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HERO Traveller?


Al_Beddow

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I haven't had to deal with starship combat yet, but we're getting there. :) Since it's a PBeM, I plan on using a liberal dose of "winging it", no pun intended.

 

The starship weapons are the same as Traveller: beam lasers, pulse lasers, missiles, sandcasters, etc. The Impie Marines use a caseless HEAP round in the assult rifles they use, not lasers, but by comparison the ship's weapons would be a large number of d6 KA. :D

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A big part of lethality is how much access the pcs have to body armor and defensive screens, especially military grade ones. If they don't have much in the way of resistant defence they're extremely vulnerable.

 

I've never been able to figure out how PCs justify a lot of their arms and defensive equipment unless they are 1) working for the powers that be, 2) are operating in an old west frontier style environment, or 3) are criminals.

 

And even then, consider just how nasty sci-fi arms would be. Without military grade defenses running into military grade equipement: autofire fletchet guns that fire hex shredding bladestorm rounds, gyrojet rounds packed with advanced explosives, plasma rifles that aren't stopped by anything other than e-screens...

 

I can see where advanced weaponry might make PCs desperate to find non-combat solutions for most problems.

 

If I have light armor [5PD/2ED] and I run into a guy with an automatic fletchette launcher [2d6 RKA, AP, AE 1 Hex Accurate, AF 5-10] I'm going to cry... after I've found a 4" steel bulkhead to hide behind.

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Hmmm... Perhaps I should clarify that the Imperial Marines use the big guns. The players are mostly ex-Navy, with one ex-Marine, one noble on the run, one street thief, and one ex-corporate agent.

 

The biggest weapon they have is the shotgun carried by the ex-marine. The ex-agent has a body pistol, and someone else has a rapier. That's pretty much it. Oh, and there's a couple of flare guns in the emergency kits kept in the ship's locker. :)

 

It's a fairly new campaign, with only one combat so far against a few goons with collapsable batons. The agent knows martial arts, so it ended up being a fair fight. The ex-marine was pissed that she missed it. :D

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Traveller-HERO campaign

 

I've just begun a Traveller-HERO campaign.

Our group is only three people, so my 2 players are a noble ex-Marine on the outs with his family, and a former Aslan scout (retired).

 

I've done a bunch of conversions of equipment, and am in the process of building prefabs for all of the gear.

 

As for the package deal for the Aslan, I just winged it. I wrote a conversion system for all characters, and added racial abilities to the Aslan that seemed to fit.

 

I plan on starting the team off with some old Traveller modules I never got to finish (The Traveller Adventure, then perhaps Twilight's Peak and/or Expedition to Zhodane).

 

By the way, I was VERY disappointed with the HERO Designer pack for Star Hero.

The Bestiary download, for only $2.00 more, had over 350 files, while the Star Hero pack had less than 100. And a dozen of the Star Hero prefabs were repeats of the Size/Weight packages included with the Bestiary.

Where were all the weapons and equipment from Star Hero?

(pp. 148-176). Of all those examples, something like 6 were included in the Star Hero pack, 2 generic blaster weapons, a force blade and energy sword, and 2 robots.

 

I'm going to be VERY reluctant to buy packages in the future, until I'm certain they're actually worth the price.

I'm having to write up most of the things I expected to find in the download.

One of the first things I've always found with Traveller players is they want to buy stuff, and I wanted to have the gear all ready for them. I thought that the Star Hero pack would take care of that, but it helped hardly at all.

(Down off my soap box, now.)

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Originally posted by 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

OMG! Nice Map!
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Originally posted by Al_Beddow

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

 

[GT ickiness excised]

Once again, Dr Rotwang! has the answer:

 

FAKE IT!

 

No, seriously! I'm a big GURPS geek and I ignore anything I don't feel like usin'. Vehicle design rules? I use a module system, and at that, I use it loosely. Trade rules? Hah! If I feel like cutting the PCs a break, then the water they bought in one place is suddenly in demand on the next; if not, then the residents of Goombah IX are drowning.

 

Ta-daaaah! I'm the GM!

 

I thought about using HERO for Trav, because I loves me some HERO, but...mehhh...I dunno, GURPS feels right for SF of that kind.

