Thank you to 2nd Dynasty for sponsoring this video Join the Kickstarter for 2nd Dynasty's Traveller Small Craft: www.kickstarter.com/projects/2nddynasty/official-traveller-small-craft?ref=6wpqho 2nd Dynasty MyMiniFactory Storefront: www.myminifactory.com/users/2ndDynasty?show=objects 2nd Dynasty's Tribe (like Patreon): www.myminifactory.com/users/2ndDynasty?show=tribe 2nd Dynasty Webpage: 2nddynasty.com 2nd Dynasty Discord Community (and support channel): discord.gg/Ceqcv4n
Impressive as the Type S and merchant ships were, the small craft seem a lot more practical for most tabletops, whether you're actually playing Traveller with them or not. Folks playing Stargrave, Xenos Rampant, 5 Light Years From Home and other skirmish scifi games can always use some big-but-not-huge parked spacecraft terrain, and of course they're generic enough to work in many other sf rpgs too.
My group enjoyed it so much that they called their friends over as soon as I did and after they spent a few minutes talking in the yard they gave me a nice pair of bracelets and a long vacation as a thanks.
I do like Mongoose Traveller (and this sounds like a helluva setting), but I think they should let Seth write all their adventures. He improves every one he's run.
I personally find Mongoose Publishing material to be half baked at best. I get that Seth is trying to promote this "quality" adventure but Mongoose has already burned my bridge years ago. I'll get this when it is on sale. Buy it for its REAL value...
I got into Traveller from a Free RPG Day quick start rules about fifteen years ago. It felt like I was the only one on Earth who had any interest in this game until you started your Traveller reviews. I was already a big fan since 2017-2018 with your CoC series, and I could scarcely believe when you started getting into Traveller. I was over the moon. Thanks, man.
It almost feels like the adventure is more about the context and consequences of what comes after rather than the adventure itself. With only two hijackers clearly not equipped to handle a rescue team, it feels like the players aren't supposed to be threatened, like the guy with the shotgun is supposed to make a last stand as more of a surprise event than an encounter with the potential mystery of the female hijacker escaping. After that it's the implications of what goes down with and happens to the station manager and the noble.
Maybe, or maybe they wanted it to be a situation that had to be defused by the players, as a shotgun going off in a tight space could cause issue for the ship or it's passengers.
In one scifi campaign where the party was a group of mercenary troubleshooters working for a major corporation (set up by a PC from a previous campaign) I gave their assignments as a handout to go through: contacts, mission objectives, pay, all there and easily referred.
I love this adventure premise so much I want to watch a TV show based on it. Like ds9 meets Chicago fire or something. Maybe I'll have to settle for expanding it into a theme campaign.
Star Trek has plenty of episodes with rescue themes but I will recommend The Orville s1e8, one of the most cool rescue episode I've seen. As an entire series well there are many scifi series but all about rescue or day to day live in space not so many. Space 1999 had some strong vibes about workers on space having to handle an emergency. Planetees is an anime about the orbital cleaning service above earth, very slow pace and day to day stuff and very hard scifi only for a very specific type of audience xD The movie Space Truckers, awesome movie that also can give you an idea about a space emergency and very similar also Lily CAT an anime movie.
@@egillskallagrimson5879 I'm pretty sure the TV show you are looking for is Thunderbirds with supermarionation. The show followed the exploits of International rescue using all their very cool vehicles and ran from 1964-66.
"Do it for me, then I can guilt trip them into making that Far Trader I really want." Ah, emotional manipulation. The universe's oldest know form of currency.
CAPTAIN REYNOLDS (To his ship's Pilot): Hey, Wash, what was the name of that system we're headed to for the Rescue Service contract again? PILOT WASHBURNE: The "Gorram" System. CAPTAIN REYNOLDS: Of course it's a gore-am system. But what is it _called?_
Seth, I think you may have missed some shorthand on the table for the chance of detection in this adventure, maybe because of the reference issues. I think that the numbers in the right column are variable targets numbers, not modifiers. So for a highly stealthy approach, a 3 or below on 2d6 has them spotted, but anything above that goes off without a hitch. Dunno if that's syntax that ever happens normally in Traveller, but I think that I recognize the language style from Warhammer.
I would love to run Traveller but there always seems to be caveats for the GM. Reading these adventures reminds me of old-school D&D when you had to "key" every room and provide details that should have already been included. Now, I understand the whole "make the game your own" thing but there is a certain baseline of information that I expect my hard earned dollars to pay for. I don't want to run or play a game that I have to flip and flip through pages and come up with "whelp, lets wing it." I appreciate you, Seth, can't wait for Voyagers of the Jump!
Why does reading the adventure bother you. How do you know what the ending is without reading it? Of course I tend to write my own adventures, so I just wing it most of the time. Personally, I think that DnD gives the GM too much direction.
The 2ndDynasty community commonly creates customized interior parts. The type-s has a lot of those on their discord. I imagine the ship's boat and pinace is going to get the same treatment.
