Traveller

Traveller, Traveller New Era, Traveller 2300, Traveller, Marc Miller's Traveller, Mega-Traveller names and logos are owned by . . . um, . . . er, by. . . someone, I guess.

"Be Your Future!"

Submitted by Dan J

This was my first experience with Traveller, so, I remember it well. I was the new guy. I had been role-playing for some time, so I came in with a Rep. This immediately set the alpha-male role-player against me.

I was a pirate complete with vessel, but high on tech skills and low on ground weapons and fighting ability. Most of the party wore straight vac suits, bullet-proof vests, shot guns, and other tech 10 stuff. We were poor. He had a robot with a fusion gun that went every where with him and was packed full of sensory gear of the paranoid persuasion. For instance, if a conversation took place anywhere on any one of three ships in our little armada, the alpha male would insist on a roll over whether he heard it or not. It even detected lies to some extent, although it gave false positives too (this leads to another story, but I wasn’t there and I’m not one to gossip). He also had a lot of stuff from other game sessions that others had heard about, but had never attended nor ever met anyone else who had attended. Humm?

Anyway, we’re about to leave this gas giant when our DM says we pick up a faint signal on a terrestrial moon nearby. So, our little fleet (one 500 ton pirate, a 100 ton scout, and a 400 ton alpha male merchant totally - automated; high security) head over to investigate. We can’t scan anything, so we get in my shuttle and head down. We land.

There’s this oblisk. At this point, alpha male starts freaking out. "There’s magic here. I know it! Let’s leave!" This is not prompted by the DM. He’s really having a flashback of some kind. We start to ignore him and proceed to the oblisk. He pulls out his gun and threatens to shoot. He’s by far the more heavily armed and skilled in the arts of war.

The pilot in the shuttle sees this and asks me if anything is wrong. He knows of the alpha male’s paranoia, so it goes out secured and scrambled. I tell the pilot to aim at muscle head. This particular weapon on the shuttle is more than a match for meat head and his robot. Then I point it out to the alpha clown and after a brief and unsuccessful attempt to get out of his situation (I radio my ship to fire on the shuttle - oops sorry, its orbiting on the other side of the planet!), he surrenders. He just wants off the planet. Besides, he taunts, "You can kill me, but you’ll never get my treasure off of my ship!" Hum. Treasure? So, we tie him up, stick him in cargo, and take off. Suddenly, we see in the closed circuit monitors that his robot is untying him. Spare gun in the robot. So we jettison our cargo at 90,000 feet. He rolls to see if the robots anti-gravs can stop his free fall. Nope. I guess not. Splat. Splat.

We re-supplied and headed back to the oblisk. Turns out to be a pretty easy bug hunt with numerous treasures and goodies. DM was putting together a rich, get acquainted scenario to build team work. Oh well. We spent the goods on breaking into our deceased teammates ship and retrieving his credit cards. Cha Ching!

So the moral of the story is: keep your cool and don’t play with guns.

"Would You Like Fries With That?"

Submitted by Michael S. Webster

While on lunch break from our work, Mark, Brian, and I went to a local fast-food restaurant to do some Traveller (original) chaptering (or free-form gaming). Brian was GMing while Mark and I were owners of a merchant ship, with me being the pilot. Being short of funds we went looking for work, and found a job shipping Eugenics, an anti-aging, and HIGHLY illegial drug on most worlds, especially over-crowded ones.

During the game, Mark, Brian, and I discussed different methods for smuggling these drugs from our pick up point and deliver them safely. We were also discussing the various penalties for smuggling Eugenics (usually death).

During this time, we were being overheard and getting various glances from the clientele. Fortunately, no law enforcement officers had shown up.