Traveller General - Spacers Never Die Edition

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>>53086180
>-2546
So... King Meskalamdug of Ur wrote it? I can dig that.

>>53086292
>I can dig that
Marc Miller literally dug it up in 1977 at a dig site in Iraq. True story.
Then during his divine/alien inspired translation, he read that in Traveller's Imperial Calendar -2546 is the equivalent of Solomani/real-life 1977AD.
It's wheels within wheels man. Or space wheels within space wheels

>>53086180

Inb4 all replies are post-Secrets of the Ancients shenanigans.

That campaign can have you muster out as a fucking immortal demigod!

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>>53086652
Well I mean, I asked how powerful you've gotten. That kind of implies how powerful you are at games end compared to games start.
But I get what you mean.

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Have a thing

>>53086960

Only kidding mate, no offense intended.

I find that it's rare a PC team becomes overpowered, if only because the game isn't really built to handle 'OP' characters.

Gaining skills ingame is near impossible unless it's GM fiat or an adventure reward like SotA. Generally your character at start isn't hugely different from the one you finish with.

There's exceptions, I'm sure, but it takes weeks to train a skill.

The only game where you have lots of those is actually Orbital 2100, where adventures can potentially be separated by full-on years of slow-coast travel, the PCs emerging as highly skilled badasses via the RAWs.

I once had a character go from a whimpy nobody to an engineering master on a trip from Earth -> Neptune. 28 months is ~112 weeks to train.

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>>53088056
>only kidding mate, no offense intended.
Oh no lad, no offence taken!

I probably could have phrased the question better. I was more thinking along the lines of Traveller/OSR lateral power, in the sense that it isn't how well your dude can pilot or how much they can bench press, more about their ability to exert power in context of the setting.

I mean how far have you/your players risen within the game world?
How rich are they, with respect to what they started with? How many ships do they command? How many noble bigwigs ask "What rating?" when they say jump?

>I once had a character go from a whimpy nobody to an engineering master on a trip from Earth -> Neptune. 28 months is ~112 weeks to train

Well I mean, you gotta pass the time somehow, right? May as well make it productive

>>53086180
General shit for a crew to do while stuck on board an escape pod?

I'm wanting to squeeze a whole session out of this idea.

Right now I've got them doing a haphazard space walk for salvage to fix their distress beacon. Any way to make general time killing activities more interesting?

>>53088361
How are your players about just-talking roleplaying?

You could mention that the escape pod has two packs of cards stowed in a panel somewhere as all good escape pods should
Make sure you actually have packs of cards on hand, so if they want to play a game of whatever they can do it IRL, but in-character.

>>53088507
>How are your players about just-talking roleplaying?
Terrible at it.

I was definitely going to do dice, I'll do cards as well but I think I'll get some sneers about how I'm just trying to fill time.

I think it could be really cool with the right group and I want to encourage RP but I'm not sure they'll bite.

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>>53089882

can any anons tell me the pros of Traveller 5? ASIDE from home defense?

>>53088361
Eat. Shit. Sleep.

You might want to look at manned space flight history too. Sounds like apollo and Gemini (and the soviet contemporary missions)

Any of the shenanigans that went on would be fair game.

Some that I remember -
* Having to calibrate the navigation system (from sextant readings through the window - is that a star or the cloud of ice particles around the capsule?).
* Hatches jamming/getting stuck
* Colds/illness

Now it's traveller, so I'd imaging that the capsule would have gravity (grav plates are cheap enough for cars). It's calibration or regulator might be wonky. (When was the last time you checked the tire pressure in your spare?)

There might be a radio that needs fixing.

If you run dry, and it's your style, it might be fun to do some flashback scenes to pad it (see Firefly's 'Out of Gas' for an example of this)

>>53090469
Thingbuilder is pretty cool, as is the idea of QREBS.

If you can make sense of the map portions of world gen it's pretty rich for a random terrain system.

Any tips for a new traveler GM, I was thinking of running a far future, cyberpunk style game, maybe incorporating only a few alien races. PC's working as agents for a large megacorp in my home-brew setting. Would traveler work for this type of game? I was thinking of giving them access to a spaceship as the reached about the middle of the campaign, for them to go and explore the colonies on astroids and far flung planets.
Any advice or general tips on how to run the system?

>>53093623
Mechanically Traveller can do all of that, yes.

Are you thinking of multiple systems with an alien race or two, or all in one system? Or some combination of the two so you can have aliens while limiting *play* to one system.

>>53093669
One system, aliens from separate systems but integrated into society

Anybody knows if there is any info online about The Great Game which Traveller 2300AD's creators used to develop the setting?

>>53090469

Pros? For actual play there are very little. For setting creation/construction, however, there is a shit ton of stuff.

Thingbuilder, alien creation, world mapping, QREBS, there are a lot of similar systems you can use to flesh out you setting.

>>53093623
>Would traveler work for this type of game?

Yes, very much so. I've run Traveller noir campaigns many times. Your plan to initially limit the action to one planet and then "step out" in the system and beyond later is a good one.

Many new GMs new to Traveller go too big too fast. They try to detail an entire sector only to end up finishing nothing and having nothing to use.

>>53095284

COTI would be a place to ask. IIRC, there are pictures of some of the maps. The rules are long lost however although someone claims to have partially recreated them.

What people don't understand about the Great Game is that it was an old school Kriegsspiel-type game. Any written rules are minimal and the results of play actions depend almost entirely on decisions by the gamemaster.

As long term grognards who started gaming in the early 70s, GDW could easily play such a game in which RULINGS are used instead of RULES. Current day sperglord gamers who need a written rule for every possible situation, plus most of the impossible ones, could never do so.

TL:DR - The Great Game was not the heavily detailed 4X game you want to think it was.

>>53095290
I just popped into mega to check out the things you described. Alien creation is somewhat usable but thingbuilder seems like a very autistic way to do a very simple thing.

>>53095818
>like a very autistic way to do a very simple thing.

Congratulations. You just described T5 in a nutshell.

Sadly, other than the similarly autistic FF&S we've no similar resource.

>>53095343
Thanks, any general tips on how to run the system. Generally have played fantasy RPGS like WFRP and D&D up until now, so this would be my first foray into sci-fi-fi

>>53096205

1st, combat is deadly. DEADLY. Your players will need to understand that.

2nd, they is no substantial difference between PCs and NPCs. Mooks and other easily handled, thwarted, killed, etc. cannon fodder do not exist.

3rd, they are no levels or XPs. While character advancement exists in varying degrees across the many versions, it's neither as easy or rewarding as d20 type games. Rewards are primarily in-game things like money, equipment, influence, and knowledge instead of meta-game things like increased HPs or Stat & Skill buffs.

4th, chargen is a game in itself. Making good choices in chargen requires some knowledge of Traveller and the campaign you'll be playing in. A good PC for a merc game will have little to do in the trade game, for example.

Seeing as you and your group are new to Traveller, I'd run a one-off "test drive" session fist. Select a Double Adventure from Classic, use the pregen characters in it, and walk through the scenario together. I'd recommend Chamax Plague because it touches on various aspects.

When you're ready to play your campaign, have a session devoted to chargen. Guide you players' choices to help their PCs fit your campaign. Forex, a noncombatant scientist isn't really going to fit well in your noir, corporation, cyberpunk game.

Finally, start small and only add those things which you absolutely need. Traveller is 40 years old and you can easily drown in all the materials which have been written for it.

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Jump

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>>53096205
What this anon said >>53096622

Also, Traveller is generally better at more grounded sci-fi. If you haven't watched the stuff mentioned in the OP (Firefly and Cowboy Bebop) I'd recommend doing so, as it's their broad tone that Traveller's good at.

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Jump-2

>>53102950

Always loved the Animal-class safari ship. There's a merchant version floating around the net someplace.

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>>53093623

>cyberpunk

Somebody on these generals long ago wrote a hacking add-on for MGT1, if you're into that sort of thing.

Traveller name generator site

http://www.spacecorsair.com/wordgen.html

anybody got Mindjammer up in the archives?

>>53105254

Mindjammer is in the MgT2e folder.

>>53105436
do any anons have a favorite not third imperium setting for traveller, homebrewed or in the archive?

>>53105587
I've been using a little backwater cluster of systems, ranging from tech level 5 to 10. The furthest system out has a world war going on, and the party is currently running higher tech weapons to them.

>>53105587

I've often played "over the border" in places like Foreven, The Beyond, The Islands, etc. The 3I is somewhere "back there" and not of any immediate importance.

There are some excellent 3rd party settings around now, stuff like Orbital, Outer Veil, Clement Sector, and others. Thanks to CE, there are many more in the pipeline too.

Thanks to Mongoose's idiocy in first releasing the SRDs and then later screwing over their 3rd publishers, an OSR is washing over Traveller and that's a good thing.

(Mongoose 2.0)

What's the simplest adventure I can run to see if my group wants to play Traveller?

>>53108981

Do you have to use Mongoose rules for the "test drive"? If not, I'd suggest running Classic's Chamax Plague from the Chamax Double adventure.

Classic is dead simple, basically roll 8+ for nearly everything. The adventure has pregenerated PCs and covers most of the Traveller tropes apart from trade. You fly a ship to intercept another one, make an EVA to board it, and save the pilot before it plunges into the local star. Next you negotiate with a company wanting to hire your ship to search for a missing science party. Next you fly to the world in question, land, and investigate an abandoned lab ship. During that investigation, you get to shoot at a LOT of Chamax bugs. When/If you're able, you than search the lab ship's computer to determine where the science party is. If you've enough time, you can even poke into some native ruins.

You could run this telling your group you're using Classic to gauge their interest. If they like the game, you tell them you'll use the more detailed MgT rules with it many options, more detailed chargen, etc.

>>53108981
High and Dry is a good introductionary adventure if you already set your mind on playing Traveller, but for checking out session it would be good to run some adventure from Classic folder, they should be pretty balanced in term of fight/skills/travel.

>>53109526

High and Dry is good, but are there pregens in it? Spending time in chargen during a "test drive" could turn some folks off.

>>53109707
Nope, at least not in MGT 2.

>>53110243

Too bad, it's a nice adventure. The referee could make up 10 or so and let his group select from them. They choose a pregen and are then given a few points to boost a stat and increase/add a skill.

That way you get playing right away and no one is stuck with a PC that doesn't "fit" the session.

>>53110280
Anybody willing can check out Classic pregens, or even take some characters from the numerous MGT books.

>>53109707
>but are there pregens in it?
Is MGT2 chargen really that difficult, or is this just crying into your beer?

>>53112401
Chargen is much hassle for generating statistics and skills, because most of the events that you roll will be unimportant for a person running a pregen in a one shot.

>>53112401
>Is MGT2 chargen really that difficult, or is this just crying into your beer?

It isn't difficult, far from it actually. Part of the problem is what >>53112798 refers to; you're rolling up a one-shot.

Another part of the problem has to do with the players having NEVER played Traveller before. Without that play experience, how will they know what sort of a PC the adventure requires? I used the scientist with no combat skills example already.

The anon in question can look over the many pregens in Classic and MgT. Some of those tailored for their particular adventures and some are more generic, but they'll still be a good pool to look over.