It's really freakin hard to pilot a spaceship when you're turned around to talk to the audience! Give the guy a break. If he piloted the ship, then everyone would complain how all they saw was the back of his head. He's in a no win situation here.
Ahh... "Hello internet".. It's like coming home... Fantastic video and a greatly detailed review. have you set up new lights for youre recording studio? It is looking great! all the best!
I dont know Seth...Im waiting to do my part when they announce making the 100,000 ton Sylea Battleship. I figure that baby will be a real conversation starter on my coffee table...and dining room table...and couch...and La-Z-Boy...and out the front door to my car.
When I was looking at my 1E Spinward Marches map and noticed the Gorram system, I thought it was an intriguing bit of evidence for the theory that Joss Whedon played Traveller at some point before writing Firefly.
I really like those 3d printed ships and if I was running traveller face to face, I'd want them. No printer here though. When I was running a West End Games Star Wars game, I used the maps for the far trader for the smuggler's ship. This guy was an artist and actually built a scale model for 25mm miniatures for the entire ship using the scale blueprints I had. That thing was MASSIVE. It filled a table. It's a shame he didn't give it to me, because it would still exist, but I think he eventually threw it away. More the shame. Neat scenario and great review as always. These always make me want to play Traveller.
Great video, Seth! I was hoping for some more Traveller videos as I'm learning the game (picked it up on humblebundle a few weeks back)! And perfect timing too! I listen to your videos whenever I mow my lawn, it's gotten to the point that I associate cutting grass with your videos now haha! Anyways thanks again!
I believe the Chance of Being Spotted (at around 16:35 on the video) is not a standard skill check roll, but a 2D6 roll where you're rolling the number or less, e.g. the "3-" being 3 or less. I think the nomenclature is "3+" is three or more and "3-" is three or less.
@@SSkorkowsky Yeah, so it did and it's strange that they suddenly use that uncommon roll (in Traveller, where everything is usually x or more and higher is better). It really wouldn't have gone amiss to have the table entries read e.g. "3 or less" instead of "3-". (Better yet, invert the numbers, so 3- becomes 11+ and so on.)
I think the Detection table is the chance on 2D6 not a modifier. So A careful direct approach is 6 or less on 2D6. So that is your target. You could also allow a pilot on board to use sensors to scan the ship as the rest of the crew is fighting although I recognize not isn’t as much fun as actually being in the fight. Possibly have to deal with events like a fuel tank rupture from the outside.
So why didn't they use the tow cable to lift the bow out of the water? If they had a 2nd pilot they might have been able to fly it out otherwise their ship has sufficient propulsion to lift it off the planet and tow it to base. The grappling arms with their great length could be used for the rescue of the guy on the sailing boat as well as removing obstacles (like capturing the guy with the gun), they can lift tons after all. Finally they have BREACHING TUBES they can enter where they want as long as it isn't through a fuel tank. Sounds like the PCs missed lots of options.
Makes me want something like a DS9 campaign. Where players are working a term on a some kind of space station. Like a mining platform, or a Space Trooper station, or a trading post, or a prison.
I don't even play Traveller and you've convinced me to back the kick-starter! I have a buddy who occasionally runs Starfinder, if I get this for him it might convince him to start running again! 😄
this is my favorite TTRPG I have found, me and my buddy made characters and it was laugh out the most fun we ever had making characters, he ended up some mad pirate and I was a disgraced doctor forced it to the military, when we ended our careers we were beat up in debt and had more enemies than we know what to do with. sadly we have not played a session yet but that character creation alone won me over
"We're like a family here!" Oh man. There's so much evidence in these videos that Seth is intimately familiar with terrible corporate jobs. If his love of Cyberpunk and sticking it to the corps wasn't enough... This definitely is. Love all your videos Seth.
I got my first corporate job right out of college. Had my 23rd birthday during my first week. The job itself was pretty fun, pay was great, and the benefits were unbelievably good. Local Management, however, was incredibly toxic. It was as if they were conducting an experiment in mental torture. Several employees admitted to actually crying in their cars before working up the nerve to walk in every morning. Out of the whole international company, my office rated the worst in employee satisfaction two years in a row. That's including factories and warehouses. The home office itself (which really did care about employee satisfaction as part of their brand identity/philosophy) had us do follow-ups with anonymous interviews, and they sincerely wanted to find out why we weren't just the least happy employees but an order of magnitude less than every other office in the world. I was on the team tasked with conducting interviews and making the report. Problem was that our management got to interpret and report the findings back to Japan, so the official report back to the home office was pretty much, "They're whiney babies and nothing is wrong." My old coworkers and I have talked at length how some of our stories from that place don't even sound believable. I have trouble believing them, myself. They systematically crushed employees' spirits and convinced us all we were horrible and were lucky to even have a job and were hours away from getting fired at all times. Our Yearly Reviews were pretty much, "Here's why you're terrible at everything." We also had the best numbers in the country, but that didn't seem to matter. The movie Office Space was real popular at the time, and I was told how I just had to watch it because I looked vaguely similar to the Michael Bolton character. Watching it, I nearly started crying because it was so accurate, and what people considered as hilariously funny was my actual life. One of my bosses even talked exactly like Lumbergh. Good times.
