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Non-Traveller Rules

The obvious systems will be listed in other postings, so I only want to mention
the Expendables RPG by Stellar Games (only 86 pages, characters explore po-
tential colony worlds, rather Travelleresque feeling), which has a number of
ideas I found interesting, and Cthulhu Rising (free PDF), a science fiction ver-
sion of Call of Cthulhu, which also includes lots of useful ideas.
 
Fading Suns, folks, if you ever wanted to do a feudal system that overlays the Imperium...check out Fading Suns.
Star*Drive could be Traveller augmented with the latest in SF.
Firefly (duh) could work in a Traveller type universe once you do add on Jump Drives.
 
I use the Silhouette Core rules for my traveller game.

These are the core rules that are used in Heavy Gear.

They work pretty well for us.
 
I think I'll end up using Savage World's initiative system in every game I'll ever play from now on. It involves throwing a playing card at each player, NPC or group of npc's and having everyone act in descending order. Special stuff happens when you draw a Joker, (and you can add all sorts of special events tied to any other particular card if you'd want to).

The advantages are that is quick, and there's an easy visual reminder as to who's going next.
 
Other Suns (out of print)

Was a fun system. Had many alien races as standard character templates. Used FL drives and Grav drives that worked differently than Traveller. FL was and could be much faster than Traveller times
Really like the Life Size points to determine how much lifesupport could substain.
Used as an empire on the other side of the galaxy. They got there via a major miss jump. Of course they (players characters) never made it back to Imperial space. ;)

Justifiers (out of print and new updated version)
Fun, short, easy rules. Many many aliens and hybrids aliens. Humans also. Can't remember the 2 book miniature system that would work with it. Used many of the concepts for Corp Research in Traveller.

Mechniods (original prefered before Rifts Conversion)
Like the drawings, Really like the bent on why the Mechnoids existed. Had fun with the large ship (book 3 of the original) with some players.

Living Steel
Liked the world/concept used it as world for a series of adventures.

Battle Tech (Baron mechs from a magazine article)
Used it to represent several worlds in a pocket empire that survived the Long Night with only Jump 2/Jump 1 Tech and lost information on how they work but had the blue prints to build more of the same. Max weight was 15 tons and very slow. Most were like Traveller BattleSuits but 3 to 5 times bigger for the same characteristics.

SpaceMaster
Used the different locations and ships designs for a different look for different parts of the universe or special NPC's. Sometimes used descriptions of equipment that was similar to Traveller when players accessed a planet data base for information versus the official data base/library. Several times the players thought they had found new tech when all it was, was a culture difference in how they described potatoes/patatoes. :)

StarFrontiers
For the adventures to add some different flavor of style. Love Larry Elmore drawings also.

There are many more. If this was not what you were asking for, sorry.

Dave Chase
 
Nearspace is a Blast!

For those who like percentile systems, Nearspace chargen is in beta, and is extremely smooth. (BTW, it's currently using the Gore engine, which is a public domain BRP system).
 
Justifiers (out of print and new updated version)
Fun, short, easy rules. Many many aliens and hybrids aliens. Humans also. Can't remember the 2 book miniature system that would work with it. Used many of the concepts for Corp Research in Traveller.

Two Questions:

1) How is the "new" version diferent from the old OOP one?
2) Who is publishing the new one?

Daniel
 
Mekton Zeta for those of you who like big robots (although the design system and rules could produce anything -- ran a Star Wars game with it once). Fun stuff, well written, easy to use and very flexibile.

Space Opera. So close to Traveller, but so far away in tone... once in a while you have to stretch that suspension of disbelief :) Some interesting concepts, and it had Novaguns! Which if you're a "Witches of Kares' (by james H. Schmitz) fan is cool... more of a Lensman / golden age sci fi / space opera (surprised?) feel than Traveller.

Star Trek the RPG. The old FASA version that got foxed when some idi... er person released a movie supplement before the movie came out... well done. Amazing how succesful they were at presenting a coherant universe and accomodating all the conflicting bits in the Star Trek universe.

Cyberpunk 2.0.2.0 A nice rules set for the cyber fans, complete with cyber psychosis for those who went too far into modification... And no magic, orcs, elves, trolls, etc. which always killed the feel of Shadowrun for me.

All good games in their own way, but mostly out of print. But, that's what used game stores / sites are for.
 
R: Re FASA- wrong. They exceeded their license by producing TNG materials... Which a judge determined were for a separate IP than Star Trek, and thus not under license.
 
Star Wars SAGA. Blows the older Star Wars d20 away
(and the WEG d6 version too). Simpler, quicker and much more movie like feel. A great game.

The Cortex engine (Battlestar/Serenity) is one of those game systems that drags roleplaying out of people (you get perks for roleplaying your flaws etc)... Looks like a campaign would be fun, but I doubt it would be a popular "go-to" system if you know what I mean.
 
I have thought about using the Shadowrun v4 rule set for combat and skills, and replacing the magic with psionics and you have a lot of psionic powers to choose from. Plus Shadowrun v4 also has all the setup for computers. I don't think the system would be hard to convert/use with Traveller since both use some kind of d6 system.

I just read the combat for MGT and I don't think I like it. I am waiting until the game comes out to see what the combat is like, but from the preview for beta testing I found the system to be bad.
 
You won't like ForeSight first edition. Besides, that buff paper is very ugly. I'll take that old copy off your hands if you like. Is $25 plus postage okay?
 
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