MT Contact! Notes

[DonM]

My goal over the next several weeks is to work up a set of short documents that would allow referees to use the various Traveller aliens in their MT games effectively. We're not stomping on any copyright issue here: no looking at MTA1 or MTA2; those are, sadly, off limits. We're also not detailing cultures or worlds -- the source material is out there for purchase by CD, or the CT reprints. We're focusing strictly on MT game mechanics.

Any takers?

 

[DonM]

Aslan Character Generation, take 1

Character Generation: The six personal characteristics are determined as per the Players’ Manual, with the following exceptions: Add 1 to the result of the Strength and Endurance throws; subtract one from the result of the Dexterity throw. Social Standing applies only to inter-Aslan relations.

Aslan may be generated and run through any of the Players’ Manual careers with only a few changes to the normal system, explained below. Players, for the present, should restrict themselves to playing Aslan within the Imperial sphere of influence.

For all tasks involving Aslan/non-Aslan interaction, increase the difficulty by one level where the parties are not known to each other; this represents the slight mutual tension between Aslan and other races. Male Aslan dealing with a non-Aslan who is not going out of their way to be polite will increase the difficulty by additional level. This represents the tendency of Aslan to lose their tempers when not treated in the way they feel they deserve (less in the female than in the male). This rule does not apply to player interactions, only between player and non-player characters.

Aslan may enter any career, but males do not do well in the Scouts and Merchants (DM –4 for Enlistment and Reenlistment in these careers if male; if female, roll normally). Aslan do very well in the Marines and Army (males in the combat arms, females as staff officers; DM +1 for Enlistment, Promotion, and Reenlistment rolls in these careers), but males tend to take unnecessary chances (DM –1 for survival if male). Other careers have no special DMs.

Brawling and Blade Combat skills automatically become Dewclaw skill. Aslan Marines will accept training in Large Blade, but all Aslan disdain the use of blade weapons, and will carry them only when in parade uniform. In combat, treat the dewclaw as having stats identical to a dagger (Pen 2, Block 1, Dam 2).

Other benefits are as for humans.

NPC Aslan will normally have high morale, if using the NPC Morale rules in the Players’ Manual.

 

[aramis]

Brawling to dewclaw, yes.
Blade combat to dewclaw, no. Aslan, per AM Aslan, use plenty of blades, especially polearms.

Career DM's: take directly from table in AM Aslan... rather than reducing to a single career.

Careers in AM Aslan: add special duty rolls.

 

[DonM]

So what you're saying is instead of my simple idea of going back to the JTAS's and building minimal details, we should really whole-cloth convert the Alien Modules...

OK... did you ever convert the Aslan weapons to MT?

We need weapons conversions, skill notes (I've got a partial of that somewhere), then building the careers from AM1 but in the MT style...

So much for a small task :rofl:

 

[aramis]

Not whole cloth, just minimum additions.

A "real MT treatment" would wind up looking like the DGP tables; the AM generates reasonable characters just by adding a special duty line. Sure, they are less diverse and/or less specialized (by player choices) due to far fewer cascades.

The Spear-hook is, for practical purposes, just a halberd.

 

[sfchbryan]

So what aliens are we looking to include?
I am guessing that we would start out with the CT Alien modules, but what about all of the Aliens from the Contact! series?

I mean really, who doesn't want to run a campaign with Bwaps attempting to impose order on the Imperium during the Rebellion?

 

[DonM]

Yes, my goal was to start with the Contact articles and finish with the Alien Modules, but now, I think we're starting in the other direction.

I've had a delay due to Winter War, and need to catchup on errata, but then this would be next

 

[sfchbryan]

The MT1 & MT2 don't have Extended Character Generation for any of the aliens. The extended Characters in the CT Aliens books are not the same as those in the MT Player's Manual.

Damn, something else I need to type up and add to my copies of MT1 & MT2. Good think I have an Extended Character Template.

If all we are looking for is straight game mechanics, just add a Special Duty roll to the Basic Char & we are done. I'll put together a spreadsheet this week showing how the basic character classes had the Special Duty roll added to MT. If we are lucky, there may be a pattern that can be retrofitted to the CT Aliens basic characters. If we aren't lucky, we would have to make some decisions. Everything else appears to be in the CT Modules.

