CoDo Traveller or Adventure in The Imperium of Man

[JcFalkenburg]

As you can probably tell by By my log in Name , I am a big fan of Jerry Pournelle 's Future History. I was thinking about running a game based in his Universe using some iteration of the rules ( TNE, except for the Character Generation, is my favorite iteration of the rules, especially FF&S , mmm, FF&S- anyway , I digress...)Anybody have any Ideas or suggestions for running a Traveller game in The CO-DO or the first of second empire of man ?

 

[Ran Targas]

Since I'm re-reading "The Gripping Hand", I completely understand your appreciation for the Co-Dominion and your desire to incorporate it into YTU; it's very tempting. I do prefer the Alderson drive to the jump drive of Traveller canon, it's seems more realistic in some ways. But the lack of anti-gravity on ships may require a merging with T2300 as well.

Either way, best of luck, it should prove a very entertaining project. Please do continue to post your ideas and I'm sure others will chime in as well.

 

[mike wightman]

The fall of the Rule of Man (second Imperium) would be an ideal setting IMHO.

 

[JcFalkenburg]

the strategic implications of the alderson drive haven't escaped me. One of the attractions of the new era ruleset is the alternate tech presented in FF&S, I will see if I can cobble something together using the 2300ish tech written in the manual. Do any of you remember the way jump routes were generated in the original edition of the lbb's ? maybe some variant using startype(spectral class) insead of starport type could be used to generate alderson tram ways.

 

[mike wightman]

Trade routes were generated using a table that used comparative starport types.

I would just make up the jump routes that suit your campaign - much easier

But if you want I'll dig out the table and post it.

 

[zonk]

Or use the tramways in the boardgame Imperium.

I think it's one of the games on the Classic Traveller CD and it's available in the big floppy reprint book that included the Traveller games, or so I believe.

 

[JcFalkenburg]

I ordered the ct canon cd about a week ago, I'll check out Imperium when it gets here, i guess. My mind is still dancing around the possibilities that the anderson drive makes for....
oh, and As far as i can tell the pournelle setting doesn't seem to have the travel speed = speed of communications limitation that the OTU seems to have. somebody correct me if I am wrong....

 

[Ran Targas]

Actually, I think it does hold to the notion of no FTL communications independent of courier ships. IIRC, all comms in the CoDominion are laser or RF based, and must be transmitted from station to station (or to a waiting ship as it may apply).

The mechanics are slightly different though, since Alderson drives can provide near instantaneous translation across distances even greater than 6 parsecs, far out performing X-boats. But once in system, dependent of course entirely on the position of the Alderson point, a CoDominion courier could find itself far from just 100 diameters from a habitable world.

As I said, I find the Alderson drive a much more elegant FTL technology, still requiring a certain level of spacemanship to efficiently use. It also makes defending a system a much more likely prospect than I believe possible in Traveller canon.

 

[mechascorpio]

^ Absolutely true. In "The Mote in God's Eye", at least, there is a series of paragraphs that outline the whole series of steps and mix of tech involved, after the Lenin has made its first jump from the Mote system on its way back home:

Shortly afterward the communications officer established contact with a waiting tanker. There was also a small message sloop, fast, manned by young crewmen in perfect physical condition. Kutuzov dictated his report and sent it with two of his midshipmen, and the sloop accelerated at three gravities, racing for the Alderson point where it would Jump to the New Caledonia System and deliver the report of mankind's first contact with an alien civilization.

The tanker carried mail and nearly a year's worth of news. There had been more revolts in the sector. ...<snip>...That news was worth another celebration on Lenin, and it got so big that Mikhaiov had to borrow MacArthur crewmen to man his ship.

The sloop returned with more messages masered even before the message ship could rendezvous. The Sector Capital was wild with enthusiasm, and the Viceroy was planning a gala reception for the Motie ambassadors. War Minister Armstrong sent a muted "well done" and a thousand questions.

