Traveller General-- 100 DTons of Cake and Booze Edition

>>53791987
>What've you smuggled in the holds of your ships, anons?

All the usual stuff, people, guns, drugs, booze, porn, you name it. With 11,000 worlds in the 3I, everything is illegal somewhere.

In one case, I had NPCs using the PCs as unwitting mules. The PCs had helped the NPCs out of a jam and thought they'd been given a nice continuing freight contract as a reward. In reality, it had been a set-up from the 1st and the freight they'd been carrying at premium rates usually had something "hinky" about it.

In another session, the PCs carried a nondescript 5 dTon container for a freighting firm only to have the branch of that firm on the world they'd traveled to refuse delivery. The container didn't have the right paperwork, it wasn't on their schedule, and they didn't want anything to do with it. Thinking the paperwork got switched some how in the warehouse on the previous world, the PCs opened the container to try and figure out who it belonged to only to find it crammed full of small arms, ammo, body armor, medical supplies, vacc suits, spare parts, etc. All kinds of stuff pirates could use.

They hadn't even got over that shock when the a port official contacted them to inform them that a newly arrived ship was asking about them AND the container.

>>53793829
oooh, this sounds Fun, how'd it go from there?

>>53793865

Both good and bad like any good session should play out.

The ship asking about them was inbound from the 100D limit and wouldn't land for hours. They close up the container and went into lock down aboard their ship. An ex-scout PC scanned the personnel listing of the local base, spotted a guy he'd served with, and called him up for help.

The contents weren't illegal because the container hadn't crossed the xtrality line yet, but having a couple million credits worth of mislabeled paramilitary equipment could still raise questions. The PC's contact came aboard, they showed him everything, he called his boss, they showed the boss everything, the boss called his contacts with the port, they showed those contacts everything, and suddenly they were the bait in sting operation.

The incoming ship was claiming they'd been sent by the freighting company to collect and return the wayward container. Because they had a man inside the company, their papers and other bona fides were in order.

The port officials decided to act like nothing was wrong, let the ship land, and let the people aboard meet the PCs to arrange transferring the container. During the meeting, the PCs were supposed to let slip that they'd opened the container and knew what was inside it. What would happen after that would depend on how the suspects reacted to the fact that the PCs knew what was in the container.

Let's just say the sting didn't go as well as hoped, some of the people aboard the other ship got away, and the criminal cabal they worked marked the PCs down for punishment.

It made for good recurring antagonists.

Are there any major differences between Cepheus Engine and Traveller? Regardless, what are the minor differences?

>>53794499
>Are there any major differences between Cepheus Engine and Traveller? Regardless, what are the minor differences?

Cepheus Engine IS Traveller.

Seeing as there are several versions of the game, there are differences to a greater or lesser extent between them all. There's a d20 version, a GURPS version, Fate, Hero, Fudge, etc. all of which are very different from the CT, MT, TNE, T4 lineage.

Systemically, there are more differences between Classic and TNE than there are between Classic and CE.

CE is built directly from SRDs released by Mongoose into the OGL framework. Those SRDs contained materials used by Mongoose to create MgT1e, materials which were derived in turn from Classic.

Seeing as all the materials are free in the OP's links, you can do your own detective work chasing down all the minor differences which don't amount to squat.

>>53794748
Thanks. Cepheus mentions an 8x8 hex map, is that just a throwaway line, and they expect you to use the standard 8x10 Traveller sub-sector, or is there an empty 8x8 image somewhere?

>>53794806

Really? 8x8 versus 8x10? That's actually something to worry about?

You can use only the 8x8 part of the 8x10 image if you're worried about not using the "right" size. You can also google/bing any number of hex maps to print and on-line services which create whatever dimensions you need.

I rarely use 8x10 and instead prefer a six hex "radius" map. You can get those at travellermap site linked above.

>>53794499

Mulling your question over while dealing with insomnia, I think the biggest difference you'll find between CE on one hand and Classic/MgT on the other is the lack of the 3I/OTU. Because CE is an OGL product, it must avoid all references to the official 3I setting.

GDW's biggest mistake over the years was that the setting became more and more "baked into" the rules. In Classic Books 1 thru 3 don't even mention the 3I, Book 4 mentions an "Imperium", and from Book 5 onward the 3I is woven into the rules. GDW's/IG's MT, TNE, and T4 follow suit while all the non-Miller versions presuppose the 3I too.

CE has to avoid the 3I entirely and thus is easier to use when making your own settings.

>>53795165
After reading most of CE, I really appreciated how clean and succinct a lot of it was compared to some of the other Traveller books I've read. They just get so cluttered and become more difficult to parse. The lack of flavor images is a bit unfortunate though.

>>53795209
>The lack of flavor images is a bit unfortunate though.

Do you want pictures or rules?

>>53795250
Rules desu

>>53795256

Then why worry about "flavor images"?

>>53795284
They are appealing, but clear and concise rules come out on top.

>tfw hes just keeping the thread alive with pedantry

>>53795322
>>tfw hes just keeping the thread alive with pedantry

There are worse ways to keep the thread alive.

Does anyone have any good scenarios/ideas for if the players misjump?

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>>53796040
Event Horizon

>>53796040
Good?
>>53797062
Not this, then, assuming you want the campaign to continue.

While there are examples of ghost ships and sargasso regions in the OTU, they are rare enough that the rules on misjump shouldn't lead to them very often.
Misjumps can be used to go nowhere when you wanted to move, to move in a different direction, or to completely relocate a campaign with a sector-long leap.
It can also be used to strand a crew on a world that you really want to dig into, either while waiting for parts or for your Engineer to be confident the drive won't get everyone killed.

Flow control.

Or ghost ships (per at least one Challenge adventure), if you really hate your PCs.

>>53797501
Thanks anon, good idea about using it as a control over movement. However, isn't the chance of misjump reliant on things like using unrefined fuel and poor astrogation skill rolls? How would you use this as a more reliable method? Fudge the target number to force a misjump?

>>53796040
>Does anyone have any good scenarios/ideas for if the players misjump?

Okay, this is one of the bigger misconceptions people new to Traveller have and one of the bigger mistakes many new referees make.

The majority of misjumps are a FAILURE to jump and not an uncontrolled jump with an unknown direction and distance. The "easier" misjump to roll results in no jump and a damaged jump drive. The next most common type of misjump, especially from MT onward, is one which takes more time than normal. While the specific odds vary across the versions, no-jump and variable time misjumps are far more common than the "random" direction/distance type.

In many versions, you have to TRY to misjump. That is you have to add multiple DMs like jumping inside 100D/10D, using bad fuel, not maintaining engines, etc. MgT has a slightly increased chance of misjumps because of their innumerate decision to require multiple die rolls for a jump.

In the RAW for any version, a random distance/direction misjump is a death sentence. If as a referee you let one occur, you should only do so WHEN you have a adventure planned just for that occurrence. In other words, you're flatly imposing a "deus ex machina" to get the players where you want them. Do that often enough and your players will understandably be pissed.

Follow the RAW and you'll never have to "worry" about misjumps at all. Misuse or otherwise impose misjumps to drive your campaign and you're players will rightly call you on railroading.

>>53798302
>How would you use this as a more reliable method?

And that's exactly the misconception I posted about.

Misjumps are by definition unreliable, so making them more reliable is a contradiction in terms.

>>53798479
>a random distance/direction misjump is a death sentence.

This. Most ships, esp. the longer-legged ones have only enough fuel for one jump. Your option at that point is to put everyone in cold sleep, use half you remaining M-fuel to accelerate towards the nearest civilized system, and hope someone's there to rescue you. At best, the campaign marchers forward a few years without the PCs.

To further explain Mongoose's innumerate decision to require multiple die rolls for what should be everyday activities, let me share a little math with you. Don't worry, you won't even have to add.

Imagine if the rules allowed you to safely jump as long as you didn't throw a 12 on 2D6. You' succeed 97.2% of the time. You're only going to fail roughly 3 times out of 100. Pretty good right?

Now imagine if the pilot, navigator, and engineer all had to succeed at the same throw. The chance then becomes 0.972 x 0.972 x 0.972 or 91.8% of the time. Now you're going to fail almost 9 times out of 100.

Requiring rolls for what should be everyday and mundane tasks increase the chance of failure and requiring multiple rolls increases that chance faster than you'd think.

As long as all the usual precautions are taken and no extreme situations exists, pulling out your driveway, using a computer, and jumping shouldn't require a die roll.

As a referee, if my players are jumpign from beyond 100D, using refined fuel, keeping up with maintenance, not begin shot at, etc. I have the navigator make a roll which only modifies jump time and not whether a jump occurs or not.

>>53798502
If a dozen-parsec "misjump" could be done reliably, the Imperial Navy would already be doing it, and there'd be no need for an X-Boat system.

Conspiracy types, of course, say the 3I's been doing this for years. Maybe they have.)

>>53798800
>If a dozen-parsec "misjump" could be done reliably, the Imperial Navy would already be doing it, and there'd be no need for an X-Boat system.

Exactly. Of course, that only applies to the OTU/3I and if you're not using that setting...

T5 has several methods for reliably "cracking" the OTU/3I's six parsec barrier.

This fascination with misjumps never fails to amaze me. It's as if people seize one small part of the rules while ignoring all the rest.

>>Conspiracy types, of course, say the 3I's been doing this for years.

As a referee, my "explanation" for that continued belief is the constant shell game Imperiallines plays with it's public, jump2, TI and private, jump6 TJ class ships.

Anyone has made states for the legend of galactic heroes space ships but for Traveller?

>>53796040
http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Tetatae

Although it's less ree-inducing, since traveller has aliens and battletech doesn't.

>>53798590
Or hope local systems pay a scout to jump into adjacent hexes and check for beacons every few months. It can't cost much, and would seem like an ideal job for the scout service to hand out to any mustered-out scouts in the region. j2 away from inhabited space is a bit more of a hassle, although j2 ships doing a 4-parsec transit through the region with holds full of inflatable tanks could probably be talked into spending a few days checking their sensors for beacons - it's not an everyday trip, but it's again not something that never happens.

hell, smugglers. have a rigorously anonymous tip line for people who just happen to have maybe been in empty sectors mark somewhere as maybe, not that they were there doing anything, maybe having a ship in need of help.

>>53800390
>Or hope local systems pay a scout to jump into adjacent hexes

Have you any concept of just how big a parsec is? It's 3.26 light years or about 31 TRILLION kilometers. That's the "width" of the Traveller hex - 31,000,000,000 km.

The signal from the "beacon" your scout is looking for is going take more than THREE years to cross a hex and more than 1.6 years to cross the "radius" of the same. Considering attenuation, can the radio or laser aboard a normal Traveller ship even be detected across those distances?

>>53801239
>31,000,000,000 km.

Oops, I left off some zeros...

31,000,000,000,000

>>53801239
This actually leads to a question I have wondered about. Drop tanks let you cross "too long" distances to permit deep strike into enemy territory. Naturally, any interstellar navy would very much like to prevent (or at least know of) any such manoeuvre. My first thought about this would be for the navy to place outposts with sensors and a high-jump courier ship out in interstellar space.

I figured this would make strategic sense, but most importantly serve as a convenient reason for someone to be there to rescue the players when they inevitably manage to strand themselves in deep space. Of course any such rescue would be incredibly awkward for the navy, since the precise location of the outpost is probably top secret.

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>>53801423
The problem with that is that, as said upthread, interstellar space is big. You might think that the walk down to your local chemists is a big distance, but that's peanuts to space.

The chances of the drop-tank ship(s) coming out of jumpspace anywhere near the listening station is hideously unlikely. Remember, the emissions that sensors pick up travel at c, so by the time you see someone they'll have already jumped again to wherever they're going. You'd have the outpost's courier showing up to warn about an attack that happened nearly a year ago.

Unless of course jumping into a hex of interstellar space will always spit you out at roughly the same point in that hex for reasons or whatever

>>53801423
>My first thought about this would be for the navy to place outposts with sensors and a high-jump courier ship out in interstellar space.

