Lord High Munchkin
Mongoose
You could also look at 'Eclipse Phase' as it uses a variant d100 mechanic (actually there is a lot that is portable to BRP).
A Farewell to Traveller
- Thread starter rust
- Start date
Techno-Guru
Mongoose
I know I've been off and on with these forums, but I'll miss you all the same. And well, the point of a game is to have fun. Hopefully you'll find another game that allows you to do the things you want.
Dave Chase
Mongoose
Guess it is time for me to learn German and start hanging out on some of those forums that rust frequents. 
Dave Chase
Dave Chase
Must say I've never been quite convinced of this. I've played Dark Heresy/WHFRP and equivalents, and I'm not sure the D100 necessarily grants you anything a 2D6 roll doesn't.
For that matter I kind of like the normal distribution effect; that first bit of competence (a level 0 skill) means far, far more in terms of increased probability of passing than being world class rather than simply a qualified professional for a basic task (7+/8+ target) whilst for a difficult task (11+ or worse) the reverse is true.
Egil Skallagrimsson
Mongoose
All the Best Herr Rust. I have really appreciated your contributions, well informed, to the point, and often quite temperate when some other contributors have become rather over heated.
Egil
Egil
Again, thank you all for your friendly words. 
sible number of improvement steps for a character's skills.
In Traveller with its 2D6 system and target number 8 there are 7 possible improvement
steps, from untrained to skill level 6, which gives an automatic success under average
conditions. Once the character has learned a skill and improved it six times during the
campaign, he has reached an almost superhuman level of competence, and there is not
much of a reason to improve the skill any further.
In a 1D100 roll under system the character theoretically has 100 possible improvement
steps, although I actually reduce this to about 20 improvement steps of 5 % each. For a
long campaign this means that the character can continue to improve his skills far more
often until he reaches the level of an automatic success under average circumstances,
so there is less risk that the character will become "superhuman" (and mostly boring be-
cause of this) early in the campaign.
This also makes it easier for me to design challenges for the characters without having
to introduce an "arms race" or "death spiral" into the setting, where problems and oppo-
nents have to get bigger and stronger all the time to keep pace with the skill improvement
of the characters.
One example that is important for me because of the length of my campaigns is the pos-locarno24 said:
sible number of improvement steps for a character's skills.
In Traveller with its 2D6 system and target number 8 there are 7 possible improvement
steps, from untrained to skill level 6, which gives an automatic success under average
conditions. Once the character has learned a skill and improved it six times during the
campaign, he has reached an almost superhuman level of competence, and there is not
much of a reason to improve the skill any further.
In a 1D100 roll under system the character theoretically has 100 possible improvement
steps, although I actually reduce this to about 20 improvement steps of 5 % each. For a
long campaign this means that the character can continue to improve his skills far more
often until he reaches the level of an automatic success under average circumstances,
so there is less risk that the character will become "superhuman" (and mostly boring be-
cause of this) early in the campaign.
This also makes it easier for me to design challenges for the characters without having
to introduce an "arms race" or "death spiral" into the setting, where problems and oppo-
nents have to get bigger and stronger all the time to keep pace with the skill improvement
of the characters.
Captain Jonah
Mongoose
Hey Rust. Don't go. just because you are stopping using the mongoose Traveller system is no reason to leave us.
Plenty of talk here about stuff which is not rules dependant and I'm sure people would be happy to help you with putting together a new rules set for your setting.
Besdies which your setting is interesting and I'm sure I'm not alone in wanting to know what goes on :lol:
So basicly we would miss you, don't leave for good, pop in for a chat :wink:
Plenty of talk here about stuff which is not rules dependant and I'm sure people would be happy to help you with putting together a new rules set for your setting.
Besdies which your setting is interesting and I'm sure I'm not alone in wanting to know what goes on :lol:
So basicly we would miss you, don't leave for good, pop in for a chat :wink:
alex_greene
Guest
And that's the basis of your leaving? A perceived fault with the game mechanic?
You simply have your characters run through situations with less than optimal conditions, facing Very Difficult and even Formidable challenges almost routinely.
Restrict dice rolling for critical moments (the aforementioned Very Difficult and Formidable challenges and, of course, combat, always under suboptimal conditions - e.g. cramped FIBUA in pitch darkness, against an enemy equipped with thermographic heat vision goggles) and just assume, within reason, that characters pull off non-critical skill rolls (Average or higher difficulty, no environmental or circumstantial DMs) with ordinary successes (Effect 2, say,rather than Effect 6).
