TNE questions.

[weasel fierce]

so I've slowly chewed through TNE, rolled up a few characters, and more or less memorized the important bits of the combat system.

I must admit, I really like this, it may be heresy, but its fast becoming my favourite Traveller version. There's just so much you can do with this setting!

A few questions are in order though:

Is there something missing in the world generation dice rolls ? A lot of the entries are of the 2D6 + size (or something else) nature, which gives really weird results. Should this be 2D6-7+size as in CT and MT ?

I have Survival Margin coming to me, courtesy of ebay. What other books can be recommended ? I've seen Fire, Fusion, Steel mentioned quite a bit.

How prominent (if at all) did you make Virus in your games?

Are there books covering aliens ? Notably Im interested in Vargr and Hivers.


And well, tell me of fun story ideas and cool things you have done with TNE!

 

[Border Reiver]

FF&S is the essential gearhead manual.

Path of Tears is what a sector book (I know it isn't a whole sector) should be. It is an essential resource for any Reformation Coalition campaign.

The Regency Sourcebook is pretty good too.

There is only one Alien book which covers Hivers & Ithklur. Some have criticised its idiosyncratic humour but I personally rate it quite highly.

 

[pendragonman]

I use Virus in some cases as THE VILLAIN. Sometimes I use it as the thing that causes THE VILLAIN to become prevalent (see TED). Sometimes it is just a background worry for the players (something to give them a hiccup in an uncharecteristicly smooth operation.) It really varies.

 

[Badbru]

Path of Tears is pretty much essential. There is a short chapter in it on Virus which basically says use it sparingly.
I got a lot of use from Vampire Fleets too but it's the only book you can't download from Drivethu so Ebay will have to be your friend if you want it.

TNE gets a bad rap on most Traveller forums and there are some aspects of the rules I don't like but I like detail and Fire Fusion and Steel, and Brilliant Lances give you that and more, which is why it is my rules set, and setting of choice.

edit, P.S. You're right about the world gen rolls. Some are missing the -7 notation. There was a small errata booklet inside Brilliant Lances, and I think Fire Fusion and Steel that fixed these although you seem to have correctly figured out the answer allready.

 

[deniable]

I spent a lot of time with Twilight 2000 v2 and TNE is the first Traveller rules set I properly played. It gets bashed a lot because it's a different rules set and they changed the background in major ways.

I generally tried to throw out the setting changes and use the old 3I instead of the new era. Virus, I could ignore, but the change of drives and the introduction of 'g-turns' really altered the feel I got from the other editions. My current campaign is TNE rules with a different universe and changes to the 'laws of physics.'

FF&S was great for gear-heading. I spent a lot of time with it. World Tamers Handbook has the detailed system generation rules as well as bow, black powder, and wagon (why?) design sequences for FF&S. Vampire Fleets expands the robot design sequences. Striker II had two pages of design rule expansion. This included the plasma gun rules update from Challenge 76.

Make sure you find the errata because you've already spotted some of the fun ones. It wasn't as bad as MT or T4 but there were a few in key places. I'm building a character generator and I've noticed some of the differences between an original TNE a 'Mk 1 Mod 1.'

This http://www.downport.com/traveller/tml/errata1.html should be the FF&S errata.

 

[Supplement Four]

Originally posted by Deniable:
... the introduction of 'g-turns' really altered the feel I got from the other editions.

Just FYI, G-Turns first made their appearance in CT. Check out SS3 Missiles.

Also, some small craft are sometimes rated with a max number of G-Turns. You don't see this often in CT, so people forget about it. But, CT uses G-turns for any craft that has limited fuel. It's a way of measuring how much fuel they burn.

I know it's a tad different in TNE, but CT is where it got its start. There's much in CT that many people think first appeared in other editions. MT's task system, the UTP, first appeared in CT (not MT). Cascade skills, people think of being an innovation of MT, but it's CT where they first make their apperance. Etc.

 

[jcrocker]

TNE was great - my group liked it.

I started with the introductory RCES adventure in the main book - the only major change was that I moved it to a similar world a lot closer to RCES space, I didn't want to have all that travel time. I think I had them operate out of a forward base most of the time for the same reason, it saved six weeks transit per mission. Then when they got 'back home' it was a major event.

The players got a kick out of it - as part of the intro they got named "Knights of Gerhard" and kept bringing that up at every opportunity, months later. "Who are you people?" "We are the Knights Of Gerhard!"

Virus I used sparingly - I was working my way towards the adventure in the Vampire Fleets book, but everyone moved across the country before I got to it.

Path of Tears is key, lots of good stuff there. I brought in a couple of Twilight:2000 bits. The "Castle by the Sea" T2K folio worked really well as part of one of the PoT adventures, but the T2K modules were a harder fit, I only used one of those.

Oh, and I had a copy of an adventure from Classic Traveller, Murder on Arcturus Station I think it was called. It's a murder mystery, and they had a good time figuring it out.

One thing I found useful was an article from Challenge titled "Putting the Science back in Science Fiction" - if you can get that, great. If not, it was a summary of how various hard-science concepts can improve a game. With TNE, and all that world-hopping, using each planet's stats to make it a seperate entity is a good idea. One time they were on a planet orbiting a red star, and I spent some time describing the environment: low light levels, deep red sunlight and deeper shadows, the grey sky, and how some plants had bioluminescent 'flowers' to operate in the low-light environment. One player turned to another and said "A grey sky would be really wierd." Mission accomplished!

 

[pendragonman]

Also, the modular cruisers of the RCES are really cool. I wonder why a design like that wasn't "canonized" before!

 

[aramis]

The system isn't bad (I prefer 2300 or MT), and I did like the CharGen...

I just didn't like the new setting, nor how Dave developed it.

Combat has a few minor issues (d6's for damage make .22's incapable of killing template NPC's... even on a head shot crit; switching to d10's for Damage 1+, and d6 rather than d6-1 for "-1" damage stats pretty much cures that).

It's a solid engine.

 

[Commander Drax]

This might surprise some of you given how much focus I've put on T20 in recent years but TNE is my favourite rules set, I just love some of the other aspects of the setting such as the way that a basic free trader could string together 2 successive jump 1's to cross to another main by carefully conserving its reaction mass, yes it might be slow to orbit by burning a fraction of a g-hour, but just look at all that fuel you save...

I love the hard science feel, makes the universe come alive for me, although starship combat is bit too complex for my liking, although it doesn't figure much in the game for me in any case, after all relic starships in independent hands are just too valuable to risk in ship to ship combat (if using the TNE default setting).

Also TNE is like classic traveller in the sense that it was designed from the ground up to be used as generic sci fi rules for any game background, (I'm currently using it to test my 'Children of Earth' setting).

As pointed out by other posts, TNE shares a lot of the technical assumptions of classic traveller, such as first edition High Guard stating that vessels used 'contra grav/null grav' drives and plasma engines for motive power, so from that point of view I think it is a true successor to CT. The only thing I miss however is the change of rules in character generation where there is no longer a survival roll per term of prior history generation.

 

[Terry McInnes]

Why Wagons?

Dave and I included primitive weapons and wagon design sequences in World Tamers Handbook because a focus of the book was colonizing virgin worlds and building societies from scratch. You start with beast-drawn wagons, then railroads, then the internal combustion engine when you are building a self-sustaining society on a new world. Sure, some of your richest citizens may float around on imported off-world air rafts but most of your folk will be looking at the north end of a south-bound horse (or equivalent) for long time. I wanted to help create a setting for the Wild West meets the New Era adventures with WTH. I think I succeeded. See the epilog to A Long Way Home and you will get the picture.

 

[Badbru]

Dave and I included primitive weapons and wagon design sequences in World Tamers Handbook because a focus of the book was colonizing virgin worlds and building societies from scratch. You start with beast-drawn wagons, then railroads, then the internal combustion engine when you are building a self-sustaining society on a new world. Sure, some of your richest citizens may float around on imported off-world air rafts but most of your folk will be looking at the north end of a south-bound horse (or equivalent) for long time. I wanted to help create a setting for the Wild West meets the New Era adventures with WTH. I think I succeeded. See the epilog to A Long Way Home and you will get the picture.

Whilst I don't mind a bit of Wild West meets New Era, "Firefly" type of setting it's not a concept that sits easy with me when we talk of colonising worlds in Traveller. In order to colonise another world you need Jump drives to get there which means you're comming from atleast a TL-9 society, and more likely higher tech than that. I just think it's much more likely that any new colony will be established at the same TL as the parent world, or more likely, and inline with the system generation rules, one TL lower like colonies in the same system which aren't mainworlds. I thus tended to scrap alot of that otherwise excellent book as I couldn't concurr with it's back to basics, TL-1 premise.

 

[Terry McInnes]

There are two reasons for the substantially lower tech levels on a TNE colony world.

First of all, a lack of shipping to haul high tech goodies from the home world to the colony. A single freighter may only call once or twice a month. If they are really lucky, a colony will have a fusion power plant to generate electricity, otherwise they will have to have something like a low-head hyro power station or wind turbines for electricity. It will be really expensive to haul things to the colony, and these will be considered luxury goods.

This leads to the second point; how to pay for the off-world goodies. A colony will have to develop export products in demand on the home or other world before it can earn the income to pay for the goodies. In the meantime, you will be looking at the south end of a northbound horse. Besides, horses make more horses free of charge. You can't say the same about air rafts.

If Congressional Space.com is still up on the web, take a look at "The Calling Stars," the sequel to "A Long Way Home." This will give you more of the flavor of colonial life, which ain't all bad.

 

[Commander Drax]

I think Terry is right, particulary in the aftermath of a brutal war and doomsday weapon(virus) most new colonies would want to be self sufficient, and not reliant on technology that can only be manufactured elsewhere and would willingly choose to start at tech level 1 and build their industrial base by moving through all of the later tech levels, i.e smelting metals locally before mass producing them, building internal combustion engines locally after prospecting fuel sources (Lhyd a possibility), which requires power generation, using wood and coal if present until a local manufacturing base can be established, that may be able to make a fission or fusion reactor. Using planes for transport until grav vehicles can be locally made.

Yes these things can be bought from off world, but who would want to be dependent on interstellar trade, knowing that it can be cut off in an instant by war or virus.

 

[epicenter00]

Ranting myself "horse" ...

Besides, horses make more horses free of charge. You can't say the same about air rafts.

I hope you can forgive me a little snark, meant in a teasing way, not too maliciously: You've never owned a horse, have you?

Horses are not free of charge. You have muck out the stable, daily maintenance (brushing the horse down, checking the hooves, etc.), pay for it to be shod periodically, pay for feed (our selectively bred horses don't do too well with grazing), vet costs, and these costs are factored over years. Any of these things you cannot or will not do yourself, you have to pay someone else to do. While they don't sound like much compared to paying $3.50 a gallon of gas, trust me, it adds up. You also have to deal with the foals - who are eating up your time and resources and not giving you a thing back economically speaking for a while - something you don't have to deal with in a new vehicle.

I can't really compare the expense of owning a horse to the handwavium economics of grav vehicles with numbers arbitrarily pulled out of the collective anterior orifices of game designers, but in my experience, owning a horse is about as expensive as owning a car and even with the most meticulous care and careful "driving" you'll go through multiple horses in the average human lifetime, something that you can avoid with the "indestructible" tech of most Traveller universes (provided they're not players - those nutters fly their vehicles towards places where people are shooting RAM grenades and fusion guns instead of away). Even in a "wild west in space" setting, horses would probably be more expensive, relatively speaking, to a low-tech buyer on a low-tech colony world than it would be for you or I to buy a car in our TL7 society, or for someone to buy a grav vehicle in a TL12+ society.

---

Ranting about horses aside, unless someone has the uniquely male romantic connections to riding around horses (or similar beasts) on the frontier (world), I would think that most colony worlds wouldn't be using horses. Perhaps kept to TL5 or TL6 but I doubt anyone would go any lower for a new colony world. I find the descriptions of horses and such primarily useful for generating Virus-fallen worlds - where they don't really have a choice.

 

[whartung]

Frankly, I think the limitation of what they use would be basically how much it relied upon electronics.

If anything has advanced equipment in any meaningful way, it's electronics, and sophisticated electronics tend to be a bit more difficult to manufacture compared to most other things.

But you can go a long way before electronics starts to really play a role (TL 6, basically). Note, electronics is not the same as electricity.

Lots of materials can fuel internal combustion engines (as is all the rage today), for example, and that's mostly a distilling process (and if any technology is going to survive a societal collapse, it's distilling ;-)).

Obviously it requires some level of industry, mostly creating and working with steel. But we had steel and machining of steel around roughly TL 4. If you can get there, then steam power becomes readily available. And, frankly, if you can machine a locomotive, you can machine an internal combustion engine and move on up to TL 5 or TL 6.

Even today, a modern tractor is a TL 5 machine with a TL 8 GPS and air conditioning (and a TL 6 mechanic named "Old Henry").

So, assuming the materials are available, I don't see why a modern society should fall much farther than TL 6 (assuming gradual collapse vs utter collapse where all of the engineers and metalurgists are dead, along with all of the libraries).

 

[Golan2072]

The higher your tech-level is, the more infrastructure - both physical and social - you'll need to maintain and operate it and the more diverse raw materials you'll need. A small country (or even mid-sized city) with the right know-how and good sources of metal could probably maintain TL4 all by itself; TL5 requires a somewhat larger economy (particularly as it needs more types of raw materials, most of which are limited to certain geographical areas on any given world); TL6 would require a semi-global economy for the very least; and TL7+ would probably need a functioning global economy. Ofcourse, having many pre-Collapse relics to salvage would make things far easier, especially in regard to metal.

