Traveller General: Once more around the sector

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There are sapient AIs in the OTU, they're roughly TL16, but experimental ones show up at TL15, which is the upper level of the Imperium. One named AB-101 appears as a PC in some of the old JTAS adventures, actually. It's close enough for research labs to be working on them here and there, and your mad scientist type guy might even build one that works. So there are some options for backstory, it's not totally out of the OTU bounds.

Seconding that Mongoose's Robots book is pretty bad. In addition to terrible rules, it's apparently heard of OTU canon once, but never gave it a second thought.

For rules, I'd probably skip Mongoose's robots and use the much simpler JTAS robots system. You can find it in the Library under Classic/Core Books/CT-JTAS Robots. It's like 15 pages total; just skip the programs section and give him an experimental brain and you're good to go.
The CT Robots book is based on Striker, so it's crunchy as heck, but it has some OTU fluff that may be useful.

>Mongoose Traveller 2e vehicle handbook
>pushed from November to December
>then to January
>almost end of January
>still in Layout editing.

It's hard to work with all those monkeys and typewriters, user.
Also I think "editing" at Mongoose is a euphemism for "getting high and playing video games."

How else are you supposed to row through your spaces if you don't have a spacesraft?

I hope you don't mind, but here are some fills for your trove... I don't think you have these, at least I couldn't see them.
Enjoy!

BITS
sendspace.com/filegroup/1bggaREFE05BVuMpj3Tdibmnyv0t+z5e59kv+hy63rq3BEkWmphCDw

Classic, part 1
sendspace.com/filegroup/rPNWTor2VKhy87mYMaqxSMrUzwppNdiul9S6tjMZjMVpQHyEvUIRUHhPMW5zZNUqg39KYANEXF6Vyzn0aAhpRiVQGbPvtAM/

Classic, part 2
sendspace.com/filegroup/qc+CJztyRYCI3sWAcO5VeuSMR7sfbuvM+kBuwMi2Grr+RH9OTkQxnOLPONoBDpCX6lgBC/yJKH93/W+T+GGeljZJQcTXMseTGPT7iSj+EcexJfMMZZgV4ZfG2dUqIp9LKt94UmAXGh0

Traveller HERO
sendspace.com/filegroup/JENdZxokqZdzu0NhuA1iqQ

T20, part 1
sendspace.com/filegroup/7v2XMo9pZcpLYuSbzsqq78X/zhBjQeW0bKLiDjlb+gBRW5Bd/1ozkAVcxqZHtSfTXSRxWYDF/O+H/vYg1Y1VIGUbLr0kO8bt

T20, part 2
sendspace.com/filegroup/uCKvPFoxaQxjvzjQ85Tn7Vs4rg1iQskCRASRJ5RHbmHtZ/mhPnxn0b5toIsS/K45EsiG/IQ74IMPujGiV6dp/w

Don't mind? I'm delighted to have more stuff! You deserve one e-high five for being a cool dude.

My pleasure.

My mistake though, you have the Grenadier supplement.
Don't delete the old HERO Traveller file, it has stuff in it that was left out of the official release.

Anyway, keep up the good work and if I see anything else, I'll pass it along.

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Got a copy of Mongoose recently. Having only DM'd D&D B/X in a megadungeon, with players who's experience is only at that same table, any advice you can off before I try this on? Should I have them go through chargen before we start? Are there many player facing mechanics I'll need them be prepared for? Generally how pick up and go is it? Is play similar to dungeon crawls - resource management, careful exploration etc.?

Also, know any session journals I can read to get a sense of how the game is meant to play?

Do chargen at the table with everyone together, and spend a little time fleshing out your backstories, which will form during chargen. If they have some cash left over, they might want to save it, or possibly buy some equipment.

Don't feel like you need to give them a ship to start off with. (they might wind up getting a ship in chargen, likely a detached-duty Scout Ship, or if they're lucky maybe a Free Trader. The SS has strings attached.) Try to hang out on a planet, or do space travel via buying tickets at first, as that will let you learn the basic rules before you deal with stuff like fuel and jumps and ship payments and space combat.
For your first game session, plan to do some skill stuff and maybe a bar brawl.
Play is not really similar to D&D, though there are some dungeon crawly modules to be had. It's usually very sandboxy, though. Getting ahead usually involves finding a patron who's got a job for your crew, and getting paid for same, so come up with a few plot hooks, or grab Classic Traveller's 76 Patrons and pick one. (Mongoose's version of same is not very useful)

For actual play, Close the Airlock is a Traveller podcast using Mongoose, it's fairly decent. You might also find some transcripts or something on the Citizens of the Imperium forum.

Traveller chargen is generally a group activity.
Especially if you're using stuff like Mongoose's connection rules.
Has the added plus of making sure that most of the PCs at least know each other, instead of being loners in their own 4th dimensional corners in the space tavern.
But yeah, you should probably have a separate session for chargen.

