dr. theodor krenstein

[Botcho]

Not my character, as I am sure most of you know. I am working on the backstory of my first f2f Traveller character and have an opportunity to tie my character to Dr. Krensteins robotics test for planetary surface surveys on Pannet (Spinward Marches 2519) back in TI 1090.

Problem is DGP publications in general, and the Traveller's Digests in specific, are rather difficult to get ahold of. My question is this. Do any of you know of any abstracts of the Traveller's Digest characters exploits? Something a touch more comprehensive then Don Mckinney's Integrated Timeline would be helpful.

 

[Hyphen]

Do any of you know of any abstracts of the Traveller's Digest characters exploits? Something a touch more comprehensive then Don Mckinney's Integrated Timeline would be helpful.

Maybe a scan or cooy of the character blurb from the front of one of the Digests? It's under a page so should fall under the heading of "Fair Use".

From memory, there's also a series of essays on "Playing the Characters" somewhere in the series , that may help.

I I remember, I'll try to dig something out - unless anyone else has something handy?

 

[Whipsnade]

Do any of you know of any abstracts of the Traveller's Digest characters exploits?

You're asking for thumbnail descriptions of the various Four Knights adventures and not information about Krenstein's previous life and personality, correct?

If so, off the top of my pointy head, and in no particular order...

Krenstein foiled a Zho plot involving x-boats communications getting knighted for his efforts, investigated the low tech descendents of a failed mining colony on a tidally locked world, solved a murder mystery aboard a liner, investigated and escaped from a heretofore unknown Ancients facility, foiled a Vilani supremacist plot during the Shudusham(sp) robotics conference, tangled with an Ancients robotic saboteur aboard a lab ship, foiled a Zho plot on Terra involving Dolphin terrorists after getting mugged at Machu Picchu, "revealed" the TNS Pathfinder/Aslan Jump Drive connection (which anyone who mattered already knew about), participated in a raid on a research facility as part of an Aslan clan war, discovered documents claiming Ziru Sirka agents interfered with pre-spaceflight Terra were forgeries, solved the case of a person murdered by a video game, handled peaceful "first contact" between the xenophobic natives and IISS staff at Reference the Imperium's primary data storage center, and dealt with a Geonee lunatic who thought he could use an Ancient weapon/device to gain a bride.

I'm sure the others can provide you with the rest.

 

[Whipsnade]

Botcho,

I got bored and thumbed through my Digest copies. I can't find issue #19, but here is a very brief synopsis of each of the twenty remaining Four Knights adventures. I've left the dates out, but they're in chronological order. I also listed the location if possible.

Jode/Pretoria - Foils a Zho plot against x-boat system involving psionic manipulation of data banks

Wal-ta-ka/Atsah - Visits a culture which eschews technology

Antiquity/Ian - First trapped in, then investigates and escapes from previously unknown Ancients facility

Jump Space - Solves a murder aboard the Tukera 1000dTon long-liner Gold of Zurrian

Vland/Vland - At AAB, proves that records stating ZS agents were active on pre-spaceflight Terra are forgeries.

Kaiid/Shuna - Identifies previously unknown sentient race

Dynam/Masionia - Foils plot by Vilani supremacists to steal mothballed warships from an IN depot

Shudusham/Core - Foils plot by Hiver manipulator to damage Imperium-Federation relations

Capital/Core - Knighted by Strephon and told to arrange surprise birthday party for Iphegenia

Reference/Core - Helps xenophobic locals and IISS make peaceful contact

Shiwonee/Massilia - Taken captive by Geonee merchant who is using an Ancient device to get married.

Inthra/Dethenes - Involved with dissidents who do not support their world's decision to remain a Red Zone

Terra/Solomani Rim - Stumbles across a plot involving Zhos, local Psionic institute, and Dolphins

Spectrum/Magyar - Investigates a "murder by video game" which may involve the SSMM

Pierson/Daibei - A pirate attack leads to either an escape from or hunt for the perpetrators

Various - Dealing with sabotage by a newly discovered Ancient robot leads to a misjump

Kusyu/Dark Nebula - The TNS Pathfinder "secret" is revealed

Various - Unwillingly involved in a deep penetration raid during an Aslan clan war.

