mike wightman
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Navigation 1 - be able to walk from cassette storage area to computer and install correct program cassette... 
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CT Only: What One Thing Would You Change About Classic Traveller?
- Thread starter robject
- Start date
Most of the time.
If I'm reading it right, the ANNIC NOVA requires its navigator to take star sights manually.
Spinward Flow
SOC-14 5K
ANNIC NOVA was a gloriously confusing mishmash of anachrotech.
That sent me down a rabbit hole of Wikipedia and Atomic Rockets.
Manual star sights were obsolete for aircraft (aside from serving as a backup) by the mid-1960s.
But the Apollo missions (into the early 1970s) used them!
So, it wasn't necessarily as anachronistic in 1977 as it appears today.
Spinward Flow
SOC-14 5K
There are star trackers for navigation on robotic spacecraft orbiting around the solar system today. The only difference is, there isn't a crewman aboard the spacecraft operating the star tracker.
Well, yeah. But that's sort of the point -- it feels blatantly anachronistic now (and probably would have two decades ago, too). Forty years ago, it might have seemed slightly dated, but not totally obsolete.There are star trackers for navigation on robotic spacecraft orbiting around the solar system today. The only difference is, there isn't a crewman aboard the spacecraft operating the star tracker.
Oh, and on the ANNIC NOVA, the astrogation dome is in the wrong place. Half of its field of view is blocked by the Collector sail! It really should be on the "front" of the ship, not on the "top". This kind of thing is almost inevitable when you're doing deckplans as "haunted castle" first instead of "starship simulation" first, so I can't really fault them too much for it.
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If I could change only one thing ... I would add something like Champions' armor verse physical damage system for combat.
To me the only real issue with CT was the fact that there weren't anymore LBBs being published, and by LBBs I mean adventures. I've stated it many times, but while Gygax's TSR was pumping out really elaborate and attractive full color adventure modules with maps, illustrations, charts and whatever else, GDW was publishing respectable adventures in the LBB format, but otherwise bare bones when it came to art ... and Keith is no Rembrandt for my money, so seeing his pencil sketches in anything really made me wince.
With the addition of an armor system for personal combat, hopefully, that would allow newer variants on armor, such that you could have Barbarian oriented TL1 or TL0 mail or mesh armor all the way up to some anime battlesuits that are the size of a small car or truck.
For my money for a system that made the claim of being a "do-all" scifi RPG it excluded a lot of genre variants. I mean I get why now, but it's like if I wanted time travel, then I would have to house rule it or grab a copy of the Doc Who RPG. If I wanted dinosaurs from something like "The Land that Time forgot" I would have to spend a few days prepping dinos with the Animal Encounter chart for the group.
Robots should have been in the basic rule book(s).
I think variants on energy weapons and Gauss or Electromagnetic Guns were needed.
For my money I was really attracted to the genre by the artistry of things like Trek, Space Odyssey, various publications including the Terran Trade Authority, and this game seemed to peter out on its promise of being a "do all scifi RPG" by excluding sub-genres. I mean it's not a big deal, but I just remember all the times we had to wing things in the 80s and 90s. Whatever. The game is something other than what aI thought it was, so it's not a big deal, but it would have been nice to have ironed out more hard rules to address various things--notably armor in personal combat.
To me the only real issue with CT was the fact that there weren't anymore LBBs being published, and by LBBs I mean adventures. I've stated it many times, but while Gygax's TSR was pumping out really elaborate and attractive full color adventure modules with maps, illustrations, charts and whatever else, GDW was publishing respectable adventures in the LBB format, but otherwise bare bones when it came to art ... and Keith is no Rembrandt for my money, so seeing his pencil sketches in anything really made me wince.
With the addition of an armor system for personal combat, hopefully, that would allow newer variants on armor, such that you could have Barbarian oriented TL1 or TL0 mail or mesh armor all the way up to some anime battlesuits that are the size of a small car or truck.
For my money for a system that made the claim of being a "do-all" scifi RPG it excluded a lot of genre variants. I mean I get why now, but it's like if I wanted time travel, then I would have to house rule it or grab a copy of the Doc Who RPG. If I wanted dinosaurs from something like "The Land that Time forgot" I would have to spend a few days prepping dinos with the Animal Encounter chart for the group.
