Merging T20 and 2320 Timelines

[robject]

I had a thought. 2320 is built on the T20 rules. Might this be a window of opportunity?

What would happen if the whole Vilani contact and Interstellar wars thing were shifted forward, say, from 2100 AD to 2350 AD, and the rich history of 2320 were inserted into the gap?

I wonder what it would 'break'. It might make it slightly more believeable that the Terrans could topple the Ziru Sirka if they already controlled a couple dozen worlds. Any thoughts?

QLI already has 2320 as a layer on T20. I think it's a shoo-in for them, and a nice easy bridge from Space Grit to Space Opera.

Most of the issues I've heard of so far are not a big deal. The biggest is Stutterwarp, which I don't know how to resolve, with "historical integrity" (whatever that means) coming in at a distant second place.


Timeline. If the timeline is shifted forward, then to me the logical conclusion is that the rich 2300 history would replace the minimalist text in Traveller which describes Terra at that time. The real work lies on the interface of the two timelines... and it looks like Andy Slack has done some of the homework for us.


Andy Slack's 2300 to Third Imperium timeline


Stutterwarp. I know enough to know that the jump drive can't replace stutterwarp. So it has to stay. There may be implications for Traveller here, but I don't know what they are. In other words, why would a ship use a Jump Drive instead of stutterwarp?


Confusion with Old Players. I think old players who know canon will understand exactly what's going on. On the contrary, I think the problem is in implementation, not the market.


Confusion with New Players. New players won't know the old canon; they largely buy the new stuff. Anyhow, the rulebooks certainly won't be merged; T20 is probably as close as they'll get to each other, book-wise.


Dislike from Old Players. Maybe, but I think the richness of the 2320 background is worth much more than any vague unease created by the merge. Besides, most old players also feel the concept is cool -- they rightly save their worry for implementation (the devil's in the details).


Alien Species. With a cosmopolitan universe, there's plenty of room for alien species. The trick is how the aliens in 2320 would fit in the big scheme of things -- a matter which I am not qualified to speak on.

 

[mike wightman]

I've done this for years IMTU.

I resolved the stutterwarp thing by making it incompatible with grav plates, acceleration compensators, nuclear dampers, nuclear damper catalized fusion power plants, meson screens, and the CT maneuver drive

The jump drive is a more efficient way to cross interstellar distances anyway - especially at the higher jump numbers.

The stutterwarp was eventually forgotten.

It could be kind of interesting if someone rediscovered stutterwarp in the CT era - it would have all sorts of uses for weapon development

 

[robject]

Interesting take (having it forgotten)... I wondered if jump wasn't better at crossing interstellar distances and landing you closer to your target world. How far in can stutterwarp work? I hear it's momentumless, so ships can turn on a dime. Surely that would be a significant tactical +DM in combat.

 

[Colin]

Officially, I don't see it happening. Too many different directions to go in. On the other hand, if fans want to stir them up for their own games, that would be cool. I once ran a Traveller/2300AD hybrid that used the worlds and setting of 2300AD, threw in some additional bits, and added Traveller Tech, suitably modified, especially ships and vehicles.

Colin
2320AD writer

 

[Kevin Livingston]

Pardon my lack of knowledge, but what is "Shutterwarp"

 

[Malenfant]

It's "Stutterwarp".

Stutterwarp is the 2300AD FTL drive. Instead of the ship jumping a huge distance at once, it jumps lots of short (metre scale) distances very very very quickly (many times a second). I think the explanation for it is a kind of souped-up macroscopic quantum tunneling effect.

This means you get the illusion of FTL travel, because the ship is missing out most of the space that it's travelling through by 'hopping' over it a zillion times a second.

 

[daryen]

The other key thing to keep in mind about stutterwarp is that after a certain amount of usage, it had to be "discharged" deep in a gravity well. The metagame purpose of this was to limit movement and force the creation of specific avenues starhopping has to take place in.

I believe the limit was 7.7 ly. Is that right? Also, how fast did the ships move? The reason I ask, is because if you have to choose between a system that takes much less than a week to go the equivalent of J2, I don't see how jump drive would be developed to the point it is better than stutterwarp.

