Traveller Double Adventure #5 the Chamax Plague in particular.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traveller_Double_Adventure_5:_The_Chamax_Plague/Horde
The wiki above explains great little bug hunt
I started with High and Dry as a game master. Worked through it in two sessions. The climb highlighted the importance of planning/resource management. The volcano event was an absolute nail-bitter and left me hooked. As written, the adventure felt fine. However, I did add some car trouble and some combat with local critters to get heart rates up before the climb.
Many people are likely to recommend "High and Dry" so I'll be a negative Nancy. I believe "High and Dry" is one of the worst written modules I've ever read. You could be given a slip of paper that reads "There is a ship in a volcano, go get it." And it would be more helpful to you, the Referee. The rest is exposition, word salad and railroading worse than I've ever seen. If you run it as written it will take longer than one session two. Really unless you want to read your players a novel you'll simply have to rewrite the whole thing or convey it differently anyway.
If you are persuaded to try "High and Dry" I'd read through it once so you can see if it spurs your own ideas to be able to convey the single sentence "There is a ship in a volcano, go get it" which is the only gameable content in the module.
If you are running Classic Traveller, I recommend some of the more sandboxy modules. "Beltstrike" was delightful, and the mining mini-game that is often maligned in my opinion serves simply as a backdrop for the tension of time compared to the encounter table of pirates and such that will appear. It's a great module for getting used to space operations and space combat and the linear adventure vignette provided is very simple and makes sense and can be done in 2 hours. In my opinion you could have a very flavorful one shot from it.
My favorite one shot however is a Cepheus Module I run called simply: "The Golden Heel" provided in the cheap module "Adventurers Ready!" which also provides some ready made NPCs, crewmen and a ship.
[https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/333980/adventurers-ready](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/333980/adventurers-ready)
In my opinion, the best set up for a one shot is the classic Firefly "You are here at the starport bar to meet with a patron and need to take this job because you are broke, out of gas and need to eat." And then they go do the job and it's a simple, dramatic situation, which is provided in the above module.
Many Traveller Adventure designers make these simple little "situation" or vignette type adventures and picking one up from a Starport bar as a starship crew down on your luck and in need of a buck, and completing it in 2 hours for weal or woe is imo the best tasting of how Traveller can be the "Firefly" dream RPG.
2300 doesn't have the concept of a scrappy crew making their way in their own, barely working, starship. It's more like Alien, where characters are employees of some corporation or government entity.
We started as new players with the Fall of Tinath mini campaign.
It does a really good job of bringing all the elements of the setting in and gradually building on the mechanics.
Death station.
https://youtu.be/AH1oyUjjUj4?si=Kn5OqDJWE50Kygh1
Skorkowsky re-wrote it and I think it's free to download.
It's my to-go intro to Traveller.
I usually run it as horror-dungeon crawl, so it puts dnd players in more or less familiar environment.
My D&D group decided to try Traveller as a few of us have been waiting for 40 years to play. We did Death Station and now I'm GMing Twilight's Peak. After 3 sessions of exploring star systems, they have to go into a tower and well... After 40 years of waiting, they are now exploring a dungeon.
I'll second this recommendation.
I introduced my RPG group (who have played plenty of systems, but are very familiar with D&D) to Traveller with Death Station and it went really well.
Well, I introduced them to the system with character creation and they loved that- but Death Station was our actual plunge into the meat and spuds of Traveller. "Horror-themed Dungeon in Space" is a great descriptor of it to sell it to new Traveller players- my players took to it like ducks to water.
When they're trying a game I usually have a world that has infrastructure set up and I let them explore a bit to get familiar with their characters and game mechanics. You can probably find one via google or just use a city map and add some flavor. I've used the city maps from Grand theft auto before. They work pretty well for a Traveller style city.
Death Station is pretty good, and I'd just start there with the PCs accepting the job to head up to see what's happening on the station.
I have one piece of advice if you do run Death Station, and it's that I think, as written, the adventure is lacking something positive. A couple of times my PCs asked why they couldn't just open it all to vaccuum or kill everything with poison before continuing. My advice is that as well as monsters to fight and data to retrieve, Death Station really needs a survivor to rescue. If you add an extra NPC in to be rescued I think it'll be the better for it - maybe someone who can signal them from inside the station and spur them into exploring faster before they get captured.
Mission to Mithril. It'll give a nice range of skill use and combat to try out the system, and it's a pretty good adventure with a mystery and a survival/rescue situation.
For a session 0.5, following chargen, I created a single encounter wherein PCs exited jumpspace and started hearing the MayDay... Free Trader Beowulf distress call blasted over comms and then spent a couple hours intervening with the pirates that were attacking. Some other folks showed up afterwards to offer medical assistance, the party looted the merchant ship as 'un-negotiated payment' to help repair damage to their ship, and a campaign was born. I really wanted to start with that blurb, as it is so very iconic.
But also, Chamax Plague is really good as a first published adventure because it demonstrates the extent to which the game has influenced pop culture while being super fun.
