A Smaller Setting?

[Geesuv]

I'm looking to start a game of Traveller but I find the OTU Spinward Marches setting just too... huge! What I'm looking for is something a bit smaller, where the PCs can make their mark on the universe in a fairly realistic fashion. Something with perhaps a couple dozen human inhabited systems with the rest being aliens/unexplored frontier.
Can anyone suggest a good setting to use?
Worst comes to worst, I can design my own setting... I'm just lazy ^^;
As a side note, is the B5 suppliment worth getting?

 

[Captain Jonah]

If you are looking for something MonT on a small scale try the Reft sector.

Small, tidy, detailed. Has its history, politics etc all covered. Rivalry between worlds, aliances and shady deals.

The reft sector is the cluster of worlds in the great rift used to link the spinwards to the main body of the 3I so it sees a fair volume of traffic and the odd passing 3I big warship but mostly apart from the scouts the place is self contained and left to its own.

Its also generaly a bit less advanced than the 3I giving it a more rough and ready feel which refs can expand as they wish.

 

[Egil Skallagrimsson]

Reft Sector could be a good idea, or a cluster somewhere in the spinward marches.

Frankly, the 3I does, at first, seem overwhealming, but remember that you can plan the campaign so the travellers are likely to only see a small part of it at a time, a subsector or less. If you don't like descriptions and background, change it for your campaign.

However, it doesn't take long to plan out a whole subsector using the rules in MoT, perhaps modifying in light of how you want things to develop, e.g. if you want to keep the tech level lowish, just cap all TL at, say, 12.

Egil

 

[Golan2072]

Find a subsector you like in the OTU and focus on it. The easiest option is to take a published subsector from one of the published sectors (Spinward marches, Reft, Vanguard Reaches etc) and focus your game on it, building your campaign from the foundations existing in published material. Another option, which takes a little more work (but I prefer it nonetheless) is to pick a subsector for which no canon material (or almost no canon material) exists and doing whatever you want with it, but still using the general OTU background/races/materials with it; that is what I'm doing with Canopus.

Of course, if you have a little spare time, building your own subsector-scale setting is the best option, as you can tailor it to your group's precise needs and have no canon to restrict your imagination!

 

[kafka]

Or check out the Traveller Adventure...a subsector has lots of potential. Project Steel shows how much fun one world can be especially if you start populating the rest of the star system.

The problem with Jump Drive (and its beauty) is that it can allow a different planet every week. But, players and PCs need to be disciplined into learning the unique features of each planet akin to saying that people who say they visited Europe when they spent an extended stopover in London. Or say that they visited Canada by seeing Toronto & Montreal. America by visiting New York and Los Angeles. Asia by visiting Tokyo?

What of Africa? What of Rio? What of Antarctica Countless parts of the world to explore... and here we have dealt only with the surface... What the oceans, mountains, and even the skies...

 

[Egil Skallagrimsson]

Or check out the Traveller Adventure...a subsector has lots of potential. Project Steel shows how much fun one world can be especially if you start populating the rest of the star system.

The problem with Jump Drive (and its beauty) is that it can allow a different planet every week. But, players and PCs need to be disciplined into learning the unique features of each planet akin to saying that people who say they visited Europe when they spent an extended stopover in London. Or say that they visited Canada by seeing Toronto & Montreal. America by visiting New York and Los Angeles. Asia by visiting Tokyo?

What of Africa? What of Rio? What of Antarctica Countless parts of the world to explore... and here we have dealt only with the surface... What the oceans, mountains, and even the skies...

Heartily agree! Though I have not played it, the Belt Strike adventure shows what could be done in one solar system with no jump drive.

Not giving the travellers a ship initially, but forcing them to reley on a ship loaned by their employer, or just high/mid/low passage will also help keep them away from planets that you don't want to develop just yet.

Oddly enough, I have found that trading also tends to direct the travellers as well, certainly after a few near disasterously unprofitable runs. Now they need a very good, GM generated reason, to jump to unprofitable areas.

Egil

 

[Ishmael]

like others, I recommend the Reft sector

If you want OTU, you might consider getting the old CT book, 'Trillion Credit Squadron' which has a lot of canon info as it was the focus of TCS's campaign game.

if OTU is unimportant, just throw away the 'islands' subsectors and replace them with ones of your own design.
imno, 2 subsectors is the ideal size for a campaign game, especially if you put in 2 or 3 smallish pocket empires

 

[rinku]

I'd suggest you just roll up a subsector of your own and play with that. Pre-published sectors or subsectors really don't save you THAT much time, since you still need to flesh out most of the planets anyway. From a practical point of view, you can just state that the subsector is "somewhere in the Imperium" or "a frontier area" or whatever you wish.

 

[BP]

One of the very early things I did with Traveller was make computer programs to generate subsector maps and NPC and trade calculations. Now, I've come to use my own brain - and not dice or computer random number generators - to do the same.

Created, rather than generated, custom settings work better than letting random generation on a limited set of rules define what is going to be your game.

