Adaptation

[Hanson's Roughriders]

OK so i have the main book and nothing else, lets work on how to adapt the rules to accommodate some settings not outlined in the book.

Ill get the ball rolling -

Star trek whats the best way to do a similar UFP setting with the serial numbers filed off? Or perhaps leaning towards the SFB universe?

issues I foresee with character generation -

1. How do I handle when a person cannot attain the required roll to remain in or attain a desired career?
2. without re-writing the occupation how does say a character become an officer - 1 term in Spacer then the rest in the desired field?

Another setting that interests me is that of original (not the movie or animation) starship troopers, or even better Armor by John Steakley? How does everyone run a millitary game?

Remember the rules for this thread are you can only use what is in T5 and legally attainable on the internet.

 

[Vladika]

OK so i have the main book and nothing else, lets work on how to adapt the rules to accommodate some settings not outlined in the book.

Ill get the ball rolling -

Star trek whats the best way to do a similar UFP setting with the serial numbers filed off? Or perhaps leaning towards the SFB universe?

issues I foresee with character generation -

1. How do I handle when a person cannot attain the required roll to remain in or attain a desired career?
2. without re-writing the occupation how does say a character become an officer - 1 term in Spacer then the rest in the desired field?

Another setting that interests me is that of original (not the movie or animation) starship troopers, or even better Armor by John Steakley? How does everyone run a millitary game?

Remember the rules for this thread are you can only use what is in T5 and legally attainable on the internet.

Basically you FUDGE IT like every other GM in the known universe. That and a healthy imagination. T5, and no other version, ever intended to supplant a GM, or players, imaginations.

Also, this isn't Starfleet: there a slew of boards out there for that. T5 is a core rulebook, not the end all and be all. From CT, and moving forward into MgT, and undoubtedly in the works for T5, is Mercenary for the purely military enthusiasts. That and a few editions of Striker.

(If you HAVE to use only T5, I fear you are going to come up short, and who the heck want to cruise the web for tidbits?)

 

[pendragonman]

Basically you FUDGE IT like every other GM in the known universe. That and a healthy imagination. T5, and no other version, ever intended to supplant a GM, or players, imaginations.

Also, this isn't Starfleet: there a slew of boards out there for that. T5 is a core rulebook, not the end all and be all. From CT, and moving forward into MgT, and undoubtedly in the works for T5, is Mercenary for the purely military enthusiasts. That and a few editions of Striker.

(If you HAVE to use only T5, I fear you are going to come up short, and who the heck want to cruise the web for tidbits?)

Actually, Mercenary and Striker are Marines and Army dudes.

High Guard is for the Navy types.

 

[Spaceresearcher]

You mean that the Traveller setting is actually outlined in the T5 book??

 

[mike wightman]

If you want an active duty Starfleet game based on Traveller then you can mix the character generation up a bit.

While Spacer will be the main career of most characters there is the possibility of a term or two as a scholar, marine, agent, scout. If your version od Starfleet is everyone is an officer than grant the commission roll.

If a player has a particular character in mind I usually allow them to pick the skills to suit heir character concept - within reason - while other players prefer completely random skill allocation and then make up their character's back story.

 

[mike wightman]

Which brings me to the second bit of your post - a Starship troopers or the like military game.

What I think you are describing is what I and others sometimes call an active duty game. Put another way the characters haven't left their services and mustered out. You run the campaign based on them still being told what to do by their superiors

So you allow the character to go through character generation, but don't do mustering out. All equipment is issued by the service for the mission.

 

[Hanson's Roughriders]

Thanks for the replies, I'll have a tinker and a think about the trek traveller.

What is the best way to handle uplifted animals (eclipse phase style)? Would making a new race be a good idea?

 

[mike wightman]

T5 is probably the best version of Traveller out there to do this. There is the chimeras section, the sophont section and the beast maker to play around with.

I would start by defining the characteristics of the animal I wanted to uplift and then add the uplift package of my choice - based on level of intelligence and education potential.

 

[aramis]

OK so i have the main book and nothing else, lets work on how to adapt the rules to accommodate some settings not outlined in the book.

