My Life As A Gamer: Proper Campaign Play In Futures Yet Undecided

What do the following RPGs have in common?

If you said "Campaign Play With Space Fantasy trappings", you are correct.

Like with the post-cataclysm games, everything you do to play D&D properly transfers over here- and of these three games Traveller has the most support.

Patrons and Domain Play are vital for these games due to the scope and scale involved, as is timekeeping, because without players having to deal with the same issues of logistics and Fog of War that dominates D&D or historical play.

Moreso than in historical or fantasy adventure campaigning, space adventure campaigns lean hard on Patrons and Domain Play because of the necessity of institutional power to get anything relevant done. Individuals and small groups--even those possess of great personal power--find their opportunities for action in the liminal spaces created by the moves of the Patrons.

This can be on the margins, which fans of Firefly may find to their liking. This can be in the shadows of the Great Powers, like the mercenaries taking contracts from the Great Houses of the Inner Sphere (BattleTech). This can be seeking new frontiers to explore, to colonize, to settle- a Western epic in Space.

Whatever it is, it's defined by the players--taking on the Patrons--interacting at the Domain level. Those intereactions create the table session scenarios, either directly (the PCs are agents of a Patron) or indirectly (PCs are taking advantage of a liminal space generated by Patron actions).

Notice that, while typical military conflict is commonplace, Space Adventure campaigning is ripe for the Entrepreneurial Merchant sort. Traveller is notorious for having three archetypes for campaigns: Mercenaries, Explorers, and Merchants. Erecting a business empire is exactly the same as conquering the wilderness and raising yourself up as a warlord: same mindset, same skillset, same process- differing only in prefering win-win diplomatic solutions over win-lose military ones.

And if you like to mix that up, I remind you that corporations can raise their own armies to conquer territory. See the British East-India Company.

Some of these games support proper play better than others, but all of them work best when run as a proper campaign.

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