO’S JOURNEY

Leiber, Fritz: “Fafhrd & Gray Mouser” series; et al

Lovecraft, H. P.

Merritt, A.: CREEP, SHADOW, CREEP; MOON POOL; DWELLERS IN THE MIRAGE; et al

Moorcock, Michael: STORMBRINGER; STEALER OF SOULS; “Hawkmoon” series (esp. the first three books)

Norton, Andre

Offutt, Andrew J.: editor of SWORDS AGAINST DARKNESS III

Pratt, Fletcher: BLUE STAR; et al

Saberhagen, Fred: CHANGELING EARTH; et al

St. Clair, Margaret: THE SHADOW PEOPLE; SIGN OF THE LABRYS

Tolkien, J. R. R.: THE HOBBIT; “Ring trilogy”

Vance, Jack: THE EYES OF THE OVERWORLD; THE DYING EARTH; et al

Weinbaum, Stanley

Wellman, Manley Wade

Williamson, Jack

Zelazny, Roger: JACK OF SHADOWS; “Amber” series; et al

Also of interest

The following Books available on Project Gutenberg are not mentioned in Appendix N, but if you made it this far, these will also be of interest 😉

Robert W. Chambers: The King in Yellow

Ambrose Bierce: Can Such Things Be?, which contains An Inhabitant of Carcosa.

H. G. Wells: The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds, Little Wars and Floor Games

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Octagon – Staffel II

Das Gewicht einer erfolgreichen Jagd lastet schwer auf den Schultern von Lilly und Van Dex, als sie über einen steinigen Pfad zurück stolpern. Hinter ihnen marschieren drei Xhegi-Jäger. Oben auf dem Felsvorsprung, dem sie sich nähern, steht Dr. Phila, der eingeteilt wurde, die Wachen zu verstärken. Etwa 20 Meter hinter ihm steht der Ornithopter, den die Xhegi für ihre Streifzüge in die Wildnis von Pannet verwenden.

Die Xhegi haben das Leben ihrer drei Gefangenen verschont. Menschliches Leben auf Pannet ist kostbar, besonders solches mit aufgewecktem Verstand und hart arbeitenden Muskeln. Die drei haben gelernt, Xhegi zu verstehen und zu sprechen, sie haben sich an den schrecklichen Geruch der Zhophe-Schwämme gewöhnt, welche die Xhegi als natürliche Luftfilter in ihren Gesichtsmasken verwenden. Sie haben gelernt, die Xhegi-Tuniken richtig anzulegen, um nicht von den unerbittlichen Strahlen der fremden Sonne versengt zu werden. Doch das Überleben auf Pannet ist hart, bisher war kaum eine Minute Zeit, um über eine Flucht nach zu denken.

“Kommt schon! schneller!” ruft Phila, “Da zieht ein Gewitter auf!”. Augenblicke später, als seine Kameraden in Hörweite sind, fügt er hinzu: „Ein paar Meilen weiter östlich haben wir einen Nerga-Flyer gesichtet, Anführer Rogdan will aufbrechen, bevor sie zurückkommen und es hier Stress gibt … “. Mit Blick über den hügeligen Horizont im Osten fügt er nachdenklich hinzu: „Manchmal denke ich, wir sollten versuchen, so einen Flyer zu kriegen. Vielleicht schafft man es damit zumindest in den Orbit …“

Die überlebenden Charaktere der ersten Staffel der Octagon-Kampagne befinden sich in interessanten Situationen. Sie könnten dort narrativ bis auf weiteres verbleiben, es gibt aber auch genug Fragen, an die man anknüpfen könnte. Für mich als Referee wäre es o.k. die Kampagne auf unbestimmte Zeit ruhen zu lassen. Mit ein bisschen Vorbereitung könnte ich aber gerne, und jeder Zeit wieder einsteigen.

Welche losen Enden haben wir?

Survival auf Pannet

Liliy, Phila und Van Dex sind bei den Xhegi in Gefangenschaft geraten. Die Xhegi sind ein Nomagen-Jäger-Volk auf Pannet, einem trocken-heißen, von einer giftigen Atmosphäre umgebenen Planeten, am spinnwärtigen Rand des Rhylanor-Subsectors. Die drei Abenteurer sind quasi Sklaven, und müssen hart Arbeiten. Jedoch erscheint die lose strukturierte Gesellschaft der Xhegi durchlässig: belohnt wird, wer sich bewährt. Die Xhegi verfügen über Flugmaschinen, und andere Technologie auf dem Stand der irdischen 1980er Jahre. Die verschiedenen Völker auf Pannet sind verfeindet. Stets geht es um die spärlichen Resourcen des Planeten. Wie geht es weiter mit den drei? Werden Sie den Sklaven-Status innerhalb der Xhegi-Gesellschaft abschütteln? Versuchen Sie zu flüchten? Wie, und wohin? Wie entwickelt sich der Konflikt mit den benachbarten Nerga? Weitere Spieler könnten die Rollen von Xhegi übernehmen. Welcher mutige Xhegi-Jäger würde nicht zu den Sternen aufbrechen wollen, böte sich die Gelegenheit?

Carmen Marshall befindet sich weiterhin bei den Nerga, religiösen Fanatikern, die immerhin sporadisch Kontakt zu den wenigen Händlerschiffen pflegen, die in unregelmäßigen Abständen auf Pannet landen. In welcher Situation sie sich dort befindet, ist völlig unklar. Aber man darf wohl annehmen, dass sie sich nur mit den nobelsten Mitgliedern der Nerga-Gesellschaft zufrieden geben würde. Oder avanciert sie gar selbst zur Nerga-Hohepriesterin?

Ein Cyborg und ein Klon auf Rhylanor

Walter Kemp wurde von seinem Roboter und Mulzac Straw gerettet, und mit der Dark Moon nach Rhylanor gebracht. Wie auch immer es dazu kam, inzwischen ist das Gehirn, und damit die Persönlichkeit Walter Kemps in den Roboter Earl eingebaut worden. Er ist ein Cyborg, physisch mehr Maschine als Mensch … fürs erste jedenfalls. Wird er als intelligenter Roboter auf neue Abenteuer ausziehen? Wird er sich einen synthetischen menschlichen Körper zulegen? Die fortgeschrittene Technologie auf Rhylanor böte da einige Möglichkeiten.

Da Mulzac davon ausgeht, dass Dr. Phila tot ist, wird auf Rhylanor die Life Insurance Philas ausgelöst. Der neue Dr. Phila wird auf dem Wissensstand vom Anfang der Kampagne starten. Mit einer Erinnerung an den früheren Walter Kemp … dass Cyborg-Kemp und Phila-Klon auf Rhylanor zusammen finden, ist naheliegend. Soziale Netzwerke und die gemeinsame militärische Vergangenheit werden dafür sorgen. Kemp hat eine Erinnerung an den echten Dr. Phila, er kann sich sogar erinnern, wo dieser verschollen ist: auf Pannet! … Von Mulzac und der Dark Moon fehlt übrigens jede Spur. Klingt für mich alles nach echten Sci-Fi Problemen!

