Interesting settings;
- Thread starter Blue Ghost
- Start date
Maladominus
SOC-14 1K
A planet ruled by the Fascist Dictatorship of Coneheads. All heads must be shaved to show submission to his Excellency, Imperious Leader Merp. Those who refuse to shave their heads are sentenced to death. Wonderful. Now I have one more bizzarre idea to inflict upon my players.
Bill; ah, much is explained 
Maladominous; you know, I just don't know how to respond to that
Amarmis; I've heard of very few K'Kree adventures on this BBS. They strike me as being somewhat difficult to include into a party, or to generate an entertaining adventure that orbits their existence.
Everyone; anybody have any good water world settings?
Maladominous; you know, I just don't know how to respond to that
Amarmis; I've heard of very few K'Kree adventures on this BBS. They strike me as being somewhat difficult to include into a party, or to generate an entertaining adventure that orbits their existence.
Everyone; anybody have any good water world settings?
Water worlds are easy enough. My favourite is: "what if birds filled all the ecological niches filled by aquatic mammals on Earth?"Originally posted by Blue Ghost:
Everyone; anybody have any good water world settings?
Yes, that's Whale-Sized Penguin World.
OK, that doesn't make a huge lot of sense, but hey...
Other good toys for water worlds are submarines. Submarines are fun. Design them like starships, if you aren't otherwise inspired.
Undersea cities are easy. They are just your basic underground/domed city complex in a different setting. Incidentally, they are relatively easy to defend against invaders from space. This was a scam I used back in the TNE days to hide a world's remaining high tech stuff from Vampire Fleets. Essentially this is an elaborate version of hiding in caves. In fact, you can hide things in underwater caves for a double layer of concealment.
Dolphins are fun. Players like dolphins. Put them in Battle Dress and give them Grav Belts. Then put them in Drop Capsules and launch them from orbit. (Wheee!)
There are a couple of other maritime species around here and there too.
Other good stuff: islands are fun. There are a few kinds of different island too, so don't rip yourself off. A pseudo-coral reef is a good thing to put around an island, since it allows you to keep your fish farm safe from marauding Penguins.
Islands also allow you to build balkanised worlds, with lots of naturally separate enclaves. Boats are fun to begin with. Gunboats are even more fun. Dealing with air and sea power is a nice change from standard mercenary situations.
Hanging out on a tropical beach is always a nice way to start or end a scenario. Or, alternatively, hanging out in a bar overlooking a tropical beach.
Polar icecaps are neat too.
Water worlds can be industrialised too, BTW. This will tend to put a premium on your surface area/shallow regions though. I guess you could always build floating factories.
Floating farms are easy. Mining, while inconvenient, could be managed with a reasonable bit of technology.
You can pretty much do anything you like on water worlds. You would really only have trouble rationalising very large populations with indifferent tech levels, and even then you can often resort to "they're dolphins/aliens/genetically engineered!"
Hmm. There's three suitable excuses. How many of these worlds will there be?
You essentially can't include a K'Kree in another party. You can include others in a K'Kree Party....
But remember, a single K'Kree PC has from 3 to 36 NPC's in service,. each of those with 1-6 wives... and any K'Kree without at least a few other K'Kree is either psychotic or a nervous wreck.
Mercantile adventures are easy... it's just that, at the time, i had not obtained Bk7, and Bk2 could not support K'Kree merchants... too much hold.
It was shortly after that that I realized it could be one roll per person seeking cargos, rather than per ship.
B
Black Globe Generator
Guest
It was ideal for one-on-one play, in that I had something like sixteen or seventeen "characters" to play.
Ours was a K'kree trader in Vargr space - turns out hooves are good for stomping corsairs...
I tend to combine the two: mobile submersible cities, like Deep Core on steroids.
A balkanized water world can also be divided between the islanders and the submariners.
