A good friend and I had a very positive conversation last night about setting up a new game for some Friday Night Roleplay sessions. We are aiming to play for between 30 and 60 minutes each week online. For me, this is a return to my twenty-odd year long habit of RPG on Friday nights and I am keen to give it a go.

My friend was especially forthright about the idea that I should run something that I am excited about playing. Having noticed my recent interest in SF and Traveller-style games, we decided to explore that further and I confessed to a strong desire to play around with the venerable old game but not being so keen on using the rules as written.

Talking over our respective preferences for gaming, we sketched out a basic set of parameters that I’ve been working with today. The basic parameters proposed were:

• Fellowship and Discovery, with Fantasy and Expression, as the primary gaming engagements we want explore.
• From a narrative perspective, having “a character with an active quest and something to lose” as a key aspect of play.
• Getting started by having the GM generate a Traveller character and then having the player take on that role.
• Utilising the Traveller 1977 edition LBBs as a baseline for game play assumptions.

Something we were keen to experiment with is finding out through play who the character is, utilising a trope such as amnesia or waking up from cold sleep. We see this as a way in to helping the player learn about the setting from a null point start. It also offers the GM some leeway as they try to spin up a workable Otherverse to play in.

I have been considering using Fudge as the underlying rules engine for the roleplaying game, using Traveller itself more as a framework for other game play structures. It occurs to me that while roleplay is our primary goal, other Traveller game mechanisms can be easily utilised to develop the setting and add interest to play.

For example, Traveller’s world generation system is an adjunct to the actual roleplay but allows the GM to create a workable universe for the game to be set in. The Patron rules and the Animal Encounter rules similarly can be easily utilised to help generate interesting encounters and events.

Having spent a good bit of time with the old LBBs, I’ve found that drawing on the Cepheus Engine SRD has acted as a very fruitful addition. While the old classic Traveller books offer me a connection back to the origins of my hobby experience, there are loads of useful details and options provided by Cepheus.

Overall, I am allowing my mind to churn up ideas while I use the tools from Traveller-style science-fiction to provide some concrete baseline material. I’m not yet sure quite what the Friday Night Otherverse will include but I am seriously enjoying the voyage out into the Far Future to find out.

Game on!