robject; there was a rumored Trek/SFB tie-in with Traveller. I'm hoping that's just a rumor. Can you share anything here?
Traveller's direction; history and future
- Thread starter Blue Ghost
- Start date
It's not an actual trek - it's the Star Fleet Universe of Star Fleet Battles. Close enough to TOS for most. Last I saw, it was being worked on. I've not logged in over at ADB's board for a while (a few months). Their dev pace is glacial, and hindered mostly by slavishly adhering to Mongoose's internal rule of "every ship published must have a deckplan" coupled with SVC's insistence on a certain standard of deckplan that 99% of engineers can't meet... and a raft of ships that are "core" for the SFU.
The setting material is already (long since) done, since it's just a repeat of that in GPD.
Note that the races list for the SFU isn't quite a match to any other published trek flavor...
The few adventures released recently for other rules engins that I've seen are all civilian paramilitary stuff.
Most recent stuff I can find is sept. 2014...
http://www.starfleetgames.com/discus/messages/38/27402.html?1410451651
It not an issue of rules but presentation. If your ruleset are laced with references to the Third Imperium, gamers are going to think it about rules running a campaign in the Third Imperium. If setting references are used sparing or non-existent then people will tend the view the ruleset as more accommodating and flexible. Although the rules themselves may encode a specific implied setting.
Harnmaster is a great game for any campaign set in Western Europe style setting. However it is laced with refrences to the Harn setting so people view as a set of rules specific to Harn.
That could have happened to Runequest and Glorantha, but Chaosium branched out to several other settings and genres with the system like Call of Cthulu, Stormbringer, etc. However it wasn't until Mongoose, again, that the fantasy version of Runequest became a generic system in gamers mindset rather than the rules for Glorantha.
I don't bother argue with it, it is just what it is.
It wasn't until the release of Mongoose Traveller that a company choose to focus on the Traveller as a general science fiction. Even then it took a while for Mongoose's version to be accepted as a generic science fiction RPG, but they did by presenting rule expansions with minimal references to the Third Imperium and by explictly making versions of Traveller for other settings like 2300 AD, Judge Dredd, etc.
I believe it about the amount of perceived work. Note not actual but perceived. Tabletop RPGs are a leisure actitivy. For most it is something fun to do in their spare time. For some, like me, you, and other on this forum, it is a highly enjoyable to spend a lot of our spare time with the Third Imperium. However we are the exception and not the rule.
The thinking boils down to "How much work I have to do to use this game to run the campaign I want to run and my players want to play in." If the rules are perceived as being for a specific setting then the perception, right or wrong, is that it will take a lot more work to use it for another setting.
For Traveller is been conflated in the general gamer population with the Third Imperium for quite some time. A situation reinforced by the use of the Traveller brand by other games using other game systems, Hero System and GURPS, to present the Third Imperium.
Call it "example" rather than "setting" and maybe I'd agree. Core books that I've liked tended to be light on references to the Imperium, using them for examples rather than to establish the setting.
The Traveller Book, for instance. The T4 Traveller Book, as a second example -- which was heavily modeled after The Traveller Book of course. And the Traveller5 Core Rules for a third example. None of these force a setting. All three use one or more implied settings for examples, and they could use more examples really.
The Traveller Book, for instance. The T4 Traveller Book, as a second example -- which was heavily modeled after The Traveller Book of course. And the Traveller5 Core Rules for a third example. None of these force a setting. All three use one or more implied settings for examples, and they could use more examples really.
It's worth noting that Mongoose's Runequest was a pseudoclone of Chaosium's - it is not the same system in a new edition, but a new system designed from the same principles. Character gen is quite different, the magic rules are somewhat different, combat is different...
Chaosium tried a truly generic version of BRP in 1980... it didn't sell all that well, and had 3 settings in the box. What it did do was provide a reference for what Chaosium felt was core to the engine.
It was in the mid 80's we see generic core with supplements finally make it work: GURPS. BRP and Hero followed suit in the early 90's, as did BTRC (with CORPS); WEG tried and failed in the 90's as well.
Even in the 90's, Palladium, WEG, Chaosium, White Wolf, Last Unicorn, and Decipher would all continue with the adapted corebook route rather than a single generic rulebook.
Even now, Fantasy flight, Palladium, Eden Studios, and MWP continue the adapted corebook approach, rather than the core+worldbooks.