@@SSkorkowsky Wow, that sounds awful! I'm no stranger to crappy managers myself. I got fired a couple years ago after training my replacements. Glad you came out with some funny stories, at least. And now you're an entrepreneur! Make sure you're a good boss to yourself. :)
I've not played traveler, but my immediate thought for a pilot who stays behind is getting a drone or something and getting to be the guy in the chair dispatching equipment and maybe managing the survivors. I would totally enjoy having to work split off and having a different sort of interaction/role to the others.
I made also contracts for my SLA Industries campaign for my players. That is really a good psychological effect to immerse themself into the world. The contract clauses were really post-capitalism-brutal like everything in SLA Industries, so it was also a good world-building/world-explanining experience for the players for the session zero. So they knew what to expect from this game.
On your (sort of) recommendation I watched "The 9th Gate"... It has all the Cthulhu-like elements- cultists, ancient tomes, rituals, murder, mystery, and mayhem, but I felt the story weave was "O.K." and not great. I really wanted it to be great, but it just made me feel cheated (especially the ending, which I won't ruin) for some reason?! I liked it, but so wanted to love it. (Now J.C.'s- The Thing and Big Trouble are both awesome!!!) Love all your videos Seth... and D&D and Call of (Pulp) Cthulhu are my favorite RPGs!
I love the 9th Gate. I know every one of its many, many faults and I still love it. I read the book just to help answer the same questions and it didn't help all that much. It only made more questions because in the novel, The Club Dumas, the whole 9th Gate story is only a side-plot in a main story about an original Alexander Dumas manuscript that the hero has.
@@SSkorkowsky Oh, I get it... I have my movies like that. The 2000 D&D movie with Jeremy Irons is loved by me, but not so much by the consensus. I find it highly entertaining, despite all it's many, many flaws. D&D is so bad it's good, but I don't find The 9th Gate bad at all, it just left me wanting it to be better. But to each their own. Thanks Seth!
This could be a cool start of a game with the characters on the ship. It would be wild for the players to start play as servants to the rich folks. Heck, if one were a former agent, this might be their last gig. Maybe even a player who is a noble or crew of the ship. Maybe even a hijacker. Then things happen and go wrong and the story unfolds that way. Players see each other and that is when we do connection skills. A hijacker PC could even get protected by his or her old friend. The rescue crew then are NPCs, with their badass Tech Level 14 suits. Of course, they might be under orders to clear out everyone in order to cover up for their boss. That would be a hard fight and maybe the PCs band together over that!
Good review. I'm halfway through running this and wish I'd spotted this review earlier as I agree with all the critricisms. I really like this scenario because it gives the Referee plenty of latitude to shape it according to their party's needs and all the details is usable. What I do find frustrating is the duplication and absence of information across various pages. For instance there are several accounts about what happened to set up the final act but it's in at least three places and differs on each page. The ordering of this information is also odd. As Seth says, there's a reference to the cultural impact as a result of the PCs' approach but this has no bearing on player actions at that point in time. It would be more fitting to have this section in the epilogue.
This sounds and reads like it has the potential for a DS9 or B5 type of campaign start with a "little" elbow grease. They don't have to be stuck to one place either, there could be adventures on nearby systems where the PC's have to take leave or go once their "on duty" time runs out and they are waiting for their next rotation to start. The Red class planet can have its own wierdness to it as well as the new science team that arrives to investigate the impact the rescuers and the crashed ship caused. Plus with all this new attention brought with the new traffic thanks to all the new comers there could be traders and corpos trying to hustle into the station for profit and increase and pirate and merc activity around the system because of all the new stuff.
I see jack the NPC is wearing the original Weyland Yutani "winged sun" logo, as he goes down to a primitive planetoid to answer a distress signal. I'm sure nothing can possibly go wrong there.
The sense I get from the review is that this is mostly a campaign setting, with the optional adventure idea, and you can make what you want out of it. There's an obvious opportunity to sabotage one of the guard satellites (or detect and fix same) in order to create a hole in the monitoring grid for someone to fly in and out of the interdicted planet if they have a code. I'm suspicious of why the planet really is red-zoned. Maybe everyone down on the surface is actually a clone of someone else in the Imperium, and this is a "farm" for storing them and conditioning them with simple manual labor, until someone comes to "harvest" them for their owner's use. (like in the movie: "The Island".) There's not much on the inhabitants, you can imagine many kinds of scenarios, one being they're all psionics, and powerful ones, too, so once you go down, they absorb you into their community or eliminate or gain control of you, and nobody wants them to leave the surface to spread. The missing ship supplies could have been diverted to some secret base in the system, I guess. A secret private operation, maybe pirates. Maybe a Secret Naval op off the books and the station and rescue craft is just a handy cover. I mean, you can spin this any way you like as a GM.
Nice work Seth, thank you for this overview. Do you think buying the combined 1-5 adventures in this book is worth it, or just a lot of additional work? Or do you think there is a better collection of adventures elsewhere?
