Star Wars Universe

[Cthulhuvong]

So I've got a bunch of Traveller books (Mongoose, its the only thing in my FLGS), but couldn't find anyone to play after an aborted start of a campaign. Then my friend says he wants to play a Star Wars campaign. So while going through with someone else all the systems I could use (d6 Star Wars, d20 Star Wars, SAGA Star Wars, d6 Space) I realized with a little modification, Traveller could work too.

And since I've been wanting to run another Traveller campaign I thought, "Why the hell not?". So I've been trying to find out what people expect from Star Wars (character types, equipment, starships, Jedi, epicness) so I can modify Traveller to it, and so far the Mongoose rules have most things covered, like rules for hyperspace travel in the Core Rulebook, Bounty Hunters in Agent, Smugglers in Scoundrel, Force Users in Psionics (probably will have the most work here trying to decide what to use and what to not use, though time and dimensional manipulation are right out).

So I was wondering and wanted to ask 3 questions:

1. What do you expect from Star Wars?
2. Is there any problems you might see in porting Star Wars over to Traveller?
3. Any advice you can give me on modifying the system to fit Star Wars, and modifying Star Wars to fit the system?

 

[PathfinderAP]

1. What do you expect from Star Wars?

Well outside of the tech (blasters are bad, armour not so good ask a stormtrooper) I expect PULP!, it is a pulp adventure,

2. Is there any problems you might see in porting Star Wars over to Traveller?

Fighter combat, Traveller doesn't do small ships well enough for Star Wars,

3. Any advice you can give me on modifying the system to fit Star Wars, and modifying Star Wars to fit the system?

Yeah, if you have Star Wars WEG D6 (2nd Ed, Rev) use that instead

 

[Icosahedron]

<dons flak jacket, changes mind, opts for battledress instead>

Hi Cthuluvong, welcome to CotI.
Prepare for some rants from the 'Traveller = OTU' purists. You may find they're the majority here, or at least the vocal majority.

I think the Traveller rules (any edition) can be used to play any sci fi. The only limitation to conversion is your imagination. The more 'rules-lite' you play, the easier the conversion will be. Simple renaming will go a long way, eg laser pistol = blaster.

What I would do is use the recruitment thread and/or the PbP thread and try to get a group together who want to play your game, then ask them what they want from the game. Your players are the only ones whose opinions matter.

If you have specific questions thrown up by the group that you can't resolve internally, then ask them here, but the tighter you make the question, the more likely you'll be to get a useful answer.

I hope everyone gives you lots of useful advice to set up your game.

 

[Ran Targas]

I've done this and it can work. I particularly like using Traveller rules as they drastically reduce the scope of play by discouraging long range hyperspace travel. It keeps the activity very localized, which is good thing IMHO, creating a richer game setting.

And the real beauty is that, unlike Star Wars, when players devise an insane plan to assault an Imperial cruiser straight on with clunky freighters and antique fighters, things tend to turn out badly, very badly.

 

[Cthulhuvong]

Thanks guys for the quick comments. I don't have access to d6 star wars, though I know where to find PDFs in less than legal ways... >_>

But I think I can make it work for Traveller. For items I just need to pick up the Central Supply Catalog, as I've seen some armor that would work as stormtrooper armor and other items such as the Arc-Field Sword which is just a lightsaber with a fancy name.

One thing I'm having trouble figuring out is, how do you translate damage from say vehicles to starships? In the Civilian Vehicles book theres a gun that does 28d6 damage (TL14 Fusion Z Gun) in ground combat and how would that compare to damage against say a Pulse Laser which does 1d6 damage in space combat?

 

[Cthulhuvong]

I've done this and it can work. I particularly like using Traveller rules as they drastically reduce the scope of play by discouraging long range hyperspace travel. It keeps the activity very localized, creating a richer game setting, which is good thing IMHO.

And the real beauty is that, unlike Star Wars, when players are dumb enough to attack an Imperial cruiser straight on with freighters and fighters, they tend to lose badly.

Any tips you can give a relative newbie to this Star Wars/Traveller hybrid stuff?

 

[far-trader]

...One thing I'm having trouble figuring out is, how do you translate damage from say vehicles to starships? In the Civilian Vehicles book theres a gun that does 28d6 damage (TL14 Fusion Z Gun) in ground combat and how would that compare to damage against say a Pulse Laser which does 1d6 damage in space combat?

Not sure it'll work though it looks like it might, presuming that 28d6 damage is character/personnel level damage.

A quick and dirty rule of thumb is use a 10x (or 5x) multiplier between personnel/vehicles/ships.

So the TL14 Fusion Z gun above does:

28d6 to personnel

3d6 to vehicles (rounding 2.8d6) or 7d6 (rounding 5.6d6)

0d6 to ships (rounding 0.28d6) or 1d6 (rounding 0.56d6)

Let common sense be your guide in choosing the multiplier but be (or aim for) consistency. No need to work things out to 6 decimal places And of course feel free to make exceptions for special cases. Llike Luke using his light saber to take out an AT-AT by slicing it's soft belly armor and tossing in an explosive.

