Indeed. I'm very glad I rate my chances of ever playing one of the adventures he reviews as low enough to take the risk. :D Whoever thinks "hm, might play any one of them any day" will miss out on a lot of fun.
There are a few who do (which I find pretty impressive). Then there's the other side who say, "I'll never play this adventure because we don't play this system," watch it, and then six months later their group changes to whatever system the adventure is for and now they're running the adventure I reviewed, but several of the players spoiled themselves. The second case also becomes the question of, "would they have ever played it had they not seen the review?" sort of like the Matrix and the broken vase.
Yeah, that's a bit unfortunate then. But on the flipside, the enjoyment from your videos (and the inspiration people who GM other systems can take from them) are worth it if they are not reasonably certain they could play this adventure in the next couple of months. A lot of stuff will be forgotten by then. And in the same vein I will continue to read all modules and the like I can get for enjoyment and educational purposes (I tend to be GMing more than playing, so it's not that big a problem); simple question of a risk-reward-balance. Ironically the one time I actually did run a printed campaign myself (Paths of the Damned for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay) it ended as a bust because book 2 wasn't quite the group's style (and not really modifyable to be so) and some of the players didn't quite dig the system. ;) So long story short: Too much gain in these videos to skip them unless the spoiler threat is estimated high.
Seth Skorkowsky I‘m pretty much on the save side here. Yes, I bought Traveller because of your videos (and a little bit of interest beforehand), but there is close to zero chance that anybody else but myself will DM it.
I tend to be the GM for most of my games, so I watch the whole of every video with impunity. If I ever play in a game and someone runs a reviewed adventure, I'm going to have to inform them that they'll need to make some changes, because I also tend to purchase and read them after watching the reviews.
Riddick! There are actually a lot of great sci-fi, or even fantasy movies / games where the beginning is to be stranded in strange lands. Pitch Black being one of the most amazing, especially since it really gives that forboding of being on an alien world that has a strange day / night cycle.
Would've been a better scenario than what it actually turned out to be, frankly. Could even fit the setting with a bit of a twist - Droyne are a lot like Mi-Go when they're still working some bizarre agenda of their Ancient ancestors.
Seth once again demonstrating his brilliance. Most Traveler scenarios are: "The players are attacked by villains. The referee will need to fill in the details." But Seth can make it fun.
I really appreciate your ability to not say "This aspect was bad and stupid because X", but instead say "Now, I found X to somewhat hidner the gameplay, and if they'd simply added Y then I feel the module would have been better."
The poor quality of the premise and writing still manages to come through though, which is good. I appreciate him playing repairman but I also appreciate him pointing out the many flaws - and I don't feel one bit shy about saying it sounds lousy.
@@travis6778 "Your" is possessive, "you're" is a contraction of "you are". As in "you are going to have to learn better english if you want to correct others."
I followed your advice and ran MakerGod after Marooned on Marduk, my players absolutely loved it and preferred MakerGod to Marooned on Marduk (although they appreciated both). It took us three 4-5 hour-long sessions to finish MakerGod and it's much less linear than Marooned on Marduk.
Awesome to hear. I enjoyed reading MakerGod. It looks great. Not only well written, but the fit and finish looks 100% professionally published, rather than the way far too many self-published adventures look. Unfortunately, our campaign ended up going a different direction, so we still haven't had the chance to run it. Very happy to hear that you and your group had fun with it.
He should have kept the one kid alive and had that kid be the NPC they’re carting around instead of an unconscious, stretcher-bound adult. It ramps up the moral dilemma of “if we keep carting this helpless person around are we going to be killed” dilemma. Though the GM would have to play the kid as so traumatized that they stay relatively quiet or heartless PCs will think it an easy decision to leave her to the hyenas/Ohgma raiders.
I did something similar in a game of Earthdawn. The party were trying to infiltrate a fortress to rescue people from Theran Elementalist who used them for experiments. One of the prisoners was a pc's daughter. However, the Elementalist was aware of this and let them take the prisoners, having cast a spell upon the daughter that would only trigger when the party got far enough away from the fortress. The spell caused the child's temperature to rise to such levels that she immolated. The Elememtalist was a real sicko and did this to reinforce the fact that he could hurt the party in other ways and wanted to punish them for opposing him. The pc could do nothing but watch.
@@jasonnewell7036 Sounds a bit iffy though, TBH. I suppose you could do something like that to one player once, using NPC bonds of players to tug at the heartstrings with moral dilemmas and killing them off is a way to accidentally ensure some go "Got it, stop caring about NPCs." Making such things happen reasonably unavoidably just might cause disengagement.
I was just rewatching this and I just realized there's a subtle zoom in during the description of the woman and her children on the plane. Brilliant early camera work, Seth!
Dude, thank you so much for making these videos. I don't even play Traveller(yet) or CoC, but watching these videos is so copacetic and calming, I'm going through a really hard break up right now and this stuff is just what I need to veg out and chill. Stay awesome, Seth
Between this adventure and Dead Light, I'm starting to build up a fondest for Adventures where the adventure Hook is completely unrelated to the adventure itself. I try not to overuse them because my players are smart and are eventually going to catch on to it, but sometimes I can't just resist the look of shock on their faces.
Best used very sparingly. That only works a few times before your PCs stop believing any of your hooks and just start looking for twists right off, to the point where they derail things themselves in search of one.
Here's how I ran it: They bump into each other in line to go down the space elevator in the Highport of a trade hub world called New Texas (this is set one sector over from Sol, so the systems were settle by sublight ships). The shuttle is actually attached to the space elevator cable at the Highport, but is aerodynamic and carries pilots as a backup incase they have to detach or the cable is damaged. As they are going down they meet a mother who is just moving here from a nearby system with her two kids. Her husband came here a year ago to get a job and now that he is being promoted to manager of a ground based shipyard he could afford to pay for their trip here. During the trip down the the line gets attacked and breaks, so they have to land the ship. One of the kids, a 12 year old boy, can't get his belt to work. The mom comes over to buckle it, but a missile hits the shuttle and both of them fly out of the ship at over 100 kilometers up. The 8 year old daughter hits her head and is knocked out. After the crash they find that the pilot was dead. So they begin their trek across the desert in an area that was nuked 100 years ago during a war. It's safe, especially given the anti-radiation drugs in the ship's emergency kit, but no one lives here. They find themselves in an abandoned city where they meet a family of hunters who come out there to hunt coyotes once a year, as the are eating too many of the local herbivores. Mom, dad, and daughter (17) took daughters boyfriend (18) with them. They are kind of rednecks. They have to keep the coyote packs at bay until dawn, when the rescue ships can get to them. The rescuers are busy with the worse cases near the city, and the crash is 500 kilometers away on a different continent. After the rescuers get there they say goodbye to the family and return to the city, and return the girl to her father, as well as give him the bad news.
Go left instead of right? Spider monster nest with dead natives wrapped in webs and bloated with spider eggs. We can get darker because someone opened that door earlier.
I'd lean into the "daring" part of the "daring raid"--I don't think this is a plothole at all, but rather a good idea that isn't fleshed out enough. The thing you mentioned about the player ship being damaged at the end would dovetail really well with a mis-jumped ship clipping the high port and doing major damage to it when the raid starts. Likewise, I'd have another of those mis-jumped ships crash into the planet after a near-miss with the shuttle. It would be a good bit of "horizon detail" on their leaving the shuttle, to have a wrecked ship sinking into the sea... and it'd also give the raiders a reason to get there remarkably quickly, since they'd be looking for their own survivors, helping to avoid the inevitable debate about "how could they track this tiny shuttle so easily?" If the daring jump into the gravity well seems too risky to make sense, I'd just add some gun platforms in orbit defending the port (since they do live right near a planet which launches raids) with the raiders risking such a dangerous jump to bypass the bulk of the defenses which would shred them otherwise. You could also split the difference have the raider's main force fly in openly, giving the PCs a day or two of warning of it before they even leave the high port, but have nobody there be worried due to their powerful orbital defenses ("They try this all the time, and it never works.") only for the aforementioned daring jump to come in as a near-suicidal attack on the gun platforms right before the raider forces get into range. That sudden shift from "It's fine" to "Oh no!" could be just the right sort of pulling-the-rug-out moment that would really dazzle a group of players (at least, assuming they aren't TOO jaded.)