Robots should have been in the basic rule book(s).
I think variants on energy weapons and Gauss or Electromagnetic Guns were needed.
For my money I was really attracted to the genre by the artistry of things like Trek, Space Odyssey, various publications including the Terran Trade Authority, and this game seemed to peter out on its promise of being a "do all scifi RPG" by excluding sub-genres. I mean it's not a big deal, but I just remember all the times we had to wing things in the 80s and 90s. Whatever. The game is something other than what aI thought it was, so it's not a big deal, but it would have been nice to have ironed out more hard rules to address various things--notably armor in personal combat.
shades of CE. I pulled the damage system from AHL and ran from there.
The journal articles we’re almost as good
Honestly that is just dogma on the part of the fans.
Ok was attracTed by the vistions of future worlds in literature than film or tv. Part of the fun was translating books into the game.
Well, I can only speak for myself. There was a lack of variants on a lot of things. Which I think most of the players I knew way back when could live with--as an aside most of them seemed to gravitate towards SNUB pistols ... I don't know why, but that seemed to make up for a lack of variants on their end.
I don't recall reading much on robots in the journals, and I never heard that other fans wanted more and different versions of Gauss and energy weapons. If so, then that makes sense I suppose, but I never heard it as something desired.
To me, in retrospect, the game itself felt like a test almost; i.e. "Can you play with what we (GDW) have given you?" That's probably just my personal cynicism, but even so, that is even if it were true, then in my opinion you still need to service the player base.
I guess what I should have said was "more adventures". The equipment and limitations thereof, not just in weapons but things like armor or vacc suits .... or the "Lamborghini Tank / AFV", really didn't effect any of the people I played with too much. It was a lack of story material in places other than the Spinward Marches. I would have liked to have seen other Double Adventures or Adventures take place in Aslan space, Vargr space, K'Kree space, places outside the Solomani sphere, Vegan or Geonee space and so forth. The Geonee have an affinity for Volcanic regions, but there's no adventures for them anywhere. The Swordys tend to be this Northern European offshoot, but there's only Mission on Mithril, which itself was pretty boring stuff. I read all about the Aslan and Aslan space, but I can't recall once adventure that took place in the Heirate. It would have been interesting to see what was way deep inside the Vargr Extents. It might have been interesting to visit, as a human, Droyne dominated worlds ... or maybe a Droyne world that didn't know that Grandfather's war was over.
Whether it was OTU stuff or proto-Traveller adventures a-la Snapshot or whatever, it just seemed perplexing to my ignorant eyes as to why TSR kept cranking out really high quality adventure modules, and us scifi fans had to wait for what seemed an eternity for another LBB.
Whatever. It's history. I've jotted most of my ideas for the game here. I'm just sorry I couldn't play it more like I wanted to.
I don't recall reading much on robots in the journals, and I never heard that other fans wanted more and different versions of Gauss and energy weapons. If so, then that makes sense I suppose, but I never heard it as something desired.
To me, in retrospect, the game itself felt like a test almost; i.e. "Can you play with what we (GDW) have given you?" That's probably just my personal cynicism, but even so, that is even if it were true, then in my opinion you still need to service the player base.
I guess what I should have said was "more adventures". The equipment and limitations thereof, not just in weapons but things like armor or vacc suits .... or the "Lamborghini Tank / AFV", really didn't effect any of the people I played with too much. It was a lack of story material in places other than the Spinward Marches. I would have liked to have seen other Double Adventures or Adventures take place in Aslan space, Vargr space, K'Kree space, places outside the Solomani sphere, Vegan or Geonee space and so forth. The Geonee have an affinity for Volcanic regions, but there's no adventures for them anywhere. The Swordys tend to be this Northern European offshoot, but there's only Mission on Mithril, which itself was pretty boring stuff. I read all about the Aslan and Aslan space, but I can't recall once adventure that took place in the Heirate. It would have been interesting to see what was way deep inside the Vargr Extents. It might have been interesting to visit, as a human, Droyne dominated worlds ... or maybe a Droyne world that didn't know that Grandfather's war was over.
