Proto-Traveller

[Jeffr0]

Proto-Traveller is...

1) Book 2 ships only-- no High Guard!
2) A different map based on the Capitol premise from the Library Data of Adventure 2. (The Bottleneck Empire?) The Spinward Marches are still there, but most Empires are no bigger than a sector or two in size.
3) Piracy is not a flamewar here because pirates are built into the basic premise of the setting.
4) PC's actions can make a difference without them becoming Admirals or CEO's.
5) The Imperium board game is not necessarily grafted into future history of this setting.

Am I missing anything?

Library data from Adventures 1-3 sounds like the key thing to look at for background. Is there any other resources good to use?

This sounds like the game I want to play!

 

[mike wightman]

Originally posted by Jeffr0:
This sounds like the game I want to play!

Me too

 

[mike wightman]

As for other good CT resources:
all of the Double Adventures can be set just about anywhere - except perhaps Argon Gambit;
76 Patrons;
Citizens of the Imperium for fleshing out "Other" characters;
Traders and Gunboats;
Mercenary, except the expanded character generation.

Beltstrike, Tarsus, and the Traveller Adventure would all still work within the framework presented.

 

[mike wightman]

This post by daryen over on the smaller Imperium thread has got me thinking too:

Originally posted by daryen:
The Spinward Marches give a wonderful setup for a smaller Imperium. Actually, you can use any setup like:

- Just use the Sword World and Darrian Confederations. Let them intrigue and duke it out.

- Use the rim/spinward quadrant, but make the Five Sisters an independent empire based on Iderati. Now you have three small empires that can duke it out.

- Use the whole Marches, but make things self-contained. Now the Zhodani are based on Chronor and the half-sector Empire is based at Mora. In this case, the two Confederations become more relevant and can actually directly influence the local politics.

In the last case, you are not even really changing anything. You are just ignoring anything outside the Marches.

You could also redefine some of the areas within the Imperial Spinward Marches as being client states/pocket empires, with an Imperial Duke as a liaison/overseer. The Spinward Marches then become a true frontier region, not firmly under the Imperium's control.
Thus dissenting local politicians do occasionally end up in Imperial prison hulks; four Kinunir class battle cruisers with TL15 Marines are a force to be feared; planets within "the Imperium" go to war with each other while the Imps turn a blind eye; megacorporations pull the strings in the background...

 

[RobertFisher]

My campaign is somewhat in this spirit.

Traveller was my first roleplaying game to play with a regular group. (B/X D&D was my first roleplaying game, but never got a regular group together.) I never owned any of the books myself. By the time I bought my first Traveller product, Starter Traveller, I wasn't playing Traveller anymore.

Almost 20 years later, I finally get to play Traveller with a group again & ref it for the first time.

(Of course, in the intervening years, I occasionally gen'd characters & designed ships & did some solitaire play. I collected & read & discussed online. But...)

Despite my long history with this game, starting this campaign really made me feel like a novice. There's so much to CT, & my knowledge turns out to not be very deep in lots of areas.

So, I've very intentionally choosen to stick as close to the basics as I could. There are some things I can't resist (Sup 4). I'll happily leverage anything when it seems appropriate. But I try to keep it basic.

About Capital: What sort of astrography do you think fits the description in Adv 2? How narrow does the gap between the rifts need to be? (Unfortunately, it seemed a lot of the star charts from the older thread linked to in the other thread...

...aren't available anymore.)

 

[Jeffr0]

Rats...

The Library Data from Adventures 2 & 3 contradict my premise. The basic structure of the OTU is there at the beginning-- the Solomani, the Interstellar Wars, the Frontier Wars, the major races (except for the Hivers.)

I was hoping more of this would have turned out to be retcons. (Sigh) Ah well. I can still declare High Guard to be a retcon, though

 

[murdocj]

I've long been torn between the "coolness" factor of the Spinward Marches with the established Imperial history (not to mention the prepared adventures) and the idea of the smaller quasi-empires a few subsectors in size.