I enjoyed this collection. The only other collection of MGT2 Traveller adventures I can think of is Mysteries on Arcturus Station, but it only has 2 adventures versus 5. I worked on that project, so I'm biased to think it's better.
Something I thought of is maybe having the rich guys heading down to the planet for a little game hunting on the side. Maybe then it would make sense for there to be rifles or the like on board the ship and a possible chance for the players to actually come across the locals should one be drawn by rifle fire.
Adding more hijackers is a good idea, but I think that switching the shotgun loads from backshot to slugs (using the Solid Shot rules from the Central Supply Catalogue) might be another really nasty surprise. Looking at this adventure from a in-universe perspective, it make sense to have a shotgun, which can be devastating in close quarters without risking to blast apart a bulkhead. Also, I guess the idea was that the PCs might not choose to use those heavy duty vacc suits in a atmosphere.
If you need to tweak weapons to be more dangerous to player PC's, you can always use discarding sabot rounds that give a serious armor piercing capability, and this is already built intot the rules so no home brewing required. Some weapons like gauss rifles already have some inherent AP capability.
I love your traveller reviews. They have convinced me to do a traveller campaign, set in the islands of Reft. Is there any chance mongoose would give you a discount code, if not for physical books maybe digital modules?
I printed mine with FDM, they turned out reasonably well. 2ndDynasty was talking about maybe doing a myminifactory tribes (like patreon) for getting more minis made. But that will likely only happen if we get enough buy in on the ships boat and pennace
I have a question about Univerity: If you finished you term in university your EDU is increased by+1 If you graduated, in Graduation Benefits you have information that EDU is increased by +2 (an additional) So, that means, in total you gained EDU +3? Or just +1 for finishing and +1 for Graduation with total of 2?
Thank you to 2nd Dynasty for sponsoring this video
Join the Kickstarter for 2nd Dynasty's Traveller Small Craft: www.kickstarter.com/projects/2nddynasty/official-traveller-small-craft?ref=6wpqho
2nd Dynasty MyMiniFactory Storefront: www.myminifactory.com/users/2ndDynasty?show=objects
2nd Dynasty's Tribe (like Patreon): www.myminifactory.com/users/2ndDynasty?show=tribe
2nd Dynasty Webpage: 2nddynasty.com
2nd Dynasty Discord Community (and support channel): discord.gg/Ceqcv4n
Impressive as the Type S and merchant ships were, the small craft seem a lot more practical for most tabletops, whether you're actually playing Traveller with them or not. Folks playing Stargrave, Xenos Rampant, 5 Light Years From Home and other skirmish scifi games can always use some big-but-not-huge parked spacecraft terrain, and of course they're generic enough to work in many other sf rpgs too.
Thank you, awesome job of showing off the Launch!
@@2ndDynasty3D Best of luck with your KS project.
Thank you!@@richmcgee434
How do you feel about Starfield the game?
Nothing impresses players more than whipping out a Pinnace at just the right moment.
Well, some are more impressive than others.
A Slow Pinnace has better fuel efficiency and cargo capacity.
It's not the size of the Pinnace, it's how you pilot it.
My group enjoyed it so much that they called their friends over as soon as I did and after they spent a few minutes talking in the yard they gave me a nice pair of bracelets and a long vacation as a thanks.
Especially with a bit of foreshadowing just the tip...
It's not just about the size of the pinnace, it's about how you use it.
Careful docking those pinnaces!
i'm confused though, none of those ports look large enough for a pinnacle to dock with...@@NefariousKoel
It may be small, but it's fierce!
That is a pinnace to be proud of...
Classic.
That 3d model is going to give people pinnace envy
Oooh! Nice pinnace!
GM: 'Scuse me while I whip this out...
To be honest, anyone who does not pretend to fly those model space ships around when no one is looking is probably dead inside.
I do like Mongoose Traveller (and this sounds like a helluva setting), but I think they should let Seth write all their adventures. He improves every one he's run.
I have never run a pre-canned Traveller adventure without making some modifications....
I personally find Mongoose Publishing material to be half baked at best. I get that Seth is trying to promote this "quality" adventure but Mongoose has already burned my bridge years ago. I'll get this when it is on sale.
Buy it for its REAL value...
I got into Traveller from a Free RPG Day quick start rules about fifteen years ago. It felt like I was the only one on Earth who had any interest in this game until you started your Traveller reviews. I was already a big fan since 2017-2018 with your CoC series, and I could scarcely believe when you started getting into Traveller. I was over the moon. Thanks, man.
It almost feels like the adventure is more about the context and consequences of what comes after rather than the adventure itself. With only two hijackers clearly not equipped to handle a rescue team, it feels like the players aren't supposed to be threatened, like the guy with the shotgun is supposed to make a last stand as more of a surprise event than an encounter with the potential mystery of the female hijacker escaping. After that it's the implications of what goes down with and happens to the station manager and the noble.
