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[Thelor]

"in that case, I don't need advance information to know what's next, I just know they're all the same because they're all burnt-out low-tech virus-ridden pools of ignorance and intolerance"

That is a problem I agree with.
But can be remedied with reducing the surviving amounts of Virus still operational and increase the fledgling worlds back somewhat to their feet.
A reason I think the new TNE book will be 1248 instead of 1201.
In MTU set in 1201 I am planning on running soon. I will reduce the number of virus active. Because it is just to many of them. And also increase the numbers of small pocket civilisations that has established interstellar trade using either the freetrader network, salvaged old ships or... The merchantile guild!

Also the black curtain might not be so black as it is wanting to be.
The empress wave will have to wait until it impacts MTU. I have to read the upcoming official explanation before I can incorporate it. I'm a bit at loss on how to handle it, not to mention its effects on psionics.

You seem to be able to portray 3I as huge more or less indifferent entity that just cares if war or like disasterous events are close at hand? It is IMO a good approach.

I have though an easier time as a GM to think out plots in a less technologically advanced era. Where TL12 is more or less the highest available.
I am trying to get a bit of the "Firefly" series feeling to my campaign. And TNE with its blasted low-tech frontierworlds seems to fill most of my criterias.

Speaking of Library data:
Your interpretation is a good one. Though I always gathered, same with the other fellows I played traveller with that the Survey data, library data is always available for a price of course.
Though I have forgotten the price. It was actually printed in some old traveller version how much the latest data on a system costed (think it was in the version where you had the rules in one big blue book (softcover), I have lost mine in a move back in the -80's )
But of course as you say. The very latest is guarded secrets by traders and corporations.
Information = credits.

Im curious but OT: How common is piracy and Merc tickets (letters of marks (sp?)) to hunt pirates in your TU?
I had a quite succesful Mega Traveller campaign starting with chars loosing their ship to pirates and the hunt to recapture it, and why their ship was seized in the first place... *grins*

 

[RainOfSteel]

Originally posted by Thelor:
You seem to be able to portray 3I as huge more or less indifferent entity that just cares if war or like disasterous events are close at hand? It is IMO a good approach.

IMTU: The 3I is the result of Cleon I's actions leading up to Founding. It is brighter and probably stronger than the average 3I, but not overwhelmingly so. The problems facing it (enemies on all sides, a military insufficient to carry out conquest, a populace that is on the balance anti-expansion or isolationist, megacorporations within so powerful that together they exceed the wealth and power of the Emperor . . . both sides have their hands around the other's throats, and anti-Imperial terrorism fomented from without by feeding on existing historic sentiments) are equally vast. It has many mechanisms to ensure its survivial (many of which I simply invented whole cloth). They battle against the problems as best they can on limited resources (because the IN gets most of the funding).

Originally posted by Thelor:
Im curious but OT: How common is piracy and Merc tickets (letters of marks (sp?)) to hunt pirates in your TU?

In my current TU under design, traditional Merc's (groups of ground troops) don't get hired to hunt pirates very often. Subsector and Local navies are usually more than enough to "hunt" any one particular pirate (though not necessarily enough to guard against them all); though this doesn't mean special cases don't occur.

The real problem with the whole "can pirates" exist debate centers around sensor capabilities and weapons ranges, with propulsion tech coming in right after (all of which changes between each edition). This makes it very difficult to successfully discuss the existence of pirates in technical terms.

I say pirates do exist IMTU by GM fiat, if only because I think they're cool (however, if pinned down on technicalities, I lean toward the "pirates can't exist" school; though I don't let such reasonability affect the contents of MTU; in this particular case, much like Jump Drives and Thruster plates are allowed to exist, because they help "make" the quality of the setting).

 

[Erik Boielle]

+++++I find the TNE situation of apocolyptically blasted worlds with no meaningful future to be incredibly dull+++++

Eh?

The worlds do have a future.

The RC comes, brings hope, recruits the local population and moves on.