Ill get the ball rolling -

Star trek whats the best way to do a similar UFP setting with the serial numbers filed off? Or perhaps leaning towards the SFB universe?

issues I foresee with character generation -

1. How do I handle when a person cannot attain the required roll to remain in or attain a desired career?
2. without re-writing the occupation how does say a character become an officer - 1 term in Spacer then the rest in the desired field?

Another setting that interests me is that of original (not the movie or animation) starship troopers, or even better Armor by John Steakley? How does everyone run a millitary game?

Remember the rules for this thread are you can only use what is in T5 and legally attainable on the internet.

Star Trek - realize that the TOS sizes are a bit smaller than the OTU.
The Enterprise is between 12000 Td and 16000 Td.

In this other post I show my basic measurements.

The difference of cones method produces somewhat less than average diameter cylinder sections. and it's closer fit.
I'm rerunning the numbers using difference of two cones mode.

I come up with

CA/TG/DD/SC Main Saucer	6020.3	84284.7
DN Main Saucer	6318.5	88458.4
CA Sec Hull	2193.9	30714.8
DN Sec Hull	3250	45499.4
Neck	362.7	5077.3
Pod	17952	251327.4
Nacelle	971.3	13598.7
Struts CA	80.4	1125.8
Struts DN P/S	123.1	1723
Struts DN C	79.6	1113.9
Struts Tug	61.1	855.4

This puts the CA as about 10680 Td. I'd suggest using either 10KTd 11KTd for nice round figures

DN: 13170 Td : DN Main Saucer, Neck, DN Secondary Hull, DN Pylons 2PS 1C
CA: 10680 Td : Main Saucer, Neck, Secondary hull, 2 Nacelles, 2 CA Pylons
DD/SC: 7354.3 Td : Main Saucer, Neck, Nacelle
Tg: 8447.8 Td : Main Saucer, Neck, 2 Tg Pylons

I'd call each bank of phasers as either Disintegrator bays or TL18 PA Bays.
Shields are "White Globes" from prior editions.
When I used CT to do so, I wrote them as PA bays of 100Td per phaser emitter. Photons were missile bays with nukes. (CT lacked Antimatter.)

Edit: Typo fixed.

 

[aramis]

You mean that the Traveller setting is actually outlined in the T5 book??

Yes, kind of. There is a lot of setting encoded as rules. And a small but vital chunks of fluff.

 

[Hanson's Roughriders]

T5 is probably the best version of Traveller out there to do this. There is the chimeras section, the sophist section and the beast maker to play around with.

I would start by defining the characteristics of the animal I anted to uplift and then add the uplift package of my choice - based on level of intelligence and education potential.

Interesting, I'm off to read ! the thing I love about these rules is that I can open the book and find stuff i have not read and then get directed to stuff to look at it from another direction.

 

[mike wightman]

I find the main strength of T5 is in setting design, I usually manage to find something that gets me thinking every time I open the book

 

[Ulsyus]

Another setting that interests me is that of original (not the movie or animation) starship troopers, or even better Armor by John Steakley? How does everyone run a millitary game?

If you're going to run a game where they're still in the military then for a group of PCs you may want to consider giving them roles that are out of the ordinary. SF is always a good start, as they're more likely to operate in a small team. For PCs it'd still be exceptional, unless most of them are happy to be gruntasauruses while one of them is the SNCO or officer. That way they can be allocated special training, seeker, security or destruction missions in different locations either in a single campaign or being jumped about around a globe/syste/subsector etc. If you wanted them to be commanders you could run a semi-wargaming campaign using a modified Striker (just adjusted to fit T5), but otherwise the PCs would merely be a very small cog in a big outfit.

Of course, if you ran an Armour-style game then you can do whatever you want with them: they're no longer on the personnel-to-mission allocation system and no-one has to consider the implications of sending them down to those damn bugs again and again and again and...

I find the main strength of T5 is in setting design, I usually manage to find something that gets me thinking every time I open the book

Agreed. It's so damn big, and there's plenty in it: what in the past would have been so many books, now all within the one set of covers!

