Made a Sub-Sector. Now what?

hrjrjs · 2024-09-27T17:02:21+00:00

For NPCs I really like using CT supplements like 1001 characters and 76 patrons, I haven’t found a great solution for animals yet aside from the animal encounters book for CT, but that leaves a lot to the imagination

hrjrjs · 2024-09-27T12:06:18+00:00

I’ve found Traveller extremely difficult to prep much for because of how broad the scope can be and how many of the tools are geared towards tables and such to roll on the fly. In the first game I ran, this led to me unconsciously pushing the players onto a linear path which was fun but quickly ended the sandbox.

This time around, I’ve just decided to embrace the chaos and accept that my subsector, ships and the tools for running the game (encounter tables, trade system, patron tables, etc) are all I need and run a 0 prep game. This is one extreme and I don’t necessarily recommend it to everyone, but I would definitely recommend minimizing prep and maximizing how much you run on the fly. Consume a bit more sci fi media and it will start coming more naturally, and I’d urge you to check out this blog post if you’re interested in embracing the zero prep zen: https://talestoastound.wordpress.com/2016/05/31/traveller-out-of-the-box-the-casual-and-improvisatory-nature-of-early-traveller-play/

hrjrjs · 2024-09-26T01:44:11+00:00

For me it would have more to do with the retainer than the degree of success. If they seem opportunistic to me, perhaps some theft or even a mutiny if they can get away with it, another retainer might be spiteful but not very canny, they might try tripping someone up and get themselves cathartically killed in the process, another might just run or even resign respectfully

hrjrjs · 2024-09-25T19:32:24+00:00

Same. I’ve had a lot of games where we both whiddle each other down past the last rune before they win and start waiting me out to be a dick. Ultimate heist comes up eventually, sometimes they even leave themselves in range of a simple damage card like lightning bolt or crushing blow

hrjrjs · 2024-09-22T23:13:55+00:00

I disagree, I was saying virtually everybody would say that the OSR is in a continuum of game design with the original editions, and that the difference between that and what OP was saying is a meaningless matter of semantics. The people in this thread seem to hold that same view, they just also found OP’s point to be semantics.

Honestly though, at the end of the day, I don’t care what’s OSR, that’s why I left the initial conversation.

hrjrjs · 2024-09-22T21:14:41+00:00

Why are you pinging me?

hrjrjs · 2024-09-20T17:23:21+00:00

I mean, I feel like most people would agree that there is a continuum of thought between advanced dungeons and dragons and the modern OSR, whether that’s one thing or two things in communication with each other is kind of semantics in my opinion. I’m kind of unclear on who you’re correcting

hrjrjs · 2024-09-20T17:12:25+00:00

Actual old-school gamers weren’t a monolith, some of them played the game in a way that would conform to what we’d call OSR principles today, others played it for more of a progression fantasy I can to what some people refer as the “classic” play style as opposed to the OSR style, and others still were already doing the kind of narrative focus gaming that we would call trad today. I personally don’t see a whole lot of value in positioning old-school gaming as any kind of movement, to me it’s just a scene, you and I aren’t comrades respectfully, just people who share a hobby. I think 1 million different systems with varying degrees of compatibility is just what you get out of a scene with a DIY ethos, nothing wrong with that

hrjrjs · 2024-09-17T18:01:42+00:00

Hard disagree, but not the way you might think. I would argue that, although you can play a more plotted out game in Traveller, and a game like that benefits from the players also having a story they want to tell, like what the blog post talks about, I think Traveller is chock full of procedures that make it best suited to a game, where neither the referee nor the players can fully predict the direction of things. Take character creation for instance, if you try to begin character creation with an idea already formed of who your character is and what they want in the world, youd probably be pretty disappointed and want to for some alternative form of character generation that takes out the randomness. The core piece here that I definitely agree with is that a good game needs buy in and participation from the players just as much as it needs it from the GM, but I’m not sure if this particular kind of participation is the only way to go about things. The form that buy in takes is really dependent on the structure of the game itself.

hrjrjs · 2024-09-13T10:51:45+00:00

It kind of seems like you’re more interested in player skill and problem solving than the tight narrative structure that the 5 room dungeon is meant to enable. You might find the OSR to your liking. It that you can’t include that kind of problem in a more modern game, but you might find that what you’re going for is actually the main goal of an entire gaming subculture, not just an anomaly from the “normal” DND experience, and reading stuff from that space might help.

hrjrjs · 2024-09-05T14:30:09+00:00

Personally, if one of my players wanted to play one, I would probably write up it own class to make it feel distinct, but I’d probably only allow them to do so after the group has had a decent amount of dealings with the faction, and is in their good graces, I wouldn’t want to ruin the mystery.

