What a shitty game. The entire rulebook being a massive wall of text doesn't help either
>>93415972If you're more example oriented check out the automated character creator online.
I'm a classic traveller fan, but admittedly I know how to read. Does anyone know if pic related is any good?
>>93415972>d100 >characters are competent>fun combat crunch>free
>>93416287I'm going to speculate probably not. I'm a Traveller fan as well (most iterations). There are several troves out there and this hasn't made it into any of them.
>>93415972It’s game from the 80s. Games from the 80s don’t hold up to modern scrutiny very well.
>>93415972for each his ownme, oldfag, find 2ed Moongose full of pictures too distracting
>>93415972>OP outs himself as a brainlet
>>9341655270s actually
>>93415972>medium requires reading>is mad about having to readI hope you're joking.
>>93416552>Games from the 80s don’t hold up to modern scrutiny very well.LMAO Traveller and B/X D&D are still beloved, meanwhile your gay little itch.io one-page Patreon-bait RPG about working in a coffee shop on Mars and having a lesbian romance will be forgotten by next week.
I'd honestly like to see a modern remake of Traveller that starts from modern, revised Planetology, modern technology, and much more modern Hard Science Fiction requirements. Too much of what once was a Hard Science Fiction TTRPG has become so polluted with Zeerust as to become nothing of the sort. There are now plenty of parts of Traveller that are literally impossible and definitively fantasy that were, at one point, at least a reasonable guess based on available facts.I find it so disappointing that, when looking for a Hard Science Fiction game, this is the default suggestion.
>>93418710Have you tried 2300AD?
>>93415972>Derpity derp derp. Me OP. Me dont no ht read. Make me angry when books have werds.>>93416552>Daw. Thass okay. Me child moron. No read more than one page games published last week, Games from histery is skary.
>start a Traveller thread with bait to get the fanboys to post in rage and for neutrals to come take a look as everyone explains why OP is wrong10/10 b80 m80
>>93419466Wait, why did he switch which window he's looking into?
>>93415972>reading BAD
>>93418710>modern Hard Science FictionIt's kinda boring, desu.
>>93418710Traveller is not and was never intended to be hard sci-fi.
>>93415972Been I while (about a year I think) since I read it but it made sense to me. I didn't end up playing it though.
Somebody call the tard wranglers, OP is on the loose again
>>93415972Very engaging post, OP. Lots to discuss
I checked out T5 a while back. Absolutely garbage as a rules system but easily the most comprehensive toolbox that I've ever seen in any RPG.
>>93415972Oh dear, poor diddums finds the book to hard. Maybe you should go back to books involving a ball. A big ball. A big red ball.
>>93418710Demanding sci fi to be based on just what we know today is retarded. If it uses just today's science, it wouldnt be sci fi, it would just be sci fact. It's set in the future, using science we don't understand or havnt discovered yet. Gravatics, Mesons, nuclear dampers, jump drives? We don't know how to manipulate those forces like they do yet but in the game they do. That's the science fiction part.
>>93415972I read, understood and ran games of this system when I was 7 years old, anon.PEBCAK - "Problem Exists Between Chair And Keyboard"
>>93418505basedalthough tbf Mars coffee shop lesbian romance furry gorge RPGs offer some great ERP opportunities it'd be fun to RP as a MtF furry lesbian with an eating disorder :D
>>93420900I'd rape your character as human heterosexual man. Chasers rise up
>>93418710
>>93415972>take highlighter>highlight the parts that are important so that the rulebook is easily referencedDid they not teach you this in school anon? Also traveller's mortgage system is unironically the best game mechanic ever devised since it feeds into a gameplay loop of debt>travel>profit>random encounters>debt every ingame month
>>93416430>D100dropped, it's just a bigger d20 and d20s are ass.
>>93421210Lol, eww>>93421245You won't die if you read the whole text. Why is reading anathema now? Like everybody is too busy being self important and chasing TikTok dopamine to read.Traveller is pretty cool imho
>>93421886Traveller sucks because it's not warhammer 40k.
>>93422836Play Rogue Trader then.
>>93421886Do you seriously think he meant, "highlight a few words and random and only read those"?
>>93422836No, Warhammer 40k sucks and traveller doesnt because it isnt warhammer 40k.
