Hit me with questions and ideas and problems.
I want to build a totally brand new, low TL universe. Earth has only recently acquired jump-2 and most jump-capable ships are military, not commercial, though that's changing at the jump-1 level.
Earth finds that most systems have habitable planets with intelligent life, and a lot of it is human (homo sapiens sapiens X, but not necessarily identical to Earth humans), suggesting some kind of ancient "seeder" civilization or perhaps a catastrophe that destroyed people's ability to travel FTL.
The U.S. is a second-tier player by the time the Earth reaches jump-1. The EU is stronger and leads the way. To deal with far-flung colonies and slow communication, they fall back on old Roman ideas, even adopting Latin military ranks and such, so you have legionaries, optios, centurions, tribunes, legates, dux, imperators, and the like.
Most of the civilizations Earth encounters are relatively primitive and are conquered easily. Like the old Rome, this New Rome brings the wonders of technology, culture, and law to the backwater barbarians. There is no Prime Directive here. Whole worlds are made "client states" of Earth. Governors are installed to run the worlds from well-guarded palaces planetside. The people are exploited commercially, of course. Trade routes, serviced by the military-run Merchant fleets (and rarely purely commercial vessels), move goods around, mostly enhancing Earth's wealth.
Earth encounters a few jump-1 civilizations that can't reach Earth yet. Wars erupt but Earth is winning them--for now.
I'll probably run this with Mongoose Traveller. I've never actually run a Traveller game, but I've played CT a couple times and I've a veteran GM of other games since 1979. I had CT back in the day but it didn't really grab me then. Now I'm all over it.
The first "campaign" (what do you call a series of sessions in Traveller?) will focus on a couple centurions who are ordered to conquer a really backward world and rule it until the real governor arrives--and that could take a year. Out on the edge of explored space, the military is stretched thin, especially in starships, so low-ranking officers get assigned jobs that would have been a legate's a decade ago. Most of the characters will be military (maybe with prior occupations but the last occupations have to be mil), though one or two characters might be civilian support (scientists or low-ranking senators) or loyal converts from the local citizenry. Play will be focused in one or two systems rather than a star-crawl.
I want to build a totally brand new, low TL universe. Earth has only recently acquired jump-2 and most jump-capable ships are military, not commercial, though that's changing at the jump-1 level.
Earth finds that most systems have habitable planets with intelligent life, and a lot of it is human (homo sapiens sapiens X, but not necessarily identical to Earth humans), suggesting some kind of ancient "seeder" civilization or perhaps a catastrophe that destroyed people's ability to travel FTL.
The U.S. is a second-tier player by the time the Earth reaches jump-1. The EU is stronger and leads the way. To deal with far-flung colonies and slow communication, they fall back on old Roman ideas, even adopting Latin military ranks and such, so you have legionaries, optios, centurions, tribunes, legates, dux, imperators, and the like.
Most of the civilizations Earth encounters are relatively primitive and are conquered easily. Like the old Rome, this New Rome brings the wonders of technology, culture, and law to the backwater barbarians. There is no Prime Directive here. Whole worlds are made "client states" of Earth. Governors are installed to run the worlds from well-guarded palaces planetside. The people are exploited commercially, of course. Trade routes, serviced by the military-run Merchant fleets (and rarely purely commercial vessels), move goods around, mostly enhancing Earth's wealth.
Earth encounters a few jump-1 civilizations that can't reach Earth yet. Wars erupt but Earth is winning them--for now.
I'll probably run this with Mongoose Traveller. I've never actually run a Traveller game, but I've played CT a couple times and I've a veteran GM of other games since 1979. I had CT back in the day but it didn't really grab me then. Now I'm all over it.
The first "campaign" (what do you call a series of sessions in Traveller?) will focus on a couple centurions who are ordered to conquer a really backward world and rule it until the real governor arrives--and that could take a year. Out on the edge of explored space, the military is stretched thin, especially in starships, so low-ranking officers get assigned jobs that would have been a legate's a decade ago. Most of the characters will be military (maybe with prior occupations but the last occupations have to be mil), though one or two characters might be civilian support (scientists or low-ranking senators) or loyal converts from the local citizenry. Play will be focused in one or two systems rather than a star-crawl.
Last edited by a moderator: