Long starship voyages and epic destinies

Voidstein Part 3- The After Action Report

Sargasso of Space - Andre Norton. Cover art by - Ed Emshwiller

We recently concluded our six week long hybrid Classic Traveller Braunstein.

This is the ongoing series in several parts describing the Classic Traveller Braunstein, it’s winners and losers and the after action review.

The After Action Review process occurs in 5 parts: What was supposed to happen, what happened, what went wrong, what went right and what we will do in the future.

What was supposed to happen

The point of view of the participants:

“I thought the game was to be about factions hiring Travellers to further their goals and ends while the factions fought and the Travellers scrambled by to get cash.” (Traveller)

“I think from my perspective the game unfurled largely as advertised. I expected to get up to space hi-jinks with other Travellers. I expected to be betrayed. I expected to die in character creation. All of these things happened. “ (Traveller)

“I think everything happened the way it was supposed to, but not the way I wanted it to.” (Patron and Traveller player)

“Patrons were going to be the movers and shakers of the area doing weird goals.
Travellers were supposed to be larger than life action heroes (Captain Kirk, John Carter, Indiana Jones), and go forth and earn money and get into hi-jinks.” (Traveller)

My summary/ The point of view of the Umpire

Classic Traveller by the book with daring pulp sci fi heroes taking on shady jobs from patron players for outrageous money, and patron players scheming for power. 6 weeks, 1:1 time, by the book.

This “Type 2.5” Voidstein was supposed to have weekly orders by patrons, but Travellers could move or act at anytime. The game progressed 1 for 1 with the real world. This meant that a “jump” in space would take you out of the game for a week!

Patrons competed with each other for power. Travellers competed with other Travellers for jobs with Patrons for money. Patrons could hire Travellers and have plausible deniability for their schemes, which was important because the “Background Simulation” would awaken and smite them if they weren’t circumspect.

The whole thing was meant to spiral out of control and crescendo around variables that got introduced around a central crisis and “MaGuffinstone”. Patron goals were pre-set and centered around various things which interlocked with the Maguffinstone. Travellers had no other goal than to make as much money as possible and were free agents, but could only make money by taking jobs from Patrons.

What did happen?

The point of view of the participants:

“I think I didn’t do a good job as the fog of war was too dense for me. The first faction I ran into reluctantly hired me, but I had almost no real info to go on. When I went to Jumpspace (the media patron) for info, they just shooed me away. So I was left with a whole universe to go search but no real clues or leads to follow, from what I recall.” (Traveller)

“Turns out nothing is sacred and my faction was eliminated before a single Traveller interacted with me (by another Patron).” (Patron player)

“I fumbled around a bit at first, but I accepted I should act like I was a Protagonist in a classic scifi adventure story, and started taking big risks. I lead an escape from a gang controlled station, then did a daring escape on ship (a roll of 1 on a d6 would have had my ship among the vaporized), then proposed to a Hacker I met (to have her join my team, but also because it seemed interesting and fun to do). So I think it went according to plan for me.” (Traveller)

“I tried to do the same, emulate the larger than life characters doing stuff but was met with “no” a lot. (By Patrons)” (Traveller)

My summary/ The point of view of the Umpire

It played out as advertised with a few hiccups that can easily be fixed

The times of events began to decouple from the weekly order process out of an imperative of the chaos made by Travellers.

Travellers sought jobs and Patrons schemed and set plans in motion. Eventually by week 3-4 every Traveller had aligned with a patron for high paying work and by week 5-6 was doing a session of live play based on the jobs and relationships they had built up to that point.

A lot of time was spent in Jumpspace by some Travellers and almost all had quiet periods where they were traveling in Jumpspace or interplanetary.

Travellers and Patrons had trouble meeting with each other and creating webs of schemes for fear of being discovered and also because many Patrons were inactive and unavailable.

What went wrong?

