Traveller General--A fistful of credits edition

>>53297542
>How badly in debt were your parties?

How badly in debt? I've had parties give up. Not give up playing, but give up trying to pay the mortgage. Of course that leads to skipping, hijacking, piracy, jumping over the border, and all sorts of fun stuff.

One group flew a couple of trading routes, ran the numbers, and decided to sell out! I'd been planning on giving them a job offer which bring in money & contacts, but they decided to sell out before I could. They pocketed their equity, became a crew aboard a subsidized merchant, used the money they had to start spec trading, and ended up running a small shipping line.

I never saw it coming.

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>>53288268
>>53288274
>>53290859

So run intro adventure ( I have been thinking about a classic recover treasure from a hulk type mission ), focus on PCs, keep it small (subsector) and do not use too many sourcebooks. Check and thanks!

As for the setting: humankind has never been unified as as single gigantic empire, there is many kinds of small kingdoms and federations warring with each other.

The aliens (who are really weird - not rubber-headed humans!) however DID unify once to kick back a huge human crusade and they basically won yet did not bother to kill all of humankind. Being defeated in the crusade divided humankind even more of course.

The game will be set in a fringe close to this old human-alien border. Only that it is rather backwater even for humans (no big kingdoms) so it is a haven for mercenaries and all sorts of fun.

For hub I was considering a curiously unfinished Ancient ring world what surrounds a gas giant. It is tooo far away from proper civilizations for anyone to conquer it yet there is _many_ interested parties (and their bases) on it.

>>53299906
>For hub I was considering a curiously unfinished Ancient ring world

No. Unfinished or not, that's too much SUPER SCIENCE!!! for any civilization worthy of the name to ignore. Such a system would become a fleet magnet and the site of constant battles until one polity or alliance of polities managed to seize both it and all the systems you can reach it from. It's the ultimate tar baby & mcguffin, it's the very antithesis of "backwater".

Furthermore, a ringworld's surface area roughly the size of 3 MILLION Earths. That two orders of magnitude larger than the surface area on all the worlds in Traveller's Charted Space. A ringworld would swallow your campaign whole without a thought.

A Challenge article for Megatraveller stupidly put an unfinished ringworld in the Hinterworlds Sector roughly equidistant from the 3I, Hivers, and Solomani. Further insulting our intelligence, the article went on the claim that a very minor race, the Outcasts of the Whispering Sky, somehow keep everyone away from structure.

The writers of that article made a huge mistake which canon is still trying to "clean up". There's no real need for you to fuck up you setting in the same manner.

>>53300335
What I thought about it that there is more than dozen similar ones in Human (and Alien) space already, and in far better conditions than this one.
The idea was that it would be more like a skeleton of a ringworld with no much habitable surface even existing - there is just lots of empty space and few components which are noteworthy - some explored and some not yet. Also it surrounds a gas giant, not a star so it would be quite bit smaller (yet still humongous though)

You make a good point though. Perhaps I should hide the thing further away, perhaps to be discovered by the PCs...

>>53300517

Whether it's completed or not, only circles a gas giant or not, it's still Too Damn Big. Instead of millions of worlds, you're looking at thousands and your campaign will still be lost without a trace.

A partially completed ringworld is going to be a more of a fleet magnet than a completed one. 1sy, because it can be more thoroughly researched, i.e fucked with, than a completed & inhabited ringworld. 2nd, it being incomplete means intermediate construction phases are still present along with (hopefully) some of the "tools" the builders used. Congratulations, you just made it MORE attractive.

Finally, a dozen or more "working' ringworlds in human and alien space begs the question of why humans and aliens are even bothering to explore far afield. When you've got 3 MILLLION Earths to fill up in a single system, you won't be much interested in more real estate elsewhere.

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>>53300788
>Finally, a dozen or more "working' ringworlds in human and alien space begs the question of why humans and aliens are even bothering to explore far afield. When you've got 3 MILLLION Earths to fill up in a single system, you won't be much interested in more real estate elsewhere.

Same as otherwise? Resources (the rings need maintenance and you _cannot_ mine the ringworld), strategical locations (so enemies cannot conquer your ring) and desire to find new worlds. Also oppressive regimes etc. And humankind always seems to colonize everything they can so it is more a "why not" as well.

Hmm.. Ill make some of the other ringworlds unhabitable due war scars or pollution for fun (imagine the migrations away from damaged ringworlds :O ). They too will be orbiting planets as well so of smaller scale. They will make suitable capitals for the major kingdoms and great stuff for them to fight over. And of course there will be other Ancient relics as well to be discovered but ringworlds are one of the most famous.

>>53301079
>Resources (the rings need maintenance and you _cannot_ mine the ringworld)

You're not doing any "maintenance" if the Ancients built them because you can't even understand HOW to do the maintenance. IN the Niven novels, you had to become a Protector to understand the control center.

As for resources, if the Ancients stripped the local system, you mine the system next door. You don't need to mine the system 100 parsecs away.

>> strategical locations (so enemies cannot conquer your ring)

The world is "strategic" and an enemy is going to conquer a structure 3 MILLION times the size of Earth?

>>and desire to find new worlds.

Why? You've got 3 MILLION worlds in one system.

>>Also oppressive regimes etc.

Who can oppress an entire structure the size of 3 MILLION worlds?

>> And humankind always seems to colonize everything they can so it is more a "why not" as well.

How long will it take to fill up 3 MILLION Earths?

>>Hmm.. Ill make some of the other ringworlds unhabitable due war scars or pollution for fun

Pollution and war scars which can fuck up 3 MILLION Earths. Sure.

>>They too will be orbiting planets...

We're done now. You've no concept of the idea beyond ZOMG RINGWORLDS!!!

Good luck. I'm sure your players will have fun as long as you don't hand them the same "answers" you've given me.

>>53301200
Ringworlds are cool, who gives a fuck about all that autism stuff

>>53303002
They are cool.
Just not in Traveller.

Have a copy of 2008 Mongoose Traveller, and am going thru the process of designing my first campaign. I noticed there's a 2016 Mongoose Traveller now. Anyone know the compatibility between versions? Can I use the 2016 Central Supply Catalog with the 2008 core with minimal issues?

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>>53304407
The problem isn't *as* bad, considering it's only a ring world around a gas giant, not a star proper. Begs the question of why though, and raises the even bigger issue of the ring blocking it's own sunlight.
Maybe change it to a small proto-star?
Still a lot of real estate though.

>>53303002
Ringworlds are pretty cool, it's just that it raises a bunch of internal consistency questions that your man outlined. Stuff like "why bother colonising other planets when we can just find an empty section of Ringworld to call our own?"
I guess you could have the Ringworld already colonised, but that's an imperial fucktonne of people.
Maybe do it like Stellaris does, where the Ringworld is organised in sections, only some of which are actually habitable. So instead of "3 MILLION EARTHS" you'd have like 10 big Earths at most.

Really, it depends on what you want from your game. If you're fine going full space-opera, then the Ringworld works fine because you can just not think about it.
If you're going for something more grounded you're either going to need to rework it or come up with some really smart answers to those questions.

Normally Traveller is more grounded, with crazy bullshit like Ringworlds normally being a Big Deal, but the system also isn't married to the setting. There's no reason you couldn't use Traveller for high flying space-opera if you wanted.

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>>53297542
>Traveller is a classic science fiction system first released in 977

Fun fact: Basil II was fond of playing Traveller between Bulgar killing sessions.

>>53301079
>They too will be orbiting planets as well so of smaller scale.

Borrowing from three SF settings instead of just the one, these would be either "Orbitals" (a self-contained ring that is in orbit around a planet but does not encircle it), or "Halos" (like a ringworld but around a world instead of around a star).

The default Traveller setting has one unfinished ringworld, one semi-Canon Dyson sphere, one Canon Klemperer Rosette, and one no-longer-Canon finished combo-Ringworld and Well of Souls.

>I want space circle worlds but the big ones are too big

What about Bishop rings? No exotic materials needed, and the surface area is roughly equivalent to India.

>>53304711
Unappreciated

>>53305425
>>53305491
Banks' Orbitals and Bishop Rings are similar in placement, if not scale, in that they orbit something but do not encircle it.

>>53305491
>Because of its enormous scale, the Bishop Ring would not need to be enclosed like the Stanford torus: it could be built without a "roof", with the atmosphere retained by artificial gravity and atmosphere retention walls some 200 km (120 mi) in height
Yeah, the open-topped style is where you go from "lol nice space station, for babies" to "oh damn that's a nice place"

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>>53304607
>>53305425
Ringworld-anon here once more.

What was written here seems really good, and close to what I had thought about: A skeleton of an orbital around a gas giant with some (dozen or so) components. Some might be habitable but most are open to space and 50% contain weird and unexplored stuff.

Why around a gas giant? For fuel. [secret]The Orbital was intended by the Ancients to be a gigantic spacedock/refueling station for their craft but Ancients disappeared long before it was finished. The few living spaces are mostly for crew enjoyment and not for that large population[/spoiler]

Thought about the reason why no big kingdoms have occupied it: The Orbital was a cause for a war 100 years ago, but it ended in a ceasefire and now the Orbital sits in a middle of a Neutral Zone between the kingdoms. Of course it is full of pirates and other suspicious types (and spies) but officially neither Kingdom wants to be there too much as that would lead to another war. Of course the PCs can change things if they like...

>>53307766
So more Space Casablanca? That makes a bit more sense politically, and is pretty neat.
If you haven't already, consider putting it between three or more equally powerful polities. That way, if any one tries to take it, the others gang up on them. Make it an odd number to prevent equal alliances.

>>53307766
what about your aliens is so alien, anon?

are the Droyne literally the ancients ? or was there regression?

>>53308819
If I recall, there was a regression. According to CT lore

>>53308819
Also the Aslan may have stolen jump drive technology making them a 'lesser race'

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>>53308401
Space Casablanca it is indeed! You are true, probably third faction could be added for "balance of terror"

>>53308707
Haven't had _that_ much to think about the Aliens, but I do not like too humanoid aliens ffor this setting - the rubberheaded aliens will be just different subtypes of humankind.

I would express their otherwordliness by
1) Not being humanoid in shape
2) Different scale (huge/small), different environment (gas/water/hot), ways of communication ( light, even UV etc), weird lifecycles. Some of them have more advanced Tech as well.
3) Really difficult to communicate with. No universal translators
4) Having quite different morality (traveller has great examples of this)
5) Different mindsets. For example, one reptilian species in one of my settings was very focused on fight/flight reflex. Yet when they (once) lost to humans, they thought that they could not _ever_ win humans again due to them having proven their *species* superiority once and for all over their *species*. The humans had not yet understood this fact, however, and were just happy that the reptiles stopped raiding them after the war.
6) Due to the old human crusade, most of aliens see humans akin to interstellar rats - annoying but too numerous to wipe out. Therefore they will not deal much with humans, meaning that Alien - PC contact will be suitably rare in this campaign.

The Ancients will probably be original humans, probably called Ancestors by their descendants. Current humans are their leftovers of their Disappearance

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>>53309504
Keep talking like that and you're gonna get dewclaw'd son

Recently saw a map of the Traveller Milky Way posted in a thread, and I was intrigued by the Core Sophonts, Essaray, Dushis Khurisi, and the galaxy in general. But googling didn't turn up much.

>>53307766

Just more excuses on your part with even less understanding. A ring circling a gas giant is going to be far less stable than a ringworld, need near constant use of attitude jets, have to deal with more "debris", and block it's own sunlight along with many many other issues.

You could use Banks' Orbital or Bishop Rings, if you'd ever heard of them before this thread. You could use huge Stanford Torii too. Instead, you simply must have a ringworld because it's cool.