How would you suggest I make weapons available to the players? Many really powerful weapons are somehow dirt cheap in the central supply catalogue, and I really wouldn't like them to get the best possible things at the very start of the game just by throwing some of their benefit roll money at the nearest arms dealer.

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>>53114894
I'm pretty sure it says in the CSC that you're under no obligation to include that stuff at all, and that if you do some it should be pretty hard to get.

So if your players want a personal Rooty-Tooty Meson-Shooty you should probably make them work for it.
I'd dare say that most planets capable of building the crazy bullshit probably don't sell them to random space-hobos, so it's either a case of trying to get one as a favour from the government, or stealing one from whoever makes them.
Either that or they could try to find a high-tech Ancapistan world where they will sell actual you recreational nukes, but then the problem is that everyone else can buy them too.

Hell, that's another thing too. If your players can get crazy broken tech, so can NPCs, which should help to level the playing field a bit.

>>53115130
>So if your players want a personal Rooty-Tooty Meson-Shooty you should probably make them work for it.

THIS. Make all that cool stuff a goal and not a gift.

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>>53114894
>>53115130
>>53115356
I think allowing them to do such a thing would actually be balanced out, in some ways, due to the inherent restrictions on the usage of such weapons. I think it should be fairly easy to find someone to sell it to you--there are plenty of violent shit-hole planets which would (this further balances acquisition as you must brave a violent shit hole planet), gunrunners (another balancing factor; buying guns illegally is a big no-no on high law worlds), and of course the case of ex-soldiers who kept their weapons when their term was up, Switzerland-style. The biggest single balancing factor to this is one everyone seems to forget: Even if you have the biggest, nastiest plasmacaster that ignores conventional armor and walls, it's useless if you can't bring it off the ship with you.

The fact of the matter is, most of the worlds the PC's are going to be visiting early on (unless they WANT to die by ancap hellhole rape gangs) are going to have a high law level. Most of these planets don't even ALLOW personal firearm ownership unless you're part of a security form or have otherwise somehow gone through the trouble of acquiring a license, and the only reason they'll let you land with them ON YOUR SHIP in the first place is because Starports aren't theirs--they're the Imperium's. Sure, your players can scoff at this and bring them with them, but GM's should be encouraged to punish them for this with extreme prejudice; it's not going to be any easier smuggling a gun out of a high-tech high-law spaceport than it's going to be smuggling it out of a modern airport. There will be scanners. There will be guards. You may be able to get away with carrying that shit around inside the spaceport itself, but as soon as you step outside, you're in the planetary government's jurisdiction. And if you do get one through? Using a gun in a fight on a world where civilians don't have them means every squad car/air-raft in the precint is going to be on your ass.

>>53115568
And of course, it gets worse; just as in real life, the more police calls which come in about a gunfight and the more panicked they are, the more cops are going to come. And if those reports mention bigger guns? High-caliber rifles? Automatics? Energy weapons? They're going to send in their planetary equivalent of SWAT. Depending on the grade of weapons used, they may just skip that and send in the military.

And if they use it on low-law worlds? Well, that self-balances too; after all, the other guys will be carrying around the nastiest guns they can manage, too, like >>53115130 mentioned.

tl;dr: Don't put artificial barriers in the way of your player's ability to buy guns. The natural ones should be sufficient enough; it's just that you have to remember that the natural ones are there and make them very apparent as Referee.

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>>53115633
On a similar vein, having the weapon doesn't necessarily mean you have the ammo for it. It's gonna be just as hard to get rifle-food on a high-law world as it is to get a rifle, which could make for interesting RP usages of the skill system: I'm imagining more mechanically-oriented characters with ranks in chemistry perhaps having the option to reload spent brass to make ammunition whose quality depends on their successes in skill rolls in relevant areas. I think it'd be really cool to allow people to bypass law restrictions in this fashion; like, maybe have chances to malfunction go up depending on how badly they roll. "Okay, so I can't get ammo here, so I'll make some--I just have to be careful, because it means I may be clearing more Failure to Feed malfunctions from underpowered rounds, or if I'm really unlucky, having my gun blow up in my hand."

>>53115633
>Don't put artificial barriers in the way of your player's ability to buy guns.

Unless you're using the MGT1 CSC, it's full of terribly written, broken stuff.

>>53115962
I can see the marketing now
"Every girl needs her BRA."

>>53095284
Here you go...
http://www.waynesbooks.com/TheGame.html

>>53122263
>http://www.waynesbooks.com/TheGame.html
Very interesting, although still unplayable. Thanks.

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jump-1

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you're sitting in the Regina Starport cantina and this guy slaps your gf's ass - what do you do?

btw this guy is 250lbs and has no concept of death

>>53124834

Ugliest ship in all of Traveller. Makes my head spin looking at it.

>>53126229

I cast flare.

>>53126229
Wonder what the heck he's doing so far from home, and tell my gf she should be honored that an alien crossed five sectors to slap HER ass.

>>53127711
>ugliest ship in all of Traveller.
Hnesshant, anyone?

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So.

Someone recommended this system to me for my homebrew scifi setting. Looking in the Mega, there's a lot of shit to sift through. 5 versions of the game. So, my question is what would the best system be for a semi-gritty setting with less civilization and tech and more wild, unexplored planets (i.e. less lasers more bullets, less hoverbikes more ATVs) while still having ayylmaos and interplanetary travel? Also, which has the best system for ships, especially concerning customization?

>>53131143
What do you like in a system?

Traveller is already more bullets than lasers, with ayylmaos and interplanetary travel.

The only parts that aren't gritty is Jump Drives, Grav Technology and Fusion Tech. (So hoveratvs are a thing for everyone, but I could see, if you were on the edge, an atv might be easier to maintain.)

>>53131143
>what would the best system be for a semi-gritty setting with less civilization and tech and more wild, unexplored planets (i.e. less lasers more bullets, less hoverbikes more ATVs) while still having ayylmaos and interplanetary travel?


That's pretty much any edition, just have to fiddle with the available tech level a bit. Popular choices are Classic and Mongoose 1e/2e. Cepheus Engine is an up-and-comer, with third parties jumping ship due to MGT 2e's bullshit licensing rules.

>Also, which has the best system for ships, especially concerning customization?

For simple and easy to use, I'd go with either Classic's High Guard, or Mongoose 2e's High Guard. I haven't looked at Cepheus Engine's ship building rules yet, so I don't know much about it, but the system's based on a mix of of MGT1e and CT, so it should be fine.

If you want more detail and crunch, the crunchiest is Traveller: The New Era's book, Fire, Fusion, & Steel, which lets you drill down to the nuts and bolts level if you're autistic enough to want to do that.

>>53131240
Well, I'm trying to persuade a group of 3.PF kiddies to play something that's not D&D, so I'm thinking of simplicity of mechanics (so I can learn to GM quickly and homebrew ships/items/creatures for when established content isn't enough) but still having a lot of options for character building and combat. Also wild survival mechanics would be nice, but I can improvise that if there are none.

>>53131336
>character building

That might be a problem. Traveller defaults to a lifepath system where you roll to find out what your guy's backstory and skills are.
There have been point buy systems made for it (Mongoose includes one) but they've never been a very good fit.

>>53131336
Generally, Traveller is pretty simple on the player's end. More complicated on the ref end though

>>53131422
>>53131446
Hmm, allright. Looks like I'll start with classic then. Any must have PDFs from the Mega besides the obvious core rules?

>>53131505
High Guard maybe? It expands ship-building, but some people prefer the simplicity and "small ship" nature of Core ship-building. High Guard's the one that adds fuckheug captial ships.

Citizens of the Imperium (I think) has more options for civilian careers during chargen, so that could be nice.

Also, you should consider having a look at Cepheus Engine. It's a retro-clone of classic, with some of the better bits of classic supplements integrated into core. It's also a bit clearer and easier to read
It's pretty much Traveller's Swords and Wizardry

>>53131505

Seconding HIgh Guard, and Citizens of the Imperium. Ignore the chargen stuff in High Guard, Classic has two chargen methods, basic and advanced. Basic is what you find in the core rules and the CotI book, Advanced shows up in the various expansion books like High Guard and is much slower and generates much stronger characters.
Also grab the Rule63A pdf, as it's a huge help to understand the loose task system of CT.

>>53131774
>It's a retro-clone of classic

Actually it's Mongoose 1e with a few bits of Classic in it.

>>53128670

Hnesshant doesn't google.

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>>53133194

Found it in a thread from last year, turns out he misspelled it.

http://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/48535347/#q48582330

It's the Hnneshant Tradeboat from the IISS Ship Files. See also the Leviathan, which is basically a big flying brick.

>>53134413
Huh. I kinda like it.

>>53134413
Confirmed for Ugly+6. To compare: Leviathan, Ugly+4.

>>53092734
Check out Apollo 13.
Hitchcock's Lifeboat
and Stowaway to the Moon (1975)
or Das Boot and Run Silent Run deep.

>>53127711
>Ugliest ship in all of Traveller. Makes my head spin looking at it.

Very true, but also one of the most fascinating ships. People have been trying to explain and/or understand it since that 1979 JTAS issue. Miller finally explained a few things about it during a con Q&A last year which someone recorded and put up as a podcast. There's a link at COTI.

1st, the two jump drives, jump2 and jump3, are actually exponential drives from T5. The ship's max range is then either 2^3 (8) or 3^2 (9) parsecs.

2nd, AN is an example of the "ship of Theseus" trope. It's a very old ship which has been repaired so often and for so long that little or nothing remains of the original vessel. USS Constitution is another example. She was commissioned in 1797 but very little remains physically from that ship in 1797.

3rd, the ship dates from the early Vilani jump drive period before the 1st Imperium. An explorer misjumped and was rescued by an alien race who helped him repair his ship. The exponential jump drive was their improvement. The explorer returned to Vland, used the ship to make a fortune, and his descendants have used & maintained it every since. By the time of the Classic AN adventure, those descendants had lost track of it.

can anybody give me a simple explanation of the various 3rd party settings for CE? and is These Stars Are Ours it, or will they also do Ashes of Empires at some point? for those who don't know, Ashes was set after the Terran Republic from TSAO imploded in and on itself

>>53136007
any other fascinating ships?

>>53131336
>character building

Other anons have already answered your questions about gritty play, combat, ships, and whatnot. I'm going to caution you about introducing 3.PF kiddies to Traveller's chargen and style of play.

Traveller is VERY different from the D&D, d20, PF style of games they've played in the past. There are NO levels, XPs, feats, etc. which turn the PCs into demigods who can shrug off lightning bolts and slay entire armies without getting a hangnail. PCs in Traveller are mostly ordinary people in extraordinary situations. While increasing skills and stats is possible in Trav, it's both a lengthy process and one that yields small results.

Rewards are in-game things like money, equipment, and influence rather than meta-game things like levels and HPs. That makes chargen important because the PC you begin with is pretty much the PC you'll end with.

PCs and NPCs are on par with each other too. No mooks, no cannon fodder. That means combat is DEADLY as anyone with a gun can quickly kill anyone else.

Run a few "test drive" sessions to help your players transition between the two play styles.

>>53136421

Check out the Kinunir adventure in Classic, the Leviathan adventure, and the AHL supplement. Those books present entire classes of ships with noteworthy, mysterious, or unlucky ships noted.