I get the impression that op is just a sad loser wanting attention, so started this thread to pretend that people care about what he says. (spoiler, we don't).
>>93421799Be excellent to each other. What's not to comprehend.
>>93422921But rogue trader also sucks. All 40k rpgs do. They have awful, awful rules.
>>93423289holy shit this is the new Rule Zero in all my games
>>93421886Unironically, dopamine poisoning. Reading comprehension and attention spans are at all time recorded lows. It's easy to get the next soundbite, the next like, the next micro-celebrity, the next shiney thing, the next easy hit of dopamine. So easy that sitting down the phone and actually reading or paying attention is becoming a lost skill. The addiction is real and easy to satisfy, and the vast majority has poor impulse control, especially under the age of 25.
>>93418710I remember a couple years ago someone posted some subsector maps that more accurately represented the positions of the nearest stars relative to Earth.
>>93418749Way too old. We've learned so much more about what kinds of star systems have what kinds of planets orbiting them, and what kinds of planets can and cannot support life. I'd really prefer something from at least the last decade that bothered to do their research on what the current star catalog says about this or that star system's planets, and worked from there.In comparison, parts of the Traveller universe has been fully debunked. Barnard's Star has no planets in its habitable zone. Given current estimates of habitable planets being 0.8 to 0.9 "g"s at minimum, Darrian, at 0.6 "g"s, can't naturally support human-derivative space elves. It's only going to get worse as time moves on. Those who were initially drawn to stories about Traveller's Hard Science Fiction gameplay need a new game to play.
>>93419580What is?
>>93425302I'm sorry dude, but traveller has never been hard scifi. It having ftl alone is enough to make it extremely unrealistic. The ships not looking straight out of COADE is also a problem when it comes to realism.
>>93419633No one bothers to elaborate so much on artificial gravity being made by constant thrust, and the impact that has on the course of the ship, without expecting the game to be played that way. The fact that so many current Traveller players have forgotten that is irrelevant. Sure, the Hard Science Fiction enthusiasts have moved on, as the game became obsolete, leaving the zeerust addicts to their beloved setting, unrealistic though it may be, but what the current population of Players says about it has nothing to do with what the game was built to do. And it was built for Hard Science Fiction.
>>93421799Good lord, how are people this braindead able to post?
>>93425374>And it was built for Hard Science FictionWhy would you repeat something that is patently false? Traveller has been Space Opera Noir since day 1. It took pains to be more consistent and logical than most space opera, and to keep its hypothetical science firmly constrained, but that just makes it a somewhat firmer space opera, not hard sci-fi
>>93425374That isn't how artificial gravity works in Traveller. Traveller has always had handwavium artificial gravity.Traveller was *never* hard sci-fi.
>>93425395It's D&DPTSD, they get over it eventually, and stop angrily shitposting about HTYNPDND and etc, just give the guy some time to get his head together
>>93425374Ah, yes, traveller, the hard sci-fi game based on those classics of the hard sci-fi movement, Such as Jack Vance's Planet of Adventure and Demon Princes series, E.C. Tubb's Dumarest Novels, and Poul Anderson's Flandy Novels. All the biggest of the big hitters of hard sci-fi!
>>93425374Then all of the unstreamlined ships should look like this, space combat should consist of orbital manuevers, COADE style, and, most importantly, FTL travel shouldn't exist. That's how you make something hard scifi.Hell, let's go further: Railguns should be in use, drones should be common, lasers should only be used to destroy external weak points such as weapon mountings and exposed thrusters because they're horrible at piercing armor, and the majority of any ship's internal space should be taken up by fuel tanks, with very little room left for passengers and zero artificial gravity. Happy?
>>93415972filter working as intended Traveller is too good for you
>>93420391What was garbage about it? As a GURPS player who got stuck playing Mongoose Traveller 1E once, I'd appreciate hearing what wasn't good about it.