 

[Sturn]

My first ever Star Wars campaign was done with Traveller (before any Star Wars rules such as WEG ever existed). Around 1983?

My memory is poor, but here are a few things I do recall:

• Stormtrooper armor was a very weakened form of combat armor with reflec added. Reflec defenses were above other defenses. I treated blasters as lasers although I know Star Wars purists will argue this point.
• I tweaked Psionics, removed some abilities, added others, to make the Force. I recall it working much better then I thought it would.
• I had to expand the starship creation tables to allow hyper/jump drives on small craft. I then reduced greatly the use of jump fuel while adding to the sizes of power plants, MDs, and jump drives to compensate.
• I don't recall using much of a starmap. Star Wars galaxy is huge and hyperdrives can bring you across it easily compared to Traveller. I recall stating out important worlds my players might or would visit before play.
• I made it very "heroic", not the usual Traveller trader campaign. It was set in a near Star Wars future (long before expanded universe came along) in which the fallen Empire lived in a fragmented state, Luke Skywalker was old and mysteriously disappeared (later to be found as a hermit by players), etc. I was around 13 years old sorry. .

It worked quite well from what I recall. One thing I would consider is some sort of "hero" pool or options to make them able to do the heroic things in the movies while not being killed easily.

 

[Magnus von Thornwood]

Quick Nerd Note.

IIRC, Blasters should be easy to port, as they are nothing more than LASER initiated plasma bolt firing weapons, treat them as Traveller Plasma weapons for the Hand and Carbine style blasters and fusion weapons for the big guns.

Laterness,
Mr. I prefer Tech to Magic Powers,
Magnus.

 

[Mithras]

Are you kidding? This is pure pulp SF.

Treat blaster pistols as autopistols, Stormtrooper carbines as carbines, etc, etc. Assume they fire a plasma kinetic bolt.

That's how they do so little damage and have so poor a range

Since you are never going to meet an autopistol, what does t matter????

IIRC, Blasters should be easy to port, as they are nothing more than LASER initiated plasma bolt firing weapons, treat them as Traveller Plasma weapons for the Hand and Carbine style blasters and fusion weapons for the big guns.

Laterness,
Mr. I prefer Tech to Magic Powers,
Magnus.

 

[Ran Targas]

Any tips you can give a relative newbie to this Star Wars/Traveller hybrid stuff?

Much like the others, we were forced to use Traveller rules to play at Star Wars because WEG d6 wasn't out yet. Originally, in secondary school, we built a sector using the LBBs, copied the names of planets from the movies, and spent our time busily supporting Solo and Skywalker in their adventures. The LBBs didn't stop us from flying X-Wings and building our own lightsabers; the rules weren't that big of a concern at that age.

Later in university, we finally got our hands on WEG d6 Star Wars and shelved our Traveller cross-over universe. But something never really worked and the feel of the movies didn't seem to carry over to the game; instead it seemed kind of undisciplined and lacked intensity. I know I missed the hard sci-fi aspects of Traveller. So we went back to Traveller taking what we liked with us, particularly the epic scale, the evil Empire, the Rebellion, and Jedi Knights.

I've described MTU probably too many times in these forums. So my recommendation, since you're already well on the road to building your own TU, is to watch the Star Wars movies again with pad in hand, take some notes, and do your best to shoe horn what you like into the framework of Traveller rules. You really can't go wrong.

 

[Blue Ghost]

So I've got a bunch of Traveller books (Mongoose, its the only thing in my FLGS), but couldn't find anyone to play after an aborted start of a campaign. Then my friend says he wants to play a Star Wars campaign. So while going through with someone else all the systems I could use (d6 Star Wars, d20 Star Wars, SAGA Star Wars, d6 Space) I realized with a little modification, Traveller could work too.

And since I've been wanting to run another Traveller campaign I thought, "Why the hell not?". So I've been trying to find out what people expect from Star Wars (character types, equipment, starships, Jedi, epicness) so I can modify Traveller to it, and so far the Mongoose rules have most things covered, like rules for hyperspace travel in the Core Rulebook, Bounty Hunters in Agent, Smugglers in Scoundrel, Force Users in Psionics (probably will have the most work here trying to decide what to use and what to not use, though time and dimensional manipulation are right out).

So I was wondering and wanted to ask 3 questions:

1. What do you expect from Star Wars?
2. Is there any problems you might see in porting Star Wars over to Traveller?
3. Any advice you can give me on modifying the system to fit Star Wars, and modifying Star Wars to fit the system?

I think either CT Citizens of the Imperium or 76 Patrons has a Star Wars example in it.

I did the old West End Star Wars RPG with our old Traveller Group. It was the most fun gaming session we ever had. No arguments, just lots of die rolling and laughs. Ironically enough we only ever played it one time.