Whether it was OTU stuff or proto-Traveller adventures a-la Snapshot or whatever, it just seemed perplexing to my ignorant eyes as to why TSR kept cranking out really high quality adventure modules, and us scifi fans had to wait for what seemed an eternity for another LBB.
Whatever. It's history. I've jotted most of my ideas for the game here. I'm just sorry I couldn't play it more like I wanted to.
Spinward Flow
SOC-14 5K
Would this be a bad time to divulge that for the past week or so I've gone off of a tangent because of the Where do the Express Boat Tenders stay? thread where I started seriously attempting to spec sheet a TL=14 Jump-5 Express Boat Network using LBB5.80 ... which was a lot of fun!
But then, once I had the parts and pieces ready to fit together I was starting to move from theory towards putting the package into practice, which would only start to make sense in the context of a map ... and that's when I remembered the J-5 Trade Route over in the Riftspan Reaches Sector on the map. There would be a good test case for the J5 XBoats and Tenders and everything that I'd built up, right?
Well ... as it turns out ... no, actually.
As soon as I started REALLY digging into the astrogation pathway along the J-5 Trans-Rift Trade Route I started to notice that it was mostly a Jump-3 route, with a couple of Jump-2 in it, one Jump-4 and two Jump-5 segments. That kind of astrogation path basically made a ruin of my plans for any kind of (useful) Jump-2 Runabout to fill the role of the Imperial Scout/Courier in such a setup. On top of that, the J-5 Trans-Rift Trade Route isn't actually an Express Boat route, it's merely a TRADE route from rimward to coreward across the Great Rift, as opposed to being an explicit Express Boat Network thing.
At that point, all of the underlying assumptions I had been making for my prospective J5 XBoat Network did one of these ...
... and all I was left with was rubble, because the stuff I had been so painstakingly designing "didn't work" if I shoved the Tenders up to Jump-3 and TL=12 so they could "self deploy" along the route because then they didn't have enough hangar space for the XBoats and Runabouts they needed to interface with on a regular basis. The Runabouts needed to be J3 instead of merely J2, just to be able to get anywhere useful in a reasonable amount of time (there's a LOT of SPACE between those stars out there! ) and the logistics for the whole thing was collapsing under its own weight due to the limitations of the tech levels and starports (and where the starports with enough tech level for annual maintenance were located) ... and ...Let's just say it wasn't working out.
I'd built this beautiful collection of starships and small craft (4 types total) that worked GREAT together ... until there was an actual MAP involved ... and then everything fell apart. The starships and small craft I'd built didn't "fit" the setting ... in THAT place, which you would think ought to be THE proving ground for the concept in a "wind it up and make it go" kind of plug and play sort of way.
Except it didn't.
So I went back to the Naval Architect's drawing board
and tried starting over with my newfound understanding of the context of the J-5 Trans-Rift Trade Route that I'd only previously known about "from afar" rather than getting up close and personal with it.First things first ... ditch the entire XBoat+Tender+Scout/Courier drill entirely.
Second ... build a under 200 tons starship that could manage Jump-3, and have enough internal fuel capacity for 5 parsecs without refueling and add an option for using L-Hyd drop tanks that would extend the range out to 6 parsecs if the drop tanks were retained through jump (reducing jump capacity by -1 while the drop tanks were retained) so as to exploit some of the 6 parsec transits between star systems. Once I got those parameters settled on, I ultimately found out that the ship I'd built could actually transit 8 parsecs (using multiple jumps of course) without refueling if the L-Hyd drop tank were expended for jump fuel on the first jump (because 2+3+3=8).
Since the location for all these starship design shenanigans was centered on the J-5 Trans-Rift Trade Route I figured I might as well "go for it" and make it a full on Aslan starship design ... so out came Alien Module 1: Aslan to read and pore over so as to get a sense for how the culture was different and what kinds of impacts that would have on the starship's design.
First stop ... crew roles assigned by gender imperatives (go figure, eh?).
