Traveller General: Luxury Edition

Well, i'd assume that some more well traveled travellers would've heard about the ancients.

And there are a few "gold digger" type of people who make a living off their remains.
Probably the most well versed about them, next to imerial researchers.

But unless you live near a site of them or have some important ruin of them in your systen, chances are that you have never heard of them.

Well let's change than. First, what Basic culture do they have?

Yep, I'm sad to hear it got cancelled just as things were ramping up.

aw shit, not again, I'm just at episode 4.

Be gentle, how much more time do i have ?

Up till the end of season 3. The cancellation was just announced like a week and a half ago.
Still too early to tell if it might get picked up by somebody else, though I wouldn't count on it.
OTOH, a graphic novel continuation seems likely, since it was born from a graphic novel in the first place.

chaoticshiny.com/culturemixgen.php
is pretty good.
So I'll pick
>ancient Greek fighting style, ancient Italian death rites, ancient African cuisine, modern Australian language, and historical Korean fashions
With this, we can say base culture would be Italian/Korean via Australia
Via World Builder's Handbook
Conservative/Advancing
Unaggressive/Neutral
Discordant/Xenophilic

Anybody who is into the asethetic of the 60's/70's Space opera look should look into getting the videogame "Prey". it is absolutely OOZING with that feel, and the soundtrack matches it too.

I aint much of a videogame guy, but I'm loving the shit out of it so far

> chances are you've never heard of the ancients
All it would take is one documentary on treevee, or one lesson in school. There woould be planets where the Ancients wouldn't fit with the local dogma; there they'd be forbidden lore.

I'd also imagine that the Ancients would feature in some forms of entertainment, think of the 3I version of Indiana Jones movies. Surely the film Ancients would be very much unlike hte real thing, but the idea of looking for their relics would stick in the mind of adventurers.

Man that's like your opinion and all.

Also it takes only one short documentary to learn the basics about many things, people are still uneducated.
The Average person in Traveller is still just a Farmer, Office worker, Artist and will not pursue that knowledge unless by personal interest.

In general depends on your traveller universe, both flavours are legit and fit into the OTU.

Are all ancients droyne? or were there other races who'd qualify as ancients, were the droyne/ancients just that divergent from one another? and is it true that some droyne can still create/maintain ancients level tech?

>Are all ancients droyne?

Nah, there were other races all over the place. If you find some weird old gizmo, it might be the Ancients, or it might be pre-Maghiz Darrian, or it might be First Imperium or Rule of Man stuff, or something else entirely.
Also I maintain that Grandfather is a liar, and his story about the Ancients is a nice fairy tale he's telling the neighbor's kids

Cool, so the ancients were just...the MOST advanced then?

The Ancients (capital A) were an offshoot of the Droyne who used Humans, created and used Vargr, and built and used robots as servants. That was about 300,000 years ago.

About 15,000 years prior to OTU current, a few of the transplanted humans and at least one other race started to re-civilize. At least one effort made it to space and began expanding, but is was not until the Vilani and Geonee (two of the transplanted Human groups) developed jump drive about 9000 years ago that things really got going.

So you have Human or other recent remnants from the last 10,000 years all over the place, and a more scattered and much older collection of Ancients stuff.

There are some Droyne worlds that can make and maintain some amazing stuff, but none of the really old super tech Ancients stuff is within their reach as such.

Let's just say that archeology is way more profitable in traveller than one might think at first.

And as we move spinward of here, here we see the edges of the Red Empire, and see why they're not that interested in the first map. Here is a rich area, full of taxes.
And thanks to Captcha, we have a name! The Kempjack Empire, heirs of the Old Archduke Kempjack!

It is certainly more interesting. Thousands of worlds have millennia of settled history, sometimes interrupted several times.

That's why I went with a long "Antiquity" period as part of my setting, right after the ancients.
Of course, I'll probably cut out all the major pulpy bits, but at the same time... Pulp.

>Cool, so the ancients were just...the MOST advanced then?

That's a good way to think of it, but 's answer is both wrong and right. Let me explain.

There have been many technological and even starfaring races before the Ancients, after the Ancients, and before the various Imperiums. Forex, in the AotI novel, the hero comes across a gadget which is 3 million years old. What sets the Ancients and the Vilani/1st Imperium apart from all the others is they had JUMP DRIVE. The Ancients were the 1st to develop, the Droyne kept it after the Ancients fell, the and Vilani were the 1st to develop it again. Everyone before the Ancients and most after them were STL only.