Some examples are the Kinunir cruiser which disappeared in the Marches, a Leviathan was pirated and has been seen in various systems, and a badly damaged AHL cruiser is floating in a sea of ammonia in a gas giant in Zhodani space.

>>53136614
AHL?

And these are all for classic?

>>53136674

Alzhanti High Lightning (AHL). It's both a ship design and a man-to-man skirmish level war game for Traveller. It's in the Classic folder. Look for Supplement 5: Lightning Class Cruiser and look in the Classic games folder for the associated maps, war game rules, etc.

>>53136850

Sorry, Azhanti and not Alzhanti. Slip of the thumb.

>>53136614
>the Kinunir cruiser which disappeared in the Marches

There's a novel about that one, Fate of the Kinunir, in the Library Data Archives in the OP. It's pretty solid, and presents a good feel for how things work out on the frontier. Most of the story revolves around the Kinunir being in a backwater system trying to get repairs and deal with pirates and crooked planetary government and so forth.

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>>53131331
Is the T4 FFS as good as the TNE one?

>>53137164

T4 had some nice ideas, but was very poorly edited, and had a ton of problems. I wouldn't recommend it as anything more than a place to steal bits from.

>>53137107
>There's a novel about that one,

"Fate of the Kinunir" is quite possibly the WORST novel I've ever read, RPG based or not. Seriously. It made me ashamed that I play Traveller. It made me furious that people reading it would think it represented Traveller.

Vardeman is a worthless hack who is wholly ignorant of important aspects of the game and setting. In one scene he has a marine officer standing on the bridge's aft bulkhead after taking his acceleration "pills" despite the fact that the Kinunir's thrust is parallel to it's decks. He has no conception of how time, distance, and acceleration works in Traveller space combat as the opening scene with the pirate shows.

>>53137251

t. autism

>>53137272

Wanting a Traveller novel to actually follow Traveller's setting, technological assumptions, and other unique aspects is autistic?

Whatever you need to believe, faggot.

>>53137164
>Is the T4 FFS as good as the TNE one?

No. They fucked up most of the equations during the editing & proofreading process.

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>>53137343

Pointing at some parts where the author fucked up the details and then declaring it the WORST NOVEL EVER is, if not autistic, then at the least it makes you the Comic Book Guy.

>>53137453
>Pointing at some parts where the author fucked up the details and then declaring it the WORST NOVEL EVER is, if not autistic, then at the least it makes you the Comic Book Guy.

I didn't declare it the WORST NOVEL EVER, asshole. I said it was the WORST novel I've ever READ. I'm mortally certain there are thousands of Harlequin romance novels out there which are worse.

I'm also not talking about niggling details. I'm talking about ignoring fundamental parts of the setting the book was supposed to represent. I'm also talking about execrable writing, wooden characters exhibiting irrational behavior, and huge plot holes. The book wouldn't even get a passing grade in a middle school creative writing course.

In one paragraph, Vardeman has the ship's captain seriously consider ordering his marines to MURDER everyone aboard the yacht he'd just saved from pirates because it would be "easier" than dealing with them. In another scene, the same captain is yelling at his XO about the AI program which has been installed in the ship's computer while also thinking about how blue her eyes are and noting how her tits push out the front of her uniform. Hell, Vardeman's captain makes Janeway in ST:VOY seem sane.

If the WH40K or Shadowrun novels were as bad as Vardeman's book, players and fans of those settings would be screaming bloody murder.

>>53137666
Well then, what're the good Traveller books?

>>53137761
There are Traveller books?

>>53137761

Agent of the Imperium is damn good, and not just "good for a tie-in book."

I'd rate Fate of the Kinunir as "pretty decent as far as shitty tie-in books go" but apparently some folks disagree vehemently.

>>53137761
>Well then, what're the good Traveller books?

Agent of the Imperium. It's by Marc Miller himself and, yes, a sequel is in the works.

>>53137896
>There are Traveller books?

Several. They're all in the Archive. The TNE books are meh, the T4 book is meh, "Fate of the Kinunir" is shit, and "Agent of the Imperium" is mind boggling.

A few people have sniffed about AotI from a purely literary perspective, but from a Traveller perspective its incredible. The Imperium is suddenly incredibly strange, brand spanking new, and intimately familiar all at the same time.

After reading it I was surprised to see how alike and different "my" 3I was compared to Miller's. A few /tg/ threads back we talked about how Traveller had always been wheels within wheels and stories remaining the same while perceptions changed. Miller does that in spades in AtoI.

It's almost a secret history of sorts. All the events, names, and dates are exactly the same, but the hows and whys of everything is suddenly very different.

>>53137761
The TNE novels rank in the middle. Not Agent quality, but hardly Vardeman or Askegren, either.

There has been some good buzz about a book written by Greg Lee (of Lee's Guide, a CT supplement) and finished just before a heart attack got him last month. Hopefully it will see print.

>>53138223
>There has been some good buzz about a book written by Greg Lee

Lee's Guide and Cirque were good, so here's hoping.

There are also the Swycaffer books from the 80s. He wrote that big starport article in Dragon Mag way back when. Most of the books are decent, a couple are just not good. They are not strictly in the setting, but close enough to be considered "compatible with". Their setting is post-empire, and could be Long Night with a little stretch, or post-TNE more easily.

There are also books that are expressly not Traveller but fit its feel nicely. Faust's "Essence of Evil" trio, for example. A little rough at first but a fine read by the end.

>>53138299
>There are also the Swycaffer books from the 80s. He wrote that big starport article in Dragon Mag way back when.

Exonidas(?) starport right? A very interesting setting which is in the Archive.

>>They are not strictly in the setting, but close enough to be considered "compatible with". Their setting is post-empire, and could be Long Night with a little stretch, or post-TNE more easily.

Among other things lots of geneering IIRC. Commoners are genetically engineered to defer to the nobility. Sort of like what Stirling later did in his Draka series with Homo servus and Homo drakus.

and Traveller's not a setting for robotics, gengineering, or nanobots, not much fancy 'modern' sci fi, is there? except, apparently the galaxiad, if it ever comes out?

>>53139453
All of them are present, but generally background noise. If the main GURPS Traveller book in in the archive read the Nanotech sidebar.

>>53138402
>Exonidas(?) starport right?
Yes. The article also serves as the setting intro for all of his "Traveller" fiction.

>>53139453
>robotics

Robotics is literally beneath notice, they're below the "level of resolution". Robots at work are everywhere, people in-game just don't notice them like we don't notice telephone poles.

>>gengineering

Huge in the setting. Geneered critters and sentients are everywhere. People clone themselves and use cloning to have children. The Terrans who settled on Darrian during the Long Night gave themselves better ozone tolerance with a retrovirus. One geneered species, the Vargr, is even a major race. Again like robots, genetic engineering is "below the level of resolution". People in-game don't make a fuss about it.

>>or nanobots

Drexlerian nano is a thermodynamic impossibility. Other nano tech are certainly in use. The Imperium has had "makers" for it's entire existence and used them early on to entice worlds to join. Again, it's a "below the level of resolution" thing.

It's a 21st C vs. 57th C perception thing and deliberately so. We'd gawk at a forklift which doesn't need an operator remarking on how fantastic that robot is. They'd say "WTF? It's just a forktruck." We'd squee over clones, "fishmen", sentient bears, and all the rest. They'd say "WTF? That stuff is thousands of years old, we do it all the time." We'd goggle at nanotech cleaning plaque filled arteries or makers "printing" TL15 goodies. They'd say "WTF? That's everyday shit. What are you, a fucking caveman?"

Traveller has robots, genetic engineering, and nanotech. Traveller has had those things from the beginning. What Traveller does is present those things like the ho-hum, everyday, tech the people of the 57th C perceive them as and not as the ZOMG!!! pants wetting tech people from the 21st C would perceive them as.

It's part of the "We're not in Kansas anymore..." feeling you're supposed to present as a referee. You're suppose to say "The forktruck is here to unload the ship..." and not "ZOMG!!! A ROBOT FORKTRUCK IS HERE!!! ISN'T THAT CRAZY!!!"

>>53137164
Actually its more or less the same. There are a few tweaks added for the T4 setting as opposed to the TNE one.
It was plagued by a typesetting issue so you want to grab the errata document available online. The equations have a -> where there should be a multiply sign.

How do you handle the ship's locker?
I have this mental image of the locker as some kind of disorganized tool shed. You know what might (should) be in there, but actually finding it might require some luck. So finding a specific item would require a Recon check, and once they remove it, the players know it's no longer in there, until they replace it (for credits) or put it back. So you don't have a list of items that ARE in there, but a list of items that definitely are NOT in there.
What do you think? My players thought it was fair, but I'd like a second opinion.

>>53089882
>>53089901
Wow those are pretty

>>53098660
I'd jump that sexy russian thing if you know what i mean

>>53140751
Although I like your view of the 3I, it's looks like a retcon. The original LBBs did not mention robots; computers were multi-ton devices modeled after ENIAC, and so forth. The low tech level (for being x000 years in the future) was explained with the Vilanis' need for safety and security.

So even if this new view is spread by Marc himself, I'd say the LBBs were closer to Buck Rogers than to the singularity.

>>53124834
This must be a prison ship, because no one would board that ugly POS voluntarily

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>>53142427
It depends. Generally I limit offensive equipment by setting a TL a level or two lower than what you'd otherwise get from benefits (so, say, TL10 for guns) and set a credit limit of, say, 1KCr. Essentially, stuff that's not important enough for players to track on their character sheets shouldn't be important enough to noticeably change the mechanics of the game. Perhaps there's an extra blowtorch or boltcutters in there and maybe even a spare vacc-suit, but certainly no combat armor or even an ACR.

Players who didn't have the foresight to prepare should live with that choice. It's also a useful referee tool as a credit sink, in case of careful characters/players who can manage their mortgages well.

>>53142650
Robots were introduced with JTAS 1, as the setting was just starting to form. That early enough for you? Not everything was going to fit into the core rules.

Computer installations taking many tons on a starship does not mean the processing core itself takes up all of that space.

Geneering also goes back to the Vargr in general and to the Dolphins for the modern era. Also all in the 70s or early 80s.

Nanotech was barely a thing even in SF when Traveller was released. It is a bit of a retcon now, but if that really bothers you then defending it from the Flash Gordon/Buck Rogers position, when exception-based reality was still the default, is like fighting fire with napalm.

>>53142698
Way too small for that.

>>53143889
Lost in the shuffle of editions is the Survival Rifle. Not a combat weapon by any stretch, unless you consider hunting domestic cows to be combat.

Hey all. Looking at running Traveller for some friends as I like look of the game, and love the sort of Firefly and Bebop scifi that it's likened to. Would Traveller be conducive to a one shot? I know the character creation would be fun, especially with everyone together witnessing all their life events and the connections and such. What's a good idea for a first game? I know Traveller is very broad but yeah.

>>53146549

Give BiTS' module Cold, Dark Grave a look. They ran it as a one-shot at conventions for a while, and it's pretty highly regarded.

>>53146293

Always a good idea.
At least one gun as well as several knives.
Maybe some sort of memory-plastic multitool like in Weber's Prince Roger series that is a shovel, blade, prybar in it's various "settings"

>>53142427
>How do you handle the ship's locker?

