Travellers Needed - Core Rulebook Reprint

[Condottiere]

Old August 12th, 2002, 06:04 PM
BMonnery BMonnery is offline

<QUOTE> Last pricing I have from China (as of Oct 2001) for 99% pure lanthanum is $4.5 per kg or $4500 per mass-ton. China currently dominates the lanthanide supply on Terra as they have ~50% of the world's reserves, so this is definitely the lowest price of the market - other vendors will charge more. <QUOTE>

The listing I checked (WebElements? I'll check) Listed $5 g-1 for ultra-pure Lanthanum, which I just scaled up.

<QUOTE> So, for conversion, $3 to the Imperial Cr, density of lanthanum metal is 6145.3 kg/m3 at room teperature, and 1 disp. ton = 14m3 <QUOTE>

1 CrImp is set at the value of the USD ISTR. It's 2300 Livre which is ~1990 $3 (~ 2002 $5.25)


This seems the earliest mention on the boards; if the origin is from other editions, those who are familiar with them can chime in at this point.

 

[Old School]

https://wiki.travellerrpg.com/Imperial_Currency

The Imperial Credit is sometimes informally known as the CRIMP (Credit Imperial).
A megacredit is one million credits. Megacredits are abbreviated MCr. [1]

So the wiki got it from somewhere

The wiki has no shortage of non-canon and conjecture. No citation usually means it came from the writer's head, probably something they remember seeing somewhere sometime. I've never seen "CRIMP" in a publication, but there are A LOT of Traveller published material out there, so I wouldn't doubt it's been used at some point.

All that said, nothing wrong with it as a slang term.

 

[heselbine]

"Easy. We follow the chromium."

Nice. I'm using that!

 

[alex_greene]

https://wiki.travellerrpg.com/Imperial_Currency

The wiki has no shortage of non-canon and conjecture ... I've never seen "CRIMP" in a publication ...

I generally go by what's in the current core rulebooks for my base materials, which is why none of the characters I might write about will use any of the material I wrote in Mongoose Traveller First Edition Book 10, Cosmopolite, for instance.

If I have to refer to, I dunno, something from Mongoose's Behind The Claw for something, I usually run it by Matthew to put the relevant piece into a sidebar if it's only a few lines long, or a paragraph or two. If it's a core rulebook thing, I write a reference to the page number in the CRB or other core sourcebook where it came from such as the Second Edition Central Supply Catalogue or High Guard. Vehicle and ship stats require access to the CRB, Vehicle Handbook, and High Guard respectively ... and I've not seen Crimps in any of those books.

 

[Condottiere]

Khajiit has wares, if you have bitcoin.

 

[shraap]

Hopefully a simple one - can we have units specified for the travel times formula on p152? I'm always forgetting (e.g. can't remember now), but certainly remember it's definitely not base SI units as per physics
It's annoying to have to calculate a couple of the examples on the table with different units till I remind myself (m? km? etc.)

 

[PsiTraveller]

For that matter, can we get a definitive answer of how the M Drives work? seem to recall a thread about space battles that Mongoose M Drives are not like the drives of past versions. The 10 meters per second per second for 1 G listed on pg 153 does not always seem to apply.

 

[swampslug]

Hopefully a simple one - can we have units specified for the travel times formula on p152? I'm always forgetting (e.g. can't remember now), but certainly remember it's definitely not base SI units as per physics
It's annoying to have to calculate a couple of the examples on the table with different units till I remind myself (m? km? etc.)

The equations work perfectly fine in base SI units of meters and seconds. The equations on page 152 are derived from the SUVAT equations, specifically s = ut + 1/2 at^2. Assuming u = 0 and rearranging for t gives t = sqrt(2s/a).
The thing to remember is that this equation only covers half the journey from stationary to max velocity while the travel time equations cover the full journey and assumes that the ship is stationary at both ends of the journey. Total travel time = 2t = 2x sqrt(2s/a) = 2x sqrt(D/a) where D = 2s.

That said, the travel time table on page 153 needs correcting. The times for 3G and 4G for 600 million km, 900 million km and 1 billion km are wrong. The correct values for 4G are actually in the 3G column and the correct values for 3G are 78.6 hours, 96.2 hours and 4.2 days respectively.