Maybe, or maybe they wanted it to be a situation that had to be defused by the players, as a shotgun going off in a tight space could cause issue for the ship or it's passengers.
In one scifi campaign where the party was a group of mercenary troubleshooters working for a major corporation (set up by a PC from a previous campaign) I gave their assignments as a handout to go through: contacts, mission objectives, pay, all there and easily referred.
Dope!
I love this adventure premise so much I want to watch a TV show based on it. Like ds9 meets Chicago fire or something. Maybe I'll have to settle for expanding it into a theme campaign.
Star Trek has plenty of episodes with rescue themes but I will recommend The Orville s1e8, one of the most cool rescue episode I've seen.
As an entire series well there are many scifi series but all about rescue or day to day live in space not so many. Space 1999 had some strong vibes about workers on space having to handle an emergency.
Planetees is an anime about the orbital cleaning service above earth, very slow pace and day to day stuff and very hard scifi only for a very specific type of audience xD
The movie Space Truckers, awesome movie that also can give you an idea about a space emergency and very similar also Lily CAT an anime movie.
@@egillskallagrimson5879 don't forget the classic Thunderbirds are go! series.
@@egillskallagrimson5879 I'm pretty sure the TV show you are looking for is Thunderbirds with supermarionation. The show followed the exploits of International rescue using all their very cool vehicles and ran from 1964-66.
"Do it for me, then I can guilt trip them into making that Far Trader I really want." Ah, emotional manipulation. The universe's oldest know form of currency.
If only the oldest currency worked on the oldest profession 💀😂🤣
CAPTAIN REYNOLDS (To his ship's Pilot): Hey, Wash, what was the name of that system we're headed to for the Rescue Service contract again?
PILOT WASHBURNE: The "Gorram" System.
CAPTAIN REYNOLDS: Of course it's a gore-am system. But what is it _called?_
Ah yes, every man's best personal achievement: hearing someone go "Hey, nice pinnace"
Seth, I think you may have missed some shorthand on the table for the chance of detection in this adventure, maybe because of the reference issues. I think that the numbers in the right column are variable targets numbers, not modifiers. So for a highly stealthy approach, a 3 or below on 2d6 has them spotted, but anything above that goes off without a hitch.
Dunno if that's syntax that ever happens normally in Traveller, but I think that I recognize the language style from Warhammer.
I would love to run Traveller but there always seems to be caveats for the GM. Reading these adventures reminds me of old-school D&D when you had to "key" every room and provide details that should have already been included. Now, I understand the whole "make the game your own" thing but there is a certain baseline of information that I expect my hard earned dollars to pay for. I don't want to run or play a game that I have to flip and flip through pages and come up with "whelp, lets wing it." I appreciate you, Seth, can't wait for Voyagers of the Jump!
*gradually louder banging on the table*
Season 2. Season 2. SEason 2. SEAson 2! SEASon 2! SEASOn 2! SEASON 2!!!!
Why does reading the adventure bother you. How do you know what the ending is without reading it? Of course I tend to write my own adventures, so I just wing it most of the time.
Personally, I think that DnD gives the GM too much direction.
Always great to get a new review from Seth!
But.... I'm dying to see his review for "Pleasures of the Harbor" for "Righteous Blood Ruthless Blades"
The absolute joy on your face in the postcredit scene was beautiful!
"We're like a family here!" 😂 Oh Lord I have been there.
Managed to persuade my group to try out traveller soon, after we finish our current campaign because Seth got me hooked. CANNOT WAIT.
Hope ya'll have fun storming the galaxy.
LOL! "OOOhhh... Nice Pinnace!" --- Perfect! Simply Perfect! 🙂
whip out on the table....LOL
The 2ndDynasty community commonly creates customized interior parts. The type-s has a lot of those on their discord. I imagine the ship's boat and pinace is going to get the same treatment.
I have still been meaning to get into Traveller and your videos Seth have been the reason I've so badly wanted to get into it.
I just love your Traveller content I could make a playlist and watch it over and over .
Jack needs to check his orbit, this ship is caught in a Gas Giant’s gravity well.
It's really freakin hard to pilot a spaceship when you're turned around to talk to the audience! Give the guy a break. If he piloted the ship, then everyone would complain how all they saw was the back of his head. He's in a no win situation here.
Ahh... "Hello internet".. It's like coming home...
Fantastic video and a greatly detailed review.
have you set up new lights for youre recording studio? It is looking great!
all the best!
I dont know Seth...Im waiting to do my part when they announce making the 100,000 ton Sylea Battleship. I figure that baby will be a real conversation starter on my coffee table...and dining room table...and couch...and La-Z-Boy...and out the front door to my car.
Yeehaw, another Travellar adventure.
I just love this setting.
When I was looking at my 1E Spinward Marches map and noticed the Gorram system, I thought it was an intriguing bit of evidence for the theory that Joss Whedon played Traveller at some point before writing Firefly.
Not gonna lie, the "nice Pinnace" thing made me laugh out loud
All these pinnace jokes are the pinnacle of humor.