With adventures like this that have so many allied NPCs, I like to spread the love and give them to the players. I split the NPCs amongst the players, giving their stat blocks so that bring a fight, the players can handle allied tactics. This frees me up to handle the villains. And it allows the NPCs to make more efficient and PC-friendly actions that I would never have thought of, since I’m busy with the enemy as well.
Sounds like a great campaign opener. have the PC's be seated together but strangers prior to the ship crash and thus bond over the adventure and become a crew.
9:18 that bit had me in tears of despair. None of the people I've ever played with would run in this situation, no matter what hints the GM might give and how obviously superior the enemy is. Running, surrendering or trying to avoid conflict in a first place is something I have yet to encounter in a game (that I participate in). I'm truly jealous of your players.
I've got similar feelings, though I can confirm there are some GMs that running is always the worst option. Suffice to say, some take dnd movement speed as the only plausible indicator of whether or not you can run away, and quite a lot of beasties move more than 30 feet baseline.
I was thinking the same. Given they had any weapons at all, a shotgun and rifle were mentioned, you'd stay and fight cause the raiders have a space caple ship! Any space capable ship from ten tonne launch, ships boat, modular cutter, up to a pinnace, is going to have some form of infra-red, thermal, or passive EMS sensors that will spot and track wherever they run.
Thanks for this excellent review and suggestions. As a long time player it drives me crazy how Mongoose can put out a product which misses stuff like 100d limit. And how they get the guy who missed that to write everything they publish...
Oh this adventure is fantastic. I had a similar idea to start out my Traveller campaign by marooning the party, so I'm going to heavily steal ideas from this.
8:27 had me laughing out loud. Well done. Having purchased and read the module, I think it would have benefited from more fauna and flora stats. Additionally some area maps for the wilderness and the ruined city.
Groups I was part of ran this twice both as the start of our campaigns. One time we managed to form an Alliance with the natives and pulled our own Trojan Horse capturing the Raider ship which we took on a quest for revenge. The other time we evaded the raiders but still wanted revenge. Fortunately the job we came for involved that. We were provided a small, well armed for its size ship, and the job was to hinder the raiders, and the search for evidence regarding the possibility that a rival corporation was aiding the raiders.
I have a couple of the old scenarios I want to try (Annic Nova, and Ship in the Lake). So those are in the queue for sometime soon I hope. It just comes down to finding time for them all.
@@SSkorkowsky Thanks Seth, I have really enjoyed your reviews and thanks to yourself and Matt Colville ended up running against the cult of the reptile god. It was great and both of your advice really helped. I have been very keen to run traveller for a while and am into old school scenarios. Would be great to get some more tips. Oh and congrats on the award. You deserve it! Cheers!
14:50 Oh Oghman raiders... i always tought it were augmented raiders. (Listing more the wathing) Always having heavly chromed pirats in mind, ... like Maelstrom pirats in space.
What I did - i run this as a starter, for team of travellers with Science Ship, which ended with planed science adventure continuing with recovery of this ship from nearby Oghma raider sector. Finally with destroyed science ship, Oghma liberated from raiders rule (well, total destruction of raiders..), travellers actually helping enforcing GeDeCo rule in Oghma, frustrated revolutionaries on Oghma (they did help to kick raiders, then betrayed players from the self interest to get the biggest ship in raider fleet as their own...), players with old, but fully repaired and outfited far trader, obviously pissed at me for "stealing" that bigger ship... This one can be a good start for the rules familiarity imo.
I used this adventure - modified to fit - as a StarTrek adventure. It works pretty well. Had to change a few details - especially to accomodate for the Star Fleet characters phasers and stuff. So imagine this world - one of three planets a pretty small isolationist starfaring species has settled. We are at the dawn of the Dominion war, so the Federation is looking out for allies, or at least try disuade people from join up with the Founders. You are on a diplomatic mission to this strange world, which, due to some old weapon system, or other strange activity discharges and destroys anything electronic. Part of your mission is, to guide one Professor Gideon Seyetik to a research outpost on the surface helping out with finding out about the radiation phenomenon. From there it's basically the same adventure, with getting shot down and hunted - but by Breen, for extra pain - fleeing, finding allies and so on and so forth. For 'more options' I had a Dominion / Breen outpost testing and refining some new-fangled dampening field weapon. With the world being either the place they found the weapon system - or the world being its first victim in a test run...
The unique thing about Traveller is the curious mix of space opera & hard sci-fi, where else would you be encouraged to role play going through customs...with a dog-head man 😊....incidentally, your little ‘addition’ was DARK. You must be an amazing CoC Keeper 💜😈🦑
"where else would you be encouraged to role play going through customs" Um, literally every espionage RPG ever? Many Call of Cthulhu games? At least one published FASA Star Trek adventure, and probably a few Star Wars ones. Not really that uncommon an thing. It's almost the same trope as talking your way past the city watch in a fantasy RPG, really.
Yeah, sometimes. Especially when you're in the Imperial Core. Didn't Han literally get his "Solo" moniker from something said by an Imperial customs agent?
Do tell. Haven't seen the Disney era stuff. It'll eventually imbed itself in my skull by cultural omosis same way the prequel stuff did, but I'm sure not rushing into the experience. Regardless, there are certainly customs on some SW worlds, and patrols between them. Part of what makes the Empire the Baddies is their love of bureaucracy - along with all the racism, slavery, and genocide, of course.
Excellent review, Seth, as usual. My only issue is that the time between the fall of the Sindalian Empire and the current age (say, 1105) is a lot more than 200 years. The SE collapsed in -1441, which puts it at closer to 2,500 years ago.
I've got it. I threw in on their Pound of Flesh Kickstarter, but in the window between then and when it delivered, Traveller fell into my lap and we're enjoying the hell out of it. I'll get to Mothership eventually, but trying to learn a new Sci-Fi RPG while still trying to learn a different Sci-Fi RPG just sounds like a lot of confusion. So I'll hold off until we're pretty solid with Traveller's system.
Interesting that the adventure completely ignores Marduk's Tainted atmosphere - maybe the Travellers should be wearing Filter Masks when on the surface to avoid damage & the NPC's encountered should also have them I guess. Also the law level seems to change from the UWP (6 Shotguns only) to the adventure text (handguns so L5?)
Speaking on the suggestion that the players should've done an adventure on Marduk before this scenario and how there is a friend from GeDeCo waiting for them, how about instead of preparing a scenario for AFTER Marooned on Marduk, you instead have them meet the contact and go down planet side to finish it (maybe a survey for future GeDeCo projects on the mainland) and when they're going back UP to the High Port, the Oghman Raiders attack and shoot down their shuttle. Compact way of giving the PCs the knowledge that the continent is uninhabited.
Thanks for doing this one, I have it and have wanted to run it (once I get another group, and one that will play sci-fi and not just fantasy/D&D). The raid information was great, too many game writers ignore the rules of the game when writing flavor text / backgrounds and it is very annoying, as well as causes plenty of issues for GMs. The first thing I thought of when you mentioned the creatures in the ruins was the Molgrim from Earthdawn - it looks like something that would be roaming around Gamma World. (Seriously, if you don't know what it looks like, look it up, it is perfect.) One thing: my experience with newer gamers over the last several years has led me to use more "railroaded" adventures and to suggest them for beginning GMs. I would say that 90% of the new gamers I have met have preferred the more structured adventure format. They say that it makes it easy because more options usually mean more confusion, and it works as great examples of how to play/run the game. So, the more linear adventure format of this adventure, I believe, is better for beginning players and GMs. As a longtime lover of Gamma World, I would have certainly expanded on the Exploration of the Ruins part of the adventure. That is so much my jam! (PA is my favorite all-time setting, specifically the post WW III with mutants and strange tech type of PA - toss in some alien stuff and I am giddy as Japanese School girl meeting their Manga idol.) Once again, a great review; entertaining and informative.
