New setting for Traveller needed
- Thread starter F33D
- Start date
Sigtrygg
Emperor Mongoose
Pick up a copy of CT circa '77.
In the rules of the game a setting is presented - it isn't named but there are various assumptions.
Characters are going to serve in the military, scouts, merchants or other:
ships jump from system to system and it takes a week, traders make money by speculation;
psionics exist but are rare and socially unacceptable.
The Imperium/OTU became a setting to show how those rules work in practice; LBB4 intro, Adventure 1 and its library data, JTAS.
Referees were free to either use this embryonic setting or make up their own, they could even change the basic assumptions if they so chose to do so.
Want a Traveller game based on Star Trek? Maneuver becomes impulse, jump drive becomes warp and drop the fuel requirement.
Want a Star Wars game? Same as the above and allow some characters easier access to psionics if they want to be jedi.
In the rules of the game a setting is presented - it isn't named but there are various assumptions.
Characters are going to serve in the military, scouts, merchants or other:
ships jump from system to system and it takes a week, traders make money by speculation;
psionics exist but are rare and socially unacceptable.
The Imperium/OTU became a setting to show how those rules work in practice; LBB4 intro, Adventure 1 and its library data, JTAS.
Referees were free to either use this embryonic setting or make up their own, they could even change the basic assumptions if they so chose to do so.
Want a Traveller game based on Star Trek? Maneuver becomes impulse, jump drive becomes warp and drop the fuel requirement.
Want a Star Wars game? Same as the above and allow some characters easier access to psionics if they want to be jedi.
Prime_Evil
Emperor Mongoose
Sigtrygg said:
Back in those days, these assumptions were commonplace in the literary SF that most fans were familiar with. The LBBs came out at an interesting time when SF was going through some important changes - on the one hand you had the birth of mass media cinematic SF in the wake of Star Wars and on the other hand you had the New Wave authors of the 1970s challenging many of the assumptions that the SF consensus of the 1950s and 1960s was built on. And less than five years later, you had the first stirrings of the cyberpunk movement....
In some respect, Traveller is a historical artefact of an earlier era in SF when the genre was based upon a consensus future. Many of the assumptions upon which Traveller is built are rooted in a literary tradition that has since moved on. There is still cutting-edge space opera being written - but it is very different in tone to the space opera of the 1960s and early 1970s.
For me, one of the most notable differences between literary SF today and the SF of the Golden Age has nothing at all to do with tech level - it is simply that modern SF tends to have a more diverse range of voices. Often the protagonists are outsiders to the mainstream culture of the setting and are able to provide a commentary on its values. Even in the most conservative areas of military SF the capable, the capable, square-jawed male space heroes of the 1960s and 1970s have given way to the likes of David Weber's Honor Harrington, Lois McMaster Bujold's Miles Vorkosigan, Mike Shepherd's Kris Longknife, and pretty much every character created by Elizabeth Moon. And yet, if you look at the artwork in the Traveller books even today, the vast bulk of the human illustrations are still of white males that a middle-class suburban audience can easily identify with. There are few women and almost no pictures of individuals from non-western ethnic or cultural backgrounds. Where are the illustrations of people descended from Asian or Negro or Hispanic or Arabic genetic stock? Where is the evidence of non-Western influences on humanity's future?
F33D said:
It's not quite as simple as that. The board game Imperium was published shortly before the RPG and is set in what we now call the OTU, with the same setting assumptions such as Jump Drive. When they decided to do an RPG they used the existing setting as a starting point and from then on the RPG and setting were developed together.
It's interesting because a similar thing happened to Chaosium with the publication of Runequest. It was set in Glorantha but the first actual game to use the setting was the board game White Bear Red Moon (later renamed Dragon Pass). I've got into a number of arguments with people that claimed that 'Glorantha never had X back in the old days, or was changes to include Y much later' only to refer them to X and Y clearly being present in the original board game background information.
Simon Hibbs
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
Lucas's Star Wars may be the yardstick most visual science fiction will be measured against, which may have looked endangered after the prequels came out, but under the guiding hand of the Mouse, the Disneyification of the franchise, with it's vested corporate interests, should ensure that future generations first thought will be of Deathstars, X-Wings, Star Destroyers, an Evil Galactic Empire and courageous Cowboys when they think of SciFi.
The more cerebral will think of Bladerunner.
The more cerebral will think of Bladerunner.
