Railroad....in....SPAAAAAAAAAAACE!
Feb. 28th, 2008 09:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bluegargantuaHi,
So recently I picked up a CD-ROM containing all the issues of JTAS ever published. JTAS stands for Journal of the Traveller's Aid Society and it was a quarterly publication devoted to all things Traveller, the origianl, old-skool Sci-Fi RPG. It's a fascinating window back in time to the early 80's when gaming was probably reaching its height of popularity and it's fun to watch people speculate on what may come.
But what's been really interesting are the Amber Zone pieces. In Traveller, a star system could be marked as an "Amber Zone", meaning it was dangerous for you to travel there for some reason (usually because the locals weren't friendly with strangers). In JTAS, the Amber Zone articles were essentially adventure seeds. And I do mean seeds. The scenarios would give a general outline of how things were supposed to go, but there were no stats for any of the people you'd encounter, no maps showing the places you'd be adventuring in, or any real details about how things should go. A minimal base on which to build your little adventure.
In D&D, the stereotypical adventure involves the PCs meeting at an inn, a wizened old man tells them about a dungeon, the heroes travel out to the dungeon, kick down doors, kill things, take their stuff and bring it all home to celebrate at a tavern where the next wizened old man will give them a job. Reading these Amber Zone adventures has made me realize that there's a pretty standard Traveller adventure template as well:
A shifty guy hires the players to deliver, or pick up a package/person. The players attempt to deliver the cargo but are continually beset by hostile forces. Eventually it's discovered that the PCs have totally been set up by the shifty guy who hired them and they have to muddle out as best they can.
There's a secondary adventure type where 4-6 ex-servicemen are hired to quickly train a ragtag force of farmers to defend against a high-tech invasion force with grav tanks.
Considering how brutal these adventures are, I'm thinking the PCs who died during character creation got the better end of the deal.
later
Tom
So recently I picked up a CD-ROM containing all the issues of JTAS ever published. JTAS stands for Journal of the Traveller's Aid Society and it was a quarterly publication devoted to all things Traveller, the origianl, old-skool Sci-Fi RPG. It's a fascinating window back in time to the early 80's when gaming was probably reaching its height of popularity and it's fun to watch people speculate on what may come.
But what's been really interesting are the Amber Zone pieces. In Traveller, a star system could be marked as an "Amber Zone", meaning it was dangerous for you to travel there for some reason (usually because the locals weren't friendly with strangers). In JTAS, the Amber Zone articles were essentially adventure seeds. And I do mean seeds. The scenarios would give a general outline of how things were supposed to go, but there were no stats for any of the people you'd encounter, no maps showing the places you'd be adventuring in, or any real details about how things should go. A minimal base on which to build your little adventure.
In D&D, the stereotypical adventure involves the PCs meeting at an inn, a wizened old man tells them about a dungeon, the heroes travel out to the dungeon, kick down doors, kill things, take their stuff and bring it all home to celebrate at a tavern where the next wizened old man will give them a job. Reading these Amber Zone adventures has made me realize that there's a pretty standard Traveller adventure template as well:
A shifty guy hires the players to deliver, or pick up a package/person. The players attempt to deliver the cargo but are continually beset by hostile forces. Eventually it's discovered that the PCs have totally been set up by the shifty guy who hired them and they have to muddle out as best they can.
There's a secondary adventure type where 4-6 ex-servicemen are hired to quickly train a ragtag force of farmers to defend against a high-tech invasion force with grav tanks.
Considering how brutal these adventures are, I'm thinking the PCs who died during character creation got the better end of the deal.
later
Tom
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no subject
Date: 2008-02-29 01:41 pm (UTC)Does it have the special supplements? Specifically the Merchants & Merchandise supplement - I've been hunting for that one...
Where would one pick up a copy of this mythical CD?
no subject
Date: 2008-02-29 01:47 pm (UTC)It has all the special supplements. Did you want the special supplement on Atmospheres? Yeah, got it.
You can get it at: http://www.farfuture.net/
Be warned. I ordered this and the classic traveller pack CD-ROM. The JTAS is fine, but the classic traveller pack is blank. I've emailed twice to get this fixed, but I haven't heard back from the guy. I'm thinking next Wednesday I'll mail it back to him and go "Please put data on that I paid for please".
But the JTAS CD is really sweet. They scanned the original documents in as a PDF, but you can cut and paste text out of it and everything so it's really easy to custom build handouts and stuff.
later
Tom
no subject
Date: 2008-02-29 01:54 pm (UTC)Sweet. Guess I'll have to dust off my campaign-starter adventure, wherein the Marines get screwed on an op and have to steal a free trader to make it offworld just ahead of the ravening hordes...
no subject
Date: 2008-02-29 02:05 pm (UTC)Like I say, it's the heart and soul of 80% of the adventures. :)
later
Tom
no subject
Date: 2008-02-29 02:13 pm (UTC)1) PCs get hired to do task X.
2) Task X goes horribly sideways.
3) PCs get lucky and barely escape with their lives.
You rarely see PCs with the moxie (or cooperative talents) to pull off the role of the screwer rather than the screwee.
And on reflection, that structure works for any futuristic setting (modern and cyberpunk). Fantasy settings tend more toward the self-starter PC ("I found a map to fabulous treasure!").