Dungeons and Travellers

[Grimolde]

Have any of you played with the idea of having Traveller pcs take part in a 'fantasy' style campaign?

Surely there must be an inhabited world out there somewhere, where the tech level is all swords and shields, with 'orc' type aliens roaming the land and terrorizing the colonists?

Problem would be depriving the characters of any and all modern tech.

 

[Eisenmann]

I have and it's a lot of fun.

There are several careers and an accompanying skill list up on my blog:
http://platonicsolid.blogspot.com/search/label/Adventurer


CaptainJack23 has his fantasy Traveller project here:
http://docgrognard.blogspot.com/

 

[Grimolde]

Good stuff

Thank you

 

[SSWarlock]

An old Traveller buddy of mine once ran a medieval campaign using Traveller rules. Very fun, especially when suddenly a group of Imperial Marines landed to save some citizens from the robots on the pleasure planet that were running amok. In other words, to save them from the PCs who didn't know they themselves were the robots or that the world was a pleasure planet!

Interesting twist, that.

 

[Nathan Brazil]

I have been working on this now and again. Under the current version of Traveller, you can find several books which I have found invaluable. In my case it is converting the old D20 SRD over to Traveller. All of the items I reference are licensed for Mongoose Traveller

On races/aliens
Traveller Core Rules has the basis for notations for races (Strong/Weak Characteristic, Feral, etc.)
Samarden Press has Flynn's Guide to Alien Creation has a bunch more.
Supplement 11 - Animal Encounters has more for the workings of "animals" or non-sentients.

On equipment
Supplement 4 - Central Supply Catalog has plenty of low tech armor, melee and ranged weapons
Book 6 - Scoundrel has rules on tech familiarity should you want to introduce "high tech" items

On "magic"
Mongoose has additional ways or enhancements to having "magic" or powers
Book 4 - Psion and Judge Dredd deal with more psionics
Strontium Dog has an entirely separate system for sorcery
Samarden Press has Flynn's Guide to Magic in Traveller has a different magic system, magic item creation and careers

An example of a fantasy campaign
Terra/Sol Games has Netherell: Planet of Magic, with its own system of magic, magic careers, monsters and so on. It had a new way addressing background and education skills as well

One thing I found of particular use was the Influence stat found in Judge Dredd. I find it to be more useful in modelling D20 SRD powers where the force of personality was involved rather than Social Standing

Speaking of which,
Book 8 - Dilletante has the concept of scale with regards to Social Standing. I found that to be useful when addressing planet bound nobles vs multiplane nobles vs deities...

 

[locarno24]

Also - have a look through the S&P index - "Gods of the Space Age", S&P 78, includes a career for a technologist on a primitive world creating scientific 'miracles', which can be used either for actual magic/magical artefacts or for the sort of advanced out-of-place tech you sometimes see in Lone Wolf and similar settings.

S&P 79 also includes race stats for lizardmen & gorillas (useful for ogre/orc types) just be sure to drop the battle dress and PGMP-12 before throwing them at the players... :mrgreen:

 

[nats]

Just play D&D.

 

[Jeraa]

Just play D&D.

Thats about as unhelpful a post as you can get. Maybe they don't like D&Ds level system, or skill system, or how combat is performed. The Traveller rules can cover anything in D&D except the high levels and versatility of magic. But Traveller does have psionics, which can be adapted to cover that.

 

[Grimolde]

And as easy as the old school d&d rules are, they aren't as good as Traveller's imho.

 

[Mithras]

http://grognardia.blogspot.com/2009/07/pulp-fantasy-library-thieves-world.html

with Traveller stats and rules for magic IIRC...

 

[crossmlk]

If I might be so bold, I would encourage you take a look at Netherell if you're planning on doing a Traveller swords and sorcery campaign. As Nathan mentioned it is a fully developed fantasy type planet that fits into existing Traveller rules and won't "break" your campaign.

Our goal was to create a fantasy world that fit within our overall Twilight Sector setting. For so-called "magic" we simply used psionics.

What Netherell can really help with is providing fantasy/low tech careers, an interesting approach to psionics/magic as well as gear and the like. Making it a lot easier to set up a Traveller/Fantasy type campaign.