Long Night

[jedmc]

So I have been thinking about the sun-genre of Breakdown space opera, where colony worlds are cut off and revert to a lower TL, before gradually being rediscovered.

Mostly I am thinking of:
A Spaceship for the King/King David's Spaceship by Jerry Pournell

But also:
The General Series by S. M. Stirling & David Drake
The Memory of Earth by Orson Scott Card

Anyway my thought was to start a campaign with the PCs living on a world that has been cut off for centuries, and has dropped to a TL 5 or lower. They then find a ship, or encounter a Scout for the Third Imperium, and explore their subsector and deal with how their world will deal with its reintegration with the interstellar community.

My question though, is if there are rules for Career Paths for rolling up characters for Pre contact worlds. It seems pretty easy to substitue any career path results for a low TL equivalent, but I am assuming that in the vast amount of Traveller material that exist, someone has taken a stab at it. Any suggestions?

Thanks!

 

[far-trader]

Welcome aboard jedmc

I think the first thing to establish is which rules set you'd prefer to use as it will inform what ready materials are available. As you guessed there is a lot of material that will be ready to use for some of the rule sets.

There's nothing wrong with your idea to simply use any available career paths and apply your TL limit and situation to skills rolled either.

 

[FreeTrav]

You could even write an article for Freelance Traveller about doing something like this! ...

 

[rancke]

I had an idea for something similar. The PCs would live on an interdicted world with a TL of roughly 5. The Scouts would be running a covert survey to see if it was time to lift the interdict. Fairly honest smugglers were doing a bit of clandestine trading. Criminal smugglers were robbing the locals blind. Several corporations had advance teams trying to line up politicians to be ready to give them valuable consessions the moment the interdict was lifted. It would be a sort of Illuminati Light campaign. Never did get around to developing it. If I ever do, I think I'd put it on Ruie in 1070 or thereabouts.


Hans

 

[jedmc]

I was thinking using Mongoose Traveller.

With most games rolling up a character is pretty setting independent, but the default Traveller method has a lot of the assumed setting baked into the career charts. Even a character is from a low TL world, the lists assume that there is trade with other worlds, and the character has the option to enlist in interstellar careers.

 

[E.D.Quibell]

T4 tried to do someting like this with its Low, Midd, High Tech Background skill sets. It got it wrong of course, but the idea was there.

To addapt the concepts you might want to pick out those skills from MgT that are relevent at Low tech, or remove the High tech ones. i.e. Computer skills at TL 5 should be restricted to academics.

Adapt the character's career choices, Navy becomes the Wet Navy, Scouts become Flyers etc, and then roll up normally. Substitue any high tech skills with low tech ones, i.e. Mechanical for Electrical etc etc and you should be able to work someting out.

Your dificulty is going to come when you want them to start flying your Space Ship. Who from a low tech world is going to have pilot, navigation, engineering, comms, sensors, gunnary etc etc? How are they going to get it off the ground? into space? and into jump?

Best regards,

Ewan

 

[jedmc]

Actually, using the GURPs version of Traveller is an idea- I could just use a setting book from the correct TL in earths history.

I am thinking that however the ship was obtained, the local government has been studying it in an Area 51 type facility and have determined that there is a too big gap in tech levels for them to understand how it works. But they have figured out the operating instructions. So they just need a team of volunteers to go off into the beyond and see what's up there. (and ideally bring back advanced engineering textbooks.)

 

[rancke]

I am thinking that however the ship was obtained, the local government has been studying it in an Area 51 type facility and have determined that there is a too big gap in tech levels for them to understand how it works. But they have figured out the operating instructions. So they just need a team of volunteers to go off into the beyond and see what's up there. (and ideally bring back advanced engineering textbooks.)

Just keep in mind, when you work out the history of the world, that if the lack of engineering texts is a factor, then either the world decivilized to the point of destroying all its books (which would require it to have very few libraries in the first place, i.e. low initial population) or it was one of those societies where everything was recorded on ultra-tech storage media.


Hans

 

[jedmc]

Good point. Perhaps they have a full library in digital form, but their ability to access it broke/wore out centuries ago. Maybe their mission is just to get a replacement part for the library's datacube reader.

In King David's Spaceship, part of the story takes place on a world reduced to nomadic barbarism, but it is also the location of an extensive library of pre-collapse knowledge. But the reason it survived is that the books are now considered holy artifacts and locked away in a reliquary, making it difficult for off worlders to be able to get in and make copies.

 

[HiverLord]

Good point. Perhaps they have a full library in digital form, but their ability to access it broke/wore out centuries ago. Maybe their mission is just to get a replacement part for the library's datacube reader.
QUOTE]

Another option: How old are the remaining data cubes the current society has (if any)?

If the scout/courier has equivalent tech to those cubes, the scientists *may* be able to determine that a reader/computer port on the scout could fit the existing (though very old) data cubes they have, and then attempt to run them, etc.

This may not provide them with enough info (broken/decayed cubes, frayed data, etc.), but may give the scientists a start in using the ship.