Why? What use is it?

>>I figured this would make strategic sense,

No it wouldn't. You're unconsciously presuming FTL sensors & comms while forgetting about jump time.

Let's say there's a listening post. The enemy exits jump space "only" one light-hour away, are detected, and the courier jumps away with the news. That news will take ONE WEEK to reach it's recipient. If a force is somehow dispatched IMMEDIATELY upon receipt of the news, it will arrive TWO WEEKS after the enemy was spotted. You want to bet that the enemy is still there?

Picketing empty hexes doesn't do squat and, or the most part, the time for needed for any jump is the reason why.

>>53801569
I figure it is a case of deciding how quickly you want to get the alarm vs. how much money you are willing to spend. If you consider the 3,26 light years figure, it is about 1190 light days. If the maximum time to alarm is 10 days, then the outpost (given good enough sensors) sees everything within 10 lightdays, for a 20 lightday detection diameter. To make a line of such stations across the hex you need 60 outposts. If you covered the hex in a grid pattern you need 60 such lines, for a total of 3600 outposts. This is a big number, but not astronomically big. Less if you use a more optimal placement than a grid, but I'm a bit too lazy to deal with the math at the moment.

If each outpost cost you, say, 100 million credits, then each hex you cover costs you 360 billion credits. This is expensive, but not inconceivably expensive for a wealthy interstellar polity to purchase.

This all of course relies on the Traveller maps being 2d. If you include the third dimension the cost goes through the roof. Covering a cube with such a net requires 216000 outposts, which is going to put the cost to 10,8 trillion credits if you somehow slash the cost of each outpost to a mere 50 million credits. While the cost of a single hex is affordable to a wealthy polity, it is unlikely that covering just a single hex is going to provide much strategic benefit.

>>53801905
>sees everything within 10 lightdays

And then needs ANOTHER SEVEN DAYS to send the message. That's the part you're continually forgetting or ignoring.

If you want a grid which produces a 10 day detection & report "alarm window", your outposts need a 6 lightday detection diameter rather than a 20 lightday one.

>>This all of course relies on the Traveller maps being 2d

As you correctly note, 3D makes the problem much nastier.

>>While the cost of a single hex is affordable to a wealthy polity, it is unlikely that covering just a single hex is going to provide much strategic benefit.

Agreed.

>>53802419
A maximum of 10 days to alarm at the outpost, not at the naval base. While the message then spends a week traveling to the naval base, the enemy also spends a week traveling to their target. Instead of getting a week to burn the whole system to the ground, they will have to contend with reinforcements from the naval base.

>>53802536
*an extra week

>>53802536
>A maximum of 10 days to alarm at the outpost, not at the naval base. While the message then spends a week traveling to the naval base, the enemy also spends a week traveling to their target.

That doesn't matter because...

>>Instead of getting a week to burn the whole system to the ground, they will have to contend with reinforcements from the naval base.

... you don't know WHERE to send the reinforcements.

Assume 3I/SolCon/ZhoCon tech with their (mostly) jump4 fleets. You spot the enemy refueling 10 or fewer lightdays away from your outpost, send a courier to the naval base, and then what?

All you know is that that force was HERE on such and such a day. A week later it can be ANYWHERE within a 4 parsec radius. So WHERE do you send your reinforcements?

Is the enemy force spotted heading for the naval base which was warned? Or is it a piece of misdirection? Feint towards the base, freeze the forces there in place, and then attack elsewhere?

If you haven't yet played Classic's "Fifth Frontier War" game, let me strongly suggest you do so. It's a real eye-opener with regards to comm lag and how it controls operational and strategic planning. If you can arrange to play the game double-blind it will be better yet.

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>tfw forget to print double-sided
>tfw only realize halfway through

>>53803310

Ohhh... how may times have I done the same thing...

You want a membership card, Anon? I'm the fucking president of that club.

>>53803512
Sure. Is the card one-sided?

>>53803557

It's two cards actually because I printed it one-sided.

Any good books than have a traveller feel? Like Vatta wars.

>>53806423
I'mma be a smartass and say Agent of the Imperium, to keep the thread alive, also, bump

>>53806423
How about the Dumarest of Terra series?

>>53806423
>Any good books than have a traveller feel? Like Vatta wars.

There's no Appendix N for Traveller sadly and nearly all the books written for the game range from complete shit to meh. Miller's Agent of the Imperium, which you can find in the Archive above is both fantastic and thought provoking.

H. Beam Piper's stuff is useful despite using different ship drives. David Drake's RCN series is good too, again despite different ship tech. Jerry Pournelle's future history "Empire of Man" and especially "King David's Spaceship" is good as is the Pournelle/Niven book "The Mote in God's Eye". Frezza's "Small Colonial War' is good. Jack Vance's "Planet of Adventure" and nearly everything by Poul Anderson can be used too.

Tubb's "Dumerest of Terra" series was a huge influence on Miller. When you read those books you can see all the bits that were borrowed. Despite their being a big influence, I must force myself to read them and haven't read more than a handful of the couple dozen which exist.

>>53806423
Bertram Chandler has a merchant series that would fit Traveller with a little bit of re-scaling the FTL drives.

I'd add various Andre Norton novels, even though the technology curve it more 50s sf than 70s.

>>53808398
I've only got the first book of this, but it is Traveller As Fuck.

Jack Vance has some good traveller inspiration too, demon princes perhaps? and I'm sure he's got a story where scouts go out alone in scoutships to scout, and one where there's a really nice inhabitable world but because it's in the middle of nowhere the only thing on it is a bar (and attached landing pads). People drop by because it's a good staging point on frontier trips or something.

>>53812539
>Bertram Chandler
Captain/Commodore Grimes.

>>53807862
I read that already desu, the one in the trove etc.
>>53808398
Oh, I read a few of them, quite good but very old school.
>>53809352
Jack vance I like him, I read his Dying Earth and Tschai stuff, I remember starting the Demon princes and not getting into it as a teen tough, perhaps a bad translation. All the other tough I never read anything about them, tough a friend recomended me the mote in the god's eye. Thanks bro that was helpful.
>>53812539
I kinda of dig the old school feel, specially afte reading some new USA sci-fi in the Hugos. Never again desu.

>>53798655
I think this is the issue I have. I'm currently coming out of a pathfinder campaign where for some inexplicable reason the DM is having us roll for every little thing (including in one case a strength check for someone to pick up an item much lighter than their above head withy limit) and I think it's affecting me more than I thought.

Usually I just go with if someone is trained in it, and the task is routine, then I just say they pass regardless.

Must purge the innumerable skill checks.

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Is there anyone who has figured out a way to use Traveller rules to run a WH40kRPG? I know that the design philosophies, sci-fi schools, and basic physics assumptions are as different as night and day, but surely someone has given it their best shot at some point?

The only reason I'm asking is because I frankly hate the crunch for WH40kRPG. It's unwieldy, overly situational, and needlessly complex. Traveller, for all its hard science in the backdrop, is actually much simpler to learn in practice.

>>53798655
In my game, if my player's character succeeds in her Jump Drive test (she literally can't roll below a 4), then the jump is successful. One roll, and that's it.
It would only ever be an issue if a different character had to try and get the J-Drive to work, but I'd have the jump just not occur in the event of a failure.

>>53814705
I would be surprised than no one did desu, but probably it has been pruned from the web or something.

>>53798655
>As long as all the usual precautions are taken and no extreme situations exists, pulling out your driveway, using a computer, and jumping shouldn't require a die roll.

OK.

Would a 747 pilot need a skill roll to take off from or land at a modern airport in good weather? Would a tugboat captain need a skill roll to bring a supertanker into a port designed for supertankers?

Did Neil Armstrong need a skill roll to land the Eagle?

>>53816509
I would argue that Neil needed to roll for the landing, since the first moon landing was an unusual situation. Subsequent pilots of lunar landers might not need to roll, if the GM has grown bored of the idea that they might crash.

>>53814705
Why on Earth would you ever want to inject that concentrated goatpiss into Traveller.

>>53801239
Quite so, and your point also invalidates the option "point the ship at the nearest star, accelerate and go into cold sleep." That means travel times of tens of thousands of years - for all practical purposes, the characters lost for the referee's campaign unless the ship emerges at the fringe of a settled system.

(Can't be bothered to calculate the exact number of years for a parsec because it becomes irrelevant once it goes above 100 years or so.)

>>53817486
Nah, rescue should be within a decade. Fifty years, tops. Then you get the salvage scene from Aliens.

>>53816509
>Would a 747 pilot need a skill roll to take off from or land at a modern airport in good weather? Would a tugboat captain need a skill roll to bring a supertanker into a port designed for supertankers?

Both good examples of actions that should simply occur rather than needing to be rolled for. It's called ROLEplaying and not ROLLplaying after all.

>>Did Neil Armstrong need a skill roll to land the Eagle?

Very much so. The planned landing site had boulders not picked up in photographs, so Armstrong had to divert and land the Eagle with only seconds of fuel left before reaching the lander's bingo point. Definitely a skill roll required there.

>>53814705
>Is there anyone who has figured out a way to use Traveller rules to run a WH40kRPG?

I've been playing Traveller since 1978 or '79 and wargames even longer than that.

In all my years of gaming, I am happy to say that I have NEVER SEEN a WarHamster - Traveller crossover. I'm sure some degenerate, brain damaged, or otherwise psychotic "person" somewhere has attempted to fashion such a crossover but, mercifully, has failed to share their carcinogenic efforts with humanity.

>> I frankly hate the crunch for WH40kRPG. It's unwieldy, overly situational, and needlessly complex.

But those things are EXACTLY what makes WarHamster WarHamster. If you aren't dealing with needless crunch, unwieldy rules, overly situational exceptions, and needlessly complex stats, you're not playing game which is the engine of the con men at GW's wholly cynical figure-selling process.

WarHamster IS ALL ABOUT being able to open the latest "codex" and tell your fellow morons that a Triple-Whipple-Dipple Douchebagerator (with Optional Chainsaw Eyelids for only $29.99) gets an extra 1.5 dice on Sim-Sala-Bim worlds during full moons in months with an "R" in them if the player's surname end in this limited list of vowels.

The idea you'd want the change THAT is quite frankly unbelievable.

>>53817403
No accounting for taste.
>>53814705
With the bits already hidden in Mongoose v1 and a few adjustments to psionics you are well on your way. What parts do you consider difficult to adapt?

So I'm looking at Cepheus Engine, and I'm having trouble with the starship weapons. I mean, surely a triple turret with, say, particle beams is more powerful than a 50dT particle beam bay? The bay does about twice as much dakka, but there are three of them in the turret, and it's 50dT cheaper.

You can get bay weapons you can't turret-mount, meson gun bays obviously having the whole "fuck your armour" thing, but fusion gun bays are basically particle beam bays but cheaper, slightly weaker, and a band shorter in range. Oh, and they don't do radiation, OK, you might not want that.

I just don't get why you wouldn't have a triple particle beam turret over a particle beam bay. Are they one per turret? And if so, why doesn't it say that anywhere I can find?

I'm missing something, obviously.

>>53818780
Particle weapons should be one per turret, per older editions, and not even fit into a turret at all until TL15. At TL14 the Particle "turret" is actually 5 tons, not one.

>>53818991
Cepheus Engine seems to be missing that. I remember Particle Barbettes being a thing, yeah, but I'm trying to just go with RAW here and it's not as bad as Mongoose's writing, but it's not exactly great.

>>53818780
>I'm missing something, obviously.

I don't think you're missing much of anything actually.

I found it to be a matter of nuance and, coming from decades of HG2 use, I had to really look for that after unconsciously assuming CE would work like HG2.

Unlike HG2 in which you can group multiple weapons in one turret into a single battery, CE treats each weapon as an individual. That triple turret with 3 particle beams has THREE separate weapons and thus needs THREE gunners. While those 3 beams can be fired at the same target, they aren't fired as a UNIT as was done in HG2. You can't "sum" similar weapons into one attack and - importantly - one attack ROLL.

