Traveller General

those seem to be most relatable for new players. They are much more anthropogenic than say, hivers.

Also you want to put the best stuff in splatbooks so that people buy those.

The area of space they chose to include in the core rulebook is surrounded by the Imperium, the Aslan, and the Zhodani. The Aslan would be an obvious choice to include in the sample aliens. Why the Vargr were chosen instead of the Zhodani I don't know. But of the major alien races, the Vargr are much closer to the area than the Hivers or K'kree, both of who are on the opposite side of the Imperium and so wouldn't be in the area in significant numbers.

Ladies and Gentlemen I present you...a file too large? Seriously? Okay then, how about a mediafire link?
mediafire.com/folder/7g264vv8qo5m1/Traveller

Now we just need the archive user to add it to the new MEGA. Thanks a lot ForeverGM!

It's laid out in the liner notes if you buy the CD (I did, because the Feg is deserving of more support) but here's the cliff's notes version.

Professor Rickets (the guy from Expedition to Zhodane who owns The Rock, mentioned upthread, is Professor Riket. It's clearly the same guy) hires freelance space pirate Baltec to slip into a Zhodani asteroid mine in Querion, to steal some odd fungal spores from the asteroids, because the Prof knows what they really are.
The spores are actually part of some kind of Ancient gene-modding tech, possibly used in the creation of the Vargr. Load these spores with Vargr DNA and you can inject them into other beings and it re-sequences it into their genome, creating hybrids. Rikets plans to create a hybrid human/Vargr master race. (I'm guessing he's all hopped up on some mixed concoction of Solomani master race ideology and the Vargr Church of the Chosen Ones, which held that the Vargr were specially selected by the Ancients to be their successors, and that they had come to alter the Vargr several times in the past and would someday soon come back and finish their work.)

Baltech crashes, though, and some Vargr find him, figure out what he's doing, and shoot him up with the spores to see what happens.
Baltech, furious, goes to find Rickets. Blaming him for his changed state, Baltech injects the Professor, who is delighted that his plans are actually feasible.
Baltech goes into hiding, while Ricketts begins operations, spreading his new plague across the stars.
The new uber-Vargr seek out Baltech and ask him to be their leader, as he was the first of their kind. He refuses, and instead warns the Zhodani, and aids them in finding the core of Ricket's operation and shutting it down, saving the galaxy in the end.

It must have been a pretty sweet campaign.

Sweet. I'll add it post haste.

I wanna meet that gm, sounds wicked. I wonder where the rest of the party was ha.

Which version of Traveller is the best to play for newer players? Which version is more "stable" and has more written for it?

Best for new players? If they're coming from more modern games, Mongoose is nice and pretty.
If they're cool with things looking a little old and all, Classic probably has the most stuff available for it, and it's definitely "stable."

Expert mode: Grab the edition that suits you best and then steal bits from other editions. Traveller's always been pretty modular, so it's easy to do, and most Traveller referees end up here there sooner or later.

>here there sooner or later

Oops. I'm not sure how that spurious "there" got in.

So mix and match Mongoose and Classic. Which parts of which should be used? Like the main book of Mongoose and the supplements of Classic? Or just all the books in general?

I'm tempted to build a cheapo 3d printer so that I can 3d print little ship models for shits and giggles, to have kickass ships for Traveller.

>Which parts of which should be used?

That's mostly up to taste, IMO. I like Classic best, but have stolen a few things from Mongoose.

>Like the main book of Mongoose and the supplements of Classic?

But this is not a bad choice. The Mongoose supplements are very uneven in quality, due to MGP's terrible editing practices, but the core is quite solid. Pairing that with Classic books is not too hard -- CT and MGT are like 95% compatible.
The main things will be that armor went from hit reduction in CT to damage reduction in MGT, so you might have to fudge a little in spots (but not often since armor types are all standardized), and that animal encounters work very differently, so you'd have to rework any that show up in an adventure, or just use the Mongoose version and hope it's well done..