1st, I never saw the Ship's Locker in literal terms. Naturally, sperglords took the term to mean an ACTUAL compartment like a tool shed and even drew deck plans reflecting that.

As someone who had served aboard ships, I saw the term Ship's Locker referring to equipment held in common for the ship and stored in various locations. Tool kits would be in engineering or near the equipment & vehicles they maintained, vacc suits would be near airlocks, rescue balls would be scattered about, etc.

The nearest thing I had to the sperglord version of the Ship's Locker was an arms locker where most weapons and ammo were secured.

2nd, rather than have endless lists of equipment and spare parts or spending too much time "shopping" for the same we mostly used a "Money In, Money Out" system. The players simply set aside money for the locker and, when they took an item out, its cost was applied against the balance.

Because not all items are alike, we divided them into categories based on the likelihood the PCs would have bought/stocked them. The biggest group was "no brainers" like vacc suit patch kits. Stuff like that was in the "locker" as long as their was money. The next category was stuff "pros" would have on hand. Whether it was present depended on an 8+ roll against a skill & the money. The final category was "We bought that?". It needed a 10+ roll and featured stuff like major/costly repair parts for turret weapons.

>>53142650
>Although I like your view of the 3I, it's looks like a retcon.

It isn't. They had THREE books of FORTY EIGHT pages apiece to lay out an entire universe.

Equally importantly, thanks to the type of gamers who existed in the 70s and who they had already had been writing rules for, they were used to people who could THINK for themselves and working things out rather than insisting on every jot & tittle being laid out for them.

As >>53145846 explained, rules for robots showed up in JTAS #1 and robots were featured in more than half of the proto-Trav adventures, the geneered Vargr & the Droyne/Ancients who uplifted them date from '79 if not earlier, and computers being more than processing units and instead encompassing sensors, comms, workstations, etc. dates from "Mayday" in 1978.

Robots, genetic engineering, and post-ENIAC computers are IMPLICIT in the materials and have been since the first. If literal minded sperglords haven't been able to "grok" that fact, the fault is with them and not with the rules.

>>53148904
>At least one gun as well as several knives.

Good ideas both. I think the Survival Rifle got "lost" for a couple of reasons. 1st, PCs being PCs, they're going to have their own weapons even if they have to hide them in their own body cavities.

2nd, the Survival Rifle's "stats" aren't it's own. Instead, it's described as a "rifle minus 2". Apart from weighing only 2.5 kg (which includes 500 rounds!), the Survival Rifle simply isn't unique enough to be memorable.

>>53146592

Let me second this recommendation. The module has pregens too which can save time for a group just wanting to "test drive" Traveller.

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>>53095476

>COTI would be a place to ask. IIRC, there are pictures of some of themaps. The rules are long lost however although someone claims to have partially recreated them.

The rules are not lost.

http://stalexone.tripod.com/gg2/2300game.htm

Nor are the maps.

http://waynesbooks.com/TheGame.html

Several Great Games have been attempted. A couple are still active. None has ever been completed.

https://sites.google.com/site/2300adgame/home

anybody have any idea how to stat wafers? I was thinking +2 to +4 to skill checks relevant to the personality inside the wafer

>>53149671

I wouldn't make it cumulative, rather you're rolling the wafer personality's skill instead of your own.
Remember that +1 makes you capable of getting a job in the field, +2 is a skilled professional, and a +4 is a renowned expert who's probably known far and wide.

How are Imperial Navy ships generally armed, kinetics? lasers? missles? some combination of all three?

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>>53112798

>Chargen is much hassle for generating statistics and skills, because most of the events that you roll will be unimportant for a person running a pregen in a one shot.

Then pick a few from 1001 Chars or CotI or Veterans or ....

>>53149648
>The rules are not lost.

The "rules' are lost because The Game relied on RULINGS from Frank Chadwick the referee and not explicitly written rules. Without Chadwick running the game, any game will not be The Game.

Nilsen notes that language groups were important in play but there are no written rules on how language groups effect game play because all of that was left to Chadwick making rulings. Without Chadwick explaining how and why he made the rulings he made, no set of Great Game rules are or can be complete.

The rules are also lost because, as with Kreigsspiel, the rules CHANGED during the game. Nilsen also notes that the MAP changed during game play too, but doesn't say how or why.

That's why I used the example of Kriegsspiel. I hoped clueless fuckwits would google the term and educate themselves on the fundamental differences between how the Great Game was played and how most current 4X game are played.

>>Nor are the maps

The maps are lost because the photographs of them DO NOT show the details of all the resource & holding boxes on the map. While you can see North America and its boxes, for example, you cannot see enough detail to determine what all those boxes in NA are.

Just because I can take pictures of an ASL game at a con, it doesn't mean I now have the ASL maps.

>>Several Great Games have been attempted. A couple are still active. None has ever been completed.

None have been completed because none have the actual maps or the actual rules.

GDW designed and sold games of all sorts. They made their living for nearly 25 years selling games. Given the level of interest in the Great Game since the late 80s, wouldn't you think GDW would have released retail version if they were able? They didn't because they couldn't and they couldn't because the Great Game depending primarily on Frank Chadwick making rulings rather than players following rules.

>>53149671
>anybody have any idea how to stat wafers? I was thinking +2 to +4 to skill checks relevant to the personality inside the wafer

Don't forget the the "same sex/species' requirement and the risk of the wafer skill not only subtly failing but also damaging the wearer's mind.

>>53149947
>Then pick a few from 1001 Chars or CotI or Veterans or ....

So use pregens just as already suggested?

>>53149788
>How are Imperial Navy ships generally armed, kinetics? lasers? missles? some combination of all three?

It's a mix of "beams" and missiles, with some missiles being kinetics, some being explosives like nukes, and others being beam weapons aka detonation lasers.

That being said, "beams" come in a variety of sizes and types. Sizes range from turrets to bays to spinals. Types range from 2 kinds of lasers, plasma, fusion, particles, and "mesons".

Is there anything in standard production 'worse' than a nuke? or are they just 'bigger' nukes than I think?

>>53150821

I have no idea what you mean here.

>>53149788

Lasers and missiles. There are rules for kinetics but they generally aren't part of the setting's space combat for whatever reason.

Large-scale spacecraft combat is primarily spinal Meson guns, which are nuclear rayguns that bypass the setting's shields (Black Globes - essentially weaponized black hole shields that prevent lasers, missiles, or whatever from penetrating the hull) and defenses (Sandcasters, scatter lasers) by being essentially just background noise until they decay inside a space ship.

This means that you can shoot 'through' a ship and detonate deep inside, past the armor. The setting doesn't really focus on the big armadas, though, since you're usually a small spacer on a little podunk freighter.

Those podunks usually carry a few double or single turrets with a mix of lasers/missiles/sandcasters and your best bet is to do point defense and run away from a commerce raider. Getting boarded is an adventure in itself.

>>53150967
it's the difference between 'a nuke' a 'fusion nuke' and say 'antimatter missles'

so, are Traveller nukes 'normal nukes' 'normal nukes, but better' or 'just another weapon' ? It seems like the 57th century should have something more for WMD's than 'just 20th century nukes'

>>53151504
>it's the difference between 'a nuke' a 'fusion nuke' and say 'antimatter missles'

Okay, now your question actually makes sense. The answer, as with some many things in Traveller, is: It Depends. In this case, it depends on tech level.

Fission weapons arrive at one TL, fusion weapons arrive at another, and anti-matter weapons arrive at yet another.

Apart form TL, the only other difference is how big of a bang you can get for a given buck. Using FF&S, you can build fission, fusion, and AM warheads of varying size.

>>53151504

Bear in mind the Imperium reserves the right to use nukes for itself, member worlds don't get to use them. There are even nastier things in the Imperium's vaults, but they don't get used much.

>>53151998
>Bear in mind the Imperium reserves the right to use nukes for itself,

That's bit of fanon simplistically "derived" from the all-too-usually misunderstood "Imperial Rules of War".

Colonial and planetary ground and space forces are an important part of the Imperial OOB, something which is both depicted in war games and explicitly mentioned in the setting's text. The utility of nukes, especially in space combat is also self-evident. All this means that member worlds own nukes.

It is when and how member worlds USE those nukes that the makes the difference. If the member has enough political cover and/or influence it can use them where and when ever it likes.

In "Aces & Eights", planetary gov't commits an NBC attack on an IMPERIAL brigade with no repercussions. In TTA, a free trader nukes a scout/courier. Nukes exist outside of Imperial hands and are used outside of Imperial hands. There is no branch of the Imperial government or military spending all their time confiscating nukes.

>>53151504
>It seems like the 57th century should have something more for WMD's than 'just 20th century nukes'

They are some very nasty weapons with meson guns at the top of the list.

>>53151998
Can you give me some examples of these nastier things?

Side note: On average, how strong would the higher end psionics be, are we talking 'the very best Zhodani psicommandos can besiege a small country psionically? a city? or 40k crack a continent in half with mindbullets?' The ancient's nonwithstanding of course

sorry for asking so many questions, I just want to see how people interpret the setting, wheels with wheels and all that

>>53152298
It ain't "fanon," it's an interpretation you don't like.

Supplement 8, page 40:
>"The Imperium does stand ready to enforce its own standards however.
>Certain basic restrictions against improper scales of force are
>observed, and weapons, such as poison gas or nuclear devices, are
>scrutinized very carefully. If matters get out of hand, then the local
>Imperial forces stand ready to intervene. The general situation tends to
>keep the mercenary forces within the Imperium in check."

Implies that either mercenary groups or planetary governments might be allowed to possess them, but with restrictions and inspections required. Implies they are as a deterrent, and considering the nature of any mass conflict between say, the Zhodani and the Imperium, it would only make sense for frontier worlds and mercenaries to have local Imperially-sanctioned stockpiles set aside against invasion.
Using them, however...

JTAS #14, p15, Police Forces in Traveller:
>2. The middle justice of the subsectors that is intended to protect
>relatively helpless societies on low technology worlds and to protect
>all societies from excessive damage by military actions. This is
>enforced by the police and military forces of the subsector duke, aided
>(if necessary) by Imperial military and naval forces.
>"Crimes normally subject to subsector justice include the unlawful
>introduction of high technology to low technology worlds, the violation
>of planetary interdiction, possession and/or use of nuclear, chemical,
>or biological weapons, and war crimes as defined by the Imperial rules
>of war"

This plainly sets the use and possession of nuclear and biological weapons in the same category as war crimes and violation of planetary interdiction.

It's one thing if the Imperium lets you sit on a set of nukes with Zhodani names on them, but if your planet has been building its own secret nukes, much less using them, you're in deep shit.

>>53152698
>>Certain basic restrictions against improper scales of force are observed, and weapons, such as poison gas or nuclear devices, are scrutinized very carefully.

Scrutinized, not prohibited. There is a difference.

>>>"Crimes normally subject to subsector justice include

Normally subject to and not always subject to.

Quit being a sperglord and reading everything in a literal sense. Traveller is all about wheels within wheels, Traveller is all about what we're TOLD and what we're SHOWN. We've talked about this for several threads now so you should at least by aware of it by now.

The only thing the Imperium absolutely enforces is it's right to intervene where and when it sees fit.

>>53152805

>Scrutinized, not prohibited. There is a difference.

