What happened to Traveller’s reaction table?

I’m preparing to run Traveller for my regular group – I’m running FASA’s old Sky Raiders trilogy, starting with Legend of the Sky Raiders.

I will run it using Mongoose’s latest rules, because I’m more familiar with them than the original little black books.

So I’m working my way through the scenario (which is harder going than I expected, but more on that in another post, I expect), and there’s a point where the PCs are slogging through a jungle and encountering the local natives. And on page 24, it says, “In all cases, the Reaction Table should be used as a guide for negotiations.”

And I thought, oh yes, I remember that.

(It’s not even Legend’s first mention of the reaction table – it’s also referred to on page 20.)

But could I find it in the current rules? I could not. I found a lot of other interesting tables, but not the reaction table.

Traveller’s reaction table

So the reaction table (from page 27 of Book 3: Worlds and Adventures) looks like this:

So basically, roll 2d6. Add modifiers if necessary. The higher the result, the better for the players. (I soon learned not to take the extreme results literally – a roll of 2 didn’t have to mean a physical attack.)

I think I embedded that philosophy into much of my gaming. Even now, if I need to make a decision as the GM, I roll 2d6 and then interpret the results with high being positive for the players, and low being negative.

I remember running one very loosey-goosey game (although that is not a term I would have used back then) in the 90s when that’s pretty much the only rule I used!

I know Traveller was my first roleplaying game, but I don’t think I appreciated quite how much it influenced my GMing style.

So while I will use the modern Traveller rules, I will also use the old rules where I find gaps.

Reaction table: gone but not forgotten

Somewhere between 1981 and 2022, the reaction table disappeared. (I didn’t keep up with Traveller’s numerous iterations between then and now, so I couldn’t tell you when.)

I wonder what happened that made a later designer think it wasn’t needed.

And do I think the reaction table should be reinstated? Right now, I don’t know. Maybe I’ll have a different view after I’ve run Legend of the Sky Raiders.

Aiding in RPG combat

So we were playing The Troubleshooters and were in the middle of a fight. We had four PCs, but one of them had already been taken out. We faced a formidable NPC bad guy and her mooks. And it wasn’t going well for us.

Unfortunately for us, only one character was good at combat. As it wasn’t me, I decided to take a leaf from FATE’s book and help our fighter, somehow. So I asked the GM if I could distract the bad guy by picking up a trifle and throwing it at her.

Not to do damage (I already knew that would be hopeless), but to give my friend a bonus when it was his turn to attack.

Unfortunately, nothing in the rules suggested we could do such a thing. We were in combat, and my options (from the rules) were:

Move

Free actions

• Say something
• Pick up something
• Drop something
• Ready a weapon
• Change weapon
• Break cover
• Fall Prone

Main actions

• Sprint
• Attack
• Catch your breath
• Reload
• Take cover
• Survey
• Delaying your main action

Alas, throw trifle at someone to distract them, wasn’t on the list. Not even a generic some other action or distract enemy or help a friend, which might have allowed such nonsense.

(Quick aside. While I play and run lots of freeform larps, I have only played actual-combat boffer-larp once or twice. I don’t like sword fighting, and I’m not good at it. But I remember I was most effective when I attacked enemies that were already engaged in fighting. They couldn’t focus easily on two opponents (Darth Maul is a force-boosted exception), particularly if we attacked from opposite sides. So even though I was rubbish, by flanking I either had an unprotected side or back to attack, or I distracted my opponent for my more-skilled colleague to deliver the killing blow.)

The GM’s role?

Now, you could argue that’s what the GM is for—to mediate the player’s chaotic ideas.

But I’ve noticed that detailed rulesets tend to inhibit such improvisation. I don’t know why that should be, but I’ve seen it both with GMs ruling and with players simply rolling dice to hit. (As a player, I’ve been inhibited myself as this story about D&D shows.)

In my example above (with the trifle), the GM agreed and gave the other PC a bonus to hit. 

(It didn’t help, unfortunately—and even had he hit, the NPC would have had a dodge roll followed by rolling damage. I so much prefer FATE—I would have created an advantage which my PC could have used to not only improve his chances of succeeding but also increase the damage inflcted. Ah well.)

