Traveller General: New stuff in the Archives

I know, right? Well, it's also got a gravitic and jump-1 drive, though the gravitic is only really good in a decent gravity well.

This looks like the ship The Rocinante from the Expanse series... Basically a Mars federation gun boat

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I am having my players start off on a cruise ship/yacht, what should this ship be called? I was thinking of calling it the High Finance. What do you guys think it should be called?

What's a good show other than Firefly and Cowboy Bebop that have a Traveller type of vibe to it?

outlaw star?

Dark Matter is pretty close to a Traveller campaign with elaborate backstories. I've heard sKilljoys is good. The Expanse kind of fits, too.

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>High Finance
I like it

the film Outland, and the shipboard scenes in the first Alien film. Yeah and the Expanse like the other user suggested.

Lots of variables, but you don't want to hand a *small* group a ship that needs a *large* group to run unless you are also going to provide the NPCs to assist.

I'm partial to big empty hulls for salvage targets. The Solomani 1000 ton bulk freighter, for example.

Gimmick option: two scouts welded together, one with a functioning m-drive and one with a functioning j-drive. the innards have been mangled until you get something roughly equivalent to a type-a in terms of staterooms, cargo, etc, but it's an unholy mess of a ship and don't take that fucker even NEAR at atmosphere again - you'll be riding the air/raft down in vacc suits unless there's a small craft wedged into the cargo space somewhere.

On the plus side, no-one'll try to hijack it for fear of their own ship catching whatever yours has.

Shilling out a new weeaboo-friendly Traveller discord chat.

discord.gg/9DpTm

The main races of aliens in Traveller don't exactly appeal to me, how stupid it be to introduce my own instead? I'm hellbent on DM'ing a Traveller campaign next year but I don't know how far from the official stuff it is safe to stray

>how stupid it be to introduce my own instead?
Not stupid at all

>I don't know how far from the official stuff it is safe to stray

The canonical universe is utterly vast and has huge undeveloped areas. You could easily carve out a whole chunk as your own without needing to factor any of the traditional Traveller stuff at all.

> I'm hellbent on DM'ing a Traveller campaign next year but I don't know how far from the official stuff it is safe to stray

Don't feel beholden to canon, because its barely beholden to itself. Its meant to be whatever you want it to be. The Imperium can be the fascist neo-feudal empire, or the gleaming bastion of human freedom.

…or both at the same time!

>I don't know how far from the official stuff it is safe to stray
A lot of people just make up their own universe, or at least a small subsector or something and leave the rest vague and undefined and way over there.

Cool thanks. I think I'll just make a handwave excuse that this is happening in an obscure corner of some galaxy and most of the important lore stuff is happening elsewhere.

Is there an app or something for ship building?

How well do you guys think Traveller would translate into a setting inspired by the tech in the Elite series?

Highlights including:
>laser weapons are common but short range, long range combat is basically just a rocket tag of railgun exchanges and the like
>energy shields exist, artificial gravity (sans the whole "spin your station and simulate gravity with centrifugal force" thing) doesn't
>many jump-capable ships are crewed by one dude, a group of allied would-be entrepreneurs/mercenaries/etc are more likely to each have their own small ship because the larger, crewed vessels are exponentially more expensive to own and maintain
>hot fusion, you scoop unrefined fuel from main sequence stars instead of gas giants
>jump travel points you at the largest mass in a target system and you pop out dangerously close to it

We'll assume we try and keep the rest more Travlike (jumps taking a week, not making capital ship battles be "two big boats park next to each other", etc). Any big problems come up in you guys' minds?

I think it'd work fine. Elite's pretty close to Traveller in a lot of ways, enough that many people believed it was inspired by Traveller, though the programmer denies it. (Still understandable though, "Commander Jameson" is a noticeable coincidence.)

None of them?

I've been in games that never really interacted with any of the major aliens, and there are areas of the Imperium where the only aliens are either human variants or minor locals.

