Using Traveller to play other settings

[Blue Ghost]

Okay, so I know that there's HERO Traveller, and that there's a PBP game going on set in Rome or Ancient Greece (or both ... I might be confusing that with another BBS that has a Greek game going on), and as discussed elsewhere that there've been some fantasy Traveller games.

But how often and what other genres has anyone used the core engine for? Has anybody done a western? Classic non-fantasy medieval? Contemporary spy thriller?

I'm just kind of curious for a couple of reasons;
1) I've written some samurai adventure seeds on my blog which didn't get much readership, and yet I've seen people briefly discuss other genres for the game.
2) In the posted interview Marc Miller / Avery states that the game was meant to be a GURPS like game, but evolved into something else, and I was curious how many people still used it like a GURPS like game engine.

Thanks for any replies.

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

I use Mongoose Traveller for all settings. Half of its books are for generic settings. Been doing a few games of Dark Albion using Mongoose Traveller. It's a great selling point for the core rules' die-roll mechanics to new players.

 

[Timerover51]

Well, in Supplement 1: 1001 Characters, you have the Traveller statistics for John Carter of Mars, while in the Little Tan Books for the original Dungeons and Dragons, you have a fair amount of data for running an adventure on Barsoom, so putting the two games together, and you could run a campaign on Barsoom.

Another possibility would be something like L. Sprague de Camp's A Gun for Dinosaur, with Time Traveling in the game, and also look at the various BBC series with Nigel Marvin, "Prehistoric Park", "Chased by Dinosaurs", and "Sea Monsters: The Seven Deadliest Seas of History". What with the animal encounters and creation data, you could have some fun with travelers going bac in time.

Paul Elliot, aka Mithras, did a terrific job adapting Mongoose Traveller to the 1953 UFO sightings in Attack Squadron: Roswell, so looking at that would give another whole set of ideas.

Then there is H. Beam Piper's concept of Paratime, or traveling to other timelines, where technology may be considerably behind todays, and putting in some modern-equipped characters with current technical knowledge in that milieu. Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen would be another great source of ideas, along with the Paratime stories you can get on Project Gutenberg.

For a western, I would prefer Space: 1889, but you could do it with Traveller, with its very good character generating system.

 

[Adam Dray]

Paul Elliot / Mithras also put out a Bronze Age setting using Traveller rules, didn't he?

 

[Silverhawk]

Funny you should mention this topic. I was just considering what kind of settings you could run using Traveller rules.

I would think settings involving current or recent past (Victorian, 1920's, Cold War Espionage) should be easy to do. Barsoom and other 'Lost Worlds' as well.

In fact most historic settings. Psionics in place of magic if you want a more fantasy feel.

BTW, Traveller HERO was moving the Traveller setting to the HERO rules engine.

 

[whartung]

Well, to be a little pedantic, since TNE was GDWs house system, that they used for T2K and Dark Conspiracy, they also used it for Cadillacs and Dinosaurs.

 

[aramis]

Well, to be a little pedantic, since TNE was GDWs house system, that they used for T2K and Dark Conspiracy, they also used it for Cadillacs and Dinosaurs.

Your pedantic Technicality is erroneous.

TNE was the 5th House System game, porting Traveller over to it. T2K 2.0 was first, then Dark Conspiracy and T2K 2.2E (the 2nd gen house system), then C&D, and FINALLY TTNE, with the third gen of the system.

Unless you accept Frank's circa 2003 claim that Space 1999 is the first House System game. In which case, all the above are shoved down a notch;
Space 1889 is 1st with the prototype (1d6 vs skill for most skills)
T2K 2.0 is 2nd with the move to d10's vs skill for all uses
DC & T2K 2.2 are 3rd gen, and use d20's vs stat+skill for all uses
Caddy's and Dinos is a variant 3rd gen - point built rather than career, but IIRC, still using d20 vs Stat + Skill for everything, and every rule I remember looking up was identical to DC.
Then TTNE comes in and makes a few more changes (first to use declining skills per term, a few minor tweaks to other rules) as 4th gen.

I don;t actually recall if DC had a 1d10 version...

So, no, they aren't using a Traveller edition...

Tho', if you had Survival Margin before TTNE came out, you could play Traveller using T2K and/or DC... I did... then sent a letter begging GDW not to go that way...

 

[Reynard]

There's Cowboys and Xenomorphs produced by Mongoose using Traveller game mechanics. It's mostly a wild west setting with a smidgen of aliens most likely influenced by the 2011 Cowboys and Aliens movie.

I thought there was a pirates themed campaign.

Traveller already has the lower tech weapons, armor and equipment for setting other than far future and the game mechanics easily accommodate any era.

 

[Keklas Rekobah]

As I've posted in other threads, Traveller and the Stargate TV series' work well together.

The X-Files series is also adaptable, as are the Fringe and Millennium series'.

Once you adjust for Tech Level and work out the backstory, everything falls into place.

As a suggestion, if you go with an adaptation of a popular SF franchise, it may be best to avoid using the main characters from the franchise as PCs. Even as regular NPCs, the presence Scully, Mulder and Jack O'Niell tends to lead to more meta-discussions than actual role-play.

 

[infojunky]

There is a lot of room in the collection of Games called Traveller. Even within the 2d6 lineage of them. While I have generally run lots of SF games that share a lot of flavor with the core traveller ethos, they all have tended to vary in the parts.

