Something I’ve spent literally years struggling with as a GM is transitioning from one scenario structure to another within a dungeoncrawl.

Let me see if I can clarify that:

I find it really easy to switch scenario structures at the same time that the venue of action is being switched: If the PCs enter the dungeon, we swap to dungeoncrawling. If they seek out a specific character in a tavern we roleplay that conversation; if they exit the tavern and then start hitting the streets looking for information we handle that a different way.

After a few false starts as a neophyte GM, I also eventually found it relatively easy to switch scenario structures within most venues: Renting rooms at a local tavern is handled at one level of abstraction, but when they wake up in the middle of the night to find the tavern haunted by ghosts we switch to a different structure.

These days, this sort of thing is pretty much automatic for me. But swapping structures in the dungeon still routinely thwarts me.

The type of structure I’m talking about is mainly the one found in adventures like Night Below or Thunderspire Labyrinth: A large, underground complex in which there are isolated pockets of “interest” which are designed to be run as a room-by-room crawl.

For awhile, I thought it was the difficulty of presenting meaningful navigation choices to the players in these environments. But once I came to think of them as “underground wildernesses”, this wasn’t a problem any more.

No, the primary problem was the transition from the room-by-room crawl to the underground wilderness (or vice versa): When the PCs enter a room with three exits and two of them lead to another room but the third leads to the more abstract labyrinths of the wider complex.

I mean, it’s relatively easy to just do it. But it’s more difficult to do it effectively.

Partly it’s the difficulty of finding a smooth narrative description of the shift. Mostly, however, it’s the damage to roleplaying and immersion caused by the imposition of the metagaming structure on the decision-making of the characters.

See, in most other circumstances it’s either the passage of time, the changing of circumstance, or the decision of the characters to do something different which smoothly transitions us from one game structure to another: But not so in this case. Circumstances remain unchanged and the PCs are making the exact same type of decision they’ve been making for the past twenty rooms… but suddenly the scenario structure is changing.

And, like I say, this can be handled pretty simply by saying to the players “we’re switching structures now” (or some equivalent thereof). But that has consequences on the decisions they’re making. (As a simple example, if I didn’t tell them “all the rooms beyond this point are empty, so we’re going to be switching to underworld exploration” then they might waste time searching those empty areas… which might have an impact when they return to the occupied rooms.)

In a lot of ways, this is all a mountain out of a molehill because it just doesn’t come up that often. But it’s something that my recent discussion of using multiple scenario structures has brought to mind.

Recently, though, I had an interesting discovery in my Ptolus campaign. Part of the vast megadungeons beneath that city are immense labyrinths built by the warlord Ghul. Ghul’s Labyrinth is filled with a number of bluesteel doors which are extremely difficult to bypass (being resistant to knock and lacking any normal lock to pick).

And these doors have proven to be ideal transition points between dungeon scenario structures because they’re natural transition points within the game world: Not only do they require a significant decision on the part of the PCs in order to pass through them, but they were actually built by Ghul to logically divide his demesne.

All of this, of course, ties back into the larger issues of making sure that your players’ decision within a scenario structure are associated with the decisions of their characters: Something I not only aesthetically prefer, but which is absolutely necessary if the scenario structure is actually unknown to the players.

Go to Part 1

When I designed The Lost Hunt for Fantasy Flight Games, I launched the scenario by having an elven village attacked by a kehtal (a servitor of the demon gods of Keht). The idea was pretty simple: The PCs could then follow the trail of this murderous creature, which would lead them to the interdimensional rift in which the demon gods were imprisoned.

The tricky part was the actual tracking. Although I wasn’t thinking in terms of game structures back in 2001, I knew that this section of the adventure needed more weight to it than a simple skill check. The experience of the adventure couldn’t be, “Fight a monster, make a Wilderness Lore check, and – ta-da! – you’ve found the interdimensional prison of an ancient god cult!”

So what I ended up doing was crafting a custom game structure for tracking: Following the trail required five successful Wilderness Lore checks (DC 20). Each failure would force the PCs to backtrack (requiring an additional success in order to find the trail they lost). Each successful check would bring them to a “pit stop” along the trail, which was described in boxed text: One established the creature’s prodigious leaping ability; another brought them to another scene of carnage wrought by the creature; and so forth.

