Traveller Fans - What Do You Want People To Know About Traveller?
- Thread starter Jeff M. Hopper
- Start date
What I wrote is verbatum from the back of a couple of the CT supplements, and even in the big black book.
If you're talking to a gearhead, and you're trying to promote the game, then just push it like any old RPG. How do you include Excalibur in classic or basic D&D? Make it up. How would you include the Millenium Falcon in CT? Make it up.
I don't want to get too off topic, but one of my major criticisms of T5 was the interpersonal table / encounter-chart and reaction table. Talk about getting away from classic RPing. Who would use that when you have a capable Ref/GM who can act out the part of various NPCs?
I think that approach is good to work around or patch Trav for whatever setting you want.
No, say what I said, just use your streetwise gaming convention skill and roll high on the success table.
salochin999
SOC-13
I think the unique thing about Traveller is the travel / time / comms aspect as that promotes a low tech form of social organisation in a high tech universe.
Hardly unique. Many settings have that feature. A.B. Chandler's John Grimes universe and David Weber's Honorverse, and H. Beam Piper's Piperverse to mention the first three that springs to my mind. And Anderson, and Niven, and...
There are probably more settings without interstellar communications faster than the speed of travel than with.
Hans
Few RPG settings do, tho'. I honestly can't think of any other ones that limit speed of information to speed of travel.
Oh, and the honorverse (and the starfire universe) doesn't... nor, for that matter, the vorkosiverse... because of the way it works, radio is in fact faster than ships across systems, and so comm nets use ships at the jump points/wormholes, and radio between. You can send messages faster than ships by having relay networks of couriers on station ready to jump, because jump/warp-point travel in those three is in fact nearly instant. Come to think of it, the Alderson points in the Niven/Pournell Codominion setting also work similarly, tho with a short transit time. The key element is that it takes time for a ship to get from the arrival coordinates to the departure coordinates, which is done STL, and the radio is far faster STL.
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That may be; I'm not familiar with many SF RPG settings.
By that logic the Age of Sail had faster communication than the speed of travel because flag signals were faster than a ship.
This is only possible in certain select places. It's arguably true in the Vorkosiverse, which is the reason I didn't mention it as an example, but for the Honorverse the speed of travel in systems may be STL, but the significant communications are between systems, so that's limited to the speed of travel (with wormholes the speed of travel is near instantaneous, but communication still goes at the speed of travel).
But the hypership that bypasses a system is far faster still.
Hans
that's a red herring, Hans.
In those settings, the bypassing the system with a ship still can be beaten by setting a courier set (usually 4-5) making the same bypass... the FTL is nearly instant (honorverse, starfire), or distance linked (CoDoVerse and Vorkosiverse) and not nearly as long as crossing a system, and your entry and exit points are usually some distance apart when connecting systems.
Those settings all have effective "known links only" travel, as well; it's completely UNLIKE Traveller in form. I don't recall the Fuzzyverse stories (the only Piper I've read) mentioning much about it.
Because the Honorverse, Starfire Universe, Vorkosiverse and CoDoVerse all have "This point in Z leads to X, and this other one in Z leads to Y", to get a message from X to Y, you go across Z at STL... and none of them have 99%C ships in the volumes I've read. And in the CoDoVerse and Vorkosiverse, several amount to "This one Usually leads to W, but sometimes doesn't work"... making packet runs interesting.
Note that the CoDoVerse also notes (In On the Gripping Hand, IIRC), that radio relay is not used for secure messages; secure stuff is sent slower, by courier, because radio is able to be eavesdropped while couriers know when they've been intercepted.
Doohan & Stirling's Flight Commander Universe also has similar, but FTL is time consuming in addition to being entrypoint-link-limited; it has a keyhole drive that then requires your MDrive to drive you down the tunnel...
Also note: The CoDoVerse isn't in Niven's Known Space. Niven's Known Space is pretty bog standard hyperdrive. Which is easier to (port to/fake with) Traveller.
How is Starfire pertinent to promoting Traveller?
Please tell me there isn't going to be a cross-over product linking the two.
Please tell me there isn't going to be a cross-over product linking the two.
No, in the Honorverse there are several different FTL methods, and they're all faster than radio. Wormhole travel is much faster than the other methods, but it's still the speed of travel. Radio is only faster than travel inside a hyper limit, but between systems there is nothing that beats the speed of travel.
