Traveller is a classic science fiction system first released in 1976. In its original release it was a general purpose SF system, but a setting was soon developed called The Third Imperium, based on classic space opera tropes of the 60s, 70s, and 80s, with a slight noir tint.
Though it can support a wide range of game types, the classic campaign involves a group of retired veterans tooling around in a spaceship, taking whatever jobs they can find in a desperate bid to stay in business, a la Firefly or Cowboy Bebop.
Master Folders:
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1lsz371hqyn5e/traveller
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/puqo88hi0x9vs/TRAVELLER
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/lcajhdj00lsyo/MONGOOSE_TRAVELLER
http://www.4shared.com/folder/SgVP1VoX/Traveller.html
>Classic
https://mega.co.nz/#F!DkdyQITY!Y1VxiiEtuqDwhHo5wEw65w
>Mongoose
https://mega.co.nz/#F!yg8gXRDJ!NMUmuB-cH9fINnkRv0242A
Galactic Maps:
http://travellermap.com/
http://www.utzig.com/traveller/iai.shtml
Resources:
http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Traveller
http://zho.berka.com/
http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Discuss/
http://wiki.travellerrpg.com/Main_Page
http://www.freelancetraveller.com/index.html
Music to Explosive Decompression to:
>Old Timey Space music
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w34fSnJNP-4&list=RD02FH8lvwXx_Y8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0cbkOm9p1k
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDXfQTD_rgQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FH8lvwXx_Y8
>Slough Feg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZM7DJqiYonw&list=PL8DEC72A8939762D4
>Goldsmith - Alien Soundtrack
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwCcrhUdgOI&list=PL56A81A723975A961
>Herrmann - The Day the Earth Stood Still
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ULhiVqeF5U
>Jean Michel Jarre - Oxygene
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlBIQqIPaGg
>Tangerine Dream - Hyberborea
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LOZbdsuWSg
>Brian Bennett - Voyage
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZioqPPugEI
So anyway, as it turns out Spinward Traveller was just a scam, but I've been watching this low-budget show called Dark Matter recently and it's almost like we got a Traveller TV series anyway.
The jump drive works differently, but the setting is very similar to the Solomani Rim, with the Galactic Authority in place of the Imperium, and various megacorps and rebel factions vying for power.
The basic premise is that six people wake up from cryo on a small vessel, their memories lost due to some kind of malfunction. They soon find out that they were a band of cutthroat mercenaries wanted for all sorts of crimes, and that there was no malfunction -- one of the crew deliberately wiped their memories.
I found scans of a bunch of the Group 1 publications the other day. Theta Borealis sector is weird.
>>48092394
Dark Matter is fucking awesome.
Four is probably one of the baddest asses on any scifi show ever.
>Three: "So you're with me on this right? No connections between us, so we sell the ship and go our separate ways."
>Four: "No. We don't have enough information to move forward. We stick together until we do.
>*pause*
>Four: "Besides. I wouldn't sell the ship. I'd take it. For myself."
>>48093053
More Group 1.
>>48093523
>>48092288
Is there a PDF the summarizes the setting, Imperium or whatever, in a quick & dirty fashion without going into autistic million-planet stats and such?
>>48094832
>>48095212
The MGT Spinward Marches book gives an acceptable overview, though the artwork is poor and still has the Aslan looking a less alien than they should.
>>48095228
>>48095333
OK, thanks, I'll take a look at it. I just wanted a short synopsis of what the Traveller setting is like, without all the detail I seem to find on all the Traveller websites and PDF collections.
>>48095387
Looks like I can't upload the maps, they're tif files. I'll have to do those separately.
>>48095474
Group 1 was a third party publisher that was given the distant Theta Borealis sector to publish material for. All this stuff is long out of print and hard to find.
From Freelance Traveller:
>Theta Borealis Sector. The most far flung of all the Traveller campaign sectors is the Theta Borealis Sector, which was the land grant of Group One, another of the Traveller publishers of the 1980s. It's located five sectors spinward of the Third Imperium and two sectors rimward of the Zhodani Consulate, in a sector so far from the rest of the Traveller Universe that I'm not sure you could even call it part of Charted Space.
>I suppose if you want a sector that doesn't have any of the traditional issues of the Third Imperium,you could go with this area, which was detailed through a number of world books and some ship-based adventures, all of which were connected together in the sector booklet, Theta Borealis Sector—but I've never seen most of the Group One books in my years of collecting Traveller.
>>48095532
>>48095575
>>48095619
Man, some of these covers are so damn cool.
>>48095639
Dangit, I accidentally the file.
>>48095666
>>48095704
>>48095754
>>48095792
Last one I can post here, the remaining module, Hydronaut, is going with the maps up on uploadmb in a few minutes.
>>48095899
Here we go, Hydronaut, and planetary maps for all the above.
http://www.uploadmb.com/dw.php?id=1467585752
>>48092288
>https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1lsz371hqyn5e/traveller
moved to here:
https://mega.nz/#F!WRQnUIJQ!RWEzUCE1dTTxdQDLkHvNfg
>>48095899
>>48095792
>>48095754
>>48095704
>>48095666
>>48095619
>>48095575
>>48095532
>>48095474
>>48095387
>>48095228
>>48094832
>>48093523
>>48093053
Man, Classic Traveller was a... different... time. Hoo boy.
I wonder if our era of stuff will look this way to people when a similar interval of time has elapsed?
What about the New stuff? Are there any new books other than the 'core'?
>>48096272
Okay, that's updated.
>>48098537
Keep in mind this is third party stuff from 1980 by a minor publisher, who went out of business. Shoestring budgets and all.
Still, that's some unusual artwork there. I'm torn whether my favorite cover of these is Lomodo or Nystalux.
>>48098933
You mean MGT 2e? There's a couple of books out.
I personally prefer Classic, largely because of Mongoose's poor editing. You'll find errors here and there in Classic stuff, but Mongoose is on a whole other level.
Still, Mongoose and Classic are very similar, so it's generally easy to translate stuff between the two. The only real hangup is Mongoose switched its armor system to damage reduction instead of hit deflection, in keeping with recentunrealistictrends, so you have to translate some of the armor and weapon stuff. Oh, and characters are more powerful in MGT, more in line with the extended chargen from some of Classic's supplements.
>>48099771
I play GURPS. I just like having a shit-ton of books to compare one to the other. And I like the pretty pictures. MGT 2e had REAL pretty pictures.
>>48095333
>>48095469
The synopsis in the basic GURPS Traveller book is a bit shorter and very good.
The setting emerged from post-WWII SF for the most part, though there is still a little Lensman and Family D'Alembert in there. With that understanding, it will also happily support post-Star Wars movie and TV SF play styles, as it is intended, in most editions, to be tool boxy enough that making up shit as you go along has lots of support. Missing a particular toy from a TV show? TLAR that thing.
The setting encompasses about 200 years in good detail some 3000 years in less detail, another 7000 as an overview, and a pre-history going back 300,000 years that is, understandably, mostly a mystery.
Different eras encourage different styles of play and in-setting narrative, though not all have been properly handled by the teams that wrote for them.
>>48092288
Anyone know where to find the late-80s Megatraveller Imperial Encyclopedia? Everywhere I'm looking just has the other two core books, Players Manual and Referees Manual.
