Classic Traveller without the Imperium setting

[Hexenritter Verlag]

Has anyone run or played in a Classic Traveller game using just the core books & developed your own setting; with your own cultures & alien species? If so, can you tell us about them? 

I've been considering it once I get a print copy of the Traveller Book via DriveThruRPG when I can & absorbing the rules. I was thinking of using Dieselpunk art as an inspiration; though I am not sure if I'd set in a alternate version of Earth circa 1933-1945 where the Nazis, the Japanese, the USA & Russians discovered aliens & their technology & used design elements of the era in their creation of space faring vehicles to fight the invading aliens thus causing a truce as their mutual destruction or subjugation was more important than their "winning" the war. Toss in Art Deco space stations & colonies throughout the galaxy; maybe toss in a few friendly alien races which both the Nazis & Japanese despise & refuse to deal with. Another option is simply use Dieselpunk tropes & art deco design as inspiration for the setting, ships and such. 

[Deleted]

Mar 2, 2018 2:44:19 GMT -5 Hexenritter Verlag said:

Has anyone run or played in a Classic Traveller game using just the core books & developed your own setting; with your own cultures & alien species? If so, can you tell us about them? 

I did. I’ll post more about it later, but it wasn’t all that edgy.

[makofan]

We've got a few on this board. Mine for sure, Ruins of Murkhill campaign was designed right on this board. I think FFilz's Wine Dark Rift is original also

[mao]

Sacrilege!!!!!!!

[Hexenritter Verlag]

makofan, I guess I'll be pouring through the Ruins of Murkill & the Wine Dark stuff asap. I wasn't sure if they were tied to the Imperium setting or not.

mao, we can always use some sacrilege in our lives  .

@piper, looking forward to that once you post it.

[makofan]

I have been reffing Traveller on and off since 1980 and have never once used the OTU. Most Traveller players, in my experience, cannot separate the rules from GDW's setting, and look with disdain on anybody who does not have the exact population and GDP of the Empty Quarter memorized

I am however, working on a side project that may end up using the OTU, but that is not happening in 2018

Look at the Space 1977 forum to see what we created here as a community

[Deleted]

As I’m sure you know, the ‘77 Traveller TLBBs were setting agnostic. There was no mention of the Third Imperium and only the vaguest of references to various governments. 

So, I looked at the author’s statement of communication being limited to the speed of travel and thought ... what if? And here was the answer.

If the basic game was designed around “The Age of Sail” in space (Miller’s words) then how about adapting that a similar milieu, that of the USA “Old West.” Communication was still, more or less, the speed of travel (until the telegraph came along) but travel was expedient along certain lines: the railroads. 

I envisioned a series of jump gates built by ancient aliens, these used (a jump within a jump) to cut the standard week of travel through j-space in half. 3.14 days, to be exact, because I thought myself terribly clever at that time. 

Travel, communication, trade; all were expedited along these lines. The Mains would open at set times and, for a fee, ships passed through to the other side. Ships along the main had no jump-drives, as a rule, so trade off the Mains was conducted by owner-operators of independent traders. The farther away from The Mains a planet was, the less connected it tended to be to interstellar politics and society. 

This created a situation similar to the Old West. If you wanted to disappear (ahem: run from the law) you went to Texas (to the point law enforcement back East often wrote GTT or “gone to Texas” in their files). If you went near the railroads and their telegraphs, you ran a chance of being apprehended.

Alien races included uplifted apes (I was a giant fan of Boulle’s “Planet of the Apes” and Heston’s film version of same), a saurid race based upon a bust of what the dinosaurs might have evolved into I saw in National Geographic, and something that was a fairly blatant ripoff of Burrows’ green Martians, ditto for Moorcock’s blue Martians.  

[makofan]

I like it

[Hexenritter Verlag]

Mar 2, 2018 17:02:35 GMT -5 @piper said:

As I’m sure you know, the ‘77 Traveller TLBBs were setting agnostic. There was no mention of the Third Imperium and only the vaguest of references to various governments. 

So, I looked at the author’s statement of communication being limited to the speed of travel and thought ... what if? And here was the answer.

If the basic game was designed around “The Age of Sail” in space (Miller’s words) then how about adapting that a similar milieu, that of the USA “Old West.” Communication was still, more or less, the speed of travel (until the telegraph came along) but travel was expedient along certain lines: the railroads. 

I envisioned a series of jump gates built by ancient aliens, these used (a jump within a jump) to cut the standard week of travel through j-space in half. 3.14 days, to be exact, because I thought myself terribly clever at that time. 

Travel, communication, trade; all were expedited along these lines. The Mains would open at set times and, for a fee, ships passed through to the other side. Ships along the main had no jump-drives, as a rule, so trade off the Mains was conducted by owner-operators of independent traders. The farther away from The Mains a planet was, the less connected it tended to be to interstellar politics and society. 