Nothing too complex here: I was basically adapting the concept of complex skill checks (as found in numerous RPG systems) and tweaking it a bit. But it did take a little bit of thought and a little bit of experimentation to nail down the details. Once I had tucked this custom “pit stop and backtrack” game structure into my mental toolkit, though, it proved useful time and time again: I’ve used it probably a dozen times since then.

This is, obviously, a very simple example of how you can create custom game structures to organize your prep and affect your players’ experience with the game world. In fact, it’s so straight-forward some of you are probably saying, “Duh.”

So let’s tackle something a little more complicated.

BETWEEN THE STARS

Campaign Concept: The PCs are the crew (and possibly owners) of a starship plying the interstellar trade routes. Although some planet-side activity might croup up, the focus of this campaign is going to be on the voyages of the ship itself.

Macro-Structure: For the macro-structure of the campaign, I’m going to use Traveller. As discussed in Part 10, Traveller has a well-developed system for handling interstellar travel and trade. This system empowers the PCs to make decisions about where they’re going; what they’re trading; and so forth.

Scenario Triggers: As we also discussed in Part 10, however, this game structure is incomplete. It has a closed resolution loop (go to starport, deliver goods, pick up goods, go to starport), but it lacks vertical integration. So the first thing we need to figure out is the trigger we’re going to use for transitioning from the trade-and-travel macrostructure to the scenarios that will probably fill most of our actual playing time.

I’m going to propose that, just like a dungeon has rooms and a wilderness has hexes, this campaign has voyages. In other words, just like we fill a room or a hex with content, we’re going to fill each trip from one star system to another with content. (Of course, some dungeon rooms are empty and some of our voyages may be uneventful. We’ll come back to that later.)

BETWEEN THE STARS – KEYING VOYAGES

We all know how to key a dungeon room or a hex: You write a number on the map and then you use that number to reference a description of the content of the room or hex. How do we key voyages? In other words, when the PCs leave a starport how do we know what this voyage will contain?

Linear Sequence: A simple solution would be a linear sequence. You prep a scenario for their first voyage (no matter where they’re headed); then you prep a scenario for their second voyage; and so forth. The obvious disadvantage of this approach is that it doesn’t include meaningful choice for the PCs.

Random: We could prep several voyages and then randomly determine which one we’ll use on any given trip. But, of course, once again we’ve eliminated meaningful choice for the PCs.

Space Hexes: We could key each hex on the subsector map with content. Couple of problems, though: First, any given voyage will actually contain multiple hexes. Second, because the campaign isn’t exploratory in nature there will be a lot of hexes they’re unlikely to visit (since they’ll probably be sticking to direct routes between planets). We could, of course, limit our prep to hexes near established trade routes and then implement a system for randomly determining which hex’s content on the flightpath gets triggered for any particular voyage. But doing that actually suggests what might be an easier approach…

Routes: What if we just key each route with content? When the PCs take a particular trade route, we trigger whatever content we keyed to that route. A potential problem here would be PCs who settle down into servicing a regular route: Once they’ve used up the keyed content for the route, there’ll be nothing new to experience the next time they take it. We could mitigate this by randomly determining cargo destinations (so that the PCs would be less likely to settle into a regular pattern) or by keying multiple scenarios to a single route (this would increase the prep load, but make it harder to completely “burn out” a given route).

BETWEEN THE STARS – SPICING THE STRUCTURE

So our basic structure looks like this: We key each trade route with an encounter or scenario which is experienced when the PCs take the route. In addition, we randomize cargo destinations to discourage the PCs from wearing a groove into a particular trade route.

That, by itself, would give us enough structure to run a campaign: We could draw up the local subsector, map out the trade routes, key them, and start play. But what could we do to spice things up – adding flavor, complexity, and/or detail to the campaign?

