I’m running a 1:1 real time with Braunstein patron play Traveller game. So far it’s been a disaster and that’s what’s made it fun!
It’s been only a week since my game started. Today, the Cybermen have pressed forward into Helgahst territory. Due to the fall of the Grand Empire, no one has any ships larger than shuttles despite being TL 10. But the cold logical minds of the Cybermen found a way to strap weapons of planetary destruction onto their ramshackle ships. They wish to expand and the Helghast territory whilst meager is right on top of the only Jump lane out of the sector. Meanwhile, the Steiner Crime Syndicate sold weapons and medical supplies to the nearby Kushan Caliphate. Before raiding their lightly defended base to regain those same supplies. Causing another war to erupt. All of this happened today. One week after territory generation. Which just so happens to be the time it takes for a fully fuled ship to travel from 1 hex to the next. Before I was planning for the game to officially start, we’re already dealing with a potential genocide and a mass wave of piracy. And the damn players haven’t even created their characters yet. All my best laid plans are in ruins.
I’m having the time of my life. This is the best campaign I’ve ever run and it’s only been a week.
So what is this?
Maybe you’ve heard about the hot new craze hitting the TTRPG scene. Play your games in real time! If you’re coming here from the BrOSR or other adjacent places with a knowledge of Braunsteins and patron play, skip ahead to the next section. For everyone else, let me elaborate.
For every hour that passes IRL, an hour passes in game. Do this as a player whilst navigating a world filled with Patrons. High level players with their own territory, armies and influence. Competing against one other for land, resources and more esoteric goals.
This dynamic world requires very little input from the GM. The patrons shape the land with their actions. A fog of war ensures intrigue is paramount. The Patrons won’t know what other patrons or players are doing until they have to deal with the consequences of those actions. The players have to deal with this ever shifting landscape. Maybe one or more of the patrons decide to give the players a quest? And that quest shapes the balance of power for the region. The players can decide to align with one or more of the patrons. There could well be multiple parties of PCs. All with their own interests and aligning with particular factions. Everyone gets to shape the game world and be shaped by it. All the GM needs to do is say “yay” or “nay”.
The real time is also important. Time becomes a currency for players and patrons. Do the players go into The Deep Dungeon of Maledictus? It’s going to take several hours to explore. How do the players prepare for that? Maybe you only have four hours for a session IRL. So you need to plan your time accordingly. Traveling to the dungeon and back again when supplies run low may be challenging so prepare for that. Does your wizard have any transportation spells or do you at least have a horse and cart? Are you going to camp inside the dungeon? If so what precautions are you going to take to stop an ambush or wandering monsters? It’s real time which means your characters and the world exist even when you aren’t playing. Be mindful and take responsibility for your character. What would be a boring “fade to black” in a regular game is now a thrilling meta-game in itself. As the good Gygax said, “You get out what you put in”. Put in that mindfulness and you’ll have the best damn TTRPG experience you could possibly have. Provided the likes of Matt Mercer haven’t rotted your brain.
Boring stuff like buying new equipment, training, spending XP. That can all be done during downtime. It’s a quick Discord message to the GM. “I spend 50 XP on Kung Fu Action Grip.” as opposed to wasting valuable session time on that. Simple actions can all be done in downtime. Travel is downtime, exploring villages and wilderness can be downtime. The game goes on even when the players aren’t present. Most Patron actions are done in downtime. Making them ideal for players without the time to participate as players. Just message the GM with the actions you want to do. It’s easy. Everyone I’ve played with is under the age of 30 and understands social media and MMO communication. This was not a huge deal to them. If a patron needed to make an apperance in a session they could. If players found themselves in the domain of a Patron that patron would GM the session. Easy. It’s all very intuitive to people who use social media in their every day life.
There is no preset narrative that the GM drags the player through. In fact, the GM actually does very little but referee this game world and it’s players. It’s all a player driven sandbox. If you played Sandbox MMORPGs such as Ultima Online, Eve, Archeage, or (the undisputed GOAT) Star Wars: Galaxies, This may all seem somewhat familiar. If not intentionally influenced than at least those games came up with many of the same common sense rules and practices that Gygax put down in his books designed for an analogue, non electronic medium. This new and wonderful way to play comes to you thanks to a new and razor sharp cutting edge source. The AD&D 1e Dungeon Master’s Guide from the distant space year of 1979. Before being rediscovered by the BrOSR who used it in their long running campaign Trollopolus.
To the sorts of people who see Role Playing Games as a television series where they are the star, there are several issues with this kind of roleplaying. It’s scary, it’s challenging, your players might die. Or even worse, outsmart and outmaneuver the GM, it’s player driven, every last scrap of “content” comes from what the players and patrons do. There are no prebaked “awesome moments.” that players did not earn through their own guile, wits, grit, or random rolls. Most offensively, the “story” comes AFTER play. As opposed to being forced into the game from the get go by GMs who unironically say “Yes, I fudge dice because I can’t trust the game to come up with a good experience for my players.” Which was actually said to me recently by a complete idiot.