This created a situation similar to the Old West. If you wanted to disappear (ahem: run from the law) you went to Texas (to the point law enforcement back East often wrote GTT or “gone to Texas” in their files). If you went near the railroads and their telegraphs, you ran a chance of being apprehended.

Alien races included uplifted apes (I was a giant fan of Boulle’s “Planet of the Apes” and Heston’s film version of same), a saurid race based upon a bust of what the dinosaurs might have evolved into I saw in National Geographic, and something that was a fairly blatant ripoff of Burrows’ green Martians, ditto for Moorcock’s blue Martians.  

I like how the 3LBB were setting agnostic, which is why I asked. A lot of the stuff I see online focus on the 3rd Imperium setting; not that I mind but I don't want to buy a ton of pre-made setting & rules expansions to run a Traveller game when I can design my own setting as I go.

I really like what you are doing there @piper, it sounds really interesting.

I need to get the Traveller Book in print to make it easier to delve into the rules. Can anyone tell me if the books have alien creation rules? I guess I can use official alien supplements to use as a baseline if need to.

[Deleted]

Mar 2, 2018 21:22:48 GMT -5 Hexenritter Verlag said:

I like how the 3LBB were setting agnostic, which is why I asked. A lot of the stuff I see online focus on the 3rd Imperium setting; not that I mind but I don't want to buy a ton of pre-made setting & rules expansions to run a Traveller game when I can design my own setting as I go.

I really like what you are doing there @piper , it sounds really interesting.

I need to get the Traveller Book in print to make it easier to delve into the rules. Can anyone tell me if the books have alien creation rules? I guess I can use official alien supplements to use as a baseline if need to.

First of all, thank you for the nice words.

To my best memory, and I just took a quick look "just in case," there are no guidelines for creating aliens in the TLBBs or the Traveller Book. I'd say let your imagination and you can't go wrong. There are some decent examples in the Traveller canon, but many of them are variant human races and not truly alien lifeforms.

Create something you want, use the human ability score ranges as a baseline (smarter than humans, weaker than humans, etc.) and tweak to get the overall effect you want.

[Hexenritter Verlag]

Mar 2, 2018 22:34:26 GMT -5 @piper said:

Mar 2, 2018 21:22:48 GMT -5 Hexenritter Verlag said:

I like how the 3LBB were setting agnostic, which is why I asked. A lot of the stuff I see online focus on the 3rd Imperium setting; not that I mind but I don't want to buy a ton of pre-made setting & rules expansions to run a Traveller game when I can design my own setting as I go.

I really like what you are doing there @piper , it sounds really interesting.

I need to get the Traveller Book in print to make it easier to delve into the rules. Can anyone tell me if the books have alien creation rules? I guess I can use official alien supplements to use as a baseline if need to.

First of all, thank you for the nice words.

To my best memory, and I just took a quick look "just in case," there are no guidelines for creating aliens in the TLBBs or the Traveller Book. I'd say let your imagination and you can't go wrong. There are some decent examples in the Traveller canon, but many of them are variant human races and not truly alien lifeforms.

Create something you want, use the human ability score ranges as a baseline (smarter than humans, weaker than humans, etc.) and tweak to get the overall effect you want.

Cool, that is what I needed to know.I'll let my imagination & common sense guide me when it comes to alien designs then. Again thanks for your help @piper.

[Deleted]

My pleasure!

If you want? Post your beta version here and let the hive mind work it over a bit! The folks here love to help.

[Hexenritter Verlag]

Mar 2, 2018 22:54:53 GMT -5 @piper said:

My pleasure!

If you want? Post your beta version here and let the hive mind work it over a bit! The folks here love to help.

Oh I will, I've seen that as I've been pouring over the 1977 Space Forum threads, it is a wonder to behold. I'll be printing out a few copies of the plain system subsector sheet & get a note book to write my notes in. I am so jazzed. It is folk like you & the rest that make me love this community, @piper - you all are so supportive.

[mormonyoyoman]

Neither can I remember if aliens as PCs were part of the Traveller Book, but I'm relatively sure that Vargyr (sp?) character generation was included in the companion volume, the Traveller Adventure. The latter was an outstanding adventure/cliffhanger that managed to avoid railroading. Part of the reason was that Traveller, especially prior to the New Era, stayed ambiguous enough in rules and plot deviances that few gamesmasters who ran this adventure (and especially any adventures by the Keith Brothers) would be concerned about the players having read the adventures.

Mainly the pieces are there, the NPCs have their agendas and they don't hold still when the PCs aren't watching, and no one's plan (not even the writer's) survives first contact with reality.

[ffilz]

Just noticed this topic now but yea, look at my Wine Dsrk Ruft setting. Also look at talestoastound.wordpress.com for a blog series on using the classic rules without the Third Imperium setting.