Random Chance: Instead of a route’s encounter happening automatically when the route is taken, we could have a randomized scenario check. Since the players won’t know whether there will be complications on a particular voyage, this will make the campaign less predictable (and also possibly less frustrating). Setting the right probability of experiencing a route scenario will probably require some experimentation: Will the PCs end up taking multiple routes on most journeys (getting from planet A to planet C via planet B)? How interested are the players in the actual trade mechanics of the game (as opposed to using the trade mechanics as a mere method of delivering content)? And so forth.

For the sake of argument, let’s say that we want roughly a 1 in 3 chance of triggering a scenario. (A roll of 1-2 on 1d6.)

Scenario Sources: Now that we’ve randomized the occurrence of scenarios, we can use that same mechanic to include encounters from non-route-based sources.

First, we’re going to seed our cargo and passenger tables with scenario triggers. For example, carrying a shipment of positronic brains makes it more likely to be targeted by rogue robotic hijackers. Or a particular passenger might be targeted for assassination.

Second, our scenario check (which is performed once per route) is now revised: On a roll of 1 we trigger a route scenario; on a roll of 2-3 we trigger a passenger scenario; on a roll of 4-5 we trigger a cargo scenario. A roll of 6 indicates no encounter.

Scenarios are theoretically being triggered on rolls of 1-5 on 1d6, but our practical odds of experiencing a scenario on any given route will remain roughly 1 in 3 because the PCs may not be carrying cargo or passengers with scenario triggers.

Weighted Route Tables: Instead of just keying a unique encounter (or a set of unique encounters) to each route, we could instead key each route with a weighted scenario table: So in the Black Expanse you’re more likely to get hit by pirates, while in the Inner Systems you’re more likely to get hit with a random audit.

(Alternatively, we could rebuild our scenario check and include “region scenarios” as a fourth type: So each route would be keyed with a unique scenario; each region would have a random scenario table; and we’d also have cargo/passenger scenarios.)

“Empty” Voyages: As noted above, we’ve now created “empty” voyages (i.e., voyages on which no scenarios will be triggered). In order to spice these up, I’m going to take a page from Ars Magica, combine it with the character creation rules for Traveller, and create a game structure for handling “down time”: Improving your skills. Improving your ship. Working on research projects. And so forth.

Dockside Encounters: Another possibility would be adding structures for dockside encounters and/or scenarios. But I’m actually going to deliberately eschew this sort of thing: I want this campaign to be focused on the ship.

While it’s certainly possible that the players will get tangled up in some planet-side intrigue, by specifically excluding this content from the campaign structure I’ll be steering the focus of the game away from it: Docking will generally be the boring bit that bridges the gap between the exciting stuff.

Go to Part 14: Scenario Structures for Between the Stars

Go to Part 1

Up until this point, a lot of this blather about “game structures” may have sounded like it was something that only game designers need to waste their time with.

But, to the contrary, game structures represent the primary and most important tool in the GM’s toolbox. The more game structures a GM has mastered, the easier they will find it to prep and run their scenarios. The fewer game structures a GM knows, the more limited their scenarios and the more difficult their prep becomes.

(The argument can also be made that, fundamentally, all GMs need to act like game designers: An RPG without a scenario is like Monopoly without a board. Or, to put it another way, if Monopoly were packaged like a typical RPG it would come with rules for moving your pawns and buying properties, but it would expect the group to design its own boards. Scenario design is game design.)

To demonstrate what I mean about using scenario structures as tools, let’s take the example of a fairly straightforward adventure concept:

The PCs have been tasked with accompanying a clerk who has been charged with acting as the proxy for the Duchess of Canterlocke to bid for a dilapidated estate standing opposite the Dweredell Gardens. The PCs are to protect him while finding out more about the other parties interested in the estate and the suspected cult activity surrounding the estate.

Fifteen years ago, my mastery of game structures was limited. I basically had two of them: Dungeoncrawling and linear railroading. Faced with this concept for an adventure scenario, I would have been forced to resort to the linear railroad: A pre-programmed sequence of scenes that the PCs would experience. (To my fictionally retroactive credit, I would have probably tried to make those scenes as flexible as possible because I wasn’t actually a fan of railroading. But I would have been fighting my prep structure, and that usually means a lot more prep.