Prime_Evil
Emperor Mongoose
dragoner said:
George Lucas originally wanted to do a remake of Flash Gordon but couldn't secure the rights and was forced to create his own universe instead. He was very familiar with the space opera genre and the original trilogy is full of sly nods to Edmond Hamilton, E.E. Doc Smith, et al. Heck, he even got Leigh Brackett to do the first draft for the script of the Empire Strikes Back. And she was one of the finest authors of the Golden Age of SF....
One of the biggest disappointments of the prequel trilogy is that Lucas turned his back on the literary inspirations behind the original trilogy and cannibalized his earlier work.
Reynard
Emperor Mongoose
If Traveller is so old and moldy, why do I keep going back or sticking with it? There have been a great multitude of scifi RPGs, and I owned quite a lot, with their own unique background and mechanics. More often than not they become the old sock. Traveller, even with it's built in background, still seems flexible and basic enough to become the foundation for any particular personal universe. There's even alternatives to star travel and the social attribute if one finds either out of sorts.
Rather than chucking the place, Traveller has moved the time from the beginning of the reborn empire to the aftermath of its destruction each with very different backgrounds and adventuring opportunities. There's enough history (and source material) to have campaigns as man leaves Earth. If I remember, Solomani ships when out and never returned. New races, new adversaries and new worlds with their own stories separated by distance and time?
Mongoose doesn't need to because eight editions of Traveller already seeded the material for more while third parties have offered campaign independent and within the official universe. Do what I have done for over thirty years, use the basics and create a universe.
Rather than chucking the place, Traveller has moved the time from the beginning of the reborn empire to the aftermath of its destruction each with very different backgrounds and adventuring opportunities. There's enough history (and source material) to have campaigns as man leaves Earth. If I remember, Solomani ships when out and never returned. New races, new adversaries and new worlds with their own stories separated by distance and time?
Mongoose doesn't need to because eight editions of Traveller already seeded the material for more while third parties have offered campaign independent and within the official universe. Do what I have done for over thirty years, use the basics and create a universe.
GypsyComet
Emperor Mongoose
Each era covered in one edition or other uses a different set of SF tropes on top of the Imperial baseline. The Golden Age is different than the Uncivil War (Rebellion), is different than the distant war (T20 at the far end of the Imperium from the Solomani Rim War), is different than the ruins of past glories (TNE), is different than the New Empire (M:0) is different than the forever war (Nth Interstellar).
Hum... A minor case of thread Necromancy here... I can play...
Travellers key Trope as stated by Loren Wiseman in the august pages of the Journal defines the core aspect of Traveller as the Communication speed is only as fast as the fastest ship.
Everytime I sit down to break Traveller with a new setting it always comes back to that. So by extension Traveller is really a Age-Of-Sail game, and works best when one remembers that. Oh all the disruptive technologies I have allowed in to my games that has been the one thing I have stuck to.
Why do we come back to Traveller? Because it has a internally consistent set of tropes that allow for a wide amount of variation. Also in there Traveller isn't a unified background, but a collection of loosely associated games and themes that revolve around those core tropes. In that each of the major aspects of Traveller is it's own mini-game often with two three variations even within specific editions. The Mini-games are actually the blindspot many Traveller Fans have, where they assume their favorite ones are "Traveller" and the rest are Apocrypha to be ignored as insignificant or inconsequential. (Sidenote this is last bit is the weak point of the Mongoose edition)
So, does Traveller Need a new setting? Yes, it needs the full 3rd Edition DnD treatment, with a bunch of people riffing on the tune set by the SRD and the Traveller they play at home. Mongoose gets to keep doing what they are doing, there are some really great bits in there alongside some not so great bits, but they are producing, tossing stuff out to see what sticks.
Travellers key Trope as stated by Loren Wiseman in the august pages of the Journal defines the core aspect of Traveller as the Communication speed is only as fast as the fastest ship.
Everytime I sit down to break Traveller with a new setting it always comes back to that. So by extension Traveller is really a Age-Of-Sail game, and works best when one remembers that. Oh all the disruptive technologies I have allowed in to my games that has been the one thing I have stuck to.