Reading this makes me [forehead slap].

Why didn't I think of this? Twenty years ago?

We'd play some OTU. Then I'd design a subsector or two and we'd play there for a while. Then I'd miss the Marches and we'd play there. Then I'd roll up a new subsector. Then back to OTU.

[Continue on and off for two decades.]

Obviously some re-jiggering would be required to do this. But nothing major.

I'd wonder a little about the large number of high-tech worlds in a small empire, though it's certainly not outlandish. Just a slightly different mind-set. And something like the Darrian pocket empire suddenly becomes far more influential with that tech level.

Other threads have folks rushing to the defense of the "big" Imperium. It's not that a smaller one is "better". It's that it's "better for my campaign".

 

[mike wightman]

I'd just like to add - read the intros to Mercenary and High Guard again.

The image of the Imperium they conjure up to me fits much better with the Library data and general background of the first three adventures.

 

[aramis]

I concur, mostly.

Until I got Supplement 8 (LD A-M), I figured the Imperium was about 8 sectors... the monster empire... and of those, 3 were clearly not full sectors...

Then again, at the time, I had 6 sectors, and 4 of them connected. Two of those four were extra-imperial.

A small imperium is not a bad thing. Just, My imperium needs to have at least 4 sectors where it has borders, and one of them needs to be the Spinward Marches.

 

[hcobb]

Why not just delete Grandfather?

Every human in the galaxy starts on Earth and by the time the Jump Drive is invented only a very few humans have been even one parsec from Earth.

If the players travel far enough they'll run into the Aslan or the Hivers, but they're a long ways off.

See GURPS Traveller: Interstellar Wars for the setting details.

-HJC

 

[aramis]

Grandfather really isn't an issue.

Deleting all the human minors would be, though, as it negates the the vilani, zhodani and several human minors (ardenese, daryan, jonkereen) also local to the marches... and it's also going to make the habitation pattern far more dispersed, and the ecospheres of habitable worlds far more alien...

the "traveller" feel wuld be gone without these human aliens, and grandfather is just he means to explain them.

I'm kind of envisioning:

+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+
|     |     |     |     |     |     |
| Zdt | Gvu | ??? | ??? | ??? | ??? |
|     |  G  |     |     |     |     |
+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+
|     |     |     |     |     |     |
| ??? | S M | Cor | Ley | M-A | ??? |
|     |  G  |     |  $  |  $  |     |
+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+
|     |     |     |     |     |     |
| ??? | ORV | S R | G R | C M | 2KW |
|     |  ?  |  G  |  $  |  $  |     |
+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+
|     |     |     |     |     |     |
| ??? |(Asl)| ??? | ??? | ??? | ??? |
|     |     |     |     |     |     |
+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+

G indicates I'd use the GDW sector.
$ indicates my using the JG sector.

 

[Elliot]

The ??? below SM becomes the Outrim Void of Adv 4 not the Trojan Reaches - a truly (almost) unknown region with * for worlds that the filthy empire has not got to yet

Oh - and in proto Traveller - the Imperium is bad, not good - it is a fascist state that locks up all and sundry and burns them without warrant.

 

[mike wightman]

Originally posted by Elliot:
Oh - and in proto Traveller - the Imperium is bad, not good - it is a fascist state that locks up all and sundry and burns them without warrant.

I agree completely.

Read up on the Forboldn Project library data entry in Adventure 1.

Or the Navy's use of interdiction.

Then there are the Rumours tables...

 

[robject]

Gadzooks, this is a fun thread to read...

 

[mike wightman]

rob, whatever happened to those maps you made of a smaller Imperiun - the ones where sectors were reduced to quadrants?

 

[aramis]

Elliot: Added ORV to the above map, but is it in Adv4, or elsewhere?

I happen to have copies of rob's small imperium... but I'm coming at this from a new look: No Atlas Data or Later. And as for atlas, it wasn't available locally until after I got AM3:V, so I'll keep that.