There's no problem with employing the Rule of Cool to plop on or dozens of ringworlds in your setting. There is a problem, however, when you try to EXPLAIN their presence because the more you attempt to explain the stupider the idea becomes.

By all means, inflict a ringworld on your players. Take care to answer their questions with "No one knows" because there are no actual answers to their questions.

>>53312816
Someone posted the outline of the Galaxiad in a past thread.
Apparently the characters go about the place meeting all of them across the different seasons.
The only one I remember properly is that the Dushis Khurisi is a Vilani Empire made up of people who ran really really really far away for some reason

>>53308819
>are the Droyne literally the ancients ? or was there regression?

Neither. The Droyne existed before the Ancients, worked for the Ancients, and survived the Ancients. Putting it another way, the Droyne were minions.

The 1st Ancient, Yaskodray (Grandfather), was a mutated Droyne. Think super psionic super genius. He took control of the Droyne homeworld and used Droyne as servants & workers. Regular Droyne didn't prove good enough, so he made copies of himself, Children, and those Children made copies too, the Grandchildren. The Kids and Grandkids were then dispatched hither and yon by Gramps on various research projects taking ordinary Doyne with them as a work force. Certain ordinary Droyne were also possibly "uplifted" to Ancient or near Ancient status.

The family squabble know as the Final War begins, Gramps hunts down and kills all his Kids & Grandkids, retreats into his pocket universe, and the Droyne are left behind.

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>>53312927
>attitude jets
Not ringworld-anon, but surely running a whole bunch of M-Drives isn't going to be that power intensive, assuming really high TL reactors.
Debris can be dealt with with Traveller's normal "lol gravatics"
Also the idea of the place being under constant night is pretty cool. Could explain why most of it isn't habitable. You can't stray too far from the heaters and lights and all that.
Also seeing as it's space Casablanca it being constantly night-time gives it a real noir feel, which works thematically with it being a nest of spies and scoundrels.

>>53312816
>Recently saw a map of the Traveller Milky Way posted in a thread, and I was intrigued by the Core Sophonts, Essaray, Dushis Khurisi, and the galaxy in general. But googling didn't turn up much.

Very little is known about any of them. They're all T5 additions and any T5 materials apart from the core rules/game design kit have yet to appear. Don't hold your breath about getting anything anytime soon either. T5 took nearly 15 years and a few of the "inner circle" people who were able/allowed to help/push Miller along have died.

There has been speculation at COTI regarding the Essaray and a comment in an early version of T5 that they are responsible for the lack of life in the trailing arm. Using that tiny comment and adding in an event in AotI, one poster suggested the Essaray are some sort of von Neumann machines.

And, of course, any of the names you found could be linked in some way to the Black Fleets so cryptically mentioned in AotI.

>>53313182
>Not ringworld-anon, but surely running a whole bunch of M-Drives isn't going to be that power intensive, assuming really high TL reactors.

Super Science or not M-drives & reactors need fuel while drives, reactors and gravitic "brooms" need maintenance, etc. ,etc. Niven's Ringworld "worked" because hidden Protectors kept nearly all the systems functioning.

More "explanations" simply create more problems.

Use a ringworld if you want to. Don't try to explain it because you cannot.

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>>53313353
How about something like these guys for maintenance?

>More "explanations" simply create more problems.
Yeah, but that's true for all but diamond-hard sci-fi. All you need to do practically is be able to field most reasonable questions that could come up from your prospective audience.
You also need to factor in what people in-universe know. While its handy for the ref to know that the Ancients built their dyson sphere as part of a cosmic dick-waving contest (or whatever), it's not guaranteed anyone alive at the time of play will know that this is the case.

Hell, maybe the Ancients were planning to perform firefly-style helioforming on the gas-giant

>>53313578
>How about something like these guys for maintenance?

Motie Brownies for lack of a better term? All you need to do is "simple" shit like breed them, feed them, house them, train them, etc. for the thousands of years they've been "mindlessly" maintaining the structure.

>>All you need to do practically is be able to field most reasonable questions that could come up from your prospective audience.

You and the ringworld anon can't even field simple & reasonable questions now so, unless the players a morons, you won't be able to field their simple & reasonable questions either.

>>You also need to factor in what people in-universe know.

That's true. You also need to factor in the IMPACT such a structure has on both the setting and the setting's inhabitants. If the structure are ancient enough, the "Why they were built" can be answered with a simple "We don't know".

However, seriously suggesting that a setting with dozens of ringworlds would also feature extensive interstellar exploration and outright wars for control of those structures is little more than idiocy.

How many real tons of mass does a Traveller d-ton equal? Is it based on liquid hydrogen?

>>53313773
>However, seriously suggesting that a setting with dozens of ringworlds would also feature extensive interstellar exploration and outright wars for control of those structures is little more than idiocy.

I've really quickly crunched the numbers, and came up with 100,800,000,000,000km^2 for each Ringworld, using the assumption that they're orbiting a Gas Giant the size of Jupiter at about the orbit of Ganymede, and using the circumference-width ratio of Niven's Ringworld. Does my maths check out?
This is approximately 50 Earths of surface area, which while massive, isn't as fuckheug as 3 Million Earths.
Assuming the other Ringworlds are finished, again maybe with Protostars, they'd definitely be a massive deal spacio-politically, but not enough to change Traveller's base assumptions a great deal. Also, Ringworld-anon implied Humanity has been around for a long time in their setting, giving time for the Ringworlds in civilised space to be populated.

It should also be said that the other Ringworlds are apparently outside the scope of anon's campaign.

>All you need to do is "simple" shit like breed them, feed them, house them, train them, etc. for the thousands of years they've been "mindlessly" maintaining the structure.

The older Keepers/Brownies take care of the training, duh. Plus the implants which allow central computer to fuck around with their brains. They live in designated hab zones, and are fed by the automated hydroponics, both of which are either powered by reactors running off fuel from the gas giant, or from massive solar panels on the outward rim

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>>53314132
I do want to put out the disclaimer that this maths was done both using google as a calculator and while a wee bit pished. so definitely double check it if you smell bullshit

>>53313992
I'm pretty sure it's the amount of volume that 1 ton of Hydrogen displaces at a given temperature. While it's arbitrary, it makes fuel requirement calculations really easy

>>53314132
>isn't as fuckheug as 3 Million Earths.

The star-centered ringworld was 3 million Earths in size. Of course the gas giant ones will be smaller.

>>The older Keepers/Brownies take care of the training, duh

That's just part of the issue, duh. No recycling system is going to be 100% efficient so all the hydroponics, reactors, and whatever are going to need raw materials.

The longer your Keepers/Brownies are using those habitats, the more material inputs they'll need. Do the Keepers/Brownies fly ships? Trade for goods?

A ringworld or ringworlds, whether around a star or gas giant, and THE TECH NEEDED TO BUILD THEM should have a HUGE impact on any setting. Yet all you and the original anon want to do is is derp about neutral zones, casablancas, unchanging organic sevitors keeping them working for eons, and other idiocies.

By all means, put them in you setting. Just don't be surprised when your players begin the point out the parsec-sized holes in your 'thinking".

>>53314678
>Do the Keepers/Brownies fly ships? Trade for goods?
That would actually be pretty neat. The Keepers/Brownies are capable of mining and awkward trading, but their entire mindset revolves around getting enough resources to their Ringworld

>>53314678
>THE TECH NEEDED TO BUILD THEM

...I didn't consider that. Especially if you have a bunch of Ringworlds, it wouldn't even be as big a risk to dismantle one to try an reverse-engineer all the high-TL shit required to keep one running. I guess if the technology required to build them isn't held on the Ringworld itself that could mitigate the issue somewhat, but even observing the Ringworld would give insight into the theory, along with aforementioned maintenance-tech being reverse-engineerable.

I guess you could have the big players in Near Space working on/basically worked out Ringworlds, but the tech hasn't propagated to the backwater where Ringworld-anon's campaign is set? Hell, it could even be conducive to a Traveller campaign, because if the major powers are focusing all their resources on working out/building Ringworlds, they aren't going to be administering the border-regions as much.

I'll admit it's a massive stretch at this point, but I'm just trying to spitball reasonable solutions to Ringworld-anon's problems.

>>53314874
>...I didn't consider that.

Believe me, it was obvious.

>>I'll admit it's a massive stretch at this point, but I'm just trying to spitball reasonable solutions to Ringworld-anon's problems.

Seeing as Ringworld anon isn't bothered to find reasonable solutions, why should you?

Ringworlds would fit nicely In a Vancian-style science-fantasy "Dying Earth"-ish setting where "magic" and "tech" merged long ago and the few people left only have a rote understanding of both. Nothing in those kinds of setting needs to be explained or accounted for, only the logical consequences need be handled.

>>53316705
>setting where "magic" and "tech" merged long ago and the few people left only have a rote understanding
One of the things I like about the rather odd setting used by Mike Kaluta years ago for the graphic novel Starstruck. High technic societies in some places, barbarians in old orbital habs in other places. Whether a really old setting or just an extreme case of the three generation rule, the variables make it an interesting read.

>>53317375
the three generation rule? forgive my plebeian-ness, but what's that

>>53317460

It's a rule of thumb originally from civil engineering.

Generation One grew up without a sewer systems and saw people dying of cholera, drinking water being fouled, etc. They deliberately choose spend the money to build a sewer system and then spend whatever money is needed to maintain it.

Generation Two grew up with a sewer system and only heard about the days of cholera, bad water, etc. They spend on maintenance for the system out of habit more than anything else. Towards the end, they skimp on spending and maintenance because the system is working.

Generation Three grew up with a sewer system and don't even know what cholera is. They see Gen 2 skimping on maintenance and think that's normal. They increasingly cut maintenance budgets, ignore the system which has always worked, then it suddenly doesn't anymore, and Generation 3 learns all about cholera.

The three generation rule is why highway bridges in the US collapse and why US/EU cities have water main systems with components dating to the 1880s.

Gen 1 - We need this!
Gen 2 - We already have this...
Gen 3 - What is this?

>>53317639
yup. Now apply that to really big orbitals. Tough and built to last at some level, but will accumulate mechanical issues while the population descends into savagery.

>>53317639
Ah, so not to be overly /pol/

Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. Weak men create hard times.

that about cover it?

>>53317798
Only if you see yourself as one of the "strong" and wish to blame the cycle on someone else. Which does happen, and can, in the context of this thread, be used to drive in-game politics, patrons, and thus adventure.

The trick to maintaining civilization is to not let too many of these cycles synchronize and hit the failure point all at once.

>>53318294
I'm not saying I agree with the phrase, I'm merely seeing synchronicity between the phrase and the above statement

>>53318355
That's cool. It was an abstract "you".

>>53312927
You don't want the archivist back any time soon, do you.

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>>53312927
>>53313353
>>53313773
>>53316705

Ringworld-anon here once more and probably for the last time.

This is getting quite tedious. I know my players well enough that I know that they will give questions about the Casablanca. However, most of the questions can be answered quite well with stuff what I and >>53313182 >>53313578 >>53314132 have came up with. Thank you!

The Casablanca is an skeleton of an Orbital built by the Ancients orbiting a Gas Planet. It is unknown how it works as there has not been sufficiently much research on it due the Neutral Zone. (Its TL is > than current human Kingdoms).

