The next section is GETTING YOUR FEET WET a high level view of the overall system. Ummm, even though this section is longer than the two I talk about in my first post I don't really have anything to say about it. It is a well written snapshot of what Traveller can be which I have no quibbles with so I am going to move on. If you are just starting with Traveller give it a read as it does bring up some reoccurring themes.
REQUIRED MATERIALS is up next and seems quaint and nostalgic considering I am posting to a blog as a way to get organized enough to run a VTT game. A few things strike me though concerning players knowing the rules and imagination. It isn't as annoying to explain what a total newbie needs to do in CT as in a lot of games because there aren't many rules. The relative lack of rules (as opposed to 3.5 and it's derivatives) encourages (IMHO) players to ask more frequently can I do this?
As for imagination I think my fantasy background actually inhibits me somewhat because I am more used to thinking about the possibilities offered by a world as opposed to an entire universe. So I need to try and make each location different than the others. It is very seductive to have every starport and world be the same if an adventure isn't fleshed out for that world. Realistically however I am not going to be able to make all 440 systems of The Spinward Marches a fully developed as your average D&D campaign so what is my goal? I have a fairly extensive library of fiction; history; DVDs and RPG stuff so I am planning on assigning an inspiration source to each world.
For instance Esalin is going to have "Casablanca" as my inspirational source. This doesn't mean space nazis per say but instead I have a reason to watch one of my favorite films and try and create a sense of a paranoid population with little respect for the terribly corrupt government. Also the natives resent both the Zhodani and Imperial outsiders. Because you can't tell who is a disgusting mind reading freak by looking at 'em there is a large group of people trying to flee the Zhodani empire but unable to get passage into the Imperium. I think I mentioned I am better at adapting things than creating whole cloth so this seems like a way to get a different feel for each world without an enormous amount of work.
To take the place of scrap paper and index cards I am going to shamelessly shill for people who have never heard of me. Cherrytree is a super awesome free windows and linux based app. It says it is for note taking however it is easily a lot more than that. Roll20 or Roll20 in Google Hangouts go without saying although the free ScreenMonkey from NBOS is an alternative I am still mulling over.
DEFINITIONS OF TERMS is a necessary section with no reason to discuss.
CONDUCT OF THE ADVENTURING SESSION is mostly a primer on how to run any kind of RPG with some Traveller specific mentions. "Don't split the party" kind of stuff is routine if everyone has played an RPG but if you have some neophytes it would be very worthwhile before the session (and ideally one on one through email/IM) to cover. Why do it away from the game session? Because it is mostly because of meta-game reasons you don't do them and things that take away from being in game are probably best dealt with outside of the context of the game.
One thing mentioned I need to work on is passage of time and tracking the flow of information. If the party blasts it's way out of say Heroni/Rhylanor a low tech backwater off of the main xboat network I need to have an easy way to track when the info gets where. Mostly because it isn't going to be reasonable that they will be anonymous. The "Blatant Lie" is the ship that fled and the crew roster will be accessible to the authorities. Besides if I don't screw it up the fun potential of this is huge. The PCs get up to typical naughtiness on a low pop world off the main line and it takes 3 months for word to hit the Xboat network and it takes another month to catch up with them. I can say without fear they won't remember that they did it and will get the best dumbfounded expression when confronted. I am exploring ways to actually do this however and am leaning toward outdated day planners from the local dollar store.
Before starting the campaign I am going to have to come up with how long news takes to travel from the subsector capital to each world in the subsector so I only need to know when the alert reaches a capital not track it for each world individually. Again I am trying to come up with a way to use a potential awesome way to make the game different from real life but balance it against the amount of time and attention I can devote to a game. I also think I am going to use Google's IM version of hangout to send secret notes to players because the whisper feature of group chat isn't as convenient as having a different window for each player and with chat history it is a good way for players to have access to stuff their PC's should know without having to ask me while the game is going on. That isn't clear but I mean have a instance of the chat window for each player.
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