>see Traveller thread>discover the system>Traveller thread diesTraveller thread
>>96567169Tell me about your current adventures, OP.My group just took a six-month hiatus (in-universe) on Usinea as we just got shanghaied by Imperial Intelligence and given a 5-year contract and a Letter of Marque in exchange for fighting Solomani extremists in the Hinterworlds (which we were already doing anyway).My drifter character has gone native and is betting his Cr900k fortune in a bid to get augments to overcome his 4 STR/5 END frailties a little.
>>96567169I'm starting my crew off in the Borderlands of the Trojan Reach, putting money together for a ship. Right now we're in the middle of a Seven Samurai adventure defending villagers from Ihaeti.
>>96567169>>96567928>>96567839>fighting dirty pirates
>>96567169Players are serving officers of a Planetary Navy, crewing a Gazelle, and once they have trained up their crew will be trying to keep a lid in smuggling, pirates and troublesome mining corporations.I will be taking lots of inspiration for plot ideas from Hornblower and Brunch & Cole's Sten novels.
I really wanna run a Traveller game, but how do I manage the scope of my game? That's a common issue I have with any space opera game.
>>96568739The way jump drives work in traveller, there are only ever a couple of options as to where they are going to jump to next. You can just do a planet of the week thing, so only ever have to prep one adventure ahead.
>>96568739>how do I manage the scope of my gameMy idea was to start on a single planet in a Jump-1 cluster like Wildeman of the Borderlands subsector. Then give them a Jump-1 ship and let them explore the cluster. Then give them a Jump-2 ship and leave plenty of clues and contacts that point them toward where you have adventures planned. Then it's planet of the week until you introduce something more over-arching like a sector-wide BBEG or published campaigns like Pirates or Drinax or Secret of the Ancients.
>>96568819>>96568825Makes sense. How indepth do you guys usually flesh out planets?
>>96568825ORSit them down with a Jump-2 ship in an isolated region like The Islands of Reft.
>>96568840TravellerMap.com is a great resources for giving you the quick and dirty overview of a planet. Really all you need is to know the Tech Level, the starport quality, and have a hook for an adventure.
>>96568840My opinion is you only need to worry about enough to make a session gamable. Robin Laws has good advice about this in ashen stars, actually: give a planet one big idea. Your players are probably only going to be there for a session or two, a planet of hats is alright for that.
>>96567169>words words wordsThey seriously thought this cover was what would grab people and not a picture of a cool space battle or something.
>>96569149The black, white and red is peak graphic design, you glue-huffing mouth-breather.
>>96569149duno, caught my imagination.
>>96569149That cover is such a classic you have no idea. No art. Just the blackness of space. And just words to represent you hearing the radio transmission. It's from and sucks you in. More memorable than 95 percent of TTRPG book covers.
>>96569306I see your Classic Traveller and raise you the New Era.
>>96569306Aye. My mind fills in the transmission static on its own.>>96569324I like the art but looks like the cover for a Dune RPG.
>>96567169Why isn't there a Traveller video game yet?
>>96569559I want one made by Owlcat.
>>96569559It exists but you're not gonna like the answer
>>96569727You're right, I don't like that answer.Star Citizen is a metaverse scam.
>>96569559There are two of them based on MegaTraveller.ttdhr
>>96569745As someone who got roped into playing it, yes, it's got too many flaws and bugs for a Traveller fan to appreciate as a "traveller video game". But hypothetically, if it wasn't a bug ridden p2w mess, it really would be peak traveller vidya. There's a lot going on in there that would make it potentially one of the best space sims, but it's hampered by its glaring flaws and bugs
>>96569727If we're going with that bullshit I wold say that No Man's Sky is a much better game.
>>96569753
>>96569799I really enjoy No Man's Sky, but my issue with it is how everyone has been cheating for so long that everything's already been solved. There's no reason to bother anymore.
>>96567169I'd like to play as a K'kree outsider in a hypothetical Traveller game--as if that'll ever happen.How do I justify that background? War orphan?
I have a rules question that has come up in the background of my game.When using the Jink/Dodge option in ship battles, do you add your entire pilot skill DM to the DM penalty, or just your ranks in the Pilot skill alone? This is a question I have had personally,
>found the best group of roleplayers I've ever played with in a random Drinax campaign I joined online>12 sessions in one of them gets a new work schedule and has to drop out>It kills the group and the best campaign I've ever played in dies off
>>96569850War orphan is fine but every culture has weirdos who want to leave their culture and join another. Just be a K'kree space weeb but for the Empire.
