Free Traders Setup Part 9: Trim the fat

 

You’ve now seen the thought and prep work that went into creating the setting; in all, probably about 20 hours’ effort, which is more than usual for me. I can get away with such limited preparation firstly because I’m using existing games and real-world history to do the heavy lifting for me, and secondly because I’m not writing a saleable product, and therefore don’t need to explain things that will be intuitively obvious to my players or myself.

Here’s what the players will get as their handout, which is also pretty much everything I will take with me to sessions except for the character sheets, dice, and a few pages pages of quick reference. Behind the scenes, I’m using the Stars Without Number world tags and adventure seeds to prepare adventures, but the players don’t need to know that.

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THE PITCH

From Firefly to Futurama, free traders are a science fiction archetype; a bunch of scoundrels on the make, in a ship just big enough to carry them and the McGuffin from patron to doublecross.

You’re Sinbad the Sailor, Marco Polo, Han and Chewie. You’re the crew of the Solar Queen or the Pride of Chanur. You take on anything that isn’t safe enough, legal enough, or profitable enough to interest the big shipping lines. Someday, you’ll make that one big score that lets you retire in style; but for now you need a fast tongue, a fast gun hand, and a fast ship.

RULES: SAVAGE WORLDS

• Available Arcane Backgrounds: Psionics.
• Available Races: Android, Human (the default), Rakashan, Saurian. Androids may swap Asimov Circuits for another Major Hindrance with GM permission. Rakashans and Saurians hate each other, and are both by turns mercenaries and bandits.
• Languages: Are boring. This is pulp SF, everyone speaks English.
• Cyberware: It’s all about the trappings. You levelled up and improved your Strength? Sounds like muscle implants to me, chummer…

THE FARSIDE ROUTE

This is your standard run; carrying robots and weapons from Uppsala to trade with Kiev for foodstuffs and rare metals, or Lygos for luxury goods (artworks, databases, fabric, jewelry, spices and wine).

Uppsala
(Varan Federation)
Theocracy, Unbraked AI
|
Ladoga
Sealed Menace, Trade Hub
|
Novgorod
(Colony of Kiev)
Colonised Population, Preceptor Archive
|
The Seven Portals
Alien Ruins, Warlords (Rakashan pirates)
|
Kiev
(Imperial Ally – for the Moment)
Oceanic World, Pilgrimage Site
|
Cherson
(Celestial Empire)
Exchange Consulate, Trade Hub
|
Lygos
(Celestial Empire)
Regional Hegemon, Trade Hub

These are just the most important stops on a single major trade route. Expect more worlds to appear temporarily during adventures; they’re always there, you just don’t often have a reason to step outside the starport bar when you visit.

The stretch between Novgorod and Kiev runs between star systems too far apart for normal hyperdrives; fortunately, some long-vanished alien race seems to have had the same problem, and left hyperspace portals bridging the gaps. Ships must fly a predictable course to use these portals, which makes them a favourite hunting ground for pirates. The usual method is to go as fast as you dare, in the hope the pirates can’t match vectors before you jump.

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And there I’ll park it for the moment. Normally I would run a solo adventurer through the setting for a while to bed it down and flush out unexpected issues; but I’m very busy at work this year, and haven’t really got the time to do that.

Free Traders Setup Part 8: Kiev

Aha, the last stop on the Farside Route heaves into view! Kiev’s early history is unclear, but if was an outpost of the Khazar empire (and possibly Magyars) a couple of centuries before the game’s time frame.

I’ve already established the Magyar-equivalents as Savage Worlds Saurians, so I’ll go with the Magyar theory, and lace Kiev with Saurian architecture, whatever that looks like. I’ll worry about that later, I can use the random architecture tables in Stars Without Number.

About a century before play begins, Kiev was taken over by the Rus and became the centre of their fledgling state. In (2)968, the Pechenegs (Rakashans) laid siege to the city.

Kiev is full of lakes, rivers, and whatnot, so I select Oceanic World as one tag. If I were feeling especially radical, I could dig out Traveller Adventure 9: Nomads of the World Ocean. Hmm. Come to think of it, I could scrap the Farside Route and just lump the planets from old Classic Traveller adventures together to make a subsector…

Stay on target, Luke.