Halka/Trojan Reach - Uncovers slave trading

Pixie/Regina - Yet more Ancient shenanigans this time involving small pocket universes

These snippets should contain enough information for you without also violating whatever IP restrictions the DGP materials are under. If this post is "naughty", I am certain the mods will flush it away posthaste.

Looking over the adventures, I was struck by how many "clunkers" there are.

 

[Botcho]

Wow Whipsnade, great information thank you. What did you mean by "clunkers"?

 

[Whipsnade]

Wow Whipsnade, great information thank you.

You're welcome. It seems I guessed what you wanted correctly.

What did you mean by "clunkers"?

Bad adventures. In some cases, really bad adventures.

Take the one set on Capital for example. For most of it, the characters basically just walk around as the GM describes all the sights to them. They then get tasked by the Emperor himself with setting up a surprise party for Iphehgenia. That's right, Strephon asks four guys who he has just met to setup a party for his Heir and then suggests kidnapping his Heir would be a good way to get her to the party.

Yeah right... If Strephon were actually that stupid it would go a long way to explaining the Assassination and subsequent Rebellion.

They rope in the Ancient too far often for my liking, four times in 21 outings.

There's a lot of railroading in many of the adventures too, something the otherwise good nugget format lends itself to.

The Aslan clan war adventure is too far ranging IMHO; the characters are aboard the ship for months before the raid occurs forcing the GM either to skip over that time or insert all sorts of additional action. A few of the other adventures are like that too, they're too "big" timewise for the action involved.

There are some great ones, the Antiquity adventure comes to mind, but many are rather pedestrian.

Edit: I checked the Digest Index at the Wiki for issue #19's adventure title. It's called "Out of the Night", it's set in the a Riftspan Reaches, and I can't remember a thing about it. I cannot find my copy of #19 either.

Another edit: My weary wetware has finally coughed up some information regarding "Out of the Night", I hope.
IIRC, it involves the arrival of a STL generation ship containing a previously unknown Minor Race at an Aslan system and the first contact issues which arise. A twist is provided when the Aslan begin to fall ill and the Minor Race is blamed. The characters determine what is causing the illness and prevent the twitchy Aslan from solving the problem another way.

 

[Botcho]

Maybe a scan or cooy of the character blurb from the front of one of the Digests? It's under a page so should fall under the heading of "Fair Use".

From memory, there's also a series of essays on "Playing the Characters" somewhere in the series , that may help.

I I remember, I'll try to dig something out - unless anyone else has something handy?

Thanks Hyphen, I did manage to find the character description for Dr. Krenstein and found it helpful. That plus Whipsnade's timeline is more than enough to play a character obsessed with the good doctors life and times.

 

[Botcho]

You're welcome. It seems I guessed what you wanted correctly.

Bad adventures. In some cases, really bad adventures.....

...There's a lot of railroading in many of the adventures too, something the otherwise good nugget format lends itself to.

The Aslan clan war adventure is too far ranging.... A few of the other adventures are like that too, they're too "big" timewise for the action involved....

...There are some great ones, the Antiquity adventure comes to mind, but many are rather pedestrian.

Yeah, I imagine that more often than not the need to connect the dots in the grand tour superseded good writing. Knowing that the overall goal was to highlight interesting if far flung aspects of known space I can forgive a lot of the excessive travel times. As far as the occasional absurd plot points, well isn't that the bread and butter of a good space opera?

Thank you for your time and thoughts Whipsnade, Traveller is a unique phenomenon in the gaming multiverse and its fans like you that help keep it breathing and relevant for enthusiasts like me to stumble upon.

