Traveller Rules As Written

[Condottiere]

Distance makes it mythology and folklore.

As they say, "Too soon."

You can reinterpret Robin Hood and the Arthurian cycle to fit into a particular (political) narrative, but popular culture less than a century old is within living memory.

 

[Vargr Breath]

The first rule is to have fun. If it's not fun what's the use?

 

[robject]

The first rule is to have fun. If it's not fun what's the use?

I've heard this before, but it needs disentangling. It's complicated by Human interactions, which coincidentally is where much of the fun comes from.

 

[Enoki]

I'd say the first versions of Traveller started out very much like most miniature wargaming rules were at the time. That is, they were a generalized framework that was playable but those using them quickly started making their own house rules to fill in gaps. MT is just a new set that took many of those sorts of rules and incorporated them into the existing ones.
Striker was clearly intended as a miniature wargaming set of rules that could be used in a larger paper exercise to a degree.

The problem then, as always, is you get "rules lawyers" who parse and pick up on every little flaw that can be exploited to their advantage regardless of how insane or inane it might be. Thus, more rules end up being made to fix those flaws and gaps.

It's this miniature wargaming mindset that gave Traveller the character generation system it has. Characters were intended to be played in a scenario then discarded. You might be able to use a character multiple times in scenarios (battles) but there was no real system in place for their continued growth as they weren't intended to be used in long term ongoing 'adventures' like say in D&D. That's where persons who are primarily role-playing gamers have difficulty with Traveller.

That, at least, is my perception of things.

 

[Dragoner]

I play the setting first and not the rules, and the more rules light the better now. I'm not that much into giant stat blocks for stuff like starships. Usually I see most number crunching as pointless, a cohesive set of rules is cool, except I am not terribly concerned about it either.

 

[mike wightman]

Canon is for setting. Have you read the latest MgT vision for their ATU Third Imperium setting? Is it all to be considered canon for the OTU because according to the MgT folk MWM himself has authorised everything in it.

Rules 'canon' is a matter of understanding the rules as written.

 

[Dragoner]

It is what it is. I wish the MgT2e people the best with their stuff, I have not read it, because I am doing my own thing (like trying to figure out how on Earth my latest pdf is 256 mb?) and when done, get in some playing time.

 

[robject]

Canon is for setting. Have you read the latest MgT vision for their ATU Third Imperium setting? Is it all to be considered canon for the OTU because according to the MgT folk MWM himself has authorised everything in it.

Mongoose is following in the footsteps of GDW. Write what you want, and let others sort it out. This is how Classic Traveller did it.

I don't like it. But I suspect that's MY problem.

 

[Grav_Moped]

Mongoose is following in the footsteps of GDW. Write what you want, and let others sort it out. This is how Classic Traveller did it.

I don't like it. But I suspect that's MY problem.

I have my issues with it, so you're not alone there.

The 'goose guys are under a lot of the same constraints GDW and their early licensees were working under -- time, budget, staffing -- so I'll cut them some slack. Some.

Because the flip side is that they have far greater access to decades of published materials than the early licensees, and to the general consensus of what constitutes canon for the OTU.

 

[Spinward Flow]

Actually, Spinward used "touchstone" which means standard canon

I meant it more in the sense that we agree to be using the same sources and that the quality of those sources is provable/demonstrable.

The original touchstones (the actual stones) were used to verify the purity gold so as to agree on metallurgy for the purposes of weights and measures. In other words, I can prove (using a touchstone) that my money has sufficient purity to be used as currency for our transactions in which we both agree on the value of what I'm offering.

Except that instead of abrading gold onto a stone surface to verify the karat quality of the gold we want to use for trade, we're pointing to quotes and citations to verify the assertions that we are making in our discussions. We point to the source ... the Rules As Written, a common source ... to back up what we're saying.

VALID shades of gray: I don't allow jump torpedos in published material.

As I've pointed out elsewhere, it's pretty hard to distinguish between a jump torpedo and an XBoat ... aside from the reusable/self-destruct factor (and the fact that XBoats are manned craft with a Pilot).

Would TNE have been so controversial if it didn't include HePLAR?

Personally, I prefer to think of HePLAR as a "backup option" for Thruster Plates in case a ship exceeds a 1000 diameters distance from the nearest other object in space. When Thruster Plates run out of "oomph" then the HePLAR is there as an alternative option to take over. So both types are incorporated into High Guard custom drives generated by the formula.

LBB2 type drives are HePLAR only, which is why the maneuver drive is small (and expensive, relative to LBB5 type drives) with a far higher fuel requirement (via the power plant, which scales badly because it doesn't scale at all).

Probably a wrong idea, but at least it makes ME happy ...

Just remember that we often do go in circles.

So to celestial bodies in their orbits.
At least there is symmetry.

 

[Grav_Moped]

LBB2 type drives are HePLAR only, which is why the maneuver drive is small (and expensive, relative to LBB5 type drives) with a far higher fuel requirement (via the power plant, which scales badly because it doesn't scale at all).

In '77, they were (if not by that name, then by characteristics), and you're right about the size issue: it was a thrust-producing accessory to the power plant (or vice versa).

In '81, they weren't, but the rules didn't change except for the flavor text describing what the power plant fuel was used for.

 

[Condottiere]

Still usable beyond anchored gravity well range, but about one percent efficiency.