Amusingly enough, I could take inspiration from my previous starship designs, but needed to rework them a little bit so as to shuffle the crew roles around. An Aslan ship could have a male Pilot/Gunner but not a male Male Pilot/Navigator, since Navigator is a female gender role in the society. Also, if the ship was going to engage in ANY commercial activity at all (and I was planning for commerce to be a thing with the design) there needed to be female Purser on board. So I wound up with a male Pilot/Gunner and a female Purser/Navigator/Engineer as the 2 crew for an under 200 ton starship (the Navigator and Engineer responsibilities are not concurrent with the Purser responsibilities, most of the time, is how I justified it to myself). And just to confirm, I made sure that the character generation system would "allow" for the requisite skills to be awarded to an Aslan character using the rules from Alien Module 1: Aslan from CT.
Second stop ... wait, the Aslan are a base-8 numbering system society?
Oh, right, they only have 4 digits per manipulator appendage, unlike humans with 5 digits per manipulator ... so it makes sense they count everything in base-8 instead of base-10. Which then in turn means that their favored numbers for starships and their tonnages are not going to break along multiples and powers of 10 (100, 1000, 10,000, etc.), but along multiples and powers of 8 (64, 512, 4096, etc. in base-10).
So what do I wind up with?
A 192 ton starship with a 48 ton L-Hyd drop tank.
What are those tonnage numbers in base-8?
300 ton starship with 60 ton L-Hyd drop tank (Trokh base-8 numbering).
Finally, things start falling into place and lining up NICELY for a culture other than the default Imperials.
Started with a TL=12 Jump-3, 2G, Power plant-3 starship, built it all out to cross-verify the numbers on everything and make sure the starship had a "useful" cargo fraction of at least 20 tons (with any mail vault included in that 20 tons of cargo space), worked out the collapsible fuel bladder size in order to "flex" the cargo space as either cargo or fuel depending on how far the next jump needed to be, reverified the needed fuel fraction to reach 5 (internal only), 6 (drop tanks retained) or 8 (drop tanks expended) parsecs of range to confirm how much fuel would be left over after finishing the last jump (answer: between 1.5 and 2 tons of power plant fuel remaining, enough to reach a "nearby" world for wilderness refueling) ... and then double checked everything again. Adjust a number here, shuffle a fraction of a ton there ... twist the screws on the numbers until they scream for mercy ... and then triple check it all over again.
And IT WORKS ... oh my sharpened dewclaws does this starship design ever WORK.
The economics for the straship is a different problem (and in the Aslan context, a decidedly female problem to deal with), but that's something that gets dealt with AFTER the basic blueprints result in something that can navigate The Great Rift in ways that make you wonder what all the fuss was about.
And then, just for shizzle, I took the exact same hull size and L-Hyd drop tank size (so everything is common to the two designs), bumped up the tech level to see if the same basic design still worked when "taking it to the next level" ... and sure enough, it did! Wound up with a TL=13 Jump-4, 2G, Power plant-4 starship that still managed to achieve the same range of 5 (internal only), 6 (drop tanks retained) or 8 (drop tanks expended) parsecs of range with almost exactly the same cargo fraction (still minimum 20 tons) with a collapsible fuel bladder in order to "flex" the cargo space as either cargo or fuel depending on how far the next jump needed to be. More rounds of cross-checking that in the various configurations all "add up" the way they're supposed to so as to confirm there's still fuel left after breakout from jump (answer: between 1.1 and 2 tons of power plant fuel remaining, enough to reach a "nearby" world for wilderness refueling) ... and then double checked everything again. Adjust a number here, shuffle a fraction of a ton there ... twist the screws on the numbers until they scream for mercy yet again ... and then triple check it all over again.
And once again ... IT JUST WORKS.
Again, the economics for the starship is a different problem (once again, in the Aslan context, a decidedly female problem to solve), but if the TL=12 J3 design paved the way ... the TL=13 J4 design says "hold my beer" for making Rift travel look EASY.
Spinward Flow
SOC-14 5K
I even took a look at how long it would take to run the J-5 Trans-Rift Trade Route one way with the different versions and drive/fuel configurations. The results were shocking even to me. Mind you, the two ends of the route are 41 parsecs apart, ignoring navigation in between the two ends.