>>96569850Probably, yeah. Orphan child of outcasts, insane (by K'kree standards), or survivor of Hiver experimentation.
>>96568739First and foremost, talk to your players.Second, build a big enough sandbox. Use either a prepped setting sector map or roll one up. Fill it with locations and NPCs. Do all of this before running your game.
>>96569559Look up Freelancer.
>>96569866What's the difference?>>96569891I am sorry for your loss, and you have my condolances.
>Traveller Album by Sluog Feg>Merc gets turned into Vargr/Human hybrid vis Ancient gene-tech spores >Vargr Human hybrid race looking for leaderFew questions on this:How would such a hybrid race work out rules and lore wise? Which edition could be used to homebrew them up? Has anyone ever posted/created playable stats for hybrids, and their change? Could they exist up into the Galaxiad era, and where would they most likely be, Vargr Extents?
>>96572082Probably just average out the stats between vargr and Humans. Mongoose 2e would be the best edition for it. I could have sworn there were hybrids rules,or at least alien creation rules, in one of the mongoose 2e supplements.
>>96569559Elite came out in 1984.
We seeing anything for Galaxiad era? Chances of Mongoose putting out content for it, after M Miller passes?
>>96573318Mongoose owns Traveller outright now, don't they? Mark is retired.
Newfag here. What campaign tone works best with Traveller? It doesn't quite strike me as best for something like Star Trek, does it work more for something like Stargate?
>>96573334Firefly, but I personally GM something with a tone similar to Cowboy Bebop. It works very well with mid-tier TL levels and the feeling of 'you're not important, but still leaving your mark.'
>>96573387Realistically, how many different systems do players usually cover over a short campaign, like 1-2 years? Assuming the party tends to fall into a rabbit hole pretty easily and wants to chase hooks to their completion i.e if they uncover a pirate ring and they decide they must go they won't stop until their asteroid base is destroyed.
>>96573402IMHO, it depends on what the GM provides. I brought my players from Pathfinder 2e, and for the first year, they didn’t leave the planet. I didn’t even bother with a ship for them, space combat, various planetary effects, or anything like that. I'd say we used like half(?) of everything in the CORE books, but my party has somewhat slow tempo - so yeah...To realistically destroy a pirate base in a sector, the party would need to leverage a lot of connections, resources, and their own ingenuity if they want to see it through to the end and stay alive, but at the end of the day it all depends on what GM and players see as the campaign tone. After PF2e, my players didn’t immediately adapt to the idea that it’s better to win a fight before it even starts rather than facing it head-on.
>>96572057>What's the difference?You can add to your +DM with augments and such.Do those outside bonuses count?
>>96573334Honestly, I could see Traveller being used for a great many things. The assumption is very Star Trek/Firefly (for TV-show analogies), but it is easily broad enough for campaigns set entirely on one planet or for Stargate kind of stuff.As someone that's been playing for a year soon, one thing I've reacted to is a sense of "Why are all these low-tech things even in the books when getting the upper-level stuff is fairly easy and often much cheaper?" and I feel like the only answer is that it's there to maintain the scope of the ruleset and setting.Sure, you'll end up having PRIS Sunglasses if you really want it, but the regular Electrobinoculars are there precisely for when you're running a Stargate type game set on a TL10 planet.>>96573318My impression is that MgT2e is intentionally "frozen" at ~1105. Given the scope of the setting, I don't consider that a problem at all, and I would caution against doing retarded shit like WH40k->nu41k.But no, I would not expect to see anything from specific other eras.
>>96569866>>96573458A +DM is a bonus to the dice modifier, not to the skill. By RAW, my interpretation of the text>equal to the pilot's skillMeans that only the actual skill counts. If we look at the text for something like the "Cockpit Sensory Suite", for example, it says>This augment grants DM+1 to all Pilot, Drive, Flyer, and Seafarer checks made when travelling at high speeds.It doesn't give +1 to your Pilot, it gives a +1 DM to those checks.This could of course differ based on the augment and whatnot, but I think that is the distinction, and I think that logic can be good to keep in mind. Most bonuses are not to skills, they are bonus dice modifiers to checks that involve specific skills (and often specific contexts). So I think the RAW is relatively clear; skill only.That said, if I was the GM, my approach would *always* be "does this make sense?". So personally, just me, if you're dodging at high speeds, I think you should get that bonus anyway, because it fits with the underlying logic of the augment. But RAW? No.
