26 May 2025

The Jägermeister Adventure begins... (Traveller)

 The Assured Couriers logo. A red filled circle with a yellow outline semi-circle at the top, and a yellow filled triangle on the bottom half, outlined with a black line.

Back in January I teased a new Traveller campaign which will kick off tomorrow evening. I'm running Moon Toad Publishing's The Jägermeister Adventure for some friends using the Roll20 VTT. This a short bounty-hunting based campaign which I think will take 9-12 sessions to complete, based on the book saying six sessions and my typical VTT based gaming session being around 2 hours.

The Jägermeister Adventure built on the Roll20 VTT. A snapshot of a macOS desktop with Chrome open. The main window shows starship in a dock, with a local star map adjacent for the Minerva Cluster using Traveller's hex map format. There are two pop up windows, one with the deck plans of the Jägermeister, and the other with various views of the ship from different angles. The sidebar on the right shows the Traveller Compendium and a window is popped out on the right with character generation rules.

Much of the build preparation has been snipping out the relevant graphics. I'm using a base splash screen which I will add to as the adventure progresses. I've also acquired the Traveller Compendium (Core Rules, Central Supply Catalogue, High Guard and Companion) from Mongoose on Roll20 which look great and will hopefully be worth the purchase.

I've four players, so it should be a good mix. There are long standing gaming friends (Graham, Paul), along with Andy (whose writings in White Dwarf about Traveller helped inspire my passion for it) and Neil (who was one of the people I first played online with, using Skype with Hot War).

Tomorrow's session will be character generation and preparation for the campaign.

I am planning to test Tabletop Recorder with this campaign. After backing the recent crowdfunding, I've three months of trial time to see if it adds any value. This is an AI supported tool that will convert audio into a transcript and allegedly produce effective summaries. It was certainly trying to butter me up with the analysis of the 30-seconds that I trial recorded, although I'm not certain about being called "Dungeon Master" in the context of a Traveller game.
“The Dungeon Master meticulously tested the recording setup for the upcoming Jaegermeister Adventure, making sure all technical aspects were ready for the session. With everything operational, they surveyed the extensive display of maps and character sheets, strategizing how to guide the unfolding narrative and create a challenging yet engaging scenario for the players.”
I am quite interested in exploring AI tools where they help me GM (for example the recent exploration of NotebookLM), but I'm also very conscious that some of these tools are putting creatives out of jobs. It's an uneasy balance. It will be interesting to see how things work out and if they're any real benefit.

26 May 2025



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