Traveller in Historical Settings Poll

[TrippyHippy]

1960's "Transistorpunk"

James Bond or Avengers type of superspies
Mad (Nazi?) scientists
Secret alien invasions (The Vegans?)
Low-powered superheroes & supervillains (example: Batman and his enemies)

All of the above have access to some TL9 technology

Actually, I think there is are really good ideas for supplements here although not as a historical setting as such.

Basically, I think making a supplement that ‘pulps up’ the Traveller rules - akin to Pulp Cthulhu - so that you can play something more like Flash Gordon or Buck Rogers (or Star Wars) could be really popular. Secondly, and this could be done in the same supplement or another one - but having a superpowers book for Traveller (letting you run stories like Guardians of the Galaxy or Captain Marvel or Superman even) could also be a great addition.

In the latter case, it could be done as part of a Psionic powers book though, or possibly a book for creating mutants or some such.

And, the other idea, to bring it back to historical settings again, would be a supplement about time travel.

 

[TrippyHippy]

Scientific Romance. Victorian age space travel.

Yep. Space: 1889 keeps ticking all those boxes. Imagine it as a Traveller box set, as they did with 2300AD, with large maps of Mars, Venus and Mercury as per the Victorian paradigm...it would be a must buy for me, that. You could integrate the Age of Empires and Westerns stuff into the same setting too, of course, as they were of the same 19th Century era.

Let's make this happen!

 

[Heretic]

I suppose a collaboration with the Gerry Anderson estate is out of the question? "Traveller: Thunderbirds", "Traveller: Stingray",


and so on...

 

[Seffix]

the silk road (lots of Travelling)

And if you think the Traveller rules are dry you are using them wrong...

I was thinking of the Silk Roads as well

 

[CordwainerFish]

I'd be fired if that was my job.......

(I understood that reference.)

 

[atpollard]

I have used the Traveller rules and TLs for a variety of unique campaigns. I sort of enjoy pushing the envelope. However rules for any existing “Historic” setting probably already exist. What I found interesting was to try combinations of worlds and TLs that are unique to the TRAVELLER rules.

• A Water World set in the 1860-1900 Tech Level era with a Balkanized Government and “Starship” skills ported over to TL 4 Steamships.
• A world of vast plains with Cowboys riding Dinosaurs and herding giant herbivores. With the higher O2 levels of the early atmosphere, wildfires become a serious threat and “settlements” become nomadic encampments (Like Gypsy Caravans).

That sort of thing.

 

[Studio Cat]

I chose "other" because I'd really like to see a setting that follows physics as we mostly know it and STL exploration and colonization. Something like the stories of Alastair Reynolds "Revelation Space", "Blue Remembered Earth", or "House of Suns" settings. Although I admit that "House of Suns" comes close to magical technology at times. The entire galaxy or local group being the playground where empires rise and fall while players are travelling between worlds.

 

[Jame Rowe]

If you were interested in a historical version of the Long Night, how about the eastern Mediterranean during the Late Bronze Age Collapse? A time when the Greeks forgot how to write down their language would be different.

I'd love this, plus the Bronze Age before and after this.

I voted for the medieval options, though I'd also love a low tech general supplement for Traveller. That way we can have low tech careers that can be used with regular Traveller as well, but are more than Barbarian.

 

[Sigtrygg]

Here is the outline for my take on the Ancients era to younger dryas...
Anunnaki - Ancients
Lizid People - wingless droyne servitors of the above
Nephilim - giant humanoid synthetics
Atlantis and Lemuria - heirs to the Earth after the Ancients left
Younger Dryas catastrophe and great flood - caused by the final war between Lemuria and Atlantis

A few Nephilim(giants) and other synthetics survived and appeared to the survivors as messengers from god and aided them in building new societies, the last of them would be slain causing the late bronze age collapse.

 

[alex_greene]

How about a Call of Cthulhu book. That is mainly the 1920's. That would be cool.

