Other RPGs That You Use In Your Traveller Games

RogerN

Banded Mongoose
I find in my own home games I draw inspiration and ideas from other RPGs that I port across into my home games. eg NPCs, maps, sometimes simple mechanics, ship designs etc.

Does anyone else do that same and if so which games ?
 
There are some things from the 40k universe and their rpgs I've drawn on occasionally. There are two that stand out for me. The first the "Gellar field", basically an energy field instead of a hydrogen bubble to keep jump space out, used as a prototype tech but not changing the galaxy at large. The second one being an "astropathic relay" being tech boosting the ability to send messages to a receiver through jump space and as it uses jump space it still isn't an Ansible. This I've used to lean into zhodani studying the science of psionics openly.

Otherwise while not a rpg farscape and their bioship has definitely helped inspire some of my more alien sophants. I've been able to cobble together some in universe sources to even explain some of the bigger aspects with leviathan and alo'he.

I've found myself leaning on Shadowrun occasionally for worlds that embrace cybernetics beyond just replacing lost limbs as many races of charted space seem to look down on augmentation.
 
Stars Without Number has a whole bunch of useful resources, especially if you're running a sandbox game. Is adventure creation tools are particularly handy, but even things as simple as its random name generators are helpful.

I've also used the collaborative system in Diaspora (a FATE game massively influenced by Traveller) to create a setting with my players which we could then play in Traveller. We used Classic, but Mongoose would work too. It's a neat way of doing things. You get a cluster of a few worlds that have pretty well-defined relationships to one another and a whole bunch of conflicts and troubles brewing.
 
Stars Without Number has a whole bunch of useful resources, especially if you're running a sandbox game. Is adventure creation tools are particularly handy, but even things as simple as its random name generators are helpful.
I'd second the use of SWN: the modular nature of the game (quite like Traveller) makes it easy to steal mechanics. I find the faction system handy in running Drinax campaigns in particular.

Something I borrow from Blades in the Dark is the idea of a focus on the party base (a building, a ship etc) with abstracted abilities to improve it as adventure arcs are completed so that it develops with the (and demonstrates) the progress of the ship. I do it within the story so as to make it less gamey than BitD ("You completed the Borderland Run and saved Hteilotorl; the Iuwoi-ko offers to make an appropriate upgrade to your ship.") but it still boils down to "you did a thing now your base levels up: choose an upgrade of up to 5 million credits".
 
I re-skinned an Alternity scenario for Traveller about 20 years ago.

Elements of 40k crept into the last Traveller campaign I ran.

I'm going to use a version of the FATE skills pyramid in the next Traveller game I run if the players are up for it. Failing that I'll play some solo using characters bult that way.
 
R. Talsorian Games has had some influence on my Traveller. Mekton (II and Zeta) with their Reputation and Lifepath rules, Cyberpunk (2013, , 2020, and Red) for ideas on worldbuilding and cybernetics, Dream Park for its use of Beats in creating scenarios, and Teenagers From Outer Space on how to inject comedy into Serious Gaming. Interestingly enough, Mike Pondsmith (who is the owner of R. Talsorian Games) is a Traveller fan who has dedicated two of his space Cyberpunk books to the game.
 
Actually, on specific adventures rather than mechanics, I have stolen a few adventure plots from Shadowrun and Call of Cthulhu in the past: I just change the nouns to remove the supernatural elements. Tech in Traveller very often presents ways to provide the same effects. Obviously, psionics can serve the same purpose in a pinch, too.
 
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