HERO Traveller?

[Al_Beddow]

I have just picked up Star HERO and while reading it have been considering just how I want my Sci-Fi campaign set up. Then I remembered, I have all this Stuff for Classic Traveller and MegaTraveller.

 

Has anyone out there thought about or done any work on creating a Star HERO campaign in any part of the Traveller Universe/Timeline?

[ShelleyCM]

Some of the work is already done for you...

 

Hi, Al --

 

I run a GURPS Traveller Game and have recently thought about translating it into HERO. The easiest way would be to translate (point-based) GURPS Traveller to HERO, rather than Traveller to HERO (which is more nebulous). Otherwise, you end up having to do what my husband did pre-official GURPS Traveller (when he ran it in GURPS) and just eyeball it while keeping a tight grip on the genre. It worked out well, but it was a LOT of work on his part.

 

(If you don't already own the GURPS Traveller books, be careful. The quality is spotty.)

 

What concerned me the most was losing the "feel" of Traveller (and GURPS), where it's much easier to die than it is in HERO. But I'm sure people on the boards can give us suggestions on how to fix that.

 

-Shelley

[Seenar]

I never liked how easy it was to die in Travaler (or that the best starting characters were old men).

 

I would use the source material for the feel of the universe, and the eyeball everything.

[Bartman]

Re: Some of the work is already done for you...

 

Originally posted by ShelleyCM

What concerned me the most was losing the "feel" of Traveller (and GURPS), where it's much easier to die than it is in HERO. But I'm sure people on the boards can give us suggestions on how to fix that.

 

Thats not hard. If you use all the option combat rules, hit locs, bleeding, disablement, etc. you will generally find that you have a mortality rate that would keep anyone but a C'thulu fan happy.

[ShelleyCM]

Quick-n-dirty combats

 

Originally posted by Bartman

Thats not hard. If you use all the option combat rules, hit locs, bleeding, disablement, etc. you will generally find that you have a mortality rate that would keep anyone but a C'thulu fan happy.

 

Oh, certainly. But it makes combat more cumbersome, and to me one of the great GURPS/Traveller "feel" advantages is speed of combat. I was thinking more along the lines of either halving all BODY stats or doubling all BODY damage -- something quick-n-dirty.

 

Over my shoulder Matthew is saying that in the past he doubled body for dirty space HERO games.

 

-Shelley

[Jerry A!]

Re: Traveller Hero

 

This is something I've thought of doing, and would definitely be interested in. Please tell me you're in the DC Metro Area.

 

As for ideas, here's a few.

• Use the hit location table. This definitely helps speed up combat. If you've got lots of dice handy, I recommend giving each player three of one color to determine hit location, and a fistful of other unused colors for the damage rolls. Thus, with one big roll, you've got damage and hit location right in front of you.
   
  
• Have a copy of Star Hero handy. Is it my imagine, or do the package deals "feel" like a direct lift of various Traveller classes. Not that I'm complaining, just makes this easier.
   
  
• Check out www.travellerhero.com. This guy has taken a stab at some ship conversions. Nice work and a great "jumping point" (pun intended).
  

[Kevin Scrivner]

Originally posted by Seenar

I never liked how easy it was to die in Travaler (or that the best starting characters were old men).

 

 

Eek! I'm now old enough to be some of the characters I role-played in high school! I've missed some of my saving rolls to avoid losing stats, and I'm not sure I've gained new skills for each term of service!

[Al_Beddow]

ShelleyCM said:

(If you don't already own the GURPS Traveller books, be careful. The quality is spotty.)

 

Oh I hear that Shelley. That's why I left GURPS. Besides some other problems I had with the company (including with mr sj himself), I found their "high quality and control over the product" to be less than advertised. I almost fliped when I found out that their blueprint for the Empress Marava Freetrader was so off. I mean the first level of the cargo hold had twice as many hexes as the ENTIRE ship was supposed to have (by their own rules). I acutally managed to sell off ALL my GURPS stuff for what I paid for it (and am now buying HERO books)

 

Jerry A! said:

Have a copy of Star Hero handy. Is it my imagine, or do the package deals "feel" like a direct lift of various Traveller classes. Not that I'm complaining, just makes this easier.

 

Check out http://www.travellerhero.com. This guy has taken a stab at some ship conversions. Nice work and a great "jumping point" (pun intended).

 

Thanks for the tips and website Jerry. I love the work the guy did with the standard Traveller ships. That alone is going to save me quite a bit of time.

[TravellerHero]

Thanks for the kind words guys.. right now the site contains non-canon Traveller references mixed in with the rest (meant to be unusual occurances in the third imperium) such as unique or rare weapons and races. Just strip out the ones you feel do not fit and use the rest.