>>96573387I am not even sure if I recognize the difference between Firefly and Cowboy Bebop at the conceptual level. They've got slightly different vibes, and the narrative is obviously different, the storytelling is different, but the base premises are very close to eachother, I think. And both are very Traveller, yeah.>>96573402>how many different systemsUnder the assumption that you meant sector and not system, that really depends on what is going on. And also what sector. But you can easily run a full campaign in a single sector if that's what you're thinking. After all, the Hinterworlds spans 435 worlds.But if you really meant system, the answer is "countless". If a group is in a hurry to get somewhere, they can run 10 systems in a session, assuming that they don't suffer any major random events or run into any GM-laid plans. Our last session, we ran 5-6 systems, no problem. But we didn't stop and smell the roses at any but one, where we delivered cargo, and then we flew to the end point to finish up what turned out to be the first part of the campaign.At another point, we spent like 4 or 5 real-life weeks on a single planet. I think our first planet took 2 weeks/sessions, maybe 3. Hell, we had a single-space-ship-combat-and-then-an-attempted-boarding-and-then-a-shoppping-session take 2-3 sessions, give or take. That was almost two full sessions in a system before we even reached the planet.My point being that there's no single answer to your question.
>>96567169What kind of cover is that anyway? Why put some narrative fluff on the cover page instead of some cool starship?
>>96574068Do you need a picture of a starship on the cover to envision an image of a starship?
>>96573865This is what I suspected.I ask because my total +DM to the relevant pilot was +9, so hitting fuckers with a -9 penalty to hit us, coupled with Evasion 2, was kinda absurd (even if it was fucking baller to thumb my nose at the fire of entire squadrons).I'll talk to my Ref, and take the honorable road.
>>96574177It is important to remember that up to 15% of the population suffers from aphantasia.
>>96574703I don't think I want to target those people as my market. Someone who sees that text coupled with the blackness of space on the cover can already envision scenarios to go with it. I immediately considered just how hopeless a mayday like that would really be. Even if you weren't under active attack and were simply floating in space
>>96574068>>96574177>>96575534Hell, I wouldn't even have that text on the front. I'd have it on the back. Just the mayday.On the front I'd just have the red line and Traveller, as well as maybe the subtitle. That's it. It's fucking iconic and I think it was a mistake for Mongoose to abandon it.
>>96576219This, so much thisIf one googles "the best RPG cover of all time"Guess what you get>>96567169This cover
>>96573334Firefly into a mix of Jagged alliance and Starsector as the PCs' company becomes wealthierIf you want to start them without a starship, then more akin to a globetrotting cyberpunk to start
>>96576219>It's fucking iconic and I think it was a mistake for Mongoose to abandon it.I do agree with this, the 1e mongoose cover beats the shit out of both the 2e covers. But I like the OG too. And I guess the Mongoose 1e cover is really just The Traveller Book cover.
>>96576571There have been 4 2e coversThey're all garbage, Mongoose 1e was minimalism in perfection
Anybody know anything about "Mystery of the Ancients", the prequel adventure for "Secrets of the Ancients"?
What is the appeal of the Third Imperium? From both in universe and player's perspectives.
>>96578807In-universe it's the biggest game in town. Protection from vargr Corsairs, pirates, Aslan slavers, and K'kree zealots. Peace, stability, a central currency.d0rsa
>>96569149As a grade 5/6 kid stumbling on my dad's copy of the '81 classic box set buried in the family's game collection, it definitely intrigued me.Never gotten around to running a game because I've never bothered to look up things other people have written (planets, ship designs, etc.) due wanting to make my own with their own flavour and inevitably get lost in the sauce of making my own till the scope bloats out of control, the ADHD kicks in, and suddenly I'm more interested in working on other projects.
>>96573402Depends. Some campaigns consist of the players operating from a single world, base or lucrative trade location, moving a few parsecs and back again over and over (some like to have a home to work from, being part of a nation, institute, guild or corporation to build upon, defend and draw assistance from). Others prefer to be space hobos that are costantly travelling, free from commitments and responsibilities. Some prefer doing a huge circular route around a sector (ie the Spinward Main), some like to travel across the imperium or explore outside it's borders, while others just wander wherever adventure or trade takes them. Talk to your players, see what they would enjoy the most.