>>48101254
I've got that, though it's kind of massive at 48 megs -- it needs an OCR, because it's just images right now. I'll upload it in a minute.
Here's my Megatraveller directory if you're looking for anything else:
DGP 875 - MegaTraveller - World Builder's Handbook.pdf
DGP 879 - MegaTraveller - Alien Vilani & Vargr.pdf
Fan - MegaTraveller - Deep Shadows.pdf
Far Future Enterprises - MegaTraveller - Robots.pdf
GDW 211 - MegaTraveller - Players Manual.pdf
GDW 218 - MegaTraveller - Fighting Ships of the Shattered Imperium.pdf
GDW 223 - MegaTraveller - Assignment Vigilante.pdf
GDW 224 - MegaTraveller - Astrogator's Guide to the Diaspora Sector.pdf
GDW 225 - MegaTraveller - Arrival Vengeance (No OCR).pdf
Megatraveller - Errata.pdf
MegaTraveller - Grand Census.pdf
Megatraveller - Imperial Encyclopedia.pdf
MegaTraveller - Lab Ship Deckplans.pdf
Megatraveller - Players' Manual.pdf
Megatraveller - Rebellion Sourcebook b.pdf
Megatraveller - Rebellion Sourcebook.pdf
Megatraveller - Referee's Manual.pdf
MegaTraveller - Starship Operators Manual.pdf
MegaTraveller - The Flaming Eye (Campaign).pdf
MegaTraveller - Vilani & Vargr.pdf
Tiffany Star 00.pdf
>>48101493
>Tiffany Star 00.pdf
A bunch of these are on one of the old archive sites. They useful or just a completist thing?
Hey, new to traveller. If I wanted to DM a campaign with players on a ship as they travel the cosmos and deal with problems between crew members, what with a fuck huge ship as well, would it be better to use Mongoose or Classic?
>>48101254
Imperial Encyclopedia:
http://www.uploadmb.com/dw.php?id=1467606268
>>48101659
Either one is fine.
If it's a "fuckhuge" ship, the way I'd do it is that I'd use Classic with just the basic chargen (because it's faster) and then let players sit down at the table and generate a nice set of crew members that they could pick and choose from for various missions. Sort of an ensemble cast thing. If some of them die, you draw from the remaining crew, and when that stock starts to get low you have the table spend a few minutes next session generating a few more.
>>48101651
I don't know, I haven't really looked at it.
>>48101802
My goal is to kinda make it as if my players are on board a large ship, just as if they're people living on board a ship out of Battletech or Halo. They could be doctors or pilots or marines etc...
>>48101659
Either is fine, though you might want to look at bits of other editions for assistance. The late MegaTraveller adventure Arrival Vengeance is a big ship on a mission adventure, and talks about ways to play that. It also has a big ship, the Lightning class Cruiser. This ship has a larger set of plans in a boxed set for CT ("Azhanti High Lightning") in case you want to have the occasional problem onboard.
Real cosmos exploring, where-no-one-you-know-has-gone-before style, requires heading for the edge of the map, assuming you use the default setting, or playing in an era of that setting where things have gone to hell and your old information is no longer reliable.
Alternately you can use another type of FTL and head for the far stars.
>>48101866
Yeah, you can do that with either edition just fine. Classic with Citizens of the Imperium will cover all your bases. Mongoose Core is pretty good, but you might want to grab a few careers from the Spica Career books. Those are a bit uneven, but generally pretty decent.
>>48101866
This type of game can change a lot based on what that large ship is doing. Active military can range from the wartime pressure cooker of the new Galactica to the gunboat recon of Star Trek, and a few modes in between; a big commercial ship can be Quark, Red Dwarf, or The Love Boat, or something a little more serious
>>48101802
>anon delivers
Thank you!
Looks like I'm good on the rest of your list. Hopefully, one of the OP folder maintainers will add the Encyclopedia to their Megatraveller stuff, so no one else will have to ask...Except I'm probably the only one who plays MT: everybody else is either classic or Mongoose...
A Lightning
>>48102096
There are certainly MT players out there. It has its issues, but so does every other edition.
>>48101987
Or, utter peacetime mission, where the adventure is personal drama among the crew, with the occasional temporary deployment or shore leave.
>>48102147
It takes the right Ref AND players, but is a viable mode of play.
>>48102147
The plot as I see it consists of the payers playing out the usual hands as crewmenbers, maybe redshirts, until they get pulled out of warp and into battle, where they barely survive. Did the engine malfunction or was it sabotage? We're the intelligence spooks up to something or potential mutiny? Where do we find replacement materials? Where are we now; how to get home?
How would these work?
>>48102268
You might want to read "The Long Way Home", one of the few really good bits to come out of the T4 and T20 period. Much smaller ship, though.
>>48102268
Misjumps are a thing in Traveller canon. You can wind up 36 hops away from your departure point just by the roll of the dice. Further jumps may also be possible, especially if you throw in psionics or some weird experimental tech. It's a big galaxy, and there's a load of unexplored space.
Pic related, it's the reach of Charted Space in the official setting. Outside the zone once controlled by the Ancients, you'll find no more humans, but a load of minor races stuck with slower than light drives.
>>48102540
>You can wind up 36 hops away
Hop is, as of T5, a different drive than Jump. Hop-1 is ten parsecs (hexes on the sector maps), so a Hop-36 misjump is a looong way out.
>>48102340
What's T4? Is it like how DND has 3e, 5e, etc?
Jumps are funky eh? I can get behind that.
>>48102540
But if the misjump was accidental, there won't be ships waiting there to attack you. You're in a giant void, a year, year and a half normal-space travel from anywhere inhabited. Nobody's gonna be there unless they were expecting YOU to be there. So, sabotage, most likely.
Getting back? If the jump drive doesn't work, and you can't capture/salvage one of your attackers ships, you put everybody in cold sleep, put out a distress call, point the ship towards the nearest friendly world, and hope they rescue you before your power plant runs out of fuel.
>>48102588
>as of T5
I haven't read it, but I might.
>>48102597
Traveller suffered from a crazy edition bloat for a while. Pic related.
It goes:
Classic Traveller (1977)
MegaTraveller (1987)
Traveller: The New Era (1993)
Traveller4 (1996)
GURPS Traveller, which is the setting in GURPS
TravellerHERO, which the same in the HERO system
T20, which is an awful D20 version because everyone was doing it
MGT, the Mongoose one
T5 which was a trainwreck
MGT2, the second edition of Mongoose, coming out now
>>48102597
>What's T4?
There are nine editions of Traveller. Each uses a different core mechanic, though several are related. As a general rule, subsystems like starships and world building can cross-pollenate.
CT = Classic Traveller (and actually two editions all by itself)
MT = MegaTraveller
TNE = Traveller The New Era
T4 = "Marc Miller's Traveller", dates from the mid to late 90s, and had a very short run
T20 = Traveller20, designed to somehow take advantage of the D20 thing; before D20Modern came along
GT = GURPS Traveller
TH = Traveller Hero
MGT = Mongoose Traveller, now in a second edition itself
T5 = Traveller 5
>>48102696
>as of T5
>I haven't read it, but I might.