Yes, Obi-Wan. Kiev has a number of sacred sites which draw pilgrims, and assorted cultural locations, so either Pilgrimage Site or Preceptor Archive would work for the other tag. I’ve already used Preceptor Archive so I’ll go with Pilgrimage Site, possibly the Saurian ruins.

Tags: Oceanic World, Pilgrimage Site.

Free Traders Setup Part 7: Ladoga

Another multi-ethnic prosperous trading settlement! I suppose it should have occurred to me that all the top-level stops on the Farside Route would be trading hubs of some sort. If I’d thought of this before, I’d have just said all of them are Trading Hubs and dug out two other tags for them. Never mind.

The dominant group is the Rus, who we’ll meet again in Kiev and elsewhere. What else has it got? Well, in the early 11th century, not a lot, apart from huge barrows with dead kings inside them, including the legendary Rurik – mind you, he’s been dead for about 250 years at this point. Sometime within the last 20 years, Erik Hakonarson set fire to it during a raid, which most NPCs the players encounter will remember.

Meanwhile, what about that second tag? Tomb World would reflect the barrows, but it’s hard to reconcile with Trading Hub. The tag ought to reflect what else I know about the place, which means fitting in with the barrows. Well, these are roleplayers, they will expect something evil in the tombs, why disappoint them? Sealed Menace it is.

Tags: Sealed Menace, Trading Hub.

Free Traders Setup Part 6: Novgorod

Novgorod was at this time the second city of the Kievan Rus, which I hadn’t thought of when I separated the two by umpteen parsecs of alien stargates. Never mind, there’s a story there somewhere. The tradition was for the eldest son of the ruler of Kiev to be sent to Novgorod to control that, as a sort of practice run I suppose. At the time of our stories that would be Yaroslav the Wise, whose father Vladimir the Great is ruling Kiev.

Reading ahead, as it were, I can see that Novgorod is a power on the rise, it will be one of the largest powers in the region in a century or two.

Right now, it has a fortress, and is already influential in politics, economics and culture, so I’ll give it the Preceptor Archive tag to reflect its cultural heritage. It’s remotely controlled from Kiev, so although I have no reason to suppose Novgorod resisted that, for entertainment value I give it the Colonised Population tag as well, with a mental note that Yaroslav is actually an OK guy, but the resistance are against him on principle. I keep reminding myself that this is a roleplaying setting, not a history lesson.

Tags: Colonised Population, Preceptor Archive.

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We have a couple of major NPCs too; Yaroslav and Vladimir, and although the latter properly belongs with the Kiev writeup, let’s do him now as well.

Yaroslav Vladimirovich: Thin-faced, and lame from a poorly-healed leg wound, Yaroslav was sent to rule Novogord in 3010. He does not get on well with his father. As the campaign begins, his father is about to die, and he himself is about to become embroiled in a complex and bloody war against his brothers (several of whom he will murder) for the throne of Kiev.

(Yes, seriously – he used to be an adventurer like you, until he took an arrow in the knee.)

Vladimir Sviatoslavich: The youngest son of the previous Prince of Kiev by his housekeeper, Vladimir has numerous children by several wives (he was a polygamist in his youth), the most recent of whom was Emperor Basil II’s sister Anna, now deceased. He seized control of Kiev from his brother in (2)972 and consolidated the fledgling empire by (2)980.

I can see that the politics of the Farside Route will be dominated through the campaign by the battles for control of Kiev. However, they don’t start until a year or so into the campaign, so I can park them for now and research them in a later preparation slot, possibly even after the first few sessions.

Damn, now I want to run this as a historical-fantasy mashup instead of sci-fi. Stay on target, Luke!

Free Traders Setup Part 5: The Seven Portals

Since historically these were just portages on the river Dnieper where rude strangers tried to take things from passing merchants, I feel I have a free hand. This part of the map is the fun bit, with half-understood alien technology and space pirates. Each of the giant portals will be different, but they will all have the enigmatic one-of-a-kind gimmicks that were such fun when the Traveller Ancients left them for the PCs to find.

