Traveller/Non-grim Sci-fi RPG

>I'm in the mood for sci-fi where people actually smile and/or clean things every once in a while;
Traveller's default setting, as already noted, includes shiny navies, rust bucket freighters, grimy back alleys, and posh palaces, and everything in between.

One of the oldest and more dominant cultures looks down upon cybernetics, while others do not care, and at least one embraces the practice.

Corporate cultures vary from ancient and entrenched mega-corporations to entreprenurial upstarts.

The orbital station you dock at could be a decade old or pushing ten thousand (in some regions).

Aliens are all over, but humanity is pervasive.

Those aliens range from easy to grasp mindsets to what-is-this-I-don't-even.

Lasers are functional weapons, though bullets work fine too. Grav tech is all over.

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I know it's kinda cliche, but I just find rustbuckets more homey than chrome boats.
Does no one else think that shiny ships are a bit sterile and impersonal? They suit the government perfectly though, for precisely those reasons

Ships start shiny and turn into rust buckets over time.

Aye, so rustbuckets are more lived in and therefore cosier

Or they just smell more...

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>It's an optional rule in Mongoose. It was only standard for Classic. The way it works is that chargen is a minigame sort of akin to Push Your Luck, where you get more skills and stuff the more terms you go in your career, but there's always a risk you'll lose your guy and have to start over, so after each term you have to figure whether to double down or to cut your losses and keep the character as-is.
Without death in chargen, you want to do stuff like limiting the number of terms.

That's always bugged me. Why didn't they just make the "You Die" the "Stop Rolling" option? Would have the same result of stopping further powering up, be the brick wall Traveller deserves, and not bog down chargen.

I wouldn't say it bogs down chargen. Classic chargen is super fast and fun, so much so that plenty of players will want to go again. Generating a stable of characters can make for a great first session, as you decide who will be PCs, who will be backup characters, and who should be important NPCs.

But really, the thing of it is that if failure on the survival roll just means you can't go again, then there's never a reason not to try another term. There's no strategy left in the minigame, because there's no risk attached to the reward.

>Classic chargen is super fast and fun,
Classic (and MT) *Basic* chargen is fun. The internal flow of Advanced chargen was never as clean, and it gets to be a slog.
Which is why I'm fine with MGT not having any of that.

Oh yeah, I should have said that only applies to the basic ones. Too tired, brain no work.

>Too tired, brain no work.
Been done, there, that.

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On the opposite, there is a chance that even a slightly better than mediocre character gets killed in chargen. It's impossible to plan a character YOU wanna play when your idea might end up dead.

Having to go through two or three character sheets until you have something you didn't wanna play is a waste of time.

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>Having to go through two or three character sheets until you have something you didn't wanna play is a waste of time.

Playing games is a waste of time. Chargen is a game, and a fun one. Generation of characters for play is not the only reason to do it.

>Chargen is a game, and a fun one.
There are editions with fewer or no random processes in prior careers, but that is not (usually) the reason those editions are less popular.

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I've used every edition except GURPS Traveller and Traveller Hero to create starships, and I have my preferences. What are others looking for in ship design processes and results?

Do you prefer T5 or MgT's ship creation?

They're about even, in my opinion, as least as results go. MGT's process instructions are somewhat cleaner, but T5 (and the 5.09 interim revision) suffers more from "what does this acronym mean" than from any systemic errors.

That said, T5 only covers "Adventure class" ships at the moment.

>Huh?
Several thousand displacement tons and smaller.

Seeing as this is basically a Traveller thread, no one has the new Central Supply Catalogue or the High Guard playtest documents from MongTrav 2e?

Not yet AFAIK.

Damn, seems my dirty begging was all for naught

One can hope the new CSC isn't basically a different combat game than the core book, like the last time.

The CSC is fucking gigantic, I am very pleased with it. Unfortunately I cannot release it since it was given to me by a friend and he asked me to not share it (it's got his name written on every page).

That's fair user. It's a playtest version I take it?
I guess it'd be very time-consuming to edit the PDF to remove his name

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And if the playtesters (and Mongoose) are doing their jobs, the final book will be different.

True, though it could be a release copy. I forgot that DriveThru has automated watermarking

And it looks like it is out, at least according to RPGNow. I see Mongoose is still charging a pirates tax...

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Is Stars Without Number welcome here? Or played?