These will be helpful:

Future History Timeline

Maps

 

[spinwardpirate]

Fun! Remember that the Leif Ericson was the inspiration for the MacArthur!
http://www.projectrho.com/SSC/index.html

 

[Jame]

I'm not sure if I'd run adventures in it, but it could work.

I was only able to read Mote in God's Eye (that is to say, the first one, whatever its name), as I found the second one to be too different from the first.

 

[Peter Schutze]

the wargame starfire (in any of its numerous editions) may be what you are looking for to generate 'tramlines' since it creates links based on startype as part of its basic system generation rules

basically the number has something to do with star size but since you also get 'empty space' emergence points they posit that a gravity well or galactic scale gravity wave interrupts the link between other systems

Or you could do what I did and multiply the stellar masses by x light years. any spheres that overlap link. if its a multiple system, links are further out and less stationary because of gravitational interferences. Then go thru and add longer range links where massive stars have uninterrupted line of sight between them .... this is the fudge factor to link clusters together.

that should keep the number of m and smaller stars who are unlikely to have good planets out of the network explaining why habitable planets appear more often than the number of stars suggest.

 

[JcFalkenburg]

The tramline generation system that you described sounds about what I'm looking for. I guess I 'll have to score a copy on ebay to really give it a closer look.
What I think I will do this weekend is lay out the technology levels for the codominium, the first empire, and the second empire. As best as my aging brain can recall, the codominium era was relatively lo tech ( tech 8 or 9) , the first empire was the highest tech, with the 2d empire more than a bit lower tech than the first. Any Ideas ?
As an on topic tangent, The Battle of Sauron By John Carr, is a great read that finally fills in the blanks about the events leading to the demise of the first empire.

 

[aramis]

JC:

Starfire's system isn't nearly so involved.

In Imperial Starfire, you randomy generate the number of systems, and their number of links. As you explore, you randomly assign where they lead.

Since it's a wargame, typically, the group decides how "big" the "universe" is before play; 1000 systems is pretty typical.

Each time you go through a link, you roll for where it ends up. If the destination isn't out of allowed warp points, it's a two way link; if it is out of allowed warp points, it's a closed link; you need science instruments to find it again, and must have the transit data to transit it. ALso note: all links to black holes are dead-ends... in a game mastered game, you don't get told what happened. Likewise, in multi-blind games (where tacticals are farmed out), you don't find out if ships are blow up in their first turn after exiting the warp point.

here's the table from Imperial Starfire (actually, from my coding thereof in QBasic):
Prim is type of primary; 0= none.
Sec is type of secondary; 0= no secondary
WPM is warp point die-roll modifier.
WP is number of warp points generated.

6       REM Primary Effects listing
        IF Prim = 0 THEN WPM = -45
        IF Prim = 1 THEN WPM = 20
        IF Prim = 2 THEN WPM = 0
        IF Prim = 3 THEN WPM = 10
        IF Prim = 4 THEN WPM = 0
        IF Prim = 5 THEN WPM = 0
        IF Prim = 6 THEN WPM = 0
        IF Prim = 7 THEN WPM = -20
        IF Prim = 8 THEN WPM = -30
        IF Sec <> 0 THEN WPM = WPM + 15
        x = D(1, 100) + WPM
        IF x <= 15 THEN WP = 1
        IF x > 15 AND x <= 48 THEN WP = 2
        IF x > 48 AND x <= 74 THEN WP = 3
        IF x > 74 AND x <= 93 THEN WP = 4
        IF x > 93 AND x <= 98 THEN WP = 5
        IF x > 98 THEN WP = D(1, 10) + 5
        RETURN

FUNCTION star$ (ty)
        IF ty = 0 THEN x$ = "Starless Region "
        IF ty = 1 THEN x$ = "Blue Giant      "
        IF ty = 2 THEN x$ = "White Star      "
        IF ty = 3 THEN x$ = "Red Giant       "
        IF ty = 4 THEN x$ = "Yellow Star     "
        IF ty = 5 THEN x$ = "Orange Star     "
        IF ty = 6 THEN x$ = "Red Star        "
        IF ty = 7 THEN x$ = "White Dwarf     "
        IF ty = 8 THEN x$ = "Red Dwarf       "
        IF ty = 9 THEN x$ = "Black Hole      "
        star$ = x$
END FUNCTION

If I were going to pregenerate the entire universe, I'd do all "1st links", with the 1st links always leading to second links, and then another pass filling in unfilled seconds going to 3rds, etc.

