Riding the Hyperlite

The Adventure

Adventure Selection and Design for ArcaneCon 1.

Kinunir, the module, has 4 adventures in it. I would need 1 for ArcaneCon, and I wanted one that wouldn't involve a lot of tactical play. I wanted social over combat. The adventure I chose was The Scrapyard. It's a straightforward Heist, commissioned by a mysterious patron. A huge reward and clear paths to success presented up front set the hook nicely and get the group started right away. Violence would always be an option for any given scenario, but softer methods yield better results earlier in a heist.

I would also have to set the tone by building out some background scenery to try to establish a little immersion and suspension of disbelief. I was there to show these folks Traveller, and I intended to deliver, but exposition is like Cayenne Pepper -- a little goes a very long way. Still, without a strong vibe, games won't take off because the players won't get it. They won't know quite how to act, or what's even inter-actable, so you have to make the most of the exposition you choose to deliver and show them with as little talking as possible. Art really helps here.

The Scenario, a Discrete Game Design Unit.

The Scenario is an abstraction describing a discrete unit of adventure. It has provided me a framework to design satisfying units of play for my role-playing/adventure games since I first read about it on The Alexandrian some 10 or more years ago. The scenario is a way to prep games that are fun to run and fun to play and no one feels like they're being forced to act out someone's Mary Sue adventure. You can mix and match them. You can save them for later and if you design them well you can re-use them with little-to-no alteration, even with the same player group.

When you establish an adventure goal and build a few scenarios leading to it, you have an Adventure. For me, it really has become that simple. 2 hours is 3-4 scenarios. 3 hours is 5-7 scenarios. You can run them in a sequence, you can run them based on player selection, and you can loop back into them from each other. They're adventure building blocks.

My Design Guidelines.

Independent.
For me to get a scenario to work , it must be atomic. The scenario must be resolvable independently of any others. In other words, no pre-requisites.

Open to Access.
There must be more than one way to get to it, and more than one way to get out of it! This is my implementation of JA's Three Clue Rule.

Open to Solution.
A scenario must not have a fixed solution. No railroading, please. The dice must be allowed to enhance or hinder progress, but never block it. There must be more than one way to succeed, and the parameters of your scenario have to be accommodating to multiple solution types, e.g. stealth, subterfuge, negotiation, bribery, and violence. This is not easy, and for me takes a few iterations to get something satisfying.

No Single Points of Failure.
Finally, each scenario must be by-passable. In other words, you shouldn't have to complete all of the scenarios to complete the adventure. Failure must be on the table or there's no thrill, but progress mustn't be halted due to failed attempts. e.g. You get turned away at the door, but notice that there's a truck around the side of the building with workers unloading crates onto a loading dock. When the dice close a door, it's up to you to show the players an open window, so to speak. What they do then is up to them, but there must always be a path forward or you'll be getting blank stares and then the phones will come out.

The Vibe.

Every successful adventure game has a distinct and compelling vibe. To me, Traveller's vibe is all about the seedy side of the Far Future. Traveller as in a Space Hobo who doesn't belong anywhere they go, and will be treated as though they don't belong everywhere they go. The protagonists are vagrants and vagabonds. They are Travellers.

I tend to go for Film Noir when building out scenarios for Traveller. Protagonists with questionable motives doing shady things for even more questionable patrons. Adventures take place on the Frontier -- a wild and often lawless zone at the edge of a once-great, but now fading Empire of Earth. Worlds often have complete autonomy. News travels slowly between stars, limited to the speed of starships and their ability to carry data from place to place. Starships are rare and unimaginably expensive. Imperial protection is capricious at best.

Source Material.

The best Traveller vibe I've ever read as far as the Classic game goes are E.C. Tubb's Dumarest of Terra books. They have all the tropes, from High and Low passage on down to the Blade in Earl's boot and the protective mesh-armor he wears under his tunic. Pretty much every Traveller trope is in there. Keep in mind this is a Golden Age sci fi book, so there's some fan service to the predominately lonely, nerdy men who bought the bulk of these books in that era. Every lady he meets falls in love with Earl. Even still, I felt Earl showed rare character for the era. And he's pretty hot. So there's that.

Derived Exposition.

To establish this vibe, I opted to open in a seedy Low Town bar called The Valley. Cheap beer, cheap burgers, loud music -- no Imperials. The Valley would be the kind of place Travellers end up in between jobs. The Valley would on a strip-mined world called Starter. Starter was a provider of raw materials for the Empire. It would be polluted, exploited, and a client world meaning The Company was in charge. You'd need breathing gear to be outside for longer than a few minutes. Most Low Town buildings had makeshift airlocks to keep the poisonous air out. A few, like The Valley, boasted fully-sealed environments. High Town was under a dome, and you weren't allowed in there without travel documents. Locals weren't friendly. Cops didn't come to Low Town in ones and twos, preferring ATVs and Air/Rafts and patrols of 5 or more. Planet, the world that owned Starter, would be a one week starship journey away and Starter's opposite in nearly every way. Planet would be rich, beautiful, hi-tech, and clean. That was enough exposition for now.