Between Novgorod and Kiev, the Farside Route runs between star systems too far apart for normal hyperdrives; fortunately, some long-vanished alien race seems to have had the same problem, and left hyperspace portals bridging the gaps. Ships must fly a predictable course to use these portals, which makes them a favourite hunting ground for pirates; the normal method is to go as fast as you dare in the hope the pirates can’t match vectors in time.

Tags: Alien Ruins (the portals), Warlords (Rakashan pirates).

The Rakashans are standing in for the historical Pechenegs, of whom Wikipedia has this to say: "Although an important factor in the region at the time, like most nomadic tribes their concept of statecraft failed to go beyond random attacks on neighbours and spells as mercenaries for other powers." In the game’s time frame, for the last 200 years they have been raiding Kiev and its territories at random, culminating with blockading Kiev in (2)968, although they have also occasionally served as mercenaries in support of Kievan forces.

For these fellows I think I’ll drag in the Mandate Archive: Scavenger Fleets free web supplement for Stars Without Number. Select any or all of the fleets in that, and imagine them crewed by samurai cat-people instead of humans. There y’go, that’s your Rakashan pirates right there. Rakashans need a racial enemy, and since I expect the players to generate a mixed human-rakashan-robot crew, I can’t use humans or robots for that enemy; enter the Saurians, stage left. Beyond knowing that they and the Rakashans hate each other, I know nothing more about them at this point. If the Rakashans are Pechenegs, then probably the Saurians ought to be the Magyars, who for our purposes are much the same sort of chaps – raiding, pillaging and serving as mercenaries, although by 3000 or so (1000 AD historically) they were settling down a bit in present-day Hungary.

Free Traders Setup Part 4: Uppsala

Skipping about the map as inspiration takes me, I come to Uppsala next.

The location – one hesitates to call it a city, even today the total population is less than 150,000 – has always been important as a religious centre; it’s also a port and later became an academic centre. I also note from Uppsala’s location that it’s a bit chilly, in case I decide to do full Stars Without Number stats for it.

At the time we’re interested in, it’s most famous for the large gold-adorned temple where statues of three gods sit on a triple throne; Thor, flanked by Odin and Freyr. According to Adam of Bremen, there was a priest who offered sacrifices – to Thor for relief from plague or famine, to Odin for victory in war, and to Freyr to celebrate marriages. These could include sacrifices of humans and animals, whose blood placated the gods. Non-believers were allowed to buy themselves out of the ceremonies. Opinion is divided on how much of all this Adam of Bremen made up.

However, it’ll do for gaming purposes, and I select these tags:

Tags: Theocracy, Unbraked AI.

This builds on input from VirgoBrown at the Savage Worlds forum, who suggested the gods could be supercomputers. In this case, the three primary Norse gods are a single mad AI with a split personality, which thinks it is all three gods, and has enough Weird Science tricks to make local people believe it. That suggests to me that the local tech level is a bit below par. ZeroMostel on the forum suggested Loki should be a viral AI that hops from ship to ship, and that’s too good not to use. Loki and Thor did not play well together, as I recall, but Loki was Odin’s blood brother so Thor couldn’t just smash his face in with Mjollnir.

Hmm. I can’t very well put "Unbraked AI" on the player handout, can I? I’ll just have to remember it. In the real world, Scandinavia had converted to Christianity by this point, and maybe Uppsala’s neighbours have a more normal religion too.

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Meanwhile, I’ve decided to shorten "Varangian", which is what people at the Byzantium end of the trade route called all the Norse, to "Varan", likewise Varangian Guard is truncated to Varan Guard (and I’m toying with the idea of making their axes symbolic of a general fascism in the Celestial Empire). Since I want a political power to counterbalance the Empire, I extend this into the Varan Federation.

Vikings governed themselves by a loose hierarchy of councils called Things, which each community being self-governing; although they did have Jarls and Kings, these were almost a parallel structure to the Thing, and it’s not clear to me whether either hierarchy had any control over the other. We would probably consider this a kind of democracy today, so Federation seems a good name for it; and in SF, the traditional counterweight to an Empire is a Federation.

Free Traders Setup Part 3: Cherson

Next along the Farside Route from Lygos is Cherson, another world of the Celestial Empire.