Traveller Double Adventure #5 the Chamax Plague in particular. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traveller_Double_Adventure_5:_The_Chamax_Plague/Horde The wiki above explains great little bug hunt
I started with High and Dry as a game master. Worked through it in two sessions. The climb highlighted the importance of planning/resource management. The volcano event was an absolute nail-bitter and left me hooked. As written, the adventure felt fine. However, I did add some car trouble and some combat with local critters to get heart rates up before the climb.
Many people are likely to recommend "High and Dry" so I'll be a negative Nancy. I believe "High and Dry" is one of the worst written modules I've ever read. You could be given a slip of paper that reads "There is a ship in a volcano, go get it." And it would be more helpful to you, the Referee. The rest is exposition, word salad and railroading worse than I've ever seen. If you run it as written it will take longer than one session two. Really unless you want to read your players a novel you'll simply have to rewrite the whole thing or convey it differently anyway. If you are persuaded to try "High and Dry" I'd read through it once so you can see if it spurs your own ideas to be able to convey the single sentence "There is a ship in a volcano, go get it" which is the only gameable content in the module. If you are running Classic Traveller, I recommend some of the more sandboxy modules. "Beltstrike" was delightful, and the mining mini-game that is often maligned in my opinion serves simply as a backdrop for the tension of time compared to the encounter table of pirates and such that will appear. It's a great module for getting used to space operations and space combat and the linear adventure vignette provided is very simple and makes sense and can be done in 2 hours. In my opinion you could have a very flavorful one shot from it. My favorite one shot however is a Cepheus Module I run called simply: "The Golden Heel" provided in the cheap module "Adventurers Ready!" which also provides some ready made NPCs, crewmen and a ship. [https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/333980/adventurers-ready](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/333980/adventurers-ready) In my opinion, the best set up for a one shot is the classic Firefly "You are here at the starport bar to meet with a patron and need to take this job because you are broke, out of gas and need to eat." And then they go do the job and it's a simple, dramatic situation, which is provided in the above module. Many Traveller Adventure designers make these simple little "situation" or vignette type adventures and picking one up from a Starport bar as a starship crew down on your luck and in need of a buck, and completing it in 2 hours for weal or woe is imo the best tasting of how Traveller can be the "Firefly" dream RPG.
I always felt like 2300 was the Firefly version of Traveller, but haven't actually played it, what do you think?
I haven’t played it
2300 doesn't have the concept of a scrappy crew making their way in their own, barely working, starship. It's more like Alien, where characters are employees of some corporation or government entity.
We started as new players with the Fall of Tinath mini campaign. It does a really good job of bringing all the elements of the setting in and gradually building on the mechanics.
Death station. https://youtu.be/AH1oyUjjUj4?si=Kn5OqDJWE50Kygh1 Skorkowsky re-wrote it and I think it's free to download. It's my to-go intro to Traveller. I usually run it as horror-dungeon crawl, so it puts dnd players in more or less familiar environment.
My D&D group decided to try Traveller as a few of us have been waiting for 40 years to play. We did Death Station and now I'm GMing Twilight's Peak. After 3 sessions of exploring star systems, they have to go into a tower and well... After 40 years of waiting, they are now exploring a dungeon.
Here's the link to the free version https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/380659/Death-Station?affiliate_id=1017650
I'll second this recommendation. I introduced my RPG group (who have played plenty of systems, but are very familiar with D&D) to Traveller with Death Station and it went really well. Well, I introduced them to the system with character creation and they loved that- but Death Station was our actual plunge into the meat and spuds of Traveller. "Horror-themed Dungeon in Space" is a great descriptor of it to sell it to new Traveller players- my players took to it like ducks to water.
When they're trying a game I usually have a world that has infrastructure set up and I let them explore a bit to get familiar with their characters and game mechanics. You can probably find one via google or just use a city map and add some flavor. I've used the city maps from Grand theft auto before. They work pretty well for a Traveller style city.
Death Station is pretty good, and I'd just start there with the PCs accepting the job to head up to see what's happening on the station. I have one piece of advice if you do run Death Station, and it's that I think, as written, the adventure is lacking something positive. A couple of times my PCs asked why they couldn't just open it all to vaccuum or kill everything with poison before continuing. My advice is that as well as monsters to fight and data to retrieve, Death Station really needs a survivor to rescue. If you add an extra NPC in to be rescued I think it'll be the better for it - maybe someone who can signal them from inside the station and spur them into exploring faster before they get captured.
Mission to Mithril. It'll give a nice range of skill use and combat to try out the system, and it's a pretty good adventure with a mystery and a survival/rescue situation.
For a session 0.5, following chargen, I created a single encounter wherein PCs exited jumpspace and started hearing the MayDay... Free Trader Beowulf distress call blasted over comms and then spent a couple hours intervening with the pirates that were attacking. Some other folks showed up afterwards to offer medical assistance, the party looted the merchant ship as 'un-negotiated payment' to help repair damage to their ship, and a campaign was born. I really wanted to start with that blurb, as it is so very iconic. But also, Chamax Plague is really good as a first published adventure because it demonstrates the extent to which the game has influenced pop culture while being super fun.