A staple of all of my Traveller games has been a fancy restaurant and bar built into a reef that is pounded by surf - it is invariably called "Breakers," after a place my roommate and I used to patronize for the $1.00 happy hour drink special and the all-you-can-eat appetizers. ("What's for dinner?" "Looks like sea breezes and tacquitos!")
Big factory ships, like the submarine mining camps.
Aquaculture supervised by dolphins or githiaskio.
Once again, Deep Core.
One of the waterworlds IMTU is populated by githiaskio who belong to an Amish- or Mennonite-like religious sect that rejects advanced technology.
Great thread you started Blue!
Some comments:
- Always wanted to use the K'Kree in an adventure or campaign but never found a way to fit them in. I 'worked' on the other side of Imperial space from the 2,000 Worlds, coming up with a reason for the Centaurs to be Behind the Claw was too much for my pointy head. I did steal the wax crescent scent sculpture idea from the K'Kree Alien Module. The players helped recover them but never met a K'Kree in the process.
- Had a long running campaign set in the Islands and detailed Sansterre quite nicely. Fritz and BGG are correct; waterworlds are fun, fun, FUN. Google The Roaring Forties and then imagine how big waves can get with no landmasses to break them up... On Santerre I had floating cities, grav cities, seabed cities, cities below the seabed, cities in reefs, cities carved into the sides of submarine canyons, you name it.
- In one campaign, I had the players stumbled across an abandoned/lost/disabled/unfinished Sky Raider generation ship still in the Great Rift. The Loeskalth had tried to launch a second one before the Vilani hammered them. The idea was to finish the ship later in some backwater system and pick up refugees on the fly. The launch had been premature, the initial jump hurried, and the ship only made it 1 ly or so away from the launch system. The crew then abandoned the ship. The Vilani caught up with them and mistook this second ship for the first one! They'd heard/learned of the project naturally. This confusion allowed the first ship to make it's escape. Of course, after all my work, the players located the ship, immediately sold the location to a government, and never stepped foot on it again. LOL!
Have fun,
Bill
Some comments:
- Always wanted to use the K'Kree in an adventure or campaign but never found a way to fit them in. I 'worked' on the other side of Imperial space from the 2,000 Worlds, coming up with a reason for the Centaurs to be Behind the Claw was too much for my pointy head. I did steal the wax crescent scent sculpture idea from the K'Kree Alien Module. The players helped recover them but never met a K'Kree in the process.
- Had a long running campaign set in the Islands and detailed Sansterre quite nicely. Fritz and BGG are correct; waterworlds are fun, fun, FUN. Google The Roaring Forties and then imagine how big waves can get with no landmasses to break them up...
On Santerre I had floating cities, grav cities, seabed cities, cities below the seabed, cities in reefs, cities carved into the sides of submarine canyons, you name it.- In one campaign, I had the players stumbled across an abandoned/lost/disabled/unfinished Sky Raider generation ship still in the Great Rift. The Loeskalth had tried to launch a second one before the Vilani hammered them. The idea was to finish the ship later in some backwater system and pick up refugees on the fly. The launch had been premature, the initial jump hurried, and the ship only made it 1 ly or so away from the launch system. The crew then abandoned the ship. The Vilani caught up with them and mistook this second ship for the first one! They'd heard/learned of the project naturally. This confusion allowed the first ship to make it's escape. Of course, after all my work, the players located the ship, immediately sold the location to a government, and never stepped foot on it again. LOL!
Have fun,
Bill
FreeTrav
SOC-14 1K
One setting that I thought might have been an interesting one to play in was McCaffery's PERN, before the rediscovery of the AI of the original colony on the Southern Continent. Low-tech, but psionics, and some good potential adventures for a first-contact team.
