What happens when you mash up an old-favourite Traveller adventure with the Cypher system to build an open-table experience for high-schoolers curious about D&D?

In my last post, I was musing over what exactly to offer the school club members as a beginner’s game in September. In my mind at the time was the idea of doing a British Fantasy inspired roleplaying game set in a fantasy Britain with Nordic Elves and other strangeness that I dubbed, “The Forgotten Isles”. But I was also wanting to do something science-fiction and curious about Cypher 2e.

The What

When it comes down to it, the school club is a roughly 90-minute a week event in which a mix of actively engaged student roleplayers (who come to play in one of four existing campaigns) rub shoulders with newbies. We’ll have an influx of Year 7 to the school and that always creates curious new members. My role is always to offer an introductory experience.

At the end of last academic year, I was trying out running 75-minute open table ‘jobs’ in the sewers of Cyfaraun. While the setting was fine, the execution led to some very brief and somewhat unsatisfying mini-dungeoncrawls in the sewers that got old really fast. I recognised the value of the open table approach, being able to flex around the players at the table, but we lacked a sense of coherent progress over several sessions.

My idea has been to offer an open table ‘mega-dungeon’-type experience but with a science-fiction location. I chose the Death Station module for Traveller (in it’s 2021 free-to-download Mongoose version), and thought it might be fun to run it using Cypher 2e. The basic premise is that you have a lab ship that’s in orbit, it has gone quiet, and the PCs are sent in to find out what’s wrong. Their initial goal is to board it and make a beachhead. From there they can explore.

The How

I’ve long been a fan of Justin Alexander’s advice from his blog series, ‘The Art of the Key‘. In it, the Alexandrian argues for a simple structure which essentially presents to the GM a hierarchy of information: read-aloud description, reactive checks that happen on arrival, details on key elements in the location, and optional GM contextual notes. The problem is virtually no published adventures use anything like this approach.

Because I was taking the map from Death Station and using it with Cypher, I was aware that the module had keyed the map in a very inefficient manner that was also weighed down with the specific Traveller stats and rules notations. I also wanted to drop the scenario in to my own ‘Out On The Edge’ SF setting which is inspired by Firefly. The choice I made was to sit down and take apart the adventure piece-by-piece, rewriting the keys and updating it to fit the vibe of this new Otherverse.

For example, here’s the original text for Area 2 (Quadrant 3):

2. CARGO BAY
   The area is dimly lit but all lighting fixtures are intact. Wall switches can raise lighting levels. This 19.8-ton cargo storage area appears to be a standard chamber, with bare metal walls and tie-down fittings on the ceiling and floor. The wall between the cargo bay and the air/raft hangar is a large sliding door. This door allows transport and shipment of bulky cargo from the air/raft if required. Many large crates and storage containers fill the bay. Some are empty. Their markings indicate they once contained scientific instruments. They are now being kept until needed.
   Five empty cryoberths are shoved against the bulkhead. One stands open. Willow Dawn is stencilled along the sides. A large, air-tight crate appears to have been used for the transport of live animal specimens. The remnants of several small specimen cages lay scattered across the floor behind it. Closer inspection reveals blood and fur smeared on the walls and floor but no sign of the animals themselves.

My entry, while much longer and specifically re-written to fit the re-worked mission within a different Otherverse, looks like this:

The Challenge

That being said, while the new entries are far easier to use (and much more detailed) taking a 40 or so location lab ship and re-writing every entry took me around 6 or 7 hours over three days. While I had a lot of fun re-designing the adventure to be a horror-themed exploration of a damaged starship, it was a considerable effort. I am hoping that the students actually want to play it.

The next step is to create a half-dozen pre-gen characters that fit the Otherverse and use the new Cypher rules. I aim to have a two-sided A4 sheet for each with some descriptive text on the front-side, perhaps with an image, and then the Cypher stats on the rear just using the main page of their official character sheet filled out. As newbies come the the table, the plan will be to have them pick a character and teach them the basics of play as we go.

With 75-minutes per session and a likely revolving collection of players, it’s easy to set up each week’s adventure as a continuation of the last. New characters can be introduced, old ones put on the bench, and a fresh set of objectives given for each foray into the vessel. Once they have established the beachhead in the cargo bay, they can experience a reasonably open sandbox in a sci-fi setting.

The best thing is that I know the module as re-written is robust and easy for me to run. I won’t need to prep much each week – at most, I could choose to alter the locations the group affects last time – and I can roll into a session without much additional effort. The focus can be on the play in-session, with Cypher providing an easy-to-run system of rules that encourage improvisation.

As always, I am a little uncertain as to whether this experiment will work but I am excited to bring it to the table in September.

Game on!