Traveller General

So Veeky Forums do you use the OTU? What do you like about it? How do you change it/fill in the blanks to suit your tastes?

If you don't, what's your homebrew 'verse like?

On a side note, anyone play 2300ad?

I don't use the OTU. I have my own homebrew that me and my friend made together. There are 8 empires in the milky way galaxy (five main ones, and three nations that have just emerged thanks to the invention of FTL travel). Here are some of the details in the world that are different from most sci fi settings.
>No alien races
>There are no Earth-class planets. All planets must be terraformed before they can be inhabited.
>AIs are intelligent and a common sight. They are more or less given equal rights to organics and are happy with their position in society. They act in line with human morals for the most part.
>FTL travel is accomplished through interdimensional travel. Basically, a starship enters an alternate non-temporal spatial dimension and emerges on the other end once they have reached where they want to go.
>Weapons use plasma bullets, encased in a thermo-reactive casing and fired from a railgun propulsion system.
>Mechas are mostly used as ground assault tanks of a sort.
>Augmentations are commonplace but those in richer countries can afford to not have them. Those in poorer/still terraforming regions have to have them to survive the harsh climate.
>Communication is near-instant thanks to advancements in FTL tech.

I think that's it. My current campaign takes place in a contested area between two warring nations. The party is freelancers working for both sides.

When you say that your campaign takes place in a contested area, is this the only sort of area that acts as enough of a "gap" for Freelance Adventurers to exist, or are there frontier regions being settled as well?

Also, how did these races get from Earth?
Was there an empire that collapsed, or were they seeded by ancient aliums?

It's a gap area by international law, one that doesn't belong to either nation. Freelancers more or less exist in every corner of the galaxy thanks to independent systems and FTL travel but contested sectors like this one allow for more freedom with mercs and freelancers.

>Also, how did these races get from Earth?
A lot of colony ships with their colonists in cryo storage that spread over the ages. The advancement of augs and AIs/robots helped with this process as they were allowed to take over the terraforming process.
>An empire
There was a huge war around 3,000 years ago between a group of trans-humanists (who wanted assimilation with AIs and augs) and pro-humanists (those who didn't). The trans-humanists won and as a result people were able to spread to the more habitable regions of the galaxy via fusion drives and unreliable FTL tech (FTL drives wouldn't be perfected to their safer and more reliable versions until about 200-300 years ago). The discovery and perfection of the FTL drive triggered a reconnection with the colonies that had gone dark due to lack of communication (because FTL comms were invented shortly after the new FTL drive).

I hope all of that made sense

I don't play it but the fluff is bretty good.
Anyone use third party suplements to play?

It made sense. Also your setting sounds neat user

Thanks. Me and my friend worked a lot on it and while I don't think it's 100% hard science, we tried to make it somewhat feasible or at plausible.

never forget

Have any of you anons ever played a Traveller game set in only one system? How did it go?

I've used the traveller rules to run historical scenarios. Napoleonics, Bosnia, Chechenya, Vikings.

But no, Traveller is really about traveling between systems. The subsector map should be the PCs world map, and each sector should be a city on their voyage. That way they get a feeling for how different each sector is, and plenty of variety.

Would it be okay to run a game with limited FTL? I.E interplanetary travel is possible, but you're only in one system?

of course!

There is a traveller setting set in out solar system in ~2100 "Orbital" which would be excellent for this... hard sci fi with spin habitats and gritty spacewalks... I'd love to run it

youtube.com/watch?v=2TtHYIrIPmE

It's interesting that you mention Cowboy Bebop, OP. I've been lurking Veeky Forums for about 2 years now, and I haven't seen a single campaign in that setting on Veeky Forums yet.

The anime is great and all, but has anyone here played a campaign as bounty hunters or rogues in the Cowboy Bebop setting? What system did you use? How did it go?

Reposting, to save typing:

>Does Veeky Forums use the base Third Imperium/OTU setting or make their own?

I use the OTU, it saves a lot of time rolling up a sector. There were some fa/tg/uys making a Tiji Sector, but I think it stalled out a third of the way in. It is a lot of work.

>If the former, do you tweak the details any?

Oh yeah, it's pretty much de rigeur to fit it to your tastes, so much so that IMTU (In My Traveller Universe) is a stock acronym on Traveller boards. The OTU gives you a basic framework for most things, but it's up to you to flesh things out in a lot of cases. Some worlds have a lot of stuff set on them, but most of the worlds are just a UPP in the local political region and the referee will have to look at the UPP and figure out what's up with this low gravity, low population, middling tech level world out here. What's it's deal, how does it fit in with the neighboring worlds, etc.
In many ways it's more like a skeleton of a setting, and you can hang what you like on it.