I would add the mother and children as a hook for the players. Not as red shirts, you know maybe the mom is terrified and the players have to lead her and her children to safety. Or even better add more weapons to the ship like some plastic explosives and detonators so that way they can play Rambo and make the augmen raiders regret the day they tussled with them. This module has great potential for some epic guerrilla warfare. The players have to play it smart and know where and when to ambush them to thin the herd for the final confrontation with the raiders.
4:45 i would like to point out that the size of the planet is 3. Gravity is only a fraction of earth and the 100 diameter is likewise reduced. The highport might actually be in ideal range of anyone jumping in at 100. Gravity is often overlooked in these modules.
Instead of the horror scene killing both children, keep one of them alive. Making it the new comatose-stretcher NPC, but, neither in a coma nor on a stretcher (also since playing children is a bit easier than adults IMO). Could let the players work out how to deal with a traumatized child and, if their backstory holds some significance with being alone/an orphan, make it so that the mother was the only relatives the kid had, letting your PCs adopt it... Which has a 50% chance of turnig the game into an emotional story about a team of helpfull, carring travellers, becoming replacement parents and a 50% chance of it turning into a 90s sitcom about a group of misfits, crooks and thieves aboard a spaceship having to raise this child who doesn't have anyone else (hijinx ensues)
My problem was managing the issue of communications. Background info on Marduk says that the various tribes of the various island populations can no longer understand one another's languages, so it is safe to assume the same for those hiding on the continent.
How does the hundred diameter rule work with Lagrange points? It would stand to reason that if the misjump chance is gravity based then popping out in an area that basically has as close to zero gravity as you get in a solar system would work just fine. It would still be a super skill based thing though since you are trying to hit an even more precise target.
Seth I would really like to hear your opinion on the new "The Expanse" role-playing game, I ran small story last night with my group, and we had a blast, I really like the game system (reminds me a bit of CP2020) and the world(s) and lore is amazing.
Maybe I’m oversimplifying but this sounds like a really stripped down linear version of Crash On Volturnus (the adventure that came in the original Star Frontiers box set)
This sounds like an old Traveller adventure written by Loren Wiseman, Marooned. It comes with an isometric map that can be pressed into service for this adventure; the terrain is similar (plains and jungles) and there are settlements of low-tech natives. Even an island south of the main continent. Random Animal Encounters include Hunters. Double Adventure 4: Marooned/Marooned Alone can be downloaded for free at the Far Future Enterprises website: www.farfuture.net/Errata%20Classic%20Traveller%20(Full).pdf
Great video. What I do not understand in this adventure is, that The Systems Marduk and Oghma are classified as green (secure system) and not as amber zone at least, considering the frequent Raider attacks.
I'm not sure why Oghma isn't Red or Amber. The Trojan Reach book (if I recall) talks about some secure port that's orbiting a gas giant in the system that's safe to visit (I think GedeCo owns it), but the planet deserves some flag that's it's pretty unwelcoming.
Or a post-apoc feel to them, where they're still picking over the ruins of their ancestors' cities for bits of old techm some of which winds up venerated in a similar way to some of the cargo cult clichés.
Hey Seth, I run Cyberpunk but always have a bit of trouble in firefights involving many npcs. How do you deal with those situations while keeping combat fast-paced and tense? There’s nothing that kills an action scene faster than feeling like it’s a turn based final fantasy fight
As GM you can always predetermine the firefight for thr NPCs and roll random dice behind a screen. Remember, you're guiding along the storyline, not actually gaming the NPC's. Do what you need to keep the game flowing the way you intend it to.
I used the gig from Gods of Marduk as the lead-in bait to get them here. Hired elsewhere to bring the fusion power core to that adventure. I don't know if you've ever been on an otherwise basically empty plane (do they still fly those anymore) but it's a nice atmospheric thing to set the tone of 'meaningless backwater'. I did have the other adventure as a distraction, however. Attack: It says the flight down takes iirc 3 hours and since the highport isn't geostationary this works; 100d transit from jump point at 3g is
There's a lot that I like about it. It's Skill-Based. There's a ton of resources out there for it. But one of the biggest appeals is that it manages to hit with sci-fi the same niche that D&D has with fantasy. It's got both an elaborate setting with extensive lore, and is still perfectly generic so a GM can just ignore the pre-written lore and make up their own world without any problems. With many other games out there, the setting/lore is so interwoven with the game that it can be difficult for a GM to ignore it and just use the game rules against a backdrop of their own world.
do you know any good tutorial videos for this game system, the game sounds interesting and I want to run it with my players but I can't find any good tutorials? If you don't know any is there chance you could make one
Eventually I'll probably make one (sort of like what I did for Call of Cthulhu), but it's going to first require a lot of playtime under my belt before I think I can give a comprehensive series like that. I'm still pretty new to Traveller.
I always find it weird that in space games, where the entire universe is your sandbox, one of the tropes is to maroon PCs. I think it is because GMs are scared of all that potential and fall back on D&D dungeon mode.
Dude, could you make a video series like you did with Call of Cthulhu on the basics of Traveller? I have a D&D group and I think our dm would really dig this game
That is the plan. But first I want to get several more sessions under my belt before I feel I can give it a proper review. The Call of Cthulhu one started after I had years of experience with the game, but right now I only have a couple months experience with Traveller and there's whole areas we haven't even touched (like psionics). One aspect of it that I really do love is that it does for Sci-Fi what D&D does for high-fantasy, and that's being perfectly generic. What I mean is while they both have complex and rich worlds with decades of lore, a GM can decide to ignore all that and just make up their own world without any problem at all. Many games have the world lore so directly tied to the rules that it becomes difficult to separate them, which means you're kind of stuck playing in the game's world setting rather than your own. Traveller GMs can opt to play in the 3rd Imperium setting and be perfectly happy (there's 4 decades worth of lore at their disposal) or they can just grab a blank map and start making up their own universe with zero problems.
@@SSkorkowsky it really does sound like an amazing game to play, you just have a way about explaining things and making them easy to understand for the layman such as myself. Also, would you do a series about the Cyberpunk rules and regulations and such? That looked like it was an awesome game to try as well
May be tell the players that the previus war in this continet leaved so high radioactive that nobody lives here, anyone living in here would die by radioactivity in 1 year.
Traveller has been out since 1977 and gone through multiple iterations, and I really do think that the one by Mongoose is the best. That said, there's 40+ years worth of materials out there for Traveller, and even if it's written for an older version of the rules, it's very easy to convert to the Mongoose version. It's good as fairly hard sci-fi without bring too rule heavy.
If they have a ship, then they just park it up at the Highport. The Downport won't allow non-GeDeCo ships to land on their little island, so people have to take the commuter shuttle to get there.
I will say that out of the Traveller scenarios I've reviewed so-far, High and Dry has been my favorite. I have a few more that I plan to run that I think are better. My "To-Run" list just keeps getting longer and longer.
It's pre-Space Age. So they've got electricity and combustion engines and the beginnings of Atomic technology. I like to think of it like one of those old episodes of Star Trek where they used some mob-movie set and were driving around in 1930's cars.
"...one of those old episodes of Star Trek where they used some mob-movie set and were driving around in 1930's cars." A Piece of the Action. Kirk was so inept at driving stick that when FASA came out with their Trek RPG they went out of their way including a skill for driving archaic land vehicles on his character sheet at a whopping 2% rating for him. Same episode gave us the card game Fizzbin, which is clearly the best game ever and should appear in all scifi RPGs that include gambling scenes. :) memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Fizzbin
No, but if you went with the "previously here with an archeology team" idea Seth came up with you could plausibly have at least some PCs able to speak the language their ancestors did - it's not a lost language and still has modern speakers - which might let them work out communications with whatever evolved form of the tongue the natives speak now. Might take some skill checks, but not impossible to get simple points across.
