Freelance Traveller - Raconteurs’ Rest

After-Action Report: Faversham RPGaming (2023)

by Timothy Collinson

This article originally appeared in the March/April 2026 issue.

Editor’s note: This was originally sent to us shortly after the convention described, in 2023 – but somehow, it got lost in our … well-organized … archives. Now that it’s been found, it’s being printed to make sure we don’t lose it again.

Be careful what you wish for! A year or so ago, the Boys from the Baltic Star interviewed me about Traveller which was great fun. Amongst the wide range of topics we covered, was the suggestion of meeting up for a gaming weekend. With TravCon apparently still struggling to find a new venue following the pandemic and the hotel’s decision to turn rooms we’d used for adventures into bedrooms – and who could blame them in the current climate? – those of us in the south of England were still starved for face-to-face role playing.

So, when the Faversham RPG Gaming event was announced for March, I first worried it might clash with TravCon should it finally be arranged and was then, when the latter never materialized, relieved that there would still be something. OK, so it wasn’t pure Traveller. Polyhedrals other than a d6 might be seen. But I could avert my eyes should it be necessary. (Yes, yes, I know there’s TNE and Traveller²⁰ but I can’t recall when I last saw anyone playing them.) There would certainly be Traveller there by virtue of the fact I’d offered to take some. In addition, Ben Slythe, Mr Baltic Star himself, would be running some Traveller as well.

Thus it was that my ever patient work colleague, Jane, and I set off for Kent and an unknown weekend. Unknown because this was the first time it had been run; unknown because we weren’t quite sure what to expect; unknown because it would most likely be all new people. One ‘known’ was that rather than write something entirely new I was bringing along “Spindrift” which you may recall I ran twice at North Star in Sheffield last year. Only this time I was being offered two 3-hour slots to run it, rather than one four hour slot, so I’d spent the two weeks before stressing about whether it might run a bit short across six hours. I wrote some side possibilities and the whole ‘Research Base generator’ came out of the need to come up with not just one but three research bases amongst other things.

Too Much Stuff!

It wasn’t the only thing I was dragging along. The Boys had mentioned there was a Sunday morning ‘slot’ that wasn’t filled and I’d suggested that I could do something like Traveller character generation in that space if they thought anyone was likely to be interested. That required not only digging out every Core Rulebook I could muster (four as it turned out: one second edition kickstarter on matte paper, one second edition ‘proper’ on glossy paper, one second edition update and one second edition update collector’s edition). I’d opted for Mongoose Traveller rather than classic just because I wouldn’t have to ‘revise’ and also thought it might act as something of an advert for the current game should there be anyone unfamiliar with Traveller. Perhaps I should have asked Mongoose for a commission. I nearly took two first edition volumes (again, kickstarter matte and the glossy edition) but luggage was getting heavy and I thought it might confuse things. In any case, four copies ought to cover all the bodies I could imagine being interested. With two people sharing that would handle eight I decided. Fortunately, I still had some printouts of the careers left over from the year I’d done my Zero Prep games at TravCon where we started the session with character generation. Those sheets had been weighing down the attic for some years over the pandemic. They weren’t likely to see any other immediate use (by now I was a bit depressed about the lack of TravCon), and so they went in the bags as well. This was the best decision I could have made in preparation for the event although I didn’t know it at the time.

Poor Jane. I now had my luggage, plus a BITS laptop bag (a TravCon freebie) full of Traveller rule books, plus another BITS laptop bag (a different year’s convention freebie) full of print outs, and I also had my box of March Harrier Publishing printouts for display purposes to tout my own wares. Plus, I had one or two other things to ‘show off’ Traveller: The Atlas of the Imperium: Second Survey, the newish Droyne coyns and more. But that wasn’t all. I’d looked at my non-Traveller RPG material and realized that now it was taking two shelves, some of it had to go. I couldn’t keep it all. Much though I loved them, my Blue Planet (2nd Edition) complete collection might make someone else happy. It had also served its purpose in inspiring me about the “Spindrift” adventure. I thought all the GURPS Transhuman Space might also be parted with. I could cry in the car later on the way home. So that was another box of material. Plus, in reorganizing all my Traveller material since the New Year, I’d found three duplicates. MegaTraveller’s Knightfall, Cepheus Engine’s Hostile: Setting and Clement Sector: Diverse Roles. Not bad, I thought for all the years of collecting, that I didn’t have more duplicates; but no need to keep them if they might make another collector happy and a few pennies into the bargain. In addition, the aforementioned reorganization had meant moving some old SF paperbacks and with the threat of either the attic or just possibly my wife coming down on me rather heavily if I didn’t weed something, I packed up maybe fifty novels with the intention of giving them away free to a good home.

