For the Crew or the Passengers?

My Father and Mother were entertainment, doing Bridge (the card game) for the passengers. My Dad was an international level Bridge player (one of his Bridge partners and friend was world champion) and a University Senior Lecture with my Mum as his glamours assistant (she was also a good Bridge player). They took everyone from those people who didn’t have a clue about how to play Bridge, all the way up to those wanting a really really challenging game. They never really explained how they put their sessions together but there were only two of them so they must have juggled them somehow being available to passengers for all the sea days.

So If you're being entertainment for the passengers you probably want a few different types of games. An intro game where those who want to try RPGs and haven't before can have a go; a game where those who have tried RPGs can get into Traveller over a couple of sessions, and a game that has multiple sessions over the cruise for a mini campaign type of thing for those who know what they are doing.

If you're the only Ref you're then going to have to work out a schedule for the cruise and work the intro game and the couple of sessions games together in a couple of sequences to allow those who liked the intro to join and progress to "into Traveller game" games, so you might have a couple of rounds of both if you use the same scenarios, or multiple different intro games, and multiple different "into Traveller game" games so those who enjoy it can keep playing with different scenarios.

The mini campaign is likely to be the hard one because you never know how many people are likely to sign up. I suppose you'll have to suck it and see.

My guess is that you'll need to play Mongoose 2nd Edition as that's the currently available Traveller rule set so it would be kind of expected. If those passengers came for the intro and progressed to the "into Traveller game" game want to keep going after the cruise then it's Mongoose 2nd Edition that they are going to pick up. If you say introduced them to CT and they get home I think they would be pissed off that they can only really get MgT2 and that you used an old rule set so while it might not be your preference as I said it would be kind of expected.

If you get seasoned RPGers for the mini campaign then you might have more flexibility in your rule set because they might understand the multiplicity of available rule sets and enjoy the experience anyway, being more forgiving if they then subsequently want to continue with Traveller and can only get MgT2.

If it's for the Crew you just need to work out their schedules and pick any rule set you want, in which case I'd want to do a campaign over the length of the cruise.

A repositioning cruise is probably best for the mini campaign stand point, but the intro sessions and the "into Traveller game" games you could probably do on any type of cruise.

For the mini campaign you'd probably want it to have the climax/ending at the end of the cruise so you'd need flexibility within it to get to ensure that you get to the climax at the right time. i.e. additional side plots and session between key campaign plot points that you could inject or remove depending on how quickly or slowly your players move through the sessions, and that might also give you flexibility depending on the length of the cruise as well.

Interesting idea though. I never thought I'd have a skill set that would allow me to follow what my Dad and Mum did before (cruse around the world in their retirement while being paid for it (or rather it covered their bar bill)) so I hope it works out for you.

My Mum and Dad always said that small cruise ships where much better than the larger ones, but then you're more likely to be able to pitch it as entertainment on larger ones. Best of luck. Let us know how you get on.

Best regards,

Ewan
--
For the fallen in the cause of the free:
 "When I go home I will tell of them and say,
 For our tomorrow, They gave their today."

 My spelling is entirerly due to dyslexia, typos, and poetic license

-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxxx@simplelists.com <xxxxxx@simplelists.com>
Sent: 07 May 2026 18:05
To: The Traveller Mailing List <xxxxxx@simplelists.com>
Subject: [TML] Traveller on a Cruise ship

My timing is crap given the situation with the MV Hondius and Hantavirus right now. Still I'm wondering about the viability of running a limited duration set of Traveller games on a Cruise ship. I think it would work best on what's called a "repositioning" cruise due to the number of sea days.

Comments?

--
Chris

      __o          "All I was trying to do was get home from work."
    _`\<,_           -Rosa Parks
___(*)/_(*)____.___o____..___..o...________ooO..._____________________
Christopher Sean Hilton                    [chris/at/vindaloo/dot/com]

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