Where does it stop being Traveller?

[Nobby-W]

Mostly guys I was pondering one of my pet campaigns that removes starships and replaces them with Stargates, fixed Stargates as such the characters need to travel across a planets surface to get to the next gate. The main vehicles are Land Speeders but significant other sorts of vehicles exist as well, ahem-Cars with guns anyone.... Oh and all of this is after a large Apocalyptic war, such that the characters are wandering from world to world as each "adventure" dictates..

I did something similar with Call of Cthulhu once, although that campaign still involved things with far too many tentacles (and a 1950s rather than 1920s backdrop). You could use Traveller for this type of setting but you may want to re-jig the careers. If it's an apocalyptic setting you might want to look at a lot of lower-tech societies as well.

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

Well, if Cowboys and Xenomorphs by Mongoose is still Traveller, using Stargates sure won't break it.

If you use the UPP, Skills and Careers (or variations of those careers) and use the combat system, or something close then I say it is OK.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Mostly guys I was pondering one of my pet campaigns that removes starships and replaces them with Stargates, fixed Stargates as such the characters need to travel across a planets surface to get to the next gate. The main vehicles are Land Speeders but significant other sorts of vehicles exist as well, ahem-Cars with guns anyone.... Oh and all of this is after a large Apocalyptic war, such that the characters are wandering from world to world as each "adventure" dictates..

What is exactly a "Landspeeder" anyway? Traveller has air/rafts and other grav vechicles. I had a similar idea. Basically the gates are wormholes that open up to a single parallel universe per wormhole, each wormhole opens up to its separate universe and no two wormholes ever open up to the same one. Each wormhole is 3 meters wide, and can be moved, they can be put on a rocket, the rocket need not be advanced, a chemical rocket will do, as you just pump the rocket fuel through as you need it, no need for the rocket to carry its own fuel, so even a simple chemical rocket can reach near the speed of light in one universe while the fuel supply stays stationary in the other. That way you can use time dialation to fast forward the universe your talking about. This is all in my Quantum Probability drive thread, by accelerating the time in the target universe, you can terraform targeted planets with minimum expenditure or resources

Rather than reprise it here, there is the thread:
http://forum.mongoosepublishing.com/viewtopic.php?f=89&t=104379&p=863876#p863876

I also thought up an apocalypse, you see lots of worlds become available, each one is accessed through one and only one separate stargate. an interesting thing happens when you set up a colony and then leave them behind with your wormhole and travel thousands of years into their future, you land the spaceship on their planet after thousands of years of relativistic travel and then something steps through that you don't expect, that something shuts down the civilization which build the wormhole, namely all technological devices except the wormholes cease to function, civilization quickly collapses after that, though a few manage to survive. Meanwhile all the wormholes remain open, all those terraformed planets have stargates leading to them PCs generations later explore the worlds through the wormholes created by the collapsed civilization.

 

[Infojunky]

What is exactly a "Landspeeder" anyway? Traveller has air/rafts and other grav vehicles.

Ah Landspeeders, they are effectively Hover vehicles. In general a class of vehicles I also refer to as GravSkimmers. They operate in the Gravitic equivalent of Ground Effect, and as such are limited to ground vehicles speeds (Faster over cleared and prepared routes (i.e. roads, relatively calm water etc. etc...)).

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

What is exactly a "Landspeeder" anyway? Traveller has air/rafts and other grav vehicles.

Ah Landspeeders, they are effectively Hover vehicles. In general a class of vehicles I also refer to as GravSkimmers. They operate in the Gravitic equivalent of Ground Effect, and as such are limited to ground vehicles speeds (Faster over cleared and prepared routes (i.e. roads, relatively calm water etc. etc...)).

We have hovercraft. For some reason they are more popular over ocean surfaces than over land.

 

[GypsyComet]

What is exactly a "Landspeeder" anyway? Traveller has air/rafts and other grav vehicles.

Ah Landspeeders, they are effectively Hover vehicles. In general a class of vehicles I also refer to as GravSkimmers. They operate in the Gravitic equivalent of Ground Effect, and as such are limited to ground vehicles speeds (Faster over cleared and prepared routes (i.e. roads, relatively calm water etc. etc...)).

We have hovercraft. For some reason they are more popular over ocean surfaces than over land.

That's because air-cushion vehicles fly around on top of a small hurricane.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Ah Landspeeders, they are effectively Hover vehicles. In general a class of vehicles I also refer to as GravSkimmers. They operate in the Gravitic equivalent of Ground Effect, and as such are limited to ground vehicles speeds (Faster over cleared and prepared routes (i.e. roads, relatively calm water etc. etc...)).

We have hovercraft. For some reason they are more popular over ocean surfaces than over land.

That's because air-cushion vehicles fly around on top of a small hurricane.

Yep they blow dust and grit around. the question is why would we want a vehicle that can only fly a few inches off the ground? Traveller doesn't have vehicles like that, what it has are grav vehicles which can fly into orbit, Luke Skywalker's landspeeder is much more limited than that.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Ah Landspeeders, they are effectively Hover vehicles. In general a class of vehicles I also refer to as GravSkimmers. They operate in the Gravitic equivalent of Ground Effect, and as such are limited to ground vehicles speeds (Faster over cleared and prepared routes (i.e. roads, relatively calm water etc. etc...)).

