Category: GM’s Notes

A few notes.

Playing approximately once a week, online, for two hours, seems to be working out. It seems easier for the whole group to find two hours and not have to travel at all than to find travel time, then two hours or more, then more travel time. And it’s easier than finding three or four hours for online play. We’re having a good time with it, and it feels like the campaign is regaining its momentum.

In last night’s game I had decided that each time I went through the entire party, asking them what they are doing and then having them do it, would equal 10 minutes in the game, and that each of those 10 minutes would raise the interior temperature of the alien ship by 10 degrees C. The team, however, was very cautious. The time scale ended up not making any sense. I stuck to it, but it was obvious that it was all out of sync with what was actually happening. I told my players that obviously I had messed it up, but we were sticking with it rather than me retconning the session. What I should have done was either make each time through the lineup 5 minutes, or just dropped the time period all together and tied each full trip through the rotation to a temperature raise, and then GM’ed it .

Lesson learned.

As I wrote up last night’s game, I realized that as a GM, writing up the sessions in this way might be my best GM practice. It is a great tool for remembering what happened, obviously, but also keeps us kind of enthusiastic about the campaign. It is cool to look back and see all the stuff the team has done.

I have been physically kind of exhausted lately. Allergies are bad this time of year, and work has been busy. Last night I was not sure I was ready in terms of prep or just physically, but we played and my players gave me the energy to do a good job. Good players make the game.

I have been running a modified version of the classic Traveller adventure “the Chamax Horde” for the last few sessions. I say “modified”, which means I used a lot of the structure of the adventures but made it fit into our campaign a bit better. This is the second time in the history of our campaign that I’ve used someone else’s adventure, the first being the Energy Leech adventure which came from Michael Brown’s 1-page adventure Energy Transfer.

It has taken a long time to do this particular adventure due simply to not playing very often. It’s hard for players to remember important details which might help them if you wait too long between sessions.

Now that we are playing online again that may change. Last night I proposed weekly or bi-weekly sessions, Tuesday nights from 7pm – 9pm. For in-person games I always feel like two hours is not enough. Everyone has made time to go to the game location, and then you only play for two hours? That doesn’t seem right. But playing online it feels different. No one has to travel. It is more convenient. And spending two hours a week online for the campaign is not too massive a time requirement. I think it may work. We’re going to try it. Everyone wants to play more. I’d like to as well. And it is easier to prep for two-hour sessions. It’s also easier to keep the Referee-Mind sharp and on-task for shorter sessions. I think that will benefit everyone.

Last night’s game was another zero combat session. Lots of exploration, planning, problem solving. I was very happy with the way all the players were active and engaged. I didn’t have to “find stuff” for each character to do. They just got in there and made it all happen. Before the game I asked them to all review the previous few sessions for important loose ends and details. One player in particular really took that seriously and was on-point with it. I have great players, and I appreciate it!

It took almost a year to get back to the campaign, but I never end a campaign. Ever.

Session 30 was really fun, and was a reminder why I love this group so much. Since William moved to San Antonio last year we are taking the game back to Roll20 rather than in-person. I’ve not run or played a game on Roll20 since the pandemic lockdown, though I’ve kept my account  and all the stuff in there. The biggest issue I’ve had with it is that putting things online is an added layer of preparation. I really like doing everything in a small notebook and using that with my small ring binder that has all the campaign materials and playing in-person. I spend a lot of time on the computer already. BUT — I have made some progress on Roll20.

I got an iPad Mini for Christmas 2024, and recently added and Apple Pencil and the application Procreate to it, and it makes creation of maps for the online game much easier. I no longer want to go jump in front of a bus every time I start working on one. I can sit in my chair, in the front room with my family, and work on the iPad. The pencil works really well too, and the application does exactly what I need it to do.

Now, while I haven’t been running this campaign for nearly a year, I have been running a D&D campaign for three players for about 8 months, so I’ve been getting a lot of GM practice. So jumping back into the Traveller game was not that hard. I was very pleased with the roleplaying done by the group. They give me so many things to riff off of during the game. I had no intention of introducing an NPC computer hacker, but they wanted to find one, so I whipped one up. The things they did that I wasn’t expecting, which was nearly everything, gave me so many options as the referee. It is kinda funny that now, at 60 years of age, I am finally understanding that if you LISTEN to your players and ride that wave the game will be a lot better, and a lot easier to run.

Classic Traveller is a great system for this kind of play. There are enough rules to get the job done, but not so many to make the game oppressive and hard to create and adjust on the fly. Cepheus Engine is the same way.

After the game we started a discussion about the Cepheus Engine, and possibly converting the campaign to the CE System Reference Document. I have already ported a lot of CE mechanics to this Classic Traveller game. I think making it official might help the players, as they’d have all the rules I’m using easily available. So I asked them, if they have the time, to fiddle around with character creation using the online version.

I do, however, ask myself how much this would improve our game. Would it improve it at all? Is it necessary? The honest answer is probably not. Classic Traveller has served us well for many years now. I really enjoy saying I run Classic Traveller. That means a lot to me.