 

[sabredog]

I'm putting on my BD for this too:

Blasters: Long, long ago in a place far away (known as Los Angeles in circa 1978) I adapted the power guns from Hammers Slammers to Traveller to fit the gap from lasers to plasma guns and because players wanted blasters.

They come in two flavors: TL-13 and TL-15. They do (in CT) (pistols) 3D6 and 5D6...rifles (6D6 and 8D6). At TL-15 rifles can use autofire but have to use a 50 rd drum to do so in order to carry more coolant and a bigger battery. Stats available upon request.

Lightsabres: (same reasons...players asked for them)...I adapted the variable sword (stasi field enclosed monwire with a bright laser reflecting along the length to a tip that bounces the beam back so you can see it and not inadvertantly chop off your leg) to Traveller this way:

Damage=2D6+character's strength...Range DM's= -1 Close/0 Short
Armor DM=Attack DM of 1/2 STR

Stormtooper armor = Combat Armor (no reason why not)

LBB 2 has an excellent small craft combat system for fighter combat (you never really saw them taking on Star Destroyers and winning anyway in the original movies, but they are a must for those TIE vs. X-Wing affairs that have to happen. I expanded the combat as in LBB 2 as follows because on the player level I use LBB2 for ship combat. Here it is:

Add ejection roll if player's fighter is critically hit and the result was destruction. Roll is 10+ on 2D6 with Ship's Boat skill level as DM.

Allow for robot (R2 unit) repair rolls in between combat turns.

Allow for shields to be in fighters but they can only work either in the front or rear to absorb lasers fire until overloaded. Shield points allowed are up to you but I kept it at around 5 points for single seaters and 10 for dual seaters (like Y-Wings).


The Force: Used it as a point value to be exchanged for positive DM's or Negative DM's in various ways as chosen by the player or me. I used the Psionic rules for determining its strength and how to cultivate it in LBB2.

 

[Cthulhuvong]

Thanks for all the help guys. I think this will all help me make it. Once I have stuff organized, I'll try to give an overview here.

 

[colinfit20]

A quick question

How did you handle the Jedi?

I mean the psionic rules seem a little overpowered say in Mongoose if you use the psion career or did you just stick to having access to one ability and only after thats mastered or raised to say a +3 do they have the means to even attempt to gain access to a new power say going from Awareness to Telepathy and then onto Telekineisis?

 

[Mithras]

I think either CT Citizens of the Imperium or 76 Patrons has a Star Wars example in it.

They're both very poor translations of Star Wars characters though...

Young Farmboy 797655 Age 22 Pilot-2

Imperial Leader FAADFF Age ? Blade Cbt-5, Pilot-3, JoT-4, Leader-2 Psionic Rating 13

 

[HG_B]

Stormtooper armor = Combat Armor (no reason why not)

In Star Wars, Stormtroopers get massacred by single hand blaster shots.

 

[Mithras]

Maybe its a form of Jack armour!

 

[Cryton]

Waaaay back when , I also used my little black books to do Star Wars using Traveller, and have also done it recently as well, the most recent using MgT rules.

Heres how I did it for MgT...

For Stormtroopers, I used Combat Armor.
For Blasters, I used Laser pistol, carbine and rifle stats but added a stun setting that rolled half damage and applied to END only, If End was zeroed, you were rendered unconscious for 1-6 min, gaining your End back upon waking.
For Lightsabers I used 4d6 damage (ignores armor) and gave em 4 hour batteries.
Psionics were used for the Force with Teleportation being completely absent, and the Jedi only trained kids that were "strong in the force", ie. Psi 9+.
I added shield generators to starships (ships tonnage/100 Dt [min 1 for fighters] gives you a 1 shield point generator [2 sp for small craft] that is in effect armor and stacks with such)
Hyperdrive motivators massed 1 Dt, and added a single hit to the jump drive as well as allowing the ship to jump 100x the jump number of the drive. once damaged (ie the first hit on the JD) your ship is restricted to the normal jump range until the motivator is repaired.
Droids were Int 6+ (TL-13) and I fudged em pretty heavily.

I also added in a "Hero" point system, giving each player 3 hero points that once spent could only be regained by ingame "heroic" actions. When spent a hero point could be used for any of the following:

1. Jump your action to "NOW" on the iniative for one round only interupting any action that is currently going on.
2. Make "fatal" shot do minimum damage instead of killing a character.
3. roll 3d6 for a skill roll instead of 2d, and use the best 2 results of the 3d for determining success.
4. Make a single shot do maximum damage. (mind you the main villans also got hero points as well, and could spend a point on option 2...)

I think that about covers it as the rest was just good roleplaying and case by case situations. Hope it helps.

 

[domingojs23]

Thanks everyone !

I seem to recall there were some official or homebrew Megatraveller rules / stats for lightsabres, but can't seem to find them. Ring a bell with anyone ?

Cheers,

Gary