Traveller "Now"

[TheEngineer]

Hi !

After several discussions with potential new players I got the impression, that many of them have problems with the "vast" amount of backgound in Traveller and the size of it all.
So there seems to be a feeling like being thrown into something they hardly can oversee.
Well, those are adult people with limited time, so its difficult for me to say: "Just read these papers for introduction" knowing that it still wouldnt be enough to get a correct impression of Traveller life and environment.

Thats the reason why I considered to set up some real "Introducery" adventures with a setting here on good old earth and time just now, just about 92 (?) years before "officel" contact with the Vilani.
Adventures could involve contacts to a lost vilani scout exploration crew, discovery of some ancient sites on Earth etc. At least it has to be done in a sensible way, so that the known officle histroy of the TU is not disturbed...
I hope this would enable me to really introduce the players into Traveller in the gaming way, with a kind of synchronized level of "Traveller world lore" between player and player character (keeping me away from having to tell: "Your character knows that" all the time).
IMHO its a kind of tribute to players tendency to prefer familar settings.

Usually everything is already done in "Traveller", so I would like to ask if somebody has links or resources dealing with this kind of setting "TRAVELLER NOW" ?

Regards,

Mert

 

[mike wightman]

Do you mean using Traveller like a techno-thriller, set in the modern day, but with possible "alien secrets" to be discovered?

Sounds interesting

Hmm, how about a UN inspection team in the middle east discover clues that eventually lead them to either a hidden Ancients site, or evidence of Vilani contact during the Summerian era...

Which version of the rules are you going to use for this?

 

[far-trader]

Not much in the way of links and such, though I do recall some discussion along this line (on the TML?) and the idea that the Roswell crash was a misjumped Vilani Scout.

So you could run with that: Area 51 experimenting and working on contra-grav thrusters and jump drives. The "Aliens" still being held, possibly alive Vilani being longer lived, and looking just like us!

As for Ancient sites on Earth, well the pyramids all over ancient earth are well suited, as are the Atlantis myths.

The great thing is you can run a wonderful Traveller campaign built on this without ever worrying about the OTU. Just get the players involved in the intrigue somehow (government secret black ops techs working on it... or conspiracy theory fringers sneaking in and discovering it... or... )

One time I considered something similar to this I was going to work the players into that first interstellar mission that made contact with the Vilani. So they wouldn't have to know a single thing about the OTU and Vilani society, because they'd be discovering it. Hmm, I think I had an Ancient site on Mars in that one, complete with a ship, and then the Babylon 5 episode with the alien ship on Mars came along and I figured the players would think I was stealing the idea (I wasn't) so I dropped it.

 

[Maladominus]

Originally posted by TheEngineer:


Thats the reason why I considered to set up some real "Introducery" adventures with a setting here on good old earth and time just now, just about 92 (?) years before "officel" contact with the Vilani.
Adventures could involve contacts to a lost vilani scout exploration crew, discovery of some ancient sites on Earth etc.

The upcoming GURPS Interstellar Wars sounds pretty much close to this period.

Earthlings discover Jump Drive.
Earthlings go out to explore and colonize space.
Earthlings find out that BIG VILANI EMPIRE CLAIMS ALL.
Earthlings go to war against BIG VILANI EMPIRE.

It's really a very simple setting that any gamer can understand.

 

[Golan2072]

Originally posted by Maladominus:

Earthlings discover Jump Drive.
Earthlings go out to explore and colonize space.
Earthlings find out that BIG VILANI EMPIRE CLAIMS ALL.
Earthlings go to war against BIG VILANI EMPIRE.

You forgot:
Earthlings eat the BIG (but horribly rotten and crumbling) VILANI EMPIRE for breakfast

Just think of any good alien conspiracy plot, occuring on either Earth or a lost colony (lost colonies are better, btw, as there are less cannon issues - if you care about cannon, that is

).

