We’re both sitting at the table, facing the same direction, staring at our laptop screens. Outside the sky is blue and we can hear the crows complaining. We really should be going out.
At the end of 2021 I played in a session of Wanderer Bill’s Octagon campaign and I’m looking forward to the next one.
Character generation took a bit longer than what I would have preferred. I think if we each had a book in front of us, it would be been much faster. The parts I like about Traveller is that you get to make rough choices like you would in real life. I was brainstorming ideas with Peter and had the rough idea of either a career in xenobiology, cataloguing alien life forms while jumping from system to system in a sleek yacht. Alternatively, we’d play a bunch of assassins, taking out mafia bosses and the like. Anyway, this was the vision. But this is Traveller, however…
My character went to college and managed a bachelor degree in biology and archaeology, wanted to join the marines but failed, wanted to join the navy, failed again, decided to pick up up a life of crime for two terms, earning a total of 700,000 Cr. and a bunch of skills. I really wanted Jack-of-all-Trades and got it twice, so yay! I also wanted to learn about shooting guns but no luck. I didn’t roll Fighter and got stuff like Trade instead. I guess my character was more of a cheat than a violent man.
Then Peter and I got talking about being assassin cooks, or having a band as a cover. So with much laughter and many silly ideas, we both decided that we should pick a term in the entertainment business. I wanted to be a cook but Peter went first and wanted to play a musical instrument. Sadly, no luck. He ended up being a computer programmer, more or less. I joked that like many programmers interested in making music he ends up doing modular synthesis and drum machines. I then learned that a career as cook would require attribute checks for attributes I wasn’t good at where as if I picked musician I’d be able to pick my best attribute instead: endurance! And I ended up with a skill point in music. So we do have a band! And we both rolled our fame and it was average, city-wide. I explain that as us having a cool live show that doesn’t come across in recordings.
I love this kind of rolling what you get and then making sense of it.
In our session, there was a little bit of silliness, like all three characters getting the same cloth armour, heavy coat, cool sunglasses, and laser pistol, but it was all in-game serious, and that’s what I love. My character had made tons of money as a cheat, where as Theresa’s character was poor with zero credits. We “hired” the young scout as a stage hand and equipped him with the band outfit, of course.
My character was nearly fried in a virtual reality set, and we did some investigating. It wasn’t about rolling high on our investigation skills, it was about talking to this guy, and that boss, and breaking into an apartment, and deciding what to do next… it was good fun, with an occasional roll to break open a door undetected, to get a security guard to follow along by subtle threats of violence, to do an emergency medical intervention.
None of those endless tactical combats. Talking to both player and non-player characters, making an occasional roll, moving on. That’s how I like it.
#RPG #Traveller
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Glad you liked our first session 😀
I agree about the time it took to make characters, how long was it actually? Something like three hours? Oh boy ... and both of you could have continued. Wise choice to go start adventuring.
I usually prefer when character creation takes only a couple of minutes, and get’s fleshed out as the game moves along.
Then again, we really got quite some material out of character creation, which — as you well noticed — already saw extensive in the game 😝
(if folks should like to have a peek, Peter did his character writeup in English)
Happy New Year!
– Wanderer Bill 2022-01-01 14:33 UTC
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I really need to sit down and do my super simple all-humans fantasy Traveller. You can be fighter, magic user, cleric, or thief. Some skill packages, four reward tables for four classes, four mishap tables. For payout tables.
– Alex 2022-01-01 15:29 UTC
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Would this be a hack a Cepheus Engine?
– Oliver 2022-01-01 16:27 UTC
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Something like that, except it would fit in six pages.
I bet that’s how they all start.
– Alex 2022-01-01 17:08 UTC
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XD
Sounds like a new years resolution!
– Oliver 2022-01-01 18:12 UTC
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It seems doable! Helmbarten (German) already has three pages!
– Alex 2022-01-01 21:02 UTC
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Hi Alex, I wanted to thank you for blogging in 2021, I enjoy reading your posts, and tooling around with hex-describe and text-mapper. All the best for 2022!
– Starmonkey 2022-01-02 01:10 UTC
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Thank you for the kind words!
– 2022-01-02 17:34 UTC