> Why it is here? How it works?
Not entirely sure, but some functioning components are collecting and refining fuel from the Gas Giant (reduced cost of fuel perhaps)
> How maintenance for it works
We humans really do not know much about that stuff. Some components are clearly suffering from lack of maintenance but at least the orbital is stable. The internal components.. not that much.
> Tech to build them
Only the Ancients had such tech, it has not been reverse-engineered successfully. (too big TL gap)
> Why it is not conquered?
The Casablanca War was waged 100 years ago about the Orbital and ended in a draw. Now it is the middle of three kingdoms and full of renegades, spies, corporations and all that fun stuff.
Also the further away Kingdoms have other orbitals to worry about. They are long distance away.
> Is it safe?
If you stay in the spaceport, it is rather safe although lawless. Go on lone expeditions to other components and nothing is certain.
> Can we the PCs profit from it
Yes, but it is risky and _many_ factions are interested in it as well. Have fun!
> Does this make a good hub for our adventures?
It is interesting, has a good spaceport, easy to dock, LOTS of patrons / contacts and cheap fuel. Why not?

In science fiction, you do not always have to answer everything, sometimes the mystery is the fun part :D
+ Rule of Cool is always great!

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>>53318899

Why does that dickhead bother you weenies so much?

>>53313239
so, will the galaxiad ever happen?

>>53319085
>I know my players well enough

If you know your players are morons, go with it!

>>53320440
>so, will the galaxiad ever happen?

If I had to bet, I'd bet no. That makes me sad, but I must be honest.

Miller is SEVENTY years old. The fire, the drive, whatever you want to call it just isn't there any more. He doesn't need to sell Traveller materials for the kid's braces or college funds.

Miller took a year to write AotI, but that was after he'd been thinking about it for a few years beforehand. As good as AotI is, it's only about 300 pages and that if you also count the various indexes. I know authors who routinely produce 300 good pages in a few months.

Look at Crawford, how much gaming materials for SWN did he produce in a year? Core rules, supplements, source books, etc., he put out 1000s of good pages for a new rules set and setting in the time Miller took to write one novel.

Miller's collaborators and "inner circle" are beginning to die off too. All the people whom Miller bounces ideas off of, all the people who do various projects, all the people who push him along, there isn't as many has there used to be.

Greg Lee died this year. He was the ONLY guy so far who was able to release a T5 product; the "Cirque" setting an a tie-in novel. There's supposed to be another T5 product in the works, but there's been no hint whatsoever at COTI.

Loren Wiseman died last year after quite a long period of ill health. He wasn't available to toss ideas back and forth for most of that time. The year before that Don McKinney went in to the hospital for weight loss surgery and never came out. Don was one of those unsung guys. He ramrodded the errata projects for older versions, worked the timeline, tracked down all sorts of references in all sorts of canon, and did all the "little" labor intensive jobs Miller needed doing. Hans Rancke died not long after Don. His grasp of all canon was so broad he was given the title of Imperial Librarian.

I don't think there's enough time left given the decade-plus production process T5 required.

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SCREECHcrash
>oh shit...
>oh it's okay, no-one will notice, this planet is a total backwater

>>53320456
Sod off, wankah!

>>53317798
Exactly!!!

>>53320456
This is why no one will play with you

>>53322423
That is not what is normally meant by lithobraking, but good effort.

>>53320909
shame, it sounds like suuuuch a cool idea

>>53326997
>shame, it sounds like suuuuch a cool idea

It does. I love the call backs to mythology, the "hero's journey", and all that. Given the example of T5's 10+ year "gestation" period plus Miller's age, I just don't see it happening.

It's sad really.

>>53324240
>This is why no one will play with you

This Sunday afternoon I'm refereeing a session in a heavily modified TTA campaign. The PCs should be contacted by the Jgd-ll-Jagd with information about a damaged/misjumped Kinunir in Vargr space. They were supposed to get the info last session but they zigged when I expected them to zag so I had to "reset" the rumor.

When we you play next and what will it be about?

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Jump-1

Are there any quick reference sheets downloadable for mongoose 1st ed? I've been looking around for some time now but all i find is the damn gm screen for 2nd ed... (or can i use that with minor changes?)

>>53331989
I think there might be something in the archive?

>>53331989
There was a screen for Mongoose 1 released early on. Is it not in the archive?

>>53335666
now's a bad time to realize it if it's not, seeing how the archivist is gone for...the forseeable future

>>53297681
It doesn't really matter since we're about to lose it to an alien psion who turned it into the Ishimura, but we already had 13 MCr out of 32 paid off and were doing fairly well for ourselves. My character avoided all the horror shit by skipping off to plow some hookers after the psion gave everyone except him horrifying visions. As it stands, I'm wondering what insurance he and the other co-owner have on it and how we're gonna replace the NPC crew. I'm hoping it's a lot so I can buy a drone and join in on the adventures instead of sitting back with the ship.

>>53335808

Wow, that campaign sounds wild! Please let us know how things turn out.

Is there something like a space fantasy supplement for traveller?

also is there a way to play as a robot?

>>53342001
there's flynn's guide to magic in traveller, and several attempts to make sword & sorcery trav.

>>53342001
Crank up the recovery rate for expended psi points. Make the assumption that the loss of potential above 18 is mirrored by a gain in potential before 18.
Use the TNE version of TK, and the Dark Conspiracy book of exotic psi abilities.

>>53342042
>>53342728
And for sentient robots?

>>53337584
Last thing we had to deal with was basically xenomorphs, almost had a total party kill because it was in close quarters. My character was especially fucked because he's almost a cripple, lots of trained skills though, and with a wafer jack that includes every last intelligence or education based skill.

>>53342001
>Is there something like a space fantasy supplement for traveller?

The aforementioned Flynn's guide, a few Vance/Dying Earth supplements, and others. As >>53342728 explains, it's basically a case of making psionics easier, faster, stronger, etc. Ditch the "lose points if untrained as you age" angle, buff the number of problems, buff recovery rates, lengthen how long effects last, etc.

>>also is there a way to play as a robot?

That's been available since Classic with robot rules in early JTAS issues and later LBB:8. DGP's work for MegaT included a robot PC, Aybee Wan Owen (AB-101) as part of their long running "4 Knights' campaign in their "Traveller Chronicle" mag. TNE had rules, mostly in Vampire Fleets, and other versions include them too. Mindjammer as a whole host of rules for this too.

Playing a robot has always been more a case of role playing ABILITY than specific rules which means many folks can't/won't be able to do it on the tabletop. Robots/androids should have certain limitations and limitations of any kind are, as the great Lew Pulsipher explains, something current players have no concept of or tolerance for. Take GURPS for example.

Disads and quirks in GURPS are meant to an integral part of PCs, providing them with built-in handicaps and personalities. Instead, they're completely ignored aspects the player took so they could buff other aspects. As a referee, I find myself constantly reminding players about their own PC's disads & quirks while they whine about having to deal with the disads & quirks they themselves chose.

With players using robots/androids as PCs, instead of getting a LCDR Data with his well known flaws and blindspots, you usually end up with a Superman who talks funny. Think twice about allowing robot/android PCs.

>>53346426

Crazy, absolutely crazy. Sounds like it was a lot of fun.

>>53346390
Are you looking for the wide variety seen in Star Wars, where even the little trash collectors are sentient?

bump, also, Best minor race of Humaniti, and why is it Darrians?

>>53350024

Suerrat for me. They made it into space ahead of Vland, but never developed jump drive. Instead they had a "sector-sized empire" held together with STL generation ships before the Vilani contacted them. Much later, they led a rebellion against the 31 in the 400s which resulted in their homeworld's equatorial regions being "scrubbed free of life".

Better yet, they're only briefly mentioned in 40 years of canon so I can do whatever the fuck I want with them.

>>53350967
and what's your take on them, anon?

>>53347142
It was actually pretty nerve-wracking; when Insaid he was almost a cripple I meant it, during character generation I started with like 7 STR and 9 END, thanks to a series of accidents and shit luck he dropped both to 3. I actually ended making him spend 8 years in prison before the game started.

>>53351148

Are you familiar with the post-WW1 Czech satire "The Good Soldier Svejk'? It's set before and during WW1 and feaures characters fighting in that war for an empire to which they have no loyalty. That's basically my take on the Suerrat.

Characters in the novel routinely engage in passive resistance towards the A-H Empire through both dumb insolence and passive aggressive behavior. IMTU, the Suerrat do th same towards the 3I.

The Suerrat get contacted by the Vilani and, because Vland has jump drive and they do not, get hammered into the Ziru Sirka while Vilani cultural norms are force on them. Over a 1000 years later, the ZS falls and the RoM takes over but the boot is still on their neck. The RoM then falls but the Long Night results.

Nearly 2000 years later, the brand new 3I comes calling, Suerrat worlds join up. Any hopes and dreams fade over the next few centuries as the 3I focuses development elsewhere, so a big chunk of Ilelish more or less peacefully revolts. While the 3I reacts more with economic and "soft" power to put down the rebellion, the world Ilelish itself gets "eco-cided" as punishment.

Nearly 700 years late, Dulinor shoots the Emperor and kicks off a war which leads to the destruction of Charted Space.

What is one of the sectors in his Domain? Ilelish.
What is the largest cultural grouping in his Domain? The Suerrat.

>>53351429

A STR and END of 3? Yeah, that's a cripple alright. of course have a wafer jack with EVERY skill based on INT and EDU more than made up for any physical problems.

I knew as soon as I read about wafers in AotI, munchkins and the like would take the centimeter Miller provided and stretch it out to a parsec.

>>53351537
Yeah, an aug that makes any nut aimed INT or EDU skill trained, or provides a +1 to anything trained above 1 is great because my guy gets a +1 from INT, so essentially I get 2 in all those skills. The problem so far is that like I said, I can't really go anywhere without getting fucked. Until I can get a drone I'm ship bound unless I want to risk death; though if we ever get an attack helo I suddenly become the toughest, hardest hitting fucker on the team since I have points in that. As it stands, the moment I get a drone is the moment I basically get a new body that's tougher than anyone else's and he best thing is that I hashed it out with the DM and he said I could control the drone with either a portable computer or the wafer jack if I pair it with a comm. I can basically mind control drones and seeing as another guy in he party is a bit of a hacker, if we ever fight some I could conceivably take one and turn it against its owners.

>>53351488
was Dulinor a Suerrat IYTU?

>>53351713
>The problem so far is that like I said, I can't really go anywhere without getting fucked.

Not exactly. It's more like you couldn't figure out to play a STR/END 3 PC in what sounds like a physically oriented/combat heavy campaign and your referee was too weak to point out that your character was flawed and have you create new one.. Naturally, the "solution" you both came up with - wafer jacks and possible drones - are overreactions which turn your PC into a superman. The "crutches" you've been given and will get doesn't just put your PC on par with the other PCs, it make him BETTER than the other PCs.

PCs need to fit the campaign. A pure combat monster with no ship skills has no place in a free trader campaign, a jump navigator has no place in a planetside merc campaign, and your PC has no place in whatever campaign your referee is running.

And, of course, the possibility that you can hack other drones while no one is able to hack yours in return is 100% pure munchkin.

>>53351844
>was Dulinor a Suerrat IYTU?

No, he's still from Dlan, isn't a member of the planetary religion there so has to wear black, and all the rest.

The Suerrat, near Suerrat, and the "dumb insolence" mindset they promote helped set the stage for Dulinor and his rebellion. While they didn't choose him, overtly plot with him, or anything like that, their "who gives a fuck", "not my job", and "why bother" mindset meant the 3I in Dulinor's Domain was and was seen to be more incompetent, corrupt, out of touch, oppressive, etc.

Putting it another way, the attitudes of the Suerrat staffing the various Imperial bureaucracies and organizations in the Domain turned Imperial governance there into a giant Department of Motor Vehicles. After generations of dealing with an imperium like that, the people of the Domain didn't need much coaxing to rebel.