Time to start this party with the patron's entrance. In media res is my preferred opening.

The Opening Scene.

"A middle-aged Corpo approaches your group with a wry smile and his palms up -- the universal sign for, 'I would have words with you and mean no violence.'

He does not introduce himself, but instead presents an escrow certificate for 150,000 credits and says, 'I'm seeking trade secrets used in the construction of certain military vessels by General Shipyards of Planet. If you have a moment, I'll give you the details of what I'm after.'"

That's more-or-less from the module with my own spin on the dialog. In the game I specified what he wanted (actual fuel tankage & engineering section dimensions, from two different sources) and had him lay out three possible ways to get it. This way, the players had three paths to choose from right away, ensuring that the game would flow from the start. Fortunately, the module provided me with three clear paths, so I lifted them and that's what Corpo delivered.

  1. Steal It.
    GS maintains a data vault on Planet. You could break in, or maybe hack it.
  2. Social Engineer It.
    Several members of the project team still live on Planet. Get one or more of them to give it to you. Or steal it from them.
  3. Find One & Gather It Yourself.
    GS has a scrapyard on Planet. There might be one there.

The module didn't give me much more adventure/game information than that. At this point, I was on my own, although #3 had a little more detail and a nice surprise in the module so I took it. I had a little more work to do on the hook and then I'd have to come up with a robust scenario for each of these paths.

Setting the Hook.

I decided my Corpo was going to be banal about recommending theft, bribery, and trespassing. After all, he's a pragmatist. He also set up the payoff in such a way that he has nothing to lose by engaging the group. Go-go independent escrow! NPC motivation complete.

I wanted put a bow on all of this, so I had him drop an Expense Card on the table to cover any costs the heroes might incur in purchasing tickets to Planet. Then I gave each of them 1,000 in cash for a stipend to erase any remaining potential hesitancy. Finally, to convey a sense of urgency I told them if they could deliver in 4 weeks, he'd pay a bonus of 50,000. But, if they weren't back with the data in 6 weeks, the deal would be off. And with that, my Corpo Patron would leave through the kitchen.

I figured the players would immediately have questions and want to gather information, so for each initial clue, I added details that would be revealed upon any investigation and a clear path to a next step for each clue, the first most logical step for each would be to secure passage to Planet ASAP.

With that initial design out of the way and the guard rails in place, my three scenarios were to be:

  1. Penetrate the Data Vault & Hack the Mainframe AKA Steal It.
  2. Bribe/Extort/Social Engineer the Project Team AKA the Social Engineering Option.
  3. Take Photos in the Scrapyard AKA Find one Yourself.

Scenario 1 Outline.

For the last part of this post, I'll lay out my outline for Steal It. I used a 5-room dungeon framework to design this scenario because I felt it would be easy to run and would provide lots of opportunities for the players to use their skill and cleverness to come up with solutions.

In the next posts, I'll share the design decisions I made for the remaining two scenarios I designed for this adventure: The Project Team, and The Salvage Yard.

Penetrate the Data Vault & Hack the Mainframe.

1. Entrance.

This is a secure corporate facility in a commercial zone. Not a lot of people around, but getting in without an ID badge will prove difficult. Getting in without being noticed will also be challenging. I envisioned the facilities I had access to when I worked for Big Technology.

2. Guardian.

Once you got in, you'd have to negotiate with the local AI for access. I opted to run this as a reaction roll (2d6, roll high for better) modified by Computer skill and whatever bribes they might be able to come up with. This would establish an Alert threshold for the Puzzle. The better the initial reaction, the longer they'd have to search before they hit the Setback.

3. Puzzle.

You have to find the data. Rather than do a success/fail, I opted to make it question of how long it would take. If that time exceeded the Alert threshold, the AI would want to know what you were doing, forcing another reaction/negotiation.

4. Setback.

If the AI wasn't initially cooperative, or if the search ran into complications, an alarm would trigger and in 5 minutes, a security team would arrive. The Travellers would have one last chance to complete their task and escape, or face arrest.

5. Reward.

Bundled with the data, should they acquire it, is a reference to the Adda Dubsar in secure salvage at GS's shipyard. The reference indicates that enough construction was completed on the AD that it would be suitable to physically measure for their purposes.

Scenario 1 Complete.

I now had a mini adventure that represented a path to secure the data that will lead to their reward. There were no one-way streets. There were multiple ways to solve it. There were no single points of failure and it was not dependent on any other scenarios. Done and done.

Thanks to Justin Alexander.

Adopting terminology and abstractions that Justin Alexander established in his foundational book So You Want To Be A Game Master, and his definition of the Scenario as an open-ended adventure in itself is for me, one of the great epiphanies of my Refereeing journey. I've met the guy and spoken with him on a few occasions and not only did he produce a great book, he's a fine fellow as well.