Frequently I have used much loose methods for character generation, where narrative rather than hard fixed rules guide their creation.

Frequently the narrative method has be used to build character for Cyberpunk flavored games. In which a collection of hardware and implants are often as much a part of a character as the core Skills are.

Like other games of that ilk, character are more designed off of archetypes rather than specific careers.

Honestly a workable point build system would be nice.

 

[Jame]

Paul Elliot / Mithras also put out a Bronze Age setting using Traveller rules, didn't he?

Not Mithras himself, but he inspired simeone to. Look in the CT section.

 

[Timerover51]

Not Mithras himself, but he inspired simeone to. Look in the CT section.

He put it in the Roman Empire period.

http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Discuss/showthread.php?t=21327&highlight=mercator

 

[Adam Dray]

Ah, that's what I was thinking.

 

[Timerover51]

There is a lot of room in the collection of Games called Traveller. Even within the 2d6 lineage of them. While I have generally run lots of SF games that share a lot of flavor with the core traveller ethos, they all have tended to vary in the parts.

Frequently I have used much loose methods for character generation, where narrative rather than hard fixed rules guide their creation.

Frequently the narrative method has be used to build character for Cyberpunk flavored games. In which a collection of hardware and implants are often as much a part of a character as the core Skills are.

Like other games of that ilk, character are more designed off of archetypes rather than specific careers.

Honestly a workable point build system would be nice.

There are a few other ways I have used to produce more viable characters for players. One is use a 6 + D6 format, giving a range of 7 to 12 for player attributes, another is roll 3D6 and take the 2 highest, a third is roll 12 set of 2D6 and choose the 6 highest rolls. One option, which I have not tried, but thought about, is taking the characteristics of some of the characters that show up in Supplement 1: 1001 Characters and Supplement 4: Citizens of the Imperium, and let the players choose from them.

There are also quite a range of possible characters in the various adventures.

 

[whulorigan]

There are a few other ways I have used to produce more viable characters for players. One is use a 6 + D6 format, giving a range of 7 to 12 for player attributes, another is roll 3D6 and take the 2 highest, a third is roll 12 set of 2D6 and choose the 6 highest rolls. One option, which I have not tried, but thought about, is taking the characteristics of some of the characters that show up in Supplement 1: 1001 Characters and Supplement 4: Citizens of the Imperium, and let the players choose from them.

There are also quite a range of possible characters in the various adventures.

Another possibility might simply be to roll the normal 2D6 for stats, but adjust anything less than 5 up to 5 (either before or after CharGen depending on your preference). That gets rid of extremely low stats without biasing the "average" stat to a higher value.

 

[aramis]

Another possibility might simply be to roll the normal 2D6 for stats, but adjust anything less than 5 up to 5 (either before or after CharGen depending on your preference). That gets rid of extremely low stats without biasing the "average" stat to a higher value.

Actually, it would raise the average.

Instead of 252/36=7,
simply resetting you get an average of 262/36=7.2777. (Because you're subtracting 2+3+3+4+4+4=20 then adding 5+5+5+5+5+5=30)
Rerolling until 5+, (252-(2+3+3+4+4+4+))/(36-6)=232/30=7.733...

Neither variation changes the mode (=7), and the median won't change, either... (median shifts 3 to the right/high, but remains in the 7's...)

 

[Brandon C]

I think I ended up having players roll 2d6 seven times, taking the six highest and assigning them to the attribute desired.

 

[coliver988]

I make them roll straight But have one extra roll they can use to replace a single stat. I also let them roll for skills but choose the table afterwards sometimes. It lets the players shape their character yet still retain some elements of chance.

And I really like doing it RAW when I roll up NPCs. Random rolls can generate its own back story.

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

Another possibility might simply be to roll the normal 2D6 for stats, but adjust anything less than 5 up to 5 (either before or after CharGen depending on your preference). That gets rid of extremely low stats without biasing the "average" stat to a higher value.

I wonder if you end up with more of your Characteristics being 5 then? Well, maybe not.

 

[Blue Ghost]

There are a few other ways I have used to produce more viable characters for players. One is use a 6 + D6 format, giving a range of 7 to 12 for player attributes, another is roll 3D6 and take the 2 highest, a third is roll 12 set of 2D6 and choose the 6 highest rolls. One option, which I have not tried, but thought about, is taking the characteristics of some of the characters that show up in Supplement 1: 1001 Characters and Supplement 4: Citizens of the Imperium, and let the players choose from them.

There are also quite a range of possible characters in the various adventures.

Supp 4 and the blurb at the end of TTB and one or two other supplements that give examples of books and films that can be emulated with the game system, is part of the reason of why I started this thread.

I remember a picture in ... I think ... it was MT, under chargen, where you see a lineup sketch of various different types of characters, and one of them is a TL1 or TL0 barbarian holding a spear. My college age mind at the time interpreted that as being that MT was trying to get back to its GURPS-like origins.

To this end I was curious if anybody still treated the game like that, or if it was all homebrew scifi with elements of OTU, or even strictly OTU. Maybe I should have started a poll. Oh well.

Thanks for the replies. I was kind of curious.

p.s. I mentioned this elsewhere on the BBS, but I've always been surprised that GT didn't get more traffic and posts because of all of the GURPS supps available for use with GT. I guess that's just me though.