Adv 0 establishes that the consulate is big... and gives us the Marches. It also esablishes that there are hostiles coreward besides the Zhodani; the sector edge is the edge of the imperium.

LD references Capital Core, so Core sector must exist;
Leg and Glimmerdrift also exist in pre-atlas canon, admittedly 3rd party: Ley, 1980; GR, MA, and CM are 1981, judges guild... they are more for the money than was Sup3, albeit the maps were lame.

Anybody else have any "Supressed Canon" sectors?

Let's see, socially...
The Imperium is Dark, but not QUITE as bad as the SW Empire. It has some laws that are good. Others are more questionable.

It ruthlessly enforces its purviews. It has a blanket forcing of cargo rates and passage rates and rights. (inferred by the Bk2 rules)

It has a system of Nobles. Nobles rule regions. Local governments vary. Dukes rule subsectors (Sup3). I guess the sector duke might as well be the archduke, and eliminate that issue. The duke runs the sector navy. We can imply his rule is a combination of respect and fear, with a healthy dose of sycophantism.

Lesser nobles would likewise run things in a similar manner, albeit with more concern over torquing off the lessers...

Self-defense armament is common... many worlds allow weaponry. The ones which do are also likely to let you use it... the ones which don't generally will be harassing you to insure you don't.

Armored ships are not a consideration... and big ships simply kill with volume of fire, unless we use HG... in which case the proto-imperium setting is ugly... with Star Destroyers and the ability to carve your initials in moons using meson guns.

 

[mike wightman]

Beyond and Vanguard reaches by Paranoia Press, and the Keith brothers' Far Frontiers sector could all be considered as "Supressed Canon" sectors.

And my vote is to ignore the ship design rules from High Guard - keep ships in the LBB2 paradigm size range.

The weapon systems can be adapted across though :devil: - there are designs that make use of HG weapons e.g. the Kinunir, the Gazelle, and a couple of the ships in the GW IISS Ship Files.

 

[Elliot]

Outrim Void is Adventure 4 - Leviathan - most worlds are unknown and unexplored - it is the tip of the Imperium

 

[Pickles]

Originally posted by Sigg Oddra:
The weapon systems can be adapted across though :devil - there are designs that make use of HG weapons e.g. the Kinunir, the Gazelle, and a couple of the ships in the GW IISS Ship Files.

Not to mention the Zhodani preference for fusion guns in Adv.4/6/7 (and others, I'm sure). But, definitely - keep to the Book 2 size ranges. 5000 dtons is still one helluva big ship to any PC.

 

[Whipsnade]

Wow! Great thread!

Some thoughts:

- Find a way to work in the A:2 description of Capital. The idea of a bisected 'rift' Imperium is just too cool not to use.

- Paranoia did publish booklets for the 'Beyond' and 'Vanguard' sectors, but I'd be hesitent to use them 'cause the material is wretched. How does a 'Comsentient League', a winged Human minor race, and a major 3I presence complete with actual member worlds far beyond its borders sound?

- Using the Keith's 'Far Frontiers' could be trouble. Foreven, the "GM's Preserve Sector", is between it and the Marches. The Keiths detailed only a few subsectors for FF, but I think someone else worked up a 'dot map' for it.

- You can import HG2 bay weapons into LBB:2 easily enough and still keep your 5000dTon ceiling.

- Stealing a riff from D&D here. Go with a 'chaotic neutral' Imperium. It's as good/evil, weak/strong, up/down, 1/0 as the man on the spot. As I've put it on the TML before; The Imperium is as good as it wants, as evil as it needs, as weak as it can get away with, and as strong as it must. Think 'realpolitik'.

- Give the Imperium an open frontier. It could Foreven and ORV beyond the Marches with the Zhos, Swordies, and Darrians 'blocking' the easy way there.

Can't wait to see the maps!


Have fun,
Bill