I really don't think it would be that difficult to turn the CT 4 & 5 into MT3. We wouldn't have the special stuff that DGP was dreaming up, but there is no use crying over spilled milk.

Of course, I could be wrong.....

 

[DonM]

Honestly, I believe we should do this work as if MTA1 and MTA2 don't exist -- we need to cleanly "reengineer" the work. Only the CT material, along with the Alien writeups in Rebellion Sourcebook, are valid.

I think we should focus on one alien (CT Alien Module 1 was Aslan), do it, use the work to build an "Alien Template" like your character templates, and move forward. This should not just be CT + special duty; let's go ahead and use the full MT skill set, then use the CT -> MT Careers to give guides to do the same to the careers from the CT modules.

 

[aramis]

Agreed, Don, that's the right approach.

 

[sfchbryan]

Honestly, I believe we should do this work as if MTA1 and MTA2 don't exist -- we need to cleanly "reengineer" the work. Only the CT material, along with the Alien writeups in Rebellion Sourcebook, are valid.

I think we should focus on one alien (CT Alien Module 1 was Aslan), do it, use the work to build an "Alien Template" like your character templates, and move forward. This should not just be CT + special duty; let's go ahead and use the full MT skill set, then use the CT -> MT Careers to give guides to do the same to the careers from the CT modules.

I agree about working as though MTA 1 & MTA 2 do not exist. The problem from my perspective is that they DO EXIST. I don't think that looking at HOW things were done in MTA1 & MTA2 is a bad thing. That is why I am building that character generation spreadsheet (it's huge by the way). I am looking at the MT stuff to see if there are any patterns that can be used to help generate our own MT stuff. That way, it would flow.

That is why I thought we should start with the Zhodani & Droyne - The Spinward Races. & then move on to Hivers & K'Kree - The Trailing Races. By doing them first, we don't have to worry about anything from DGP & by the time we get to doing races that were in MT1 & MT2, we will have our own viewpoint & there won't be as great a temptation to lift anything from them.

And as an added bonus, it would give Mr. Sanger yet another opportunity to bring the DGP material back to the Traveller community. I am more than willing to let bygones be bygones & would welcome him back with open arms (and an open wallet).

Anyone got a Frommers' Guide to Zhodane? I can't seem to find in on Amazon...

 

[DonM]

Mr. Sanger has retired and the DGP rights are, for now, a dead issue (with two exceptions that I am aware of).

But that is a great idea, to start with the Spinward Races. Zhos first?

 

[sfchbryan]

Looking at the Darrians & Zhodani, I notice that they get an additional DM of +3 in character enlistment and an additional DM +2 in position. Do we want to keep this?

I am in favor of making the additional DMs go away.

 

[DonM]

sfchbryan: where are you seeing these DMs?

Zhodani, first thoughts (skills):

Because of the different culture and psychology of the Zhodani, the basic MegaTraveller rules (written to apply to the typically human Imperium) need certain alterations and changes to accommodate the alien Zhodani. Where not specifically changed in Alien Module 4 - Zhodani, the standard MegaTraveller rules apply; where changes are provided in this document, they apply instead.

SKILLS
The skills presented here are, for the most part, identical to those available in MegaTraveller. Two added skill in AM4, Liaison and Trader, exist in MegaTraveller and are used from there. One added skill in AM4, Non-Verbal Communication, is part of the Interview skill in MegaTraveller, and the functions of the Psychology skill from AM4 are subsumed by the Interpersonal tasks system in MegaTraveller.
Rare Skills: Six skills from MegaTraveller are not ordinarily permitted to Zhodani characters—Bribery, Disguise, Forgery, Gambling, Intrusion, and Streetwise.
Interpersonal Skills: For tasks involving interactions between Zhodani and other humans, increase the task difficulty by one level unless the individuals are known to each other.

Just a start...

 

[sfchbryan]

sfchbryan: where are you seeing these DMs?

Zhodani, first thoughts (skills):

Because of the different culture and psychology of the Zhodani, the basic MegaTraveller rules (written to apply to the typically human Imperium) need certain alterations and changes to accommodate the alien Zhodani. Where not specifically changed in Alien Module 4 - Zhodani, the standard MegaTraveller rules apply; where changes are provided in this document, they apply instead.