Yes, you're only allowed to have them under restrictions that include inspections, likely to make sure none of them are missing or being used in your border war.
>Normally subject to and not always subject to.

Yes, if you have a permit to stockpile them, again likely because you need them for planetary defense against invasion from another major power, then you won't be prosecuted for having them. The word "normally" up there does NOT in ANY way mean that you get to use them in a skirmish with another Imperial member world.

>Quit being a sperglord

Says the guy who acts like his interpretation of everything is God's own truth, and dismisses other possible readings as "fanon."

>>53152612
>Can you give me some examples of these nastier things?

At the end of the sector-wide Ilelish Revolt of the 400s, the Imperium punished that world by "scrubbing the equatorial regions free of life".

If you read "Agents of the Imperium", you'll learn about other, equally frightening methods. It's in the Archive.

>Side note: On average, how strong would the higher end psionics be, are we talking 'the very best Zhodani psicommandos can besiege a small country psionically? a city? or 40k crack a continent in half with mindbullets?' The ancient's nonwithstanding of course

Forget any WH40K-level douchebaggery and Zho commandos could terrorize a country or planet not "besiege" it. Go to the Archive and read the psionics section of Book 3 in the Classic folder. Psionic abilities, while powerful in some ways, are of short duration and require long post-use recovery periods. ForEx: Reading 60 seconds of the surface thoughts of someone standing next to you requires five hours for full recovery.

>>53152885
>Says the guy who acts like his interpretation of everything is God's own truth, and dismisses other possible readings as "fanon."

Canon has several statements regarding prohibitions and laws while ALSO being full of events in which the prohibitions and laws those completely ignored and no punishments applied.

In Traveller, we're TOLD things and we're SHOWN things. Ranging from the Aslan, to the Zhos, to the Imperial Rules of War, the truth lies with what OCCURS and not with what is being SAID.

The meta-game concept of revealing varying levels of knowledge or truth as a reward has baked into the game from the first. If you're too stupid, literal minded, or autistic to understand or appreciate that fact, the fault is yours and yours alone. Grow the fuck up and open your eyes to EVERYTHING the game presents to you and not just what is being said in-game.

>>53153067

>Canon has several statements regarding prohibitions and laws while ALSO being full of events in which the prohibitions and laws those completely ignored and no punishments applied.

Yeah, and it also introduces the Kinunir as a serious battle cruiser, then later massively increases the ship sizes, suddenly leaving it as the tiniest and weakest "battle cruiser" around.

I have a problem with your willingness to sneer at folks reading the text as-is, calling that reading "fanon" while perversely insisting that your super-secret interpretation that requires looking at things your specific way and which rolls in stuff from a gaggle of different authors over decades is the actual "canon."

I also don't accept your notion that what those authors wrote was all some MKUltra secret that was just-as-planned right from the beginning, when it's pretty obvious to everyone else that most of those later explanations were created to fix inconsistencies and contradictions that had piled up by accident, not because of some master plan.
The OTU shows little evidence of being planned from the start in that way. It appears instead to have accumulated like sediment, and then changed over time. Just witness the way X-Boats broke, or the sudden shift to a large-ship, large-polity universe I alluded to above, which was an obvious response to the arrival of Star Wars.

I also don't consider anything from GURPS or TNE to be in any way better or more canonical than what came before. Canon is what you make of it. The "official" canon is leaky and full of holes, but that's okay because you ought to be able to interpret it on the fly, which is what makes a canon workable at the gaming table.

Anything that would require referees and players to memorize decades of detailed bullshit before they finally know the "real" canon is gaming poison that belongs in Runequest, and only appeals to folks who are in love with the idea of their own superior intelligence.

>>53153341
>Yeah, and it also introduces the Kinunir as a serious battle cruiser, then later massively increases the ship sizes, suddenly leaving it as the tiniest and weakest "battle cruiser" around.

Yup, that's the Classic Schism and it's necessitated plenty of retcons.


>I have a problem with your willingness to sneer at folks reading the text as-is...

I don't sneer at them. I feel sorry for them and their limitations.

>>... calling that reading "fanon" while perversely insisting that your super-secret interpretation...

It's not a super secret interpretation. It's the way Traveller was written from the first.

>>rolls in stuff from a gaggle of different authors over decades is the actual "canon."

Everything i told you about nukes and the Imperial Rules of Law is from Classic so you can't whine about different versions.

>I also don't accept your notion that what those authors wrote was all some MKUltra secret that was just-as-planned right from the beginning

There were mysteries planned from the beginning and having mysteries to solve was planned from the beginning. The pursuit of in-game knowledge as a goal in play is repeatedly stated in the rules from the first 5 books onward.

>The OTU shows little evidence of being planned from the start in that way.

The OTU's many details grew rather than being minutely planned, that much is certain. However, the fact that there would be long term mysteries, that statements in the text would not be the entire truth, that interpretations would change, was part of the game from the first.

>>Just witness the way X-Boats broke, or the sudden shift to a large-ship, large-polity universe

Those are changes to specific rules and not change to the thinking which underpinned the game from the first.

>I also don't consider anything from GURPS or TNE

I haven't quoted anything from those sources.

>>53153341 (continued)

>Anything that would require referees and players to memorize decades of detailed bullshit before they finally know the "real" canon is gaming poison that belongs in Runequest, and only appeals to folks who are in love with the idea of their own superior intelligence.

This is not about memorizing trivia, you dullard.

This is about GDW baking into the game's tenor and lore a level of nuance and uncertainty which allows the pursuit of in-game knowledge to become a goal in play. Having very little set in stone increases the potential scope of play.

If you're too literal minded or too limited to understand, appreciate, or take advantage of the that design feature, then I feel sorry for you.

>>53153549
>It's the way Traveller was written from the first.

So you say, and the writers would have us believe, but I'm not buying what they're putting down.

>Everything i told you about nukes and the Imperial Rules of Law is from Classic

Except you provided no citations for it, just your own personal reading.

>I haven't quoted anything from those sources.

Yeah, my bad, when you brought in the previous conversation I assumed we were picking up where we left off.

Is Trillion(?) Credit Squadron the best system for large scale naval combat in Traveller?

>>53153710
>Except you provided no citations for it, just your own personal reading.

I cited two adventures from Classic.

>>Yeah, my bad, when you brought in the previous conversation I assumed we were picking up where we left off.

You're the simpleton from the Hiver conversation? I should have known.

>>53153764
>Is Trillion(?) Credit Squadron the best system for large scale naval combat in Traveller?

Classic's TCS is very minimal set of rules bolted on top of HG2. It provided a map of the Islands, a way to tax worlds to pay for construction, some refueling rules, and a few other things. You'll find it missing many things you might want to have.

TCS was also a convention game. It listed annual criteria for #s of pilot, jump ratings, refueling abilities, etc. for about a decade.

Pocket Empire and Imperial Squadrons for T4 are more complete strategic games. However, unlike TCS/HG2 which allows for the design of individual ships, PE and IS concern the construction of squadrons which are then only rated for a few factors like attack, defense, etc.

Any quality horror setting you lads recommend?

has the Imperium ever had a non-human emperor?

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>>53153991
When you say setting, do you mean the universe as a whole?
Or do you mean "what's a good place to have horror happen within a larger setting?"

My answer to both would be to do something like Alien(s). With a dash of Event Horizon to taste

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I've asked you guys to be civil before, but apparently somebody's fedora is just too tight.

My enthusiasm has been on a low ebb for a while and lately I'm getting tired of wading through your shit, so fuck it, I'm done with 4chan for the time being. See you folks whenever I can reignite my love for Traveller.

Before I go, there's some new stuff in the Cepheus Engine folder that I've been meaning to add for the past week or two. Check Incoming May 9.

>>53154180
The Emperor has always been of Humaniti to my knowledge, but what particular strain of Humaniti counts as human is always up for debate.

>>53154401
Sorry to hear you've been feeling the burn-out. Thanks for keeping the Archive up and running, and hope to see you back soon.

>>53153822
>I cited two adventures from Classic.

You cited adventures whose events don't line up with the canonical text on middle justice. You did not provide any citations that your interpretation of that discrepancy is any more accurate than "circumstances prevented middle justice from being applied in this case" or just saying "the author fucked up."

>>53154401
That's fair enough archive-anon. I've noticed the vitriol being a bit higher lately too.
Do you reckon you'll be gone for long?
If you will be, could you maybe pass on control of the archive? Just so we can add new stuff yanno?

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>>53154401
>somebody's fedora
There's always one or two. Unfortunate, but inevitable. At least it's not as bad as the WoD/CofD threads. Not much coming down the pipeline in terms of new MgT releases, at any rate.

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>>53154307
I was thinking of scenarios and such, don't know much about Traveller to be quite honest

>>53155583
The patrons section of the main book, assuming they kept it in Mongoose 2, is a good launching point. Treat the missions/motivations just like you would the usual fantasy quests/rewards, but nearby cities become neighboring worlds, wilderness encounters are in the outskirts of a system or in a system you have to jump through on the way, etc.

>>53155583
There are some horror scenarios in various Challenge issues.

Pirates of Drinax, opinions on it? any good stories about it?

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>>53154401
As someone who curates another general around here I can totally sympathize with this

>>53154401
Hope you'll be back soon. Archive is masterfully maintained.

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>>53154401
>Before I go, there's some new stuff in the Cepheus Engine folder that I've been meaning to add for the past week or two. Check Incoming May 9.

Excellent! You've got the Vehicle Design System for CE.

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what's the closest visual analogue to Traveller ships? Star Wars? Star Trek? Old Gothic Raygun Pulp art? some other thing I haven't listed?

>>53167318
>what's the closest visual analogue to Traveller ships? Star Wars? Star Trek? Old Gothic Raygun Pulp art? some other thing I haven't listed?


That's hard to answer. Trek is probably the furthest away because "no necalles". While Star Wars influenced a lot of the early art, the ships don't work anywhere near the same way. Raygun Pulp sort of fits and sort of doesn't.

Traveller ships are include a lot of fuel tankage, something a lot of other settings all but ignore. A scout, forex, is 20% "gas tank".

If pressed, I'd describe the "look" of Traveller's ships as flying wedges, cylinders, and bricks with (mostly) unneeded streamlining and/or aerodynamic bits.

>>53167620
So, visually, ISDs? Just big fucking un-aerodynamic looking wedge in space?

For...some reason, I always picture Solomani ships as looking similar to UNSC ships from Halo

>>53167708

Not really. While the art, designs, and deckplans moved on from wedges, a lot of the early art and designs were wedges for two reasons.

The first reason was Star Wars' influence. SW triggered Classic's jump from "small" to "big" was seen in HG2.

The second reason isn't as obvious to folks in 2017. Drafting and/or drawing wedges by HAND was easier. It was the late 70s/early 80s and, while CAD CAM programs existed, they existed on the mainframes of large engineering firms.

There was no small scale desktop publishing yet either. GDW PHYSICALLY cut and pasted up the layout of their various books and games until the mid-80s.

Anyway, if you want an overview of the game's various ships "looks", check out Classic's Supplement 7: Traders and Gunboats and Supplement 9: Fighting Ships. Both are in the Archive.

While there are some wedge designs for the reasons stated above, it's not just the lazy & mindless ripoff of Star Wars you seem to think.

