Shore Leave

RPG PDF Spotlights is our daily look at a recent release for a new tabletop roleplaying game, supplement or scenario, or solo journaling game, that has caught my eye.

Shore Leave

Traveller Supplement by Matt Johnston

The cruiser makes orbit. Eight hundred people who have spent four months in a steel box come down the lift with a year of accumulated pay and eleven hours each.

What happens to the town?

Most Traveller material treats the starport from the point of view of the people passing through it. Shore Leave looks at it from the point of view of the people who cannot leave: the bartenders, police, taxi drivers, hoteliers, criminals, families and officials who know exactly what happens when the Fleet comes in. 

This 40-page supplement provides a complete toolkit for turning a routine port call into an adventure. Ports are defined by Dependence, Friction and Saturation, measuring how badly the town needs visiting crews, how much it resents them, and just how overwhelming this particular visit has become. Those numbers feed into prices, policing, civilian reactions, crime, availability and the increasingly desperate attempts of everyone involved to get through Fleet Night intact.

Inside you’ll find:

• Liberty Footprint and Saturation rules for determining what hundreds of personnel suddenly ashore actually do to a settlement.

• The Second Economy, covering surge pricing, temporary work, scams, illicit markets and the things that mysteriously become unavailable when the Fleet arrives.

• Jurisdiction and Political Weight, for answering the awkward question of what happens when Imperial personnel break local law.

• Liberty Briefs, including restrictions, unusual local laws, hazards and establishments declared Off Limits.

• A complete Shore Patrol procedure, including approaches, fatigue, Incident Points and a d66 table of calls. A four-hour patrol watch can provide an entire session without a prepared adventure. 

• Liberty Escalation, from normal liberty through curfew, alcohol bans and finally everyone being confined aboard because one idiot ruined it for eight hundred people. 

• Tables for civilian attitudes, Startown businesses, company and complications, and what is left behind the morning after.

• Guidelines for how the same port reacts to Marines, Scouts, mercenaries, Sword Worlders, Zhodani, Aslan, Vargr, Darrians, corporate security and Free Traders. 

• An addendum extending the system to merchant traffic, passenger vessels, the Army, mercenaries, pilgrims, refugees and other organised visitors. 

Shore Leave is written for naval Travellers, Shore Patrol crews, civilians caught in Fleet Night, or referees who want Startown to be something more than three bars, a weapon shop and the next patron encounter.

Nobody is entirely in the right. The town complains about the Navy and lives on the Navy. The ratings behave badly and get robbed blind. The police resent the Shore Patrol but are relieved when it takes problems away.

For Classic Traveller, Mongoose Traveller 2nd Edition, Andromeda 2D and the Cepheus Engine. 

Shore Leave is available in PDF from DriveThruRPG.