Planning Milieu Zero

Planning for running a Traveller Milieu 0 campaign has turned out to be a bit more complicated than I had planned. Given that the focus of the campaign is going to be going out, exploring strange new worlds, and up-selling them high tech goods, the nature of those worlds is probably one of the more important things to have detailed.

Unfortunately, the sector data on Milieu 0 seems to be a little sketchy. The location of various polities not only isn’t well defined, it’s not consistent. Much of the details that I was hoping would be in Traveller Map aren’t there. Where it is there, it conflicts with the data in the Milieu 0 book. Often, world names are different, or in different places.

So I’m just going to fake it.

I’m importing much of the world information directly into FoundryVTT, so that I can track detailed world information there This means that I can modify it as I see fit. It also means that information on patrons, locations and other bits of information can be recorded directly on the world sheets.

This work meant that I ended up fixing quite a bit of the world sheets for my Foundry MgT2e. Both Patrons and Factions can be hidden now, and some of the missing trade options are there.

It would be good if I could automatically add status effect icons for things like starport type and gas giant presence. I think I’ll make that part of the Traveller Map Tools module though.

We were planning on having our first session this week, but one player couldn’t make it at the last moment. So instead we had a session where we reminded each other who all the characters were, and did some shopping.

It was also an opportunity to have some rules discussion, and talking about the direction the game will go in. The missing player knows all the rules stuff, so it’s not that serious that he’s missed out on this.

Eventually, they will be picking up a Frontier class Lab Ship. This will be a modified Lab Ship with a bit of armour and weapons, as well as extra space for cargo and vehicles. This will be more suited to an exploration campaign than the standard lab ship. Why not a Scout? Well, one of the Travellers picked up a Lab Ship as part of character generation, and it’s a lot more capable than the Scout in a lot of ways. With five characters, the Scout will also be very cramped and have no room for passengers.

The idea behind the campaign is that the Travellers will be signing on with Karukmamki Ganidiisur Gashidda (KGG Corp), who will give fund their exploration and give them a small share of profits from resources and trade routes that can be exploited. It’s Milieu 0 – literally year zero – so there are plenty of unexplored worlds ready to be exploited and brought into the embrace of the Imperium.

I am planning to go for a sort of “the Imperium will bring stability, but there are factions looking to exploit and make money” vibe. Maybe the Travellers will be able to sway how things work. Maybe they won’t care. They could come out of this very rich, so there could be a lot of reason to push the exploitation angle.

It’s a two year contract, so that puts a definite end point on the campaign if we want to end things there. I don’t want another five year campaign similar to Deepnight Revelations. Mostly, I’m wanting to try out a more normal Traveller campaign, and put the Foundry system through its paces a bit.

The first adventure will not be in their Lab Ship, but in a borrowed Subsidised Merchant The Imperfect Friend. This will allow me to play out a simple introduction to the system and the setting, before they head on to Sylea to finalise the contract for their ship.

I’ll probably do a post on the characters and some other details on my take on the setting another day.