 

[aramis]

Warp Drive:
you will need to decide how to handle it. Borrowing a page from Mongoose is probably not a bad idea: it's twice the size of a similarly rated jump drive, but burns fuel at the same rate as an equally rated PP.

We know that the antimatter storage is in the nacelles.

The rating is another issue. If you want to use the drive rating directly as cruising warp factor, and allow rating +2 emergency speed (with task rolls to avoid damage), then these things get very quick.

If instead you want to have roughly the same maximum velocity as standard, the rating is in parsecs/week... which works out to 169.985 C per Jn at peak.
Sustained jump speeds are about half that unsupported, and 9/14 supported.

Jn	LY/Y, 14d/WFE, 14d	LY/Y, 9d/WFE, 9d	C during J/WFE, 7d
0	0C=WF0	0C=WF0	0C=WF0
1	85C=WF4.4	132.2C=WF5.1	170C=WF5.5
2	170C=WF5.5	264.4C=WF6.4	340C=WF7
3	255C=WF6.3	396.6C=WF7.3	510C=WF8
4	340C=WF7	528.8C=WF8.1	679.9C=WF8.8
5	425C=WF7.5	661.1C=WF8.7	849.9C=WF9.5
6	510C=WF8	793.3C=WF9.3	1019.9C=WF10.1
7	594.9C=WF8.4	925.5C=WF9.7	1189.9C=WF10.6
8	679.9C=WF8.8	1057.7C=WF10.2	1359.9C=WF11.1

If doing it this way, you may want to be figuring the drive ratings directly as emergency speed.

 

[Hanson's Roughriders]

Thanks aramis! Star Trek is very close to my heart not as close as Dr Who but right up there (and I would never try to stat up the TARDIS).

Perhaps stating up star wars is easier (avoid capital ships)? I have often dreamt of a realistic starwars - with elite imperial troopers scaring my players as opposed to being cannon fodder.

 

[Blue Ghost]

Wasn't there supposed to be a Prime-Directive (Trek) - Traveller mash-up somewhere down the pipeline? I think I heard tell tale rumor of that before I left the SFB BBS some years back.

 

[aramis]

Wasn't there supposed to be a Prime-Directive (Trek) - Traveller mash-up somewhere down the pipeline? I think I heard tell tale rumor of that before I left the SFB BBS some years back.

Last I heard, it's being done by ADB... which means "it gets done when it gets done." Finding authors and artists willing to work with ADB can be tricky - SVC has a very restrictive license, and is very particular about what can and cannot be added, because one screwup and he loses his whole income stream.

And, to be blunt, he's made it clear the fluff is all the standard 2nd ed boilerplate (used in GPD, PD20, and PD20M). He's also stated his belief that the TPD will satisfy the d6 system players (who want d6 Space used).

And, last I saw, the big holdup is that they're holding to the MGT standard that every ship presented must have full deckplans. Which has resulted in a 3+ year holdup, since SVC is psychotic about deckplan style and quality.

It shall be glorious when it releases. Which will be "eventually".

 

[Blue Ghost]

Ah, okay.

Well, aren't the Enterprise (Constitution Class Heavy Cruiser) plans available for print as per his license? It would seem, and I'm talking as someone who has no idea of what's going on in the least, that those deckplans are done. But, just thinking outloud here, I'm guessing there's a desire to get the other ships done too...DD, SC, Tg, DN and what not...probably Klingon-Rom ships too.

Oh well.

Thanks for the clarification.

 

[aramis]

Ah, okay.

Well, aren't the Enterprise (Constitution Class Heavy Cruiser) plans available for print as per his license? It would seem, and I'm talking as someone who has no idea of what's going on in the least, that those deckplans are done. But, just thinking outloud here, I'm guessing there's a desire to get the other ships done too...DD, SC, Tg, DN and what not...probably Klingon-Rom ships too.

Oh well.

Thanks for the clarification.

Not exactly. IIRC, He's redoing them from scratch, since he's not licensed by FJD to reprint theirs.

 

[Blue Ghost]

Interesting. I don't want to get off topic and start talking about it, but, well ... thanks. SFB, to a certain point, was fairly fun. But now it's going to have a Traveller tie in. Neat.