Forscher, Detektivagentur, Rolling Stone

Ekene Megan hat faszinierende Erkenntnisse über die Ancients und deren extrem fortgeschrittene Technologie gewonnen. Ein paar wissenschaftliche Aufsätze und ein selbst publiziertes Buch bieten eine neue berufliche Perspektive: doch zurück in die Forschung? Was gibt es in den Archiven der imperialen Universitäten zu diesem Thema? Geld einwerben für eine archäologische Kernexpedition? Hier könnte man hervorragend das dritte publizierte Abenteuer der Spinward Marches-Serie anschließen: Secret of the Ancients.

Xavier Koerner hat eine Agentur für Private Investigators gegründet. Die ersten Aufträge werden nicht toll sein. Man muss halt nehmen was man kriegen kann: abgehalfterte Ex-Militärs, die nach einer verschollenen Raumschiff-Yacht suchen? O.k., falls uns die mal unter kommt, können wir ja Bescheid geben. Aber Moment, das hier ist interessant: da möchte eine gewisse Kylie Jadin im Auftrag eines großen Wirtschaftsunternehmens auf Rhylanor, nach einer geheimen Fabrik für militärische Klone suchen lassen …

Lem Gerov schließlich ist für alles zu haben. Nach den Ereignissen auf Fulacin hat er eine Working Passage als Engineer auf einem Far Trader bekommen. Er hat genug Kontakte im ganzen Subsektor, um vor Ort zu sein, wenn es um eine vielversprechende Mission geht … immer unterwegs … like a Rolling Stone …

Traveller 5

Traveller 5 bietet einige spannende Regeln und Ideen, die wir in der ersten Staffel allenfalls gestreift haben. Das ganze Thema der Klone und Synthetics, der künstlichen Intelligenz und Roboter, die als Charaktere gespielt werden können, würde ich gerne erkunden; genauso wie jede Art von Aliens, die als Spielercharaktere offen stehen, und Beasts, die Hindernis und Ziel abenteuerlicher Missionen sein könnten. Die Variationsbreite der Erschaffungsregeln in Traveller 5 ist da sehr groß: von mikroskopisch kleinen Wesen bis hin zu monumentalen Space-Leviathanen, mit unerwarteten ökologischen Nischen, und wirklich sehr ungewöhnlichen Aliens, mit uns fremden Sinnes- und Kommunikationsqualitäten. Und dann die extrem hohen Tech-Level: Higher Order Jump Drives, die 10, 100 oder gar 100.000 Parsecs pro Sprung schaffen, Grey Goo, Ringworlds, Reality Manuipulation, Singularity …

Das Domain Game würde ich nicht forcieren, aber definitiv dafür offen sein. Traveller 5 bietet einige Regeln, die dafür wie geschaffen sind. Social Status, Adelsränge, Land Grants, Raumschiffe und Resource Units usw. Insofern würde ich der Erschaffung von neuen Charakteren nach den vollständigen T5-Regeln gerne den nötigen Platz einräumen. Charaktere, die das Glück haben, etwas Land zu besitzen, sind automatisch Patrons, die gelegntlich auf ihrem Landbesitz nach dem Rechten sehen sollten. Ein hoher Rang, der sich aus der Charaktererschaffung ergeben könnte, impliziert, dass der Charakter Bedienstete oder Untergebene hat, und über einen entsprechenden Einflussbereich verfügt. Das Domain Game muss in Traveller gar nicht extra aufgesetzt werden. Es ist eigentlich schon immer fest integrierter Bestandteil der Regeln.

In jedem Fall werde ich die Kampagne mit 1:1-Timing weiter laufen lassen. Und falls wir erst in 2 oder 5 Jahren weiter spielen, wären dann eben auch in der Spielwelt 2 oder 5 weitere Jahre vergangen.

Mulzac Straw räkelt sich genüsslich in der Eignerkampine der Dark Moon. Vor wenigen Minuten ist er von einem vertrauten Rumpeln geweckt geworden. “Captain Straw” knistert es über das Intercom, “in knapp 30 Minuten sollten wir den Sprungraum verlassen. Der neue Raketenwerfer ist einsatzbereit!” Straw wirft einen zufriedenen Blick auf den fürstlichen Kaperbrief, den er eingerahmt über das luxuriöse Bett gehängt hat: “dann wollen wir sehen, ob der Jewell-Subsektor hält, was er verspricht …”

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Did this Domain Game fail?

Back in March 2022 while having refereed some 15 sessions of our Traveller 5 Octagon Campaign, I stumbled across some posts about Patron Style play in classic D&D campaigns. Patron style play is often, and probably much more commonly, referred to as domain level play, or simply domain game, so think of those terms as being synonyms for each other. I’ve commented on the topic in general over here. In any case, I was so fascinated by the idea, that I tried to incorporate domain level play into the ongoing campaign.

While I’m still convinced, that patron style play is a great idea, which should be conducive to the campaign style I’m aiming for, I must admit that my experiment didn’t work out as expected. I’ll try to pin down a couple of reasons as to why this happened, and what I’d likely try, in order to be more successful in the future.

This is a lengthy post. For a quick read, you might want to skip ahead to the section “So, what happened?” below. For the dauntless, let me begin by briefly recapitulating:

Domain level play? Patron style? What are you talking about?

Just to give you a quick idea, in patron or domain level games, players take up the roles of influential rulers and leaders who might command armies and may have large amounts of resources at their disposal. With this kind of gaming, players are more or less expected to play antagonistically to each other, rather than play the usual collaborating adventuring party. Of course domain level play harkens back to the war games, our modern role playing games developed out of.

The fascinating thing about domain level play as part of role playing game campaigns is the potential for the players to generate their own adventure hooks. If for example a player fancies, the prince she’s playing is going to invade the neighboring country: Conflict arises and adventure hooks follow naturally: someone has to scout out the enemies defenses, bands of raiders might be hired to steal money and weapons to fund the invasion, and so on. Sometimes things might be played out in the manner of your usual role playing, other times large scale conflict might be solved using actual war gaming rules.

Patron Characters in the Octagon Campaign

The Octagon Campaign had four Patron Characters. There was pharma business tycoon Virginia Edgerton, played by @kensanata: 

# Virgina Edgerton

UPP 773A9C (50) Citizen, 7 terms, home world: Vland (A967A9A-F Hi Cs)

Broker-13, Admin-3, Trader-3, Advocate-3, Bureaucrat-3, Psychohistory-3, <One Science>-3, <One Art>-1, Computer-1, Counsellor-1, Liaison-1, Hostile Env-1, Rider-1, Streetwise-1

## Commonly known information

Ruthless entrepreneur with main base in the Rhylanor Subsector. Fame-20 (sector wide). Her portfolio includes, among others, Fico Pharmaceuticals & Insurances. The tabloids say she owns a superyacht on Rhylanor.