>>93420429>Demanding sci fi to be based on just what we know today is retarded.Firstly, categorically untrue: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/MediaNotes/MohsScaleOfScienceFictionHardnessSecondly, that isn't even what I said. I said "starts from"; I by no means said "consists entirely of". There is so much in Traveller that is now no longer merely a guess that may or may not be true, or is merely probabilistically unlikely, but is outright actually disproven. It is something that was Science Fiction, once upon a time, but has since become Science Fantasy purely due to science progressing in ways that demonstrably show certain assumptions it made once upon a time turning out to be blatantly wrong.I'm not complaining about the stuff that hasn't been proven wrong yet; I'm complaining about the stuff that actually has, and damages the foundation of the setting. Barnard's Star has no planet in its habitable zone. Darrian either can't naturally support life, as described, or can't be 0.6 "g"s of mass. I'm sure there's more, too, but that's enough reason to stop looking, when what I want is a Hard Science Fiction game, preferably somewhere between 3.5 and 4.5 on the scale. 5.5 can be good, too, but that wasn't what I was going for (but anything that can properly handle 3 - 6 would indeed be great).
>>93421210Yeah, I was never really into transhumanism. I get that it also delivers on the Hard Science Fiction stuff, but I'm not interested in exploring transhumanism at all, and there's not much to the setting without it. I feel like I'd have to sand too much away for any of what's left to be worth it.How does intra-system navigation work, by the way? I'm curious how they handle orbital trajectories.
>>93424774Neat.
>>93425343It was built to do it before it had a default setting. And it's the "Classic Traveller" book that's used in the thread post. You want to argue that "The Third Imperium" was never a Hard Science Fiction Setting? Sure. But the System was conceived to do Hard Science Fiction. And the only reason it doesn't anymore is more out of habit and obsolete rules than anything else.
>>93425416Why do the Classic Traveller books describe it that way, then? Why are there ships specifically designed to do it, then? Sure, the Third Imperium setting has its handwavium artificial gravity, but the System was built to support thrust-powered gravity from day 1.
>>93425449Classic Traveller had no default setting. The Third Imperium came afterward.
>>93426248True, but it had a bunch of setting implications baked into the rules, and Millar has talked in various places about what his influences were. They weren't """""hard sci-fi""""""""
>>93425458>the majority of any ship's internal space should be taken up by fuel tanks, with very little room left for passengersThat already is Traveller.><other stuff> Happy?I'll be happier when there's a book, and rules that efficiently cover orbital mechanics. For the record, I don't necessarily mind if FTL is the "One Big Lie", so long as you still have to orbital mechanics your way into the system after a jump and out of the system before a jump. What good is a TTRPG about Space with no Space Camp problems?
>>93426314Quote some, then. Or cite a reference. Saying it's so doesn't make it so. Prove it.
>>93426235You're full of shit. I have the LBBs right in front of me, there is nothing in the them about the effects of gravity, or lack thereof, on the passengers in a ship. Ship movement rules themselves are somewhat hard sci-fi, but the fucking OBVIOUS implication is that ships internally have artificial gravity of some kind.
>>93426349How about you cite a passage that proves your point, shithead?
>>93426398>claims book doesn't say thing>doesn't post WHERE it doesn't say that
>>93426418How about book 2: Starships, motherfucker.>He doesn't point out where in the book is *doesn't* say a thing I said.Again, how about you cite the rules about g's negatively effecting crew members, or how acceleration is a capped at what the crew are able to withstand, or *literally anything* that backs up your claim.
>>93426444where does it say you're not a faggot tho
>>93426444The guy you replied to is just being silly, my dude, relax your sphincter
>>93420696absolutely dog shit acronym
>>93427436We would also sometimes say "there's a loose screw behind the keyboard"
>>93425966This is beyond autism, you have a brain worm that prevents you from enjoying things. Here is a fun fact for you the second law of thermodynamics has not been rigorously defined. Are going to shift your entire set of parameters for what a good science fiction game is based on that fact?
>>93427531yes, once we fully understand thermodynammics spaceships will be able to run on steam
>>93427499The phrase is great but the acronym is terribleIt isn't clear or easy to sayIt isn't much faster to say or much smaller textIt doesn't even spell out some cool word unrelated to the phrase
>>93427543>he doesn't know that everything is a heat engineNGMI
>>93427554PEBCAK isn't easy to say? They even awkwardly added "exists" in there just to make it easy to say.
>>93427761i fucking hate you bro
>>93416572I'm right there with you. Mong 2E is too glossy. Thought Mong 1E is much better in my opinion and a step up from Classic Trav.