In >>53798655 I pointed out how even high odd rolls become low odd sucker bets IF you must perform enough of them. That triple turret requires 3 rolls from 3 different gunners while the 50dTon bay only requires one roll from one gunner.

Because CE (so far) only deals with ships under 5K dTons, it's ship combat system and the weapons used in the same have more of a RPG/PC focused than HG2's huge #s of huge ships with huge #s of huge weapons fighting huge battles wargame focus.

I opened CE unconsciously expecting to find HG2's exquisitely balanced battery ratings which blended tonnage, TL, numbers, and other factors. CE is more like Classic's Book 2 with it's PC focus.

>>53818991
>Particle weapons should be one per turret, per older editions, and not even fit into a turret at all until TL15. At TL14 the Particle "turret" is actually 5 tons, not one.

That's HG2 and I assumed HG2 too when I first read CE.

CE is slightly different and it "penalizes/prevents" turrets with multiple particle weapons in a different way.

A few more random generator links and resources that might be useful.

http://story-games.com/forums/discussion/13263/resources-for-solo-play

>>53820937

Thanks for the link.

SWN also has a bunch of random generators that can be use for Traveller.

>>53821233
SWN is great for traveller in general

>>53822517
>>SWN is great for traveller in general

Quoted for truth.

The Faction system in the core book is a game in itself.

>>53818524
Obviously, most of the military careers aren't much different from your average Imperial Guard regimen (though perhaps being in the Guard is about ten times more lethal). My biggest concern is over how weapon damage in WHRPG weighs against weapon damage in Traveller, or the exact traits of each universe's power armor. That's not even getting into the relative stat differences between an unarmored space marine and a regular human, or something like a chaos deamon or eldar (though darians may come close with some tweaks).

>>53823651
>or something like a chaos deamon or eldar (though darians may come close with some tweaks).

You know absolutely nothing about Traveller if you think the Darrians are only a few "tweaks" away from being WarHamster's Eldar.

The Darrians are a fairly nondescript Human Minor Race, with a different pelvis, a more easily modified metabolic rate, melanin that protects from UV without darkening, and a somewhat higher resistance to ozone.

They don't have spooky psionic powers and they're not stronger, faster, nimbler, or have more endurance than the Vilani, Sollies, or Zhos.

As for battledress, each version of Traveller has a different take on battledress and none even remotely resemble WarHamster's power armor.

>>53824186
I know little about the lore because the crunch is more important to me, yes.

>>53824302
Okay if you need crunch, use the crunch, but don't jump to conclusion about the fluff.

Also i have to put the breaks on you about psionic powers in both systems. Compared to WH brain-dimension-magic traveller psionics are like a flamethrower versus a wet matchstick.

>>53824186
not him >>53824302
but could you explain some of the different takes on battledress? (I really like the name in any case)

>>53824302
>I know little about the lore because the crunch is more important to me, yes.

You don't know shit about the crunch either because the Darrians have little that is "special" in the way crunch.

In chargen, their STR and END scores get slightly nerfed - 1D+3 vs. 2D6 - while their EDU gets a slight buff - 2D6+1 vs 2D6. Their career tables have slightly different stat/skill results than the basic tables, but nothing that stands out too much.

Also >>53824439 kindly cautions you about psionics with: "Compared to WH brain-dimension-magic traveller psionics are like a flamethrower versus a wet matchstick." and he's absolutely correct.

Psionic powers in Traveller are subtle with limited duration at short ranges and lengthy recovery times.

Psionics are seemingly weak because in nearly every version of Traveller psionics isn't career. Instead it's something a PC develops after their career. This means psionics are just another skill instead of the primary reason a PC exists in the game; i.e. your PC is an ex-scout medic with limited telepathic powers and not a Telepath!!! who can hand out band-aids.

>>53824462

Sure.

In Classic, battledress (BD) was upgraded combat armor combined with a vacc suit. It doubled your STR and gave you unlimited END for encumbrance and melee. While it increases STR and END, it does not increase them with regards to taking wounds. BD also allows you to fire the supremely nasty PGMP and FGMP weapons without penalty or risk of injury.

In MT, BD got a huge boost because MT added lots of equipment to the game plus rules to use it. Along with buffs to stats and the ability to fire the PGMP/FGMP, BD suddenly had built-in sensors and comms of various types and flew thanks to an integral grav belt. BD was also slightly harder to penetrate and damage. In many ways, the MT version of BD was/is the toughest.

TNE dialed things back somewhat. It included sensors and comms, just not automatically like MT. While you could use a grav belt with it, such a belt wasn't built-in. It still allowed you use the PGMP/FGMP.

T4 returned to the Classic version albeit tweaked for the T4 system. BD provided stat buffs, had little in the way of embedded system like the MT version.

I've yet to use MgT or personal combat, or for much of anything realy.

CE seems to split the difference between Classic and MT. You get stats buffs and can use the P/FGMPs. Because CE has nice personal computing rules, it's BD has a built-in computer with specific programming. CE also mentions that BD is "commonly" personalized with "numerous upgrades" meaning you can mix & match whatever kit you and your referee agree on.

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What's religion like in your Traveller universe? Or if you use the OTU, have any religions been prominent in your games?

I haven't found much about religious belief in the Third Imperium, is it the case that there aren't many religious movements spanning more than a planet or two?
I know about the Vilani Star Chorus thing, but apart from that are there any beliefs that are common across big regions of the Imperium? Do Solomani settled worlds still practice Earth faiths? Is religion largely just beneath the scope of Traveller to mention?

I'm doing my own thing at the moment, but I just thought it'd be interesting to ask

>>53818438
I take it ya don't like warhammer, eh anon?

>>53825027
Thanks. I really liked the CE computer rules, for everything; personals, built in, ship comps. They really modernized things while maintaining the general Traveller flavor.

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>>53814705
Although I might disagree with old-anon over there, the WH40kRPG by FFG is actually really good for what it is supposed to do. Firstly the level of 'crunch', as it were, is actually fairly minimal, and while certainly more than Traveller, does a good job of portraying the setting (Paranoia is a great thing to have, for example). Also, a lot of the rules, especially for Rogue Trader, are part and parcel of the continuation of rules from tabletop, including Battlefleet Gothic. Also, WH40KRP is based in large part on the old 2e WHFRP system, so there's lots of holdover material there.

More to the point, Traveller's mechanics don't match the setting of 40k. For instance: psionics. You could try using a 2x or even 2.5x modifier as MgT Psion 1e suggests for varying settings, but it doesn't replicate the mindfuckery of maybe accidentally summoning a Khorne berserker because the primaris psyker was stupid enough not to flagellate himself in the morning. Or the ships. 40k ships are deliberately stupid and unwieldy. They have a distinct 18th century ships-and-iron-men feel, with broadsides and whatnot.

So it doesn't fit. Don't get me wrong, you can adapt Traveller to lots of things with more or less difficulty. Star Trek, to some extent Star Wars, can be done. Firefly and Mass Effect are pretty easy conversions. But 40k? Just stick with WH40kRPG. It's a good system for what it needs to get across.

>>53825188
>I take it ya don't like warhammer, eh anon?

WarHamster is less a war game and more a con game run by GW to sell books and figs to clueless idiots besotted by the baroque nature of the minis. It's the MtG of wargames; the more you buy the better chance you have to win.

My minis group meets in a FLGS which also host WH40K matches, Not a week goes by without some poor soul wandering over from the tedious, never ending, throw a 55 gallon drum full of dice, WH "games" to sit in with us as we push Roman legions, Wild West gunfighters, 74 gun SOLs, T-34s, or Napoleonic grenadiers around our tables is historical battles that we actually finish.

>>53825213
>They really modernized things while maintaining the general Traveller flavor.

Yup. The CE computer rules are a nice update.

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>>53825027
>>53825213
Threadly reminder that (almost) all CE rules are MgT 1e rules, and are, for the most part, at least for personal scale stuff, the same as MgT 2e rules.

>>53825073
>Is religion largely just beneath the scope of Traveller to mention?

No beneath the scope as much as wisely left up to the individual referee. Traveller does mention religions and use religion in a few adventures.

GDW, however, know that one man's view on religion was another man's heresy and yet another man's joke. Accordingly they left it all up to you to do what is best for you and your group.

>>53825389
>dat Empress
What stops high-ranking Imperials from just taking anagathic drugs to stay in power without having to retire?

>>53825972
>What stops high-ranking Imperials from just taking anagathic drugs to stay in power without having to retire?

Supposedly societal and/or cultural pressures. And that's a BIG supposedly. Later versions fiddled with anagathics somewhat dialing back Classic's claims. TNE especially put what acted as a "hard" limit by imposing ever increasing risks for cancers and/or psychiatric damage.

Some of the early emperors, however, had long reigns and even longer lifespans. Like lifespans upwards of 100+ years. Miller at COTI has broached the idea that those long-lived emperors may have been clones of some sort, but that's just speculation and not official - yet.

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>>53825972
Nothing, really. Other than cultural acceptance and economic capability.

That being said, the way anagathics are described sort of rustles my jimmies, in that they're kind of a holdover from the idea of the 'impertinence of magic'. Just as a magic castle may crumble when the evil king dies, anagathics are presented first as a method of maintaining cellular senescence, but then also described as having deleterious side effects if one goes off of them (sometimes including rapid onset aging).

The problem is that these two effects simply don't have much backing in reality. A cell doesn't magically 'remember' how old it actually is and immediately revert to it after it's off magic science pills.

If a pill created in an 20 year old individual a biological milieu in which they had 'negligible senescence' in the way of, say, a lobster, then coming off of the pill 30 years later doesn't make him magically 50. He'd still be 20.

>>53819368
>That triple turret with 3 particle beams has THREE separate weapons and thus needs THREE gunners.
That's a special kind of stupid.

>>53826427
>anagathics are presented first as a method of maintaining cellular senescence, but then also described as having deleterious side effects if one goes off of them (sometimes including rapid onset aging).

Which version(s) does that?

In Classic, anagathics simply void aging rolls and, if you stop using them, you pick up at the age where you began them off and not the age you currently are.

MT is more complicated. 1st, anagathics only 'protect" 2 of 3 physical stats. 2nd, you still age a term after beginning them because it takes while for them to take effect. 3rd, when got off them, you face extra aging rolls initially to model stopping the drug regime, but you begin aging from the age where you began.

>>53826716
>That's a special kind of stupid.

While it's straight from Classic, Mayday, and the other PC-focused ship combat rules, there's nothing stopping you from changing it for your game.

Once again, do what you want.

>>53825073
>What's religion like in your Traveller universe? Or if you use the OTU, have any religions been prominent in your games?
In a world, "localized", which means the answer to the second question is "no". The Church of the Stellar Divinity pops up occasionally.

>>53825972
>What stops high-ranking Imperials from just taking anagathic drugs to stay in power without having to retire?
>>53826108
>Supposedly societal and/or cultural pressures.

Specifically, the sitting Emperor or Empress has complete control over an Imperial title. If the Emperor wants Nobles to cycle generationally, then they *will* cycle. They risk being forcibly retired, or having their long-suffering heirs given a title elsewhere resulting in their jealously held title being denied an heir, or any number of other enticements.

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>>53826764
> you face extra aging rolls initially to model stopping the drug regime
That's it. Also, MgT has aging shocks when coming off of the drug regime. That may very well replicate the effects of withdrawal from an addictive drug, to be sure, but doesn't really mesh with what is presumably necessary to slow aging (i.e. affect DNA methylation rates, histone wrapping tightness and/or telomerase efficiency in affected cohorts, etc. etc.).

In fact, I find that it's a slightly big jump to think that you'd have to continually be on anagathics to maintain this biological immortality; the necessary changes would be on an epigenetic level and thus would be more or less permanent. You'd take the medication and voila, you're biologically immortal. The idea that you'd have to 'maintain' it is a bit off to me. Certainly you'd still be prone to DNA damage, much as anyone else would be, but that could be treated much more akin to radiation damage than as aging rolls.