Get to know the tables and rules - they provide inspiration and a framework - then go create!

It is not only faster and less tedious - but will make more sense (at least to you).

 

[PoppySeed45]

I'd suggest you just roll up a subsector of your own and play with that. Pre-published sectors or subsectors really don't save you THAT much time, since you still need to flesh out most of the planets anyway. From a practical point of view, you can just state that the subsector is "somewhere in the Imperium" or "a frontier area" or whatever you wish.

This is exactly what I did last time I ran, and in fact I took it a step forward. My setting was such that the players rolled up planets for their homeworlds, and those became the coreworlds of the subsector. It was a "Fall of the Imperium" type setting so they weren't expected to know much beyond their core of worlds. Then, as they started to move out of those worlds, I just rolled up the next one on the quick, had a few minutes to think about how the stats fit together, then off we went.

You can do this easily with the corebook. Or you can pre-generate some worlds (pick a spot, and generate worlds for the 6 parsecs from that spot, for example). Ought to be enough for a couple of weeks, no?

 

[Claybor]

Reft sector, while isolated a bit more, is still OTU which you said that you did not want.

There are 3 other MgT universes that I have heard about, but I have no info on them so you would need to look into them to see if they fit the bill for you.

Twilight Sector
Reign of Discordia
Hyperlite

MgT B5 is OK. It has some good info but was ported over from the d20 game and some of it looks like it was copied over with no thought to Mgt IMO. It's is a good start if you want to run B5 though.

 

[AndrewW]

There are 3 other MgT universes that I have heard about, but I have no info on them so you would need to look into them to see if they fit the bill for you.

Twilight Sector
Reign of Discordia
Hyperlite

Also Chthonian Stars coming up in October:

http://www.mongoosepublishing.com/home/detail.php?qsID=1877&qsSeries=Traveller

Hammers Slammers:
http://www.mongoosepublishing.com/home/detail.php?qsID=1661&qsSeries=51

Judge Dredd:
http://www.mongoosepublishing.com/home/detail.php?qsID=1698&qsSeries=51

Strontium Dog:
http://www.mongoosepublishing.com/home/detail.php?qsID=1724&qsSeries=51

As far as alternate universes go.

And for reference.

Twilight Sector:
http://terrasolgames.com/products/twilight-sector/

Reign of Discordia:
http://www.mongoosepublishing.com/home/detail.php?qsID=1793&qsSeries=51

Of course one is free to take the Original Traveller Universe material and do whatever they wish with it. Do away with the Third Imperium and replace it with a society where whoever wins the intergalactic video game tournament rules for the next 4 years (till the next tournament)...

 

[zero]

I'm going to switch to Chthonian Stars when its released myself. Its all in the Sol system but theres enough planets and moons and space stations (oh my!) to keep alot of people who want a certain location happy.

S&P issues 81, 82 and 84 have quite lengthy previews of the material.

 

[simonh]

Created, rather than generated, custom settings work better than letting random generation on a limited set of rules define what is going to be your game.

Get to know the tables and rules - they provide inspiration and a framework - then go create!

I fully agree. I started out with just the core LBBs so had no info on the Imperium setting. I'm not sure if Spinward Marches had even come out yet. Book 3 was one third of the game, so of course I created my own subsector and had a blast. The 3I is a great setting, but there's nothing to beat the trill of creating your own subsector or sector. The random generation rules are a great start and from there you can tweak, adjust and expand to your heart's content.

This is what the world generation and starship design systems were orriginaly primarily for IMHO - to give you the tools to create your own setting.

Simon Hibbs

 

[Treebore]

Personally I would start with "Beltstrike" and then work my way out from there. Besides, if you run Beltstrike it has plenty of stuff that leads into even more trouble than what is covered in the book, so if the players get into it and pick fights with enough of the NPC organizations in there, you have a pretty long running game in a single system just waiting.

Then, since it is written with the assumption that it has no ties to the Third Imperium, but you could easily make such ties exist if you want them too, you can expand beyond that system as you desire by creating or using whatever resources you wish to use or create.

 

[Sturn]

I hadn't commented before, but my Terran Dawn setting is small. I have UWPs for the entire sector, but the majority (nearly all) of the material is currently focused on a single Pocket Empire (the Old Earth Union) which is just a handful of worlds. TL11-12 setting.

It's a work in progress, but a few hundred pages of PDFs are available for free. Link in signature.

 

[srogerscat]

The initial setting for the campaign I am starting this Sunday is very small indeed: The Solar system. My working title for the campaign is "Invasion". The game starts in 1967 when several interstellar groups stumble across earth in fairly rapid succession. The players are starting as barbarian auxiliaries and will have to work their way up. They will be henchmen for NPCs who are the PCs from my old campaign with different names.

Yep, all the social stress of the late sixties and early seventies with the added fun of squabbling interstellar powers. What could possibly go wrong?

If the players succeed in becoming movers and shakers, Earth could end up like India today. If they fail, well, look at the modern Congo....