The historical Cherson had a small military garrison, but was mostly the Byzantine Empire’s diplomatic interface with the Pechenegs (whom I shall replace with Rakashans) and Rus (centred on Kiev – more of them later). It also thrived on commerce across the Black Sea.

The city was destroyed by Vladimir of Kiev in (2)989, but rebuilt by the time frame of the game. This is an important piece of background as most NPCs the players meet will remember those things happening, and might possibly resent Space Vikings.

It seems to have been quasi-autonomous, with the local government allowed to mint its own coins and treated more like an allied power than a subject province.

Tags: Exchange Consulate, Trade Hub.

Given that Cherson and Lygos are the only worlds of the Celestial Empire that the players will see on a regular basis, they will form their opinions based on them. That will give them the view that the Empire is heavily focussed on trade, and its subject worlds are left pretty much alone so long as they acknowledge its authority and pay their taxes.

Free Traders Setup Part 2: Lygos

I had expected to start from the Uppsala end of the Farside Route, but I found myself more interested in Miklagard. I don’t think I mentioned it in the first post, but I intend to use Savage Worlds as the basic rules set, although I’m still thinking about 5150 and Stars Without Number as possible parallel universes – same setting, different rules. Stars Without Number enters the fray at this point, as the world tags are a very neat and easy way to flesh out a world.

The first thing I did was to change my mind about the name; Miklagard isn’t at all Greek, and this is the route from the Varangians to the Greeks, after all; so at least for the time being, I shall call it Lygos, the city’s original name. Historically, a lot of the time people just called it “the City” or “the Big City” (which is what Miklagard means in Old Norse).

Here’s the fruit of the second two-hour slot of preparation time. Lygos is based on early 11th century Byzantium. That gives me both tags right away; at this time, Byzantium was a military superpower, and it has always been a great trading centre.

Tags: Regional Hegemon, Trade Hub.

SWN will then give me lists of places, things, friends, enemies and complications, which I can then use with its random adventure seed table to create scenarios. More of that in a later post, for now I’m looking at the big picture.

RECENT HISTORY

Which I’m creating by taking interesting events from the time period and adding about 2,000 years to the date, focusing in on the last 50 years as "living memory", i.e. the parts that overshadow the PC’s lives. That gives me an initial span of let’s say 950 to 1050, translating to 2950 to 3050, with the PCs starting in 3014, and a campaign duration of up to 36 game years. That should be enough room.

(As an aside, I plan to avoid using dates in the campaign, as they lead to unnecessary complications about how fast ships travel, how far apart worlds are, and how many star systems there are in between the ones on my rough diagram. If absolutely necessary, I shall say it takes a month to travel from point to point on that diagram.)

• 2958: Basil II born to Romanos II and Theophano.
• 2963: Romanos II dies. Basil and his brother Constantine are too young to rule; Theophano marries one of Romanos’ generals, who crowns himself Nikephoros II.
• 2963: Basil II’s younger sister Anna is born.
• 2969: Nikephoros II murdered by John I, who crowns himself Emperor.
• 2976: John I dies, possibly poisoned by Basil Lekapenos, the Empire’s chief administrator and an illegitimate son of Emperor Romanos I. Basil II assumes power.
• 2979: Skleros rebellion is ruthlessly suppressed by Basil II.
• 2985: Basil Lekapenos is accused of rebel sympathies and removed from power. Most PCs are probably born around this time, plus or minus ten years.
• 2988: Vladimir I of Kiev captures the Imperial base at Cherson; he offers to vacate it and provide troops to Basil II if he can marry Basil’s sister, Anna.
• 2989: Vladimir and Anna are married. Basil II suppresses Phokas rebellion, again ruthlessly. Troops from Kiev are organised into the Emperor’s personal bodyguard, the Varangian Guard. Basil Lekapenos is exiled and his property confiscated; he dies shortly afterwards. The Emperor breaks up the large estates of the nobility.
• 3011: Anna dies.
• 3014: Campaign start date.
• 3025: Basil II dies, succeeded by his brother, Constantine VIII.