Imagine an Imperial-based corp bribing the local Imperial Navy authorities into allowing them to access a TL7 Red-Zoned "preserve" to abduct the natives as experimental stock - especially if the locals have something 'interesting' about them, possibly a dormant but hefty PSI potential. The PCs are abducted, transported to a Corp facility - and then released by a Naval Internal Affairs raid (as the IN authorities found out about the bribes and stepped in to clear things up). Now that the abductees have been "contaminated" by knowledge about the corporation and the Imperium, they cannot go back (they'll compromise the "preserve"), but might get offered a certain job (or added to a certain noble's yacht's crew as a "couriousity"). Or they could have knowledge and/or professions that will add them to a trader's crew in a frontier area (There are ALOT of TL7- worlds in the OTU, and on the way they'll learn about the higher TLs).

What I was thinking about for the time where I'll introduce my girlfriend to Traveller (she now has her mind fixed on Shadowrun

) was starting her off in my virus-less post-Hard-Times setting on a world which was cut off from civilization for quite a time (an wasn't in THAT good contact before anyway - think Raschev from the Horde adventure). So her character will know what she knows from me about the OTU (not much, but the general lines), the rest she'll learn by herself as her world will be re-contacted by the Terran Community (the new name for what I called the "Unity of Gaia") and she'll be drafted to help defend this world from one of the warlords.

 

[Andrew Boulton]

Hmm...Traveller:2000

That and the first contact are games I've considered but never got around to.

 

[kafka47]

I would rather like the new Doctor Who series - Torchlight to serve as the backdrop for Traveller : Now. I wouldn't mind everything that was outlined above save the finding of Ancient sites on the Earth more fun could be to find them on Luna or even Mars. Afterall, the whole push to Mars is very suspicious, true it will answer many scientific questions but there is a somewhat Mars Mania when many other interesting places and space projects could be done.

 

[FlightCommanderSolitude]

Originally posted by TheEngineer:
After several discussions with potential new players I got the impression, that many of them have problems with the "vast" amount of backgound in Traveller and the size of it all.

I've never understood this argument. I haven't read every Spiderman comic - in fact, I've read precisely zero Spiderman comics - and yet somehow, amazingly, I was able to understand the movie. And call me vain, but I like to imagine that I'm smart enough that I could pick up a Spiderman comic and make some sense of it, and if there was a Spiderman RPG I could probably manage to play it if my friend wanted to.

 

[sid6.7]

Originally posted by FlightCommanderSolitude:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by TheEngineer:
After several discussions with potential new players I got the impression, that many of them have problems with the "vast" amount of backgound in Traveller and the size of it all.

I've never understood this argument. I haven't read every Spiderman comic - in fact, I've read precisely zero Spiderman comics - and yet somehow, amazingly, I was able to understand the movie. And call me vain, but I like to imagine that I'm smart enough that I could pick up a Spiderman comic and make some sense of it, and if there was a Spiderman RPG I could probably manage to play it if my friend wanted to. </font>[/QUOTE]no thats not entirly true at least for me
i was pertty up on book 1-3 and a few adventure
books around 1983ish....i had vaugly heard of
mega traveller.....
but i had no idea till i came
here of all the other versions and story lines
or AKA history...
its still a little overwhelming at times...and esp if you add in 1st ed. 2nd ed.
of stuff...thats why i am always asking so many questions

im drowning...heeee...l.l.l.l...pp.p..p.blurb..

 

[FlightCommanderSolitude]

Yes, you may be drowning in Traveller history, but that clearly hasn't kept you from playing Traveller!

 

[TheEngineer]

Hi !

Originally posted by FlightCommanderSolitude:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by TheEngineer:
After several discussions with potential new players I got the impression, that many of them have problems with the "vast" amount of backgound in Traveller and the size of it all.

I've never understood this argument. I haven't read every Spiderman comic - in fact, I've read precisely zero Spiderman comics - and yet somehow, amazingly, I was able to understand the movie. And call me vain, but I like to imagine that I'm smart enough that I could pick up a Spiderman comic and make some sense of it, and if there was a Spiderman RPG I could probably manage to play it if my friend wanted to. </font>[/QUOTE]I couldnt follow that argument completely, too.
But a friend told me, that there are quite a few alternative "already known" settings, like e.g. Serenity or Star Wars. People seem to be kind of familar with those, even if they dont know all the details of life in such a setting.
So maybe its not the question "Why dont people play Traveller" but "Why do people play other stuff" (but thats a different topic...).