>>53168187
I don't think it's a ripoff, I just need a quick, simple 'visual shorthand' to explain to my players, and ISD's are 'wedges in space'

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>>53167708
Star wars doesn't have a monopoly on wedges in space.
Look up Elite: Dangerous. Closest thing to Traveller aesthetics you'll get.

>>53168431
Right, I forgot about Elite, because I'm not one for MMO's

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Oh don't worry, it's not an MMO. It's not even a game most of the time. But it's pretty close to Traveller as far as spessships are concerned.

>>53168558
how is it not an MMO, OR a game?

>>53168590
You won't meet another player unless you truly go out of your way to find somebody, or visit one of like 12(out of 1000+ inhabited) systems where everybody hangs out, and it has a solo mode that's not functionally different to online in any way.
And it's certainly not a game, it's a grind simulator with minuscule amounts of content. Some Early Access survival sandboxes have more content than Elite.

>>53168343
>I just need a quick, simple 'visual shorthand' to explain to my players, and ISD's are 'wedges in space'

Then use the Classic pdfs freely available in the Archive. After all, a picture is worth a thousand words.

>>53137970
>>53138170

You're right about agent of the imperium, but would it, should it, translate into the game? can you trust PC's with that kind of power?

>>53169574
>You're right about agent of the imperium, but would it, should it, translate into the game?

The technologies, mindsets, similar things can most certainly be used in a game.

>>can you trust PC's with that kind of power?

Trust a PC? Hell, no. Trust an NPC? Most certainly.

Bland and his fellow wafer personalities are perfect patrons. Imagine your players are part of the crew aboard a small warship visiting some backwater and a problem arises. The computer assesses the threat, Bland's wafer comes out of a vault your PCs never knew existed, and suddenly this cold blooded, centuries old, "personality" riding one of your crewmen is planning on scrubbing the planet down to bedrock. He'll give the players 72 hours to solve the problem another way before the rocks start falling.

Sound like a good adventure?

Remember, the Decider wafer which destroys worlds for the great good is only one of 5. There are other wafers for Admiral, Warlord, and Negotiator personalities plus one whose title I don't remember just now.

>>53170968
where the other 4 in the book?

>>53172382
*were the other 4 in the book?

Would you recommend T20 for a starting traveller player, if the rulebook was readily available?

>>53172602
as compared to any other version of traveller? Not particularly, it's marred by being, the original was D6, Traveller's not even that hard of a system on the player's end, the Referee might need to put in some work though

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>>53168558

>>53172640
Compared to T5 and Mongoose. Are there any glaring issues that make it objectively worse?

>>53172916
T5 isn't a game, it's a devkit

it tries to fit D20 assumptions into Traveller, and not fit Traveller into D20

>>53172964
That is pretty glaring. Would you recommend Mongoose then?

>>53173052
I'd recommend mongoose core 1e, or cepheus(?) engine, but otherwise, mongoose has editing issues, and a lot of the fluff is inconsistent, the rules themselves are workable enough, plus or minus a few...imbalances every now and again

>>53172964
I think you're talking about T20, not T5.

T5 is mechanically close to T4 (I recommend using it as a Rosetta Stone if you want to make sense of T5)

But there's not much of d20 in either.

>>53173146
I forgot to specify I was talking about D20, and it might've been my group...

what's the largest tonnage traveller ship? the tigress at 500,000 tons?

>>53172382
>>53172546
>>were the other 4 in the book?

Briefly. They're all mentioned, especially in the beginning when Bland and his fellow soon-to-be-wafer-personalities are codifying the Agent Standing Orders".

Later on, Bland's Decider wafer is activated when the Warlord wafer activated earlier has failed.

>>53175843
thanks

>>53174575
>what's the largest tonnage traveller ship? the tigress at 500,000 tons?

The Tigress-class is 500K dTons. There's also mention of a million dTon fleet tender named "Gorodish". A tender carries other ship through jump.

The biggest is the Sky Raiders'/Loeskalth's planetoid generation ship which was primarily STL but could perform jump1. It is several million tons.

>>53175952
500k is 500,000, isn't it?

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>>53168431
>Look up Elite: Dangerous. Closest thing to Traveller aesthetics you'll get.
The original Elite was strongly influenced by Traveller, what with Commander Jameson and the distinctly wedge-shaped starting ship.

>>53168064
That makes perfect sense, if we go with the whole conservative, brutalist style us Terrans are so fond of. As long as they're cramped and smelly, like old Soviet submarines.

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>>53176305
they're brutal, and mounted around 'the big main gun'

>>53172964
>it tries to fit D20 assumptions into Traveller, and not fit Traveller into D20
And yet it bends the fuck out of D20 to make it sort of work. T20 is more of an adaption of its base system to Traveller needs than GURPS Traveller is. GT is GURPS wth a Traveller flavor dusted on top. T20 got stuck in the blender for a bit by comparison.

It'a ugly, its D20, but it kinda works.

>>53168343
You can shorthand the look of ships with Star Wars quite a bit, while also adding the Buck Rogers TV show, Battlestar Galactica, Space Cruiser Yamato, and the TTA books from the 80s.

why do people say Traveller is hard sci-fi? grounded sci-fi I can get behind, but it's not overly hard on it's own

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>>53177206
Matter of perspective, I suppose. Kinda like how a more casual gamer might consider, like, Privateer on the harder end of things, but to a greater neckbeard, hard sci-fi gaming might be more like Aurora or Vega Strike.

To be fair, what Mongoose obscures to some degree about travel time Classic is more out there about, the whole acceleration-deceleration phasing deal. And, at least in the original version, the impossibility of true FTL travel is addressed through essentially using an Alcubierre drive on steroids... sorta.

>>53177206
>why do people say Traveller is hard sci-fi?

Vector movement. No "blasters", "phasers", or "ray guns". Deadly personal combat.

I don't consider it particularly hard. It's hard in some spots, soft in others.

>>53177206
Scifi is considered "hard" when it adheres to the known laws of physics.

Thus Traveller isn't hard wrt FTL, anti-grav, black globe screens and psionics. M-drives are more or less iffy in each edition. This list may not be complete.

OTOH, there once was a project called Traveller Done Right which tried to bring the known laws of physics to Traveller. Guess what, when in-system travel times are in the order of months, a very boring game ensues.

>>53153822
Congratulations, you did it.

Anyone feel like sharing some homebrewed playable or npc alien races? Even a short description is fine.

I'm trying to fill up a hub world with all sorts of visitors and thought it would be fun if they were from other referees' campaigns.

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>>53178844
My favorite will probably always be the Birin. Always wanted to play one of them as a character.

My group is finally getting the hang of MgT 1e. Everything is clicking into place now. One question though: Are there any houserules to make Dodging more meaningful? A -1 isn't too useful. It feels almost like an afterthought addition.

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>>53181632
>Are there any houserules to make Dodging more meaningful?
It's only -1 if you have 1 rank in athletics (dex) or only a 9 to 11 in dex. It can be much more useful at higher dex levels (cybernetics) and in conjunction with smoke grenades.

More to the point, for most characters you should be Diving For Cover, since cover not only provides DM-2 to enemy ranged attacks but also that very useful bonus armor which stacks with worn armor.

>afterthought addition.
Quite to the contrary, it's there to reinforce the fact that cover is really quite important and that fighting it out heroically is a pretty poor idea.

>>53177322
What's Aurora? I've heard of Vega Strike, but not Aurora, also, Alcubierre drive on steroids in what way?

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>>53184183
Aurora 4x

It looks like this

>>53116306
I been wanting to GM Traveller and I'm unsure of which version to run for my group. Could you give examples as to why MGT1's Catalogue?

>>53184183
Well, Alcubierre drives work by bending space ahead of them and behind them, right? As opposed to Traveller drives, which straight up bend space into a bubble of alternate unive-... Okay, now I see that my analogy was ill-advised. I'm sorry. They're nothing alike now that I think of it. Oh, god.

>>53186239
>I'm unsure of which version to run for my group.

Mongoose or Cepheus Engine. The Mongoose versions have more of what current players think a RPG should have; things like in-gane character advancement and back story tables. Of the 2 Mongoose versions, MgT2e is marginally better although it's ship building rules are in another book. (Seeing as the Archives host 99.999% of everything published for Traveller, getting hold of the books you need is trivial.)

Cepheus Engine is the OGL/OSR version of the game and, thanks to Mongoose being short sighted douchebags, it's the "go to" rules set for nearly all 3rd party publishers now. CE already is the rules set which coves more alternate settings and that lead will only grow.

Finally, a word about the official setting: the OTU. It's 40 years old this years, has seen several rules sets, several publishers, and hundreds of writers. A game can easily get smothered in the OTU. Use the OTU like you would a buffet. Choose what you like or need and ignore all the rest.

>>Could you give examples as to why MGT1's Catalogue?

Could you restate that question in English instead of gibberish?

why are zhodani commando's so terrifying?

>>53189563
Most are teleporters.

>>53189742
any other reasons?

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>>53186239
Mostly this:
>>53187496
But I'd like to qualify some stuff. Traveller differs from many RPGs in various ways, but it's particularly differentiated in that character advancement is either nonexistent or very time consuming (which also plays into the jump time concept). I would say that, except for a few missing (albeit fairly important) paragraphs lost between 1e and 2e, Mongoose 2e is quite a bit better than 1e. It got rid of a lot of terribly worded and balanced rules stuff (particularly early 1e's Mercenaries and CSC) and the new(-ish) spaceship and vehicle creation rules are much, much better integrated. I'd say that the 2e Vehicles Handbook alone is reason enough to choose 2e over 1e.

As for CE, while Cepheus is quite noble in its endeavors, I personally can't go back to the clunky way it builds ships, even if it's mostly the same.

>>53190666
So, tear the mongoose shipbuilding rules out and bolt them to cepheus, it's not like people don't frankenstien together the best bits from each system

>>53189859

Well, aside from teleporting into your encampment with their weapons on full auto...

How about ripping out your fucking heart at a distance? Or inducing a stroke which leaves you a drooling zombie? That's just the stuff they can do with telekinesis.

How about digging into your mind for up to 10 minutes looking for the information they want? Or making a psionic assault which inflicts 2D6+6 hits? That's just the stuff they can do with telepathy.

All you need to do is read the rules and apply a little of imagination.

>>53190666
>Traveller differs from many RPGs in various ways, but it's particularly differentiated in that character advancement is either nonexistent or very time consuming

That was part of Traveller from the first. That, plus aging, is what made Traveller unique.

Sadly, most current players "learned" about RPGs from D&D, d20, and video games where XPs, leveling up, and character advancement are the norm. They think Traveller is broken because they can't play and/or grow min/max munchkins.

Mongoose tried to split the difference between Traveller's design choices and the play style too many people think is the only way to play RPGs. As you note, the result didn't really succeed either way.

New guy here. Interested in Traveler, have been for a long time, but not sure where to start. Should I avoid the latest editions, or are they fine?

>>53192043
Just avoid T20 and you'll be fine. T5 is a toolkit, and is dense as hell. Mongoose is pretty okay, but you can always rip parts of different systems to get what you want - most of the editions are very compatible with each other.

>>53192209
So I should avoid Traveler 5e unless I want to be putting together my own stuff. Okay, so I should go for 4e if I want the latest thing that's actually pre-assembled?