## Goals/Motivation

* Increase your wealth
* finally be ennobled
* Expand Fico Pharmaceuticals & Insurances 
  into a sector-wide MegaCorp.

## Resources

* 400 foot super yacht on Rhylanor with 
  landing platform for her speeders. Skipper 
  *Elon Linkovich* is loyal to Virginia.
* Generally good relations to the high 
  society of Rhylanor, including the Duke.
* 100% ownership of Fico Pharmaceuticals & 
  Insurances, annual sales MCr 950
* Stocks/Shares:
  - Rhylanor Shipyards (overhaul, repair, 
    construction of star ships): 10%
  - Oberlindes (Major shipping line, feeder 
    routes to all major starports, charter 
    traffic outside imperium): 0.1%
  - Tukera (Long Distance Shipping along 
    XBoat Routes) 1%

There was the mighty Duke of Rhylanor, played by Conti: 

# His Grace Cosmin Hault Draghicescu, the Duke of Rhylanor

UPP 4658AF (62) Noble, 11 terms

World Knowledge (Rhylanor)-8, Advocate-5, Leader-4, Navigation-4, Flyer-3, Bureaucrat-2, Blades-2, High G-2, Strategy-2, Comms-2, Artist-2, Athlete-2, Diplomat-1, Language (Zhodani)-1, Liaison-1, Tactics-1, Philosophy-1, Zero-G-1

## Commonly known information

The Duke owns a princely estate on Rhylanor, as well as lands on various planets in the Rhylanor sub-sector. Formally representing the interests of the Emperor, Strephon Aella Alkhalikoi. He is the commander-in-chief of the Rhylanor Imperial Navy.

## Goals/Motivation

* Maintain law and order in the sub-sector
* Prevent another Zhodani invasion, at least 
  stand out as a victorious general.
* Secure and increase family wealth
* Advance to Sector Duke of the Spinward 
  Marches

## Resources

* Royal estate on Rhylanor
* Land grants on Rhylanor and all other 
  main worlds in the subsector with a base 
  income of around 3.8 MCr per year.
* 25 proxies in the Imperial Parliament, 
  the *Moot Spire* on *Capital*, messages 
  take about a year there and back.
* Commander-in-chief of the Rhylanor 
  Subsector Navy.
  
   The following can be mobilized at short 
   notice:
   - *Ruthless*, Batte Cruiser, Regal class, 
     75,000 tons, Jump-4, currently in the 
     Regina system (Regina subsector)
   - *Revenge*, Regal Class Battle Cruiser, 
     75,000 tons, Jump-4, currently in the 
     Rhylanor system
   - *Regulator*, Regal Class Battle Cruiser, 
     75,000 tons, Jump-4, currently in the 
     Lonesda system
   - Two 400 t *System Defense Boats* Jump-0 
     in each system of the subsector
   - Squadronds of three 400 ton *Type CE 
     Close Escorts*, Jump-4 in the Rhylanor, 
     Jae Tellona, Margesi and Porozlo systems

There was the smart Zhodani Agend Karthik Salvi, played by Moritz:

# Karthik Salvi

UPP 674B59 (44) Agent, 6 terms

Bureaucrat-3, Grav Flyer-3, Stealth-2, Language (Anglic)-2
Navigation-2, Pilot-2, Turrets-2, Vacc Suit-1, Survival-1, Rider-1,
Streetwise-1

Codename: the jackal

Chief agent of Zhodani Intelligence in the sector. A slim,
tall man with a carefully trimmed full beard and accurate manbun.

## Goals/Motivation

* Undermine and weaken Imperial forces 
  in the Rhylanor sub-sector.

* Gather intelligence to prepare for 
  another invasion of the sector.

## resources

* Intelligence base on Fulacin disguised 
  as a company MagnetoDynamics Inc., which 
  operates the class A spaceport.
* Agents on Yori/Regina subsector, Jae 
  Tellona and Gitosy, both Rhylanor 
  subsector.
* encrypted communication to the 
  following Zhodani ships:
  - "Aasha" - Shivva Class Patrol Frigate 
    600 tons, Jump-4, currently on diplomatic 
    mission in Celepina system (Rhylanor)
  - "Aazaadee" - Shivva Class Patrol Frigate, 
    600 tons, Jump-4, currently on a secret 
    mission in the Gitosy system
  - "Pragati" - Shivva Class Patrol Frigate,
    600 tons, Jump-4, currently on a secret 
    mission in the Henoz system

At first none of the other players knew that Moritz was secretly playing an enemy spy. I saw much potential in this set up, but I will comment on this later.

Finally there was the head of an extra-imperial corporate state , one 07#23MAJ, called “Major Seven”, played by Pyromancer:

# Director 07#23MAJ

called *Major 7*, Home world *Termous Dex* (Vilis)

UPP B4A8AB (54), Genetic Profile: 6644XX

Merchant 4 terms, Functionary 6 terms.

Bureaucrat-9, <one art>-6, Broker-5, Leader-5, Admin-4, Advocate-4,
Biology-3, Steward-3, Strategy-3, Vacc Suit-2, Diplomat-2, Driver-0
(Grav-2), Comms-2, Astrogator-1, JOT-1, Sensors-1, Teacher-1 Trader-1

Benefits: Directorship, Life insurance, Knighthood (Soc B)

## Commonly known information

Major 07#32MAJ, known as Major Seven, is the chief official of the
Tremous Dex Inc.

Obvious resource is the planet located outside of the Empire:
Tremous Dex in the Vilis subsector. As the supreme decision-making authority, Major Seven has ultimate authority over the merchant fleet
of Tremous Dex, all ships of the 2,000 ton CARAVAN class. How many
there are, where they are currently located, and ultimately, the where abouts of Major 7 are not known.

## Goals

* Open up the market for high-tech 
  pharmaceuticals in the Spinward Marches.
* If necessary, drive potential competitors 
  out of the market.
* Develop the market for industrially 
  manufactured "Synthetics", i.e. androids 
  based on human clones
* Research project: programmable psionics. 
  There is a constant need for psionic 
  gifted "breeding material". 
* Ultimately introduce psionically 
  controllable military androids, with the 
  Zhodani Consulate being the most likely 
  buyers.

## Resources

* The planet Tremous Dex (Vilis subsector), 
  with a factory that produces human clones 
  and synthetics with high efficiency.
* 10 ships of the 2,000 ton CARAVAN class
  - 3 of them, numbers X76, X21 and X98 
    are currently located on a trading trip 
    in the Zhodani Consulate
  - 3 CARAVAN ships X28, X33 and X95 are 
    in the home system Tremous Dex.
  - 4 ships are currently in the Spinward 
    Marches:

    The X42 under Commander Zes 62#13ZES, 
    currently in jump space between *Jae 
    Tellona* and Rhylanor. The ship will 
    arrive 064-1106.

    The X12 under Commander Major 
    07#23MAJ (that's you!) in the Porozlo 
    system (Rhylanor). A civil war is 
    currently looming there.

