Your homebrew Traveller setting

[RainOfSteel]

Originally posted by Despasian Cruesa:
One of the mose interesting home-grown campaigns I played in, was centered around discovering a Ringworld.
The referee populated it with the races from Julian May's 'Pleistocene Exile' Series (Many Colored Land, Golden Torque, etc).

For those who don't know it (a shame), they were

Tanu: Tall, beautiful, (elf-like) POWERFUL Psionic race who classified you according to your Psi potential.

Frivulag: Short, misshapen dwarves. Psionic-based ability to make elaborate illusions. More primitive than the Tanu.

The two (dying) races had an old fued, and the story involved their efforts to use humans as breeding stock.

This made for quite and interesting Traveller world to operate in to say the least.

Lots of fun though.

Did the GM moderate the Tanu and Firvulag psi powers (and change the Torc slave control circuits)? In the books, some of those beings, as NPCs, would have been overwhelmingly powerful. Even Torced, the PCs would not likely have stood a chance unless the GM handed out huge psi powers to those Torced, and the control circuits of the Silver Torcs would pretty much prevent rebellion, the PCs would have been slaves.

Also, there really isn't a Psychocreation ability in standard Traveller, so I'm interested in how the GM implemented it (if it was implemented).

Further Notes: The Tanu and Firvulag were a dimorphic race, in that they were the evolved descendants (due to environmental differences of the different areas of their homeworld they chose to inhabit) of a single parent race. They shared most of the same genes. In rare cases, a birth in one race could show up as a member of the other (baby's so born were typically swapped, with great distate by the giving race, to the "other side"). The Tanu and the Firvulag had, over the ages, grown to hate each other, quite deeply, and fought a great annual bloodsport contest against one another, with psi powers ruling the battlefield. The capstone of the multi-day conflict (The Grand Combat) involved the two mightiest psychic warriors duking it out, often to the death (alongside hundred or even thousands of other deaths among the other participants over the course of the conflict leading up to this point).

 

[Despasian]

Off the top of my head, I forgot a lot of the dynamic between the 2 races. You're recap pleasantly reminded me of some of the more interesting aspects of that series. In my defense, last time I read it was mmm...17 years ago.

I'll have to go dust 'em off again.

As to the game.
He reduced the god-like power levels a great deal. The base psi power of the residents of the ring world were on par with typical levels.
With 2 exceptions:
1) The 'testing' process tended to unlock a person's full potential, so talented individuals (if tested) tended to skew above average in PSI-power.
2) The torc would amplify the user's natural talent. I'm fuzzy, but I seem to remember the Silver doubled, and the Gold tripled.
Now that could mean for some pretty powerful stuff but, not nearly as powerful as the books' example.
A bad-ass, gold-torc'ed, Tanu could knock over a grounded scout ship, but rearranging mountain ranges was well beyond them.
Of course, we didn't stick around long enough to find out if the 'metaconcert' could do more.

As far as the Psychocreation and non-traveller standard manifestations, he borrowed a bit from the AD&D psionics for the 'missing' powers. Basically he plucked a few disciplines from that source, edited them (and the CT psionics system) a little to make it work. I'm sorry I don't remember the specifics ('84 after all), but it worked pretty well.