Also, wouldn't stutterwarp get better, too? Was there any hard-and-fast rule that stutterwarp could only go 7.7 (or whatever) ly, regardless of the technology used?

(That raises another point of difference between 2300 and Trav. Technology. No, not the specific items used, but the range of it. 2300 was set with specific technology available. There was no progression. Traveller, on the other hand, provided the ability to operate at many different levels of technology. In other words, Traveller allows for the use of multiple high tech levels, whereas 2300 has but one.)

I have to say I am somewhat skeptical that the 2300 and Traveller universes could be merged without changing both so much as to effectively be creating a third universe.

 

[Whipsnade]

r o b mused: I had a thought. 2320 is built on the T20 rules. Might this be a window of opportunity?

Rob,

Simply put; No.

Daryen has it right. The tech differences between Traveller and 2300 are too great. You'd end up with a completely different third setting and not a bridge between the first two.

Take the stutterwarp drive for example. Everyone points to the fact it operates far differently from jump as an FTL drive, but everyone also forgets that 2300 uses stutterwarp as an in-system drive too. In fact, as an in-system drive, stutterwarp is far superior to Traveller's m-drive, HePLaR, thruster plates, and what not. The only thing stutterwarp can't do is act as an interface drive.

So the question isn't "Why would ships in a Traveller/2300 hybrid carry jump drives?". The question is "Why would ships in a Traveller/2300 hybrid carry ANY Traveller drives?"

What would happen if the whole Vilani contact and Interstellar wars thing were shifted forward, say, from 2100 AD to 2350 AD, and the rich history of 2320 were inserted into the gap?

In the words of the late, great Desi Arnaz you'd have a lot of 'splaining' to do. Somehow the nations of Earth didn't unify in the face of the Kafer Threat but did unify in the face of the Vilani Threat? That's one big rabbit to pull from your hat.

Most of the issues I've heard of so far are not a big deal. The biggest is Stutterwarp, which I don't know how to resolve, with "historical integrity" (whatever that means) coming in at a distant second place.

None of these issues are a big deal? Okay...

Timeline...

Yo can shoehorn the two together and Andy showed us how. Now shoehorn the technologies together.

Stutterwarp...In other words, why would a ship use a Jump Drive instead of stutterwarp?

No. It's more like "Why would a ship use ANY Traveller drive"?

Confusion with Old Players...

I'm an old player and I say screw 'em. The idea is to sell products. Old players die or fade away, which brings us to...

Confusion with New Players. New players won't know the old canon; they largely buy the new stuff. Anyhow, the rulebooks certainly won't be merged; T20 is probably as close as they'll get to each other, book-wise.

Not knowing canon is a good thing. And selling new stuff is a good thing too. If the closest any new player using this proposed setting will get to Traveller is T20, then why bring Traveller into it at all?

Dislike from Old Players...

Again, from an old player, screw 'em.

Besides, most old players also feel the concept is cool -- they rightly save their worry for implementation (the devil's in the details).

The implementation is impossible, as pointed out by a cursory examination of each settings FTL technology.

Let's get down to the real reason behind the desire for a Traveller/2300 hybrid: People want to use Traveller's richly detailed, 35 century long, future history on the cheap. It took Traveller over a quarter century to develop that history and the work is still going on. A 3500 year long future history for 2300 could be created, but it would mean work and why do the work when you can - perhaps - crib it from another setting? People want the results without the sweat. They want it on the cheap.

The trouble with stealing that history for other uses still lays where it always has; technology. Specifically, FTL technology. Traveller's history makes no sense whatsoever if stutterwarp or any other FTL drive system is available. None. Zilch. Nada. Zero. The strengths and weaknesses of jump drive create a 'terrain' of sorts that Traveller's history is then played across. Stutterwarp will create a wholly different terrain and therefore a wholly different story.

A Traveller/2300 hybrid cannot work and remain even partially true to either of its predecessors.


Bill

 

[Colin]

The fastest stutterwarp vessels could do upwards of 4 light years/day, while most operated at about 1-2 ly/day.

Colin

 

[Whipsnade]

No matter how fast a stutterwarp vessel travels, it's travel distance is still circumscribed by the 7.7 ly barrier.

