codrus

So yes, about that Traveller campaign. Last year I was watching the old Mission Impossible TV show, because I recall from my youth enjoying the show. I mentioned that a bit here.

http://codrus.livejournal.com/228487.html

The one thing I totally didn't remember from watching it at a younger age was the significant Cold War mentality. Eastern block countries. Former nazis. Etc. I'd bounced around a few ideas of how I could do a practical campaign with that sort of spy setup, but nothing really clicked.

Until now.

OTOH, there's another setting that in its day had a serious Cold War mindset -- Traveller. The Zhodani started out as the scary Russian menace, eventually igniting the 5th Frontier war. Most Traveller games either seemed to exist in the pre-war setting or against the backdrop of the war, but the players weren't really movers and shakers or really knowledgeable about what was going on.

But, and here's where the Imperial Mission Force comes in, there's a lot that could be done with a Mission Impossible game set in the Spinward Marches/Traveller setting. You've got the Zhodani, the Sword Worlders, maybe even the Vargr. As I see it, the Imperial Mission Force probably consists of hand-picked men sworn directly to the Emperor's service, rather than indirectly through one of the neo-Vilani bureaucracies. They are his personal bag men, chosen for their incredible gifts and skills. Their material resources are small only relative to the Naval or Scout intelligence services. Their missions are not those of marine commandos, but are to really act in the Emperor's best interest.

To appeal to gun-bunny players, you could easily make this more combat oriented. In earlier seasons of the TV show, they had their fair collection of shootouts though, and more than one fist fight. So I think you could easily embrace the spirit of it the TV show without making everything a commando run. Which would be disavowed, right? :) I'm still not certain that the 'con artist' structure works well for a roleplaying game...so it might require seasoning it with a bit of Alias, or maybe even the more action oriented structures of the movies. They made for occasionally annoying action movies, but might make for good roleplaying.

What's been nice is that the ideas for possible adventures have just been flowing since this seed gestated last night, particularly as I bring more Traveller lore and ideas into it. Stealing wacky Ancients devices. Rescuing agents caught by the Zhodani secret police. Tricking the Vargr Corsair across an XT line. Stopping the evil Zhodani agent from killing Duke Norris.

Even the structure of the adventures seems different in my head than most Traveller games I've been in. A classic Traveller thing is to micromanage travel around the stars. First you jump to Regina, then you drive to the gas giant and refuel, then travel 1 more A.U. and take a slight left. It is like adventure-by-Google-maps. What I see for the adventures is aping the structure of the TV show. Mr Phelps gets his recording, he looks through the dossiers (amenable to shifting what players are in the adventure), they have a small opening sequence, and then they are start the actual con. The travel time wasn't important to the story, so they left it out. :)

System-wise, I *could* do this in any number of Traveller rules settings, but I'm strongly inclined to run this in Spirit of the Century with only minor changes. I'm even thinking the normal 15 skills pyramid works extraordinarily well for this. The Emperor has trillions of people to choose from, you'd think he'd actually find the best goddamn people to be his personal retainers/hit squad.

Edited to add

One of the interesting things about this exercise is that it really lets me spin the Traveller setting around and twist things.

For example:

X-boats are generally not worth attacking -> scenario where the players need to get something off an X-boat.

The Imperium doesn't know who the Ancients actually were -> The Emperor actively suppresses this information. Worse, might be killing off similar genius figures that might destabilize the empire.

AI technology is outside the reach of the imperium -> AI technology is dangerous and needs to be inhibited.

Duke Norris needed an imperial letter of authority but the Emperor needed plausible deniability -> The agents are responsible for setting up all the events of the original Traveller Adventure 1.

Essentially, every old, sometimes 'stale' Traveller idea is suddenly very cool!