J-5 Route Aulryakh / Aulryakh / Riftspan Reaches to Wahtoikoeakh / Wahtoikeoakh / Riftspan Reaches jumps with different jump drives
Trouble is, squeezing a Jump-5 drive into a sub-200 ton starship means it's going to have no appreciable/useful cargo fraction remaining ... and maintaining the beast is going to be a hardship in the Riftspan Reaches since there are only 8 worlds with TL=14 in the sector with 2 of them decidedly inconveniently located, so annual maintenance could be a logistics problem. Nothing ruins your profit margins faster than needing to go out of your way to make it back to a shipyard that can actually do the annual overhaul maintenance you need (TL=14 for Jump-5 drives) rather than simply being able to stop off almost anywhere in the neighborhood with a lower TL=12-13 to get the job done.
Riftspan Reaches Sector
TL=14 worlds: 8
TL=13 worlds: 7 (+8 TL=14 means 15 shipyards for maintenance)
TL=12 worlds: 16 (+8 TL=14 and +7 TL=13 means 31 shipyards for maintenance)
So in this region of Charted Space ... TL=12-13 for Jump-3 with extra fuel for extended range of 5+ parsecs is DEFINITELY the way to go. The only question I have about the two designs is ... is the faster transit time possible with the TL=13 version worth the premium in the higher construction cost? It's really hard to say, since the "market" in the Riftspan Reaches is going to be quite unlike the "Imperial standard" simply due to the outright remoteness of the various worlds both on and off the J-5 Trans-Rift Trade Route running through the sector. If ever there was a case to be made for using parsecs of distance as a multiplier on the revenue prices for filling up a cargo hold ... this is DEFINITELY the place for it.
Anyway, once I get everything hashed out in the forum editor, I'll post my results over in The Fleet.
Bonus fact: these starship designs would put the Islands Cluster in Reft Sector within relatively easy reach of the rest of the Third Imperium, despite being a minimum of 7 parsecs away from every other star system outside the Islands Cluster.
So although I'm explicitly designing them for use in the Riftspan Reaches and adjacent Verge Sector ... there's no reason why the design specifics couldn't be "copied" elsewhere in charted space by human naval architects for construction in human shipyards to service human settlements in The Great Rift and elsewhere. It's not like there's anything about their construction and design that is uniquely Aslan which cannot be duplicated elsewhere. If anything, the crew requirements would be easier to manage without the assigned gender roles imposed by Aslan society dictating who is "allowed" to do what jobs onboard.
So yeah ... something to look forward to when I can finally get them posted.
J-5 Route Aulryakh / Aulryakh / Riftspan Reaches to Wahtoikoeakh / Wahtoikeoakh / Riftspan Reaches jumps with different jump drives
- Jump-1+1+1+1+1 transit = 45 jumps
- Jump-2+2+2 transit = 24 jumps (TL=12 retaining 48 ton L-Hyd drop tank)
- Jump-3+2 transit = 17 jumps (TL=12 clean configuration, internal fuel only)
- Jump-3+3 transit = 15 jumps (TL=13 retaining 48 ton L-Hyd drop tank)
- Jump-4+1 transit = 14 jumps (TL=13 clean configuration, internal fuel only)
Trouble is, squeezing a Jump-5 drive into a sub-200 ton starship means it's going to have no appreciable/useful cargo fraction remaining ... and maintaining the beast is going to be a hardship in the Riftspan Reaches since there are only 8 worlds with TL=14 in the sector with 2 of them decidedly inconveniently located, so annual maintenance could be a logistics problem. Nothing ruins your profit margins faster than needing to go out of your way to make it back to a shipyard that can actually do the annual overhaul maintenance you need (TL=14 for Jump-5 drives) rather than simply being able to stop off almost anywhere in the neighborhood with a lower TL=12-13 to get the job done.
Riftspan Reaches Sector
TL=14 worlds: 8
TL=13 worlds: 7 (+8 TL=14 means 15 shipyards for maintenance)
TL=12 worlds: 16 (+8 TL=14 and +7 TL=13 means 31 shipyards for maintenance)
So in this region of Charted Space ... TL=12-13 for Jump-3 with extra fuel for extended range of 5+ parsecs is DEFINITELY the way to go. The only question I have about the two designs is ... is the faster transit time possible with the TL=13 version worth the premium in the higher construction cost? It's really hard to say, since the "market" in the Riftspan Reaches is going to be quite unlike the "Imperial standard" simply due to the outright remoteness of the various worlds both on and off the J-5 Trans-Rift Trade Route running through the sector. If ever there was a case to be made for using parsecs of distance as a multiplier on the revenue prices for filling up a cargo hold ... this is DEFINITELY the place for it.