I don't know much about it, but I often hear it mentioned in the same breath as Traveller, and sometimes as "Traveller 2.0". Got a friend making noises about it, can someone brief me?

SWN uses a D20 retro-clone approach to the same basic setting assumptions as Traveller. I'm not enamored of class and level for SF, but the Referee tools and advice in SWN are worth the read.

Which edition/what chimeric abomination of editions would you suggest for a star trek exploration type game?

Getting the play style right would probably work best in the editions that have well developed skill selections for the sciences, and the ability to switch careers so that even the rank and file are likely to have a Science.
At the same time, a combat mechanic and character generation mechanic that are properly paired so that a new batch of red shirts don't take forever to generate.

If you need a ship as big as any of the Enterprises you'll want to use an edition that has the tools for capital hulls. You don't need a ship that big unless you plan to hold a really large population of red shirts.
(And really, go read Scalzi's Red Shirts first...)
You'll want to approach craft bays in reverse if you want to emulate the big shuttle bay. You *can* just say that's a funny shaped Launch Tube/System, or you can install a really big bay and put no dedicated craft in it.

Use the external docking rules from TNE. You might want to use TNE's ship system maintenance approach, too, as it is the only edition to spell that stuff out. If you are way out beyond ready crew replacements, having some way to track ship wear once the Engineers lose too many grunts will keep the Ref grinning and the players awake at night...

To continue the thought on ship size, you can run an exploration game with something as small as a Type C (I would use the exploration version from FASA; it's on one of the Apocrypha CDs from FFE), but the big crew feel really starts at about 50% bigger. The Leviathan (CT adventure with one of the ugliest ships flying) is a ship built for exploration with a mercantile bent, and is about that size.
You can get a lot of what such a campaign needs out of 2000 tons, as a nice round number. The Zhodani Council Cruiser, introduced in their CT book, even has such a campaign in mind.

The CT Zhodani book, as well as at least one other book in that series, also includes a map-based mechanic for exploration of unknown space. It is a little primitive, based on what we are discovering weekly in real life these days, but it gets the job done considering we're using telescopes designed for extreme resolution at extreme ranges, and a ship is going to have broad but short vision instead.

Nighty.

Type C?

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...So what's the point in this? Is it basically a flying RV? Why is it attached to a hotel, why bother making a mobile home if it can only be attached to specific hotels?

>...So what's the point in this? Is it basically a flying RV? Why is it attached to a hotel, why bother making a mobile home if it can only be attached to specific hotels?
The hotel owns these pods. You book a stay at the hotel as your spaceship enters the system. Authorities don't like you using your spaceship to cruise around their world-city, so this is a combination hotel room and courtesy shuttle bus all in one.

See now we're getting into a subjective POV with a side-order of logical fallacy.

Games are a form of entertainment, and entertainment isn't wasting time, as it's time used for a purpose. Entertainment.

If you think Entertainment has no purpose, and that it's a waste of time, you're a pretty edgy fedora.

That and the definition of NFA.

The original "Cruiser". The Broadsword is the most common example, but not the only one.

Just as the Free Trader is a Type A in most editions (Mongoose dropped a lot of the Type labels) and the Scout is a Type S, the Subsidized Freighter is a Type R, Subsidized Liner is a Type M, Patrol Corvette is a Type T, Corsair a Type P, Lab Ship is Type L, and Yachts and Safari Ships are Type Y and K.

>Safari Ship
AW YEAH DID SOMEONE SAY SAFARI SHIP?
ANIMAL-CLASS IN THE HOUSE, MOTHERFUCKERS

DAMN BITCH YOU SO SEXY
I WANT TO INSERT MY LAUNCH INTO YOUR DOCKING PORT

From CT Starter Traveller (older descriptions didn't automatically include the word "Mercenary" in the name):

Mercenary Cruiser (type C):Using an 800-ton hull, the mercenary cruiser is built to carry small troop units for corporate or government operations. It has jump drive-M, maneuver drive-M, and power plant-M, giving jump-3 and 3G acceleration. Fuel tankage of 318 tons supports the power plant, provides one jump-3, and holds 4 8 tons in reserve for its small craft and for long term operations. Ad- jacent to the bridge is a computer Model/5. There are 25 staterooms and no low berths. The ship has eight hardpoints and eight tons allocated for fire control. Eight triple turrets are installed, but no weapons are mounted. There are five ship's vessels: two modular cutters (with one open module and one fuel module), two ATVs (in ATV modules),and one air/raft. Cargo capacity is 80 tons.The hull is unstreamlined.
The mercenary cruiser requires a crew of eight: commanding officer, pilot, navigator, four engineers, and medic. Vehicle pilots, clerks, troops, and gunners may be added. The ship can carry 17 passengers (42 if double occupancy) in non-commercialservice; its primary intended purpose is transport and support of small military (mercenary) units. The ship costs MCr445.95 (including 10% discount for standard designs) and takes 25 months to build.

