First time Traveller planning a campaign, some questions

[JimmyMarshall]

So I'm planning out a Traveller campaign having never used the ruleset before, and was just wondering if some seasoned players and GMs would have some insight onto what will work well and what will not. My players all have a ton of experience with d20 systems, and a couple of them have played GURPS as well, but no one has tried Traveller before.

My campaign setting is quite different from the 3rd Imperium setting that comes with Traveller however. I'd compare it to a combination of Battlestar Galactica and Firely. I really like the dynamic of Battlestar Galactica all taking place aboard a massive fleet, and I like the human-centric sublight speed feel of Firely. So my campaign setting is aboard a huge colony fleet of ships that have been sent out on the first interstellar voyage from Earth's home solar system. The ships are absolutely titanic in scale and home to millions of colonists, each one operating as a flying mini-city. The stories and drama is going to focus on events occurring aboard these ships and the tensions and conflicts between the various factions present.

This is quite different from the way Traveller was designed, which seems to be to just give the players a ship and let them jump around exploring new planets and aventuring, so I'm wondering if anyone has any comments on what trouble I might run into.

A couple key problems I foresee:

1. No faster than light travel. This messes up a lot of pricing and ship rules because the jump drive is non-existant.

2. After getting together with a player to show him the character generation system, he wound up owning two ships, a small boat he got from his navy career and a huge science vessel from his scholar career. I hadn't really wanted the players to start off with this much wealth... it seems odd that they could sell their ships and have a combined wealth of millions and millions of credits.

Thanks for any insight!

 

[rust]

I do not see any major problem for your setting. Since the
characters probably do not own any of the huge sublight
ships, the fact that their cost does not include a jump dri-
ve does not really matter, and the ship shares could be
handled any way you like - for example, the characters
may have had to spend all or most of them to buy their
positions on the sublight fleet, with more shares giving a
higher nominal position.

 

[Rick]

You could keep the jump-drives in, but limit the fuel to a 1-jump limit; that way each 'episode' would revolve around scrounging/refining enough fuel for the next jump. The characters could operate one of several small scouts sent out to find a fuel source ahead of the fleet - migh get a bit 'samey' if that's all they do, but it might make for an interesting change.

 

[AndrewW]

The small boat could make a good vessel to travel between the various other ships of the fleet. Could be why he got the position on board.

 

[locarno24]

After getting together with a player to show him the character generation system, he wound up owning two ships, a small boat he got from his navy career and a huge science vessel from his scholar career. I hadn't really wanted the players to start off with this much wealth... it seems odd that they could sell their ships and have a combined wealth of millions and millions of credits.

First off, ships received as benefits tend to be 'gifted' as surplus with all sorts of clauses on maintenance, reactivation, the need to do favours for the gifting body, etc, etc. Rarely are they actually 'yours' in the sense that you could just sell them.

Secondly, the 'Lab Ship' benefit (which I assume is what he got) doesn't give you a lab ship, If I remember right. It gives you a bundle of ships shares which count as significantly more shares if used towards a lab ship.

Pricing still works. One ship will be short of one thing, another will be short of a second.
Access to raw materials will be extremely limited and they'll be valuable everywhere.

Giving each city-ship the right trade codes and it'll more or less work out. You might not have jumps involved but if the 'formation' across which the ships are flying is big enough* (which it will be, if they've been launched over a period of a few months), then even at sub-light speed going from one end of the 'wagon train' to another will take time.

* If the last ship in the formation is a billion kilometres astern of the leader, a thrust-1 ship will take just over seven days to make the trip, whilst a flight between two nearby ships will be a day or so.

 

[M0nk3y]

I made the same initial error with the wording on the Benefits tables.
As the previous poster touched on, the Lab Ship benefit from the Scholar career is described on a later page as:

Lab Ship: You receive 5 ship shares towards the use of a Laboratory Ship research vessel, or 2 ship shares towards the use of any other vessel.

So unless your character rolled on some other table to gain this, then they only have a specialised type of ship share, not a whole Lab Ship.

With the Ship's Boat benefit from the Navy career, I would normally say to my players who receive this that they have the 'use' of one. As I would expect the Ship's Boat to normally be paired with a larger ship rather than found in use on their own, this means the player does not necessarily own it, and it is therefore not possible to sell it for gain.
The other options I can think of are to treat it as an Ex-service craft and put it through the "Old Ships" section found at the end of the "Common Spacecraft" chapter to make it less attractive to sell on, or make it a valuable addition to your fleet in such a way that it helped the character with their position on the fleet, like the previous posters mentioned.

