Traveller 2300ad?
- Thread starter Hopeless
- Start date
Hopeless said:
I've been running one when I can get the band together, which has proven a bit frustrating. Nothing like Prometheus, though, although I've described some gear (spacesuits) as appearing similarly as a visual shortcut for the players. I have to say, my players act a lot smarter than the Prometheus crew....
I've been running as close to the source material as I can, only in 2310, past the worst of the Kaefer incursion (wanted Aurore to be a place worth visiting, Beta Canum rebuilt), and have figured out how to at least introduce the PCs to a couple of alien species and the basics of international conflict on the Arms. I've also opened up the 61 Cygni Arm by tugship and, if I get a chance and the players, I'll develop a sandbox there.
It's a bit more of a challenge to run than an "Anything Goes" campaign set in the CTU. But I like the grit.
jeffery_keown
Mongoose
I'm going to run 2300AD as soon as my PFRPG run of Rise of the Runelords ends (sometime this spring, methinks). I think I want my PCs in the middle of the first Kaefer invasion....watching the nukes and rocks from the ground as their world is destroyed before their eyes.
They'll be either ordinary folks working in Tanstaafl, or in the militia itself. Basically, the set up for the game is found on pg109 of Tools for Frontier Living. I'll give everyone plenty of time to enjoy the local flora, fauna and flora-fauna and then, one day, start an alien invasion.
They'll get to play a part in the invasion, and the eventual "victory" that will bring them up to the current day of the game. Then they'll join the push to drive the Kaefers out of human-occupied space altogether.
They'll be either ordinary folks working in Tanstaafl, or in the militia itself. Basically, the set up for the game is found on pg109 of Tools for Frontier Living. I'll give everyone plenty of time to enjoy the local flora, fauna and flora-fauna and then, one day, start an alien invasion.
They'll get to play a part in the invasion, and the eventual "victory" that will bring them up to the current day of the game. Then they'll join the push to drive the Kaefers out of human-occupied space altogether.
Captain Jonah
Mongoose
I like the setting and have both run and been in a number of 2300 games over the years.
Traveller in the OTU tends to be more next gen or Voyager, high tech, clean and shiny. 2300 is more DS9 with grit and grime and make do with what you have.
The setting is small, you can cover human space entirely in a single campaign. Where ever you are there will be the heart worlds with the best of high tech a few jumps one way and the rough edge of explored space a few jumps the other way.
The arms give the setting far more regional flavour that the OTU has, this isn’t “welcome to the spinward marches full of generic 3rdImp worlds, this is welcome to the French Arm of human space”.
The stutterwarp is close to jump for long distance travel but makes intra system adventures possible since you can go from the inner worlds to the outer worlds much faster than trundling round with a 1G drive. The lower tech really can add flavour, just getting into orbit can be a mini adventure rather than the “Ok we take off and fly up to the high port” that you get with gravatic drives.
The bug wars add to anything you do in the French Arm but there is plenty to do in the other arms far from that war. Fighting the bugs played properly is very dangerous though. One campaign started with us all playing French Foreign legion troops from a small garrison on Aurore when the nukes and rocks fell. The one survivor of that fight join the rest of our new characters at the Tanstaafl militia (hint Binom infantry tactics don’t work when the bugs get smart and have grenadiers, two for the price of one).
The French arm adventures book has three good themes for 2300, or have a look for the old GDW stuff.
When running2300 you need to get into the mindset of the tech, don’t think about playing a Traveller game in 2300, you need to play a 2300 game that happens to use the Traveller rules. Sit down with the players and watch Prometheus, Pandorium, red planet, the space parts of 2001/2010, and anything else from the film list at the back of the rule book to get in the mood.
Traveller in the OTU tends to be more next gen or Voyager, high tech, clean and shiny. 2300 is more DS9 with grit and grime and make do with what you have.
The setting is small, you can cover human space entirely in a single campaign. Where ever you are there will be the heart worlds with the best of high tech a few jumps one way and the rough edge of explored space a few jumps the other way.
The arms give the setting far more regional flavour that the OTU has, this isn’t “welcome to the spinward marches full of generic 3rdImp worlds, this is welcome to the French Arm of human space”.
The stutterwarp is close to jump for long distance travel but makes intra system adventures possible since you can go from the inner worlds to the outer worlds much faster than trundling round with a 1G drive. The lower tech really can add flavour, just getting into orbit can be a mini adventure rather than the “Ok we take off and fly up to the high port” that you get with gravatic drives.
The bug wars add to anything you do in the French Arm but there is plenty to do in the other arms far from that war. Fighting the bugs played properly is very dangerous though. One campaign started with us all playing French Foreign legion troops from a small garrison on Aurore when the nukes and rocks fell. The one survivor of that fight join the rest of our new characters at the Tanstaafl militia (hint Binom infantry tactics don’t work when the bugs get smart and have grenadiers, two for the price of one).
