Prime Directive Traveller
- Thread starter Nerroth
- Start date
Lincolnlog
Mongoose
I've been watching all the Mongoose-ADB threads intently since the announcement. And while I don't engage in much SF wargaming and even less RP gaming, I'm a sucker for anything ST (especially ST-TOS).
I've been playing SFB since 1981. And back in the 80's was also into FASA's ST-RPG. I also played a lot of the Classic Traveller. I own both versions of PD. But, I'm not a big fan of D20 or GURPS, so IMHO, this will be a great improvement just through the application of a better gaming engine.
In past PD games, our group always played ST (the way we imagine it) adding our own flavor and backgrounds where needed. We used the SFU material, books, and of course TOS.
The gaming world is about preferences. D20 & GURPS fanatics probably don't understand this either. I went out this weekend and purchased a copy of Mongoose Traveller (I already have a set of classic traveller), just to get a basic understanding of the core MT rules. So see, there is already profits being made by the companies. This is a very positive step and I believe it will do well in the market.
Thanks :!: to both Mongoose and ADB for tackling this project and accepting gamer input! Who knows, PD-t may actually get an old guy to RP again. I'll definitely be getting the rules, and ACTA-SF as well.
I've been playing SFB since 1981. And back in the 80's was also into FASA's ST-RPG. I also played a lot of the Classic Traveller. I own both versions of PD. But, I'm not a big fan of D20 or GURPS, so IMHO, this will be a great improvement just through the application of a better gaming engine.
In past PD games, our group always played ST (the way we imagine it) adding our own flavor and backgrounds where needed. We used the SFU material, books, and of course TOS.
The gaming world is about preferences. D20 & GURPS fanatics probably don't understand this either. I went out this weekend and purchased a copy of Mongoose Traveller (I already have a set of classic traveller), just to get a basic understanding of the core MT rules. So see, there is already profits being made by the companies. This is a very positive step and I believe it will do well in the market.
Thanks :!: to both Mongoose and ADB for tackling this project and accepting gamer input! Who knows, PD-t may actually get an old guy to RP again. I'll definitely be getting the rules, and ACTA-SF as well.
What might be relevant to the discussion of what's allowed on the MGP forum is that previously there was a small fan fic section.
As I understand it MGP were requested / instructed to remove it (specifically the Babylon 5 aspects) and did so.
Shame really as IMO the B5 fan fiction was of higher quality than the official novels........... but the point is that although MGP have always been very generous with what they allow on their forum, it sounds like it will not be the same with ST - as I think we all know, Paramount has a far greater interest in policing ST than B5?
As I understand it MGP were requested / instructed to remove it (specifically the Babylon 5 aspects) and did so.
Shame really as IMO the B5 fan fiction was of higher quality than the official novels........... but the point is that although MGP have always been very generous with what they allow on their forum, it sounds like it will not be the same with ST - as I think we all know, Paramount has a far greater interest in policing ST than B5?
If there is, it would come to you directly; a.n.other forum that you create yourself in the stinking mire of the internet is just that, yours.
You might be asked to take stuff down, especially if you are essentially putting up rulebooks, but that has nothing to do with ADB or Mongoose.
This forum, however, is Mongoose's own forum and as such they are (and justifiably so) expected to maintain a degree of control over what goes on here.
A similar escapade occured in the Babylon 5 A Call To Arms forum, where one regular poster started posting up ship concepts (fine) then posting his own scratchbuilds (fine in that case) then started selling them (a violation of the B5 IP, so mongoose had to swat it or risk losing the license).
Essentially, whatever the law says, this forum will always be seen by another company as something akin to a Signs & Portents letters page; anything on here should arguably have been vetted by Mongoose to protect the general public from IP violations, obscenity and spam.
Mongoose is a company whose current commercial success is mostly dependent on its licensed IP (Traveller, Fading Suns, SFB, 2000AD, Paranoia, etc) and anything which impacts its perceived fitness to hold those could kill the company as certainly as a bomb going off in central Swindon*.
How defensible punishing a company is for things like this is is open to question but I'd rather that question not get asked!
* Lets face it, how could you tell unless you were there at the time?
rust, I cannot tell you that it would be fine. That would be aiding and abetting something that is not within our license. I can tell you that we don't go googling Borg Cube SSDs just to see what turns up. We have far more important things to do. We are responsible for our own Forums; Mongoose is responsible for its forums. We are in a joint venture; we share the responsibility to stay within the license.
What Paramount does is Paramount's business. We are not their IP police branch.
