Just some random Traveller Hero thoughts

[Spence]

A couple of threads that were talking about Traveller hero made me think back to the old games a traveler that I used to really enjoy and the new games that frankly just aren’t as fun. When I played the old games the universe was an unknown, exploration was the big thing and even a small starship could have an impact. In the new traveler, not really new but super developed, the unknown is not really a thing it feels more like playing in a Star Trek Star Wars setting rather than a frontier setting. I think the issue is that technology is far too available and travel between the stars is far too easy. So I started thinking about what exactly changed and I decided to go back and try to figure out exactly what the differences were. First I opened up my PDF copies of Traveller in this case it was Mongoose Traveller and the starship rules and set up seemed off. So I went back and looked at my classic little black book and that is where I noticed a big difference in starships.

 

The first thing I notice right off the bat is computers. In Mongoose Traveller a ships computer as a tech level rating and cost but no basic size or mass because they are thought to be distributed throughout the ship rather than being one device. The available programs are still somewhat limited (I believe to simplify play) and they chose speak off of using rating. Those programs are much more versatile than the old ones. Now Classic Traveller presents the computers differently. Instead of simply having a price and a rating, the classic traveler computer not only has a cost but it occupies space defined by tonnage as well as a program capacity. For instance a Model One computer takes 1 ton and can run a capacity of 2 in programs and with a stowage of 4.  A model for computer takes 4 tons and can run a capacity of 8 in programs with the stowage of 15. A hard point which is necessary to mount weapons as a requirement for 1 ton of computer space attached to each for fire control.

Now for a computer to take tons of space/mass and only run one maybe two programs at a time seems very very dated. But in the 1970s when this game was written that would actually been a fairly small computer considering it was being used to run programs for traveling between the stars.

That got me thinking, one of the issues with the science fiction campaign and exploring the universe is if your star drive can let you go literally anywhere, with the big issue being how long it takes. Then it becomes very difficult for a GM to not only build that universe but stay one step ahead of the players. In my mind that’s probably why so many games are run within established universes. If the Empire already exists then it’s easier for the players to have to interact within that Empire. But at the same time it makes it much harder to introduce unexpected changes. In an established universe first contact is not really a thing instead you get “yet another first contact”. 

In the past I had read a really great book by an author named John Morressey called “A Law for the Stars” which was part of his Del Whitby series. The unique thing about that series was that the jump field a starship used destroyed advanced electronics. Mechanically based computing devices and tube driven electronics and large electronic components such as resistors, capacitors, coils and so on were fine. But any of the more advanced electronics were basically hashed. That meant starships were required to be built as low-tech as possible with only the jump coils being considered high-tech. But even they were built using “low-tech” components. This comes to mind because a computer occupying 1 ton of space/mass on a starship could easily be low-tech, and with the programs being single-purpose simple ones such as jump, maneuver, predict and so on. You could easily see this kind of constraint existing in the early traveler universe, or a version thereof.

 

Another thing will be how we map the universe. How do we make it so that it’s explorable and yet constrained to make the GM’s life easier? While still being exciting? What if instead of a starship simply being able to jump in any direction based on how much it’s jump drive can reach, or just having a warp engine that zips off in the direction? What if we use jump points? Let us say that like the old Starfire universe a star system would have a limited number of jump/warp points that allow starship to travel between two locations. Each jump point would connect to another jump point in another star system and a starship could enter one end and jump to the other. Then let us say that different jump points have different sizes and capacities that regulate how large a ship can be and how fast the passage is. With all warp points being "pre-existing" a starship would either use "mapped" points to jump to known destinations or when a new warp point is discovered, make a blind jump to see what is there.  Explorers would map new systems and locate new Warp Points.

 

With that in mind you could take the classic travel ship construction and carry it right across with the concept that is starship would use its jump drive to initiate a pre-existing warp point and thus travel between the stars. Bigger and better jump drives would allow larger ships to enter the war point or smaller ships with higher jump drives to travel faster. But the cargoes of those vessels would have to be basically low-tech. Because a modern laptop PC or a modern military computing suite would not survive the jump. That would mean humanity would spread slowly. A colony would have to make do with technology that does not use a chip or any of the other high technologies such as solid-state hard drives or even old-fashioned hard drives. Magnetic tape would probably be considered high-tech on board an operational starship.

 

Now I would not want to rewrite or convert this to the Hero System since I don’t really see the need to convert the already super simple Classic Traveller starship system.  I’ve never liked the idea of trying to build up ships, vehicles, buildings and so on in Hero. It’s not that we can’t it’s just kind of pointless. I look at a ship just like I look at a tavern or an inn. It is a location for the player characters to do stuff in. Not a thing whose own movement and actions are super important. I really don’t feel the need to move counters around on a map of starships or other ships to play out a battle, except for something to allow a player or players to keep the situation in mind so their PCs can make decisions and do cool stuff. I actually prefer a “map” that consists of a center point where the PCs ship is, surrounded by rings where you place markers indicating targets or items around the ship. The rings would represent applicable range bands based on what the system is. If the PCs maneuver the ship the “targets” would rotate around to indicate their relative location from the PCs ship. I got that idea from a guy who built it for the Slipstream Savage Worlds setting and I like to use it for many of my space-based games. Now the thing that’s important is a good deck plan so the PCs have an idea of where they are at and what they’re trying to do.

 

Just some rambling thoughts triggered by some of the Traveller Hero discussions

[DShomshak]

1 hour ago, Spence said:

What if we use jump points? Let us say that like the old Starfire universe a star system would have a limited number of jump/warp points that allow starship to travel between two locations. Each jump point would connect to another jump point in another star system and a starship could enter one end and jump to the other. Then let us say that different jump points have different sizes and capacities that regulate how large a ship can be and how fast the passage is. With all warp points being "pre-existing" a starship would either use "mapped" points to jump to known destinations or when a new warp point is discovered, make a blind jump to see what is there.  Explorers would map new systems and locate new Warp Points.

 

With that in mind you could take the classic travel ship construction and carry it right across with the concept that is starship would use its jump drive to initiate a pre-existing warp point and thus travel between the stars.

IIRC Jerry Pournelle's stories use jump points like this, though I haven't read much of them. Bujold's "Vorkosigan" series also uses jump points, and makes them an important source of drama. So I agree, it's an excellent serup for SF adventure.

 

The tech-frying aspect of jump drive is intriguing as well -- if only so advances in real tech don't make your "futuristic" technology seem antiquated 10 years later! It also preserves genuine mystery, in that people can't just consult their super-advanced omni-sensors and have their super-advanced computer analyze the results and tell them everything. EG: There's a vault door set in the surface of the asteroid. What's behind it? Somebody needs to go and look, they can't just analyze the bogon scattering to find out everything. (Or the GM has to invent some handwavium to explain why Bogon Scattering Tomography doesn't work.)

 

Dean Shomshak

[Ninja-Bear]

Tales of the Jedi also introduce Jump Points. And they also had space buoyes to guide ships. Now pirates have been know to tamper with them…

[Spence]

27 minutes ago, DShomshak said:

IIRC Jerry Pournelle's stories use jump points like this, though I haven't read much of them. Bujold's "Vorkosigan" series also uses jump points, and makes them an important source of drama. So I agree, it's an excellent serup for SF adventure.

 

The tech-frying aspect of jump drive is intriguing as well -- if only so advances in real tech don't make your "futuristic" technology seem antiquated 10 years later! It also preserves genuine mystery, in that people can't just consult their super-advanced omni-sensors and have their super-advanced computer analyze the results and tell them everything. EG: There's a vault door set in the surface of the asteroid. What's behind it? Somebody needs to go and look, they can't just analyze the bogon scattering to find out everything. (Or the GM has to invent some handwavium to explain why Bogon Scattering Tomography doesn't work.)

 

Dean Shomshak

 

Yep, there are a lot of books that had jump points, both ones that just sent you through the other end if you hit it and the ones that you had to trigger.   Weber and Whites Starfire novels did this and the game as well.  And they are the ones I have read most recently. 

 

As for the tech killing aspect.  Expansion would be slow even if you brought technology knowledge through.  You would have to build up the technology base to a point that you could build the tech needed to build the tech. 

 

Starship weapons would have to rely on near-WW2 technology and a starship missile's on board computers would be huge in comparison to today.   Not a huge number on the magazine.

 

Many thoughts here.... 

 

Maybe even a good reason for boarding parties and using that blade....

[Ninja-Bear]

@Spence do the starships need a certain type of fuel to operate? That would constrain the PCs. If the ship has to get back to home base to refuel then they are limited on how far they can travel.

[Scott Ruggels]

I used to play a lot of Traveller.  I think I played D&D for about a year, before the first Traveller books came out. We didn’t quite understand the rules, but had a lot of fun with it, and eventually worked out the kinks. Also, we tried a number of systems as well, until champions was released in the summer of 1981. We still occasionally play Traveller concurrently. I played in Matheson’s fairly vanilla campaign in the Spinward Marches, where we used High Guard to build ships. I also played briefly in Paul Gazis’ Eight Worlds campaign, which was ner total home brew (as he was a NASA engineer at NASA Ames), and had a very 16th Century feel, socially, after a collapse of the Star Empire. In College, even after abandoning most other game systems for Hero, I got an invite into L. Douglas Garrett’s Traveller campaign, which invoked a fair amount of an intrigue of noble house, and Small Unit, Special Operations. Even recently, in Roll20, our D&D group gave Mongoose 2nd Edition Traveller a year of play, before returning to D&D 5e. So I have experienced a lot of different flavors of Traveller in my 45 years of gaming experience. 
 

In the early days, the exploratory nature might have been overstated, depending on the group.  Sure, there was a good set of rules for generating sub sectors, and then the planetary ecology, but the enthusiasm for “frontier” style gaming was inversely proportional to the number of women in the group, and we had a few. The women would steer the play more towards social roleplay and interacting with the noble houses in the Spinward Marches, and would shy away from open conflicts and kinetic operations.  Heists and abductions became common as well.  On the other side of things, we also tried out the ship combat rules as a pure wargame for an afternoon, involving a few of us.  Back then we had an embarrassment of riches of gaming groups, and people would swap in and out. 

One of the things I learned was tha different groups has very different play styles. The rules then, and now supported all of them ( even my short lived, all Vargr ship and mercenary unit, that was probably proto-furry, even if there was a moderate body count.) Not everyone was enamored of frontier exploration, the recent campaign was pure trade and profit, with us taking minimal risk if we could help it.  Some campaigns were intricate ASOIAF political maneuvering. It all depended on the desires of the group, and those desires became clear usually by the second r third contract that the ship accepted.  It also generally helped when the players, and the GM, kind of discussed the campaign over the meal breaks, during other campaigns, so when the current champions campaign or D&D ended, there was some idea and agreement on what the Traveller campaign would look like. 
 

My tastes ran towards being a tourist rather than an explorer, enjoying the scenery of other civilizations, and settled planets, going to TL5 planets to buy hand made bespoke suits and shirts for bargain prices, watching the local air races, buying something for my lapel from the little Vargr flower seller, talking to the locals about the news,  and partaking of the local food. Either being a merchant or mercenary suited me just fine.  As such I like the published material. 

 

for those that want to explore uncharted space, there is plenty of blank map out there. Travellermap.com illustrates what has been documented, but also where the edges of the map are. Just use the various generation rules and such to fill in the sub sectors as you go along. It does take time to do it though.  
 

Running Traveller on a Hero I haven’t tried yet, myself, but Duke seems to have had a fair amount of success with it. I would definitely want to give it a try, but then how much of the regular system do you replace with Hero? I would probably not use Hero for ship combat. 

The idea of dropping the tech due to jump energies I thought was preposterous, until I remembered the modular electronic systems I had invented for a Hero based SolarSystem campaign. No WiFi and all programs hard wired in to the modules that would snap together like Legos or Technics, to prevent outside hacking, or failure due to cosmic Ray damage. So you would put the plastic nodes together to make the computer do the thing you wanted to do.  The more nodes, the higher the power consumption, and the more heat it put out, but the system was far more robust and easily repaired than Microchip based tech, that could be fried by a solar flare, or be hacked by malicious code from outside. Little nodes would then themselves become a commodity based on what function they could do and how rare or common they were. The computer room would then be these semi-random looking collections of Lego looking bricks, with fat cables coming out. However, with this system, functions could be distributed all over the ship, so that hits don’t disable all computer functions, and having spare bins of modules would allow for easy repair, or after hours tinkering to improve, or invent new programs.  The other idea was reverting to electromechanical fire control, but that didn’t go too far. I know how Battleships and Submarines did it, but not with too much detail, other than that they were analogue and relied on skilled machining to make the forms within the device, necessary for the ballistic calculations. 
 

I rambled, but then Traveller causes me to, due to my history with it. But part of my twitch about the change in the tech, was it felt like it pushed Traveller into a pulp paradigm. Traveller, to me now has become its own genre. Sure, in the beginning it was a first generation “universal system”, but due to publications, and a lot of cooperation between groups, it has become its own thing. Sure, enough of the universal mechanics are still there that you can homebrew one’s own background. But why pulp, or worse Sword & Planet? 😁 I’d much prefer seeing something more like The Expanse. But that’s just me.  Anyway, these are my thoughts on Traveller, and I kinda want to run a campaign of it sometime.  
 

15 hours ago, Ninja-Bear said:

@Spence do the starships need a certain type of fuel to operate? That would constrain the PCs. If the ship has to get back to home base to refuel then they are limited on how far they can travel.

No. Starships run on water or collected gaseous Hydrogen and Oxygen in RAW. I suppose you could invent your own system, though.  

[Spence]

@Ninja-Bear

As Scott said, generally normal Traveller regardless of version, most ships can locate and "refine" their fuel as needed. 

 

@Scott Ruggels

The groups I played with leaned more toward universes based on 50/60s style scifi such as the world's of Heinlein, Norton and Morressey.  Ships were tailsitting and rocket like.  Ships were small, space was large and the universe was unknown. 

 

The Expanse is the closest of the modern shows to the feel of those early games.  I think back and we may have lost interest when the feel of the game eliminated the unknown but added in alien of the week and more politics than adventure.  Instead of action adventure you got, well, something like the SW prequels. 

 

I know there is a market for it, but I prefer to run or play in an adventure far more than melodrama such as As the Stomach Turns....

[Scott Ruggels]

On 5/9/2022 at 10:32 AM, Spence said:

@Ninja-Bear

As Scott said, generally normal Traveller regardless of version, most ships can locate and "refine" their fuel as needed. 

 

@Scott Ruggels

The groups I played with leaned more toward universes based on 50/60s style scifi such as the world's of Heinlein, Norton and Morressey.  Ships were tailsitting and rocket like.  Ships were small, space was large and the universe was unknown. 

 

I think I was a little later, with my SF being different authors and a heavier dose of shows like UFO, Space 1999, and such. I've read and enjoyed the Heinlein juveniles, and I think I have read a couple of his other stuff, here and there, but I was reading a lot of just about everything back then, so I had a lot of different influences.

 

On 5/9/2022 at 10:32 AM, Spence said:

 

The Expanse is the closest of the modern shows to the feel of those early games.  I think back and we may have lost interest when the feel of the game eliminated the unknown but added in alien of the week and more politics than adventure.  Instead of action adventure you got, well, something like the SW prequels. 

 

The Expanse has been one of my favorite recent shows, mostly because of the Hard Science approach, and substituting acceleration for gravity, because of the Epstein drive allowing for multi-day 1G burns.  Also the whole "Protomolecule" subplot was a right and proper "Space Mystery", and there have been few GMs that I have gamed with, that had enough of a science background to pull that off, so in a gaming situation, it takes a high level of education, and a lot of prep to get something like that to not only work, but survive the barrage of elegant, and educated, as well as bone headed questions from the players. L.D.Garret's  "Polarized Gravity" Subplot was probably the pinnacle of that, and it predated Star Wars Prequels by About 5 years. 

 

In another thread, That touched on the decline of homebrew content, and the assumption of GMs competent at Homebrew, it's still a question of time.  Right now Time is stolen by anything with a screen, but more specifically social media, and short form video. Time is also stolen by overtime at work. So there really isn't a lot of time for prep or homebrew items, with some notable exceptions.  The Creator of Traveller, Marc W. Miller is ambivalent about much of the background that was created for it, having a much more minimalist approach to the game, than other people, at that particular point in time.  The hobby caught up with him a decade or so later, but in the mean time enthusiastic players filled in the background, for other enthusiastic players who purchased the published material, and kept GDW afloat.  Now, the paradigm is that a full adventure is provided to the GM, including as much detail as can be included in the book to run the adventure, and cover for player induced divergence, so as to prevent the adventure from feeling on rails (See Pathfinder Adventure paths). It's not 1983 any more. 

 

On 5/9/2022 at 10:32 AM, Spence said:

 

I know there is a market for it, but I prefer to run or play in an adventure far more than melodrama such as As the Stomach Turns....

 

The Politics in the Prequels made it's point, though Lucas wrote some very bad dialogue, due to some harebrained theory about "Mythic acting", which marred the movie.  It's a valid critique on a way for Democracies to fall into tyranny. But in games, in my experience, the more women in the game, the more "socially" focused it got.  In games with no Women at the table, a lot of the Traveller games became Tactical war games, which I quite enjoyed. 

[Spence]

6 hours ago, Scott Ruggels said:

But in games, in my experience, the more women in the game, the more "socially" focused it got.

Not more socially focused with more melodrama.  Rather, having more social interaction within the adventure.  The best games IMO are in the 50/50 range.  It didn't change the types of adventures I ran, instead it changes (for the better IMO) the way the players play out the encounters.

 

There is a difference, a big one, between the adding more social interactions into a action adventure and ditching the adventure entirely to pursue a melodramatic romance.  There are RPGs out there for playing out the social infighting on who has the most fashionable attire at the ball.  But that is not the intent or purpose of an action adventure game like D&D or Champions. 

 

And because it hit my "button" and is not directed at you personally......

 

I have also found a decided lack of care for people who cry railroad.  Have there been bad examples? Sure, but the vast majority are not.  Instead it is petulant blubbering by idiots that agreed to one thing and then discovered the GM expected them to own up to their part. 

 

I still remember they whinny little a$${bleep} that ran around bad mouthing people until he got himself kicked out.  The GM built a adventure that was a pretty straight forward "rescue the princess" plot.  And the "railroading" was because the players were supposed to rescue the princess. 

 

To every person who was traumatized because the GM didn't bend over to their every whim. 

 

If the game doesn't interest you, then don't waste everyones time, don't play. 

 

If you cannot find any games that you like and "everyone" always "railroads" you, the issue may be you and not the game or the GM.

[Scott Ruggels]

21 hours ago, Spence said:

Not more socially focused with more melodrama.  Rather, having more social interaction within the adventure.  The best games IMO are in the 50/50 range.  It didn't change the types of adventures I ran, instead it changes (for the better IMO) the way the players play out the encounters.

 

There is a difference, a big one, between the adding more social interactions into a action adventure and ditching the adventure entirely to pursue a melodramatic romance.  There are RPGs out there for playing out the social infighting on who has the most fashionable attire at the ball.  But that is not the intent or purpose of an action adventure game like D&D or Champions. 

 

I think it's just a  combination of the women, and the GM. in those days I was a professional player, and didn't start GMing until Fantasy Hero became "official".  But back in the Traveller days we a couple of women that had a Nobility fixation. In the most recent game (last year), the game was the Papers & Paychecks medium low risk game, after the crew got bit by armed opposition in a couple of missions (and the re-occurring NPCs sometimes were hilarious),  and only towards the end did we start taking a look at nearly uninhabited planets.   I think the most extreme example was one woman who at one point, snapped, and would not play in any further games that had the possibility of fatal encounters any more, and went total Melodrama, so we only saw her in Champions games, and she went off for her princess adventures that the rest of us avoided (I faded out of that group soon after that). So it really is a case of GMs and the interactions with certain players is what tends the flavor the games IMO.

[Spence]

2 hours ago, Scott Ruggels said:

So it really is a case of GMs and the interactions with certain players is what tends the flavor the games IMO.

Totally agree. 

For myself while I acknowledge that the style of game exists and has a following.  But I also know the style of game I can run and the style I do well as a player.  And melodrama/interpersonal political talking isn't it

[Scott Ruggels]

17 hours ago, Spence said:

Totally agree. 

For myself while I acknowledge that the style of game exists and has a following.  But I also know the style of game I can run and the style I do well as a player.  And melodrama/interpersonal political talking isn't it

 Well the "Interpersonal Interaction", often led, as it does in D&D , to some sort of Empire building.  The Melodrama was in service to a goal of taking over some stellar locality.   Again, probably not your thing, but it kept the men and women at the table united on a goal.  However, I was not the GM. 

 

How would I GM Traveller?  Probably ta;;k to the players some, to at least get an idea of what they want to do, because like Hero, you can do pretty much anything in Traveller. The short lived All Vargr game had them as "policy implementation specialist (hired guns) for a few corporations outside of the Imperium. But as a GMI am flexible to a point. I am curious enough to want to run Travgeller again, or play it. Traveller Hero? Probably, but in 5th Edition, if not earlier.

[Spence]

2 hours ago, Scott Ruggels said:

All Vargr game

 I do follow your points, but I think the big thing I miss which was the corner stone of all our Traveller (or Space Opera or etc.) was the lack of an "all Vargr" or any aliens in the core game.  The players characters were the one "discovering" the aliens and making first contact. 

 

The settings removed all the excitement and wonder by filling in all the blanks.  Boring.

[Scott Ruggels]

1 hour ago, Spence said:

 I do follow your points, but I think the big thing I miss which was the corner stone of all our Traveller (or Space Opera or etc.) was the lack of an "all Vargr" or any aliens in the core game.  The players characters were the one "discovering" the aliens and making first contact. 

 

The settings removed all the excitement and wonder by filling in all the blanks.  Boring.

 

Of all the GMs I have played with, only L.D. Garrett was capable of running "Space Mystery", and  Exploration. My only in depth science education is Geology (because it doesn't have a lot of "math" in it). I surely can't do it and make it a compelling story. It would end up of "orbit the planet, roll dice on sensors", then give then the results of their sensor skill rolls, from the tables in the various books.  Then they land and put cameras out in the various biomes and record the animals, and to me that is a "job", more than an adventure. (I have a couple of relatives that are Park Rangers, and they definitely love the job, but it's a job.) Then again I have to talk to my players about what they expect, but even so I have to play to my strengths, and that is not science.

[Spence]

2 hours ago, Scott Ruggels said:

 

Of all the GMs I have played with, only L.D. Garrett was capable of running "Space Mystery", and  Exploration. My only in depth science education is Geology (because it doesn't have a lot of "math" in it). I surely can't do it and make it a compelling story. It would end up of "orbit the planet, roll dice on sensors", then give then the results of their sensor skill rolls, from the tables in the various books.  Then they land and put cameras out in the various biomes and record the animals, and to me that is a "job", more than an adventure. (I have a couple of relatives that are Park Rangers, and they definitely love the job, but it's a job.) Then again I have to talk to my players about what they expect, but even so I have to play to my strengths, and that is not science.

Wow. 

My early scifi gaming was all exploration. 

To say you can't do that if you aren't a scientific genius is like saying you cannot play D&D unless you are a expert in martial arts, both armed and unarmed. 

It's just....

I can understand just not liking it.  Or it not being your thing, like soap opera games are not mine. 

 

But eliminating an entire long lived genre that has been and is actually being played because apparently it can only be done by intellectual giants? 

 

Umm.... I actually have nothing.

[Scott Ruggels]

It’s just a plausibility issue. After a polymath like LDG, it was like being a comedian taking the stage after  Dave Chappell. At least that was the thinking at the time. These days I am running, but it’s Cyberpunk Red, though I am giving Traveller long and loving looks (none in the group has any interest in Hero at the moment). Cyberpunk is not a genre for melodrama, and it rewards impatience with action (though perhaps not on the player’s terms), so this may be a suitable warm up. But the group has had bad experiences with “puzzles”, as in not figuring them out, so that may be a limitation. A fair number of Europeans signed up on the server, so it may be a language thing.  I don’t know.  We’ll see. 

[Duke Bushido]

So many things I want to say, and only the accursed medium of miniature touchscreen with which to say them....     :😢

 

I have only the past couple of nights begun to read Mongoose Traveller, and my findings thus far are akin to Scott's.  However, I more firmly disagreed with Mongoose's 'negligible mass" computers.  I had always assumed that a lot of the mass of the computer in Classic Traveller was the miles of wiring  and thousands of sensors and whatever electronics made things work via the computer, such as opening the airlock from the bridge, detecting a pressure change on deck 6, etc.

 

It wasn't until so many third party materials included deckplans that there would be a  large chunk of area marked 'computer' that I spent even a moment thinking otherwise, and decided "well, that's not going to fly" and ignored it, instead declaring that box to be the main computer station, etc.

 

When regarding computers the way I did,  the Mongoose change is little more than saying "that tonnage is now considered to be part of the Hull /infrastructure, so it is not _that_ big a deal, and computer money now refers to the cost od computer-specific bits like processors, etc.  The part I don't care for about the Mongoose change is that it makes the computer nearly invulnerable to minor damage, but still allows it to be completely destroyed: you miss some interesting opportunities to introduce malfunctioning grav plates, no-longer-automated doors, and life-support issues as obstacles for players fighting a running battle.

 

Miller is ambivalent about the setting because he didn't write it.  Most of it was Joe Fugate and his playgroup who became DGP who became the driving force of additional supplements and background material for Traveller.  Miller himself doesn't use it any more than I do... Well, probably even less than I do, honestly.

 

I had similar problems,with the hyper-developed universe that Scott did: it's like when people say "we are going to take a vacation and go 'explore' Manhattan."  I have bad news.  Someone already did that.  You are welcome to fight the throngs of people on the roads or the sidewalks if you like, and see if any of the streetsigns have interesting names....

 

It got so bad that Miller had to decree that one particular small area was off-limits, and was for the players to build out as they wanted.  I mean, what was the point if having build rules for sectors ans systems and worlds if someone else had gone ahead and filled all that out for even the stars _beyond_ the heavens?!

 

Hard to make that cartography cash (or even be a Scout!) When every gas station in the Imperium has a map?  What trade routes can you open when there are already megacorps bleeding the system dry?

 

Worse yet, a lot of what came along eventually made the early published adventures impossible to place anywhere in the universe except that off-limits area reserved for your own special creations.

 

It was nuts.

 

Truth be told, I think that is why the entire focus of MegaTraveller was "Rebellion!  Tear down the Imperium!"  Notice That it was followed by New Era, the focus of which was explore, make contact, open trade routes, etc?  It was almost like trying to recapture the appeal of the early days of Classic Traveller.

 

It failed, because you were rediscovering populated worlds, many of which had formed little empires with a few neighbors, and of course: somebody already lives here; we know about the imperium; we have the same tech you do-  well honestly, you couldn't just bomb everyone back to the stone age.  You weren't discovering new things; you were just finding out if the old maps were still good.

 

They tried to resolve that by adding Virus, which was to have eaten all the data of the Encyclopedia Galactica, but seriously-   from _everywhere_?  From worlds and systems that Virus never reached?   

 

It was fun(ish), but it did not recapture that original feel _at all_..

 

 How have I been successful with playing Traveller on HERO rules?

 

I took a page from Miller' book: if your background suggests that you _should_ know a little bit about something (an Army colonel _should_ know something about beureaucratics), you take the higher of a characteristic roll or 11 or less.

 

If your background suggests that you wouldn't know about it, then you take the lower of a characteristic roll or 8 or less.

 

Characters are created literally as traveller characters: roll up characteristics. Either as traveller stats and convert, or- if you are feeling a bit more generous or are in a hurry- Primary Characteristica (remember I play 2e) are 2d6 plus 5.  If you are feeling more genrous than that, roll 3d6.

 

Figured characteristics are... Well, _figured_.

 

Pick a career and get cracking.  Mods to characteristics are applied directly.  Winning a skill grants that skill at 11-.  (Skills are broad in this game).  Win it again, add 1.  Originally I added 2, but HERO character progression is much more generous, allowing characters to simply buy up their skill levels with experience.

 

Aging Crises are applied directly as well.

 

Most importantly for character creation- and I cannot stress this enough in terms of making it feel like Traveller-  F\%#: "points balance" for character creation, at least at this point.  Keep track of your actual cost, of course, because someone there will likely have played HERO, and will scream like they are being tortured if the points don't match. (if there are other game groups in the area, encourage him to find one).

 

Cascade skills: character selects a skill or small skill group (handguns or energy rifles, for example) which he will now have at his base OCV, (or appropriate characteristic roll, or 11-, depending on what skill or group we are discussing) and he will select one particular firearm (or subskill) with which he will gain a skill level.  Each time he rolls the same result, he can up that skill level, or pick a different weapon / subskill to get a plus one skill level.

 

If he happens, somehow, to get ten points worth of plus one skill levels, he can opt to swap the various levels for a 10-pt plus one with the group.  With skills, this is what most players do.  With weapons skills, it is almost _never_ done.  Once they have a plus 3 in something, they don't want to get a plus one in ten other weapons at the cost of dropping those extra bonuses with that one weapon.

 

 

Seriously though, when each character is done with his career and his mustering out and getting his skills, etc, get their points total and deduct it from the campaign limit for building the characters.

 

That is what they have left to spend or bank at their pleasure.

 

Social standing is a specific new Primary Characteristic.  If you are a noble (SS 15 or higher), it is initially treated as a Perk, and as it increases, the Perk becomes more expensive, and things such as "influence," "wealth," various noble powers, land grants, etc are added, and certain social skills are awarded.  All nobles will receive "conversation' and "high society" skills. High society skill is now based on the Social Standing Charactetistic.

 

During gernation, _no_ characteristic may be increased more than 2 points or over 15 using the "balance" points. Social Standing may not be increased at all with balance points.

 

Other than that, use them as you woukd to make a champions character- flesh out your Character with skills, equipment, perks, skill levels,etc.

 

Because it is fun to play a scoundrel or a bastard child. The Noble perk may be purchased by characters who have lower social standings than 15, just be able to explain your disgrace.  Ha!

 

No, I absolutely do _not_ use HERO rules for space combat.  I just don't hate myself that much.   We used to use rhe original traveller rules, but as time went on, the players gravitated toward the simplified rules as presented in both Traveller Basic and The Traveller Book; these systems use range bands akin to personal combat and feature simplified movement.  Not mt favorite, but it is not the HERO rules, so,,,..

 

 

I have always wanted to use the Starfleet Battles game for ship combat, but I am the only one at the table  familiar with it (I was once well-known for the Klingon Butthook maneuver).

 

 

There is so much more, but I have had all of this accursed touchscreen I can handle.

[Scott Ruggels]

Did you mean me, or Spence?

More later.

[Duke Bushido]

3 hours ago, Scott Ruggels said:

Did you mean me, or Spence?

More later.

 

There were items adressing points raises by both of you.  Unfortunately, the limitations of a phone screen being what they are, it is more than a little difficult to track multiple quotes, etc.  I have no doubt that I goofed up more than once.

 

I ask your grace in those instances.

 

[Spence]

17 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

Much snippage by me........

 

 

So many things I want to say, and only the accursed medium of miniature touchscreen with which to say them....     :😢

 

I have only the past couple of nights begun to read Mongoose Traveller, and my findings thus far are akin to Scott's.  However, I more firmly disagreed with Mongoose's 'negligible mass" computers. 

 

No, I absolutely do _not_ use HERO rules for space combat.  I just don't hate myself that much.   We used to use rhe original traveller rules, but as time went on, the players gravitated toward the simplified rules as presented in both Traveller Basic and The Traveller Book; these systems use range bands akin to personal combat and feature simplified movement.  Not mt favorite, but it is not the HERO rules, so,,,..

 

 

I have always wanted to use the Starfleet Battles game for ship combat, but I am the only one at the table  familiar with it (I was once well-known for the Klingon Butthook maneuver).

 

 

There is so much more, but I have had all of this accursed touchscreen I can handle.

Great if lengthy post

 

 

A couple points to reply

 

1) I too absolutely hate trying to post via the tiny touchscreen on my phone.

 

2) Computer size.  I have no problems with being able to believe a computer being room sized.  The first real computers I worked with used punchcards and reel to reel mag tapes.  So the concept is not just believable, but I can remember the advanced airborne mission computer that had 64k of processing with three independent memory units that could store a whopping 1 megabite of data each with the entire computer (minus tape drives and keyboard/ display logic units) weighing in at 600 pounds.  So an early game making computers big is not an issue.

 

I have been toying around with using a modified version of John Morressey's setting for his A Law for the Stars book.  Star travel in this universe uses jump drive, I can't remember if it is like Traveller jump drives or Starfire style warp points but it doesn't matter.  The issue is that the jump irreparably fries semiconductor junctions, meaning micro chips become lumps.  This has two major results.  Starship computers are large, bulky, simple and made using vacuum tube, individual electronic components (resisters, capacitors, etc.) and mechanical calculators.  Navigators crunch numbers with sliderules and spacefarers have to be able to actually understand celestial navigation and be able to fix things.  It also means a colony world will never see modern electronics unless they visit Earth or a colony that has been around long enough to develop the infrastructure needed to build the tools to build the tools to build the tools to build....well you get the idea.  Suddenly exploring new star systems takes on a whole different vibe.

 

3) Vehicle/Ship rules.  I NEVER ever use HERO vehicle rules.  For Traveller I use the rules out of the original game book 2 (Starships) plus parts of the original High Guard.

 

4) Loved to play SFB's. You just had to remember that "optional rules" were just that, optional.

 

5) I hate tiny little touchscreens too.

 

[Steve]

6 minutes ago, Spence said:

2) Computer size.  I have no problems with being able to believe a computer being room sized.  The first real computers I worked with used punchcards and reel to reel mag tapes.  So the concept is not just believable, but I can remember the advanced airborne mission computer that had 64k of processing with three independent memory units that could store a whopping 1 megabite of data each with the entire computer (minus tape drives and keyboard/ display logic units) weighing in at 600 pounds.  So an early game making computers big is not an issue.

 

I have been toying around with using a modified version of John Morressey's setting for his A Law for the Stars book.  Star travel in this universe uses jump drive, I can't remember if it is like Traveller jump drives or Starfire style warp points but it doesn't matter.  The issue is that the jump irreparably fries semiconductor junctions, meaning micro chips become lumps.  This has two major results.  Starship computers are large, bulky, simple and made using vacuum tube, individual electronic components (resisters, capacitors, etc.) and mechanical calculators.  Navigators crunch numbers with sliderules and spacefarers have to be able to actually understand celestial navigation and be able to fix things.  It also means a colony world will never see modern electronics unless they visit Earth or a colony that has been around long enough to develop the infrastructure needed to build the tools to build the tools to build the tools to build....well you get the idea.  Suddenly exploring new star systems takes on a whole different vibe.

 

The Hostile RPG by Zozer Games follows this sort of universe paradigm, since it emulates gritty, retro-future (zeerust) movies from the 1970s like Outland and Alien. Computers are robust, easy to use and easy to repair to survive whatever gets thrown at them in the unforgiving vastness of space. Solid and well-made keep people alive, so buttons, dials and toggle switches took the place of more fragile touch screens and keyboard commands while gauges and meters replaced multi-purpose LCD screens.

 

 

[Duke Bushido]

36 minutes ago, Spence said:

 

2) Computer size.  I have no problems with being able to believe a computer being room sized

 

Right; I get that.  In '77, the abaolute only thing that I knew about a computer was that they were massive things that required highly-trained operators and near-sterile rooms and one had to take great pains to avoid any sort of static discharge around it.

 

 

Now bear in mind that this is what I _"knew_".  Even today, with regard to the state of computing in 1977 (when I started playing Traveller), I have no idea _at all_ of just how accurate this was, amd given that it was exactly 45 years ago, the accuracy of those assumptions is now only an irrelevant point of curiosity at best.

 

But I "knew" a couple of other things about computers, too.  I knew my Pong machine was a computer, and I knew that Lars's _much cooler_ Atari machine was one.  I had heard comments from people more familiar with computers say that Lars's Atari  had the same "computing power" as the machines that got us to the moon.

 

Again:  No idea if that was right or wrong, and at this point it doesn't matter beyond my personal curiosity.

 

I qas a did-hard fan of Star Trek, which featured gigantic-- but not room-filling-- computers, slave terminals, and dozens of computer-controlled and computer-monitored processes all over the ship, and alien room-filling xomouters that ran entire planetary societies-- from a single room!

 

All of this- and who lnows how many more sci fi books and movies-- and our tiny little home "computerized entertainment machines" led me (and Lars, who was my first Traveller ref) to just assume (again: we weren't actively trying to justify something; we just made an honest and, to us, obvious assumption about why the comouters of the future would be so gigantic in terms of weight.  Clearly they were going to get smaller and more powerful: we had seen it happen to calculators, radios, telephones, and car engines, and there were already computers (of a sort) creeping into cars to control various oarts of the ignition and pollution reduction systems, and none of them were more than little black plastic boxws filled with goo and a single circuit board.

 

The only thing that made sense to us with regard to the xomputers of the future was that "computer tonnage" included not just the processors and memory- which we assumed to be significantly huge, of course, as they would have to make who-knows-what kind of calculations and references and maintain how many floating points and track God-himself-might-have-to-double-check moving stars and obstacles just to calculate a songle jump, and do it quickly enough to make space travel an efficient meqns of exploration, warfare, and trade.  So yes: we knew there would be massive amounts of whatever was needed to do all that, and there were similar data and processing needs for firing solutions and maneuvering in and out of harm's way during a space battle, but we still just assumed that the rest of the "bulk"-- the _majority_ of the bulk-- was going to be the hardworking and the various slave terminals and thousands of solid-state components that allowed everything else on the ship to be monitored or even controlled by the ship.  Given the dangers of space and the inability to just pull into a full-service Texaco whenever we had a hitch in our giddyup, we also assumed multiple redundancies  in every instance.

 

 

Ultimately, the only difference here is that we had, without even pausing to reflect on it, made an assumption based on what we were actually seeing in the world around us instead of looking for a justification to force the rules to make sense.

 

Ultimately, it doesnt matter:  No matter what we assumed about the how and why of it, we all gor to a point where a four ton comouter made perfect sense, right? 

 

 

The only "advantage" to our interpretation of the rules is that it slides nicely into the change Mongoose made with regards to computer bulk.     🤣    so we got lucky enough that, should we switch to Mongoose, we dont have to backport or upport or house rule anything there to make a direct swap.

 

 

 

36 minutes ago, Spence said:

4) Loved to play SFB's. You just had to remember that "optional rules" were just that, optional.

 

Yep.  And the way the optional rules came out-- you literally,biught a packet of tiles, and it came with optional,rules!  You bought a larger packet to add a new race and their ships, and _it_ came with optional rules!

 

It lead to a house rule that optional rules could only be implemented if everyone playing already owned and was both familiar and comfortable with them (probably because after the first guy wins with the Klingon Butthook Maneuver, _everyone_ starts looking for really obscure optional Butthook Maneuvers of their own... 

 

 

36 minutes ago, Spence said:

5) I hate tiny little touchscreens too.

 

 

The English lqnguage is the largest, most complex, most vocabulary-laden langaue in the history of mankind.

 

It totally failed to produce words extreme enough to express my hatred of the touchscreen interface, and worda vile enough enough tobdescribe what I woyld like to do to the body, mind, and soul of the guy who decided flip-out and slide-out physical keypads were no longer the way forward for portable internet devices....  🤬

[Spence]

35 minutes ago, Duke Bushido said:

Yep.  And the way the optional rules came out-- you literally,biught a packet of tiles, and it came with optional,rules!  You bought a larger packet to add a new race and their ships, and _it_ came with optional rules!

 

It lead to a house rule that optional rules could only be implemented if everyone playing already owned and was both familiar and comfortable with them (probably because after the first guy wins with the Klingon Butthook Maneuver, _everyone_ starts looking for really obscure optional Butthook Maneuvers of their own... 

 

To this day I am amazed at how many people from all over the world that played SFB are familiar with the "Klingon Hook".  I haven't played in years (early 2000's maybe) and I do not recall ever seeing an article or formal write up of the maneuver but I have seen countless players from all over the world that knew what it was and called it some form of "hook".  A perfect (to me) example of form following function.  The design and layout of the Klingon warship (D classes through C classes) just make it a natural result.  Along with Klingon warships always being in threes.  

 

Long ago when I was younger and we played regularly, I was a master (if I do say so myself ) of maneuver with my favorite formation of three C-9's with six D-7's in two groups of three. A ship on the receiving end of a three ship coordinated hook was usually shredded and out of the fight.  Getting caught by three C-9's was a ship ender. 

 

I miss those days

[Scott Ruggels]

Played SFB some, but I don't remember it well.

 

I really don't get you guy's  fetishization for vacuum tube, rack mount, CPUs. I just don't. It's weird, like genre enforcement of DOD computer practices from the 1960s, or The Rand Corporation. The whole Genre Enforcement thing is what made me walk away from Superhero games (With one or two exceptions, because the GMs were exceptional). Traveller could be set up for just about anything. I forget where, but there was a semi serious posting in one of the GDW publications that had stat blocks for Star Wars Characters, but they were given generic names. I could see someone back in 1978 putting together a Star Wars campaign using Traveller. Hell, it's Maneuver and Jump  for ships looked similar.  So basically  Duke said that one enthusiastic Traveller group basically filled in the Hexagon Pad, except for the area that  Now I have homebrewed backgrounds for SF Campaigns, bnut looking through various Traveller projects I am curious to what sorts of things other people have come up with to cover my blind spots. Also I am curious about the Julian Protectorate as there are fragments of a story there. scattered through the Traveller Map, and some of the Traveller Wiki,  that I am curious to find out about. Again it's a matter of time. OI don't have a lot of it, between clin\ic visits, and attempts to earn more money to add to my unfortunately fixed income at the moment.   I still prefer any game I play to be Map and Minis, so I can get an idea of ranges and layout of combat areas. Hell in ROTC I was a map and compass guy.

 

Duke I would love to see more detail on how you did THe Hero conversions.

 

It was also Steve Jobs that killed the slide out keyboards.  For complex posts, I type on my desktop.  If I am Dyalysis, I use voice to text, and then edit the mistakes (only one hand available, and it's not my dominant).

[Spence]

19 hours ago, Scott Ruggels said:

I really don't get you guy's  fetishization for vacuum tube, rack mount, CPUs. I just don't. It's weird, like genre enforcement of DOD computer practices from the 1960s, or The Rand Corporation.  ---snip---

 

Wow, really odd statement...diatribe(?)...

 

Doesn't really have anything to do with the discussion.  The use of mechanical controls (switches, toggles) and hardware controls and mechanical compute engines is actually still used in the modern world.  Essentially, if you have a vehicle/critical device that you really really need to ensure it can be repaired without any outside assistance it will not be a modern microchip controlled device.   Just like the pipes and cables on a working ship are not concealed in the "walls" like a luxury cruise liner.  When things go wrong you need things that can actually be fixed.   Last time I was shipboard did we have did we have all the fancy laptops and other electronics?  Yes.  But we also still had sound powered phones and controls and panels allowing functional control that did not rely on the modern micro-computer. 

 

In the future when we actually begin traveling to other planets, you will see a reduction in reliance on "laptops" and other "micro-computers" and a reversion to technology that may require the user to hold greater personal skills and knowledge, but will also be able to actually be repaired in place without the need for 100% replacement.  Unlike a surface ship on Earth where you can be reasonably sure you can get a replacement delivered anywhere on the globe within two or three days for a major life threatening emergency and two weeks for anything else.  Once we are in space the inability to actually repair a device will mean you simply die.  Of course this will all change when we can actually go in an repair the microchip, but I don't think we are anywhere near that yet.

 

I think this is more of a understanding gap between people living in a safe secure environment and people that have experienced isolated and hostile environments. 

You either have multiple redundant spares for everything or you ensure you can actually fix everything. 

 

I like RPGs with a small dose of reality, but don't believe that "reality" is all grim dark and conspiracy with shiny touchscreens everywhere.

 

But YMMV

Edited June 10, 2022 by Spence
Note: what is a micro-ship and why does my computer insist in changing microchip into micro-ship?