 

So GURPS it is.

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Yeah, I'm on the same wavelength, there, Harvester. I'm a super, super die-hard Star Wars d6 fan, and even I think HERO would be an acceptable alternate system.

 

In faaaaact...I have notes for my "Star Wars with the serial numbers filed off" campaign, and it sez "Star HERO" on it.

 

I dunno why GURPS feels so right for hard-ish SF, anymore than I can articulate why I like Marvel comics better than DC or why I prefer vanilla over chocolate ice cream...I just do. Maybe it's the structure that GURPS has -- the skill-heavy feel. I dunno.

 

Make Mine Marvel!

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I have never read any Star Wars D6 books, but I happen to like D20 version :). My opinion is that GURPS works better for hard-ish because it is quite realistic. HERO was first superhero system and then generic, so it is more suitable for high powered games than realistic ones. Just my opinion, I don't want start any fights :).

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Originally posted by Harvester

I have never read any Star Wars D6 books, but I happen to like D20 version :)

 

The D6 version was put out by West End Games and was quite a good system.

 

Originally posted by Harvester

My opinion is that GURPS works better for hard-ish because it is quite realistic. HERO was first superhero system and then generic, so it is more suitable for high powered games than realistic ones. Just my opinion, I don't want start any fights :).

 

HERO is quite realistic too. The problems with GURPS are:

- Lack of internal consistency (EX. this caused the "compendiums")

- Lack in internal quality (take a look at some of the ship blueprints, they actually break most of the rules for designing spaceships).

- Too few stats requiring an added stat in certain genre's like "Psionics" and "Martial Arts" (combine the two and the basic GURPS character has 2 additional stats, CHI and PSI compared to other characters).

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Slowly converting CT to FREd

 

Well, thanks to owning most of the original LBB's and getting the reprints as they become available, I've been working hard on converting the Classic Traveller Universe over to Hero.

 

Coming up with a conversion of the races hasn't been too hard. It's setting up the "prior service" system that's a pain. Where do you start the players, how do you handle promotion chances, survivablity, medals, etc. ARRGGHHHH..

 

Well... Once it's done I'll put it up on my website http://www.hackwurld.org

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Not knowing how things are going so far, how about this:

 

Start characters at 75 points. For each term of service, add 5 points. Or if you're doing the expanded every year option, give a char. point per year, plus 1-2 for the extreme mission/assignment rolls.

 

Aroooo

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Re: Slowly converting CT to FREd

 

Originally posted by Al_Beddow

Coming up with a conversion of the races hasn't been too hard. It's setting up the "prior service" system that's a pain. Where do you start the players, how do you handle promotion chances, survivablity, medals, etc. ARRGGHHHH..

 

I just didn't deal with it in my conversion. I created a package deal for each service, with the last item being "select three from the following list, plus one for every term of service". It made it nice and easy.

 

So, most players have both a racial package and a service package. The rest is description. Simple.

 

Survivability never meant much to me. What's the point of creating a dead character? ;)

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Re: Re: Slowly converting CT to FREd

 

Originally posted by Thrakazog

Survivability never meant much to me. What's the point of creating a dead character? ;)

 

:) I liked the way GURPS Trav dealt with that: If you feel you must have that flavor from CT, roll a D6. On a 6, throw away the character and start over.

 

I would prefer your method of racial and occupational package deals myself. My suggestion only works if the players really want to build their characters from scratch. But packages offers more standardization (sp?), eps. with military occupations.

 

Aroooo

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  • 2 weeks later...

Star Hero is far better able to handle the gritty hard-Sci-fi genre then GURPS could ever hope too. Ultra/High Tech in Gurps , especially with the armor, made it nearly impossible to die. Just look at the stats for average imperial marine power armor, or even to scout atmoshperic armor, in GURPS they have like a DR of 35-50!!! Thats INSANE! Just about the only thing that MIGHT hurt you is a plamsa gun.

 

Im not suggesting players run around with such armor, but the GURPS system really begins to break down for gameplay balance as Tech passes into the high stellar area.

 

Star Hero is much better designed to keep the feel of 'the cold vacuum of space on the back of your neck' kind of fear in combat, that Traveller has.

