T20 Apocalypse in the New Era

[Space Cadet]

The New Era is the most Apocalyptic of all the Traveller settings. I don't much care for TNE rules, but the setting is just excellent. I don't really care about a 4th Imperium. The Imperium is about civilization, but TNE is about a Dark Ages, and the dark ages are where the most exciting adventure possibilities are.

T20 is based in D20 which is the system used by D&D, which is also a "Dark Age" setting that occurs in the wake of some fallen empires. I like a medeaval analog to the Imperium's "Roman Empire". Instead of a vast Imperium surrounded by tiny client states, how about a bunch of medeaval kingdoms that is more or less in line with what developed in Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire? This brings us back to the D20 Modern Supplement d20 Apocalypse. The New Era is ,according to this book, a combination of Nuclear Armageddon and Rise of the Machines. Now if your playing a group of barbarians that loot the ruins of a city for valuable artifacts, and they come aput an 80 year old artifact starship, getting the thing to work and the barbarians into space is a tough job, especially since none of the barbarians possess the necessary skills to fly it.

So what are the solutions to this dilemma as "Thundar" the barbarian sheaths his sword and scratches his beard as he looks at the blank screens and consoles of the starship in puzzlement?

1) There is of course the ever helpful virus that knows how to run the ship.

2) Another trick are the low berth passengers that are still viable, and can be revived after 80 years of "cold sleep", perhaps they might possess the required skills

3) If a barbarian is literate, he might just spend several years reading the operating manuals and try to figure out how to power up the starship

What's your method?

Then there's the question of exactly where do the barbarians find this starship artifact, it would probably have to be protected from the elements somehow to stand a chance of being in a usable condition when found. Probably the best setting would be the desert, the barbarians are desert nomads, and they take shelter when a sandstorm kicks up, and when its over, the dunes have shifted and uncovered a scoutship that was left here long ago. the explaination is simple. 80 years ago, this place was a starport or a scout base, and after it was abandoned or the occupants were killed, the sand covered the whole place up. The starships were air tight so none of the sand got inside, it rarely rains in the desert, and being buried under the dunes served to protect its surfaces from the scouring sandstorms that rack this area. If the PCs search around some more they find some other building protruding from the dunes, even some hangars. This treasure should not be completely unguarded, when they power up the systems, they also activate some security robots that were infected with the virus, and they begin attacking the PCs, hopefully by this time, the PCs have found some futuristic weapons to defend themselves with. weapons are easy to use, but starships are difficult to fly. Probably one of the above will help them to fly it.

The barbarians don't really know where they are going when they fly into space, one direction is just as good as another.

 

[Valarian]

Good idea - though the natives don't have to be the D&D type of barbarian. They could be a culture that have reverted to the Victorian steam age (steam-punk anyone?), with mechanical parts not subject to Virus infection. If it's only been 80 years since the Virus cataclysm, then maybe the locals haven't yet reverted too far technologically.

If the ship is Virus infected, then maybe the PCs can "reboot" the computers - wiping the infection. The transponder could have been damaged so that reinfection isn't immediate. Though with a duff transponder, things could get very interesting for them if they reach a 'civilised' world.

Originally posted by Space Cadet:
The barbarians don't really know where they are going when they fly into space, one direction is just as good as another.

The gods help them when they try a jump

 

[Space Cadet]

I suspect that a higher tech level society would revert further back because they aren't used to doing as much for themselves. Somebody from an interstellar society wouldn't know as much about blacksmithing as say someone from today, machines would do more of that metalurgical stuff, factories would be more automated and employ fewer people. If the Virus were to infect all that technology, people from higher tech levels would be less likely to know how to do that stuff manually, and there might not be too many paper books for them to read up on that stuff as data would be stored on electronic formats and if the virus gets to those electronic viewers, the data storage would be useless to a society deprived of its technology.

