Are there any Traveller equivalents of the Free City of Greyhawk / Zobeck?

IanBruntlett

Emperor Mongoose
I spent years running AD&D2e games in the Free City of Greyhawk. I read Fritz Leiber's Lanlhmar books. I am currently reading "Zobeck: Clockwork City", recently purchased, looking for inspiration to run Traveller adventures.
Are there any Traveller equivalents of these cities and their neighbouring polities?
 
Hmm. Played/DMed Greyhawk a looong time ago so I had to search just now. Immediately, I thought the world is very Earth-like, maybe a garden world. Tens of millions of people and balkanized. Greyhawk is the most important region and city and has a B starport. It is a tourist destination for its blend of medieval atmosphere/cultures and modern conveniences brought in from other worlds, a theme park world. The natural fauna is unusual and many are dangerous (convert D&D creatures to Traveller equivalents) giving and AMBER designation. Law level HIGH for obvious reasons.

Big thing that attracts adventurers will be the recent discovery under a castle older than the original colony is a maze of caverns and rooms littered with creatures and alien artifacts from some non-human race. The government of Greyhawk needs people who can deal with the dangers and possibly understand the high tech down there. They must be resourceful (because other teams never came back out). They're trying to keep it a secret from other regions and extra interstellar entities.
How's that?
 
Hmm. Played/DMed Greyhawk a looong time ago so I had to search just now. Immediately, I thought the world is very Earth-like, maybe a garden world. Tens of millions of people and balkanized. Greyhawk is the most important region and city and has a B starport. It is a tourist destination for its blend of medieval atmosphere/cultures and modern conveniences brought in from other worlds, a theme park world. The natural fauna is unusual and many are dangerous (convert D&D creatures to Traveller equivalents) giving and AMBER designation. Law level HIGH for obvious reasons.

Big thing that attracts adventurers will be the recent discovery under a castle older than the original colony is a maze of caverns and rooms littered with creatures and alien artifacts from some non-human race. The government of Greyhawk needs people who can deal with the dangers and possibly understand the high tech down there. They must be resourceful (because other teams never came back out). They're trying to keep it a secret from other regions and extra interstellar entities.
How's that?
Very good :) Not quite what I expected. Hopefully, I'll take the ideas from Zobeck and apply them to the Sindal Subsector in the CRB or possibly elsewhere in the Trojan Reach or even in the Spinward Marches. Merchants, Traders, Militaries, Thieves, Rascals are easy enough to move to a Far Future setting. Wizards can be technologists. Magic items can be high-tech equipment. But I was hoping someone else had already done the work :)
 
Nope, there are no big urban settings detailed for Traveller. All of Traveller's "huge" adventures are space travel related.

Unless you count that there were Traveller rules for running the Thieves' World setting as a giant VR game. :p
 
Efate 1706 Reginasub sector. High tech low law free for all
Very little canon information for Efate that I'm aware of, other than the name of a continent suffering from an Ine Giver infestation...
If you want a detailed (but not particularly high pop) free-for all, there is always Theev as described in Pirates of Drinax, but I'm not sure that fits what you're looking for.
 
I spent years running AD&D2e games in the Free City of Greyhawk. I read Fritz Leiber's Lanlhmar books. I am currently reading "Zobeck: Clockwork City", recently purchased, looking for inspiration to run Traveller adventures.
Are there any Traveller equivalents of these cities and their neighbouring polities?

The issue here is that the premise to a campaign like Greyhawk is fundamentally different than the default premise of any Traveller campaign, which is based on Travel. In something like Greyhawk, the players have a base, the referee details the place, people and events over time so the players feel rooted in it, and the adventures are all a few days ride from the city, usually - we'll call this a hub and spoke campaign where the city is the hub.

In Traveller, the hub is usually a ship and the ship moves from place to place, so Traveller uses a journey style campaign. The upside is you get to see somewhere new every few weeks, the downside is almost nowhere is deeply detailed like a city you stay in for literal years of play (Except for the ship, and in Traveller that's usually more of a moving house than a moving city).

That's not to say it cannot be done in Traveller, it absolutely can, but not much of the published material will give you more than a good starting point. There are some interesting possibilities, though.
  • The hub is a really big ship, so you're still travelling, but you're on some behemoth of a ship that feels like a city. Star Trek is this kind of campaign - a moving city full of recurring characters that goes from place to place in search of adventure.
  • The hub is a space station in a busy place, somewhere near the edge of danger - think Deep Space Nine.
  • The hub is a city, but it's adjacent to a world of adventure. Maybe it's a Grav city floating over the jungles of an otherwise primitive world and the players are cops or scouts or members of some organisation that gives them ample excuse to go groundside and get into trouble.
The only thing you can do wrong here is to make it too like Greyhawk - Traveller is about Travel and science fiction adventure in the Far Future. The more static you make it, the more like D&D you play it, the less it matters that you're playing Traveller at all.

Let us know what you decide to do.


PS: The Deepnight Revelation Campaign is a good example of the players living in a Moving City (An Element Class Cruiser) and journeying with a cast of recurring characters on a multi-year mission beyond the edge of known space. This is the closest thing to the Star Trek premise in published Traveller materials.
 
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I looked this up and in 1981 Chaosium published the fantasy city of Sanctuary with some classic Traveller stats along with eight other rule sets!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thieves'_World_(role-playing_game)

There is even a podcast about it!


This does make me think about constructing a Traveller Space Station or city type adventure.
 
I looked this up and in 1981 Chaosium published the fantasy city of Sanctuary with some classic Traveller stats along with eight other rule sets!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thieves'_World_(role-playing_game)

I thought of this too, but for me the central question in using something like this is 'Why use the Traveller ruleset to play what is a fantasy campaign'. Sure, you could 100% do this, but you're not really playing Traveller any longer, unless you really finesse it. The players are Scouts, crashed on a primitive, Red zone world, and trying to survive while looking for a way to signal for rescue.

So the question is - are you actually playing Traveller, or just using the Traveller rules in another genre?
 
I played a Scout in a Thieves' World game, it was ok. In my setting I have quite a few cities, and they have figured prominently in adventures, often with them coming back to them over the course of years.
 
The only thing you can do wrong here is to make it too like Greyhawk - Traveller is about Travel and science fiction adventure in the Far Future. The more static you make it, the more like D&D you play it, the less it matters that you're playing Traveller at all.
I have also run Traveller Judge Dredd adventures in the past. The front of the core rulebook does say "Science Fiction Adventure in the Far Future".
Let us know what you decide to do.
I will read more supplements (Traveller and other systems) and have a think about things.
 
GURPS Traveller did a write-up of the Glisten system in Spinward Marches, positing that the capital city / main starport was one giant station. It felt a bit underdeveloped to me but may be worth looking into.
 
I have been thinking what such a city look like, sound like and feel like. I realize that the city is influenced by its history, culture, geological location, technology and planetary conditions but then that's part of the fun.

A young high tech city may look very different to one the players are use to. With grav vehicles common would there be any ground level streets? If the buildings have grav technology and were floating in the sky would resemble it Venice? With a local internet and powerful expert systems would there be any services like lawyer offices downtown?
 
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