Anyway, once I get everything hashed out in the forum editor, I'll post my results over in The Fleet.
Bonus fact: these starship designs would put the Islands Cluster in Reft Sector within relatively easy reach of the rest of the Third Imperium, despite being a minimum of 7 parsecs away from every other star system outside the Islands Cluster.
So although I'm explicitly designing them for use in the Riftspan Reaches and adjacent Verge Sector ... there's no reason why the design specifics couldn't be "copied" elsewhere in charted space by human naval architects for construction in human shipyards to service human settlements in The Great Rift and elsewhere. It's not like there's anything about their construction and design that is uniquely Aslan which cannot be duplicated elsewhere. If anything, the crew requirements would be easier to manage without the assigned gender roles imposed by Aslan society dictating who is "allowed" to do what jobs onboard.
So yeah ... something to look forward to when I can finally get them posted.
Well, I'm not sure how to respond here. You've clearly put a lot of thought into navigating the old J5 route, both as Imperials and Aslan.
My gist was that there were hardly any other official written adventures for areas like Aslan space, Zhodani space, various areas in the Vargr Extents, Hiver space, or just any other place outside the Imperium.
I'm glad you worked out your starship design minutiae, but I'm not sure how that helps tweak the old game for the purposes of improvement. It's impressive, what you've done, but I'm not sure I understand the general player-referee application.
My gist was that there were hardly any other official written adventures for areas like Aslan space, Zhodani space, various areas in the Vargr Extents, Hiver space, or just any other place outside the Imperium.
I'm glad you worked out your starship design minutiae, but I'm not sure how that helps tweak the old game for the purposes of improvement. It's impressive, what you've done, but I'm not sure I understand the general player-referee application.
Spinward Flow
SOC-14 5K
"If you build it, they will come."
- Field of Dreams
When you've got nothing to go on ... nothing to start with ... it's absurdly hard to build a campaign setting somewhere from scratch. It's kind of like the old saying in which "you need money to make money" in that you need to have some starter building blocks in order to assemble the sort of richness in tapestry that makes people comfortable enough to say "Okay, I want to set up a campaign HERE."
For a long time (back in the CT days) the only mapped sector available was courtesy of LBB S3 Spinward Marches ... so aside from custom campaign settings, that's where the campaigns tended to be set, because the sector map was available. We had a few types of starship to work with in LBB2 (and rules to make some more) to act as a seed from which Traveller campaigns could blossom and flower.
In other words, you had the location(s) and the means to Travel(ler) around the Spinward Marches ... so campaigns tended to flourish in that location.
Later we got the Solomani Rim (with the familiar location of Terra) and had another sector to play with at the other end of the Third Imperium (almost as far away from the Spinward Marches as you could ask for). We got to know the Solomani as a distinct identity "different" from Imperials and that created the space needed to set campaigns there too.
The Zhodani got LBB A6 Expedition to Zhodane to help flesh them out as a location, culture and people ... which in turn helped kickstart the idea of setting campaigns spinward and coreward of the Spinward Marches in the Zhodani Consulate.
So there were seeds scattered around that made it possible to coalesce into the ideas and inspiration needed to extend the Traveller universe beyond just exclusively the Spinward Marches or the Solomani Rim. The trick is that you need a "hook" of some kind, a way to get INTO a particular portion of the map and the people who inhabit that region of space so as to form the nucleus for a campaign that a Referee is going to be inclined to run.
Once you have something to start with ... you can build on that as your foundation.
The beauty of using the Riftspan Reaches and adjacent Verge Sector as a campaign setting is that you have a HUGE expanse of space to work with (so lots of Traveller traveling is possible) with relatively few stars and worlds to work with and keep track of. That very sparsity of stars in and of itself makes the work of a Referee a LOT easier. I mean the Riftspan Reaches sector has only 108 star systems in it ... of which only 49 are within The Great Rift itself (and a lot of those are not easily accessible) so you wind up with something like 30-40 systems spread across the sector to work with as a Referee. With that kind of limited quantity to work with, it becomes a LOT easier to coalesce around fleshing out the relatively few systems there along the J-5 Trans-Rift Trade Route running through the sector and build outwards from there as an exercise in world building ("I made the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs.").