    The X13 under Commander Roc 87#18ROC 
    in the Paya system (Aramis)

    The X99 under Commander Hui 44#99HUI 
    in the Extolay system (Lanth)

The Patron Game Turn

I send out “News” to each Patron player once per week, asking for a reaction. Here’s an example of the news I initially send to the Duke: 

## News 014-1106

* The *CARAVAN X42* a large trader ship 
  owned by Tremous Dex Inc. is currently in 
  the Henoz system. It is assumed that the 
  journey will continue via Celepina to 
  Jae Tellona.

* A price war appears to be brewing between 
  the Shovelton and Oberlindes trader lines.

* Smugglers are regularly caught in the Jae 
  Tellona system.

* Fico Pharmaceuticals & Insurances, a 
  company wholly owned by oligarch Virginia 
  Edgerton (also based on Rhylanor), seems 
  concerned about competition from Tremous 
  Dex. Rumor has it that Virginia is preparing 
  to send a trade delegation to Tremous Dex.

I gave the following basic instructions to each patron player:

As a reaction, a written order is then sent back to the referee, who will implement the effects in the campaign world. Anything could be ordered: sending out diplomatic missions or agents, assembling troops, throwing a party for the rich and famous, whatever. And even if someone were to declare war, the campaign can’t be ruined by it. It would only get more dramatic. There can/may/should be interaction with the regular player groups. For example, the assignment of a special unit to steal industrial secrets could lead to an adventure for one of the player groups.

These were basically “the rules”. Reactions varied quite a bit from concise, bullet pointed orders, to lengthy explanations of general strategies, to play by post style, first person statements and descriptions of imagined dialogues.

So, what happend?

First let me say, that all players send back great orders and reactions. Some were puzzling, almost all entertaining, and I saw dedicated engagement in the characters and the gaming world, all around.

The domain game provided some color. It was fun to have the players scan a system, reveal a Zhodani Ship far out, and know, that this particular ship is actually controlled by a player.

As expected some interesting plot hooks were generated, the highlights of which were:

  • Assemble pirate crews to interfere with Tremous Dex Inc. and destabilize the neighboring subsectors with a ducal letter of marque.
  • Recruit a covert mission to Gerome to get a sample of the clones alledgedly produced there.
  • Assassinate the Dukes Spy.

Unfortunately, neither of these became relevant. In one instance I could have introduced the Covert Mission to Gerome but, simply forgot about it. In all other instances, the characters were simply to busy with whatever they were doing, and had no demand for new jobs or missions.

My favourite situation that arose from the domain game, was the opportunity to let one of the patron characters, Karthik Salvi, the Zhodani Spy, have a “cameo appearance” during one of the regular sessions. The players were quite surprised when their characters went to see the star port warden and suddenly a new player joined our sesssion to act as an antagonistic player. The effect for me as the referee was actually amazing: I could lean back and watch the situation unfold as the opposing characters played out the situation.

Apart from that, all patron players obviously had to struggle with the “slow” speed of communication. As in the Traveller Universe news won’t travel faster than jump speed, most of the time the players saw the results of their orders literal weeks later. For example, when Karthik‘s Agent Cobra had been uncovered by Major Seven, it took two actual weeks to get the information back to Karthik, almost a month after Karthik had ordered Agent Cobra to go on her secret mission in the first place. For me as a referee this generated a feeling for how enormous those astronomic distances really are, but I think it was quite difficult for the players to maintain a feeling of ongoing plot that way. Really, a lot of information generated in the domain game simply got lost. Almost none of the players realized, that one of them was actually playing an enemy spy. A timely reveal might have led to a very different, and much more interesting development of events.

Curiously two of the Patron Characters, Virginia Edgerton and Duke Draghicescu were in the same system all the time. By logic of the basic Traveller rules, their players could have comunicated with each other directly, with no imposed delay at all, even without knowledge of the referee, but they consistently relied on me relaying the communication back and forth. I assume they simply didn’t realize the advantage they actually had.

Also, I quickly felt, that whatever the Patron Characters did seemed to be lacking in terms of consequences. There were almost no game mechanics to engange with, hardly any risks to be felt, no obvious gains to be won, appart from interactively telling the story. And the story as a whole was only visible to me as the referee, anyhow. There was just too little feedback of the Domain Game back to the regular players.

Finally, the most crucial problem I found was this: Each week I prepared a seperate set of news items for each player and relayed all messages back and forth between all players. As the players orders were in no particular, or standardized format, this afforded a lot of rephrasing, paraphrasing, formatting, and paying attention to the speed of news, as well as keeping a calender to remind myself, when some remote event would actually become known to each player respectively. Plainly, this was just too much work! Before the end of the campaigns first season I gave up on the domain game, to be able to concentrate on the two regular gaming groups.

While at the time all of this felt like a failure then, I can now see:

My takeaways

  • Generously feed back any developments in the domain game to the whole group. Make sure everyone knows what’s going on. Start sessions with current XBoat News, gossiping tavern patrons, summaries of current rumors, whatever is appropropriate to the setting. Make everyone benefit from the extra work. There will still be enough fog of war.
  • No free form orders. Everything must be send as a message with a clearly stated recipient, ready to be relayed as is. NPC recipients will adhere to the word as precisely as possible.
  • Encourage direct communication, whenever the situation allows it.
  • No individual news posts. “Publish” campaign news for everyone to see, other than that, only relay messages as stated above.
  • Use the rules and mechanics the respective game system provides: Traveller has the Social Status attribute, military ranks and a hierarchy of nobility, D&D has rules for “name level” characters and their strongholds. These are the basics for any domain game, they’re baked into the original rules, and they are there for a reason.
  • Use the monetary systems, the rules provide. They make risks and gains tangible.
  • Be explicit about the speed of communication.
  • After all, it still was fun, I enjoyed what we did! I hope the players did, too!

Interestingly Classic Travellers Adventure 05 Trillion Credit Squadron provides a valuable template for a domain game in a science fiction setting, and is quite explicit about precisely these issues. I wish I had read and digested what was put forth about Patron Style Games back in 1981, before introducing patron characters into our campaign!

So, did this Domain Game fail? I’m not so sure anymore. I feel it did fall short of what we hoped to get from it. Then again, it’s still been a valuable experience for me, and I think I learned a few things about how to better set up the next Grand Campaign.

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Grenzland reloaded!

It’s a sunny morning, last night’s storm has ceased. There have been no earth quakes for weeks now. The last tsunami to wash over our home islands is more then six months ago. Jolund our sage says better times will come: “Entropy … the forces of change … have had their way. The white moon is gone forever, the old imperiums and kingdoms of the northern continent are buried under the debris of their own hybris.” There are rumors of a new continent, too. It has been born far to the east. Brave young adventurers are daydreaming of proud ships, of vessels to carry expeditions, to find out what’s there …

These days, I find myself pondering whether to open up my D&D campaign again. The Grenzland-Kampagne had been going from 2016 to 2021. It started out as a red box Basic D&D game with B2 Keep on the Borderlands and turned into a 1:1-time, multiple player groups, OD&D campaign about half way through. You can find more on the Grenzland-Kampagne here (mostly in german), and I commented on grand campaigns in general over here (in english).

