On 18/11/21 03:56, Timothy Collinson - timothy.collinson at port.ac.uk
(via tml list) wrote:
>
>
>   With my apologies for being so far behind; and that it's so rough
>   and ready.  We're getting there.
>
>
Hey, it's posted.  Celebrate your achievement.  Maybe drink to that.
>
> <snip>
>
> We have a short discussion about how far we are through /The Traveller
> Adventure/.I’ve no idea whether it will spoil things to say or whether
> it might be helpful to know we’re reaching the end.I’m not getting any
> signals that anyone doesn’t want to know so I tell them.One more
> chapter to go.We perhaps spend three sessions on a chapter so we could
> be four sessions from the end.Or maybe we could wrap it all next time!
>
> Following that, will we go on?Take a break?Doing something
> different?We save that for another time as well and actually sign off
> by selling Jim on TravCon.I’m appalled to realize that Jane has
> already been going for five years now!
>
Well, my answer is biased from my own situation, so apply salt as needed:

This may be due to us being two different people running for more than
two different groups, but the GM's ability to improvise is one that all
of the groups I've been a part of have desired, tested and developed.  A
wry grin and a mutter of "you _bastards_.  Let's go get tucker." (as
favoured, multiple times, by Ceilingrat - Shadowrun GM _sans pareil_)
goes down a hell of a lot better than getting your back up and trying to
stuff increasingly-square pegs into increasingly-round holes.

One GM I had (whom Eddles and Herr Sweep can personally attest to) was
almost notorious for her inflexibility and her players regularly
wrong-footed her (self, Eddles and Herr Sweep, mainly).

One D&D 3.5 game said GM ran (hey, I played what was going) had me
playing a bard, of the rabble-rousing persuasion.  Local plod took
violent exception to this and raided the joint they were staying at - so
our three Murder Hobos promptly buggered off up the joint's central
stairs (all three flights of them).

Aforementioned bard paused to cast grease on the _middle_ third of the
stairs (including the rails), turning them into a traction nightmare a
la _Home Alone_, especially for pursuing plod.  GM was completely
poleaxed, while Eddles and Herr Sweep pissed themselves.

A later 3.5 game (same players + GM) had me playing a (iirc) 10th level
fighty type, built as a mook-shredder (improved 2-weapon fighting,
combat brute, great cleave, improved chunder, medium fort armour, twin
adamantine bastard swords (GM encouraged us to go nuts) ... it was
CHOPPA TIME).  The three (different) Murder Hobos had booked passage on
a ship, and about two-thirds of the way through the trip, a pirate ship
hove into view and demanded our boot heave to or prepare to be salvaged.

My bloke counted thirty pirate crew, and turned to his fellow Murder
Hobos: "Thirty of them, three of us - ten each do?"  GM wondering what
in blazes I was up to, Eddles trying to contain laughter, Herr Sweep not
even trying.

Pirate boot repeated demand for our boot to heave to and promised no
harm if no resistance.

The Three Murder Hobos: "BALLS!"

Our boot's captain aggressively came alongside the pirate boot, and the
Three swung aboard, my bloke getting himself surrounded.  Eddles got a
bad case of the giggles.

GM hadn't quite grokked the rules interactions I was using - fighty type
was _built_ to kick ass, take names and chew bubblegum in such a
situation.  Two combat rounds and 10 dead pirate mooks later, he
reboarded our original boot.

GM: "WTF?"

Me: "I got my ten."

Eddles and Herr Sweep cracked up.

If you're looking for a module (which _I_ think is selling yourself
short enough you'll run afoul of FSA restrictions on short selling), how
about Mongoose's version of _Secret of the Ancients_ ?

Through accretion, decisions you've made, etc, Collision's Traveller
Universe does indeed exist, somewhat closer to the Golden Age OTU than
the Advisoryverse is to the ISW OTU.

You are also a _significantly_ more experienced GM than the Collision
who sat down to start running TTA.

_I_ think you and your players would be better served by you running
something bespoke in CTU (again, I'm coming from a milieu where sessions
where the vast bulk was improvised are still talked about over a decade
later, but the from-module stuff disappears without trace).  The
stereotypical Trav games (ethically-challenged merchants, etc) exist for
a _reason_ - they _work_.

Off top of my head, here's some suggestions:

- Trading into and out of the Islands cluster in Mongoose's version of
Reft. The PCs will need a J-4 ship to make Rift crossing possible.

- Being one of the myriad private ships scouting ahead of/sideways from
the current Zhodani Core Expedition.

- Likewise, tagging along with a Solomani recon expedition to the Rim
(as Milky Way's radius is now lower-bounded by 30 kpc, that's a good 20
kpc walkabout).

- Skip tracing and default repossession, across an international border
to really make it interesting.

- Something in the "Distant Fringe" ATU on the Trav wiki
(https://wiki.travellerrpg.com/Distant_Fringe) - wherein the original
settlers butt-pirated from Terra after the Vilani attack in IW3 and ran
like hell for a good hundred years.

That should get your brain started.

Alex