Traveller 1977: Solitaire Turn Sequence

Early RPGs are actually quite straightforward to use as solitaire games, largely because they are focused on random events and sandbox play.

Campaign Turn Sequences

PCs Without a Ship

Rolls are on 1D unless otherwise stated.

Twice Daily: Random Animal Encounter (on 5+). In the Rules As Written, there is no reason why you can’t have animal encounters in urban areas, but personally I limited them to rural ones.

Daily: Legal Encounter (roll law level or less on 2D). Yes, I know the rules say law level or more, but that is such an obvious typo that I won’t try to defend it, even with my current obsessive focus on what the Rules As Written actually say.

Daily: Random Person Encounter (on 5+). Persons can be encountered anywhere, and about 11% of the time they start a fight – more often if the referee feels like it, as a reaction of 5 might trigger an attack if he thinks it’s a good idea. Note that 20-year military veterans are more popular, because they get a +1 on the reaction table and so are only attacked 8% of the time. One way or another, though, the adventurers can expect to get into a fight for no obvious reason about once per month.

Weekly: Random Patron Encounter (optional, on 5+). You don’t have to look for a patron, but it’s very good for your bank balance.

PCs With a Ship

Ships alternate between a week insystem, on or near the main world, and a week in jump. The last two weeks of each year are used for ship overhaul and crew leave.

Day 1: Jump insystem and land. Ship Encounter in flight.

Days 2-6:

• Animal, Person and Patron Encounters as above. The Rules As Written imply that if you’re looking for a patron, you can’t do anything else, so the band might want to nominate one member to search while the others look after the ship.
• Pay berthing fee, refuel, replenish life support, unload standard cargo, look for speculative cargo (optional) – these can be done in parallel.
• Check for standard cargo, commit to next port of call, load standard cargo, look for passengers – these have to be done in that sequence. Subsidised merchants are committed to a specific route, but the rules are silent on whether they have to follow it in a particular sequence or how long each step takes.

Day 7: Travel to 100 diameter limit and jump. Ship Encounter in flight.

Days 8-14: In jump. The rules are silent on this, but I use this as a chance to interact with passengers, which I generally run as Person Encounters. Occasionally (5+) a passenger may turn out to be a Patron Encounter, as ship crews have less chance of meeting those normally.

Patron Encounters

Early editions of the game leave it to the referee to decide what commission a patron has to offer. Later versions have a random table of possible missions, but early on I would roll a d6 and use that to direct me to a random person (1-2), patron (3-4) or speculative cargo (5-6). A terrorist is interested in a cargo of ammunition? Sounds like a heist. An avenger is interested in a playboy? Sounds like kidnapping or murder. A tourist is interested in bandits? Perhaps they’re holding another tourist for ransom, or maybe the patron is a journalist who wants to interview them.

If in doubt, look at the adventurers. If they have a ship, the commission probably involves that in some way, so take the above and add a charter. If they are known on the planet, it’s probably something to do with their skills. A shipowner needs a band heavy on crew skills? I wonder what just happened to his original crew. A mercenary wants a group with lots of combat skills? Probably recruiting. You get the idea.

I did create my own random table of missions, but it offered no significant advantage over that simple check, so eventually I dropped it. Georges Polti’s 36 dramatic situations offer guidance on the situation and the characters involved, and that works quite well too.