Inspiration?
- Thread starter impala
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ShapeShifter
SOC-13
* Books, and plenty of them--fiction and non-fiction, different genres/subject-matters.
* Real astronomy and physical cosmology.
* Very lastly, if at all: movies or other pop media.
* Real astronomy and physical cosmology.
* Very lastly, if at all: movies or other pop media.
Inspiration
Recently I came up with an entire campaign arc after buying an old lead figure of what looked like an orbital base. I thought it looked cool and over the next few weeks I decided it was a 300 dton monitoring station with limited jump performance to ferry it from one system to the next. Next thing I knew I had deck plans, (MGT) statistics and a pre-generated crew (also MGT) with back stories & connections, a reason an old monitor was now a PC starship and a story arc. Not bad for a one dollar purchase.
Recently I came up with an entire campaign arc after buying an old lead figure of what looked like an orbital base. I thought it looked cool and over the next few weeks I decided it was a 300 dton monitoring station with limited jump performance to ferry it from one system to the next. Next thing I knew I had deck plans, (MGT) statistics and a pre-generated crew (also MGT) with back stories & connections, a reason an old monitor was now a PC starship and a story arc. Not bad for a one dollar purchase.
I watch a lot of TV drama and the occasional junk film. It all percolates in what passes for my brain before popping up as an idea for Traveller. I liked some of the narrative elements of FASA’s Star Trek RPG and so now I use a lot of Star Trek TNG/DS9/Voyager (stripped of the uber-tech) mixed with the film version of Dune as a base.
From that base I once developed a campaign which had the players as the odd job squad for an IN fleet operating in District 268 during the 5FW. (That must have been an obvious idea because The Forgotten War pdf adventure that came out years later did the same thing.)
I also had a campaign that featured a deliberately antagonistic group of IN personal waking up from cold berths to discover some disaster had overtaken the ship and they were a long way from anywhere with only themselves to get them out. I thought I was copying Star Trek Voyager but with a new twist but since then Stargate Universe and Pandorum have come out which seem very close to what I had.
Currently I’m thinking of an NCIS-like campaign based in the Regina subsector.
From that base I once developed a campaign which had the players as the odd job squad for an IN fleet operating in District 268 during the 5FW. (That must have been an obvious idea because The Forgotten War pdf adventure that came out years later did the same thing.)
I also had a campaign that featured a deliberately antagonistic group of IN personal waking up from cold berths to discover some disaster had overtaken the ship and they were a long way from anywhere with only themselves to get them out. I thought I was copying Star Trek Voyager but with a new twist but since then Stargate Universe and Pandorum have come out which seem very close to what I had.
Currently I’m thinking of an NCIS-like campaign based in the Regina subsector.
far-trader
SOC-14 10K
Great minds and all 
I found myself thinking the same thing a week or two ago, but I don't have any convenient players so that's about as far as I took the idea.
So to answer the question, I get inspiration from just about anywhere, I never know what might twig a "That'd be fun for Traveller!" moment.
grendelttroll
SOC-12
Many works by Poul Anderson, Clarke, Campell, and Bradbury are some of the authors who have inspired me personally. The Rise And Fall of the Third Reich by William L. Shirer gives me inspiration on how to portray the Third Imperium...
Lots of great ideas here. Yes, I always envisioned the Imperium as Asimov's Federation series Galactic Empire. And I always liked the Stainless Steel Rat.
But on an NCIS inspired campaign, I was thinking of a campaign inspired by The Wire, where the players would be smuggling in drugs - probably unknown to them as it was a freight shipment for a third party, and then they get mixed up in a world of police politics, rival gangs, and Omar hunting down drug dealers.
But on an NCIS inspired campaign, I was thinking of a campaign inspired by The Wire, where the players would be smuggling in drugs - probably unknown to them as it was a freight shipment for a third party, and then they get mixed up in a world of police politics, rival gangs, and Omar hunting down drug dealers.
So many inspirations
Star Trek. Doctor Who. The Stainless Steel Rat. Babylon 5. Firefly. Warehouse 13. The X Files. The Telzey Amberdon/ Hub setting of James H Schmitz. The Last Legionnaire of Moros setting by Douglas Hill.
Earthsearch and Earthsearch II by James Follett. Time Enough for Love by Robert A Heinlein.
Neuromancer and the rest of Gibson's Sprawl trilogy. Virtual Light, Idoru, All Tomorrow's Parties. Leon. Nikita. Reservoir Dogs.
John Varley's short fiction, particularly Air Raid. James Blish's short stories from The Quincunx of Time. Larry Niven's short stories and novels from his Known Space series. Destiny's Road. Niven's Janissaries series co-written with Jerry Pournelle. Alan Dean Foster's Humanx Commonwealth.
Pretty much everything Gerry Anderson ever worked on, from Torchy the Battery Boy to the new Captain Scarlet revisioning.
And finally, one show in particular. Coming around the period in the late Seventies that Space: 1999, Traveller and Star Wars were released, when Tom Baker was The Doctor, when we had Battle of The Planets and The Space Sentinels to look forward to on pre-news TV (no "children's department" to puck things up for kiddy entertainment), that whole era felt like the Renaissance of Science Fiction after a long spell of downbeat books and films like The Stepford Wives, Phase IV and Soylent Green that made people wonder whether SF as a genre was dying. And this show crowned that whole era, and serves as my greatest inspiration still.
Cosmos by the late Carl Sagan. Nothing so awed me and gave me as great a love of Space than that TV series.
Star Trek. Doctor Who. The Stainless Steel Rat. Babylon 5. Firefly. Warehouse 13. The X Files. The Telzey Amberdon/ Hub setting of James H Schmitz. The Last Legionnaire of Moros setting by Douglas Hill.
Earthsearch and Earthsearch II by James Follett. Time Enough for Love by Robert A Heinlein.
Neuromancer and the rest of Gibson's Sprawl trilogy. Virtual Light, Idoru, All Tomorrow's Parties. Leon. Nikita. Reservoir Dogs.
John Varley's short fiction, particularly Air Raid. James Blish's short stories from The Quincunx of Time. Larry Niven's short stories and novels from his Known Space series. Destiny's Road. Niven's Janissaries series co-written with Jerry Pournelle. Alan Dean Foster's Humanx Commonwealth.
Pretty much everything Gerry Anderson ever worked on, from Torchy the Battery Boy to the new Captain Scarlet revisioning.
And finally, one show in particular. Coming around the period in the late Seventies that Space: 1999, Traveller and Star Wars were released, when Tom Baker was The Doctor, when we had Battle of The Planets and The Space Sentinels to look forward to on pre-news TV (no "children's department" to puck things up for kiddy entertainment), that whole era felt like the Renaissance of Science Fiction after a long spell of downbeat books and films like The Stepford Wives, Phase IV and Soylent Green that made people wonder whether SF as a genre was dying. And this show crowned that whole era, and serves as my greatest inspiration still.
Cosmos by the late Carl Sagan. Nothing so awed me and gave me as great a love of Space than that TV series.
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