>The Mongoose supplements are very uneven in quality, due to MGP's terrible editing practices, but the core is quite solid.
The MgT 1e Core Rulebook, yes. 2e, ehh...maybe after they finish the errata/FAQ for it.
Mongoose books are pretty good so long as you don't spend to much time looking at them as they hold up to scrutiny like...there actually isn't a comparison that comes to mind that relates how poorly MGP holds up to close inspection. THAT is how bad Mongoose is.
But, so long as you start playing before you find the flaws, it's an easy system to use.

What of this Traveller 5 thing I keep on seeing?

How many traveller editions am I gonna have to read through before I can cobble together a high quality game?

If you want to minimize the editions you're looking at, just do Classic. It's the one that was so good that they had trouble luring people away from it for like 30 years.

A big pile of tangled tools in the midst of being organized into a payable game.

This said, Classic has open questions that you may or may not notice or worry about. Some of those have since been addressed in other editions, so you may want to ask here or at Citizens before reinventing the wheel.

T5 has solid rules...for everything. But a lot got missed in the editing process, not as much as you'd think, given it's a 600+ page tome of charts, grids, sketches, and tables. The errata is only 10 pages and is mostly just wording clarifications or a sentence or two that needed changing.
There is very little info about 3I and very little info about actual vehicles and gear, it's mostly build your own, which was the big complaint.
The mechanics run a bit differently, using Flux and roll under rather than roll over.
It's okay. System building is fantastic though. SO MUCH DETAIL.

Live, damn you.

Posting on my phone rather than from the laptop, so no trip at the moment.

We did have the idea of sniping one of the satellites to create a hole in the sensor net, then slipping through the hole, aided by the stealth coating on the ship.

I'm pretty sure it's "nobody's supposed to know anyone landed on the planet" rather than "nobody can know we were even in-system".

You can pick up a ship landing spot for several days and radiation traces for years...so someone, eventually, will knowsomelanded on planet.

What are some recommended Mongoose and Classic books to pick up? Also what kind of shows and books are out there that have the same sort of likeness to Traveller (barring the obvious Firefly of course)?

Dark Matter is pretty cool. I mean it's pretty dumb sometimes but at the same time I really just can't stop watching.

Mkay, this has probably been asked a few trillion times, but if I'm a new Referee, what do I want to run?

It sounds like Mg2e is the newest, but needs some polish before being up to par, while 1e is older and somewhat flawed, but has a lot of resources, and a player base that can answer all the questions you might have about it.

And on that note, any tips for a newbie referee? Things I shouldn't let my players do, things I should do myself, what?

Just use 2e

Tips for a new ref.
Always have something going on in the background. Just little slice of life things that characters can interact with if they want. Just because the PC's are the main characters in THIS story doesn't mean theirs is the only story.
Also don't be afraid to reach for the bigger hammer.

Homebrew, small ship universe using CT Book 2.

I also tend to cut planetary populations down a bit at the high end, except for a few capital worlds.

The usual rules should produce two or three worlds comparable to our population in each subsector, but the chances are that the worlds will otherwise be very different.

There is a lot of value in running a game in the neighborhood of a high pop world. You get all the trappings of a well developed infrastructure in one place, and a bunch of "small town worlds" arrayed around it for flavor of the week.

That's kind of how I do it, but with a bit of pocket empires stuff. I've got about a dozen major states, some of which tend to be at war, but the wars tend not to touch the high-pop core world or worlds of each state because it's kind of hard to ship enough troops over to occupy them, and they've got enough non-jump defences to fuck shit up..

Okay, yeah. A more volatile political background and more dominant and "neutral" high pops can produce a very different picture.

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A Traveller themed mod for Stellaris would be awesome

I suppose you mean the third imperium mod for Stellaris? Because that's not the same as Traveller, and I can't imagine translating an RPG system into this game.

I'm still salty for the dumb space-ships and space combat system

...

I'm currently using the Scout splat for Classic to generate the details of the worlds in my subsector (the default world generation's lack of detail bothered me, I'd rather have fewer system but with more details), but it looks like it's going to take ages to roll all of the worlds, even with the lowest density (6+ on one dice) and I'd like to run a game soon. How would you run a sandbox game in an incomplete subsector? Do you think it is possible? Maybe I should already roll the main world for each hex, see which one are the most interesting and complete them?
What should I do if my players want to go to a system I haven't rolled yet?