Copyright issues. Though you could enjoy setting a Traveller game in the 1920s, just without the green Pacific kaiju living at the bottom of the sea with Spongebob Squarepants.

Nemmind. Someone's already done one. Frostbyte Books came up with one a few years back, called Odd Soot. Based on M-Space, which draws from The Design Mechanism's Mythras. So maybe this setting could do something different.

It could take its cue from Olaf Stapledon, Ray Bradbury, Alfred Bester, maybe Heinlein, but set firmly in the 1920s, between the World Wars, before the flying saucers, where Einstein had just come up with relativity, pre-nukes, and where maybe, just maybe, humanoid aliens were walking among the humans, heavily disguised.

And maybe the story can start on Earth, and head out into space. The setting could develop its own version of High Guard, even. You would not need to have the same design philosophy of Traveller. The stories could be set partly on Earth, and partly anywhere in the galaxy, and even as far as Lundmark's Nebula ...

 

[JustEastOfTheEdge]

I would prefer Mongoose to focus on expanding Traveller, and upping their game in regards to proof-reading and editing. I am sure many of us are here because we like sci-fi, not because we want Vikings or Dwarves that happen to use traveller mechanics.

 

[Brianw]

Here is the outline for my take on the Ancients era to younger dryas...
Anunnaki - Ancients
Lizid People - wingless droyne servitors of the above
Nephilim - giant humanoid synthetics
Atlantis and Lemuria - heirs to the Earth after the Ancients left
Younger Dryas catastrophe and great flood - caused by the final war between Lemuria and Atlantis

A few Nephilim(giants) and other synthetics survived and appeared to the survivors as messengers from god and aided them in building new societies, the last of them would be slain causing the late bronze age collapse.

Someone here is a fan of The Why Files!

 

[Brianw]

Unfortunately I’m coming up blank. The game system is fantastic for Traveller and 2300, but I think Chaosium’s BRP is a better (perfect, imho) UGE…

 

[TrippyHippy]

I would prefer Mongoose to focus on expanding Traveller, and upping their game in regards to proof-reading and editing. I am sure many of us are here because we like sci-fi, not because we want Vikings or Dwarves that happen to use traveller mechanics.

The two things are not mutually exclusive.

 

[Zhangar]

I don't know if it would be what your looking for. But what about a time travelling setting, where each supplement or group of supplements could provide a new time period and character options.

So the time travel element would be the overarching thread which then could allow the other time periods to interact, pirate vs roman gladiators anyone?

Though if you never made a supplement about a starship crew trying to save some whales it would be unforgiveable!

 

[Sigtrygg]

Someone here is a fan of The Why Files!

Guilty as charged

 

[Michael S]

A pirates/viking setting for early Asteroid mining in pre stellar pre Gravitic systems. Be awesome to see maybe some other culture than just Human. Bwap?

 

[TrippyHippy]

If they chose to do a Time-Traveller rules book, they could use it to effectively have a chapter outlining a whole range of different historical chapters in it, perhaps? You could also then have chapters discussing different time-travelling paradigms or theories (and maybe even add a little real science quantum or thermodynamics explanations) and maybe another chapter or two outlining some potential campaigns. I mean, at a high enough Tech level, why not introduce time travel concepts? Also, it could provide a good vehicle to bring in different geological eras - basically dinosaurs.

 

[alex_greene]

Dimension hopping. D-jump technology that takes them to alternate parallels where history turned out a little different each time, and even the occasional alternate which is a fiction in the real world, such as a parallel Tokyo with kaiju, a parallel Elizabethan England where Dr John Dee really did invent real world magic (or just awakened his PSI potential). Maybe even a 1970s parallel where they meet Starsky and Hutch, and encounter The Six Million Dollar Man and Bionic Woman.
Or weirdest of all, Wonder Woman ...

 

[TrippyHippy]

Actually, if they integrate a bit of H.G. Wells into the Space: 1889 setting they could incorporate The Time Machine into that setting too.

All in the public domain....