CT Only: Hard Space

[flykiller]

I strongly prefer book 6 for system generation

try this

 

[kilemall]

I like RTT Worldgen, you don't get the weirdness of trad system gen but it's a lot more logical and provides biome and planetary descriptors.

https://wiki.rpg.net/index.php/RTT_Worldgen

 

[Golan2072]

I am late to this thread but I just wanted to chime in that Outer Veil is my favorite Traveller setting of all (even better than my own settings darn it!) It has just about everything one needs to make any of the types of game I enjoy (trading, exploration, megacorp shenanigans, political tension and separatism, bounty hunting/skip tracing, alien exploration - just no grand empires going toe to toe).

Thank you for your very kind words

I only have two niggles with it, both minor:

1) I prefer reaction engines, no gravitics

2) I strongly prefer book 6 for system generation and all the non-shirtsleeve systems it creates. I feel it spreads civilization out, gives more latitude for dark empty spaces, and makes garden worlds truly something rare and special.

However, I understand that 99% plus of Travellers use gravitics in their games I can't fault a publisher for going that route.

Exactly. You can write a specialized product, such as 2300 AD or Zozer Games' wonderful Orbital 2100, but then you have a narrower market composed mainly of people interested in your specific sub-genre. Your customers also have less 3rd party material they can use, as (for example) the vast amount of ship-books and deck-plans out there almost always assume gravitics and usually also have reaction engines. You can of course make a wonderful harder-science product as I have noted above, but you will have to consider the market implications.

Likewise, given that Outer Veil's UWPs appear to be "interpreted", rather than purely random nonsense, I can't complain.

Yes, most UWPs were hand-crafted. I had some rules for generating their social characteristics according to colonization area, but I also "eyeballed" stuff a lot back then.

One of the things I love most about it is that using GURPS: Far Trader to map the trade routes really drives home the dependency of the frontier colonies on the core. Most frontier and OV worlds trade more with Earth than with their neighbors, which gives me a lot of flavor for starship traffic and opens seams for a trader type campaign in the colony to colony trade.

This is something I should try to get into sometime in the future. I am not into GURPS, but generating complex trade routes sounds very interesting indeed.

 

[OIT]

Thank you for your very kind words

Thank you for the great product!

Exactly. You can write a specialized product, such as 2300 AD or Zozer Games' wonderful Orbital 2100, but then you have a narrower market composed mainly of people interested in your specific sub-genre. Your customers also have less 3rd party material they can use, as (for example) the vast amount of ship-books and deck-plans out there almost always assume gravitics and usually also have reaction engines. You can of course make a wonderful harder-science product as I have noted above, but you will have to consider the market implications.

I have not tried Orbital 2100, but am familiar with some of Zozer's other products. Thank you for the recommendation.

Most designs will have to be altered a bit for a reaction mass campaign, but the deckplans should only have to be tweaked. You can postulate (or add) maneuver drive exhaust nozzles on the lowest deck of the plans, facing down. Those would be the ones the ship would use for transit to/from jump point, allowing "down" to remain "down", while using the aft facing ones for atmospheric flight.

Yes, most UWPs were hand-crafted. I had some rules for generating their social characteristics according to colonization area, but I also "eyeballed" stuff a lot back then.

That is fantastic! I am not against oddball worlds, but they should be the exception rather than the rule, IMHO.

This is something I should try to get into sometime in the future. I am not into GURPS, but generating complex trade routes sounds very interesting indeed.

I have never played the GURPS system, Far Trader is a great product for mapping out trade routes, and some other things too.