>>53351885
>physically oriented/combat heavy campaign
It actually isn't combat heavy, we've only really had 3 major fights, the xenomorphs, a ship fight, and currently the necromorphs, and the first one screwed over everybody because it was at such close quarters and no one was specced for melee combat, the second my guy handled just fine because he's the pilot. For the most part a lot of it has been business meetings and parcel delivery, the former only one guy is actually specced in, and the latter I can do because my guy can drive.

>make him BETTER than the other PCs.
It won't, all of us are pretty specialized in whatever roles we've got, two of the other PCs are specced for gun-combat and are already pretty heavily armed, by the time I can actually afford a drone they'll be able to exceed it when it comes to firepower and versatility of weapons plus have enough armor to closely match it for toughness. The only drones that I know can exceed them in firepower and toughness are so far out of my character's budget that they're a complete non-starter.

>possibility that you can hack other drones while no one is able to hack yours in return
I can't hack, the third guy is specced for that and business shit, and if we do fight drones then there's a pretty good chance he'll be too busy shooting at them to hack. Plus, our DM has been pretty good about rolling against hacking attempts

>>53352123
>It actually isn't combat heavy,

Not combat heavy. You had a near TPK against xenomorphs and you been complaining that your PC is so weak he'll be killed if he leaves the ship. but the campaign isn't combat heavy at all. Makes sense to me.

>> two of the other PCs are specced for gun-combat and are already pretty heavily armed,

Two min-max munchkins specced for gun combat, but it's really not a combat heavy campaign. Sure thing.

>>I can't hack, the third guy is specced for that and business shit, and if we do fight drones then there's a pretty good chance he'll be too busy shooting at them to hack.

So you can't hack and the guy who can will be too busy? Tell me again how that is any different than drones being hack proof?

>>Plus, our DM has been pretty good about rolling against hacking attempts

How is he for rolling NPC hacking attempts? You know, the guys who are going to want to hack your drone before it shoots their asses off?

So your cruppled PC needs a combat drone to keep up with the other 2 gun specced PCs in your non-combat heavy campaign? And there's no chance of anyone ever hacking your drone? And you've got a wafer jack giving you two levels in every INT & END skill?

And you still think your PC is a cripple?

>>53350967
>Better yet, they're only briefly mentioned in 40 years of canon
Contact article in the rare T4 era issues of JTAS, and some coverage in GTIW. Other than that just mentions in library data.

>>53352897
>article in the rare T4 era issues of JTAS
>>some coverage in GTIW.
>>just mentions in library data.

I think all that counts as "brief", don't you?

That T4 JTAS article said their STL generation ships had huge trees running the length long axis.

>>53346390
I've never found a good set of robot rules. I just go with "you're mechanically a normal character, say beep boop a lot, may be social consequences at the imperial or local levels, who knows, work it out, also at times of extreme need you might be able to function as a bare-minimum starship computer, the same way an organic crew could spend a week plotting a jump by hand if their computer was fucked, and then have someone hopped up on spice do the piloting work."

>>53353033
Their treatments are brief compared to the long articles or parts of books some other species have gotten, but still a bit more than the typical short Contact article. As an example, the Virushi have material in CT and GT, but the GT chapter on them is close to a word for word of the CT article, while the two major Suerrat sources are covering different ground.

Someone in the previous PDF share thread posted this:

>>53219023
>Ah, screw it. There might be some duplicates, but here's something.

>M3G4 dot EnZee
>/#F!d7Q3HaRZ!gTsKc-vYWTNa5th9EspwxQ

Yeah, that's Attack Vector: Tactical in the SF games section. There are some interesting and possibly relevant bits in there for Traveller players, the Nexus Journal included has a write-up of a drop brigade, including organisation and some stuff on strategy. It's for a harder setting than Traveller - it assumes that once you drop, you're not getting back up until you capture the local launch facilities - but if you've ever considered the hassle involved in dropping almost ten thousand marines onto an enemy planet then you might find it worth a look.

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Sorry for reposting from an old thread, but pic related. Who else doesn't like artificial gravity? Are there any alternatives besides constant thrust or centrifuges? How would you implement it in your game? What interesting consequences could arise? This might be slightly off topic, but I'd like to replace the omnipresent artificial gravity with something more hard-ish and interesting

>>53354319
>Are there any alternatives besides constant thrust or centrifuges?
No not really. If you take out artificial gravity from the equation then you take out all forms of fabricated gravity.

The consequences would be pretty much that your stations will either become spin-stations or 0G stations. Also if we allow (near) infinite thrust for ships (IE The Expanse) travel will be limited by what G forces your passengers can endure.

>>53354319
Only other way I can think of is to put enough mass underneath you to make it work (which is how we keep all our stuff on the ground here on Terra)

The trouble with removing artificial gravity in Traveller is then you lose the following (at least).
1. Grav Tanks
2. Cheap Surface to Orbit Spaceflight

To do the really heavy lifting that we have (where you aren't counting grams of equipment in your surface to orbit calculations), you need a LOT of power (hundreds of gigawatts to terawatts) - enough to likely be a much more effective weapon than your laser batteries.

If you wave your hand and say 'antigrav', that option goes away (I think it's one of the reasons that between Traveller '77 to '81, MM made the change in the M-Drives to not a torchship style drive is due to this)

Mind you, you can do it. But it'll have consequences if you go hard.

You probably already know about it, but in case anyone else doesn't know - Atomic Rockets (http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/index.php) is a great resource for this sort of thing.

>>53354600
The problem with the "Put mass underneath you" is that to do that artificially is to create an artificial moon. to even have a reasonable sense of gravity on a human scale.

>>53354600
What about magnetic levitation or some kind of anti-Casimir effect? I can't help but think that weird things might happen if all the mass above your grav plates is constantly accelerated in one direction and the rest of the ship is not. And what about under the grav plates? Gravity, like any other force, works in every direction. Is it pushed against the grav plates or (somehow) repelled?
Maybe I'm overthinking this and should just learn to Love the Gravitics.

>>53354688
That was the joke.

>>53355287
Oh. Well that flew waaaay past my head there :D

Anyhow completely unrelated question. Anyone has an idea or two for "experimental" cybernetics that I can potentially throw into the game? Don't have to have any stats or anything, I just need something to get the ball rolling.

>>53355408
Brain-computer interface is an old classic, but Traveller already has those. How about a "rig", something that goes a bit further, a number of implants along the spine that allow you to control a vehicle or spaceship like your own body? If it's experimental, it would probably only work on a single testbed vehicle, requiring an entirely new software package or even surgery to work on a different vehicle or just a different configuration of the testbed. Might be traumatic to the body schema, driving the test subjects mad after a few uses so they identify more with the testbed vehicle than their own body, and they get murdery. Free plot hook for you

>>53354319

Your only option besides artgrav and thrust/centrifuges is Zero-G, which isn't out of the question if you can negate the effects of it.

Imagine a universe where a 'Kinetic Drive' can move ships kinda like Grav Thrusters or Telekinesis, but lacks actual internal gravity effects.

This means your ship moves relative to planets at high velocities, but there's no felt gravity aboard. Big, distributed ships are therefore possible in deep space. Huge cavernous space stations wall-to-wall with zero-g vegetation.

>>53358060
Sorta something like stutterwarp from 2300ad?
Essentially the ship isn't actually moving, it's teleporting a tiny distance a bunch of times per second

Does beg the question of how you correct momentum to make orbit around a body though.

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>>53342728

>and the Dark Conspiracy book of exotic psi abilities

Fuck that. Lester Smith is a Commie.

>>53317798

/pol/yps are right every once in awhile.

Their mistake is believing that THEY are the strong.

>>53354206

Thanks, anon. Been lookin' for AVT :)

Would a melee focused build make any sense?

I imagine this could be pretty good against hi-tech humanoids but not a smart move against agressive fauna. Still would love to give a character like that a try.

How do you explain the appeal of traveller to new players?

>>53360932
Seconding this. Especially convincing a woeful bunch of 3.5 DnD players.

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I've been told this is the system to go to run a game about a ship of space salvagers.
Apparently there's a ton of versions; could you guys quickly tell me which edition is the best, and why?

I come from Star Wars and we have a hard time deciding which rpg is the best; let's hope you guys are more unanimous.

>>53361021

Don't waste your time. They're too stupid to play Traveller.

>>53361087
And for the common players?

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>>53354206

Know anything about the other games he's got over there?

>>53361032
Of course we're unanimous!
We all agree the best edition of Traveller is the one you cobble together yourself!

But jokes aside, you're probably be best starting off with Mongoose Traveller 2e. It's got everything you need to start off and is relatively modern in it's sensibilities.
The big downside to 2e is that ship-design rules are in a separate book which isn't really a downside cause it's all in the archive

>>53361631
Many thanks anon.

So what is a good beginner campaign plot? for players and game master

Also any required read for lore?

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>>53360932
>>53361021
>>53361488

Firstly, Traveller is pretty rules light on the player's side.
The base mechanic of Mongoose Traveller is 2d6+Stat+Skill, try to roll 8+ (adjusting the target number for easy/difficult things).

Secondly it's fairly lethal. Characters don't have HP, damage is done to their physical stats (Strength, Dexterity, and Endurance) which range from 1-12, average 7.
You get two stats knocked to 0 and you're unconscious, all three and ur ded.
A standard rifle does 3d6 damage, so combat is pretty lethal. Smart players hit first, hit hard, and run for the hills when things go south.

Thirdly, it has a pretty neat lifepath chargen system. Essentially you start out as a fresh-faced 18 year old with a few basic skills, and then send them off to serve in the navy or be a colonist or whatever, picking up additional skills and other benefits. There is a big element of chance in chargen too. Different versions have different levels of depth to chargen You've probably heard the "died in chargen meme" but that was only really true in Classic, where chargen took like 10 minutes tops.

Fourthly, it has an emphasis on "horizontal" character development, rather than the vertical development seen in many other games. Skills are very hard to develop after chargen, and stats harder still. The focus is more on growing your characters diagetic assets, stuff like getting a bigger ship and better weapons, being owed favours from powerful people, and of course making mountains of cold, hard, space cash.

I'm not a great seller, so if you want to you could always check it out for yourself. Hoke out the Mongoose 2e Core book in the archive in the OP and have a read sure

>>53362003
Oh I almost forgot, there's a metric fucktonne of material written for Trav over it's 40 year run, and most editions have relatively compatible mechanics so stuff is very easy to mine.
Even Stars Without Number and it's supplements are a goldmine for ideas, especially seeing as Traveller is a more robust system in my opinion.
SWN is basically a long love-letter to Traveller after all

>>53362036
anybody know where to get all the SWN books?

>>53362070
Look in the OSR trove under Sine Nomine Publishing

>>53362103
thanks friendanon

>>53361954
The Traveller Adventure

It's very well designed and written. The end goal is presented in the first session, get Object A to Point B and into the hands of Person C. This goal acquires some additional details as play progresses, but the core is there in session one. There are clear intermediate steps to the end goal. Each step concludes with a sense of accomplishment before the next step is revealed. The end goal does not require the characters to head straight for it with no variation. Side trips are possible and encouraged. Some of the side quests have sequels.

The bulk of the plot is driven by the motivations of various NPCs. If the players miss an encounter, the motivation for that encounter remains unsatisfied, and the NPC involved remains to try again a different way. The big bad is not chasing the characters directly. He has henchmen for that. But should the characters manage to kill the big bad before the main plot is resolved, he has an organization and lieutenants. The motivation behind the main plot is vested in the organization and the story will go on with someone filling the big bad's boots.

