Traveller General-- 100 DTons of Cake and Booze Edition

I take it ya don't like warhammer, eh user?

Thanks. I really liked the CE computer rules, for everything; personals, built in, ship comps. They really modernized things while maintaining the general Traveller flavor.

Although I might disagree with old-user over there, the WH40kRPG by FFG is actually really good for what it is supposed to do. Firstly the level of 'crunch', as it were, is actually fairly minimal, and while certainly more than Traveller, does a good job of portraying the setting (Paranoia is a great thing to have, for example). Also, a lot of the rules, especially for Rogue Trader, are part and parcel of the continuation of rules from tabletop, including Battlefleet Gothic. Also, WH40KRP is based in large part on the old 2e WHFRP system, so there's lots of holdover material there.

More to the point, Traveller's mechanics don't match the setting of 40k. For instance: psionics. You could try using a 2x or even 2.5x modifier as MgT Psion 1e suggests for varying settings, but it doesn't replicate the mindfuckery of maybe accidentally summoning a Khorne berserker because the primaris psyker was stupid enough not to flagellate himself in the morning. Or the ships. 40k ships are deliberately stupid and unwieldy. They have a distinct 18th century ships-and-iron-men feel, with broadsides and whatnot.

So it doesn't fit. Don't get me wrong, you can adapt Traveller to lots of things with more or less difficulty. Star Trek, to some extent Star Wars, can be done. Firefly and Mass Effect are pretty easy conversions. But 40k? Just stick with WH40kRPG. It's a good system for what it needs to get across.

>I take it ya don't like warhammer, eh user?

WarHamster is less a war game and more a con game run by GW to sell books and figs to clueless idiots besotted by the baroque nature of the minis. It's the MtG of wargames; the more you buy the better chance you have to win.

My minis group meets in a FLGS which also host WH40K matches, Not a week goes by without some poor soul wandering over from the tedious, never ending, throw a 55 gallon drum full of dice, WH "games" to sit in with us as we push Roman legions, Wild West gunfighters, 74 gun SOLs, T-34s, or Napoleonic grenadiers around our tables is historical battles that we actually finish.

>They really modernized things while maintaining the general Traveller flavor.

Yup. The CE computer rules are a nice update.

Threadly reminder that (almost) all CE rules are MgT 1e rules, and are, for the most part, at least for personal scale stuff, the same as MgT 2e rules.

>Is religion largely just beneath the scope of Traveller to mention?

No beneath the scope as much as wisely left up to the individual referee. Traveller does mention religions and use religion in a few adventures.

GDW, however, know that one man's view on religion was another man's heresy and yet another man's joke. Accordingly they left it all up to you to do what is best for you and your group.

>dat Empress
What stops high-ranking Imperials from just taking anagathic drugs to stay in power without having to retire?

>What stops high-ranking Imperials from just taking anagathic drugs to stay in power without having to retire?

Supposedly societal and/or cultural pressures. And that's a BIG supposedly. Later versions fiddled with anagathics somewhat dialing back Classic's claims. TNE especially put what acted as a "hard" limit by imposing ever increasing risks for cancers and/or psychiatric damage.

Some of the early emperors, however, had long reigns and even longer lifespans. Like lifespans upwards of 100+ years. Miller at COTI has broached the idea that those long-lived emperors may have been clones of some sort, but that's just speculation and not official - yet.

Nothing, really. Other than cultural acceptance and economic capability.

That being said, the way anagathics are described sort of rustles my jimmies, in that they're kind of a holdover from the idea of the 'impertinence of magic'. Just as a magic castle may crumble when the evil king dies, anagathics are presented first as a method of maintaining cellular senescence, but then also described as having deleterious side effects if one goes off of them (sometimes including rapid onset aging).

The problem is that these two effects simply don't have much backing in reality. A cell doesn't magically 'remember' how old it actually is and immediately revert to it after it's off magic science pills.

If a pill created in an 20 year old individual a biological milieu in which they had 'negligible senescence' in the way of, say, a lobster, then coming off of the pill 30 years later doesn't make him magically 50. He'd still be 20.

>That triple turret with 3 particle beams has THREE separate weapons and thus needs THREE gunners.
That's a special kind of stupid.