Gonzo Level Traveller

[gloriousbattle]

Bleys Formaen was my favorite Traveller character. He had a Psi Rating of 10, had mysterious Powers of the Past (from White Wolf #39, these were really gonzo level Traveller abilities designed to make the character into a walking death machine http://tinyurl.com/25kv6qc ), had the plans for a Tech 18 forcefield that reflected energy attacks back on their attackers, and used these various powers to make himself absolute ruler of the Man-Danin CoDominium in the Glimmerdrift Reaches. Oh yes, he also had a shapeshifting Libauri assassin in his employ, to take care of his light work.

When last we saw Bleys, our hero was training his Danin warriors with his mysterious battle-sorcerer powers, arming his ships with the new technology, and had designs on conquering the whole Gateway Quadrant. What next? Maybe the Kree, or the Imperium...

"Excuse me while I puke! That's not Traveller!"

Well, yes and no. Certainly it is not canon Traveller, but it was a lot of fun, and it was more of what I hoped for when I bought the game.

I got into Traveller in my teens, and was disappointed with the relatively hard sf approach. Where were the weird aliens? The Lensman level psionic powers? The Orion slave girls?

Then I found out that while GDW was trying to keep the game relaitvely pure (at least until Grandfather showed up) other companies like TSR and Phoenix Games were quickly trying to wreck the Traveller universe with all sorts of science fantasy elements like the ones I listed above. Incidentlally, if you are interested in a more gonzo / science fantasy version of Traveller, you can do no better than to spend a buck on the White Wolf issue above, and to get a copy of Phoenix Games' Spacefarers Guide to Alien Races, Spacefarers Guide to Alien Monsters and Guides to Sectors 1 and 2. These are chock full of alien life forms with weird powers (both intelligent and animal), and some nasty super-tech devices called First Empire Biological Combat Machinery, as well as some strange planetary descriptions that would have embarrassed Gene Roddenberry.

So, how do you stand? Should Traveller be canon only, or is it open to any and all weirdness published by whoever? I have played and enjoyed it both ways, but, as you can tell, my preference is for the weird and wild.

Cheers

 

[Seriayne]

IMNSHO - Canon is merely the point of departure - what you learn if you want to write for publication, or how you keep score whether one publisher's got the game's best interests at heart.

I don't know about 'trying to wreck' it, but deviating from it without worrying about potential criticism, yeah. That 'don't care, reinvented here' thing can cough up some pretty scary stuff, but as long as its something to be taken or left at the side, I don't mind it. There's been plenty of 'canon' that a lotta people here think 'wrecked' their ideal of Traveller.

As to myself - I don't think the 'canon' of any game survives intact after I've read the rules/background/etc over. I can keep it pretty close (I still want to run Lords of Thunder someday, as close to the original campaign as possible), but its that ... background slate, that point of departure, that I love to build on - although in a Time Riders sense, anything not explicitly said 'hasn't happened', could happen. Could have happened. Somewhere, somewhen. The canon TU's incredibly BIG. Its easy to deviate, and set the game in a time or location relatively untouched by all the lore and history.

My current TU takes place deep in Hanstone during the Interstellar Wars raging far to coreward, on a little backwater, Russian/Czech settled planet that's only regular trading partner is a GenAssist research station set well outside the Terran Confederation's naval or political influence. It takes 8 jumps for the characters to even reach the first settled world to coreward of their position, and another 9 to even reach a decently well connected one.

Its fairly low key, within the realms of the CTU, but with some noteable points.

- The PC's are all uplifted weasels, escaped from GenAssist's lab after it received orders to close up shop and head coreward.

- Two ancient (Not capital A, but older) artifacts have been discovered by the PC's, one jump either direction from their adopted homeworld. They have no confirmation on what the stuff does, but their government's confiscated all the items from one site, and detonated enough nukes to 'turn off' the artifact at the other. Very likely, one of artifacts was a crashed ship that had antimatter pod fuel for its FTL. The other artifact (the nuked one) appeared to be a planet-breaker buried within its targeted planet, slowly churning the world to dust a few kilos at a time. It was on its lowest setting, pointed out, not in, nullifying its function - and constituted an invisible traffic hazard for ships refuelling at the gas giant below.

- At some point there will be, potentially, if the PC's are lucky/busy enough, a fairly high tech race (TL13ish - during Terra's TL11 phase) encountered, sans jump drive. The PC's may be the reason said race (a fairly agressive one at at that) ends up getting the jump drive. There will also be a significant, but low tech, alien race encountered (haven't decided the details yet), to add that to the mix.