>>53192254
Eh, not sure on T4. Travellers edition list is strange compared to other games.
We have Classic, The New Era, something else, Gurps (3rd and 4th), Mongoose (1st and 2nd), Cepheus Engine, T20, T4, T5, and I'm sure I've missed a few.

>>53192463
Christ. I'll just check out 4e for now and take a look at some other options later. I can always keep looking until I find an edition I like, hard sci-fi with aliens is a big interest of mine.

>>53192463
Classic (Traveller 1)
Mega (Traveller2)
TNE (Traveller 3)
Marc Miller's Traveller (T4)
T20
GURPS Traveller (GURPS 3)
GURPS Interstellar Wars (GURPS 4)
Traveller Hero
Mongoose 1e
Traveller 5
Mongoose 2e

T4's core book is, odd dice usage aside, pretty decent. Some of the additional books are workable, some are a waste of paper.

>>53192538
Which ones are a waste? Why?

>>53192566
Starships is half-half; the build system is decent, but the example ships are frequently useless
Central Supply Catalog (T4) is reasonable.
Aliens Archive is chapter by chapter.
Milieu Zero is a poorly executed data dump. First Survey is more data dump. Milieu Zero CAMPAIGN is better, being the second try of both First Survey and Mil Zero in one book..
Emperor's Arsenal is decent.
Pocket Empires is fantastic if you are a simulationist with LOTS of time and scripting experience available. Otherwise its waaaay too dense.
Anomalies attempts to be useful, but fails for a lot of people.
Fire Fusion and Steel (T4) is another dense book, but is also marred by arrangement issues and some universal typography fuck-ups.
Emperor's Vehicles is a book of stuff. Fun pictures, lots of stats, but no vehicular combat system to go with. Anywhere...
Psionics Institutes is a hot mess, if I recall correctly.
Naval Architects Manual is a bunch of disjointed deckplan fragments, with less utility than it could have had.
Imperial Squadrons attempts to be an active service campaign book and a fleet sim, and messes up both.
Missions of State is a book of adventures...for Gamma World or Metamorphosis Alpha...
Aliens Volume 1 is aa retread of the older Aslan and Vargr materials and a sloppy expansion of the Graytch from Aliens Archive. Meh.

>>53192538
>>53192493
Okay, go with classic or mongoose. I don't really know the others well enough to tell you about them.

>>53192538
>T4's core book is, odd dice usage aside, pretty decent.
>40-odd pages of errata
>pretty decent

>>53192935
Hmm? The 30 page errata document is for most of the line. The Core book is only a part of that file.

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>>53192995
The one I've got is 42 pages long, 27 of which are core. The rest is SSDS, CSC, PE, and FFS.

Still,
>30 pages of errata
>pretty decent

>5. Explicitly stating a standard of quality that promotes whole- some adventure and eliminates sexually-flavored art or con- tent, unacceptable or vulgar language, and gratuitous, unnec- essary violence.

Okay, T4 dropped for being stupid moral watchdog bullshit. Guess I'll try Mongoose next.

>>53193054
Eh. That stuff is easy to add to taste, but harder to ignore when found as full page art in every book.

>>53193032
That doc is a lot of pages because it uses huge text, and has draft explanations and suppositions instead of final answers.
Not going to lie, T4 was a rushed mess, but for perspective you need to look at the MegaTraveller errata doc...

>>53193107
Was it really so bad that they have to unironically use words like 'wholesome', which invariably means "NO FUN ALLOWED FOR THE SAKE OF THE CHILDRENS"?

>>53193133
>every Traveller core book has required 10-20 pages of errata from T1-T4
Is GDW/FFE editing better or worse than Mongoose editing?

>>53193133
Maybe it's just the pdf I'm using, but entire lines of the history of the universe are missing in the T4 core book. That's pretty fucking bad, considering it makes most of it impossible to decipher.

>>53193151
Nah. That stuff is easy to add to taste, but 4chan is not the whole world, and not everyone wants a writeup of AI dildos, fusion-powered fetish gear, or explicit rules for adding more wang. Or wangs, plural.

Just play with a couple ronery guys. They'll have all that stuff written up in no time if it would get a laugh.

Or just use FATAL and Arduin as references. That's all up to you.

>>53193329
>Arduin
What?

>>53193323
>>53193263
GDW was better, if only because they were fixing honest mistakes in the day when there were no desktop computers or layout software. Mongoose rushes stuff out and *might* tell you about the errata someday.

>>53193365
Oh lucky you. Arduin was an extensive D&D house campaign that saw publication. The man had no filters, so his additions were frequently tasteless or worse.

>>53193329
>The issue is that you're a dirty pervert and want sex everywhere!

Really, dude? Really? Sexuality is a big factor in how a culture develops and works. It's part of the big picture no matter how you slice it.

And it's not just that, it's the fact that the game apparently takes SUCH pride in how prudish it is. Not just sex, no, you won't even see bad words or violence in this book! Nosiree, there is nothing but good, wholesome talk in this book. Little Timmy's parents won't be offended by this completely mundane book with writing as dry as the Sahara!

Nope, it's all because I can't stand not having sex scenes in an RPG. Surely.

>>53193054
>Okay, T4 dropped for being stupid moral watchdog bullshit.

Before you take too much umbrage, let's put the statement in some context.

Miller isn't "policing" your sessions and doesn't want to police your sessions. Miller has always thought of role-playing as a family activity and purposely keeps a "Young Adult Fiction"/PG13 mindset when writing, granting licenses, or approving publications.

Miller has also said people can do whatever the fuck they want in their games. You want to run a campaign featuring sex saves, cannibals, and whatnot, go right ahead. You want him to sign off on publishing such a campaign? It ain't gonna happen.

I'm sure you're played long enough to realize that one man's dark, edgy, and mature is another man's childish douchbaggery. Miller wisely avoids all that by keeping official materials at a YAF/PG13 level and not worrying about what people do in their own games.

It's like institutional cooking. It's purposely bland so people can spice it up to their individual tastes. Like mess cooks in the Army, Miller leaves the amounts and types of spice to you.

>>53193443
>Sexuality is a big factor in how a culture develops and works. It's part of the big picture no matter how you slice it.


It sure is and Miller is leaving just how sexuality effects a culture's development completely up to you.

>>53193402
Elaborate. If you don't want to shit up the Traveller thread complaining about Arduin, there's a shit games thread over >>53154585

>>53193450

See >>53193443

It's more how proud it is of how 'wholesome' it is that irks me. The statement comes off as a holier-than-thou soccer mom tirade.

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>>53193539
Well known in-setting NPC...

>>53193559
Mid 90s. The hobby was just getting over cyberpunk.

One sentence in the introduction is enough to set you off?

>>53193379
>GDW was better, if only because they were fixing honest mistakes in the day when there were no desktop computers or layout software.

The technological "gulf" between GDW and Mongoose is hard for younger people to imagine, even if they are aware of it.

GDW used manual typewriters and carbon paper. They edited text by using a red pencil on a typewritten sheet. After they finished editing, they had to manually type up the corrected sheet.

GDW drew deck plans, diagrams, and other illustrations BY HAND. No were no CAD CAM programs outside of Fortune 500 engineering firms' mainframes and drawing tablets didn't even exist. You want to know why so many early ships are wedges, circles, and boxes? Because they were easy to draw, that's why. I'll bet most of you don't know what a French curve is, let alone how to use one.

When GDW put a book together, they physically PASTED it together. The cut out text, diagrams, and illos with razors and pasted the blocks on page mock-ups with glue and hot wax. The paste-ups were then sent to printing plant where they were photographed in the special way and turned into flexographic sheets laid out on cylinders.

Mongoose, OTOH, does all of that in a computer. Their text can be automatically checked for spelling, grammar, and other attributes. Blocks and tables can be set-up with trivial effort. Their text can be edited before it's physically printed. Their illustrations and diagrams are also made in programs and can also be changed with trivial effort. When they "paste-up" a product it's all virtual and a computer file is sent to the printing plant rather than a hand-made book. Through all of that, the computer programs being used help Mongoose look for, find, and fix problems.

Yet, despite all the technological tools and help at their disposal, Mongoose's editing is utter shit.

So, who do you think did a better job? Who do you think actually WORKED at the process and who do you think is sleep walking?

>>53193559
>It's more how proud it is of how 'wholesome' it is that irks me. The statement comes off as a holier-than-thou soccer mom tirade.

What's the "insult" 4channers use now?
t. implying?

As >>53193698 asked, you're such a triggered special snowflake that ONE sentence is a book is enough for you to ignore an ENTIRE product line?

Miller & Co. wrote that when the hobby was suffering from the cyberpunk hang over and if you think Miller et. al. are smug holier-than-thou soccer moms, you've never heard of "Dark Conspiracy".

>>53138402
What makes Exonidas so interesting?

>>53194118
>What makes Exonidas so interesting?

It's non-OTU for one. Swycaffer crammed in a shit ton of ideas which any good referee can expand upon. The article is one campaign and/or adventure seed after another and across every genre; mercs, post-apocalypse, traders, local, planetary, & interstellar politics, military, you name it.

IMHO Sywcaffer struck a good balance with his details too; just enough to suggest things and not enough to handcuff a referee.

Many newer GMs and players usually need everything spelled out for them, so Exonidas isn't going to seem "finished" to them. ForEx, they can't even come up with PC backstories on their own and instead need tables to tell them what to do. In the hands of someone who can think, however, Exonidas is gold.

>>53194118
Unlike Champa Downport in JTAS, Exonidas included its attached fleet, significant personalities, more pictures, and a gigantic mass driver to push ships into orbit...

>>53194462
>Exonidas included its attached fleet, significant personalities,

That's a great point. The fleet is there because of the limited nuclear exchange which fucked up an entire continent on the planet below. The fleet and the army/marine units it carried are there to help with recovery and rebuilding The article has pics & USPs for the ships plus UPPs & descriptions for many of the flag officers along with the rivalries between them. Again, just enough details for a good referee to run with.

Swycaffer also mentions almost off hand that the fleet in orbit is a nice chunk of the interstellar polity's navy AND a polity opposing that polity might not be able to resist pulling a "Pearl Harbor" there...

>>53194582
Which issue of Dragon is this thing in?

>>53194613

Vol 6 No. 9

It's also in the Archive.

>>53194641
Or #59, in a slightly more easily referenced format. It's also got a story called Skitterbugging that directly precedes Exonidas, with a page on translating said story into Traveller.

If anyone wants a few ideas for space stations, feel free to liberally pilfer and/or adapt: http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacestations.php

>>53191525
And also tear out the MgT 2e vehicle rules. And, personally, I'd also steal most of the skill changes and the slightly modified combat rules from MgT 2e. In which case, it's really not even using Cepheus. It'd be using MgT 2e with third party Cepheus stuff instead. Which, you know, would be fine.

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>>53193329
You know, that being said (and all of which I agree with), it is noticeable how little is written about sex among all the alien species pieces. It's the central, most important biological function organisms that differentiate between sexes have, after all. From a biologist's perspective it's very important information, as it's the basis of everything, society, culture, how the species even perceives the universe, the lot.