Jane arrived Friday lunchtime just as I’d got everything out onto the driveway. She has previously given me a lift somewhere in an estate car. That was no more. She turned up in a small car. A very small car. Americans might think British cars are small in general. Brits think this kind of car is small. The ‘boot’ for want of a better word isn’t more than six inches wide. There are technically ‘back seats’ but I wouldn’t want to sit in them for more than a five-minute journey. There’s isn’t a Traveller skill for ‘packing’ or even for cargo loading – which is perhaps an oversight – but I think we earned our level 1 badge and somehow managed to get all the above into the car. I’ve no idea how and was convinced I’d be leaving the paperbacks for a later charity shop run. Somehow, we squeezed and pushed and flattened until it was all in this tiny space. I came to regret that we’d managed.

A Dreadful Drive

The satnav said 123 miles and reckoned 1 hour 50 minutes. I tweeted as much and off we went. With Luke of The Boys tweeting back to that information – 123 miles, pshaw, you could have made it a day trip. Hah! We’d soon see. An accident just a few minutes ahead of us on the A3 brought us to standstill for an hour until we found a slip road to escape from and navigate around the incident. Road works at the top of the A3 where it joins the M25 not only held us up a bit more but also meant we managed to miss the M25 and take a slightly more scenic route – although past some very nice houses it must be said. (How can you miss a four lane in each direction London orbital motorway?!) A contraflow after the M25 provided more delays and finally, just for the complete set, we had an ‘obstruction in the carriageway’ slowing things down. Although we never saw the obstruction. We did stop for a bite to eat for half an hour, but still, 4 hours 15 minutes is not my idea of fun and not my idea of a day trip. But that’s why we’d left on Friday (and were planning on returning on Monday) for an event that was only Saturday and Sunday.

Despite all the above we arrived in plenty of time to unload – multiple trips from the car to the room with all those books of course – I really hadn’t thought it through and was now in some pain from the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Then, unpack, grab a supper of fish and chips, and get to the pub to meet the Boys from the Baltic Star for an evening of drinking. Still, that last was easy, we were staying in the Railway Hotel (I liked the four-poster bed I was given – Jane had to make do with two single beds) and that was the venue for the evening’s drinks. So I had no distance at all to stumble from the snug by the bar to my room after being encouraged to drink more than I’ve ever downed in one go before. Four pints – I thought I’d hate myself in the morning but in actual fact I loved the fact that it was about the only few hours of the weekend I wasn’t in some pain from all the tiredness and physical exertion! But the best thing about the evening was getting to meet Ben, Luke and Ewan in real life for the first time. They were just as affable and charming as they appear on screen – but they were so large! Compared to the little windows I see them in their stream, full sized people were very weird.

Saturday and Spindrift Redux

A cooked breakfast at the hotel set us up for the busy day and then there was the small matter of shifting far too many bags, boxes and books down to the Faversham Assembly Rooms. Fortunately, they were only two minutes away and multiple trips weren't too painful. Once again, I was reminded that I hadn't thought things through but my thanks to those who helped out and to the long suffering Jane. I fear she was beginning to regret ever offering a lift never mind helping with all my stuff. Ben, Luke & Ewan were setting up the hall with tables, snack facilities and some impressively posh banners. They’d thought things through very well and for an event’s first outing things ran extremely smoothly. At least as far as I could see. Perhaps there was some frantic paddling under the water.

With no formal proceedings, it was straight onto the first slot. 1000-1300. For me that meant “Spindrift”, or at least its first half. Numbers were disappointingly low on the Saturday and that meant I only had two players in the end. Jane + Steve H who felt like he should have been a TravCon regular but I don't think I’d met him before. They took a couple of PCs each so we could fill out the ship functions and we also set a place name in honour of Sperrow – one of the regulars in the chat on the BFtBS Twitch stream who’d kindly supported the whole enterprise by buying a ticket even if flying in from New York was a non-starter. The PCs I’d pinched from six years of running The Traveller Adventure to save creating more and to make an easier mental load as I’d be instantly familiar with them all.