Unless you really want to go galloping across the map, most campaigns need only about two subsectors of space to operate in, and you can, if you are invested in your locals enough or don't let your PCs have a ship of their own, run a game in a cluster of just a few worlds.

Two of the Major Alien Races (Vargr and Aslan) tend to get just about everywhere, but can also be reasonably limited to "that one Vargr who runs the bar" or "one of the trade vessels that stops here is Aslan, but only one" if you even want that. You can easily run a game with humans and a local homebrew race or two in a cluster and still have it feel entirely like the default setting.

One piece of advice I see in the official forums: "Canon is for the Writers". You are not one of them, so feel free to go off script a bit. Sticking to Canon is only a big concern if one of the players at your table is a Canon wonk with no flexibility. Since Canon in Traveller is inherently flexible, the problem is likely the person, not Canon.

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I found out something neat earlier this week. Classic Traveller has a simple vehicle combat system tucked away in Double Adventure 2: Mission to Mithril, which basically adapts the basic personal combat system to work with vehicles. All a referee needs to do is come up with some hit zone tables for the different regions of any particular vehicle, and go.
If I ever do make the Classic Traveller SVE (single volume edition) thing I've been thinking about, (inspired by Greyharp's OD&D SVE) then this is absolutely going in.

neat

His stuff is not well known anymore, which is a shame.

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Which book is that one in?

How would I write up the stats for a ship like that?

Originally appeared as stats and art in CT Solomani. Not sure if it is also in the MT version. I think it got plans in the Mongoose Solomani book.

Nice paper counters. Where are these from?

I think I found it in the Mongoose book, it's called the Magyar-class Bulk Carrier. It's a 1000 ton freighter that has a crew of 9.

Spanish edition MegaTraveller.

Here is a pdf of the ship

What book does this ship come from?

It's from an article in Freelance Traveller, issue #11 -- pdf related.

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That's the one.

Hey Veeky Forums, I'm looking at running a game of Traveller for some friends that have never heard of it. I'm curious what edition you would recommend? I have a little bit of experience with Mongoose Traveller, but accidentally downloaded some books for another edition.

One of the things that I liked about the other edition (Which I'm not sure which it is) is having specific names/models for equipment. I'm a sucker for having an MP-46 versus "Light TL 9 Pistol", personally. Any opinions on the edition, and advice for a first time Referee would be greatly appreciated!

Mongoose is a great start, might as well go for that seeing as you've tried a bit. The thing about Traveller is that all the editions can be used with each other to some extent, although this is more true of some than others. (Classic, Mega and Mongoose are good together).

>many jump-capable ships are crewed by one dude, a group of allied would-be entrepreneurs/mercenaries/etc are more likely to each have their own small ship because the larger, crewed vessels are exponentially more expensive to own and maintain
hm. book 2 ships for everybody, and lower tech levels - at lower tech than 15, getting a j3 or j4 warship means you're going with a 400dt hull tops. a common houserule is single turrets for civvies, double turrets for security/paramilitary groups/pirates, triple can only be handled by major militaries.

reduce maintenance and crew requirements on book 2 ships, perhaps.

then let major worlds run maybe a handful of book 5 ships - half a dozen for a middling pocket empire? make them big beefy fuckers in the 50kDt+ range, spinals and all.

I assume it would literally be a type-a, mechanically speaking. j1m1, and all that. -1 or worse on engineering rolls from people who haven't been exposed to its particular brand of makeshift junk engineering gore before, but the crew are used to it, and don't even have the nightmares these days.

Have a ship quirk for additional inspiration

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So hello Veeky Forums, I'm about to start a Mongoose Traveller campaign in a few weeks but I want to get the setting right. Any advice on what sort of stuff to look up to get the "feel" of it?
Book/campaign diary/story collection anything that could be of help on this would be appreciated.

