Looking for Traveller starship "product labels"

[robject]

Something Traveller hasn't done much is "colorize" the descriptions of starship components. For example, branding a jump drive. Here are canonical examples of what I mean:

Gayle Field type ##
Shva type ?#-
IDC FarDrive #/?
Bilstein A?-#
Dupree ###m
Model 1#
ISMM Model ?.##
#? Ganged Forelle field generator
Torgee PL ??##
Deltic Mk####
Triptic Halonic ?
Zahinyo #.#

I want more. I'm looking for a dozen more names. Anyone done anything like this already?

 

[DaveChase]

Wouldn't you know. A company that makes a living do what you ask

Not that I am suggesting that you use them. LOL

http://www.brighternaming.com/technical_naming_experience.html

I can't find it now but there was a buzz word generator that you could dump in your own words along with a spelling dictionary and then it would dump out X number of words made up from adding words, parts of words and such

You clicked whether you wanted actual words, made up words or words that sounded neat (only the spelling words would be combined since the program only knew how those sounded)

And some words for gadgets come from the culture/national language and just sound neat to our unaccustom ears.
Some examples to help

Akai - "red" in Japanese, also used as the name of color of the rising sun, as seen on the flag of Japan.

Blaupunkt – "blue dot" in German. The company (named Ideal back then) specialized in headphones manufacture, and the blue dot was the sing with which the headphones that passed the quality test were marked. Thus, the quality symbol became a trademark, and the trademark became the company name.

Canon - from the name of the company's first camera, the Kwannon, in turn named after the Japanese name of the Buddhist bodhisattva of mercy.

Casio - from the name of its founder, Kashio Tadao.

Cisco - short for San Francisco.

Compaq – probably, from "comp" for computer, and "pack" referred to a small integral object; or: Compatibility and Quality; or: from the company's first product, the very compact Compaq Portable.

Daewoo - means "great universe" in Korean.

Hitachi - literally means "sunrise" in Japanese.

LG - combination of two popular Korean brands Lucky and Goldstar.

Samsung – means "three stars" in Korean.

Sanyo – means "three oceans" in Korean.

Seiko - Japanese word for "exquisite", "minute", or "success".

Sharp - named from company's first product, an ever-sharp pencil.

Sony - from the Latin word "sonus" meaning sound, and "sonny", a slang word used to refer to a bright youngster. This name was chosen as it could be pronounced easily in many languages.

Plus some company gadget names come from the ancorymn of the first letter of each word of the device

BLT (Bacon lettuce tomato or my favorite from a B SciFi movie, Bi-Linear Transport)

MILES gear (Multiple Integrated Laser Engagement System)

Just trying to help people think of some cool names for your.

I really like your idea about adding this kind of detail. Thanks


Dave Chase

 

[Scarecrow]

They did this for Star Wars in the RPG and it contributed towards de-mystify the setting for me, sadly. I don't need to know that the X-wing is a T-65 built by Incom, it's just an X-Wing. That's all I need to know.

For Traveller, however I think it'd have the opposite effect, strengthening it's credibility and adding background texture. It's a great idea.

A 200 dTon Free-Trader using a Boeing 'Bison' Frame and utilising two 50,000 lb Pratt and Whitney Engines with vectored thrust tunnels for mid-line lift function. That has me positively salivating

Anyone remember the Uncle Albert's catalogue from SJG's Car Wars? A book like that for Traveller would be a great piece of Splat/Fluff.

Crow

 

[Magnus von Thornwood]

Those stats sound familar...

They did this for Star Wars in the RPG and it contributed towards de-mystify the setting for me, sadly. I don't need to know that the X-wing is a T-65 built by Incom, it's just an X-Wing. That's all I need to know.

For Traveller, however I think it'd have the opposite effect, strengthening it's credibility and adding background texture. It's a great idea.

A 200 dTon Free-Trader using a Boeing 'Bison' Frame and utilising two 50,000 lb Pratt and Whitney Engines with vectored thrust tunnels for mid-line lift function. That has me positively salivating

Anyone remember the Uncle Albert's catalogue from SJG's Car Wars? A book like that for Traveller would be a great piece of Splat/Fluff.

Crow

These sound like some FTL Tug I recall....didn't end well at all...

 

[Scarecrow]

You win a snog!

Yeah, I was so utterly blown away by that drawing as a kid, I memorised it word for word and used it in just about every starship design plan I ever drew

I was just flicking through the Uncle Albert's Catalogue and they actually didn't have many company or product names. It was just a fancy equipment list, really - fair enough, that was what it was supposed to be - but every item is illustrated and accompanied by descriptive fluff text aswell as stats. A Traveller version would be very cool I think.

Ling Standard Products Catalogue IC-1113

I was looking for a link to that picture but couldn't find one I did discover Cobb's official site though and I didn't realise that he worked on Firefly!!
He did design Conan's movie sword, The Millenium Falcon interior, The ALIENS dropship and the Hammerhead from the cantina and for that he shall always be sainted I also discovered recently that he appears in the first Conan movie. He's the guy that tries to sell Conan and Subotai the Black Lotus (Stygian! The Best!)

cool

 

[Maladominus]

A 200 dTon Free-Trader using a Boeing 'Bison' Frame and utilising two 50,000 lb Pratt and Whitney Engines with vectored thrust tunnels for mid-line lift function.....

You forgot to mention the Vickers machineguns.... erm... I mean "twin-laser turrets".

