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Showing posts from January, 2016

This Is Not ... an Air/Raft

In My post on Scout ships I urged people to make modifications to the ship the Scout service unloaded  loans their ubiquitous retired Scout character. One of the easiest ways to this is to start at the air/raft. To put it simply not every Scout ship has to be outfitted with them. Some ships have other vehicles more suited to the roles they undertook. Switching your vehicle with another Scout ship's is considered a high form of humor. At least if you're trading up. All these vehicles are four tons and will fit into the standard berth on any Scout ship. A small berth to hot bunking s included. Any armor they possess is incidental much like the air/raft's. Go/Cart: Mounting  a TL 9 fusion plant the go/cart has a month's endurance. It holds a driver and three passengers (up to four more passengers with overcrowding). There are provisions for one dTon of internal cargo or equipment such as lab gear. A small fresher is also standard equipment since holding it for a month is

Chains of Command

Captain: Oh great GHU! Who knows about this? Ensign: Just us three so far. I brought her straight to you sir. GAIA: Sorry, sorry, so sorry. Captain: Order order order … GAIA: Shutting up! Ensign: Sir, it’s not her fault. She had an accident with that AXA. If anything it’s due to us not being able to hand that damned thing off to anyone else. Captain: Watch your tone mister. Ensign: Aye sir. Captain: The fact remains our gynoid arti-intell assembly has been reassembled. She was repackaged by ancient aliens we know were … uh ... Ensign: They had trouble keeping it in their shorts. Captain: Good way to put it. The Rockapongalie were likely responsible for the ability of most humanoids to interbreed. Whether this was on purpose or just a side effect of their drunken debauchery we may never know. GAIA: I’m still me sir. I just had my desktop changed in a way. Ensign: I’ll say! Captain: Quiet! GAIA: Aye s … Captain: Not you, lover boy over there.

Game (Not Rocket) Engines

One of the best settings for an urban horror game I have ever seen was Dark Conspiracy. Note that I say setting not game because the rules were ehhh. I am not going to go into a review of Dark Conspiracy. Douglas Cole already did  it here . Go read it if you want. The man knows his games, bullets and making faux Roman armor for his daughter. Good stuff. Anyway I was pondering for the umpteenth time how to run DC (Dark Conspiracy, not Douglas Cole though that is a freaky coincidence) and realized I was a schmo because CT would be an excellent game system. Consider mostly the beasts and monsters in DC are psionic in nature. Traveler has psionic rules You'll have way more special talents and need a few additional powers but those are easy tweaks. One reason I liked Traveller for my Ghost Drive setting. You already have tech levels for different firearms (DC guns can range from TL 6-low TL 9.) You already have rules for claws, fangs and what have you to hang on your monsters. Easy

New Dice for Old Pt. 2

Same system with a few additions: Pick the skill level necessary for the task. If the character meets it they get a +1, if they have double the skill or more a +2. If they don't have the required level they receive a -1 or -2. Do the same with a characteristic level if desired (for example if they are shooting and have ADM or ASM for their weapon). Total all mods. If the total is 0, roll 2d6. If the total is positive add that many dice to the roll. Roll and take the two highest dice. If the modifier is negative add that many dice to the roll and take the lowest two dice A '2' is a catastrophic failure with possible adventure derailing consequences. A '4' is a failure with extra penalties. You use up resources, are delayed, or break something. A '6' is a success but it has a downside. You make the shot but exhaust your ammo or jam your gun. You stabilize your injured friend but expose yourself to attack etc. You can take it and bear the cons

New Dice For Old

I'm going to bounce a new dice system off you guys. Hope you like it. It has the benefit of being applicable to darn near any game system. To use it: Pick the skill level necessary for the task. If the character meets it they get a +1, if they have double the skill or more a +2. If they don't have the required level they receive a -1 or -2. Do the same with a characteristic level if desired (for example if they are shooting and have ADM or ASM for their weapon). Total all mods. If the total is 0, roll 2d6. If the total is positive add that many dice to the roll. Roll and take the two highest dice. If the modifier is negative add that many dce to the roll and take the lowest two dice A '6' is a success but it has a downside. You make the shot but exhaust your ammo or jam your gun. You stabilize your injured friend but expose yourself to attack etc. You can take it and bear the consequences or take it as a failure and try again. An '8' is a plain o

Send in the Scouts!

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Hell of a response to my battle dress post. This column is both very simple and very hard to write. All you have to do is look at a rule or aspect of a setting with fresh eyes so to speak. In a discussion I had the other day with Ray McVay he mentioned how some folks are rules oriented and have to keep making up new rules and systems. I think that I am more setting oriented. I like making up stuff about a world or campaign and any new rules I do are pretty incidental. But if you're reading my stuff for the rules please continue and pass the word. The Sulieman Type S Scout Courier. Everyone knows it and probably has a love hate relationship with it. It's about as dinky assed as a starship can be. This is from a guy who'd consider getting a "Small Ships Universe FTW" tattoo on his chest. But it's free. You just need to enlist in the Scouts which is easy and live which ... requires planning and quick action. Or put another way play Russian roulette with a r

