Non OTU: Traveller ATU How To #2: Foundation

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Useful tips, features, color, and rules to give your Traveller game a "Foundation"-like feel.

CHARACTERS

1. All careers seem to exist normally.

EQUIPMENT

Traveller equipment seems to be adapted to the Foundation. That includes the wide variety of vehicles and portable equipment available, including grav belts.

 

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STARSHIPS

"Free Traders" is a common thing.

Ships run off of what is essentially an Alderson drive
- easy to maintain
- can run off of low-tech power (chemical, nuclear fission, and fusion)
- range limits
- time required to calculate the next jump
- arrival location may not be precise, requiring multiple jumps
- requires Ansible for fast computation of jump points
- the problem of making long jumps was more one of computing rather than engine
- adapt rules from T5 Book 2 p122 (e.g. "instantaenous" Skip-3 Drive @ 300 parsecs per jump)

TECHNOLOGY

1. Artificial gravity is easy to maintain
2. There is an Ansible. Power requirements are "ridiculous" beyond "short" range.
3. No Artificial Intelligence available. Similar to the Dune setting -- it COULD exist, it DID exist, it's not allowed.

 

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BACKSTORY

1. No aliens.

2. The Galactic Empire: 25 million inhabited worlds out of 200 billion stars
- collapsed
- many worlds have declined to tech level 6

3. Psychohistory is a Useful Thing

4. "Free Traders" is still a Thing

5. Psionics is a Secret Thing ("Mentalists" and the "Mule"). In place of the Psionics Institute in the OTU, we have the Second Foundation, which is a secret society of psionically gifted individuals and psycho historians who's job it is to see to it that the "Seldon plan" remains on track.


READING LIST

Foundation by Isaac Asimov. Though there are many many books in the series, the first one is sufficient.


ADVENTURES

Not really limited -- anything that shows up in Traveller is doable here. I can't think of any particular emphasis that would be specifically "Foundation" though, unless it's protecting the Second Foundation from the depredations of barbarian worlds. Kind of Star Viking like?