After that session zero, I guess if you're going for the standard Traveller Tramp Freighter campaign (no worries if you aren't, Traveller is versatile), you should probably have the players start out with their ship impounded or something so you can A. have a straightforward intro adventure and B. the players can get used to the normal rules before you introduce the spaceship rules

Definitely the most useful bit of chargen in a group (aside from it being a fun storytelling bit that everyone can contribute to, especially when postulating exactly what sort of shitty thing happened on a penalty) is figuring out connections between folks; really helps with the "Okay, but -why- are we all meeting each other in a tavern?" bit if you establish connections in chargen

(And you can watch to make sure they don't fudge rolls)

I'm actually planning to use a civil war for my homebrew verse.
Mustering out benefits are worked out after the RAW chargen, with the understanding that players are still in the careers they're in.
Then, a four-year-ish civil war breaks out, so I'll ask "did you sit it out and lose your job because of the war, or were you a rebel(the losing side)?"
Gives a good reason for former admirals to be tooling around in a Tramp Freighter, and gives more opportunity to tie characters to the setting, especially seeing as everyone in known space (not a big area) had a stake in the war.

"You were in the Nausicaä First-and-Only? Shit, you're alright in my books" says the former rebel pirate captain

That sounds rad as fuck. Good luck to you, sir.

If you have the time, MgT1's supplements can be pretty cool, though they can lead to shenanigans. High Guard is particularly useful for the stuff it does with the shipbuilding system, and the Central Supply Catalogue is contentious for the potential !!FUN!! it can bring about. "Cybernetics" is fun, too, for different reasons, but robot creation is kinda fucky.

I'm using MgT2 as my base, but I have a bunch of MgT1 supplements too.
The setting is very much a "Travellerised" Stars Without Number, if that makes sense? So it's a bit softer than Traveller, with a less concrete m-drive and more pop-culturey laser weapons.
Honestly I like the idea of j-drives being outer system->outer system, because then you can have shit like down-on-their-luck Belters as pirates in some mid-systems.
This creates problems with the RAW m-drive, cause then it takes weeks to get places, so I just figured it should be relative, with it taking a set time for a given m-drive rating to get between planetary systems, and gravity wells and other ships' drives interfering with it.

That sounds pretty cool! Come back and give us the rundown on how your first session goes, I'd be excited to hear about it.

Honestly, it's only one of the games I'm going to be pitching to my group soon.
If they take it up I'll report back, if not it's going back to the back-burner, to be played some day...

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It's spelled space/raft, Mongoose couldn't even get that shit right.

Sweet sassy molassy that's bad. This makes me want to rethink editing as my fallback career. Maybe something about it fucks with your brain.

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Ha! Like an upgraded air/raft, capable of interplanetary trips, eh?

Well, other publishers seem to do it just fine, it's just Mongoose. I don't know what goes on there, but it ain't editing.

>Ha! Like an upgraded air/raft, capable of interplanetary trips, eh?
Nah, it's just got an outboard babby m-drive on the back to give it a bit of a kick when it's away from a gravity well. You still have to wear your vacc suits, and it still takes a couple of hours to reach orbit.

So, less a legitimate market-ready product, and more something makeshift sold out of the back of a grav-van, with the guy's personal "gurantee" that it totally won't strand you in space, and if it does, give him a call and he'll come get you, eh?
I like where this is going.

I just got to googling some air/rafts, and darkhstarr.com/photogallery.html may have the modelling and painting skills of a small child, but they have some really fun bits of kit.

>'CLASSIC TRAVELLER' AIR/RAFTS
>Inspired by the traditional air/raft design from
>Classic Traveller.
>Scratch built from 'Listerine' breath strip
>containers plus styrene & odd parts.

>30 TONNE BELTER'S BOAT.
>A Belter's workboat for asteroid mining complete with manipulative arms & a laser cutter. Several empty tape
>rings (one of my favorite raw materials for the cargo hold), a clear plastic vending machine capsule for the
>cockpit, a plastic gun from a Warhammer gun accessory set, arms from a broken toy, bogie wheel sensor unit,
>rear hatch from a broken model, & thrusters from lego. Not very fast (1G) but quite useful for a belter. Never
>came up with a name for this model.

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Improv at its finest.

Reposting this in case any other Classic nerds come around.

I'm combining Classic's basic chargen stuff here, folding together the core LBB careers with the ones in Citizens of the Imperium to create a unified Classic chargen. Some of you have probably done similar and might know where I'm going with this.
The problem is that new skills were introduced between book 1 and supplement 4, and so the Citizens careers give out skills that don't exist in the core careers. This means that Rogues can get Liaison, but Merchants cant, or that Sailors (ie wet navy) can get Battle Dress skill, but Navy (space) can't.
Now I've got a few options.

One, I can just ignore it -- hey admin is like liaison, right, and battle dress can just be vacc suit minus 1, hey? It's a little weird, but kind of works, I guess.

Two, I can rejigger the tables to insert some skills and remove others, maybe inserting cascades to let you pick between them. Workable, but not a first choice. It could be tricky to get the feel right.

Three - instead of reworking them, I could use the Megatraveller tables, which are already set up with cascades and stuff for all the skills that were in CT, and just pair it with the CT skill list instead. This one's nice enough, but I really want the end product to be as Classic as possible. Still, tempting.

