Reign of Discordia?

[FentonGib]

Heyas,

On the other hand, if by nature, they command a number of star systems, or you just can't imagine them under the heel of any stellar government, then it would work best to leave a little room in between the RoD systems and the new ones you introduce.

This is where a bit more info to the usual practices of the Imperium would be good. For example it says that some races apply for membership, but others are conquered - how do we define which they tried to do? Would they try offering membership first and then try to conquer, or the reverse (ie only offer membership to those they can't conquer).

In my case I can imagine the Vargr and the Imperium clashed violently, but eventually they applied for membership - but have been troublemakers ever since. The Darrians, who abhor violence, I think may have applied for membership just to avoid conflict, and for economical benefits - since they are trying to pull their society back from the ashes.

The Gaeti are great as an enigma (if ugly lol), and definitely look forward to reading stuff on them. The book says that they're very advanced, will there be a canon TL for them? I was aiming at making them TL 17-20, and having them use incredibly advanced ships. On another thread I've been discussing AI for ships and I was thinking of a story where the players help a damaged ship with a wounded, strange life-form on it (a Gaeti) and escort it back to where it's trying to go. Or so they'll find out, because the session will begin with them having no recollection of where they are or what happened - but as a 'thanks' the Gaeti actually 'upgrade' the ship's computer and turn it into a sentient/self-aware True AI (which will be henceforth played as a NPC for the group). That sound feasible for the Gaeti, or should I instead have this happen via Ancient technology?

Sorry to hear that you've had problems, would offer to help if there's any way I can... Really looking forward to reading novels or other sources. Please consider doing a nice book of sector maps and more races! hehe.

Thanks again.

 

[Brutorz Bill]

I've been following RoD since its True20 Days. Hope to see more developed for it. Especially some more races available for my players.
FentonGib I like how you've worked the Darrians and Vargr into the setting may look into doing that myself.

 

[FentonGib]

I like how you've worked the Darrians and Vargr into the setting may look into doing that myself.

Thankx

 

[GamerDude]

I've been following RoD since its True20 Days. Hope to see more developed for it. Especially some more races available for my players.
FentonGib I like how you've worked the Darrians and Vargr into the setting may look into doing that myself.

Ahh... I was wondering why the author, at a convention back in August, told me doing RoD was so easy "since it was just a system conversion". Now I understand.

Thanks

 

[FentonGib]

This may seem like a stupid question...

Normal traveller a jump drive jumps 1 parsec per jump. The ship the players have is a Jump-3, so it jumps 3 parsecs, and takes 1 week of warp per parsec. Fair 'nuff.

But Reign of Discordia has no sector maps, and the map it has shows that it's minimum 40 light years between major planets. Considering a parsec is 3.26156 light years (I googled it... I'm not a braniac) that means the players jump approximately 9.5 light years per jump. But RoD uses Tachyon drives, which says that Tachyon jumping is almost instant, but "long jumps" would take 40 light years per hour... but then it says that in practice it takes weeks of microjumping...

Umm am I missing something? How is jumping calculated/done in this system? Do I use the "Teleport Drive" alternate drive? By normal Traveller standards it's take them half a year+ to get anywhere!

What's the simple way of saying "players are on Earth, they want to get to Lamog... it'll take x amount of time and require y amount of jumps at Jump-3"

HELP!

Thanx!

 

[FentonGib]

Anyone playing Reign of Discordia able to help me with my previous post about how jump works in RoD since it differs from Traveller norm?

Pretty please?

Thx

 

[Travellingdave]

Anyone playing Reign of Discordia able to help me with my previous post about how jump works in RoD since it differs from Traveller norm?
Thx

Well, I'd probably refer you to this thread and the entries at the bottom of the page where a similar question was asked and answered: http://www.mongoosepublishing.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=40453&start=30

My own final entry seems rather presumptuous (for which I do apologize) and is by no means official, yet I was trying to provide more of a "number-crunching" method to measure the effectiveness of the drives. Not sure if I succeeded though ...

 

[FentonGib]

Oooh I'd missed that!

Thanx! Very helpful. Will answer what effectively is a contribution to that thread here because my thread necromancy is already rubbing people up the wrong way and if I post on that thread then I'll be nearly a year after the last post, and more necromancy. lol.

It was nice to have Darrin confirm (what I suspected) that it functions like the teleport drive.

However I don't like the idea of not using fuel at all except for microjumping... normal traders are not likely to microjump often imo, and all traveller ships have fuel calculated "one Jump-x and y-weeks operation" and so they're using a lot of tonnage on fuel they don't need... and can't be bothered recalculating that tonage as extra operations.