In the past I have done other Traveller gaming in my own settings as well but the Wine Dark Rift is the first attempt to genuinely use the rules as presented.

Frank

[Hexenritter Verlag]

Mar 3, 2018 1:08:05 GMT -5 ffilz said:

Just noticed this topic now but yea, look at my Wine Dsrk Ruft setting. Also look at talestoastound.wordpress.com for a blog series on using the classic rules without the Third Imperium setting.

In the past I have done other Traveller gaming in my own settings as well but the Wine Dark Rift is the first attempt to genuinely use the rules as presented.

Frank

Frank,

Thanks for the reply. I bookmarked the Tales To Astound blog so I can read it later. I am mining your web site for resources to inspire any future CT campaign I run either online or face-to-face. Hopefully you'll resurrect your Wine dark PbP here or start another based in it here. BTW ffilz how did you create your campaign map?

[dragondaddy]

Mar 2, 2018 21:22:48 GMT -5 Hexenritter Verlag said:

I need to get the Traveller Book in print to make it easier to delve into the rules. Can anyone tell me if the books have alien creation rules? I guess I can use official alien supplements to use as a baseline if need to.

 You can riff off of Supplement 2: Animal Encounters, and probably come up with some interesting Aliens. When I mentioned making an Aliens LBB that would, for example be similar to Animal Encounters, except for being for Intelligent  Aliens instead of just animals, Marc Miller told me last year at GaryCon that;

1) He'd be very interested in seeing it, and...

2) If it was good he's help to see it was published, or he's be very interested in publishing it himself.

[dragondaddy]

I have four settings that I generally use;

The Frontier Sector, a homebrew that does include 103 systems within the Imperium (First Imperium), as well as an additional 114 systems in three additional "Frontier" subsectors, each of which has one or more Independent Interstellar Goverments.

The Genian Sector, only half mapped, ...also not within the Imperium, or related in any way to the OTU, and which was originally mapped by the Terra Prime Corporation.

The Sharmara Cluster, also not related in any way to the OTU, or to the Imperium. It is, in fact an isolated globular cluster of stars that is located outside of our Galaxy, and outside of any Galaxy, really, which was colonized after a large liner seriously mis-jumped from known space and ended up outside of known space. Since then, eighty-one worlds in two subsectors within the clusters have been settled. No one inside the globular star cluster knows how big it is, as most of the Cluster which is more than 500 light years in diameter is still unexplored, or that the Imperium even exists since it didn't exist at the time that first mis-jump occurred.

...and the Spinward Marches, which is within the Imperium on the Zhodani border. Back when it came out in 1981, I bought a copy of the Fifth Frontier War, and started my friends on a campaign that began when the Fifth Frontier War, began. I had a wargamer friend that didn't play Traveller, but played the Zhodani, along with the Sword Worlder Rebels in the Fifth Frontier War game, and I played the Imperium. We each took a turn, once a week, and I would update the players in the Traveller RPG campaign with the results from our wargame. Instead of rolling random encounters, for example, if any of the Zhodani or Imperial Fleet showed up in a star system the players happened to be in
they would encounter the entire fleet in game. It was a blast, and naturally I had started the RPG players on Jewell, which very quickly was blockaded and besieged. In our campaign though, Jewell never fell, but was blockaded for the first eighteen weeks of the game by an enormous Zhodani fleet that landed many assault divisions in an attempt to conquer Jewell. Becuase of this, I have always had a soft spot for the Spinward Marches.

I also have all of the now non-canon Judges Guild Sectors, but have never played in them or ran any games set in them.



 

[dragondaddy]

Also did the system surveys for the three systems of the Free States League in in the Ruins of Murkhill, Nardea, Berberus Port, and Woryn.

[Hexenritter Verlag]

Mar 3, 2018 20:20:21 GMT -5 dragondaddy said:

Mar 2, 2018 21:22:48 GMT -5 Hexenritter Verlag said:

I need to get the Traveller Book in print to make it easier to delve into the rules. Can anyone tell me if the books have alien creation rules? I guess I can use official alien supplements to use as a baseline if need to.

 You can riff off of Supplement 2: Animal Encounters, and probably come up with some interesting Aliens. When I mentioned making an Aliens LBB that would, for example be similar to Animal Encounters, except for being for Intelligent  Aliens instead of just animals, Marc Miller told me last year at GaryCon that;

1) He'd be very interested in seeing it, and...

2) If it was good he's help to see it was published, or he's be very interested in publishing it himself.

Wow, sounds cool dragondaddy, keep us abreast of your progress - color me intrigued.

[Hexenritter Verlag]

Mar 3, 2018 20:58:05 GMT -5 dragondaddy said:

Also did the system surveys for the three systems of the Free States League in in the Ruins of Murkhill, Nardea, Berberus Port, and Woryn.