Mongoose is fairly unusual in having a corebook with setting and then supplements for it as if a generic, and crossing genres in the process. They did it with MRQ, and again with Traveller.
Chaosium tried a truly generic version of BRP in 1980... it didn't sell all that well, and had 3 settings in the box. What it did do was provide a reference for what Chaosium felt was core to the engine.
It was in the mid 80's we see generic core with supplements finally make it work: GURPS. BRP and Hero followed suit in the early 90's, as did BTRC (with CORPS); WEG tried and failed in the 90's as well.
Even in the 90's, Palladium, WEG, Chaosium, White Wolf, Last Unicorn, and Decipher would all continue with the adapted corebook route rather than a single generic rulebook.
Even now, Fantasy flight, Palladium, Eden Studios, and MWP continue the adapted corebook approach, rather than the core+worldbooks.
Mongoose is fairly unusual in having a corebook with setting and then supplements for it as if a generic, and crossing genres in the process. They did it with MRQ, and again with Traveller.
salochin999
SOC-13
I think the rules can do that in theory but the internal logic of some of the rules pushes things in a certain direction.
1) The power of individual systems can vary by multiple orders of magnitude so 95% of the systems rolled are no match for the hipop, hitech Alpha systems so even with a randomly rolled subsector you're probably going to get a pocket Imperium or occasionally two alpha systems in conflict.
2) The slow comms means if one of those pocket Imperiums expands at the expense of its neighboring pocket Imperiums then a partially decentralized power structure is inevitable with a never-ending battle of wills going on between the core and the periphery worsening as the Imperium expands.
3) An Imperium that eventually consumes hundreds of alpha planets and their hinterland pocket empires will eventually have the money and facilities to build a huge navy.
So in a lot of ways the OTU is a product of the rules.
You can start a game in the OTU at an earlier date so the process isn't complete yet or an YTU at earlier stages of expansion but logically the end result will be similar due to the logic of the rules.
(There are probably ways round that but personally I don't have a problem with that in itself - in fact i think it's quite cool that the game has such a strong internal logic.)
#
Is there a problem with this rules generated setting - whether the OTU one or a MTU generated with the same system generation rules?
The problem I see is a lot (most?) players like the game equivalent of the hero's journey where they get a task in a settlement, go out into the wilderness and then come back to the settlement a hero - there and back again - which in Traveller terms could be seen as a journey from the big ship universe of the Imperium into a small ship universe and back again.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monomyth
The alpha planets with their dreadnought fleets can play the role of the start and end point of the adventure but where's the wilderness?
Having the OTU on the frontier was an attempt provide the wilderness which doesn't work too well because the frontier isn't open so the frontier is swarming with big fleets and Zhodani agents. Virus, Rebellion etc are imo all attempts (consciously or otherwise) to provide more wilderness for the players to venture into.
An easier solution maybe - especially if you take on board the idea of trade being much more limited by distance than previously assumed - is to simply see the Imperium as a network of the clusters made by the alpha planets and their hinterlands - with everything outside those clusters pretty much completely ignored - except by the Scout Service.
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Given that the world generation system produces a universe that logically naturally tends to become like the OTU over time then perhaps the key to creating alternate settings is to simply create alternate world generation systems.
For example if you did away with the seeding idea so the world gen went
1) roll physical stats
2) check for native sentient species and their TL
3) roll pop and govt stats depending on results of (2)
the universe might look very different especially as the species are unlikely to have developed space travel at the same time (and some might still be in a half-evolved state) so the first species to get star ships would likely have expanded over the other species in some form or other.
salochin999
SOC-13
A thought on some of the comments related to writing for the OTU.
An adventure set for example in a desert world doesn't have to be attached to a specific OTU world. It could be attached to a secondary planet in any existing system.
edit: I mean the adventure could be set on a secondary planet in a system so the GM could place it in whichever OTU system was most convenient for their game.
Also alien artifacts can provide any tech you want: chameleon suits, personal force shields etc.
If I had a better handle on the OTU history i'd probably set a game earlier maybe soon after the Imperium got to TL13 and the first J-4 ships so with a *lower* level of standard tech but with lots of higher tech alien artifacts as "treasure."
An adventure set for example in a desert world doesn't have to be attached to a specific OTU world. It could be attached to a secondary planet in any existing system.
edit: I mean the adventure could be set on a secondary planet in a system so the GM could place it in whichever OTU system was most convenient for their game.
