- Traveler Core Book 1 "Characters and Combat", Page 1
Introduction
Today on BDubs&Dragons we are going to try something a little different. Recently Jeffro Johnson of Jeffrogaxian Time and Appendix N and Battle Braunstein fame analyzed how to run the old 1978 scifi TTRPG "Traveler". His focus was how you can easily run Traveler without "modules" if you know how to use the random character generation system and the random charts to do a bit of what Alexander Macris of Adventurer Conqueror King System fame calls "abductive reasoning". Check this out!
The focus of my blog post is to take what Jeffro created and add my own Traveler PC to it. This Traveler PC, completely randomly rolled here, will be brought into Jeffro's simple campaign set up with an eye on Total NonStop Braunstein play (TNB). TNB means playing EVERY session of your TTRPG campaign as a Battle Braunstein. You can check out the links to explain what a Braunstein and Battle Braunstein are here.
What Did Jeffro Do?
Jeffro rolled up a starting planet called "Moonshine" which the charts told him was low tech, no government and no law. Check out his blog for exactly how he rolled this up but for my purposes lets say he created a "lonely outpost in the backwaters of space" in which "the only thing of interstellar relevance here is the scout base". He likens it to rural Kentucky so he named the place Moonshine. "Images of the Dukes of Hazzard running liquor across state lines come into our minds unbidden."
Thanks to low/no prep Jeffro's rolled up PC with a Vehicle skill result means he's a helicopter pilot from Moonshine come back after his retirement. Great no prep stuff!
I'm paraphrasing quickly because the point of this blog post is for me to create a PC to put on Moonshine in such a way that my PC is involved in a Braunstein against Jeffro's PC and/or NPCs. Does this mean full on PVP where I want to off Jeffro's PC? Maybe but not likely. I will be creating the PC live on this blog post then using abductive reasoning to set up a Braunstein on Moonshine. Can I pull it off? Well first we need to paraphrase Jeffro's adventure scenario.
Jeffro used the "76 Patrons" book for Traveler to randomly generate an NPC for his PC to interact with, to create the session adventure he imagined may be engaging (it is).
Upon rolling up a Patron (NPC) as "Scout" and the Random Encounter as "Vigilantes" Jeffro comes up with the following fantastic session scenario and worldbuilding:
Thanks to low/no prep Jeffro's rolled up PC with a Vehicle skill result means he's a helicopter pilot from Moonshine come back after his retirement. Great no prep stuff!
I'm paraphrasing quickly because the point of this blog post is for me to create a PC to put on Moonshine in such a way that my PC is involved in a Braunstein against Jeffro's PC and/or NPCs. Does this mean full on PVP where I want to off Jeffro's PC? Maybe but not likely. I will be creating the PC live on this blog post then using abductive reasoning to set up a Braunstein on Moonshine. Can I pull it off? Well first we need to paraphrase Jeffro's adventure scenario.
Jeffro used the "76 Patrons" book for Traveler to randomly generate an NPC for his PC to interact with, to create the session adventure he imagined may be engaging (it is).
Upon rolling up a Patron (NPC) as "Scout" and the Random Encounter as "Vigilantes" Jeffro comes up with the following fantastic session scenario and worldbuilding:
"There is some sort of piracy operation going on in this world. The scout base is corrupt. Some of the locals are opposed to this. TC from Magnum P.I. is flying from island to island looking for clues in a weird Space translation of Hazzard, Kentucky. He immediately finds himself inside the plot of the classic movie Outland. Is first encounter is with this world’s counterpart to the Bookhouse Boys from Twin Peaks."
He mentions Twin Peaks so maybe you now realize why all this intrigued me.
Lastly he describes the following session scenario possibility:
"We can play for a while even in a zero prep session just with this. As referee, I might declare that things just go wrong with an initial investigative encounter and guns are immediately drawn. This is entirely consistent with both Raymond Chandler novels and Dumarest of Terra. Might as well lean into it! We do not need an elaborate scenario to begin play at all. We need relatively simple situations to serve as tutorials for the main rule systems of the classic Little Black Books. We not only have a campaign setting that took no effort to play, but we also have a game that is already running. It’s more important for our first steps within this space to get the players up to speed on how the rules work than it is for it to actually feel like a real game."
Point being Jeffros PC the "LT Colonel" has some vigilantes trying to get him in the Bookhouse Boys or telling him not to mess with the Bookhouse Boys or whatever. So finally, on to my PC!