Remember, turning a profit off of derivative licensed IP (as locarno24 points out) is Very, Very Bad and that gets squashed by any reputable company.
Fanfic is iffy. If you are documenting your RPG adventures, that's fine as long as your RPG adventures are strictly within the SFU. Outside of that becomes a management question. If B5 asked it come down, then I cannot imagine that Paramount would not as well and we probably don't want to go that route.
I'm excited by the news that people are getting excited by the prospect of Traveller Prime Directive. This leads me to do a serious happy dance!
What Paramount does is Paramount's business. We are not their IP police branch.
Remember, turning a profit off of derivative licensed IP (as locarno24 points out) is Very, Very Bad and that gets squashed by any reputable company.
Fanfic is iffy. If you are documenting your RPG adventures, that's fine as long as your RPG adventures are strictly within the SFU. Outside of that becomes a management question. If B5 asked it come down, then I cannot imagine that Paramount would not as well and we probably don't want to go that route.
I'm excited by the news that people are getting excited by the prospect of Traveller Prime Directive. This leads me to do a serious happy dance!
Good. It's a nice ruleset and a nice setting. Plus, you get to attack the players with unconvincing looking rubberized dinosaurs. Go the Gorn!
Excellent. Continue the happy dance!
I have no doubt that the Traveller and A Call To Arms side will work well. The big trick will be figuring out some compatibility between the two; I don't know whether that properly belongs in the Prime Directive or the A Call To Arms rulebook, but it would be nice to have that capability; if involved in a fleet action being able to play an engagement between half a dozen cruiser-class vessels (impressive but far from unthinkable) with ACTA can be done 'during' a game session rather than being the game session (and a long one at that).
The trick is figuring out:
1) What effect the PCs can have - if I have a specifc PC - or even a named NPC as a ship's helmsman, or tactical officer, or engineer, I'd like to think that that ship will perform detectably better. Look at the current NA ACTA occultist rules, maybe? Equally, if the traveller ship design mechanics remain the same, you can garuantee people will fiddle with a ship's armament or defences.
2) How damage is converted back into traveller when you're done. If I finish the game with a cruiser on 13 hit-points, at critical 3 on its shields, critical 2 on its weapons and critical 4 on its crew, clearly, in traveller terms, it is "somewhat buggered". How that translates into traveller hull damage, structure damage and system hits is a different (and sadly somewhat more involved) question.
Lincolnlog
Mongoose
I'm partial to the option that was mentioned previously, which would be, PD-t would have a RP type simplified starship combat system built in. That way it would be up to the GM to involve the crew in operating and fighting the ship.
Another option would be to release a separate book(let) with conversion rules in both directions, depending on how in-depth those rules would be - that would prevent players with no interest in combining the two systems (there are some strange people who do not roleplay, but do wargame and vice-versa) from having to pay for rules they neither want, nor can use...
On the other hand, having very basic rules (ie one or two pages) would encourage sales of the other game... so I could see a combination of both ideas being the best route - a simple set included in one of the books (I'd suggest the Traveller book, but it really wouldn't matter) and have the more advanced rules as a stand alone product - not least because doing so would also help to fund the playtesting and development such a project would need, above and beyond that required for both projects.
Thanks Loc... the idea of a "slightly buggered" cruiser has just brought to mind some disturbing images that'll take some time to get rid of...
And if anyone gets upset at what Jean just said, go read it again and read between the lines, like Rust did...
One thought though: Companies tend to get very protective of their IPs during a recession or an economic slow-down, so now is the time to be extra careful of not upsetting any IP holder... an paramount is one of the more extreme examples - they used to be pretty slack - we ran an RPG group on DALnet back in the 90's - we had an LCARS web-page and all sorts... I doubt we'd get to do it now without some kind of slap on the wrist from them...
On the other hand, having very basic rules (ie one or two pages) would encourage sales of the other game... so I could see a combination of both ideas being the best route - a simple set included in one of the books (I'd suggest the Traveller book, but it really wouldn't matter) and have the more advanced rules as a stand alone product - not least because doing so would also help to fund the playtesting and development such a project would need, above and beyond that required for both projects.
Thanks Loc... the idea of a "slightly buggered" cruiser has just brought to mind some disturbing images that'll take some time to get rid of...
And if anyone gets upset at what Jean just said, go read it again and read between the lines, like Rust did...
One thought though: Companies tend to get very protective of their IPs during a recession or an economic slow-down, so now is the time to be extra careful of not upsetting any IP holder... an paramount is one of the more extreme examples - they used to be pretty slack - we ran an RPG group on DALnet back in the 90's - we had an LCARS web-page and all sorts... I doubt we'd get to do it now without some kind of slap on the wrist from them...
