Traveller and Battlestar Galactica

 

Back when I created this new blog, I said it was going to be about the games I love, and love to play. Well, I'm about to throw you all a curve ball, because I'm about to go into a place that has been 40-odd yahrens in the making.

I'm not sure if this was 1978 or 1979, but the very first mail-order purchase I ever made was for the black box set of Traveller books. I consumed those books much like I had with the Holmes D&D Basic blue book, but I never was able to get anyone interested in playing! All my friends wanted to play this D&D that they kept hearing about. So, those black books sat on a shelf - with only my dozens of generated characters and worlds to show that I had tried to figure out the rules. 

So fast forward to today, 45 years later, having only played Traveller a couple of times at conventions, when a podcaster[1] asked about taking a favorite military franchise and running it as an RPG. I don't know why, but my mind leaped to Battlestar Galactica and Traveller...

... and ye gods. An obsession may have been born. 

I don't know if this is going to go anywhere. I don't know if this is just my hamster-wheel brain churning on a Neat New Idea. I mean, I have an Ultima RPG I wrote/adapted that lies wanting players. Between 3 campaign groups in my AD&D world and my Dungeon23 OD&D campaign, I need another campaign like I need another mortgage and yet here we are... my brain can't stop reading my LBBs, the various Classic Traveller PDFs I have, or mentally mapping out how this would work.

Frak.

So... here's my opening premise, three hexes, you know... of how I'd start a Traveller campaign - not with the default Third Imperium setting, oh, no, that'd be just too damn easy. No, I'm going to jump into a mashup of the original 1970s Battlestar Galactica and the 2000s reboot series. 

Campaign Overview:

What if the Galactica and Pegasus weren’t the only capital ships to escape the Cylons, along with other refugee ships in tow?

A Light Battlestar, the Lance, managed to survive a Cylon Raider assault during the Battle of Cimtar, but with its jump drive severely damaged, it and its accompanying fleet are being forced to play a game of cat-and-mouse. Following incomplete star-charts, due to computer damage, they are searching for a place to rest, refit and recover so that they can find a new home, far away from the Cylons.

Chargen and “Why Are We Here”

All sorts of backgrounds are possible, but perhaps for the short intro adventure, being part of the service makes sense. So I'd probably run the chargen as RAW from CT81. Weapon damage will be CT81. Can have laser skills but not likely to have them starting out. Energy weapons are for the ship-board ground-pounders and marines, and while its possible that one of the players might have Army/Marines service, are they active when Cimtar happens?

Why are characters of multiple backgrounds mashed together? It’s the end of the Colonies! Refugees from all over, in a rag-tag fleet guided by the LBS-109 Lance. And since its jump drive is on the fritz, you’ve been “voluntold” into a team to help find parts - somewhere - somehow.

That's going to be the first adventure. The Lance needs parts to fix the jump drive. A good chunk of the ships are jump capable, and for some of the rest, there are jump-carriers available. 

Will the players scrounge around the fleet? Will they jump to one of the other worlds away from Colonial space? Will they dare to go back into the Colonies to try and pick up parts from wrecked ships amidst the invading Cylon forces? 

And I guess I have to plan for any of those options! Yay! 

Homebase

In this campaign, since the “homebase” *IS* the Lance, I’ll dedicate a bit more time to that ship, and its refugee fleet.

LBS-109 Lance, Valkyrie class light battlestar

• Captain: Commander Tonya Middel
• XO: Colonel Alejandro Brusco
• CAG: Colonel Lucina Coraggioso
• Chief Engineer: Chief Misha Chamra
• Chief Medical Officer: Dr. Gerald Macomely

LBS109 was originally build early on during the thousand yahren Cylon War, as humanity's artificial children rebelled. It served with distinction across many campaigns and is a decorated ship. The damage to the port nameplate on the flightpod was never fixed, as a remembrance to those who made the ultimate sacrifice to the Colonies.

Other info on the homebase:

• 148 refugee ships. Some are not jump-drive capable and have to berth with the Lance or other ships, such as civilian Jump Carriers.
• Approximately 48,000 survivors across the ships and Lance.
• The game would start in the outer Oort cloud of the Cyrranus system (location of the 12 colonies).
• Humankind is not alone in this universe, there are other species! Cylons are creations of man. Most species are organic and have outlawed AI and sentient/synthetics.

As I go through this exercise of noodling around with the idea, I'll document it here. Right now, I'm not going to get caught up in alot of the minutiae of Traveller. Get started with characters and just "reskin" some of the various ship types into Vipers, Cylon Raiders and Raptors. 

For sure, there are aliens, so I guess this'll be a bit of TOS BSG. For sure, there will be pursuit by the Cylons and their desire to eliminate all survivors due to religious dogma - that's from TRS. But... build 3 hexes and start small, so that's what I've done. 

And... maybe some PC pregens or NPCs...

Remember, this is just a thought exercise... (he says, hoping against hope he doesn't keep getting excited over the possibilities...)

[1] Whoops! Forgot to mention who the skalliwag podcaster was when I published this! That would be Jason of Nerd's RPG Variety Cast. Great podcast with lots of guests and topics - highly recommend giving it a listen!