We’ve talked about setting up an informal Traveller Organized Play for members of Dicehaven who play one-shots in our home games or elsewhere. Here’s a brainstorm on what that might look like.

Organized Play Basics

Character Creation — Players create characters per the normal Mongoose Traveller 2e rules. Characters can be created either as a group or outside the game depending on the circumstances and GM guidance.

Story Setup — Player characters are mercenaries aboard a Free Trader starship owned by Delta Horizons, an intergalactic megacorp that contracts skilled workers to do exploration, security, bounty hunting, transportation, and other odd jobs. Players are expected to follow relevant Imperial laws and act for the common good and for the betterment of Delta Horizons.

Subsector Location — The events of organized play games usually take place in the same subsector as any ongoing campaign.

Missions — The GM of organized play games gives the crew of the week of a given Free Trader a mission from Delta Horizons.

Money — Expenses are not tracked and are assumed to take play ‘off-camera’. Although any character debt or other story hooks that came from character generation are in full effect, players don’t bother to track ship shares or do other accounting.

Ship, Expenses, and Salvage — The specific Free Trader ship and its name may very from game to game. Delta Horizons provides the ship and takes care of all reasonable expenses during missions. Any treasure, derelict ships, or the like are given over to Delta Horizons for processing and salvage.

Retiring Characters and Multiple Characters — Players can choose to retire a character at the end of game. Players can also have multiple, active characters in different organized play games.

Rewards

Story Hooks — The events of organized play games are assumed to take place roughly contemporaneously with any active Traveller Campaign. Therefore, organized play Traveller Games can become (1) news items which campaign characters can hear about, or (2) story hooks (for example, villains or factions which remain after the organized play game is ended) which campaign characters can encounter.

Study Period Reward — For each game the player plays, if their character survives, that character earns a successful Study Period (page 52 in the core rules), no EDU check needed. The character may use the Study Period per the normal rules (for example, to level up a skill) subject to the normal Limitations and Exceptions listed on page 52 in the core rules.

Possible Reward: Inspiration Points — We could choose to create Plot Points / Inspiration / Bennies, such that each time a player plays an organized play game, in addition to the Study Period, they also get a point which they can use as a bonus, perhaps as a (1) reroll, once per game, (2) a +1D bonus, once per game, and/or (3) a Boon once per game. These points could be used in non-organized play games, so that each Organized Play game you play would give you a mechanical benefit in a normal Campaign Game.