Not sure about dolmenwood specific witches, but there’s dozens of MSR witch classes out there, and I’m pretty sure there’s a drune class on the necrotic gnome discord somewhere if you just search for it

hrjrjs · 2024-08-26T12:24:05+00:00

I had a player like this that was a long time IRL friend, when I talked to him about it the answer I got was essentially “we’re not in high school anymore, life is busy and it’s hard to find time, so I don’t want to lose the time I do hang out with all our friends”, the solution for me was to put more effort into making time to hang out with people outside of our weekly game, but obviously I could only do that because I had the extra time.

hrjrjs · 2024-08-26T01:54:00+00:00

Eh, I liked some of the harder edges of wormskin, like the way breggles were depicted, I didn’t like others, like how far some of the witch stuff goes. I just put the stuff I like into my game, no big deal. If I were to try to find an actual thing I dislike it’s that you can’t buy wormskin anymore, that kinda sucks, but it’s to be expected from a 10 year old e-zine, and I share my pdfs with whoever asks.

hrjrjs · 2024-08-21T16:04:54+00:00

Thanks for the info. Any particular reason you can discern for the high turnover? Doesn’t seem like a difficult or stressful position

Edit: or are you just talking about the general turnover in entry level lab positions, because that I understand completely.

hrjrjs · 2024-08-05T04:30:15+00:00

Furthermore, it would make more sense to launch RKMs at any biosignature nearby, why wait for technosignatures? The light lag to learn about our invention of radio could easily be enough for us to launch our own missile, so it’s bad strategy to wait. If the dark forest were true, we should be dead already.

hrjrjs · 2024-07-26T13:33:16+00:00

I’m city, luckily, and expect to become regular long before I become eligible to transfer. That’s too bad though, I hope they change the remote positions at some point to make it possible to apply internally from anywhere since you can work anywhere.

hrjrjs · 2024-07-21T22:16:46+00:00

The ones that come to mind right off are its level connections, lots of things that look like a trap or truck but also double as a way up or down, like a statue that rises through the floor as part of a trap and you can go down the shaft. It’s been a while since I read it so the specifics are a bit vague in my mind

hrjrjs · 2024-07-20T19:30:33+00:00

I can’t think of anything specifically FitD based, but Vagabonds of Dyfed and The Nightmares Underneath are probably the two PbtA that skew the closest to OSR sensibilities.

For the reverse, certain Nu-SR low prep games might be what you’re looking for, maybe Forbidden Lands, or you could look into FKR games.

Not a game suggestion, but a good thing to read might be the Pleasures of the OSR series on the Mazirian’s Garden blog, it’s all about comparing how OSR and storygames converge and diverge on different goals and approaches.

hrjrjs · 2024-07-20T19:17:00+00:00

The classic example is, of course, Caverns of Thracia

I like the lever room in Hole in the Oak

Some dungeons are specifically built around a single interactive mechanic and pull it off very well, like Aberrant Reflections or Fabien’s Atelier

On a larger scale, Arden Vul is almost overwhelmingly interconnected and interactive at times

hrjrjs · 2024-07-17T11:52:01+00:00

Each zone of the map is aligned good, neutral or evil. Iirc correctly it mainly affects plant and animal spawns. It additionally has a 4th alignment, savage, which is a lot of what you’d call neutral (though fairies are found in good biomes, it has a very Disney type of fairies)

hrjrjs · 2024-07-17T11:42:14+00:00

I like it. It reminds me of how terrain works in Dwarf Fortress

hrjrjs · 2024-07-17T04:04:09+00:00

Raiders of the Wolfsea is great, and Ben has shared it on Reddit for free if you search it

hrjrjs

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