In fighting the big bad, the characters will inadvertently befriend a powerful patron who is fighting the big bad for his own reasons. The characters can either sign on with this patron or remain acquaintances with a mutual enemy. The patron's write-up details his long term actions in either event. There are opportunities to weave the main plot and subplots together, but they don't have to be. There is a lot of detail the characters won't encounter. Some groups will have certain experiences running through the main plot. Other will have others. When the main plot is concluded the characters will be surrounded by a richly detailed and experienced setting with a bunch of plot hooks dangling from their previous adventures, or just lots of colour to use when they return to Planet X or Y and run across old friends or enemies.

Any anons ever let their players get a tank? Is it a good idea?

>>53360734
>Would a melee focused build make any sense?

No, not at all. In fact, thinking of Traveller PCs in terms of "builds" doesn't much work at all. The game isn't D&D or d20 or anything similar so "one note" PCs don't work well at all.

The best Traveller PCs are balanced ones. The PC will have some skills associated with their previous career(s) plus a selection of others skills picked up thru life experiences.

A PC which is only useful in combat is of little use in the usual campaigns and a PC which is only useful in unarmed combat is little more than a target for every NPCs' guns. Sure, I can put together an adventure or campaign in which melee skills are a necessity, but such a campaign would so narrowly focused, so specialized as to be useless for normal play.

>Traveller is a classic science fiction system first released in 977
>released in 977

That is one hell of an ancient RPG. Way before its time.

>>53361032

Anon(s) >>53361631, >>53362003, >>53362036, and >>53363336 pretty much explained it all.

Let me repeat their caution that players with only D&D/d20 experience are not going to "get" Traveller right off, ESPECIALLY the "lack" of levels and XPs plus the play styles & mechanics levels and XPs engender. Rewards for good play are entirely in-game things like possessions, money, contacts, and the like rather than meta-game things like d20's various buffs to the PCs' character sheet.

Because Trav has a different play style, I always suggest that new GMs/players run a few introductory sessions first. The materials in the archives are full of pregen PCs, there are at least 2 books with nothing but pregens. Hve your players pick out likely ones and then run them thru something which, at the very least, will so them how deadly combat is. I usually use one of the two Chamax adventures from Classic for that.

Having your players play the game 1st will also help them make better choices when they create a PC thru chargen. They'll have a better idea of what careers & skills they want rather then simply guessing.

Finally TTA is a great campaign. It also a LONG campaign and, despite a lot of sandbox aspects, a scripted campaign. Another choice could be Classic's Twilight's Peak. While the actual campaign arc/plot is short, the sandbox materials surrounding it are as minimal or as extensive as the referee needs them to be.

>>53363613
and that's why it's so great!

>>53363807
>Having your players play the game 1st will also help them make better choices when they create a PC thru chargen.

With pregen characters and that?

>>53363845
yup

>>53363601
tbf, the Marines do seem to think cutlass training is important, so a "melee build" is probably going to be an ex-marine. Or maybe an uplifted barbarian.

Though the beauty of Trav's chargen is that even if you set out to just be "the guy who's good with swords", you'll probably pick up a bunch of other things as well

any anons know of systems with similar 'horizontal' character progression to Traveller?

>>53363886
similar to Traveller I mean

>>53363601
On the other hand, a knife is legal in a lot more places than a gun is, and one of the most satisfying combat encounters I've had in many years of play was gutting a street punk leader in one round in the early stages of the Knightfall campaign. My fat and happy Trader Captain had a snub pistol for those situations, but Small Blade-3 was his combat skill of choice.

>>53363930
But he wasn't strictly focused on melee skills, which is what >>53363601 was going for, it's not strictly 'build to be absolute combat beast' as much as 'a bit of this, bit of that'

>>53363415
>Any anons ever let their players get a tank? Is it a good idea?

Yes I have. While it was a very bad idea/choice on their part, it was great for me because it gave me a wonderful hook I gleefully used to constantly fuck with them.

If you take the time to actual think about the idea instead of knee-jerking "Cool! A tank!" like my players did, you'll realize that most authorities aren't going to be too keen about the idea of some barely known free traders aboard a tramp starship from nowhere landing in the middle of their starport with a fusion gun-armed grav tank squatting in the cargo hold. Accordingly, the ship is usually kept in orbit while the authorities slowly inspect every nut, bolt, and piece of paperwork aboard.

They couldn't wait to get rid of the thing, but they were also greedy enough to want to get some money for it so I was able to punish their idiocy for a good long while.

Another time my players owned a "tank", they were a platoon-sized mechanized infantry merc group with APCs. They didn't have the same problems the morons above did.

>>53363969
Hammer's Slammers?

>>53364041
Or Norton's Star Guard, Asprin's Phule's Company, Shlock Mercenary, the many merc companies of Battletech, etc...

>>53363957
Jayne Cobb, perhaps?

So what is the most common way players die?

>>53364108
Poor dice rolls?

Smartassery aside, in my games, it tends to be poor tactics, not using cover, shoot first ask questions never...

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>>53364124
>>53364108
Always follow pic-related

>>53363866
>the Marines do seem to think cutlass training is important

That's an esprit de corp building exercise, as Miller himself explained using the example bayonet training from his own (and my own desu) military service.

>>so a "melee build" is probably going to be an ex-marine.

You deliberately ignored the words "build' and 'focused' the OP's question. While a marine will have cutlass skill he'll have many others too. A PC with Cutlass-5 is going to be worthless in all but the most specific of sessions or campaigns.

>>Or maybe an uplifted barbarian.

Soon after Classic's Supplement 4, I had a player roll up a barbarian PC. The PC in question had bow, blad, and gun combat skills plus recon, survival, and leader. He basically became the "away team" leader but he was worthless aboard ship, couldn't drive/fly anything, couldn't fix anything apart from weapons, etc. My player accepted those limitations and his diminished role when play didn't involve hiking thru the woods, something I think many current players would find hard to do.

>>53363930
>My fat and happy Trader Captain had a snub pistol for those situations, but Small Blade-3 was his combat skill of choice.

You too deliberately ignored the OP's use of the words "build" and "focused". While your merchant captain was a whiz with a knife, he was ALSO a merchant captain with the skills that position requires.

A PC who is Mack the Knife or Kwai Chang Caine isn't going to have much to do in a normal campaign.

>>53364041
>Hammer's Slammers?

The Slammers are a large regiment with armor, combat car, artillery, infantry, and logistic battalions.

My players had a mech infantry platoon comprised of 3 squads of 7-9 troopers mounted on 3 APCs.

>>53364474
but thematically I mean

>>53364124
>it tends to be poor tactics, not using cover, shoot first ask questions never...

This. Players die thru their own stupidity 95% of the time.

Traveller rewards actual tactics and planning, not the "I'm half-orc/giant Level 36 multiclass mage-paladin-thief who can shrug off lightning bolts" foolishness other games devolve into.

>>53364415
>That's an esprit de corp building exercise
That makes sense, sorta like modern day navy pike drills? Though due to the close quarters involved in space boarding actions, melee training is probably *slightly* more useful than in wet-navy boarding actions. Especially considering boarding actions are probably pretty rare in space.

That said you yourself missed
>Though the beauty of Trav's chargen is that even if you set out to just be "the guy who's good with swords", you'll probably pick up a bunch of other things as well

I was more trying to make that point that Traveller's chargen will more often than not give you a decently well-rounded character, whether you like it or not

>>53364104
>Jayne Cobb, perhaps?

While he is a "combat monster", Cobb also has vacc suit, zero-gee skills, and vehicle skills. He helps make repairs to the ship too.

>>53364574
Also, I guess you could bring up that bayonet charge those Brits performed in Afghanistan a couple of years ago, though that is an extreme edge-case scenario

>>53364574
>That makes sense, sorta like modern day navy pike drills?

I don't know anything about pike drills. I do know USN recruits carry rifles and drill as a way to instill discipline, etc. despite the fact that 90% will never touch a rifle again during their service.

Just like how Miller explained to non-vets questioning the cutlass skill, I not only received bayonet training but led such training too. The Army wasn't planning on me or others to lead a fucking bayonet charge however. It was a drill which combined discipline, exercise, morale building and other things.

>>>Though the beauty of Trav's chargen is that even if you set out to just be "the guy who's good with swords",

My point was that is if, like the anon asking about "melee focused build", you set out to be a guy who is good with swords, guns, or X you do not understand Traveller or it's chargen systems. One-trick ponies are both hard to roll up and hard to "role" in play.

>>53364538
>but thematically I mean

Not in the slightest. Not all merc campaigns are alike. The Slammers are a big unit fighting big tickets for big money. My players were patrolling a river valley looking for insurgents and weapon caches.

You might as well say a kazoo and the London Philharmonic are the same thing 'thematically".

>>53364627
>Also, I guess you could bring up that bayonet charge those Brits performed in Afghanistan a couple of years ago,

You could, you also bring up one made during the Falklands too. Similarly, you could bring up the CAVALRY CHARGE a US unit made in '42 against Japanese infantry in the Philippines.

Sperglord pedants will cite those instance to "prove" the modern military still "plans" on making bayonet and cavalry charges and that is the reason bayonet, pugil stick, and close order drill are still a part of basic training.

As you and I both know, the that isn't the reason at all.

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>>53364776
>>53364846
I guess at the very outside, the fact that a unit can carry out a bayonet/cutlass charge if they absolutely need to is a bonus, however negligible

Speaking of which, did your players have any interesting or notable engagements?

>>53364776
How would it help morale?

>>53365073
>Speaking of which, did your players have any interesting or notable engagements?

Several, most of which happened "organically" rather then being planned. I set it on Gard-Vilis because I've never been happy with the Classic adventure there and use the map from AH's Outdoor Survival which I modified. It was lot of work for me as the referee because most of players were also wargamers and expected more.

Most of the notable unplanned or "organic" engagements happened when the dice put larger OPFORs in play, PCs faild recon roles, or the players took risks. The notable planned battle had the PCs acting as a blocking force for a bronegruppa-style operation against a large insurgent held town. Their grav APCs meant they could rapidly get to the blocking location once the operation already started thus avoiding tipping off OPFOR by arriving before the attack began.

Of course the route the PCs were tasked to block was the insurgents' planned evacuation route!

They did well because they started digging as soon as they arrived. They also had batteries from several different outfits to call on, although that also meant they didn't have batteries only tasked with supporting them. They ended up holding a 360 perimeter with the APCs making occasional sweeps beyond. They also came *that* close to being part of a blue-on-blue incident when part of the bronegruppa assault force showed up driving insurgents on their lines.

>>53365124
>How would it help morale?

Seriously? You have to ask? Have you never been part of a group, military, sports, or otherwise, which trained and worked together and whose success depended on how well you performed as a group?

Fucking pathetic.

>>53365634
Not sure if 'the debate team' counts...in fact I'm pretty sure it doesn't

>>53365775
Take your entire debate team down to the local dojo and enroll in kendo classes with the goal of having ALL of them be proficient to vigilante standards by a certain date. Help each other train to that goal. You WILL be a tighter knit group when you are done. Each knows what the others are capable of, and what they can accomplish as a group or individually.

>>53363807
There is no skill progression in traveller?

>>53361631
>We all agree the best edition of Traveller is the one you cobble together yourself!
But only as long as you use Book 2 starship size limitations.

>>53367775
In CT there is, but it's slooooow, as in months or years. Getting a skill rating of 0 is pretty quick though, it's just after that things slow down.

Alien race traits and gameplay balance, should I even bother? What if some alien races are simply superior to others?

>>53367775
>There is no skill progression in traveller?

There is. It just isn't what RPG players conditioned by D&D, d20, and Super Mario Brothers think "skill progression" means.

Classic's skill progression tends more towards the realistic, just as the game tends more towards the realistic. (Note to sperglords: TENDS MORE towards the realistic and not IS ENTIRELY realistic.) It takes time, effort, and discipline to improve a skill, just like in real life.