So what I think I'll do is simply say that one "jump" is one hours tachyon drive usage (or one week microjumping). So a Jump-3 drive (what my players have) can jump for up to three hours for a total of 120 light years. Or maybe I can justify it that since the Tachyon system uses tachyons to "pull" the ship to a destination, the jump number is how far away they can set the "pull to" point that they get pulled towards. The game effect is the same, 40 light years and one hour per jump point.

However on survey missions or if going through uncharted space they'll have to microjump.

I was thinking of a "space/trade lanes" house rule whereby a full Tachyon jump is "blind" and is "Routine" difficulty whereas microjumps are "Easy" difficulty like the standard rules say, but this can be offset by using space lanes, which decrease the difficulty by +2 DM, or jumping through uncharted space increases it by -2 DM. Not using space lanes within charted space gives +0 DM.

This means that players going through uncharted space (e.g. surveying) would be well advised to microjump as then it'd be "easy" with a -2 DM (overall +2 DM, not including distances and other factors), but if they decide to full-jump blind through uncharted space (effectively "point to that star and jump!" without proper astrogation or sensor information) that would be Routine with a -2DM (effectively making it +0 DM) ... greater probability of a misjump. But using a trade lane on a full jump would be Routine difficulty with a +2 bonus, (+4 bonus) thus making it the same overall DM as a normal traveller jump.

I think this'll encourage players to go slower in uncharted areas, rather than hop full speed everywhere, and encourage them to use space lanes more.

I do think there has to be some limiter... don't like the idea of a Jump-1 ship effectively being able to go just as far as a Jump-6 ship unless they're microjumping... prefer saying that each use, whether microjumping or full jumping, uses up fuel to get the energy required for the jump, but microjumping uses it as a slower rate than full jumping.

Thanx again, really helped.

 

[Rockymountainnavy]

Does an errata sheet for RoD exist?

In particular, I am looking for clarification on the planetary population number for Earth (p. 22). RoD states a population of 11,792,600 and a UWP factor of 7 (10's of millions) yet the text says "densely populated". This population is about the size of our present day Sao Paulo, Brazil.

 

[FentonGib]

Heyas

No atm there isn't one to my knowledge, however I actually wrote to Darrin himself about the same query when I first bought the book. This was his reply:

"Regarding Earth, you are correct, the population should be in billions instead of millions"

The correct population code should be "A" (tens of billions) instead of 7.

He said that the other populations are correct (I queried how small the populations of these "major worlds" seemed), though he said they got a Traveller expert to do the codes and conversions. So if you see any of the codes seem wrong, believe the text tescription, not the UWP

Hope this helps

 

[aspqrz]

I have, and I wrote it. What would you like to know?

The Population figures are way off, pretty much all of them ... or seem to be ...

Earth is described (page #22) ... "the world remains densely populated" ... but the population is listed as ... 11,792,600!!!

Less than the population of Australia here and now!!!

I presume it is meant to be 11,792,600,000 - and it seems as if, for some worlds, adding "000" to the extant figures makes sense, but then, for others, it makes population figures ridiculously high.

Is there an errata? I have searched high and low on the 'Net and haven't been able to find one ...

[Edit] Ah, I see others have had the same problem. Still, it really needs an answer - "guessing" based on text descriptions is not an answer for a professionally produced book, IMO. YMMV.

Phil

 

[FentonGib]

Well as I just stated, the author stated that all the population figures are correctly WRITTEN in the descriptions - and only the codes are wrong in some cases. I queried in particular Teron/Rover's beacon, which has a pop of about 180,000 and it mentions there are 100,000 on Rover's Beacon, and was told that was correct, that three are more ppl on the station than on the planet. Most "major worlds" are growing and influential, but not huge in size. In the traveller book that's normal for Space Opera settings, where you tend to re-use fewer places rather than have many places.

However you're perfectly entitled to make worlds' populations as big or as small as you want them. In my 3rd session I've already created a new world called Diego IV which has one big city called New Vegas with a pop of 116,000 - the players saved the world from a R'Tillek attack by running around convincing some ex-Stellar Imperium admirals to band their fleets together for defence... and in the end the players themselves had to shoot down an ortillery missile carrying the R'Tillek virus.

Had the players failed the planet would be dead now like the others the R'Tillek destroyed, but they succeeded, so right now they're on New Vegas being given the "keys to the city", enjoying their hero statuses (whilst it lasts), getting their ship repaired and starting to get tied up in the local politics, which centers heavily around the mafia and two rival families.