In a similar fashion, you can see how the lack of a game structure for wilderness adventures has resulted in most modern adventure modules presenting overland travel as a linear sequence of pre-programmed encounters:

But today, with a wider array of game structures at my fingertips, I find it relatively trivial to break this scenario concept down in a way that’s easier to prep, easier to run, and offers the players a much greater freedom in how they want to approach the scenario.

(1) “The PCs are to protect him…” I’m assuming this means that there will actually be something to protect him from. To prep this, I draw up a list of threats (i.e., the attacks that will be directed his way). These might be triggered by location (“when he reaches Water Street, the assassins strike”), but just putting them on a timeline will probably work, too.

(2) “To bid for a dilapidated estate…” When I prep a large social or business gathering, I prep two tracks: First, I prep a roleplaying profile for each significant participant. Second, I prep a list of significant events.

Sometimes the significant events are on a timetable. Sometimes they’re keyed to particular NPCs or locations. Sometimes they’re just a list of conversation topics that are popular at the party. (Ultimately, it’s whatever makes sense and is most useful to me. More details here.)

(3) “… a dilapidated estate standing opposite the Dweredell Gardens.” Here we come to a key question: Is the estate something that the PCs are supposed to explore room-by-room (like a haunted house)? Or will we just be just be treating it as a backdrop for the auction? The former gets prepped (and run) as a dungeoncrawl. The latter gets prepped with a few brief descriptions and maybe a generic floorplan if I think it’ll be important for some reason.

It might also be both: The mansion itself might just be a backdrop for the auction; but the family crypts under the mansion might shift us into a ‘crawl. Or maybe the mansion is treated as a backdrop during the auction and then we approach it as a ‘crawl during the night when all the ghosts from the Well of Souls come out.

(4) “The suspected cult activity around the estate.” Like most mystery structures, I’m going to default to node-based scenario design to break it down into easy-to-manage and easy-to-design chunks. To launch players into the node structure, I’ll liberally seed clues in the threats in #1, the NPCs in #2, and the rooms in #3 (if I went for a crawl-based structure there). A sample node list might look something like this:

• Cultist Assassination Team
• Shrine of the Black God
• Temple of the One-Eyed Priest
• Councilor Jaffar (Secret Cultist)

The assassination team is a proactive node that attacks the clerk the PCs are guarding. One of the assassins has a distinctive tattoo (asking around town indicates people have seen people with similar tattoos hanging around the Shrine of the Black God). Questioning any of the assassins will reveal they were sent from the Temple of the One-Eyed Priest. Maybe one of them has a note signed by Jaffar telling him to kill one of their fellow assassins once the job has been completed.

And so forth.

BREAKING THAT DOWN

The first thing is the scenario hook: The Duchess of Canterlocke wants to hire the PCs to guard a clerk for her.

That hook is connected to a simple timeline structure: The clerk needs to head to the estate at Time A; assassination attempts will be made at times B and D; the open house and auction will begin at time C.

That timeline has additional triggers in it: Clues on the assassins will trigger the node-based investigation. Escorting the clerk to inspect the house will trigger the ‘crawl of the house. Escorting the clerk to the auction will trigger the social-based party structure.

The ‘crawl of the house will probably include triggers for combat (undead in the crypts below the house or whatever). The party structure will contain additional clues triggering the node-based investigation. And the node-based investigation will lead to both the Shrine of the Black God and the Temple of the One-Eyed Priest, which are probably both prepped as dungeoncrawls, too.

USING THE RIGHT TOOLS

Like most projects, once you have the right tools, it’s just a matter of identifying the right tool for the job and then using it.

For the sake of argument, let’s imagine that we instead used all the wrong tools:

(1) We try to prep escorting the clerk across Dweredell as a ‘crawl: That means prepping every street with a keyed encounter so that the PCs will encounter content no matter which streets they decide to walk down. (Result: Way too much prep, a lot of decisions that aren’t of particular importance to the immediate goals of the PCs, and probably some severe pacing problems.)

