How I used to run the adventures

Introduction

Introduction to the variant of the Two Hour Wargames Future Tales with a Classic Traveller twist that I am playing solo Classic Traveller published adventures using a spreadsheet.  Since Annic Nova (early 2021) I have moved away form this to using 4 Dice PPS SFRPG (link coming soon).

Background

The dead end of detail and story generation

It was 2012 and I was looking to run some solo Traveller.  I started doing this using MegaTraveller and Rory Story Cubes and even blogged the first few scenes.  I was unhappy with the amount of work it took to play and lack of a story arc so started looking at what to do.  I latched onto Blake Snyder’s Beat Sheet and Covetous Poet’s Adventure Creator stuff and over the next 5 years or so developed a spreadsheet to create a story driven RPG.  In 2016 I gave it a go and did about 4 scenes but it was entirely a story generator – basically the scenes ended up entirely written based on generated keywords and phrases.  I was looking for a more RPG type experience.  I had also collected simple and solo RPG games over these years and eventually created a spreadsheet to create characters and resolve events, encounters and tasks. It was based on opposed d6 dice rolls with only a few modifiers. In 2017 I used it to run the first two scenarios of the Traveller Kinunir and it worked well but required lots of cut and pasting to do.

I had also moved on in life from using 1d6 +/- modifiers to rolling a small number of dice (usually 1 to 4) and adding or subtracting a few dice to the roll. And the dice were GoalSystem dice so 1-3 = no successes, 4-5 is one success, 6 is two successes.  I kept the opposed dice roll for tasks with only one to two modifiers.  Character creation etc. is not dice based as it is a spreadsheet so can be randomly generated from tables.  Originally I was going to use it to continue to play Traveller scenarios but then started creating my own story framework.

RPG-like combat system

I wrote a mashup of Chaos and Cairo and Pulp Alley and played a game in early 2017 solo with the intention of playing more with the children but that never happened.  I was intrigued with the plot plots and perils concepts as I used something similar in my RPG framework.  I got more into Pulp in general (watching films and reading books) and so looked into Larger than Life as a scenario generator but still more of a minis than game.  A good framework but not quite as flexible as I was looking for.  I was looking for a framework that I could easily change to minimise combat, preferring to have an non-combat based RPG experience.

Two Hour Wargames

Mid-2018 I then read a friend was playing Call of Cthulhu and while I know and had read a few of the Cthulhu Mythos stuff never really dived deeper.  So I bought some Cthulhu Mythos MegaPacks ebooks from Amazon and also bought Two Hour Wargames Lovecraft’s Revenge which had the a great framework I could easily make less combat-oriented by using stuff from my Kinunir spreadsheet.  So I continued with the spreadsheet and branched my Excel knowledge in some VBA and macros and buttons to make running the game easier.  I ran a few games using Lovecraft’s Revenge and it was what I was looking for.  I modified and expanded the spreadsheet to run Larger than Life: Director’s Cut that is the Pulp version that Lovecraft’s Revenge is based on.  Ran a couple of games and this worked well too.  And then I converted the Larger than Life spreadsheet to include the Future Tales (the SF version of Larger than Life) elements.  And ran a game and it worked fine.  Lastly, I ran a Classic Traveller adventure with it but realised I needed to make it a little more Traveller like so added in some Traveller elements and also modified slightly how character generation worked. 

 

It is still a work in progress but the tweaking is now minor.  The advantage of running the adventures in a spreadsheet is I can generative a narrative from the tasks etc.  I tweak this all the time to make it more readable!

Characteristics

Player characteristics are all generally in the range of 2, 3 or 4, indicating the number of dice rolled for tasks.  2 is poor, 3 is average and 4 is good.  Sometimes a characteristic may be 1 or 5.

 

Spreadsheet	CT
Physical	Strength
Agility	Dexterity
Mind	Intelligence and Education
Reputation	Endurance
Circle	Social Standing
Interaction	Administration, Streetwise and/or Leader skill

Notes:

Reputation is from Two Hour Wargames (THW) and is the default that all other characteristics are generated from. Rep is first assigned and is 2, 3, or 4 (matching THW rep of 3, 4, 5 respectively).  By default all the other attributes are equal to Rep.  But a random roll sees one non-REP attribute become one less and one non-Rep attribute become one more.

THW Future Tales (and other similar games) have 5 Circles that is your level on influence in the world.                                         

Skills

The spreadsheet has nine skills that broadly map to the Classic Traveller (Books 1-3) skills.

There is no equivalent to Jack of All Trades and I have not considered Gunnery but if I ever needed it would put it under Crack Shot.