Why do we come back to Traveller? Because it has a internally consistent set of tropes that allow for a wide amount of variation. Also in there Traveller isn't a unified background, but a collection of loosely associated games and themes that revolve around those core tropes. In that each of the major aspects of Traveller is it's own mini-game often with two three variations even within specific editions. The Mini-games are actually the blindspot many Traveller Fans have, where they assume their favorite ones are "Traveller" and the rest are Apocrypha to be ignored as insignificant or inconsequential. (Sidenote this is last bit is the weak point of the Mongoose edition)
So, does Traveller Need a new setting? Yes, it needs the full 3rd Edition DnD treatment, with a bunch of people riffing on the tune set by the SRD and the Traveller they play at home. Mongoose gets to keep doing what they are doing, there are some really great bits in there alongside some not so great bits, but they are producing, tossing stuff out to see what sticks.
It depends on which 'bits' of traveller you're using; basic rules (fine), ships (cool but physics is having a quite cry in the corner at some of the details), trade (errr....), psionics, etc, etc.
As noted, B5 worked fine. Legacies of War is a superb campaign (one of the best they've done) and the traveller mechanics support the B5 'feel' of combat (oh **** he's got a gun) far better than anything D20/D&D based ever did.
Equally, Judge Dredd works perfectly despite never leaving the planet, and...I'm honestly not sure if Strontium Dog has FTL comms or not.
The latter two don't really include any ship elements though, and B5's ship rules were just a bit random in terms of the effectiveness of different weapons. Prime Directive, one assumes, will include ship combat (we'll see).
To be honest, Traveller is a nicely flexible set of basic rules - skill checks, stats, etc. It wouldn't take long to home-brew some historical 'careers' and head off viking and set fire to some some dane or saxon settlements. In fact, an Uhtred Of Bebbanburg (Bernard Cornwell novel series), Ragnar Lodbrok (History Channel Vikings), or similar setting might be quite cool.
It's a genuinely awesome period of history that annoyingly few people seem to know much about* and has most of the classical fantasy tropes - multiple kingdoms at war with one another, small bands canonically tipping the results of battles (since the armies are big enough to be armies but small enough that a few dozen trained men really matter), duels between army leaders, politics and backstabbing, different nations within a few days travel of one another, religions (Christianity and Norse Paganism) at war as much as nations, itinerant merchants looking to make a living round the edges, pirate raiders, bezerker nutcases, mercenaries and traitors, etc, etc.
* Seriously, I swear most of the people I know seem to view British history as:
"The Romans" - "Nothing Happened" - "The Normans" despite over half a millenium of things, including most of the Vikings actually being the Vikings, the birth of a country and the only English king ever to qualify for a "The Great" badge falling in that gap.
As noted, B5 worked fine. Legacies of War is a superb campaign (one of the best they've done) and the traveller mechanics support the B5 'feel' of combat (oh **** he's got a gun) far better than anything D20/D&D based ever did.
Equally, Judge Dredd works perfectly despite never leaving the planet, and...I'm honestly not sure if Strontium Dog has FTL comms or not.
The latter two don't really include any ship elements though, and B5's ship rules were just a bit random in terms of the effectiveness of different weapons. Prime Directive, one assumes, will include ship combat (we'll see).
To be honest, Traveller is a nicely flexible set of basic rules - skill checks, stats, etc. It wouldn't take long to home-brew some historical 'careers' and head off viking and set fire to some some dane or saxon settlements. In fact, an Uhtred Of Bebbanburg (Bernard Cornwell novel series), Ragnar Lodbrok (History Channel Vikings), or similar setting might be quite cool.
It's a genuinely awesome period of history that annoyingly few people seem to know much about* and has most of the classical fantasy tropes - multiple kingdoms at war with one another, small bands canonically tipping the results of battles (since the armies are big enough to be armies but small enough that a few dozen trained men really matter), duels between army leaders, politics and backstabbing, different nations within a few days travel of one another, religions (Christianity and Norse Paganism) at war as much as nations, itinerant merchants looking to make a living round the edges, pirate raiders, bezerker nutcases, mercenaries and traitors, etc, etc.
* Seriously, I swear most of the people I know seem to view British history as:
"The Romans" - "Nothing Happened" - "The Normans" despite over half a millenium of things, including most of the Vikings actually being the Vikings, the birth of a country and the only English king ever to qualify for a "The Great" badge falling in that gap.