>>96573841The low tech stuff makes sense if you take into account the low communication and travel speed across Imperial space. TL is the world's ability to make, use, understand and integrate a level of technology into what it already has. TL15 is the highest TL (very rare), TL10-12 being common, with many worlds or subsectors (especially in frontier sectors like the Spinward Marches) being much lower. In 2025 we are used to next day delivery and instant online training and info, but when the delivery time for the supertech gizmo (and it's training explaining it's use, how to repair and maintain it, even the scienctific principles behind it) are a couple of months away, most worlds (especially the smaller colonies) settle with what they can make, understand and maintain themselves. I like to think of the Imperium being more like the Earth earlier times, with slower dissemination of tech and ideas - the few TL15 worlds being main manufacturing and technological hubs where anything (within their law level) is available, most cities being lower TL unable to make the best gear but able to operate and maintain it with parts shippped in, and with the smaller frontier sector colonies being like small villages and coastal fishing hamlets where everything is locally made because it is easy to maintain and repair locally than wait for spares to arrive.Other restriction could be due to religious beliefs, local interests, national pride, or the effects of local resources and environments - the availability of oil, coal, metals, water, vegetation, breathable air, sunlight, etc that can effect the TL adopted.From a gaming point, having every world different gives a reason for the players to travel, as every landing opens up a novel place to visit. If every world is exactly the same TL15, I find it tends to reduces the sense of adventure - the characters might as well just stay at home.
>>96569149It's timeless. A cover with a picture tends to get dated very quickly, as art styles change, the technology use to draw it changes, or the political value of the viewing audience changes. A simple black cover with red and white text is pretty neutral will still be around decades from now.
>>96579949I realize that it makes sense in a meta setting context, and I agree that it helps to think of it all as "Earth in earlier times", where dissemination of information, sending letters, etc., can take weeks even within the same country - and every adjacent system in Traveller is, on average, a week or so apart.But from a player character perspective in a game, and the fairly high possibility of finding higher-than-average-TL on any given planet, it's just not going to see any use. It is mostly there to maintain the scope of the ruleset and setting. I don't even really mean this as a criticism, but it is somewhat jarring when coming from other systems, because it is worth keeping in mind, like "No, no, you don't want a TL10 computer, you want to just go straight for a half-sized TL16 Portable Computer that also serves as a Commlink, it is cheaper and better in every way if you can find it; you'll literally never want a TL10 Computer unless truly desperate."
>>96580303>fairly high possibility of finding higher-than-average-TL on any given planetIs it?
>>96579949Rolled up about 1/5th of a sector using Classic rules (just adding that a gov 7 world also has +1 TL like in later versions). Doesn't quite match, funny. But then I also did zero adjustments and happily have a TL3 world with a corrosive atmosphere. I'm sure those 5 millions people will be fine.>>96580308Modern Traveller insists that hopping on a starship is like we do with planes currently, that thousands of cargo starships of thousands of tonnes follow corporate trade lines endlessly from a port to another and hundreds or thousands of free traders and subsidized traders take care of all the smaller cargo lots and worlds, so, yeah.
>>96580308>Is it?It is.
>>96580886Btw I want to add that I personally think that's a bit fucky, and that it should be -1, -2, -4, -8 or something to that effect, but c'est la vie. I'd also make it so that items above the planet's average TL are more expensive, instead of things (at least computers and electronics) flat-out becoming cheaper as TL rises. In my opinion it should all be relative.
>>96567169Okay, I'm sold on TravellerCan I play it solo? Game shops in my area are basically D&D and 40k only.
>>96580943Yeshttps://www.zozergames.com/solo-for-traveller.html
>>96580943>Can I play a roleplaying game solo?Are you retarded?
>>96573932Was your game the Close the Airlock podcast? Because that beginning of game sequence of events sounds .. awfully familiar.
>>96581706>Close the Airlock podcastNever heard of it. I generally don't listen or watch other people play. That said, it doesn't surprise me that others would have the same experience, I think it very easily happens in Traveller. How much time you spend in one system or another is incredibly arbitrary, especially in real life timekeeping terms.
How "grimdark" is Traveller?
>>96584039You can play it pretty gritty, the novel Mark Millar wrote, Agent of the Imperium, is pretty fucking grim. It's outside of my expertise, but I think The New Era is very '"stellar post apocalypse."
