Freelance
TravellerAfter-Action Report: TravellerCON/USA 2024
This article originally appeared in the November/December 2024 issue.
Author’s Note: Sorry about no pictures; as usual, I completely forgot about taking any. Executive Summary: Fun was had, but I may have to start getting more than four hours of sleep during the night…
Outbound
I got started a little later than I had planned; the result was that I didn’t hit as much traffic as usual approaching the George Washington Bridge. Once past the Deegan (Major Deegan Expressway) interchange, where trucks heading for the Bridge need to cross four lanes of traffic in a very short distance, it was smooth sailing through most of NJ – I-80, I-287, I-78 to about NJ mile marker 15 on I-78, where it slowed down because of construction around mile marker 11; from there to the Welcome Center just past the PA border and toll was clear sailing, as was from the Welcome Center – only about a ten-minute stop this year – all the way to about a mile short of the interchange between US222 and US30, which it turns out is under major construction and will remain so until September 2027 – just in time for TravellerCON/USA for Traveller’s 50th anniversary.
Arrival: Friday Afternoon
I arrived at the hotel at about 14:45 and quickly checked in, then went down to the Con rooms, said my hellos, and more or less just hung out chatting and working on an idea I’d had a couple of weeks ago for a quick-to-get-started game (“The Idea”, with the capitals, henceforth), until the end of the Afternoon session at 17:00.
The now-traditional pizza party was dinner, and a chance to chat with some people and bounce some parts of The Idea off them – if I can make it work, I think there’ll be decent uptake of it. Hopefully, I’ll have it worked out enough by next year to be ready to actually play-test it.
Friday Evening I: World-building Panel
From about 18:45 to 19:15 was a panel discussion – JFZ, CG, and PD were the panelists, and the topic was world-building. There was certainly plenty of useful advice, but one thing that was emphasized, even if not explicitly in words, was “Don’t over-specify” – that is, don’t go into unnecessary detail. Another thing that Chuck (CG) considered offensive was the ‘villains’ board meeting’, where the author shows off his world-building by having them discuss all of the interesting-to-the-author details, regardless of whether they actually move the story forward. That sort of thing needs to be left in the author’s notes, so that if it has an indirect effect on what’s going on in the real story, the author can get it right. But if I-the-player/reader don’t need to know it for the story, don’t make it a point to tell me about it. Again, not explicitly stated, but this is equally important for gaming and for writing (as in, for reading rather than playing).
Friday Evening II: No Game for Me
I didn’t play anything for the Friday Evening session; the offerings were a little thinner than they would be for Saturday, and the interesting ones were all filled. That gave me a chance to wander around and look at what was on offer from vendors, and to work a bit more on The Idea. I did notice that there were a number of games based on the Dumarest of Terra series by E.C. Tubb, more than last year. This is a “new” thing at TravellerCON; they only appeared for the first time last year. I really need to sit down and read the novels, before deciding whether I want to play in one of the games in the future. Especially since they’re often cited as ‘core’ influences on the creation of Traveller.
Saturday Morning: An Ancient Crowded Hour
Saturday morning, I played in DC’s game, “Whispers of the Ancients” (a presentation of the Dead Games Society). A research station that has found an Ancient artifact has fallen silent; the Artifact seems to have the potential to stabilize the system’s star, which will, without the stabilization, go supernova. The group is tasked with finding out why they went silent, and helping them in unspecified ways. The first half of the adventure was played without explicit time constraints; when we reached a point where it seemed we had not quite but almost all of the information we’d need, the situation changed, and we had 90 minutes – which was managed in real-time, with a countdown clock – to solve the mission. We did manage to solve it, and have the Best Possible Outcome, with about two minutes left. Running the last half of the adventure as a Crowded Hour* (hour-and-a-half, but…) worked nicely; trying to run the whole thing “on the clock” probably would have been disastrous. I’ll be honest; part of the reason I felt comfortable with this adventure was because the character I selected was one that I could play as myself, to a fair extent. I don’t think I would have enjoyed it as much if I’d ended up being the group leader, for example.