What is the typical Darrian family structure? Who typically carries and rears the young? Do they give live birth? Do they use pheromone systems for attraction? How does the mating process work? How do they differentiate between unambiguous signals of fitness and deception mating tactics? From what material is written about it, it seems that they have a relative equality in society between the sexes. How does this come about?

There is some thing to be said about the 'prudishness' of certain writers. I bring up Darrians because not only is the space elf trope fairly common (yes, yes, Darrians weren't necessarily originally space elves), but because other similar species do get more 'complete' descriptions. For example, the Tohaa, from Infinity (whose RPG is similarly structured to Traveller, as an added bonus), are essentially space cauliflower elves, but with interesting social and sexual dynamics involving and requiring three individuals to produce a single offspring (It's written by Spaniards).

>>53193799
>Ignoring an entire edition for cancer is bad

Sounds like the triggered one here is you. Is the poor wittle baby angry that I don't like what he likes? And it seems like T4 was trash anyway, so I guess I'm not losing anything over it.

>>53198095
>requiring three individuals to produce a single offspring
And the Tohaa are so obsessed with 3 as the "nuclear family" that once the child is born, one of the parents leaves the family unit, preserving the triad.

Do you guys ask your travellers to have some believable means to increase skills through training? I mean, theres only so much appliable information on the interwebs and only book knowledge logically wouldnt make a master in most skills

How are you supposed to get levels in heavy weapons if youve never even touched one?

>>53198498
I like training to make some sense, yes. The VR available is probably amazing, though.

>>53198095
Most longer treatments of the alien races do actually discuss such things in a textbook style when they are different from the Earth default, but even the long treatments have better things to do than dive deep into marriage practices, eating utensils, and twenty words for snow.

>>53188722
What's the thing on the top for, looks like a ball turret without guns

>>53198246
>And it seems like T4 was trash anyway, so I guess I'm not losing anything over it.

You're missing out on Pocket Empires. the 4X strategy game for Traveller, but being triggered like a special snowflake by a single sentence you assumed meant MIller & Co. are smug soccer moms is more important.

>>53198095
>it is noticeable how little is written about sex among all the alien species pieces.

The basics are covered and the rest is left up to you. You find it important (and as you correctly note it is very important), other do not, and the game stays out of everyone's way.

>>53200191
>What's the thing on the top for, looks like a ball turret without guns

That's exactly what it is. The Beowulf has two turrets; one dorsal and the other ventral.

Many times, those turrets are empty and getting weapons installed is a player goal.

>>53198498
>Do you guys ask your travellers to have some believable means to increase skills through training?

I do and that's why I use a something more like Classic's "It takes time/stay motivated" system rather than "One hour in the holosuite, now I'm a brain surgeon" system many newer players both want and want to believe is realistic.

In Classic, a skill level of one means you can be employed to practice that skill. Skills mean something and even a +1 DM is significant in a 2D6 roll. Inflating skills out of some misplaced d20/"vidya" game desire to "level up" devalues those skills and makes rolls inconsequential.

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>>53199611
>even the long treatments have better things to do than dive deep into marriage practices
Sure, sure. I'd argue it's more important than literally anything else they could possibly put to words; sex and mating practices are the most essential, most central quality of a species. Society, culture, everything else comes from it.

Just a quick example from our own species: Each of us has a repository within our genetic code that describes which diseases we are immune to, called the Major Histocompatibility Complex (an oversimplification, but bear with me). This MHC differs from individual to individual and is a chimera of your father and mother's. Now, when choosing a mate, it is advantageous to find someone who's MHC differs from yours as much as possible (so your offspring will be protected from a wider array of diseases). How does the human species deal with this? With smell.

Women, and not men (as far as we know), often find (usually subconsciously) that men with differing MHCs smell 'better' than those with similar MHCs. [Sidenote, there's a famous experiment of asking a bunch of women to smell sweaty men's clothes and rate them on attractiveness]. So that's a way in which sexual selection affects us in quite subtle ways.

But wait! Turns out there's a TWEEEST. When a women becomes pregnant, this attractiveness paradigm flips on its head, and suddenly that musky, manly man she fell in love with smells like a dirty hobo! (It's far more complicated, but that's the end result) The natural selection hypothesis as to why is quite interesting (succinctly those traits that make certain men good gene donors (strong, tall, etc) are precisely NOT the characteristics you want in a father rearing children (aggressive, impulsive)). So the women's body does a switcheroo on her to try to separate her from him when she gets knocked up. Yes, cuckolding is a very real, biological strategy.

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>>53201788
FURTHERMORE (and this is the cultural kicker)! Contraception pills work by essentially tricking the woman's body into thinking it's already pregnant ("I'm already pregnant, so it's not like I can get MORE pregnant"). That has cascading effects. In relation to our MHC discussion up above, a woman on the pill will find men that she would normally think smell weird otherwise smell attractive. Which, you know, is good for us beta men that lack the testosterone to punch down a brick wall, but she might be sorely disappointed once she goes off the pill and finds we're not the Adonis she smelt.

So, the point is, biology and mating strategies in particular are incredibly essential to building the narrative of how that species' behavior and culture unfolds. There's plenty of other examples (the arms race between a woman's periods of fecundity vs. men's ability to detect cuckoldry is a powerful one).

I think Traveller would be a good system to run something like the new Prey game in.

>>53192904
>Pocket Empires is fantastic if you are a simulationist with LOTS of time and scripting experience available. Otherwise its waaaay too dense.

Do you have any other book where there is not so much simulationism ?

>>53086180
Tell me about your ships in your quests.

>>53204067
>Do you have any other book where there is not so much simulationism ?

The whole IDEA behind Pocket Empires or Imperial Squadrons or TNE's Worlds Tamers Handbook IS simulationism.

You might as well ask whether if there's a type of contract bridge you can play with Go Fish rules.

>>53201788
>I'd argue it's more important than literally anything else they could possibly put to words

Which is why they left to the referees in question.

If they'd spent 2, 3, 4, or a dozen pages on mating and marriage practices, we'd be bitching that they'd left out ships designs, legal systems, weapons, maps, chargens, and other things.

>>53205852
Indeed. The list of things important to a game element like an encounterable alien is different, though it overlaps, from the list of priorities for an alien represented in fiction. Heck, the list of aliens is different, too.

>>53205852
This.
Deep into the RP for an encounter with an alien couple, I might note that they exchange glances at possibly significant moments.
Deep into the novel covering the same event, I'm either narrating from one of their POVs or from a third party who *might* know the significance, so I have to work it out ahead of time.

>>53205816
Pocket Empires turns it up to 11, though.

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>>53205752
Running a short test campaign with mostly TL9 (and under) designs with no J-drives and very, very few G-drives, because calculating delta-v is fun sometimes. It makes small craft quite deadly, not because they're any more dangerous, but because larger ships will run out of combat thrust points relatively quickly and become sitting ducks and thus have to plan out engagements meticulously.

Also, giant robots are fun.

>>53201863
fertility and cuckoldry? wouldn't that mean that, logically, a woman should try and get as much genetic material in her as often as humanly possible?

Any advice on convincing folks to give Traveller a shot? It's literally my fave RPG but all my friends are just dnd only types.

>>53207560
The transition from zero-to-hero games to the "just wealth and power, please" model can be difficult. Traveller, in most editions, does not handle heroic stupidity well.

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>>53207442
Not really. It depends on strategy. A number of birds (fairywens, dunnocks, etc), for instance, practice a type of deception called sperm competition (no, really, that's its scientific name), where a female will mate with multiple males, as you indicate. This is a selective advantage because the male birds cannot tell whether or not the children is his and thus (generally) provides care, which is extremely important in birds since a single or even two parent(s) cannot provide for the young.

However, in many mammals, and in humans, that's not only not necessary, but not advantageous. Because primate gestation and rearing of offspring is so long and energy intensive, it is a better strategy for the female to correctly choose a mate in the first place (and indeed, many mammals have pre-coitus competition).

One strategy is to deceive by timing. Many animals that live in areas with more than 1 season can only become pregnant during a specific time of the year, such that, after the gestation period, the offspring is born in the Spring, such that it gives the babes the longest period to grow before the next winter. But humans can have babies anytime, which is (hypothetically, and there are some interesting papers about it) an adaptation that allows for greater freedom for females in deceiving the time of conception from males.

That being said, humans as a culture still tended to follow the 'born in spring' rule; the "honeymoon" after a wedding literally refers to the amber moon of June. Go forward 9 months and you get to the beginning of Spring.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w34fSnJNP-4

Have a ghost story, Travellers

>>53197789
Personally, I think the CE vehicle design book is just as good if not better than the MGT2e one.

And the MGT 2e vehicle combat rules are, frankly, a joke. Essentially they devolve into "dogfights" or multiple referee handwaves.

My BS detector went off when I saw that MGTvehicle speed is rated in "speedbands" and yet the combat die roll modifier for speed is given for actual distance covered. Riddle me that Batman.

Does Traveller have rules for Zero-G, or nonstandard gravity combat? are they particularly good?

>>53201863

I'd like to forget how fucked up women are for a few hours while gaming.

>>53209807
>Does Traveller have rules for Zero-G, or nonstandard gravity combat? are they particularly good?

There's a Zero-Gee combat skill in most versions. It generally comes down to whether you can even handle weapons with recoil on 0 gee and make melee attacks without losing control and having to regain it before attacking again. There is a "recoil-less" pistol and rifle in many versions too.

There are also rules to also adjust weapon ranges for differing gravity fields. They're fiddly and generally not worth it except for the more autistic players.

>>53211622
What's that thick book in the back supposed to be? It's not The Traveller Book, that's hardcover.

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>>53212231
http://shawndriscollrpg.blogspot.co.nz/2017/05/a-traveller-book-i-wanted-as-kid.html

>>53212874
So, it's a version of Traveller with the cover art replaced with that of the ZX Spectrum manual? Seems to be too thick in the picture to be just Traveller core.

Traveller is gay

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>>53211622
That ship looks familiar...

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>>53214222
It's a Broadsword-class Mercenary Cruiser, one of the core Traveller starships

>>53214222
Where do you think Battletech got the idea?

>>53214222
>That ship looks familiar...

FASA started out in business as a Traveller licensee so BattleTech has quite a few Traveller influenced bits. GW was a Traveller licensee too and, while it's got more weird as time progressed, WH40K was based in part on an in-house Traveller campaign.

Speaking of the Broadsword, here's a pic of the Hayden Planetarium sphere in NYC. It's very close to the size of the Broadsword absent the four landing pylons.

Displaying Trav's ships relative to real world objects is always fun. The "tiny" scout, for example, is about 124 feet long or two-thirds as long as the original 747. The AHL cruiser is 405 meters long, compare that to Chicago's Sears Tower which is 440m tall.

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>>53218205

Oops, forgot the pic!

>>53218472
>>53218205
Looks close enough.

Another point of reference
>>53087602
The Engine Room (12) of a Scout is roughly the size of a roomy two car garage.

So does someone have a MGT2 Core rulebook that DOESN'T look like shit?

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Does anyone think it would be possible, well, would it be a good idea to port the Scum from Eclipse Phase into Traveller?

Scum are nomadic space gypsies, traveling from station to station in heavily modified barges or swarms of smaller space vessels, mostly former colonial ships.

and we've reached bump limit one post before

>>53226092
It's easily doable. Go for it.