Some interesting potential quandaries for said team, too: Suppose the planet is contacted AFTER the period of the Psionics Suppressions. The planet is no threat, and the way the local psionics have fallen out, it doesn't seem that humans can use telepathy or telempathy on other humans, but only on the various dragon-related species. What does the FCT report, and how does the Imperium react to the report? Suppose further that the FCT is invited to a Hatching, and one of the members Impresses a fighting dragon. The FCT member now has an inside perspective on the psionics issue; how does this affect his/her relationship with the rest of the FCT, and the report? How does the FCT deal with the fact that the member that Impressed the dragon now pretty much has to become an immigrant? How do the locals react to the Impression, given that the FCT member "wasn't supposed to" Impress (recall Mirrim's Impression of Path in the series)? What happens if the FCT member in question is female, and Impresses a queen (gold) dragon?
Some other settings with potential, though more-or-less conventional in their Traveller compatibility:
The universe of Dan Simmons's Hyperion cycle. There are some interesting psionic and theological implications if you permit some of the events of the story cycle to actually happen, but even if you don't, it makes an interesting not-quite-dark-but-not-really-light setting.
The "Lords of the Diamond" series by Jack Chalker. Some tweaking would be necessary, but the basic setting - four worlds that once you're exposed to them, you can't leave, and there's some sort of virus that has drastic effects on you (which is why you can't leave), different on each world. Of the four worlds, I find that Cerberus is actually the most plausible for a Traveller setting without stretching suspension of disbelief TOO far (make the mystery virus a psionically-active virus), but if you want to invoke an Ancient diablus ex machina, all four would be ultimately explainable.
Trantor, from Asimov's Foundation series, or a built-up planet like the Earth of his The Caves of Steel. Not a lot needs to be said about either of these.
It's difficult not to do severe damage to ANY Traveller setting by incorporating ansibles in some way, but the Hainish Ecumen of Ursula K. Le Guin, the universe of Elizabeth Moon's Vatta's War series, and the post-Bugger-War universe of Orson Scott Card's Ender Wiggen books all offer interesting ideas that could easily be incorporated into a Traveller setting without wholesale importation of the entire universe, with the damage to 'fundamental Traveller' that such importation would represent.
Some interesting potential quandaries for said team, too: Suppose the planet is contacted AFTER the period of the Psionics Suppressions. The planet is no threat, and the way the local psionics have fallen out, it doesn't seem that humans can use telepathy or telempathy on other humans, but only on the various dragon-related species. What does the FCT report, and how does the Imperium react to the report? Suppose further that the FCT is invited to a Hatching, and one of the members Impresses a fighting dragon. The FCT member now has an inside perspective on the psionics issue; how does this affect his/her relationship with the rest of the FCT, and the report? How does the FCT deal with the fact that the member that Impressed the dragon now pretty much has to become an immigrant? How do the locals react to the Impression, given that the FCT member "wasn't supposed to" Impress (recall Mirrim's Impression of Path in the series)? What happens if the FCT member in question is female, and Impresses a queen (gold) dragon?
Some other settings with potential, though more-or-less conventional in their Traveller compatibility:
The universe of Dan Simmons's Hyperion cycle. There are some interesting psionic and theological implications if you permit some of the events of the story cycle to actually happen, but even if you don't, it makes an interesting not-quite-dark-but-not-really-light setting.
The "Lords of the Diamond" series by Jack Chalker. Some tweaking would be necessary, but the basic setting - four worlds that once you're exposed to them, you can't leave, and there's some sort of virus that has drastic effects on you (which is why you can't leave), different on each world. Of the four worlds, I find that Cerberus is actually the most plausible for a Traveller setting without stretching suspension of disbelief TOO far (make the mystery virus a psionically-active virus), but if you want to invoke an Ancient diablus ex machina, all four would be ultimately explainable.
Trantor, from Asimov's Foundation series, or a built-up planet like the Earth of his The Caves of Steel. Not a lot needs to be said about either of these.