Yeah I just watch these because I’m curious about other systems, I’ve only played (usually As the DM) advanced Dungeons and dragons (mostly 2nd edition), and I am somewhat embarrassed to say the Star Wars RPG from West End games. I was real into Star Wars as an elementary schooler/middle schooler and DMed the RPG, but now I find it a little embarrassing because now that I’m in my mid twenties, and after watching sci gems like Star Trek:TNG and DS9 on Netflix, along with Babylon 5, and Battlestar Galactica, the Star Wars movies impress me way less than they used to. Even the much adored original trilogy... maybe part of it is the fast pacing that makes some things seem ridiculous (like Lando becoming a general just like that with no previous military command experience, same with Han Solo) and the Hollywood dialogue that just makes it seem shallow and thin to me, or even like the movies are made for a young or at least immature audience. Compared to the shows I mentioned when I watch Star Wars aside from the setting which I like it seems like a dumbed down version of those shows I mentioned, with the characters not feeling like real people nearly as much, (and Luke just seems kind like an annoying douche a lot of the time), and there is a distinct lack of deep ness and wonder compared to those shows as well. I still tolerate them in a popcorn flick way and the Star Wars universe and ships are very cool, so I like the base setting and the style of space opera it uses, but not so much the execution and how the story is told. Even as a kid when I GMed for the Star Wars RPG I basically used the setting and mechanics of the universe, the big capital ships along with small fighters, energy weapons and blasters, the dramatic space opera style of dress, and the magic of the force but I had my own setting of a few neutral solar systems that I made up where the Empire and Rebels were not very involved and I had my own antagonists and all that.
Seth, I love your reviews, but my god, the Traveler art never fails to disappoint. It is the least fun vision of the future I can imagine, and kills any interest I have in the game.
This sounds really incomplete, uninspired, and poorly thought out, especially for an intro scenario that's supposed to sell players and GMs on the game. The jump limit botch shows an utter lack of comprehension of the basics of the Traveller setting, too. I bet it's full of typos as well. It is from Mongoose, after all. In short, thanks for the warning.
I don't recall finding any typos, but I'm also fairly immune to noticing them. As long as I can clearly see what the intended meaning was, my brain just fills in the blanks and I keep reading. For me, the scenario feels like a personal game written for a specific group. Like, when I write an adventure for my players, I'm 90% sure what directions they'll go and that's the area that gets filled in the most. If they surprise me and throw me for a loop, I'll just have to fill the rest as we go, but most of the time I can accurately guess their path beforehand (a benefit of playing with them so long). However, when publishing a scenario, you can't guess what direction the players will take because you don't know the group or the players. You have to fill in several directions so the GM is ready for multiple paths. This scenario only gave us one. Now... our current game is one of those self-pub adventures someone did through the Traveller Aid Society program (similar to the programs that Call of Cthulhu and D&D have now). It's amazingly crude in how they laid out only 1 path and there are gaping plotholes, weird logic leaps, zero foreshadowing, and other problems (even found typos). On paper, it's pretty bad. However, there's something about it that really hooked me, so I'm running it (it's a 4-part mini campaign) We'll be starting Part 2 this weekend and I'll probably do a running review for it like I did for Two-Headed Serpent. But we are having SO much fun with it. Part 1 was our best Traveller game yet. The review will be something like "This is what we started with. Here's what I turned it in to."
I spent years doing proof reading as a side job. Mongoose products are physically painful for me to read, or at least they were ten years ago and I see little reason to expect that to have changed. That said, the most impressive thing about your module reviews is the repair work you do on their flaws. Makes you stand out from the crowd here on UA-cam, and it's more useful for people who might actually use the item being reviewed than simply pointing out mistakes without suggesting patches and workarounds.
Thanks. I needed that. I'm currently getting trolled by some dude who insists that my offering suggestions and tips based off my play experience somehow lessens the review. He believes that a pure and unbiased RPG review cannot be done if the reviewer has played the game, and my having played the subject of my reviews somehow diminishes them. (I don't get it.) So thank you. I appreciate the kind words right now.
Your troll is simply wrong on a fundamental level. The idea being LESS familiar with the material somehow improves the quality of that review is patently and demonstrably false. We are all familiar with ideas that look good on paper but don't work out in practice, and with RPGs and their adventures it's very hard to spot that sort of thing without experience. Now, everyone's experience in a playthrough will be different and you can't hope to catch everything that might cause problems but hey, you're trying and you've put the work into a proper playthrough. Can't say that about many reviewers. I would suggest you take the Professor's words to heart: ua-cam.com/video/jclPWidTfak/v-deo.html No, not the part about the internet being made of cats. :)
Yikes, as a new mother if a Gm threw that bit of horror with the mother and kids at me I'd get up and leave the room having a panic attack. Just listening to that description caused me to stop watching and take a break from the computer. I try to keep up to date on all of Seth's videos but I didn't need that today.
Imagine being a player who only watches the first minute of Seth videos, but then has to turn it off to prevent spoilers.
Indeed. I'm very glad I rate my chances of ever playing one of the adventures he reviews as low enough to take the risk. :D
Whoever thinks "hm, might play any one of them any day" will miss out on a lot of fun.
There are a few who do (which I find pretty impressive).
Then there's the other side who say, "I'll never play this adventure because we don't play this system," watch it, and then six months later their group changes to whatever system the adventure is for and now they're running the adventure I reviewed, but several of the players spoiled themselves. The second case also becomes the question of, "would they have ever played it had they not seen the review?" sort of like the Matrix and the broken vase.
Yeah, that's a bit unfortunate then. But on the flipside, the enjoyment from your videos (and the inspiration people who GM other systems can take from them) are worth it if they are not reasonably certain they could play this adventure in the next couple of months. A lot of stuff will be forgotten by then.
And in the same vein I will continue to read all modules and the like I can get for enjoyment and educational purposes (I tend to be GMing more than playing, so it's not that big a problem); simple question of a risk-reward-balance. Ironically the one time I actually did run a printed campaign myself (Paths of the Damned for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay) it ended as a bust because book 2 wasn't quite the group's style (and not really modifyable to be so) and some of the players didn't quite dig the system. ;)
So long story short: Too much gain in these videos to skip them unless the spoiler threat is estimated high.
Seth Skorkowsky I‘m pretty much on the save side here. Yes, I bought Traveller because of your videos (and a little bit of interest beforehand), but there is close to zero chance that anybody else but myself will DM it.
I tend to be the GM for most of my games, so I watch the whole of every video with impunity. If I ever play in a game and someone runs a reviewed adventure, I'm going to have to inform them that they'll need to make some changes, because I also tend to purchase and read them after watching the reviews.
You could always turn this into "Pitch Black", and have an alien life form attack you only at night. That movie is a great inspiration for this game.
I'm very annoyed with myself for not thinking of Pitch Black here. It's obvious now that you mention it.
Vin Diesel, I have failed you. :-(
And this is why I’m going to combine this set up with flatlined.
Riddick! There are actually a lot of great sci-fi, or even fantasy movies / games where the beginning is to be stranded in strange lands. Pitch Black being one of the most amazing, especially since it really gives that forboding of being on an alien world that has a strange day / night cycle.
05:57 And then Mi-Go start appearing right outside of the window...wait...wrong scenario. :P I hope someone other than Seth gets the in-joke.
Brother Malachai Quick! Look behind his screen and see if there are new character sheets with our new bodies.
Definitely a similar setup, indeed.
Would've been a better scenario than what it actually turned out to be, frankly. Could even fit the setting with a bit of a twist - Droyne are a lot like Mi-Go when they're still working some bizarre agenda of their Ancient ancestors.
@@richmcgee434 Yeh Grandfather was a devious sod
"there's, something on the wing!"
Seth once again demonstrating his brilliance. Most Traveler scenarios are: "The players are attacked by villains. The referee will need to fill in the details." But Seth can make it fun.
"Uh... horror author."
That cracked me up. :P
Same. 😂
I had liked the video already, but had to unlike it to like it again at that point.
I really appreciate your ability to not say "This aspect was bad and stupid because X", but instead say "Now, I found X to somewhat hidner the gameplay, and if they'd simply added Y then I feel the module would have been better."