Plus what it does have is that retro Space Opera feel that I love.

I'm wanting to run a setting with a whole bunch of different alien races and no one controlling faction. Can traveler do this or are you limited to playing the aliens in the book and staying in the big human empire?

Same user you replied to last thread would you believe it.
My intent was more to get people talking about the cool shit they'd come up with, yanno?

On that note, what's Veeky Forums's favourite planet you've used in a Traveller game? Or what's your favourite world you've visited as a player?

Haven't actually gotten to run it, matter of fact. It's been the system I've wanted to play since I was a nerdling back around '81, but it's like I'm cursed, groups go fine until I start prepping for Traveller, then shit goes wrong.
One of these days, though.

Traveller's pretty setting agnostic in terms of politics if you're willing to take some liberties, so what you describe shouldn't be difficult

I'm sure you'll get to run it some day soon user, I believe in ya space cowboy

Just finished skimming through it a little (mongoose). I'm liking it a lot. only thing that bugs me is the ACR, which I just think is dumb as a concept, and I can just remove that. I especially like Psi, and the way that it's used as an entirely different stat that can be learned at any time is intriguing. As far as ship combat goes I've been a little spoiled by Edge of the Empire, so what they got there seems a little... Slow? I may run this in the future. I'm already running a game, so not in the NEAR future, but in the future.

Yeah traveller space combat is more like modern naval combat than bang bang zoom zoom star wars or star trek space combat. Its still a lot of fun though.

Hey folks, what would you think of a Mech game in Mongoose? Are there any huge holes in the vehicle combat system? What would I need to house rule?

It would work great. I dont think you'd really need to homebrew anything.

Supplement 6: Military vehicles covers custom building of vehicles, its pretty straight forward. There are already about 5 mechs statted out.

You might need to fudge or alter some of the values of how much legs can carry for a more "cinematic" mechwarrior feel, as the limits can be well, limiting. Have a try at building some mechs and see how it goes though.

pic is from Supplement 6

The Vargr moon's at height
Escape's en route tonight
I'm leaving the sand

Revenge is what I seek
My mission's incomplete
Bisecting the strand

...

RELEASE
THE
SPORES

...

...

Prefered traveller spaceship? The vagyr corsari for me.

THE SMOOTH LINES AND PURE SEX THAT IS THE ANIMAL CLASS SAFARI SHIP

Azhanti high lightning for some reason

I have a weakness for large older ships...

>minecraft AHL
I remember that project!

hahah classic traveller thread shenanigans

A friend of mine ran a Space Caribbean game with an isolated and tight little archipelago of systems, if that counts.

It's been done. Just a single planet can have a ton of adventures on it.

Probably the Florian.

Venus.

How do you guys deal with the lack of perception checks in the game? I'm not a fan of arbitrarily deciding what a player sees, or exhaustively describing everything in a room. Currently, I've got my players just making a standard throw, with modifiers if they have a relevant skill for the situation, but it's a little clunky. Anyone have a better system?

So, what editions/combination of editions do you recommend?

In terms of rules? I've read Mongoose 1e/2e and they look pretty sound.
Till I can get my hands on a 2e High Guard PDF I'll be cannibalising 2e for it's chargen and skills with the majority being 1e

Anybody have the MongTrav 2e GM briefings?

Hi Veeky Forums a somewhat green GM with his first sci-fi campaign inbound.

I'm working on a campaign set in my homebrew setting focusing on one sector, roughly 15-20 solar systems, somewhat kinda realistic, so FTL but no psionics for example.

I want my players to switch ships during the campaign and become more and more powerful, perhaps getting to a small capital ship and some escorts sometime in the endgame. They LOVE to customize their shit, find new more powerful weapons or repair/modify their equipment. I wanterd to ask if there were any supplements that I should look at? Any considered obligatory? Also I want to make some custom ship designs, so are there any additional rules for that (except the rules from the core book).

Thanks for your help, Veeky Forums.

Assuming MongTrav 1e or Classic, High Guard is a guide to capital ships and capital weapons, so there's that

thanks! Is there a big difference between mong Traveller 1e and 2e? W read 1e and glossed over 2e, it seems longer and better looking, is one better than the other?

Also I thought all editions are somewhat compatible unlike D&D, was I wrong?