Four, a modified version of two where I try to reduce the proliferation of skills so I don't have to exclude as much. Increasing the number of skills made the individual skills less powerful anyway, like do you need separate Pilot and Ship's Boat and Vehicle skills? And why not fold Electronic into Mechanical, or maybe Engineering? But I fear that that way lies homebrew madness, and I want to stick as close to official Traveller stuff as possible.

I'm kind of leaning towards option three. What are your thoughts, guys? Informed opinions based on experience are welcome, as are wild asspulls from random dudes. What would you prefer if I handed you this at the table?

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I was wondering if I could get a copy of Vast Imperium - Bold Travellers.

I've been thinking of using TriStat-DX and various alien races *cough* lifted from other setting to make an alternate TU.

Recently got Baroque Space Opera so just realizing my wackiness levels probably need an upgrade.

thank you

A conversion to run Traveller with BESM? Interesting. I've seen conversions for Fudge, Savage Worlds, and the Apocalypse engine, but that's a new one on me. Looks like it's been gone from SJGames' website for years. With any luck some old timer will have it on his hard drive, though.

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You might be wondering how I got here. Well,

I'd personally try removing those skills?

ohhhh yeah, 3d fractals

This is neat:

prismnet.com/~thrash/imperium.html

It's a collection of short quotes from sources all over the various books and things, all on the nature of the Imperium. Sort of a broad overview of the setting, in bite-sized snippets.

A lot of mentions of "as long as they obey the basic laws", somewhat less on what those laws are.

Still, it's something I didn't know existed, so thank you for that.

Well, I imagine that means the Imperium's High Justice, which boils down to fairly simple stuff like: don't engage in piracy or interfere with trade, don't nuke each other, keep your local squabbles low-key (again, don't nuke each other), pay your taxes, don't go messing about with interdicted planets, that sort of thing.

This article on the same site suggests the possibility that High Justice also includes stipulations against criticizing or undermining the Emperor or the Imperium:

prismnet.com/~thrash/4thest.html

I'd not thought of the Imperium censoring interstellar communications before, but I think it might go into my campaign, as it kind of fits. They're not evil, but they are very much against anything that they think might lead to another collapse and Long Night. (Not wiithout good reason, of course. Hundreds of billions died horribly after the Second Imperium collapsed.)

Probably used Mandelbulb 3D.
But I don't remember the seed number.

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They're also quite keen on timekeeping. The Imperial Office of Calendar Compliance seems like a joke at first, then you realise it's cover for secret agents and strike teams, but eventually you realise that no, they WILL make sure you're keeping accurate time.

After all, YOU CAN NOT HAVE A MEANINGFUL CAMPAIGN IF STRICT TIME RECORDS ARE NOT KEPT.

>They're not evil
Nothing corrupts like good intentions and having too much time on one's hands (and little oversight helps, too).

Nah, they don't have the budget for that, and ever time they do get some money the fucking spies come in and demand they spend it on bullshit to make their undercover stuff easier. I mean it's not a problem, having a secret stateroom and airlock on your ship so they can deploy, really, it's inconvenient, but they just got a new grant to upgrade the clock beacons in the oldest part of the network and this fucking imperial intelligence wanker gets wind of it and suddenly it's vital for undisclosed mission requirements that they have a stealth Jacuzzi in the hidden compartment as well?

>The Imperial Office of Calendar Compliance seems like a joke at first

It's as much a joke as the NIST (formerly NSB) with it's billion dollar yearly budget. Ensuring everyone uses standardized measurements of mass, distance, time, etc. has been vital to civilization since civilization began.

>then you realise it's cover for secret agents and strike teams...

There's that too, just as with the IISS, Imperiallines, and others. The spooks and black ops types are always pretending to be someone else.

That doesn't obviate the singular importance of using the same gram, meter, second, and whatnot from Regina to Terra and everywhere in between.

And then you get an imperial invasion force up your arse because they're declared your world to be in calendrical heresy. "oh, it's just a leap second, they won't mind us rationalising it," you thought.

Anyone has tried a pirate/navy based game?

Yeah, those are doable, and I hear they can be fun.
Piracy is a bit tricky, but if you treat it as a game of chicken where you threaten the prey until they agree to hand over their cargo and small craft or whatever, you can make a tidy profit before the law catches up to you.
Naval games will feel a bit railroady, but that's life in the military. Running as a mercenary crew gives players more freedom, but has a different flavor.

Mercenary seems more fun then, perhaps with a bit of "privateering" in the side. In some backward sub-sector outside the Empire seems more fun, the Imperial army space ships are true behemoths of death in tonnage and numbers.

For anyone that plays on Roll20, how do you handle diagonals on a square grid?

I know each square is 1.5m

My dad always told me about how he played this game, so it's pretty cool to see this here.

Everything looks pretty cool.

I use the pathfinder/3.5E option. If I want more accurate diagonals I use hexes.

I was thinking either that or the Euclidian option

thanks ill probably just go with pathfinder/3.5

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