- The game's going to go multiple generations, playing the original PC's descendants over the course of an arc lasting through the rise and fall of the Second Imperium. I'm saving the big, Star Wars esque battles for when the PC's homeworld's created/discovered enough inhabited systems to support that level of conflict.

So, for me, while I stress story mostly;

Canon = Backdrop
Non-Canon = Additional Resources
Story > Canon
Fun > Story

 

[rancke]

So, how do you stand? Should Traveller be canon only, or is it open to any and all weirdness published by whoever? I have played and enjoyed it both ways, but, as you can tell, my preference is for the weird and wild.

My interest in Traveller is mostly with the Third Imperium setting. The rules only interest me to the extend that they reflect that particular universe and allow me to infer new background facts. For gaming sessions I have my own house rules that (IMO) are better than any of the commercial versions I've seen. So as far as I'm concerned, I prefer canonical Third Imperium products. Megacity judges and strontium dogs need not apply.

But that doesn't mean I think everone else has to feel the same way. If you have fun playing with middle-aged shapeshifting assassin reptiloids, go for it. And if a publisher thinks there is a market for a Fifth Imperium Sourcebook (a.k.a Return of the Ancients), I might regret that they're spending effort on that instead of fleshing out the Third Imperium, but I'd never deny them every right to try to make a bit of profit.


Hans

 

[sabredog]

I started running Traveller when it first hit the shelves in 77 and since no official universe existed I made my own. It started at one subsector and has now grown to two full sectors (one of which hasn’t been fully explored at all so it’s just full of blank star symbols and only I know what’s there till the players “discover” it). And it’s still all just my own inventions influenced by the science fiction I read when I was a kid and since. It’s gone through a lot of changes and evolved along a continuous future history (meaning it ages and changes even if no one is playing in it at the time because I want it that way).

All it has in common with the OTU is the Classic Traveller rules. Books 1-3, HG, Mercenary, Scouts, and Striker for combat. That’s about it. It keeps things generic enough I have maximum imagination and creation control. So as an example of how far you can deviate from the OUT and still be Traveller:

I have the Terran Empire (which rose from the ashes of the Terran Confederation after a recent war), the Askorrian Empire of reptilian caste-system aliens who do a lot of genetic manipulation of themselves to constantly strive for improving the race in order to better conquer the universe, the Felinian Domains of arboreal marsupial-cat types who sealed their borders to all and only allow trade at a special meeting world everyone settled on for that purpose (they are psionic and provided me with the weird prejudice against psionics that the original game rules mentioned but didn’t explain until the Zhodani showed up in the OUT). They are lower tech than the Askorrians and Terrans, but are also the source of a lot of fear and mystery since they won’t let anyone visit their Domains.

I have the Prox…actually the first race I came up with and so they became the first contact for the humans when we left Earth in my future history. They are marsupial hyena-like nocturnal carnivores that are extremely territorial (which is why that first contact wasn’t a good one for the colonists who kept vanishing for some reason in the nights) and have a bit of a racial inferiority complex since they have been “kept down” by the Terrans. Now that the Terran Confederation has collapsed into Empire a lot of colony worlds are up for grabs as the Terran Empire tries to reconsolidate what it lost and the Prox try to grab up what they can. They are lower tech than anyone, but they are good at finding what they need. They also rent out the best mercenary ground troops in space so they get hired a lot as security by the megacorps in the frontiers worlds that are outside Terran control. But since they don’t really like humans all that much (in general, there are always the exceptions), and humans tend to not trust them, working with them can be tense.

And finally the last major race is the Borthu: TL-18+, dying from a genetic “poisoning” resulting from a long ago war with a splinter relation of theirs that the Borthu fought all across the known space area with partially by using genetic manipulation to create new races from native stock they’d find in order to build custom fighters. The Felinians are a result of that, though they don’t know it – they have certain forbidden knowledge, etc. locked away that a special sect alone knows of but that’s all for a future adventure. The Felinians helped the Borthu defeat their cousins but it left all sorts of interesting clues all over if any players ever twig to them. The Borthu currently stay out of other race’s affairs while they try to find a cure to what has been causing them to die off over the last 1000 years. Otherwise they only have about 100 years left.

In between all this is the frontier zone where most of the action takes place, and myriad lesser races are scattered around.

So see…it’s entirely possible to play Traveller with a universe of your own creation using none of the 3I stuff – it can be as wild and wooly as you want, but it can be an awful lot of work, too. So just start small and see where you go from there.

 

[sabredog]

Oh, and yeah...the Borthu and their cousins have (or had) disintigrators, teleporters, personal shields, stargates, and allllll sorts of gonzoness.

