The Great Rift - Travellers' Comments Welcomed!

[MongooseMatt]

Good morning Travellers!

Just a quickie...

If you could change anything in the current Great Rift box set... what would you change?

 

[Demon Samurai]

Great art. Maybe some campaign ideas. A chapter on factions. An adventure.

 

[Sigtrygg]

How about making sure the rules in the Explorer's book are the same as in other books? Sector Construction Kit and World Builder's Handbook...

 

[MongooseMatt]

How about making sure the rules in the Explorer's book are the same as in other books? Sector Construction Kit and World Builder's Handbook...

Got anything specific there for us to look at?

 

[PogoLeaf]

So the only thing I could see that I would update, the ships stats, a lot of them are out of date with recent releases small craft in particular I think, the fuel use age is off but I’m not well versed in that, and the deck plans would better switched to the new format, along with the change from the orange boxes to the blue ones for the aside info and stuff, i could read through it but it would take me a while, those a very dense books for me.

More to follow

 

[MasterGwydion]

Good morning Travellers!

Just a quickie...

If you could change anything in the current Great Rift box set... what would you change?

Just proofread it. Make sure all rules that are "non-Charted Space specific" are in the correct rulebooks and not in the Great Rift Box Set. Make sure all ships and vehicles align with the current rules, including Geir's new VH update. In general, make sure that the Great Rift Set actually obeys the game rules, same as we want for the quality of all Mongoose products.

 

[Terry Mixon]

So the only thing I could see that I would update, the ships stats, a lot of them are out of date with recent releases small craft in particular I think, the fuel use age is off but I’m not well versed in that, and the deck plans would better switched to the new format, along with the change from the orange boxes to the blue ones for the aside info and stuff, i could read through it but it would take me a while, those a very dense books for me.

More to follow

And actually doubly check that they are correct and make sense. Sometimes that doesn’t happen.

The fuel shuttle from the Great Rift adventure #2 is a great example and there is a thread in this forum highlighting what I found. Not in the box set, true, but an example.

 

[RYXlord]

It is maybe asking too much of the writers, but I always feel like these big setting books are missing out by not having a PoDesque 'Patrons and Opportunities' section full of fun little adventure hooks that can turn a dense setting book into a quick, on the fly sandbox campaign.

Actually, on that same vibe, a section talking about using these books in a campaign could be useful. Like, what does a campaign in the Rift of all places look like? What are some fun Rift-specific campaign ideas? Why should I put my campaign here and not one of the other regions?

 

[Varulv]

The kickstarter resulted in such a great product. And then nothing more happened.

We need campaigns, adventures, adventure hooks/idea's etc. that take full advantage of the uniqueness of this isolated area.

 

[AndrewW]

The kickstarter resulted in such a great product. And then nothing more happened.

We need campaigns, adventures, adventure hooks/idea's etc. that take full advantage of the uniqueness of this isolated area.

Great Rift Adventure 1: Islands in the Rift
Great Rift Adventure 2: Deepnight Endeavour
Great Rift Adventurer 3: Flatlined

 

[Geir]

I do like the idea of adventure nuggets/patron encounters for various systems or even regions, or even jump space shoals and other oddities.

There's also those aliens (Ascondi) that got detailed without a home, and that world in the middle of the rift (Phobetor) with random K'kree and Vargr (but no Aslan that I recall) that looked like a sketch of a 'world of adventure'-type place, with just a page of 'things'- and a better explanation on how you get to a place that's literally in the middle of nowhere. With a train.

But it was one of those: 'Well that's interesting', books (boxes) that got put on a shelf. Adventures that came with the box were good, but really applied only to Reft.

 

[paltrysum]

If you could change anything in the current Great Rift box set... what would you change?

Include a copy of the Traveller: Riftbreaker #1 comic in the box. The story is flagrantly designed to promote Reft and Corridor as interesting settings for adventure.

 

[Varulv]

Great Rift Adventure 1: Islands in the Rift
Great Rift Adventure 2: Deepnight Endeavour
Great Rift Adventurer 3: Flatlined

They were all included in the kickstarter (and all three very good adventures imho), but after that - nothing...