 

[Whipsnade]

Yeah, I imagine that more often than not the need to connect the dots in the grand tour superseded good writing. Knowing that the overall goal was to highlight interesting if far flung aspects of known space I can forgive a lot of the excessive travel times.

I was commenting more on the time spent in adventures rather than the time spent between them. Many of the adventures contain quite a bit of traveling within them and very little material regarding that traveling. The "murder by video game" adventure is a good example.

In it the characters have their own Suleiman on loan from the IISS and they're carrying a low level Sollie ambassador back home. (Just how they got that job would have made for a good adventure.) The adventure has them pass through several named systems with little more than a few lines, "You refuel at Arglebargle... You refuel at Bargleargle... You refuel at Shempistan...", and so on. The thing is that the world on which the adventure takes place isn't all that special, there's no real reason it had to occur on Spectrum except for the need to shuffle the characters along.

Now, of course, a good GM will fill in all the stops barely mentioned in the adventure just as he would fill in the completely unmentioned time between adventures, but why mention those "whistle stops" at all? All they did was take up space in the text.

The pirate adventure in Daibei works in much the same way. The characters are headed for a certain IISS base to turn in their scout/courier and the adventure plots most of the route with "empty" references to various worlds, "You refuel at Arglebargle... You refuel at Bargleargle... You refuel at Shempistan...". Which system the pirate attack takes place isn't that important, so there's no need to railroad the characters to one specific system by a given date. Again, the characters "itinerary" just takes up space in the text.

As far as railroading is concerned, the adventure dealing with the Ancients sabotage robot has it in spades. The characters are aboard a lab ship, pick the robot up at one world, and then travel to the world where the robot will be studied. The robot activates, screws with the ship, causes a misjump, and - Ta Da! - the characters end up in Aslan space just in time for their adventure on Kusyu.

There's a lot of railroading in the DGP materials. First because a tightly scripted, published adventure sort of requires it and, second, because the nugget format makes it easy.

Anyway, the adventure featuring the Aslan clan war raid is the one which made me think of all this. Like the others, there's a lot of time within the adventure mentioned, nothing that fleshes that time out, and it's all there to get the characters to one system at a certain time when the raid could easily be set in many places. Rather than writing "You're working aboard an Aslan trader and will visit these systems in this order", they simply should have stated the characters are aboard and begun the action right away.

As far as the occasional absurd plot points, well isn't that the bread and butter of a good space opera?

Very good point.

Thank you for your time and thoughts Whipsnade.

I was bored and it was fun to look over some magazines I haven't opened in years.

Your comment about time between adventures has me thinking. Each of the Four Knights adventures has a starting day and year. I wonder if it's possible for the characters to be where they are when they are? GDW goofed repeatedly on this issue, especially concerning TNS news briefs. Very often the message could not have reached system where the brief was "published" from the system where the news occurred in the time stated.

 

[flykiller]

Each of the Four Knights adventures has a starting day and year. I wonder if it's possible for the characters to be where they are when they are?

was looking through the early adventures on the ffe cd-rom, can't remember the name but there's one where the adventure team using an s-class is to conduct a skim survey of the entire spinward marches in 20 years. 1040 weeks / 440 worlds = 2.3 weeks per world. I was wondering if that were even possible, and what the j2 route would be.

 

[Whipsnade]

was looking through the early adventures on the ffe cd-rom, can't remember the name but there's one where the adventure team using an s-class is to conduct a skim survey of the entire spinward marches in 20 years. 1040 weeks / 440 worlds = 2.3 weeks per world. I was wondering if that were even possible, and what the j2 route would be.

Oh oh oh... Can you remember which one that is? I think it's the one I vaguely remembered during our discussion regarding the 10K dTon scout cruiser design in S:7. IIRC, there are guidelines for actual UWP survey work, stuff like the time required and so forth.

 

[Dulinor]

That would be the Memory Alpha adventure.

 

[Duke Craig]

dr theodor krenstein?

It's Dr Theodor Krenstein.