Wil Mireu said:
Well, for most of Traveller's history it realy hasn't been intended to be a generic scifi rules set. It presented a set of integrated rules systems (ship design, world generation, trade, role playing) with a single set of technological and sociological assumptions built into all of them. One of those is that worlds right next to each other can be radically different in technology, which at least in part is a consequence of the transport assumptions. The only propulsion systems were manoeuvre and jump. One suite of mutually balanced weapons systems. World generation rules that produce worlds with scout and naval bases. Character generation rules that produce scout, navy, marines, noble, etc characters. Want to run a game which uses warp drives, no pervasive government to have navy or scout bases, and in which the military and noble careers don't make any sense? Tough. You're on your own. The tech and social assumptions are deeply ingrained into the game.
Some editions have made perfunctory efforts to present some alternatives, but they are superficial at best. Mongoose and Mega Traveller offered some alternatives as standalone sidebar-type notes, but provided no actual support for them in the rest of the rules. How might warp drives affect navigation or trade? They don't. How would pervasive sentient robots affect crewing rules or maintenance? You're on your own.
Now, that's not really a criticism. I have a lot of respect for any rules system that has an opinion and follows through on it. However it is a fact. Traveller has never made any attempt to be a generic system. You can certainly create your own Traveller universe, the world gen rules make that very easy, but it will be very much Traveller universe.
Simon Hibbs
simonh said:
Yes, with CT if you used the rules as described but not the OTU then you'd still end up with a setting that felt like the OTU because of the inbuilt tech assumptions - but that said the tech assumptions were removed in TNE with the publication of Fire Fusion and Steel and all of its alternate techs (and associated discussion and advice for how to use them). And arguably the social limitations were removed in TNE too, since the Imperium had collapsed.
Certainly though, I've made settings that just used some elements from the Traveller ruleset (changing the tech and worldgen rules) and they don't look or feel anything like the OTU.
Lord High Munchkin
Mongoose
I've always used (since CT came out... and I bought it as soon as it was available in GW's Dalling Rd shop) an alternate TL table. I just assumed that that was alterable as well.
Wil Mireu said:
Indeed. You can even pull out the entire world gen system and drop it into a completely different rules system. Same with starship construction, though the tech assumptions are more deeply integrated there.
I recently ran an SF game set on a gigantic colony ship that was largely ruined by a civil way several generation before the game was set. The survivors mainly lived barricaded into defensible parts of the ship centered on valuable resources such as power generation, food supplies, colonists in cryosleep that could be traded as slaves, etc. The rest of the ship was either ruined, evacuated, or sparsely populated by extremely dangerous robots or cannibalistic tribal survivors.
Traveller was my first choice of system, but I gave up on that fairly quickly. I wanted to use very different weapons tech and very few of the standard careers are at all relevant, so for that game Traveller had very little to offer me. If the players make it to what's left of the ship's starport I'll likely use the Traveller ship design system to rough out the parameters for the smaller 'sub-craft', but some of the subordinate vessels are far bigger than anything even High Guard can deal with.
Simon Hibbs
alex_greene
Guest
A combat-light setting centered around roguery and scoundrels, a la the late Harry Harrison's The Stainless Steel Rat series, would be welcomed. It'd give me a chance to go back to Book 5: Agent and Book 6: Scoundrel.
All those unclaimed trillions of other people's property; all those gullible fools just begging to be fleeced, and all those women - and maybe men - to sweep off their feet in the process; the occasional harvest of low-hanging fruit, posing as a psychic or personal trainer or lifestyle guru to some low-INT minor celeb or noble awash with readies; and even, when my character gets bored, the occasional job working for local law enforcement, tracking down nasty creeps with blood on their hands. For a time. And the rest of the time my character would be living on his feet and out of a suitcase, looking for the next mark, grifting his way across the Galaxy because only a sucker would actually be so dumb as to pay the fare ...
All those unclaimed trillions of other people's property; all those gullible fools just begging to be fleeced, and all those women - and maybe men - to sweep off their feet in the process; the occasional harvest of low-hanging fruit, posing as a psychic or personal trainer or lifestyle guru to some low-INT minor celeb or noble awash with readies; and even, when my character gets bored, the occasional job working for local law enforcement, tracking down nasty creeps with blood on their hands. For a time. And the rest of the time my character would be living on his feet and out of a suitcase, looking for the next mark, grifting his way across the Galaxy because only a sucker would actually be so dumb as to pay the fare ...
alex_greene
Guest
The tech tables would have to be amended to include commonplace technologies not allowed in the OTU below TL 17 - and then there would be the inevitable outrage chorus of "That's not allowed at that Tech Level in the 3I setting!"simonh said:
Though the Zhodani would make for a chilling take on Harrison's Gray Men.
Similar threads