 

[Varulv]

...
But it was one of those: 'Well that's interesting', books (boxes) that got put on a shelf. Adventures that came with the box were good, but really applied only to Reft.

Yes, but the box could be so much more than just "interesting", it has the potential to be extraordinary! The foundation is there, but it's not developed enough.

I do like the idea of adventure nuggets/patron encounters for various systems or even regions, or even jump space shoals and other oddities.

There's also those aliens (Ascondi) that got detailed without a home, and that world in the middle of the rift (Phobetor) with random K'kree and Vargr (but no Aslan that I recall) that looked like a sketch of a 'world of adventure'-type place, with just a page of 'things'- and a better explanation on how you get to a place that's literally in the middle of nowhere. With a train.
...

All good ideas, and still just a few of numerous opportunities to develop the area!

 

[WHULorigan]

How about making sure the rules in the Explorer's book are the same as in other books? Sector Construction Kit and World Builder's Handbook...

And a minor tangential errata issue that I mentioned for the initial release that got partially fixed, but not everywhere:

Please make sure that ALL references to "Quasi-Stellar Objects" are changed to "Sub-Stellar Objects". QSOs and QSRs are "Quasars" (properly the latter) and are active galactic nuclei seen from very long range. They lie at intergalactic distances (unless it is a microquasar associated with a feeding intermediate or stellar mass black hole). Sub-Stellar Objects (SSOs) are a broad term for Brown Dwarfs and free-floating Sub-Brown Dwarf mass superjovians (which may have formed as Jovian or Superjovian Gas Giant planets around a dense core and been ejected from a home system, or have formed within a molecular cloud by gravitational instability and collapse like a failed star). In any event there should be no QSOs in the Rift (other than a possible microquasar). There could be many SSOs in the Rift, however.

 

[summerdown]

More plot ideas and low level stuff. There's a lot of big picture stuff describing the cold war nature of the islands. But I'd like to see some ideas of what the Travellers can get up to as they move through.

For example, let's say they dock in Elysee. That seems like it might fall on a trans-rift route, and I can imagine Travellers visiting it. But what do they do once there? I can invent stuff, but I'd like to have some starter ideas for each location that gives me a feel for the possibilities and dangers. Like, are there patrons in the area? What do they need doing? What is the place short of? What opportunities exist for slightly dodgy scoundrels with a heart of gold?

In general, this would be my comment on what I'd want out of any location guide. A gazetteer gives me the background detail, but I really get most use out of GM-facing stuff like story seeds, local patrons and adversaries, opportunities, etc.

 

[ottarrus]

OK, the Great Rift has always been an outlier region... when Travellers only have ships that have J-2, the Rift is 'death in the void'.
One thing I want to mention is that the Great Rift box set gave a lot of players the idea that they could Jump into any old hex and find fuel, something that is patently false. If The Great Rift is going to be reprinted or rewritten, the dire straits of a ship in the middle of the rift that's low on fuel needs to be stressed. Perhaps a table of how long it would take a ship to cross from Gushemege to the Reach with a J-2 ship Far Trader... you know, fill the cargo hold with fuel bladders, Jump out 1 parsec, unload the bladders as a fuel point, Jump back, reload... over and over and over again.
A second thing I'd like to see is more detail on the isolated worlds of the Rift. These worlds might see a visiting ship once a year if they're lucky, and so they have almost no outside influences. Those societies almost sure to be more than a little 'quirky'.

 

[WHULorigan]

Plus, the Rift Route worlds know they have a Monopoly on Travel. How does that shape their cultures, effect their economies, and/or create unique problems and difficulties with both logistics and corruption/crime?

 

[WHULorigan]

A second thing I'd like to see is more detail on the isolated worlds of the Rift. These worlds might see a visiting ship once a year if they're lucky, and so they have almost no outside influences. Those societies almost sure to be more than a little 'quirky'.

THIS.

 

[Condottiere]

If you want to make it a big sandbox, you could isolate the systems more, and make them really culturally distinct, for that weekly adventure town trope.

Essentially, nothing from the Imperium should really have an effect.