I thought Seth was gonna just gloss over the obvious Pinnace joke, but he proved me wrong. Good work, Seth! You never disappoint.
"We're like a family here." sent a shiver down my spine.
That whole bit with signing the contracts was beautiful. I miss playing in depth tabletop RPGs
Thank you 2nd Dynasty!
Always love seeing Traveller content from you Seth. You got me into the game and my campaign's still going strong
2:20 I don't even play traveler and these things blow my socks off.
You know what a guy like me needs after a long Monday? A Seth Skorkowsky video. Hoody hoo! Thanks Seth!
I really like those 3d printed ships and if I was running traveller face to face, I'd want them. No printer here though.
When I was running a West End Games Star Wars game, I used the maps for the far trader for the smuggler's ship. This guy was an artist and actually built a scale model for 25mm miniatures for the entire ship using the scale blueprints I had. That thing was MASSIVE. It filled a table. It's a shame he didn't give it to me, because it would still exist, but I think he eventually threw it away. More the shame.
Neat scenario and great review as always. These always make me want to play Traveller.
Johnson! That ship looks just like a pinnace!
Seth knows how to feed my Traveller addiction so well. 🤪
I have pinnance envy.
Great video, Seth! I was hoping for some more Traveller videos as I'm learning the game (picked it up on humblebundle a few weeks back)! And perfect timing too! I listen to your videos whenever I mow my lawn, it's gotten to the point that I associate cutting grass with your videos now haha! Anyways thanks again!
I believe the Chance of Being Spotted (at around 16:35 on the video) is not a standard skill check roll, but a 2D6 roll where you're rolling the number or less, e.g. the "3-" being 3 or less. I think the nomenclature is "3+" is three or more and "3-" is three or less.
If that's the case, then the module entirely failed at making that clear.
I believe that you are both correct
@@SSkorkowsky Yeah, so it did and it's strange that they suddenly use that uncommon roll (in Traveller, where everything is usually x or more and higher is better). It really wouldn't have gone amiss to have the table entries read e.g. "3 or less" instead of "3-". (Better yet, invert the numbers, so 3- becomes 11+ and so on.)
I think the Detection table is the chance on 2D6 not a modifier. So A careful direct approach is 6 or less on 2D6.
So that is your target.
You could also allow a pilot on board to use sensors to scan the ship as the rest of the crew is fighting although I recognize not isn’t as much fun as actually being in the fight.
Possibly have to deal with events like a fuel tank rupture from the outside.
So why didn't they use the tow cable to lift the bow out of the water? If they had a 2nd pilot they might have been able to fly it out otherwise their ship has sufficient propulsion to lift it off the planet and tow it to base. The grappling arms with their great length could be used for the rescue of the guy on the sailing boat as well as removing obstacles (like capturing the guy with the gun), they can lift tons after all. Finally they have BREACHING TUBES they can enter where they want as long as it isn't through a fuel tank.
Sounds like the PCs missed lots of options.
So, finally the travellers get to be big gorram heroes. Shiny.😊
I have not played Traveller since the blackbook days (wish I still had those), but I enjoy living vicariously through your content.
Makes me want something like a DS9 campaign. Where players are working a term on a some kind of space station. Like a mining platform, or a Space Trooper station, or a trading post, or a prison.
I was waiting for the inevitable pinnace joke. On the other hand this does look like a good adventure to run for a Traveller Scouts group that I have.
Additional note, now we see how long it is before Seth does new reviews for High And Dry and Mission To Mithril.
You always go above and beyond! THanks as usual for letting us see behind the curtain in this excellent review & guide!
I don't even play Traveller and you've convinced me to back the kick-starter! I have a buddy who occasionally runs Starfinder, if I get this for him it might convince him to start running again! 😄
Check out their catalog of stuff. Ton of cool inspiration.
G.Jetson sounds at the end. Fantastic!
this is my favorite TTRPG I have found, me and my buddy made characters and it was laugh out the most fun we ever had making characters, he ended up some mad pirate and I was a disgraced doctor forced it to the military, when we ended our careers we were beat up in debt and had more enemies than we know what to do with. sadly we have not played a session yet but that character creation alone won me over
I've used the word Pinnace in one of my games.
NEVER AGAIN
Yay Traveller!
Dear Seth, as my 1 mortal wish please do a video on how Dark Matter is the greatest inspiration for any space RPG ever. Thx 🦾
Neat.... the gamemaster is going to whip out his pinnace onto the table.... 😉😆
Really nice, thorough overview and review. Well done.
Push to get this episode renamed The Pinnace Tabletop Flop Drop starts here
"We're like a family here!"
Oh man. There's so much evidence in these videos that Seth is intimately familiar with terrible corporate jobs. If his love of Cyberpunk and sticking it to the corps wasn't enough... This definitely is.
Love all your videos Seth.
