Other games for inspiration.

[mike wightman]

It is getting close to that time where I plan for this summer's Culture scenario. For these scenarios I often look way beyond Traveller resources for inspiration.

Recently I have been buying up Infinity sourcebooks, I have been in receipt of the new Alternity books I kickstarted, a Coriolis adventure pack and the new Expanse rpg.

Just wondered if anyone else mines other sci fi rpgs for their Traveller campaigns...

 

[Ran Targas]

I liked the Fading Suns setting mostly because it was CT on a more manageable scale. In addition it incorporated some aspects of Dune (ruling houses), 40K (outside threat), and Lovecraft (ancient aliens). Some gold there for the mining, I think.

 

[mike wightman]

There's a new edition of it in the works I believe.

 

[Fovean]

I also recently received The Expanse RPG (which I find gorgeous and very well done, for the record) and it has helped inspire my next campaign - a single solar system only, albeit a quintuple system with two binaries. A sort Firefly/Expanse mash-up, with the campaign area populated by descendants of a Terran sleeper ship which arrived 500-1000 years ago.

On a more granular level, I’ve been using the Waite Tarot deck to divine truths about the history of said campaign area. Just drawing a few cards to inspire, surprise and connect the dots. I’m not New-Age really, I just find the imagery and interpretations of the cards to be evocative and unexpected.

As far as other media properties for inspiration, I’ve been really enjoying the Saga graphic novels and they’ve started some ideas percolating, weird ones outside the comfort zone as it were, which is great.

 

[mike wightman]

Interesting ideas. I like the idea of a binary/trinary/quaternary system for an Expanse like set up.

The Protostar setting for new Alternity has a great similarity to the Expanse post ring discovery.

I have used the Coriolis icon deck of cards for hooks, and in the past I have used the Everway fortune cards to do a similar thing in the past.

 

[gchuck]

Other games for inspiration

Picked up a copy of the 'Blue Planet' rpg a couple of months ago.

It's really fleshed out for water world ideas and scenarios. Plus a ton of critters and other denizens.

 

[mike wightman]

It is a superb setting. Which edition did you pick up?

 

[gchuck]

Other games for inspiration

Must be 1st, it's got pub date of 2000.

 

[Enoki]

I also recently received The Expanse RPG (which I find gorgeous and very well done, for the record) and it has helped inspire my next campaign - a single solar system only, albeit a quintuple system with two binaries. A sort Firefly/Expanse mash-up, with the campaign area populated by descendants of a Terran sleeper ship which arrived 500-1000 years ago.

On a more granular level, I’ve been using the Waite Tarot deck to divine truths about the history of said campaign area. Just drawing a few cards to inspire, surprise and connect the dots. I’m not New-Age really, I just find the imagery and interpretations of the cards to be evocative and unexpected.

As far as other media properties for inspiration, I’ve been really enjoying the Saga graphic novels and they’ve started some ideas percolating, weird ones outside the comfort zone as it were, which is great.

With the extant expanded system rules, filling in the rest of the system is something I do regularly. That has resulted in more than one case of the above. That is, two or more polities within a system.
In one case, I had a civil war going on between the main world and a second political entity that occupied worlds around a gas giant. Neither could build starships, but both could build spaceships. So, they each had a fleet of ships up to around 1000 tons max that had no jump drives that they were using to fight each other.
I've had binary and trinary systems that have seperate governments in the same system that do internal trade too.
You can do that with just the expanded system generation rules as they stand. Fudging just a little, you can give the other governments / systems a starport that is of lower quality than the UWP one on the "main world." That explains why it's a, say, class B starport. There is also a C and D in the system on these secondary polities.