The Ancients were Droyne, but Droyne with a twist. The Droyne were a pastoral race which had reached TL 5 or 6 and stayed there. A "super genius", Yaskodray or Grandfather, was born among them and took over. He needed better servants than the run of the mill Droyne and so he made about a dozen children and had those children make children. Yaskodray ran things, kids/grands were his viceroys, and normal Droyne were the labor force. Yaskodray and his kids/grands then fought a war, Yaskodray "won", and retreated to his own dimension. Or so Yaskodray claims.

All that happened about 250,000 years before the OTU's current date. There were non-Droyne starfarers before that and after that, but they didn't have jump drive. We've a name for one race that came after, the Kursae, but little is known of them.

cool, and a bump before bed

...

jump-1

Honestly my man, it looks like an off-brand Expanse.

Also it probably has curses on how to discern houshold items from doomsday devices.

I havent watched the expanse to i would't know.
I currently finished episode 5 and i like how much they do with so little plot elements. Also that they rather show who the characters are, rather than exposition.
They use new elements they introduce, instead of just throwing in more and more new, to distract the viewer from the stuff happening.

but fuck the zombie episode, i mean i get it that a new show has to catch new viewers, but fuck zombies.

So i know what people think about Vargr around here on Veeky Forums but what about those that choose to life in Humaniti space ?
They are apparently more capable of recognizing social structures, and might even respect a formal contract.
Humaniti space Vargr, just as bad as their jump drive stealing brothers or cool bros with the attention span of a goldfish ?

5897EB, 42 year old Star Marine Brigadier with TAS membership.

Why can't I make these rolls in a real group?

そんな糞船と一緒にされるのは侮辱だ、ゴミと一緒に捨ててしまえ

>Humaniti space Vargr, just as bad as their jump drive stealing brothers or cool bros with the attention span of a goldfish ?

While I can only imagine the horrors the douche nozzles at Mongoose inflicted on the Vargr, you'd be better served by ignoring ALL canon published by Mongoose and sticking to older sources. There's a Classic AM and a sourcebook for MT called Vilani & Vargr.

The Vargr did not steal jump drive. They developed jump1 on their own. They may have developed jump2, they may have been given it by rebellious Ziru Sirka provincial governors, and, given comm lag & distances, both things could have happened. They either stole or were allowed to steal jump3 from the Zhodani. The records there support both interpretations.

As for Vargr in the Imperium, Vargr and Human share planets in many more places than the Imperium. Let me suggest you read about the Julian Protectorate. It's a group of coreward sectors which had been part of the 1st/2nd Imperiums and which the 3rd Imperium failed to reabsorb. The Protectorate is a confederation of polities ranging from multi-world governments down to individual nations. While exceptions do exists, a hallmark shared by nearly all of the polities making up the Protectorate is Human-Vargr coexistence and cooperation.

TL;DR - Ignore Mongoose, read the real stuff.

Which ship you are talking about ?

> The Protectorate is a confederation of polities ranging from multi-world governments down to individual nations.

Sounds neato, will look it up for future reference on co-existence between species.

>The Vargr did not steal jump drive.
This was intendet as a joke on my side, like, stealing things of high monetary value.

>Sounds neato, will look it up for future reference on co-existence between species.

The Julian Protectorate received a a fair amount of attention in MT. "Vilani & Vargr" is a good source as are several articles in various issues of "Challenge".

The Traveller Wiki linked above should have a list of "Challenge" articles so you can which one you need to download from the Archive.

On a final note, the Imperial Archduke of Antares is Vargr.

But also a line from the Wiki i was refering to.
>Assimilated Vargr Enclaves: Some Imperial Vargr live in Vargr enclaves. Others have adapted to living among Humans and other races. These are often referred to as assimilated Vargr. Assimilated Vargr have all the physical advantages and disadvantages of ethnic Vargr, but many of the typical Vargr mental traits are less pronounced and sometimes completely absent.

