House rules for T20 – Posting and Evaluation

[Bishop Odo]

Using T20 as a base RPG system and starship creation rules. Has anyone created any hybrid or home rules to include any points missing or tech missing in various Traveller editions?

One rule that I was interested in was the optional 50% jump fuel rule in T20. However upon thinking about it, it would drastically change the nature of the Traveller universe. The J-5 route through the Great Rift, the frontier wars, military strategy, starship economics, travel times, communication and nature of feudal system would be jeopardized. I believe, the purpose of the 50% fuel rule is to make starships more profitable by allowing more cargo space or by giving adventures more personal space. However, there are better way to do it.

By using the G:T Far Trader rule that items that are produced at Tech levels higher than the item itself are cheaper. The first tier or level higher are 50% cheaper, and next tier higher are an additional 25% cheaper, because of the cost of production is cheaper at higher levels, and the TL currency exchange rules also in Far Trader. The need to use the 50% fuel rule would be moot, and would increases the level of starship traffic and make merchant and adventuring a reasonable economic career choice. Any thoughts?

 

[Veilheim]

Well, I'm working on a revised set of robotics rules, and just submitted a variant to CotI on prior history and aging to bring it more in line with the original traveller generation process. Wish me luck on that one.

I found myself really disappointed with the rules for robotics. They aren't vehicles, but that's what we have to use currently. I drudged up my old traveller robotics rules, and am converting them. I'm also in the process of playing around with the starship combat rules to make something a little faster and more fun for my players.

 

[far-trader]

Originally posted by Veilheim:


<snip>

I'm also in the process of playing around with the starship combat rules to make something a little faster and more fun for my players.

Have fun and good luck, do keep us all posted, so we can steal, er borrow your wonderful ideas


I still haven't had a good look at the ship combat but another citizen has been working along similar lines over here with his own alternate space combat . I'd still highly recommend The Role-Playing Space Combat System by Joe Walsh for a good source of ideas if not exactly what you need. Anyway, just trying to give you a little helpful data to make your task eaisier

 

[Veilheim]

Aaacccctttuually... I've already got it written up, just not polished. Its definately not a vector system, but I like it.

 

[jzeitlin]

Originally posted by Bishop Odo:
One rule that I was interested in was the optional 50% jump fuel rule in T20. However upon thinking about it, it would drastically change the nature of the Traveller universe. The J-5 route through the Great Rift, the frontier wars, military strategy, starship economics, travel times, communication and nature of feudal system would be jeopardized. I believe, the purpose of the 50% fuel rule is to make starships more profitable by allowing more cargo space or by giving adventures more personal space. However, there are better way to do it.

All of the above are valid concerns; the core problem is starship economics, and that's really broken in all versions of Traveller. No matter what happens, if you have a ship that can carry any significant amount of cargo (basically, if you have a 200dt trader or larger), while its under mortgage, you're scraping by at best, unless you get _really_ lucky - but if you can stick it out until the mortgage is paid off, you're almost instantly wealthy. That's not likely to change, no matter what you do, but if you aren't interested in what happens at the end of the mortgage, in general, all you need is some minor hacks on the jump drive. One that seems to have worked well for me in the past was the Lyman Drive, which is a modest modification of the standard jump drive - it makes things a little easier for the players, but not so that the entire universe changes in character.

The Lyman Drive writeup.
Other Jump Drive Tweaks.