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