>Scientists disagree on how much these traits are inborn but suppressed by association with Humans, or not inborn and just not learned in the first place. The comparison between dogs and wolves is highly impolitic, if difficult to avoid.
>Assimilated Vargr react very poorly to the suggestion that they have been "tamed" by Humans or, even worse, are just "Humans in Vargr suits" -- claims that ethnic Vargr are quick to make. Assimilated and ethnic Vargr often react very poorly towards each other.

>the Wiki

Sadly, the Wiki is mostly shit. If a sentence or passage is not directly quoted from a published work, ignore it. The Wiki's editors spend more time uploading their own "fanon" than anything else.

Aw shucks. gues i will dig for some non-mongoose Vargr books.

>non-mongoose

As a rule of thumb, any canon source takes precedent over anything published by Mongoose. The only time Mongoose is "right" is when it repeats previous material.

All the sources you'll need are in the Archives.

Got Alien book 1 from GURPS Traveller, yay or nay ?

>the Wiki is mostly shit.
One of its more useful functions is to point at the published sources.

It's good, if "GURP-ified". The writers stuck to Classic/MT sources and SJGames' Traveller line editor was the late Loren Wiseman, a GDW alumn and one of the creators of Traveller.

Unlike the douche nozzles at Mongoose, SJGames and Wiseman didn't feel the need to change stuff just for the sake of changing stuff. Nor did they think, unlike Mongoose, that by twisting the Vargr into some sort of violent wolf stereotypes they'd attract furries to the game.

About the mistaken Vargr = Wolf/Dog assumption so many make. From the first it was explained that samples definitely from the family Canidae and almost certainly from the genus Canis were used. Those samples would include dogs, wolves, jackals, foxes, and other species. The Ancients first geneered that mix and left the result to evolve on lair for 300K years.

300K years is a LONG time and plenty of evolution can take place during it. It's about as long ago as archaic homo sapiens developed. So the species the Ancients abandoned on Lair is exactly what the Vilani encountered.

All this means that the Vargr are not "dogs" any more than we are chimps. They don't automatically chase thrown frisbees, chocolate doesn't kill them, they don't fly air/raft with their heads out the window, and all the other stupid shit lazy referees and players have saddled them with since the beginning.

>One of its more useful functions is to point at the published sources.

And that's about it's only useful function.

>So the species the Ancients abandoned on Lair is exactly what the Vilani encountered.

Stubby fingers and potato phone. That's supposed to read:

So the species the Ancients abandoned on Lair is not exactly what the Vilani encountered.

To be fair, if i HAD to strike a comparison between anything and have only one to two sentences to describe their behaviour boiled down, i'd choose people with moderate ADHD

And i say this as adult with ADHD.

To set them on the same level as Dogs/Wolves is missing the damn point.

>To set them on the same level as Dogs/Wolves is missing the damn point.

Exactly. And your moderate ADHD analogy is a good one.

I'd go with that ADHD-ish behavior and being slightly more credulous than average humans.

They are more likeey to get distracted and they're more likely to get talked into things.

Eh, hyperactive storage Wilkes with a love for gaudy colors and lack of commitment to social roles ?

Not the nicest comparison but I can see where it comes from & brings a point across.

I want to rent a used ship to my players, but the table in MgT 1e is sorta shit for a 50 years old 100dton ship. Do you guys have any hombrews or alternative sources for old rust bucket traits ?

>So the species the Ancients abandoned on Lair is not exactly what the Vilani encountered.
True. Much of the variety Mongoose overplayed was already present from MegaTraveller days, though.

>Much of the variety Mongoose overplayed was already present from MegaTraveller days, though.

MT's V&V talked about Vargr 'races" in much the same way we currently have human "races". There are outward physiological differences like hair color etc. but nothing really different under the skin.

V&V talked about two subspecies which were also presumably interfertile with the general population. Sadly, both subspecies were the usual tired tropes:

- A larger, stronger, dumber, warrior type
- A smaller brainy type which is born blind and has weird psionic powers.

Maybe three sentences out of the entire sourcebook were devoted to them.

Of course, Mongoose took that millimeter and stretched it out to a parsec or more. If you're going to fuck up, it pays to fuck up BIG.

An user in the previous thread posted a zippyshare link to a document detailing starship quirks. Give me a minute...