Please be careful with your split infinitives, possessive pronouns, proper nouns, and grammar in general.

Proper nouns have two distinct features: They name specific one-of-a-kind items, and they begin with capital letters, no matter where they occur within a sentence. Here, we’ll take a closer look at proper nouns, provide proper noun examples, and help you learn how to use a proper noun the right way.

Dr Krenstein is certainly one of a kind and deserves to be treated as a proper noun.

Thanks,

 

[mike wightman]

It is Adventure 0: The imperial Fringe which was included in the deluxe boxed editions of CT post 81 revision.

 

[Whipsnade]

Thanks Mike! And thanks to Fly for mental nudge!

 

[MCEvans]

was looking through the early adventures on the ffe cd-rom, can't remember the name but there's one where the adventure team using an s-class is to conduct a skim survey of the entire spinward marches in 20 years. 1040 weeks / 440 worlds = 2.3 weeks per world. I was wondering if that were even possible, and what the j2 route would be.

Yes and no. You can't get to every system in the Marches via J2 and stay in th Marches, some you have to leave the Sector then come back from an unexpected direction (Traveller Map helps) or let the PCs have a J3 ship as this allows for faster access to some systems and a lot less backtracking just for system that seems to be inaccessible but by a wide looping path.

 

[aramis]

Yes and no. You can't get to every system in the Marches via J2 and stay in th Marches, some you have to leave the Sector then come back from an unexpected direction (Traveller Map helps) or let the PCs have a J3 ship as this allows for faster access to some systems and a lot less backtracking just for system that seems to be inaccessible but by a wide looping path.

Let's see... using Regina and Mora as the two "waypoints" (both having been sector capital at one or another point)... All hex numbers in Spinward Marches.

Subsector	Worlds not on J2	Leave marches for J2
Cronor	—	Gyomar (0108) Atsa (0207)
Jewell	—	—
Regina	—	—
Aramis	—	—
Querion	—	Bael (0218)
Vilis	—	—
Lanth 1	—	—
Rhylanor	—	—
Darrian	—	—
Sword Worlds	—	—
Lunion	—	—
Mora	—	—
Five Sisters	Andor (0236), Candory (0336) 875-496 (0834)	—
District 268	—	—
Glisten	—	—
Trin's Veil	—	—
1
2

[tc=2]6 worlds in Lanth require J3 from rest of lanth, but are all J2 strand in spinrim corner; all other worls on main or J2 from main[/tc] [tc=2] [/tc]

Only 3 worlds (2 of them red zoned alien population worlds) not accessible by J2.
3 more require exiting the sector, but can be accessed by j2 by going 1 hex off-map into Foreven...

6 worlds that, given only the map of the marches, you can't get to with J2 ... and none unaccessible by J3.

 

[Whipsnade]

Wow, Wil! I think you just rolled for exceptional success on that Navigation task!

Re-reading A:0 Imperial Fringe for the first time I can remember, I strongly believe the players cannot complete the mission in 20 years not only because of the interstellar travel times required but because time also needed needed to travel within and audit(1) the systems being surveyed.

First, we've systems like Stellatio and Trifuge where main world-to-100D limit travel times are measured in weeks or months.

Second, page 17 in the booklet provides some interesting time requirements for determining the various portions of the UWP. While sussing out the physical part of the UWP is pretty straightforward, getting a handle on the sociological aspect can get hinky.

• Starport - Three hours, on-site inspection, no variation
• Size - less than one hour, orbital scan, no variation
• Atmosphere - One hour, orbital scan, no variation
• Hydrosphere - Three hours, orbital scan, no variation

Different people can attempt different readings at the same time so size, atmo, and hydro can all be determined at the same time. The rest of the UWP is where things go pear shaped.

• Population - Three hours, orbital scan, can vary by TL, first two readings may be wrong.
• Government - Three hours X 1D6 , contact personally or by comm with local government, first two readings may be wrong.
• Law Level - Three hours X 2D6, personal contact and interviews only with local government, first two readings may be wrong.

