David webers Honorverse

[darkmentat]

Has anyone tried to use any of the backgroud from thease books it would seem to be a good fit for the traveller mythos, but since i'm new to this system i would like some input from some veterans.

 

[WarriorKnight]

It was being worked on for the T20 rules,but I don't know if it ever published.

 

[Peter Schutze]

T20 would be as good a method as any for the RPG side once the game started

it would make a lousy fit for the traveller mythos since the tech is just so different. Theres also the problem that over the course of the books (about 30 years) Manticore seems to go up a couple of tech levels and Haven seems to as well which is unheard of in Traveller. At the end of the series they've even got FTL comms for routine in system comms

so many other things would need rework that its probably easier to start from scratch. Even the character generation / careers would need serious changes though because of the routine use of anagathics in the honorverse .... 2 issues off the top of my head

most manticorans would need a reason to explain why they dont have >A as their education stat
aging wouldnt even be a consideration for 12+ terms

 

[Putraack]

I ran a game maybe 6 years ago using the Honorverse and the 2300AD ruleset. That worked OK. I stayed away from the military action, just had the players doing a few "planet-of-the-week" episodic adventures. That didn't seem to hurt it any, they were in some of the non-aligned worlds. I kludged the starship concepts from somewhere else.

I really only used that setting as I knew it was the only one that nearly all of my players had read any of. The theme was that they were the techies for a travelling rock'n'roll act. The campaign's name was "Space, drugs and rock 'n' roll!"

I think it could work as part of the Traveller mindset, if you stay away from the very-organized empires, like Haven, Manticore or the Solarian League.

Having said that, Traveller is supposed to be a generic ruleset at heart, so go for it!

 

[Jame]

If you can make it work, then go ahead.

Note that I lost interest in the setting a couple years ago, and gave up my copies.

 

[leo knight]

As I recall, the ships in Weber's books accellerate at hundreds of Gs (the top end in the first book was 600 Gs, IIRC), but the 'hyper limit' is farther out, so travel times in systems were faster, but a ship running for the jump limit took about as long as in standard Traveller. Hyperspace had increasingly fast 'bands' that allow faster travel if the ship has inertial compensator strong enough to withstand the stress. Again, faster than Traveller, but stars are farther apart, so travel times seem comparable. The Sirius runs for hyper at 410 Gs, and will reach the hyper limit in just under 3 hours.

She paused and began punching numbers into her maneuvering systems with an unaccustomed speed and accuracy that amazed McKeon. The results flashed on her screen, and she pointed at them.

"Look. If they pop out of hyper right at the hyper limit on a reciprocal of Sirius's present course, they'll be barely twelve light-minutes out from Medusa. If they translate downward at the maximum safe velocity, they can be into planetary orbit in under three and a half hours, even at superdreadnought acceleration rates. They'll also be just over eleven-point-three light-hours from the terminus, so they can reach it in twenty-eight hours and forty-five minutes. If we didn't know they were coming until they dropped out of hyper, they'd have plenty of time to be set up right on the terminus when Home Fleet tried to make transit through it."

From "On Basilisk Station" chapter 27

The big difference I see is the weaponry, especially defense. Ships have their gravity bands 'above and below' the ship, theoretically impenitrable, with the weaker sidewalls, and the open 'throat' and 'tail'. They also, IIRC, are much bigger than Traveller standard.

By the way, you can read "On Basilisk Station" free, online,here:
http://www.baen.com/library/
And my favorite part, the final battle between the Sirius and the Fearless, begins here:
http://www.webscription.net/10.1125/Baen/0743435710/0743435710.htm

For myself, I had thought about keeping the numbers and rules from Traveller, but "re-explaining" them with Weber's technology. The whole hyper bands concept seemed to mesh well with jump drive, and the way turbulence in hyper could destroy small vessels explained the 100 ton minimum for starships. I got bogged down, and set it aside.

Here's an interview with David Weber:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VyvtO4wZVU&feature=player_embedded
I haven't seen it, but I hope it helps. Enjoy!

 

[Theophilus]

They also, IIRC, are much bigger than Traveller standard.

Actually, there not that much bigger. Using the information on the Nike and Nevada classes from Storm From The Shadows and calculating displacement using the TNE Spreadsheet I figured the dispacements:

Nike class (2.4million ton battlecruiser)

Length: 998.9 meters, Width/Heigth/Diameter 127.16 meters gives a length/width ratio of 7.85/1 which calcuates to a dispacement in TNE of 867,000 tons.

Nevada class (911,000 ton battlecruiser)
Length 721.1 meters Width/Heigth/Diameter 92.02 meters gives a ratio of 7.836/1 which calculates to a dispacement in TNE of 328,000 tons.
Obviously the multimillion ton Dreadnaugths will be much larger than this, but the ships depicted in the early novels would be more comparable. Now if I just had accurate lengths for all the ships and I use the L/W ratio's found here as a guide I could get an approximate Traveller dispacement for ever ship in the Honorverse.

 

[Theophilus]

Obviously I fudged the numbers some, while the Beam (Width) was 127m the Draugth (Heigth) was only 113 meters since TNE doesn't have stats for a flattened cylinder I cheated somewhat, in that the ships have an obvious taper on each end and an enlarged "hammerhead" bow and stern. I simply used the true cylinder displacement for both ships to give an approximate displacement. Purist's may cry, but I think this is close enough to give a reference for comparision.

 

[Theophilus]

Using the above guide, If the Fearless from "On Basilisk Station" displaces almost 90,000 tons (honorverse) then at a 1/3 conversion to Traveller Tons I'd infer 30,000 tons.

