Resurrecting or rebooting a dead Milieu

[kafka47]

Has anyone here taken what is dead or at least comatose canon and given it new life in a new era. I was looking over the FASA High Passage/Far Frontiers stuff and realized how much a Referee's playground this sector could be in the MT/Rebellion era. Have other people taken other canon/quasi canon products and transported them to another era?

My other thought was to do the Lords of Thunder as MgT Campaign...

 

[rancke]

Has anyone here taken what is dead or at least comatose canon and given it new life in a new era. I was looking over the FASA High Passage/Far Frontiers stuff and realized how much a Referee's playground this sector could be in the MT/Rebellion era. Have other people taken other canon/quasi canon products and transported them to another era?

I converted Leviathan to take place in the Year 400 and wrote up District 268, Glisten, Egyrn, and Pax Rulin[*] as a setting. Published in JTAS Online as The Outrim Frontier, parts 1 and 2, and Leviathan: 400.

[*] Or Subsector N of Spinward Marches, District 214, and subsectors C and D of Trojan Reach as they were known at the time.​

Hans

 

[sabredog]

It might not apply, but I advanced my personal non-OTU by 25 years, threw in a war and collapsed one of the main cultures into an empire form a confederacy.

The older (now) PC's just got back into it and are now playing a different way in a new and improved universe that doesn't feel as stale and shopworn as it had been.

No reason you couldn't do the same given the size of the OTU: just pick a spot and throw the players into it and go nuts. Have another rebellion, or try an alternate universe type thing with maybe the Vargr as top dogs (sorry, couldn't resist) with their own Imperium and the Aslan and Solomani united against them.

Hmmm...cats n' rats vs. an empire gone to the dogs.....I might do that myself.

 

[HiverLord]

I've taken the "golden age" CT setting (1105), advanced it to 1118-1119, and am soon sending my players on an across-the-Imperium race to Capital. If they make it there first, they prevent false reports of a 'rebellion' in the Marches, saving millions of lives. If not... :devil:

It'll be a while before it gets that far, however.

 

[sabredog]

Hey, speaking of that sort of thing I did play when Fifth Frontier War came out in a campaign based on the events in the game. We weren't all admirals either, we played as ordinary traders caught behind the lines and having to find our way out as the war played out around us.

A few players met on a different night and just played the game as a wargame, then we RPG players met on the opposite weekend and the ref rand us through what happened on the levels we were involved in. It was pretty fun, and it really showed how chaotic and confusing an interstellar war can be not to just the fleets chasing each other around, but to the civilians who never know what's going to be at the end of the next jump (we more than once found ourselves jumping right into a battle or after one - then performing rescue ops or running for our lives depending!)....I mean jeez - the time backlog of news was drove you insane - and the prices! Lousy war-profiteers would charge up to 2000Cr./ ton for refined fuel sometimes!

 

[Dragoner]

My campaign milieu is called Imperium 1133, and as the name suggests it takes place in 1133, I do use the FASA stuff in Far Frontiers.

 

[Jame]

I wouldn't mind if MGP tried to reboot the Gateway Domain milieu.

 

[Ben W Bell]

I've taken much of the various settings, and rewrote many of the adventures, into my own Traveller milieu which is pretty much Milieu 0. Year 42, Imperial expansion is just reaching into the Zarushaagar sector (concentrated initially on going coreward to Vland and didn't want to go rimward too soon and risk running into the Solomani if they're still around.)

Throw in some pocket empires, civilisations just clinging onto the edge after bitter survival through the Long Night, and a lot of the canon stuff from 1100+ does work well (once the tech levels are toned down a bit.) Gives it a nice frontier feel where it genuinely is unexplored space (well you have several thousand year old partial data archives, but they mean nothing) and you're on the front of it.

 

[Blue Ghost]

Has anyone here taken what is dead or at least comatose canon and given it new life in a new era. I was looking over the FASA High Passage/Far Frontiers stuff and realized how much a Referee's playground this sector could be in the MT/Rebellion era. Have other people taken other canon/quasi canon products and transported them to another era?

My other thought was to do the Lords of Thunder as MgT Campaign...

Our gaming group never really saw the need. The evolving milieu was plenty for us.

You must have played a lot to reset the setting.

 

[Mysterion]

I'd like to see how the Paranoia Press sectors The Beyond and Vanguard Reaches fared the fall of the Third Imperium.

 

[Darkhstarr]

I use a lot of the FASA & Paranoid Press in my Beyond Campaign. Though my Traveller follows the alternate milieu suggested in the TNE mainbook & GURPS Traveller (no assassination, no fall of the Imperium) I've often felt that much of what's in my campaign would apply to the aftermath of the Imperium's fall. Personally, I think the distance of the Far Frontiers, Vanguard Reaches, & much of the Beyond would leave untouched by the Imperium's fall.