Now, I had a couple of issues with the Grenzland-Kampagne, that’s why I had decided to drive it to an end by early 2021. I guess I was also simply tired of it, DM burnout … that sort of thing. But as I said, I had some issues which led to that decision. Technically I didn’t want to simply call the game over, but I found an in game reason which led to a cataclysm: reckless gambling of ancient dragons had instigated mad cultists to destroy one of the two moons … they succeeded in a way, only the wrong moon was destroyed. I’ll come back to the moon story in a bit, now let me first come to the issues I’ve had:

Not our World …

While the campaign grew out of Keep on the Borderlands which sort of happend according to our shared imagination, I placed the Keep into the canonical Known World of Basic D&D, which was later expanded to the Mystara-Setting. While it’s a cool setting in it’s own right, it clearly isn’t ours. It’s tied strongly to the BECMI-Rules Set, to the Rules Cyclopedia and the Gazeteers. The more I think about it, the more it feels like somebody elses campaign. While I’m fine to play in Mystara for some time, I clearly wouldn’t want to follow along a prewritten campaign for years to come. And this long term focus are what Great Campaigns are all about, right?

… and it’s a mess!

I tried to cram into our campaign world as much as possible. At some point I envisioned it to be an all Old-School D&D campaign, like a sight-seeing tour that should lead from the Keep on the Borderlands to Hommlet and The Temple of Elemental Evil along a couple of OSR-Modules on to the GDQ modules, which were supposed to be the Greatest Adventures of All Time. And so the campaign world became an amalgam of Mystara and Greyhawk … and somehow the characters didn’t even care to go near the Temple … it was neither in the end. And now I’m not even so eager to reuse those old modules anymore. The emergent story telling that happend was much more interesting. These days I find emergent campaign play with proactive players, with multiple characters playing in multiple independent player groups, even to the point of player versus player war gaming, the most interesing bit of the game thats Original D&D!

… also the rules!

While this might not seem like a big issue, I was aways a bit unhappy with the rules. I had switched the campaign from Basic D&D to OD&D, but had applied a couple of house rules, thereby meaning to ease the transition. Still, those House Rules always felt a bit clumsy to me. It’s hard to pin down now. Maybe it’s just, that it didn’t feel like true OD&D to me, since we had started with something else.

As a side note: I like “white box” OD&D much better than Basic. It’s clearly the more flexible, more campaign oriented, rules set. And if you use the original d6 based hit points and damage system, it’s even less deadly than Basic. Also if you start out with just the three little booklets of 1974 and add new rules only very carefully and slowly it’s a much more open system, that can support anything your campaign might develop into.

Start with Earth

If you’re a listener of Ken and Robin Talk about Stuff, you’ve probably heard this advice before. While crazy fantasy world building is fun and interesting, most folks can relate to our own world much more easily than to the ramblings of one amateurish game master. While one could of course use a well known published settings like Middle Earth or the Star Wars Universe, that would throw us back to the Not our world issue. Alternate Earth scenarios like the Marvel Cinematic Universe or even Robert E. Howards world of the Conan Saga have the advantage of both worlds (that’s more than a pun in this case). They use the common knowledge everyone has of our World while adding fantastic elements liberally, justifying them with clever changes in the actual history of our planet. Thinking about Mystara, it’s true that Frank Mentzer tried to retcon, that Mystara acutally is our own Earth in his Immortals Rules Set. I’m not sure this idea was largely accepted … you’ll have to ask the Mystara crowd about that.

For one thing, discovering that Mystara was supposed to be Earth — at least in one particular timeline — led to the problem that I had set up our known world with two moons beforehand. Thus came the Idea to devise a catalysm that would get us rid of one moon.

So there you have it: our world of the Grenzland is actually our world. It has been Earth all along. Only way back in time, aeons back, when Earth still had two moons. Now the larger lawful moon of the old empires is gone forever. The smaller moon is still there. Luna, the moon of entropy and renewal. The new continent in the east will one day become known as Thuria. Later times will be known as the Hyborian Age … but that’s still aeons in the future, and not part of this campaign … unless of course they discover time travel …

Technically the original Grenzland campaign has four surviving player characters …

Samo: “today is brighter than yesterday, don’t you think?”

Liskolf pulls his thick fur cloak tighter around his shoulders, and looks up into the dusty clouds: “I think you’re right. Tonight I thought, I could catch a glimpse of the moon …”

Fardir looks around over the wastelands covered in grey snow: “Maybe we should follow Jonny, and also go south. I wonder if it’s warmer down there …”

Samo: “Yes, I seem to remember stories of islands in the sea …”

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Rules Options for Domain Level Play

In my recent post Plotting Grand Campaigns, I’ve written about domain level, or patron style play at length. Here are some references to rules systems one might want to consider to support domain level play. They’re mostly rules for large scale conflict simulation, war games in other words.

Now, before I go on, let me say this: “war game” is a term, I abhor. While I’m obviously mighty fascinated by the derivatives of war games, I consider myself a pacifist. “Conflict simulation” sounds innocent and sophisticated, academically interesting, but let’s face it: we’re talking about armor values and damage potentials and violent death.

Especially at the time of this writing, even thinking about war games feels utterly wrong. There is a real war going on in Ukraine right now. I wish nothing more than the fighting to stop at once! Then again, most of the time we’re playing there’s is some violent conflict going on in the world somewhere. We should always be mindful of this.

If setting up conflict in games teaches us one thing, it’s the fact, that it’s actually quite hard to construct credible reasons for armed conflict. Motives we come up with, are either criminal or corrupt, often both. So, let me say this: reaons to go to war are always made up, they’re always messed up! Reasons to go to war are always fabricated, messed up bullshit, driven by the interests of few corrupt individuals in their criminal pursuit of power.

As H.G. Wells put it in his adendum to Little Wars: “You have only to play at Little Wars three or four times to realise just what a blundering thing Great War must be.“

Rules for Political Scheming

This would be the place to link to the original Braunstein rules. But as I already said in my previous blog post, there seem to be no published rules. The best documentation I’ve found is on Ben Robbin’s blog Ars ludi: https://arsludi.lamemage.com/index.php/106/braunstein-memories/

The Adventurer, Conqueror, King System, might be useful here, but I can’t claim any experience with this game.

If you have any other suggestions, please do add them to the comments.

Rules for mass combat and large scale conflict

Basically crude mass combat rules can be achieved by simply lumping together a certain number of combatants into one larger “meta-creature”. For example 20 “normal men” in OD&D with one hit die each, dealing one die of damage each, might become one unit with 20 hit dice dealing 20d6 of damage to an opposing similar unit. Only one to hit roll is performed for each unit. Armor class and bonuses remain the same, as for single characters. Combined with the usual rules for morale. This simple scaling of figures might do all that is needed.

Actually the importance of morale can’t be overstated, since in any larger scale conflict, the question is not only survival or death, but whether one side prevails, routs, gains or loses ground.