Classic's skills are also useful at levels many RPG players think are low. A skill level of ONE, forex, means you're a professional in that area and can be hired on the basis of that single skill level alone. A skill level of 3 means you're renowned as a sector-wide expert.

Compare that "progession" in an XP/level system where after the kill enough stuff PCs become demigods who can ignore lightning bolts and ballistae missiles as if they were gnats.

>>53366610

This anon gets it. It's too bad that the overreaction to psychotic Little League parents and the like means children are no longer introduced to healthy competition.

>>53368227
>Alien race traits and gameplay balance, should I even bother? What if some alien races are simply superior to others?

Given the direct terms-skills link and the fact that potential negative aging effects don't begin until 34, PCs can also superior and/or inferior to other PCs.

Game play balance of the type you're concerned about is primarily an XP/level system worry. The buff that an XP/level system provides to HP, stats, etc. mean that PCs/NPCs of wildly differing levels makes a game unbalanced.

Superiority in Traveller is purely situational and any alien species is going to be superior on it's home turf.

>>53367840
>>53368530
Anons, stop, I can only get so erect.

Coming from EotE, the system with the worst class and progression system I've ever played, this sounds like a dream come true. Time to mine derelectics!

>>53368530
>Super Mario
You should be posting in the bingo thread, grandpa

>>53370170

Are babbie's fee-fees hurt because the bad man used a catch-all term to label all video games with unrealistic skill progression systems? Is that what's troubling you, Bunky?

Suck it up, snowflake, and wipe away your tears.

>>53370485
It's the worst possible comparison, because most Mario games only require player skill to beat.

But I guess anyone else has unrealistic skill progression compared to grandpa here

>>53370606
>It's the worst possible comparison, because most Mario games only require player skill to beat.

Raccoon suits, power-ups, extra lives, etc., etc. Yup, nothing but player "skill" there.

>>53370770
That's equipment, grandpa. You don't make your players in Trav fly through space naked, do you?

That's not the direction I expected this thread to take.

>>53369707
how is EotE so terrible? Once you scrap jedi that is

>>53359374

This was a problem with actual Stutterwarp that still isn't answered. The only option is to hit the wall and warp 'stationary' constantly to gain 'free' velocity from planetary gravity but it sucks and takes forever.

My suggestion was actually to do Stutterwarp but without the 'warp' part, just a raw 'velocity drive' that changes the energy of a system without imparting a corresponding momentum to a craft.

>>53360932

Listen up shitlets. You can play as a weaboo Luke Skywalker who grew up in Pallet Town and is off to fulfill his destiny...

Or, you can play Han Solo. Traveller is a game where you're a party of Han Solos. You had your origin story. You have your Landos and Chewies. You and a handful of friends are on your Millenium Falcon plying trade, getting shot at by the space police and bounty hunters, and banging hot space girls.

That's Traveller. No weabs here.

>>53361954

Think Shadowrun. Basic mission to do a simple thing. The key is that Traveller snowballs. Your characters have a tangible effect on a world which in turn has a tangible effect on the subsector, which is 'your place' as far as gameplay is concerned.

Say you knock over a mining colony and blow up the fuel depot. That fuel can't fuel another planet you visit, so it's in unrest now. You go to another system, buy fuel, and drop off that fuel on unrest planet. You're rich!

Oh wait, except now news has reached the system that YOU blew up the fuel colony. You're wanted men! Clear your names!

That's Traveller.

>>53363415

I usually run tankers if I run a Merc campaign. That or starfighters. Light infantry die way too easy in Trav.

As other anon said, regular old Tanks tend to cause trouble with the law.

>You don't make your players in Trav fly through space naked, do you?

No. We have tight form-fitting spandex vacc suits with bubble helmets for that. And Jetpacks. And Blasters.

Damn.

And now I want a Spaceman Spiff campaign.

>>53364415

My understanding is that the Marines in Trav actually do use Cutlasses to prevent blowing holes in ship walls with their PGMPs.

Melee weapons in general are used for this purpose in Traveller, otherwise you're plugging holes in ship hulls everytime you take a shot and there's only one Ship's Locker with ~4 suits you can't don in a gunfight.

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Would it be a terrible idea to try and mix Traveller and Drama System together?
Traveller would fill the "gaming" part of the game whereas Drama System would fill the rp scenes with no rolling involved.

The only real compatibility issue between the two systems is that they have two wildly different character generation systems which might cause problems. I'm thinking that I would do Traveller chargen first and then use Drama System to deal with the relationships, and also deal with Traveller connections

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Came across this in the central supply catalogue, did I miss something while reading the core rulebook? Or are rules related to fear or shock effects somewhere else?

>>53377665
>My understanding is that the Marines in Trav actually do use Cutlasses to prevent blowing holes in ship walls with their PGMPs.

Yeah, because PGMPs and FGMPs are the ONLY weapons the marines ever have. They're never issued stuff like shotguns, snug pistols, gauss rifles, or shit like that, right?

The "We only use melee weapons to avoid hurting the ship" is nothing but a bit of douchebaggery concocted by long ago by someone completely unaware of the actual fucking rules and repeated since then by well meaning fools who are also completely unaware of the actual fucking rules.

The number of damage points needed to penetrate interior walls (100) and pressure bulkheads (1000) have been part of the rules since 1979 and Traveller's FIRST published adventure, "Kinunir".

Depending on RL, damage from single hits by PGMPs and FGMPs range from 10D to 16D meaning single hits from those weapons still aren't enough to penetrate an interior wall let alone a pressure bulkhead.

>>53375368
Class system is awful with unflexible, redundant and unbalanced talent trees (gotta buy those expansions after all), gear is all over the place while being a major force multiplier, characteristics are so dominant that a hacker droid will easily be better at first aid than the dedicated medic.

>>53377462
>Light infantry die way too easy in Trav.

Depends on the OPFOR and what your definition of "light" is.

Combat armor, ACRs, and RAM grenades backed up by APCs with VRF gauss guns is light infantry when compared to BD troopers with FGMPs backed by Trepida grav tanks.

However, when compared to insurgents with a mix of civilian and assault rifles plus the occasional tac missile, that light infantry suddenly isn't light anymore.

>>53378994

Light Infantry meaning Footmobiles or Air/Raft/Mobiles in at best Combat Armor. APCs are Mechanized Infantry.

I generally play 2300 where even Combat Armor isn't really a thing.

>>53297542
Do you guys think Traveller is a good system to use to run an Aliens vs Predator campaign, or more specifically set in the AVP comic universe?

>>53382296
possibly...

>>53382988
Im thinking standard interplanetary adventures they just so happen to exist in a universe where these species exist. Just worried about amount of colonies and roles

>>53382296
The animal rules can produce most of the forms of Alien we see to deadly effect, while the Aslan stand in well for the Yautja with a toy upgrade.

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>>53378887
Imperial Marines transitioned from "just more military" to "the BIG stick" fairly early, but you are correct that they are going to use more weaponry than just the FGMP and Cutlass. That said, the cutlass is really nasty with the doubled STR of battledress. This is Valerian Space Axe sort of stuff, not just some dude with a sharp piece of metal.

>>53383091
What TL would you give the humans? I'm thinking 10 with dips into 11 in the extremely wealthy corporate zones, though the synths throw a slight wrench into the mix

>>53382296

There are stats for the Alien, "facehugger", larvae, and eggs, in Classic's JTAS issue #4.

The author added this postscript to the article:

"It is suggested that this creature be used very sparingly, as it is extremely powerful, despite its short life-span. The seed pods can be concealed or disguised in order to persuade unlucky players to investigate. My intention with this essay has been to be true to my sources, not to create a beast that can be used for everyday encounters in Traveller."

I've used the JTAS Alien in the past and those words should be heeded. The session came within 1 PC of a TPK (out of 6 PCs and 8 NPCs) and finished with an IN close escort "pushing" the PCs' derelict ship into course ending with a catastrophic re-entry into a gas giant.

>>53383173
The synths are a different TL track than weaponry, so feel free to mix n match. Even as late as A:R the synths need specialized "healing", so they are paying for their inherent "cyberware".

>>53383151
>That said, the cutlass is really nasty with the doubled STR of battledress. This is Valerian Space Axe sort of stuff,

Not in the slightest it isn't. This is Traveller, not d20. All STR does is provide a +DM to hit. A cutlass does 2D damage no matter the STR of the person swinging it.

BD dress will give a PC a +2DM to hit with a cutlass and, more importantly, unlimited swings. Swings & blows in Traveller melee combat are limited to a PCs/NPCs endurance.

My correction of >>53377665's well meant repetition of an old bit of incomprehension still stands. PGMPs and FGMPs don't easily "blow holes" thru ship interior walls and bulkheads, so the "reason" marines train with a cutlass isn't because they're afraid of making too many holes with their guns.

>>53383540
Ah, a CT Only And Ever type, eh? The bitterness seemed familiar.

>>53383860

The weapon damages and wall/bulkhead strengths I quoted are from CT. The "reason" I debunked is from the CT era.

If MgT does something different so be it, but marines don't train with cutlasses because they're afraid to blow holes in ship bulkheads.

bump

any anons run military campaigns? is there a high turnover rate?

>>53385889
>any anons run military campaigns? is there a high turnover rate?

Like any other campaign, they're hard or easy to run depending on your players' expectations. War gamers and vets are going to need a bit more "realism" than folks who only experience of combat is "Call of Duty".

I have found that military campaigns are more focused and less "sandbox" than other campaigns along with being more likely to have a definite ending.

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>>53383362

There are stats for aliens, predators, greys, and pod people in "Cowboys and Xenomorphs."

(Wonder what Mr. Canonista Fan Boi thinks about THAT?)

>>53387016
>(Wonder what Mr. Canonista Fan Boi thinks about THAT?)

I don't know about him, but I'd like to know where to get a copy!

>>53387050
in the archive, probably

>>53370170

That's not old. THIS is old:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bhu0LI5XOlg&feature=youtu.be

>>53387081

Found it. MgT1e folder in Settings - Other

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>>53387050
>>53387081

I'd forgotten about JTAS #4. Gonna have to dig iit out to see how they compare.

>>53387341

The JTAS version is TOUGH. Armor equates battledress, a STR of 20, fast, etc. IIRC, the "acid blood" does around 500 damage points per turn.

The JTAS version is from 1980 and only based on the 1st movie and movie tie-in book. All the later movies probably introduced additional abilities for the creature.

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>>53331989
>(or can i use that with minor changes?)
You can go backwards with most of it, but really, just update to 2e. Mongoose may have shitty company policies, but 2e's mostly a better system than 1e, and has much better peripheral rules, such as a more seamless transition between personal scale/vehicle scale and ship scale, with plenty of intended wiggle room therein.

>>53378235
Nope, and rules for morale checks are equally vague. However, it's fairly easy for the Ref to just ask for a INT or possibly END check (maybe make it 10+ for difficult pinning or psychological shock or whatnot) and ad-hoc it that way.

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>>53378887
>>53383540
>>53385096
Not him, obviously, but for comparison:
- in MgT, increased strength does increase damage done by melee weapons (melee is still a fairly un-optimal choice, which is probably appropriate for the setting)
- PGMPs deal 1DD damage (range 10 to 60)
- FGMPs deal 2DD (range 20 to 120)
- The standard Far Trader has 2 (spaceship) armor, which is 20 armor in personal scale.
- Most military ships in 2e High Guard are fairly poorly armored, up until we get >50Kdtons. The Ghalak has 15 armor (150 personal scale), but a Midu Agasham is flying around with 0 armor (though it does have 1,320 hull, or 13,200 in personal scale)

So by this measurement, yes, in MgT, FGMPs and PGMPs would easily breach the armor plating of most non-military spacecraft.

