I'm currently playing a character in the Traveller TTRPG who possesses the "Steward" skill.
How is the Steward skill used in Traveller?
The Steward skill reflects a character's ability to serve and manage the needs of passengers on starships. As Traveller is frequently a game about adventuring around via interstellar travel, this skill is not as niche as it might initially appear.
Stewardship can involve:
preparing and serving meals,
scheduling entertainment for guests aboard the ship, and
other additional concierge-like duties.
Starships hosting high passage (that is, high-paying) clients require a player or NPC acting in the Steward role in order to take on these passengers in the first place. The more VIPs, the more stewards are needed, much like keeping a healthy ratio of teachers to children in a classroom.
My steward's journey: from space dolphins to galactic hors d'oeuvre
My character, Sam, originally started her career performing as part of an acrobatic troupe located on a water world. Their performances featured complex underwater dance sequences, all done live alongside space dolphins. (The space dolphins are not actually dolphins, but that's more or less the role and general evolutionary niche these creatures fit.)
In addition to performing, Sam tended to be the troupe member who managed the logistics and meals for shows and rehearsals, which is how she developed her Steward skill. Later on, she moved into an (immediately doomed) political activist career, and, out of credits and out of luck, signed on to a mission with the rest of the player characters which ultimately wound up with them all being kidnapped while in cryostasis (the Traveller module, Flatlined).
Several adventures later, she and the other player characters are now aboard The Astrea, a small but well-appointed space yaught, and Sam is now back in familiar territory - acting as the steward of the ship. I've been deeply enjoying having Sam collect bizarre and gastronomically challenging ingredients from each planet we visit, and then subjecting the rest of the crew to them in her meals. It's all for the noble cause of strengthening their humours!
Creating the menu for a Traveller crew
As a little treat, I decided to create an official menu for The Astrea, which passengers can use to pre-order their meals a week prior to a jump so that Sam can ensure everything is available as-needed.
I used a free Canva account to pull up a menu template featuring some ramen dishes, then swapped out most of the artwork to match the kinds of foods I've been serving up during our campaign. I'm on a real Szechuan cooking kick lately, so most of the meal titles are plays on Szechuan staples. The meal descriptions are all based on the cursed gastronomical wonderland inside my mind, however.
Scroll down for an image of the end result (or if you like, you can download the menu as a PDF, link below).
Comments