If anything more is needed, here are a host of various rules sets.

  • Chainmail by Gary Gygax and Jeff Perren, published in 1971 by Guidon Games, and later by TSR. A rules set for medieval miniatures games. It’s “Fantasy Supplement” is considered to be the predecessor of Dungeons & Dragons.
  • Swords & Spells, and amalgam of D&D’s “alternative” d20 based combat system and Chainmail, published by TSR in 1976
  • Daniel “Delta” Collins’ Book of War
  • Alex Schroeder’s Mass Combat Rules
  • Robin Stacey’s Mass Combat Rules
  • Don’t give up the ship, a rules set for naval fleet combat in the age of sail, published in 1972 by Guidon Games, and later by TSR.
  • Warriors of Barsoom, a rules set for war games set on Edgar Rice Burroughs‘ John Carter of Mars Setting. While it’s available on archive.org, it’s copyright status seems to remain unclear.
  • War Machine, a set of mass combat rules described in the D&D Companion Rules.
  • Battle System, mass combat rules designed for use with AD&D 2nd edition.
  • Classic Traveller’s Book 4 Mercenary for a rather abstract, sort of birds eye view approach on infantery mass combat.
  • Classic Traveller’s Book 5 High Guard, for battles of large space fleets.
  • Full Thrust by Ground Zero Games, for even more detailed fleet battle in space.
  • Striker, the rules for modern day to far future miniatures combat accompanying Classic Traveller, available from Far Future Enterprises on the Classic Traveller CDROM.
  • GURPS Mass Combat, another abstract system somewhat similar to D&D’s War Machine and Traveller’s Mercenary.
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Plotting Grand Campaigns

EDIT 3 (2023-08-01): Recently I had to learn, that the “BrOSR” group of gamers, of which the below mentioned Jeffro is a member, does not only advocate interesting gaming concepts, but also political stances, I cannot approve of at all. If you want to learn more about these concerns, you might want to follow this post over on Tower of the Archmage. Well, maybe you don’t even want to follow the link, since it’s really not funny. I’m afraid the posts Archmage is referring to are no fabrications. Consequently I asked Jeffro to take down the link from his blog to my blog. I’ve never been part of the BrOSR, never will, and I don’t want to be associated with it in any way.

I’m happy, that the OSR and the ttrpg community in general is a creative, broad and diverse bunch, having fun with great games. Also my own interests don’t stop with rules-as-written old-school gaming. Life is colourful! Let’s embrace and celebrate diversity! Let’s be welcoming and share the fun!

With that out of the way, here is the original post:

So I took a deep dive into this rabbit hole for the last couple of weeks. Over on Mastodon user phf pointed me to a blog post by Jeffro on how to play Original D&D. Now, while somewhat polarizing, what Jeffro writes is intriguing. After I commented on one of his earlier post on How do you do Patron Style play in D&D, he answered with yet another blog post on the subject, clarifying some questions I had. So thanks Jeffro for this great inspiration! Consequentially these ideas led me to expand our current Traveller5 campaign to include High Level PCs (post in german).

Basically Jeffro suggests, that in a fantasy campaign, as it was originally conceived, experienced and played by the gaming groups of Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, the players do not only assume the roles of individual characters going on dungeon excursions, but also the roles of leaders, potentates and antagonists, with “the patrons”, i.e. the players who play these high level characters, given free hand to develop their dominions, and to make up their own agendas and strategies. Thus regular character parties will actually receive quests from, act on behalf of, or against high-level characters, who are in turn also controlled by players. In this kind of game the game master will act much more as a true referee than as a one-man-show puppeteer.

Recapitulating how the Old School Renaissance ventured to repopularize 1970s gaming style, Jeffro states:

“1:1 timekeeping with multiple independent domain-level actors is the fundamental axiom we have been missing.”

He goes on to describe, how by applying these two fundamental principles to his campaign, Jeffro observes how factions begin to act much more consistently and driven by intention, than could be simulated by a single game master, even with the help of various source materials and random tables. The reasons why this should work seem to be quite obvious and convincing to me.

Jeffro anticipates:

“your campaign will immediately begin spontaneously generating SECRETS as soon as you turn it on.”

And as from what I’ve experienced since adding patron style play to our Traveller5 campaign, I think I can confirm this expectation, and I will report on how this turned out in a future blog post.

If all of this sounds convincing to you, and you want to give it a go, I suggest you read Jeffro’s post The “Always On” Campaign, it’s a good place to start.

EDIT: Ben Milton of Questing Beast hast put out a great video about the same ideas.

EDIT 2: in the meantime I saw several videos about Robert Wardhaugh’s enormous D&D campaign. It’s been going on for 40 years. Apparently Robert also has domain level play going on. He refers to it as a macro component using war gaming rules, where players get to control tribes, realms and even whole nations and empires.

While “researching”, I’ve looked at quite a number of rules options to support domain level play. They’ve made it into their own blog post.

If you’re interested in my further thoughts on this subject, read on.

Domain-Level Play in the Original Games

After reading all those blog posts, I went back to the original 1974 rules of the game. If domain level play should be the original assumption, the rules surely must contain some clue about it. Certainly there is a clue, but it’s not easy to find.

While there are rules about constructing castles and strongholds, ruling over baronies, cost of men at arms and so forth, I could not find any obvious mention, of what would be considered “patron style play” … not until I actually leant back, closed the booklet and looked at it’s subtitle: “Rules for Fantastic Medieval Wargames Campaigns” … there it is, hiding in plain sight.

Considering all of the above, I think it fair to take said subtitle as an indication, that those rules were originally conceived as rules to be part of the set up, not necessarrily it’s only defining element. It has often been stated, that one reason, why the original three booklets seem to be difficult to understand in some places, is due to the authors being war gamers, writing for an audience of experienced war gamers. So it’s probably safe to say, that the basic assumption was the war game. And war games, naturally, are games of conflict simulation, in which players take up the roles of conflicting parties.

The first fantasy campaign, widely known as the Blackmoor campaign by Dave Arneson, and considered by many to be the origin of fantasy role playing games, started out in 1971 as a Braunstein game, set in a medieval fantasy setting. Braunstein in turn is a losely defined style of game, conceived by David Wesely in which players take up the roles of various allying or conflicting parties across a broad range of power levels from peasants to generals. Players are supposed to get information from the referee and act by giving written orders. As long as their characters are in the same location, their players may also communicate directly. While there seem to be no pubilshed rules for Braunstein, a lot can be inferred from published play reports and handouts.

In Secrets of Blackmoor, a documentary on the Blackmoor campaign, Stephen Rocheford, one of the original Blackmoor players states: “Yes, I am the High Priest of the Temple of the Frogs“. Clearly you don’t start out as a High Priest when you do conventional character creation in D&D. Obviously this was a patron player character, on which “Rocheford and Arneson [had] worked together to create this character as a humanoid alien with ties to extra terrestrial forces and technnology”.