Basically think of a Tech Level 15 society with robots and grav vehicles, and suddenly they all fall out of the sky, the robots fail to work and the cities go dark. The mayor of the darkened city tries to call the emergency services, but the holovid phones don't work, there is no power. The vehicles don't work, and no one knows how to repair them as their are machines that do that stuff, most of the repairmen are used to directing machines to do those repairs, but the repair machines don't work either and they don't know how to manually repair a vehicle. The parts are too small for them to manupulate and the tools aren't designed for human hands.

Gunsmithing is an unknown art, as guns are made in automated factories and they shut down. Since most people use energy weapons, they wouldn't know a thing about making projectile weapons that use explosive chemicals to propel the projectiles. The have some theoretical knowledge of chemistry, but no practical hands on experience, the machines are their hands and those hands don't work. You can see how a high tech society might fall further than a mid tech one.

 

[koza]

Yep, Space Cadet, pretty much.

This was covered in the TNE book about home worlds versus colony worlds.

Many colony worlds were founded at high tech. All the way back to the First Imperium. When the Final Blow came in 1130, many of these worlds couldn't recover because all of their documents for patents, blueprints, and the like, were all in electronic format. Those were pretty much erased and the people who knew of them didn't survive, usually.

Home worlds, OTOH, usually had physical archives from when the civilization first rose. Books and old technical manuals weren't affected by Virus. Civilization could be reestablished easier because of them.

Keep in mind, there are always exceptions. There could be a cache of uninfected computers with the information on the drives still intact. Their could be a "jumpstart" cache prepared via Imperial Decree in an underground bunker. All things are possible....

 

[epicenter00]

This is touched on in the TNE book for reverted worlds (as opposed to pocket empires or the Regency). You're speaking about totally reverted worlds (which I find unrealistic for my TNE games - 100 years give or take isn't long enough for people to fall back then climb back up to Conan the Barbarian - but that's how the setting was made, so I'll run with it). You already have part of it, you just need the other half:

4) Wizards and monks. You've introduced Thundarr (and his trusty sidekick Ukla the Mok^H^H^H Aslan). Who you need is Sorceress now (1). Arthur had Merlin. Aragorn had Gandalf. Bran has Coldhands. Anyway, you get the picture. You need your Irish monks inscribing the Book of Kells while the Vikings howl for blood outside (2). Instead of using psionics for magic, you can simply use knowledge of technical matters instead.

TNE introduces the idea of the technical priesthood. While those introduced in TNE smack of the Adeptus Mechanicus from the Warhammer 40000 universe, learning knowledge that is getting more and more debased and simply practicing it out of rote, your wizards and monks don't have to be that way. Perhaps they're like scientist-dabblers of the Age of Reason - men and women who've kept or rediscovered the tools of scientific inquiry and verification and are now discovering exactly how spotty or outright inaccurate the knowledge of the Tech Priesthoods are.

If you want to go hideously Mary-Sue, you could follow the advice given in "Survival Margin" and have had a technical education for your characters (or selected characters) passed down from their grandparents. Why only the players benefit from such an education while everyone else is scratching dirt with the chickens is why this is Mary-Sue.

Footnotes:

(1) Goodness, did I just age myself? Do I get nerd points for remembering that?

(2) Yeah, yeah. I know. It wasn't like that, but you get the picture. Sheesh.

 

[Space Cadet]

Personally I find that the 4th Imperium gets established too quickly. I'd rather have at least 500 years of Dark Ages first.

I think TNE went with 80 years because, it is way less realistic for a 500 year old or a 1,000 year old artifact to work. To have alot of technological goodies that still work, then 80 years is not too long a time.

Has anyone ever done a Traveller setting modeled on Medeaval Kingdoms rather than Imperial Rome by the way?

