Traveller: High and Dry in Walston (Map)
- Paul Wolfe
- 12 hours ago
- 2 min read
One of the best campaign kick-off adventures I’ve seen for Traveller in any of the versions of the game is Marches Adventure 1: High and Dry from Mongoose (also available in the Marches Adventures compilation). It’s a true traveller adventure: The group is commissioned go to Walston (1232 - C544338-8, a backwater system in backwater District 268) to pick up a scout ship abandoned there by another group. There’s a short travelling sequence as the characters book passage on a far trader from Flammarion (0930 – A623514-B; Sword Worlds) and proceed down the Bowman Arm through to Walston.
If you use Zozer’s Solo book, you can keep your travellers entertained with shenanigans along the way, but otherwise, not much goes on for the trip. Once in Walston, of course there are complications that escalate quickly. It's a great combination of irritation and high adventure.
The thing I love about that adventure is that there’s almost no combat. In fact, you’re hard pressed to get anyone to remember they even have guns. But, it’s pure white-knuckle action at the climax.
Anyway, this isn’t a review of Walston / High and Dry, so much as storytime and sharing.
I don’t run my campaigns in the Third Imperium. I have a bastardized sector of my own that combines some stuff from various games and settings, not the least of which is Star Frontiers.
I use everything I can for my game, and High and Dry was a natural campaign starter. The oppressed vargr in that scenario became kopal/yazirians, religious pilgrims that ended up staying on Walston generations ago. They are the oppressed majority to the human dictatorship. My players are bleeding-hearts first, bloody capitalists (very close) second, so when they finished up that scenario and left as heroes to both the human and kopal populations, they had a bad taste in their mouths due to the overall situation.
When they got back to civilization, I queued up 76 Patrons entry #31: (did I mention I use everything): “patron is seeking a group of experience military personnel to form an underground resistance movement and train guerrillas to overthrow the government…”
In my campaign, there’s a merchant-prince domain called the Compact that fund various operations to further their market dominance. There are now designs on Walston (Warken in my campaign). The travellers bit like a catfish coming off Ozempic.
I needed to develop out Walston/Warken. The info in High and Dry is pretty sparse and focused on the scenario at hand, of course. There’s a bit of other info in other places, but generally, I needed it to fit in to my campaign space.
Anyway. I always start with a map. Even though its labelled Warken, it’s modeled off of the small map in High and Dry comprising the western edge of Settlement Island. Hopefully it’s useful to someone out there. Also, I named starttown Ridgeline and the capital Anchorpoint. (Two versions of the map below: GM with some secrets and Players that's clean).
I’ve got most everything set up for the travellers' to return. There have been some changes in the social situation since they left. They’ll barely recognize the place.