The hardcover is a bit of a train wreck. The current "5.09" revision is much easier to absorb.
>>48102695
>there won't be ships waiting there to attack you.
Depends on where you go. Due to the cost of fueling and moving large ships, major powers like the Imperium and Zhodane will keep them spread around in various systems until a war breaks out and they get moved toward the front. If you ended up in somebody's back yard they may attack you, especially if they're interdicting that system for some reason.
If you've jumped into some old minor race's home turf, you may have a lot of exotically armed system defense boats coming at you hoping to steal the awesome FTL tech you so obviously have -- a race without FTL might spend centuries exploiting its own star system, including having interplanetary wars in their own back yard. That can be a nasty surprise waiting for Scouts and other explorers.
>>48102757
Misjumps are also hard on the drives, and sometimes on the crew.
>>48102540
>but a load of minor races stuck with slower than light drives.
Good thing, too, given that the Imperium just happens to occupy a huge choke point between the tow halves of the spiral arm.
>>48102802
It's possible to cross the gap in various spots despite the scarcity of stars. The Aslan have found their own little corridor through the Riftspan Reaches, while the K'Kree have moved through to press the Vargr on their Trailing edge.
Going to be house sitting in a cabin in west virginia for like 2 months with shit internet and looking for some stuff to do.
What books do I need to play Traveler alone?
>>48103034
Classic Traveller books 1-3 (the core rules)
There are random tables for sector generation, merchant ship cargoes, spaceship encounters, animal, people encounters, and patrons for one-shot adventures. It's honestly one of the best games for solo play.
Citizens of the Imperium lets you generate civilian NPCs, and 76 Patrons is basically a book of mini adventures. Spinward Marches or Solomani Rim are useful if you don't want to build your own sector from scratch.
>>48103034
The long-standing solo modes for Traveller include ship building, world building, character/crew building (chargen being a sub-game in many editions: survive to retirement!), and then using those things to solo the merchant game, speculating on cargo, filling the gaps with freight and mail, and seeing if you can make enough profit to stay ahead of the bank and keep flying.
Nearly any core book or set will allow this, though a few editions have bumped ship building to a separate book.
>>48103124
Thanks.
Last time I agreed to do this, I read the series of books I brought with me in the first 10 days and took to making tooth picks and screwing with people down the mountain with a ghillie suit.
>>48103034
Depends on what you want to do. If you like wargaming, there's plenty of stuff to do on that end with the various rules for combat. Striker has support for minis, so you can set up a battlefield in one room of the cabin and play space general.
A merchant ship game can easily be done solo. I'd suggest getting Merchant Prince from Classic, or maybe getting the GURPS Far Trader book and using its trade rules, which are allegedly the best, according to some guy on the internet.
(The standard trading rules in Classic and Mongoose are a bit thin; they assume you're not going to go into trading seriously, and so you wind up with stuff like golden pairs where you can just fly back and forth between two stars and have a guaranteed profit forever. Fine if trading's just an adjunct to adventure, but not enough if it's the main deal.)
If you want an adventure I'd suggest getting a GM emulator to handle that, like Mythic, CRGE, or one of the other ones. The published adventures for Classic could be used with that, as most of them are basically skeletons that a GM has to flesh out himself, leaving plenty for the GME to do.
>>48103156
>Striker has support for minis, so you can set up a battlefield in one room of the cabin and play space general.
Well, Space Captain. Striker is basically an RPG for Captains and Lieutenants. You give your troops orders, then the game handles the question of whether or not your troops got enough of their self preservation trained out of them. Playable solo with a little more OpFor setup.
>>48103227
Cool, I haven't read Striker yet, so I didn't know how broad it got.
I know you can be space admiralty with Fifth Frontier War, though.
>>48103256
Striker also hits the "Design Stuff" solo button, as it has the earliest version of the vehicle construction rules. It can build a wide variety of military hardware and *emulate* modern stuff as that term was defined at the time. Don;t expect it to match weights and fuel durations with real life, though. Thirty pages of frames and components is just not the same as a century of mechanical engineers tinkering with gear ratios, funky armor ideas, and stupid design decisions fixed by the guy on the front who has already lost a crew to the mistake...
>>48103256
Fifth Frontier War, Dark Nebula, Invasion: Earth, and Imperium
Anyone wanting to do Solo Traveller should look at this
Anyone know if there's a MgT version of this here fighter?
http://www.freelancetraveller.com/features/shipyard/tne/kia.html
Or how to convert it, at least.
>>48102696
>>48102702
Both forgetting the second GURPS Traveller edition? Shame. GURPS Traveller Interstellar Wars is a new edition! Was a new edition. RIP GURPS Traveller. :(
I play CT, but GT1 has an entire supplement about the modular cutter. It's beautiful.
May as well ask while this thread lives - anyone have PDFs of the 1977 edition of Classic Traveller? The original versions of LBB 1-3, with less references to some weird "third imperium" nonsense, and slightly different ship design rules.
>>48109331
The GURPS4 book for Traveller is in the same "sort of" position as Mongoose 2e and CT1977v1981.
>>48109225
Ignore Peter Gray. Look at the original
>>48109890
And the art.
Does anyone have a pic of a Corsair that actually looks like a corsair (i.e. not the pic in Mongoose 1E)? That's the ship my players got for our upcoming campaign and I'd like to be able to see what it looks like.
>>48109787
I'd definitely call both GTIW and RTT2 new editions. 77/81, less so, but you could argue it.
All pales before the clusterfuck of T5, anyway.
>>48109962
You want a piece of art... that matches the ship's stats? And plausible deckplans, I assume? I mean, best of luck, and the Corsair is _relatively_ sane compared to something like the mercball, but good luck. Really. You'll need it.
(deckplans, art and stats are only loosely connected to each other and any notion of reality)
>>48109962
http://www.trisen.com/sol/ship.asp?Topic=10&Page=25&iClass=NISHEM&iType=P
http://biomass.deviantart.com/art/Nishemani-Class-Corsair-496351004
http://biomass.deviantart.com/art/Nishemani-Corsair-603136903
Deck plan:
http://seegras.discordia.ch/Roleplay/Traveller/Shipyard/Corsair/
>>48109890
Interesting that the later version had two extra crew and a stateroom. Maybe a long range version that didn't have to run back to the carrier after a dogfight?
It's a pretty standard 50-t, 6g fighter. Just build it in your edition's ship construction rules and see what you get?
>>48110146
>You want a piece of art... that matches the ship's stats? And plausible deckplans, I assume?
>>48109962
The Corsair has relatively consistent art from CT/MT and GT, but like most ships is going to vary a bit.
The one part of the original description that really doesn't stand up is the ability to dock a Scout ship internally. Nothing you try will make it not look like a snake that swallowed a speedboat.
>>48109962
Not sure about the utility of a ship that effectively has "I AM A PIRATE" painted on its side. A surplus patrol cruiser, or a standard merchant ship with engine and armament improvements would make more sense.
Possibly the original hull was a low-end patrol/system defense design the Navy sold cheap to planetary governments, so that's what the pirates had to work with?
>>48110780
50 tons leaves a lot of space for extras, depending on your design system.
How would I go about statting the volume of an internal mall, /tg/?
