#RPGaDay2025 - 1 - Patron

It's RPGaDay season again, so I'll give it a go. Here's a link to the blog post with the current year's prompts.

Today's prompt is Patron.

In many ways, this is an easy one to talk about, as the word 'Patron' in a roleplaying game context immediate takes me to my forever game, Traveller. I long loved the utility of the Classic Traveller supplement, 76 Patrons. This is a fantastic collection of short plot hooks with a variety of options for resolution that could easily fill in a full play session. I guess that they'd be referred to as adventure seeds or hooks these days. When I was running a sandbox style merchant campaign in the Spinward Marches (broadly influenced by Twilight's Peak and others), I'd regularly go to this book and JTAS (The Journal of the Traveller's Aid Society) for ideas to slide in around the main plot, and it was rare that they ever let me down as a source of ideas. 

Each Patron encounter was defined by a role for the Patron, the Required Skills & Equipment, and then had two short paragraphs giving Player's Information and Referee's Information. The latter was a selection of options on what was going on, numbered against the roll of a six-sided dice. There weren't always six options, but you always had an option to randomise.

You can still get 76 Patrons from Drivethru RPG.

Skipping forward, I was proud to coordinate the book 101 Patrons for BITS. This was initially designed to replace 101 Plots, but it grew legs. It has a lovely cover by Jesse DeGraff (RIP), and some fantastic guidance on using the 4Ps (Plots, People, Places and Props) when working out a scenario, followed by some lovely work on the 36 dramatic situations (by Andy Slack if I recall correctly). This is followed by 48 Patrons in the same format as 76 Patrons along with 27 situations (again in the same format but not necessarily directly linked to a patron), 6 elaborations and a huge number of 'starport chatter' and 'world seed' entries. It's a really useful book for a Referee, particularly if you're in a hurry. In fact, the whole 101 line takes this approach.

You can still get 101 Patrons on Drivethru RPG, but there's also a bundle with all the 101 books. 

I don't get any benefit if you do pick a copy up, but you'll definitely have a useful aid for running a science fiction game!

1 August 2025