Steve and Jane, and “Spindrift” (under all the snacks)

As it happens, I couldn't have asked for two more engaged players, and it may have been a good thing I didn’t have a table full as I was struggling to hear in the acoustics of the hall. Jane and Steve threw themselves into the adventure, its puzzles and its action. As far as I could tell they both enjoyed it. At least, they returned from lunch for the second half in the only game of the weekend that ran across two sessions. It certainly had room to breathe in the six hours rather than being a bit of a squeeze into the four of North Star. I found it interesting once again to see how a different set of players took a slightly different route through it. They met different NPCs including some I’d written specially for Faversham. They pursued different routes through the possible options. I’d like to think this is a good sign of a more open, sandbox style game where PC choices count for something, but this is an aspect of adventure design I’m really unsure about. There was one particularly funny moment when random chance as I worked down a list of NPCs meant that lovelorn Loyd, The Captain, was billeted with the pretty young thing (see TML reports on The Traveller Adventure passim). He was the perfect gentleman of course, even in this incarnation. Steve may have wondered what all the fuss was about, but these few moments seemed to make Jane’s day. Naturally, none of the side plots I’d written ‘just in case’ were needed. With a perfect amount of time to spare, we got to the climax and the day was saved – and the eroctopi – once again. Though there was just a moment on this occasion where I feared that perhaps the final combat might prove too deadly for the PCs. Thank you Jane and Steve for giving it a whirl and putting up with the seawater spray and the touching and all the little quirks of my lockdown inspired, dream given adventure.

Meanwhile, other games were happening, including Ben running a Traveller game called “The Kidnapped Child” which I’d get to play in its repeat on the following day. With the second session running from 1400-1700 we then had ninety minutes to get something to eat. Jane, Steve & I found an Indian restaurant that wasn’t too overwhelmed to fit us in unannounced on a Saturday night. An Indian meal after a day of Traveller made us feel like TravCon was reincarnated!
Ben running “The Moho Mine” For the evening session I’d signed up for Ben Slythe running another Traveller adventure called “The Moho Mine” and found it was a delightfully tight and claustrophobic adventure which wasn’t quite horror but did get to some very tense moments towards the end. So much so I was genuinely terrified of rolling the dice on one occasion and had to really will myself to do so. I was utterly “there” and loved the sense of immersion. It was truly a joy to participate in and it was terrific to experience Ben refereeing at first hand like that. As that was one of the reasons I'd come to Faversham in the first place. It was not a disappointment. Fortunately, the Assembly Rooms were booked for the two days and all my rubbish could stay put overnight. Back at the hotel much of the convention’s ‘crowd’ had come to help fill up the snug and drink a pint or two. I really should have gone to bed but couldn’t bear to miss out and stayed till closing time. Still, I was once again very glad of the short walk along the corridor and up one flight of stairs to bed when others had more of a walk or even a drive.

Sunday and a Masterclass

Sunday started as a repeat of Saturday with cooked breakfast at 8am and then one of my CFS Stops to combat CFS and then down to the Assembly Rooms. (A half hour of doing nothing I’m supposed to do every three hours to manage energy levels). Instead of a gaming session the morning this time was split into two. The local university’s D&D Society had joined us mob handed (18 of them I think) so numbers were substantially up.

Roll the Damn Dice in action

First up was a live interactive performance by Roll the Damn Dice. Of internet fame apparently although if I’d come across them previously, I’d lost sight of it as I can barely keep up with Traveller never mind Dungeons & Dragons. I had no idea what to expect but by the time Jane, Steve and I were heading to the seating area, the only option was the front row. Well, that suited me as I like to be able to see and hear. Good job too as the acoustics of the hall and the “atmosphere” music which played throughout, combined to make hearing difficult. I assumed it was just me getting old and no setting on my hearing aids seemed to help, but I wasn't the only one who mentioned it as a problem later.

A real live dungeon master, Paul, introduced three vivacious young ladies – I never caught their names they were so quick – and their characters; two apiece. Part of their schtick was to swap characters at certain point as directed by the audience. Not just between their own first and second characters but also with each other. I was already impressed with their ability to put on accents which suited the characters and helped differentiate them, but I was doubly impressed when a character moved between players and the accent went with it. They were very good. It certainly helped keep track of who was who. The first segment of the 90 minute slot was a puzzle as the trio or sextet depending on how you looked at it, had to escape from a dungeon cell. I was pleased to be able to contribute an idea here as although I don’t know D&D, I could grasp the situation easily enough to help try to spot what was necessary to get the door open. The other thing that impressed me with the team was Paul’s ability, supported by the ladies, to succinctly explain some of the technical stuff going on with the rules when he knew there was an ignoramus in the audience. Not endlessly so, so as to spoil the flow of proceedings, but just at critical points when it helped make sense of something. I believe they do these live interactive shows regularly and the experience – and the sense of fun – showed. The second segment of the show involved a maze the audience could see on a screen to the right of the table but the players couldn’t. Two volunteers from the audience had been picked to act as opposition to the PCs in the maze and it worked well but turned a little tedious towards the end. It all came to a halt when the players had all been swapped into the same character (a point I'd missed) who then happened to be the character who was killed by the opposition’s mimic. I think. I had to ask for a bit of explanation afterwards. It was fun to see skilled actors in action and it gave me pause for thought about whether there was any mileage in offering the same for Traveller. As I wrote, however, regarding watching Actual Plays, I’d rather be playing!