>>53827294
>That's it.

But you only face them once and then pick up where you left off. I see it as more of a game balance thing, there's a penalty for stopping, than a some insult to my understanding of the biological and medical sciences.

>>Also, MgT

I don't care what Mongoose does.

>> doesn't really mesh with what is presumably necessary to slow aging

Presumably necessary? You know how to stop aging?

>>The idea that you'd have to 'maintain' it is a bit off to me.

Please. The fact that you have to keep buying anagathics is purely a game balance mechanism. If it were a one time purchase your players would do nothing but work towards the goal and then do fuck all.

You're definitely overthinking this. It is make believe after all.

Has anyone saved Vast Imperium, Bold Travellers from JTAS?

>>53828781

That was from the on-line SJGames version of JTAS, right?

>>53828800
Yeah. It was a conversion to use BESM for Traveller.

>>53819368
So a CE triple laser turret requires three gunners? Man. CE needs editing.

>>53825373
>WarHamster
Christ, dude, grow up.

Besides, the cool 40K fans stick to 1e Rogue Trader and maybe a little bit of 2e.

Is there a wiki out there for Cepheus Engine? I've been on the main Traveller wiki and couldn't find anything related to rules. I prefer to read rules in wiki form over pdf form if I can ever get my hands on a wiki.

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>>53796040
Here are some random ideas

>>53824462
And in TNE and T4 you could build your own version of Battle Dress, adding what you wanted to it (within certain limits).
MgT tried to do this several times, but as far as I'm concerned has made a hash of it each time.
In CT and MT you got what was written down by the authors, you couldn't design your own.

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>>53791987
>What've you smuggled in the holds of your ships, anons?

Here's some logs from my solo trader campaign I did a while ago: A straight-A's Aslan 'exiled' from her clan quickly devolves into smuggling illegals...

https://pastebin.com/SzkwVG07

I had a lot of fun with this campaign and did regular posts here on /tg/. Pretty sure I still have the papers for her ship somewhere tucked away. It was an Ao'Iw light trader from the mongoose Aslan book.

I was running MgT, this was before 2e came out.

>>53819133
I didn't see rules for barbettes in the cepheus engine.
And it only has rules for meson and nuclear dampers, instead of more classical "shields". For being a generic it has to few options desu, I know it's a traveller retro clon and all, but at least they could have tried to make it "wider" in options, the weapons and defense systems are underwhelming.

>>53825972
In My Traveller Universe, eternal rulers are generally considered extremely dangerous. This is because the way a person rules is largely influenced by their experiences during their formative years. Since the universe is constantly in motion, political realities eventually grow distant from those experiences. At that point you need a new ruler, or your polity will suffer from increasingly irrational rule. Imagine an immortal Queen Victoria, trying to handle Brexit as if it was still the 1800's. Or an immortal Ronald Reagan, forever fighting a Cold War against an enemy that has long since been defeated.

Another reason for a distrust of anagathics on societal scale is the fact the next generation will receive no inheritance. When a title falls in the hands of an immortal noble, their successor(s) are going to look for other titles to usurp, or other avenues of power to advance through. Or they might seek to help their predecessor into the grave, "restoring the natural order". All in all, this can be a source of great instability.

This doesn't mean, of course, that there are no rulers that use anagathics to live forever. After all the price is negligible once you control a planet. There are worlds where an Eternal Stalin purges and terrorizes the population, with no end in sight since time will not claim the tyrant. Such worlds help delegitimize the idea of an immortal ruler.

Finally, the nature of the Anagathics themselves plays a role. In Mongoose Traveller you need to start taking them at a young age in order to live forever. If you start late your life will be long, but finite. Most people in their twenties don't think of eternity, and so they slip past that crucial period.

What's the dT of the classical homworld ships? They don't seem to be that big.

>>53833837
Do they have any official dimensions listed? Even just length would go a long way to estimating volume.

>>53833837
The classic Mothership is pretty damn big, just going off the number of people it holds in low berths while simultaneously providing hangar space for a fleet, manufacturing capabilities to build a new fleet, and r&d teams that rival xcom for sheer bullshit.

From the homeworld wikia:

>Mothership's in-game height is 2138.1 meters or approximately 2.1 kilometers. The Scaffold, that enclosed it during construction, is 1370.3 meters or approximately 1.3 kilometers. Game manual, however, disputes these values: Page 6 of Part 1: Historical + Technical Briefing states that Scaffold is 25.6 kilometers long (19.7 times larger). Assuming that the size ratio between Mothership and Scaffold is kept, the latter implies that the mothership should be 41.37 kilometers tall.

>Homeworld manuals contain many other discrepancies; however, both the game and the manual maintain that the Mothership was built to house 600,000 of Kharak's population in cryogenic sleep. Assuming that each person is no taller than 1.5 meters, the combined body volume of this population alone amounts to 157,500 cubic meters, making the in-game sizes unrealistic.

>>53835391
also apparently the 500kdT Tigress DN is 750' in its longest dimension, and while it's a ball and the mothership's thinner, the banana is more like 6,000' tall using the in-game size.

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>>53835391
some other googling has hw2 ships being done in meters in-engine and the interceptor being f15-sized, and the wikia's argument about fitting humans in doesn't seem like they're scaling well, so you could probably call it about 2-3km tall.

have a 1/72 interceptor: http://s177.photobucket.com/user/PetarB/Taiidan%20Interceptor/story

>>53835482
also like an hour-long video? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7ZXTX6f230

>>53835428
or 2000 decks high, assuming they are arranged that way.

Some *incredibly* lazy maths, assuming it's 2000m tall (it's taller), about a fifth of that long and a tenth of that thick (I literally looked at one picture for a few seconds), multiplying up and dividing by 13.5 gives you about 1.2MdT. I'd be comfortable calling a banana about 3-5MdT, because it's taller than that.

Assuming (ha) frozen watch-style low berths for the sleeping population, you've got 300kdT of low berths, and double occupancy staterooms taking up another 100kdT for the active on-board crew.

Let's say... 1/5 is meat, stores, and general workspaces, 1/5 is hangar, 1/5 is drive, 1/5 is manufacturing, 1/5 is resources. At 5MdT that gives you a full million dTons for meat and their workspaces, which is overkill, but dropping to 3MdT you're still within a reasonable 600kdT - assuming you're not taking a full half dTon for a fully-fuctional Traveller-style low berth, you can probably pack in the sleepers more tightly and fit your waking crew in like sardines, because it's a hell of military/religious/cultural expedition/quest and they're desperate - they're not going to object to sharing tight quarters.

The drive obviously doesn't have Traveller fuel requirements, but if it does, fuck it, fuel'll fit for a J1, and since Homeworld ships aren't water balloons 10% is reasonable. If you need more, you're a Homeworld mothership, build giant drop tanks or something. Probably take all of thirty seconds.

>>53836366
>lazy maths
Oh right. 6000 FEET.
That's still 600 decks. For a fanbase that has trouble with more than five decks, 200 is a bit much.

>>53831311
>I didn't see rules for barbettes in the cepheus engine.

There aren't any. Once again, CE has more of a Classic Book 2 focus via MgT than a HG2 focus.

>>And it only has rules for meson and nuclear dampers, instead of more classical "shields".

You're confused, Traveller has never had "shields". For pure defense, Book 2 only had sandcasters. HG2 added physical armor, repulsers, nuclear dampers, meson screens, and blakc globes. MT then added white globes at much higher TLs.

>>but at least they could have tried to make it "wider" in options, the weapons and defense systems are underwhelming.

They had 300 some pages to present everything from chargen to sysgen to trade to animals to ship building to psioincs and all the rest. Just as with Classic's Books 1-3, they CHOSE to emphasize to emphasize a PC level of play.

You might as well be bitching that they didn't include enough about grav tanks and other purely mercenary and military equipment.

>>53836842
Is there any information out about more books being planned for CE? Or is such a thing just impossible copyright wise?

>>53837607
>Or is such a thing just impossible copyright wise?

CE is "built' from SRDs which Mongoose released into the OGL framework. As long as you stay within the bounds of those SRDs and append the OGL's legal "boilerplate" somewhere in your book, there are no copyright issues.

So, the question of a book with more "High Guard-ish" weapon and systems begin released for CE will depend on what sort of SRDs Mongoose released. Did they release a SRD with materials from their version of High Guard?

>>53837734
I've been looking into doing this, and I think the answer is no. Only the vehicle design system (which you can see has a CE version)

In order to pull off a CE, you'd have to decide which HG you wanted to mimic, and recreate it. If I were doing it (I've been thinking about it a bit), I'd probably start by extrapolating from the 0-5000 dT ships up to the 1,000,000 dT level, decide how capital ship combat should work (more abstract to support giant battle fleets?)

If one did that, they'd probably be able to release an OGL CE High Guard SRD (Though you'd want to call it something else)

>>53838134
>you'd have to decide which HG you wanted to mimic

The only "HG" or ship construction system you can mimic is one which has had SRDs released from it into the OGL framework. So far, the only versions of Traveller which has released SRDs are the Mongoose versions. MgT1e and 2e.

If Mongoose has released a "HG" SRD, than a CE or CE-ish HG book could be fashioned from it.

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>>53834960
It isn't official but those are quite good for that.

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>>53838542

>>53838233
If Mongoose released a SRD, you could just copy and paste it, with a bit of editing.

I'm saying to redo High Guard (just like mongoose did for their version of it)

If you look at the 100-5000 ships, the engine tables flatten out to a percentage of the mass/jump (mostly) (just like classic traveller's high guard)

This is falling back onto the whole 'You can't copyright game mechanics' thing. Why Pathfinder can have stuff that's not in the d20SRD, like psionics.

We can't copy content, but we can create new content to fill the void (just like CE re-introduced the other professions)

Actually, it looks like there IS a High Guard SRD might not be as much stuff that needs to be replicated - taking a look now.

>>53838599
Looks like the key parts are there. See for yourself - http://www.mongoosepublishing.com/pdf/travdevpack.zip

Needs a ton of formatting of course.

>>53838599
>I'm saying to redo High Guard

You can't do that without a license from FFE.

More accurately, you can do that but you'd have to make so many changes that the finished product would barely resemble Traveller and would not "fit" with the existing Traveller rules very well.

>> (just like mongoose did for their version of it)

Mongoose has a LICENSE from FFE.

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>>53838588

>>53838682
How can you say that when Cepheus engine is a thing? The OGL provides the license cover.

And even without a SRD, there's nothing stopping you from making a work-alike of any game, as long as the presentation is unique (a pretty safe way to do that is to have two people and actually reverse engineer it, where I teach you, and then you write up how you do it).

But it doesn't matter, mongoose released a high guard SRD.

>>53838876
Do you think the CE author will make a HG equivalent?

>>53838933
I'm not sure. Kemp always struck me more as a Small Ship universe guy. I figured that if I want a CE HG, I'd have to do it myself (beacuse it feels like people prefer a Small Ship Universe right now), but now that I see that most of it is there, I'd probably ask him if he was planning on doing it before doing the work.

>>53838876
>How can you say that when Cepheus engine is a thing? The OGL provides the license cover.

I say that BECAUSE Cepheus Engine is a thing, fuckwit. Cepheus Engine EXISTS because of the OGL license cover.

If you reverse engineer Classic's HG2 instead of using Mongoose's HG SRD and start releasing free pdfs of the same, plan on retaining legal counsel.

>>But it doesn't matter, mongoose released a high guard SRD.

What is in it? Spinal mounts? Barbettes? Battery rules? Black globes?

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>>53839029
I prefer SSU, but 5.000 dT seems to little to me. For one part it must be the biggest ship a npc like a Pirate or something should have, in the other that it's like a big Frigate/Destroyer should be, perhaps even light cruiser, but seems to little for a Battleship or any heavy.

>>53841301
>but 5.000 dT seems to little to me.

Did you see the comparisons posted in the last thread or too?

