Traveller General

>Someone
Why not (you)?

I couldn't manage something like that. I'm not autistic enough.

Yeah, Mongoose Traveller. I'll look more into it later. I did however get him to amend it to a Chimpanzee instead.
As for letting him down I've got a feeling he might switch to something normal anyway once we all sit down for chargen.

Since OP forgot..

Previous thread:

>As for letting him down I've got a feeling he might switch to something normal anyway once we all sit down for chargen.

Please don't misunderstand. I'm not saying don't do it. I'm suggesting that you may not want to do it in your FIRST ever Traveller game. You're already looking at a learning curve, so why why make it steeper than you have to?

Once you have a few sessions under your belt, you'll be able to make better choices when you stat out that "uplifted" Macaque.

There's a section for online games at COTI. You may be able to find some there. The link to COTI is in the OP.

>In this Judges' Guild illustration, we see a cigar-smoking Guerillizard in a Wonder Woman bra signing an autograph for Sheriff Blond Monkey Hitler.

At least the maps are kinda nice, even if the staggered grid pattern is weird.

For a while there, the gang at Judges' Guild were scoring the GOOD stuff.

Don't worry, I'm not forcing him to change characters. What I meant was that after they all get the chance to look through character creation that they'll probably not end up with what they originally wanted. No offense taken and none given, my dude.

Anybody else get this box? i got that tier that gave me all the core hardbacks at a discount. Can't wait for sector maps seems like it'll be great

>No offense taken and none given, my dude.

I didn't think you'd force him and I didn't want you to think I wanted you to force him! If that makes any sense.

When new players come to Traveller from many other RPGs, they need to make some shifts to their usual thinking and play styles. There are no levels so your PC is competent right from the start. No levels also means he isn't going to get much better either. Then there's combat which can be quite a shock for some new players, especially those used to effortlessly slaying low level mooks, healing spells, resurrection, and the like.

There's a lot to get used to and I was worried that trying to stat out an uplifted Macaque at the same time could be too much.

The Library Data Master Archive has been updated!

In Books, we have Martin J. Dougherty's Shadow of the Storm, A Story of the Solomani Rim. Jefferson Swycaffer's books, based on Traveller but unofficial, are up, as is Gregory Lee's The Laughing Lip series, which is also Traveller inspired.
Alongside the new books we have a Kindle version of E.C. Tubb's Dumarest series and a couple of more formats for Fate of the Kinunir.

In the Classic folder we've got an OCRed scan of Classic Traveller's stripped down Starter Edition, an alternate scan of Judges Guild's Maranatha-Alkahest Sector book, and the generic Port of Call: Tarlkin's Landing, as pictured above.

We've got four new books in T4, too. There's the Armor Compendium, Mayday, Prior History, and a better scan of Game Screen and Adventure.

There's an interview from Different Worlds #1 with Marc Millar, on "My Life in Role Playing" up in Zines.

"Wanderer, Book 1: Characters and Conflict" is an attempt to make the famous fantasy CT mockup a reality, and is in the System Conversions folder.

We also have some paper minis under General Misc.

Woo hoo! It should be interesting to compare Classic's Start version with CE.

Has your crew ever kidnapped someone?

That picture's great, though I think the power pack on that gun is a bit small. At that size, why not put it on the gun?

COTI is dead and there's nothing being run like what I suggested.

I wrote "may be able" and not "will be able". There was nothing in the Play by Post forum or in the Recruiting Office board?

Yes. In fact we played the adventure that illo comes from.

Like no voice? Text only is kinda slow, but I've done it before.

Don't forget the Discord of nu-males

So looking at the supply catalogue, some weapons are straight up better than others.
Blade does 2d6 with one heft and costs credits. While the club does 2d6 does not have heft and costs nothing. I think it also has the mace quality.
Anyone have potential fixes for stuff like this?

Don't use Mongoose's CSC?