(2) We prep the crypts under the house as a timeline of undead-themed encounters: After 5 minutes of explortation we trigger encounter 1; after 10 minutes of exploration we trigger encounter 2; and so forth. (Result: The only meaningful input the players have here is to say “we keep exploring”. Our impulse is probably to at least improvise a map as they explore, but of course that just moves us back towards the dungeoncrawl structure that we’re specifically eschewing for the purpose of this broken example.)

(3) Instead of prepping auction bidders for roleplaying, we instead give ‘em combat stats and roll for initiative whenever the PCs want to talk to them.

And so forth.

Use the proper structures and the prep will be easy and naturally allow your players to make meaningful and relevant decisions. Use the wrong structures (either by mistake or because you don’t know the right structures to use) and your prep will be difficult and your players will struggle to make the choices they want to make.

But what if the right game structure doesn’t exist?

Go to Part 13: Custom Structures

Go to Part 1

Now that we’ve discussed incomplete game structures, let me go fully the wrong way about it and explain what I mean by a “complete game structure”.

Most importantly, what I do not mean by a complete game structure is that the players will never be able to take actions outside the structure. As I’ve been saying all along, roleplaying games are functionally open-ended: Unlike a boardgame or card game, players are always free to propose whatever course of action strikes their fancy.

Instead, what we’re talking about is a structure which can theoretically provide a complete experience. If the players choose to stick to a complete game structure, that structure will never deliver the game to a place where no structure exists.

Practical experience at the game table plays a role here, and I’m also expecting a dose of common sense: It’s possible to argue that Traveller presents a “complete game structure” as long as the PCs never leave their ships. But, of course, that’s not what actually happens at the game table, is it? What happens in actual practice is that the Traveller scenario structure delivers a ship to a starport, the PCs get off their ship, and… the scenario structure has delivered them to an unstructured place.

In practice, complete game structures require vertically integrated structures and closed resolution loops. They will also usually feature complete transitions from macro-level to micro-level game structures.

For example, consider the basic mystery scenario structure: You start in a location and you search for clues. The clues take you to another location, where you search for clues (which will, of course, take you to another location).

That’s a closed resolution loop: You can follow that structure forever.

Earlier, we talked about the smooth transition from dungeoncrawling to combat in D&D: You’re in a dungeon room, you pick an exit, and you go to another dungeon room (there’s your closed resolution loop). But in that room are a bunch of monsters, so you switch to the combat system (which is another closed resolution loop) until you defeat the monsters. Once the combat is finished, you swap back to the dungeoncrawl structure, pick an exit, and go to the next room (which might also have monsters in it, in which case you swap back into combat).

That’s a vertically integrated structure: The dungeoncrawl structure provides a specific trigger (“there are monsters here”) which transitions you into the combat structure; and the combat structure provides a specific trigger (“all the monsters are dead and the room is empty of interest”) which transitions you back into the dungeoncrawl structure.

(As a thought experiment, imagine that you were using a dungeoncrawl structure but you had no combat system. Can you see what happens when the dungeoncrawl delivers you to a room full of orcs? The structure is incomplete. Now, imagine that you’re using a dungeoncrawl structure but instead of a combat system the rules had a well-developed mechanical structure for resolving riddle contests. That’s a very different dungeon, isn’t it?)

It’s also possible to extend the chain of macro-level to micro-level transitions. An easy demonstration of this is a hex keyed with a dungeon complex: The hexcrawl structure triggers the discovery of the dungeon; entering the dungeon transitions you to the dungeoncrawl structure; and meeting some monsters in the dungeon transitions you to the combat structure.

I occasionally think of this as an inverted pyramid, but it’s not necessarily a tidy one. (For example, hex keys can also easily trigger you straight into combat.)

FEATURES OF A COMPLETE GAME STRUCTURE

Let’s take a moment to look at the basic features a complete game structure requires. By matter of necessity, these will be somewhat preliminary conclusions: There aren’t many complete game structures in roleplaying games, so the body of data is sparse.