Thats the reason, why I thought about introducing players to Traveller via a "cross-over" setting or better a set of introducary adventures, starting at a point they know perfectly: here and now.

regards,

Mert

 

[Hemdian]

Originally posted by TheEngineer:
Adventures could involve contacts to a lost vilani scout exploration crew, discovery of some ancient sites on Earth etc.

Did the First Imperium sometimes include Vargr in their crews like the Third Imperium? If so then the lost Vilani scout exploration crew could include a Vargr: the basis for a "werewolf" adventure!

Regards PLST

 

[jfetters]

Originally posted by kafka47:
I would rather like the new Doctor Who series - Torchlight to serve as the backdrop for Traveller : Now. I wouldn't mind everything that was outlined above save the finding of Ancient sites on the Earth more fun could be to find them on Luna or even Mars. Afterall, the whole push to Mars is very suspicious, true it will answer many scientific questions but there is a somewhat Mars Mania when many other interesting places and space projects could be done.

The Monolith as an Ancient artifact...

 

[Spinward Scout]

Well, nobody knew Star Wars when it first came out, but everyone loved it. Traveller is for gearheads and technically-minded people who like hard science fiction. If you want to draw more and diverse people, you have to change that. If you read about Star Trek, do you know every Klingon planet? Romulan? Ferengi? No, you know one or two. That's why I was trying to do a Top 50 (or 100 or 250) Worlds of Known Space a while back - so you didn't have that much to look at. You need to stereotype and consolidate the information. Do they need to know about anything outside of the Imperium if they aren't going to operate out of the Imperium? No, they only need to know what a kid in school would know. Make it a general knowledge roll - then let them read the Encyclopedia entry. You DON'T need to tell them everything right from the start.

Dameon

 

[kafka47]

The Monolith would make a perfect Ancient artifact, but I would rather go right back to the Short Story that inspired Clarke to write the screenplay for 2001 and relocate the whole glass pyramid to Pluto for the new probe that was launched to discover on Charon's surface.

This in turn beams a message squarely at an undisclosed location on Earth. While the message is intercepted by television satelites nobody can make head or tail of it.

Lurking in the depths of Africa and South America, the signal is recieved and decoded by a group of right wing extremists who inform the conclave of the Ilumaniti in Venice. And the rest you can figure out.

Needless to say, it involves the resurrection of Russia into the Soviet Union and the jumpstarting of their Space Program, so that by the Japanese test the successful trans-Solar Jump the American USSF is ready to make a trip to Barnard's...

 

[Andrew Boulton]

"Did the First Imperium sometimes include Vargr in their crews like the Third Imperium? If so then the lost Vilani scout exploration crew could include a Vargr: the basis for a "werewolf" adventure!"

There was an adventure in White Dwarf many years ago, called "An Alien Werewolf in London", which revealed that Jack the Ripper was a time-travelling Vargr...

 

[far-trader]

Originally posted by Hemdian:
Did the First Imperium sometimes include Vargr in their crews like the Third Imperium? If so then the lost Vilani scout exploration crew could include a Vargr: the basis for a "werewolf" adventure!

Regards PLST

Not to squash the idea (because it is a fun one) but if they did have some Vargr in the crews it would be a very small percentage and they would be employed along the Vargr border, just about as far from Sol space as you can get. So you'll need to creat some rationale for why, and then let the adventure begin.

 

[robject]

I imagine there was rare contact with Earth. That would explain the werewolf myth very well.

 

[far-trader]

Or a contact with a Hiver leading to the Cthulhu mythology.

 

[Keklas Rekobah]

There was an issue of "Dragon" magazine that featured an adventure called "Green Horizon". The adventure began with an alien cargo vessel misjumping into Earth orbit, during the winter of 1943. The ship's engineer can repair the damage, but requires a few litres of deuterium oxide to initiatialize their jump drive. Sensors detect a source of D2O in Norway at a clandestine nuclear research facility run by Nazis. This, coupled with the fact that the crewmembers of the starship all look something like kobolds, forces any attempt to procure the D2O be done very, very quietly. And then there are the possibilities of an Allied invasion and Resistance activities...

I rate this adventure very highly. I hope you can find it!