So, my players have been handling enemies pretty well. A little too well, in fact. They've all got pretty decent weapons and gear, and they've pissed off just about every powerful family they've come across
They kidnapped this guy who tried to stop them from collecting a bunch of cryo-pods from a space station on account of them being related to some sort of property that a noble family owns.
They plan to perform a prisoner exchange to the people who hired the guy, as well as sell them the cryopods, but instead I'm planning on throwing 60 infantry and half a dozen vehicles from multiple sides into the mix and turn the exchange into a complete shitstorm
How likely are my players to die from this?

this
make your own weapon list
plus, then you can add your own weapons, since weapon statlines are pretty easy to make

>How likely are my players to die from this?

How likely? Very likely.

You waited too long to slap them down. Every time they escalated, you should have escalated too. A few near death experiences would have taught them to be more circumspect, that the other guys pretty much have the same equipment & skills they do. They were never taught those lessons and now they're going to die - unless you pull your punches again.

How far along are they with this bulletproof attitude? If they're presented with an overwhelming force, how likely is it that they may surrender rather than go down fighting? If you can get them to surrender, you can put them through the Prison Planet adventure. There's a Classic and MgT version.

>make your own weapon list

Exactly. Make the game your own. Don't blindly use a weapons stats you feel are wrong just because they're published.

Well, this is only four sessions in, admittedly
I dont plan for everyone involved to target them, I just want it to be obvious to them that they've pissed off a lot of very dangerous people and this is what can happen
The actual encounter will be a five way fight in terms of enemies and who will be fighting who

I've actually tried to escalate - they fought one squad of enemies, and won, partially using diplomacy
Then, they fought a guy with better armour, better stats, and better weapons, and won
in the same session, they fought a squad of enemies and three enemy ships. They easily killed the squad of enemies and obliterated one enemy ship in one combat round each.
I think that the upcoming encounter will be partially balanced by the fact that they will have their ship nearby and could use its guns, but will also have to contend with enemy ships. I hope to create a "land and air" type battle that will involve
>space police
>vengeful mercenaries
>space foreign legion
>space rhodesians
>scrap-junker-slavers
>the player crew

>I dont plan for everyone involved to target them

No one ever plans for something like that happen and, to mangle an old phrase, no plan survives contact with the players.

>>The actual encounter will be a five way fight in terms of enemies and who will be fighting who

No. It's going to be a two-sided fight. You said they've managed piss off everyone they've encountered, right? Well now everyone they've encountered is going to put aside their differences to take the PCs down.

>>Then, they fought a guy with better armour, better stats, and better weapons, and won
in the same session, they fought a squad of enemies and three enemy ships. They easily killed the squad of enemies and obliterated one enemy ship in one combat round each.

I don't know how you've been handling combat, but much of that is quite frankly improbable.

>>I hope to create a "land and air" type battle that will involve

Do you have any idea what starship weapons do to ground troops and vehicles? A single laser turret is 3x better than the best gun a tank can carry while a fusion gun turret is 6x better. Do you remember they can that they can strike from orbit?

Chimps are pretty reasonable by comparison. Most monkeys are a bit small, but Traveller has established that Orangs and other primates have been uplifted, as well as at least one strain of dolphins, and some bears. That that's just the relatively modern stuff

>but Traveller has established that Orangs and other primates have been uplifted

Orangs and gibbons wasn't it? The Terran Confederation wanted a zero-gee workforce, aka quaddies, and started an uplift program. Then progress in artificial gravity made the project moot so it was dropped with the animals in question short of actual sentience. Jump forward a few thousand years and the Sollies start the project up again and finish it this time. Trouble was the reason for the project this time wasn't quaddies or even sentient apes but instead was groundwork for creating superhumans, think Trek's Augments.

When that bit of news came out, a lot of shit hit a lot of fans.

...

Seconding this. I'd be down to help the GM.

Alright, I'm trying to confirm how this works. I'm playing Mongoose Traveller 1e, and I want a Triple Beam Laser Turret. It does 1d6 base for being a Beam Laser. What does it being a Triple Turret actually do? I've been searching for how it works for about ten minutes, and I'm not seeing it. I know it's here, but I cannot for the life of me find where.

I THINK it was something like +1 damage per die of the weapon for double, and +2 for Triple, but I can't remember.

Oh jesus christ Traveller 5 really is near 800 fucking pages. What the fuck.

kidnapped the same person twice, for two entirely different reasons.