SKILLS
The skills presented here are, for the most part, identical to those available in MegaTraveller. Two added skill in AM4, Liaison and Trader, exist in MegaTraveller and are used from there. One added skill in AM4, Non-Verbal Communication, is part of the Interview skill in MegaTraveller, and the functions of the Psychology skill from AM4 are subsumed by the Interpersonal tasks system in MegaTraveller.
Rare Skills: Six skills from MegaTraveller are not ordinarily permitted to Zhodani characters—Bribery, Disguise, Forgery, Gambling, Intrusion, and Streetwise.
Interpersonal Skills: For tasks involving interactions between Zhodani and other humans, increase the task difficulty by one level unless the individuals are known to each other.

Just a start...

In Basic Character Generation:
For the Darrians (CT 8):
Pg 28 on the Darrian Prior Service Table.
Enlistment has a DM+1 line, a DM+2 line, and a DM +3 line.
Position has a DM +1 line, and a DM +2 line.

For the Zhodani (CT 4):
Pg 26 on the Zhodani Prior Service Table
Enlistment has a DM +1 line, a DM +2 line, and a DM +3 line.
Position has a DM +1 line and a DM +3 line.

I only noticed because it messed up my Character Generation Spreadsheet (it's huge btw).

The skill changes above make sense.

As a final note, If you look at MT1 & MT2 side by side with the CT equivalents, you'll see that it's mostly a cut & paste. The only things that were really new were the Vilani(which I think is just great.), adding WBH data on the home worlds along with naming cities & such; The dot maps & what was going on during the rebellion; and writing from the alien's point of view. Oh and the artwork. As a rough guess I'd say that 80% is word-for-word from the CT alien modules.

 

[aramis]

DGP Vilani CGen is pretty much MT Basic CGen with aging modifiers and restrictions on choices of skills... It could easily be reworded (from memory) into a work-alike.

 

[DonM]

Any other comments on the Zhos, or additions, as I move forward into them further?

 

[sfchbryan]

Is there a WBH workup of Zhodane? (before I do one this weekend?)

Also, is there a good dot-map of the entire consulate?

I have formated Zhodani Philosophies from JTAS 24. I think that should be added.

 

[DonM]

Using the material from JTAS 24 in our discussions is fine. Dropping it in is a copyright violation.

Dot maps of the Consulate are largely unnecessary; I use http://www.travellermap.com/ for that anyway...

And using WBH is offlimits, just like MTA1/2 are. We're stuck with Zhodane as it was published in AM4 (which is fine, really).

What I'm shooting for producing is a document or set of documents which function much like the errata document, to point the MT player/referee to being able to use the Traveller Aliens in their games. I'm not looking to violate copyrights and support filesharing products.

 

[sfchbryan]

Using the material from JTAS 24 in our discussions is fine. Dropping it in is a copyright violation.

Dot maps of the Consulate are largely unnecessary; I use http://www.travellermap.com/ for that anyway...

And using WBH is offlimits, just like MTA1/2 are. We're stuck with Zhodane as it was published in AM4 (which is fine, really).

What I'm shooting for producing is a document or set of documents which function much like the errata document, to point the MT player/referee to being able to use the Traveller Aliens in their games. I'm not looking to violate copyrights and support filesharing products.

You may not like dot-maps, but I do and I haven't figured out how to print a sector map from www.travellermap.com

1st Item: If we're doing an errata type document then:
"JTAS 24 - Zhodani Philosophies - written from the Zhodani perspective."

I just zapped it over into my template & it takes exactly 1 page in the MT format. (And none of the pages are upside down, unlike my PDF of JTAS 24.)

2nd item add Special Duty roll for each character.

3rd - adjust skills to fully take advantage of cascades in Character Generation.

4th item - Make list of Zho Documents in the HIWG CD, Challange Mag & Traveller's Digest.

At this point we have completed your document. Other than identifying what is available on the HIWG CD, it shouldn't take more than a couple of weeks per race.

I want a MT 3 - 5 for myself & I'm gonna build it. Luckily for me, If I grab the Zho part of the Ref's Companion & bolt it on to CT 4 & voila, 1/2 of the spinward races; all in MT book format.

No one said anything about violating copywrite, no one said anything about filesharing programs (What does that have to do with this?)

Using WBH to generate Zhodane would not violate copywrite. Putting said information into IS Form 23 would violate copywrite, but only because I used the form.