Aiding in combat

Putting aside the challenge of improvising while playing/running detailed rule systems for a moment (or another post), are there other games that let you help in combat?

Picking some games from my small library…

In FATE, even if you have no combat skills, you can create an advantage that someone else can invoke during the fight. You might flank them, throw sand in their eyes, distract them by throwing a trifle at them, shine a light in their eyes, upset them with insults or whatever else you can think of.

Mongoose’s Traveller has a catch-all miscellaneous action in combat. It would be nice if the examples included helping another PC, but it’s better than nothing.

ALIEN and Liminal both include rules for helping or assisting others in a task, although neither includes that in their list of combat actions.

One of the basic moves in Monster of the Week is Help Out—which gives a bonus to another PC’s move (and is exactly what I was doing with that trifle).

While Cthulhu Dark has rules for helping, it also rules that if you fight the monsters you die!

So in summary, a mixed bag.

Improvising in detailed systems

For me, much of the joy of roleplaying comes from improvising and doing all those things you couldn’t do if you were playing a computer RPG. And yet I still find myself inhibited when faced with a detailed rule system—if the rules don’t say you can do it, you can’t do it.

And yet, you can.

You just need to ask.

Stars and Wishes

Stars and wishes have come up recently in some of the blogs I read and podcasts I listen to. Guy discusses them on his Burn After Running blog (he thinks they’re a good thing), but that’s balanced by episode 51 of the Grognard Files (where Dirk and Blythy aren’t so keen).

So what do I think?

I started using stars and wishes in my RPG sessions during 2021 and they’ve become a great way of giving feedback—both the weekly groups I run and play in now use them.

If you’ve not encountered stars and wishes before, this Gauntlet post explains them. But in essence:

• Stars—give a star to someone and tell them what they did that was so great.
• Wishes—what you want to see more of.

Stars

Stars are easy—they’re a way to highlight the good things that happened during the session. Strictly, you’re supposed to ‘give’ a star to someone around the table, but we don’t adhere too strictly to that, and we’ll give out multiple stars.

It’s nice to come away from a session with the highlights, so I think stars are here to stay.

Stars are a formalised way of capturing the frothing enthusiasm you can get at the end of a game—I see it often after successful freeform larps. (I don’t know whether that says more about freeforms or freeformers.) Formalising it this way encourages you to look for the good bits in all sessions though, not just the great ones.

Wishes

I find wishes harder, for several reasons.

Wishes are supposed to be constructive ways for everyone to suggest what they’d like to see more of. However, I like running horror games, and players will say things like “I wish it wasn’t me” (upon learning they’d been impregnated by a facehugger in ALIEN) and “I wish this will turn out well” (when it obviously won’t). I think they’re joking...

I’m also running a lot of published one-shot scenarios (over three or four sessions) at the moment, and there's less scope for going beyond the scenario. We’re not so good at wishing for internal things that we’d like our characters to be exploring.

And often, I find that player wishes are directed to the GM rather than other players. (I probably do that myself—so maybe I should make other players the subject of my wishes more often.)

Instead, and I guess this is similar to wishes, at the end of a session I ask the players for the plans going forward. That helps me to prepare, and helps me deliver what the players want (although there’s a limit to that in a published adventure.)

But perhaps I shouldn’t worry too much that I haven’t got wishes quite right. They’ll either come to me, or they won’t.

And for freeform larps?

I haven’t yet used stars and wishes directly in freeforms.

Wishes suffer the same problems as tabletop games—freeforms are a one-shot thing. Some freeform GMs find criticism particularly hard directly after a stressful run.

The problem with stars is giving everyone the time to “give” their star, particularly online (which is how I’ve been doing stars and wishes so far). It’s probably easier in person, as you can you’re your star in private. (Instead, in the last freeform larp I played in, I worked out what my star was and, during our post-game enthusiasm frothing, said how much I liked that.)

Summary

So I give a star to the Gauntlet for sharing the idea.

And my wish is to either get better at wishes or to embrace the fact that wishes are hard. And do them more in freeforms.

