New Traveller Universe: Pioneer
Around the bottom end of 2022, we will be releasing a brand new universe for Traveller, with the current working title Pioneer. This will be a self-contained book (so no need for the Traveller Core Rulebook), as we will be tweaking the Traveller rules somewhat for this one.
Pioneer is set in our own Solar System, around 10-30 years in the future. Humanity is just starting its new wave of exploration of the planets and moons, and you will be on the leading edge of these missions – this is a game where you will be the first to walk on Mars, the first to establish a Moon base, the first to test mining operations on an asteroid... and if you push the timeline forward, the first to look for life on Europa, to visit Saturn’s moons, and much more. The whole Solar System will be your playground and you will be the first to explore it. The likes of Gravity, The Martian, Interstellar (in terms of atmosphere, not the actual mission), Sunshine and 2001/2010 are very much our touchstones for this new universe.
To do this, you will create characters from around the world, and engage in missions funded by both governments and private enterprise. There is no dedicated combat chapter in this book as your main adversary, by far, is the hostile environment of space and the planets and moons of our sun.
The lead designer for Pioneer will be Sandy Antunes, a name that will be familiar to a lot of you. Dr. Antunes worked as a NASA contractor at NASA/GSFC, an NSF fellow at the Naval Research Laboratory, and is currently a senior programmer at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab. He also taught as a Professor of Astronautical Engineering for 10 years, and holds a Ph.D. in computational astrophysics. He has written operations, flight and analysis software, and worked with multiple satellite missions in the US and Japan, including CUBIC, ASCA, XTE SUZAKU, STEREO, and Parker Solar Probe, and was the lead for the CACTUS-1 CubeSat mission. He has written 4 books on ‘DIY Space’ for Maker Media and presented talks at both World MakerFaire and Gray Hat/Aerospace Village on the risks from malicious satellites, as well as publishing scientific research on topics ranging from radiation damage to space hardware through to modelling solar coronal mass ejections (CMEs). He has written for multiple gaming books (including Miskatonic University and A Faery's Tale) and short form works (including GURPS: Starbases and Doom: Semper Fidelis), and he is the co-founder of RPG.net.
This looks really interesting.
If you have not yet checked out the Sea of Thieves RPG and fancy some good pirating action on the waves, you really cannot do better. We have ensured that you can begin playing within minutes of opening the box (yes, really!), and the tutorial voyage leads directly into a full campaign (also included in the box set) that will take you around the huge poster map of the playing area while encountering all the weird and wonderful sights within the Sea of Thieves.
I want to comment on this from a general theme.
Few years ago, my friends decided they want to try a D&Dish role playing experience again. We had not played in, you know, decades. Somehow, somewhere, they found someone to be the DM. I didn't know this person, but they chose to use the "Pathfinder" system (which I guess is some kind of D&Dish offshoot).
Anyway, he sent us some enormous PDFs and was babbling about characters and what not.
When we eventually met to try to get things started, I told him flat out simply: "If we're not killing monsters within 15 minutes of us sitting down, I'm not interested."
He looked at me as if I had lobsters growing out of my ears.
We had not played in years. Getting the group together was going to be challenging enough. Keeping it together even more-so. I certainly wasn't going to read 100's of pages of, well, anything. I was going to be hard pressed to read 10's of pages. I didn't want to spend 3 hours rolling up characters, "talking in the inn", packing horses, or who knows what else. I knew every minute was going to be precious, and, heck if we didn't enjoy the running around bonking monsters part, not sure how much we'd enjoy the rest. So I wanted the first session to be action packed, adrenalin filled, tally ho, Charge! just to see if this group was going to work at all.
As a player, early on, honestly, I don't need to know anything. I should be able to learn the fundamentals organically. The GM can tell me what to roll, what skill might be appropriate, how do I swing my sword and whack a kobold without me having to read, well, anything except maybe my character sheet (with the pre-generated character) that says "Yes, indeed, I have a sword."
Maybe that's the wrong attitude, but that's how you bring players to a game. "What do I need to bring?" "Just your body, just show up."
The group didn't continue (not because of my thing, there were other reasons), but I just wanted to point out that I doubt I'm alone in wanting to get in, get down, get dirty, quickly without having to get bogged down with anything.
I'm also casually interest in Pirates, so maybe I'll pick this up just for some fun background material.
www.enworld.org