We have hovercraft. For some reason they are more popular over ocean surfaces than over land.

That's because air-cushion vehicles fly around on top of a small hurricane.

Yep they blow dust and grit around. the question is why would we want a vehicle that can only fly a few inches off the ground? Traveller doesn't have vehicles like that, what it has are grav vehicles which can fly into orbit, Luke Skywalker's landspeeder is much more limited than that.

 

[Anonymous]

2300 has a lot of hover craft...

In a non anti grav setting I think the reasoning of not needing roads to move on has good application for frontier colonies but I'm still not convinced of their practicality, they aren't the easiest of things to drive and like a spacecraft using reaction thrust, don't turn too well - dealing with traffic could be entertaining! There's also the issue, just like with anything that flies, that they'll have atmospheric pressure requirements to achieve lift. I'm pretty sure there was some hand waving/technical advances that sidelined this in 2300 but I'm still not convinced of their merit as front line combat vehicles - transports, yeah I can see that but MBT/IFV? Hmm

I'm a big fan of aerodynes - if for no other reason than they're cool! (The only mecha I liked was in Heavy Gear, not a fan of the mechs in Traveller per se). As material technology improves and we can make ducted fans strong enough and the craft themselves light enough I can see them replacing helicopters and tilt rotor craft like the Osprey, we're watching the adoption of drones today and the aerodynes I'm thinking of seem a natural extension of that but Traveller is an anti grav setting to me so maybe it's stopped being Traveller?

 

[Nathan Brazil]

So is it still Traveller if I use Flynn's Guide to Magic in Traveller, "A Traveller Compatible Product" which "Requires the use of the Traveller Main Rulebook, available from Mongoose Publishing"
?

 

[IanBruntlett]

So is it still Traveller if I use Flynn's Guide to Magic in Traveller, "A Traveller Compatible Product" which "Requires the use of the Traveller Main Rulebook, available from Mongoose Publishing"
?

It might not be the Third Imperium (default background) but if you are still using the Core Rulebook then I'd figure it is still Traveller

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

So is it still Traveller if I use Flynn's Guide to Magic in Traveller, "A Traveller Compatible Product" which "Requires the use of the Traveller Main Rulebook, available from Mongoose Publishing"
?

It might not be the Third Imperium (default background) but if you are still using the Core Rulebook then I'd figure it is still Traveller

One could have low level fantasy in the 3I Traveller setting if you use Traveller Psionics in place of wizardry on a planet with a tech level of 1. Fantasy settings also have multiple intelligence sophonts, Aslan for Orcs, Vargr for gnolls, Zhodanoi for elves.

 

[Nathan Brazil]

One could have low level fantasy in the 3I Traveller setting if you use Traveller Psionics in place of wizardry on a planet with a tech level of 1. Fantasy settings also have multiple intelligence sophonts, Aslan for Orcs, Vargr for gnolls, Zhodanoi for elves.

Or it could be Netherell another "Traveller Compatible Product". It has ogres and psionics as the basis for "magic"...

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

For me it stops being Traveller if it no longer uses the OTU setting as written by GDW/DPG/QLI. Even SJG material is "out of it" in many cases. I have and will always see Traveller as a setting, not as a rules system. Maybe due to the fact that I used a few of them to play in the OTU before settling for one (not MgT).

The "Mongoose Universal System" can be used to play Traveller or 2300Ad or whatever. But that is just a system for me even so it now uses the name of a setting.

Tell me then, is Dungeons & Dragons a setting? There are many different campaigns which use the same ruleset, Greyhawk, Kingdoms of Kalamar, Dragonlance, Spelljammer, Ravenloft, Planescape, and the Forgotten Realms for example. 2300 and the OTU do not use the same Ruleset, though it may use some of them. Why can't you have another setting that uses the same rules set as the OTU, except with a different Empire or interstellar government, different stars and planets etc? Why is Traveller wedded to the OTU? What is it about science fiction settings in general that you can't have multiple settings that use the same ruleset like you can with Dungeons & Dragons. As I understand it Traveller was originally intended to be Generic just like D&D.

 

[Condottiere]

D&D for me is riding into the village of Hommlet. Shadowrun is getting lost in Seattle. And Traveller is designing starships for the Imperium. It really came to what the first exposure was about.

 

[Infojunky]

What is exactly a "Landspeeder" anyway? Traveller has air/rafts and other grav vehicles.

Ah Landspeeders, they are effectively Hover vehicles. In general a class of vehicles I also refer to as GravSkimmers. They operate in the Gravitic equivalent of Ground Effect, and as such are limited to ground vehicles speeds (Faster over cleared and prepared routes (i.e. roads, relatively calm water etc. etc...)).

We have hovercraft. For some reason they are more popular over ocean surfaces than over land.

Yes, Tom, we do. While most conventional Hovercraft hand flat surfaces like champs, they have a much more difficult time with irregular surfaces. Thus the GravSkimmer which handles those irregular surfaces better than conventional Hovercraft.

Also there is the recurring meme of the GravSkimmer in popular literature and movies.

 

[rje]

I think it's easier to tell if something is "Traveller" rather than than "NOT Traveller". There are a number of telltales, but I don't know if anything is REQUIRED, except one thing: if you use a Traveller book for your game, it could be called a Traveller game.