The Kinunir Game - Session 0

Color me surprised but I am going to run a Traveller game! Using the Kinunir since it was the 1st published adventure, I have the original version as well as the PDF, and there is some discussion over on COTI about the ship. I took that as a sign.

We had a session 0 and I had them roll up characters. Oddly, we have characters from Classic Book 6 Scouts, Mongoose 1st edition and Cepheus Diverse Roles. And even more interesting, to me at least, is that they only stayed for 2-3 terms. 

The Scout player wanted to be an engineer, and tried to get into college and failed, then tried to get into the Navy and failed, and the draft ended up Scouts. Which can give the engineering skills. I doubt he wrote down each year and what he did. Oddly none of the duty assignments had a chance of promotion. Nor did he end up with a Scout ship.

The Law Enforcement player, using Mongoose 1e, had an interesting career with some interesting events and picked up a smattering of skills. It has been a while since I rotated through that character generation process so had to backtrack a couple of time. He ended up a lieutenant, I think. 

The final player, who has joked for years about playing a juggling whore, ended up going through the Prostitute career. He picked up a few interesting skills, including advocacy (lawyer), got beat up by some of his clients. The mustering out benefits are not great for that career, but apparently the player has a plan for what he wants to do.

While I do like Traveller character generation, and I do house-rule that they roll then can pick the skill, the players I think wanted more control over things. And it kept coming up about the adventure: what sort of characters did they need for the planned game? And to me, that is where Traveller really differentiates itself from most RPGs: it really does not matter too much what your background was, what matters is what you do. All 3 characters will have something that can help with the game. Years ago, I ran a game and 1 player chose barbarian and had all of 1 term. He had 2 skills I think, and none of that mattered in running the game honestly. I'll probably recheck the Mongoose skill package and may do that as well. We have 1 more player that will need to generate a character as well. 

The other question is - OTU or MTU? I was going to go MTU but looking at the adventure, I'd have to translate a fair amount to map it well enough. I decided to stick with the OTU, and they are all from Regina by their choice. Being a long-time Traveller player I would have gone a different direction, but they all wanted it to be simple and that does simplify a few things.

The prostitute, a hetaerae actually (Hetaerae – You are a member of a trained and educated group whose job is to provide long term companionship) may have had some interaction with the police officer. They did end up with 2 contacts during character generation, though the player decided on his own who they were. I'll have to get that info so that I can link that into the rumors and patrons of the adventure somehow. The Scut has mustered out on Regina as there is a Scout & Naval base there.

I never did a world write up on Regina, so I suppose I'll see about generating some maps. There is a LOT of info on this subsector capitol, so I'll have to read a bit on that to not break canon too much. Not that we will really need maps, but I like them. Plus need to figure where to place the Scout and Navy bases beyond the starport, as well as the miscellaneous shipyards, one of which has the Kinunir in it. Maybe map the shipyards, though that would be an interesting challenge as space is a fully 3D environment.