 

[Jame Rowe]

You could keep the jump-drives in, but limit the fuel to a 1-jump limit; that way each 'episode' would revolve around scrounging/refining enough fuel for the next jump. The characters could operate one of several small scouts sent out to find a fuel source ahead of the fleet - migh get a bit 'samey' if that's all they do, but it might make for an interesting change.

I would also have the colony fleet slowly break up as either ships break down or crews visit a system, say "hey, I like it here" and stay. I.E., do NOT confine humanity to one system like Firefly ended up doing.

 

[steelbrok]

Maybe have the ships travelling in clusters, the ship's boat might be OK within a cluster (analogous to being within a planetary system) but the bigger ships would be needed to have the range to travel between clusters

 

[locarno24]

Maybe have the ships travelling in clusters, the ship's boat might be OK within a cluster (analogous to being within a planetary system) but the bigger ships would be needed to have the range to travel between clusters

Makes sense. They'd probably have been built and launched in waves, each wave consisting of one ship from each 'slipway' built in orbit.

Also makes things easier in case of emergency - those ships are close enough to assist with smallcraft or (in an absolute emergency) to reach with a vacc suit and an eva pack.

Assuming a few months between final launches and you could have a week or two's travel between the waves (which isn't possible in a smallcraft as it doesn't include enough food or life support, and quite possibly not enough fuel).

 

[rust]

... (which isn't possible in a smallcraft as it doesn't include enough food or life support, and quite possibly not enough fuel).

Ah ... a Launch from the core rules has 13 dtons of cargo space
and requires only about 1 dton of fuel per week, so with very little
effort one could prepare even a launch to operate for months.

 

[locarno24]

Oh, I'm not questioning that you could kit out a launch for long journeys if needs must, just that it's not so fitted by default.

If you were actively choosing what to take, you'd look for something with staterooms.

 

[GypsyComet]

A Modular Cutter with the right module, for example

 

[JimmyMarshall]

Thanks for all the help and suggestions! I'll have to do some rules modifying to get everything to work out but it looks like it won't take a huge amount work to balance things out.

Also that makes a TON more sense for the Lab ship. I thought that seemed a little nutty...

 

[Reynard]

First off travel even one parsec to Alpha Centauri will take thousands of years, probably tens of thousands! This means adventures *will* be on and around the colony fleet in deep space. Up to you how many thousands of years have passed. You may actually stll be in sight of Sol or in the the Ort cloud if only decades, a generation or two, have gone by.

Ships that big, do not even consiter construction! They are a background and plot device. In a way, this campaign is similar to playing on a planet and traveling between cities except you ride a shuttle. Each colony ship will develope their own 'personality' as the decades pass so you create a backdrop and atmosphere unique to each ship as different as New York is to Bejing or Johannesburg. Ships that big will become chaotic. As an idea, use planet creation to create random ship stats. Consiter what an average ship population should be. I'm assuming from your description, this would be population digit 6. Roll government and law level including Factions and Cultural differences.

Ship shares and ship ownership can now be representing some form of access to intership transportation not seen by the average colonist.

 

[Jak Nazryth]

The ship-share question has already been answered, that was the only real big booboo you made on character creation.
.... uh... did I just use booboo in a sentence?

I like the general premise but with one exception, I would include jump drives on the mother ships.
Reynard is correct, your colony ships will be in interstellar space for thousands of generations just going "one hex". I am currently running a cannon Traveller with a bit of B5 flavor, but I almost ran something similar to your idea. Mine was set up almost like a Stargate scenario. I rewrote a bit of "Traveller history" where first contact was made in the late 1800's but kept "super secret". The players enter the game using Traveller rules but in a "modern" or "near future" setting. They are recruited for a special mission by a private/government organization, without knowing exactly what they are in for (similar to Daniel Jackson in Stargate) After some "realistic" tests... fire fight simulations etc..., they are flown to the secret base.... under the Bikini atoll. (nuclear testing was a cover and the perfect excuse to keep the world away from a super secret small downport) When the get in an elevator inside a thick concrete bunker, the players official escort tells them to all go to the restroom first because the elevator ride should last about 20 minutes. When one player asks "How deep are we going?" their official escort says... "Deep? we are not going down..." and then the elevator cab lifts silently and quickly into the sky (using gravic plates of course)
20 minutes later they are on the dark side of the moon, hop in a shuttle, then embark on a 6 hour trip to Mars, where the first Terran exploration fleet is waiting.

