Allensh said:
When it gets delivered, it completely buries your house. . .
Babylon 5 Traveller is coming
- Thread starter Greg Smith
- Start date
When it gets delivered, it completely buries your house. . .
msprange said:
lol...yes it would.
Back in the FASA Star Trek days they published an editorial in their Stardate magazine where they responded to a request for a miniature (in proper scale) for the Spacedock from Star Trek III..they said it would stand about four feet high and weigh many hundreds of pounds and sell for a LOT of money
Still, 25mm deck plan sheets for some of the major areas of the station would be something I would buy...
Allen
Rikki Tikki Traveller
Cosmic Mongoose
msprange said:
And then disappears right before you start your game session... :wink:
Any set of deck plans in a book format will probably be not much more than a cutaway view or else a very simplified view of the ships. Lets face it, even a hyperion, probably the most common EF fleet ship, is a kilometer long. There's nothing in any of the Traveller books that come close to that size AFAIK. Trying to put together a useful set of Deck Plans for something that size is a huge task. The best set of deck plans for any SF ships I've seen was the one they did for the Star Trek Next Generation Enterprise-D. It was a fully developed set of deck plans, showing every corridor, turbolift, shuttlecraft bay, holodeck, etc. It cost about $40 bucks, and was printed on over a dozen sheets. This is the kind of map you can get blown-up and put to 1" scale for your game session.
The deck plan books we got from mongoose show little more than general arrangement, and on single sheet laminated poster stock. The fluff booklets were nice - they gave great background and history, but the maps themselves were not very useful for planning an encounter in the hallway, for example. Traveller ship maps I've seen are produced to much higher standards. GURPS Traveller ship maps that came in books generally have easily reproducable gridded, scaled maps. GURPS Modular Cutter, and the 6 Deck plan map packs were great. the map packs were printed to 1" scale, and while big, proved to be exceptionally useful.
The ships of the B5 universe are far to big to be done to this level of detail on a regular basis. They might do 1 or 2 of them that way, and they'd probably be small examples, not something like the above mentioned 1701-D box set. but to say they're going to produce Deck Plans isn't an accurate statement in my mind, sorry. What we've got (and almost certainly will continue to get) isn't a deck plan but rather a general arrangement of the interior, and due to the size limitation of the books and printed medium, won't show the level of detail we've seen on other traveller products from other publishers. That's not mongoose's fault either, just that the dang ships are too friggin big to be represented that way.
The deck plan books we got from mongoose show little more than general arrangement, and on single sheet laminated poster stock. The fluff booklets were nice - they gave great background and history, but the maps themselves were not very useful for planning an encounter in the hallway, for example. Traveller ship maps I've seen are produced to much higher standards. GURPS Traveller ship maps that came in books generally have easily reproducable gridded, scaled maps. GURPS Modular Cutter, and the 6 Deck plan map packs were great. the map packs were printed to 1" scale, and while big, proved to be exceptionally useful.
The ships of the B5 universe are far to big to be done to this level of detail on a regular basis. They might do 1 or 2 of them that way, and they'd probably be small examples, not something like the above mentioned 1701-D box set. but to say they're going to produce Deck Plans isn't an accurate statement in my mind, sorry. What we've got (and almost certainly will continue to get) isn't a deck plan but rather a general arrangement of the interior, and due to the size limitation of the books and printed medium, won't show the level of detail we've seen on other traveller products from other publishers. That's not mongoose's fault either, just that the dang ships are too friggin big to be represented that way.
Rikki Tikki Traveller
Cosmic Mongoose
The deck plans for the Traveller Game Azhanti High Lightning were pretty good. There was a BIG stack of decks, but many of them were used several times. The ship resembled a skyscraper with lots of "floors", but each floor was not too big.
I would expect the EA ships to be similarly designed since they don't have artificial gravity, they would use thrust for internal gravity and that means a skyscraper design.