A Traveller dTon is 14 m^3 or 500 ft^3. The "tiny" Beowulf free trader carries the equivalent of 10 "18-wheeler" tractor-trailers or 8-10 railroad boxcars. The Type-R merchant carries 20 tractor-trailers or 20-25 boxcars. A WW2 Liberty ship is 2400 dTons.

Military ships work a little differently because of armor, etc. but a WW2 US Fletcher class DD is 600 dTons while a current DDG like the USS Cole is 1700 dTons. The WW2 Enterprise is 4300 dTons, the Span-Am War Oregon is 1700 dTons, HMS Dreadnought 3000 dTons, and USS Arizona 5000 dTons.

Until you understand and can visualize just what a dTon is, you really can't grasp how big Traveller's "small" ships truly are.

>>53841301
Common science fantasy parading itself around as sci-fi, have no sense of scale.
On the other hand, without gravity and atmo to limit things, ships can be a lot bigger. EVE ships are still ridiculous, but a few 100Kdt should be fine.

>>53839341
I don't think you can download the evelopers pack from Mongoose anymore, but the Open Content stuff it had can be found here:

http://www.traveller-srd.com/

>>53843333
I take that back. You can still download the developer pack that contains the SRDs.

http://www.mongoosepublishing.com/traveller-core-ebook.html

>>53836599
what do you mean anon?

>>53843544

I think he meant that once you get past a certain size, a ship is no longer a "ship" and become more like a "location".

Of course just what the size it will depend on the people involved.

If you want really BIG ships you can try CORE COMMAND.

Now that's making me curious about re-skinning the Mindjammer Traveller as Core Command.

You're not wrong, but you're being a dick about it. No, really, about everything.

Not replying to any specific post, because you know, and everyone else knows, who and what I'm talking about.

Mong1e, or 2e?

On travellermap.com, what does "Symbols" actually mean? I looked it up in the Traveller 5 core book, but it's still not clear and it appears the text is cut.
What does it mean if a world has Symbols 3, or D?

>>53836842
>>I didn't see rules for barbettes in the cepheus engine.
>There aren't any. Once again, CE has more of a Classic Book 2 focus via MgT than a HG2 focus.
Yeah, the thing is due to this omission they've got triple particle beam turrets. Really, just limit them to one per turret and you're set.

>>53841979
>while a current DDG like the USS Cole is 1700 dTons.
And reminder that in general, modern destroyers are effectively cruisers, except they sound smaller and cheaper so they're easier to get funded.

>>53848223
Maybe try the Wiki?

>>53848440
>Symbols: may range from the concrete (idols; totems; statuary) to the abstract (symbolized belief systems; group affiliations).
How helpful.

>>53848223
The cultural indices are vague on purpose. Symbols could be interpreted as abbreviations or euphemism in language, prevalence of street signs, or the tendency to adopt professional dialect.

>>53846941
1e

>>53848223
I've never come across this...
Do you mean it literally has the word "symbols" in the sector hex? or do you mean the actual symbols in the hex?
There is a key on the right hand side at the top - click the key (Map legend and Symbols)
Scroll down on the pop up to see all the symbols used.

>>53848492
I was thinking something like this
https://travellermap.com/doc/secondsurvey

>>53848528
It's even worse:
>The Cultural Extension is abbreviated Cx and written in brackets ([]). It gives insight into the social behavior of the world's population. It is given as four eHex digits representing Homogeneity, Acceptance, Strangeness, and Symbols.

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>>53842080
Yeah, that. An imperial destroyer is incredible big, the Super Star destroyer is nuts. I prefer the homeworld, star treck or outlaw star feel of ships too (outlaw stars is basically nip Traveller after all), it lets smaller leagues of world or mini empires field armadas without tickling my autism too much.
Tough a 50.000 dT battleship battleship is quite big but not stupid big to me, perhaps even a few +100.000dT dreadnaughts, battle stars etc for the very big players or more advanced aliens (I'm making a setting with a feel of the Long Night, it's a lot more interesting desu).
>>53841979
Yeah I now, that, that's why they should be bigger than water based navies, space allows that, but you make them too big and they are more like decorations than anyting (the Tigress for example). I'm looking for a happy middle if that makes sense.

>>53838686
>>53838588
>>53838542
With lengths and a grasp of hull shape, you can use pages 11 and 12 of TNE's "Fire, Fusion and Steel" to ballpark volume.

The Kadeshi Multi-Beam (bottom of the second pic) is listed as 80 meters, and can be interpreted as being a "close structure". Close Structures have a Length Mod of 1.75. Divide 80 by 1.75 to get about 45m as a sphere. The table on page 11 puts that size sphere between 3000 and 4000 displacement tons.

>>53848601

Maybe I'm just bad at keeping things in scale, but I never thought of the Tigress as being ridiculously big.

Like, it's fucking big, sure, but still more or less reasonable.

>>53848547
>Homogeneity, Acceptance, Strangeness, and Symbols.
High Homogeneity indicates likely monoculture. Earth as a whole has low Homogeneity, while a sub unit like Japan has a high rating.
Acceptance is most easily treated as a range from xenophobia (low Acceptance) to extreme curiosity (high Acceptance), or ISIL vs a typical "liberal arts" university.
Strangeness is in comparison to the default, usually Imperial, culture. Low Strangeness will feel familiar to standard Imperials, while high Strangeness will have oddities that interfere with understanding, commerce, and/or a proper shared sex act. A LOT of SF has been written about high Strangeness contact.
Symbols can be all sorts of things, but you can use it as a shorthand for clarity of communication. Do they use Stop signs, and do those signs also have the word "Stop" on them? Do they talk with their hands or other body language a lot? Will they tell you you're a stupid shite or insult you in ways only their friends can understand?

>>53848884
>can be all sort of things
Then why even bother rate it?
There's nothing anywhere that tells us what 0 or F mean.

>>53848676
Traveller ships got nothing on the big stuff in Star Wars, the Culture, Shlock Mercenary, or 40k, all of which practice "because we can" levels of bigness.

>>53848911
Because it is sociology, not rocket science.

>>53848911
>Then why even bother rate it?

Because it's sociology, the science in which Miller has his degree.

>There's nothing anywhere that tells us what 0 or F mean.

sigh... You already use hexdex in UWPs and know a STR of 0 is low while an INT of F is high, but you suddenly can't comprehend hexdex in the Culural Extension? Okay...

>>53852124
I never asked anything about the rest of Cultural Extension, only Symbols.

>sigh
>...
b2reddit

>>53848347
>Yeah, the thing is due to this omission they've got triple particle beam turrets. Really, just limit them to one per turret and you're set.

Agreed. A lot of the early Classic ships had single turrets thus avoiding the "problems" with having enough gunners. Classic's use of computer rules in ship combat often prevented every weapon from being used in the same combat turn. Take everyone's favorite trip-turret load out for the scout/courier for example.

That ship's trip-turret usually has one laser, one missile launcher, and one sandcaster. It's computer has a CPU "size" of 4 and the programs you'll want to run eat that up pretty quickly. Maneuver, so you can use the M-drive, is size 1. Target, so you can use the turret, is size 1 also. Launch, so you can fire missiles and sand, is size 1 too. That's 3/4ths your computer's CPU filled and you've haven't even added stuff like Maneuver/Evade or Gunner Interact yet. Want to fire at incoming missiles this turn? That program has a size of 2 so there will be things you can't do that turn.

In a combat turn, firing lasers and launching missiles occur in separate phases so one gunner can fire a laser and launch a missile in the same turn as long as the proper programs are running.

As for more than one of the same weapon in a turret, Book 2 states that all the lasers in a turret must be fired at the same target in the same turn. You can carry that rule forward to CE and say that the 3 particle beam weapons must be fired at the same target and, because of that, only one gunner is necessary. (continued)

>>53853391 (continued)

All this seems counter-intuitive to folks used to doing whatever they want whenever they want to. Being able to use ALL the weapons in a turret against whatever target(s) you want to whenever you want to seems more "normal".

Because they were wargame designers first, GDW chose to add a layer of planning and decision making to Traveller's space combat rules. At the end of each combat turn, you have to plan on what you want to do in the next turn and then make choices based on that plan. Because your CPU resources aren't "infinite", you have to choose between options. ForEx: generating a jump course and jumping uses up half of a scout/courier's CPU space. The turn you want to jump away is also a turn you're not going to be using all your weapons.

When you remember that all Traveller space combat systems descending from Book 2 and thus keep bits & pieces of Book 2 in their systems much like how we still have an appendix, much of what seems odds suddenly make sense.

And, of course, you can always change things and do what you want!

>>53853318
>I never asked anything about the rest of Cultural Extension, only Symbols.

Symbol is part of the Cultural Extension and works just like the Cultural Extension. You might as well say "I never asked about the UWP only Hydrographics" or "I never asked about the UPP only Dexterity".

>b2reddit

And back to wherever and whenever it was you were supposed to learn how to THINK for yourself.

>>53853539
>You might as well say "I never asked about the UWP only Hydrographics" or "I never asked about the UPP only Dexterity".
But I won't, because both of those are well explained, and we have examples.

>And back to wherever and whenever it was you were supposed to learn how to THINK for yourself.
Does your handler know you're using the computer?

>>53854025
>>But I won't, because both of those are well explained, and we have examples.

The Cultural Extension is explained and there are examples. All you need to do is think.

>Does your handler know you're using the computer?

Is your facilitator typing for you because you might want to get a new one.

What are the good ways to do large scale ground combat? Maybe planetary invasions too?

>>53855671

There are as many ways as there are versions.

Classic has system in Book 4 Mercenaries. Classic also has Striker mini rules.

MT has a mass combat system in the Referee's Companion. You build conglomerate units from individuals, put them combat, and then assess damage down to the individual level. In the Rebellion Sourcebook, MT shows how to build ground units that can then be used with Classic's FFW and Invasion:Earth rules.

TNE has rules in Path of Tears, Smash & Grab, plus Striker II.

T4 has rules in Pocket Empires and Imperial Squadrons. These are the highest "level" rules with squadrons & armies being handled.

GT has mass combat rules in Star Mercs.

There are rules of a sort on MgT's Mercenary and Hammer's Slammers.

>>53855671
It's not Trav, but as a wargame I'm fond of Strike Legion: Planetary Operations. The original Strike Legion's more of a company game, but Planetary Operations is a standalone game that scales it a fair way up. Units are a couple of bases representing a battalion, and you can run a dozen or so at a time, with support.

It's not Traveller tech, but you can fiddle it.

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>>53856304
Strike Legion is crazy bullshit, and and I LOVE it for that

>>53856304
>>53860077

Thanks for the tips. The core looks really fun, so I'll look for the Planetary Operations book.

>>53860077
Err, different Strike Legion I'm afraid.
http://www.wargamevault.com/product/89043/Strike-Legion-Planetary-Operations-Revised-Edition

>>53855915
This is all gold.

And if you want to fight a SF guerrilla war, GDW actually made on of the best boardgames of its era to do that: "Bloodtree Rebellion". All of a sudden "we had to destroy the village to save it " takes on meaning.

If you want to fight naval battles, MegaTrav based rules exist called "Wet Navy" that were published across several "Challenge" magazine issues beginning with number 53 (they're in the trove).

>>53862855
>If you want to fight naval battles, MegaTrav based rules exist called "Wet Navy" that were published across several "Challenge" magazine issues beginning with number 53 (they're in the trove).

The campaign they included with that is excellent. The PCs are recruited to command/crew a nuclear submarine, a nuclear battlecruiser, and a nuclear carrier to turn the tide in a planetary war.

>>53862725

Different or not, thanks for the link.

>>53862725
well THAT'S confusing

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>>53868673
>dat iconic illustration
I wonder if "Dick Hentz" is still around today (not much evidence online)

>>53869215
>I wonder if "Dick Hentz" is still around today (not much evidence online)

He was probably a graphic arts student or instructor at whatever Indiana University - Bloomington was called back in 1977. I wonder is he provided illos for GDW's many pre-1977 wargames?

