BASILISK STATION - A TRAVELLER BLOG

Given the nature of the campaign that this will be—referee-less and driven by diplomacy as a prime motivator—I wanted to ensure I had some random element to help differentiate various diplomatic motivations, desires, and needs. After searching a bit, I did not find any random tables that might assist with this. Traveller has long used D66 tables to help generate any number of things (e.g., encounter tables, cultural differences, etc.), so I decided to create my own. The table is below. I may replace them if other ideas I like better occur to me. If any one knows of any existing tables or has suggestions, comment on this post. I’d love to hear them. Roll Result 11    An Imperial noble is held prisoner, complicating negotiations. Roll 1d6. On a result of 1-4, the noble was detained for political reasons. On a result of 5-6, the noble is legitimately believed to have committed a crime, up to and including being convicted. 12    The local gove...

Callam Lero (677B84) is from  Dlan   (A8D3ADE-F), a high technology and capital world for the Dlan subsector in the  Ilelish  sector. He grew up in an impoverished family, the fourth son of eight children. He avoided the gangs that fought for control on the streets, while his parents worked multiple jobs to keep the family with a roof over their heads and food on the table—meager food, made from the fungus farms and processed to look like something resembling meat. His parents prized education, believing that it would, eventually lead to their children improving their lives, so Callam studied. His elder brother, Cannik, encouraged him in the practice, knowing he himself lacked the intelligence. Cannik did not avoid the lure of the gangs. After he was killed in a gang shootout, Callam doubled-down on his efforts to break free of poverty. He applied to attend the University of Dlan, and by all rights, he should have been accepted. His scores were excellent, and...

NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA) [Public domain] After talking to my friends at High Shelf Gaming Podcast , I've decided to shift the game a tad from a solo campaign to a play-by-post campaign with two other players. I'll introduce them in good time, suffice it to say, I'll play the commander and captain of the ship, and they'll play the XO and the diplomat. This will still be referee-less, and it's an interesting experiment for the three of us. Speaking of referee-less, I was reviewing a number of Journal of the Travellers' Aid Society , and in particular the GURPs/Steven Jackson Games articles. In there, I found Matt Smith's articles on the various government types. In these, he describes in some detail the nature of the government types and then provides a series of tables for rolling up how that governing body primarily operates. This will help keep some randomness and variation in the many feudal technocracies that I've a...

The basic world generator in the Traveller core rulebook includes tables for factions and cultural differences (pgs. 219-223). In rolling up my Foreven sector, I have not determined those particular elements. Because factions can change pretty rapidly as their power grows or diminishes, I will be rolling--again randomly--for these characteristics when the ship enters the system. I think this will be important because it can greatly affect the diplomatic efforts of the Imperium in its effort to sway the local government to ally with it should war break out. Perhaps the rulers in the primary government of the planet want to eliminate a faction before offering to sign a neutrality statement or mutual defense agreement? Perhaps the culture of the planet has elements anathema to the crew and diplomat and they need to find some way to "work around it." Or--perhaps one of the factions is willing to ally itself with the Imperium in the hopes of rising to power. The nature of the...