Stay away from T5. It's a RPG construction kit rather than a game. Only one adventure/campaign has been released for it in 3+ years and the guy wrote it died soon after. The T5 "Players' Handbook" project seems to have stalled. About the only thing it's being used for is to update the Travellermap site so that all system listed there are in the same format.

I'm not really super interested in it, but a GM I'm talking to seems to be using it, so...

How's Classic Traveller?

I want to use Traveller for my world but feel like the character generation will be a pain to modify to fit the setting, I'm waiting for the Traveller Companion to come out this year because apparently ti has a points buy system in, has someone made one already though?

MGT1e has a point buy system, but honestly the randomgen is far better. YOu could just give your players some choice in gen rather than throwing it out.

True, I'm not against the creation I'm just not sure how much I would need to change for my world, I'll do some research.

Forgot to ask, how are High Guard, Vehicles and the Armour books? Are they good?

But which edition though

>Forgot to ask, how are High Guard, Vehicles and the Armour books? Are they good?
Not those anons, but (assuming MongTrav) I would suggest avoiding High Guard or any of the other career books until you've ran at least 10-12 sessions so you can eyeball what will be overpowered. The splatbooks suffer from tremendous power creep, and a character made using the core rules will be much weaker than a similar character made using one of the splats.

The latest one, idk what edition it is

He said he's looking at an upcoming release, which means he's using the bad edition, 2e.

user, no. Delete your books, go get MGT1e(The 2008 one), and use that. 2e is fucking garbage.

How do I delete a physical book?

>a GM I'm talking to seems to be using it, so...

If he's using it instead of just using pieces of it like the Travellermap update I mentioned, he's the first GM I've heard/read of doing so. He's a very rare man indeed.

>>How's Classic Traveller?

Think simple, not simplistic, and OSR decades before the term was created. It relies more on rulings rather the rules and it's "task system" is little more than "beat an 8". It's easy to modify and otherwise homebrew because it's so "sparse".

There were also a couple versions of Classic. Torturing a D&D analogy here, CT77 was "brown box" D&D which saw a "white box" update as CT81, an introductory "Holmes" version called Starter, and a updated one book "Moldvay"version called The Traveller Book (TTB). MegaTraveller can be thought of as AD&D with MgT as Pathfinder/5e and Cepheus Engine being B/X or Labyrinth Lord.

user, this is an easy answer. You use fire.

Why is 2e shit anyway?

>I want to use Traveller for my world but feel like the character generation will be a pain to modify to fit the setting

In what way? Can you share an example?

>Forgot to ask, how are High Guard, Vehicles and the Armour books? Are they good?

They're grossly overpowered. While you can safely use bits & pieces, you need to be extremely careful about which parts to plunder and which to ignore. As notes, you won't have good feel for what to use/ignore until you've played the game for a while.

>The splatbooks suffer from tremendous power creep, and a character made using the core rules will be much weaker than a similar character made using one of the splats.

To be fair, Classic has that problem too. PCs made with basic chargen and it's 4 years terms pale in comparison to those made with advanced chargen and it's 1 year terms. Classic has 18 careers, 6 in Book 1 and 12 in Supplement 4. Only 5 of those have advanced chargen; army, marines, navy, scouts, and merchants.

>How do I delete a physical book?

Trash can, recycle bin, donation box, fireplace, the list is endless if you bother to think.

>Why is 2e shit anyway?

There's a small "Changes between 1e and 2e" document in the Archives you can read. I don't like much about MgT to begin with and so haven't paid much attention to the differences between editions.

Honestly looking again it won't be too much of an issue it's more to do with military service in the country the players will start in, it's required that everyone do service, so should I just have them draft as their first term? Also unemployed people get shoved into the forces mostly in said country too so should I just get rid of the drifter career and have only draft?

>kidnapped the same person twice, for two entirely different reasons.

I had a group who kidnapped someone from the original kidnappers while hiding that fact from the local government and poor bastard who was being passed around. To say it was convoluted doesn't really explain things, but it's best thought of as a 3 way struggle over one person who didn't want to be in the hands of any of the factions involved.