It's difficult not to do severe damage to ANY Traveller setting by incorporating ansibles in some way, but the Hainish Ecumen of Ursula K. Le Guin, the universe of Elizabeth Moon's Vatta's War series, and the post-Bugger-War universe of Orson Scott Card's Ender Wiggen books all offer interesting ideas that could easily be incorporated into a Traveller setting without wholesale importation of the entire universe, with the damage to 'fundamental Traveller' that such importation would represent.
rogermccarthy
SOC-12
The Ekumen having FTL comms but no FTL travel would have pretty dramatic effects even if relativity means that characters don't age much on the trip - you would probably have to adopt some kind of Pendragon-like generational play to fill the long gaps between starships arriving.
Ken MacLeod's Engines of Light setting has similar issues with travelling but some cool ideas (planets seeded by colonies taken from various stages of earth history, intelligent dinosaurs, vast STL starships crewed by gigantic Kraken-like beings).
Hyperion had IIRC FTL but with significant relativistic effects meaning it could take months or years in real time to get from one planet to another - however it has an evil catholic church controlled by weird alien entities selling immortality in exchange for domination - so what's not to like?
Barring the ansibles (which are disabled by a nefarious plot anyway) Vatta Wars is almost pure small ship Traveller - free trader crews made up ex-naval personnel, marines and other flotsam and jetsam, pirates, mercenaries...what more could you want?
While utimately a huge let-down as fiction Moon's Heris Serrano series also has a very Traveller feel.
Sonething I would dearly love to run one day but which would require a huge amount of work to set up is a Traveller game set in the distant past of MAR Barker's Tekumel, when it was still part of a vast interstellar civilization with some of the weirdest aliens ever, killer androids and interdimensional cthulhuesque entities coldly planning the annihilation of all life in the universe.
Ken MacLeod's Engines of Light setting has similar issues with travelling but some cool ideas (planets seeded by colonies taken from various stages of earth history, intelligent dinosaurs, vast STL starships crewed by gigantic Kraken-like beings).
Hyperion had IIRC FTL but with significant relativistic effects meaning it could take months or years in real time to get from one planet to another - however it has an evil catholic church controlled by weird alien entities selling immortality in exchange for domination - so what's not to like?
Barring the ansibles (which are disabled by a nefarious plot anyway) Vatta Wars is almost pure small ship Traveller - free trader crews made up ex-naval personnel, marines and other flotsam and jetsam, pirates, mercenaries...what more could you want?
While utimately a huge let-down as fiction Moon's Heris Serrano series also has a very Traveller feel.
Sonething I would dearly love to run one day but which would require a huge amount of work to set up is a Traveller game set in the distant past of MAR Barker's Tekumel, when it was still part of a vast interstellar civilization with some of the weirdest aliens ever, killer androids and interdimensional cthulhuesque entities coldly planning the annihilation of all life in the universe.
I read those years ago. Cerberus was the ice-world, wasn't it? Otherwise I can't remember too much about them. The first book in the series was interesting, and the second book was kind of neat. I don't remember too much from the third. I do remember that the second book took place on a water world. Some good cover art, if I recall it correctly, which would lead to some very inspired Traveller settings.
FreeTrav
SOC-14 1K
I read those years ago. Cerberus was the ice-world, wasn't it? Otherwise I can't remember too much about them. The first book in the series was interesting, and the second book was kind of neat. I don't remember too much from the third. I do remember that the second book took place on a water world. Some good cover art, if I recall it correctly, which would lead to some very inspired Traveller settings. </font>[/QUOTE]No, Cerberus was the second book, the waterworld, where the local variant of the Warden virus enabled mind/body swapping. The ice world was Medusa (fourth book), where the local variant of the Warden virus enabled rapid and radical adaptation to ambient conditions, and when driven to near-overload levels, conscious control over such adaptation.
(For completeness: Lilith's (Book 1) variant of the Warden virus didn't allow offworld material, and allowed what essentially looked like telekinetic control over anything that was 'contaminated' by that variant. The Charon (Book 3) variant seemed to allow outright magic, including transforming inanimate objects and polymorphing living objects.)