The Coming Race

GAIA Log #10,983 <Malfunction. Malfunction. Malfunction. Alert!> <Remote communications off line. Initiate SR Protocol via VI.> <Initiating.> <Initiate full diagnostic.> GAIA: Good you’re awake. Ensign: Uh … whuh …? Who? GAIA: Gynoid Artificial Intelligence Assembly #24601 Ensign: Whuh … what happened to you? You have hair now. GAIA: Yes. Something similar to hair anyway. I can control the length and color though changing it takes a little time. Ensign: How do you have hair?! Is the Doc playing makeover again? He didn’t want to stop at giving you toes and fingernails? GAIA: I was ordered by the Chief Medical Officer to inventory all medical equipment and determine maintenance required for same. Ensign: … Aaaaaaaaand? GAIA: The Anomalous Xeno Artifact is designated medical equipment. Ensign: The Anomalous … oh for … we still have that thing aboard? GAIA: Yes. No other captain would accept it. I entered

Armor Armour

D&D (or was it AD&D) had armor class 0 but Traveller introduced us to BATTLEDRESS! Battledress was a Jump 6 move from the other lesser armor classes in protection and coolness. Never mind we're told the version adventurers mustered out with was a stripped version of the suits the active military got. Back in '77- '78 we were all a long way off from active military and central governments. After psionics my crew all went after battledress with a vengeance. What the hell is it anyway? According to LBB 1 battle dress and combat armor are armored versions of vacc suits. While anyone can use a vacc suit Vacc-1 is required to don battle dress. It enhances the strength and senses of the user using servo motors and personal feedback sensors. This doesn't sound like something you can just climb into and do cartwheels in. Doubtless the enhanced senses must be quite difficult to process to someone not used to a vacc suit's heads up display. The nature of the en

Oddball Planets Pt 2

Traveller and other SF games takes a simplistic view of a great many things. This is a necessary and valid design decision, otherwise most people wouldn't have the technicals background to stay alive. So we have maneuver drives to keep us from figuring out delta vee appropriate missions. We have planets reduced to the simple and concise UWP. Let's talk a little about atmosphere. First most science oriented people will note most major worlds are about 8,000 km in diameter which is a shade too light to keep any atmosphere you'd not find in a neon lighting tube in the long term. This could mean most planets in a CT style setting are already oddball, ether more massive than their size indicates or having a breathable atmosphere through other means. Maybe your otherwise Mars-like planet was the target of terraforming by humans or beings with lungs similar to ours. In the case of ancient aliens this might mean relics and other goodies are lying around (maybe the engines of te

Handwavium/Unobtainium Alloy.

Have you heard of the new handwavium/unobtainium alloy? It's unbelievable stuff if you can get some. Boo. Hiss yourself. Here's a tentative timeline/slash TL Chart for Gravitic Technology TL 8 Lifter technology. One to six diameters distance. Note lifters will take a looooong time to actually get you to orbital velocity but you could always use them to loft a ship and start her rockets further up in the gravity well for a savings in fuel or use the lifters to compensate for planetary gravity allowing all your thrust to accelerate a ship. TL 9 Maneuver drives (whether reactionless ar super efficient rockets depending on YTU. Around this time a heat dissipater is invented from gravitic making heat radiators unnecessary. Late TL 9 Jump Drive possible TL 10 Jump Drive discovered through heat dissipater research. The heat dissipater is my way of hedging my bets. Which is another way of saying I'm answering the questions no one wants to ask. It evolved when engineer

Staying in the Black

The admirals with black globes are like a dog with a squeaky toy. None of them know how it works but they all know they want one. With a black globe generator a ship or installation becomes invulnerable ... for a while. Energy is absorbed from the hull of your ship where it can make huge holes and diverted to your jump capacitors. All forms of generator don't require any appreciable power. As a bonus it provides stealth in space. The drawbacks are that the protected ship can't see out or maneuver while the globe is on. You could flicker the globe to provide partial protection but this affects your fire as well. This is pretty bizarre as even TL 4-5 biplane designers figured out how to fire machineguns between the blades of their propellers. In theory a Scout Courier could mount the same one that a million ton dreadnought does. Note that the dreadnought has a lot more jump capacitors than a dinky Scout and could probably weather the explosion of planet Krypton while the Scou

Classic Vehicles Part 1: Between a Raft and a Hard Place

One of the most iconic symbols of Traveller to me is the air/raft. Extra points if you have a group of ne'er do wells with hearts of gold and shotguns on it. What do we know of the air/raft? An air/raft weighs about 4 tons and can be loaded with four tons of cargo or passengers. Kudos if you can find room for all that stuff on a standard 3m x 6m 'raft. Lift is provided by four modules for safety reasons. Given the four can lift eight tons you could lose one or two modules and stay aloft or at least set down safely if you aren't overloaded. The lifters are powerful when thrusting directly against a planetary mass allowing you to reach orbit. The top speed however is an unimpressive 100 kph. Most air/rafts are designed to fit in a tight compartment with a minimum of fuss. there are no wings or aerodynamic structures one them. Without the lifters they have the handling characteristics of a brick. Lifters allow the craft to hover or even back up like helicopters but without

Oddball Planets Pt. 1

What exactly is an oddball planet? Opinions may vary but they fall into two types. The planet either makes you say, "Yikes!" from orbit. The planet makes you say, "Yikes!" after you land. It is theoretically possible to create a planet that makes people yike from another star system but then it's deuced hard to get them to go there. Generally worlds that make you yike from orbit have charming local features regarding the starport, lithosphere, atmosphere, hydrosphere or a mixture. Worlds that make you yike after you land have unusual features regarding the population, government, law level or tech level. The planet is too big. Its size code is a fricking letter. For a Fat Trader making 1 gee at best this is problematical. Landing craft have a problem with these worlds as well (for some reason, even though they usually pull 2or more gees.) Rotation is often not considered in landing maneuvers. Our world spins at 1600 kph and provides a significant boo