As I slowly settle back into what might be called 'normal life' once more, my thoughts turn to, quite naturally, my hobbies and interests, specifically those most disrupted by my transitory and nomadic lifestyle, in short gaming.

Rather than turn to my vast and expandy sandbox setting for yet another round of ye olde same-old, same-old I have a mind to set my sights upon they stars and stir the wanderlust of my imagination upon the foundries of the stars.

Or, less poetically, to run a Traveller campaign.  

While I am reasonably confindent of my ability to handle such an awesome burden alone, I had a mind to stretch my wings and free my mind from the constraints of conventional GMing practices.  I have upon my plate a sandbox of unimaginable size, an entire galaxy and the tools with which to explore it, why not live a little?!

But, enough stalling with the purplish prose of my passing passions and alliterative aspersions of awesominity. To the meat!

Whilst shopping for random office supplies, a side hobby of mine, I happened upon a rather poorly assembled 'journal' book, nothing more than a blank book of pages with intent for entry, nothing fancy or unusual except that at that very moment inspiration struck and I was dumbfounded. Thus I laid forth the peices of silver necessary to purchase the gawdawful thing.

My plan: To put for the first date of the game on the first page, along with any relavent NPC activities that could impact the campaign setting, and thus too for every day after, leaving enough space blank upon each page to put forth entries for the player activities. Thus, in this way, I force myself as the GM to acknowledge the passing of days and weeks in a time that is, in fact, accurate to the campaign, and to allow myself to plan forward such notable events as... ship maintenance.

Exciting one, that.


So far, so good.

But, as I contemplate the vast and stretchy blankness of pages I realize I have no good idea for what events I truly wish to occur 'in the background' to draw the players away from the humdrum banality of filing space taxes and sweet talking tariff collectors into....(Drumroll, please!).... ADVENTURE!

None.  Rather, while I have some vague notions of ideas, nothing that really resonates upon the squishy grey matter that fills my skull as good 'hooks', for I must start, perforce, from how to get the players to WANT to get involved, no matter how peripherally it may seem at that time.

Thus, I have turned upon the vicious pool of scoundrels and ruffians that is the RPGsite for ideas, knowing full well that keeping one eye upon the door, another upon my back and yet another on the denizens is, if nothing else, good for my creeping paranoia.

So, here is too ideas, and to try and keep them relevant my starting point for the campaign:

Day 1: We have a ship!

Type of ship? Player defined. Seriously, I get really annoyed at the common presumption that GMs should restrict player characters to cheap crap they may not actually want just because. Not because its a bad idea, but because it seems that EVERY SINGLE GAME I see proposed starts exactly the same.  It isn't 'Traveller, with lots of ships' it seems it is 'Traveller with a Free Trader, and a bunch of cooler ships that you will never, ever have'.  A pox upon your houses, I say.

Location: I intend to use that massive online map of Traveller sectors (you know the one), but I suppose somewhere in the Spinward Marches to start.

Setting: Default Imperium? Not tied to this for time or place. Star maps strike me as more setting neutral than you might imagine.  

Special considerations: I may or may not use the Hyperspace Rules from the Babylon Five setting book I recently acquired, though not much else.  I'm not adverse to jazzing the setting in various ways, such as making it more 'fading suns', or playing it straight. Part of this will depend upon the group I build for the game.  Likewise I may play around a bit with ages and career paths so not every character is forced to decide between comptent geriatric or healthy idiot... but again, some/most of that will depend upon the group.

Scope: Any. While 'instant' adventure events without grander implications are welcome, I actually don't need those. I can have 'pirates attack' all on my own, I even have random tables for that should I chose.  Given travel times, it is perfectly reasonable for events to play out over a handful of years from whatever hooks I provide, and while truly galactic scope events are feasible, the players still need an 'in' to make them work.

Setting: See also, Scope.  I'm not adverse to playing it straight with the third Imperium, etc, I am also not wedded to it in any particular fashion. A truly innovative idea with clever hooks that requires a space cthulu to work is not out of the question, I can build the setting around that just fine if I like it.  

Group/Medium: Undetermined.  I have not yet assembled my group of players for this. I'm a bit gunshy about trying a PbP seeing how drastically badly my last attempt went at getting off the ground (as a player or as a GM I've failed consistently for four years at even starting PbP gaming...), but if there is interest I'm game to move it here instead.

I can't think of any other questions to pre-emptively answer, and probably answered some no one would have asked.

Christ on a crutch! What the fuck is this doing in here??? I know I didn't click on this subforum!!!!