Its been almost a year since I thought of this idea.

I haven't GM-ed in a while...I'm getting antsy and I don't want to get rusty at it.

Also, 1 or 2 of my players from recent TRAVELLER campaign are making noises like they want me to run a game again.

Anyone new to the forum think the Marco Polo family in space idea is workable?  

New Ideas?


- Ed C.

The really interesting part of Marco Polo's travels was not his actual journey to China, but when he stayed there at the court of the Khan. He was learning all about Chinese culture.

The way Polo painted it, he was an important adviser to the Khan, was offered governorship of a province, and so on. The way Chinese accounts paint it, "Marco who? never heard of that guy." He might have had an ego problem

So that's another way to do a "Marco Polo" campaign - the PCs enter the court of the alien Khan -



- no, not that guy! Or maybe yes. Anyway, they enter the court of the alien Khan, and become his lackeys, "go investigate this world for me, I want to know what's happening there." And then over time they gain Khan's favour, which makes other favourites jealous, and they get involved in the politics of the court, and so on.

I ran this idea with a few modifications (and did give you full inspirational credit Koltar) and it worked out pretty well.  The primary modifications I made were to change the date to current day, make it a number of families with up to 12 people total, and set the away time at ten years maximum.

Some of the additions that were made included the pcs having the additional duties of being "ambassadors" for Earth (but not having any real power to make treaties or anything, more like Chamber of Commerce), there being possible small internal conflict within the party due to the families being from different countries.

I'll write more later, but it was a sucessful campaign.

Thats REALLY cool - this idea inspired a canpaign, and it sounds like a fairly successful one too!

- Ed C.

Is the political universe as screwed up as it is on Earth?  If so, this peaceful meet and greet, could be a lot of fun.

I mean, lets say your guides are the equivalent of Tibetan Monks, thinking that all Tibet's and the world's problems could be solved by praying with the world's leaders.  (There was such a mission in the early 60s).

In many cases, they were politely accepted, given 10 minutes, and shuffled on.  In other places they were refused harshly. In others, they were deported.  

So they are a somewhat new race and naively think they can impact galactice events.

So your guides naively think that humans are a new race. Other races have known you existed for centuries but for various reasons decided that humans need to stay on their planet. (Maybe Humans are descendents of The Destroyers, and we all know what a mess of the universe they made.) Our planets astrographic position might mean we are in a no-beings land between two great empires. Any number of reasons could complicate things

So your guides thinking they are doing you a favor and thinking they can make the universe a better place will find themselves "in the wrong places at the wrong times" or in places that their presence will "make things complicated".  

It could work, but the pacing of this campaign is the tricky part... how to keep things interesting and dramatic enough over time.

Quote from: Koltar;294995Thats REALLY cool - this idea inspired a canpaign, and it sounds like a fairly successful one too!

- Ed C.

It worked pretty well, though there were a few things that I could have done better.

Some suggestions if you don't mind (based on this experience YMMV).

Decide on what ship you want the players to be on and use deck plans if possible.  I didn't do this and it hurt.  The players all wanted details and not having even rough deck plans kept me from being able to have boarding actions, a player favorite!  I did decide to use a civilian ship that had gotten lost rather than a government ship.  I did want the ship to be fairly large with room on it but not too large a crew (I went with 15 for the crew, all controlled by one player).  I'm sure that you have access to deck plans though.

Draw up plenty of planets and systems for them to visit.  Again, something I didn't do before hand but I know that you have a number of suppliments and modules available.

Decide on a general tech level.  I went with GURPS 9 to 10 in general, and threw out a fair number of items and processes (most portable energy weapons, brain tapping, AI computers easily available were high on the list).  I wanted the aliens to be generally  ahead but not so far that the characters just sit back in amazement and feel like barbarians all the time.

Limit their luggage, I went with 25 cubic feet and 200 kilos for their personal luggage, and then allowed room for samples/gifts/etc. from Earth for them to give out and show to the various planets and such that they met.  This also allowed for room for souvenirs for them to bring back.  There was fun with the players making their lists and the ships crew looking the stuff over and making comments (if you're nice the crew can make helpful suggestions).  You may want to think about weaponry.  I went with slug throwers still being in heavy use and certainly the crew generally had sidearms on (I wanted somewhat of a Firefly/Serenity feel there).  Players controlling 5 characters (two families) didn't even think about firearms, but the players of the other family (7 members) did.  The crew kept the passenger weapons locked away for a while of course.

Which brings up something important - money.  How are the players going to make purchases out there amongst the stars?  I decided to make it easy on the players (sort of) and make various precious metals be used as currency.  What I can remember at the moment was that 30 grams of gold had the buying power of $20, and 30 grams of silver $1.  Yes, their respective governments, if not the UN would certainly provide funds, but it comes out of the luggage allowance.  Now smart players would make deals with various news/media/studios/etc. before they left for their stories.

More if you're interested.  And if I haven't said it, lots of thanks from myself and my players for the idea.