There's some stuff in the Library, filed under Books. Fate of the Kinunir and Agent of the Imperium are in the official setting, the other books are mostly stuff that served as inspiration for the creation of Traveller and the Third Imperium.
Agent of the Imperium is a damn good book. Fate of the Kinunir is decent but not quite as good IMO, but it might be more useful for a referee who wants to get the feel of the universe right.
Agent is more a series of very unusual incidents occuring all across the Imperium over thousands of years, while Kinunir is more about local corruption and deceit happening in a star system in the Spinward Marches.

Thanks, I'll check those out.

A somewhat related question, how good is the system generator in MgT? I prefer "homebrew" locations in a specific setting but if the system creator is bad then I'll just go with a published one.

It works just fine. It generates mostly normal results, with the occasional bizarre result you'll have to figure out, but that keep things interesting.

If you want a bigger, more detailed one, then Megatraveller's World Builder's Handbook is good.

If you want more crunch, you could also use Grand Survey & Grand Census by DGP for Megatraveller.

I recently got into MgT starting with 2e and ended up rolling two entire sectors just for the hell of it. While I can understand the entertainment in figuring out how to interpret bizarre results or making sense of contradictions the rules present definitely seem to encourage fudging the results.

2d6-2 for the size of a planet means I'm getting a lot of 5s, give or take a step or two. This results in most planets I'm rolling up falling under "low gravity", and thus are going to inflict a penalty on certain checks unless players spend time acclimating or specializing in Athletics. It also seems odd that Population uses the same 2d6-2 roll that's independent of any other result previously rolled (which has more than once resulted in potentially billions or more of inhabitants on asteroid-sized planets). It also gives a ton of planets the "Non Industrial" trade code because it applies to any planet with a pop of 6 or less.

I still really like the system but the universe generation rules seem kind of flimsy, and it's worse when you look at published material and it's clear the writers don't even have the correct atmospheres or gravity for certain worlds. Not to mention the OTU sectors seem to have very deliberate placement of systems in neat little lines and routes, whereas most of mine end up haphazard messes.

Yeah that was what I encountered in my test as well. Loads of tiny planets with large populations. The most inhospitable places ended up getting large populations stuff like that.

check out the album "Traveler" by the band The Lord Weird Slough Feg

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God, I love Vargr. Just the mental image of a bunch of corsairs insisting on riding in the air/raft, not the g-carrier, just so they don't have to fight over who gets to stick their head out the window...

although really, it's always the one with the highest charisma.

While both are more complicated than Mgt world generation, GURPS Traveller (both 3e and 4e Interstellar Wars) have a more detailed generation system. Both include determining a planets resources, the maximum population a world can sustain, and how likely a given world will have a population. Higher resource/more habitable worlds have higher populations, while low resource, poor habitability works have lower population.

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I love Junior in the back seat. He's just digging a chance to go for a ride with Dad.

There is also the Foreven (aka GMs Playground) sector, if you want to pick up the setting later.

Foreven has basically no canon material and is just a bunch of planets with barebones information.

The whole idea of that sector is to be the GM's special place.

Is there a chart or table out there in one of the rulebooks that determine how much rust a ship has? It's not important but I am doing it as joke thing on my players, just to fuck with em.

Do you guys know of a program or something that I can use to make a star map? Various different stars and what not since I'll be having a few systems in my game. I've been checking out
stars.chromeexperiments.com
and it's pretty nifty for maps and stuff so it got me wanting to make my own star map for my players to check out.

Which MgT supplement books are recommended to use with the core rulebook in running a game?

There's an old program called Heaven & Earth that does a good job of making Traveller maps.

If you want a nice printout, travellermap.com will accept sector data from you and give you a map for that sector in any of its formats.

Scoundrel is pretty good. The Vehicles Handbook is alright. The Central Supply Catalog has a lot of stuff, but is poorly playtested and has a lot of broken stuff, so be careful what you make available from it.
Most of the rest is just poorly done IMO, but I don't want to name names because it's been a while and I'm not sure I remember which book is which.