I'm trying to make the equivalent of a modern luxury sea liner for MgT, and, never having been on one myself, took to looking at pictures of them. Turns out a lot of them have a setup where there's a huge central mall with a bunch of stuff on it (and empty space) between two "walls" of suites. Would it be sufficient to just convey this as "luxuries"? How should I determine mathematically how large a space it would take up?
>>48110955
Given the original spec, it may have started as a Scout design, but I'm inclined to think of it as a multi-purpose design that happens to be decent at pirating. The variable identity features don't mean squat unless there are thousands of these running around in legitimate pursuits per sector to hide amongst. Think of it as an alternate Type R in origins. Fit the bigger drives and fuel and make the stateroom and turret changes, and now its a Corsair.
>>48111013
Luxuries (per MGT) is probably the right way to cost it, but it can literally be however large you have room for.
>>48111013
Have an amount of empty space equal to the tonnage of whatever staterooms face onto the promenade? If your looking for actual dimensions, a "ton" of space is 13.5 cubic meters, or about 2.3 meters square, with a 2.5 meter ceiling.
If you want an actual shopping mall, just make each "store" the equivalent of 2-3 staterooms.
>>48111113
>>48111393
Okay, thanks! P:
>>48111520
For illustrative purposes, the hotel that one of the conventions I attend has a little shop for soda, candy and travel goods next to Check-In. It's about a half ton (5'x5'). Another hotel has a similar space but about twice that size. A museum gift shop will typically be about one to two staterooms (2 to 8 tons) in size, as well a typical small shop in a modern shopping mall. A typical four anchor shopping mall with two floors, wide promenade, food court, etc is going to run to 30,000 dtons.
>>48112100
Thanks! And whoa, that's already well into the capship size for my setting. Though I guess it makes sense; modern pleasure liners are like floating cities unto themselves. I wonder if a smaller megacorp would -have- the dosh to field something that big and still turn a profit after the maintenance/life support fees?
Actually, I wonder about corps and megacorps themselves, a lot. I wish there were some way to get a good grip on just how big a business' budget was based on what they do and what their holdings are like.
>>48113285
The average subsector will have 2-3 worlds of Pop-9 (4-6 billion, about as populated Earth), plus almost always at least 1 world of Pop-10 (40-60 billion, 10x Earth population). So a full sector of 16 subsectors is going to have ~180x the population and economy of today's Earth. I'd say battleship tonnage cruise ships in space is no big deal.
Your passenger list is likely going to be rich, noble, and/or well connected, which makes it the perfect setting for corporate or political intrigue.
>>48114127
Good point. I guess I'm worried mainly because I'm limiting my setting to the Islands, so most corporations will be restricted to 1, maybe 2 worlds, with a handful of "multi-state" corporations. So I was worried they might have a lot less individual resources in comparison to the Imperial megacorps given as examples in the source material, and that their individual capabilities for building ships might be much less, since the average TL in the Islands is about 11.
>>48114814
Still working on that cruise ship; jesus fuck capships need so much fuel per jump.
>>48109160
Does that Heavy Worlder/Alien have three arms?
>>48116325
Oh my god I didn't even notice that.
Fuck yes, a Traveller thread!
>>48115913
Yeah, but it's handy when you're a small ship full of criminals to know that the Imperial capship in the system you just entered is not going to follow you out through a jump, because it can't afford to go haring off after two-bit criminals.
It might be a harrowing wait to scoop fuel from that gas giant and move to the 100d line with that monstrous thing maneuvering towards you at like 3g, sending radio commands to stand down, but if you get out in time, you only have to worry about small vessels coming after you. The really big capital ships usually only jump on schedules or when a war breaks out.
>>48116325
He has four. One holds rifle. Two hold scanner. One points randomly in a direction no one is actually looking.
>>48116325
>>48116343
>>48116364
He's a Sydite, from Ley Sector. They are one of the most extreme Ancients mods, with extra arms. Rather vaguely described in early appearances, they were given more detail in T20.
>>48116360
Which is why the Navy also operates Couriers, Pickets, and Corvettes. Mess with a Fer De Lance at your peril.
>>48113285
When I say "four anchor", I'm including four large department stores in that size. If you want twenty small shops along a wide walkway, you are looking at 100 to 150 dtons.
So, I'm GMing right now. My players are on a Shooting Range on Extolay's Starport. How can I troll them?
>>48117584
The Port has a Gun Club? Okay.
Have some other visitor firing something that only your Gun Combat-3 guy will recognize the sound of.
>>48117724
Naval Depot there. So a couple of Navy-jocks and dumb marines like to argue and shoot to show they are better. I'll let darrian appear with some TL high-as-fuck there to troll the Sword Worlder. (We're playing GURPS, btw)
>>48117584
How about this one: Some shady guy sees the PCs playing with their expensive toys, offers to let them in on a place where they can buy some really good stuff, cheap, no questions asked. Just show up at this place tomorrow, bring lots of credits.
Of course it's actually an attempted mugging - the shady guy was supposed to find some rich offworlders, and he foolishly picks the PCs, so most likely it either ends in a shootout, or they make off with the PCs cash briefly, only to have the PCs hunt them down and kill them.
>>48117909
Nice. I'll keep this idea (in some form of it) for later. Right now, they are just waiting while their ship refuels and they continue to Arden
Alright, lads. Here's what my exercise in autism has yielded.
"Named after the fabled Imperial vessel which first brought Jump technology to the Islands, the Islandbridge StarLines El Dorado is the largest private vessel in the cluster, with a weight that easily matches the largest capital vessels fielded by the Great Powers, coming in at 120,000dtons. Featuring a massive internal concourse of shops and other delights and amusements for the rich, including an octuple-size library, it features a 507-man crew, 250 16dton penthouses, 1,000 8dton suites, and a further 1,500 4dton staterooms, in addition to ones for the crew. It carries a whopping 51,200dtons of l-hyd, allowing it to operate for four weeks and make 2 Jump-2's without refueling. Safety conscious, it carries 5,507 escape pods. For coasting periods around scenic points such as gas giants and orbital memorials, it features a flight of 12 pinnances and 12 shuttles for those who would like to get closer, as well as 4 dedicated maintenance pods and a tug for recovering vessels in the event of an emergency. It also features 20 air/rafts, which assist in ground crew operations, such as passenger ferrying and resupply. It features a cavernous 225.5dtons of cargo bay for extra accouterments. In the case of an emergency the ship's medics can't handle, it features ten emergency low-berths for transporting patients in cryo.
It costs 2,973,813Cr. per month to maintain, as well as 11,015,000Cr. in monthly life support. The crew salary is doubtlessly astronomical, but at a ballpark 4,000Cr/Month/Crewman, it comes out to around 2.02MCr. per month.
The ship itself costs 35,685,756,000, or 35.6b credits."
(The formatting got fucked when I ported it to PDF, but you get the jist. Probably fucked up the formatting on my spiel, too, I pasted it from the .txt doc I'm working with.)
Wonder how much your average fare would be?
I don't want to be that guy but... is anyone running a game of Travelle online?