The fact that in two of D&D’s most famous adventure modules B2 – Keep on the Borderlands, and T1 – The Village of Hommlet, not just the “monsters”, but also the “good non-player characters” are fleshed out with complete combat stats, has been commented on with some amusement, but in the light of an adversarial game being the default, this seems to actually make a lot of sense.

So, these findings seem to indicate, that domain level play might actually have been the default assumption. But there is more, if we look at games and adventure modules published after D&D hit the market.

Antagonistic play in other games

In the canon of Classic Traveller, there are two adventures, which I find quite remarkable with respect to patron style play. Namely Adventure 5 – Trillion Credit Squadron (1981), and Adventure 7 – Broadsword (1982). The former offers an elaborate frame work for setting up a game of conflicting space navies, with missions for individual characters mentioned only as a secondary possibility. The latter is a collection of scenarios designed around the crew and troops of a mercenary ship. The referee is given the advice to have some players play the antagonists, and instructions to stage the scenarios on large scale terrain maps. Similarly in Adventure 5 – Leviathan the referee is advised to have “the player party preferably […] occupy command posts”, giving the game a wholly different perspective, than that of the usual struggling adventurers.

Interestingly also the basic rules set of the Generic Universal Roleplaying System (GURPS) by Steve Jackson Games, contains rules and suggestions about adversarial players, albeit with the notion that an adversarial player will play adverseries ultimately designed by the game master.

And then, there is also Fate, a modern character focused, “story telling” game which, by treating every important story element as a character, offers rules and examples to play on a, possibly adversarial, faction or domain level. There are examples in the Fate Toolkit, as well as in the Burn Shift and Mindjammer settings by Sarah J. Newton.

I’m sure one could find many more examples. If you know of any, please add them to the comments!

The gentle but seldomly trodden path to domain level play

Of course I am perfectly aware, that Dungeons & Dragons’ actual rules put forth in the three brown booklets of 1974 do fokus on characters starting at low level, going on dungeon expeditions as the default setting. This primary focus of the game is again repeated in the paragraph THE FIRST DUNGEON ADVENTURE, in Gary Gygax’s 1979 Dungeon Masters Guide. And it has become the assumed standard ever since, with domain level play only starting once characters reach the lofty, so called “name level”.

Similarly in Traveller, patrons are usually considered to be non-player characters, who might offer jobs or quests to the player characters. And while Marc Miller writes “With time and a growing knowledge of the universe, the players themselves will develop their own missions and become for a time, their own patrons.”

From an educational perspective this gentler path to domain level play appears to be an easy, little demanding way to do it, but achieving patronage through play seems to happen rarely enough, and if at all, only after many sessions have been played.

While in this light, games which never reach domain level play might seem to be missing out, I don’t believe wargame like, adversarial, domain level play to be the end all and be all. Since the days of the old war gaming grognards, a lot of great developement has happend, and character driven role playing games have developed into a multitude of intersting genres and sub genres. Playing a well scripted 1920s pulp adventure may be a phenomenal experience, telling relationship driven stories in a postapocalyptic dystopia might be all you’ll ever want from this hobby. And heroic high fantasy as embodied by todays 5th edition of the original fantasy role playing game has become a whole genre of it’s own. If you like it, there’s nothing wrong with playing the game by it’s modern rules.

All this post is really about, is just say, that playing the game by it’s original rules, might offer an experience much more immersive, than you ever thought. And clearly those original rules sets contain those rules aimed at domain level play. They may just as well be applied right from the start — when you begin to plot your Grand Campaign!

More food for thought

  • http://wanderinggamist.blogspot.com/2021/07/current-11-timescale-campaigns.html
  • https://bdubsanddragons.blogspot.com/2021/07/acks-session-24-croc-whisperers.html
  • https://waterdeeposr.blogspot.com/2021/06/real-time-play-braunstein-effect.html

Finally, be sure to watch Secrets of Blackmoor!

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Quick Traveller5 Characters

So our Traveller 5 campaign is 12 sessions in, with two independent player groups roaming the Rhylanor Subsector. So far the story has been very consistent and player attendance has been almost 100%. Of course eventually players will need to have to skip a session once in a while. Also, new players might want to join, and players might want to roll up a second (or third?) character on short notice, as developments in the campaign might demand. I’m a huge fan of very traditional campaign setups and open table sandbox gaming (1:1 campaign time, multiple characters per player, all the good stuff).

But then character creation in Traveller 5 is very detailed and takes some time. Up until now we’ve done characters in one-on-one sessions, which took from about 20 to 90 minutes. And right there’s a rub, obviously. Lengthy character creation is nothing I would even want to think of, two hours before a session starts, let alone after the session has started. So this does not seem to be ideal for a traditional campaign.

So what do we do? We need quick character creation!

The following is what I’ve come up with:

The fast and loose method

  • Roll six attributes with 2d6.
  • Pick a name.
  • Let’s talk (or chat or post online) about the kind of character you want to play.
  • Take 5 skills to fit your character idea (the referee will give you suggestions).
  • Roll 1d3 for the level of each skill.
  • Optionally, trade in skill points to increase low attributes (5 or less).
  • Haggle about the gear and credits your character might reasonably have acquired up until now (again the referee will give you suggestions).
  • Done, you’re ready to play!
  • Optionally, some time in between sessions, retrofit a homeworld and a career to your character.

I know it relies heavily on the suggestions, advice and ultimately impartiality of the referee. But if you don’t trust your GM, why play at all, right 😉

This approach to character creation already has precedent in our campaign. When one first time role player asked if she could join the game — literally an hour before we were going to start — I asked her to give me a rough idea of what kind of character she wanted to play. She imagined an adventurous, sort of roguish young woman who had been travelling for quite some time already, sometimes as a working passage, sometimes as a stowaway. Then we did some dice rolling and chatting and came up with this:

UPP 796947 (age 22)

Streetwise-2, Stealth-3, JoT-1, Blades-2, Fighter-1

Dagger, Heavy Coat, 500 Credits

Here you go, a playable character. In between sessions we added some backstory, but basically that’s the whole process.

Recently we found another option, which was actually used while we were already half way into a session. A character was needed really quickly.

