CT Only: What would you put in Book 9?

[The Dragon Master]

It always bugged me that the books went from 0-8, felt like there should have been one more just to round it out. From a numbers perspective at least.

So let's say you were shuttled back to 1988 and put in charge of planning LBB Book 9 for GDW. What subject would you tackle with it? Would it be the long awaited Psionics book? A book about Nobility in the OTU? Maybe something that deals with generating alien races/cultures in the same way the other books construct planets and star systems? The sky's the limit, and you're calling the shots!

 

[kilemall]

There are a book 9 and 10 but not a GDW or FFE production. They were for a fan/house rule Traveller Plus.

 

[mike wightman]

First off I would make my LBB:9 for a generic setting rather than what was done for 6-8 which were all setting based.
LBB:9 would be a 56 page book (same size as LBB:8) -
chapters as follows:
1. Referee's guide to die throws.
2. Referee's guide to using the encounter tables to generate whole scenarios.
3. Referee's guide to experience and character advancement
4. A Snapshot/AHL based AP combat system which uses AHL/Striker pen and damage
5. Medicine and healing.
6. TLs beyond TL15 and variant tech paradigms
7. Character augmentation - using bio and cyber tech to improve your character
8. Ship combat based on involving as many characters as possible

 

[Nathan Brazil]

Welll, Book 8 was 1986. By 1988 Megatraveller was here along with DGP and Rebellion. So If I ran the Circus McGirkus, back in 1986 ()

Book 4-7 expanded character generation of 5 of the major careers presented in Book 1 and a higher level abstraction of what that career does (Large scale ground ground combat, fleet action, abstract trading). Book 8 was the oddball in that mindset. Despite Third Imperium examples, Books were more generic . Supplements seemed more campaign minded, or are to my way of thinking.

Book 9 would not have been:
Sophonts - IIRC Marc Miller has a firm belief that good sophonts/aliens should not "just be people in funny suits". A generic sophont generation system would have gone against that notion. and would go against the constraints set forth on what a Book might be. Finally if you cannot play them "right"...
Psionics - Again, that was another Marc conviction. While there are many science fiction stories and series with psionics, the use in most fiction they read was is far more reserved and subdued. On the order of maybe 1 psionic action per session, not blazing away like X-Men's Marvel Girl or Professor X.

 

[Dragoner]

Vehicles, and vehicle combat, maybe. Though to be honest, I am not sad about books one thru three only for a game either. I did that with my Solis setting, also using Mercenary, Citizens of the Imperium, and Traders and Gunboats.

 

[The Oz]

I ran plenty of games with just the three LBBs. All the supplements were useful, but not required.

 

[Enoki]

Colonizing and terraforming handbook. This would cover new skills, character occupations, and rules for a party augmented by NPC's to begin colonizing, and if necessary terraforming, a world from scratch.

 

[Grav_Moped]

The appropriate number of books should be a multiple of 6.

We're talking about Traveller, after all.

 

[tjoneslo]

Vehicles, and vehicle combat, maybe.

This was pretty well covered in the Striker rules. Striker covered (in three books) unit level combat, vehicle combat, integration with striker (so character could participate), and the earliest vehicle construction systems for Traveller. It formed the basis for both Book 8 and MT design systems.

 

[tjoneslo]

I'm going to agree with @Enoki : Book 9: Alien Worlds.

Starts with the Book 6 world generation process and zooms in with more details.
- shorter versions of the Atmosphere supplement from JTAS, the Environments books from GameLords written by the Keiths .
- Building colony rules, with new skills, and weird events to make lives difficult. How to find air, water, food, build infrastructure, and so on.
- An early version of T4's Pocket Empires rules for building your own empire from a colony.

Question: Are you assuming the "today-you" is pulled through a worm hole to 1986 to write this book, or are you altering the time stream so the "1986-you" shows up at the GDW HQ with a Warrant from the Emperor?

 

[mike wightman]

Exploring a truly alien world is quite a rare subset of the fiction that inspired Traveller.

If I could do so, which I can't, I would go back to my earlier post and add vehicle combat.

Note that Striker id a set of wargame rules first, a design system and equipment list second and has a larger page count than the original LBB1-3

What is needed is a distillation so that vehicles (and starships) can be included at the personal combat scale of the characters.

I still think I could fit my wish list into 56 pages since I have most of it written in my houserules already

 

[Dragoner]

This was pretty well covered in the Striker rules. Striker covered (in three books) unit level combat, vehicle combat, integration with striker (so character could participate), and the earliest vehicle construction systems for Traveller. It formed the basis for both Book 8 and MT design systems.

I owned, and played it back in the day. Though imo, the grav vehicles seemed a bit like a white elephant, and it sort of fell into the trap of the "paper Panther" a vehicle that looked good on paper, but wasn't so good in reality. I mean for example, the M4 Sherman, even those with the shorter 75 mm gun, had electric motors in their turret, better interior ventilation, a rudimentary gyro-stabilized fire control system, more low end torque horse-power to weight ratio, which meant in the Lorraine campaign, they handled the Panthers.

 

[kilemall]

Exploring a truly alien world is quite a rare subset of the fiction that inspired Traveller.

If I could do so, which I can't, I would go back to my earlier post and add vehicle combat.

Note that Striker id a set of wargame rules first, a design system and equipment list second and has a larger page count than the original LBB1-3

What is needed is a distillation so that vehicles (and starships) can be included at the personal combat scale of the characters.

I still think I could fit my wish list into 56 pages since I have most of it written in my houserules already

The simplified vehicle gen of the MgT2 vehicle book plus combat rules would suffice.

 

[Enoki]

If it were done with this as a secondary purpose in mind, a colonizing / terraforming book could also serve as one for making up terrain and environments for other purposes as well as basic rules for things like outdoor survival.

 

[The Dragon Master]

Question: Are you assuming the "today-you" is pulled through a worm hole to 1986 to write this book, or are you altering the time stream so the "1986-you" shows up at the GDW HQ with a Warrant from the Emperor?

I'm definitely picturing today-you, with all the intervening play experience to base your calls on.

 

[infojunky]

There are a book 9 and 10 but not a GDW or FFE production. They were for a fan/house rule Traveller Plus.

Got a link for that?

 

[The Dragon Master]

Got a link for that?

I believe they're talking about http://crucible.cc/traveller/tplus.htm

 

[atpollard]

Completely bank … so you can fill it with your own house rules.

 

[RandyB]

Book 9: Nobles. Covering how to play nobles of all ranks and levels of wealth, de-emphasizing the "landless/poor/disinherited noble" tropes In favor of something more akin to "Dallas/Dynasty in Space".

Given how popular those two shows were at the time, the comparison may well have been a winner.

 

[MichaelSTee]

By the time book 8 was out, Striker and its vehicle building rules were already out. So I would have made book 9 be Sophonts (maybe called Aliens), with the rules for building sophont species. That would have filled the biggest hole in the game rules (namely, that there was no way to create aliens).