I got my first corporate job right out of college. Had my 23rd birthday during my first week. The job itself was pretty fun, pay was great, and the benefits were unbelievably good. Local Management, however, was incredibly toxic. It was as if they were conducting an experiment in mental torture. Several employees admitted to actually crying in their cars before working up the nerve to walk in every morning. Out of the whole international company, my office rated the worst in employee satisfaction two years in a row. That's including factories and warehouses. The home office itself (which really did care about employee satisfaction as part of their brand identity/philosophy) had us do follow-ups with anonymous interviews, and they sincerely wanted to find out why we weren't just the least happy employees but an order of magnitude less than every other office in the world. I was on the team tasked with conducting interviews and making the report. Problem was that our management got to interpret and report the findings back to Japan, so the official report back to the home office was pretty much, "They're whiney babies and nothing is wrong."
My old coworkers and I have talked at length how some of our stories from that place don't even sound believable. I have trouble believing them, myself. They systematically crushed employees' spirits and convinced us all we were horrible and were lucky to even have a job and were hours away from getting fired at all times. Our Yearly Reviews were pretty much, "Here's why you're terrible at everything." We also had the best numbers in the country, but that didn't seem to matter.
The movie Office Space was real popular at the time, and I was told how I just had to watch it because I looked vaguely similar to the Michael Bolton character. Watching it, I nearly started crying because it was so accurate, and what people considered as hilariously funny was my actual life. One of my bosses even talked exactly like Lumbergh.
Good times.
@@SSkorkowsky Wow, that sounds awful! I'm no stranger to crappy managers myself. I got fired a couple years ago after training my replacements. Glad you came out with some funny stories, at least. And now you're an entrepreneur! Make sure you're a good boss to yourself. :)
This has the me the most genuine and lovely sponsorship Ive ever seen ❤
I've not played traveler, but my immediate thought for a pilot who stays behind is getting a drone or something and getting to be the guy in the chair dispatching equipment and maybe managing the survivors. I would totally enjoy having to work split off and having a different sort of interaction/role to the others.
Cant wait for the future War story about that time Jack the NPC started a Cargo Cult. 🤣😂🤣
2nd Dynasty is doing a Fifth Frontier War Kickstarter now, so it seems like their relationship to traveller continues 😊
Closed captions confuses spaceships with anatomy just like i figured it would
My wood pinance used to to reign supreme, until my wife started choosing a plastic pinnace instead ;(
I made also contracts for my SLA Industries campaign for my players. That is really a good psychological effect to immerse themself into the world. The contract clauses were really post-capitalism-brutal like everything in SLA Industries, so it was also a good world-building/world-explanining experience for the players for the session zero. So they knew what to expect from this game.
Being unfamiliar with Traveller, my first thought on seeing that model ship was how much it reminds me of Flash Gorden styles.
Wait until you encounter the Pirates Of Drinax campaign - King Oleb IS Brian Blessed!
The doors slide open and closed! Wew lad. Then there's me and my carboard and foamcore builds, haha.
I espy the Blade Runner starter set on Seth's bookshelf.
That could be interesting.
The contract handout is a great idea!
On your (sort of) recommendation I watched "The 9th Gate"... It has all the Cthulhu-like elements- cultists, ancient tomes, rituals, murder, mystery, and mayhem, but I felt the story weave was "O.K." and not great. I really wanted it to be great, but it just made me feel cheated (especially the ending, which I won't ruin) for some reason?! I liked it, but so wanted to love it. (Now J.C.'s- The Thing and Big Trouble are both awesome!!!)
Love all your videos Seth... and D&D and Call of (Pulp) Cthulhu are my favorite RPGs!
I love the 9th Gate. I know every one of its many, many faults and I still love it. I read the book just to help answer the same questions and it didn't help all that much. It only made more questions because in the novel, The Club Dumas, the whole 9th Gate story is only a side-plot in a main story about an original Alexander Dumas manuscript that the hero has.
@@SSkorkowsky Oh, I get it... I have my movies like that. The 2000 D&D movie with Jeremy Irons is loved by me, but not so much by the consensus. I find it highly entertaining, despite all it's many, many flaws. D&D is so bad it's good, but I don't find The 9th Gate bad at all, it just left me wanting it to be better. But to each their own. Thanks Seth!
This could be a cool start of a game with the characters on the ship. It would be wild for the players to start play as servants to the rich folks. Heck, if one were a former agent, this might be their last gig. Maybe even a player who is a noble or crew of the ship. Maybe even a hijacker. Then things happen and go wrong and the story unfolds that way. Players see each other and that is when we do connection skills. A hijacker PC could even get protected by his or her old friend. The rescue crew then are NPCs, with their badass Tech Level 14 suits. Of course, they might be under orders to clear out everyone in order to cover up for their boss. That would be a hard fight and maybe the PCs band together over that!
Awesome as always. Now to scan the comments to see if any of my players were foolish enough to leave a comment.
LMAO! I haven't heard a good Pinnace joke since Sie Meyer's Pirates!
Good review. I'm halfway through running this and wish I'd spotted this review earlier as I agree with all the critricisms. I really like this scenario because it gives the Referee plenty of latitude to shape it according to their party's needs and all the details is usable. What I do find frustrating is the duplication and absence of information across various pages. For instance there are several accounts about what happened to set up the final act but it's in at least three places and differs on each page. The ordering of this information is also odd. As Seth says, there's a reference to the cultural impact as a result of the PCs' approach but this has no bearing on player actions at that point in time. It would be more fitting to have this section in the epilogue.
