Traveller General--Uplift Edition

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All Tomorrow's Zombies
sendspace.com/file/pv1vte

Now we only need to add Mecha

Once in a Vargr game, we were boarded by uplifted cats during an escort ticket.

Is this a furry game?

No, it was just conceptualized and created in the 70's, when 'anthropomorphized animals' was a popular shorthand for aliens, but traveller's aliens are generally deeper than that

>Traveller leans towards realism in combat
>because Traveller was created by a company which designed wargames

top kek

Ninja mecha mutant zombies !

moreso because it was designed and written by a 'nam vet

I think that's a GURPS splatbook

No but it's a fun game.

most aesthetic traveller ships, go!

I'm interested in getting into Traveller and I heard Mongoose was the best place to start. Which edition should I go with?

Safari Ship

Someone post the starter PDF for this lad

Ok, so why does this thread keep disappearing?

improperly aligned Zuchai Crystals?

>Ok, so why does this thread keep disappearing?
The Ancients Did It

I missed last thread, so have a repost of the Psionics Index, with rules
pastebin.com/Ri94GckL

I'm using traveller as a system for a homebrew setting. Thing is, the setting has shields. How should I write rules for shields? I could use some advice. Currently it's just another level of armour, but I want it to be more than that.

using MGT2 by the way

Is that not what shields are? It regenerates xyz amount a combat turn. Too much damage, rekt to the armor. Etc.

I may be remembering wrong, but I believe that MGT2 High Guard does have shields as an option for ships.

The faster a projectile travels, the better the shield is at stopping it

Unless you've already found those on page 69 and want something different. In which case you need to be more specific. Shields generally are just another level of ablative armor (or hit points) that regenerate over time.

I found the shields in high guard, and modified them a bit. Should work great, thanks.

Let me ask you guys: if you were to have a ship with a shield "rating" of 3/10, and it be relatively light ship with 100 hull points, would it make more sense for it to have 3 shield points, or 30? I haven't tried space combat yet, so I dont know how much damage gets done, how quick, etc.

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>top kek

Kek all you want. Miller is a Vietnam veteran and others in GDW and among their freelancers are vets too.

While no RPG combat system can be said to be real, some RPG combat systems are more realistic than others. Some of GDW's RPGs like Traveller, T:2000, and 2300AD do have more combat systems which are more realistic than many others.

>Is this a furry game?

As originally designed, no. As played by those introduced to the game by Mongoose, possibly.

Furries didn't exist when Traveller was initially designed in '77 and Albedo lay eleven years in the future.

Go to the archive listed above and look in the Incoming Sept 29 folder for the Getting Started pdf.

>I haven't tried space combat yet,

Then do so. Smoke test your ideas. You needn't play out an entire battle, just set up a number of likely attacks on likely shield configurations and look at the results/numbers.

My groups often use Classic's Mayday movement system combined with Hg2 combat system. One homebrewed "shield" variant we've enjoyed used sandcasters. Instead of sand being left behind when a ship maneuvers, we decided ships could "drag" deployed sand along with them. We also stacked sand as allowed in Book 2 and Mayday while imposing -DMs on fire passing through sand in both directions. Some further details we fiddled with had sand only protecting along one hexside and "hits" on sand reducing sand levels.

In the end, all that matters is if what you decide to use works for you and your group.

>Albedo
Isn't that that furry tank battalion comic?

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Their combat rules were essentially tactical wargames,not so deep like Squad leader but waaay more than, for example, cyberpunk.

At least twilight 2000 2.0 was, they had even rules for indirect fire and spotting (had so much fun with the wojo-combo mortars back in my day). Classic traveller was way more streamlined.

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>Classic traveller was way more streamlined.

That was more due to page counts more than anything else. The Little Black Book format gave GDW 44 pages to work within while the later and larger splat format allowed 4x, 5x, and sometimes even more "room".

All you need to do is look at AHL or Striker to see what "full bore" Classic combat would have looked like.

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Related

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Have a random lore tidbit.
Sealed Crate Auctions: On occasion, a starport must get rid of cargo - defaulted warehouse payments, impounded alongside illegal cargoes, or just plain old left behind. As many do not, for some odd reason, have licenses to act as merchants, they are left in a bind. Enter the Sealed Crate Auction, where used cargo crates (which starports are explicitly allowed to sell) are auctioned off - and the goods inside are a bonus. The manifests are sealed inside the crates, and each is given a new coat of paint with a randomized ID. Normal auctions range from Cr500 to Cr5000 per quarter dTon of crate capacity, with higher or lower bidding being a sign of either leaked information or a newcomer.
A variant of the auction, the Showcase Sealed, packages random crates into 10dton lots, with a random and limited assortment of items from the lot on display. Auctions in this variant swing wildly in how much people pay per lot, with a baseline of Cr15000 to Cr20000.

Is there a ruleset/reference that's preferable for setting up a campaign with lower tech levels, smaller/younger empires, etc.?

The only one I know of is the Orbital setting, though that's literally pre jump drives so it's set in a single solar system. It is TL9.

Lower tech levels generally just means fewer or no PGMP or other plasma weapons with laser & gauss being the high tech, smaller ships and things like that. Plus lower jump ratings limit travel speeds and the areas you can reach. Empires would be smaller out of necessity as they literally wouldn't be able to colonize certain worlds, or it would take a lot longer to reach certain planets due to having to go the long way around a "small" gap.

How do I interplanetary currency?

freelancetraveller.com/features/preproom/3ialts.html

It's a fairly good article, and works with any ruleset. As implies, all you need to do is simply cap the TL and work out the implications.

Read Neptune's Brood.

Interplanetary can be handled like modern currency. The problem comes when you go interstellar.

you think of that yourself?

I take it you've never seen the "reality" TV program "Storage Wars"?

it came to mind, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was traveller canon at some point

It does seem like a plausible thing from a glance, though the reality is that it'd be very boring most of the time. Congratulation you bought 2dtons of bolts & nuts, 4dtons of nonperishable rations, 1dton of toilet paper and 2 dtons of cloth.

just like the real thing!

self-sealing stem bolts

anyone have that alternate TNE version where the Virus is contained and things are still fucked, but less so? or at least know the name of it?

That would be a fun scenario for people who have no idea where those particular items originate from.

...dare I ask where they come from?

>though the reality is that it'd be very boring most of the time

Bingo. The TV show is rigged much like the UK/US "Antique Roadshow". The auction prices for abandoned containers would be no where near the numbers suggested. Also the facilities in question will far more likely to seize the goods and then sell/dispose of the stuff than auction it off.

There's a setting like that in the Archive. Lucan's agent at Omnicron is killed. removed, or thwarted in some manner, the messengers to the other factions succeed, and Dulinor attacks the system in question knowing the project needs to be destroyed rather than captured.

you can't un-see the answer

still curious?

yes...

>self-sealing stem bolts come from Deep Space 9
memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Self-sealing_stem_bolt

Any tips for running a traveller campaign? I was thinking of starting a project for a large shared setting similar in style to a west marches game for multiple GMs. Would traveller work well for such a game?

>Any tips for running a traveller campaign?

Start small and only grow as needed. GDW was entirely correct when they suggested in Classic that two subsectors can provide years of sessions.

>>I was thinking of starting a project for a large shared setting similar in style to a west marches game for multiple GMs.

Like any other RPG and especially like any RPG was contains setting creation systems, Traveller's history is littered with grandiose projects which never came to fruition. You're setting yourself up for far more work than you realize.

>>Would traveller work well for such a game?

When you remember the fact that the 3I/OTU with all it's various sector books is exactly of what you're proposing, you'll have your answer.

>I was thinking of starting a project for a large shared setting similar in style to a west marches game for multiple GMs. Would traveller work well for such a game?

Huh I recently started working on something similar and I definitely think that traveller would work for it, especially since character advancement works during downtime which non participating characters have. I am seriously considering.

> I am seriously considering.

I am currently* considering using Classic's ruleset for it.

I should re-read what I wrote before posting if I switch tabs during writing...

what's west marches in this context?

Large sandbox area for the players to explore. Multiple GMs running in the same sector with a high player count and sharing events in the campaign in order to create a living campaign world.

The main character was a pilot, but there was a side story that was more ground pounder oriented.

The setting has discrete travel times baked in, so you have both a handy separator and possibly too much separation.

A single subsection or two seems like it would be enough, given what this has said.

Would just need some factions that could all be tied in for the players to interact with to give it more of a meta plot.

Even the standard Imperial setting provides some factional potential, while also putting a cap on the scope of open war.

If open war was something that the Refs wanted available, the two subsectors that come to mind are the same two used for the Trillion Credit Squadron campaign: Old Islands and New Islands in Reft.

You could also get some mileage from the now abandoned version of The Beyond (pic related).

The star positions were never really defined past this map, though the TravellerMap site might still have this as a variant somewhere. They replaced it with the much older Paranoia Press version, though.

This is the political map the first one is taken from, covering Aslan space. This is a HUGE area. I include this only for the nation list at the bottom which identifies the states in the first pic.

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are droyne more bird, lizard, or bat?

They're more bird/lizard and are definitely not mammals.

the wings reminded me of the makeup of bat wings

Sort of. As said, it's mostly based on Storage Wars, but with less bullshit from producers rigging everything ( ).
You are right, 90% of it is very boring. This idea is very good for an Imperium that is very protectionist of the free market - since Starports are part of the government, they can't act as part of the market, so they work around for getting rid of abandoned goods without spending more money on disposal (Future OSHA and EPA are scary thanks to the innumerable regs built up over the centuries of industry and material development)

>Future OSHA and EPA are scary thanks to the innumerable regs built up over the centuries of industry and material development
You've given me an idea...

Ministry of Labor compliance optional.

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d'aww

is policy psionics left up to individual planets? or is that one of the broad 'imperium shall intervene' things

The Imperium, very technically speaking (in a manner that gets you labeled a conspiracy nut), does not ban Psionics. It has merely made it impossible to legally train a person in psionics.
Now, basically every planet in the 3I, those ban Psionics... And your neighbors will do everything they can to wreck your shit if they find you legalizing psionics.
Blame the Psionic Suppression.

Ah, like swedish prostitutes, you can BE one, but you can't make a living off it, nor can you offer your services to others

And you're a wanted criminal.
By the government of a small American town that has charged all Swedish Prostitutes and given them the death penalty.
And their entire state is backing them up.

Yeah, according to Imperial Law, you can be psionic, you just cannot use it, or train yourself or others in the use of psionic powers, without the appropriate license - which is impossible to get. According to almost every single planet in the Imperium, having Psionic capability is grounds for Justifiable Homicide.

As explains, it's not a "one size fits all" issue. It's more nuanced, despite nuances being beyond many peoples' abilities to comprehend.

A planet cannot by *overtly* pro-psionics as that will guarantee Imperial intervention. However, a planet can be "meh" about the issue and only go through the motions regarding prohibitions and prosecutions. While Classic lists various official reactions to psions being discovered ranging from deportation to lobotomies, the listed penalties only start at 4+ on a 2D6 roll meaning there's a 1 in 12 chance of nothing happening at all.

MT strongly hinted at and TNE later explicitly confirmed that the 3I used psionics regularly. What the 3I didn't want was psions and psionic training not under it's direct control.