The French arm adventures book has three good themes for 2300, or have a look for the old GDW stuff.
When running2300 you need to get into the mindset of the tech, don’t think about playing a Traveller game in 2300, you need to play a 2300 game that happens to use the Traveller rules. Sit down with the players and watch Prometheus, Pandorium, red planet, the space parts of 2001/2010, and anything else from the film list at the back of the rule book to get in the mood.
I, like Captain Jonah, have run a number of campaigns in both settings for a number of years (2300AD using the original GDW-published rules). Previous posters are correct in saying the 2300 setting is grittier than the Third Imperium setting of Traveller.
For me, the advantages of 2300AD over Traveller are:
1) the "sandbox" is much smaller, making campaign management much easier,
2) the use of stutterwarp make tactical ship movement lends itself to the use of hex maps for that table-top combat experience my players and I enjoyed,
3) the use of modern-day governments and a dominant human species helped the players relate more to game events.
All three aspects made the game easier to GM for me. As for viewing movies to help get a good feel for the atmosphere of the game, I'd also recommend "Aliens" and "Outland". And I recommend gathering as much of the original GDW material as is economically feasible.
For me, the advantages of 2300AD over Traveller are:
1) the "sandbox" is much smaller, making campaign management much easier,
2) the use of stutterwarp make tactical ship movement lends itself to the use of hex maps for that table-top combat experience my players and I enjoyed,
3) the use of modern-day governments and a dominant human species helped the players relate more to game events.
All three aspects made the game easier to GM for me. As for viewing movies to help get a good feel for the atmosphere of the game, I'd also recommend "Aliens" and "Outland". And I recommend gathering as much of the original GDW material as is economically feasible.
SSWarlock said:
Older materials are available on CD-ROM from Marc Miller, and they are helpful.
Point #3 is important, I think. Spend some time getting your head around the improbable geo-global politics. They’ll lend themselves to many adventures.
France is in a manipulative cold war with Reformed Germany, both helpful ally and subtle agent against reformation. Under almost any read, Mexico is a hostile against America (holding much former U.S. territory and responsible for the loss of Texas, as well). Mexico leverages its alliances with most of Latin America and Manchuria to great advantage. Texas really can’t make it without the benevolent non-intervention of a grumbling America, a benevolence that can shift around in play.
I’ve had a harder time getting my head around Central Asia and the division between Manchuria and Canton. I’ve decided the latter two must be in some sort of Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, along with Japan, the pragmatic latter of which does not share goals or worldview but understands near neighbors are large and resourceful. Toss the Far Eastern Republic into the sphere for added Rasputinish weirdness.
I see Manchuria fairly at odds with the Western powers, which helps keep those powers' grumblings in check and creates unstable alliances that can strengthen or deteriorate, adventure to adventure. And given what France has gone through in Central Asia and the Arm, its "Empire" is a creaky shell, its position is much more precarious than is widely understood.
If you don’t like the geocentric-geopolitics, you can shift the base of interstellar operations to Tirane, where hostilities and alliances are blurred and softened a bit.
On top of this, you can throw the Provolutionists, who are a much more interesting adversary than the Kaefers IMO.
What really seems to work is to make PCs a troubleshooting team from some resource-starved Third Tier nation. That way you can legitimately withhold lots of agency support, leaving them alone to develop their own solutions, quasi-sandbox.
dragoner said:
You know once upon a time they'd release a special extra where you could do a literal virtual reality style walk through the interior of the Prometheus, now there was a screen saver version of Babylon V that would be great even if its just showing clips of the Prometheus from the movie!
2330ADUSA1
Mongoose
Hopeless said:
**** Prometheus setting is the startup and reimage of the Aliens Movies and is extremely nice and set in 2095AD. I like the new reimage restart alot better than the origial Alien movie. The movie ends with alot of questions and makes one wonder what Dr. Shaw might find out there with the Andriod David. How and why did the Aliens called the Engineers destroy themselves and why did they want to destroy what they created?
Lemnoc said:
If you have played Twilight2000 there is nothing improbable about the Geo-politics.
or
2300AD is the future of the Twilight2000 world not ours, GDW played a large scale "Game" Based on the post nuclear war world. So the timeline diverged in 1999, not in our future.
Captain Jonah
Mongoose
Lemnoc said:
As long as you explain Bavaria to them after explaining that France is the world superpower and the most powerful space going nation, they should still be in shock and not notice Bavaria :lol: :wink:
Colin
Mongoose
The original Traveller:2300/2300AD was the future of the Twilight:2000 setting, which was a possible future for the late 1980's, when the games were written.
The current version of 2300AD takes place after Twilight, a period of chaos sometime in the first half of the 21st century. While Twilight included a limited nuclear exchange, the core of the Twilight Event was not a nuclear war. The exact cause of Twilight is unknown, as all electronic records from the end of the period, back to the late 20th century, were mostly lost. Even paper record are fragmentary at best.