(Images from game-icons.net)

The Dee Sanction #2: Putting it into practice

Last time I talked about the things I do as a GM at the end of sessions and then between them, including making lists for the following session.

Our Agents are clerk Margaret Chatywn and gardener Samuel Hodgeson (played by Jon and Terry respectively). We’re playing The Dee Sanction online for no longer than two hours using a Trello board as our tabletop.

These are my lists for Session #5, with explanatory commentary in italics.

Part of our Trello board

Events

• Gilbert asks for help—he needs bodies to keep the blood goblin fed. Wants to move into better accommodation, wants help disposing of bodies. Proposes a deal. [Gilbert is from the previous adventure, Ex Libris. I changed the scenario so he could be an ongoing NPC. In the end, he didn’t reappear.]
• Gossip about the bodies washed up on the banks of the Thames. [These are the victims of the currently undefined monster/creature/thing. The bodies appear in session #7.]
• Bodies are being stolen. [Probably stolen by the School of Night and fed to the monster/creature/thing.]
• Report about the fight and the blue eyes [This is a link to Window of the Soul, another published adventure. I didn’t use this event we focussed on Marlowe.]

In the end I didn’t use any of the events, so they will carry over to the next session.

Secrets and Clues

• Children have been going missing
• Marlowe is a government spy
• Marlowe is a Spanish spy
• Bodies have all had their brains scooped out
• Bodies were found when a ship, the Golden Rose, foundered

I used the two about Marlowe but didn’t have a convenient opportunity to bring in the missing bodies so they will carry over. (It’s possible I will never use them—so much depends on what happens at the table. But I have them if I need them.)

NPCs and places

• Theatre – rowdy, bawdy, popular
• Run-down theatre – haunted
• Marlowe’s house – unoccupied
• Theatre pub Rat and Ferret – back street room, cockfights, prostitutes
• Sam Gosse – an actor
• Victor Smith (Viola de Lessops) – in disguise as a young boy actor
• Ralph Bashford – theatrical entrepreneur
• Sam Gosse – an actor
• The de Lessops house – rich merchant

Session #5: Marlowe’s play

We started this by talking about Marlowe, and Wikipedia told me his first play was Dido, Queen of Carthage, first performed in 1585-1587 (which was about the right time). It was performed by the Children of the Chapel (who hadn’t performed at court since 1584, for delightfully vague reasons).

The PCs learned that the Children of the Chapel favour the Rat and Ferret for their after-show refreshments. At the Rat and Ferret, the PCs asked about Marlowe and were directed to Victor (who Marlowe spent time with) and Ralph Bashford, impresario at the Rose theatre.

At the Rose, the Agents found Ralph and learnt that Victor (who has not been seen recently) worked at Lord Wessex’s residence and looked sickly when last seen. (As we played, I realised that Victor/Viola could be under the influence of whatever nastiness was at the centre of the mystery (whatever that is), and so I played it that way. The players worried about vampires as soon as they heard that Victor was sick.

We left it with the players planning to find more about Victor and Lord Wessex.

Session #6: Lord Wessex’s estate

Between sessions, I had that idea that the monster/creature/thing creates doppelgangers and the School’s ultimate aim is to clone Queen Elizabeth. (This isn’t where I ended up, but I mention it here to show that my ideas were changing as we played.)

My preparation for #6 was all about Victor (secretly Viola de Lessops). Where has she been? What has she become? Who else knows?

However, the players headed off in a different direction…

First Margaret went to the palace to find Margaret’s good friend Katheryne Lappage, maid of the queen’s chamber, to learn about Lord Wessex. Katherine told the PCs that Lord Wessex isn’t in favour with the queen as he nearly went bankrupt and married a rich merchant’s daughter (Viola) for the dowry. (Stolen shamelessly from Shakespeare in Love.)

Then the Agents went to Egham and Lord Wessex’s home, where they made friends with under-steward Martin Allington in the Queen’s Arms. Using witchcraft to make poor Martin ill (Samuel tainted Martin’s beer using magic), the PCs took him back to the house and ingratiated themselves with Mrs Brisket, the housekeeper. Mrs Brisket told the PCs that Viola hasn’t been herself recently, which worried them as they were still thinking about vampires.