Also alien artifacts can provide any tech you want: chameleon suits, personal force shields etc.
If I had a better handle on the OTU history i'd probably set a game earlier maybe soon after the Imperium got to TL13 and the first J-4 ships so with a *lower* level of standard tech but with lots of higher tech alien artifacts as "treasure."
I did a setting writeup for JTAS Online called The Outrim Frontier set in the Marches in Year 400. Two setting articles (players' and referee's) and the old adventure Leviathan backdated to 400. It might interest you.
Hans
I think, to be fair, Chaosium’s Worlds of Wonder Box set (which was the original attempt at generic BRP) was the very first of it’s kind. It wasn’t unsuccessful as a system, it just wasn’t marketed particularly aggressively and other companies stole a march on it - notably GURPS. However, the Big Gold Book of BRP has sold pretty well since it was released in the late 2000s.
The RuneQuest adaptation that Mongoose made was developed from the original RuneQuest, rather than BRP, and continued in RuneQuest 6 which is now under the auspice of Greg Stafford again via The Design Mechanism license, while it was also endorsed by Steve Perrin (original system designer) in the forward too.
A lot of game companies have made generic systems that have been adapted from successful games - including d20 lest we forget it! I don’t regard Mongoose Traveller as being a weak entrant in this field at all, incidentally, as even the default campaign setting (Imperium) has a variety of worlds and tech levels within it. Also, the 2300AD and Judge Dredd adaptations were successful, and there has been a number of other third party settings that have done well with it too. They have yet to release many non-sci-fi/alternative settings with the rules, although that may start cranking up soon. I’m not sure I’d use it for a fantasy setting however, even though I have seen a few rules supplements for that. Historical-with-tech, however, I would see no problems at all.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
I sometimes think people miss the main way in which CT and MgT are generic rules - they cover adventures from TL0 all the way to TL20+
It requires some work by the ref to adapt character generation to a particular TL/world, but I think the effort is worth it.
It requires some work by the ref to adapt character generation to a particular TL/world, but I think the effort is worth it.
salochin999
SOC-13
Yes, sounds interesting.
I read that yesterday and it struck me as something that has been in the back of my mind as well. So, the comment stuck with me as I lurked about (I am about lurking about for ideas as I am about to start a new campaign with new players) and something came to me in the middle of the night:
Ya know, I suddenly realized that most comments regarding this point, and many others, are linear in thinking. Not only linear time in the OTU chronology but also exclusively on the spacial x-axis.
We know what is spinward of the Spinward Marches and we know what is rim ward, crossword and trailing - but what is "above" and what is "below." All OTU maps are a bird's-eye view of the spacial x-axis plane, but have we even thought about the y-axis? Have we even thought in spacial 3D?
Another post I read yesterday (perhaps further down on this thread? or was it to do with photo-traveller?) rightly pointed out that the old CT adventures supplied about 80% of material, the referee needs to supply at least 20% of MTU materiel. Maybe we could look at the OTU Canonical mapping the same way: it is only at least a third of what is there.
That is, we know how the spin ward main runs along the x-axis but perhaps there is a y-axis trade-route junction that runs through Efate "above" and "below" (I don't even know how to label those directions in Galactic Terms.)
I am not sure if I am making sense here - I get ideas and then it is difficult to communicate them without lots of editing, it's more like rambling.
But it is similar to a pet peeve of mine with sf movies and TV: there is Capt. Kirk on the bridge speaking with the skipper of another vessel. They break communications and we see the other vessel on the screen facing the Enterprise (because we also get exterior shots of the two ships) on the exact same plane like two ships standing-off at sea - in space.
Why don't we ever see the other ship from the aft starboard angle? and vice-versa see the other ship from the forward port? Especially when they engage in space combat (the pother pet peeve is explosion sounds in a vacuum, but that's another post).
That doesn't apply to naval formations, of course, and 3D mo-boards would probably blow my mind, but two ship meeting each other on the exact same plane and "altitude" is probably very rare unless it's in orbit or something.
That's just an example of the 2D x-axis thinking that is so intuitive.
So back to the original problem of no frontiers. I think we have plenty of opportunity for lots of MTU (even OTU, if someone wants to write up some sort of sketch) for multiple layers of the Atlas of the Imperium.
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I missed that thread, but that is exactly what occurred to me last night. I think it would be possible, and I might just do this for MTU, to create y-axis trade route in an OTU sector or subsector to fulfill that exploration need. Bearing in mind to keep the Rifts open and impassable as mentioned on that thread.