First, each part of the game structure requires a clear and specific trigger. (For example, combat is triggered when someone wants to make an attack and initiative is rolled.) Vertically integrating your structure requires that the macro-structure will deliver the triggers necessary for the micro-structures. (For example, the dungeoncrawl structure delivers the trigger for combat when you enter a room filled with hostile monsters.)

Second, you need a default scenario hook. This is actually just the trigger for the macro-structure which contains the micro-structures and it doesn’t need to be terribly complex: For example, the default scenario hook for a dungeoncrawl is “the dungeon entrance is in front of you”.

Third, you need a default goal. This is what motivates the players to engage the scenario hook. For example, the PCs go into the dungeon (i.e., accept the hook presented by the dungeon entrance) because they want to find treasure.

(It should be noted that the default scenario hook and goal are often the first things to get swapped out when you’re adapting a game structure into actual play. For example, the PCs might be going into this dungeon – which is actually a fortress – because their friend has been kidnapped by the slavers inside.)

Fourth, you need a default action: Picking an exit in the dungeoncrawl; picking a direction in a hexcrawl; looking for clues in a mystery; attacking an enemy during combat; etc.

Fifth, taking the default action should return you (either directly or after a sequence of actions) to a point where you can take that default action again. This is the point where you close the resolution loop and complete the game structure.

EFFECTIVE GAME STRUCTURES

There are also a few things which aren’t necessarily required for a complete game structure, but which are probably a good idea.

First, the structure should be flexible. Flexibility for the players means the ability to make choices which are not constrained by the structure. Flexibility for the GM means the ability to include a broad and creative array of content into the “containers” of the structure.

(These constitute the “structure, not a straitjacket” and “flexibility within the form” principles we talked about before.)

Second, the default action should usually allow the players to make meaningful decisions. Roleplaying games are primarily about making choices and structures which don’t allow for those choices to be made will, in my opinion, struggle. Furthermore, a structure which doesn’t include points at which players are free to make decisions is probably going to strongly inhibit their opportunities to make choices which are not constrained by the structure (see above).

(As a counterexample, consider a hypothetical piratecrawl structure in which the players choose a direction to sail and then the GM randomly determines what type of ship they run into: This has a great deal of flexibility for the GM, since he’s basically free to include anything which fits into a ship-shaped container. But you’ll notice that the players’ decision of sailing direction is meaningless, which will result in less than satisfactory play.)

Third, assuming that we’re talking about RPGs and not STGs, the players’ decisions within the game structure should be associated and in-character.

(For pretty much all the same reasons that the mechanics of an RPG should be associated.)

Fourth, the reward structures of the game should probably be tied into the default actions and default goals of the game structure.

(The easy example here, as I’ve mentioned before, is D&D: The default dungeoncrawl / combat game structure rewards you with XP for the default action of fighting monsters and with GP (and XP) for the default goal of treasure-hunting.)

Fifth, the game structure should be fun. This, of course, can be a somewhat nebulous quality and will also vary from one group to the next. But the important point here is that a complete game structure will act as the foundation for your scenario or campaign: If that foundation is fun, then everything you and your players build on top of it will be fun. If it is simply workmanlike bookkeeping, on the other hand, you may still end up having fun if the stuff you build on top of it is awesome enough, but it’ll be less of a sure thing.

Sixth, the game structure should be easy to prep. Part of this is providing a clear structure for prep (and I think you’ll find that clearly defined game structures will simultaneously provide straight-forward guidance on what you need to prep). But it’s also about limiting the amount of prep necessary for play to begin. (If your structure requires the GM to prep 500 pages of material in order to use it, it’s not going to see a lot of use in the real world.) And all of this, of course, can be helped by giving the GM tools which assist with prep (like the old dungeon- and hex-stocking tables that used to be a mainstay of D&D).

I was also going to add “easy to run” to this list, but I suspect that this is a quality which actually arises naturally out of properly constructed game structures. But if you’re in need of a reminder, check out Part 8 of this series.

Go to Part 12: Using Scenario Structures

As a brief tangent to our discussion of game structures, how could we go about plugging the “hole” in Traveller’s scenario structure?