Sell me on Traveller. I'm a prospective GM who wants to give sci-fi/sci-fantasy a good shot with a massive classic, but I've no idea about it and I like to have a general idea of what I'm getting into before I sit down to read it.

>>The splatbooks suffer from tremendous power creep
That sounds like bullshit, unless you are talking about the concentration of skill awards into smaller lists with the specialties.

Assuming books that aren't High Guard or Mercenary, that is. Those *were* creepy.

Memey boon/bane dice that just comes across poorly.

Oversimplification of many mechanics to the point where they lose their heart and just feel overly generic.

General lack of quality.

>Honestly looking again it won't be too much of an issue it's more to do with military service in the country the players will start in, it's required that everyone do service, so should I just have them draft as their first term?

That sounds good to me. I'd limit just how much they get out of that drafted 1st term. Not all draftees are schlubs, mind you, but most are going to be more interested in doing their time and getting out rather than looking for advancement, skills, etc. I'd rule out commissions and various advanced training during the term and focus on basic skills.

>>Also unemployed people get shoved into the forces mostly in said country too so should I just get rid of the drifter career and have only draft?

Or they're drafted and then become a drifter after discharge or being kicked out.

You could handle it like the draft post-WW2 US up through the mid-60s. Most guys finished high school and either then waited to be drafted or joined to avoid being drafted. They did their time and got out. Those who went to college after high school were eligible to be drafted after graduation. They too could wait and see or join to get it over with. They could also opt for OCS if they wanted. So, initial career paths could look like this:

Draft > Career(s)
Draft > Drifter > Possibly career(s)
College > Draft > Possible commission > Career(s)

There's a getting started pdf in the Archive. You'll find the link in the OP.

Traveller is a game where character generation involves rolling your stats (or pointbuy if you're a faggot) and picking a few skills from a list based on your Education stat and the type of planet you grew up on (frontier ag world, high-tech hive world, etc.). At this point your character is 18 years old. Next, you pick a career you would like to enter, and roll to see if you can actually get hired in that career. If you can, you get to play a little minigame where you acquire more skills, stat increases, equipment, friends, enemies, or even injuries. If you failed to get hired in that career, you can either opt to join the military service or become a space hobo.

Either way, when you finish your first career term, you are now 22 years old. You can either begin play at this point, or stay in for another term (either at your current career or by trying to switch to a new career). However, once you hit age 34, you have to start rolling to avoid age-related impediments, and this gets harder to avoid (and the impediments get more severe) with each term.

Combat in Traveller is a bit more brutal than D&D, because you don't have hit points. Your wounds are subtracted directly from one of your stats, depending on some factors. If one of your stats reaches 0, you are dead.

The typical tone of a Traveller game is a lot like Firefly - a group of semi-retired middle-aged people smuggling and doing other shady jobs to keep up the payments on their spaceship.

>If one of your stats reaches 0, you are dead.
Not quite.
One at zero is impaired, though the specifics vary with edition.
Two at zero is unconscious.
All three at zero is dead.

Sounds good thanks mate

Good summation, user. Let em add:

- Your PC is already a competent individual when play begins. There's no need to "level up".
- Your PC isn't going to get better as play progresses, again no "leveling up".
- Gaining new skills or improving stats after chargen is hard, costly, and time consuming.
- Your PC will begin to age after 34. Not automatically, but by die rolls.
- A skill level of 1 means a PC can be hired to perform that skill. A skill level of 4, forex, means you're a renowned practitioner. Skill levels of 0 are useful too.
- Your PC "improves" by in-game factors like wealth, possessions, and knowledge rather then meta-game factors like levels.
- Combat is DEADLY. A PC with 5 terms in the Marines can be killed as easily as a PC with one term as a bureaucrat.
- Traveller was designed from the first for sandbox play. There is an official setting, but it can be more of a problem than anything else.

>Only one adventure/campaign has been released for it in 3+ years and the guy wrote it died soon after

Are you implying T5 is cursed?

>Only 5 of those have advanced chargen; army, marines, navy, scouts, and merchants.

And those also have basic chargens, so you don't have to use the advanced one at all.

>Sounds good thanks mate

No problem, user. I was glad to offer some ideas.