Who needs to make this stuff up? It’s all right there, in the library or on the internet. Just needs a bit of tweaking. In this case I’ve left out the various shenanigans with the Abassid Caliphate, which is off-map beyond the Lygos end of the Farside Route, and just make a mental note that Lygos has large, powerful enemies which will keep it from throwing its weight around too much on the Route itself.

NOTABLE CHARACTERS

Basil and Constantine are unlikely to meet the PCs, but they are movers and shakers, up to things in the background. The Varangian Guard are more likely encounters, first because some of them might be related to the PCs, and second because they enjoy fighting and have a tendency to go looking for trouble (which as everyone knows is spelt “PC”).

Emperor Basil II. Short, stocky, with light blue eyes and luxuriant sidewhiskers which he rolls between his fingers when angry or thoughtful. A dissolute womaniser in his youth, his ruthless suppression of rebellions early in his reign left him a grim autocratic bachelor, one of the finest military minds of his generation and a capable administrator, worshipped by his troops.

Constantine VIII. The opposite of his brother in many ways, Constantine is a tall, graceful, cowardly hedonist. Where Basil II is pragmatically ruthless, Constantine is impulsively cruel. He has three grown daughters by his wife Helena; Eudokia, Zoe and Theodora. So far, so stereotypical; but Constantine has no designs on the throne himself, as the paperwork would get in the way of partying. Some of the Imperial nobility, though, wonder if a more easily distracted Emperor might be better for them…

Varangian Guard. Emperor Basil II prefers to entrust his protection to foreigners, a core of troops from Kiev supplanted by mercenaries from Uppsala and beyond. They are characterised by fierce loyalty, a liking for large axes as their melee weapon of choice, and drinking to excess. The PCs are going to love them.

Desert Island RPGs

When, as now, I find myself working long hours far from home, I get less time to prepare for gaming sessions, but more time in the car to think. This week, my main topic of thought has been what gaming activities I can keep up under the current gruelling work regime, and which have to be cut back further. Then, I thought of the BBC Radio programme Desert Island Discs.

For those unfamiliar with the show, the premise is that a celebrity is cast away on a desert island, with a music player and one compilation album. During the programme, the celebrity explains why they picked the 8 tracks on that album, which are played in turn. The castaway is also allowed one luxury item, and one book, as well as copies of the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare.

ASSUMPTIONS

You (and enough friends to make a gaming group) know that you will be cast away on a desert island. Don’t worry about food, accomodation etc. You may assume that you have pencils, paper and dice.

However, 8 games is too many to give a tough choice, and it’s the choice and the reasons for it that are interesting.

What three gaming items would you take with you, and why? What would your book and luxury item be?

MY CHOICES

The gaming products:

• Savage Worlds Deluxe Edition. If I could only take one game, this would be it. Works for any genre, works with or without figures, works as a skirmish wargame.
• All Things Zombie. This comes lower down the list because it needs figures – I picture us drawing a playing area on the beach and using pebbles. However, it serves many purposes; it’s a game in its own right, it’s a setting for SW, it’s a skirmish wargame if you drop the zombies and just use military (or police and ganger) figures, and it’s an AI opponent if the rest of the group don’t make it ashore (or exile me to the DHARMA Initiative end of The Island after too many Total Party Kills).
• For the final item, I really can’t decide between Beasts & Barbarians Golden Edition, which is my favourite SW setting, and Stars Without Number, which has outstanding tools for setting creation. What do you think?

The book and luxury item:

• I could cheat and take my fourth gaming product as a book, but instead I shall choose The Complete Chronicles of Conan by Robert E Howard, which is a snout (in the dark) ahead of JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings in my affections – although it was the latter that ignited my interest in fantasy and science fiction, and indirectly led me into roleplaying games a few years later.
• A repurposed oil tanker full of Glenmorangie. Obviously, the group were travelling on it when it ran aground, and the penguins from Madagascar have trashed the radio.

OVER TO YOU

What would you pick, and why? Answers on a comment please…

Dark Nebula

To recap: Several things have combined to reignite my interest in a space opera campaign as the next game after Beasts & Barbarians. First, I feel I’ve painted myself into a corner with the Arioniad, so I need to leave it lying fallow for a while. Second, I want to do something in a science-fiction vein after a few years running mostly fantasy. And third, I’ve built up a lot of SF gaming resources that I want to use, such as Stars Without Number and High-Space.