Traveller Character Generation

The second half of the morning, I’d volunteered to run a workshop on Traveller character generation for anyone who was interested. I should note that calling it a ‘masterclass’ was absolutely nothing to do with me and gave me a good case of imposter syndrome. I thought maybe two or three might give it a go and I’d bought along four rulebooks in anticipation. I’d begun a ‘Zero Prep’ session at TravCon with character generation and was fairly confident we could get it done in the 90 minutes available even if I did a very short introduction to Traveller itself. As it turned out a dozen of the students chose to join Jane and Steve in this session, and I suddenly had fourteen people all needing sight of the careers at the very least. Fortunately, I still had printouts from the Zero Prep session of the key bits and was able to handle those kind of numbers with just a couple of people sharing.

By way of context or history, I’d taken my original Little Black Book boxed set and enthused about that and my being drawn into Traveller many years previously by world creation. I ran through a very brief history of Traveller in a couple of minutes, warned them that in the ‘old days’ you could die in character generation, and then it was on to the main thing. Mongoose 2nd Edition character gen. We rolled stats and discussed just accepting what came, rolling three sets and choosing the best, assigning a set of six rolls to whatever characteristic you wanted and the more recent options of Point Buy or Packages which we weren’t going to get into on this occasion. I mentioned that some saw SOC as something of a dump stat but said woe betide any of my players that did this, as SOC could often be important. Then it was a question of picking background skills and learning what kind of skills Traveller offers. We chose careers and got a further sense of what adventures might be on offer and then I ran through three terms guiding everyone through survival, events and the various characteristic/skill table rolls. As they could each have chosen a different career, there had to be some flexibility and I’d pause to respond to questions, but I think it worked well and gave more engagement than just picking one example career to run everyone through. It was rather like one of my lectures at university except that this was fun and had fully engaged students! One poor Portuguese student didn’t seem to be able to roll more than a 4 on 2D6 and had the most disastrous time, but, as I pointed out, she came out with quite an interesting character! Three terms was only just enough to get into the routine and to start to worry about aging which of course is what limits uberskilled characters, but they were getting the hang of it. We were all done in about 75 minutes in the end and stopped to give everyone a chance to grab some lunch. I was very gratified when several said afterwards they were going to look into Traveller further and perhaps have another go at the character generation. They were delighted when I said they could keep the printouts which I had no desire to carry home again! (Though of course, it will mean printing another set of key pages which isn’t cheap if I ever do something similar again.) (I’ve been thinking about whether it might have been possible to do something like it with a projector and much less printing. But I’ve not come up with a solution I think will work. It needs hands on.)

Cults and Kidnappers

I needed a Stop more than lunch and headed back to the hotel, barely able to walk any more after the exertions of the weekend and almost unable to talk either. Perhaps no bad thing. For me, the afternoon consisted of Luke running “The Vienna Express”. This was a 1930s adventure on a thinly disguised Orient Express using rules from Those Dark Places. I’d not come across the latter before and the petite hardback book was certainly very attractive. The rules were straightforward enough and Luke had produced a really fabulous handout/character sheet which made things easy and really set the scene. The plot involved cultists taking over the train and running it into Berne at top speed as part of a sacrifice that needed to be made. Unless a small group of first class passengers on their way to an archaeological symposium could stop them. Cue a set up of us getting into our roles and experiencing the luxuries on offer, then uncovering the problem bit by bit, and then attempting to save either the train or the passengers or both. After some derring-do (which was actually a skill option), we managed, just, with the last roll of the dice, to stop the train a few feet from the buffers in Berne. Phew! It was all go. Luke did a great job of herding us through this but the standout for me was one of the students playing a ‘southern gentlemen’ over from the USA who put on an accent, got into character and stayed in it, convincingly, for pretty much the entire afternoon. I’ve sat round a fair few RPG tables and seen few do as well as this young lad did. All credit to Joe.

