Recent content by Epicenter

The "destroyer" thing for the JMSDF is how they chose "translate" the general term for ships in JMSDF into English. In Japanese, all JMSDF ships are referred to as goei-kan (護衛艦 - "defense warship"), though sometimes as jiei-kan (自衛官 - self-defense warship, in the same way the somewhat awkward...

The "tough guy" or "do it yourself" argument has never really held much traction with me. I expect others (the game writers) to do the work for me because I am PAYING them to. I don't hire contractors to add a room to my house then do some of the work myself. I don't buy video games and then...

It's conservatism / legacy Traveller going back to like black box Traveller, like serious "that's the way it was done in my father's day, we cannot deviate from them!" type stuff. GDW only made a few example vehicles and starships and put them in their rules, likely for good reasons. However...

The chart under each ship entry is basically the worksheet for the ship, not just the stutterwarp. It tries to list all the game-relevant information like how many days of fuel the powerplant has (19 days for the Anjou), its size (100 tons), staterooms (25), and so on. It's not very easy to...

Stutterwarp speed is its Stutterwarp Efficiency and expresses how many Light Years the ship travels in a day if I recall. In the Mong2300 this is listed on the ship stats summary under the entry "Stutterwarp Drive." You'll see Unloaded and Loaded, which is the Stutterwarp Efficiency for the...

I do. Players have this romantic vision of spaceships, so it always helps to reframe the conversation in terms that are easier to understand. That ship with a load of quirks is like some 1995 Ford Crown Victoria that has been ridden into the ground. Yeah, players can pay to replace the engine...

No, technology has never been the issue for Traveller games. In fact, if I took a few minutes to give a sketch about the nature of the TU, many players (particularly those with an interest to historical RPGs) actually found the idea that communications are not instant to be pretty intriguing...

Please accept my condolences in your time of grief.

The Imperium technically controls space - it doesn't control planets. Despite the situation in the area, GeDeCo being an Imperial group seems it'd follow the Imperial philosophy here; it can argue can "What happens on Acrid stays on Acrid." If pressed: "The rumors of worker treatment on Acrid...

From what I can tell, Traveller is very much based on a TL6 technology universe with a veneer of higher tech. It's possibly not even TL6, maybe TL5. Even by 1977 when Traveller was made, the idea of the tramp freighter was already retro - intermodal containerization by 1977 would have made the...

I admit I've never understood the obsession that so much of the Traveller community appears to have with deckplans; so many people are always clamoring about them that I figured I was in the minority who don't have much use for them. In all the time I've run Traveller games ... I've never used...

Oil? Liquified gas? Sure. They're both far more valuable as industrial feedstocks than fuel. If transport fees are low enough, it might be economical enough to move it to use it as fuel, even. Plus they can be used to make coal if someone was that desperate for coal. Coal? I'm going to...

When a character dies, you should ask the remaining characters how they plan to fill in the gap because there likely is a gap in the group's skills. This is particularly easy if the gaming group is based around the idea of the crew of a small ship. If the person who died was the pilot, the...

It sounds like the sort of problem that'd happen on "flexibly" (sloppily) run cargo haulers. They've had thousands of years (an unthinkably long time, honestly) to refine every small detail of space travel in Traveller. I think any dedicated bulk carrier in the TU would have thoroughly...

I'd dump the SOC stat entirely if it were a non TI setting. Beyond my biases, there's a mechanical reason why having different SOC standings is bad: It's creating more specialized skills that players cannot get in chargen. Traveller being on the end of "skills light RPG" (compared to something...