>>93426016It has two Delta V formula options but that's about it. There are entire games about what you're asking though - like Attack Vector: Tactical
>>93427878>Mong 1E is much better Would have been good had they just gone without art entirely. There's some real abominations in the 1E supplements. I do (as a 28 year old zillboomial) think the polish of 2E adds a lot for running it for normies, and as silly as the third imperium is I enjoy all the work mongoose is doing to detail out regions of it.
>>93427499I always liked "ID-10-T error," but you can't write it out, it only works when spoken.>>93427554That acronym is older than you, faggot. It's absolutely easy to say, and it's not intended to be clear. You don't want the problem to know you're talking about him, like when your parents are discussing if you'll ever get a job and move the fuck out, or stop shitting your pants over acronyms
>>93415972Sounds like a skill issue on your part.Character creation alone is enough to enjoy Traveller.
>>93418710Modern understanding? But (using Traveller technolgy levels, 1 for cavemen, 8 for us and 15 for peak Imperium) we CURRENTLY have a primitive and incorrect understanding of how the universe works, It's why we cant yet manipulate gravity, mesons, nuclear force, etc. Our CURRENT understanding of the universe is inacurate or wrong. I mean, look, we haven't even figured out a Unified Theory yet, or know what Dark Matter is, so why are you insisting that your hard sci fi should be so limited? Are you saying that we have discovered everything now and there will be no more big leaps in understanding or technology? Isnt that a bit retarded? Compaired to a TL15 society, we are as primitive to them as a cave dweller is to us. When we finally reach the higher technology levels, we will be slapping our forheads and laughing that our CURRENT understanding of science was so backwards.
>>93425516T5 is like a recipe book of world quisine, a great resource for those who like to experiment and make their own meals . Some lack the ability or time to cook a meal for themselves though, so prefer to just consume ready meals.
>>93427554You like to argue a lot, don't you. Do you find this has a negative effect on your ability to maintain social interactions and friends? (spoiler: it does)
>>93430155If you're hoping that we're gonna find out that our understanding of the universe is completely wrong, don't hold your breath. We've been progressively less and less wrong about these things every step of the way through scientific history. At this point, the things we're wrong about are getting incredibly small and hard to hide an FTL spacecraft in. See The Relativity of Wrong:https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~dbalmer/eportfolio/Nature%20of%20Science_Asimov.pdf
>>93425516>What was garbage about it? As a GURPS player who got stuck playing Mongoose Traveller 1E once, I'd appreciate hearing what wasn't good about it.It's almost 900 pages long (split into three volumes), reads more like an engineering textbook than a set of rules for play and one of the first things the book introduces to you is instructions on how to read hex. The rules themselves are pretty much your standard Traveler fare and you can dial in how much complexity and granularity you want, but the organization of the book is abominable. If you want to look up how A and B interact in context C with modifiers D and E then you have to parse through 140 combined pages from sections T, U, V and W and then reference appendix X for good measure. It's very much a Build-Your-Own-Space-Adventure kit as opposed to a set of rulebooks and I can't really imagine that the intent was for anything other than to have a grog GM roll their own preferred rules and setting for a group of players who are also already familiar with Traveler.
>>93415972So did op ever explain why traveller is a shit game?
>>93425374>And it was built for Hard Science FictionNonsense. From CT book 0 p8: "Traveller is set against a background drawn from adventure-oriented science fiction literature [...] Almost any situation which occurs in any SF novel, movie, or short story can be recreated in Traveller with a little work [...] with all the trappings of classic space opera". That's from the '81 version. '77 book 1 says "players are capable of playing single scenarios or entire campaigns set in virtually any science fiction theme".
>>93430347He'd have to read the book first, and that's never happening
>>93430460You seem to be misunderstanding something.Given:>"players are capable of playing single scenarios or entire campaigns set in virtually any science fiction theme".Firstly, Hard Science Fiction is the hardest thing to correctly execute, because the whole damn point of it is that there isn't any Soft Sci Fi tech to let you massage the numbers. So, either the above was a true statement by the author, and Classic Traveller was built to do Hard Science Fiction first, and other Sci Fi genres as icing on top of it, or his own statement is a lie, at which point, naive idiots can't be faulted for saying so to me once upon a time.