 

[mancerbear]

Hi Matt,

I would like to see the following:

• 
  a detailed index in the back of the core rulebook
  updated Jump information and the expanded jump operations published in JTAS
  updated sensor operations as published in JTAS
  update the equipment section so that it matches the information for those items in the Central Supply Catalogue
  update the starship range bands as detailed in Highguard
  update the example starships to match those detailed in Highguard
  remove the alien traveller options, as they are superseded by the new Aliens books
  add/update identified errata
  perhaps a character generation example
  a starship combat example

I think that's about it for me

 

[PsiTraveller]

Can you hold off on reprinting anything until you have decided what the damage will be for missiles? If you are looking at a major change like that have things playtested a bunch, please!

 

[gilthy]

The thing to remember is that this equation only covers half the journey from stationary to max velocity while the travel time equations cover the full journey and assumes that the ship is stationary at both ends of the journey. Total travel time = 2t = 2x sqrt(2s/a) = 2x sqrt(D/a) where D = 2s.

Maybe add a version of the illustration about how that works? Like the one shown here at the top (variants of this are in various CT/MT Traveller books I have).

 

[Ursus Maior]

Ah, the classic diagram! This was my entry into the worlds of scifi RPG. Would be nice to see that back in a book. Though I have a feeling that mathematical signs beyond those for addition, subtraction and multiplication are bad for sales.

 

[iainjcoleman]

University and Military Academy: between Skills and Graduation, insert an instruction to roll on the event table. This step is easily missed. Also, if a traveller enters a military career at rank O1, clarify whether they receive the automatic skill for that rank.

Graduation benefits: instead of increasing skills to level 1 or level 2, increase skills by one level as appropriate. This will avoid a clash with event 10 on the event table: at the moment, there's not much point gaining a level in a skill, as it will be set to a specific level on graduation anyway.

Benefit tables: change "combat implant" to "cybernetic implant". Most of them aren't for combat.

Army: if you haven't already, fix the error in the Cavalry survival roll. It should be Dex 7+, not Int 7+.

Citizen and Drifter: note on the career page that basic training uses the assignment skill table, not the service skill table. This is easily overlooked.

Mustering out benefits: reconsider the price limit on guns. At present, a traveller cannot receive any laser weapon, which is annoying. Also, define scientific equipment. And remove the Ship's Boat benefit, it's pretty much pointless.

Anagathics: reduce the cost of anagathics during character generation by a factor of 10, to 1D x Cr 20,000. At present, the level of debt from anagathics is so high as to be almost meaningless, making it pointless to even bother rolling on the cash tables.

Debt: introduce some guidance on debt repayment.

Skills: replace the engineering specialities M-drive, J-drive and Power with a single speciality of Drives. At present, engineers are stretched too thin in terms of skills compared to other traveller crewmembers.

Ships: revise the Yacht to make it Jump-2.

Prisoner career: reduce the starting parole threshold (to just 1D, say). At the moment it's too easy for a traveller to spend far too many terms in prison.

General:

Remove the layers on the pdf, as these make scrolling slow on a tablet.

Make all text black-on-white.

Provide an index, and a more detailed contents page.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

We mention the use of KCr in the Core Rulebook (as in Cr, KCr, and MCr), but we never properly implemented it.

Pet peeve, but the abbreviation for Kilo is k, not K.

K means Kelvin, as in temperature.

So, if you are using SI prefixes it should be Cr, kCr, and MCr.

Kilo is a decimal unit prefix in the metric system denoting multiplication by one thousand (10³). It is used in the International System of Units, where it has the symbol k, in lower case.
...
By extension, currencies are also sometimes preceded by the prefix kilo-:

one kiloeuro (k€) is 1000 euros
one kilodollar (k$) is 1000 dollars

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilo-

 

[Ursus Maior]

Debt: introduce some guidance on debt repayment.