>>53390212

I'd add that it doesn't make sense a pressure bulkhead can take 1000 damage. That's ridiculous, especially since Trav explicitly deals with a society range down from TL 1 cavemen to TL15 hypercivilizations.

A TL7 Space Capsule's not going to resist a PGMP, or even small arms, yet it's a 'Pressure Bulkhead'. Likewise, the average Imperial Marine needs to be geared to assault a good variety of

>>53385889

Depends largely on the type of campaign and the encounters you run. I find these campaigns tend to be 'Hero'-type campaigns where you're less likely to run into as much flak as an NPC squad might realistically do so.

Operation Overlord for 2300 is a lot different than the Etranger-ified 'Operation HERKULES' as an example. In Operation Overlord, the actual GDW campaign, you're one marine squad that infiltrates and blows up the alien citadel.

In HERKULES it's a full company of Marine Raiders that has like 90% casualties, which is more realistic. Obviously your chances of survival in the 'HERKULES' campaign is far lower than the GDW-made Overlord.

All depends on how your GM feels. I'd say that it's better to run a SF-style team or a group of Tankers as another anon said upthread. Less squishy, and if your tank gets rekt your characters can usually survive and run the fuck away.

That creates a fun Zvika Greengold-type situation where your tanks keep getting ganked but then you get another and the baddies are like 'WTF they don't die!'

>>53390212
>yes, in MgT,

Once again, the "Marines use melee weapons to avoid blowing holes in ships" nonsense dates dates from Classic so using MgT to to "explain" such an idea is like using Pathfinder to explain a long time misconception about AD&D.

>>53391768
>I'd add that it doesn't make sense a pressure bulkhead can take 1000 damage.

Take it up with GDW. Using the RAW for CT, single shots won't penetrate interior walls and bulkheads so the melee weapon excuse for cutlass training doesn't make any sense. I'll also point out that, while MgT didn't change P/FGMP damage too much, it drastically reduced the strength of ship bulkheads.

Finally, Miller the man who WROTE and OWNS the game says the marines drill with cutlasses for morale & discipline reasons. Why they do so in YTU is your call, but in the OTU that is the reason and not because they're afraid of blowing holes in ships during boarding actions.

Can someone give me a quick summary of the differences between classic traveller and mongoose traveller? From what I've seen in these threads it's just that for rolls CT uses Dice+skill whereas mongoose traveller uses Dice+stat+skill

>>53391768
>Depends largely on the type of campaign and the encounters you run. I find these campaigns tend to be 'Hero'-type campaigns where you're less likely to run into as much flak as an NPC squad might realistically do so.

That's a very good point. Most of my groups have been comprised of war gamers, vets, active duty, or a mixture of all three, so "Hero"-type military campaigns were a non-starter.

That being said, during a FLGS game night I've run a one-shot Chamax session where a "man" in his late 20s left the table in tears when his pregen PC died after a series of increasingly stupid decisions on his part coupled with his unwillingness to take advice from me and his fellow players.

The tone and tenor of a military campaign, let alone the scale and scope, is going to depend entirely on the players whose needs it serves.

>>53393820

MgT has a formal and unified task system. All tasks follow the same format. A referee doesn't need to think and only needs repeat that format to create new tasks.

CT, rather than having a system, is deliberately ad hoc. It focuses on situational "throws" instead of formulaic A+B=C tasks. Here's a quote from CT explaining it:

"Skills and the Referee: It is impossible for any table of information to cover all aspects of every potential situation, and the above listing is by no means complete in its coverage of the effects of skills. This is where the referee becomes an important part of the game process. The above listing of skills and game effects must necessarily be taken as a guide, and followed, altered, or ignored as the actual situation dictates."

Because GDW knew every situation couldn't be covered in the rules, they emphasized the concept of Rule Zero: Do what you think is best and keep playing. That, of course, is a result of GDW being long time, old school, war gamers where common sense RULINGS made by referees take precedence over RULES.

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>>53397257
Zhodani are the best of the major human variants

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>>53387441

I finally got around to looking it up. It was written by the guy who did the Paranoia Press supplements.

1-600 points of damage per round is a bit extreme. Nobody could live through that. Hell, 1-6 points per round would be bad enough. That'd be about 35 points per minute, 350 in ten.

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>>53398714
where the paranoia press supplements as much pic related?

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>>53297542
>be me
>get into gaming back in the early 80's, friends at camp show me how to play
>have someone show me "Traveller", exotic and cool -- one of those "other games" at the comic book store
>love space etc. cool.
>play a game where i wish out loud for a lightsaber, and we travel to a planet where we infiltrate some volcano complex. find a cylinder with a button, press said button hoping for lightsaber, activate super-bomb that blows us all out the top of the volcano
>ridiculous, but good times with friends
>be now
>4chan. Cool. Gaming.
>traveller thread 404's.
>"TOWER GIRLS CYOA" everywhere
>whatfaggotryisthis.jpg
>try to post discussion threads about cool games and the structures that make up rpg stories
>falls off the end of page with...maybe five replies
>ELVES: WHAT WAS THEIR PROBLEM thread - 100's of replies
>jesuschrist

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>>53398889

No.

>>53399013
>1st session
>TPK

Are you me? We played Traveller between DnD and Battletech campaigns.

TPK every session, but damn me if we didn't go down fighting.

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>>53399013
The year is -2545 I.C. /tg/ is entirely occupied by the shitposters. Well not entirely! One small thread of indomitable Travellers still holds out against the invaders. And life is not easy for the shitposter legionaries who garrison the fortified threads of /twgg/, /pfg/, /ElfSlaveWatDo/ and /CYOA/...

>>53399013

It's the dumbing down of Government schools. Instead of teaching Algebra II, they teach how trannies are normal.

>>53399440

At least the shitposters here know something about Traveller. Many of the discussions are fairly serious if you discount the assholery from certain parties.

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>>53399624
Yeah I feel that. Even though gramps it does seem like one guy is a wee bit pic-related, I feel that discussion here never strays into vitrol for vitrol's sake. It's always good to have criticism, and it is nice to have the old guard about.

>>53399452
am white male, work with young kids in their 20's, can confirm

Another anon in another thread just announced COTI has opened a Mindjammer forum and provided a link:

http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Discuss/forumdisplay.php?f=151

Still no Cepheus Engine forum sadly.

>>53400551
What's Mindjammer? Is it a third party setting originally for Traveller, or is the FATE version first

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>>53400551

They just put one up.

http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Discuss/forumdisplay.php?f=153

Imagine someone posting images on an imageboard

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>>53400951

It originally required the FATE rules from Starblazer Adventures. The second edition used FATE Core rules. Now there's a version that uses MGT2 rules.

It's pretty lame, but it's brand new lameness - something Traveller has needed for a very long time.

>>53320121
Because he's probably not trolling. He actually sounds like he believes his own bullshit

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>Training up to the level of a professional fencer
>Morale building exercise.
>One cutlass per crewman in basically every ship's locker list I've ever seen.
>Spacer tradition.

First of all, anyone unironically talking about "morale" or "esprit de corps" has never been a private.

Second of all, a goodly amount of hand-to-hand training, and almost all close order drill, while almost useless in any battlefield after about 1890, is suspiciously useful for riot control, and operations against unarmed civilians generally.

Consider that most of the Imperial population lives in high-pop, high law, totalitarian noguns hellholes, and the true purpose of every Marine walking out of boot with Cutlass-1 becomes disturbingly clear.

>>53401973

Or, you know, Miller just wanted swordfights in space, and bullshitted a way to allow it

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Is there any discernable difference other than the underlying rules engine between T4 and TNEs versions of Fire, Fusion, and Steel?

>>53401973
>First of all, anyone unironically talking about "morale" or "esprit de corps" has never been a private.

First, I've been through both Navy and Army boot camps. I've been an AIT instructor too. That means you can take your "irony", "implying", "greentext", and all the other shit associated with being a jaded millennial poseur and cram it. Understand?

>Consider that most of the Imperial population lives in high-pop, high law, totalitarian noguns hellholes, and the true purpose of every Marine walking out of boot with Cutlass-1 becomes disturbingly clear.

That actually happens to be a good point for cutlass/melee training. You'll note, however, it still has nothing to do with being afraid of blowing holes in ships.

To recap: The "Afraid of blowing holes in ships" excuse dates from the CT era. The CT rules do not support that excuse. Cutlass training in CT therefore must be for some other purpose.

>>53402152

The TNE version is much better edited, something which is important considering the many equations being presented. The TNE version also presents more tech options.

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I'm new to Traveller, been playing Mongoose Traveller 2e with my group

Why the fuck is this general all grognards arguing about Marines blowing holes in ships and using cutlasses?

>>53402692
because 5 (7, but IMO, 2 don't count properly) different versions with differing interpretations of events and basics of the universe of which the game is set, all equally cannon?

>>53402541
>That means you can take your "irony", "implying", "greentext", and all the other shit associated with being a jaded millennial poseur and cram it. Understand?

Certainly, Lieutenant.

>The "Afraid of blowing holes in ships" excuse dates from the CT era. The CT rules do not support that excuse.

The first time a creator's fluff was ever contradicted by his or another writer's crunch. Also the last ever. Srsly. Ecxuse me, "seriously".

>Cutlass training in CT therefore must be for some other purpose.

Which was my point. Sir.

>>53402753
>The first time a creator's fluff was ever contradicted by his or another writer's crunch.

Miller's fluff never included being afraid of blowing holes in ships and MIller, like you and I, supplied another reason for cutlass/melee training.

>Which was my point. Sir.

Which is why I agreed with you.

BTW, I was never an officer. My parents knew one another.

>>53402886
>BTW, I was never an officer. My parents knew one another.

Heh. That's one I'd hadn't heard before.

>>53402692

Read >>53402723

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>>53378887
>The number of damage points needed to penetrate interior walls (100) and pressure bulkheads (1000) have been part of the rules since 1979 and Traveller's FIRST published adventure, "Kinunir".

disingenuous
[dis-in-'jen-yoo-uh s]
adjective
1. lacking in frankness, candor, or sincerity; falsely or hypocritically ingenuous; insincere:

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>>53399452

To be fair, the game also used algebra.

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>>53403710

I will admit there's nothing *explicit* in the 1977 LBBs about why the damn things were standard issue,..

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>>53403777
...and the Kinunir's marines do seem more shooty than choppy. Looking at the crew listings generally, it looks like this was after Mercenary, but before High Guard.

>>53403853
Yeah, Kinunir's a weird one by later standards - 1,200dT is barely a light escort after Book 5, it's a boat from the small ship universe days.

going about 5kdT was a mistake

>>53403963
why was above 5k dtons a mistake?

>>53403999
CT77 is the One True Edition.

I don't know, I just like small ships.

>>53403963
Kinunir was a pretty good adventuring ship, if you were into military-oriented adventures (your group took leadership positions and the ship was dispatched behind enemy lines to go raiding) or Star Trek type adventures into unknown space.

>>53403999
>why was above 5k dtons a mistake?

It made everything "big". Big ships, big governments, big budgets, big companies, big trade, big planets, big, big, and big.

All of a sudden the PCs were very small fish in a very big ocean. All of a sudden the 3I wasn't some distant entity "over there someplace" but instead was right here right now with marine divisions aboard 500K dTon battleships. While LBB:4 Mercenary sort of cracked open the door to "big", LBB:5 High Guard basically blew the fucking house up and left a smoking crater behind.

When grumpy old grognards like me refer to the "CT Schism", this is what we're whining about. There are TWO versions of Classic, everything before LBB:5 and everything after LBB:5. There's even a name for the earlier "version", Proto-Traveller.