 

[Baeron Gredlocke]

We have a current and ongoing campaign in the "The New Era" setting played using the MgT ruleset.

 

[kafka47]

Kewl suggestions everyone keep the juices flowing...

Recently, I have been toying around with Milieu 0 and wondering how a campaign centred around Terra might look. Immediately, I thought of Asimov's Spacer/Robots trilogy. A much powered down Earth thinking itself the centre of the cosmos (having survived the Long Night intact) sends out feeder ships during the Long Night. These colonies rebel and impose martial law on Earth. A fledgling resistance to the occupation exists centred around the idea of the Rights of Man (yes, of the French Revolution and Thomas Paine's great work). But, more or less, Earth accepting the rule of the Spacers but it is cordon of steel and beam weapons that keep the Earth from being the dominant player in the Dawn. Thus, the Earth Union is only Earth in name only but refers to the ambitious but stagnant aristocracies of the Spacer Worlds.

 

[IanCooper]

I always liked TNE 1248, and I'd hope it's still OTU. For me it did what the Rebellion was supposed to do: break the imperium up into smaller polities. More states, more borders, more opportunities for conflict. But it was not the wholesale scorched earth of TNE, which was too much Year Zero for me.

 

[kafka47]

Yes, scorched earth allows you to play post apocalyptic fiction out...so it allows me to incorporate Morrow Project and Twilight 2000 and change things like towns to worlds. But, slap me, I liked Hard Times, because of the futuristic cyberpunk feel to the whole thing.

My biggest problem with M:0 that I am contenting with is why the 3i is so afraid of Earth. Which is why I came up with stealing from Asimov's Robots series - the Second Imperium may have let Robots go wild and cause havoc.

 

[rancke]

My biggest problem with M:0 that I am contenting with is why the 3i is so afraid of Earth.

How afraid is it?


Hans

 

[kafka47]

At various points of M:0 there are mentions of the First Minister reluctantly sending Scouts to Earth and later that practice was codified when he became Emperor. So, indeed, what was the nascent Third Imperium afraid of. Solomani domination and collapse? That could only be part of the answer. Looking through the S. Accords the Terrans gained an advantage through Robots and perhaps they feared something that the Solomani unleashed during the Second Imperium. For the whole era of Ramshackle Empire is when the Vilani were an occupied but still vibrant force...for me it is akin to the British Raj save technological innovation skyrocketed in certain parts of the Imperium - where different minor races were able to develop their expertise/historical comparative advantages.

 

[Starviking]

At various points of M:0 there are mentions of the First Minister reluctantly sending Scouts to Earth and later that practice was codified when he became Emperor. So, indeed, what was the nascent Third Imperium afraid of. Solomani domination and collapse? That could only be part of the answer. Looking through the S. Accords the Terrans gained an advantage through Robots and perhaps they feared something that the Solomani unleashed during the Second Imperium. For the whole era of Ramshackle Empire is when the Vilani were an occupied but still vibrant force...for me it is akin to the British Raj save technological innovation skyrocketed in certain parts of the Imperium - where different minor races were able to develop their expertise/historical comparative advantages.

Don't forget that M:0 erroneously puts the Second Imperium at TL-15.

 

[kafka47]

[FONT=arial,helvetica]Don't forget that M:0 erroneously puts the Second Imperium at TL-15.[/FONT]

I retro-conned that to being certain worlds and certain technologies during the Second Imperium reached TL-15. Earth was not one of them. It was rather where a crazed Terran scientist discovering old Vilani patents and decides that she can improve upon them. Soon the whole world might have prototype TL-F toothbrushes then the Long Night falls hard and then it is only the Tech-Shamans who still possess them and have them work more or less.

I see the Second Imperium akin to a jigsaw puzzle whose pieces were scattered around the table. As the new Jump technologies allow for longer and more intensive exploration and minor races really coming onto their own under a human dominated Empire. But, because J-3 is the limit there are still lots of dragons and lots of places the Vilani feared to go.

 

[daryen]

One alternative I have played with (but never finished) was where Santanocheev successfully outmaneuvers Norris. He does this by successfully intercepting the Imperial Warrant, the planting rumors of a crash on Algine. When Norris' search comes up empty, he is pretty much ruined because of the RZ violation (let's assume there is shooting on Algine, too). At that point, facing his own ruination and Zhodani guns (remember, the Zhodani made it as far as Regina), he surrenders his duchy to the Zhodani.

The result is an independent Duchy of Regina (which includes the Imperial Jewell holdings) that is a Zhodani client state. Santanocheev, who won his battle with Norris, but loses the 5FW, is executed for treason when the truth comes out (to the nobility; the populace never finds out what happens), and Delphine is disgraced and while not replaced has her influence eliminated.

This ends up giving a more dynamic Spinward Marches, and unsettles established relationships (the Zhodani dump the Sword Worlds, and the Darrians are more isolated from their Imperial benefactors). In a way, it is a single-sector "rebellion".