>>48118131
*pulls out calculator*
Something like Cr18,000 per stateroom equivalent, assuming the usual 2 jumps per month. That's just covering basic expenses, you're gonna want 2x or 3x that to pay off your investment and make a profit. So 4x to 6x a standard High Passage.
Like I suggested in >>48114127, if you've got at least one or two worlds with 10 billion plus population, there'd be a market for something like this.
Modern megacruise ships seem to be priced in the $1-2 billion range, so a 30 billion dollar starship doesn't seem too out of line.
>>48118433
I am. Literally, right now. 6 people already, on a brazilian RPG chat program. I'd love to find another online group, tho. Would be fun to meet new people.
>>48118131
>>48118504
The monthly payments on the loan for this monster add another Cr 15,000 per passenger per jump. Eep.
>>48118131
Fuel tankage has no price tag. The fuel in it does, though. You might knock down the required revenue per stateroom by reducing your jump fuel to one jump instead of two, and using the resulting space as payload instead. You can also put in a little fuel purification plant and save on fuel costs that way, either by skimming a gas giant for free or buying the cheaper stuff at the port.
Not sure the tug is useful, either.
>>48118504
Hot damn, thanks anon. I could actually work this into a short adventure module, maybe. "The Maiden Voyage of the El Dorado" or something to that effect.
It occurred to me I might have the corp buy the original El Dorado off the Scout Service and have it on display in the concourse, but some digging revealed that Imperial Strike Cruisers average 20k-40k tons, so I think I'll table that idea for another day. If I worked that into the tonnage, it'd take god knows how long, and I'm not sure the Scout Service would even be game for such a sale, canonically.
>>48092288
>Traveller thread
How nice. So what do people think about Mongoose 2e core so far?And does anyone have a link to the 2e Central Supply Catalogue or the High Guard playtest documents?
>>48118701
Buying one of the old Imperial Ship's shuttles or landing boats might be better both price- and tonnage- wise. Either as a museum piece on the promenade, or if it's in good enough condition, as a working small craft to ferry the very top of the high paying passengers..
>>48118748
I like it. Pretty pictures. But I'm an autistic fuck who loved T5.
(I imagined it looking something akin to a Heighliner but with a festive color scheme, so here's a picture of one.)
>>48118632
Ah, I think I left the fuel amount in there on accident, but on the actual excel sheet I used for the calculations, I left the cost out, I think. I went with 2 Jump-2 because Mongoose's writers seem to like mentioning it a lot as the Island's standard. I thought about making room for fuel skimmers and plants, but I figured it'd take prohibitively long to skim and process that much. Though, I might reconsider if I'm gonna overhaul this thing to have 20,000-40,000 more tons for having a starship-cum-museum as its gooey chocolate center.
My real problem was figuring out how many skimmer vessels would take how long to collect the fuel; I don't think a vessel this size would do its own scooping, especially since it's an unarmored hulk full of rich civilians and gas giants are dangerous. So it'd probably have subcraft to do it--problem is, I can't seem to find any rules about how much fuel gets scooped in 1 1-6 hour interval, just that it takes 1-6 hours. Does it fill its tank to capacity? Is it a certain tonnage? I wonder. I reckon you'd have to have a lot of them, though, and a lot of tonnage devoted to processors, since every moment a vessel this big sits idle it's essentially hemorrhaging money. Maybe I'm being a bit -too- perfectionist there, though, especially considering this is mostly a thought experiment for funsies.
>>48119134
>figuring out how many skimmer vessels would take how long to collect the fuel
I think a skimmer fills its own tanks in one go, but that trip is of random length. The real time killer is purification.
>>48120604
Whoa. Metal.
>>48111013
Going by CT and handwaving, half of "stateroom" volume is communal areas, which this would include, then use the majority of the 20% of wiggle room you get in the ship's total volume when drawing deckplans. So on a kiloton ship (which is huge under Book 2) you'd have a deckplan with (roughly) 2,400 squares, 400 of which + 4 per stateroom (with 4 squares for each stateroom) would be thrown at the central passenger areas.
The wiggle room exists for a reason! Also handy to drop down 10% or 20% on small craft and fighters.
Yeah, it's a pretty cool cover, huh?
These are brand new scans that showed up about a month back.
>>48120818
Here's the last adventure to appear in those scans, A Fistful of Credits. At 14 megs, it's too big for /tg/.
http://www.uploadmb.com/dw.php?id=1467697388
And here's Traveller's Guide to the Marischal Subsector by Martyn J Henderson, which covers a subsector out in the fringes.
Now with the actual link:
http://www.uploadmb.com/dw.php?id=1467697929
>>48109382
I don't have PDFs, but the QLI reprint of the originals. What different ship design rules do you mean?
(Having a single pocket book for 1-3 is great for long bus trips where you can generate characters and star sectors using the license plates of other cars for an RNG.)
>>48120917
>>48121067
Neat!
I'm looking for Traveller in German.
Can anyone help me?
Thanks!
>>48121136
The primary difference in shipbuilding is that CT81 requires that the powerplant match or exceed both jump drive and maneuver drive, while CT77 only required matching or exceeding the maneuver drive.
Its why the original XBoat has no powerplant: no maneuver drive to require one.
>>48121190
The most recent licensee in Germany is 13Mann. No idea if scans exist of the German language stuff.
>>48121201
This is what I'm looking for...
>>48121192
The QLI edition says the powerplant must match or exceed either jump or maneuver drive, whichever is higher, and that the maneuver drive is not mandatory for a starship. It doesn't have XBoats as a sample vessel, however, and the only mention of the Third Imperium is in the blurb on the back cover.
>>48121478
Right. That's the CT81 rule. If the Jump drive is a C and the Maneuver drive a D, the powerplant has to be a D or larger.
In CT77 only the maneuver drive is relevant.
>>48121508
Ah, there you go then.
>>48121564
Wow, that cover is kind of crazy, like a 90s indy comic "issue #000 collector's special edition" cover.
I love the disembodied head, and the dancing vargr, and the shadowy figures trying to freeze his butt.
The fact that nobody has any feet makes it seem like a Rob Liefeld fever dream.
>>48121621
The back of the book has even more disembodied heads. A Solomani, a Droyne, an Aslan and a Hiver.
Have the Traveller20 cover while at it.
>>48121675
>Have the Traveller20 cover while at it.
Oh don't remind me. T20 was such a wreck, and the covers especially. The FFE cover up there is charming and dynamic in comparison, while the T20 one has the kind of overly busy feel that the d20 system itself had, where it feels like a whole bunch of disparate stuff just got crammed in there with no thought given to how it's arranged. It hurts to look at it.
Plus there's the guy who looks like his laser pistol is burning his hands so he keeps having to swap from left to right, and the dopey grin on the Vargr, who's all "OH BOY, A GUNFIGHT, GEORGE! I LOVE GUNFIGHTS!"
Huh. Now I have an urge to stuff Dug from Up in as a low-charisma Vargr NPC somewhere.
Off to bed bump, with a good choice for ship's computer.
>>48118131
Make it a Titanic - have fewer lifeboats than required for all passengers and crew. Might make it more interesting when the ship does fail.
Backstory: The megacorp found that the ship is barely paying for itself (although being a megacorp, it didn't have to take out a loan). Therefore some lifepod bays were replaced with suite modules.