>>96584039By modern standards? it isn't, even the darker eras are more decline and degeneration than grimdark.>>96584068TNE is definitely Nobledark.
>>96584039>grimdarkGrimdark, as a concept, is pretty fucking lame and gay. Just look at all the literal transgenders attracted to 40gay.
>>96584039It's not grimdark in the gothic sense of Warhammer 40k, or even the mongoloidal "grimdark" capeshitting of nu41k. I think it's more fair to say that it has grimdark angles at times, just like it has elements of cyberpunk without being meaningfully part of cyberpunk as a genre.It can get pretty grim and dark, both in the personal sense of existing in a universe that hates you, as alluded to by the classic cover. Being lost in space, suffocating, etc., as well as the grander sense of politics or setting background; the Third Imperium is a feudal behemoth, largely controlled by megacorps at this point, and wars that can devastate planets always loom on the horizon, and there's near-cosmic horrors of an unknown antiquity implied to be looming in the background. There's de facto immortality available for some but not most, as well as Altered Carbon-like mind backups, mind-wiped secret agents with compartmentalised lives, government cyborg slave-soldiers, combat drugs, and implants that can make you question what it means to be human, including things like a pilot box - a consciousness entirely confined to a simulated life in a box, activated for flight duty. There's an entire race of psionic humans to which privacy does not exist and thought crime is real.But all of that, while extant, isn't the focus of the core game, and it would be up to the GM to choose what to lean into, if they want to. There's no mechanically enforced loss of sanity for implants. There's no Chaos threatening to encroach on daily lives. There's no overbearing all-encompassing religious dogma to most. There's no mutations, and no commissars on every ship. Slavery, while prevalent, is largely outlawed.The central premise revolves around the players being plucky adventurers and aspiring traders, space-truckers, explorers, and mercenaries. Regular people, with relatively normal lives (and then shenanigans ensue).
>>96584949TNE seems like a cool setting, I really aught to check that out. Taking back the stars seems like a more focused campaign frame.
>>96585754Depends on the period you choose. The original setting was set 1105 years after the founding of the 3rd Imperium - mankind has spread across the stars, life is good for most and apart from the occasional frontier war, pirate action or trade war the Imperium looks to last another 1000.Before the 3rd Imperium was the Long Night, basically a centuries long dark age after the collaspe of the 2nd Imperium - Lots of worlds collapsed, lots of plague, famine, death, misery, technological decline, space vikings, etc. Before the Long Night you had the Interstellar wars in which us Terrans fought and conqoured the Vilani of the 1st Imperium - just centuries of warfare (in which Earth won), quickly followed by the short lived Terran/Vilani 2nd Imperium and the economic collapse into the Long Night.Later versions of Traveller tended to carry on from the 3rd Imperium Era, but destroying the 3rd Imperium setting (to sell books I guess), Megatraveller introduced an Imperium wide Civil War, TNE introduced an Imperium wide AI virus and second Long Night, with some later versions introducing a brain frying 'Empress Wave' eminating from the galactic core. Latest version of Mongoose has gone back to the golden era 3rd Imperium.You have lots to choose from (or can even make up your own) and Traveller can be as Noble or Grim as you want.
>>96586144I don't really feel like any of those are materially different in this regard, and vaguely constitute the same elements, especially at the personal level, but yes, just to be clear, my perspective is the base ~1105 one, and I do agree that Traveller *can* be as noble or grim as you want, which was partially my point, since all the pieces are there - they're just not (normally) core to the central premise.>>96586020I don't think I'd categorize something as vague as taking back the stars as a focused campaign frame for what's primarily just an adventuring party. You could make it something like a colonial campaign, though, but unless you start to really abstract things yourself, it's unlikely that you'll start managing multiple colonies and the like.I mean it's possible to run in the system, obviously, but at some point I feel like you're not really playing the game anymore, as much as you'd be running a management simulator in the setting. Which would be cool, but not what I think the game is really made to do.
>>96586528>I don't really feel like any of those are materially different in this regard, and vaguely constitute the same elements, especially at the personal leveltbf fair because most of those do feel rather fixed, but, Hard Times is supposed to feature the collapse actually happening around the PCs, between the civil war and virus. I would put Hard Times as grim and dark for sure, since warlords are consolidating power everywhere, raiding neighbours for stuff they're running out of, and the GM is meant to roll up world UWPs degrading and getting worse when the PCs come back to a world they've already visited.