Fuel-wise, both biogas (i.e. a mixture of methane and CO2 made by the anaerobic digestion of organic matter) and ethanol make good choices as they are both fully renewable and easy to make. The key issue here with internal combustion engines would be purification - most such engines won't get along well with too much CO2, water or fruit/grain remains in their fuel. And, of course, most renewable fuels have a lower energy content per unit of fuel than refined fossil fuels - I'm not sure you could fly a jet (for example) on ethanol or biogas. And scrubbing or purification are typically higher-tech than digestion or fermentation.

 

[Terry McInnes]

The higher your tech-level is, the more infrastructure - both physical and social - you'll need to maintain and operate it and the more diverse raw materials you'll need.

Golan hit the nail on the head, it's infrastructure that counts, and that is built over time. Also, the more complex the infrastructure, the larger and more specialized the population you need to support it. My colonization scenario in World Tamers supposes a group of people with a variety of skills signing on to build a society on a raw, unexplored world, not dissimilar to the colonization of the Americas in the 15th and 16th centuries. While it is possible to import some high-tech items from off-world, these will be rare and expensive. It will be decades before an industrial base is established that can handle the production of TL-4+ items. If the colony world has a valuable resource in demand off-world, then it can earn cash through exports that can be used to speed up this process. If not, it will remain an agrarian society until they develop industrial and transportation infrastructure.

About horse, donkeys, mules, oxen, cows, and other farm livestock.: I never did say they were cheap to maintain. What I said was they reproduce themselves free of charge. You can bring in the first generation of livestock to the colony world either in special low berths or as frozen embryos that can be thawed, raised, and then made to reproduce and used for transportation and food. You may also find animals native to the colony world that can be tamed and or eaten. Either case would be cheaper than trying to maintain a hover craft or air raft for any length of time on a colony world. You need spare parts, skilled mechanics, and fuel for that.

Anything is possible on a colony world including a mix of technologies. In the Epilog to A Long Way Home, you see a picture of a colony that has a steamship, sailing ships, blacksmiths working metal, one or two imported air rafts, and a hand-full of ground cars. But mostly our colonist rely on horse power to get around. By the time I write the sequel to this book, I will have developed a more comprehensive picture of this colony world.

 

[Badbru]

The higher your tech-level is, the more infrastructure - both physical and social - you'll need to maintain and operate it and the more diverse raw materials you'll need.

I'll grant you that point however you have that on the homeworld. If the colony is expected to survive then I expect it to be supported. This means not occasional visits by a Free Trader who wanders past but a regular shipping transport dedicated to the colony. Even if you only want to support the occasional Free Trader (Note the capitals refering to TNE's Free Traders as a people, not free traders as a starship class) you will still want some form of starport, and that will require your TL9+ homeworlds tech. For example, look at the other mission in World Tamers, it has a number of Clipper modules all built at TL9+ sitting in orbit acting as a command post, starport, medical center and survey point not to mention a storage point for supplies. At no point was this considered either too expensive for the mission, nor were there any complaints that the locals at TL-2 couldn't repair it.

Golan hit the nail on the head, it's infrastructure that counts, and that is built over time. Also, the more complex the infrastructure, the larger and more specialized the population you need to support it. My colonization scenario in World Tamers supposes a group of people with a variety of skills signing on to build a society on a raw, unexplored world, not dissimilar to the colonization of the Americas in the 15th and 16th centuries.

I was wondering when this old chesnut would come up. Oh the glorius whimsical pridefull memories of our nations historical foundings and early development. So easily we forget that our forefathers came from a technological society, atleast in Travellers terms, of EXACTLY the same Tech level. Those muskets and plows that built our nations were of the same Tech Levels as those used by our homeworld equivelent nations of Europe; England, France, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands et al. The English colonists did not establish a colony in the America's at Stoneage TL-0 because it would be too expensive to import flints for their High tech flintlock muskets. How would we ever replace a plow blade should we break one? I know, we'll make do with bones tied to sticks as plows because that way we'll atleast be independent. Sounds silly when I put it that way doesn't it yet people cling to this romantic idea of building from scratch just to be independent and self sufficient.

While it is possible to import some high-tech items from off-world, these will be rare and expensive. It will be decades before an industrial base is established that can handle the production of TL-4+ items. If the colony world has a valuable resource in demand off-world, then it can earn cash through exports that can be used to speed up this process. If not, it will remain an agrarian society until they develop industrial and transportation infrastructure.