I'd personally either keep the populations as they are (fairly small on average) but then add more minor worlds as you see fit, or just increase the populations of a few of the smaller ones to whatever makes you happy.

Great thing about the RoD book is that it's meant to give you idea seeds, and very often (sometimes frustratingly so) is so open and non-commital that it relies on the Referee to come up with the fine details. Which means that it's also your perogative to alter as you see fit.

 

[aspqrz]

However you're perfectly entitled to make worlds' populations as big or as small as you want them.

...


Great thing about the RoD book is that it's meant to give you idea seeds,

I expect that a finished product has key information presented correctly ... not to be told "oh, make it up as you go along ..."

I can do that myself, for free, I don't expect to be told to do it for a commercial product I have paid for.

If it had been advertised as "random seeds on which to base your own guesses" I wouldn't have bought it.

YMMV, but I will not be recommending it to anyone who asks my opinion (not that anyone does, mind :wink: )

Still, it's a piss poor job IMO :wink:

Phil

 

[FentonGib]

That's fair enough... personally I'm loving the RoD setting and it has everything I want. Sure it has one or two tiny bugs, but imo every official Mongoose Traveller product I've bought to date has at least twice as many bugs, omissions and errors... so to me if I wouldn't be able to recommend RoD then by the same criteria I'd definitely not be able to recommend any mongoose product either.

Personally I like campaign books that give you the main ideas, but still leave you room to make it your own. When things are too rigidly set it also makes it harder to remember everything. That's why I don't like most adventure books - they tell you what to do too much and are too restrictive... and my players tend to have tendencies to do things that are normally not factored for in the books, making the books useless or forcing me to hamstring the players.

My main "beef" with RoD is that although it's a good starting book with lots of info, there are areas that should/could be better explored - especially the equipment section. For example it mentions that high-end AI is in demand... however base Traveller has crappy support for AI other than a little bit saying that true AI is very exensive and most is false AI, and that it's really expensive - I'm hoping that the Robotics and Cybernetics books cover this more, but since it is mentioned in the RoD book it would have been nice for them to include some sample AI in the equipment section, rather than just port over the stuff from the d20 Future book (half of which is unbalanced in TL or use compared to base Traveller, making a lot of RoD equipment either ridiculously good for its TL, or pathetically useless).

 

[Techno-Guru]

That's fair enough... personally I'm loving the RoD setting and it has everything I want. Sure it has one or two tiny bugs, but imo every official Mongoose Traveller product I've bought to date has at least twice as many bugs, omissions and errors... so to me if I wouldn't be able to recommend RoD then by the same criteria I'd definitely not be able to recommend any mongoose product either.

Personally I like campaign books that give you the main ideas, but still leave you room to make it your own. When things are too rigidly set it also makes it harder to remember everything. That's why I don't like most adventure books - they tell you what to do too much and are too restrictive... and my players tend to have tendencies to do things that are normally not factored for in the books, making the books useless or forcing me to hamstring the players.

My main "beef" with RoD is that although it's a good starting book with lots of info, there are areas that should/could be better explored - especially the equipment section. For example it mentions that high-end AI is in demand... however base Traveller has crappy support for AI other than a little bit saying that true AI is very exensive and most is false AI, and that it's really expensive - I'm hoping that the Robotics and Cybernetics books cover this more, but since it is mentioned in the RoD book it would have been nice for them to include some sample AI in the equipment section, rather than just port over the stuff from the d20 Future book (half of which is unbalanced in TL or use compared to base Traveller, making a lot of RoD equipment either ridiculously good for its TL, or pathetically useless).

- honestly I have to say I side more with aspqrz on this one. While not as bad as Cyberpunk V.3 (which occasionally references skills and entries omitted from the book,) RoD does fall beneath most of the Mongoose Traveller books I have read, at least as far as basic typos are concerned.

- That's not a campaign book you're describing, it's a setting book. A campaign book would have several adventures strung together like Rogue Trader's Lure of the Expanse by FFG. That being said, I do agree setting books are a generally better value then adventure books.

- About your closing point I have one thing to say one thing, YES. I hate blasters, even in a setting where players can afford semi-decent armor for a relative pittance, I wince every time I read the damage dice for those things. A good roll instantly incapacitates a character with average HP (not counting armor reduction) and they're priced so that even a drifter with enough career terms behind him could afford one if he knew where to look.