Wanderer a la Rob

[Jame]

So, Rob, what ABOUT those "official" efforts "coming out"?

I'm working on an official MGT version of it. Still got a ways to go; the others have been busy busy busy, busy-busy-busy. But safe to say it's got a fairly unique setting...:smirk:

 

[Jame]

Rob, perhaps you could suggest some books to read to get in the spirit of things?

 

[robject]

Rob, perhaps you could suggest some books to read to get in the spirit of things?

Til We Have Faces
The Master of the Five Magics
The Iliad and the Odyssey (abridged versions work best)
The Discarded Image (bit of a tough read tho)
Movie: The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad
Movie: Conan the Barbarian (of course)
Any of the Man with no name movies by S. Leone with Clint Eastwood... oh wait, wrong genre, sorry about that.

 

[Plankowner]

The Spirit Ring by Lois McMasters Bujold - Alternate middle ages with an interesting take on magic and the church.

 

[Rhialto the Marvelous]

Rob, that list is very epic/superheroic. Intuitively, I'd have thought a fantasy version of Traveller would be gritty sword & sorcery. Howard, Leiber, so on. No?

 

[Madarin Dude]

do you plan on having it work with traveller. For settings like Star Prince Charlie by Poul Anderson comes to mind.

Traveller would defiantly give it a very different feel from common fantasy RPG's. You start out experienced and your life is fragile so you have to be a bit more cautious.

 

[Jame]

Updated the careers, adding some of the "service" branches for each career path.

Also started to enumerate skills not typically found in Traveller rules.

Where is this? (If there's a link, I've forgotten it).

Oh, and for the careers, like with Ranke's I suggest making early start at 14 the norm for most careers, mainly because most people, commoners especially, didn't live much past 40.

 

[Timerover51]

Wanderer is a shorthand term for the idea of using Traveller for fantasy, and represents a number of unfinished drafts on paper with different goals. For example, how magic is used and implemented depends on the person, and the setting is indeterminate. My preference is a low-fantasy (approximately earthlike, and without dragons and wizards) setting, perhaps like the Argonautica, Odyssey, Conan, and Sinbad the Sailor.

In some respects you are contradicting yourself when you state that you want a world without wizards and dragons, and then give some setting examples. The Argonauts run into a fair number of monsters, including a dragon, and, of course, Medea the enchantress. You have Pallas Athena appearing regularly in the Odyssey and Circe the enchantress as well. Conan runs into quite a few wizards, including Xaltotun, who figures very prominently in the one novel of Conan that Howard wrote, The Hour of the Dragon. In Sindbad, you have a fair number of magicians along with the Roc.

The you have Dwarves and Elves, who appear prominently in Tolkien's works, while not appearing in your setting sources, as well as Muses that have supernatural powers, with the more capable ones being called mages and sorcerers. Emissaries deliver ultimatums to supernatural powers. You also mention sea serpents, sirens, Djinn (one of the more powerful supernatural beings), and Shamans. The Pict Shamans in Conan pack a pretty good wallop, especially when it comes to transferring the mind of men to animals and vice versa. Having wizards few and far between I can see, but you then counter that with having an entire book devoted to magic.

I do have a question about the following statement.

Disadvantage. Dwarves have an innate greed that interferes with their ability to reason. When in the presence of large amounts of wealth, roll two dice every twenty minutes; when the roll is less than the dwarf's intelligence, the dwarf is unable to make a clear-headed decision until the next time greed is checked.

As read, it appears to mean that the less intelligent the Dwarf, the more likely he is not to succumb to greed. Should it not be the opposite, and the die roll be higher than the Dwarf's intelligence? Then the less intelligent the Dwarf, the more likely he is to have problems with greed.

 

[robject]

In some respects you are contradicting yourself when you state that you want a world without wizards and dragons, and then give some setting examples.

I agree.

Then you have Dwarves and Elves, [..] Muses that have supernatural powers, with the more capable ones being called mages and sorcerers. Emissaries deliver ultimatums to supernatural powers. You also mention sea serpents, sirens, Djinn [...] Shamans. [...] Having wizards few and far between I can see, but you then counter that with having an entire book devoted to magic.

Yeah, I know. I have internal conflicts to resolve, there.

As read, it appears to mean that the less intelligent the Dwarf, the more likely he is not to succumb to greed.

Yes, and the mechanic just isn't going to work. Neither is the Elf mechanic. But yes, I intentionally penalized smarter dwarves. Penalizing a stupid dwarf will stamp a 99% guarantee that no player character dwarf will ever have low intelligence. But as I said, the mechanic won't work. The intent is to offset superior characteristics in dwarves and elves in a way that must be dealt with by the player... and preferably by the entire group. But even the elf-shunning mechanic seems ill-fitting. Something else will have to replace them.

 

[Vladika]

Yeah, I know. I have internal conflicts to resolve, there.

Tried Therapy?

 

[robject]

Tried Therapy?

That's why I'm here. Traveller therapy.