How does that relate to Traveller?
Okay, enough waffling. What does this have to do with Traveller? A completely different game from 1E AD&D. A science fiction TTRPG in the vein of Asmiov and Clark. Well, those rules from the DMG can fit very well in a variety of other games. And Traveller is no exception. Traveller already dictates things like how long travel between star systems take. (A week to travel between hexes and a week to recharge for the next jump for basic Jump drives.) So it’s pretty easy to adapt those 1:1 time rules with very little work. Patrons are also present. Albeit controlled by the GM. But have many of the features you’d be used to in patron play, giving quests, rewards, connections to other patrons. It’s pretty easy to get Braunstein actions out of that. And that’s where I started out. I had long time players who wanted to play a game with me. But couldn’t commit. I had newer players who wanted to play a cool science fiction RPG. The long time players became Patrons. Four in all. And new players are going to become the first adventuring party packed like sardines into a flying tin can. By the time they enter, the subsector will have had several days of war stories that have shaped that world. And the players must react to this.
How it all began
To give everyone context as to how everything fell apart in such an interesting way, I must first explain the backstory of the setting me and the Patrons created together. For it influenced many of the actions the Patrons took. Here is the email I sent to patrons just before we generated their territories:
Noble System Lord, The Grand Empire has fallen. Your analysts predicted it would be a slow decline. The Empire has been corrupt and decadent for as long as you can remember so this made sense to you. Your analysts were proven wrong when Emperor Heinz von Helman sent an empire wide broadcast. In it, he smiled before raising a laser gun to his head and pulling the trigger. Vaporizing his head instantly and messily. As the broadcast shut off, so too did the Stargates. Anarchy fell upon the empire. The Stargates had been taken for granted since long before you were born. The ability to travel instantly from one gate to any other in the network negated any need for starship travel. Now 300 year old slow moving Starships are the only thing keeping your domain from collapsing. You must re-establish your territory. A meeting of all the subsector’s System Lords is scheduled one week from now. Prepare yourself for that time.
From that little message I established some of the themes of the setting and the limitations the Patrons would have to work through. Society is at roughly tech level 10. But the availability of ships is limited due to them falling out of use. At best, these guys would have some small shuttles. Not even any Scout ships. And the Patrons would have to build more.
I detailed territory generation in this Twitter thread.
From this the Patrons used the trade tables from Book 2 to generate resources per planet. We ended up with several poor, non industrial planets with few resources. Which fit neatly into my plan. I naively thought at the time. I wanted to have it where the Patrons would meet for a Braunstein session the week after we generated the territories. That’s where the game would start And they’d engage in diplomacy and intrigue to get the resources they need. Start a few interesting dynamic conflicts maybe. Then start building ships eventually as the players dropped in the week after the first Braunstein.
This plan failed utterly the day after territory generation.
The best advice I can give to GMs wanting to run any kind of 1:1 time game with Braunsteins is DON’T HAVE A PLAN. You’re the referee. It’s not your job to generate stories like a hoop for a dog to jump through. I made a huge mistake and it was only through the ingenuity of my Patrons that things didn’t go completely tits up. The Patrons and players drive the narrative forward. You as GM just officiate it. Turns out the Cybermen and Helghast players were shittalking each other before we even started territory generation. The Cyberman picking his territory right up next to the Helghast was deliberate. The Helghast wanted to turtle up at the very edge of the map so distance would dissuade anyone from attacking. Even if it meant he had less territory. He didn’t count on the Cybermen calling his play immediatlely by having his territory right up against the Helghast. This may well be a painful and costly error for the Helghast. We shall see. It’s real time after all. It’s going to take at least another two weeks for the Cybermen ships to reach Helghast and that’s after they bomb a heavily fortified Korn.
The other plan I had was to keep to Books 1–3 for Classic Traveller. Already that’s gone out the window and I’ve had to crack open High Guard. I need rules for Orbital Bombardment because the Cyberman player wants to send a heavy handed message of intimidation to the Helghast player. Who has decided to fortify his planet for a grim last stand. Both players are incredibly invested in this war. And the game wasn’t even technically supposed to start yet. I’m having to look at Book 4 to find out info about ground invasions and merc companies. Because something MIGHT be happening later today that I can’t talk about. But that’s where we’ve left off. In a future post I’m going to detail the factions which our lovely patrons have created. And the planets they own. I can not talk about everything as all factions are operating under a Fog of War. I can only talk publicly about things that would be public knowledge. I can’t say So and so patron is planning a raid. I can only say So and So raided such and such after the fact. Because of this, whilst I will be providing updates on this game on here and my Twitter, it will be infrequent. It will not be scheduled. Sometimes we’re going to have weeks of downtime with not much happening. That’s okay when you don’t need that downtime represented in session time. When the players arrive, they’re going to have four dynamic factions they can ally with or hinder. This subsector will change Dramatically within the next couple of weeks. And more beyond that. Come join us for the ride.