Just curious, which culture embraces it? I always disliked it when Mongoose put Cyberwear and the like into their book, before I realised it was a more generic rulebook for their other systems as well. Also hated it when Traveler 2300 put it in their Earth sourcebook. Don't get me wrong, love Cyberpunk games, but not a fan of blending, unless you're playing Amber...

I think that might in fact be us, the glorious Solomani. There's a traditional love of robotics and cybernetics referenced in a couple of books about us, er, them.

The Solomani are in the "tolerate" camp for themselves, though they practice it on their client uplift species.

The Lancia cultural region, in the spinward portion of the Imperial core, is an ancient civilized region every bit as old as the Vilani and Suerrat who flank them. Unlike the Suerrat, who value their personal connections to the life around them, and the Vilani who were hounded to near extinction by Ancient death machines, the Lancia have no innate prejudices against cybernetics. Acceptance and enthusiasm still vary from place to place, but their baseline of acceptance is higher than the Imperial default.

Note that the Lancia culture is named for a Human Minor race in the region, but is actually a racial melange with the S'mrii and, I think, one other minor race in the area. They were expanding by sublight in the same era the Vilani and Suerrat were, but didn't invent jump drive like the Vilani did. Like the Suerrat, they were eventually absorbed into the Vilani Empire.

>I always disliked it when Mongoose put Cyberwear and the like into their book
Cybernetics have been a potential in the game since the first issue of JTAS back in 1979, and became a part of the setting with The Traveller Adventure in 1982 or so. The "punk" aspects have also been there all along, with many of the early adventures and adventure seeds involving freelance work against the government and/or the megacorps. It hasn't ever slid all the way into "cyberpunk" because the nihilism and baseline rage against authority was never introduced, and cybernetics were always marginalized, but the elements were available from very early.

>Lancia cultural region

Thanks guys for the info. I'd completely forgotten about the Lancia cultural region, but I knew that the Solomani were more tolerant of tech rather than xenos. I'll have to reread JTAS though.

But thanks!

on a realted question, what would you consider the pros and cons of 1st or 2nd ed of the Mongoose Traveller? I'm thinking of diving in and call me old fashioned but I still prefer having the "dead tree" version of at least the core book at the table and I'm not sure which to go for, Ebay has both and the difference tends to just be around $10

Also what books are good for the default setting's fluff? I've skimmed the 1st edition of Mongoose and there didn't seem to be much setting material in it, is 2nd editin the same way?

I had been wondering the same thing when I saw those images in a different sci-fi thread a while back, that's actually a cool explination, I might use that in my next sci-fi game.

I'm starting to plan my next campaign, but I'm not settled on a system yet.

Think the 1980s tone and criminal intrigue of Lethal Weapon/Beverly Hill's Cop but on a permanent space station and the planet over which it orbits. Full-sentient AI exist but are considered and treated subhuman, and there's a Blade Runner-style security department to handle synthetics.
That department is likely to be a focus of the game in one way or another.

The contenders are Mongoose Traveller and Green Ronin's True20 system. I haven't played either, but both are strong for what I'd like to do.
I've been wanting to try Traveller for a while (ideally on the other side of the GM screen, as a player), and while this would be a chance to play it I'd rather do it in a more completely space-faring sort of game.

I mean, I know it's effectively the Traveller general, but what do you guys think? MgT or True20? Or perhaps other system suggestions?

If that were the case you would never have a reason to stop before failure, more or less. At least not at a reasonable point.

Traveller characters get stupidly strong/important past 6 or so terms. To the point that it's difficult to contrive reasons for normal traveller adventures because everyone is a duke/admiral and has so many obligations and so many resources that it's kind of silly to imagine them fucking off into space.

The first has separate books for setting information. I haven't looked at 2nd ed since they were first previewed but I doubt they'll have much fluff.