Aye they are largely compatible, I'm The only problem with 2e is that it doesn't have ship design rules yet, they're coming in High Guard.
There's playtest documents floating around but my archive trawling has turned up zilch

Honestly my plan is to steal the stuff I like from 2e (like Boon/Bane) and graft it on to 1e, at least till 2e has all it's important books easily accessible

The thing that should be said is that Traveller is very modular. Just take the bits that you like and stick them together and it should work okay if you're half-way sensible

Thanks, that'll save me some reading. It's going to be my first Traveller game and my first Sci-fi campaign, so I don't want to homebrew too much. It seems 1e for now.

I would feel much more confident if I've played the system before, desu.

Also, what caracter sheets are you guys using? The basic sheet from mongoose 1e is horrid to say the least...

I like this one. It's two pages, but the second page is all fluff and background stuff so you don't really need it. It's also form fillable which is handy cause I've gotten into the habit of rolling up characters on my phone when I'm travelling places

Speaking of which, I'd actually recommend that you do the same just to get a feel for the chargen system

Also I'm in pretty much the same boat. My setting is about the same size and based largely off Stars Without Number, cause I dig it's fluff. It's also very loosely Fallout New Vegas IN SPACE

That sounds nice. Thanks for the char sheet, it looks much, much better. About rolling characters, do you roll, pick or point buy? It seems point-buy is most controlled, but rolling sounds fun.

Honestly the career-term chargen system seems like a major part of the fun of Traveller.

How I'm thinking of doing it is having the stats (STR, DEX etc) being rolled down the line, but the player can swap two stats if they want.
I'm also thinking maybe for skill rolls to allow the player to roll first, then choose which table they want the skill from, if that makes sense.

I'm aiming for enough control that you can aim for the niche you want (Engineer, Faceman, etc), but you still get thrown a few curveballs to make the characters more interesting yanno?

Yes.

Borrow bits from Battletech, as one possible source. Trav and BT are much more closely related than they look.

I use Recon, if playing Mongoose, but you can use the skill appropriate to the perception as well. The skills are (in most editions) not tied to a specific characteristic to enable that sort of broad application.

>I'm also thinking maybe for skill rolls to allow the player to roll first, then choose which table they want the skill from, if that makes sense.

That's a decent houserule, it gives you a little strategy and kind of makes sense in-universe. You get assigned pilot duty, but you can devote your efforts to study and get computers, or you can slack off and hit the personal development table for carousing or gambling or whatever the number is that you rolled.

I would just handle it OSR style, tell them whatever's readily apparent, and if they ask to look at something closer, give them the details. I've never been a fan of hiding cool stuff behind perception rolls, and calling for a perception roll seems to me the most boring way to hint that there's something cool here to look for. Too metagamey. If the players are going to notice the hidden wall safe, it's because I described the painting being ajar and they decided to look behind it, not because they rolled 16 on a d20 or whatever.

You know what I wish existed? Traveller: Age of Sail edition. Like that Wanderer concept, but 17-18th century tall ships instead of Sword&Sorcery.

I'd almost work on it myself if it wasn't for the fact it'd require an extensive rewrite of the ship construction rules.

I guess you could argue that skills are there for things that players can't describe practically.
So Recon is used for stuff like long-distance tracking or sitting on a hill noting down troop movements on a bit of paper. Describing that shit in detail takes too long for it not to drag the game to a halt.

Player ingenuity is used for searching rooms and the like though, which can be practically described in a shortish time.

Though just that's my personal spin.
That is one thing I do really like about Traveller: GMs are basically encouraged to make whatever changes they see fit when it comes to rules, instead of being expected to stick to RAW

It would be easier if you started with Mercator. PDF related.
I believe there's a ~17th century tech splatbook for Mongoose too, but I don't know if it has ships because I've not found a scan yet.

Yeah, it's a toolkit, and you're the mechanic in charge.

Honestly user, the shipbuilding rules are the major hurdle.
The careers and skills and shit are easily changed if you know what you're doing, and you'd just use a low tech level for equipment.

Hell, doesn't 1e MongTrav have some sort of OGL thing? If you published you could make a bit of money

>Roman Principate Traveller

user, this is something that I didn't know how badly I wanted till you made me aware of it. I hope you have a real Nova day

You have patrician tastes, user.

I see what you did there
I'm more a fan of late republican history, pic related, but Principate is pretty cool too

Bump

This is actually a pretty good idea.

...