My Traveler PC
Ability scores are rolled with 2d6 with 7 being average. Here we roll:
Strength 7 Dexterity 6 Endurance 7 Intelligence 6 Education 8 Social Standing 9
So, we've got an extremely average man here who has a bit of extra education and social standing. Seems the only way to acquire skills and training is to enlist.Should I enlist in Navy, Marines, Army, Scouts, Merchants or Other?
In Traveler you have to roll 2d6 +DM (dice modifier) to successfully enlist. Fail this and you're in the draft and your PC is probably going to suck. My best DMs are for the Army (need 5+) or Merchants (need 7+). My stats allow a +2 DM on both tries so we can assume Merchants are generally going to train better skills since it's harder to hit. BUT it looks like I'll get a DM for all of my other rolls if I go down army path. Giving it a shot!
He mentions Twin Peaks so maybe you now realize why all this intrigued me.
Lastly he describes the following session scenario possibility:
"We can play for a while even in a zero prep session just with this. As referee, I might declare that things just go wrong with an initial investigative encounter and guns are immediately drawn. This is entirely consistent with both Raymond Chandler novels and Dumarest of Terra. Might as well lean into it! We do not need an elaborate scenario to begin play at all. We need relatively simple situations to serve as tutorials for the main rule systems of the classic Little Black Books. We not only have a campaign setting that took no effort to play, but we also have a game that is already running. It’s more important for our first steps within this space to get the players up to speed on how the rules work than it is for it to actually feel like a real game."
Point being Jeffros PC the "LT Colonel" has some vigilantes trying to get him in the Bookhouse Boys or telling him not to mess with the Bookhouse Boys or whatever. So finally, on to my PC!
My Traveler PC
Ability scores are rolled with 2d6 with 7 being average. Here we roll:
Strength 7 Dexterity 6 Endurance 7 Intelligence 6 Education 8 Social Standing 9
So, we've got an extremely average man here who has a bit of extra education and social standing. Seems the only way to acquire skills and training is to enlist.Should I enlist in Navy, Marines, Army, Scouts, Merchants or Other?
In Traveler you have to roll 2d6 +DM (dice modifier) to successfully enlist. Fail this and you're in the draft and your PC is probably going to suck. My best DMs are for the Army (need 5+) or Merchants (need 7+). My stats allow a +2 DM on both tries so we can assume Merchants are generally going to train better skills since it's harder to hit. BUT it looks like I'll get a DM for all of my other rolls if I go down army path. Giving it a shot!
I'm in the army with a terms of service of 4 years. Rolled a 9 to survive my TOS and an 11 to get my commission (add LEVEL 1 rank to Service). Nice. Am I promoted? Just barely thanks to the +1 DM for my high education. Woot! I now have 2 RANKS in Army and is a Captain.
The way this works is I get 2 random skills for a TOS and 2 more for the ranks I achieved. I can choose from the chart I'll screenshot to the side of this blog but I'm going to go with the Advanced Education Table for Army men since I have an Education of 8+. "Leader" "Computer 2 ranks" "Tactics"
Anyway this will continue on until I'm done. Realizing this is getting a bit long but you can see why Traveler is celebrated for it's outstanding character generation. I'll finish it on my own and post below.Feel free to skip as this is almost scratch paper which I'll meme up some ideas about just after.
TOS 1: Enlist in Army, Survive, Commission, Promotion. Achieve Captain. 4 skills: Leader, Computer 2, Tactics 22 years old
TOS 2: Re-enlist, Survive, Promotion to Major so 2 new skills. Keep with the Advanced Education: Computer 4 26 years old
TOS 3: Re-enlist success, promotion to Lt Colonel. Keep with advanced education: Admin, Tactics2 30 yo
TOS 4: Re-enlist, Survive, no promotion. Leader 2 34 yo
TOS 5 (aging gets me -1 to STR and END!) Re-Enlist successful. Survives. No promotion! Computer again! Age 38
TOS 6: (aging gets me -1 DEX and END) Re-enlistment is harder as I'm getting slower from too much time behind a desk with Computers. Barely survive! Promotion finally to Colonel. Admin, Tactics AGE 42
TOS 7: (aging gets me -1 STR) Barely re-enlist again. Survives TOS. NO PROMOTION. Leader. Age 46.
TOS 8: 7 terms is when you're forced out of Retirment unless you roll boxcars. I didn't so I'm forced out of retirment!