 

[gloriousbattle]

I don't know about 'trying to wreck' it, but deviating from it without worrying about potential criticism, yeah. That 'don't care, reinvented here' thing can cough up some pretty scary stuff, but as long as its something to be taken or left at the side, I don't mind it. There's been plenty of 'canon' that a lotta people here think 'wrecked' their ideal of Traveller.

Being a little bit facetious when I used the word "wreck", but only a little. I think that a lot of people felt the same way I did about the very conservative attitude GDW took towards science fiction, and many of the third party products showed a little (IMO) healthy rebellion in this regard.

Some of the most way out and enjoyable stuff was in early issues of White Dwarf magazine, which was really one of the best all-around gaming mags before it became a GW house org. Two White Dwarf Traveller adventures that involved time travel were Green Horizon WD35 (travel back to Nazi Germany) and An Alien Werewolf in London WD62 (hunting an alien Jack the Ripper in Victorian London). Obviously, this involved tech that was way over the top for the Third Imperium, and possibly even the Grandfather might have had trouble figuring it out, but these adventures were the stuff that science fantasy is made of, and I loved them both.

 

[Seriayne]

Some of the most way out and enjoyable stuff was in early issues of White Dwarf magazine, which was really one of the best all-around gaming mags before it became a GW house org. Two White Dwarf Traveller adventures that involved time travel were Green Horizon WD35 (travel back to Nazi Germany) and An Alien Werewolf in London WD62 (hunting an alien Jack the Ripper in Victorian London). /QUOTE]

Also, try some of the older Dragon magazine issues. I remember one of the earliest OMG this is so cool! moments with Traveller was a Dragon issue that had a non-canon Empire responding to a planet struck by nuclear war, the relief effort, naval ships involved - complete with pictures and HG stats, etc. Mind you, I was MUCH younger when this came out - but it was the first real thing I'd seen besides Annic Nova adventurewise to that date, and it unlocked the scope of drama in my imagination in ways that Nova just couldn't. Second mind you, at the time, The Day After had aired about that time iirc - and I was still having nightmares about an American nuclear holocaust. - Here was a story/adventure of an interstellar society dealing with one in their midst.

Also, there was a fairly decent Robots set of rules in Dragon #64 I used well before, and quite awhile after Book 8 ever came out.

 

[sabredog]

The Space Gamer also had some excellent robot rules long before Robots, as did JTAS. I actually prefer the streamlined rules from JTAS to Book 8. And I adapted a ton of rules for cyber-enhancements and biologic androids into mTU so people wouldn't think my game is holy writ, either.

Oh, and never, ever, mention mechs. The blowback from the ubergrognards would fry you in an instant.

I wouldn't worry about "canon", even the last section of the LBB's says to use whatever you want to make whatever you of the game, that the rules are merely a framework to provide consistency. And what with all the retconning and various versions of Traveller that came out over time I'd argue that what is and isn't "canon" could left to the perception of the user.

 

[gloriousbattle]

The Space Gamer also had some excellent robot rules long before Robots, as did JTAS. I actually prefer the streamlined rules from JTAS to Book 8. And I adapted a ton of rules for cyber-enhancements and biologic androids into mTU so people wouldn't think my game is holy writ, either.

Oh, and never, ever, mention mechs. The blowback from the ubergrognards would fry you in an instant.

I wouldn't worry about "canon", even the last section of the LBB's says to use whatever you want to make whatever you of the game, that the rules are merely a framework to provide consistency. And what with all the retconning and various versions of Traveller that came out over time I'd argue that what is and isn't "canon" could left to the perception of the user.

White Dwarf also had some quick, playable robot rules, more along the lines of simple characters that you could buy standard templates for than a metasystem used to create individualized bots.

 

[sabredog]

The ones in JTAS and Space Gamer treated robots as non-PC's. Possibly the more advanced ones might work as NPC's, but mainly they were just, well, robots. Which I prefer for my campaign anyway. I really don't want a player to play a robot, not sure why exactly, but I prefer them to be either useful tools or meaning, unsympathetic killing machines of war than something out of an Asimov story.

But....that's my take. And if I ever did have any thoughts of having them be NPC's or player characters DATA on Star Trek definitely would have brought me to my senses. Oh jeez, that character would live like maybe 5 minutes into the game before I had a Type C cruiser land on it.

 

[Seriayne]

Heh, PC robots. One player in HS was a mixture of the R2D2 player from Darths and Droids, and the bounty hunter robot that constantly insults living beings as useless bags of meat/mostly water when he thinks you can't hear him from Knights of the Old Republic.