Thanks
Thanks
Another benefit for those of us who like to "eat their cake and have it too
", is that if you have two different write-ups for a Sector (say the Canonical MJD-Gateway Domain version of Ley Sector and the old Judges Guild version of Ley Sector [each of which have different stellar positions relative to one-another]), you can simply place the one sector above or below the other, and still consider them to both be the same sector, but at different z-altitudes North/South. Using this model, it also means that the Imperium has frontiers once again (Z+/-, above/below [perhaps it also means that there are other polities significantly far away above/below]), should the GM so desire, and it also means that there are as many "GM-preserve" sectors as the GM desires that will never be overwritten by OTU canon (as near or as far away from Charted Space as the GM desires).
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Thus turning the Imperium from one parsec thick to two parsecs thick?
I would have a big problem with doubling up on sectors that way: the history of the sector just got a lot more complicated, as instead of two scores of major worlds interacting you now have four scores of major worlds. Compound that with another hundred 'layers' and the task of providing even a minimum level of coherence would be more than I could handle -- more than anyone could handle, I believe.
The biggest benefit I would derive from turning the OTU 3D, say make it 100 parsecs "deep", would be to increase the number of systems without increasing the number of inhabited systems. I'd distribute the canonical worlds in suitable clusters on and above and below the astrographical plane and fill in with empty (and mostly worthless) systems. That would give the various navies a lot more territory to patrol (or fail to patrol) and provide places for pirates to lurk and intercept merchants.
I've thought about doing something like that, but I've come to the conclusion that it would be a lot more work than it would be worth. YMMV.
Hans
Thus turning the Imperium from one parsec thick to two parsecs thick?
I would have a big problem with doubling up on sectors that way: the history of the sector just got a lot more complicated, as instead of two scores of major worlds interacting you now have four scores of major worlds. Compound that with another hundred 'layers' and the task of providing even a minimum level of coherence would be more than I could handle -- more than anyone could handle, I believe.
The biggest benefit I would derive from turning the OTU 3D, say make it 100 parsecs "deep", would be to increase the number of systems without increasing the number of inhabited systems. I'd distribute the canonical worlds in suitable clusters on and above and below the astrographical plane and fill in with empty (and mostly worthless) systems. That would give the various navies a lot more territory to patrol (or fail to patrol) and provide places for pirates to lurk and intercept merchants.
That is similar to how I would do it as well. Many of those other systems would be otherwise useless or uninhabited (many of them Red Dwarfs with no meaningful planets or Gas Giants). My thought would be to have a +/- 5pc notation in each hex, which would represent a "layer" that has a North/South depth of 11pc (in the plane being +/- 0pc). Other stars might exist in otherwise empty hexes, but there isn't anything in those hexes worth exploiting. Other sectors North/South (or alternate versions of a sector above/below) would be their own 11pc thick "layer".
My rationale would be that when the Ancients were active, their terraforming program was to (generally) move out along the plane of the galaxy (terraforming many worlds as they went), with the eventual goal of then starting to terraform North/South from these positions later. But the Final War intervened, and the project was never completed. Thus, when Humaniti (and other races) spread out into the Galaxy, they preferentially moved out along the vectors that already contained partially terraformed worlds, rather than go to worlds with "exotic" atmospheres that lay in different directions. I would make the greatest North/South extensions of Imperial (or Sophont) Space centered on homeworlds and otherwise important or Capital Worlds (i.e. Terra, Vland, Sylea, Zhdant, Kusyu, etc.) and have the North/South extension of those territories "taper-off" in the z-direction the farther you move away from the core/central world in the xy-plane.
I like a challenge.
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What would that do for jump distance? If everything is up or down 0-10 PC from each other, traversing the diagonal is going to be longer than the flat-plane-assumption distance.
One way is to simply say that jump distances are actually X% longer than it says on the tin, but that the relative distances between already established systems is still the same (e.g. in flatland, star systems Albert and Bobert are 2 PC from each other and thus can exchange far traders. In 3D-land, Albert is a parsec above the plane, and Bobert 1 PC below, so they are really 2.8 PC apart, but that's okay, because a J2 drive actually jumps 3 PC.)
Another way is to say that the already established systems are all in a plane, and thus the jump distances are what they are. Unrealistic, but simple.
Any idea how you would do it?
I like a challenge.
Clearly.