I realised that my story about Viola was becoming muddled, and I needed to get it straight for the next session.

Viola’s backstory

Before session #7, I worked out Viola’s backstory and the overall plot.

Here’s what Jon and Terry said they wanted to explore:

• Research Blood Goblins. (They were concerned that Gilbert’s blood goblin had caused Viola’s illness. It hasn’t, but they don’t know that yet.)
• Ask Dee for the Book of Dead Names. (I have kept Dee at arm’s length, so the players are working on their own, but the book won’t hurt.)
• Samuel to research herbal medicine to help lady Viola. (They convinced Mrs Brisket they know herbal medicine and to let them look at Viola, when Lord Wessex is out of the house in three days.)
• Discover what Marlowe is doing or set someone to watch his movements. (Marlowe has gone to ground, so they will struggle with this.)
• Return after three days to Wessex’s estate and behest of Mrs Brisket to attend to sickly Lady Viola. 

Session #7: Bodies in the water

This session, I introduced the bodies of the monster’s victims, thrown overboard from the Golden Rose when it foundered and caught up in one of the water wheels on London bridge. I changed my mind about having their brains scooped out—the bodies are withered and shrivelled instead. 

This session involved them following that up. They found the Golden Rose but not its captain. The PCs also researched blood goblins (which I took from the rulebook), leaving them with more questions than answers.

House rule #1: I introduced a house rule to The Dee Sanction (agreed with Jon and Terry first). Any roll of 6+ is an extraordinary success. While 3-5 is successful, 6+ is a great success. And conversely, a roll of 1 is a bad failure indeed.

Before I ran The Dee Sanction, I had thought the PCs were relatively low-powered; ‘ordinary people with tainted history’ as the book says. However, most of the time, they are extremely competent. With a d6 in each resource (attribute), a ‘standard’ PC succeeds on a typical challenge 66% of the time.

Next time

Next time Margaret and Samuel visit the Wessex estate and meet Lady Viola.

Download Abaddon’s Puppet (the adventure that this campaign eventually became) on Itch.io.

And here I've chosen a few appropriate Tales of Terror.

The Dee Sanction #1, Between Session Moves

I’m currently running a mini-campaign of The Dee Sanction. I started with Lost in Translation (from the rulebook) and Ex Libris and followed that with a longer investigation of my own invention.

My well-thumbed copy

This is how I ran the game, including my thoughts on preparation and reflections on how each session went.

I had two players, Terry (playing gardener Samuel Hodgeson) and Jon (playing temple clerk Margaret Chatwyn). We played for about two hours a week using Facebook Messenger for chat and a Trello board as a virtual tabletop. We roll dice physically.

A base of operations

The Dee Sanction doesn’t provide any details about the organisation that the players work for, so we made that up.

We decided that the PCs’ friends and family believed that the PCs had been executed for witchcraft. That’s what the record shows—and the PCs are now full-time agents of Dee, living in a secure location in London.

The players chose the crypt of The Chapel of St Thomas on London Bridge to be their base of operations. The chapel was repossessed during the Reformation and while it is still used for services, the crypt is now Dee Sanction property. At low tide it has access to the river.

A vague plan

My original plan was to play through the published scenarios and maybe tie in something about the Spanish Armada in 1588 as a big finale, taking 12-13 sessions.

I also had an idea about some monstrosity under London with an appetite for sacrifices. (I was inspired by Scarlet Traces by Edginton and D’Israeli, with a horror that provides something good but at an awful cost.)

I had no idea if or how the two would link up; I was sure that something would come along and make it work.

Episodes #1 to #4

Session Zero and Lost in Translation took up the first two episodes. During episode #3 we explored the PC’s base of operations on London bridge and started Ex Libris.

At the end Ex Libris (in episode #4), the PCs encountered Kit Marlowe and the School of Night. When they reported back,  Dee instructed the Agents to learn more about the School of Night.

And that put things in motion.