A while ago I posted about Emergent Settings, which I think of as Option 1 for the forthcoming space opera campaign. This is Option 2; use a map and background information from an old boardgame.

The Setting

I’m never really happy with any campaign maps I create myself, so I had a rummage through the Boardgames Graveyard under the bed and pulled out Dark Nebula by GDW, from 1980. I ran a GURPS Traveller game set there for about four years, in fact it was the playtest setting for GURPS Traveller Alien Races 2 and 3, or at least the parts of them I wrote, and I have happy memories of that; so there’s the map and the overall metaplot – the buildup to war between the Aslan Hierate and the Solomani Confederation. I’ll have to figure out some way of running the war solo, probably involving the Savage Worlds mass battle rules, but that’s not an immediate need.

I originally intended to draw the map in Hexographer, but then I thought: Somebody must have done this before, and had a look on the Board Game Geek forum, where I found that Norsehound had already done some very nice-looking and printer-friendly maps. I hope he won’t mind if I post just one to show you how good they are:

Thanks for sharing your most excellent maps, Norsehound!

Hyperspace

One of the features of the Dark Nebula maps is the distance between worlds, which ranges from 1 to 8 hexes (with a hex being one-half parsec according to the rules). I think the easiest way to use this is to say that the number of hexes to the destination is the target number for an FTL roll (if I use High-Space ship designs) or a Piloting roll (if I don’t). If I do use the High-Space fleet manual for ship designs, I might make the FTL roll co-operative, with PCs able to make Piloting or maybe even Repair rolls to help the ship.

Worlds

The Dark Nebula gameboard is divided into 8 sections, each with a handful of star systems, which are classed as Primary (with a naturally habitable world), Secondary (with worlds, but not naturally habitable ones), and Tertiary (no planets). Two of the Primary worlds, Maadin and Kuzu, are said to be Homeworlds, with unusually high populations, and each the capital of a small pocket empire. There are various ways I could convert those into statistics for the game of my choice; for the GURPS Traveller game, I assumed Homeworlds and Primary worlds were Earthlike, Secondary ones Marslike, and Tertiary ones much like an asteroid belt, and then fleshed them out in detail as and when PCs visited them.

For the purposes of this post, I’ll stick to Earthlike, Marslike, and Belt, and apply Stars Without Number world tags (my favourite part of that game) as a way of making planets unique and memorable. Which tags to pick? I could select them randomly, but instead I’ll look up the names of the worlds on the map in Wikipedia and choose SWN cultures and tags that match. For example, the two Homeworlds are clearly Regional Hegemons, so they both get that tag.

Maadin means "mine" in Arabic and Turkish, so the second tag for Maadin is Heavy Mining. Kuzu was a town in Japan, now absorbed into the larger conurbation of Sano; the notable features of the Tochigi Prefecture (itself not a bad name for a star nation) in which it’s located are shrines and industrial complexes, so I could go with either Heavy Industry or Pilgrimage Site, and select the latter as it sounds like more fun.

I might, or might not, flesh out the rest of the stats later; to create adventures and set the scene, two tags are more than enough.

Races

By the Classic Traveller canon, the two main races in this volume of space are humans (the Solomani Confederation) and Aslan (the Aslan Hierate). Humans use the human racial template (obviously), and Aslan are Traveller’s version of the ubiquitous samurai catmen, a long-standing science fiction trope – CJ Cherryh has the mri and the hani, Larry Niven has the kzinti, and so on; in fact, the hani are the closest thing I know of in literature to the Aslan. The easiest thing to do is use the rakashan racial template for Aslan, and make their racial enemy humans.

The Metaplot

The background story arc in this setting is the coming war between the Solomani Quadrant (humans) and the Aslan Hierate (rakashans). I toyed with the idea of playing a solo version of the game, or setting up Stars Without Number factions and letting them duke it out; but none of that is really necessary. A general background of tension is all I really need, with military contact and conflict added as the storylines of individual adventures dictate.

Coda

So, a bit more work than Option 1, but not overwhelmingly so. For my next review in a couple of days time, I’ll look at Option 3: Daring Tales of the Space Lanes.