Since Traveller’s starmaps are hex-based, we could start by rifling through the pockets of the hexcrawl and snagging the concept of “when the PCs enter the hex, trigger the hex’s keyed content”. But what we’ll quickly realize is that there’s a reason Traveller doesn’t do this already: Planets are really, really big.

If we think of a dungeon room or a wilderness hex as a “container” which holds keyed content, it’s pretty easy to recognize that a planet-sized container completely dwarfs the scale of any single encounter or location. Take an encounter and stick it in a dungeon room; it fills the room. Take the same encounter and put it in a wilderness hex; it gets a little bit lonely but there’s still enough to quench our thirst. Stick it on a planet, on the other hand, and the glass still looks completely empty.

And this isn’t just a matter of aesthetics. It impacts the GM’s ability to logically transition the scene: If the PCs are traveling through a wilderness, it’s relatively easy to find a transition from the macro-level of wilderness travel to the micro-level of the keyed encounter. You just say something like, “As you pass through the forest, you see a bunch of orcs.” But this method doesn’t work quite as well if the PCs are approaching a planet.

Perhaps more importantly, this also affects the ability for players to make meaningful decisions within the context of the scenario structure. If the GM of a hexcrawl says, “You see a castle perched upon a rocky crag of blackened stone.” The players can say, “Okay, that looks scary. I think we’ll just skirt it as far to the west as possible.” And they can do that. But if they were to say, in this hypothetical game structure for spacecrawling, “Okay, I don’t want to deal with this settlement of murderous cannibals. Let’s lift-off and land somewhere else on the planet.” Suddenly they’ve exited the purview of the scenario structure.

One logical leap from this conclusion is that we simply need to key more content to the planet. Maybe, for example, we could just map the entire planet and key it as a hexcrawl: Thus, just like a hexcrawl contains dungeoncrawls, our spacecrawl would contain hexcrawls.

But hexmapping and keying an entire planet in any sort of meaningful or interesting detail? That’s an absurd amount of work. It’s obviously completely impractical.

HAILING FREQUENCIES OPEN

So maybe, instead of that, we let our logic take us the other way. Maybe we accept our limitations and implement a structure where each planet is keyed with a “hail”: When an intrepid band of interstellar scouts enters orbit, they’ll receive the hail.

This basically handles the problem of scale by embracing the old pulp SF trope of “every planet is a village”. The result is less Traveller: Firefly and more Traveller: Star Trek. But as long as the players are onboard with the fact that they have to either engage with Oxymyx and Krako or bypass the planet (i.e., they can’t just decide to head over to the other side of the planet and talk to a different set of gangsters), you’ll probably be in pretty good shape.

Unfortunately, the structure starts to breakdown once you’re dealing with civilized planets (instead of exploration). But, of course, this is also true for traditional hexcrawls (which provide no guidance for PCs once they pass through the gates of Greyhawk).

ABOARD THE KING ARTHUR

Unsurprisingly, I’m not the first person to start thinking this way about Traveller. Back in 1981, FASA produced Action Aboard: Adventures on the King Richard. In addition to detailing the ISCV King Richard and providing two sample adventures, this module included a dozen or so “Outline Adventures”, all of which constitute primitive scenario structures into which any number of specific scenarios could be poured. For example, the Hijack:

I. HIJACK

The forcible capture of the vessel and its contents may come from either inside or outside the ship.

A) Internal

A hijack from inside assumes that the hijackers and their equipment are all aboard at the beginning of the scenario.

1) Players as crew – the players may or may not be issued weapons from the ship’s locker, depending upon the level of surprise.

2) Players as passengers – The players will not be given weapons and, unless they have social standing A-F, they will be abandoned at any habitable planet (roll 1-4 on  one die) or shot, and/or dumped into a vacuum (roll 5 or 6 on one die). If they have high social ranking, they will be ransomed.

And so forth.

Primitive? Yes. Still incomplete? Sure. But you can see how this begins to provide a basic structure into which a few stats can be poured to give you something that can be used in play. In combination with the other “Outline Adventures”, Action Aboard begins to give you enough structure to run an entire campaign based around the voyages of the ISCV King Arthur.