The point of view of the participants:

“The fog felt too thick to me at times. I’m not sure if that’s a result of my inexperience with this form of play.” - (Patron and Traveller player)

“Likewise. I had one order and then one action and then was toast. Not a criticism, but it was nothing and then everything in a single instance.” - (Patron)

“During play, there were a couple things I wish I’d know about the events and people of the world that led into this. It was a bit jarring at times; I didn’t actually know when we started that I was playing a Patron that had an existing history in the world, including interacting with another couple of the PCs.” - (Patron)

”If that will continue to be the norm, we should think about giving some of that info to the new player, if a patron or faction changes hands.” - (Patron and Traveller)

“I’d third that. Fog was very high as said before and information very limited in who was what and what they were, exactly. It felt like I had to do a lot of work to even find adventure and I had no real ties to anyone because lots of people were very conservative and cautious or were very obtuse in their dealings.” - (Traveller)

“I’ll say that for me it seemed to go from 1G to 7G very quickly. It’s like my Traveller was at the Stellar Burn Cantina looking for employment (while the Player was just figuring out how things work and skimming through the 3 books) and the next thing I knew he was going on a suicide mission involving a massive Fleet Battle! “ - (Traveller)

“Yeah, having the right folks for patrons/factions seems important (no offense, life gets hard for everyone!)” - (Traveller)

My summary/ The point of view of the Umpire

• Fog of war too thick

• Key patrons too inactive

• Not enough imperative for patrons to act quickly for a 6 week Braunstein

Some Travellers spent a lot of time on the sidelines. This was especially punishing since you spend part of the game traveling no matter what. Some Patrons either nearly ghosted or just wouldn’t be proactive in providing jobs. Because we designed the Voidstein to interlock the Travellers and Patrons so closely, Travellers that were able to manipulate seemingly distracted or distant Patrons for money even in solo play simply won, while others who were trying to be more competitive couldn’t get ahead.

Having Patrons that the Travellers depended on for big money payouts that would not engage with the game actively when needed forced me and other patrons to step in and ensure the game kept moving.

It’s clear that while this approach is fascinating and leads to a lot of autonomy and emergent chaos from participants driving things instead of the Referee, either only certain people can perform as Patrons, or there must be another aspect of the ecosystem which drives Patrons to Travellers more urgently, since the reverse is true (the Travellers had a weekly living expense). There has to be something driving Patrons to act other than a final win/lose outcome. Probably Patrons should only be those who are utterly committed to weekly orders and can fulfill them, when the game depends on them this much.

The fog of war was far too dense and needlessly so. Traveller works based on real world physics, so radio signals can only travel at the speed of light. However, the entire Voidstein took place in a solar system, where a radio signal can reach most worlds in about an hour. I made this needlessly complex and difficult, stating that people could intercept signals, and had hoped there would be an entire “spy game” of Travellers leaving dead drops with starport barkeeps and such.

In the end that didn’t happen, and a “dark forest” emerged where people were afraid to communicate across the solar system. By the end of the Voidstein I had mostly corrected this, assuming Patrons and Travellers were competent sci fi heroes and able to use their signals smartly and operate on that abstraction. Of course, if someone was in Jumpspace or unavailable, they were just unavailable. But if someone knew another entity in the solar system, by the end, I encouraged them to simply send a signal to known locations. This worked well enough by the end.

What went right?

The point of view of the participants

“I had a classic pulp scifi adventure.” - (Traveller)

“I acted my ass off, and had an absolute blast doing it. I was able to see my machinations take shape and cause ripples that themselves caused feedback. That was awesome. On the player side; I learned that, much like in Rimworld, it pays to be a psychopath. But luck pays much better.” - (Patron and Traveller player)

“I had an awesome time teaming up with a great group to wreck house and have an awesome adventure that ended in a cool space battle and an epic death for my traitor to be. The char gen braunstein was really awesome and gave some initial info/context for/with other Travellers.” - (Traveller)

My summary/ The point of view of the Umpire

• Everyone had a pulp sci fi adventure

• Schemes, plots, backstabbing, intrigue

• The emergent story of the scenario was really interesting

• Traveller actually happened. Fleet battles, sword fights, and travelling on starships.

I was thrilled to see the game mostly work as intended, most of all, that the solar system was left to the simulation of the game system, people had to actually get on starships and take the time to travel in space and yet it still worked. By the end of the game, every single participant had an epic, pulp sci fi adventure play out. And that all happened naturally from the maelstrom that is the Braunstein.

What we will do next time (for this type of Voidstein)

The point of view of the participants

“We should all be more aggressive and destructive. Lowering the fog of war could be fun. Maybe the TAS has a list of known Travellers operating in the area? Maybe a Cast of Characters, with publicly known info on them? Make the ability to contact people easier. I would have been fine to have just kept playing, and kept doing stuff, I was kind of sad it ended.” - (Traveller)

My summary/ The point of view of the Umpire

• Lower the fog of war through multiple angles, but keep to the rules

• Switch to 1977 Classic Traveller from 1981 Classic Traveller (not explained here. The 81’ rules work fine!)

