A week in the life of a small ship
While making a transit through jumpspace, the Traveller’s ship is untouchable and unreachable for about a week or so.
Some Referees enjoy playing these days and plan detailed encounters accordingly. Others mark the time in-game simply by asking players “do you do anything special during jump?” In these cases maybe a vague roll is made on the off-chance some kind of mishap occurs during the transit, but usually things are hand-waved towards an exit from jumpspace, where the next chapter of the adventure can start.
I propose some middle ground, a little dice rolling and so in true Traveller fashion randomly spicing up those weeks in jump. This little supplement fleshes out that idea.
If you have something particular planned for the Travellers’ time during jump, then that should take center stage. But if you have nothing planned but would still enjoy seeing if anything unusual happened, these tables can help.
Jump – the routine occurrences
First let’s talk about the the regular things that happen when a “small” ship is making the transit through jumpspace. The ship may indeed be using the physics of jumpspace to cheat Relativity, but time still passes.
According to most versions of the Traveller rules, the jumpdrive isn’t even active or powered during the transit. It was certainly active at the start of the jump, but during time in jumpspace the ship is sort of “floating along” in the bubble created by the energy delivered from the refined hydrogen fuel. The maneuver drive is also offline, because there’s really no maneuvering while in jump. No one is EVA-ing, or otherwise departing the vessel under normal circumstances. Comms are silent.
So what is going on?
Well the powerplant is going, certainly. The ship’s computer, gravitics, and life support systems and all humming along. And the business of the ship is taking place. Sophonts are being sophonts.
Anyone injured is down with the autodoc. The crewmembers are probably standing some form of watch, actively reviewing, inspecting, maintaining, practicing, keeping up to date, or otherwise focusing on their primary area. Paperwork is being caught up on; manifests, budgets, logs, inventories, and assessments are being created and approved. Some people are probably working out, or working through courseware and practicing physical skills to get an edge.
All those people are cooped up in that relatively small space, they’re very likely doing what sophonts do everywhere – some are plotting and scheming, some are relaxing and recreating by consuming multimedia, enjoying hobbies, or imbibing. The truly self-motivated might be running “do at home” businesses while in jump.
This is all relatively normal. What about not-normal?
New tables
When you’d like to fast-forward through a given jump but would still like to farm the opportunity of a jump-week for interesting tidbits you can use during play, here’s a set of tables to generate odd or noteworthy happenings that occurred during jump. These small plot points are designed for later ( optional ) revisitation and further development by the Referee, or to be used as a co-creation tool with the players. In My Traveller Universe I have the player roll and put it on them to develop the details. I can do this as jump happens if I want the players to spend in-game time on it for some reason, or I can assign it as meta-game activity that happens away from the session table. This latter use further involves the layers in the creation of the game world and what’s happening. I reward quality work of fleshing these items out by giving boons or sometimes spinning the occurrences favorably for the players who did the writeups.
After I’ve deemed a given jump is successful by the appropriate rolls, I’ll give the players every opportunity to accomplish tasks during jump as they describe. I’ll resolve anything that needs that level of my attention, and then before the emergence into regular space we’ll make rolls on the Jump Week Events table.
Read through the Events. Some of them have origins in activities that took place prior to jump but are only discovered at some point during the transit.
The events are meant to be pretty broadly applicable to a small ship typical of Traveller adventures, but your milage may vary. As the Referee you may determine that a given outcome could not possibly apply to your players, or simply that you don’t like it for some reason. Roll again. Or pick one that catches your eye. There are a few instances where possible “big stuff” shows up in the results, and these events will probably requiring some roleplay could occur. If you’d rather not do this, feel free to ignore or dial-down the result so that it doesn’t warrant specific roleplaying time.
What I do, in my own game
I get a read on the flow of the current game session and make the call – would it be better to just enter these events into a “Captain’s log” and note them as interesting, possibly developing one of them further later on? Or should I spend game time discussing them with the players? Sometimes I roll in secret and merely deliver the news of the results to the players, assigning them to do writeups that make sense. Other times I have them roll the results themselves, and we decide as a group how the events came to pass and fit into the current narrative.
“NSMSC” defined
The above acronym is my abbreviation for a spectrum of outcome intensity, mostly a qualitative descriptor. Broken down it stands for: “Nuisance, Slight, Moderate, Serious, and Critical.” Any outcomes with this strong identifier ( or just part of it ) you as Referee you should make the call as to exact effects and the need for playing a particular event out. “Nuisance” events rarely need to be played out, but it might be good times to do so. “Critical” events probably should be played out, but are rare on these tables. My reasoning for this is: Most of the time critical stuff shouldn’t be random, but rather show up as planned by you the Referee.
Let’s get started.
First, does anything out of the ordinary happen during jump?