You start with a blasted world, recover anything you can find, set up governments and soon you have a stable and growing community. You refit ships and go further in to the wilds and find new oppertunities to exploit. Soon you have a bustling Viking world. Then you get gentrification and a couple of centuries down the line you have a fully industrial core world.

Its a frontier - a recovery rush. It bleeding Deadwood in space man.

 

[mike wightman]

Now there's a thought, cross Firefly with Deadwood...

 

[daryen]

Originally posted by Erik Boielle:
You start with a blasted world, recover anything you can find, set up governments and soon you have a stable and growing community. You refit ships and go further in to the wilds and find new oppertunities to exploit. Soon you have a bustling Viking world. Then you get gentrification and a couple of centuries down the line you have a fully industrial core world.

Isn't that really:

Come, rob them blind of whatever you can move, set up a puppet government, and wish the people luck and you leave them in chaos and squallor?

The Star Viking's job is to steal whatever technology they can for the RC, and to depose "dangerous" foreign governments. It's kinda hard to actually help those worlds when the Vikings are always taking a world's precious technological goodies and destabilizing their government.

Its a frontier - a recovery rush. It bleeding Deadwood in space man.

Sure, except in this western the "good guys" make sure to loot Deadwood of anything useful before they leave. And "bad guys" are whoever is in the way.

 

[Erik Boielle]

+++++Come, rob them blind of whatever you can move, set up a puppet government, and wish the people luck and you leave them in chaos and squallor?

The Star Viking's job is to steal whatever technology they can for the RC, and to depose "dangerous" foreign governments. It's kinda hard to actually help those worlds when the Vikings are always taking a world's precious technological goodies and destabilizing their government.+++++

Well that is only one interpretation.

Another is that the Viking movement is a religion that converts people to its cause as it washes over them. Since all the people of the ex imperium self identify as ex people of the imperium they don't suffer as much from an Us Vs. Them thing, and there are enough on the coalition seed worlds who remember the times before the technical colleges that they see the inhabitants of the wilds as raw material rather than non-people.

And its Organisation, the ability to pull it the same direction hard that has done well for western civilisations. Kept in the hands of warlords relic technology will decay, and only be used to repress people anyway.

Collectively held it can be reverse engineered, put in to production and things can grow instead of petering out.

Something like the formation of the modern states we know once the Roman Empire fell apart possibly*.

I dunno. Just where the hell are you going to find a more justifiable situation to do a little nation building in?

(Incidentally, one should note that the original denizens of Deadwood were squatting on someone elses land (and not just in an 'it wasn't their continent' kinda way, but in an actually flagrant ignoring of treaties to prospect for gold kinda way**) and once they had dug out all the gold they moved on. And Indians are traditionally bad guys…)

*Or is that peaked - my grasp of history is always tenuous.

**I think

 

[Thelor]

RoS wrote:"In my current TU under design, traditional Merc's (groups of ground troops) don't get hired to hunt pirates very often. Subsector and Local navies are usually more than enough to "hunt" any one particular pirate (though not necessarily enough to guard against them all); though this doesn't mean special cases don't occur.

The real problem with the whole "can pirates" exist debate centers around sensor capabilities and weapons ranges, with propulsion tech coming in right after (all of which changes between each edition). This makes it very difficult to successfully discuss the existence of pirates in technical terms.

I say pirates do exist IMTU by GM fiat, if only because I think they're cool (however, if pinned down on technicalities, I lean toward the "pirates can't exist" school; though I don't let such reasonability affect the contents of MTU; in this particular case, much like Jump Drives and Thruster plates are allowed to exist, because they help "make" the quality of the setting)."

How about making juristiction of the fleets (red tape, rivalry between fleetcommanders etc etc)a problem? System fleets are not allowed operation beyond a certain point in space. Same with subsector navy control.
A bit like local police doesn't like to cooperate with FBI in every movie out there
Also crossing a border into non-imperial space or just into another fleets juristiction would help pirates immensely. And also of course jump out into empty hexes and transfer stolen goods to "legitimate" freighters.