If you don't like psionics, don't use psionics. Develop an alternative skill speciality which simulates the effect of psi. Specifically, the Art specialities of Cold Reading, Prestidigitation, Escapology and Stage Magic, and of course the expansion of Social Sciences (psychology) to include the study of body language with the following task:-
Analyse body language, Social Science (psychology), Intellect or Education, 10-60 rounds, Average(+0).
Do you want games based on what characters do, rather than what equipment they carry or what cargo and armaments the starships carry? Set your adventures mostly planetside. Make them about people.
You need not even worry overmuch about the aliens. If you don't want aliens, again don't run them or play them.
Anyway, I've said my say. DWTW, Rust, but keep your eyes peeled on this forum regardless. You never know when the next big thing might sudden;y hit Traveller.
You simply have your characters run through situations with less than optimal conditions, facing Very Difficult and even Formidable challenges almost routinely.
Restrict dice rolling for critical moments (the aforementioned Very Difficult and Formidable challenges and, of course, combat, always under suboptimal conditions - e.g. cramped FIBUA in pitch darkness, against an enemy equipped with thermographic heat vision goggles) and just assume, within reason, that characters pull off non-critical skill rolls (Average or higher difficulty, no environmental or circumstantial DMs) with ordinary successes (Effect 2, say,rather than Effect 6).
If you don't like psionics, don't use psionics. Develop an alternative skill speciality which simulates the effect of psi. Specifically, the Art specialities of Cold Reading, Prestidigitation, Escapology and Stage Magic, and of course the expansion of Social Sciences (psychology) to include the study of body language with the following task:-
Analyse body language, Social Science (psychology), Intellect or Education, 10-60 rounds, Average(+0).
Do you want games based on what characters do, rather than what equipment they carry or what cargo and armaments the starships carry? Set your adventures mostly planetside. Make them about people.
You need not even worry overmuch about the aliens. If you don't want aliens, again don't run them or play them.
Anyway, I've said my say. DWTW, Rust, but keep your eyes peeled on this forum regardless. You never know when the next big thing might sudden;y hit Traveller.
No, of course not, a game system that suits me a little better is just a wel-alex_greene said:
come consequence of moving away from Traveller. The main reason for lea-
ving Traveller is that it does not support campaigns with the focus on a sin-
gle planet well, especially when this planet is a water world, and that there
is a huge gap between Traveller's technology assumptions and what makes
sense within the framework of my water world setting.
To continue with Traveller would force me to continue to make up almost all
of the rules and all of the equipment my setting needs, and by using my real
world sources for any plausible future marine technology I would continue to
run into lots of contradictions with the established Traveller technology. After
lots of attempts to twist Traveller into a form that fits my setting I am just ti-
red of this effort and the bad compromises which I get as a result.
Well, and when I move to another technology design system, GURPS with its
many very useful supplements (Atlantis, Blue Planet, Transhuman Space - Un-
der Pressure ...), I can just as well use the opportunity to move from 2D6 to
1D100, too.
nats
Banded Mongoose
Wouldnt the FASA supplement on the undersea environment not help? But yes Traveller isnt well suited to one-planet campaigns, thats not really what the game is about. I actually do like creating my own rules but admittedly its not fun if you have to do a whole book of rules for a campaign.
So yeah I can see why you would want to change your system.
Personally I hated Gurps, though I didnt give it much of a go.
I only play Traveller because I got into it as a kid and dont want to try anything else. I love those little books! I havent played anything else so I dont know if there is anything else that is better - there probably is. Certainly Traveller is full of holes and some parts of it are useless. But I still like it.
So yeah I can see why you would want to change your system.
Personally I hated Gurps, though I didnt give it much of a go.
I only play Traveller because I got into it as a kid and dont want to try anything else. I love those little books! I havent played anything else so I dont know if there is anything else that is better - there probably is. Certainly Traveller is full of holes and some parts of it are useless. But I still like it.
It is useful, but it was written in 1983 and shows its age, its technologynats said:
is outdated even from today's point of view, and much more so when
compared to an extrapolation of what future aquatic technology will pro-
bably be like.