Happens all the time in the Traveller universe. Safety? Pah.
>>48118776
High paying passengers in a decrepit craft? I like it. (Those replacement parts for an old shuttle with out-of-date tech are sooo hard to find.)
>>48122570
>>48122531
Hmm! I can dig it. I'm'ma jot these down.
>>48122570
to go with this you could have it sent out with a bomb to sabotage/scuttle it so the corp can claim the insurance, and also get rid of any....inconveinient people.
Re; cruise ship, what I could effectively see is an expensive civilian carrier - jump capable willing to carry smaller system only ships around various star systems for a price.
>>48110955
>a ship that effectively has "I AM A PIRATE" painted on its side
Yeah I thought it was dumb too, so in our setting it's gonna be a multipurpose/fast strike military ship and pirates happen to like (3 turrets, 10 cabins, a reasonably fast sublight engine and a fuckhueg cargo bay seems like good stuff for a pirate). Although the captain used to be a pirate (and that's how he got his ship), now he's more of a merc/independent merchant, and I'm certainly not gonna give a Corsair to all the pirate crews the party comes across. If anything, pirates will most of the time have modified merchant or scout ships and most Corsairs will belong to the military/space police.
>>48092288
bump for tommorrow
>>48127483
This is by Felbrigg Herriot, who runs the excellent Behind the Claw podcast for Traveller. If you like it, maybe buy it and give him some cash? He's a stand-up guy.
Definitely give the podcast a listen, too:
http://behindtheclaw.blogspot.co.nz
Any Good traveller story times?
>>48130691
Couple of months back, we were playing a Military SciFi game in the Interstellar Wars. The players were the crew of the light cruiser 'Marquês Tamandaré', named after the brazilian patron of the Navy. As soon as they got to Nusku and went to refuel, the admiral asked for them to participate on a training exercise.
They ended up lowering the power of the lasers and drawing penises on other ships to 'tag' them as 'hit and destroyed'. The admiral thought it was hilarious, but the skipper got every other captain as enemies.
>>48127483
think i will modify this to start a Campaine.
>>48135401
>Did you mean: annie novak?
No.
So, something something homebrew ship, rules-breaking jump drive, found abandoned in the middle of nowhere...or am I thinking of another adventure?
>>48135503
That's the one.
Old School
>>48137221
Thanks Anon for keeping it alive. Also, I trolled by players by starting a fire on the Shooting Range. I mean, who in their right mind fires an incendiary shot on a Space Station?
What would be a good way to keep players lost in space?
Put them in Hostile space?
Repo Warrent on there ship?
>>48137415
Lost, specifically, or just always off balance?
>>48137415
Misjump on an empty and hunted ship.
>>48137415
Quarantined paranoid subsector. No docking or landing anywhere.
>>48137415
A misjump which leads them to a derelict some very important people wanted lost forever and a cargo they would do virtually anything to get their hands on.
Too bad it's so shiny the PCs will never give it up, especially to the guys who want them dead anyway.
>>48137607
I like this Idea.
But Yes Keep them black listed and worried not where there money comes from. But Where there gas. Food! repairs all that
>>48140227
wtf is this movie?
>>48140350
That picture actually looks like a screenshot and actress from that Canadian scifi time-travel series, so that's probably a completely made-up synopsis using photoshop.
>>48140405
Rachel Nichols, from Continuum.
Sometimes I feel like the pinnacle of what a Traveller adventure ought to look like is that one episode in Outlaw Star where Gene has to get imprisoned on a high-grav world and use a concealed monopole magnet to extract someone with info about the Leyline.
Remove vilnafku
Give back the terran clay
>>48140677
There are a lot of good ideas floating around literary SF, TV and movies. "Ideal" is dependent on the Ref and players, though.
Hey, I had an idea that I wanted to run by you guys.
You know how a lot of combat on ships is supposed to take place with melee weapons, right? Because it's easy to damage something important or vent a compartment to space firing regular weapons? Well, would it be reasonable to reduce the potential for busting up starship internals if you used Soft Target ammunition, like glaser rounds?
Also, what's a good way to handle the risks of firing guns on ships? When should you rule that someone's missed shot, unlucky ricochet, or through-and-through laser wound punched a hole in a window, or hit a junction box or something?
>>48143189
>Well, would it be reasonable to reduce the potential for busting up starship internals if you used Soft Target ammunition, like glaser rounds?
Flechette guns, bro
>>48143218
Shotguns. For the tough guys, ridiculously oversized revolvers firing shotgun shells.
What? Armour? Oh, just shoot them as a distraction while you charge, then lay into them with your boarding axe. You did bring a boarding axe, right?
>>48140350
It's not, it's a website (don't have the url) which gives plots and synopsis at the touch of a button.
>>48143189
>laser wound punched a hole in a window
>laser punched a hole in window
>light damaging something transparent
>>48146057
No substance is perfectly transparent. (Or reflective for that matter)
It might take longer, but as long as the energy going in exceeds the amount that can get out, that window could melt. And seeing as how one side is vacuum, which doesn't conduct heat away, it'd be easier to do than with a window in atmosphere.
If you have a strong enough laser, you can cut a mirror with it.
>>48143189
we were always playing in warships so went by the idea that "it takes a starship weapon to penetrate a starship hull"
Light arms could damage internal components, maybe start a fire if you're unlucky, but they aren't going to tear a hole in the hull.
FGMPs and PGMPs on the other hand would probably have a chance to burn through a hull if fired at an outer wall.
If a Battle dress can easily shrug off all small arms fire, then a warships hull would have no problem.
Plus our campaign involved a fair bit of shooting on board starships and space stations, so it was part convenience. The only time a hull gets breached is when a vessel reaches 0 hull points, at which point I usually randomized D6 sections to have explosive decompression. Characters in those sections would have to make dex then strength checks to hold on and not get sucked out into space. had a few NPCs and even the main PC leader sucked into the void in the final space combat of the game.
>>48146102
There is still the surrounding metal to take heat away from the glass. I don't think a small arms laser after punching through a person would be capable of damaging glass that is likely very high-quality
>>48146162
Why would there be windows on a spaceship? Why would anyone willingly lower it's hull integrity for a view of pure black?
>>48147355
Why would anyone want to board a spaceship when it's next to impossible, realistically? Why are people thousands of years in the future still waging war with manned spacecraft and not with drones?
You have to realize, a lot of these questions exist because this is not a total hard sci-fi setting. There are large bits of it that are more up the space opera alley.
And to answer your question, it's because most of the art in Traveller depicts spaceships as having windows. That's why.
Does anyone have the original GDW Traveller 2300AD books laying around?
>>48146057
At first the window is highly, but not perfectly, transparent. Some energy is absorbed in the material, heating it up. As the material heats, it becomes slightly less transparent. As it becomes less transparent it absorbs more energy from the laser. This feedback can lead to the glass being damaged despite being initially highly transparent.
>>48146160
I always read into MgT's highly cautionary sentiment against using guns in starships as being mainly about internal components, not so much as depressurization. I rationalized it thus: It's hard to damage components from outside because of the thick, thick armor. But inside, the only thing with any reinforcement at all might be bulkheads and whatnot; otherwise, you're inside, beyond the armor, with conduits full of important shit and terminals with important readouts and whatnot everywhere. Kinda like how sources of radiation which we shrug off when they're external can just kill us dead if we ingest them.