The HS game I was running was prior to MegaTraveller coming out, and was set about 1000 years after the collapse of the Imperium in the 'Second Long Night'. In addition to the lunch-time games with 4-5 players, I had two empire builders who solo'd in the background using a mixture TCS and High Guard to essentially conquer the Ilelish sector until their borders met. Two years into the various games/campaigns - MT comes out. o:

Years later, I swear, I'd wonder if game designers were wiretapping a bunch of our games. Lately though, its just been a case of weird coincidence and 'Psychic Radio'.

Last week, players choose 'Minsk' (rearranged letters of Minks, plus it sounds Russian) for their species/race name, this week we all watch the BBC's Stephen Moffat directed Sherlock finale, where Holmes starts the episode in Minsk - for no readily apparent reason having to do with the plot that followed at all. Similar coincidents relating the games are happening several times daily now. >.>

 

[gloriousbattle]

The ones in JTAS and Space Gamer treated robots as non-PC's. Possibly the more advanced ones might work as NPC's, but mainly they were just, well, robots. Which I prefer for my campaign anyway. I really don't want a player to play a robot, not sure why exactly, but I prefer them to be either useful tools or meaning, unsympathetic killing machines of war than something out of an Asimov story.

I meant that more in the sense that the rules were pretty simple. You could not have a DATA level robot until... what... TL18?

 

[aramis]

I meant that more in the sense that the rules were pretty simple. You could not have a DATA level robot until... what... TL18?

TL16 for AI

 

[soloprobe]

I agree with seriayan:
I look at cannon as a point of departure. My First traveller universe had Alan Dean Foster's Comonweath fighting a cold war,with George Lucas' Empire....But that was when traveller was just three black books. In my latest traveller universe the Terran empire has just fended off an invasion of the Tyranids..........

 

[Seriayne]

I agree with seriayan:
I look at cannon as a point of departure. My First traveller universe had Alan Dean Foster's Comonweath fighting a cold war,with George Lucas' Empire....But that was when traveller was just three black books. In my latest traveller universe the Terran empire has just fended off an invasion of the Tyranids..........

Whoa, that's ambitious, what level of Tyranids (old, cloppy-clop centauroids with bioguns, or newer planet-eating/genestealer-using, biomass 'borg'?)

And more to the point how!?? Mind you, WH40k's battles are weirdly skewed, with one or two marine chapters capable of handling a huge planetary war (at only 1000 marines per chapter?)

In a Traveller style setup, the border/invaded worlds must have been horrifyingly devastated before focused resistance was brought to bear. . Drama, tragedy, things that look like they were once a race you at least had a passing respect for, now simply part of the roiling, horned, spiky, fleshy collective. *shudder*

 

[gloriousbattle]

Yeah, 'nids vs. the Third Imperium would pretty well suck for the Imperium.

Then again, 3I has black globes, and the 40K Imperium did not, but would that be enough to make the difference?

Now, 'nids vs. Darrians would be another matter. "Oh, did you skitterbug things just invade that solar system over there? You know, the one with the exploding sun? Bring it fellas, we can do this all day long..."

 

[Seriayne]

Yeah, 'nids vs. the Third Imperium would pretty well suck for the Imperium.

Then again, 3I has black globes, and the 40K Imperium did not, but would that be enough to make the difference?

Now, 'nids vs. Darrians would be another matter. "Oh, did you skitterbug things just invade that solar system over there? You know, the one with the exploding sun? Bring it fellas, we can do this all day long..."

Well, there's that, and also, the Imperium understands their tech and knows how to manufacture -new- stuff empire wide, as opposed to having a caste of Tech Priests guarding 'teh secrets of technologicalmancy'.

 

[gloriousbattle]

Well, there's that, and also, the Imperium understands their tech and knows how to manufacture -new- stuff empire wide, as opposed to having a caste of Tech Priests guarding 'teh secrets of technologicalmancy'.

Or, for that matter, 'nids vs. Hivers:

Norn Queen to Tyranid Warriors: "So, tell me again how we managed to devour all their planets and still lose the war?! This sucks. Let's go eat some more humans."

 

[Icosahedron]

Also, try some of the older Dragon magazine issues. I remember one of the earliest OMG this is so cool! moments with Traveller was a Dragon issue that had a non-canon Empire responding to a planet struck by nuclear war, the relief effort, naval ships involved - complete with pictures and HG stats, etc.

Not wishing to derail the thread, but I'm very interested in this concept. If the stuff were currently available, I'd be adding my 2Cr to the author/publisher's coffers today, but there's no way I'll ever get a copy, so I'd be interested in whatever you can recall about how the relief effort was co-ordinated.

I'm not so interested in ship specs, as I use an ATU, but any mechanics related to the logistics of interplanetary relief aid would be much appreciated.

New thread or play with our expanded PM limits, perhaps?

 

[martinjpayne1964]

Icosahedron, check your PM box.