This sounds and reads like it has the potential for a DS9 or B5 type of campaign start with a "little" elbow grease. They don't have to be stuck to one place either, there could be adventures on nearby systems where the PC's have to take leave or go once their "on duty" time runs out and they are waiting for their next rotation to start. The Red class planet can have its own wierdness to it as well as the new science team that arrives to investigate the impact the rescuers and the crashed ship caused. Plus with all this new attention brought with the new traffic thanks to all the new comers there could be traders and corpos trying to hustle into the station for profit and increase and pirate and merc activity around the system because of all the new stuff.
I missed the Traveler reviews. Thanks.
I see jack the NPC is wearing the original Weyland Yutani "winged sun" logo, as he goes down to a primitive planetoid to answer a distress signal. I'm sure nothing can possibly go wrong there.
That's a good adventure pack.
The sense I get from the review is that this is mostly a campaign setting, with the optional adventure idea, and you can make what you want out of it. There's an obvious opportunity to sabotage one of the guard satellites (or detect and fix same) in order to create a hole in the monitoring grid for someone to fly in and out of the interdicted planet if they have a code.
I'm suspicious of why the planet really is red-zoned.
Maybe everyone down on the surface is actually a clone of someone else in the Imperium, and this is a "farm" for storing them and conditioning them with simple manual labor, until someone comes to "harvest" them for their owner's use. (like in the movie: "The Island".)
There's not much on the inhabitants, you can imagine many kinds of scenarios, one being they're all psionics, and powerful ones, too, so once you go down, they absorb you into their community or eliminate or gain control of you, and nobody wants them to leave the surface to spread.
The missing ship supplies could have been diverted to some secret base in the system, I guess. A secret private operation, maybe pirates. Maybe a Secret Naval op off the books and the station and rescue craft is just a handy cover. I mean, you can spin this any way you like as a GM.
YES!! A fresh traveller review from Seth, great way to start the day 🙂
I could watch Seth nerd over ship models for hours lol
Thanks for another one for the Traveller!
Should we expect more videos about the Kult?
Nice work Seth, thank you for this overview. Do you think buying the combined 1-5 adventures in this book is worth it, or just a lot of additional work? Or do you think there is a better collection of adventures elsewhere?
I enjoyed this collection. The only other collection of MGT2 Traveller adventures I can think of is Mysteries on Arcturus Station, but it only has 2 adventures versus 5. I worked on that project, so I'm biased to think it's better.
No ruttin' way! The whole planet is named Goram? Shiny!
Look at Seth, playing with his small Pinnace...
Something I thought of is maybe having the rich guys heading down to the planet for a little game hunting on the side. Maybe then it would make sense for there to be rifles or the like on board the ship and a possible chance for the players to actually come across the locals should one be drawn by rifle fire.
When will you review the Pendragon starter set?!
Aw, the kickstarter is still coming soon. I wanted to support it right away...
Good luck with your Far Trader! I hope that they get you one at some point!
Brrrrrrrr! is not the sound a spaceship makes.
The Jetsons would disagree
I very clearly heard "Brrrrrrrr!" there. Must be something wrong with your ears. :)
Adding more hijackers is a good idea, but I think that switching the shotgun loads from backshot to slugs (using the Solid Shot rules from the Central Supply Catalogue) might be another really nasty surprise.
Looking at this adventure from a in-universe perspective, it make sense to have a shotgun, which can be devastating in close quarters without risking to blast apart a bulkhead. Also, I guess the idea was that the PCs might not choose to use those heavy duty vacc suits in a atmosphere.
If you need to tweak weapons to be more dangerous to player PC's, you can always use discarding sabot rounds that give a serious armor piercing capability, and this is already built intot the rules so no home brewing required. Some weapons like gauss rifles already have some inherent AP capability.
Wake up honey! Seth posted another video! 🎉
My players have no idea that I use Traveller's adventures as a base for our sessions. Or Cthulhu. Or Kult... But they love it all the same.
I love your traveller reviews. They have convinced me to do a traveller campaign, set in the islands of Reft. Is there any chance mongoose would give you a discount code, if not for physical books maybe digital modules?
Id spend serious money on 2nd Dynasty's Traveller minis but i dont have a 3D printer 😢
I printed mine with FDM, they turned out reasonably well. 2ndDynasty was talking about maybe doing a myminifactory tribes (like patreon) for getting more minis made. But that will likely only happen if we get enough buy in on the ships boat and pennace
I have a question about Univerity:
If you finished you term in university your EDU is increased by+1
If you graduated, in Graduation Benefits you have information that EDU is increased by +2 (an additional)
So, that means, in total you gained EDU +3? Or just +1 for finishing and +1 for Graduation with total of 2?
Total should be +3
Invested in two kickstarters from them and an Empress Marava class... that would be really cool.