And the first building block stepping stone to be able to do that in an interstellar Traveller campaign is ... a Starship ... built for purpose in the location of the setting ... and a Map. Once you have an Adventure Class Starship that is fit for the purpose of trave(l)ling around within The Great Rift itself and can navigate the with relative ease along the J-5 Trans-Rift Trade Route running through the sector ... NOW you have what you need as a Referee to start building out your campaign setting in a place that isn't the "same old same old" Spinward Marches and Solomani Rim if you're looking for somewhere new.
Kind of like how the Distant Fringe works as a setting because someone went out and DEFINED what was there and how it all fit together.
Also, another point in favor of using the Riftspan Reaches and adjacent Verge Sector as a campaign setting is that there is an inherent "frontier mentality" involved with the location. TL=15 exists (in the Third Imperium) ... but it's so far as away as to not be "useful" to the locals. TL=14 is obtainable, but not necessarily sustainable, long term. TL=12-13 become the "high end" of the technological spectrum with enough worlds at these tech levels to maintain ships, vehicles and equipment ... with TL=9-11 being the most widely available and therefore sustainable. So the result is a kind of "middle ground" between the Distant Fringe setting with its TL=12 maximum and Jump-2 setting limitation and the TL=15 maximum and Jump-6 setting limitation of the Third Imperium. It's a "frontier place in between two other places" ... and that's the kind of location that can be something of a breeding ground for campaign ideas and developments.
But you have to start somewhere in order to kickstart those sorts of developments.
I'm starting small ... I'm starting with a starship that weighs in at under 200 tons which can then enable all of that potential for characters and stories outside of the Third Imperium to be unlocked.
It's a start, that can be built upon by others and reused in different regions of Charted Space.
I do really like the fact that Spinward Flow took into account the Aslan base-8 system. I've been wanting to do similar things with cargos (wait, that is not what we agreed on!) but never did that (yet).
And Traveller was purpose-built as a framework to be able to do whatever you wanted. As noted, there was a severe constraint on what could be published due to the form factor (and the fact that back then RPGs were not the 1000 page behemoths that they are today [though liberally sprinkled now with 1 page RPG rules-lite RPGs thanks to PDFs and easy publishing]). For me, that was the strength of Traveller: I had the base rules and could create anything. Just as others have posted: you are not limited to what was specified, that is just the suggestion of what you can do. Traveller was the Unix of RPGs: lots of small things that could work together to create larger, complex creations.
We never ran written adventures (and while I have several, I've only actually run Death Station. I use them for reference as they often introduced new rules and equipment). And when I run Traveller, I always give the players the choice of OTU or MTU (which is almost as old as Traveller as it started in '82 or so. Just now it is electronic and I use TravellerMap APIs to make pretty sector maps!)
For us, what they did provide at the time, especially with the JTAS and other fan-zines, was more than enough to kick off our adventures.
And Traveller was purpose-built as a framework to be able to do whatever you wanted. As noted, there was a severe constraint on what could be published due to the form factor (and the fact that back then RPGs were not the 1000 page behemoths that they are today [though liberally sprinkled now with 1 page RPG rules-lite RPGs thanks to PDFs and easy publishing]). For me, that was the strength of Traveller: I had the base rules and could create anything. Just as others have posted: you are not limited to what was specified, that is just the suggestion of what you can do. Traveller was the Unix of RPGs: lots of small things that could work together to create larger, complex creations.
We never ran written adventures (and while I have several, I've only actually run Death Station. I use them for reference as they often introduced new rules and equipment). And when I run Traveller, I always give the players the choice of OTU or MTU (which is almost as old as Traveller as it started in '82 or so. Just now it is electronic and I use TravellerMap APIs to make pretty sector maps!)
For us, what they did provide at the time, especially with the JTAS and other fan-zines, was more than enough to kick off our adventures.
Spinward Flow
SOC-14 5K
Hey, if a different race location is your setting, might as well organize your stuff the way that they do for that native/natural feeling.