The online generator method

A lot of folks know and use Paul Gorman‘s Classic Traveller Character Generator. While characters generated for Classic Traveller (CT) are sort of playable according to Traveller5 (T5) rules, their skill values tend to be quite low. I think I remember suggestions to multiply CT skill values by 3 to use them in T5, but we’ve come up with a different method, leading to a much more detailed skills set. Here’s the character the generator gave us:

Lt Colonel UPP 7765CB (age 30)

3 terms army

ATV-1, Air/Raft-1, Dagger-2, Electronics-1, Fwd Obsvr-2, Rifle-1, SMG-1

Now instead of just increasing those skill values, we looked at the career. Survival of three terms in the army, commission, promotion in every term. In Traveller5 the soldier career yields 4 skill points per term plus 1 skill point for a commission, and 1 skill point for each promotion. So in T5 this characer should have 12 skill points for careers, plus 4 skill points for his promotion to officer rank 4, a total of 18 skill points. Add to that possible home world skills. Nine of those 18 points have already been allocated, and they were translated to T5 rules thus:

Electronics-1, Fwd Obsvr-2 (no conversion needed)

ATV-1 and Air/Raft-1 ⇒ Driver-0 (Wheeled-1 Grav-1)

Dagger-2 , SMG-1 and Rifle-1 ⇒ Fighter-0 (Blades-2 Slug Throw-2)

The remaining 9 skill points were allocated by taking automatic skills by rank and randomly rolling on table C Soldier Skills of the soldiers career for the remainder. Finally, after picking a home world, we added home world skills, too. I know this might sound a bit complicated, but it actually went much faster then doing a full on character generation according to T5 rules. Now the character looks like this:

Army Reserve Major, UPP 7765CB (age 30)

Admin-2 Fighter-2 (Slug throw-2 Blades-2) Forward Observer-2 Electronics-1 Leader-1 Medic-1 Stealth-1 Steward-1 Streetwise-1 Tactics-1 Driver-0 (Wheeled-1 Grav-1) Hvy Wpns-0 (WMD-1)

Now, this looks like a playable character to me, generated on the fly, expanded to T5 stats in between sessions.

I must say I like both methods, and would always let player preference be my guide. Finally I guess both approaches can be viewed as rules as written if you consider this quote from the Traveller5 rules books:

“Create the Character you want to play with friends. Pick and choose abilities that are important and interesting. Use randomness for the rest.”

I’ve nothing to add to that 😉

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High Level Spielercharaktere für die Octagon-Kampagne

Die Octagon-Kampagne ist eine Traveller-Kampagne, die ich seit nun sieben Sessions leite. Ich liebe Komplexität und parallele Handlungsstränge, und daher freut es mich sehr, dass sich zwei Spielergruppen gefunden haben, die beide unabhängig voneinander in der gleichen Kampagnenwelt spielen.

Kürzlich wurde ich dann auf einen Blog Post über das Kampagnen-Spiel mit High Level Charakteren aufmerksam gemacht. Spieler übernehmen dabei im Hintergrund der “normalen” Spielrunden die Rollen hochstufiger Charaktere, die auf politischer Ebene handeln, oder sich strategisch gegenüber stehen. Während ich finde, dass Blogger Jeffro etwas gnädiger mit uns Normies sein sollte, finde ich die Ideen hinter dieser Art zu spielen äußerst faszinierend. So faszinierend, dass ich dann auch gleich noch etwas über die Braunstein Spiele von Major Wesely gelesen habe und ein weiteres Mal die Doku Secrets of Blackmoor geschaut habe.

Ergebnis: High-Level Charaktere für die Octagon Kampagne! Dabei handelt es sich z.B. um Adelige mit Hohheit über einen gesamten Subsektor, stinkreiche Oligarchen, denen subsektorweit agierende Konzerne gehören, sowie die Patriarchen traditionsreicher Trader-Familien, die über ganze Flotten an Handelsschiffen verfügen. Solche Charaktere ziehen nicht selbst auf Abenteuer aus, und kommen auch nicht mal als normale Auftragegeber in Frage. Nein, ganz klar, die Fürsten der Space Lanes, die oberen Zehntausend der Spinwärts Marken lassen machen!

Das ganze läuft so: Im Hintergrund der Abenteuer der zwei “normalen” Spielergruppen läuft ein Play-by-Post Spiel dieser hochrangigen Charaktere. Einmal in der Woche erhält jede:r “High-Level”-Spieler:in schriftlich aktuelle Nachrichten — Infos, die von Geheimdiensten, Informanden, aber auch den imperialen Network News mitgeteilt werden könnten. Als Reaktion wird dann eine schriftliche Order an die Spielleitung zurück geschickt, welche die Effekte in der Kampagnenwelt umsetzt.

Per Order könnte alles mögliche veranlasst werden: es könnten diplomatische Missionen oder Agenten entsandt werden, Truppen zusammen gezogen werden, eine Party der Reichen und Schönen ausgerichtet werden, was auch immer. Und selbst wenn jemand den Krieg erklären sollte, die Kampagne kann dadurch gar nicht kaputt gehen. Es würde nur alles dramatischer werden.

Dabei kann/darf/soll es gerne zu Interaktion mit den Spielergruppen kommen. Die Beauftragung einer Spezialeinheit, die Industriegeheimnisse stehlen soll, könnte so unmittelbar in ein Abenteuer für eine der Spielergruppen münden — Ausgang ungewiss.

Zwei High-Level Spieler sind schon gestartet und grübeln über ihren ersten Schachzügen. Den Dritten werde ich hoffentlich noch dieses Wochenende mit seinen Infos bestücken. Zwei High-Level-Charaktere wären damit noch vakant. Ich denke fünf ist eine gute Zahl für dieses “Domain Level Spiel” im Hintergrund.

Die Informationen welche die High Level PC Spieler zu Beginn bekommen würden, sähe ungefähr so aus:

Basisdaten

  • Name, Alter
  • Eigenschaften
  • Hintergrund
  • Aktueller Standort

Resourcen

  • Wie ist der politische Einfluss? im Subsektor? im Sektor? im Imperium?
  • Befehlsgewalt über militärische Einheiten?
  • Agenten? Geldmittel?

Ziele/Motivation

  • Was ist das Ziel des Charakters?
  • Was will sie/er erreichen? Was will sie/er verhindern?

Kürzliche Ereignisse

  • Was ist der aktuelle Hintergrund in der Spielwelt

Aktuelle Nachrichten

  • Was gibts neues?
  • Was berichtet die Zeitung?
  • Was berichten die Geheimdienste oder sonstige Quellen?

Dann geht es los. Was auch immer die Order des High-Level Charakters ist, es wird Auswirkungen auf die Spielwelt haben. Die Nachrichten “reisen” dabei nach den üblichen Traveller-Regeln. Dass heißt, wenn zum Beispiel ein Raumschiff welches 6 Sprünge weit entfernt ist, zum Standort des Auftraggebers kommen soll, dann ist mit seiner Ankunft nicht vor Ablauf von 12 Wochen zu rechnen. Denn 6 Wochen (6 Sprünge) braucht die Nachricht, um beim Raumschiff anzukommen, und 6 Wochen braucht das Raumschiff dann selbst um den gleichen Weg zurück zu legen. Und ach ja, die Kampagnen-Zeit läuft in Echtzeit, 1:1. Das sollte man bei der Strategie berücksichtigen.

Unser “Spielbrett” sind die Spinwärts Marken des offiziellen Traveller Universums. Die aktuellen Handlungen spielen im Rhylanor-Subsektor. Kampagnendatum heute ist 014-1106 Imperialer Kalender (14.01.2022).

Falls jemand Lust hat mitzuspielen, oder sonst allgemein an der Kampagne interessiert ist, gerne auf dem Grenzland Discord-Server im #sabbel-kanal melden 😉