This point is probably where I found the most problems. If a colony world has a valuable commodity for exploit then it will be exploited, and then some, and with the most efficient means available to the Homeworld concern that is doing the exploiting. Infact this will be the reason the colony is there in the first instance and they will not care a whit if it's agrarian capabilities are up to snuff. In addition, all it's high paid workers will expect all the creature comforts they have back home on their TL9+ homeworld. Look at any Western, First world, minning sites built in Third world nations for examples. Heck take a look at US forces in Iraq with their own McDonalds stores!

If there is not a commodity or resource begging to be exploit then the colony in question is allready on shakey ground and is looking more like a dumping ground for convicts and political dissidents. I know that even this type of colony can succeed as I sit in my living room right now in a former one. Though I would claim that a, it was supported, b, there were/are resources to be exploited, and c, that it was established at, or certainly with, the same Tech level as the English that created it were using.

About horse, donkeys, mules, oxen, cows, and other farm livestock.: I never did say they were cheap to maintain. What I said was they reproduce themselves free of charge. You can bring in the first generation of livestock to the colony world either in special low berths or as frozen embryos that can be thawed, raised, and then made to reproduce and used for transportation and food. You may also find animals native to the colony world that can be tamed and or eaten. Either case would be cheaper than trying to maintain a hover craft or air raft for any length of time on a colony world. You need spare parts, skilled mechanics, and fuel for that.

Anything is possible on a colony world including a mix of technologies. In the Epilog to A Long Way Home, you see a picture of a colony that has a steamship, sailing ships, blacksmiths working metal, one or two imported air rafts, and a hand-full of ground cars. But mostly our colonist rely on horse power to get around. By the time I write the sequel to this book, I will have developed a more comprehensive picture of this colony world.

I haven't made that purchase, yet, so I'm wondering what exactly is that colonies purpose as that will have the strongest bearing on it in my opinion.

 

[Golan2072]

I was wondering when this old chesnut would come up. Oh the glorius whimsical pridefull memories of our nations historical foundings and early development. So easily we forget that our forefathers came from a technological society, atleast in Travellers terms, of EXACTLY the same Tech level. Those muskets and plows that built our nations were of the same Tech Levels as those used by our homeworld equivelent nations of Europe; England, France, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands et al. The English colonists did not establish a colony in the America's at Stoneage TL-0 because it would be too expensive to import flints for their High tech flintlock muskets. How would we ever replace a plow blade should we break one?

The two points to consider here are:

1) Shipping volume. How much incoming supplies does the colony need? Is the available shipping tonnage sufficient? Keep in mind that the higher the tech, the more spare parts and supplies you'll need to carry. So bringing parts and construction gear to build a few small local manufacturing workshops might be a wise choice - it cuts down on the transport requirements; and in the New Era, there's always a shortage of ships. Producing food, water and life-support supplies locally really helps as these tend to take up a hefty volume.

2) Infrastructure which is needed locally; plows and muskets (or even tractors, a biogas digester&scrubber and AK47's) need relatively little existing infrastructure - but running a high-TL hospital will require you to have a good power-source and a clean water-source for the very least. This means that a small fusion reactor would be very useful locally, and higher-TL would also probably require a comm-net.

My bottom line is that part of the colonial investment should be spent on creating local infrastructures, as shipping is expensive and ships are (in TNE) relatively rare.

This point is probably where I found the most problems. If a colony world has a valuable commodity for exploit then it will be exploited, and then some, and with the most efficient means available to the Homeworld concern that is doing the exploiting. Infact this will be the reason the colony is there in the first instance and they will not care a whit if it's agrarian capabilities are up to snuff. In addition, all it's high paid workers will expect all the creature comforts they have back home on their TL9+ homeworld. Look at any Western, First world, minning sites built in Third world nations for examples. Heck take a look at US forces in Iraq with their own McDonalds stores!

Shipping volume would be a concern here; creature comforts would probably come last when you only have three 200-dton ships (in bad repair) making rounds over a 4-parsec distance. Did the American colonists have the same level of creature comforts as the urban middle class back at the UK, atlesat early on? Life on the frontier is usually leaner than in the metropolis, especially when shipping volume is low.

---

In other words, think Aliens - Acheron was a modern-tech colony, though somewhat spartan; but its local manufacturing capabilities were relatively low (though the colony did have its own fusion plant and atmospheric processor). I'd say that about 99% of the local stuff was imported.

---
I'd say that the average colony would be a TL below that of the homeworld (with full homeoworld-TL tech available but some higher-tech articles being somewhat rarer), but that the local manufacturing capabilities would be very limited for the average colony - you'll need atleast POP-4 for anything that resembles a real industrial base; below that you'll probably have workshops, but no real local industry except for whatever the colony does for exports (i.e. mining, salvage etc).