I wrote last week about about my fears of having possibly bitten off more than I could chew for TravCon, but couldn't say why.  For reasons that will become clear.  My apologies, I had meant to write on Monday to say what I'd been up to, but to be honest was too exhausted from the whole convention to manage that.  I'm still getting over it now.

When _Supplement 13: Dynasty_ first came out, I'd thought it might be quite interesting to run an adventure using the book.  Even though I couldn't quite quite reconcile all the rules with wench other it would have to be something set across lots of years of course.  But I'd not had any particular inspiration about what.

Then in the middle of last year I was reading Rob Grant's book _Colony_ and the connection finally triggered.  Do an adventure about a generation starship.  I started reading (or rereading) all the generation ship stories I could find (quite a lot a it turned out).  Thinking about it, I couldn't recall very much in Traveller On the subject.  There are passing mentions in a few places (I have a list if anyone wants), but of course once Jump Drive is invented they're pretty passé.  Still, they see, ripe for lots of Traveller style stories.  Maybe we avoid them because _Metamorphosis Alpha_ has 'been there, done that' and why not just use that.  But I think there are many more stories that can be told. (And I bought a copy of MA to make sure I could *avoid* replicating it)

With Dynasty it seemed obvious that I'd want a segment at the start where the ship is built/named/launched etc; a bit in the middle where they arrive at the original destination and find its uninhabitable; and then a bit at the end where they find they've regressed in tech and knowledge (which is of course very traditional in such stories for not quite all of them).  Or alternately a 'proper' arrival.

I set too and between adventure and burgeoning bibliography on the subject I soon had 40,000 words and 100 pages but it felt as if the idea would work.  Even if I was using a form of Dynasty-lite which was a bit a cut down and used some short cuts I came up with due to the convention setting rather than an ongoing campaign which would have made some things easier.

But while I was writing, I made my other 'connection'.  18 months back I'd thought it might be rather fun if two TravCon adventures, of the five we have going simultaneously, were actually connected.  Now maybe this is common elsewhere, but I was pretty sure it hadn't been done in all the years of TravCon.  (I know why now!) The best idea I'd come up with was maybe two Mafia style gangs running a city (high port?) and in conflict with each other.  But it didn't seem overly Traveller, or was maybe a bit dark for my taste.

Well, as I wrote some variant adventure seeds for Generation X, it was an obvious thought that perhaps there could be a standard lot of adventurers who either stumbled across the fern action ship or were hunting for it.  So next I needed a referee who was up for it.  After a couple of warnings that it wouldn't work, or would be too difficult etc the inestimable Steve Ellis agreed to give it a go and sketched out some characters and a plot that fitted what was needed.  (He could manage this less than a month before the con whereas I felt the four or five months I'd been at it was barely adequate.

Anyway, between the experimental nature of the Dynasty bits and the whole 'surprise' thing, you can see why I was apprehensive last week!

There were some hairy moments and it was difficult to ensure we were both at the same point at the same time (3 hours into a 4 or 5 hour game), but, but it was easily worth it.  The look on the players' faces (both sets) when we introduced the two groups (my lot having a tribal meeting in a large (disused) cargo airlock, Steve's lot having just boarded), were absolutely priceless.  Instead of us just playing a bunch more NPCs we could turn each game round to the other table (we were all standing at this point - my lot because that was traditional at their meetings, Steve's lot supposedly taking a break and being curious as to what we were doing), and introduce actual people.  Then the interactions between the two groups were pretty much all I could have wished for as the role playing came to the fore and Steve and I could essentially sit back and let them work things out.  We even managed to run the game a second time on the last day of the con and the surprise still worked. (We'd asked folk not to take publicly).

It was hard work and meant a fair bit of stress, but I'd recommend the experience.  I gave out some feedback sheets at the end to see whether it was worth doing again and virtually everyone would happily try the Dynasty experience again, and the 'joint' adventure.  So there's a challenge for someone at TravCon in the USA in October.

I've written at some length (I hope that's ok) to offer some tips if they're helpful should anyone want to try something similar:
- have planned out time checks for both adventures to help with meeting, even if it needs revising on the fly.  Astonishingly, my wild guesses I'd sketched out beforehand turned out to be bang on in the first game and close enough in the second.  (Of course you could bypass this difficulty by having both games know the adventures were connected from the start) (not as much fun though!)
- make sure both groups have enough to do and enough power that one isn't overwhelmed by the other (Steve warned me about this so we added some stuff to my tribal group.  I still nearly came a cropper on this in the first game, but some tweaks for the second meant it worked much more smoothly)
- make sure both referees are keeping an eye on all the players after they start mixing so that no one is being left out or feeling they don't have an ear to bend
- obviously it helps if both referees know both sides of the adventure inside out, but divide the labour. For us it was obvious that any questions inside the ship should be directed at me, any questions about the outside Imperial goings on would be handled by Steve
- don't worry about being in the same room and players overhearing each other.  I nearly asked the organizer for separate rooms but that would have been difficult.  As it turned out it was such a surprise, that no one had a clue that the two games interrelated - despite the teasers on the game sign up sheets making me feel very exposed in that sense!

Some of my favourite memories from the games:
- the look of shock as they twigged what was going on at the meeting point, as well as the delight with which they went to it in the new situation.  Conceptual breakthroughs are very common in generation starship stories, but these are very hard to recreate in role playing because most are familiar with the tropes, but this conceptual breakthrough really worked!
(In one game, a player stood there for some while saying "really?  Really?  REALLY!?" Over and over.  In the other, one player - who was enthusiastically addressing the referee in character, couldn't make the adjustment until we were all standing there saying "they're behind you" like some ham pantomime.)
- a nearby pool cue grabbed as a "talk stick" at the tribal gathering
- the dilemma posed by some latecomers arriving in a shuttle after the launch of the generation ship.  Out of fuel and out of options, should they be taken aboard?  One group took them, one didn't.
- the crossing of a deck where the antigravity had failed which made the regressed tribal lot sick. Between the overgrown vegetation, the odd dead body or two and the vomit, somehow this place felt very real.  Once the gravity was restored, it was no less of a mess to tramp back through all that lot now on the ground
- one player going to grab a drink and returning a few moments later to find 300 years had passed and ship had arrived; only to be matched in surprise by another player nipping to the loo only to return just as I announced that as a result of plague and mutiny they were back in the Stone Age "how long was I on the toilet?"
(Although we had scheduled breaks I should add that I might normally have paused to allow two minutes like this, but in the second game I was really under pressure to get to the meeting point as one PC had been a bit vocal and we were behind)

I should also add that a couple of players really struggled with the disjunctures that the Dynasty 'gaps' brought.  This was partly an artifact of a convention game where an ongoing group would have had breaks between sessions and/or fully played out the generations in between.  I was accused of doing a bait and switch - not an expression I'm familiar with but I think means that I offered one thing and it turned out to be another.  Given that I warned right from the outset as people were signing up that the game was a) experimental, b) inspired by Dynasty and c) contained surprises, I'm not sure what I didn't deliver, but it's surprisingly disappointing to feel you've let down players who've chosen to spend four or five hours playing your game and not someone else's.  (This was quite a knock to me on Friday night such that I doubted the wisdom of trying to run it again)

It was definitely worth all the work and worry, so I'd recommend it others.  It might be a while before I try something quite that complicated again, but judging from feedback it would be worth trying both dynasty again, and/or the joint adventure.  Perhaps not simultaneously.  But for now, maybe I'll take next year off... :-)

Safe travelling
tc