A lot of RPG illustrators back then were just moonlighting "jobbers" picking up a few extra bucks apart from their day jobs of illustrating supermarket circulars or newspaper ad copy and some weren't even working as illustrators at all.

The guy who did the iconic early D&D covers was a taxi cab driver.

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>>53872265
>The guy who did the iconic early D&D covers was a taxi cab driver.

Dave Trampier? Not quite.
He was on TSR's payroll as a full time artist, but suddenly had either a falling out with the company, or some kind of breakdown, and just left with no forwarding. They found him, some years later, driving cabs in Carbondale, Illinois. From the pictures, it looked like he was living in his cab

>>53869215

Always liked the guy and the brief explanation of his role.

He's not some combat monster in power armor shredding the locals in hand-to-hand combat. He's a forward observer instead. He uses his laser carbine and comm system to call down a world of shit on the enemy.

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>>53874145
I'll never forgive him for walking away from Wormy mid-storyline.

>>53874145

Man, the whole Lorraine v Gary thing had a lot of fallout, huh?

>>53874596
That and the Blumes before her (Actually Lorraine was a result of the Blumes)

To bring it back on topic, I've read some blurbs about Traveller history (presumably written by FFE) which had a fair amount of passive aggressive salt when TNE gets discussed.

Given that its a departure from Classic Traveller's implied system (2d6, 8+ is a success), and also a departure from where Miller was going game design-wise (nd6 roll under, with n increasing with difficulty, see T4 and T5, and at least one CT book that suggested the same for ad-hoc rolls), I wouldn't be surprised if that decision had some.... passionate discussions)

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So...what do all you anons think will happen to Traveller once Miller passes on to that great game table in the sky?

Pic is the only thing relevant I could find in my folders

>>53876516
>To bring it back on topic, I've read some blurbs about Traveller history (presumably written by FFE) which had a fair amount of passive aggressive salt when TNE gets discussed.

TNE not only fractured and pissed off the fan base, it fractured and pissed off people inside GDW too. The decision to rework all of GDW's RPGs into the so-called House System was not well received. A significant part of the staff decided to scale back their participation on the RPGs side.

>Given that its a departure from Classic Traveller's implied system (snip) and also a departure from where Miller was going game design-wise (snip) I wouldn't be surprised if that decision had some.... passionate discussions.

That's putting it mildly. Even worse, there were passionate discussions where, in hindsight, the wrong ideas won out.

Miller & GDW had basically subcontracted the "day to day" handling of MT to DGP while keeping a very weak line editor position. When they decided to bring Traveller back "in house" and began mulling over what would become TNE, the people who had been working on MT were so shocked by what was being suggested that they tried to BUY Traveller from Miller. After being tuned down, they simply left. A good chunk of the people who had been creating Traveller content were no longer interested in the game anymore. From the start the decisions being made or agreed to by Miller were turning long time players off.

Miller signed off on every decision and change associated with TNE. While you can argue about how strongly Miller felt about and supported those changes, the fact remains he AGREED to it all and came THAT close to killing the game.

It's very telling that none of the post-TNE versions Miller has released or licensed deal with either the TNE or the immediate post-TNE settings. T4 is set at the 3I's founding, T20 is set in the year 1000, GT is set in an alternate timeline, T5 talks about the Galaxiad timeline, and MgT rehashes the Classic Era

>>53877326

I don't if he'll will it to anyone separate of his FFE company. While his wife and children may play occasionally, none seem involved at any of his titles and properties at any real level. Apart from the occasional dedication, neither his wife or his children show up in bylines or playtest lists for either wargames or RPGs.

Best guess? His wife will inherit FFE keep up with the same sides and continue to honor licenses while negotiating occasional extensions.

Wild guess? The wife gets FFE but Miller wills "control" of Traveller and it's continuing development to a third party much like how authors will the permission to write additional stories in existing series. Just who would become this "intellectual heir" is anyone's guess.

There are no real candidates among GDW alumni. Loren Wiseman is dead. Chadwick has several of his own current projects and lines. He also basically left Traveller due to TNE. While Frank Harshman is involved in licensing in some manner, he hasn't done any development in decades and also seems to have a real job. Dave Nilsen has a real job with DoD.

As for Miller's "inner circle", Hunter Gordon is long dead, Don McKinney is recently dead, Hans Rancke is more recently dead, and Greg Lee - the only person to release ANY T5 materials, died just this year.

Listing a few others, Ken Whitman is a little more than a con man with several failed kickstarters and a few state attorney-generals looking into his "businesses". Tim Brown is a possibility, although I haven't seen anything from him since T4. Rob Eaglestone could be a good bet. Not only did he work on T4, GT, and T20, he's been intimately involved with T5 from the first.

If I had to bet it will be the first option. Mrs. Miller keeps the lights on at the FFE store while granting Mongoose license extensions when asked. Meanwhile any real creative development of Traveller occurs along the lines of Cepheus Engine via the OGL framework.

>>53878254
I wish it would all return to the DGP guys, they put out top notch material in the MegaTraveller heyday.

>>53878647

I didn't agree with 100% of what they wrote; their take on ship combat was awful IMHO. However, whenever you read DGP's stuff, you knew they'd actually PLAYED it.

They just didn't write adventures or campaigns. They played the game and then wrote about it.

>>53877780
>It's very telling that none of the post-TNE versions Miller has released or licensed deal with either the TNE or the immediate post-TNE settings.
You missed the 1248 books, but hey, whatever subset of the evidence works for you.

>>53879300
>You missed the 1248 books, but hey, whatever subset of the evidence works for you.

No I didn't actually. M:1248 has been decanonized by Miller. No future writers need to worry about it at all.

>>53879592
"released or licensed" is not the same thing as "currently considered Canon", and you specified the first.

>tfw my uncle gave me a bunch of old ass Traveller game books, pieces, and maps
>still no clue how to play after 10 years

>>53879678
>"released or licensed" is not the same thing as "currently considered Canon", and you specified the first.

Pedantically, yes. I didn't correctly write what I was trying to say.

My point is that Miller has avoided addressing TNE and everything it added to canon. Even, after initially okaying M:1248, Miller subsequently decanonized it.

TNE, Virus, and all the rest are the "third rail" of Traveller. Even the game's creator/owner doesn't want to deal with them.

>>53879847

It's dead simple, anon. Watch an episode of Firefly and you'll understand.

>>53858913
>tfw literally no-one to play with
>tfw dnd shitters are king

muh roleplay

>>53881493

There have been plenty of ways to play Traveller alone since 1977. In the last decade or so many products like "Mythic" have been released to help people play solo. There's even a book in the Archive called "Solo" which is designed specifically for several kinds of solo Traveller campaigns.

You'll find it in one of the folders in the MgT2e section.

>>53881638
>playing roleplaying games solo
Unless you can recommend a way to find players, I'll just stick with designing ships that will never be used, t-thanks.

>>53881728
If you can deckplan or do external views, blog 'em. They will get used.

>>53872265
>A lot of RPG illustrators back then were just moonlighting "jobbers" picking up a few extra bucks apart from their day jobs of illustrating supermarket circulars or newspaper ad copy and some weren't even working as illustrators at all.
>The guy who did the iconic early D&D covers was a taxi cab driver.
I remember stories from 70s TSR where they advertised for artists and were confused when one applicant mentioned something called a "portfolio."

>>53878254
If you say "give it to the people who've done the most for it lately" then, you know, Mongoose as the heirs of Traveller?

Man, just give it to Kevin Crawford and see if you can wean him off b/x.

SJ Games are way better than Mongoose for Trav, but they make far too much money off Munchkin to make it viable.

>>53882496
>If you say "give it to the people who've done the most for it lately" then, you know, Mongoose as the heirs of Traveller?

The trouble is Mongoose has done very little by themselves. After royally fucking up their first releases, they realized they needed much more hand holding and vetting by people designated by FFE. Mongoose's later stuff got somewhat better because Miller had folks like McKinney and Eaglestone watching them daily.

Anyway, the best thing Mongoose did for the game was something they did by accident.

After completely failing in their own efforts to use Traveller as a set of basic sci-fi rules for properties like B5, Dred, and Slammers, they released SRDs into the wild to encourage 3rd parties to do the work Mongoose was too lazy and/or stupid to do. Very soon after that, they changed their licensing rules pissing off many of the same 3rd party producers they'd been hoping to lure in.

CE was the result and CE is going to bury the MgT line eventually because Mongoose hasn't the in-house talent to produce anything of any quality and few talented people want to work for them thanks to the licensing changes.

>Man, just give it to Kevin Crawford and see if you can wean him off b/x.

That is a great idea. It's worth noting that SWN uses b/x thanks to the OGL and CE is OGL too.

>SJ Games are way better than Mongoose for Trav, but they make far too much money off Munchkin to make it viable.

Far too late for SJGames to return to Traveller and, with Wiseman's death, there's no one in house in Austin to handle it anyway. SJG barely supports their own RPG as it is, no more splats and just a dribble of pdfs. Munchkin pays all the bills there, so everything else is a either vanity project or a kickstarter.

>>53883060
>After completely failing in their own efforts to use Traveller as a set of basic sci-fi rules for properties like B5, Dred, and Slammers, they released SRDs into the wild
The core of Mongoose's Traveller SRD went live at edition launch, though they didn't add much to it until later.

>>53791987
I realise all the books are in the mega, but could someone post the Cepheus engine core rules pdf for me? My laptop is dead so I'm phone posting and my phone refuses to download it from mega, with or without the app. That is for reading my blog and spoonfeeding me.

>>53884083
Can you grab it from dtrpg? It should by Pay As You Want, and if you use dropbox, their system can upload it to your dropbox account rather than downloading it directly to your phone if that still doesn't work.

>>53887829

Now THAT is a really intriguing picture.

Any ideas on how to use it?

>>53883362
>The core of Mongoose's Traveller SRD went live at edition launch, though they didn't add much to it until later.

Exactly. They made a show of releasing SRDs but didn't actually release enough material for anyone to actually do anything until much later.

>>53889079
I thought perhaps it was the leavings of some destroyed giant industrial machine/factory whatever.

>>53889121

Works for me. In fact, it's better than anything I could come up with.

An orbital strike trashed a huge industrial facility and the PCs are tasked with literally wading thru the wreckage to find some mcguffin.

>>53889079
"For the last time, Steve, no. We are not naming this planet Hell. This is not blood. Those are absolutely not the severed, petrified balls of a race of giant aliens who lived here aeons ago, because they didn't exist."

>scouting expeditions in uncharted space with that one fucking guy on your crew

"WILL YOU SHUT UP ABOUT THIS WORLD BEING A GIANT MINIGOLF RESORT."

>>53889488

Beautiful, absolutely beautiful.

To be honest, doesn't every group need at least one fucking guy? Think Jayne on Firefly.

>>53889795
Plot twist: the campaign is about trying to murder them in the most deniable way possible. Also, your expedition is being sponsored by a reality TV company, and while it's not broadcasting FTL, everything you say and do is being recorded and stored in your ship's computer... and you don't get paid unless the footage gets back intact.

>>53889935
(plus the guy has like 18 in his luck stat, and I know traveller a) doesn't have a luck stat b) uses 2d6, not 3d6, for stats)

>>53889935
>Plot twist: the campaign is about trying to murder them in the most deniable way possible.

Even better. It's a cross between reality TV and a snuff film with plausible deniability for the producers.

>>53889954
>(plus the guy has like 18 in his luck stat, and I know traveller a) doesn't have a luck stat b) uses 2d6, not 3d6, for stats)

Then make it a special psionic power. "Special" powers have been part of the game since Classic. There's an early DGP adventure in which an NPC has the ability to change computer records via psionics.

Giving a PC weak, intermittent version of the Teela Brown gene would make for great roleplaying. Their luck isn't always on and doesn't always work, but it seems to pop up whenever the situation is most dire.

>>53890095
>Even better.