Luke running a game – I didn&rsquolt get a pic of Vienna Express

Unfortunately, in order to save the day, the game had overrun its slot a little and there wasn’t time to find a restaurant. To be honest I wasn’t hungry anyway. What with cooked breakfasts and some severe fatigue and pain, I was very happy to find a student who was willing to share a pizza – or rather, just let me have two slices which was as much as I could manage. He was probably very happy to find someone quite happy to buy said pizza.

That left just one more slot on Sunday evening and I was back with Ben who was running “The Kidnapped Child” for a second time. Phew! Or I’d have missed it. This time we were back with Traveller rules and trying to find and save a young girl from the nefarious goings on around her which we had to unpick as we went. It was all great fun and once again Ben proved adept at getting us involved, engaged and having to pick between difficult options. The one thing I found really interesting in both his games was that he didn’t have pre-generated characters for us. In the first we rolled characteristics in order and had to live with what we got, in the second we could assign them as we wished. In the first game we could pick whatever skills we liked, but only four of them and we had no idea what would be needed. In the second it was similar but we had a slightly wider range of skill levels we could pick and some idea that we wouldn’t need space skills (and we knew the title of the adventure implied certain things). His idea was that this represented a random group of people brought together for whatever reason and not a team specifically picked to deal with the situation at hand. This worked really well in my opinion as I berated myself for having not picked the exact skill that was required at the time. There was also a moment of ‘serves you right’ when in the first game I’d ended up with a really low SOC roll (3) and leaned into being something of a lowlife. In the second game, I had to assign a low characteristic number and thought I could save creative energy by just carrying on in the same way. I even recycled my character’s name. There was no intention of gaming the system but when Ben had me rolling a really crucial task that involved SOC, one of the students at the table reminded me of my words about dump stats in the morning. Well, that told me! Indeed, I’m pretty sure Ben had got to the measure of me early on, taken note of what my characteristics and skills were and delighted in giving me tasks for which I felt constantly ill-suited. It was a very nice counterbalance to knowing the game well which was a perhaps an advantage when everyone else round the table was new to it. I had a blast.

Winding Up

Eventually the games wound up and the evening came to an end. (We did manage to rescue the kidnapped child and I assume the other group did as well). There were no formal proceedings to the convention, but I could see my Blue Planet books still hadn’t sold and in a desperate effort not to carry them home offered them to the D&D Society at a knockdown rate. A couple of them were really excited about it but I was reminded they were students when the society President was scratching around between them to muster the (relatively small) amount of money in cash; not to mention they needed a receipt for the university. Perhaps I should have just given them the Transhuman Space books as well but I felt they had some value still to me and decided I would carry them home. (I’d just finished reading Blue Planet and bits had crept into “Spindrift”, so I didn’t feel I’d be passing that way again. I also thought, when the President asked which of the two sets of books I’d recommend, that Blue Planet was more likely to be ‘accessible’ than Transhuman Space which is a little bit more ‘out there’ in terms of SF and perhaps in role-playing as well.) I thought I’d be disappointed at the bargain basement price I’d offered, but in fact I found I was delighted they’d gone to a new home and young minds and that they might inspire a new generation.

That was one of the things about the second day that I really enjoyed. I’ve not been to many conventions (lots of TravCon and one North Star) but it does tend, in my experience, to be mostly male and mostly males of a certain age. I can’t complain, I’m one of them. But despite being reminded of my own aging body, it was wonderful to have the mind and spirit reinvigorated by all the youth in attendance and great to see their enthusiasm and abilities on display. Full marks to whoever had the bright idea of inviting them! Full marks to whoever, on the student side, organized the group into attending.

Technically that was the end of the convention but Jane and I had one more treat in store. That wasn’t the short trip to the charity shop across the road to dispose of the remaining paperbacks that hadn’t been taken although it was a relief to offload them. No, it was brunch! One of the recurring bits of fun in the Boys from the Baltic Star twitch stream is the characters forever stopping for brunch. Any excuse will do. It therefore seemed obvious that the Boys should host a real-life brunch on the Monday morning for those of us who had stayed another night and didn’t have to hurry home. It made a lovely close to the event before we set off on what was a much more straightforward journey home.

Ben, Luke and Ewan deserve a huge amount of credit and appreciation for putting on an excellent convention with lots of gaming and lots of fun. For a first outing it was really impressive and the good news is, if I’ve understood correctly, that they’re already considering running it again next year. I’d like to think that TravCon might be back by then but at the time of writing, there’s still no further news on that. Perhaps another trip to Faversham will be in order but let me put in writing right now: I won’t take so much stuff. Promise.

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