The poor quality of the premise and writing still manages to come through though, which is good. I appreciate him playing repairman but I also appreciate him pointing out the many flaws - and I don't feel one bit shy about saying it sounds lousy.
You're
@@travis6778 "Your" is possessive, "you're" is a contraction of "you are". As in "you are going to have to learn better english if you want to correct others."
I followed your advice and ran MakerGod after Marooned on Marduk, my players absolutely loved it and preferred MakerGod to Marooned on Marduk (although they appreciated both). It took us three 4-5 hour-long sessions to finish MakerGod and it's much less linear than Marooned on Marduk.
Awesome to hear. I enjoyed reading MakerGod. It looks great. Not only well written, but the fit and finish looks 100% professionally published, rather than the way far too many self-published adventures look. Unfortunately, our campaign ended up going a different direction, so we still haven't had the chance to run it. Very happy to hear that you and your group had fun with it.
Usually, I think me and my friends are pretty vicious GMs.
With that bit with the mom and the kids though, I think you just put ALL of us to shame
I bet he took notes when Bambi's mom got shot
He should have kept the one kid alive and had that kid be the NPC they’re carting around instead of an unconscious, stretcher-bound adult. It ramps up the moral dilemma of “if we keep carting this helpless person around are we going to be killed” dilemma. Though the GM would have to play the kid as so traumatized that they stay relatively quiet or heartless PCs will think it an easy decision to leave her to the hyenas/Ohgma raiders.
I did something similar in a game of Earthdawn. The party were trying to infiltrate a fortress to rescue people from Theran Elementalist who used them for experiments. One of the prisoners was a pc's daughter. However, the Elementalist was aware of this and let them take the prisoners, having cast a spell upon the daughter that would only trigger when the party got far enough away from the fortress. The spell caused the child's temperature to rise to such levels that she immolated. The Elememtalist was a real sicko and did this to reinforce the fact that he could hurt the party in other ways and wanted to punish them for opposing him. The pc could do nothing but watch.
He sounds exactly like me at times. . . Though I am trying to tone down my horror leanings.. . .
@@jasonnewell7036 Sounds a bit iffy though, TBH. I suppose you could do something like that to one player once, using NPC bonds of players to tug at the heartstrings with moral dilemmas and killing them off is a way to accidentally ensure some go "Got it, stop caring about NPCs." Making such things happen reasonably unavoidably just might cause disengagement.
Sounds like a good module to play after watching all the Riddick movies.
In space no-one can hear the Call of Cthulhu.
This is why E.T had so much trouble, no one to accept the call,
.......jerks
In space ALL you can hear is the Call of Cthulhu.
I was just rewatching this and I just realized there's a subtle zoom in during the description of the woman and her children on the plane. Brilliant early camera work, Seth!
Oh man that digression into the horrific scene on the plane was top notch. I really need to buy your books one of these years.
I have to admit, when Seth showed the folks going through the ruins, I was like "Look out, that ferocious beast you guys were fighting has a machete!"
Dude, thank you so much for making these videos. I don't even play Traveller(yet) or CoC, but watching these videos is so copacetic and calming, I'm going through a really hard break up right now and this stuff is just what I need to veg out and chill. Stay awesome, Seth
Between this adventure and Dead Light, I'm starting to build up a fondest for Adventures where the adventure Hook is completely unrelated to the adventure itself. I try not to overuse them because my players are smart and are eventually going to catch on to it, but sometimes I can't just resist the look of shock on their faces.
Best used very sparingly. That only works a few times before your PCs stop believing any of your hooks and just start looking for twists right off, to the point where they derail things themselves in search of one.
@@richmcgee434 Haha, yeah. Then I can make the twist be that... there is no twist. XD
@@EvilSandwich Well, your username definitely checks out lol
Here's how I ran it:
They bump into each other in line to go down the space elevator in the Highport of a trade hub world called New Texas (this is set one sector over from Sol, so the systems were settle by sublight ships). The shuttle is actually attached to the space elevator cable at the Highport, but is aerodynamic and carries pilots as a backup incase they have to detach or the cable is damaged.
As they are going down they meet a mother who is just moving here from a nearby system with her two kids. Her husband came here a year ago to get a job and now that he is being promoted to manager of a ground based shipyard he could afford to pay for their trip here.
During the trip down the the line gets attacked and breaks, so they have to land the ship. One of the kids, a 12 year old boy, can't get his belt to work. The mom comes over to buckle it, but a missile hits the shuttle and both of them fly out of the ship at over 100 kilometers up. The 8 year old daughter hits her head and is knocked out.
After the crash they find that the pilot was dead. So they begin their trek across the desert in an area that was nuked 100 years ago during a war. It's safe, especially given the anti-radiation drugs in the ship's emergency kit, but no one lives here.
They find themselves in an abandoned city where they meet a family of hunters who come out there to hunt coyotes once a year, as the are eating too many of the local herbivores. Mom, dad, and daughter (17) took daughters boyfriend (18) with them. They are kind of rednecks.
They have to keep the coyote packs at bay until dawn, when the rescue ships can get to them. The rescuers are busy with the worse cases near the city, and the crash is 500 kilometers away on a different continent.
After the rescuers get there they say goodbye to the family and return to the city, and return the girl to her father, as well as give him the bad news.
Go left instead of right? Spider monster nest with dead natives wrapped in webs and bloated with spider eggs. We can get darker because someone opened that door earlier.
I'd lean into the "daring" part of the "daring raid"--I don't think this is a plothole at all, but rather a good idea that isn't fleshed out enough.
The thing you mentioned about the player ship being damaged at the end would dovetail really well with a mis-jumped ship clipping the high port and doing major damage to it when the raid starts.
Likewise, I'd have another of those mis-jumped ships crash into the planet after a near-miss with the shuttle. It would be a good bit of "horizon detail" on their leaving the shuttle, to have a wrecked ship sinking into the sea... and it'd also give the raiders a reason to get there remarkably quickly, since they'd be looking for their own survivors, helping to avoid the inevitable debate about "how could they track this tiny shuttle so easily?"
If the daring jump into the gravity well seems too risky to make sense, I'd just add some gun platforms in orbit defending the port (since they do live right near a planet which launches raids) with the raiders risking such a dangerous jump to bypass the bulk of the defenses which would shred them otherwise.
You could also split the difference have the raider's main force fly in openly, giving the PCs a day or two of warning of it before they even leave the high port, but have nobody there be worried due to their powerful orbital defenses ("They try this all the time, and it never works.") only for the aforementioned daring jump to come in as a near-suicidal attack on the gun platforms right before the raider forces get into range. That sudden shift from "It's fine" to "Oh no!" could be just the right sort of pulling-the-rug-out moment that would really dazzle a group of players (at least, assuming they aren't TOO jaded.)
One year late, but I will certainly use this once I run this scenario!
With adventures like this that have so many allied NPCs, I like to spread the love and give them to the players. I split the NPCs amongst the players, giving their stat blocks so that bring a fight, the players can handle allied tactics. This frees me up to handle the villains. And it allows the NPCs to make more efficient and PC-friendly actions that I would never have thought of, since I’m busy with the enemy as well.
Sounds like a great campaign opener. have the PC's be seated together but strangers prior to the ship crash and thus bond over the adventure and become a crew.
How did this gem get past me ? I thought I watched all your videos? Oh I see subscribed
11:37 Took me way too long to realize that was a Vargr. Rusty on my Traveller lore, apparently.
9:18 that bit had me in tears of despair. None of the people I've ever played with would run in this situation, no matter what hints the GM might give and how obviously superior the enemy is. Running, surrendering or trying to avoid conflict in a first place is something I have yet to encounter in a game (that I participate in). I'm truly jealous of your players.
I've got similar feelings, though I can confirm there are some GMs that running is always the worst option. Suffice to say, some take dnd movement speed as the only plausible indicator of whether or not you can run away, and quite a lot of beasties move more than 30 feet baseline.
Maybe the combat is a bit easy then?