And funny that you mention cargo, since the LBB2 system is rather obviously designed as a Rule of Man/Imperial type of system ... so major cargoes are offered in multiples of 1Dx10 tons, minor cargoes are offered in multiples of 1Dx5 tons and incidental cargoes are offered in 1Dx1 tons. Mail vaults are 5 tons too, essentially making them the equivalent to a minimum size minor cargo lot.
Should those assumptions shift and change in Aslan controlled space because of their base-8 numbering system?
I don't see any reason why they wouldn't.
Aslan major cargo = 1Dx8 tons
Aslan minor cargo = 1Dx4 tons
Aslan incidental cargo = 1D tons
Aslan Mail vault = 4 tons (basically a single unit of minor cargo)
Okay, I guess that makes sense. It just seemed like a lot of background generation, and I wasn't seeing the player benefit.
When I used to run games in the early 80s it was typically proto-Traveller; i.e. the Imperium may or may not be there depending on the direction of the game, necessity and my personal mood.
To me all games were essentially "proto-Traveller" stuff. That's interesting about the J5 route from an Aslan perspective. Personally I would just describe the ship the players were on, and let their combined imaginations massage the rest, all the while answer questions about particulars they see and experience on the vessel.
I'll be honest, a lot of the background material written up specifically in the GURPS Alien books, to me, seems excessive. Things like how Aslan math and writing are done are interesting, but how important is it? I guess some people love that level of detail.
Oh well.
Like I say, for me personally, when I was back in my gaming and scifi fan hay-day, I kept expecting more from whoever was writing game material at the time. And from my very "outside the loop" lay person's perspective, I didn't know why SJ Games wasn't publishing more Convoy like adventure, or why GDW suddenly up and closed shop with no LBB adventures for areas other than the Spinward Marches.
I'm not really into it anymore, so these days it's not really a curiosity so much as a disappointment and "ho hum" kind of chapter in my gaming life.
When I used to run games in the early 80s it was typically proto-Traveller; i.e. the Imperium may or may not be there depending on the direction of the game, necessity and my personal mood.
To me all games were essentially "proto-Traveller" stuff. That's interesting about the J5 route from an Aslan perspective. Personally I would just describe the ship the players were on, and let their combined imaginations massage the rest, all the while answer questions about particulars they see and experience on the vessel.
I'll be honest, a lot of the background material written up specifically in the GURPS Alien books, to me, seems excessive. Things like how Aslan math and writing are done are interesting, but how important is it? I guess some people love that level of detail.
Oh well.
Like I say, for me personally, when I was back in my gaming and scifi fan hay-day, I kept expecting more from whoever was writing game material at the time. And from my very "outside the loop" lay person's perspective, I didn't know why SJ Games wasn't publishing more Convoy like adventure, or why GDW suddenly up and closed shop with no LBB adventures for areas other than the Spinward Marches.
I'm not really into it anymore, so these days it's not really a curiosity so much as a disappointment and "ho hum" kind of chapter in my gaming life.
It's useful to establish and maintain consistency. In ATUs and one-shot scenarios it doesn't matter, but when you're trying to maintain compatibility with the OTU or within an extended campaign it does.
For example, I'd be hesitant to write up a campaign with a large cast of Aslan NPCs because I don't fully understand them (though, to be fair I don't have the relevant books...). One or a few, or maybe several if I didn't care whether it contradicted OTU canon? Sure.
Sure, why not. I mean it was fun to read about them in both the DGP and SJ Games GURPS books. My broken record mode says "I'm sorry there weren't more LBB adventures and double adventures for places outside the Imperium." And Aslan and Vargr always come to mind when I repeat that phrase.
I guess for a fairly unified culture like the Aslan it makes sense to include those cultural details.
Spinward Flow
SOC-14 5K
What's the point of having a whole different species/culture if everything "over there" is exactly the same as everywhere else?
It's the subtle differences that make other places (and people) interesting.
Uniformity is good for rules, but lousy for a richness of flavor.
I guess it's partially why I ran adventures in Wolf Space. Vargr are comparatively chaotic, treacherous, and just more fun, verse the culturally unified samurai cats. That, and at the time we didn't know much about the Aslan.
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