 

[JcFalkenburg]

I'll try to mess around with tramline generation some this weekend. I found and printed up the wikipedia Info on the codo, the little wiki blurb on technology and the timeline sites description of the upper limits achieved by the first empire( which, aside from antigravity) seems more advanced than the otu Imperium ( direct matter conversion and such ) gives my a nice window to work with. So , here is where we are:

Roughly three time periods to choose from
- The Codominium proper-relatively low tech, Opportunities for exploration and colonization , roughly 40 or so colonies in various states of dependence on imports from the mother world,and, later on in the period,painfully aware that the codominium is failing. This period is probably the most well documented period.
_ the first empire-the least well documented and probably the longest period. Tech advances, growth to 1000+ worlds, wars at the beginning and wars at the end. The Rise (and destruction) Of Sauron. lots of opportunity for intrigue, exploration, etc.
-The second empire-rebirth from the ashes of the first empire, pocket empires, wars of unification, tech regression.,etc.
Which one do I start working on first ?
While I'm Deciding, I'll try and figure out how big an alderson drive should be, and the energy requirements to traverse the tramline-any suggestions would be appreciated.

 

[Ran Targas]

^ I think playing in the 2nd Empire would afford you the opportunity to still mine CoDominion and 1st Empire adventures; as the 2nd Empire pushes out into old 1st Empire turf, they are going to run into pockets of all kinds of interesting stuff, most of it unexpected (like the Moties).

 

[JcFalkenburg]

an interesting side effect of trying to figure out how to work up the codo in traveller rules is being reminded exactly how much inspiration the designers of the game drew from the pournelle universe. I know some of the similarities are just because of the genre ( hard sci fi) but the degree of militarization, the humanocentric universe ( at least in the original rules set, and the inevitability of empire all scream pournelle.

 

[Major B]

...as the 2nd Empire pushes out into old 1st Empire turf, they are going to run into pockets of all kinds of interesting stuff, most of it unexpected (like the Moties).

Ran, you've reminded me of one of my favorite Pournelle stories - I think the title was "King David's Spaceship" - the story of a "rediscovered" planet that had to scramble to demonstrate space flight before it was admitted to the Imperium as a second-class world. I have to see if I can find the box that one is hiding in and read it again.

The CoDo Marines were the inspiration for the Imperial Marine organizations I use IMTU. Along with that I've incorporated lots of other ideas, but never thought to recreate an ATU based on Pournelle's universe. I'm very interested to see how this thread develops and what other ideas I can borrow. Thanks for starting this discussion JC.

 

[Peter Schutze]

>I'll try and figure out how big an alderson drive should be, and the energy requirements to traverse the tramline-any suggestions would be appreciated.

I'd think combining the traveller fuel and jump and maneover drives into one overall package should work. there never seemed to be any real mention of fuelling or different drives for jump.

King Davids spaceship story actually suggests the opposite .... getting into space is effectively the pinnacle achievement, very unlike Traveller's minor/major race distinction

the other factor I can see is that without artificial grav you probably want to cut the above drive total down to say 85% so you can increase the accomodation / quarters space requirements. here I'd look at the 2300 ships for inspiration.

the other thing to consider is allowing some of the alternate maneovre tech in FF&S so you can have 'primitive' ships in the between empires period. there's not much about them in the Co-do stories but King Davids spaceship does mention many other methods besides the cannonshell they built which could be a reference to our current situation with everything hypothetical or actual ships that were used

 

[whitedalek]

here's a (system-agnostic) web map i did for Thousand Suns, the square boxes with numbers are the travel times between systems

there are a few more maps posted on the Thousand Suns yahoo group, if you'd like to join and get them... ; )

http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Gallery/index.php?n=471