>>93427531I enjoy movies just fine. But those are fictional Characters making their own decisions. They aren't me making my decisions from what I know in the moment. If I'm going to play a Science Fiction game, I absolutely want the parts that haven't been written over with Softer Science Fiction to still be properly Hard, so they can be used normally, identically to real life.At present, there's no reasonable degree of opposition to the Second Law of Thermodynamics; therefore, there's nothing from which to practically insist upon a plausible alternative. Right now, anything that defies the Second Law of Thermodynamics isn't, strictly, not Science Fiction, per se. It also has no inherent lack of Hardness. The only meaningful things to judge it on are how interesting it makes the setting.I don't object to a game being Soft Science Fiction, so long as they get the underlying default to Hardness right. It's when people use something being a Soft Science Fiction genre to hand-wave having rules for basic physics that I consider a problem. What good is a supposed Science Fiction game that throws any and all Science out the window because of its half-assed worldbuilding? It's just a waste of paper.
>>93427922From what I understand, "Attack Vector: Tactical" is more about combat around a planet than about intra-system space mission planning. Granted, I don't actually know much about it, but that was my understanding.
>>93432267>Hard Science Fiction is the hardest thing to correctly executeTotal horseshit. You're just making things up.>there isn't any Soft Sci Fi techJump drivesPsionic powersDrugs, particular Fast and SlowGrav belt and Air/raftYou are a liar or a fool. Probably both.
>>93430155Not at all what I was getting at.We have a MUCH better understanding of star system composition than we had before. We have factual proof of some stars having planets at this or that orbit, and therefore NOT having planets at this or that other orbit. We have a much better understanding of what sized planets can support Earth-like life, and what cannot.The facts literally destroy the fictional foundation that Traveller's usual settings are built upon. Exotic physics doesn't even enter into it.
So. Which version is best (for what)? Classic? T5? Mongoose 1 or 2? Cepheus?
>>93432850I got Mega because it was the right blend of old school with available crunch.>>93432649Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. We're aware of "super earths" simply because they're big enough for our current telescopes (and math) to detect. The "goldilocks zone" is just hypothetically more likely to contain intelligent life based on our current understanding and is really only a place to focus our research on right now, with the tools we currently have. The instant they find multicellular life under the ice on Europa for example, that will change. Stop being a gnostic science worshipper.
>>93432579Play "60 years in space", idk.
>>93432579Yeah, that's what my understanding was, too, but I don't know much about it, either.
>>93432606Firstly, quite a bit of that is setting stuff, and not System stuff."Jump Drives" fit under "One Big Lie". Psionic Powers were potentially just a misunderstanding of where studying the brain would lead us. Remember, this game is from the '70s... People thought all sorts of stupid shit back then that never panned out. Look at how badly Traveller misunderstands how computers would develop, for instance.But let's go back to:>Hard Science Fiction is the hardest thing to correctly execute>Total horseshit. You're just making things up.No, I'm not, and that's precisely the problem. You can make up a bunch of fantasy physics that conveniently gameify fictional pseudoscience phenomena; you can't do that with real physics. With real physics, you have to start with the hard numbers, and gameify that. It's a much harder encapsulation problem to break the real world down into numbers that are gameable across the entire breadth and depth of gameplay.
>>93432982You can't use multicellular life on Europa as an excuse that some of the odder planets in Traveller's catalogue can exist as depicted. Darrian can't naturally sustain an atmosphere as depcited; it's too damn small to matter. Barnard's Star's system does not have a planet in it that could serve as the depicted Barnard's Star planet. Does not have it; confirmed, not "has not yet been shown to have it". Does it have a planet? Sure, but not one in the right place, and certainly not one that can do the job.On the subject of "life on Europa", you want to come up with some sort of speculative merely-Soft-ish Sci-Fi critter that might reasonably survive on Europa-like planets? Sure, do that. We can talk about all the planets that might match Europa's conditions after you do that. Until then, there's no point.
>>93433931Terra is not Earth, it is an alternate reality parallel to but distinct from Earth and their Barnard's Star is not our Barnard's Star, it is a parallel but distinct Barnard's Star.
