[Traveller] I'm Just Here for the Celery

[Bill Cook]

My group played its first session of our Traveller campaign. A few points are worth sharing.

Jason (our GM) walked the first three players to arrive through the rules, with a focus on checks and confict resolution. This was highly productive. I would never have thought that a game as venerable as Traveller would have an economy for advantage; really intriguing. After more people arrived, discourse on rules issues became notably more chaotic.

It really struck me how play was experienced as spheres of connection to the GM, growing more intense with more proximal seating. I imagine a half circle, with the GM at the center, would draw the greatest benefit from this phenomenon. (Like a blackjack dealer!)

We made our characters in one-on-one meetings or during times of non-activity for a player in my recent Sorcerer campaign. This patchwork process really left me feeling directionless. My character was lumped in, troupe style, with a ship's crew, all PC's. We were literally directed by the captain. Another character had his own narrative thread. He carried another PC as a satellite player.

I've noticed this pattern before: one or two players emerge as leaders and other players become assigned to them as support characters. It can be functional, despite what negative connotations one may imagine. I don't find it especially desirable, but I feel left behind and unclear about what I would be arguing for if I did. And once my role became defined, I started having a good time, adding color here and there.

I was chatting with our TROS seneschal at a LAN a month back, sharing design concepts for a game of mine. (This was concurrent with the Sorcerer campagin I mentioned.) And he made a striking comment: "Lots of people don't like the pressure of having to come up with their own material. They just want to hang out or be entertained."

So there I was, mostly eating celery, working to remain present, knowing that we'd basically be discovering plot from here on out. It is what it is.  I can't say I didn't enjoy myself.

[rafial]

From the title, my first thought was "Traveller with treecats?" ;)

I'm curious to know what ruleset you were using.  i.e. Classic Traveller, Megatraveller, GURPS, T4, T20, TNE?

[Bill Cook]

I've seen Jason reference two different editions. One set comprises three or four books with titles like "World Creation" and "Ships." It reminds me of the D&D white box set. The other is a letter-size, soft cover that I think is more recent. I think he's drawing material from both editions, but the feel he's established is very fluid, in any case.

[rafial]

Ah, the small booklets that remind you of D&D white box (only black) would have to be Classic Traveller.

I used to play quite a bit of Traveller back in the day, and the troupe style play revolving around a ship was very standard for what we did, although at the time I don't think we had any formal idea of what we were doing.

It sounds like your group is fairly large.  How many players are there?  Do you think the "spheres of connection" you describe is a strategy for "distributing the work" as it were, allowing players to play without requiring direction GM attention?

In one large campaign I used to play in, which at one point I think had eight to ten players, in addition to the troupe style play also had a revolving GM seat occupied by those that felt up to it.  At several points, we actually had multiple GMs acting in the same session, dealing with seperate groups of characters.   I wonder if the "leader players" could be perceived as "unofficial mini-GMs" in this sense.  This fits in with the idea that the GM role/task is not as monolithic as we traditionally believed.

I'm of course speculating based on my own play experience.  Does any of this make sense if terms of what you experienced?

[Bill Cook]

It sounds like your group is fairly large. How many players are there?

Seven altogeher.

Do you think the "spheres of connection" you describe is a strategy for "distributing the work" as it were, allowing players to play without requiring direction GM attention?

Hadn't thought of it that way. That may be true, though when a non-GM leader leads, the GM's not doing anything more than following what's happening. And it is an intuitive posture; not pre-conceived or textually supported.

. . . Does any of this make sense if terms of what you experienced?

From the perspective of GM duty distribution, . . . No, not really. It seems more like two players in particular have strong ideas for directing their characters. Other players either want to be lumped or resolve an absence of direction with resignation (my case). Since chargen was performed in isolated interviews, it's hard to speculate how much of what happened in the case of the lead players is contributing to their strong direction.

I think one player is mostly empowered by having a ship. He's the captain, and it's a genre trope, so there's just a lot of Star Trek to emulate, I guess. The other player is just a Sim-breathing fish that will ecstatically provide input for skill checks for hours and hours.

And they're both cool guys. Their interest and excitement has been my primary source of fun so far. That and Jason's animated scripted scenes. e.g. A conversation with aliens that we overheard in which their clicks and pops were translated into a computer voice. The aliens' contempt for humanity makes hysterical melodrama; and we're getting off on it.

[rafial]

Hadn't thought of it that way. That may be true, though when a non-GM leader leads, the GM's not doing anything more than following what's happening.

Okay, that's different than what I was thinking of...  I've seen situation where the group around a "leader" disconnects leaving the GM free to run somebody elses thread until some situation arises requiring an GM call, usually some sort of interaction with "the world".

And it is an intuitive posture; not pre-conceived or textually supported.

Oh quite. Alot of the stuff I was babbling about developed quite naively in our group, I didn't expect it to be any different here.

Their interest and excitement has been my primary source of fun so far. That and Jason's animated scripted scenes.

This definitely supports your thesis of "I just want to be passively entertained" as a common player motivation in this group.