Here it is:

www15.zippyshare.com/v/saT89fBl/file.html

Thank him, not me.

jump-1

>- A larger, stronger, dumber, warrior type
>- A smaller brainy type which is born blind and has weird psionic powers.

>Maybe three sentences out of the entire sourcebook were devoted to them.

>Of course, Mongoose took that millimeter and stretched it out to a parsec or more.

So, mongoose is good if you need more info on the subraces, if nothing else?

Yeah, basically. Sucks that they took over the license and are trying to run it into the ground. I'm also surprised that they haven't decided to replicate the civil war and virus yet either - a clear wipe of the board and canon would fit perfectly with their style.

"And then we introduce space elves, orks and wizards."

All of this leaves me mostly with one questions.

Can Vargr actually use human language ?
I'd assume they could thanks to ancient fuckery, but with a strong accent.

>Elves
Darrians. Seriously, that's what they are.

Sort of. They're also a little bit not-Vulcan/Romulan guys too, as they're not at all mystical, but rather 110% about the SCIENCE!

Seriously, as soon anything happens that could be of scientific interest, there will be a darrian closeby stroking his pants.

>Mongoose Virus/Civil War

I am morbidly intrigued...care to speculate anons?

I like this picture.
Has sort of a samurai feel to it.

I think of it like more of a mexican standoff, but i get what you mean.

anybody want to meet up to discuss traveler on Rolz?

room name: dasboot

AKTUALLY

a mexican standoff is when 3 parties have shared hostilities. So basically the first one to shoot kills the first party, and the third to shoot kills the first and is the only one left standing.

No one can leave or back down and no one can fire first. Its an odd paradox.

>So basically the first one to shoot kills the first party
*second party

Well today I learned something new, thanks traveler.

Sooo then what is the right term for the vibe I get, "cowboy duel" ?

I don't know that there is any particular term for it, other than the vanjarl looks honorable and his opponent is obviously sneaky and underhanded.

I'm new to Traveller and trying to get into it with the possibility of running a short campaign for my group. I'm a huge fan of the character creation process, it's the first time I've had fun making a character for an RPG. I've been using munsondev.com/chargen/ for it, can anybody comment on how attuned this site is to the rules?

Which is the best ruleset for a group new to Traveller?

Is there a ruleset for playing as an android or cyborg?

A few missing files for the T4 folder. Still haven't found either the big Milieu 0 Campaign book or JTAS 25 & 26.

T4 - Central Supply Catalog.pdf
www118.zippyshare.com/v/IaoQ5bWx/file.html
T4 - Emperor's Arsenal.pdf
www118.zippyshare.com/v/LcVyfKbD/file.html
T4 - First Survey.pdf
www118.zippyshare.com/v/FaoUuLvE/file.html
T4 - Milieu 0.pdf
www118.zippyshare.com/v/e21gVGKp/file.html
T4 - Naval Architect's Manual.pdf
www118.zippyshare.com/v/Tkq3pnYD/file.html
T4 - Psionic Institutes.pdf
www118.zippyshare.com/v/ffMKH0Av/file.html
T4 - Starships.pdf
www118.zippyshare.com/v/yhML5HTx/file.html

youtube.com/watch?v=IHQr0HCIN2w

youtube.com/watch?v=XP9cfQx2OZY

That's usually called a "walk down." The first one on record was supposedly between Wild Bill Hickock, in his duty as sheriff of Abilene, Texas, and Phil Coe.

>Which is the best ruleset for a group new to Traveller?

Probably Mongoose 1e or its clone, the Cepheus Engine. It's all-in-one, (unlike most of Classic) pretty well edited, (unlike most of Mongoose's stuff) and has good third party support. (Unlike Mongoose 2e.)

>Is there a ruleset for playing as an android or cyborg?

In Classic you've got JTAS Robots and the much crunchier official Robots supplement. Mongoose has an official Robots supplement, but it sucks bad; The third party book Traveller Robots is much better.

In case that everyone speaks English in your group, try cepheus engine, it's free an basically tried to take the best from CT and MgT 1e. Overall pretty streamlined.

Mongoose traveler 1e got actually translated into different languages.

As far as cyborgs go in the system, there is like one line of rules for augmentation and sine great for that. Traveler as system handles super human cyber shenanigans not as well as dedicated systems, but it's definitely possible.
It's mostly something your character just hat and not something he or she is centered around. Same goes for psyonics

Mobility enchantment and subdermal armor are pretty neat for melee fighters tho.

