Hazel

[madman]

Hazel

Hazel is a world in the Traveller role playing game universe. Originally an adventure setting in Journal of the Traveller’s Aid Society issue 2 (GDW), it was barely a foot note. Called “the Ship in the Lake”, the adventure spanned little more than a single page of the half size publication. The planet was originally called Cocta.

The adventure was fleshed out to 9 half size pages in Mongoose’s first issue of their JTAS. What caught my eye was a review and further development carried out by youtuber Seth Skorkowsky. He made some better players aids as well as posing alternate and more detailed directions the scenario could progress.

In both iterations of the adventure the main reason for the past events was a “low level” rebellion happening on the planet. This always stuck in my mind as of course I was always looking for a setting for battles or a campaign for miniatures gaming.

I ran the adventure in Traveller with three of my friends as the characters. While I was prepared for an incursion by armed adventurers they had scientist characters and took a totally different approach to playing the adventure. Since their direction was a surprise for me, and quite different from all avenues covered in either adventure, I gave their characters good odds to buffalo the local officials and it worked. So they ably completed the adventure. But by this time I had done some more extensive development of the planet and came to like it as a potential game setting, hence my desire to continue in this venue.

This is just a bare introduction to the world of Hazel and how I came to develop and pick it as a locale to expand upon. If people want I can, I hope, show the development and direction I took to do so in more posts in a manner similar to but different from Mike’s.

[Punkrabbitt]

I am a long-ago Traveller player and I would be very interested for this.

Please visit my OSR products for sale at
www.drivethrurpg.com/browse/pub/17194/Punkrabbitt-Publishing

[Angel Barracks]

Would I be correct in thinking that Firefly drew from Traveller and has a similar sort of feel, when you said the name Hazel it instantly made me think of the big ol verse.

[madman]

Angel Barracks wrote:

Would I be correct in thinking that Firefly drew from Traveller and has a similar sort of feel, when you said the name Hazel it instantly made me think of the big ol verse.

The word on the ‘net is Joss Whedon played Traveller in college. He brought a lot of that “feel” to the show. Although the show only deals with one solar system (spoiler) the planets are far enough apart to require “jumps” be made between them. As for the western feel who knows. Traveller is very open wrt settings so maybe his take, maybe his game master played that feel or perhaps he just likes that feel or watched a lot of oaters as a kid.

[madman]

After the adventure I had collected and worked up enough on Hazel that I liked the feel of it. It is only capable of manufacturing 1910s to 1930s technology goods. It has a very basic dirtside starport serviced by a smallish town of partially local workers, imperial citizens from other worlds who were required by their jobs to be there and a few people “just passing though” but for whatever reason their stay has been extended.

I thought of a few possible reasons why the rebellion may have occurred but a general feel made clear in the adventure stayed in the back of my mind and provided the impetus; Hazel was reportedly bereft of natural resources, especially mineral, but efforts to verify that fact were hampered by local laws and customs. Also it was adjacent to a major planet, the subsector capital, so I took the idea that, there may be more resources but have been kept from being found, and ran with it. I had the world settled long ago by a group of refugees who took to the hardscrabble life on the planet as a challenge. It was the only place they could call home so they did their best, making it productive, but just barely. Small amounts of surplus agricultural products would be traded with the neighboring worlds for needed tools and equipment to make farming easier and open up new areas. About a thousand years later a small influx of settlers from the nearby worlds, especially the sub sector capital, helped boost the population. These new settlers had to adapt to the hardscrabble lifestyle. Many did and slowly, and in limited ways, prospered, to a limited extent, and integrated well into the communities. A lot didn’t, thinking they were going to find the streets paved with gold or other riches just there for the taking or exploiting. They quickly gave up and passed on. Those that stayed brought skills, knowledge and wealth which allowed them to raise up the world and start some limited manufacturing. They were welcomed by the initial settlers as having the same attitudes as they had and willing to “roll their sleeves up” and pitch in. About a couple hundred years ago another influx of better off settlers came to Hazel. Like the last wave they were a very mixed bunch. But many (too many?) of the well financed ones found ways to insinuate themselves into the world, often knowing how to live off the work of others while creating little or no value to the planet. The original settlers and the first wave of immigrants soon grew to resent these interlopers. But not before they managed to acquire tracts of prime farmland, gain control over much of the financial institutions and insinuate themselves into the limited political life of the planet.