I'm an oldfag, so my take on the draft in the US between ~'46 and ~'66 is based on what I know happened to my uncles, granduncles, and family friends during that period. Out of 15 uncles and granduncles only two never served. They all were either drafted, including my father, or joined up to avoid being drafted and get it over with. (Joining gave you a few more options). Of the two who didn't serve, one had polio as a kid and wore a leg brace while the other worked in a shipyard right out of high school and was in a "protected" occupation.

This is not to say every guy during the period was either drafted or chose to join, but a majority were and did.

If you expand your world's draft to include stuff like the Peace Corp, AmeriCorp, Civilian Conservation Corp, and similar stuff, you coudl easily have a substantial majority of the planet's population drafted in early adulthood to work in many ways other than digging foxholes or swabbing decks. Many secondary schools have community service requirements for graduation now, so drafting young people for a short term into some community service effort could be public policy on your world.

>Are you implying T5 is cursed?

No. I am saying the only man in 3+ years who managed to write an adventure for it won't be writing any others.

>And those also have basic chargens, so you don't have to use the advanced one at all.

No one is forcing you to use or not use advanced chargen. However, if some players choose to do and others do not, there will be a "skill gap" among the PCs which the GM will then need to take into account.

>Joining gave you a few more options
Was it just a case of 'You have a background in this so you'll go into this' for the draft, or was it 'We need this so you'll be this'? I presume if you joined you could apply to the roles you wanted?

This particular country is an authoritarian jingoistic country where service is coimpulsory and the military is very large. There will still be universities for the intelligent people but I'm think people complete secondary school and either go on to University and then the draft/forces at a higher rank or just go straight from school to forces/draft.

>Was it just a case of 'You have a background in this so you'll go into this' for the draft, or was it 'We need this so you'll be this'? I presume if you joined you could apply to the roles you wanted?

If you joined, you chose which branch to join. If you were drafted, most the time you went to the army. The navy and air force got draftees too, but the army got the lion's share of each year's intake. If you joined, you also had a better chance of selecting the kind of jobs you would train for whereas if you were drafted you got shoveled into whatever job needed filling that day.

>>This particular country is an authoritarian jingoistic country where service is coimpulsory and the military is very large.

Sounds good, but try to think outside of the "Western, liberal, democracy" box. You want you worlds to be different, to be something other than Peoria or Perth. After all it's why Traveller has those different government codes.

There are nations where there's no difference between the police and the military, where the police are a branch of the army. You and I unconsciously assume that there's a "wall" between the two roles, it's part of federal law in the US, but that doesn't mean other places work the same way.

In Traveller canon, the high population, high tech world of Mora - the capital of the Domain of Deneb - follows that example. Police work on Mora is done by the planetary army while wearing army uniforms. One Regina, police sweeps are routine. If a crime occurs near you, you and everyone else in the area are arrested and held until you'e cleared.

On your jingoistic world, a large draft doesn't necessarily mean a large MILITARY. The government there could use the draft to fill low level government jobs. Forex, the people cleaning that elementary school each day could be draftees doing their time in service.

Mix it up a bit. The word "draft" needn't imply "gun".

Well that does sound pretty nice. Might give it a shot. Just a few more things:

What's the basic dice rolling mechanic like?
How does the horizontal progression play out in-game? Is it satisfying to have such a different type of progression, or do you guys ever feel "stuck" with a character?
Are there only humans in this game? If not, how do different races affect balance/gameplay?
Is it hard sci-fi or does it have more soft sci-fi/sci-fantasy elements to it?
Can it support a "stranded on an alien planet" type of campaign or is it more geared towards space exploration?
Are there any elements of other RPGs such as crafting that are left out of focus, or is it complete in its own regard?
Can I play as a comfy vehicles mechanic that can satisfyingly take care of ships, vehicles and whatnot?

>What's the basic dice rolling mechanic like?

2D6, roll over the target number.

>How does the horizontal progression play out in-game?

PC's progress via in-game rewards and not by meta-game mechanisms.

>>do you guys ever feel "stuck" with a character?

There are no cleric, magic-use, fighter, thief "boxes". PCs have had careers which provided them skills. As such, they aren't locked into narrow roles within the group.

>Are there only humans in this game?