Do you mean the Scout book? I don't think there's a book on Scoundrel, I think that's a class in the Star Wars game lol.

MGT1 Book 6, Scoundrel, covers pirates, rogues, belters, and other unseemly individuals. It's suprisingly well done for Mongoose.

Shit I feel dumb now, I guess I glossed right over it. Thanks for correcting me.

Hey, it's cool. There's so much Traveller stuff out there it's hard for me to keep it all straight, and I'm the resident archivist.

Sweet thanks for help. Oh hey, which book would be a good resource for "ye olde clunker" type ships? I found this ship but I want to see what else there is before I decide upon this ship.

I can't think of anything specifically for old clunkers. I don't know, I'd just dig around and look through what's available.

In that PDF, is one square 1.5 meters? That would make the cargo bays only 50 ft by 74 ft, which seems kinda small to me in scale. What do you two think the proper sizing is?

1.5 meters per square is standard Traveller size for deckplans, but it wouldn't surprise me if Mongoose messed up. (It's 1.5x1.5x3.0, so the ceilings are about 9 feet up)

Adding up the deck plans I get about roughly 1532 squares, give or take a square due to all the irregular shapes.
Stock Traveller deckplan rules (which I don't think Mongoose ever mentions) give two dTons per square (it's actually a little bit less, but that leaves space for hull and internal systems and stuff), so that's about 766 tons mapped. 780 tons if you add in the 14 tons of fuel.
So it could maybe be a little bit bigger, but not a whole lot. Still, each of those cargo bays is about 3000 square feet of floorspace, which is pretty big. Close the upper bays up with floors/ceilings, and you've got a lot of walking room.

Deckplan squares are 5 feet/1.5 meters unless stated otherwise.

Each of the 4 large holds are 10 squares x 15 squares, 2 decks high. that is 150 squares per deck, 300 total per hold. At squares/ton, those holds are 150 displacement tons each. Add up all 4 gives you 600 tons. They are the proper scale for that ship.

I meant to say 2 squares/ton.

Eeshk yeah Mongoose doesn't even state that one square is 3 meters tall, for awhile I was scratching my head as to the height of everything.

Yeah, it's up to you as the ref whether you want that to all be open and just have high ceilings, or if you want a crawlspace above or below, for working on ship internals and maybe hiding from the pirates that have boarded your ship.
The crawlspace is the correct answer, obviously

By way of comparison, this is a floor plan for a 3200 sq. ft home. You could just about fit about eight of these, four stacked on a side, in the space that the cargo holds of that freighter take up.

Off to bed bump. See you folks in the morning.

>1.5 meters per square is standard Traveller size for deckplans, but it wouldn't surprise me if Mongoose messed up. (It's 1.5x1.5x3.0, so the ceilings are about 9 feet up)
Don't forget you're (usually) meant to have up to 10-20% wiggle room on the deckplans.

Interpreted as a deckplan, that house is about 65-70 dtons.

One of my players wants to play as a dolphin in Mongoose Traveller, how would I make this work? I don't know of any kind of exo suit thing that a dolphin could use for land.

Dolphins are totally a playable thing somewhere in one of the books; maybe you should check the Solomani sourcebook

They have stats in the main rulebook of MgT but I can't find stats for a land suit for dolphins.

Is there a "understanding the third imperium" book or something like that?

The Library Data books might help

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To whomever manages the trove: I have some rare stuff someone uploaded on 7chan, specifically:

- Spacedogs
- Cold Dark Grave
- The Khiidkar Incident
- All the missing T4 adventures (Milieu 0 campaign, Gateway!, Annilik Run, Missions of State)

Who should I contact to get everything uploaded?

Archivist here. Just upload it somewhere, mega, zippyshare, uploadmb, I'll get it into the Library.

>Cold Dark Grave

Oh wow, I've heard this adventure is fantastic, but never seen a copy due to a limited print run.

Does anyone have more of the Freelance Traveller zine? I currently have th one posted above...
Thanks!