Before the Schism it was easier for the PC and their actions to matter. Three, 4, or 6 players could matter aboard a 200 dTon or 1500 dTon ship, but aboard a 500K dTon one? Before the Schism the 3I was around "somewhere" but stretched thin and only able to show up when megatons of shit went down. After the Schism, the 3I can flood the space lanes with thousands of multi-1000 dTon ships.

Everything got big and, oddly enough, big was less fun.

>>53405027
>Before the Schism the 3I was around "somewhere" but stretched thin and only able to show up when megatons of shit went down.

Which is unrealistic, given that every sector had, on average, one planet with 10x Earth's current population, and 2-3 more with roughly the same population of Earth. You've got a subsector government that makes China and indio look like microstates, but you don't have anything bigger than a coast guard cutter or a tramp steamer?

>Everything got big and, oddly enough, big was less fun.

Saying Star Wars is "less fun" than Firefly is a matter of taste.

>>53402125

Not only were there Pirates in Supplement 4, they could muster out with letters of marque.

Economically, with its fuel limitations, and long travel times, CT was mid to late 1800s colonialism in space. Culturally, Miller was trying for something closer to Hornblower.

(At least until, as someone's already mentioned, the supertankers and carrier battle groups showed up.)

Anyone here willing to share some homebrew alien races? Im trying to fill up a hub world with all sorts of visitors.

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>>53407943
>Saying Star Wars is "less fun" than Firefly is a matter of taste.
It's funny you should say that though, because Firefly is a big ship universe. I mean compare Serenity with the Alliance Quad-Skyscraper ships.
Though to be fair apparently these things are more like somewhat-mobile stations than actual ships

>>53407943
Also, classic had the drive/dTonnage performance tables. Big ships would have lower drive ratings than a smaller ship with the same drive.
So if you want a bigger ship with the same rating as a smaller ship you need a more advanced drive. A 5000dt Ship can only pull off rating-2 with the most advanced drives and reactors, so it's possible that performance above that is impossible for the Imperium's tech level.

Though on the other hand, they'd probably just go with a *load* of smaller ships

>>53408193

Yeah, I couldn't really think of an actual small-ship canon. Firefly was as close as I could get.

>>53408377
Try, "Small ship canon is Civil War veterans fucking shit up in Central America. Large ship canon is the Battle of Jutland."

>>53404502
I always feel like this is a good reason to keep ships small - makes them usable.

Massive multi-sector fleets should darken the sky with ships, not just field a handful of megaton balls with their own onboard marine brigades.

>>53408269
>Also, classic had the drive/dTonnage performance tables. Big ships would have lower drive ratings than a smaller ship with the same drive.
>So if you want a bigger ship with the same rating as a smaller ship you need a more advanced drive. A 5000dt Ship can only pull off rating-2 with the most advanced drives and reactors, so it's possible that performance above that is impossible for the Imperium's tech level.
This is kind of a big deal - IIRC you're looking at sub-kdT ships if you want jump 3 or god forbid jump 4 and you're not damn advanced. Which is good, it leads to a larger number of smaller pocket empires.

It also means you're not building everything at M6, so fighters (and ship's boats, the superior high-tech fighter equivalent) are actually faster than battleships.

>>53409813
also why the fuck did they not include the tech levels on the book 2 charts, I swear to god that's really annoying when you're using your phone to look at your pdfs and design stuff.

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jump-3

Ideas for first adventure? Perhaps one-shott to test Traveller-system?

>>53393719
Isn't SOP to depressurization ship going into combat in CT (because lasers WILL punch through the hull)

By that measure, who'd care about shooting through a bulkhead?

>>53409249

I'd go with Small Ship as USS Constitution vs. HMS Guerriere or some other fancy 1800s ship-on-ship action.

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>tfw you were introduced to Travller via the Mongoose books and you've never actually played the game, but T5 is the most appealing to you despite its lack of rules for robot generation and cybernetics
Why am I like this. Why can't i like simple games?

>>53417599
no idea anon...but T5 is more toolkit than game, also there are things that tome DOESN'T cover?

(spoiler) I've never read the entire thing (/spoiler)

>>53417776
I forgot how spoilers work

which RPG has more equipment porn? Traveller or Shadowrun?

>>53417599
>Why am I like this. Why can't i like simple games?

Because you were the kid who would "free build" with his Legos instead only making what was shown on the box.

>>53414087
>Ideas for first adventure? Perhaps one-shott to test Traveller-system?

Anything with combat usually. The deadliness of Trav combat is always an eye opener for the D&D/d20 roleplayer. The Plague half of Classic's Chamax Double is good for this, cut out the prelimenaries and start with the PCs stepping out onto the planet. For something less "shooty", look at Classic's ATV Double; Across the Bright Face and Mission on Mithril.

Finally the Freelance Traveller link above has a "Getting off the Ground" section full of intro adventures.

>>53409829
>also why the fuck did they not include the tech levels on the book 2 charts,

It was a mistake. The TL charts in LBB:3 do include drives however.

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>>53417776
I decided to have a flip through it and am I reading this right?
A reactionless thruster made of motors and gears? The thing must be powered by Newton spinning in his grave

>>53418168
depends on the edition

>>53417776
yeah, as far as i know the "ThingMaker" doesnt cover robots/drones or cybernetics. I suppose its true old-school Traveller in that sense.
i just want a robot arm ;_;

>>53418473
>I decided to have a flip through it and am I reading this right?

Yes you are. It's basically the "Spindizzy" drive from Golden Age sci-fi.

T5 is a game KIT, remember. It presents several options to "answer' for any given technological "question" . You'll notice, for example, that Orion drive-type "thrusters" are listed before the spindizzy one.

>>53419068
Yeah I get that it's a toolkit and all. It's just that it seems kinda out-of-place amongst the rest of the tech, which is either entirely-possible, hand-waved with GRAVATICS or the like, or sufficiently advanced shite.
And while T5 is definitely quite DIY, it still has the strongish implied setting.

>>53417599
Speaking of T5, have there been any rumblings about 5.1?

>>53407943
>Saying Star Wars is "less fun" than Firefly is a matter of taste.

SW and Firefly are both fun, but SW and Firefly are both different kinds of fun. Different kinds of fun need different rules.

Trav's rules were initially written for Firefly style fun and then only partially rewritten for SW style fun. That's caused all sorts of problems ever since.

>>53419848
>Speaking of T5, have there been any rumblings about 5.1?

Don't hold your breath. Miller is 70yo his inner circle is literally dying around him, and it took 10+ years for T5 to be released.

>>53418829
the most equipment porny Traveller edition is?

>>53420474

Still a tough call.

TNE, and to a lesser extent, T4 allow you to DESIGN the most equipment.

Both versions of MgT have the most DESIGNED equipment.

Do you want to play with another person's toys or do you want to make your own?

>some of the pages of the rulebook have become partially unglued and it's annoying me even though it's intact
>3 days past the 30 day return limit for amazon

reeee, I've barely used the book

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Am I dumb for reading "Vegan" and thinking it was a euphemism for the K'Kree? I'm not alone here right? I spent far too long wondering why there would be an autonomous polity of crazy centaurs just corewards of Terra

>>53426063
Oh anon

>>53423524
Contact them anyway, and if it's a new book from a new edition, contact the publisher.

If it's Mongoose, I'll laugh. Also I will cry, because I've had Mongoose books in the past. God, that period when they decided they'd buy hardware and do their own printing in-house was a bad time. I still have that copy of CthulhuTech somewhere.

>>53427057

Agreed. It can't hurt to ask. All they can say is no.

>>53427449
I see this a lot, with people posting "hey do you think X company would do Y," like special orders for miniatures, or "does anyone know Z," when really, a lot of companies will talk to you. Especially nerd companies, so not Amazon and Mongoose might be a bit big, but small, pocket businesses? Just Ask.

Mongoose have been OK customer service-wise, to me, but I still avoid them for quality reasons.

>>53427486

Yup. Like I meant to post, the worst they can say is no.

>>53420719
How serviceable is TNE for playing a standard system hopping while trying to keep up on the mortgage Spinward Marches game?

>>53430823


While I never used the TNE rules as opposed to the TNE setting, I have used the various iterations of the rules which eventually jelled into GDW House System for other games like both editions of T2K, M2K, etc. I found the house system serviceable with no glaring problems.

The various tech assumptions/changes in TNE will most likely have more impact on a game than the rules. The change from the magical thruster m-drive of CT & MT to the equally magic fusion torch HePlaR m-drive, forex, make crews EXTREMELY fuel conscious. Ships are no longer constantly under thrust and instead "burn & coast" meaning n-space trips take much longer.

Gravitics gets nerfed too. While the tech still provides lift, it no longer provides thrust meaning grav belts now use ducted fans for movement, air/rafts have hot & cold jets requiring fuel, etc.

There are many other "minor" differences too. None make TNE bad or broken. It's just different.

>>53435032
So it basically turns Traveller into The Expanse but with mild anti-grav and FTL?
Nice

>>53436652

Yeah... that's a REALLY good analogy, by the way.

TNE also injected some reality in to Traveller ship weapons. Since Classic, you've had lasers with ranges measured in multiple light-seconds, tiny missiles with huge accelerations which somehow physically impact ships, and other stuff that it didn't pay to look too close at.

TNE turned missiles into detonation-lasers that need guidance, dialed back multiple lasers in single turrets to single x-ray types that required grav-focusing, and added sensor rules.

TNE just didn't nerf weapons though. It provided a lot of spinal mount options like smaller sizes for smaller ships and mounting more than one.

How the fuck do I do Point Allocation in Mongoose Traveller 2e?
My group hates rolling for stats and I don't want them to get mad

>>53437886
>hates rolling for stats
How are they going to handle rolling for skills, survival, and advancement in careers?

>>53427057
It is Mongoose, second edition.

I'll contact them.

>>53427057
>>53439242
Just phoned amazon and they're going to replace it for me.

Hopefully the next copy isn't fucked as well.

>>53437886
Make them get mad, they sound like mongs.

Where does the line between animal and NPC go?

>>53441965
Depends on a character's sexual inclinations

>>53437886
Can't speak to Mongoose, but in CT/MegaT I'd:
--Give everyone a UPP of 567789, to arrange as they see fit.
--A failed Survival roll means they've mustered out two years early due to flat feet or some other medical issue not worthy of attribute loss. Nobody dies in chargen.
--Ignore Aging Crisis; aging wont decrease any attribute below 1. Also maybe nerf some of the penalties for using anagathics.

Then I'd give all the players lollipops, because they're obviously babies.

>>53440673
>Stupidhuge spherical battleship with a spinal mount hellweapon.

In other news, the first Star Wars movie premiered on this day in 1977.

>>53437886
>>53438883
>>53442569

Actually, the system from 2nd Ed. Twilight 200 would work for this. Each term gives you a list of skills you can pick and choose from, the stat requirements are fairly easy to meet, and the only thing you roll dice for is promotion.

I seem to remember one of the Travellers using this system. TNE, maybe?

>>53442731
>Twilight 200

Ah, yes, the game about a Roman legion surrounded by barbarians on the wrong side of the Rhine...

>>53442943
I don't know, I checked Wikipedia and it claims that "The Paracas culture in the Andes comes to an end (around this year)."

That's the closest thing to a Twilight I could find, so it must be what anon was referring to.

>>53438883
>>53439349
This is pretty much only because of one faggot chuuni who has to be the main character in pretty much anything who was threatening to leave if he got a character as shitty as the one he got in a shorter game of Traveller
I'd make him mad again but he'd probably just quit, and I'm not entirely sure if that's the best idea even though it'd be the most convenient. He's still a friend even though he's irrational as fuck about gaming sometimes

>>53440673
Do not taunt the Happy Fun Ball!