>>93433814>One Big LiePut down those goalposts; you'll have someone's eye out.>Psionic Powers were potentially just a misunderstanding of where studying the brain would lead usBullshit. This isn't, "The army thinks they can learn to kill goats by staring at them", it includes teleportation straight from The Stars My Destination.If you want something more fundamental, the sector map is purely a game tool with no attempt at any basis in reality.>With real physics, you have to start with the hard numbers, and gameify thatWhere is the evidence that they did any such thing? Nothing in book 3 fits: no one had any idea about extrasolar planets at the time, never mind creatures and the aforementioned psionics. Ship building is just rules for plugging components together with no real reference to physics beyond mass. Drugs are again game tools and Dumarest references.Where are you seeing all this real physics? One basic travel formula that assumes constant acceleration and deceleration but totally ignores orbits? Ship combat rules that use vectors?
>>93432850I've tried Cepheus and both Mongeese, and Classic's easily my favorite.
>>93434049According to what canon?
>>93434706I staked those goalposts well and firmly in the ground as of...>>93425966... and I haven't moved them since.>Psionic Powers were potentially just a misunderstanding of where studying the brain would lead us>Bullshit. This isn't, "The army thinks they can learn to kill goats by staring at them",That's exactly what that is, and so is everything that ultimately stems from it.
>>93415972Where can one actually find a game of this? This has been on my radar for some time but never got the chance to play because the RPG scene is non-existant where I am with the occasional 5e game
>>93436085I mean, definitely Classic and Mega at least? But presumably most of them?
>>93427531Laws aren't rigorously defined. Laws are things that are observed to happen. You mean it lacks a rigorous theoretical explanation.
>>93429644The 2e chargen website seems to be fucked. Have you tried connecting recently?
>>93415972Ironically it has an excellent magic system. Counting up to 8 is a rare skill these days. w000p
>>93415972Traveller is cool as hell.My only real problem with is that it's not swingy enough. If someone can manage to have like a +4 to a roll, which isn't really that hard, the chances of them failing are incredibly fucking miniscule.2d6 with a normal target number of 8 is just too easy to nail. It's a 91.66% chance of success, actually.Every roll in the game is either trivially easy or outright impossible. Gets hard to balance. Needs more of a gradient. Maybe if it were a 1d12 system I'd feel better about it.
>>93425374>No one bothers to elaborate so much on artificial gravity being made by constant thrustWrong as fuck.In the section of the book where it elaborates on boarding access, it explicitly lists that disabling the artificial gravity is a common tactic to discombobulate boarding space pirates.If there's a fucking OFF button for the gravity, then they have magic handwavium gravity technology.
>>93442836When I was in my 20s I had a cancer with a 92% survival rate and I was still pretty nervous.
>>93418710The problem is that zeerust is an issue with monthly science magazines. There's no way a properly developed and tested game is going to be released and meet your needs that isn't already out of date as soon as it's printed
>>93425458This post is already full of zeerust and a poor understanding of science. (It also doesn't understand stuff that's already being used IRL.)
>>93430347Not enough pictures.
>>93432850I think Zozer's Cepheus Universal is the best version of Traveller for most types of play.
>>93443336did you die?
>>93428666Well I'm for all add ons to the game. However there is a darker secret about Mong 2E. A lot of that expansion you are seeing is actually re-hashing of other version source material. Especially GURPS. As a player and a collector it sucks when that happens.
>>93424469hmm... where have I heard about that before?https://www.languageisavirus.com/creative-writing-techniques/william-s-burroughs-cut-ups.php
>>93436341maybe the /Traveller trove or /RikkiTikkiTraveller would help?
I've always preferred stories with characters like Dominic Flandry, James Bolivar diGriz, and Jason dinAlt to "The Cold Equations".But I would like a planetary generation system that is closer to current scientific understanding of the universe. Is there any hope of something like that? something that could be run on a modest home computer?What game system has the newest astronomical science?
>>93449428c >>93443491
>>93449428Does our current understanding actually tell us anything useful in terms of game relevant planets? Have we actually found enough to have an idea of what likely exists rather than just what's easy to find?As an alternative, Cepheus Journal 5 has an article on using the new-ish knowledge of rogue planets between stars.