If you think we have trouble with tech levels here at COTI, wait until you read this. Tech Level is determined by:

• Examinations on the world surface
• Specific items are matched to LBB:2 tables
• Descriptions of equipment seen being used or for sale may be deliberately slanted to a lower tech level
• Three hours per item or location
• Longer periods are required in atmosphere 1- or A+

You can see that the survey process - especially the sociological parts - is a deliberate goad to roleplaying. The player doesn't roll a die, succeed at the task, and read a number off the some ship's display screen. They have to personally make physical inspections and interviews in many cases.

GDW's famous push, pull, and hook model is on blatant display here and an incredible sector-sized sandbox campaign is the result.


1 - A:0 uses the term 'audit" on page 17.

 

[flykiller]

I strongly believe the players cannot complete the mission in 20 years

no way.

a much more reasonable mission would be multiple simultaneous regional surveys originating at the various scout bases. e.g. "you guys, go check out the villis cluster (what is that, seven worlds?). submit your report in one year." that would be a great lead-in and referee tool.

 

[aramis]

Wow, Wil! I think you just rolled for exceptional success on that Navigation task!

Nah, just took extra time and used computer assistance...

Re-reading A:0 Imperial Fringe for the first time I can remember, I strongly believe the players cannot complete the mission in 20 years not only because of the interstellar travel times required but because time also needed needed to travel within and audit(1) the systems being surveyed.

First, we've systems like Stellatio and Trifuge where main world-to-100D limit travel times are measured in weeks or months.

Second, page 17 in the booklet provides some interesting time requirements for determining the various portions of the UWP. While sussing out the physical part of the UWP is pretty straightforward, getting a handle on the sociological aspect can get hinky.

• Starport - Three hours, on-site inspection, no variation
• Size - less than one hour, orbital scan, no variation
• Atmosphere - One hour, orbital scan, no variation
• Hydrosphere - Three hours, orbital scan, no variation

Different people can attempt different readings at the same time so size, atmo, and hydro can all be determined at the same time. The rest of the UWP is where things go pear shaped.

• Population - Three hours, orbital scan, can vary by TL, first two readings may be wrong.
• Government - Three hours X 1D6 , contact personally or by comm with local government, first two readings may be wrong.
• Law Level - Three hours X 2D6, personal contact and interviews only with local government, first two readings may be wrong.

If you think we have trouble with tech levels here at COTI, wait until you read this. Tech Level is determined by:

• Examinations on the world surface
• Specific items are matched to LBB:2 tables
• Descriptions of equipment seen being used or for sale may be deliberately slanted to a lower tech level
• Three hours per item or location
• Longer periods are required in atmosphere 1- or A+

You can see that the survey process - especially the sociological parts - is a deliberate goad to roleplaying. The player doesn't roll a die, succeed at the task, and read a number off the some ship's display screen. They have to personally make physical inspections and interviews in many cases.

GDW's famous push, pull, and hook model is on blatant display here and an incredible sector-sized sandbox campaign is the result.


1 - A:0 uses the term 'audit" on page 17.

I'll note that PC's can complete a subsector in about 2 years... let's take the most obnoxious: Lanth (travellermap link). You have to leave the subsector to go J2 to all worlds; the 6 in spin-rim are J3 from the other 23 worlds... A survey takes a group a week, give or take a few days... so Lanth requires about 1 year to do the main. (hitting a few worlds just across the subsector border adds a month). Assuming Trail-rim to spin-core, 23 jumps, then 7 jumps in villis to reach the Lanth trace, which is 6 worlds itself. 36 jumps, roughly 75 weeks (allowing for Annual Maintenance).
16 teams could survey the whole of the sector in under two years.

Given that there are probably a half dozen teams per subsector, and the data is cross-checked...
Total survey costs under GCr3. Counting the DD couriers at surplus sell-off value of MCr15. (GCr1.45 in surplus value)