 

[Liam Devlin]

Originally posted by epicenter00:
This is touched on in the TNE book for reverted worlds (as opposed to pocket empires or the Regency). You're speaking about totally reverted worlds (which I find unrealistic for my TNE games - 100 years give or take isn't long enough for people to fall back then climb back up to Conan the Barbarian - but that's how the setting was made, so I'll run with it). You already have part of it, you just need the other half:

To a point I can concur, then have to disagree. With the collpase of the 3I, there goes also interstellar trade, that wonderful macGuffin so many folks like to say in either Big-Ship or Small Ship TU's makes the 3I what it is..

Remove it-- and remove spare parts for worlds that need them, and don't make them themselves. The Glimmer of how well a world could adpat to this was given us in MT's Hard Times. Some will fall precipitously without the lifeblood of this Interstellar Trade, beginning with the loss of the starport itself.

Next, without the adequate population, and ionfrastructure health care will also plummet. No more TL12 Broad spectrum Anti-toxin vaccines..

at TL4 vaccine knowledge began, and can be sustained. Regress below TL4..and common infections from cuts can kill you, or reduce you to medieval means of using fire and such to clean such things.

below TL4 life expectancies shorten, infant mortalirty rates climb..so yes, in 70-80 years, 100 tops, folks could breed themselves into ignorance/ barbarism.

4) Wizards and monks. You've introduced Thundarr (and his trusty sidekick Ukla the Mok^H^H^H Aslan). Who you need is Sorceress now (1). Arthur had Merlin. Aragorn had Gandalf. Bran has Coldhands. Anyway, you get the picture. You need your Irish monks inscribing the Book of Kells while the Vikings howl for blood outside (2). Instead of using psionics for magic, you can simply use knowledge of technical matters instead.

TNE introduces the idea of the technical priesthood. While those introduced in TNE smack of the Adeptus Mechanicus from the Warhammer 40000 universe, learning knowledge that is getting more and more debased and simply practicing it out of rote, your wizards and monks don't have to be that way. Perhaps they're like scientist-dabblers of the Age of Reason - men and women who've kept or rediscovered the tools of scientific inquiry and verification and are now discovering exactly how spotty or outright inaccurate the knowledge of the Tech Priesthoods are.

If you want to go hideously Mary-Sue, you could follow the advice given in "Survival Margin" and have had a technical education for your characters (or selected characters) passed down from their grandparents. Why only the players benefit from such an education while everyone else is scratching dirt with the chickens is why this is Mary-Sue.

Agreed, its Mary Sue as GDW's TNE looked at it (or from what we saw that printed before their own "Collapse".)

I never did Warhammer Adpetus mechanicus, but I did wade through Aasimov's Foundation trilogy, which uses the Techno-Data-Priest idea as well to save knowledge and bring about a treturn to the stars after an interstellar empire's collapse.

I concur that repositories of knowledge were far more widespread than protrayed in GDW's TNE, and so we see in 1248: TNE the average tech regressed world falls between TL4 and TL7 in the UWP's.

TL 0 for a world beyond the UWp population of 6 (millions) I have a hard time with for example as this would mean falling back to the pre-city state level of Ancient man at TL1.

 

[Liam Devlin]

Originally posted by Space Cadet:
Personally I find that the 4th Imperium gets established too quickly. I'd rather have at least 500 years of Dark Ages first.

Well, I personally disagree SC.

Lemme see..if we chart from it Hard times 1124, and go to the coronation of Avery I as Emperor of the newly established 4th Imperium 001-1248, then we have 124 years.

Now if we chart it from Virus' onset in 1130-to-1248, thats about 118 years.

I think TNE went with 80 years because, it is way less realistic for a 500 year old or a 1,000 year old artifact to work. To have alot of technological goodies that still work, then 80 years is not too long a time.

It also leaves a lot of dead worlds with stuff that can be cannibalized and reused to restart civilization with in Salvage campaigns from the lone world to the pocket empire scaled projects.

Has anyone ever done a Traveller setting modeled on Medeaval Kingdoms rather than Imperial Rome by the way?

Can't say as I ever approached my TU with an Imperial Roman model for a Goth-Visigoth, vandal, Lombard, Saxon, Hun, series of invasion no.