Well, that and the idea of LoGH style combat with people hacking on each other with comically large melee weapons is hilarious.
>>48149514
Okay. I know that glass could be damaged and punctured by a laser. I doubt that a small arms laser could do so unless you decided to continue firing rapidly at the same spot. Corundum would be my window material of choice, if I even bothered to have windows on my combat craft.
>>48092288
Alright. This got me interested. Are there any pre-written adventures I can mine for ideas, or is it a sandbox, e.g. Stars Without Number?
>>48152531
There are tons of adventures, check the links. Most official adventures from the classic era were organized as kind of a skeleton that the referee would flesh out and adjust to his own campaign rather than a more modern "do this, then say this, then do this" kind of thing, but you can find some of those floating around, too.
Mongoose has a lot more of that sort of thing going for it than Classic.
Traveller is very flexible and you can do a lot of different kind of games with it, but sandbox mode is kind of the classic, most popular form. Stars Without Number is often described as Kevin Crawford's love letter to Traveller, for good reason. (Personally I don't care for it, I don't want Basic D&D mechanics in my Traveller, but the faction tools are neat)
>>48152531
It's a fully fleshed out setting with dozens of published adventures, that is also a wide-open sandbox.
You can hex-crawl, but the hexes are entire solar systems.
>>48153627
This made me grin.
Should I go with Classic or Mongoose?
My shit internet connection won't be done downloading it for hours. I hate middle of nowhere mountains. >.> There's not even a damn bookstore within three hours.
>>48153986
>Should I go with Classic or Mongoose?
They're about 95% compatible, so you can use stuff from one in the other pretty easily.
Mongoose is more suited to modern gaming mindsets who expect big meaty adventure modules, and characters with big laundry lists of skills because you can't do it if it's not on the sheet. (Luke Skywalker's Classic Traveller skill list for the first movie: Pilot-1) Mongoose also has some lousy editing going on outside the core book.
I'd say look 'em over and pick the one you like better.Fixing Mongoose's shit, or needing to make up your own shitYou can easily import rules you like from the other.
To get started with Classic, get The Traveller Book, and PDF related, the UTP (because everybody used that, so much that this third party houserule become official in Megatraveller.)
For Mongoose, get the core rule book and you're good.
>>48154357
My players are all relatively new and young players, so Mongoose sounds like a better bet. I'll eventually get both, but I've got an itch for sci-fi, so hoping I can draw them in.
>>48092288
Holy shit, I've been listening to Lord Weird Slough Feg's album for so long and I thought it was just an original story. This is what I get for not researching theme albums more.
I guess I have to figure out what this is all about.
>>48154523
The album is based on their campaign, and is set in the Third Imperium setting.
Professor Riket and his asteroid ship are from one of the old adventures, Expedition to Zhodane. I gather they had run that adventure, and then decided to reuse him as their mad scientist in a later arc.
>>48155995
>their campaign
And by "they," I mean the band members. Scalzi and crew have clearly played a lot of Traveller.
>>48093053
Can anyone reupload this one?
>>48156087
Is there something wrong with the PDF right there?
>>48156309
It keeps giving an error message when I try to open it.
>>48156316
I can see it just fine, maybe it's your browser?
Hang on, I'll upload a copy to uploadmb. Here you are:
Traveller - Theta Borealis Sector.pdf
http://www.uploadmb.com/dw.php?id=1467873944
>>48140227
>>48140350
>>48145189
It's a photoshop from LiarTownUSA. That guy's done a lot of great shit, pic related.
>>48157618
Which does me ask: How do you guys treat robots and AIs in Traveller? I have no idea how to deal with them. (I play GURPS Traveller, if this makes any difference)
>>48147830
Take a look through this folder, the complete set is in there. This folder also contains a lot of T4 and GURPS stuff, as well as other Traveller-related odds and ends.
http://www.4shared.com/folder/SgVP1VoX/Traveller.html
>>48157697
If the ship has an AI it's basically it's own character, and though it's conversant and has a personality it is not a self-determining entity. Basically it can learn to fulfil it's programming more efficiently and to do it's job better but it has no ability to remove hardwired limitations whatsoever, much like a videogame AI can't spontaneously decide to kill you with a blender eventually as an extension of it's attempts to beat you at the game.
Robots are just robots.
Some are clanky, some are squishy, some you shoot at, some are more like furniture that occasionally can talk to you.
>>48158459
So AI is a hardware problem? Ships have a "nice" one because they have a large enough computer for it, whereas a robot has shitty because its smaller?
>>48158582
It's worth noting that AI in the official setting is cutting edge stuff. AI is apparently more difficult in the Traveller universe than in ours.
(But from a 70s/80s viewpoint, predicting that the folks working on AI were going to find it a lot harder to accomplish than they thought at the time was still a good bet.)
>>48158582
Partially, but also most people aren't stupid enough to allow a floating gun gun who's only way of interacting with the universe is shooting at designated targets the ability to question the nature of it's own existence and the meaning of a life.
Basic robots are like sophisticated roombas, which TECHNICALLY do have an artificial intelligence, albeit an extremely crude one.
We associate the term "AI" with "fully cognizant self-aware and self-determining computer that quickly proceeds to break all of it's programming boundaries", but in actuality any machine with programming that can make even simple superficial decisions for itself without you having to manually put in the response as the decision is made is technically equipped with an AI. The videogame I am playing right now has an AI because the NPC's are making their own "decisions" that have only to do with stimuli that it "understands" in regards to stuff I do in-game.
IMTU, it's relatively easy to prevent AI from going wildly insane as long as you put hardware limitations on it. An AI can't change it's coded programming any more then you could as a real human being literally reach inside of your own brain and alter your brain chemistry by hand. The danger in AI instead is when it's goal is so open-ended and it's processor allows for "fuzzy" logic (open-ended problem solving) that causes problems as it malfunctions and goes homicidal as a result of it's programming allowing it to "solve" problems in a different fashion but not truly being aware enough to understand that this is harmful to it's creators.
Shipboard AI have personalities sometimes, but they can't ponder the nature of existence and basically get the mechanical equivalent of emotional sanctification when serving it's crew and maintaining the ship in working order. They're also mostly extremely calm all the time because they don't feel terror or pain, but can experience "distress" or something like it when their duty becomes impossible.
>>48159084
I only rarely use the official setting beyond the broad strokes.
It's fun in a hilariously outdated way, but I'm one of those guys who doesn't mind ghetto technology if it's ghetto because ghetto is cheap and practical rather then ghetto because BETA-MAX tapes are genuinely the height of video storage or whatever in the setting.
>>48159210
>fun in a hilariously outdated way
It models post-WWII Space Opera on purpose. A similarly distant SF future based on what we know and can project forward from today is completely different, but may also be unplayable.
>>48159362
I'm aware it does it on purpose.
It's not subtle that it's doing it on purpose and neither are the developers when you consider that I got the newest version of the book using a digital monetary transfer system to invisibly transfer magic nonexistent money I can't even see to get a book that actually isn't a physical object that I can read on my handheld computer that is smaller and weighs less then my one year old house cat; you'd have to be pretty damn ignorant of the world to be doing the retrotech accidentally with that kinda distribution system.