Yeah That's what I was thinking . All My people would be hanging in trying to fight off the raiders
I was thinking the same. Given they had any weapons at all, a shotgun and rifle were mentioned, you'd stay and fight cause the raiders have a space caple ship! Any space capable ship from ten tonne launch, ships boat, modular cutter, up to a pinnace, is going to have some form of infra-red, thermal, or passive EMS sensors that will spot and track wherever they run.
What an interesting scenario. Think I will use it for inspiration in my own game. Loved the skits in this too :)
Thanks for this excellent review and suggestions. As a long time player it drives me crazy how Mongoose can put out a product which misses stuff like 100d limit. And how they get
the guy who missed that to write everything they publish...
Good review, I'm very interested in hearing more of your experiences with the new traveler rules and universe.
Excellent as always. Keep up the good work. Love the skits and the vargr!
Oh this adventure is fantastic. I had a similar idea to start out my Traveller campaign by marooning the party, so I'm going to heavily steal ideas from this.
I had this one scratched off my short list, but this is better than I expected. Sounds like a great Con game!
Awesome as always and a big value-add if I decide to run this one. Thanks!
8:27 had me laughing out loud. Well done. Having purchased and read the module, I think it would have benefited from more fauna and flora stats. Additionally some area maps for the wilderness and the ruined city.
The adventure also leads into the Pirates of Drinax mini-adventure for Marduk (Gods of Marduk) quite easily.
Groups I was part of ran this twice both as the start of our campaigns. One time we managed to form an Alliance with the natives and pulled our own Trojan Horse capturing the Raider ship which we took on a quest for revenge. The other time we evaded the raiders but still wanted revenge. Fortunately the job we came for involved that. We were provided a small, well armed for its size ship, and the job was to hinder the raiders, and the search for evidence regarding the possibility that a rival corporation was aiding the raiders.
MORE TRAVELLER!
Also, I would love to see a review of the classic traveller adventure.
I have a couple of the old scenarios I want to try (Annic Nova, and Ship in the Lake). So those are in the queue for sometime soon I hope. It just comes down to finding time for them all.
The Traveller Adventure is indeed a grand classic
I will admit to having scratch built a model of the Annic Nova in years past, complete with removable "nacelle" launches. :)
@@SSkorkowsky Thanks Seth, I have really enjoyed your reviews and thanks to yourself and Matt Colville ended up running against the cult of the reptile god. It was great and both of your advice really helped.
I have been very keen to run traveller for a while and am into old school scenarios. Would be great to get some more tips.
Oh and congrats on the award. You deserve it!
Cheers!
14:50 Oh Oghman raiders... i always tought it were augmented raiders. (Listing more the wathing) Always having heavly chromed pirats in mind, ... like Maelstrom pirats in space.
What I did - i run this as a starter, for team of travellers with Science Ship, which ended with planed science adventure continuing with recovery of this ship from nearby Oghma raider sector. Finally with destroyed science ship, Oghma liberated from raiders rule (well, total destruction of raiders..), travellers actually helping enforcing GeDeCo rule in Oghma, frustrated revolutionaries on Oghma (they did help to kick raiders, then betrayed players from the self interest to get the biggest ship in raider fleet as their own...), players with old, but fully repaired and outfited far trader, obviously pissed at me for "stealing" that bigger ship... This one can be a good start for the rules familiarity imo.
I used this adventure - modified to fit - as a StarTrek adventure.
It works pretty well.
Had to change a few details - especially to accomodate for the Star Fleet characters phasers and stuff. So imagine this world - one of three planets a pretty small isolationist starfaring species has settled.
We are at the dawn of the Dominion war, so the Federation is looking out for allies, or at least try disuade people from join up with the Founders. You are on a diplomatic mission to this strange world, which, due to some old weapon system, or other strange activity discharges and destroys anything electronic. Part of your mission is, to guide one Professor Gideon Seyetik to a research outpost on the surface helping out with finding out about the radiation phenomenon.
From there it's basically the same adventure, with getting shot down and hunted - but by Breen, for extra pain - fleeing, finding allies and so on and so forth.
For 'more options' I had a Dominion / Breen outpost testing and refining some new-fangled dampening field weapon. With the world being either the place they found the weapon system - or the world being its first victim in a test run...
The unique thing about Traveller is the curious mix of space opera & hard sci-fi, where else would you be encouraged to role play going through customs...with a dog-head man 😊....incidentally, your little ‘addition’ was DARK. You must be an amazing CoC Keeper 💜😈🦑
"where else would you be encouraged to role play going through customs" Um, literally every espionage RPG ever? Many Call of Cthulhu games? At least one published FASA Star Trek adventure, and probably a few Star Wars ones. Not really that uncommon an thing. It's almost the same trope as talking your way past the city watch in a fantasy RPG, really.
@@richmcgee434
Wait, you go through customs in star wars?
Yeah, sometimes. Especially when you're in the Imperial Core. Didn't Han literally get his "Solo" moniker from something said by an Imperial customs agent?
@@richmcgee434
That was a recruitment officer, He joined the imperial army
Do tell. Haven't seen the Disney era stuff. It'll eventually imbed itself in my skull by cultural omosis same way the prequel stuff did, but I'm sure not rushing into the experience. Regardless, there are certainly customs on some SW worlds, and patrols between them. Part of what makes the Empire the Baddies is their love of bureaucracy - along with all the racism, slavery, and genocide, of course.
Seems like there's a dearth of high quality adventures for Traveller.
Huh. I was watching some of your back-catalogue just this afternoon thinking, "I wonder if we're ever going to see more Traveller reviews..."
An impressive set of actions you add to make this a great adventure!
Excellent review, Seth, as usual. My only issue is that the time between the fall of the Sindalian Empire and the current age (say, 1105) is a lot more than 200 years. The SE collapsed in -1441, which puts it at closer to 2,500 years ago.
"aw, horror author"
LOL, that got me rolling
Great video, very creative execution! Well done!
Ah, traveler. I member getting into it back in the day because of the dos megatraveller games...
You should review the Mothership RPG; I think you would like it quite a lot considering that you like Call of Cthulhu and Traveller so much. ?
I've got it. I threw in on their Pound of Flesh Kickstarter, but in the window between then and when it delivered, Traveller fell into my lap and we're enjoying the hell out of it. I'll get to Mothership eventually, but trying to learn a new Sci-Fi RPG while still trying to learn a different Sci-Fi RPG just sounds like a lot of confusion. So I'll hold off until we're pretty solid with Traveller's system.
Holy Hell, that horror show. I couldn't have taken it; it was rough. Sometimes I am glad you are not my GM, Seth!
Interesting that the adventure completely ignores Marduk's Tainted atmosphere - maybe the Travellers should be wearing Filter Masks when on the surface to avoid damage & the NPC's encountered should also have them I guess. Also the law level seems to change from the UWP (6 Shotguns only) to the adventure text (handguns so L5?)
Great video. Looking forward to the next one!
Speaking on the suggestion that the players should've done an adventure on Marduk before this scenario and how there is a friend from GeDeCo waiting for them, how about instead of preparing a scenario for AFTER Marooned on Marduk, you instead have them meet the contact and go down planet side to finish it (maybe a survey for future GeDeCo projects on the mainland) and when they're going back UP to the High Port, the Oghman Raiders attack and shoot down their shuttle.
Compact way of giving the PCs the knowledge that the continent is uninhabited.
That's good trigger discipline there, Jack. And we're 200 subscribers from 45K!
Step 1: like.
Step 2: comment.
Step 3: actually watch.
Thanks for doing this one, I have it and have wanted to run it (once I get another group, and one that will play sci-fi and not just fantasy/D&D). The raid information was great, too many game writers ignore the rules of the game when writing flavor text / backgrounds and it is very annoying, as well as causes plenty of issues for GMs. The first thing I thought of when you mentioned the creatures in the ruins was the Molgrim from Earthdawn - it looks like something that would be roaming around Gamma World. (Seriously, if you don't know what it looks like, look it up, it is perfect.)