To give an example of what I mean, in the 1980s the idea of an archety-
pical sea floor miner was still close to a tough guy in a diving hardsuit with
the aquatic equivalent of a mining pick in his hands. But in my setting the
typical miner is just as likely to be a slim young woman with a technical
education who knows how to use a virtual reality set to remotely control
an aquatic mining drone from a room which looks much like a starship's
bridge.
nats
Banded Mongoose
I would guess then that undersea operations would almost be exactly the same as vacuum operations and undersea mining would seem to be very similar to asteroid belting in space.
I would suggest that using Traveller as a rules framework along with some specific Belting rules that many others have written elsewhere, some Robot design rules, modern vacc suits, undersea vehicles, undersea colony buildings, and some imagination would get you where you want to go (along with some sea related adventures such as Undersea Environments and Nomads of the Ocean World)
I cant see any other rules being able to give you that kind of thing to be honest.
I would suggest that using Traveller as a rules framework along with some specific Belting rules that many others have written elsewhere, some Robot design rules, modern vacc suits, undersea vehicles, undersea colony buildings, and some imagination would get you where you want to go (along with some sea related adventures such as Undersea Environments and Nomads of the Ocean World)
I cant see any other rules being able to give you that kind of thing to be honest.
Not really, the two environments are very different, and deep seanats said:
operations are much more challenging and dangerous than vacuum
operations - which is why we already had lots of spacewalking astro-
nauts and even some astronauts walking on the Moon, but until now
no human has ever walked on the sea floor at our ocean's average
depth.
Well, with GURPS Atlantis, GURPS Blue Planet and Transhuman Space
- Under Pressure I have almost 450 pages of roleplaying material for
aquatic settings and adventures. :wink:
GamerDude
Cosmic Mongoose
In space, internal pressure wants to blow outward and must protect from radiation and such (in system). Without needing to land the ship can be of any shape/size.nats said:
underwater, the pressure is inward and will crush a vessel. The deeper you go the greater the pressure. To move through water you don't use the same principles as outer space. There is a type of "streamlining" needed so the water doesn't hold you back/create to much resistance. and so forth.
Yep, and the deep sea is a much more dynamic environment,
there are currents and other phenomena one has to deal with.
Sensors have a much shorter range, a much lower resolution
and are less reliable (which is why submarines surprisingly of-
ten run aground or hit obstacles like uncharted seamounts).
Sea water is "dirty", its organic and anorganic loads tend to
reduce visibility and sensor range and to damage equipment.
To move up or down one has to change the flotation, and one
has to watch it closely if one wants to stay at the same depth.
And so on and on, a very long list of potential problems.
But the worst thing is the one mentioned by Gamer Dude, the
pressure. While a human can survive vacuum for several minu-
tes, which gives him enough time to patch a hole in a vac suit,
the pressure in the deep sea will kill him instantly in case his suit
fails. And while a hull breach on a spaceship often means only a
few hours in a vac suit to do the repairs, a hull breach on a vehi-
cle in the deep sea destroys the vehicle and kills the crew. The
same happens if the vehicle dives or sinks beyond its crush depth.
All in all, compared to the conditions in the deep sea the outer
space is almost a welcoming environment, and sea floor mining
is a typical job for drones and robots instead of humans (or for
extremely well paid humans with a suicidal tendency ...).
there are currents and other phenomena one has to deal with.
Sensors have a much shorter range, a much lower resolution
and are less reliable (which is why submarines surprisingly of-
ten run aground or hit obstacles like uncharted seamounts).
Sea water is "dirty", its organic and anorganic loads tend to
reduce visibility and sensor range and to damage equipment.
To move up or down one has to change the flotation, and one
has to watch it closely if one wants to stay at the same depth.
And so on and on, a very long list of potential problems.
But the worst thing is the one mentioned by Gamer Dude, the
pressure. While a human can survive vacuum for several minu-
tes, which gives him enough time to patch a hole in a vac suit,
the pressure in the deep sea will kill him instantly in case his suit
fails. And while a hull breach on a spaceship often means only a
few hours in a vac suit to do the repairs, a hull breach on a vehi-
cle in the deep sea destroys the vehicle and kills the crew. The
same happens if the vehicle dives or sinks beyond its crush depth.
All in all, compared to the conditions in the deep sea the outer
space is almost a welcoming environment, and sea floor mining
is a typical job for drones and robots instead of humans (or for
extremely well paid humans with a suicidal tendency ...).
IanBruntlett
Emperor Mongoose
I'm a newbie in this respect. I believe that gravimetric sensors detect mass - is this right and are there any ways to hide from gravimetric sensors?rust said:
