New Traveller has Questions

[Empty]

Hullo,

I'm a new member here, big Paranoia fan, and I just bought Traveller yesterday. Before my normal game last night my players and I were flipping through the "little black book" and were so captivated by character creation that we blew off our regular game and spent the night making characters. It was great fun; almost a mini-game in itself.

Naturally we began thinking of putting together a campaign. But looking through the book we had a couple of concerns and questions:

Experience -- there was a small paragraph on Learning New Skills. Is that the whole of the character advancement system in Traveller? No experience points or the like, just "I'll spend 5 weeks to learn Piloting"? The game seems to have a lot of downtime, wouldn't this lead to skill glut?

Economics -- Wow! Ships are expensive! After crunching the numbers, my players & I started to wonder why anyone would leave their careers (in our cases: diplomat, naval officer, explorer) to become a hopelessly indebted trader. Mortgaging a 30 year-old ship with 13 shares, we ended up owning >12,000 credits a month! Is that right? Could trading possible be lucrative enough to make this worthwhile?

Crunch -- Wow! Ships are complicated! I appreciate the realism (acceleration instead of speed, etc), but neither I nor my players are "gear-heads" and this is just too much detail for us. Is there a simplified ship system? Is this just the wrong game for us?

Setting -- The main rulebooks has very little setting of GM info. Is there a "Referee Guide" of some sort? I'd like some more info about the 3rd Imperium. I read online that there is no FTL communication, is this true? (I hope so: I love this idea and use it in my homebrewed SF games). If it is true, how do traders pay their mortgage monthly? They can't "wire" the money, do they have to travel back to civilisation every month to hand the bank a cheque? With at least a week's travel out to the fringes and back, that doesn't leave a lot of time to make 12,000cr.

I really like Traveller and want to play it. I could, of course, house-rule these concern, but I'd like to get the official answers first. Thanks for any help or suggestions.

Cheers,
--MT

PS Did I see an Int Sec trooper in one of the illustrations?

 

[AndrewW]

Yes that's about it for built in experience system, though some do come up with their own system that expands upon that.

Yes, ships are expensive. Paying off a mortgage can give an incentive to adventure and not just trade, but you can also purchase an older ship to reduce the costs. Or arrange for your players to receive a ship for free, or sponsored by another if it is a concern.

Ship construction can get into a bit, but no real need to construct your own there are a lot of ships out there already. As for the details of running/operating a ship it doesn't take much to get used to and you don't really need to worry about all the details if you don't want to.

Spinward Marches gives a bit of information on the Third Imperium setting. Yes that would be correct, the default Traveller has no FTL communications. Information is transmited through the X-Boat network, this usually moves faster then the players if the systems are along the X-boat routes, can take longer if not along this route but players can make a payment where they happen to be located and the data can catch up.

 

[hdan]

Experience -- there was a small paragraph on Learning New Skills. Is that the whole of the character advancement system in Traveller? No experience points or the like, just "I'll spend 5 weeks to learn Piloting"? The game seems to have a lot of downtime, wouldn't this lead to skill glut?

Right, no experience points. We don't really use the learning new skills rules, but the way they are written would lead to some skill glut. Though the fact that you take longer to learn skills as you get more skills helps somewhat.

Players "level up" in Traveller by getting better gear for the most part. That, and maybe useful contacts. They can also hire employees.

Traveller combat is pretty harsh too, so often characters will simply be killed. What I like to do when possible is to have each player roll up a few characters who work together (like a bridge crew, marines and maybe some researchers) so that players don't have to send their captain on away missions, so to speak.

If that's not practical in the campaign, then I let players get new characters any time they arrive at a new world. This also lets players rotate out characters that aren't fun for them. If the party has legally incorporated in some way (like a ship's crew), then the departing player might wind up leaving most of his equipment (expensive armor, weapons, computers, etc.) because it really belongs to the party. It can be fun to have old PCs show up as NPCs or Patrons later.

Really, Traveller's approach to characters isn't quite the same as most other RPGs. You don't have to adopt the "characters come and go" approach, but IMHO it's more "with the grain" than a more traditional D&D approach to characters.

Economics -- Wow! Ships are expensive! After crunching the numbers, my players & I started to wonder why anyone would leave their careers (in our cases: diplomat, naval officer, explorer) to become a hopelessly indebted trader. Mortgaging a 30 year-old ship with 13 shares, we ended up owning >12,000 credits a month! Is that right? Could trading possible be lucrative enough to make this worthwhile?

Yes they are expensive. Don't forget maintenance and life support costs.

You can get 1000Cr per ton of standard rate shipping though, so as long as you haul 10 tons or so each jump (where you follow the "two jumps a month" schedule) you'll be ok. And most traders hold 5-6 times that much.

The rules basically just make sure that you can't just sit around waiting for stuff to happen, you need to keep flying. On average, shipping freight and passengers will probably keep you in the sky, but you won't get rich. For that, you'll need to get some lucky speculative trades in or supplement your income with odd jobs in your "down week" between jumps. (That is, use adventuring, smuggling and lucky bargains to get rich, use freight to pay the bills.) And as a GM's note, passengers can make for interesting patrons. Also, people may want to charter your ship for a special cargo run, and be willing to pay above average prices for the privilege of controlling your schedule.

The one "Free Traders" game I ran, the players weren't that interested in the details, so I just hand-waved things such that as long as they kept flying on schedule, they didn't have to worry about monthly payments or maintenance costs, but didn't make any extra money either. The ship sort of took care of itself. But that worked because the captain was an NPC, and the players were all his employees.

You'll want to amass a few million credits (MCr) as quickly as you can so that you can repair damage from pirates and such. That can get VERY expensive.

You might want to not have your players own their own ship. You could easily have them serving as crew on someone else's ship, or even just doing odd jobs to get money for their next passage off world. This works well if you have a destination in mind, like "Everyone is trying to get to Regina". Patrons can then pay you in "Passage Tickets", or some multiple of their cost. Many of the old Traveller adventures assume the characters don't have their own ship. Death Station is a good example.

Crunch -- Wow! Ships are complicated! I appreciate the realism (acceleration instead of speed, etc), but neither I nor my players are "gear-heads" and this is just too much detail for us. Is there a simplified ship system? Is this just the wrong game for us?

Believe it or not, Mongoose's space combat system *is* the simplified one, compared to the Classic Traveller 2d vector math one.

I would not worry too much about the specifics if that's not your thing - whichever ship has the highest maneuver rating is going to get to dictate the range of combat. The only thing you'd have to work out is if your ships are running to somewhere, how many turns will it take to get there. I would just pick some dramatically appropriate time and have your ships move "at the speed of plot".

For example, you might be attacked by a raider. You put out a call to the local defense fleet, but they are 2d6 turns away from helping you. The raider is faster than you are, so maybe you have them engage you in 1d6 turns. Looks like you're going to have to hold them off for a little while before the cavalry arrives. Maybe you can damage them enough to make them back off before they cause any serious trouble?

Setting -- The main rulebooks has very little setting of GM info. Is there a "Referee Guide" of some sort? I'd like some more info about the 3rd Imperium. I read online that there is no FTL communication, is this true? (I hope so: I love this idea and use it in my homebrewed SF games). If it is true, how do traders pay their mortgage monthly? They can't "wire" the money, do they have to travel back to civilisation every month to hand the bank a cheque? With at least a week's travel out to the fringes and back, that doesn't leave a lot of time to make 12,000cr.

There is a book called "The Spinward Marches" that covers setting in a lot of detail. The Alien books have setting information in them as well. You can also google for the traveller wiki, which has tons of information.

Comms are indeed at the speed of jump. The Imperium has set up an "X-Boat" system that works a bit like the old "Pony Express" - high speed ships jump into a system and relay their data to another ship that is fueled and ready to go. X-boats are Jump-4 maximum, but often jump less in more congested sectors.

The mortgage thing is a problem for which there is no standard answer that I'm aware of. I personally have the captain pay up at annual maintenance time, though he can pay up any time he is in a system with X-boat service.

I really like Traveller and want to play it. I could, of course, house-rule these concern, but I'd like to get the official answers first. Thanks for any help or suggestions.

 

[Egil Skallagrimsson]

Hullo,

I'm a new member here, big Paranoia fan, and I just bought Traveller yesterday. Before my normal game last night my players and I were flipping through the "little black book" and were so captivated by character creation that we blew off our regular game and spent the night making characters. It was great fun; almost a mini-game in itself.

Naturally we began thinking of putting together a campaign. But looking through the book we had a couple of concerns and questions:

Experience -- there was a small paragraph on Learning New Skills. Is that the whole of the character advancement system in Traveller? No experience points or the like, just "I'll spend 5 weeks to learn Piloting"? The game seems to have a lot of downtime, wouldn't this lead to skill glut?

Economics -- Wow! Ships are expensive! After crunching the numbers, my players & I started to wonder why anyone would leave their careers (in our cases: diplomat, naval officer, explorer) to become a hopelessly indebted trader. Mortgaging a 30 year-old ship with 13 shares, we ended up owning >12,000 credits a month! Is that right? Could trading possible be lucrative enough to make this worthwhile?

Crunch -- Wow! Ships are complicated! I appreciate the realism (acceleration instead of speed, etc), but neither I nor my players are "gear-heads" and this is just too much detail for us. Is there a simplified ship system? Is this just the wrong game for us?

Setting -- The main rulebooks has very little setting of GM info. Is there a "Referee Guide" of some sort? I'd like some more info about the 3rd Imperium. I read online that there is no FTL communication, is this true? (I hope so: I love this idea and use it in my homebrewed SF games). If it is true, how do traders pay their mortgage monthly? They can't "wire" the money, do they have to travel back to civilisation every month to hand the bank a cheque? With at least a week's travel out to the fringes and back, that doesn't leave a lot of time to make 12,000cr.

I really like Traveller and want to play it. I could, of course, house-rule these concern, but I'd like to get the official answers first. Thanks for any help or suggestions.

Cheers,
--MT

PS Did I see an Int Sec trooper in one of the illustrations?

Experience - Yup, trav is not really about starting as a level 1 weakling and gaining experience until you are a level 24 super hero. Even the learning skill rules, if you take out a lot of the down time to be spent in neccessary chore, are quite limited. This takes a little getting used to, but works really well when the players realise that either a) accumalating loads of fancy gear and MCr or b) developing character and contacts is much more interesting. Different mind set, give it a go and see. (If you trawl these forums you will find lots of ideas about how some GMs do introduce "experience" rules to allow skill boosts.)

Economics - Personally I always thought these are very cheap, for less than 30MCr you can fly in space, reliably cross the gulfs of space etc, and the mortgage rules make running one of these vessels straigntforward for impoverished travellers. However, if you want to avoid the costs, or just the book keeping, there are lots of options to lend or give the group a ship, or just get them to buy passage from one world to the next, or design a campaign on one world.

Crunch- Stick with the ship design rules, design a couple of 200 to 1000 ton ships, the rules are straight-forward when you have reviewed them a few times.

Setting - Others have suggested Spinward Marches, but designing your own really is very easy, there is everything you need in the worlds section of the core handbook, copy the blank sector map, roll up 4 or 5 UWPs, add a little imagination (or just copy from your favourite sci-fi movies and books). If you don't like the Aliens in the core book, design your own (or have none at all), if you want 2 warring, high tech, high pop worlds, with a few lower pop worlds, just write up the UWP (no need to roll any dice).

Trav is a great system, limited only by your imagination (and, perhaps, how much hard science you want to include). Have fun!

Egil

 

[Empty]

Thanks for the advice! I think Traveller will work well for us, with a little tweaking (but isn't that the case with all games?).

I'll check out the Marches. What's in the "Library Data" book?

Cheers,
-MT

 

[Gypsy Knights Games]

Setting -- The main rulebooks has very little setting of GM info. Is there a "Referee Guide" of some sort? I'd like some more info about the 3rd Imperium. I read online that there is no FTL communication, is this true? (I hope so: I love this idea and use it in my homebrewed SF games).

In addition, if you find you don't care for the 3rd Imperium, there are several smaller companies who have settings, sector books, and subsector books out for Traveller.

Obviously, we'd love it if you'd give our products a look. But there are also several other companies (such as Samardan Press, Spica, TerraSol, and Zozer to name a few) who publish interesting settings and individual worlds for your possible use.

 

[Jak Nazryth]

I think most everyone has covered your questions. As far as experienced is concerned, there is a "magic box" that some people on these boards really dislike. It's called a Library. Mongoose introduced it in a book called High Guard... I think..., sorry still at work so I'm going on memory right now. High Guard introduces more Star Ship design options, plus focuses on character careers in the Navy. Basically a Library will double your time for studying. If you spend a week during Jump studying in an on board library, it counts as two weeks towards your study time.

In addition I introduce character points. At the end of each night I award 1 XP to each player. They can spend these points on improving their skills and stats as if purchasing them via the character point option. I do this because I think there is a huge difference between "learning by doing" and "learning from a book". My players get both.
I've been running my game since last summer and so far there doesn't seem to be a skill glut.


My only other input is the cost of ships and reward/risk of adventure types.

You can cheapen the cost of a ship by using older models. One GM last year related what his players did to get a functioning 200 ton far trader. They scabbed together an old hull, salvaged engines, and used parts over 2 or 3 game sessions. The hull was actually completely stripped on the bad side of town, and was being used as a disco! The players purchased it dirt cheap, then got a used power plant and drives from a junk dealer, purchase spar parts and restored them. Then got a scrapped junker with a jump drive and had that installed. By the time they patched together an actual working 200 ton far trader, they players spent several months in game time, and as I said, 2 to 3, or even 4 game sessions doing all this. But in the end they had a great working ship for a fraction on the price of a new one. The GM though made a bug in the jump computers, because when his characters prepared for jump, disco music would start thumping throughout the ships audio systems! But the coolest part that I liked is that the players first adventures was to get a ship! And all the players had something invested in creating their adventure ship, making it that much more fun to them.
As a GM, you can create any type of scenario to help your players "Play the game" as apposed to "Pay the bank". True, part of the game is finding enough work to make payments and upkeep, but at times the fun gets to bogged down when the adventure centers on only paying for the ship.

What I have done in my game is that a former player, who left the game because of the spreadsheet/cost aspects of the game, is now an NPC. He is a Noble (Soc 13) and used book called "Dilettante" to create his Noble character. Dilettante allows for monthly incomes instead of mustering out benefits. He runs a family business, thus explaining his monthly income.
So as a GM, I made the players ship a company ship. The NPC noble owns 51% of the ship and the players own 49%. Then the players apply their ship shares to the 49%. They only pay for 49% of the bank note and upkeep. This takes a huge chunk of the financial burden off them as players.
It also lets me step in as the Noble, and use his ownership as an adventure thread. "Sorry guys, the company needs us to travel to the Elroot system... " etc...

Lastly, to account for interest rates etc..., the rules effectively double the payment time when calculating the monthly cost of a ship. You can just ignore that rule and say the interest is already built into the prices listed in the books. That's the easiest way to make ship payments easier to manage. A real world economist or banker might faint at that thought, saying it would destroy the entire economics of the Traveller universe... but what the heck, this is a science-fiction / science-fantasy game, not the real world. Don't let OVER realism bog down your game.

One other option is to do some kind of mercenary or privateer campaign. I was a player in a campaign back in the late 90's. Our "client" was a pocket empire in conflict with some of its neighbors. We used a heavily modified 600 ton liner converted into a pocket carrier/merc ship. It was fun for a while, but in the end, as players, it seem were on rails, not having much input into what we could do. The GM simply said "Ok, this is your new mission" and we would go through the motions.

As mentioned before, I would look at getting the Spinward Marches supplement. You can also get a large fold out map, but it is sold separately. I have it, my players love it.
There are several others out there that are pretty good. In the mean time, here is a link showing just about every sector in the Traveller universe. You can zoom way out to see the galaxy, and how tiny the "known human space" is.... or zoom way in to see individual planets/systems. When you zoom in close enough the big grid will turn into offset checker board, and zooming in even closer the checkerboard turns into a true hex map with stars, planetary systems, x-boat routes, etc...
The Spinward Marches is part of the Emperium (center of the main traveller map) and is the default "nation" where characters are from. But the Spinward Marches is just 'south east" of the Zhodani Counsulate, on the left hand side of the map. When you first open the link below, you will be able to see "Spinward Marches" in small print at a diagonal. The Spinward Marches sector is considered "the wild west" of the Emperium. The Zhodani's are "The bad guys" of Traveller... when the game was created back in the 70's, the Zho's were sort of modeled off the Soviet Union/eastern block. Here is the link.

http://www.travellermap.com/?x=-0.433&y=0.5&scale=2&options=1015&style=poster

Hope some of those ideas helped.

Have fun.

Jak

 

[Easterner]

3rd Imperium History
http://www.freelancetraveller.com/features/advents/ttaintro/travintro.html

http://www.drye.ca/hans/Handouts.htm

Andrew's trailer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iWehLi_4ug&feature=related

Library
http://traveller.mu.org/library/library_data.html

Ship Info
http://www.freelancetraveller.com/features/shipyard/tonnage.html

 

[Empty]

Hey, thanks for the links and the info!


Cheers,
--MT

 

[locarno24]

One other option is to do some kind of mercenary or privateer campaign. I was a player in a campaign back in the late 90's. Our "client" was a pocket empire in conflict with some of its neighbors. We used a heavily modified 600 ton liner converted into a pocket carrier/merc ship. It was fun for a while, but in the end, as players, it seem were on rails, not having much input into what we could do. The GM simply said "Ok, this is your new mission" and we would go through the motions.

Split the difference... the new Pirates of Drinax campaign gives you both freedom of movement and a 'free' high tech not-a-raiding-ship-honest-guv'nor-please-stop-pointing-bay-weapons-at-me.

 

[andyl]

Crunch -- Wow! Ships are complicated! I appreciate the realism (acceleration instead of speed, etc), but neither I nor my players are "gear-heads" and this is just too much detail for us. Is there a simplified ship system? Is this just the wrong game for us?

Believe it or not, Mongoose's space combat system *is* the simplified one, compared to the Classic Traveller 2d vector math one.

I would not worry too much about the specifics if that's not your thing - whichever ship has the highest maneuver rating is going to get to dictate the range of combat. The only thing you'd have to work out is if your ships are running to somewhere, how many turns will it take to get there. I would just pick some dramatically appropriate time and have your ships move "at the speed of plot".

In fact you can have plenty of games without ship to ship combat at all. In my game there has been no ship to ship combat (despite one of the characters being ex-navy and wanting to try and 'help' her old mates out hoping that she can get some kind of semi-official advisor role or even a special commission) because they are flying around on a yacht (and complaining about how expensive maintenance is) with very limited offensive capabilities.

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

my players and I were flipping through the "little black book" and were so captivated by character creation that we blew off our regular game and spent the night making characters. It was great fun; almost a mini-game in itself.

Get the Library Data book also. It explains the Traveller universe your characters are in.

 

[tneva82]

Economics -- Wow! Ships are expensive! After crunching the numbers, my players & I started to wonder why anyone would leave their careers (in our cases: diplomat, naval officer, explorer) to become a hopelessly indebted trader. Mortgaging a 30 year-old ship with 13 shares, we ended up owning >12,000 credits a month! Is that right? Could trading possible be lucrative enough to make this worthwhile?

Thing is mortages are either pain in the ass(players need to figure out lots of non-trading missions to cover the expenses) or no sweat. If you have end up with nice chunk of start money and have character with broker-3(or heaven forbid more...) you'll often end up getting ridiculously fast cash.

First campaign I played one character had broker FOUR and we had about 200k start up cash...

After couple jumps cash the group was carrying had already broken million. Then issue that was left was lack of cargo space...Money was flooding ridiculously fast pace then. If we had wanted to go for series of weeks in quick order rather than have detailed events each jump we could probably have bought flat out BIGGER ship in less than a year game time with no loan...

Alternative option is to figure out some OTHER way for them to have a ship which DOESN'T require constant trading. If they have ship without loan trading isn't need all. For this you need to look characters background. Does somebody belong to organization that could give them ship to perform their duties but they have to accomplish tasks given from above? Like the next campaign I will play(whenever that is. voefully lacking in time) where one character is agent of one(as yet unnamed) organization. Sorta James Bond style. You don't see Bond doing trading to pay off his rents do you?-) Rest are basically his henchmen(pilot, armed thug type etc).

edit: To avoid the railroad issue just don't have the organization telling ALL the time. Treat the characters as sort of specialists called in for "real tough nuts". Obviously that doesn't work if they are all 1-2 term rookies however

 

[rust]

Economics -- Wow! Ships are expensive! After crunching the numbers, my players & I started to wonder why anyone would leave their careers (in our cases: diplomat, naval officer, explorer) to become a hopelessly indebted trader. Mortgaging a 30 year-old ship with 13 shares, we ended up owning >12,000 credits a month! Is that right? Could trading possible be lucrative enough to make this worthwhile?

My favourite and usual way to handle this is to give the characters
a subsidized ship. Since most of my settings have a specific colony
as the focus, the ship is usually owned by the colony and most of
the time used for missions to support the colony (supply shipments,
diplomatic missions, medical evacuations, exploration - whatever a
colony might need interstellar transport for). In between those mis-
sions, which are small adventures themselves, the characters can go
adventuring or trading for fun or cash. The colony pays the mortga-
ge and the maintenance of the ship, the characters receive normal
wages and can also keep the money they earn when operating be-
tween the colony's missions, and over time can save the money re-
quired to buy the ship (if they want to do that). The colony's missi-
ons enable me to introduce the adventures I designed for the set-
ting, while the characters can use the time between these adventu-
res for a more "sandbox" style game.

 

[hdan]

As far as settings go:

"Pirates of Drinax" would be a fun way to start off, and gets you right "next door" to the more traditional Traveller 3I setting. "Pirates" is set in the Trojan Reach sector, next door to the Spinward Marches and sandwiched between two large empires. (Go to travellermap.com and search for Drinax - the worlds between the red and yellow will be your stomping grounds.) All of the library data and such would be immediately relevant, as would the Aslan alien book, which contains more details on the Trojan Reach. The campaign itself involves both hunting shipping and trying to curry favor with different worlds while not getting the Imperium or Heirate too angry with you. It would serve as a good introduction to Traveller "style", since what you are trying to "level up" is your ship and your contacts. Having better contacts benefits the players directly in game mechanics, so it's almost like leveling up, but for the whole party.

The original 3I "OTU" began with the introduction of a Jump-1 route ("The Spinward Main") that wound through a sector called the Spinward Marches (SM). The SM is a border between the more civilized Core and some hostile neighbors, and contains a great many underdeveloped worlds. Players frequently started in Regina subsector (because that was the example subsector in the Traveller Book) and wound their way down the 'main, looking for profit and adventure. Mongoose's "Secret of the Ancients" has some nice ideas to mine for Regina subsector, and a lot of the old JTAS "Amber Zone" (short adventure ideas) articles were set in Regina subsector or its immediate neighbors.

If you don't care about meshing your universe with the OTU worlds and creatures (which is a very defensible position, and the way Traveller was originally played when it first came out), you can generate your own worlds or use Gypsy Knight's excellent series of quick world/subsector source books. (RPGNOW.com, search for Gypsy Knight) In this case, you'd still have essentially the standard Traveller assumptions in place, but you get a better fleshed out and smaller setting to work in. Realistically though, unless your game runs for a very long time, you won't exhaust the possibilities found in a few subsectors.

For settings that push out beyond the typical OTU (but in very different ways), there are two that really stand out to me: "Twilight Sector" by Terra/Sol Games (http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/15/15351.phtml) and the "Outer Veil" by Spica Publishing (http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/15/15475.phtml), both of which are available from rpgnow.

Twilight Sector has a modern space opera feel to it, with trans-humanism and mutations, true AIs, cybernetics and a LOT of attitude. Plus, no aliens. That they know of. Though there are some odd things going on, so it could be aliens. Or not. The "Twilight Sector" itself is on the edge of settled space, but the setting is much larger than the one sector, and holds almost endless possibilities. Rogue AIs motivating armies of robot "drones" (think the Geth from Mass Effect), dangerous new mutations that threaten to change the nature of humanity and other plotlines are all possible. TS is pushing the bounds of what Traveller can be, and a lot of creativity and imagination has gone into the setting. You should definitely grab the various free things on RPGNOW for this setting and see if the setting appeals to you. At least download the solo adventure and run through it.

Outer Veil is a more traditional Traveller setting by trappings, though it takes place a few centuries after Mankind first reaches for the stars, so has an "into the Final Frontier" feel to it. (By way of contrast, the OTU is thousands of years old, and even the Third Imperium is a thousand years old, and is built on the ashes of another millennium long "dark age".) The OV tech level just developed Jump-2 ships and nobody has the capability to build really huge ships, so players with even a simple armed trader or courier could be a force to be reckoned with out on the fringe. Also, the whole setting fits in one sector, centered on Earth. So it's not at all unreasonable for players to wind up travelling from the frontier to the "core" and back. Consequently, all settled worlds in the OV tend to have similar tech items available, though most of those items are shipped in rather than built locally. OV also has some aliens. Well, "had" some aliens - all that's left are ruins, but the ruins aren't very old, and its possible that contact with the aliens could happen at any time. To me, the OV feels like a mashup between the Old Star Trek setting and Firefly/Serenity. Plenty of strange new worlds, and a lot of shady research projects, with some big advances "just around the corner".

 

[Golan2072]

Outer Veil is a more traditional Traveller setting by trappings, though it takes place a few centuries after Mankind first reaches for the stars, so has an "into the Final Frontier" feel to it. (By way of contrast, the OTU is thousands of years old, and even the Third Imperium is a thousand years old, and is built on the ashes of another millennium long "dark age".) The OV tech level just developed Jump-2 ships and nobody has the capability to build really huge ships, so players with even a simple armed trader or courier could be a force to be reckoned with out on the fringe. Also, the whole setting fits in one sector, centered on Earth. So it's not at all unreasonable for players to wind up travelling from the frontier to the "core" and back. Consequently, all settled worlds in the OV tend to have similar tech items available, though most of those items are shipped in rather than built locally. OV also has some aliens. Well, "had" some aliens - all that's left are ruins, but the ruins aren't very old, and its possible that contact with the aliens could happen at any time. To me, the OV feels like a mashup between the Old Star Trek setting and Firefly/Serenity. Plenty of strange new worlds, and a lot of shady research projects, with some big advances "just around the corner".

Thanks for the review! :mrgreen:

We at Spica Publishing are hard at work on a Print-on-Demand hardcopy version of Outer Veil, which will also boast vector starmaps (far sharper in print than my old raster ones!). Also, several additional books are in the works for the Outer Veil setting. The next to come out would be 48 Passengers (for both OV and generic Traveller) - which will also include an adventure set in the Outer Veil universe; a detailed ship-book for a 2,000-ton Asteroid Mining Rig (complete with high-res raster deckplans and new and improved belting rules!); and a book with 15 brand new starship designs (with deckplans!) for the Outer Veil setting - all of which will be fully usable in other Traveller settings as well (as long as you have worlds producing TL9-11 starships, that is). More stuff, such as a sourcebook focusing on one adventure-packed subsector in the setting, a vehicle/equipment book and a mini-campaign are also in the works, but will take more time to complete. Stay tuned!

 

[hdan]

Thanks for the review! :mrgreen:

Oh man, if I knew I was writing a review, I would have gushed a bit more. Though I suppose if the OP goes to rpgnow, they can read my more detailed review. Looks like there are quite a few other reviews there now, which is good to see.

I'm looking forward to a print-on-demand version. I love the pdf's searchability (and the sector map's searchability for that matter), but it's also nice to have a book to flip through.

Given the strong start, I have nothing but high hopes for your future products, and I'm really looking forward to, well, pretty much all the stuff you just said.

 

[Gypsy Knights Games]

If you don't care about meshing your universe with the OTU worlds and creatures (which is a very defensible position, and the way Traveller was originally played when it first came out), you can generate your own worlds or use Gypsy Knight's excellent series of quick world/subsector source books. (RPGNOW.com, search for Gypsy Knight) In this case, you'd still have essentially the standard Traveller assumptions in place, but you get a better fleshed out and smaller setting to work in. Realistically though, unless your game runs for a very long time, you won't exhaust the possibilities found in a few subsectors.

Thanks for the kind words!

I'd also like to mention that if you're searching for adventures, you might look into our 21 Plots line as well.

 

[hdan]

I'd also like to mention that if you're searching for adventures, you might look into our 21 Plots line as well.

I'll second the "Plots" - well worth getting.

 

[Solomani666]

Thanks for the advice! I think Traveller will work well for us, with a little tweaking (but isn't that the case with all games?).

I'll check out the Marches. What's in the "Library Data" book?

Cheers,
-MT

You can hold off on the Library book for a while, most of that info is in the Traveller Wiki:

http://traveller.wikia.com/wiki/Traveller_Wiki


I suggest the following books to start:

Traveller
Spinward Marches
Central Supply Catalog

Basically it's the Rules, the Setting, and then Gun Porn.


I suggest sticking to the canon at first and then modifying things after you are more familiar with the game setting. Traveller has about 30+ years of history with many worlds and settings already developed for a huge variety of campaigns.

Most likely your players will only visit one or two worlds per a session. If I don't have something specific planned, I figure out where they are most likely to go next, then check the GURPS book for that world, the Mongoose version, and the Wiki, then fill in my own details.

Since all of my campaigns are in or around the Spinward Marches, I have a rich library of ideas and info to draw from.

And as far as players owning a ship, it's easiest if you just have one player be a Scout.

Hope this helps.