Traveller General: Late for the grav-bike races edition

Okay.
I once posted it on tumblr, so you might be able to find it.
I called the setting Hard Burn. What originally started off as an attempt to make something very inspired by Firefly in Traveller quickly snowballed into a project covering 4 sectors, with 7 governments and independent systems, two human-compatible alien races, evidence that something seeded a few dozen planets with human life way back when, a rather expansive cold war played out through proxy systems, and it's wrapped up in a 30+ parsec void that contains something that can drive people mad.
It may also give psychic powers, because that's exactly what the not!reavers needed.
The governments are actually rather small, thanks to the time delay jump travel puts into any command loop, and as these guys were sent out from earth via slowship, they automatically went for centralization or distributed centralization. Thus how I managed to stick 7 governments, about 20 vest pocket empires, and quite a lot of systems that weren't part of any polity but their own, into 4 sectors.
Most of the governments split off the first one, which was the not!Alliance. Sometimes they went peacefully because it got rid of the crazies. Other times they got hit with an immediate embargo. Then the Not!Independents happened, and their idea of people choosing their government went too far. Cue war, add rebellion, cue not!Alliance being broken into a fraction of its former size and being kept that way.
And thus the cold war starts, with everybody trying to manipulate the independent systems into being their battleground.
The current day is about 15 years into the cold war.

>Thus how I managed to stick 7 governments, about 20 vest pocket empires, and quite a lot of systems that weren't part of any polity but their own, into 4 sectors

You could have stuck all that into one sector with room to spare.

The Marches has 400+ systems in it and it has a "Scattered" (33%) system presence.

Up that to "Standard" (50%) and you're looking at 600+ systems which is more than enough for what you've described so far.

True, and it would've given me even more of a pressure cooker feeling.
I did find that tumblr though.
Damn did I overthink that project, but it was kind of good. Especially just how much the not!Alliance was into propaganda - it was actually named the Grand Central Alliance of Humanity's Best Hope.
And their portrayal of the other 6 governments as short-sighted traitors, and how they show it as a quick series of breakaways despite it being a 400 year process, is hilariously crude.
Then again, when you're indoctrinating 6 and 7 year old children into thinking that humanity only needs a single government, and that the other nations are a deliberate conspiracy to hold the human species back, you don't need sophistication.

Could you at least have filed Firefly's serial numbers off? When you ripoff... I mean... are "inspired" by another setting, you need to take great care in hiding the fact.

Once you players "figure" out, for example, "It's Firefly" they're going to start behaving and making decisions as if it actually is Firefly and not your setting. Then when something occurs in your "setting" that shouldn't/wouldn't happen in "Firefly" (or vice versa) the players get pissed off.

By all means beg, borrow, and steal. Just try to hide it better.

I tried. This about 4 years ago, so I've gotten better about references - things need to stand on their own. Hard Burn didn't. The entire thing was a snowballed project that tried to cram too much in.

This has been posted in past threads. It's great advice.

batintheattic blogspot com
/2009/04/how-to-make-traveller-sandbox.html

All it takes is fifteen steps beginning with two subsectors, adding a couple dozen rumors & plots, etc. and you're ready to rock.

Not some 100+ page EPIC!!!! your players won't give two fucks about because they came to play and not read your future history fan-fic.

Set the scene, seed the background, and get out of their way 'cause it's time to play.

Ah, thank you. My main issue with Hard Burn is that I spent too much time on the big picture, how the various governments interacted, and not enough time setting things up to give room for players to be... players.
But, I survived making a mistake. One step closer to getting Game Design 0.

>One step closer to getting Game Design 0.

>My main issue with Hard Burn is that I spent too much time on the big picture, how the various governments interacted, and not enough time setting things up to give room for players to be... players.

I think realizing that means you already have Game Design-1. ;)

I think that's just having the necessary taste to develop game design. Like being able to recognize different flavors and how they go together is a prerequisite to being a good cook.

Depends on the scale. I'm pretty sure I'm at 0, halfway to 1. Now if only internships were paid in the US...

...

...

...

