Recent content by Alexander Cecil

Really? Traveller lends itself very well to a very player-centric gaming style, but that does not have to devolve into interstellar accountants at all. In my current game, the PCs are a crew of ex-military, ex-pirate, and ex-Imperial intelligence agents who have a common history through a...

Thank you, Andrew. We allow Agents to switch between Corporate and Intelligence, but not Enforcer, because Enforcer has its own rank advancement table. At least I think it's Enforcer. Curse my addiction to physical books and their lack of availability at work!

I had my players recently exploring an abandoned asteroid-hull mining ship in their most recent adventure. The PCs needed to hack into the ship's computer at various locations to restore functionality to the vessel, but any unsuccessful hack attempt activates the remaining security drones in...

I believe that a common solution is to allow characters to switch specializations if they share a rank table. For example, Scouts can switch freely between their three specializations, but Agents can switch only between Corporate and the "spy" career (I forget its name). This is what we do in...

Interestingly, some of my players have brought up articles about what space combat might look like in comparison to popular movies. Specifically, it related to the sounds the TIE Fighters made in Star Wars and how computer generated sounds in 3D could help pilots and gunners make use of...

To help with this, I separated out each of the "common contraband" columns found in the main book's world generation section. Based upon the government type, the "common contaband" is banned at Law Level. Each other category of contraband is individually banned at (Law Level - 1d6). My sector...

My players have become painfully aware of this, as the one autodoc on the ship isn't quite enough to deal with the damage they received in a nasty set of encounters with combat drones and reprogrammed repair drones. While some are getting healed, others are slowly bleeding out from a lack of...

Years ago, a Solmani megacorporation conducted extensive exploratory mining on a Venus. This was a calculated risk based on computer models which predicted extremely rare, hard to manufacture chemical compounds in the planet's crust. Though the mine ran successfully for several years, advances...

I am currently running a game set in a homebrew version of the Old Expanses Sector, set between the Solomani Rim War and the outbreak of Virus (with the two set much closer together than in OTU materials). We've been running weekly since early October, with occasional breaks due to holidays and...

It might be an errata, or it might be in Mercenary, but I know that Drive(Grav) also gets added to the skill list. In my campaign, Drive(Grav) will let you use normal Air/Rafts, but using any other grav vehicle, especially G-tanks and personal grav. belts, requires Flyer(Grav). Combine this...

For MTU, I take lots of ideas I originally found in Fire, Fusion, and Steel and then modified. All of my ships have three types of "thrusters". For maneuvering within atmosphere at reasonable pressures, the ship uses ducted jets combined with "contra-grav" technology to negate the pull of...

Keep in mind that autonomous combat drones (those running an intellect and expert combat programs) are generally viewed very, very poorly by the Imperium. There's nothing especially as threatening as an enemy that cannot know fear and is easily replaceable. My Traveller players have finally...

I have been playing with a homebrew set of rules for a Song of Ice and Fire campaign using Traveller as my base. Since Traveller is tech-level flexible and uses a fairly dangerous combat system, the connection seems perfect. Rules alterations include more in-depth melee combat (since that...

I have always assumed that it is the same problem as with Jump bladders (external, disposable fuel tanks to allow a second Jump immediately after the first). Having such an item makes it hard to keep things like the Jump-grid aligned and powered properly. I would allow such a design in my...

I let them choose which attribute got which stat. Still, 2d6 has a fairly strong level of variance, and the sheer number of 2's and 3's rolled by a couple players made for horrific stats. I know that usual arguments in favor of keeping lousy stats, but I also want my players to be happy. They...