Does anyone use the Traveller Universe?

[ShawnDriscoll]

I see a lot of "well, in my own Traveller Universe, ships are blah blah" or "in my universe, there is no nobility career and psi powers are treated as blah blah".

I use the Traveller Universe as-is, and I don't house-rule or home-brew anything. And I was wondering if anyone thinks as I do.

 

[F33D]

I played in a game ~30 years ago that used the TU. Not since then though.

 

[Greylond]

I use the Traveller Universe as-is, and I don't house-rule or home-brew anything. And I was wondering if anyone thinks as I do.

Same here. Actually, I just started my first MgT campaign and at the beginning I've announced that I'm using the OTU with ALL the MgT books in play but reserve the right to make adjustments as we go if I find something that I don't feel works or some glaring errata comes to light.

Personally, I've always liked the OTU even when I played CT and MT years ago. One of the things that I like about it is that there is a lot of player available info on it and I can point the Players to many of the available resources for IC information. It's a big help to me because I don't have the time to create a whole universe and don't see the need when there's already a perfectly playable one already written by better writers than I.

My campaign started on 002-1105 on Regina and I will alter the OTU timeline for events that happen IMTU. The 5th Frontier War is going to happen but the Characters have a chance to alter some parts of it through play and after that we'll see how it goes.

 

[Infojunky]

Well considering that when I started playing Traveller there was no Traveller setting, as such I just started playing and adding as material came out to a creation that pretty much existed in my head, so, No I don't and yes I do. Meaning there is lots of bits of the 3rd Imperium in my Classic and Mongoose games, My TNE campaign was probably the most orthodox of any of the games I have run as I took a "Official" sector and collapsed it then rebuilt as I saw fit.

The trick is only to worry about the small area the Players are in, the rest doesn't matter as much.

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

My TNE campaign was probably the most orthodox of any of the games I have run as I took a "Official" sector and collapsed it then rebuilt as I saw fit.

That's interesting. Did TNE have rules for doing that? Or were the sectors already collapsed by the GDW crew for the players to use?

 

[GypsyComet]

TNE (and MT's Hard Times, to slightly different purpose) has a process in the main book for "collapsing" healthy space. It can be extremely brutal.

While I spent some of my early years grinding my own subsectors, I made the decision to follow the official setting as it grew. Even in 1105 there is a corner on the map for just about any sort of campaign that suits the normal technology assumptions, but my various games have been all over the timeline as well.

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

I played in both.

We had a Spinward Marches campaign that ran for years and I have my own OTU setting.

When I introduced my sons to Traveller, I used the TNE 1248 Spinward Marches and had a roaring good adventure that eventually spread into the Reft Sector and was headed towards a collision with the Fourth (False) Imperium. Much fun was had by all.

 

[dragoner]

Yes and no, all canon is intact for my 1323 campaign, it is just 75 years after the 1248 books and in a different place. I have worked on it for a few years and here are the sectors I have so far:

after 30+ years of playing in the Marches, I wanted something different, though I did run a T5 playtest in the Marches using the 1248 Spinward States book.

 

[rust]

I played in a game ~30 years ago that used the TU. Not since then though.

The same here.

 

[Gypsy Knights Games]

I used the OTU for the first few years of running Traveller. After a while, we left the OTU behind in favor of a setting which I designed with help from the players and what they envisioned.

We've played in that universe for about 18 years and much of the setting material is now seeing print in our products.

 

[evo]

I do not use the 3rd Imperium, because I really dislike 70's Aliens with fur and tentacles created under LSD. My universe is inspired by the "Firefly" TV show and "Serenity" movie - cowboys in space - "no aliens, humans only allowed !"
;-)

Homo Homini Lupus - man is a wolf to man.

 

[hdan]

I see a lot of "well, in my own Traveller Universe, ships are blah blah" or "in my universe, there is no nobility career and psi powers are treated as blah blah".

I stay pretty close to the OTU in substance (especially star maps, ship designs and rough political structures), but maybe not style. I think everyone has their own idea of what the OTU feels like anyway.

Back when I played in High School, we changed up a few things, most notably that higher jump numbers meant faster ships, not farther reaching ships. (That is, a J-2 ship only took 1/2 week to go a parsec.) But we weren't concerned with really exploring the social implications, we just wanted to have adventures.

 

[dragoner]

I stay pretty close to the OTU in substance (especially star maps, ship designs and rough political structures), but maybe not style. I think everyone has their own idea of what the OTU feels like anyway.

