Book 9: Robot

[Cyphr]

<snip>

And yes, you COULD create cybermen with the Traveller rules. Of course, Daleks will require the Power Armour book...

Funny you mention Cybermen and Daleks. I was thinking the same thing when I first read this thread.

There is also the Movellans.

Of course the very sadistic GM, Marvin the Paranoid Android and Holly the Ship's Computer. :twisted:

 

[justacaveman]

Isn't very sadistic GM redundant?

 

[justacaveman]

When I mentioned wanting rules for Cyborgs, I was thinking more William C. Dietz's Legion of the Damned, rather than personal augments. Putting human brains into Mecha type armour, APCs, and Gunships etc..

There is the Full Body Transplant on page 187 of the CSC, but it's TL 18, and the only purpose of that design appears to be to say it is impossible for a PC to even think about having a robot body. It truly annoys me when the game designers go out of their way to control what a GM does in the game. I certainly don't need rules that say robot bodies are only plot devices. I can make up tech that the PC's can never have at impossible TLs all on my own.

The medical TLs in MGT are as way out of wack as CT computer tech used to be. We can already make synthetic copies of DNA, and soon we'll be able to design it from scratch (And we're only TL 8.). By the end of this century we'll be creating complex organisms to order and modifying existing ones will be even easier. Many of the MGT rules and designs seem to made in complete ignorance as to what is actually being done right now. Not just the medical tech, vehicle designs also seem to be done by people who don't know anything about real vehicle specifications.

 

[rust]

Many of the MGT rules and designs seem to made in complete ignorance as to what is actually being done right now. Not just the medical tech, vehicle designs also seem to be done by people who don't know anything about real vehicle specifications.

I suspect the designers were fully aware of the problem, but had to face
the horns of a dilemma: They could write either a more realistic system
that devalues the technology assumptions of previous Traveller versions
and makes MGT incompatible with those earlier versions, or they could
use the "traditional" technology assumptions of the Third Imperium set-
ting and accept the contradictions with the real world.

This is where economy enters, because many of the Traveller fans might
have turned away from a system that is not compatible with the setting
they have been used to for decades, to them MGT would have become
just another science fiction game "with the wrong name on it" - and with-
out those long time Traveller fans the market for the game might well
have been too small to risk the money required to produce it.

 

[justacaveman]

So how does Judge Dredd etc. fit into the Third Imperium? If you're making generic rules for many different settings, why are technology assumptions based on one specific setting. It should be simple to make the generic technology a little closer to reality, and have the setting modify the tech levels.

Besides, while its okay to handwave some technolgies such as artificial gravity into existence, it's not okay to handwave real technolgies out of existence. Are we supposed to ignore all the advances in science and technology that have occured in the last 30 years because that stuff wasn't around when CT came out. Some of the stuff in CT (Such as robotics.) had lower tech levels. Almost nothing had a TL requirement higher than TL 15.

 

[Lord High Munchkin]

I change drastically the TLs of many items/technology (which often radically alters societies) for my games, I just dump the bits I don't like and add what I want. It's a tool-kit.

The 3rd Imperium isn't 'Traveller' — it's merely one "flavour" of 'Traveller', that means that just because it's written up in one way for one setting, it isn't fixed in stone for all.

Do what you want with it.

 

[rust]

Well, I do not use Tech Levels (or Law Levels) at all, they only got in the
way whenever I attempted to describe a specific planet and its society in
some detail.

In one of my water world settings I used a non-human aquatic race with a
highly developed technology based upon biotechnology only, with geneti-
cally modified creatures replacing our kind of technological devices.
It would have been impossible to fit this kind of technology into the usual
Tech Level framework, and using functional equivalents ("same function
and same game stats as a normal device means the same Tech Level")
proved to be quite meaningless, too.

Since then I have turned to lists and descriptions of what is produced or
otherwise available on a specific planet, without any attempt to use any
kind of levels, and for me this just works fine.

 

[justacaveman]

I like the way you think Rust.

The TLs seem less like guidelines and more like straitjackets in MGT.

Biotech is practically ignored, and some of the representive high-tech equipment seems to fall short of current technology.

Best to just ignore the conflicts and play the game.

 

[Egil Skallagrimsson]

Yeah, I think we need to be careful about choosing straitjackets, different sci-fi novels and films work on different assumptions, if you don't like the assigned tech level, renumber it or throw it out.

Even in a 3I Spinward Marches type second, if you don't like something, throw it out. How much "hard science" and how much "space opera" is up to you (GM), though if your group have some very differnet assumptions things could get very wierd quickly.

Even hard science sci -fi is an attempt at extrapolation, nothing more than, more or less, educated guesswork.

Egil

 

[Treebore]

Yeah, I think we need to be careful about choosing straitjackets, different sci-fi novels and films work on different assumptions, if you don't like the assigned tech level, renumber it or throw it out.

Even in a 3I Spinward Marches type second, if you don't like something, throw it out. How much "hard science" and how much "space opera" is up to you (GM), though if your group have some very differnet assumptions things could get very wierd quickly.

Even hard science sci -fi is an attempt at extrapolation, nothing more than, more or less, educated guesswork.

Egil

Agreed.

 

[Dave Chase]

When I mentioned wanting rules for Cyborgs, I was thinking more William C. Dietz's Legion of the Damned, rather than personal augments. Putting human brains into Mecha type armour, APCs, and Gunships etc..
...
Many of the MGT rules and designs seem to made in complete ignorance as to what is actually being done right now. Not just the medical tech, vehicle designs also seem to be done by people who don't know anything about real vehicle specifications.

I like the way Timothy Zahn did Cyborgs in the Cobra Series (stories).

Dave Chase