Spreadsheet	CT
Brawler	All Blade Combat-2
Crack Shot	All Gun Combat-2
Survival	Vacc Suit-2, Forward Observer-2, Tactics-2
Technical	Computer-2, Electronics-2, Engineering-2 ,Mechanical-2
Medical	Medical-3
Vehicle	all transport skills-2, Navigation-2 Pilot-2
Larceny	Forgery-2, Gambling-2
Trading	Steward-2 Bribery-2
Investigative	No mapping – an alternative to high intelligence

                                                       

Note that other CT skills from later books can be mapped into these 9.   Most Player characters will have 1 skill, some will have 2, rarely none. Most NPCs will have 0 or 1 skill.  A character has a job that gives them a default skill.

Due to the way tasks work (roll dice = characteristic +1 die if have the relevant task), characters also normally have high characteristics and so operate as though they have skill level-0 in all other skills.  Many NPCs may have lower characteristics and so may be thought as not having skill level-0 in all other skills.

Dice

Each die rolled is read a 1-3 is no successes, 4-5 is one success, 6 is two successes.  When rolling one or more dice, count the number of successes. 

Tasks

Just about everything is resolved using tasks.  All tasks are opposed dice rolls where the characters roll a number of dice equal to the Attribute and +1 die if they have the appropriate skill related to the task (if no skill just use the attribute) and maybe add or subtract some dice based on the environment (e.g. if wounded subtract a die).  If opposing another character, then that character rolls that number dice; if opposing something else, roll dice equal to difficulty level.  Add up the difference in successes and I use a variant of the Yes, Yes but, No, No but to resolve the task:

-2 No or failed badly

-1 No but or failed

0 Yes but and No but often roll again

+1 Yes but or passed

+2 Yes or passed really well

A task is completely resolved as the task – there is no multiple tasks.  For example shooting at someone both roll dice and check the difference:

-2 shooter is out of the fight

-1 shooter is injured and leaves the fight

0 shooter is injured; target leaves the fight

+1 target leaves the fight

+2 target is out of the fight            

So far, these are all the tasks in the game (some will be familiar from the THW games):

Task	Description
Recruit	Search for a recruit for the party
Talk the Talk	Interact with someone
Question a person of interest	Question a person on interest
Find an Object	Find an object
Solve a puzzle	Solve a puzzle
Obstacle	One PC needs to overcome an obstacle (mind)
Hazard	Al PCs need to overcome a physical challenge
Recovery	Recover from injuries
Shooting	Shoot
Melee	Melee
Charging	Charge at someone (who may shoot if armed and then melee
Charged	Shoot at someone charging at you and then melee
Barrier	Once PC must cross a barrier (agility)
Trap	If caught in a trap, try and escape it
Trade	Look for and buy equipment

More may be added as future adventures require them.

A special type of task is the challenge.  This is the task that needs to be undertaken at the end of the scene and gain a clue.  A challenge is rolled for at the start of the scene and will be one of Question a person of interest,  Find an Object or sometimes Solve a puzzle.  If the task is successful, you gain a clue. (this maps onto the scene challenge in the THW Larger than Life). 

Running adventures

Larger than Life type games

For Larger than Life type games with a story arc the games narrative runs very similar to Larger than Lifeor Future Tales and is quite simple:

• Game starts with an Opening scene where you determine the story goal and the number of clues to accomplish.
• Each scene you process a number of PEFs.  Once through the PEFs you perform a challenge and get a clue if successful.
• If you go through a certain number of scenes without getting a clue the game ends.
• If you go get the required number of clues, you go to a final scene where you confront the Big Bad and his minions.

PEFs – Potential Enemy Forces.  These are resolved as either nothing or something.  The something is usually an interaction with NPCs, but could be a hazard, obstacle or barrier to overcome. 

Clues – at the beginning of the game you determine how many clues you need to complete before doing a final scene.

Scenes – Scenes are similar to story scenes.  A scene has an objective and a number of PEFs to go through depending on the location of the scene.  The objective is completed by a challenge (usually against a person but could be solving a puzzle or finding an item).  Completing a successful challenge gives you a clue. 

Classic Traveller

For running Classic Traveller adventures it works a little differently.  I run these two ways.  If there is an obvious end goal then I run it similar to a Larger than Life game with “clues” being successful scenes getting you closer to the end scene.  Kinunir scenarios ran like this, as did Research Station Gamma.

If there is not an obvious end goal and it is more a “dungeon crawl” such as Shadows (although shutting off the power could be construed as a goal but I found it was too nebulous and so did not run it that way) or Annic Nova, then I simply run some scenes as above and ignore clues. I decide how many PEFs occur per scene (usually 1 or 2 depending on the adventure with one PEF always occurring).  Note that some adventures require some PEFS to actually occur such as avoiding a rock fall or being attacked by animals.  I run these as a PEF that resolves into a task.