I’m not a combat monster; to me, the ideal adventure is one that the group can think their way out of. This time, though, some combat was necessary. I looked at my character’s character sheet, and my skill with a handgun was better than with a combat rifle (ACR), so when it came time to actually have to shoot at someone, I elected to use the handgun, even though it didn’t have a three-round burst mode like the ACR did, and even though I was doing it at a run. I got a couple of odd looks from the other players (all of whom were using their ACRs, regardless of relative skill levels), but I simply noted that my Handgun skill was better than my ACR skill, and left it at that. Sounds like a recipe for disaster, right? Not this time. No fudging rolls, and of eight shots, seven were effective, and even the eighth hit my intended target – and I only had Handgun-2 (and DEX 11), and we weren’t (intentionally) playing Cinematic! Traveller!.
Overall, the adventure was fun, and running part of it as a Crowded Hour is an interesting technique that may be underrated and underutilized.
A quick lunch from what I was mentally calling ‘the refrigerator shop’ – basically, pick stuff out of the refrigerator and pay at the desk, then take it to wherever was convenient to actually eat it – and I spent part of the lunch break working on The Idea. I should have checked out the restaurant; it turns out that (unlike last year), they were open for lunch, and while the refrigerator shop choices were made in the restaurant kitchen, the table-service restaurant really is better (and you get a better selection, including hot foods).
Saturday Afternoon: Building Worlds
The afternoon session on Saturday was JFZ’s World Building workshop. Although I was occasionally starting to doze off at the table (I may have to admit that trying to get by on four hours of sleep isn’t really possible any longer), I was able to stay awake enough to follow along and participate; the topic is fascinating, the process outlined is completely system-agnostic, and the worlds it generates are realistic – most of the work is based on real science from studying the exosystems that have been discovered in the past twenty or so years. The process is described in detail in a book as thick as any Traveller supplement, and JFZ made a point of letting us know that it is available from Ad Astra Games. I’ll review it for a near-future issue, but it’s not a ‘spoiler’ of the review to say that I am going to give this a strong buy recommendation.
Dinner in the hotel’s restaurant – which has been completely redone from last year, and given a new name – was pleasant and a chance to talk to a couple more people I hadn’t seen since last year’s TravellerCON.
Saturday Evening I: Panel: OK, Now What?
From 18:45 to 19:15 – actually, a little later; we went over – was the second panel of the Con. JFZ and CG were talking about keeping a campaign moving forward, and how to deal with the almost inevitable situation where you’ve let the PCs get to the point where they’re either too rich or too powerful to keep going as they have been.
Saturday Evening II: Shut Out
There were a couple of games I wanted to play in for the Saturday evening session, but they were all filled – in fact, most of their slots were taken by pre-registers. I don’t usually pre-register for games, because I want to see the full list of what’s on offer, but I think I may have to start seriously thinking about doing so in the future. Honestly, though, it was probably better this way; I started to work on The Idea and the first part of this AAR, and dozed off a few times. Not something that you want to have happen in the middle of a game.
Sunday: Pictures, and Homebound
Sunday morning, I specifically planned not to be in any games; I wasn’t sure if there was going to be a football game at the Meadowlands, so I didn’t want to be anywhere in northern NJ when a hypothetical game was letting out. I hung around until about 10:30, when MF called for the annual group photo, and got onto the road just before 11:00. A stop for lunch in Kutztown, and I was pretty much on-schedule for when I wanted to get home. A slight misjudgment of my own body’s performance made it advisable to go back via the George Washington Bridge, with a quick diversion off I-80 in one of the ‘bridge suburbs’ to discard some used soda; without that misjudgement, I’d have stayed on I-287 and crossed on the Tappan Zee Bridge – but that would have added about three-quarters of an hour to the drive time (without the opportunity to discard the used soda). Most of which was added anyway; the GWB was slow (but not as bad as on game days, when the approach delay can go above an hour).
Once across the GWB and past the Deegan interchange – which is just as bad coming off the Bridge as getting on, and for largely the same reason – home was smooth sailing, and I arrived at about 16:30.
Side Note
About a week before the Con, I acquired two pairs of genuine Ako Dice, and six pairs of cheap Chinese Ako knockoffs. The knockoffs are heavier than the genuine article, but both had a nice feel when rolling. The biggest downside to them is that they take a little longer to read than conventional dice – but I’ve seen ‘themed’ dice that were worse. I didn’t do enough rolling to perform any sort of real statistical analysis, but I didn’t perceive any particular pattern to my rolls that would suggest that they’re not ‘fair’ dice, despite their unconventional appearance.