End of session moves

When I run a campaign, I use end-of-session moves (as PbtA might put it) to prepare for the next session:

• I ask the players what they are planning for the next session: what are they interested in following up? Who do they want to talk to? Where do they want to go?
• I also now use Stars and Wishes to celebrate the good bits and influence the game’s direction.

At the end of session #4 my players said they planned to check the theatres (and the taverns where theatre-folk hang out) to see if they could track Marlowe down.

Between session moves

Between sessions, I think about what may happen, and make lists.

• Events: Events that may happen during the session—such as things the bad guys may do or the ticking of a countdown clock.
• Clues: Stuff the PCs may learn. I don’t decide where or how the PCs will find the clues, just draw from the clues when needed.
• NPCs and places: Ideas for NPCs that the players may encounter and places they may want to visit.

I create these as checklists within a card on another Trello board. I include previous list items if they are still relevant.

Even though I’ve gone through this exercise, my players will probably veer off in a different direction. But by prepping something, I have something to fall back on.

(I believe Michael Shea does something similar in The Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master, but I’ve yet to read that.)

Next time

Next time I will talk about how that worked in practice for Session #5.

Ask questions first, roll dice later

We roll the dice a lot when playing RPGs, but we don’t always roll them well.

I find there are two kinds of rolls: those where the rules cover exactly what you’re trying to do (most often in combat), and all the other times.

Some recent examples from a recent game of The Dee Sanction:

• Recapturing a fleeing prisoner.
• Persuading suspicious guards to trust you.
• Magically setting fire to a wet door.
• Trying to stop a maid from running down the stairs.

The sheer number of options available to players (what S John Ross calls tacticalinfinity) means that the rules can’t cover everything. Yes, it’s usually easy to identify the correct attribute or skill to apply to the roll, but you still need your judgement to evaluate the results.

What does success look like? What about failure?

I used to roll the dice and then try and interpret the results. Often that worked (usually when the result was a clear success or failure); sometimes it didn’t.

These days, I ask questions before the dice are rolled:

• What does success look like?
• What does failure look like?
• The absolute best result?
• And the worst?

It’s always worth asking the players:

• They know what they’re trying to achieve better than I do, so letting them specify what success and failure means we avoid any misinterpretations.
• Describing success and failure gives players ownership in the roll and helps make the game more collaborative.
• When describing failure, players are almost always more horrible to their characters than I am. I’m often too nice.

So today’s gaming tip: ask questions first, roll dice later.

Being a better player

I don’t think I’m very good at playing roleplaying games.

I think I’m a good GM (although you shouldn’t take my word for it), but playing? I need all the help I can get. So here are the things I do to improve my roleplaying skillz.

Better roleplaying

A selection of RPGs that (mostly)
don't tell you how to roleplay

I don’t think I’m very good at roleplaying. Most of the time, my approach to roleplaying is to play myself (or a version of myself) but set in another world. It’s okay, but it could be better.

And RPGs themselves aren't much help. They're noticeably short on advice on how to actually roleplay.

The Angry GM has some help here. I rather like The Angry GM. He’s a bit ranty (okay, he’s very ranty) but is never dull and always has something worth saying. He talks a lot about D&D, but that’s okay as what he says often applies to other games.

In a recent post, The Angry GM talks about how to play a character. To save you the 3000-word rant (which is good but long), he suggests (via a Star Trek Trill analogy) that to roleplay your character, you need only to come up with a ‘seed’ and give them motivation.

Then you ask yourself: ‘What would I do if I was a role with a motivation?’

There, roleplaying.

That’s not the first time The Angry GM has talked about roleplaying. In this post, he talks about two-note characters, in which you choose a motivation (ie as above, but he’s provided a list this time) and a colourful character detail.

So combining them both gives us:

• A role
• A motivation
•  A colourful character detail

You take that and over time you will settle into your character, and you’ll do it without thinking about it. (I don’t think I’ll ever reach that stage—I like variety too much.)

I like this. It’s short enough for me to remember, it’s system-agnostic, so I can use it anywhere, and hopefully it gives me enough to work with.