Sorry, that was supposed to mean that >>53889935's idea is even better.

>>53890095
I wasn't thinking of Teela Brown when I wrote that.

I was thinking of her about five seconds after posting. Tanj, etc.

>>53890682
>I wasn't thinking of Teela Brown when I wrote that.

How would you handle the Teela Brown gene in Traveller? Through the psionic rules? By GM fiat? Some other way?

Another couple of things to remember are what Niven had Louis Wu finally realize concerning Teela's "luck". 1st, it's luck for her alone and not the other people around her. 2nd, it's "long term" luck. "Bad" or "unlucky" things can occur because they will lead to a greater, more lucky outcome.

Teela, for example, is aboard a ship which crash lands on the Ringworld and goes through all sorts of other dangers just so she can meet the man she is destined to love.

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Anybody wanna help stat out the Avenger ?

>>53892064

Sorry, I know so little about the game/setting that I couldn't even begin to guess.

XCOM has been discussed in these threads so hopefully some other anons can help.

>>53892740
Well, it's a supply ship, so at least 100 dtons?

>>53893122

Speed, range, cargo capacity, weapons, defenses, etc., etc.?

The 2gee/jump2 100dTon scout/courier has only 3 dTons of cargo space while the 2 gee/jump1 100dTon seeker has 23 dTons of cargo space. Both those ships have 1 turret which can carry up to 3 weapons.

Does that sound like XCOM's Avenger?

Can people or troops just be shoved into plain cargo space? Is it RAW to pack a shuttle with marines for a landing? Would the marines need to be wearing vacc suits of some kind, or could I just pressurize the cargo bay?

>>53894757
>Can people or troops just be shoved into plain cargo space?

For how long? Traveller ships spend 168 hours in jump space for trips of any length.

>>Is it RAW to pack a shuttle with marines for a landing?

Again, for how long?

>>Would the marines need to be wearing vacc suits of some kind

Vacc suits in Traveller work for specific amounts of time before needing to be "recharged". So, again, for how long?

>> or could I just pressurize the cargo bay?

For how long?

>>53895362
I thought, "for a landing" might have given the correct impression I meant just from a ship in orbit to ground. Like a combat drop or just quick transport, not jumping. I guess I should have been more specific.

>>53895505
>I thought, "for a landing" might have given the correct impression I meant just from a ship in orbit to ground.

Sorry, I mistakenly "landing" only referred to the 2nd question. My bad.

Classic's modular cutter can got from orbit to ground in 20 minutes. An air/raft takes a # of hours equal to a world's size code to make the same trip. Other small craft can make the trip in times closer to the cutter's. Vacc suits are good for 8 hours until they or, more accurately, their "tanks" need to be recharged.

>>53894757
>>53895362
You could probably stick a bunch of SpaceIKEA bunkbeds and portable freshers and toilets into a freighter's cargo bay and call it a day. You should probably look into portable life support equipment to supplement your ship's life support too.
It wouldn't be pleasant, but if you want a space technical to ferry space insurgents or whatever, it'd work.

Also, aren't portable low berths a thing? Just bolt a bunch of them down in your cargo bay and wire them up to your reactor to skip all that messy nonsense

>>53896786
>You could probably stick a bunch of SpaceIKEA bunkbeds and portable freshers and toilets into a freighter's cargo bay and call it a day. You should probably look into portable life support equipment to supplement your ship's life support too.

Good suggestions. Classic is rather vague on life support, it just gives you a cost per occupied stateroom per trip. MT gets into things in more detail so you can borrow ideas from their.

>>It wouldn't be pleasant, but if you want a space technical to ferry space insurgents or whatever, it'd work.

Classic's Fast Drug is what you want there. One does lasts for 60 days which the user perceives as only 1 day. There's an antidote too so you needn't wait the entire 60 days for the dose to run it's course.

>Also, aren't portable low berths a thing?

There are emergency low berths. They hold four and everyone share the same revival roll.

>>53898805

Now that's an interesting one...

Human Minor Race, obviously. Two moons and is that a meteor in the sky or a ship?

I get a real terraforming "vibe" from the pic too. Look at that range of "hills" in the near distance, definitely harsh terrain which has yet to have been weathered much by water or wind. Maybe the scene is set in a purposely made impact crater where there's more water and the atmo is slightly thicker?

Maybe that "meteor" is really a frozen gas "ice-teroid" deliberately placed on a course which allow it to break up high in the world's thin atmosphere and thicken it by some minuscule amount?

Thisbe, a world in the Marches, is being bombarded with gas and water "ice-teroids' to improve both it's atmosphere and hydrosphere.

>>53899315
This is a cover from Bradbury's "Martian Chronicles", by the way.

>>53899407

That's a shame. Not only are Phobos and Deimos are too small to bee seen as visible discs from Mar's surface, neither moon is a sphere to begin with.

A nice piece of art ruined by the artist's inability to understand the science.

>>53899482
Science? You haven't actually read the Martian Chronicles, I take it?

>>53899577
>Science? You haven't actually read the Martian Chronicles, I take it?

I have and most likely long before you did. However, if you're doing a cover which includes Mar's moons, you should at least try to get them "right".

Bradbury ignored a LOT of what was known about Mars when he wrote the collection, but he didn't ignore that.

>>53899703
>most likely long before you did.
Believe what you please, Anon. My last re-read was farther back than the apparent ages of many posters here, based on posting behavior. Not that tantrum-riding 6-yr olds set a high bar.

>>53900353
>Believe what you please, Anon.

Mid-50s here. You?

>>53900392
Similar. 4chan is not as generational as some would like to think.

>>53901086

Very true. I remember first visiting here when Moot had trouble keeping the lights on, before WT Snacks got "fired", and before the Mexi-Moot "hoax" was even launched.

I used to visit mostly for /sp/, especially the active threads when a baseball or football game is going on, but /hwg/, /nwg/ and the like are fun reads too.

anyone know of a system that does ship combat better than traveller?

or is traveller the best?

>>53894024
It can cross the whole world in a day

It can carry a whole base full of advanced tech, and living arrangements for 100+ people, it's somewhat heavily armored, and it's got...4 deployable groundside turrets, and...3 plasma weapons, not sure if it's space-borne or not, it's implied, but never shown

>>53899703
Not the guy, and I'm sure Bradbury didn't, but cover artist =/= author.

>>53901502
Tall order. Traveller has several ways to handle ship combat, from the extreme detail of Brilliant Lances (TNE) to the fleet sim of CT High Guard, and several steps between.

>>53901502
Talon by GMT Games. The best.

>>53901566
>living arrangements for 100+ people

Hmmm, that's the toughest part.

A scout/courier can carry all sorts of advanced tech, there's an old adventure with a surplus s/c having "screens" which can easily spoof Cold War era radars.

There are heavily armed/armored small ships in Traveller canon too. Groundside weapons don't count against hardpoints and even "small" ship weapons have big stats in Striker ground combat rules. There's even a <100 dTon shuttle design that carries 90 people.

It's the LIVING arrangements part that's tough. Living arrangements means bunks, toilets, galleys, "elbow room", and all the stuff you need to live aboard. It doesn't mean stay in on your assigned seat during this transoceanic flight.

So, no I don't think a 100 dTon ship would cut it given Traveller tech. That doesn't mean you can't change stuff.

>>53901502
>anyone know of a system that does ship combat better than traveller?

Define "better".

>>53890883
Isn't part of it also the luck of her descendants? I seem to remember that being mentioned in one of the books, about how at least part of the luck works across time.

To answer your question, I would not handle the Teela Brown gene in Traveller. That way lies madness.

>>53901978
This is exceptional, but I'm not sure it would adapt well to Trav.

>>53902389
>Isn't part of it also the luck of her descendants?

I don't know sadly. I quit with "Ringworld Engineers" and haven't read the "Fleet of Worlds' series at all. Niven's names is on the series 'cause he wrote the outlines but some other guy is doing the actual writing and it shows. (David Drake has been doing the same thing for years now too. It's really easy to determine which book he wrote and which book he merely wrote an outline for.)

>>To answer your question, I would not handle the Teela Brown gene in Traveller. That way lies madness.

The Ringworld RPG must handle it in some way. While that might be worth looking at, like you I'd be VERY hesitant to include the Teela Brown gene in Traveller.

Hell, Niven "invented" the damn thing and he doesn't like it either! He says writing stories about immortal phenomenally lucky people is next to impossible and that's why he hasn't really written much about Known Space lately.

>>53902413
>This is exceptional, but I'm not sure it would adapt well to Trav.

Talon is good, as most GMT games are. Translating the tech to Traveller would be very hard sadly.

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>>53902013
eh, 100 people is the maximum you can recruit in the game, plus the NPC's who'd already set up shop there, you generally run with less though, to be completely honest, pic related

I just wanted other anons opinions on the subject

>>53902626

This isn't meant to be snarky because I'm sincerely curious as to the answer.

Do you know of any video game RPGs which have been successfully "translated" into "pencil & paper" RPGs?

I'm wondering if anyone else succeeded in doing what you want to do and if we could learn something from how they did it.

>>53902700
No, but I know of bits and pieces that've been statted up, and THAT is what I'm trying to do here, anon

>>53903370

Well good luck.

You seemingly already know what you need to know about XCOM. Now all you need to do is spend some time flipping through MgT or CE or Classic instead of asking if someone has already done the work.

>>53903592
I wanted to know if someone had a better idea than I did

this is my first time designing a proper ship

>>53906714
I suppose that's one way to do a grav belt.

>>53902519
>The Ringworld RPG must handle it in some way.

I feel like they just said, "nope, it's a one shot ability for one specific NPC, and basically boils down to GM's fiat. It's not available to PCs".

Been many, many years since I actually played Ringworld, so I could be completely wrong.

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Hi traveller general.

I'm ruinning a modified "Pirates of Drinax" campaign, set in the spinward marches.

I designed a new deckplan for the pirate ship the players get and would like to have some opinions in it. Stat wise it's the same as the ship from the books.

(sorry for the german)

>>53881493
>tfw currently playing Traveller with my group of friends, who have been playing with me for half a decade now

>>53906942

I must agree. The Teela Brown gene is just too powerful to even attempt to model, especially when you add in the generational consequences >>53902389 wisely mentioned.

Like I wrote earlier, even Larry Niven - the guy who came up with the idea - doesn't like it.

>>53910418

Looks like a rip-off of the Serpent-class scout first shown in Classic's JTAS issue #2 in 1979. If you're going to steal, it's always better to steal from the best.

Despite being a rip-off, it's still better than the original Mongoose design.

>>53910571

Lucky bastard.

>>53860077
This should be g...
>It's mecha shit
Nevermind

>>53910960
Actually it uses the model from the quetzocoalt scout ship from merchants and cruisers.

>>53911265
>Actually it uses the model from the quetzocoalt scout ship from merchants and cruisers.

Which itself is a rip-off of the Serpent-class from 1979. Like I said, if you're going to steal it pays to steal from the best.

After 40 years and given the parameters of the game, it's presumed technologies, and it's building systems, little of what we "design" is actually new or different.

Instead, it's how we use what we build that is actually new. Use that ship and have a shit load of fun with it. That's all that matters.

>>53911423
Okay, so where do i find that serpent class ship in the classic traveller stuff ?

>>53911822

The Archive above has a Classic folder and in it you'll find a pdf of all 24 JTAS issues. The Serpent class is in #2.

Just why you need to look at the Serpent-class is beyond me. Your design is fine. You'd simply "borrowed" your design from a design which had been "borrowed" in turn from JTAS #2 and there's nothing wrong with that.

You may also want to look around in the Classic folder for a "stretched" version of the Serpent. People "borrowed" the original design and added 50dTons to build a larger scout version and a yacht version.

Again, there's nothing wrong with your "design". You just weren't aware of it's pedigree.

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>>53910960
what's so bad about mongoose's design anon?

I like the Not!Bird of Prey

>>53912082
Oh then i misunderstood you, thank you for the clarification.