It's not jump, sure. I didn't say it was. I said that the fastest communication speed is the speed of travel. Known links travel (wormhole travel) is between a small handful of places and it is STILL speed of travel.
It just mentions that Zarathustra is six months travel from Terra and that's how fast news gets between Zarathustra and Terra.
Honorverse doesn't have any systems with two different wormhole termini in the same system. So the relay-by-radio method would never be used.
I've already dealt with the Vorkosiverse. I can't say that I remember any system in the CoDoVerse with multiple Alderson lines, but then again, I won't swear that there aren't any.
Hans
Who said it was?
As you wish: There isn't going to be a cross-over product linking Starfire to Traveller.
AFAIK, that is.
Hans
FYI: Starfire is the game that David Webber was line editor for, and from which he & white wrote the first two novels from; it's not uncommon for grogs familiar with it to use it in place of Bk2/Bk5 by adding jump drives and jump fuel, or by making route lines on their sector maps.
Also, the Honorverse is, at least in the first few novels, very clearly derived from starfire (I can even count the turns played in the battles in On Basilisk Station), and the Honorverse was licensed to Hunter for a while. I've seen the playtest files.
So it's two removes for official, but one from use.
And it's a clear example of a type of FTL setup where no FTL comm doesn't make for no comm faster than a courier can get there.
Starfire I have no opinion of, but the Honorverse is a clear example of a type of FTL setup where the fastest communication between systems is couriers. Inside a system's hyper limit (where none of the FTL drives work), radio is obviously faster than couriers (also, over the novels an FTL radio is developed, but as it doesn't work between systems, it doesn't change the fact that the fastest communication between systems is by courier).
There are even several plots that depend on that very fact.
Hans
salochin999
SOC-13
Yes, I was thinking RPG systems which - of the ones I've seen - tend to be either fast travel and fast comms (Star Wars and Star Trek) or at least fast comms (Warhammer 40K). There are probably others I've missed though.
Jeff M. Hopper
SOC-14 1K
Thank you all for your input, it is helping me greatly.
Now, one last thing. Can anyone pass along a message to Marc Miller? While you have all provided excellent input, I would like to know what the IP holder of Traveller wants new people who are interested to know about the game. Thanks.
Now, one last thing. Can anyone pass along a message to Marc Miller? While you have all provided excellent input, I would like to know what the IP holder of Traveller wants new people who are interested to know about the game. Thanks.
It is possible to use Traveller to play in any sci fi setting, but the game is designed to take place in a rich and fascinating background that is unlike any other in literature and cinema. Parts of Traveller space are similar to many other settings, but no other completely replicates its complexity, the detail contained within its sweeping scope, nor the opportunities to discover and explore as are contained in Traveller.
Frankymole
SOC-12
Yes, I also liked it from the outset because of massive variety of genres you could play in it - detective story, action/adventure, ghost story/horror, scientific research, wilderness exploration, economic/mercantile/trading/mining resources, dynastic struggles on a huge scale, star fleet battles, piracy, empire-building, naval architecture (design your own ship!), character development, psychological thriller, and many more.
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David Johansen
SOC-12
Space is big and space is dark it's hard to find a place to park.
Really I think the big features are the gamist approach to science fiction. The vastness of the setting. The lack of moral judgements or philosophical directives. It's a very grey setting in an impartial universe. It's almost noir in space. The imperium isn't benevolent it's capitalistic to an extent that would make Ayn Rand blanch in horror. The credits must flow is the imperium's only credo. That's neither good nor bad, it's just business with a very long view of the economy. One reason the imperium uses a noble class is to avoid the short term thinking problems endemic with elected politicians and CEOs who burnout and die with the turn of the quarterly report.
Really I think the big features are the gamist approach to science fiction. The vastness of the setting. The lack of moral judgements or philosophical directives. It's a very grey setting in an impartial universe. It's almost noir in space. The imperium isn't benevolent it's capitalistic to an extent that would make Ayn Rand blanch in horror. The credits must flow is the imperium's only credo. That's neither good nor bad, it's just business with a very long view of the economy. One reason the imperium uses a noble class is to avoid the short term thinking problems endemic with elected politicians and CEOs who burnout and die with the turn of the quarterly report.
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