Putting it into practice

So recently I was playing in Tales from the Loop. The kid playbooks give you a good start for most of this. I am playing Slash:

• Role: 14-year-old boy
• Motivation: Trying to impress a girl
• Detail: Guns N’ Roses fan

I wrote ‘What would I do if I was a 14-year-old boy trying to impress a girl' at the top of my character sheet to remind me how to play Slash.

Take risks: play like an NPC

Sometimes, as a player, I get to play NPCs. Occasionally, when my character is absent from a scene, the GM has an NPC to hand I can play.  When playing NPCs, I take more risks, mistreat them, insult other characters…

Sometimes, I can play my characters a little too safely, and I have to remind myself to play my character as if they are an NPC.

(This differs from playing NPCs as a GM. As a GM, my NPCs serve the story and I’m concentrating on too many other things to play them particularly well. As a player, I can have fun with NPCs because I care less about their fate.)

So as a player I need to remind myself to take risks and play like an NPC.

Wrapping up

So all I need to remember is:

• What would I do if I was a role with a motivation?’
• Act like an NPC

If I can do that, then that should make me a better player. And maybe if I do it enough it will become second nature. 

Not in the rulebook

Recently, I’ve been paying attention to the things I do when I run a roleplaying game. Some of those things aren’t in the rules…

I don’t know why they’re not in the rules. Perhaps they’re so obvious they don’t need to be.

Anyway, this is the first.

Making decisions

When I run a roleplaying game, I roll dice for one reason more than any other—and that’s to decide.

These decisions include:

• Answering player questions: “Is there a phonebox nearby?” “Does the store sell wellingtons?” “How far is the nearest river?”
• Deciding how difficult a challenge (such as the scalability of a cliff-face) should be.
• Deciding how cooperative an NPC will be.

If I don’t already know the answer, I let the dice decide. And I make these kinds of rolls more often than for any other reason.

If I roll high then it’s in the players’ favour. If I roll low, it’s bad for the players. And if I roll in the middle, then it’s complicated (ie, good and bad).

Sometimes I’m open about the roll and will explain why I’m rolling and the consequences, and sometimes I do it secretly. I don’t think there’s any logic to this—I do whatever feels right, although as I get older I’m more likely to be open about the roll.

In a recent example, the PCs went to visit a theatrical impresario. I knew nothing about this character, so I grabbed a name and rolled to see how cooperative he would be. I rolled high, so the players found him in good spirits and happy to help. Had I rolled low, he would have been uncooperative and the PCs would have needed to work harder (a skill roll, maybe a bribe) for his help.

The players are not the characters

I know that should be obvious, but sometimes we act as if it were so.

I certainly have done it when creating Call of Cthulhu scenarios. For example, I’d present clues and expect the players to figure them out. Or I’d expect the players to blag their way past a stuffy butler through sheer “roleplaying” alone.

I don’t do that any longer. (At least, I hope I don’t.)

After all, I don’t expect players to use their real-life fighting skills or their real-life lockpick skills. So why would I expect players to use their real-life persuasion or investigation skills?

Characters and players know and experience different things. Characters may be scared; the players may not be. The players may know that someone is lying, the characters don’t. The characters know how their world works; the players may not. The characters may understand the clue; the players may not.

So now when I present a clue, I also explain its context and what it means to the characters. (Assuming I’m not running something with a different approach to investigations like Brindlewood Bay.)

And if a player simply wants to describe how they are persuading the butler (and then rolling the dice), that’s fine too.

The players are not the characters.

Derailed by poor dice rolls

I try not to let a poor dice roll derail an investigation.

For example, during a recent session of The Dee Sanction, the players tried to extract information from an NPC—and rolled poorly. However, they were on the right track, so I said, “Mrs Brisket won’t tell you that—she either doesn’t know or won’t say. But you’re sure that there’s more to find out here, but you’ll have to try something else.”

If I hadn’t said that, the players might have thought there was nothing to find and headed off in a very different direction.

But the players aren’t the characters—the characters can put two and two together even when the players can’t.

An alternative to this is to offer success at a cost. (Fate does this.) So the PCs succeed but at some penalty. So in the example above, I could have offered the players success at a cost, such as Mrs Brisket seeing through their disguise (although ideally, I would let the players tell me what the cost was).