No. There several alien species and many one which are human but alien in outlook.

>>If not, how do different races affect balance/gameplay?

Depends on your group and how well they roleplay. At worst, the aliens are rubber suits. At best, they're alien.

>Is it hard sci-fi or does it have more soft sci-fi/sci-fantasy elements to it?

Both. The game can be as crunchy as you want. Look at "Fire Fusion & Steel" for TNE as an example. That being said, Marc Miller, the game's designer, has a degree in sociology. Traveller has been more about exploring people and cultures in the far future than exploring blueprints in the same.

>Can it support a "stranded on an alien planet" type of campaign or is it more geared towards space exploration?

While space exploration is used more often, there are published adventures for both styles and several rules books & supplements across all versions to help you make your own.

>Are there any elements of other RPGs such as crafting that are left out of focus, or is it complete in its own regard?

By crafting you mean PC's building stuff? MgT added some rules in some careers for that, but it's generally and deliberately left up to the needs of the GM and his group.

>Can I play as a comfy vehicles mechanic that can satisfyingly take care of ships, vehicles and whatnot?

Very much so. You're going to be called on to do more than squat in your garage though. There's a lot of stuff to do and not many hands in the usual adventuring party to do it.

>What's the basic dice rolling mechanic like?

Most editions are 2d6 + mods versus a target of 8.

>How does the horizontal progression play out in-game? Is it satisfying to have such a different type of progression, or do you guys ever feel "stuck" with a character?

Never had that problem, there's a universe of possibilities out there.

>Are there only humans in this game? If not, how do different races affect balance/gameplay?

It's human dominated, but there are aliens, and recent canon shows there are more alien races than many of us thought running around underfoot. The major races (who invented jump drive and so get to claim all the planets they can grab) consist of two weird human types, two mostly-comprehensible aliens (one of which is a terran canine uplift), and two weirdies that are difficult to understand. Minor races are all over though, but largely stuck on their homeworld, which helps out with planet-of-the-week style games.

>Is it hard sci-fi or does it have more soft sci-fi/sci-fantasy elements to it?

There are soft elements, but it tries to look at them as hard as it can. Like psions can teleport, but you have to account for angular momentum and gravitational potential when jumping on a planet, so distance and height are limited to what you can safely do.

>Can it support a "stranded on an alien planet" type of campaign or is it more geared towards space exploration?

Oh yeah, shipless campaigns are a thing. There's an old module called "Stranded on Arden" that's all about being stuck on-world, and Tarsis is a whole campaign on just one planet.
There's also the "Chancer" campaign where players drift from world to world, scrounging cash to buy tickets to their next destination. The Dumarest of Terra books were basically this, with Dumarest trying to find his way home again.

(cont)

>Are there any elements of other RPGs such as crafting that are left out of focus, or is it complete in its own regard?

There's no real crafting system per se, just skill checks. I wouldn't be surprised if someone had built one over the years though, there's a ridiculous amount of third party stuff floating around.

>Can I play as a comfy vehicles mechanic that can satisfyingly take care of ships, vehicles and whatnot?

Yeah, you can totally do that. A free trader game is viable, and fits well with the planet-of-the-week format. Pull into port, trade some goods, get involved in local shenanigans, load up cargo, head off to the next planet.

Yeah I was going to go with the police and army being basically the same thing, and it would be authoritarian and jingoistic from our point of view but the people of the country are actually quite happy and well looked after providing they toe the line. Health is good, unemployment and crime is very low (apparently), fuck all freedom from our perspective but it seems to work for the people there.

Drafting into other areas is something I've thought about too, what if they draft people into certain industries where resources are needed, I know in WW2 a lot of women in the UK worked in the factories producing shells and such, not sure if they were drafted though.

>fuck all freedom from our perspective but it seems to work for the people there.

Exactly. That's the kind of great world building mindset I was blathering about. People call it the "We're not in Kansas anymore" moment. Your players are going to observe something they think is completely abnormal which the people involved think is completely normal.