 

The Alien conversion should have been done by now, but I got sidetracked by the ultimate vehicle book, and ended up making updated versions of the ships. It looks like I will have those up in a week or two, and the aliens will have to come after the revised ships.

 

and finally here's a contribution to your game if it's going to have anything to do with space travel...

 

http://www.utzig.com/traveller/iai.shtml

[Guest Dr.Unpossible]

MOTHER OF PEARL!

 

this site is a beauty to behold =). Well a beauty to a Traveller geek anyhoo. Thank you very much for sharing your hard work. I will be parusing this site often I can tell =)

 

Have you posted the link for the rabid traveller fans over at

http://www.travellerrpg.com/ to consume. I'm sure the msgbrd there would love to see this site as well.

 

If I remember correctly, thats how I came across your TravellerHERO site. Some one had mentioned it in a Traveller Post.

[Thag13]

Thanks for the great sites.

 

VERY well done and an giant help to me as I am running a SCI fi Hero game this weekend.

 

As its stands now, its a VERY alternate Babyon 5 universe, but every bit helps

 

Thank you VERY much

[James_Kiley]

If I'd had access to a good traveller-hero conversion three months ago I probably wouldn't be using TE. I gave serious consideration to using Traveller's Imperium for my own game.

[TravellerHero]

Shelley,

 

Have you considered simply having death occur at 0 body instead of twice starting body? The numbers I have set up for weapons and armor lean a bit towards the weapons already. It should be able to capture the speed at which you dispatch enemies in Traveller. Once you add the death at 0 rule it becomes extremely deadly.

 

However I personally do not use my 0 death rule as I like to have an expensive longshot to revive the character. (remember the old character generation system where you could get injured during service and there was an optional roll where you could have surgery to correct this issue, but you could die on the operating table? That's why I keep the twice starting rule, it alllows players that really still want to play this character to have a chance to jump back into the game [after some time and a lot of money])

[ShelleyCM]

Originally posted by TravellerHero

However I personally do not use my 0 death rule as I like to have an expensive longshot to revive the character. (remember the old character generation system where you could get injured during service and there was an optional roll where you could have surgery to correct this issue, but you could die on the operating table? That's why I keep the twice starting rule, it alllows players that really still want to play this character to have a chance to jump back into the game [after some time and a lot of money])

 

I've only played "real" Traveller once, and "real" MegaTraveller once, and didn't have anybody die during creation -- whew! I've always played Traveller in GURPS, even before there was GT, thanks to my husband's excellent adaptation.

 

It's not so much that I want to kill PCs (I don't, but all bets are off for NPCs) but that I want the game to feel more lethal, and to me, HERO just never felt lethal enough for dirty space.

 

Of course, this is *so* subjective!

 

-Shelley

[AnotherSkip]

Another Sugestion would be to have All NPC's suffer from the 8 average stats rather than the 10 average stats, (PC Hero's excerpted of course) thus opponents fall easier.

[Aroooo]

Originally posted by ShelleyCM

I've only played "real" Traveller once, and "real" MegaTraveller once, and didn't have anybody die during creation -- whew! I've always played Traveller in GURPS, even before there was GT, thanks to my husband's excellent adaptation.

 

It's not so much that I want to kill PCs (I don't, but all bets are off for NPCs) but that I want the game to feel more lethal, and to me, HERO just never felt lethal enough for dirty space.

 

Of course, this is *so* subjective!

 

-Shelley

 

The first time I read the GURPS Traveller rules, I cracked up when I read the passage in charactger creation that goes something like "we don't want to kill characters during creation, but for Traveller purists, roll 1d6; on a 1 crumple up your character sheet and start over..." Too funny. I'm not a big GURPS fan (mostly their combat mechanics), but I do love their Traveller adaptation.

 

As for lethality in Hero, thats been mentioned before in other threads. Personally, I think [non-supers] Hero is very lethal, but as you said, subjective

 

Arooooo

[Al_Beddow]

Originally posted by ShelleyCM

I've only played "real" Traveller once, and "real" MegaTraveller once, and didn't have anybody die during creation -- whew! I've always played Traveller in GURPS, even before there was GT, thanks to my husband's excellent adaptation.

 

Shelly,

too bad your husband couldn't sell his stuff to SJG, I might have stayed with GURPS if he had been able to.

[ShelleyCM]

Originally posted by Al_Beddow

Shelly,

too bad your husband couldn't sell his stuff to SJG, I might have stayed with GURPS if he had been able to.

 

Wouldn't that have been nice? But I can't get him to run a game these days, let alone write anything up!