• Keep using the rules by the book and remain dedicated to hard science fiction, distances, jumpspace, gravity, etc.

• Hand select Patrons and ensure they are committed to weekly orders.

• Allow for more participants to play both a Patron and a Traveller at the same time.

The parameters for this experiment were a single solar system with at least a few Patrons and around a dozen Travellers, a central conflict and a “maguffinstone”.

I am thrilled with the outcome!

Although some participants had a mixed experience, the experiment overall was a success. I’ve heard of some really fun sci fi Braunsteins, and even Classic Traveller ones (including the famous Moonstein and others.) However, what I had not heard of was a starfaring Braunstein, one in which participants must actually traverse space in 1:1 time in a starship.

This makes sense, and most sci fi Braunsteins so far have emphasized keeping the area local and small so that the emergent chaos of a Braunstein could come about. Check out this video by Jon Mollison describing a sci fi Braunstein that did attempt starfaring, and how it failed!

I was particularly inspired by this, but didn’t want to give up on the concept of Starfaring and being on starships.

But you can see the problem right?

If we are committed to a living world with 1 for 1 timekeeping, and yet you are on a starship, that means potentially weeks without playing.

For this experiment, one of the solutions to this problem for me was keeping the scenario based in a solar system. This meant that signals could reach from one end to the other, but using our selected game system, starship travel would still be an imperative for play.

Secondly, we committed to using the 1981 Classic Traveller rules “by the book” including gravity, vector starship combat and travel times. Anyone who does Braunsteins knows that this sort of thing is very important so that participants can compete fairly according to the rules and so that people can make meaningful plans and see where they intersect with their adversaries. Encumbrance, time, distance, rate all of those things are crucial in a Braunstein for it to work.

Third, I created a situation which would contract more and more around the participants, forcing them into decision points, alliances, tradeoffs and conflict. Something akin to the shrinking area like in extraction shooter games, the conflict of the scenario would drive them into intersecting paths of conflict and motivation. Additionally, the Travellers had weekly expenses, which I calculated based on the need for housing and food from the CT rules as well as a single mid-passage and two working passage per month, then divided per week. If a Traveller went into debt, I would only allow them to Travel in low-passage (risk of death) and they would be wanted automatically during Law rolls on planets and at starports.

As noted before, Patrons were motivated by their final win/lose state, and this was actually a problem. They certainly need some kind of weekly pressure to act and seek Travellers for jobs right along with the Travellers weekly pressure to adventure.

The amazing thing is that, all of this worked! This was a Braunstein that would see people take a week to travel. That’s a pretty reasonable time for a busy person not to be plugged into a game anyway. However, one drawback to this is that this really turned into a Type 3 Braunstein instead of a Type 2. That meant it was very hard work for me.

To revisit the earlier definitions from “BrOZER” and “UMBROS”; A Type 2 is a weekly game of orders. A Type 3 is “always on” and runs nonstop as events occur (even over weeks!) A Type 3 is strenuous, but possible as common sense applies, with the Referee completing orders as they can.

It became Type 3 because people would exit Jumpspace at different parts of 1:1 time, or leave interplanetary journeys. This meant I had to do one of two things: I could either “pause time” and have everyone catch up to 1:1 in bubbles, or I had to allow 1:1 time to play out. For the most part, I did the latter.

I definitely could not have kept running this more than 6 weeks, but I’m thrilled with how it turned out. The two major downsides, which contributed to multiple other points of failure: inactive patrons and thick fog of war, are easily fixed for a Voidstein set in a solar system.

Unfortunately, while this game worked very well and was tremendous fun we are moving on to more experiments so we won’t be getting back to this “Voidstein Type 2.5” anytime soon. In fact, our next experiment is a Matrix Game to resolve the political chaos following this Braunstein.

But after that…

We are working on making this a total-non-stop-Braunstein or something like a “Type IV” as described in UMBROS (https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/541947/umbros-a-braunstein-of-dinosaurs-and-treachery-at-the-earth-s-core).

If we can figure this out, we will have a 77’ Traveller game with a large number of participants where Travellers are constantly at play in the background.

The “far future of the 1970’s” is looking very bright for us.