Questions for all TNE GM's:
The Merchantile guild. How powerful and big is it in your TU?
Pocket empires: How many others close by to the RC?
Kidans: Possible to replace Arturo and integrate them into the RC? Or cure Arturo via diplomacy or otherwise the errors of his ways?
Solee: What are your plans for Soleean Empire? MTU this will be alot of tension and diplomacy missions involving players as diplomats and spies and the Merchantile guild wanting of course to see them go to war!
Covenant of Suffren: To far away , or useful ally to the RC?
Virus: How many fleets are flying up and down the Vampire highway? How big are these fleets?
Jump start caches: Have you ever let players find these? How and what did you allow it to contain in that case?

 

[RainOfSteel]

Originally posted by Thelor:
How about making juristiction of the fleets (red tape, rivalry between fleetcommanders etc etc)a problem? System fleets are not allowed operation beyond a certain point in space. Same with subsector navy control.

IMTU: 3I: Non-Rebellion:

Juridiction of Imperial, Subsector, and Planetary (aka Local) fleets are well defined, though individual instances of confusion leading to problems may, of course, arise.

IN vessels go wherever they like in space, including inside all 100D limits right up to the orbit of the local Highport (if any, and if none, then right up to 1D away).

Subsector Navies do the same, except that, technically, they must give right of way to IN vessels at their request.

Local Navies patrol up to their 100D limit. Except in the case of General War, IN and SN vessels must give them right of way in this area. During General War, the IN has direct command over SN and LN forces, and jurisdictional quabbles that aren't successfully covered up by the superiors directly over them tend to cause careers to end. Some LN forces have warrants from the Duke (OTU: Sector Duke) to patrol their entire starsystem, and so these rights extend to the whole area, but it doesn't keep IN or SN forces out, either. In these extended patrol area situations, the LN still has right of way except in the case of General War.

Usually, in the case of the movement of ships, training ops, etc., IN or SN forces will work through the Local Noble to create a schedule of operations with the Member World's LN (if any) to prevent conflicts of movements or having ships accidentally stray into live-fire testing zones. However, in many cases, the Member World has no navy of it's own (due to a lack of funds or lack of TL . . . IMTU, all worlds sub-TL-8 have no LN at all, as do worlds with Pop 3 or less). In these cases, the SN, funded by subsector taxes, is the only patrolling naval force in the starsystem. While the IN and SN forces are rivals IMTU, this rivalry is generally in starports between low ranking personnel who try to beat each other up over insulting remarks. The IN and the SN only rarely come to blows outside this, because if the Duke (OTU: Sector Duke) heard heard about it (via intelligence reports from plants aboard the ships), heads would roll at the sector and subsector level, the Count (OTU: Subsector Duke) would wind up getting embaressed over it, perhaps even reprimanded by his Duke (OTU: Sector Duke).

 

[Erik Boielle]

Incidentally, I think one of the secrets of not seeing it as unremittingly dark is to assume that there simply isn't anything more scary out there than a Viking operations group* - The RC isn't scared of the Virus - Virus is scared of the Vikings.

*Or 'The PCs', if those foolish sorts choose not to join the movement.

 

[spank]

Come, rob them blind of whatever you can move, set up a puppet government, and wish the people luck and you leave them in chaos and squallor?

The Star Viking's job is to steal whatever technology they can for the RC, and to depose "dangerous" foreign governments. It's kinda hard to actually help those worlds when the Vikings are always taking a world's precious technological goodies and destabilizing their government

That's a somewhat slanted view of the whole thing. Path of Tears gives quite a few adventure Ideas and Types, Survey, Diplomatic, Intel, Bootstrap, Commerce, Ect. The governments the RC deposes are actually dangerous to themselves and others, rather than being "dangerous" because they've been labeled that way by the RC. If the Government is a good it is treated as such, not just steamrolled, or subverted.

 

[Badbru]

Originally posted by Thelor:
And also of course jump out into empty hexes and transfer stolen goods to "legitimate" freighters.