(A charge of sorts builds up in the drive that must be 'bled off'. One result of being near the 'bleed off' point is higher rad levels for the crew to deal with. As explained in 2300's Ranger, the Eber's 8.3 ly(?) stutterwarp drive wasn't any better than humanity's, it's just that the Ebers can withstand radiation a little better and thus push their drives further.)

Take 7.7 ly, squint a little bit, and it becomes 2 parsecs or jump2. Voila, we have a Traveller/2300 hybrid already! Easy no?

Hardly.

As Colin pointed out, stutterwarp vessels move at different speeds. This means that some vessels can travel those two parsecs faster than others. However, when using jump drive, vessels take the same time to travel 6 millimeters, 6 AU, or 6 parsecs. That fact is woven into the basic fabric of Traveller history.

In Traveller, interstellar communications take a week. If you recipient is +1 lightweek away or 6 parsecs away, it will take a week for your message to reach him. There is one speed.

In 2300, the speed interstellar communications depend on the speed of the courier. There are many speeds.

You can bash the two timelines together.

You cannot bash the two FTL drives together.

This isn't simply a matter of juggling a few details. The two settings do not mesh, the concpets underlying the two settings are mutually exclusive.


Bill

 

[Morte]

Originally posted by Larsen E. Whipsnade:
the concpets underlying the two settings are mutually exclusive.

Yep. And thank gawd for that. If 2320 and OTU were compatible, there'd be no great reason for both to exist. We'd have less choice and the gaming world would be poorer.

Merging the two seems ill-conceived.

 

[Sanjjuro]

Speaking as a person who still has ALL of his CT thru TNE stuff I'd have to agree with Morte on the fact that the gaming world would be poorer if there had only been one system. Thmatically Traveller and the 2000/2300 series were very different. The mechanics of there rules evolved differently as well, although by the MT/TNE periods there were significant areas of overlap.

The Hallmark of a good GameMaster though is the ability to modify inspirational material from one campaign/setting into another. As an example, when my group wanted to play Rokugan 2000 I used Dark Conspiracy adventures as my starting point while keeping AEG's d10 mechanic.

If I wanted to combine the 2300/Traveller timelines it would in fact be fairly easy. History is written by the victor, right? So the nascent Terrans in writing the history of their first victories over the Vilani bragged a bit on their ability to overcome the odds, since Terra proper represents the bulk of her population that's certainly understandable during the long night.

Now for the drive technology issue.

If I recall Imperium correctly the vibrant yet outnumbered Terrans possess the strategic and tactical advantages of better drives as well as interior lines of communication. Stutterwarp serves this purpose admirably. The Vilani could use classic Traveller Jump technology.

The Terrans would want to keep a military monopoly on Stutterwarp. BUt what if it is incompatible with artificial gravity technology? That certainly opens the door to civilian and commerical traffic using the safer (if somehwat slower) Jump technology. As the civilian technology advances it eventually overtakes the outer performance limitations of Stutterwarp, and begins having a strategic military application.

In addition, much as China culturally suborned her conquerors, there are simply more Vilani who know Jump tech than there are Terrans who know Stutterwarp tech. The knwoledge could very well die out during the long night.

It could in fact make the basis of an interesting campaign if the Travellers recovered an intact Stutterwarp ship, whcih could upset the tactical balance of power in a region. Stutterwarp equipped fighters would be a tremendous tactical weapon again even if stutterwarp no longer had a strategic value.

By comparison the longbow, and even the crossbow, had serious tactical and strategic advantages over early black powder weapons. As late as the Texas Revolution and Mexican American War longbows would have had suprior range, penetration, rates of fire and supply issues compared to muskets and early rifles. Yet now they are museum pieces.

 

[TKalbfus]

One could say that the 2320 timeline is a parallel timeline to the Traveller T20 one, it was all caused by the Twilight War, which didn't happen in the Classic Traveller Timeline. Because there was no World War III, the Jump Drive was developed, while in the 2320 timeline, World War III caused the Stutterwarp to be developed instead. Once a particular FTL drive was developed, their was no reason to look further.