Starpunk - A Variant Traveller Universe

[Patron Zero]

I'd like to toss out a concept I'm working through for a variant setting Traveller game-campaign and collect the opinions of the good assembly in residence.

The working title is Starpunk for the lack a better one at the moment and breaks down in the following ideas.

The fundamental divergence from 'mainstream' Traveller as it's known-played currently is the extreme hazards of the environment-dimension of jumpspace and the required precautions and procedures observed and taken to navigate in such.

Shared in common are the starships of this setting are designed-constructed to survive the brief excursions into jumpspace by the having 'jump-rated' outer hulls, best explained as how modern submarines have pressure-rated hulls that determine their operations into an ocean's depths.

Before preparing to activate it's jump drive, the vessel goes through a checklist of securing internal compartments, 'locking down' operating systems and the crew taking stations in 'jump-safe' areas.

At this point the variant technologies applied to safely traversing jumpspace differ, passive and active measures can include the extending of hull mounted 'lightning' rods to ward away the crackles of jumpfire or the application of insulating 'tiles' to areas of the ship vulnerable to said hazard.

Any vessel that suffers damage in combat can still attempt a jump but with risks equivalent to the level of compromise to said systems-measures.


Mind that's the a very brief presentation of the idea and still much needs further development, that said, any thoughts are welcome and much appreciated.

 

[Hemdian]

If jump is dangerous like that I suppose you could apply one or more rolls from the HG/MT ship combat radiation damage tables. You'd need to play around with the figures until you were happy with them, but off the top of my head you could do one roll for jump number with a defensive bonus on each roll based on the hull rating. Is that what you had in mind?

 

[Patron Zero]

If jump is dangerous like that ..... Is that what you had in mind?

For the mechanics of game play yes, that would work nicely, perhaps more of what I'm attempting is about a sort of pulp flavor of the spaceships of vintage B-movies than much else.

Other variations would be turrets being manned in the fashion of WWII bomber aircraft or similar to those seen aboard the Millennium Falcon in the film SW: Episode 4 - A New Hope. Said turrets required to 'lock down' for jumpspace travel a given.

 

[jatay3]

I might do that in a moderate form. I've sometimes thought there should be some hazards in jump space.

 

[jawillroy]

The fundamental divergence from 'mainstream' Traveller as it's known-played currently is the extreme hazards of the environment-dimension of jumpspace...

It occurs to me that an ATU with Jump being that high-risk an undertaking would be either a) a really "young" TU, with jump tech being relatively new or b) a really "small" TU, since not so many people would be risking travel were it all that deadly. It could be pretty interesting to play that all out.

What sort of repercussions do you have in mind should those countermeasures be ignored/fail? On the one hand, seems like you'd want there to be some real risk to the characters (otherwise it's just chrome and doesn't really change the game) but it's already pretty easy for PCs to be dumb cheapskates and end up misjumping (I've seen it happen again and again...) Having to re-roll your character because he died of radiation sickness from a mismatched jumpspace baffle might not be that much more fun...

 

[ShapeShifter]

Sounds like some really cool ideas!
I just borrow the Erhaft Field (from the Dumarest books) or something like the Langston Field (from Mote in God's Eye).