Armor is much easier and more logically split between energy and physical, and the various weapon advantages (AP, Pen, Expl, etc) make it very easy to simulate a deadly weapon. I played in a Star Hero Traveller cross over in college, and it felt every bit as deadly in combat (we used hit locations and wound penalites) as Traveller.

 

To those who dont understand the immense appeal with the gritty nature of Traveller, it was thus: The universe is a dangerous place, and combat should only be undertaken as a last resort. For when the lasers fly, people die.

 

This made for EXCELLENT role playing from all players, who were really loathe to enter in fights (GASP! Just like REAL people!!). Players would use their heads and typically acted in very real, belieavable ways in the game. This is helped make Traveller the greatest Sci-Fi setting ever done in RPG.

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I've been running a hard sf star hero set in traveller with a few mods for 5 months, the players really liked it, although it took me 3 weeks of solid work to come up with templates for ships, vehicles, weapons and equipment from traveller and then include slug-thrower weapons both hth and ship based and to also include mech classes and their derivative weapons

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I've been having fun running my Hero Traveller campaign (although they guys aren't quite as cautious about getting into gunfights as THEY would like).

 

With all the people creating stuff for Hero Traveller, how about we coordinate efforts. I can host it all (with credits) on my website..

 

Contact me via e-mail if you are interested in contributing to the effort.

Al

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Originally posted by Al_Beddow

I've been having fun running my Hero Traveller campaign (although they guys aren't quite as cautious about getting into gunfights as THEY would like).

 

With all the people creating stuff for Hero Traveller, how about we coordinate efforts. I can host it all (with credits) on my website..

 

Contact me via e-mail if you are interested in contributing to the effort.

Al

 

Look on the hard sf star hero thread

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  • 2 months later...

Chello, Al!

 

Nice to see ya over here (Lord_Kjeran from the Kanzer boards here)!

 

I had the same issues with GURPS Traveller...I think the big problem is that GURPS isn't a truly integrated system like Hero. It's been added and morphed from when it was just a fantasy game. I will admit that firearms in GURPS atre pretty blasted deadly.

 

That having been said, I'll weigh on the Traveller feel in Hero. I haven't run Traveller in Hero since the BBB (and that came out when I was in the Amry), but here goes. I just let the PCs design their characters as normal for Traveller. Talked with them about their design and made sure that what they wanted FIT.

 

Eh, who knows.

 

Damn it, Al, now I want to run Traveller Hero! :mad:

 

Tony

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Traveller Hero discussions etc

 

I would love to help with the conversion ideas, having played Traveller since it came out, and done some writing and playtesting on various things over the years, I have a lot of assorted ideas and notes already done

 

my specialty is starships and gadgets mostly though

 

heres what I have already done just for various editions of traveller and some odds and ends for 4th ed Hero

 

http://fafrhd.pocketempires.com/

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Traveller/Hero discussions

 

we have a general traveller chat room on undernet IRC thats pretty much open whenever at night, and 1 current running traveller campaign going, not all of us are familiar with Hero, but would happily be interested in exchanges of ideas. I apologize

if this posting is in violation of any policies etc... our specialities tend to be ships and gadgets, along with aliens and different worlds

 

were on the undernet on a channel called #traveller

or if nobodys there, you can find one of us in #callahans

which is based on the bar of the same name

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Originally posted by Al_Beddow

I've been having fun running my Hero Traveller campaign (although they guys aren't quite as cautious about getting into gunfights as THEY would like).

 

With all the people creating stuff for Hero Traveller, how about we coordinate efforts. I can host it all (with credits) on my website..

 

Contact me via e-mail if you are interested in contributing to the effort.

Al

I would like to expand this to... ANYONE who is doing a conversion/setting for HERO 5th and doesn't wish to pay for a site that is free from banners/popups I am willing to host you for free. You will be totally responsible for your own layout etc and I will upload them for you. I'll even give you a free POP3 e-mail address at My domain.

 

it is a ".org" domain because people have voluntarily donated to help pay the bills. anyone so inclined to do so I suggest $12 USD for "a year". I do NOT turn away those who don't have the funds.

 

To see some of the stuff on the site go to http://www.hackwurld.org

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