Well, for a start, if there is no know world or gas giant in a system people tend to leave it alone. No way to refuel, you see. So unless the group you're running has J-4 they're better off staying in explored space.
Second, the Sector/Sub-Sector isn't incomplete. It's just the navigation charts are missing the data for rarely visited systems... seriously you should never give your players a whole sector to play with unless serious upper level politics get involved. It will give you plenty of time to finish fleshing out systems.

I am the guy who wanted to make a deck plan for the ship in my pic. Spent a whole lot of time slapping shit together in MS paint and i have a first draft but it looks like complete garbage. Seems functional, but i am seriously torn between wanting feedback and being embarrassed about how shitty it looks.

I also have some questions about rulebook stuff. For example why is the Autorifle so much more expensive than the assault rifle, as far as i can the assault rifle is objectively better in every way other than ammunition being slightly more expensive.

But why?

Can I get an example for the former and latter?

>being embarrassed about how shitty it looks.
Show us. It's not like anybody here knows you personally or something.

>I also have some questions about rulebook stuff. For example why is the Autorifle so much more expensive than the assault rifle, as far as i can the assault rifle is objectively better in every way other than ammunition being slightly more expensive.

Mongoose, huh? There are a few things, other than just the ammo. Assault Rifles use the assault weapon skill instead of the rifle skill, which I think is less common; they're a slightly higher tech level so they may be less available; and most importantly, the ranges are different. rifles are better at long ranges, assault weapons are better at more close-up ranges. See the combat section for the table, p65.

>Mongoose, huh? There are a few things, other than just the ammo. Assault Rifles use the assault weapon skill instead of the rifle skill, which I think is less common; they're a slightly higher tech level so they may be less available; and most importantly, the ranges are different. rifles are better at long ranges, assault weapons are better at more close-up ranges. See the combat section for the table, p65.

>Mongoose

christ. that sounds purposely designed to be confusing.

Ah, I think that may be a fuckup in the core rulebook. The stats are different in the Central Supply Catalogue. Autorifles are 3d6+3SAP, 20rd mag, auto 4, recoil 1, 250cr, 5kg, ammo cost 10. Assault rifles are 3d6 SAP, 30rd mag, auto 4, recoil 1, 500cr, 4kg, ammo cost 15.

I think they were trying to demonstrate the difference between early select-fire weaponry (e.g. the M14) as opposed to more developed, purpose-built assault rifles with smaller cartridges like the M16. At least, that's the vibe I get from the fluff in the CSC.

The Mongoose layout isn't great. It's better than their awful editing, of course, but it's kind of average for the industry in that you'll run into rules that can be a pain to find here and there.

Assault weapon skill?
I thought it was Gun Combat(Energy/Slugthrower/Archaic)?

We are talking about Mongoose right?

My bad, I thought there was an assault weapon skill in MGT, it's been a couple of years since I read it. The entry "Ranged (Assault Weapon)" on the weapons tables threw me off, but that's a "range" entry, not "skill."
It doesn't actually tell you what skill the weapons use. I guess you're supposed to just figure that out.

There is more than one version of Mongoose Traveller. In 1e, it is Gun Combat (Slug Rifle). In 2e, it is Gun Combat (Slug Thrower).

But the other poster is wrong - there is no Assault Weapon skill. Assault rifles have a range of Ranged (Assault Weapon) - they still use the Gun Combat (Slug Rifle) skill. At least in my copy of the 1e core rulebook.

Took a while to answer, I probably should of reloaded before I posted.

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I guess it's the difference between a BAR and a ak-74

A voice crackles out from the tiny speaker attached to the AR:
>AM AUTORIFLE. AUTORIFLE KICK ASS. EVERYBODY RUN. RUN OR DIE. HA HA HA.

Alright fine here it is. I did everything in horrible gaudy colors to keep it organized in my brain, the black is tonnage dedicated to armor. Even so i fudged a lot of things to get the deckplan i wanted. Also the living areas are pretty large because i allocated some tonnage to luxuries.

Why the actual fuck is this table not next to the chart with the actual weapons holy shit

More than anything else i feel like the lower deck especially is not nearly claustrophobic enough and there is too much hallway space.