My idea was to have several huge mother ships go out into the stars, with the players manning a small 200 ton exploration ship. At each stop along the way, the mother ship lets all the smaller ships explore in all directions for a few months, then the smaller vessals return, and the exploration cycle continues.
Kinda a cross between a moving B5 and Startrek.
Since this happens in modern or near-future times, the whole thing would be a complete surprise to them... again, think of stargate.
But, my idea is still within the Traveller Universe. My players would be among some of the very first humans from Earth to explore after the discovered jump drive. This would be the dawning of the Rule of Man.

Your concept seems a close match, but without jump drive, you could only fly ship to ship in the deep void of interstellar space.
However, if to do keep the non ftl route, I would have the mother ships as captured, highly modified asteroids, gutted for engines, fuel, "underground" cities etc... you could have a "cloud" of asteroid ships as a 1000 generation expedition away from earth.. maybe the sun went "boom"?

Just my 2 cents.

 

[Reynard]

It does sound like you want stellar exploration. The 'colony that can never go home' concept is a good one, however, slower than light travel to the stars went out with Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon. Again, don't get bogged down with the core rules saying Traveller starships *have* to be a certain way. In your Traveller universe jump drives are enormous and need gigantic city ships. Other craft are merely spaceships usable when in a star system. Your players are crews of explorers. We've seen enough books and movies where space crews also have interesting adventures planetside or, in your case, starshipside since that's where the only civilization is.

There's a thought. No one nation may have been able to build more than one colony ship. Some may have collaborated for some regions other than their own. So these ships may actually represent nations or cultures. Each wants to get their people to a new home but have to share and work together with the other colony ships to survive. No pressure there, eh?!

 

[Hans Rancke]

2. After getting together with a player to show him the character generation system, he wound up owning two ships, a small boat he got from his navy career and a huge science vessel from his scholar career. I hadn't really wanted the players to start off with this much wealth... it seems odd that they could sell their ships and have a combined wealth of millions and millions of credits.

In my opinion ships are far too valuable and useful to be handed out based on random chance. If I want to run a Free Trader campaign, I let the PCs have the use of a suitable ship no matter how few ship shares the players rolled up; if I don't want the PCs to be able to gad about in a ship or to become instant millionaires by selling a couple of ships, they don't get a ship no matter how many ship shares the players rolled up.

If it didn't suit my campaign that the PCs had a ship, I'd either convert ship shares to cash awards (and NOT proportionate wealth either) or make out a list of bennies that the players could choose from in lieu of their ship shares.

(I've actually been thinking about making up such a list, but am stuck for good ideas.)


Hans

 

[Reynard]

One thing Traveller has always been known for is randomness. That doesn't mean the GM and the players HAVE to accept the randomness any more than they have to accept the official Imperial universe.

There is an inside chance more than one player could get a ship or ship shares. In most instances players will want a ship to travel, hence Travellers, but not multiships. To stay mostly in the rules why not justify diverse ship shares as 'investment' towards the ship type that the players would prefer. This represents a connection of players with different backgrounds. Even a scout ship could be consitered 'lend to own' when other players put their shares towards it.

Back to the topic and concerning either starships or spaceships controlled by players. One method if ships or shares are rolled and you don't really deal with it is let them ignore those and roll twice for other benefits. If you really want to include ships and shares then first decide if jump capable ships are available. These may be advanced interstellar scouts that jump ahead to see if the system is worth a fleet jump. Even a trader could be jumping to a system to explore and retreive resources for the fleet after NPC scouts have made their report. Lab ships are obvious as second wave scout.

If you want to keep the jump drive with the colony ships then offer players interplanetary versions of the starships availale to them. Remove the jump engines and it's fuel and make the ship more powerful for it's purpose. When the fleet enters a system the players are the ones that interact in their particular field; explore, security or resource exploitation.

The ownership of those ships can be represented as recognition of the players for their value to the colony fleets, a benefit for some outstanding accomplishment.... the company gold watch. The fleet also alows others to to invest with rewards of shares in their service.

 

[Dunia]

Lab Ship: You receive 5 ship shares towards the use of a Laboratory Ship research vessel, or 2 ship shares towards the use of any other vessel.

If you do not want your group to be owning a big ship like this, you can use the Ship Shares as to indicate how much influence that the Player has over the ship. 100 ship shares = who get the whole ship.
50 shares = You are probably the captain of the ship or the first mate. 5 Ship Shares = You are an officer on board who has little to say, but what you say is weighed in when the captain makes decisions.

And the ship shares also indicate how many shares of all profyit that the ship makes that will go into your pockets.