 

That said, some of the GT stuff was just fine...but it needed editing. Badly. Did you see the Spinward Marches sourcebook?! I gave up and used my Traveller materials.

 

-Shelley

[Al_Beddow]

That said, some of the GT stuff was just fine...but it needed editing. Badly. Did you see the Spinward Marches sourcebook?! I gave up and used my Traveller materials.

 

I had ALL the GT stuff, then sold it after giving up.

 

G:T had one template for Aslan and none for Vargr, then in Alien Races 1 they put out a DIFFERENT template for Aslan.

 

GT:Far Trader - The floor plans don't use hexes that are 1m across, then when you add them up the FIRST level of the cargo hold on the Emperess Marava deckplans had twice as many hexes than the ENTIRE ship was supposed to have.

 

GT:Far Trader - Ever try to design a Star Sector with the trade rules?

 

Ship Maintenance and operation costs - now there was a headache. IT took me about a week of pouring through the books to figure it out. When I finally did, the Emperess Marava class ships required something like 29+ hours a day of routine maintenance, yet they only had ONE engineer in the crew. Talk about some major overtime!

[Thrakazog]

I run a PBeM game in the Classic Traveller universe, but using the Hero system. I love CT but didn't like the system at all. It's working really well.

 

I created racial and background package deals as needed. I use the starship deckplans from CT and just wing what I need to in order to make it work.

 

So far, all eleven players are having jolly good fun. I'm free to compare notes anytime.

[AlHazred]

Originally posted by Thrakazog

I run a PBeM game in the Classic Traveller universe, but using the Hero system. I love CT but didn't like the system at all. It's working really well.

 

Don't be shy, man! Share it!

[Thrakazog]

Originally posted by AlHazred

Don't be shy, man! Share it!

 

It's not shyness.

 

I'm concerned about two things. I use a lot of pics and link to a lot of sites I found on the internet. I'm not sure what the ethics of all that are, but if the resources are out there why not use them? Nobody except my players view my site, since I never published the URL anywhere. The interactive map someone posted the URL for is something I might link to, for example.

 

Second, there's a lot of holes. All I have are a campaign background and some house rules and character construction guidelines. I've also got a link to the group list.

 

I'm mosly concerned about the first issue. When I started the campain I remembered that my ISP gave me some free web space, and so I threw together a quick campaign site with stuff I found on the web. I'd hate to get threatening letters becuase I took a pic I thought was cool off someone else's site. I have a front page disclaimer that reads:

 

This web site and the campaign itself draw upon the excellent art and campaign works of many others, including Game Designer's Workshop, Steve Jackson Games, and others. They appear here for no other reason than I simply thought they were cool. No claim of originality or ownership is stated or implied.

 

Is that enough? I wasn't sure I wanted to find out.

[JohnTaber]

Hi Shelly,

 

I ran an Alien Legion based Hero game and I made one simple change that made combat much more deadly. All of the blasters, etc. had regular killing dice with -1 to the Stun Mod. This has the effect of causing lots of Body damage before the character gets knocked out. Works really well to change the flavor. You would be amazed at how important cover became...hehehe...[evil GM snicker]...

[Aroooo]

Originally posted by Thrakazog I'm mosly concerned about the first issue. When I started the campain I remembered that my ISP gave me some free web space, and so I threw together a quick campaign site with stuff I found on the web. I'd hate to get threatening letters becuase I took a pic I thought was cool off someone else's site. I have a front page disclaimer that reads:

 

This web site and the campaign itself draw upon the excellent art and campaign works of many others, including Game Designer's Workshop, Steve Jackson Games, and others. They appear here for no other reason than I simply thought they were cool. No claim of originality or ownership is stated or implied.

 

Is that enough? I wasn't sure I wanted to find out.

[/b]

 

The whole free use issue is a big gray area when it comes to putting stuff on the web and either using or linking to other folks web sites.

 

The best thing to do is 1) put up a disclaimer; 2) get the other folks permission for personal game use if you can (most folks won't mind for personal games like yours). Some companies like DOJ and SJGames have fair/personal use policies on their web sites.

 

Aroooo

[shadowcat1313]

Traveller Hero conversions

 

I've done a lot of work on converting traveller to HERO, although its all been done with a combination of 4th Edition and some stuff from the 2nd playtest draft of Starhero

the playtest draft had conversion tables for power/damage output, which enables converting most weapon systems to HERO.

 

with 5 different versions of Traveller, somethings have varied considerably.

 

one example being the starship beam laser

which has an output classic traveller and Mega of 250 mw

 

TNE of 150 mw

GURPS of 405 mw