There's actually a not-completely-terrible mass effect conversion for Mongoose 1e floating around the internets. It's not horrible, though it's clearly geared more for ME1 and 2, rather than 3, which is probably a good thing?

As it is, I'd just use psionics, change teleportation to charge, add in some powers from the various Psion supplements (all up in the archive) and change recharge time from hours to, say, minutes or something.

>a dining table that seats 9 AND a sofa for 5+
Is this how the Scouts recruit? By enticing prospective vagabonds with the idea that they'll have rambunctious sex and good times while flying around?

That's a x-mail courier. They probably need to knock down the table and couch size. On the other hand, there's four staterooms. You really only need about two people for an x-mail run, and that's to prevent boredom.

That particular version was done using MegaTraveller, and may only be possible under MegaTraveller due to the way jump fuel works in that edition.

So here's something. This is partially a test to see how robust MgT 2e's High Guard is at lower TL craft (result: actually not too bad), but also partially because Super Robot Wars V was just released a little while ago (in English too!), and I'm in the punchy mood.

So here's some bull no one will care about: a poor rendition of the Irish-class battleship from Zeta Gundam, a TL9, 30k dton ship with no gravitic drive and no jump drive. Just some rockets, lots of fuel, and space for giant robots and/or more rockets.

...

>That particular version was done using MegaTraveller, and may only be possible under MegaTraveller due to the way jump fuel works in that edition.
How does jump fuel work in MT?

You need far less than the usual 10% of displacement per parsec jumped.

I can't remember the exact formula and but, IIRC, it worked out to something like 5% of displacement plus 1% per parsec. On an X-boat that "saves" 10dTons.

I'm about to start a traveller campaign, and one of my players wants to play a robot/cyborg. How would I go about implementing this? Switch his medic checks to engineering? Negative DM to all checks that require human interaction, persuasion for example? Can they suffocate, take rad dmg, etc?

I'd love to give him this option but im not sure how balanced a robotic pc would be...

There are chargen rules for robots that detail how they're made. As for stuff like repairing/medic you could simply give negative DMs to the person doing the aid due to the complexity.
For stuff like social interaction it depends; is the PC making a manlike machine or one that is obviously robotic? The uncanny valley effect could do something if they're low quality.

Balance is the harder one to do however, robotic PCs are immune to radiation to a higher degree than organics, but they risk perma damage if the dose is too high. Then there is the point of low TL planets outright banning them. They're also very expensive to maintain compared to a standard sophont (Dolphins not withstanding).

End of the day I'd say the player would need to be mature to make balancing less of a mechanical problem alongside fluff reasons. Don't forget that an amazing robot could be marred by faulty programming or a silly weakness like a literal off switch.

It's 5% plus 5%/parsec, so the progression is 10%, 15%, 20%, 25%, 30%, 35%.

MT also allows (but is not unique for doing so) installing M1 in 100 ton hulls. That saves on powerplant sizes. The XBoat is also unarmed, which saves on powerplant size. Weapons and M-Drive are the big power hogs of MT, so minimizing both lets this variant XBoat get away with quite a bit of extra space.

MT also does not use the default 20 ton Bridge.

>Can they suffocate
If the chosen power plant is fusion or closed fuel cell, not really. Open fuel cell needs air, and coincidentally has much greater fuel efficiency.

>I'm about to start a traveller campaign, and one of my players wants to play a robot/cyborg.

I'd tell him to stop being a special snowflake asshole, but you seem to have already signed off on his douchebaggery and all the extra work he's selfishly imposing on you. So...

Go to the archive link above and look for a 3rd magazine called "The Traveller Digest". Each featured an adventure in a long running campaign called the "Four Knights". One of the PCs is an android build by another PC. It's called AB-101 or Aybee Wan Owen.

Each issue contains roleplaying advice for someone using AB-101, especially the later ones. One of the issues also has an article detailing the android's capabilities, appearance, flaws, etc.

Which edition? There are robot rules. In MgT 1e, there are 2 entire supplements devoted to robots (though they're not particularly great), and one devoted to cyborgs (which is mildly better).