The adventure takes place about a decade after the start of the rebellion. So for the first couple miniatures games I set them right near, one before actually, the start of the rebellion. We played these scenarios using Stargrunt II rules as I liked the variable die type to account for quality of the forces. I was also enamored of only needing to roll only a few dice and “buckets of dice”. As I was to find out that came with the price of lots of mental maths to determine what type of die needed to be thrown for what combat result as the forces were reduced by casualties.

The first scenario occurred before the rebellion got its start. One descendant of the original settlers joined the Imperial Marines becoming a highly skilled and regarded spec ops trooper. On his return visits home he became more agitated by the detrimental influence the new commers were having on his home world and eventually decided things had to change and since no one else was going to do anything he was going to have to be the one to push. A number of his buddies from the military often came with him on his visits home and realized the inequities had to end. So when they mustered out of the service a number returned to Hazel to see what could be done. A long winded set up for a couple sentence scenario wrap up I know. The powers that be got wind of what was happening and decided to nip this in the bud as it were. Now Hazel has a population of about 7 million but no standing army, just some of the local bureaucrats, service workers (think road crews, watermain workers, etc.), and other government workers without the means to bribe officials, had to provide two weeks of service per year plus a weekend a month in a very rough civil defense force. It’s primary mission, and the only one it ever did, was disaster relief and the occasional crowd control when either a local musical act or an off world celebrity performed or just came to call. The politicians sent a couple of squads of this defense force out to bring this agitator in. Now a couple squads was about all the “forces” had. They often recruited off world retired military individuals to provide leadership and training for the defense force. So this group travelled by boat to a small town, where the trooper and some of his friends were supposed to give a speech, and were dropped off nearby walking into town. There they “confronted” the “unarmed” mobs who had coalesced in the town and proceeded to take the individual into custody. Now you have to remember this is a very laid back world with almost no crime (except by the newcomers, who would guess) and no combat before. When the defense force entered the town it was more like two groups of neighbors (what frankly they all were) joining into a block party. No fighting and the agitator freely surrendered, as it was part of his long term plan to show the original inhabitants that the “powers that be” really had no power and no moral authority. The forces controlled by the agitator were mostly unarmed while some had farming implements and another group (fishermen) had the equivalent of knives and machetes. The militia had bolt action riles and no automatic weapons. The agitators friends had some high tech assault rifles but kept them well hidden and were told not to use them except in self defense. Similarly the leaders hired by the government were also armed with high tech weaponry they brought with them. Not knowing how they would be dealt with they kept theirs close at hand. In the end once the two groups came together no situation developed, much to the annoyance of the people ordering (one snitch accompanied the expedition) the local defense force, who did little to hide the fact that if the agitators were to be injured or killed they would take no action.

The second scenario took place only a couple weeks later in the same, now not so sleepy fishing village. Now the defense force, who were a little better trained but no more trigger happy then before, had word that the agitator’s friends were starting to arm and train the locals. The agitator was due to be released as actually he had done nothing wrong, there were no laws broken (frankly no laws covered this as it was never a thing) and the original settler groups were much more agitated by his detention than apparently anything he did. A sweep to search for and confiscate any weapons was ordered. But again the locals, who did have guns now, and the defense force did little damage to each other before the locals were captured, disarmed and the agitator’s friends fled before they could be detained.

I purposely made these two scenarios very low key wrt combat as well as aggression. The locals all saw each other more as family and neighbors as opposed to opponents and were more likely to start a block party (which happened in the first scenario) than exchange shots.

The agitator was released and made some irritating speeches about freedoms and intimidation which did nothing to calm the newcomers but did put the original settlers on edge.

Enough for now.

[Angel Barracks]

madman wrote:

About a thousand years later a small influx of settlers from the nearby worlds, especially the sub sector capital, helped boost the population.

madman wrote:

They were welcomed by the initial settlers as having the same attitudes as they had and willing to “roll their sleeves up” and pitch in.

madman wrote:

About a couple hundred years ago another influx of better off settlers came to Hazel.

madman wrote:

The original settlers and the first wave of immigrants soon grew to resent these interlopers.

How long do people live in your setting?

 

[madman]

Angel Barracks wrote:

How long do people live in your setting?

I figure typical farmers, workers, etc. 30 to 50 years. Bureaucrats, bankers basically anyone not wearing themselves out would be 50 to 70 years. Of course in any population this is median and some would have short lives, accidents, disease or natural disasters, while others would grow old and be revered for their knowledge.

Sorry for the interruption but life.

[Author]

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