Which is better than solar sailing.

 

[whartung]

I like TNE because they "scienced" it, however imperfectly. But they tried. They tried to apply the same "rules" from switch blades to meson guns from a "sorta" material science perspective, no easy task. Gave the game a "harder" sci-fi edge.

Did they unnecessarily complicate it? Perhaps. It's supposed to be a game after all. The laser design sequence alone makes the mind go spinny.

Actually you could say that it hearkened back to 1977, or perhaps HG1, where ships were assumed to be using fusion rocket like things.

I kind of disagree. As I like to say, for many of the fundamental universe mechanics in the game, over time (via rules, JTAS, MT), the systems evolved and gain clarity, but not really revolutionized. M-Drive has always been a power thing, not a fusion blast thing. I don't see some huge paradigm shift from '77 to '81 forward.

For all practical purposes, the M-Drive was never a constraint. "effectively unlimited" was the term in '77 Book 2. In '81 Book 2 it was "Power plant fuel under the formula (10Pn) allows routine operations and maneuver for four weeks." And always note that the fuel is based on the power plant, not the M-Drive, with the only requirement being the power plant being at least as big as the drive. Even with the consumption rates in Beltstrike, the Seeker (the modified Scout ship in Beltstrike) with 30 tons of fuel, if you allocated 10 tons of fuel towards powering Maneuver, that's, to use TNEs term, 5000 G Hours of fuel. 208 days of acceleration at 1G. Since it takes about a week at 1G to get to Jupiter, that's 15 round trips out and back from Earth.

Contrast that to a TNE Free Trader, which has fuel for 28 G Hours (not including Jump Fuel). To run out to Jupiter and back using that fuel alone (and not refueling) is a 70 day journey for the Free Trader. 7 hours of acceleration plus 7 hours of deceleration, both ways.

There's a vast difference between requiring power and reaction mass. Maneuver drives have always required fuel, but in CT, it's fuel used to power the power planet. In TNE, it's fuel to be pushed out the back end of the ship. TNE made M-Drive fuel a First Class problem, in contrast to CT where it's basically a load on the circuit breakers next to the refrigerator and microwave. It's easy to consider the Beltstrike consumption the same way you'd consider how much gasoline is used to power a generator to power bright lights.

Mechanically, it's kind of moot. A Free Trader needs enough fuel to push it 100D, not span entire solar systems. Obviously there are jump shadowed planets that require more flight time, but, those are pedantic edge cases in a world of door kicking, big game hunting, T-shirt world adventure. IMTU those traders would either dock at a very high-port at the outer 100D limit and let the intra-system network move things to the main world on their dime, or at least the ship would be able to top off and burn their jump fuel in to the main planet. Burning jump fuel, Jupiter to Earth, one way, is only 13 days on the TNE Free Trader, only twice as much as a 1G burn the entire way. Not crippling to say the least.

For "normal" planets, there's more than enough fuel for full burns to 100D and back. In TNE, any "real" adventure ship would be over built to bring extra maneuver fuel just to ensure a better chance of it not becoming a problem. Most TNE combat vessels have twice the fuel reserves of the traders.

 

[Grav_Moped]

LBB2 type drives are HePLAR only, which is why the maneuver drive is small (and expensive, relative to LBB5 type drives) with a far higher fuel requirement (via the power plant, which scales badly because it doesn't scale at all).

In '77, they were (if not by that name, then by characteristics), and you're right about the size issue: it was a thrust-producing accessory to the power plant (or vice versa).

In '81, they weren't, but the rules didn't change except for the flavor text describing what the power plant fuel was used for. Same drives, same fuel allocation, different technobabble.

 

[robject]

I kind of disagree.

Point taken -- regardless of what CT'77 called them, the maneuver drive behaved like a maneuver drive. And "mass" to describe ship tonnage didn't really have any traction.

 

[Spinward Flow]

And "mass" to describe ship tonnage didn't really have any traction.

That's because tonnage as a unit was fungible.
14m³ or 1000kg ... whichever you get to first is 1 ton for starships.

 

[GypsyComet]

Would TNE have been so controversial if it didn't include HePLAR?

HEPlaR being controversial came a bit later, when the rocket scientists looked at it.

The first screaming points were the impossibilities of Virus and "You blew up my Imperium".

Then it was "the Virus Night is actually too short" and "laser gravity focusing that good would collapse the ship into neutronium"

Then "Have you tried designing a modern tank with FF&S?" and something about grav-assisted pogo sticks capable of bouncing into orbit.

There was a fair bit of "SCIENCE fiction" vs "science FICTION" as well.

My primary complaint was that the rule book's typeface made some chapters unreadable, but that's a different level of issue.

 

[Enoki]

Personally, what Traveller needs to do is decide if it's a wargame or an RPG. It can be both separately in two parallel games but trying to make it one in the same is likely it's biggest drawback.

 

[Grav_Moped]

My primary complaint was that the rule book's typeface made some chapters unreadable, but that's a different level of issue.

I've tried-and-failed to read worse, even in recently-published games where they should have known better by now.

It seems that sometimes game books are published to look pretty and sell, rather than to be used as reference material in actual games.

 

[Spinward Flow]

what Traveller needs to do is decide if it's a wargame or an RPG.

1. RPG
2. ???
3. Wargame

... in that order of priority.