 

[Jeffr0]

For Traveller, however I think it'd have the opposite effect, strengthening it's credibility and adding background texture. It's a great idea.

BattleTech did this in their first technical readout. The mech design system was very primitive... but the "branding" of the weaponry combined with the drawings by Loose went a long way toward making that simple game very respectable. The power plant listing in the original rulebook gave a company name for each size-- there were no game effects on any of these names... it just made things seem real.

Anyone remember the Uncle Albert's catalogue from SJG's Car Wars? A book like that for Traveller would be a great piece of Splat/Fluff. Crow

IMTU, Uncle Albert lives on in one of his many clone descendents. He's known as "Uncle Al the Traveller's Pal" and has name recognition exceeding that of Brubek's and SolaCola.

 

[Jeffr0]

I was just flicking through the Uncle Albert's Catalogue and they actually didn't have many company or product names. It was just a fancy equipment list, really - fair enough, that was what it was supposed to be - but every item is illustrated and accompanied by descriptive fluff text aswell as stats.

Check later issues of ADQ and supplements like The Combat Showcase-- branding began to take on NASCAR level dimensions. Other companies besides Uncle Al would place advertisements in ADQ occassionally. FNORD motors was a classic... and of course there was hi-tech equipment from Electro-fabrique Swisse and pedestrian weaponry from Ped-Tech. Mitsui and Amex made some pretty good cars, too.

(Uncle Albert was more the "Wal-Mart" type marketing of other companies' stuff. He'd talk them down on their prices until they were paying him to carry their stuff-- and they didn't even get to keep their brands on it most of the time!)

 

[coliver988]

7th Sanctum

there are a variety of random word/phrase/etc generators at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/

The equipment link (http://www.seventhsanctum.com/index-equi.php) has several options for things like weapons, medications, etc.

No brand names per se, but somewhere in there is probably a company name generation system.

But a supplement with all this would be cool fluff.

 

[Border Reiver]

The earlier Traveller adventures like Kinunir and Leviathan included these kind of details for drives, powerplants and computers.

Then the Imperium just got too big.

 

[robject]

Off the cuff, I came up with thirty "templates", ten for each drive (jump, maneuver, power), but with some creativity they could perhaps be expanded into a large number of templates for representing different ship components.

Each template can have four special characters:
? represents the drive letter
# represents the drive number
@ represents a random letter
$ represents a random number

So for example, a random selection and generation of templates for the Type A jump, maneuver, and power plant are:

j: Magash Systems A12-1p
m: Bilstein AA-1
p: Zhunatsu 0043.jA1

It is fitted with the Magash Systems A12-1p jump drive, the Bilstein AA-1 maneuver drive, and the Zhunatsu 0043.jA1 power plant, giving performance of Jump-1 and 1G acceleration.

Jump drives:

LSP ?/# Starpoint
Gayle Field type $#
Shva type ?#-@@
IDC FarDrive #/?
Ansar @#-?
Glisten Engines #x?
Dalon # Grid ?#
Madoc Mark #
Systems Inc. L-##$$?
Magash Systems ?12-#@


Maneuver drives:

LSP Impulse ?#
Bilstein A?-#
Dupree ##$m
Degani ? Number 1#
ISMM Model ?.#$
$x#$?@ Ganged Forelle field generator
Yard 7 m?/#
Lesler-Khalan #$.?
Slipstream ?@.##
Banshee Gravitics ?#.$


Power plants:

LSP Power ?
Torgee PL ??#$
Deltic Mk#$$#-?
Triptic Halonic ?
Zahinyo #.$?/@
?f-# Cold Sun
Karuniin ?#+@
Grid #@ Tokamak/?$
Mailliw #@@.?
Zhunatsu $$$$.@?#

 

[DaveChase]

I just remember that 101 Robots had such names for

some of their products.

I will try and look through some other supplements and see if I find any more sources.

Dave Chase

 

[Jeffr0]

These are the good bits from Kinunir:

2 Deltic Mk1827 JK Fusion power plants, driving one
Shva type r3-55 jump drive (with integral r2-55 backup),
and 2 Dupree 734 impulse maneuver drives.
ISMM ModelD.3 on-board computer with multiple input
stations and limited Al. Integral fire control and
on-line storage. Fibre optic back-up network.

 

[Jeffr0]

These are the good bits from Leviathan:

Engineering: One Torgee PL FS62-Y fusion-linked power plant driving two
Gayle Field type 77X jump drives (one type 76W backup) and
one Bilstein Arg-6Y impulse manoeuvre drive Alb-5W backup).
Gravitics: Ganged Forelle Field generators, with 1 G floor fields.
Electronics: Zahinyo 7.4~ computer with integral fibre optic backup, and
Zahinyo 5.0h auxiliary computer. Integral and manual input
fire control.

 

[ShapeShifter]

I think I know what the OP means.
I think that kind of stuff the players can come up with and not always demand that the ref waste time on non-mechanics/pure-fluff material.
I only have done that so far with "branding" names of ship's computers (e.g. starchart database systems for scout ships).

 

[Imperial Planetologist]

BITS 101 Corporations is a good resource for starship component manufacturers and FASA's The FCI Consumer Guide does the same thing for other sorts of equipment.

I add this sort of detail all the time to my games. Some manufacturers have a reputation for reliability (reduced chance of malfunction but higher cost) while others are cheaper and, well, cheaper (increased chance of malfunction but lower cost). Players in my game got so fed up with their character's Type R's cheap power plant breaking down they swapped it for a more reliable model when the opportunity presented itself.