>>53912090
>I like the Not!Bird of Prey

Bingo, and that's not the only problem with it.

First, it's lazy, just like most of Mongoose's work. Rather than bothering to work out a design which fits the tech, setting, and culture which built it, they borrow/steal something which looks "kewl" instead.

Second, the design fails to follow it's own tech assumptions. One example of this is the location of the weapon turrets. Having them "tucked" into the "wing" roots restricts their field of fire, especially the PA turret, and for no other purpose than looking "kewl". This means the ship needs to "aim" itself to make up for the restricted fields of fire. Other ships have had fixed or semi-fixed weapon mounts, notably Sollie designs, but have also had negative DMs in combat. Not so with the Drinaxi Harrier class.

Third, the ship is over 200 years old, was built at TL 15, and wasn't built to Imperial specs. While making repairs and getting parts are part of the campaign, Mongoose makes it out to be as easy as visiting your local Ace hardware store for a new plunger. After two centuries, the ship shouldn't even be operational let alone flying around looking for fights and you shouldn't be able to repair it with standard parts seeing as it wasn't originally built to that standard.

I won't even bring up the many idiocies in the setting like having the Kingdom of Drinax on it's own somehow reaching and then operating at TL 15 a few centuries BEFORE the Imperium. Sure, the Darrians did so for a short period but there were good reasons why that happened. There's no reason why it should have happened on Drinax apart from the fact that it's "kewl".

>>53913041
hey man, it's a big universe, and they're a small, isolated faction

>>53913041
That is why i alter the campaign

>>53913378
>hey man, it's a big universe, and they're a small, isolated faction

Sorry, but no.

Mongoose chose to place the campaign in the 3I/OTU setting and then chose to ignore the precepts of that setting. Derping about "space being big" ignores why there are settings in the first place.

The late Hans Rancke, who forgot more about the setting than you or I will ever know, had a ready answer for excuses like yours: It Has To Make Sense.

Know what we know about the in-game history of the OTU/3I setting, the Kingdom of Drinax and it's relic pirate ship makes no sense.

>>53913513
>That is why i alter the campaign

And that's why you're a good referee.

>>53913871

Basic refit for the start of the campaing, (I'm trying to refit things of the campaign as I go along, quite possible that the players will do what they want anyway.) :

As i sait, it's located in the s.marks, because my group knows that place a bit. The "Kingodm in Ruins" is Thanber, because it hase some worlds nearby and a nice position between darrian, swordie, imperial and zhodani space... which just invites trade, smuggle and trouble.

long story short, Tanber managed to raise to TL 15 for a short time and build its own domain 2-3 centuries ago. Then aslan Ihatei happened and nuked the thing down for one reason or another (possible for the reason in the campaign, havent read that far or just because the nobels where dicks to the landless).

The ship is build on imperial standarts and the repairs are more expensive, but the prices can be pushed down to the campaign notes by the devoted engineer in my group or simply good roleplay/ doing side missions.

Found no other blatant stupidity till now but can't be stuff that can't be fixed by improvising.

>>53916563
>>long story short, Tanber managed to raise to TL 15 for a short time and build its own domain 2-3 centuries ago.
>>The ship is build on imperial standarts

All that works very well except for the two bits I quoted above.

While Thanber could have been TL 15 200 to 300 years ago, the Imperium was not TL 15 200 to 300 years ago. The 31 achieved widespread TL 15 around 1000IE a little over a century before the Drinax campaign. The relic ship could not have been originally built to Imperial standards because there were no TL 15 Imperial standards when it was originally built.

Here's how you can easily work around that and here's what Mongoose could have done is they weren't too stupid and/or lazy.

Google or Bing the phrase "Ship of Theseus". Miller himself uses that parable to explain the Annic Nova.

It works like this. The USS Constitution was built 1797. It's been repaired so many times since then that little of nothing exists of the ORIGINAL 1797 parts and yet it's still the USS Constitution. Your Thanber ship is much the same.

It was built 2-300 years ago with TL 15 Thanber parts. Every time it was repaired new parts were used. After Thanber couldn't make those TL 15 parts anymore, Imperial TL 15 parts were imported and the ship rebuilt to use them.

So, just like the 2017 USS Constitution is nearly all parts made in the last 50 years and not 1797 parts, your 1116 Thanber ship is mostly Imperial TL 15 parts from the last 50 years or so and not Thanber TL 15 parts from two or three hundred years ago.

Easy right? Makes you wonder why Mongoose couldn't be bothered.

>>53917132
>Mongoose couldn't be bothered
Question and answer all in one sentence.

>>53874213
Damn I really dug Wormy.
- and fun with Phil and Dixie if you wanna be honest..
The comic about the halfling chick was pretty good as well but got flaky near the end.

- fuck am I old.

>>53919643
Halfling chick... Yamara? That was flaky to start.
Don't even get me started on Pinsom. Acid trips made more sense.

>>53919643
>- fuck am I old.

Aren't we all...

>>53921164
Insufficiently youthful here, too.

>>53921164

Haven't PLAYED Traveller in over 20 years.
My last RPG was Pathfinder for about 7 or 8 months a year ago after a HUGE dry spell of anything. I just want to shoot a laser, find Aztec gold or fight the Great Old ones...

>>53922231

Several solo RPG aids have been published in the last few years. Some generic, some entire RPG systems in themselves, and some just for Traveller.

In the Archive linked above you can find Trader and Solo for Traveller. As the name suggests, Trader supports a trading campaign. Solo supports trading and other campaigns.

Among the generic aids, there's Mythic. Among solo RPGs, there's Scarlet Heroes. Both of those and others can be found in the Da Archive sharing thread here on /tg/. You can search for blogs about solo RPG play too and see how it's done.

Finally, Traveller itself has been suited for solo play since 1977. Forex, people use the various systems to intricately detail entire subsectors.

>>53927908

Now that's an interesting one. I like the implied high tech/low tech mix because that's how I see many backwater worlds.

What kind of campaign is Traveller5 Galaxiad? Is it a TL19 Star-Trek like setting?

I've looked a couple times and don't see solo in the archive anywhere

>>53929983
Same here - I think there's some confusion between Zozer's Solo which is expands on Star Trader, the CYOA style solo modules (Marooned Alone for CT, Into the Star for MgT)

That said >>53928885 is right - Traveller was a good solo game before all of the solo game tech we have these days. Coupling it with something like Mythic (or any other type of Oracle) makes it golden.

>>53929983
>>53930185

My bad, anons. I could have sworn Solo was in the Archive. I saw it "in the wild" not long after buying my pdf of it.

You can most likely find it in the Da Archive pdf sharing thread here or in the request thread on the /tg/ board on the chan three doors up from here.

>>53929043
>What kind of campaign is Traveller5 Galaxiad? Is it a TL19 Star-Trek like setting?

No one really knows. We have the TL charts and other stuff in T5. There's various other hints dropped in T5 too like the maps of the galaxy. A few other hints have been dropped at COTI like a map of the "Republic of Regina" which includes only a fraction of the same subsector.

Miller has released some very high level meta stuff that reads like Joseph Campbell's "The Hero's Journey" filtered through Traveller. "Robject' at COTI, who may or may not be working on a T5 player's handbook, has also dropped some hints too.

There's a paying members only section at COTI where Miller and his inner circle post vague questions and make even more vague statements while asking for 'answers" and "comments". People then take those few crumbs and then attempt to predict what might be in the pipeline but no one really knows what is being planned or if anything will ever be released.

Remember, Miller is 70yo and, apart from T5 being released, his inner circle has done little over the last few years beyond dying.

>>53917132

Thank you anon, that was really helpfull

>>53931334

No problem anon. Your campaign sounds great and I know you'll all have a lot of fun with it.

>>53930969
Does Miller still play RPGs at all?

>>53934230

I don't know. He seems to have been hitting the 'con circuit the last few years and doing Q&A sessions. I would be interesting to ask him that question.

anyone have opinions on some of the stuff, IIRC, Mongoose adds, like psi-blades, or Not!Lightsabers?

>>53935958

A few are good, some are meh, most are bad.

Good, meh, or bad they all only exist because of Mongoose's failed attempts to turn Traveller into a generic sci-fi rules set that could be used to support settings as diverse as B5, Judge Dred, Hammer's Slammers, etc.

Whether any of them are worth adding to or using in your game is something only you and your players can answer. As always, you should do what you want.

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>>53935958

As a rule of thumb: the best thing mongoose did with traveller are the things where they did the least with it.

Also 2Es art is a bad acid trip and cause /k/aneurysms

>>53936725
but wasn't traveller ORIGINALLY a generic sci-fi ruleset? back in 77?

>>53937375
I'm pretty new to Traveller, having been first exposed to it via /tg/, so take everything I say with a salt mine

Classic didn't have an explicit setting, this is true. However the items, ship designs, and careers that it provided in its black books created an implied setting. One where there was a central government that's "way over there somewhere", and where there are certain assumptions about how sci-fi technology works. ie. the jump-drive, manoeuvre-drive, and gravitics in general,
While you could adapt it to any game (see that anon from a few threads ago where a group used Trav to play a South American war in a pulpy 1930s), out of the box it works for settings that fit it's assumptions.

I'm not against shit being added to Traveller, so long as it's explicitly stated as being rare or not available by default

>>53937375
>but wasn't traveller ORIGINALLY a generic sci-fi ruleset? back in 77?

Not in the slightest. Tha was just GDW talking out their collective ass. You can quote various a blurb or two in 1977 text about how the rules will let you "do whatever you want". However, those same black books also say there are no FTL communications apart from messages sent on ships.

The truth of the matter is exactly what >>53937615 already explained:

>>black books created an implied setting. >>there was a central government that's "way over there somewhere"
>>certain assumptions about how sci-fi technology works. ie. the jump-drive, manoeuvre-drive, and gravitics in general

While the rules didn't imply a single specific setting, they most certainly implied a certain RANGE of settings.

I know at least one guy who used Trav to run a Trek game. It worked but only after he changed a shit ton of rules and other systems and there was that anon who ran a pulp 1930s game too, but neither worked right out the box.

Psionics can become the Force IF you change the rules. Luke's X-wing can travel half-way across the Galaxy in a few hours IF you change the rules. The comm badge on your chest can instantly contact a ship light-hours away IF you change the rules.

The problems arise when the changes add up. The more shit you change, the better chance you have of breaking something and watching the rules fall apart.

>>53936973
>As a rule of thumb: the best thing mongoose did with traveller are the things where they did the least with it.

Very true sadly.

I knew Mongoose didn't give a shit when I read their 1st attempt at a mercenary book. The clueless douche who wrote it thought the term "merchant marine" referred to armed guards on commercial ships and none of the "editing' Mongoose did caught that little gem.

>>53878254
Give it to Gareth hanrahan. Ehs a cool guy and doesnt afraid of anything

>>53939356
He's too busy with the bar
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATmGwOdSEk0

Quick question, does an archive of the vansihed GURPS JTAS exist anywhere? pdf or other format...

>>53941001
Not really the answer you're looking for, but GURPS Traveller Best of JTAS Vol. 1 is included on both of the official GURPS Traveller CDs.

http://www.farfuture.net/FFE-CDROMs.html

>>53941001

Other than the "Best of..." splatbook, I've never seen a JTAS archive. I had a subscription there for a time while GT was still publishing books and there were occasionally some great articles. I quickly decided against renewing my sub though. The release schedule was very spotty and several issues could go by without any good articles showing up.

I remember one early article in which the "author" simply copied rate descriptions from the USN's Bluejacket Manual and changed a few words. They "earned" a subscription for that and pretended to be shocked when the readership called them on their lazy shit.

>>53928944
The default setting is oooold.

>>53941001
I suspect there are scraped archives in private hands, but the volume of material is considerable, and unlike the actual books, not already in a format useful for good looking publication. An actual archive of it all is probably still being worked on.

we passed bump limit! (this is rare for a traveller thread)

>>53928885
checking them out. thanks.

>>53941949
Came for /5eg/ to laugh at you.