Also keep in mind that design comes after function in traveller.

One dermal senior night be ceramic plates booked onto your skin, another might me a mesh of bucky tubes between your muscles.
But in the end both can have the same TL, cost and effect.

Same goes for every other piece of equipment.

Streamlined Far-Trader moving in code 3 (very thin) atmosphere. Does it impose any disadvantage?

We are playing 2nd. Ed. Mongoose Traveller and our destination planet for the next session has an atmosphere with this code. Our Referee said that he's not sure what kind of modificators he should give us depending on the different kinds of atmospheres, so i figured i could ask you guys for advice. Could you give us some tips?

A streamlined ship is good for space, and atmosphere. A thin atmosphere is just inbetween, there shouldn't be any trouble for that.
Now an insidious atmosphere undergoing storms... Then you have to watch out for the Jaggies.

Mods and disadvantages for what?

...atari? amiga? what is that from?

Atari 8 bit. There's a 64 port, but the faster CPU on the Atari makes that version play a little smoother.
If you download it, grab a copy of the manual, the manuals for the early Lucasfilm games were awesome.

>I am morbidly intrigued...care to speculate anons?

He's referring to the original OTU timeline as published by GDW, knucklehead.

Classic - "Static" 3I with 5th Frontier War
MT - Strephon killed, Rebellion/Civil War
TNE - Virus "slate wipes" Charted Space, era of rebuilding

Apart from some work by the 3rd party publishers Avenger, no one has touched the TNE or post-TNE eras. T4 went back to the founding of the 3I, GT started an alternate timeline where Strephon wasn't killed, and MgT returned to the Classic period.

Considering how much Mongoose fucked with Classic canon, was suggesting they could really fuck things up if they tackled the Rebellion and Virus too.

And the user you're talking to was suggesting we speculate on how they would fuck it up if they were to do it. A knucklehead is you

what game, user?

Oh, derp! Rescue on Fractalus.It was the first of the four Lucasfilm fractal-based games. It's pretty cool, though it maybe gets a little repetitive after a while.
(I think Koronis Rift was my favorite of the four, though Ballblazer is pretty ace if you've got someone to play with)

thanks

>Fractalus

Love it.

I've been going over some the 3rd party stuff for Classic thanks to the Archive and holy shit is there a lot of stuff to borrow. Ideas, plots, animals, NPCs, ships, trade goods, planets, you name it.

While production values for most of it are low even by 70s/80s standards, the materials themselves are crammed full of stuff to borrow.

Maneuver at speed, I would guess.
Very Thin is equivalent to the top third of Everest. Airliners fly higher than that, so you can assume that there is still too much air to pull stupid physics tricks that work in space. A hot turn-about to bring a different turret to bear will still need to be carefully considered, or you'll be ripping bits off. You could presumably design a ship to handle such maneuvers, probably as a sphere or saucer.

Attempted to build an AKV using MgT1e, based on the fact that the fact the 30 dton hull can hit the highest acceleration, at 16g.
Did all the math, filled all cargo space with lead, and... At one turn of thrust, it hits with over 915 kg of TNT per kg of ship weight.. At over a million kg it comes out to 763.9 million kg of C-4, the plastic explosive listed in the core book.
At this point, damage is irrelevant, but if I did the math right, about 160 million points on average.
Jeez, that's just 10 minutes of acceleration. Imagine if it went for the full hour of fuel I gave it...

Oh here's the manual for it.

>Don't worry about being taken prisoner, the J'Hagga Ri Kachatki don't take prisoners.

Thanks, but I was just commenting on the name Fractalus. It must have been a great in-joke among the coders back then.

AKV?

And it's 42 megatons at 1 hour, or over 2 times the Tunguska event.
It's a shit ton of damage. Not enough to crack a planet, but enough to completely wipe an Empress battleship.

>Maneuver at speed, I would guess.

That's mine too but, as you correctly note, even a thin atmosphere is going to prevent or preclude "physics tricks".

Autonomous Kill Vehicle.
What happens when you pull out the math and realize that any drive fast enough to be interesting makes a good weapon
And that any vehicle that has a velocity of 3km/s is it's own weight in boom.