>>what if they draft people into certain industries where resources are needed

That could be part of it. People could also do their draft time in various socially oriented "stoop labor" jobs. Think hospital orderlies, wellness checks on seniors, street cleaning, park maintenance, janitorial work, environmental work like brush clearing, recycling, waste collection, you get the picture. No one really complains because everyone is either doing it or had to do it. It's considered part of becoming an adult.

Those who do it straight out of high school are involved in more "blue collar" tasks while those who do it out of college are involved in either managing others or more "white collar" tasks.

One wrinkle might be to give the world some resource, either gathered or processed, whose export provides a big chunk of the planet's off-world trade. Production and sale is a gov't monopoly and people could be drafted into various aspects of that production.

Sounds right up my alley. Guess I'll give it a read and make something up for next week.

Forgot one thing, are robot PCs a thing?

Funnily enough my world has a material that increases the efficiency and power of internal combustion and rocket engines a thousandfold but is a very rare material and very expensive, it's only needed and used in small quantities but the demands are growing and as a result of that there has been a space race without end to look for that resource, and others elsewhere both in the solar system and now beyond. The time I have the world at currently is at the point where they have early interstellar travel and are going into the unknown looking for the resource on plants, moons and asteroids.

I know Traveller is more travel the universe in the blink of an eye thing but I think it'll be fine for a world set around a solar system and the odd remote star.

People could be drafted to help mine and refine the resource. It'snot just the country that has access to it, a few countries do, but it's the most valuable resource so drafting people to help get it would make sense.

Thanks for the help mate, I'm new to proper worldbuilding and it's a bit overwhelming, there's so much to think about.

Yeah, but avoid the official splats for it. Classic's is really super crunchy (it's actually part of the Megatraveller shift over to using Striker 30mm rules for everything) and Mongoose's is just terrible. The Classic JTAS Robots setup is simple and usable, and under Mongoose 1e third party you'll find 13Mann Verlag's Traveller Robots, which is very good.

>Forgot one thing, are robot PCs a thing?

They can be. A 3rd party publisher. DGP, for MegaTraveller had one called AB-101 or Aybee Wan Owen in a long series of adventures called "Grand Tour" and "Four Knights" in their magazine, Traveller Digest.

There have been rules for robots/androids since Classic's Book 8. DGP extrapolated them to create an android PC. MgT has rules for the same in one or more of it's splats.

Like aliens, robot/android PCs are only as good as the player behind them. DGP always included lots of suggestions on how to play AB-101 in it's adventures. Whether people bothered to follow them or just copied LCDR Data is another question. Over the years I've only had one player attempt to play an android PC and they abandoned the attempt after a few sessions because they felt they weren't getting it "right". I thought they were doing fine and only had to "enforce" the PC's limitation a few times, but the player wanted out and we managed it easily enough.

>it's only needed and used in small quantities but the demands are growing and as a result of that there has been a space race without end to look for that resource

Traveller has lanthanum and zucchai crystals while 2300AD has tantlaum, so you're in good company there.

>I know Traveller is more travel the universe in the blink of an eye thing but I think it'll be fine for a world set around a solar system and the odd remote star.

More like in 168 hours, but I know what you're saying. Traveller is good in single systems too, so don't feel you need to go interstellar.

>People could be drafted to help mine and refine the resource.

Yup. While mining is a specialized and dangerous job, draftees could assist mining & refining operations in all sort ways. As you know, not everyone working in a mine rides the elevator down to the coal face.

>Thanks for the help mate, I'm new to proper worldbuilding and it's a bit overwhelming, there's so much to think about.

Again, no problem. You may be new to it and you may find it overwhelming, but it seems to me that you're going a pretty damn good job already!

One word of warning for someone this happens to all the time: Don't get so wrapped in world building that you forget to play! Not only will your players either ignore or not come into contact with 90% of what you create, there's a law of diminishing returns at work too. You'll find yourself devoting hours to some fiddly little bit which really adds nothing when it come to playing the setting. Learn when it's time to stop writing and when to pick up the dice. Believe me when I say it's something I STILL have trouble doing!

What I'm worried is I start playing in the world and something happens or the players do or ask me something and I don't have an answer to. Do I just improvise there and then even if it doesn't actually work, or may not work in hindsight, or do I just say to them 'I haven't made that yet'?