Rick
Mongoose
Hmm, you might be comparing apples and oranges there, locarno!
If a ship is small enough that PC's are directly in command of the vital systems, but are still able to function on 'landing party' missions, then it's unlikely to be much of a threat in ACTA - probably about 8 points damage and a few shields at most.
On the other hand, if PC's are on a Cruiser, say, they are likely to be mid-level crew, but unlikely to be able to influence much in the way of how a battle turns out.
My take on it would be to have a form of Traveller starship combat system, which would be fine for smaller ship engagements, but perhaps a little slow for the big ships, and ACTA - to do the big, 'campaign-important, but mainly for background fluff' battles.
As for having a conversion system, I'd be tempted not to bother - just have PDT and ACTA stats for each ship, side-by-side and fudge the damage/crit effects between the systems.
If a ship is small enough that PC's are directly in command of the vital systems, but are still able to function on 'landing party' missions, then it's unlikely to be much of a threat in ACTA - probably about 8 points damage and a few shields at most.
On the other hand, if PC's are on a Cruiser, say, they are likely to be mid-level crew, but unlikely to be able to influence much in the way of how a battle turns out.
My take on it would be to have a form of Traveller starship combat system, which would be fine for smaller ship engagements, but perhaps a little slow for the big ships, and ACTA - to do the big, 'campaign-important, but mainly for background fluff' battles.
As for having a conversion system, I'd be tempted not to bother - just have PDT and ACTA stats for each ship, side-by-side and fudge the damage/crit effects between the systems.
that's more or less what's there - Traveller already includes a fairly good system for ship-to-ship duels, but the thought that ACTA gives you the ability to throw in a fleet action in a meaningful way. I've done it in Fantasy Flight Rogue Trader games (using Battlefleet Gothic) and it provides a nice change of pace for part of the evening.
According to whom? If we're taking Traveller as a base, the closest equivalent I can see is a High Guard campaign, which (in the mission generation section at the back) actively encourages you to put the players somewhere where their decisions matter. I don't want SFU to be 'just war' but there will almost certainly be a fair amount of blowing stuff up.
Besides which, I can't imagine there not being the support there if I want the party to be the command crew of a Constitution-class; delicate licensing issues aside, that is ultimately what it's all about, isn't it?
That's exactly of what I'm after*- just with something pre-prepared to avoid having to fudge it.
*as noted the traveller rules will need a little tweaking to include shields and to reflect the longer ranges, higher speeds and limited numbers of weapons on bigger hulls
Nothing prevents a gaming group from running several groups of characters: the bridge crew who get to run the ship; a different group of characters who form an away team and who handle "situations;" and characters in a prime team who handle just about anything that comes up and don't need to be tied to a ship. And there are those folks who'd love to play the post-General-War adventurers who are out to make a fortune and retire or even (Oh! The Horror! :shock: ) Orion Pirates (who may not be Orion).
We want the game to be flexible enough to handle what you want to do.
We want the game to be flexible enough to handle what you want to do.
It is intended that if you want to play a bridge crew that always forms the landing team will be workable. By the time you have enough seniority to be on the command bridge, you should have enough skills to handle whatever you want, at least to a reasonable extent.
This is made a lot easier since Mongoose Traveller makes heavy use of skill-0.
This is made a lot easier since Mongoose Traveller makes heavy use of skill-0.
Rick
Mongoose
I've borrowed a friends Traveller books (the last ones I used were megatraveller), so I'm trying to catch up a bit. Just had a brief look at High Guard and noticed that there are a lot of similarities between the Starship combat system and ACTA already, so from the point of view of sorting out damage effects, I don't think there will be too many problems.
One question I've been meaning to ask about the SFU - are there warp-shuttles in it (I'm thinking back to FASA a little here, so stop me if it's not SFU canon) - warp capable small transports, sort of bigger than a large shuttle, but smaller than a 'proper' starship?
One question I've been meaning to ask about the SFU - are there warp-shuttles in it (I'm thinking back to FASA a little here, so stop me if it's not SFU canon) - warp capable small transports, sort of bigger than a large shuttle, but smaller than a 'proper' starship?
In terms of civilian craft, there are skiffs and workboats. A skiff is an older type of civilian vessel, between a shuttle and a frigate in size. A workboat is a civilianized version of a military gunboat; trading in the additional power and weapons of a combat PF for the ability to operate independently for a civilian operator.
