Payn's Ponderings Traveller Settings

[payn]

Small note regarding 2300AD: Mongoose is currently launching it as a setting for MgT2e (see Mongoose Release Schedule) - I don't know to which extent it is different from the earlier versions, though.

I believe its more focused on transhumanism and Earth centered. Though, if anyone wants to fill us in...

 

[Eltab]

GURPS also did The Interstellar Wars, set roughly a century in the future when the men of Earth finally reach for the stars ... and find out about half of nearby space is already part of The Imperium.

 

[dragoner]

Zozer games also has Hostile for Cepheus Engine, it's an Alien/Outland flavored setting. Stellagama, whose recent release of Cepheus Deluxe to rave reviews, also has a Space Opera setting called TSAO: These Stars Are Ours!

 

[Eyes of Nine]

I took it down a year ago, it was called "dragoner's domain" (a play on the name of a Space: 1999 episode Dragon's Domain) it might still be in a way back machine of something, I also have a 360 page setting doc pdf/word docx. I have a new forum up for Solis People of the Sun. It was running that campaign, and the newest one, that people I respected said I should publish it, so here I am. Though in a lot of ways, I just want to get back to running a game or playing as well.

This sounds awesome, are you publishing it already? If yes can you provide a link?

 

[dragoner]

This sounds awesome, are you publishing it already? If yes can you provide a link?

Yes, this is the new one, I have some other setting books, spacecraft, NPC's/Organizations, and adventures; once those are out, I go back through and use the feedback to make them nicer. I have art already commissioned, I will add it when I re-do the layout.

DriveThruRPG

www.drivethrurpg.com

 

[pemerton]

Do you make your very own setting? Do you hybrid with the Imperium, Twilight, or third party settings? What has your Traveller journey been like from a setting perspective?

<snip>

Classic Traveller 1977:

Establishment of The Third Imperium at the height of its power.

As I've posted before, I prefer the 1977 to the 1981 or MegaTraveller rules, but use my own variant that includes some post-Book 1 skills, and some rules adapted from later Books, early White Dwarf and my own imagination.

Book 1 implies a setting with nobility (given the Social Standing rules) and I follow that plus ideas from White Dwarf in positing an Imperium with an Imperial Navy, Imperial Marine Corps and Imperial Interstellar Scout Service. Beyond that, I make up my own setting based on my rolls for world creation and my own ideas. I assume that there are Imperial as well as local world officials - Diplomats and Bureaucrats by profession, on the whole - and that individual worlds have Armies, Air Forces/Orbital and Systems Defence, and Wet Navies, but not Navy or Marine characters.

I mostly follow Book 3 on the attitude of the Imperium and most people to psionics, but in my current campaign there is one world where psionics is not uniformally reviled. The PCs undertook their psionic training on an outpost of this world, even while the world itself was under Imperial interdiction.

In our game so far there has been no occasion to speculate about the age of the Imperium, who the Emperor is, etc.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

I prefer the 1977 to the 1981

(Sidebar - any resources that identify the differences between the two? I have not considered them to be separate enough to like one version over the other)

 

[overgeeked]

(Sidebar - any resources that identify the differences between the two? I have not considered them to be separate enough to like one version over the other)

There's this, but it's rather detailed.

 

[pemerton]

(Sidebar - any resources that identify the differences between the two? I have not considered them to be separate enough to like one version over the other)

The changes are documents in this book: Classic Traveller-CT-SS4- The Lost Rules Special Supplement - Game Designers' Workshop (GDW) | Classic Traveller | DriveThruRPG.com

My sense of the 1981 versions is affected by my better knowledge of The Traveller Book than the 3 1981 black books. And in some places I do adopt 1981 conventions (eg rules for minimum power plant number). But overall I prefer the more player-oriented feel of 1977. An examples is the different ways that Streetwise skill is explained:

Book 1 (1977), p 15: The referee should set the throw required to obtain any item specified by the players (for example, the name of an official willing to issue li-censes without hassle = 5+, the location of high quality guns at a low price = 9+)

Book 1 (1981), p 22: After establishing throws for various activities desired by the characters (such as the name of an official willing to issue licenses without hassle: 5+; the location of high quality guns at low prices: 9+)​

 

[payn]

(Sidebar - any resources that identify the differences between the two? I have not considered them to be separate enough to like one version over the other)

I used the Traveller wiki for my breakdowns.