>I just improvise there and then

That's the general solution whenever players go off the rails. The alternative is to railroad them, and that's no fun for anybody.

>Do I just improvise there and then

As already explained, that's all you can do. Traveller is full of encounter and tables to help you do just that.

Don't ever say you haven't made something yet. Use the game's many mechanisms and systems to lay out a "skeleton" for you which you then "dress up" as needed.

I know but if it's going to be important to the world you're still building what happens if you improvise and realise you should have done something else or w/e
>lay out a "skeleton" for you which you then "dress up" as needed.
That makes sense

>I know but if it's going to be important to the world you're still building what happens if you improvise and realise you should have done something else or w/e

All I can suggest is that you make your mistakes work. You either tweak what you've prepared earlier to accommodate them or you "explain" them as one time occurrences.

Remember this though, sometimes mistakes make something better. Sometimes they point out something you would have done if you'd only thought of it.

I suppose I can always say what happens in game isn't canon in my world just to be a dick.

Well if your improv turns out something that doesn't make sense, like a plot hole or something, try looking at it from another angle and see if you can't turn it into something. When you sit down after the session and notice this, say to yourself "hey, that doesn't seem to make sense, I wonder what could explain that?" and then go from there. For example, if the planetary police acted funny and let the PCs go when in hindsight they clearly should have been arrested, maybe they weren't real police but imposters working for a revolutionary group about to do something nefarious, when the PCs accidentally bumped into them and they were suddenly obligated to act the part of real cops.
And if you still can't come up with something, don't worry too much about it. Players are generally very distracted during a session and often won't notice even fairly sizable inconsistencies. Plus they may have come up with their own theory as to "what's really going on"; listen for that, and then steal it.

Classic's was the best, it was my introduction to Traveller and while now I have it all physically, its still the version I go back to.

Sounds great! Thanks for pointing me in the right direction and all the info you've provided, lads.

>I suppose I can always say what happens in game isn't canon in my world just to be a dick.

That's not being a dick. That's making the game your game.

Your setting is your setting. Your world is your world. It's level internal consistency is your decision.

Everything everyone else does, did, or published only matters if YOU say it does. Nothing else is of any consequences.

>Sounds great! Thanks for pointing me in the right direction and all the info you've provided, lads.

Glad to help. While I used robot/andorid NPCs all the time, I only had that one player who tried playing android PC. For whatever reason, he changed PC because he thought he wasn't playing it "right", which weren't my or the other players' opinions at all. The fact that my groups never tried android PCs again meant we missed out on something.

>It's human dominated, but there are aliens, and recent canon shows there are more alien races than many of us thought running around underfoot.

T5's "NIL explosion" is perhaps the biggest fundamental change to the game. All the other stuff like the FFW, Rebellion, Virus, etc, were events in the setting's history. The "NIL explosion" changes the makeup of the setting itself. I have a few reservations, but generally like the idea. More NILs means more options for the GM. It also means more work and that is going to be a problem.

Most of us use what can best be described as semi-canonical settings. We use those pieces of canon we like not just because we like them but because they save us time. We don't need to create everything from scratch if we use the this about 3I, this about that map, this form that book, and so forth. Peppering out semi-canonical settings with NILs means we're going to need to describe those NILs on some level.

I'm not talking about creating languages and species' histories. Instead I'm just talking shape, size, number of eyes, number of limbs, general behavior, and so forth. You know, the kind of stuff players would ask when you say "It's a Zog from Snog" or "Derp from Herp".

I took a look at T5's sophont maker section last night thinking they might be a way to boil down the autism enough to create a few 2D6 tables which would put together those kinds of simple descriptions. Boy, was I wrong. The headache's gone but my eyes are still bleeding.

Jump-1

>I know Traveller is more travel the universe in the blink of an eye thing but I think it'll be fine for a world set around a solar system and the odd remote star.

Just scale down the hexmap and keep the travel time. A Jump-2 planet takes a couple weeks to get to, even though it's in the same system. Maybe make a few different hexmaps with the planetary orbits charted so you can easily figure out the variable distance and travel times at different points in the year if that's your thing.

Alternately, pick up the Orbital rules from the Mongoose 1e or Cepheus Engine folders.