Is that ship not symmetrical? I mean I guess it's hard to tell cause of the angle

What baffles me is that this was a perfect opportunity to differentiate their recoil values in order to back up this concept they were obviously trying to develop that early man-portable automatics were difficult to control because they were still loaded with big honkin' cartridges for bolt-actions. But nope, both of them have recoil 1. MONGOOSE EDITING.

Based on the picture i kinda just assumed it was not symetrical, and was more or less flat on the other side. I think it is cooler that way anyways. Also i took the space that looks like it houses escape pods and used it for fuel storage instead as this ship has no escape pods. I figure that the left side of the ship has a large door at the front for direct access to the cargobays

GW errata be all like "Oh dear, it seems I have written this passage as -2DM, when it ought to be +2DM. As written it makes the task harder, when it's supposed to make it rather a bit easier, I should say. Sorry about that, old chap!"

Mongoose errata be all like "Please to excuse me, but is 'Spacesraft' being word in English?"

...

is using AM rifle. is english for auto matic

I agree with this user. It's not claustrophobic enough. But maybe it's just the way you placed the walls.

Y'know, I've gotta say, reading Mongoose is a big part of why I no longer regard being an editor as being a good, solid, mundane job route for an English MA. Obviously it doesn't matter how much they're usually paid, because if Mongoose is any indication, no one is hiring them anymore.

Sorry to clarify that user was actually me. I am just not sure how to rearrange things to make it more claustrophobic while maintaining consistency of tonnage and the shape of the ship

Don't worry, people still hire English MAs.
It seems to be more that smaller companies don't have much editing oversight and eventually stop caring

I don't know. I usually draw my deckplans on 5mm squared paper, where one square = 1 ton, and I keep my hallways one square wide, except in a few exceptionnal cases. I think it's a good way to make your ship look more dense.

I find that Killjoys has a closer to Firefly vibe (moreso in season 1. ) Although green goo does have a sort of Blue Sun vibe.

The thing I dislike about Dark Matter (and I DO like the show) is the absence of space trafic and construction in the more "civilized" areas.
like unless Earth pretty much is a "cleaned up" solar system and people are dissuaded from being there - well the system is pretty empty.

The major thing I don't like about Dark Matter is that there isn't much sense of place, yanno?

Like they dock at "a station" and fly down to "a corporate outpost" rather than "Rigel Station" or "The Centauri colony"
Apart from Earth and Ziron, is there any other actual place named in the setting?

It just makes it feel kinda generic sci-fi, rather than having a character of it's own?
I still dig the show though

Example of the 1st:
Why are the prices of speculative cargo so varied? Did the manufacturer have some difficulty during fabrication and is shilling sub-standard goods? Or patent a new process for cheaper goods? Raw materials glutting the market?
That's the easiest one to keep going in the background. If the players are the ones rolling for trade you can always just change the DM to reflect the market or use their result as the basis for some other group's trades.

2nd part (Biger Hammer)
Unless everyone in the party is a NOBLE, there is always a bigger hammer you can bring in when things start getting inane (and or insane). Crime Bosses that make an offer you can't refuse, Intelligence agencies looking into the characters...Tax Bureau if you really want to bring the hammer down on party craziness.
Even if everyone IS a noble, the bigger hammer just gets more offical, with lots of pretty seals and stamps of authority.

Just posted these up to the trove, from the Tales to Astound blog as talestoastound.wordpress.com
These are weapon cards for Classic Traveller's standard combat system.
Judges Guild had the neat idea (later made official in snapshot) of combining the weapon range and armor modifier tables together, so you only look up one thing instead of two, and just roll against the target number there. That's great, but has the disadvantage of being a pretty large table.
These cards split that table out into a single data card for each weapon, so you can just let your players worry about what they need to roll.

And I didn't actually attach the file, duh.

He made a referee screen too.

You have any more stuff like this for GMs and such? I am about to Gm Traveller for the first time and could really use stuff like this.

There's a fair bit of stuff around in the Archive.

Hand your players a copy of the nice world UPP chart in this, it'll help them figure out the maps without having to reference the book. A must have for newbies.

What would you recommend out of the archive? There is a ton of stuff in there.