FreeTrav
SOC-14 1K
... and of course, we can't neglect to mention H. Beam Piper's Terran Federation/Terran Empire universe of Space Viking, Uller Uprising, and the Fuzzy books - which universe is said to be one of the inspiration for Traveller in the first place.
Also, while the basic universe/setting of Star Trek simply doesn't 'feel right' for Traveller, there are, nevertheless, certain novels in the Pocket Books series of Star Trek novels which could be adapted into Traveller adventures with little violence needing to be done to either the story or the Traveller setting - one of my favorites that is thus portable is Uhura's Song.
Also, while the basic universe/setting of Star Trek simply doesn't 'feel right' for Traveller, there are, nevertheless, certain novels in the Pocket Books series of Star Trek novels which could be adapted into Traveller adventures with little violence needing to be done to either the story or the Traveller setting - one of my favorites that is thus portable is Uhura's Song.
GypsyComet
SOC-14 1K
Water worlds are easy enough. My favourite is: "what if birds filled all the ecological niches filled by aquatic mammals on Earth?"Originally posted by alanb:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Blue Ghost:
Everyone; anybody have any good water world settings?
Yes, that's Whale-Sized Penguin World.
...
Hmm. There's three suitable excuses. How many of these worlds will there be? </font>[/QUOTE]The Whale-sized Penguin is called a "Vortex", as that is exactly what Dougal Dixon did in "After Man" many years ago. The book should be high on any Traveller world-building wonk's "to find" list, as it posits that Man is gone to some undisclosed form of extinction that included all the species he domesticated or hunted, and the other species he exterminated in support of those activities. So most of the equines, bovines, porcines, and large carnivores are gone, as well as the whales and a number of other aquatics.
Already mostly there, the penguins and a couple other aquatic birds evolve to fill the two niches once occupied by the whales (micro carnivore and macro carnivore). The rodents provide the basis for many of the new large land carnivores, and a number of less economically exploited herbivores expand to fill in the environmental niches emptied by man's domesticated species.
Great stuff. Dixon has done three other notable projects that might be of interest. The one to follow "After Man" was "Man After Man", a look at the continued development of Man as he approaches, hits, and passes his technological zenith.
Next was "The New Dinosaurs" (if memory serves, this is the one I don't own) whch looked at an almost Jurrasic Park type of scenario, assuming that some species survived or were revived by man, and have assumed roles in modern ecological niches including some domesticated roles.
Most recent was a BBC series call "The Future is Wild" which looked at Earth in three later periods, millions of years from now, to see how life survives and evolves to meet the new challenges. The series has been shown in the US and been released on DVD.
Thanks BillOriginally posted by Bill Cameron:
Great thread you started Blue!
Some comments:
- Always wanted to use the K'Kree in an adventure or campaign but never found a way to fit them in. I 'worked' on the other side of Imperial space from the 2,000 Worlds, coming up with a reason for the Centaurs to be Behind the Claw was too much for my pointy head. I did steal the wax crescent scent sculpture idea from the K'Kree Alien Module. The players helped recover them but never met a K'Kree in the process.
- Had a long running campaign set in the Islands and detailed Sansterre quite nicely. Fritz and BGG are correct; waterworlds are fun, fun, FUN. Google The Roaring Forties and then imagine how big waves can get with no landmasses to break them up...
- In one campaign, I had the players stumbled across an abandoned/lost/disabled/unfinished Sky Raider generation ship still in the Great Rift. The Loeskalth had tried to launch a second one before the Vilani hammered them. The idea was to finish the ship later in some backwater system and pick up refugees on the fly. The launch had been premature, the initial jump hurried, and the ship only made it 1 ly or so away from the launch system. The crew then abandoned the ship. The Vilani caught up with them and mistook this second ship for the first one! They'd heard/learned of the project naturally. This confusion allowed the first ship to make it's escape. Of course, after all my work, the players located the ship, immediately sold the location to a government, and never stepped foot on it again. LOL!