One thing: my experience with newer gamers over the last several years has led me to use more "railroaded" adventures and to suggest them for beginning GMs. I would say that 90% of the new gamers I have met have preferred the more structured adventure format. They say that it makes it easy because more options usually mean more confusion, and it works as great examples of how to play/run the game. So, the more linear adventure format of this adventure, I believe, is better for beginning players and GMs.
As a longtime lover of Gamma World, I would have certainly expanded on the Exploration of the Ruins part of the adventure. That is so much my jam! (PA is my favorite all-time setting, specifically the post WW III with mutants and strange tech type of PA - toss in some alien stuff and I am giddy as Japanese School girl meeting their Manga idol.)
Once again, a great review; entertaining and informative.
I'm using "gods of Murduk" to start this one off.
I would add the mother and children as a hook for the players. Not as red shirts, you know maybe the mom is terrified and the players have to lead her and her children to safety. Or even better add more weapons to the ship like some plastic explosives and detonators so that way they can play Rambo and make the augmen raiders regret the day they tussled with them. This module has great potential for some epic guerrilla warfare. The players have to play it smart and know where and when to ambush them to thin the herd for the final confrontation with the raiders.
4:45 i would like to point out that the size of the planet is 3. Gravity is only a fraction of earth and the 100 diameter is likewise reduced. The highport might actually be in ideal range of anyone jumping in at 100. Gravity is often overlooked in these modules.
Instead of the horror scene killing both children, keep one of them alive.
Making it the new comatose-stretcher NPC, but, neither in a coma nor on a stretcher (also since playing children is a bit easier than adults IMO).
Could let the players work out how to deal with a traumatized child and, if their backstory holds some significance with being alone/an orphan, make it so that the mother was the only relatives the kid had, letting your PCs adopt it...
Which has a 50% chance of turnig the game into an emotional story about a team of helpfull, carring travellers, becoming replacement parents and a 50% chance of it turning into a 90s sitcom about a group of misfits, crooks and thieves aboard a spaceship having to raise this child who doesn't have anyone else (hijinx ensues)
My problem was managing the issue of communications. Background info on Marduk says that the various tribes of the various island populations can no longer understand one another's languages, so it is safe to assume the same for those hiding on the continent.
How does the hundred diameter rule work with Lagrange points? It would stand to reason that if the misjump chance is gravity based then popping out in an area that basically has as close to zero gravity as you get in a solar system would work just fine. It would still be a super skill based thing though since you are trying to hit an even more precise target.
Indeed good sir, I much prefer Macaroons on Marduk 🧐
...Considerably more civilised
Seth I would really like to hear your opinion on the new "The Expanse" role-playing game, I ran small story last night with my group, and we had a blast, I really like the game system (reminds me a bit of CP2020) and the world(s) and lore is amazing.
Maybe I’m oversimplifying but this sounds like a really stripped down linear version of Crash On Volturnus (the adventure that came in the original Star Frontiers box set)
So the sindalian Empire collapsed 2500 years ago not 200. But great review and very helpful
This sounds like an old Traveller adventure written by Loren Wiseman, Marooned. It comes with an isometric map that can be pressed into service for this adventure; the terrain is similar (plains and jungles) and there are settlements of low-tech natives. Even an island south of the main continent. Random Animal Encounters include Hunters. Double Adventure 4: Marooned/Marooned Alone can be downloaded for free at the Far Future Enterprises website:
www.farfuture.net/Errata%20Classic%20Traveller%20(Full).pdf
Wow. People are still playing Traveller. Loved that game back in the day.
A year from now goes, "Really?"
Great video. What I do not understand in this adventure is, that The Systems Marduk and Oghma are classified as green (secure system) and not as amber zone at least, considering the frequent Raider attacks.
I'm not sure why Oghma isn't Red or Amber. The Trojan Reach book (if I recall) talks about some secure port that's orbiting a gas giant in the system that's safe to visit (I think GedeCo owns it), but the planet deserves some flag that's it's pretty unwelcoming.
How about a campaign based on John Ringo's march to the sea?
"And the captain has turned on the fasten seat belt sign. Please return to your seat sir."
And then executed a 5G maneuver....
I think there was a big missed opportunity for a cargo cult among the native.
Or a post-apoc feel to them, where they're still picking over the ruins of their ancestors' cities for bits of old techm some of which winds up venerated in a similar way to some of the cargo cult clichés.
Hey Seth, I run Cyberpunk but always have a bit of trouble in firefights involving many npcs. How do you deal with those situations while keeping combat fast-paced and tense? There’s nothing that kills an action scene faster than feeling like it’s a turn based final fantasy fight
As GM you can always predetermine the firefight for thr NPCs and roll random dice behind a screen. Remember, you're guiding along the storyline, not actually gaming the NPC's. Do what you need to keep the game flowing the way you intend it to.
Make a lot of minions but with 1hp each. Also use average damage for npcs so you dont have to roll so much.
I used the gig from Gods of Marduk as the lead-in bait to get them here. Hired elsewhere to bring the fusion power core to that adventure.
I don't know if you've ever been on an otherwise basically empty plane (do they still fly those anymore) but it's a nice atmospheric thing to set the tone of 'meaningless backwater'. I did have the other adventure as a distraction, however.
Attack: It says the flight down takes iirc 3 hours and since the highport isn't geostationary this works; 100d transit from jump point at 3g is
Thanks dad! 👍
God damn am I happy my normal GM only runs DnD5e. Means I get to always run all the other stuff. More importantly, I get to watch all of the video.
I never played Traveller. I should try it, because I do like Sci-Fi a lot.
There's a lot that I like about it. It's Skill-Based. There's a ton of resources out there for it. But one of the biggest appeals is that it manages to hit with sci-fi the same niche that D&D has with fantasy. It's got both an elaborate setting with extensive lore, and is still perfectly generic so a GM can just ignore the pre-written lore and make up their own world without any problems. With many other games out there, the setting/lore is so interwoven with the game that it can be difficult for a GM to ignore it and just use the game rules against a backdrop of their own world.
This is so true, unfortunately.
do you know any good tutorial videos for this game system, the game sounds interesting and I want to run it with my players but I can't find any good tutorials? If you don't know any is there chance you could make one
Eventually I'll probably make one (sort of like what I did for Call of Cthulhu), but it's going to first require a lot of playtime under my belt before I think I can give a comprehensive series like that. I'm still pretty new to Traveller.
I always find it weird that in space games, where the entire universe is your sandbox, one of the tropes is to maroon PCs. I think it is because GMs are scared of all that potential and fall back on D&D dungeon mode.
I've written how to counteract this: tomboftedankhamen.blogspot.com/2017/04/rpgs-in-space-rpgs-and-space.html
Is there a Traveller adventure in space, or are they all on planets where you are fighting the environment?
Around 8:25 Seth totally breaks your heart. Be warned.
Dude, could you make a video series like you did with Call of Cthulhu on the basics of Traveller? I have a D&D group and I think our dm would really dig this game
That is the plan. But first I want to get several more sessions under my belt before I feel I can give it a proper review. The Call of Cthulhu one started after I had years of experience with the game, but right now I only have a couple months experience with Traveller and there's whole areas we haven't even touched (like psionics).
One aspect of it that I really do love is that it does for Sci-Fi what D&D does for high-fantasy, and that's being perfectly generic. What I mean is while they both have complex and rich worlds with decades of lore, a GM can decide to ignore all that and just make up their own world without any problem at all. Many games have the world lore so directly tied to the rules that it becomes difficult to separate them, which means you're kind of stuck playing in the game's world setting rather than your own. Traveller GMs can opt to play in the 3rd Imperium setting and be perfectly happy (there's 4 decades worth of lore at their disposal) or they can just grab a blank map and start making up their own universe with zero problems.
@@SSkorkowsky it really does sound like an amazing game to play, you just have a way about explaining things and making them easy to understand for the layman such as myself. Also, would you do a series about the Cyberpunk rules and regulations and such? That looked like it was an awesome game to try as well
I miss your three "players". Don't they play Traveler?