Oh I am pouring through them as I have time. All of you are wonderful creative minds & inspire me.

[ffilz]

Mar 3, 2018 16:14:18 GMT -5 Hexenritter Verlag said:

Mar 3, 2018 1:08:05 GMT -5 ffilz said:

Just noticed this topic now but yea, look at my Wine Dsrk Ruft setting. Also look at talestoastound.wordpress.com for a blog series on using the classic rules without the Third Imperium setting.

In the past I have done other Traveller gaming in my own settings as well but the Wine Dark Rift is the first attempt to genuinely use the rules as presented.

Frank

Frank,

Thanks for the reply. I bookmarked the Tales To Astound blog so I can read it later. I am mining your web site for resources to inspire any future CT campaign I run either online or face-to-face. Hopefully you'll resurrect your Wine dark PbP here or start another based in it here. BTW ffilz how did you create your campaign map?

I had gone through several exercises on setting up a sub-sector, with the one just previous to the Wine Dark Rift being an experiment with the Five Sisters and District 268 sub-sectors of the Spinward Marches inspired by Christopher Kubasic's posts on Tales to Astound. But I didn't like the Imperium connecting to the area at the end of the rift, and I didn't like getting swept into the Third Imperium setting. So I printed out some blank hex paper (using sec2pdf) for an area enough larger than 2 sub-sectors to make a similar sized rift. I then penciled out my rift, and rolled worlds up per Book 3. I fudged in a few places (I wanted to keep a J-1 route around the rift). I actually wrote a program to roll up the UWPs. I fudged one or two of those. The program that generates worlds takes a sec2pdf .sec file that has star port locations but no UWP and fills in the UWP (if it has UWP but not trade codes, it will figure those). I also hand placed a few worlds in the middle of the rift. The names of the worlds were extracted from Judge's Guild's Wilderlands of High Fantasy, taking city and feature names that looked workable for world names from the regions closes to the Wine Dark Sea in that setting. Then I tweaked a few worlds (some that wound up with too high a tech level). I also hand rolled space lanes from 1977. With all of this, I was then able to identify what worlds I wanted as part of my Imperium. I used Stars Without Number to roll some tags for worlds of interest and cooked up some rumors, and then set various play groups loose.

The setting is still very much under development, I have no idea what all is out there beyond UWPs...

Frank

[Hexenritter Verlag]

Very nice@ffilz, your map looks very nice. I was watching a review of the revised Stars Without Numbers RPG & noted it looks like a OSR/D20 version of Traveller - which in my mind is not a bad thing. I plan to mock up my own subsector to help me learn the rules concerning sector & world creation since I printed out a number of blank sheets. I might also use the Tag System from SWoN as I do so. 

[Deleted]

I don't know the 'blogger, but here is the beginning a series about a non-3I Traveller universe.

wizardnebula.blogspot.com/

[Hexenritter Verlag]

Mar 5, 2018 23:04:56 GMT -5 @piper said:

I don't know the 'blogger, but here is the beginning a series about a non-3I Traveller universe.

wizardnebula.blogspot.com/

Not sure if you are being funny but Miskimen is a member here - that said I'll keeping an eye on this blog.

[Deleted]

Mar 6, 2018 1:50:38 GMT -5 Hexenritter Verlag said:

Mar 5, 2018 23:04:56 GMT -5 @piper said:

I don't know the 'blogger, but here is the beginning a series about a non-3I Traveller universe.

wizardnebula.blogspot.com/

Not sure if you are being funny but Miskimen is a member here - that said I'll keeping an eye on this blog.

Oops! LOL! I didn’t know, thanks for the heads up!

[Deleted]

Glad you fellows liked it ... the setting/campaign is very much in the designing stage and I only post to it periodically as ideas come to me, but the Traveller Bug is strong and posts may become more frequent ...

[Admin Pete]

Mar 6, 2018 11:22:59 GMT -5 JMiskimen said:

Glad you fellows liked it ... the setting/campaign is very much in the designing stage and I only post to it periodically as ideas come to me, but the Traveller Bug is strong and posts may become more frequent ...

I don't have much time, but I did take a quick look and John that blog is really sharp looking.

[Hexenritter Verlag]

Mar 6, 2018 11:22:59 GMT -5 JMiskimen said:

Glad you fellows liked it ... the setting/campaign is very much in the designing stage and I only post to it periodically as ideas come to me, but the Traveller Bug is strong and posts may become more frequent ...

I'll be keeping an eye on it that is for sure JMiskimen.

[Mighty Darci]

Mar 6, 2018 11:22:59 GMT -5 JMiskimen said:

Glad you fellows liked it ... the setting/campaign is very much in the designing stage and I only post to it periodically as ideas come to me, but the Traveller Bug is strong and posts may become more frequent ...

I like it too! The Traveller Bug, is it catching?