Have fun,
Bill
I always wanted to create a floating city adventure. I probably will at some point.
Okay, Bill and everyone else; I'm guessing the year before last or before that I started a Ring World topic. Have any of you done a Ringworld or Dyson sphere adventure? What was it like?
Blue,
I never tackled a ringworld or Dyson sphere. Both artifacts are just too damn big for the OTU setting. They'd swallow up empires and make empires that only controlled a fraction of them far too powerful.
DGP - who else? - put an 'unfinished' ringworld in the Hinterworlds sector. Just what 'unfinished' could be stretched to mean is unknown.
Supposedly some relatively tiny minor race empire, the Outcasts of the Whispering Sky, manages to keep any and all investigators away from the system in question. Sure. It's only one sector away from the Imperium, Solomani, and Hivers and a bunch of schmoos with a handful of worlds keeps everyone at bay. Right. Pull my other leg, it plays Jingle Bells.
IMTU 'unfinished' meant 'various sections in long period solar orbits around the central star with nothing connected together'. And that's still not dialed back enough to dampen what should be objects of immense interest.
Of course, as Niven himself pointed out, a ringworld is perfect for a "tech as magic" type setting.
Have fun,
Bill
P.S. Almost forgot that GT upped DGP's ante in the Moron Game and placed an unfinished Dyson sphere coreward and trailing of the K'Kree/Vargr. Naturally, neither of those major races show anywhere near the interest in the Sphere that they should. Right. Sure. Uh-huh. Hey, if you're going to f*** up you might as well f*** up BIG.
[ December 19, 2006, 02:11 AM: Message edited by: Sigg Oddra ]
I never tackled a ringworld or Dyson sphere. Both artifacts are just too damn big for the OTU setting. They'd swallow up empires and make empires that only controlled a fraction of them far too powerful.
DGP - who else? - put an 'unfinished' ringworld in the Hinterworlds sector. Just what 'unfinished' could be stretched to mean is unknown.
Supposedly some relatively tiny minor race empire, the Outcasts of the Whispering Sky, manages to keep any and all investigators away from the system in question. Sure. It's only one sector away from the Imperium, Solomani, and Hivers and a bunch of schmoos with a handful of worlds keeps everyone at bay. Right. Pull my other leg, it plays Jingle Bells.
IMTU 'unfinished' meant 'various sections in long period solar orbits around the central star with nothing connected together'. And that's still not dialed back enough to dampen what should be objects of immense interest.
Of course, as Niven himself pointed out, a ringworld is perfect for a "tech as magic" type setting.
Have fun,
Bill
P.S. Almost forgot that GT upped DGP's ante in the Moron Game and placed an unfinished Dyson sphere coreward and trailing of the K'Kree/Vargr. Naturally, neither of those major races show anywhere near the interest in the Sphere that they should. Right. Sure. Uh-huh. Hey, if you're going to f*** up you might as well f*** up BIG.
[ December 19, 2006, 02:11 AM: Message edited by: Sigg Oddra ]
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
It wasn't DGP
MWM mentions the unfinished ringworld in Secret of the Ancients.
MWM mentions the unfinished ringworld in Secret of the Ancients.
I'm still not sure how those are ok since the works date from the 50s+. With reissues in the 90s (one in 2001 both by Ace books) & at least one new novel based on his works being done or out. Sounds more like somebody making an "abandonware claim" and crossing their fingers (per manybooks.net entries*).
But hey, good works, well worth a read. Very suitable for Traveller and good reads as well.
*disclaimers like "Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the copyright on this publication was renewed."
But hey, good works, well worth a read. Very suitable for Traveller and good reads as well.
*disclaimers like "Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the copyright on this publication was renewed."