May be tell the players that the previus war in this continet leaved so high radioactive that nobody lives here, anyone living in here would die by radioactivity in 1 year.
Looks like Seth has piqued my interest in another RPG.
Great game, check it out
Ditto. I’ve been wanting to do an outer space RPG that was NOT Star Wars, and this looks perfect!
His videos on Call of Cthulhu convinced me to get those books. Haven’t tried it yet though.
Traveller has been out since 1977 and gone through multiple iterations, and I really do think that the one by Mongoose is the best. That said, there's 40+ years worth of materials out there for Traveller, and even if it's written for an older version of the rules, it's very easy to convert to the Mongoose version. It's good as fairly hard sci-fi without bring too rule heavy.
06:40 How do you do this if you did "High and Dry" earlier and the party claimed the ship for themselves?
If they have a ship, then they just park it up at the Highport. The Downport won't allow non-GeDeCo ships to land on their little island, so people have to take the commuter shuttle to get there.
I will say that out of the Traveller scenarios I've reviewed so-far, High and Dry has been my favorite. I have a few more that I plan to run that I think are better. My "To-Run" list just keeps getting longer and longer.
Combine with gods of Marduk as a way to introduce Marduk and how there are no natives on mainland.
Engagement!
maybe one of the natives makes a break for it and runs to get on the rescue craft because they want off the planet?
Tech level 5's not bad. That puts them at roughly equivalent to most civilizations on Earth during the 1990s.
It's pre-Space Age. So they've got electricity and combustion engines and the beginnings of Atomic technology. I like to think of it like one of those old episodes of Star Trek where they used some mob-movie set and were driving around in 1930's cars.
@@SSkorkowsky 1st edition Mongoose traveller marked it as mid-20th century, so you're probably closer to the mark.
Earth in 1990 would be roughly TL7 to very early TL8.
Bingo James
"...one of those old episodes of Star Trek where they used some mob-movie set and were driving around in 1930's cars." A Piece of the Action. Kirk was so inept at driving stick that when FASA came out with their Trek RPG they went out of their way including a skill for driving archaic land vehicles on his character sheet at a whopping 2% rating for him. Same episode gave us the card game Fizzbin, which is clearly the best game ever and should appear in all scifi RPGs that include gambling scenes. :) memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Fizzbin
8:25 Wow... I only put that kind of messed up stuff in if the players later have the opportunity to *LITERALLY* skin the culprit alive.
It didn't help that the first NPC kept sniffing everyone's butt
Hmm, what was that job?
“... and the PC’s are not going to be able to speak the same language as them.”
What, no handy Universal Translator in this sci-fi universe?
No, but if you went with the "previously here with an archeology team" idea Seth came up with you could plausibly have at least some PCs able to speak the language their ancestors did - it's not a lost language and still has modern speakers - which might let them work out communications with whatever evolved form of the tongue the natives speak now. Might take some skill checks, but not impossible to get simple points across.
Yeah I just watch these because I’m curious about other systems, I’ve only played (usually As the DM) advanced Dungeons and dragons (mostly 2nd edition), and I am somewhat embarrassed to say the Star Wars RPG from West End games. I was real into Star Wars as an elementary schooler/middle schooler and DMed the RPG, but now I find it a little embarrassing because now that I’m in my mid twenties, and after watching sci gems like Star Trek:TNG and DS9 on Netflix, along with Babylon 5, and Battlestar Galactica, the Star Wars movies impress me way less than they used to. Even the much adored original trilogy... maybe part of it is the fast pacing that makes some things seem ridiculous (like Lando becoming a general just like that with no previous military command experience, same with Han Solo) and the Hollywood dialogue that just makes it seem shallow and thin to me, or even like the movies are made for a young or at least immature audience. Compared to the shows I mentioned when I watch Star Wars aside from the setting which I like it seems like a dumbed down version of those shows I mentioned, with the characters not feeling like real people nearly as much, (and Luke just seems kind like an annoying douche a lot of the time), and there is a distinct lack of deep ness and wonder compared to those shows as well.
I still tolerate them in a popcorn flick way and the Star Wars universe and ships are very cool, so I like the base setting and the style of space opera it uses, but not so much the execution and how the story is told. Even as a kid when I GMed for the Star Wars RPG I basically used the setting and mechanics of the universe, the big capital ships along with small fighters, energy weapons and blasters, the dramatic space opera style of dress, and the magic of the force but I had my own setting of a few neutral solar systems that I made up where the Empire and Rebels were not very involved and I had my own antagonists and all that.
That slow zoom at 8:03 is a great added cinematic touch.
Seth, I love your reviews, but my god, the Traveler art never fails to disappoint. It is the least fun vision of the future I can imagine, and kills any interest I have in the game.
You look like the actor that played the evil scientist in alien ressurection.
That's dark
Me who watched a mother holding a child got killed by a giant enjected bullet to the head
Seth does not like children
This sounds really incomplete, uninspired, and poorly thought out, especially for an intro scenario that's supposed to sell players and GMs on the game. The jump limit botch shows an utter lack of comprehension of the basics of the Traveller setting, too. I bet it's full of typos as well. It is from Mongoose, after all. In short, thanks for the warning.
I don't recall finding any typos, but I'm also fairly immune to noticing them. As long as I can clearly see what the intended meaning was, my brain just fills in the blanks and I keep reading.
For me, the scenario feels like a personal game written for a specific group. Like, when I write an adventure for my players, I'm 90% sure what directions they'll go and that's the area that gets filled in the most. If they surprise me and throw me for a loop, I'll just have to fill the rest as we go, but most of the time I can accurately guess their path beforehand (a benefit of playing with them so long). However, when publishing a scenario, you can't guess what direction the players will take because you don't know the group or the players. You have to fill in several directions so the GM is ready for multiple paths. This scenario only gave us one.
Now... our current game is one of those self-pub adventures someone did through the Traveller Aid Society program (similar to the programs that Call of Cthulhu and D&D have now). It's amazingly crude in how they laid out only 1 path and there are gaping plotholes, weird logic leaps, zero foreshadowing, and other problems (even found typos). On paper, it's pretty bad. However, there's something about it that really hooked me, so I'm running it (it's a 4-part mini campaign) We'll be starting Part 2 this weekend and I'll probably do a running review for it like I did for Two-Headed Serpent. But we are having SO much fun with it. Part 1 was our best Traveller game yet. The review will be something like "This is what we started with. Here's what I turned it in to."
I spent years doing proof reading as a side job. Mongoose products are physically painful for me to read, or at least they were ten years ago and I see little reason to expect that to have changed. That said, the most impressive thing about your module reviews is the repair work you do on their flaws. Makes you stand out from the crowd here on UA-cam, and it's more useful for people who might actually use the item being reviewed than simply pointing out mistakes without suggesting patches and workarounds.
Thanks. I needed that. I'm currently getting trolled by some dude who insists that my offering suggestions and tips based off my play experience somehow lessens the review. He believes that a pure and unbiased RPG review cannot be done if the reviewer has played the game, and my having played the subject of my reviews somehow diminishes them. (I don't get it.) So thank you. I appreciate the kind words right now.
Your troll is simply wrong on a fundamental level. The idea being LESS familiar with the material somehow improves the quality of that review is patently and demonstrably false. We are all familiar with ideas that look good on paper but don't work out in practice, and with RPGs and their adventures it's very hard to spot that sort of thing without experience. Now, everyone's experience in a playthrough will be different and you can't hope to catch everything that might cause problems but hey, you're trying and you've put the work into a proper playthrough. Can't say that about many reviewers. I would suggest you take the Professor's words to heart: ua-cam.com/video/jclPWidTfak/v-deo.html No, not the part about the internet being made of cats. :)
Yikes, as a new mother if a Gm threw that bit of horror with the mother and kids at me I'd get up and leave the room having a panic attack. Just listening to that description caused me to stop watching and take a break from the computer. I try to keep up to date on all of Seth's videos but I didn't need that today.
Darn i thought this was a real game, not a pen n papers friends required game☹