Says Who

Classic Traveller - Combat Example

Classic Traveller has a moderately arcane combat system to modern eyes. For the most part though, it is not too bad. This is an example of how it can be interpreted. If you want to do things differently, there is no reason to assume that this is the only way it should (or can be interpreted to) work. In general though, I think that the following example is mostly sensible and will not cause too many feathers to be ruffled. (This is another thing that is being posted to here as a more permanent home than various discord messages and a file on my PC, but which was written a while back.)

Dracula Dossier Session 4

The Dramatis Personae:

  • S, playing Padraig - Irish actor, formerly linked to drug running, and then pressured by EUROPOL to act as a courier to provide gear and funds to informants and similar shady characters
  • N, playing Yannis - Belgian hacker who got recruited by the ADIV/SGRS a while back. Mostly a desk jockey who acts as the ‘guy in the chair’.
  • An, playing Cooper ‘Coop’ - All-American patriot. Former Marine, pulled into the CIA as a wetworker. Easily the most trigger-happy of the group, mostly because he is the only one in the group who can really shoot.
  • Al, playing Petros - ‘Ambiguously Balkan’, openly works for the dog/horse racing rings that the various Balkan mafias are involved with. Currently setting up a safehouse in the London area while the others investigate (player unable to make it this session).

Recap

17 - 19 April 2011

Harker (S)Entries - a Dracula Dossier Starter

One of the central questions for starting a Dracula Dossier campaign is to decide how the agents are going to get the actual dossier. There are a couple of options given in the book, as well as some published operations that can do it. Two of those published operations are (S)Entries and the Harker Intrusion. I could not decide which, so I used both, roughly like this. (S)Entries is available in the Nights Black Agents core book, and The Harker Intrusion is one of the Edom Files adventures.

Dracula Dossier Session 3

The Dramatis Personae:

  • S, playing Padraig - Irish actor, formerly linked to drug running, and then pressured by EUROPOL to act as a courier to provide gear and funds to informants and similar shady characters
  • N, playing Yannis - Belgian hacker who got recruited by the ADIV/SGRS a while back. Mostly a desk jockey who acts as the ‘guy in the chair’.
  • An, playing Cooper ‘Coop’ - All-American patriot. Former Marine, pulled into the CIA as a wetworker. Likes squirrelling away guns, dislikes loose ends.
  • Al, playing Petros - ‘Ambiguously Balkan’, openly works for the dog/horse racing rings that the various Balkan mafias are involved with, really undercover Romanian security.

Recap

13 - 17 April 2011

Getting into Classic Traveller in 202X

Someone told you that Traveller is a cool SF TTRPG, and you heard that Classic Traveller (CT) is a good version of it. So, how do you start? This was a (relatively) brief guide that I wrote in August/September 2023, with some edits in December. This is a more permanent home for it than a PDF uploaded to various discords.

Contents

Choosing a Core Book

First of all, there are a few different versions to choose from:

A Lightweight System for the Dracula Dossier

Just a quick note on the mechanical bits for my Dracula Dossier campaign. It is written for Night’s Black Agents, which is a Gumshoe game. I tend to dislike some aspects of Gumshoe though, in particular the spending of general abilities, and only rolling a single d6 (which just feels dull compared to rolling either more dice or fancier dice). So, here is the basics of the system we are using:

Dracula Dossier Session 2

The Dramatis Personae:

  • S, playing Padraig - Irish actor, formerly linked to drug running, and then pressured by EUROPOL to act as a courier to provide gear and funds to informants and similar shady characters
  • N, playing Yannis - Belgian hacker who got recruited by the ADIV/SGRS a while back. Mostly a desk jockey who acts as the ‘guy in the chair’.
  • An, playing Cooper ‘Coop’ - All-American patriot. Former Marine, pulled into the CIA as a wetworker. Easily the most trigger-happy of the group, mostly because he is the only one in the group who can really shoot.
  • Al, playing Petros - ‘Ambiguously Balkan’, openly works for the dog/horse racing rings that the various Balkan mafias are involved with. Currently sick with food poisoning because he ate a dodgy gyro (player unable to make it this session).

Recap

9 - 11 April 2011

Dracula Dossier Session 1

Following some discussion and offline character creation, the agents get together in early April 2011. Our dramatis personae:

  • S, playing Padraig - Irish actor, formerly linked to drug running, and then pressured by EUROPOL to act as a courier to provide gear and funds to informants and similar shady characters
  • N, playing Yannis - Belgian hacker who got recruited by the ADIV/SGRS a while back. Mostly a desk jockey who acts as the ‘guy in the chair’.
  • An, playing Cooper ‘Coop’ - All-American patriot. Former Marine, pulled into the CIA as a wetworker. Easily the most trigger-happy of the group, mostly because he is the only one in the group who can really shoot.
  • Al, playing Petros - ‘Ambiguously Balkan’, openly works for the dog/horse racing rings that the various Balkan mafias are involved with. Is actually deep cover for the Romanian foreign intelligence agency - the SIE.

These first few session reports are based on two published adventures: The Harkness Files and (S)Entries. I have mashed them up, which takes up the first four sessions or so. Spoilers for both of those in these, and for the Dracula Dossier as a whole.