I would expect the EA ships to be similarly designed since they don't have artificial gravity, they would use thrust for internal gravity and that means a skyscraper design.
lastbesthope
Mongoose
Rikki Tikki Traveller said:
They don't seem to based on onscreen evidence, personally unless you're thrusting one way or another all the way to where you're going(e.g. turning around half way to decelerate), thrust induced gravity is a bit pants.
LBH
I... don't know what to say, really.
On the one hand, there's existing books. THat sucks, and I know how much this sucks because I have about 30 or so D&D 3e books sitting on my shelf at the moment that I would love to ceremoniously burn in order to burn WotC in effigy for 4e, but that's another rant. But the point is, I know how people with prior editions feel about another ruleset/edition change.
On the other hand, I've found that d20 has... problems when you try to rip it from its anchors and do something other than fantasy. A new system is not necessarily a bad thing at this point.
On the gripping hand, it's happening regardless of what we think.
On the one hand, there's existing books. THat sucks, and I know how much this sucks because I have about 30 or so D&D 3e books sitting on my shelf at the moment that I would love to ceremoniously burn in order to burn WotC in effigy for 4e, but that's another rant. But the point is, I know how people with prior editions feel about another ruleset/edition change.
On the other hand, I've found that d20 has... problems when you try to rip it from its anchors and do something other than fantasy. A new system is not necessarily a bad thing at this point.
On the gripping hand, it's happening regardless of what we think.
Babylon 5 Aide
Mongoose
I liked 4th edition. Liked it alot. Not sure how much I will want to get into a Traveller edition sense I know nothing about that one. Why would they change things up again? Was any reason given?
Rikki Tikki Traveller
Cosmic Mongoose
LBH has a point though, continuous thrust does NOT seem to be the way that EA ships run in B5. They seem to be more of the high-g for a while then coast. In that case, the Skyscraper design doesn't have to be used.
When Sinclair and Garibaldi spent 3 hours in a shuttle to B4, they were supposedly in Zero-G for most of the trip.
When Sinclair and Garibaldi spent 3 hours in a shuttle to B4, they were supposedly in Zero-G for most of the trip.
Babylon 5 Aide
Mongoose
Ships being large, it appear that larger ships are under power most of the time. We don't ever see an Omega or Nova without thrust do we?
BTW, I thought Traveller was just another D20 rule set?
BTW, I thought Traveller was just another D20 rule set?
That was just the previous incarnation (T20). There's also Classic Traveller (CT), MegaTraveller (MT), Traveller 4 (T4), and now Mongoose Traveller (MGT) ... the latest incarnation.Babylon 5 Aide said:
As a setting, Traveller has been served by many gaming systems.
[EDIT] Oops ... forgotten Gurps Traveller (GT)
Rikki Tikki Traveller
Cosmic Mongoose
The Classic Traveller and new Mongoose version of Traveller are D6 based.
Babylon 5 Aide
Mongoose
Ah ok, thanks!
Mongoose Si
Mongoose
Just about every roleplayer I know hates D20 with a passion, so my players are keen to give the new Traveller rules a go when they come out, as am I.
One of the things I'm interested in seeing is how Mongoose is going to stat and map ships for B5-Traveller. As has been said up-thread, I think they will have to take a different tack for B5, since mapping ships in the normal Traveller way doesn't seem possible for a lot of B5 ships.
This will be an interesting glimpse on the future of using the Mongoose Traveller rules as a generic sci-fi rules set. I have no problem with a less detailed, but compatible, ship system for those settings that need them. Star Trek is another good example of this, there is no practical way to completely map out most of these ships (other than the shuttles and other smaller ships).
I hope that Mongoose succeeds in capturing the feel of the setting and that Traveller fans are open to new ways to use the rules.
This will be an interesting glimpse on the future of using the Mongoose Traveller rules as a generic sci-fi rules set. I have no problem with a less detailed, but compatible, ship system for those settings that need them. Star Trek is another good example of this, there is no practical way to completely map out most of these ships (other than the shuttles and other smaller ships).
I hope that Mongoose succeeds in capturing the feel of the setting and that Traveller fans are open to new ways to use the rules.