Yes, to paraphrase von Clausewitz: "No OTU survives contact with the gametable", particularly so in that: 1) It is a rough frame work in itself that needs to be fleshed out and 2) how everyone interprets that frame work is different.

 

[mpoles]

I've generally stayed pretty close in my campaigns. The setting is the biggest appeal of Traveller for me.

I might have moved the odd published adventure to a different world, and my setting has a rival to Grandfather, but apart from that I stick pretty close to canon. Oh, except when Martin J Dougherty's history of the worlds around Terra in the New Era 1248 differed from the New Earth Union setting I put a lot of work into over several years for three different campaigns. After all that work, I stuck with my version.

(I forgot one other difference - I have a human minor race that was able to use Ancient technology in about 10,000 BC to have an ultra-high tech civilisation for a while before disappearing. IMTU, the Floriani were geneered by this human race, not by the Ancients.)

 

[Hopeless]

I do not use the 3rd Imperium, because I really dislike 70's Aliens with fur and tentacles created under LSD. My universe is inspired by the "Firefly" TV show and "Serenity" movie - cowboys in space - "no aliens, humans only allowed !"
;-)
Homo Homini Lupus - man is a wolf to man.

Have to admit I'd been hearing about the Spinward Marches for several years but never ran anything but played briefly in an online classic traveller game, a d20 traveller game that didn't get beyond the meet the other characters stage and a gurps traveller game at a club where I ran a zhodani dwarf engineer.

When I finally got to run a Mongoose Traveller game I got inspired by the Star Wars movies in that I wanted to try to correct the prequels but that never got past the drawing board instead focused on character creation via email which resulted in a dutch scientist from Fulacin a german descended corporate lawyer and former psion adept from Beck's World the other a former port worker from Enos in the Sword Worlds who went on to become an imperial scout and the last a German descended Sword Worlder and former Marine who went on to become a Corporate Agent... still hope to go back to that game but currently looking ar running a prequel to it which has due to discussion on this boards turned into an earthbound game dealing with the events prior to the first manned mission to Mars... well thats the idea anyway! :lol:

 

[Egil Skallagrimsson]

Another vote for the OTU, or a version of it at least. Our campaign is very much a Spinward Marches one, using the MgT Spinward Marches as the base. Inevitably, and I am sure deliberately, there is so much possibility for different interpretations that, the OTU ends up getting becoming OTU mod 2, or YTU! After all, my feudal technocracy probably doesn't look quite like yours.

In terms of rules, we pretty much use the MgT baseline for careers (sometimes using some of the careers books as well), skills, costs, equipment etc. Interstellar travel is by jump drive as CRB, ships are designed using CRB and HG, use the psionic rules as RAW (but harder to qualify for psionic skills, only 1 in 36 people have any capacity after testing). We have modified the combat rules slightly (see some previous posts, a while ago!), and use a campaign specific list of weapons instead of the mess in the CSC. Aliens as written, personally I have no problem with the standard types, Vargr, Aslan etc.

However, all said done, while we have tinkered with various rules, and fleshed out various planets etc, have basically run a MgT Spinward Marches campaign, and still greatly enjoying it

Egil

 

[tanksoldier]

I pretty much use the game mechanics of whatever system I'm playing in as-is, but I prefer the setting put forth by GURPS: strong nobility with differentiation between "honor" nobles and the peerage, no Virus or revolt (yet) and so forth...

...but as mentioned, most characters don't see that big of a picture. Playing in their own little sandbox a lot of that doesn't make much difference.

 

[Infojunky]

I see a lot of "well, in my own Traveller Universe, ships are blah blah" or "in my universe, there is no nobility career and psi powers are treated as blah blah".

I use the Traveller Universe as-is, and I don't house-rule or home-brew anything. And I was wondering if anyone thinks as I do.

No, you are not alone while I have stated what I have done there are lot of people devoted to the 3rd Imperium as written, proof I have in over 20 years of online discussion and argument.

The brutal truth is everybody's game is a variant of what has been written, as we all run the game and play differently and as any campaign progresses it becomes My Traveller Universe. There is no way to avoid this from such a varied and static core state.

 

[Lord High Munchkin]

No, I never liked the 3rd Imperium setting.

 

[Cryton]

I don't use the 3I in my games, I do however use the 1248 setting.

This is primarily due to the fact that in the 1248 setting, all the stuff for the 3I is usable, but as far as future timeline and events, well, that's all up to me.

~Rich