I would like to see some form of guidance here, too. Currently, I referee it like so that debt can be accumulated from various sources, but is kept separately. So a Traveller may own money to various third parties. Debt from ships owned usually would go to banks, but anagethics probably mean the money is actually owed to organized crime, irrelevant of middle-men the Traveller might actually know in person. Also, for my games, debt and cash rolled do not cancel each other out. Players can choose to do so, but it should not be automatic. If you rather want to have some cash at hand, but in consequence own KCr20 to the doctor, who fixed you up, when you got unfortunate during your last job, that is indeed a nice plot-hook for the referee. More so, if your last career was being a thug or a pirate.

A sentence or two should be enough here. Just give readers more guidance, what the idea is.

 

[JeffMindlin]

Space Combat rules
They are ok but I have found that its super important to keep all players involved. I preferred first ed on this TBH though I aapted those a bit too. Certainly the hit system was better IMO.
So I think the sequencing and chaining of tasks should be altered so that all tasks take place before firing each round so that everybody feels invested and is hanging on that roll.
1) engineering check before pilot allocates thrust
2) Sensops before firing to make lock if/break lock
3) Pilot should have to roll with effect 1-3 adding +1 to thrus effect 4+ adding 2 and effect 4- taking one off
Most important thing is all positions have something to contribute

 

[QuinZ33]

The speculative trade rules need to be tweaked to actually have a risk of loss.

My players really focused on education and int, and got a ton of skills in broker. One of them was rolling at like a +6 on broker rolls with a boon (because he was getting competent assistance from someone else who had a lot of broker). They were averaging something like 4 megacredits per jump once they got rolling following rules as written. They spent that money to rip out the passenger cabins and put in more cargo space. This was 1) because passengers are possible plot hooks which can cut into their profits and 2) because cargo was worth so much more than passengers.

The solution I got from people on the Discord was to just arbitrarily sabotage their trade efforts. I could see doing this once in a while (and I actually did so. They were prevented from docking at the capital, and had to jump to their next destination without selling and with the "wrong" trade goods for the world code, and STILL made a big profit with a high roll), but it would get absurd after a while. EVERY single port they land at, they would be unable to trade, or have some disaster happen? My players wouldn't believe that I was just being a neutral arbiter.

This had knock-on effects for the rest of the game that were tough to reconcile. They would ignore plot hooks, because it was less profitable than trading. I had to implement hooks other than "hey Spacers, don't you want to make some money?" Instead, it was "Oh, you traded with this crime boss who happened to secretly be a psion. Now, The Institute takes you in for interrogation". "Oh, you killed the crime boss? You need to leave the subsector for a while while we clean up your mess, go talk to the Scouts".

When we started the game, we were planning on having a scrappy crew of a beat-up ship going on adventures to pay the bills. It turned out to be a crew of genius traders playing the market.

 

[Condottiere]

Plot out recessions, depressions and market downturns in advance.

You can hint at bubbles.

 

[Condottiere]

Federal agents arrested 44 people on Thursday, including five New Jersey politicians and five rabbis, as part of an investigation into corruption, organ sales, and bank fraud. One of the many shady deals involved the passing of $97,000 in cash stuffed into an Apple Jacks cereal box. How much U.S. currency can you fit into an Apple Jacks box?

$9,050,000. In order to stuff that much money into a box of Apple Jacks, you’d have to use a mix of high-denomination bills that have been taken out of circulation and a 21.7-ounce family-sized package. That calculation is based on three assumptions: 1) that the box, which is 321 cubic inches, could hold 4,658 bills, each of which is 6.14 by 2.61 by 0.0043 inches; 2) that you would lose no space to air or the unavoidable folding of bills; and 3) that you have access to all of the highest-denomination bills currently in circulation.


You could measure currencies by weight or size, finding a common nondescript container.

 

[Stainless]

Pet peeve, but the abbreviation for Kilo is k, not K.

K means Kelvin, as in temperature.

So, if you are using SI prefixes it should be Cr, kCr, and MCr.

Except credit isn't an SI unit so is not governed by the SI conventions. SI defines the abbreviation of kilo as k when used as a prefix (it's not a unit) only when in conjunction with its units. It's scope is specifically limited to the SI system. It's simply derived from the Greek word χίλιοι (chilioi), meaning "thousand" so should be open to use in any form an author wishes for their naming convention, provided it's not SI.