Table One – unusual events? ( d6 )
| 1 | Nothing happens - no need to roll further; a boring week. |
| 2-3 | One thing - roll once on either table |
| 4-5 | Two things - roll once on each table |
| 6 | Three things - roll once on one table, twice on the other |
Table Two – Out of the Ordinary Occurrences
| 1 | 1 | The most boring week ever. Nothing. Make no further rolls |
| 1 | 2 | crack in a viewport |
| 1 | 3 | Particular ship system develops a “personality.” Either it starts performing in an unusual but harmless way, or a previously-unknown talking user interface starts to engage passers by. |
| 1 | 4 | Ship’s main persona or computer program reveals something surprising |
| 1 | 5 | A physical item of interest is discovered on the ship; some definitely new item no one remembers or admits bringing on board. Investigation is inconclusive. |
| 1 | 6 | A small stowaway animal is discovered |
| 2 | 1 | A minor system fails, causing discomfort |
| 2 | 2 | Gravity on one specific plate changes erratically |
| 2 | 3 | There is an extra piece of regular gear discovered aboard |
| 2 | 4 | Secondary craft fuel/energy is dangerously low |
| 2 | 5 | Slightly wrong cargo - +1% value |
| 2 | 6 | Ship’s paperwork out of order, for the worse - NSMSC |
| 3 | 1 | Ship’s paperwork out of order, for the better |
| 3 | 2 | A location tracer device is found on ship |
| 3 | 3 | New discovery made about destination - NSMSC |
| 3 | 4 | Strange occurrence in jumpspace - tapping, voices, strange shapes, bizarre dreams, shared vision |
| 3 | 5 | Some kind of mass-strike at jump entry - loud noise, alert rings, possible minor problem only. |
| 3 | 6 | Passenger identity discovery - pick one: famous, relative, infamous, former service mate, wanted, or bizarre |
| 4 | 1 | Random crewmember grabbed wrong bag at last port of call |
| 4 | 2 | Random crewmember left Imperial ID at last port of call |
| 4 | 3 | Previously unknown weapon discovered in locker |
| 4 | 4 | Ship develops new quirk |
| 4 | 5 | Random non-critical program in the ship’s computer becomes corrupted and needs updating |
| 4 | 6 | Strange vague message discovered |
| 5 | 1 | Vacc suit hole discovered |
| 5 | 2 | Rescue ball hollowed out, discovered |
| 5 | 3 | Two crewmembers discover shared hobby |
| 5 | 4 | Life support keeps resetting to match environment for a destination several jumps ago |
| 5 | 5 | After an audit, ammo count off by “a bit” |
| 5 | 6 | crewmembers discover shared friend |
| 6 | 1 | Crewmembers discover shared experience |
| 6 | 2 | A previously unknown persona discovered on board in one of the ship’s systems |
| 6 | 3 | Random cargo container leaking/failing |
| 6 | 4 | Random cargo container doesn’t appear on the manifest |
| 6 | 5 | Anonymous secret admirer letter for crewmember discovered |
| 6 | 6 | A crewmember’s nemesis has their machinations revealed - NSMSC |
Table Three – Slightly Stranger Things
| 1 | 1 | Mysterious paper map discovered |
| 1 | 2 | All shipboard non-emergency alarms went off at the same strange time |
| 1 | 3 | New concealable space discovered - empty or full |
| 1 | 4 | Contraband discovered - NSM |
| 1 | 5 | Positive error in ships ledger |
| 1 | 6 | Misjump - jump is instantaneous; all other previously-rolled results are null |
| 2 | 1 | Negative error in ship’s ledger |
| 2 | 2 | Best meal in a very long time |
| 2 | 3 | Premium multimedia delivered in error last time |
| 2 | 4 | Charts updated in error to scout-class |
| 2 | 5 | Random software updated in error - good |
| 2 | 6 | Random ship’s program goes down one level |
| 3 | 1 | Charts of a random nearby system corrupted somehow |
| 3 | 2 | A crumpled 5000 ImpCr note is discovered |
| 3 | 3 | bug infestation discovered - NSM |
| 3 | 4 | Review of news - ship suspected of something -regu/scandal/crim |
| 3 | 5 | Review of news - crewmember/family/acquaintance mentioned in story |
| 3 | 6 | Random crewmember loses 3 hours of memory |
| 4 | 1 | Accident - NSMSC |
| 4 | 2 | Mail discovered to be in the clear |
| 4 | 3 | Old Thank you note discovered in records |
| 4 | 4 | Random unneeded emergency system fails horribly |
| 4 | 5 | Environment trending negatively |
| 4 | 6 | Best game of something -ever- |
| 5 | 1 | Altercation between 2 people - NSM |
| 5 | 2 | Wrong food stocked in galley |
| 5 | 3 | Food poisoning - a whole day lost by 1-2 people aboard |
| 5 | 4 | Small unnoticed bonus from prior job located in logs and ship’s accounts. |
| 5 | 5 | Minor mystery discovered |
| 5 | 6 | Shared dream experience for unknown reason |
| 6 | 1 | All alcohol gone from ship, or some now present |
| 6 | 2 | NPC has an episode/catharsis/breakdown - MSC |
| 6 | 3 | Minor jump incident - coloration, trailing sparkly glow, luminescent, displaced |
| 6 | 4 | |
| 6 | 5 | Crew member develops medical issue - NSMSC |
| 6 | 6 | Strange week - re-roll for an event plus for an additional thing, ignoring this result if it comes up again |
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