Odradek's Drift Classic Traveller Player Primer
Location: Discord voice chat on the Gay Beholder OSR server, and a TLDraw whiteboard.
Schedule: every Monday, at 6:30 PM Pacific time, running for roughly 12 sessions to wrap up in early September.
Attendance Policy: open-table, anyone is welcome to play at any time. However, player count is capped at 5, first-come-first-served with a waitlist. Observers are welcome. \
Premise
Odradek's Drift is a backwater subsector in the vicinity of the leeward Pleiades. Players are employees of Krongu corporation, based on the planet Krongu.
Krongu Inc. produced one product: bottled primordial slime from Krongu's primeval seas. A few decades ago, there was a rush of investment into speculative evolution and primordial slimes were all the rage. Then the "soup bubble" burst, Krongu's value dipped, and now the company stands on the brink of bankruptcy.
With only a few months left before interstellar regulations require it to declare bankruptcy, the Krongu board of directors scraped together just enough cash to buy a shitty Type A free merchant and load it up with the remaining inventory: 69 metric tons of green slime. You, the players, have been tasked with making as much money as possible before the company dissolves.
Odradek's Drift has no relation to any official Traveller setting.
Feel free to peruse past session reports to get up to speed:
Ruleset
I am using the 1977 version of Classic Traveller and can send pdf links upon request. Alternately, you can download the nearly-identical Facsimile Edition for free.
To generate a character quickly, use the Bat in The Attic generator, embedded below. Any career is fine, though I prefer sticking to the original 6: Army/Navy/Marines/Scouts/Merchant/Other. Also note that there are some custom services available (see below).
House Rules
- Odradek's Drift has three optional services: The Castalian Order, The Church, and Coca Cola Inc.
- I have been using Unturned Hovel's die modifiers for general attribute saves.
Etiquette
Traveller has very free-form pacing and can easily devolve into chaos if everyone is trying to talk at once. Please try to avoid crosstalk as much as possible: make use of the sidebar chat for low-priority questions & actions, and consider enabling push-to-talk.
I will do my best to regularly rotate which players I am engaging with, but please speak up and advocate for yourself if you want to take a particular action. (See below for a list of "standard" things Travellers can do).
Tips for Players
- You do not have to read all three rulebooks in full. Traveller is easy to learn during play, but I do recommend perusing the following:
- Character creation: Book 1, pp. 4-11, also see pp. 21-23 and the example on 24-25.
- Skills: Book 1, pp. 12-20
- Combat rules: Book 1, pp. 26-44. Note that weapon & armor prices are on p. 41.
- Space travel basics: Book 2, pp. 1-4
- Trade rules: Book 2, pp. 42 - 44
- Misc. equipment: Book 3, pp. 13-18
- The Traveller rules provide for a few default activities when landed on a planet. Each week, you can...
- ...attempt to find a new patron: roll a d6, on a 5 or 6 a patron is found. Contingent on reaction roll and negotiation, they will likely have a specific job. This is the best way to make money quickly.
- ...attempt to buy trade goods: see Book 2, pp. 42 - 44. In brief, you roll to see what type of good is available, how many tons, and how much it is discounted from its "base price". If you can afford it, you can buy it, load it onto your ship, and then attempt to sell for a profit on other planets.
- ...travel to another planet, either using your ship (consuming 20T of fuel, or 10,000 credits), or via low, middle, or high passage (see Book 2, pp. 1-4). The latter may be more economical for brief trips.
- ...take any other action to pursue rumors or plot threads that are already in play.
- How much money is a lot? As a rule of thumb, CR 1 ~ $1.00 usually works.
- A meal at a nice restaurant is CR 20-50
- A ground car is CR 4,000
- A revolver is CR 150
- A wristwatch is CR 25-1,000
- A Type A free merchant ship is CR 37,000,000, and costs CR 10,000 to refuel after each jump.
- One metric ton of fruit is CR 1,000
- Traveller skills sometimes have their own little subsystems. If you have an unusual skill, check the description in Book 1, pp. 12-20.