Retired Colonel Luther Stickell: 46 years old. Army Rank 5 Colonel. STR 4, DEX 5, END 6, INT 6, EDU 8, SS 9. Leader 2, Computer 4, Tactics 3, Admin 2. Gun 2 (body pistol), SMG 1, Rifle 1. Items: 2 High Passage Tickets, and 20,000 credits.
So based on the above you get a picture of a guy who started his Army career well and was promoted after leading men into battle. Over the years however his head for computers over fighting made him miss out on promotions. Since he achieved tactics 3 and Leader 2 you need to think he may be a bit of a coward... men listened to him but he wasn't promoted for his led battles. Higher ups saw him pull back and not lead from the front or focus too much on the 1s and zeros and not the boots on the ground.
When he was 42 he was promoted to Colonel but with no further promotion for 4 years despite leading another successful battle at 46 they pushed him out! This guy is a secret king who wants to prove he should have been promoted to General a decade ago. He is still trying to prove himself!
So, our Colonel has the cash and skills to prove himself but cowardice which always makes him come up short. He recalls a backwater planet called Moonshine he was stationed in at 42 (4 -6 years ago) where he was asked to get things organized at the Scout base. He failed to get law and order there but perfected his Admin skills and was promoted to Colonel as a sort of thank you for spending 4 years in such a thankless task. The higher ups figure his retirement funds was thanks enough.
But Moonshine seemed a place he could tame, a place to bring tech and the order that comes with it. With his 2 ranks in Leadership he hires on 12 men to be part of his crew to clean up the backwater planet. He's a bit of a desk jockey with 2 successful big battles on the outskirts of the quadrant (where he was successful but he was notably absent from the firefights) he figures he can make it happen. But he won't be hands on. He comes to Moonshine as "a new sheriff in town" with a dozen former military who retired over the years and never achieved his lofty ranks. They mostly know him from his Admin years so don't realize that if wetwork goes down the Colonel will be in the rear with the gear.
I've named him Colonel Luther Stickell based on the hacker guy played by Ving Rhames from the Mission Impossible film series. I can go ahead and then rip off his mob character from Pulp Fiction and make him an amalgam of both, but a colonel. This means his cronies are John Travolta, Samuel L Jackson and other lower tier thugs from that film (and Tarentinos other crime films bc why not?) but twisted to be former soldiers. Heck you can even add Uma as Colonel Stickell's "kept woman" like her storyline in Pulp Fiction where one of the PCs try to steal her away with charm and dance!
Now THIS is a cool faction!
My PC in Total NonStop Braunstein
The Braunstein aspect writes itself. Colonel Stickell has put himself up against the vigilantes Jeffro rolled up. So, in the session 1 that Jeffro laid out wherein the Vigilantes accost or attack his LT Colonel, I would have Colonel Luther try to meet up with Jeffro's LT Colonel and see if I can get him to spy on the vigilantes. "Hey man, we both know what war is like. Do you really want your home planet to be backwater rat's nest of hillbillies forever? I'm going to bring computers to this place! We're going to have tech. We're going to civilize this spot!"
Jeffro could then agree, betray me and run moonshine/guns and align with the Vigilantes, or whatever. If he's fully on Stickell's side he may learn that the Colonel takes half measures when guns are drawn. If he aligns with the Vigilantes he'll need to keep abreast of the surveillance equipment Colonel Stickell begins to ship into Moonshine for installation (Colonel Stickell thinks computers can solve any problem). Maybe he becomes like one of those UK Bladerunners knocking my equipment out as part of his session actions. Maybe Jeffro's guy just doesn't want the High Tech that Stickell wants brought to Moonshine. He's against it like old hillbillies were against the TVA?! Braunstein play is dynamic play!
All this based on some dumb random rolls and the combined imagination of just a few players. And not even real players but a couple of guys making blog posts and theorizing. How much better would all this be in real weekly session play?
But the trick is the focus on the Braunstein play within the session and game world. Traveler doesn't have dungeons for us to "get the ruby" from and but there's no need for us to all hope on a starship like Firefly, OG Star Trek, or Cowboy Bebop to be "Wagon Train to the stars!" Which seems to be a common approach to those poor TTRPG players brought up on conventional approaches to TTRPG in general and D&D in particular.
We have a much more interesting scenario on this planet of Moonshine! You just need to be creative enough to do it and brave enough to risk dying in PVP where they might lay their vengeance upon you. Are you bad enough to try?
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