The world of 2300AD does have some geopolitical weirdness. Some of that is rooted in whatever occurred during Twilight, and some of it is due to the way the world evolved over time.
The current version of 2300AD takes place after Twilight, a period of chaos sometime in the first half of the 21st century. While Twilight included a limited nuclear exchange, the core of the Twilight Event was not a nuclear war. The exact cause of Twilight is unknown, as all electronic records from the end of the period, back to the late 20th century, were mostly lost. Even paper record are fragmentary at best.
The world of 2300AD does have some geopolitical weirdness. Some of that is rooted in whatever occurred during Twilight, and some of it is due to the way the world evolved over time.
Captain Jonah
Mongoose
The Twilight. Not an official answer and maybe slightly humorous :wink:
1. The hivers found us and decided we were a threat so they caused a series of wars and nuclear exchanges while putting wipe viruses into the worlds computer networks in an effort to stop us. Since it didn’t work and we have now developed a new method of jumping which allows us to build short range but far more powerful warships than those which give up so much volume to jump fuel they are now hiding from us and working on plan 2.
2. The Illuminated made their bid for power. Those countries that were thought to pose the greatest risk were nuked. Entire governments were under their control. The rebellion was underground and consisted of secret anti Illuminated groups, anarchists and hackers. A combination of the destruction of network hubs and massive hacker viruses resulted in the loss of most records from this time. Some countries had not been heavily involved and escaped in a better condition allowing them to recover. France had been the stronghold of the Illuminated and much better defended. As a result while it was attacked its infrastructure was in better shape at the end. The illuminated were defeated and have not been seen since, they are not in control of France. Honest.
3. The Pentapods had been watching humans for many years and had been, erm, interfering for a while. Long range Pentapod scouts had found the Bugs and there was great concern about the threat they posed. After much debate by the God/Kings a new plan was prepared. The upright monkeys would be contacted and hired to fight the war. First contact was a disaster, the Pentapod ship was nuked as were the shuttles and ambassadors on the planet. Others responded by launching nukes of their own. A massive attempt to hide all evidence of the meeting with aliens resulted in wiping out most digital records of the time and those who knew were either sworn to silence or silenced.
4. The entire thing was an attempt by the (CENSORED) to destroy another rising species that may become a future threat. Using their normal method of attack they infiltrated the digital infrastructure to cause chaos prior to their strike. However humans had been fighting each other online with viruses and hackers for decades and quickly spotted the new attack. Since the (CENSORED) were operating from only a handful of locations they were tracked down and local police went in to arrest these new hackers. The handful of survivors came back with stories of aliens and terror. Military units went it and the true nature of the (CENSORED) was revealed. Such was the fear of them amongst the world leaders that nuclear weapons were used against them even in population centres. A last viral attack by the (CENSORED) as they were being destroyed savaged the net and wiped huge amounts of digital data.
1. The hivers found us and decided we were a threat so they caused a series of wars and nuclear exchanges while putting wipe viruses into the worlds computer networks in an effort to stop us. Since it didn’t work and we have now developed a new method of jumping which allows us to build short range but far more powerful warships than those which give up so much volume to jump fuel they are now hiding from us and working on plan 2.
2. The Illuminated made their bid for power. Those countries that were thought to pose the greatest risk were nuked. Entire governments were under their control. The rebellion was underground and consisted of secret anti Illuminated groups, anarchists and hackers. A combination of the destruction of network hubs and massive hacker viruses resulted in the loss of most records from this time. Some countries had not been heavily involved and escaped in a better condition allowing them to recover. France had been the stronghold of the Illuminated and much better defended. As a result while it was attacked its infrastructure was in better shape at the end. The illuminated were defeated and have not been seen since, they are not in control of France. Honest.
3. The Pentapods had been watching humans for many years and had been, erm, interfering for a while. Long range Pentapod scouts had found the Bugs and there was great concern about the threat they posed. After much debate by the God/Kings a new plan was prepared. The upright monkeys would be contacted and hired to fight the war. First contact was a disaster, the Pentapod ship was nuked as were the shuttles and ambassadors on the planet. Others responded by launching nukes of their own. A massive attempt to hide all evidence of the meeting with aliens resulted in wiping out most digital records of the time and those who knew were either sworn to silence or silenced.
4. The entire thing was an attempt by the (CENSORED) to destroy another rising species that may become a future threat. Using their normal method of attack they infiltrated the digital infrastructure to cause chaos prior to their strike. However humans had been fighting each other online with viruses and hackers for decades and quickly spotted the new attack. Since the (CENSORED) were operating from only a handful of locations they were tracked down and local police went in to arrest these new hackers. The handful of survivors came back with stories of aliens and terror. Military units went it and the true nature of the (CENSORED) was revealed. Such was the fear of them amongst the world leaders that nuclear weapons were used against them even in population centres. A last viral attack by the (CENSORED) as they were being destroyed savaged the net and wiped huge amounts of digital data.