 

[Gray Lensman]

What I've used

Left this alone for a few days to see what came up. A good look at the tech of the "Honorverse" is written by David Weber in the anthology "More than Honor" Baen Books 1998.

I have personally ripped the entire Manticore Binary star system (named differently in the campaign) and those wonderful "treecats" (about the only form of psionics I have ever allowed in a campaign).

Never cared for the technical aspects but I am not really a gearhead anyway .

 

[Finarvyn]

In my continual search for inspiration for my next Traveller campaign, I've been looking over Hammer's Slammers and B5 in another thread. I've also got friends who are big "Honor Harrington" fans and thought about running that for Traveller instead.

For myself, I had thought about keeping the numbers and rules from Traveller, but "re-explaining" them with Weber's technology. The whole hyper bands concept seemed to mesh well with jump drive, and the way turbulence in hyper could destroy small vessels explained the 100 ton minimum for starships.

I like this concept. Basic firearms and such seem like they would be pretty compatible with no real conversion needed. It looks like the main issues would be in terms of starships, and mostly in the Jump Drive area. I have issues with the ships' acceleration of hundreds of g's aspect of the Honorverse anyway, so scaling this down would seem to work fine.

Seems like a lot of the HH adventures would be planetside instead of space combat anyway.

I got bogged down, and set it aside.

Has anyone else tried to fit HH into Traveller?

 

[aramis]

Lots of people have. Including Hunter/QLI.

The real issue is tech... Webber was involved in Starfire for so long (game designer for SF III, and co-editor with Todd W. Crump for 2nd and 3rd eds, plus the novels), that he has internalized that tech progression... and the Honorverse seems to share that tech progression.

I read On Basilisk Station, and 4 more, and the battles could have been played out using Starfire...

But that tech and combat paradigm is very different; it would require a major overhaul of the TL system.

 

[Finarvyn]

that tech and combat paradigm is very different; it would require a major overhaul of the TL system.

Drat. That's what I get for not being too familar with a genre and thinking I can just plug square pegs into round holes. A major overhaul is not what I had in mind.

 

[Whipsnade]

Drat. That's what I get for not being too familar with a genre and thinking I can just plug square pegs into round holes. A major overhaul is not what I had in mind.

Finarvyn,

Sadly, even a major overhaul would still most likely not convert Traveller to the Harrington setting. It's not a matter of adjusting tech levels as the technological assumptions made in one are nothing like those made in the other. The technologies are simply too different and, because technology is such a basic part of a rule set's or setting's design, changes to technologies create huge follow-on changes elsewhere.

When converting a setting to a rule set, we need to look at both the technologies and the details produced by those technologies.


Regards,
Bill

 

[DaveChase]

Question
Are you a rules kind of GM or a RolePlay kind of GM?
Do your players want set rules and charts or do they want the atmosphere and roleplay?

If you answer yes to the first half of each question then I concur with Whipsnade.

If you answer yes second half of each question, then say read up on everything on the Honorverse and then start gaming.

You can (as the GM) control what action takes place, where it takes place and how things flow. But if your players are not having fun then it will not be a fun game.

Just some of my thoughts on your question.

Dave Chase

 

[captainjack]

Question
Are you a rules kind of GM or a RolePlay kind of GM?
Do your players want set rules and charts or do they want the atmosphere and roleplay?

If you answer yes to the first half of each question then I concur with Whipsnade.

If you answer yes second half of each question, then say read up on everything on the Honorverse and then start gaming.

You can (as the GM) control what action takes place, where it takes place and how things flow. But if your players are not having fun then it will not be a fun game.

Just some of my thoughts on your question.

Dave Chase

two things:

1. Welcome back Dave!

2. Most of the differences in my limited read of the honorverse deal with travel and space combat. All the rest can be shoehorned, particulalry using either CT or MGT. The travel issue only matters insofar as jumptime in my campaigns is when players work on projects and skills. The commubnication issue would require a rethink in than from scratch universe, but its got the structure in the HV, so if you are familiar with that, you're golden.

Combat really matters if you are resolving it non narratively (ie on a hexboard) - if not, theres quite a few ways to run narrative space combat in traveller that will do just fine -particulalry if you are doing small ship small numbers combat rather than capital ship combat as in HV books. Some of them are here, and I'd also note that the old T4 range band 2D model works fine for small sizes and numbers, and is flexible enough by far to accomodate HV terminology.

 

[ThunderChilde]

At the root of your dilemna is a question. What is it from traveller that you want to use?

If its the chargen and task resolution, it will need to be adjusted to reflect rejuv/prolong whatever you wanna call it.
If its the starship rules section, your in for some heavy lifting.

Personally, I don't see the great difficulty. Drop Travellers Tech assumptions, and write up your framework of the HV tech assumptions, use the chargen and task resolution and run with it. You infered you weren't a gear head, so don't bother with detailed descriptions of the ships, just let them become background to the story.

 

[Finarvyn]

At the root of your dilemna is a question. What is it from traveller that you want to use?

If its the chargen and task resolution, it will need to be adjusted to reflect rejuv/prolong whatever you wanna call it.

If its the starship rules section, you're in for some heavy lifting.

My gut feeling is that the chargen and task resolution would be my main focus. I think that starship combat is important, but my particular gaming group isn't so much into that kind of thing. I think we'd be more likely to pay more attention to character interactions, diplomacy, and that kind of thing.

Of course, sometimes they surprise me.