IMTU this is known as catch and carry piracy where pirate organisations consist of ex military warships as "catch vessels" which then transfer their loot to legitimate "carry vessels"

Questions for all TNE GM's:
The Merchantile guild. How powerful and big is it in your TU?
Pocket empires: How many others close by to the RC?
Kidans: Possible to replace Arturo and integrate them into the RC? Or cure Arturo via diplomacy or otherwise the errors of his ways?
Solee: What are your plans for Soleean Empire? MTU this will be alot of tension and diplomacy missions involving players as diplomats and spies and the Merchantile guild wanting of course to see them go to war!
Covenant of Suffren: To far away , or useful ally to the RC?
Virus: How many fleets are flying up and down the Vampire highway? How big are these fleets?
Jump start caches: Have you ever let players find these? How and what did you allow it to contain in that case? [/QB]

Mercantile Guild

From Path of Tears pg 144 "There is a governing Admiralty Council consisting of five of the most powerful Guild ship owners, and a Council of Captains consisting of a little over 100 ship owners who elect the five Councillors every three years."

Granted that "100 ship owners" doesn't necessarily mean 100 ships, but, this is what I took it to mean when thinking about the guild IMTU. I then assumed they covered all 16 subsectors of Diaspora, atleast the coreward 4 of The Solomani Rim, and atleast the spinward 4 of The Old Expanses. A minimum of 24 subsectors. So that gives them an average of 3 to 4 ships per subsector.
Looking at the Guild that way made it alot easier for me to work them into my campaign. I now had a structure for them.

I think of the Guild much like I think of popular cultures portrayal of the Mob, families with turf, Dons heading up a family etc etc. So IMTU Senior Guild captains are responsible for a given "Turf", usually a subsector. Senior Guild Captains will have under them 2, 3 or 4 (ordinary!)Guild Captains hence leading to 3 or 4 Guild ships per subsector.

IMTU they frequently play a variant of Good cop/ Bad cop. That is to say Guild ship A might raid, plunder, and slave on planet X but Guild ship B will NEVER harm the inhabitants of planet X and may even "Drive off" those nasty pirates. Whilst over on Planet Z Guild ship B has been conducting low level bombing raids when Guld ship A shows up to save the day hence creating good will with the populace.

The Guilds plan was allways to dominate interstellar trade, though it's not until 1201/2 IMTU, that they conclude that interstellar trade is controlled by controlling the Starports, not the spacelanes. There is a movement in the Guild IMTU circa 1201 for the Guild to reactivate the extrality zones with Guild personel on the inside and everyone else on the outside. So yeah the Guild are pretty powerful IMTU and they do it by having three or four ships per subsector and control of as many of the starports as they can.

Pocket Empires
Other than Arturo's(Kide)"Diasporan Star Empire" and the Soleans I only added "The Harlequin Unity" down in Harlequin subsector(D) of The Solomani Rim, and The Covenant of Sufren up in Sufren(C) of Diaspora. So no, not many other's in mine.

Kidans
The mission to Lefigura suggests there is a resistance movement of sorts to Arturo's rule on Kide so yes I think a good campaign could be run there to aid and/or establish a resistance movement. In my first RC campaign my players performed several missions on Kide....

Solee
The RC/Solee war never sat right with me. My RC was more about bringing the stars and technology back to the people of the wilds. It was a place of hope. It just seemed inherently wrong for the RC and definately The Dawn League (remember where you come from) to find another starfaring group and then go to war with them! How was that going to rebuild the wilds? The Soleans had to be set up as intractable nut jobs as far as I could see or surely every effort would have been made to resolve the differences peacefully afteral the RC is really quite an accepting enlightened bunch really when you look at the divesity of their citizens. They are the first to accept Cyms afterall.(Sandman) (and Breeds)
In any event my players mostly spent time in Khulam, Promise and other parts of Diaspora rather than Old Expanses so I didn't really have to resolve it.