You're doing classic? Grab the Errata, Traders and Gunboats, Citizens of the Imperium, and either the Universal Task Profile from DGP or the CotI forum's Universal Game Mechanic to taste.
FASA's adventures and stuff are pretty good.
Gamelords has some handy books on different environments in case you want to a bit through an arctic environment or deserts or such.
Judges' Guild stuff was pretty uneven in quality. Their ref screen is comprehensive, but probably TOO comprehensive at 8 pages wide.

Under Misc Ship files, the CT Seeker books are great, as is IISS ship files.

The CT STP-02 Starports book is a nice look into how starports work, too.

Everything else is up to you; the rest is mostly adventures and stuff set in the various publishing houses' sectors.

I should write up a guide to this stuff. And maybe make a folder for newbies to grab and go.

Hmm.
Not complete garbage at all. I've seen some pretty lazy shit. Heck, I've created some pretty lazy shit. This is not that.

I can take a stab at your given hull form, and/or re-interpret the art for symmetrical and non-symmetrical, if you like.

I am doing a mix of mongoose and classic, so either or works for me. Thanks for all the recommendations man!

Any adventure sets veterans would recommend?

My group wants to try Traveller but none of us have played it before and the Third Imperium is a little sparse on solid adventure hooks. If nothing else, it'd be nice to have an idea of what a dev-standard Traveller game looks like for inspiration.

In the official GDW adventures, The Traveller Adventure is an excellent campaign. Nomads of the World Ocean is excellent. Every ref should have Prison Planet in his back pocket, because sooner or later they'll get arrested. Safari Ship is a favorite. Horde and Chamax Plague are pretty good, with the latter being a bit like Aliens. Tarsus is a good one, too, all set on one world.
FASA's Action Aboard is well-known, but the best of theirs is the Sky Raiders trilogy, Legend of the, Trail of the, and Fate of the Sky Raiders. It's an interplanetary archaeology adventure with some Indiana Jones stuff happening. (I'd love to run that one one of these days)

I'm not too familiar with the other stuff in there, except Yagahina: World of Eternal Day looked pretty cool on a cursory read.

Outside the Archives, BITS had a module called Cold Dark Grave that is reputedly fantastic. It's out of print right now, however, and I don't think there are any scans floating around. BITS is planning a reprint, though.

What are some of the more memorable ships from Traveller? Are there any images to go with them?

The Scout/Courier is probably the most iconic.

...

i would love that. Although to be honest i am pretty in love with the assymetrical form

We'll start with that, then. It won't be instantaneous, but I'll see what I can do. Are you wedded to that arrangement of components? And did you provide a tonnage breakdown? 20 tons of this, 64 tons of that, and so forth.

It's not bad. I thought it would be symetrical, but having it off axis is actually pretty cool when you aren't using a reaction drive and don't intend to spend much time in atmo.

The Type A Free Trader (like this Beowulf class) is pretty cool too.

I should sort my images folder and upload it to the archives.

Here's a Fat Trader.

My read of the original art is that the orange hull is symmetrical, but there is no hint of a matching port side grey hull. You can certainly assume there is one present, but the art doesn't confirm it.

I am not attached to the arrangement of stuff, with the exception of the bridge. I want it to be where that little windsheild thingy is on side beside the turret.

As for breakdown this is it

300 tn hull
Titanium steel armor x2 30 tons
Jump drive C 30 tons
Power plant C 20 tons
Manouver drive C 5 tons
Bridge 20 tons
civ electronics 1 ton
10 staterooms 40 tons
8 low berths 4 tons
Luxeries 2 tons
Fuel 72 tons
2 fuel processors 2 tons
2 double turrets 2 tons (I imagined one on top and one at the bottom)
2 fire control systems 2 tons
All the rest in cargo

I left out anything that does not take tonnage, like fuel scoops. Let me know if you have any questions

That is exactly what i thought, i think it looks much cooler asymetrical. I also figured if my players ever somehow get a bigass bay weapon they could mount it in the front which would be badass

Alright.
The orange hull looks to be about an 8-to-1 ratio of length to width, and a 300 dton needle hull is about 60 meters long. That means a two large deck arrangement is about right, with the two decks of the orange hull being about 100 dtons each and the grey hull making up the rest.