1st has setting splat books though. And a lot more content in general, of variable quality.

and idea how compatable 1st ed supplements are in general with 2nd? looking through the 2nd ed pdf it speciffically calls out getting High Guard for ship creation so I'm guessing there's at least some backwards compatability/

There's a new edition of High Guard too, I believe... maybe they're compatible with 1e Mongoose?

The new High Guard's for MongTrav 2e, and is only available as a playtest, which no one on here seems to have. Either that or it's watermarked

I think it'd kinda bad that they scooped out ship-building for a supplement

Yeah, really lame cash grab, especially considering there's only a handful of pregenerated ships in the core book.

ah good to know, I hadn't hread about the new version of High Guard so I probaly would have neded up getting the 2nd ed Core and then the 1st ed High Guard, thanks.

uhg I can't type today damn

>ah good to know, I hadn't heard about the new version of High Guard so I probably would have ended up getting the 2nd ed Core and then the 1st ed High Guard, thanks.

You could probably retrofit them, I'm not sure if there's much difference in shipbuilding between 1e and 2e.

Personally, I may be looking to run a Traveller game toward September/October time, so I may just cherrypick the good bits from 2e core then use the 1e supplements

One other thing I was wondering with regard to Mongoose 1e is whether or not to use the splatbook careers or just stick to core-only. Anyone got any advice here?

I'm unfamiliar with True20, but that should work great with Traveller.

How inspired by SS13 is it?

You know, I've never actually played SS13.
Originally me and a friend were trying out the chargen in TriStat dX and one of the concepts we pulled together was a robot detective (I was thinking Automata at the time), and the tone jumped from pulp to something Lethal Weapon-esque once we started talking about his partner and it started fitting a buddy cop mold.

I really don't really like TriStat's damage system though, so I decided to use a different system for the actual campaign.

If you're focusing on detective work, maybe GUMSHOE? Or whatever system Trail of Cthulu uses. Never played it myself, but it could be worth looking into

>One other thing I was wondering with regard to Mongoose 1e is whether or not to use the splatbook careers or just stick to core-only. Anyone got any advice here?
As with any question involving Mongoose, the answer is "it depends."
The strength of the MGT1e career splats is not in the careers themselves, but in the other tools included on those themes. Hardware, ships, and rules/methods. The splats don't necessarily stick to the tropes of the default setting, but some wander farther than others. The Psion book and the Robot book are both custom setting idea troves, while Cosmopolite' and Scoundrel are full of broadly useful tools for just about any setting. Dilettante is a book about the 1%, and will very quickly break a normal campaign (if allowed into PC hands) while still being very useful for running a high society game.

The Third Imperium books (1e books with art on the covers) vary from good and useful to cringeworthy. Two of the alien books, Aslan and Vargr, were both mishandled in one way or other: ignore the art in Aslan, and ignore any piece of text that makes you go "wait, WHAT!?!" in Vargr.

Gumshoe is a bit clumsy taken as a whole, especially in its space opera iteration Ashen Stars (I won't go so far as to use the term "shit show", but the whole damned book is just clumsy). The actual clue/plot motion mechanic is easy to lift as Referee advice for some other system, though.

The campaign's definitely going to swing for more of a classic action movie structure. I mean, sure there's going to be some detecting and investigating, but it's not the star of the show.

I'll take a look at GUMSHOE and see how the idea sits in that. I'm always keen on excuses to check out a new system.

Ugliest ship in Traveller or in ALL of Science Fiction?

Nah. The Leviathan wins over the Annic Nova.

I recall seeing an oblique pic as well, but I can't find it at the moment.

The Large Freighter from the Mongoose 1e CRB is also pretty homely, but when you mate it with the Leviathan, you get the Hnneshant Tradeboat from IISS Ship Files. Hoo Boy.

When I first encountered it back in the day, I thought the Leviathan was a lot like the Red Dwarf

A lot smaller, though.

Oh definitely, yeah. I just recognized a similarity in that brutalist, functional design. I really like the Leviathan adventure, I think it would be great for a beginning party.

>I think it would be great for a beginning party.
It can be played several ways, including "Star Trek with a profit motive"

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>ignore the art in Aslan, and ignore any piece of text that makes you go "wait, WHAT!?!" in Vargr.

I'm probaly gona regret this, but... got any examples of these? I could use the laugh