Covenant of Sufren
Yes I used them, most definately. It is the Covenant of Sufren that gives the RC "Snake". The introduction of Snake anti viral weapons created a time my players refer to as the "Vampire Harvest". A short lived time where they could defeat Vampire ships without having to fight them therefore beyond burning out the computers not damage them more than they allready were. The RC recovered many servicable (after a complete electronics refit) ships befor Virus devised their own countermeasures.
My players also went with the small fleet on what we called Opperation Return Favour, the first diplomatic contact run up the hiway from the RC to the Covenant returning the Covenant personell retrieved from Promise.

Virus
TNE was set in 1201 for a reason, or so I thought. That reason was that it took that long for Virus to die off sufficiently for pocket empires to emerge. I mean it's not like it's 1140, seventy years have gone by. I had very few actual Fleets of Vampire ships. Never more than 6 ships in any fleet and the largest Virus run ship I ever used was the Midu Agasham light cruiser at 3000 Disp Tonnes.
I'd like to think that mostly when my players met Virus or Vampires it was as the book suggests, a rare and novel thing that the Ref can detail, not something they routinely met and either defeated or were defeated by. You'd have to ask my players if I was succussful though.

Jumpstart Cache
Never did use one of these, though I currently want to in my current game but I'm comming up blank devising a suitable Treasure Hunt adventure leading to it's discovery. Also having difficulty deciding which world to put it on in my current Khavle area game.

Well those were my answers to your questions Thelor for some of the campaigns I've run for TNE.
I hope you got something out of it you can use for yours.

 

[Uxi]

Originally posted by Thelor:
Questions for all TNE GM's:
The Merchantile guild. How powerful and big is it in your TU?
Pocket empires: How many others close by to the RC?
Kidans: Possible to replace Arturo and integrate them into the RC? Or cure Arturo via diplomacy or otherwise the errors of his ways?
Solee: What are your plans for Soleean Empire? MTU this will be alot of tension and diplomacy missions involving players as diplomats and spies and the Merchantile guild wanting of course to see them go to war!
Covenant of Suffren: To far away , or useful ally to the RC?
Virus: How many fleets are flying up and down the Vampire highway? How big are these fleets?
Jump start caches: Have you ever let players find these? How and what did you allow it to contain in that case? [/QB]

The Guild: Diaspora Branch about 100 ships as quoted in PoT and pretty much organized like Badbru. The difference I have though is that there are "other" branches.

My long term plans had a more powerful ~200-300 ship "Yakuza"-like type extending from portions of Magyar to the Solomani Rim and informally connected with the Diaspora Guild and another ~100'ish one in the Ilelish - Zarushagar vicinity. I also had ideas to adapt Michael Knoehne's "Guild" in Gushemege . All of these are "The Guild" only in similar behavior and methodology.

Pocket Empires: I was detailing the Hiver "Stepping Stone" in Old Expanses P (which due to a Centrist "win" in the Assembly, Oriflamme was reaching out towards and turning it into something the Hivers were outwardly uncomfortable with... but that others were claiming was a manipulation.

I had initially started work on a "Terran Federation" but then decided to adapt some Children of Earth stuff. Weakened the Terran Republic a bit and changed the nature of the main religion while keeping some of the names, etc.

Other than that that not much other than what the TNE list put in Masilia and a sort of Cyberdine-wins area in Delphi that's a precursor for the Black Curtain, where the "Sandmen" cut their teeth and prove themselves to a dubious RCN.

Kide was up to the players. I was letting them have their way, though the RC wasn't willing to decapitate and the 1 of the 2 other TED's had promise...

Solee was going to be mostly a cold war with the occassional wargaming.

Suffren was the "shakedown cruise" for the RCS Belladonna, which would later attempt the mission to Terra.

Virus... mostly background though there's the "Cyberdine" area of space and then apparently winding down...

the Vampire Highway mostly avoided because of a few decently sized fleets and more numerous smaller fleets.

Jump Start caches. Never found but planned for a possible and unexpected expansion of the Coalition (I never set anything in stone).