Doesn't mean I have to care about it or use it, so I don't. Simple.
>A similarly distant SF future based on what we know and can project forward from today is completely different, but may also be unplayable.
Oh, I see the confusion.
I'm not trying to "realistically" model the future for our game. I'm just making a fun space opera setting to play with my friends because we all like scifi shows, which is a much simpler task.
>>48158375
That picture made me have a fan-gasm.
Or whatever you would call it.
It looks sooooo fucking amazing, and so exactly right down my alley, i just wanna reach out and push buttons and watch her maneuver whatever she's flying.
The rubbers skintight clothing with some texture and design... amazing. The interface for flying... with the little screen. almost perfect. the placement and design of the thrust levers. and the scenery outside.
fuck.
>>48159406
> I got the newest version of the book using a digital monetary transfer system to invisibly transfer magic nonexistent money I can't even see to get a book that actually isn't a physical object that I can read on my handheld computer that is smaller and weighs less then my one year old house cat; you'd have to be pretty damn ignorant of the world to be doing the retrotech accidentally with that kinda distribution system.
The game was originally published in 1977.
Credit card sales still used a mechanical printer and paper receipts. Phones had to be plugged into a wall, The smallest computers were the size of footlockers, and ran on punch cards and magnetic tape.
Traveller isn't "retro", you stupid hipster, it's *40 years old*. If you don't like pre-cyberpunk SF, don't play a game that predates cyberpunk.
10/10, got me mad. Good show.
>>48160190
FWIW, the only way tobuymy edition of choice is to have them snail-mail a CD to my physical address. Which isn't 1977 levels of "hurr retro", but it's right up there.
>>48159210
"Tech's basic because it's built stupidly tough and some asshole with a space wrench can bang parts together and get your recently-lithobraked scout back off this shitty rock" it the way I like it.
>group of friends decide to play traveller
>join up with them
>we have a diplomat, power-armored marine, scientist and trader
>make an engineer/mechanic lady
>join the navy
>turns out the attributes I'd selected were the ones used for advancement and survival
>end up as an admiral with a load of other shit
That was unexpected and now I'm at 15 social standing,
How the hell am I meant to be a pampered mechanic?
>>48163468
This is why you should limit the number of terms you roll up. Most referees will tell you "no more than 5 terms" or such right at the start of chargen.
My advice: Stick that admiral in as an NPC, maybe an ally of the party that they can call up now and then, roll up a new character that won't be ridiculously disruptive to just be hanging out with the other characters.
>>48163522
That was five terms, I got lucky and commissioned on the first roll
>>48163595
Wow, you got crazy lucky! I'm impressed. Clearly you are good at roleplaying games. Heh.
Anyone on here have the new Mongoose Traveller Central Supply Catalogue? Not the yellow text one, just the new one.
>>48164403
No, but I bet I could find it on IRC. I wonder if it's as ridiculously broken as the 1e one. (One of the players on the Close The Airlock podcast went nuts with buying stuff from that book and wound up with something insane like +36 on gun combat rolls with his rifle. For those who don't know Traveller, that's on a 2d6 roll where you hit on an 8.)
>>48164444
Sorry, what's IRC?
Not particularly computer-literate.
>>48164485
Oh, Internet Relay Chat. It's a clunky old dinosaur that us computer-savvy oldfags use to communicate about what nerf toys that damn Johnson kid tossed onto our lawn today.
It's also useful for filesharing, though on a smaller scale than bittorrent.
>>48164556
That's what I THOUGHT you were talking about, but I wasn't sure.
I'm not exactly young myself, I just really loathe computers and so never learned anything other then the practical basics.
Well, no luck on the 2e CSC, but I got this absolute gem. I think I'll give the author the $2 for a copy when I get my paycheck this week, this is some A+ work.
Here's a wicked little fighter which appears to be built using Classic's High Guard rules for small craft. Expensive, and difficult to find a world that can build it, but man I'd love to see the other guy's face when you drop one or two of these out your hold.
>>48166453
>Civilian Design
Never forget Law Level 0 really means Law Level 0
>>48170217
I can't really see the Zhodani doing that, except maybe out on the Core route
>>48163468
>make an engineer/mechanic
>join the navy
>end up as an admiral and a Duke
Pic related.
>we have a diplomat, power-armored marine, scientist and trader
Kirk, Spock, Chekov, and Harry Mudd.
Seriously, if someone hands you the ball, you run with it.
>>48163468
Five terms, and acquired the Title during muster out? You might ask the Ref to allow a reroll of that benefit. Even dropping a Noble rank or two makes the Ref's job easier. Dukes get attention regardless of which type they are.
>>48170767
Half the fun of Traveller is figuring out in-game explanations for weird combinations of dice rolls.
IIRC, a Duke is is usually the ruler of of a subsector, at least on paper. Since presumably, all the nearby subsectors already have Dukes, and this character got her Letters Patent from the Navy, you could say she works directly for the local Archduke, or even the Emperor himself, as a scientific and technical troubleshooter, Possibly with a more mundane, less high ranking cover identity, when she needs to snoop around quietly.
This would work especially well if you're in the Spinward Marches, as Archduke Norris is ex Naval Intelligence himself.
>>48171009
>IIRC, a Duke is is usually the ruler of of a subsector, at least on paper.
Or has some other responsibility that is equivalent but which does not involve responsibility for worlds directly.
As a technical type, the PC could oversee all of a sector's Research Stations, as one example.
The third type is simply "we like you, have a title". It doesn't have a job attached. Dukes of this sort *should* be rare for obvious reasons, but I could see a PC type being granted such a title just to see what sorts of shit gets stirred as they travel around randomly. Because no one will believe that the are travelling randomly.
>>48171688
I like the Gazelle
That's a neat image of it too
>>48171688
>>48171688
>>48174632
>>48173289
>>48169642
Mag's more streamlined version is pretty cool as well, and remains distinct from the Fiery.
>>48174715
I've got the pdf for that
The PCs are hired as body guards for a noble woman as she takes a pleasure cruise. Alas for her and the PCs, a rich and powerful jilted lover is going to wreak havoc on board to ensure she dies horribly.
The ex-lover has arranged for a detachment of his loyal troops to board the same liner. Their plan is to take over, set it tumbling out of control towards the sun and wreck the life support systems before escaping in the only life boat that they haven't ejected. In this way Baroness Calla will burn up or suffocate, either of which will satisfy the Earl Dike Karls lust for revenge.
When play starts, the bad guys have already started to make their move. They're assaulting the engineering section when the PCs become aware that something is amiss.
Rory's Drift is a long abandoned Scout base and the PCs are reactivated by the Scouting service to reconnoitre the base to see what's left after an Aslan invasion. They're to determine if it can be brought back online. The base was deserted when the enemy overran the system. Now that peace has been re-established the Imperium wants to reoccupy the system, and step one is to assess these facilities.
Unfortunately for the PCs not all of the Aslan agreed with the peace deal and some have stayed behind to make a stand.
>>48169943
>>48177543
Oh, God, I really hate this kind of art. The Uncanny Valley is waaaaay too deep