I use the OTU, but what I write is pretty much only limited to the Islands Sector. It's got so much potential for grand campaigns within a space that's relatively small in comparison to the average. I like the idea of really intensely fleshed out planets with systems that actually incorporate and list out the other planets around the star, not just the primary body, with inter-system missions being just as important as inter-stellar ones. The fact that the Islands are all old Terran culture-wise and a bit behind the curve allows for a bunch of really retro, janky solutions for things put together by the multiple bickering polities there, too.

So anyone use 3rd party books for traveller? I liked the Clementine sector ones, it's a bit like Traveller 2300 without the Vilani.

Destiny sure is pretty

*Interestellar war. Heck. And Celement sector. Tough 2300 trav spaceships are cool as fuck too.

Just replace the star map with a map of europe, still takes a week to get to the next city, and still take navigation and engineering checks to get there. - maybe factor in wind n weather n shit.

homebrew the ship design rules to be much much lighter, and replace all the sci fi weapons with different caliber cannons, or different ammunition types (like the 2 balls connected with chains to tear off an enemies sails)

Traveller is already kind an "age of sail" setting, having to send mail to the next system over and wait weeks for the reply, etc. You wouldn't need much to 18th/19th century-ize the setting. The combat rules wouldn't need touching, as there's already cutlasses and antique pistols and muskets (check the central supply catalogue)

Oh, is that where it's from? I just picked something randomly out of the big grab-bag of sci-fi scenery I've accumulated over the years

A helpful user uploaded a bunch of Challenge magazine scans for me; seeing as there's a lot of Traveller-related stuff in them I'll pass the link along:

mega.nz/#F!CJcFhCAb!sAPQmmdqPRemd7p6fDfXKA

This is the sort of project I'd love to get involved it. Although it's not as elegant a system as CT, I could perhaps suggest Privateers & Gentlemen; it's from that same era and has a similar flavour.

mediafire.com/folder/85487akatmoew/Privateers_and_Gentlemen

Good Lord, that thing is ugly.

I like it.

I reallly like that kind of ships, like the Destroyer in B5 or Nexus first missions ships. Traveller 2300 ftw.

2300AD (called Traveller 2300 in its first appearance) never had Vilani, and isn't the same setting as the default Third Imperium at all.

I know, I mixed them with the interestellar imperium setting, than is pretty cool too.

So, what books from 2nd Mongoose are out - and downloadable?

Just core at the minute
mega.nz/#F!WRQnUIJQ!RWEzUCE1dTTxdQDLkHvNfg!acAUwAiA

CSC is out, but no one has posted it yet. Same for the High Guard playtest docs

Cool. I liked the art.

Is tidal-locking pretty much guaranteed for planetary bodies orbiting a gas giant?

The moons in close, yes. The moons farther out may not be, but since they would be locked with the gas giant, they would still have a diurnal cycle with the star.

So what's Traveller General's overall opinion of New Traveller?

Aside from the numerous editing errors and spelling issues in the first printing, I've found it pretty fun so far. My newbie players are taking to it quickly as well.

New Traveller being the new edition? No idea about it, only read it for the pictures. Always played Traveller on GURPS or CT.

Yeah, it's pretty much the first Mongoose Traveller with a little streamlining in skill selection and minor changes, but it uses 2d6 instead of 2d8.

Any tips on designing a gas giant moon such that it's habitable enough for a human to walk around outside without a pressure suit?

Traveller has never used 2d8 for tasks, only once for weapons, in T20.

If the gas giant is in the star's habitable zone and large enough for a breathable atmosphere (which is, admittedly, larger than any of Jupiter's moons), then your only concern is the radiation from the gas giant's magnetic field and solar wind. Since this is space opera, that's is only a concern if you want it to be.

And since a moon that large probably still has a molten core, it would still have its own magnetic field and/or could also be far enough out that the gas giant's radiation belts are not a concern.

Just don't ask an astrophysicist. They have no sense of fiction.

It's really tempting to hand-wave stuff like that off, yeah. Mainly I'm just worried about the seismic effects; in my googling for answers, I've seen people assert that if there is sufficient tidal heating to significantly warm a moon, there would be massive and frequent earthquakes as a result, either that or massive tides on a world with seas

Tides just make it more interesting.
Tidal warming is only an issue for those moons really close in to the gas giant. For the outer moons the star will be more important, and the Habitable Zone applies to all bodies, not just "planets"

Io is subject to tidal heating.The rest of the Jovian moons are quite sedate by comparison.