Alternative Traveller Setting Ideas

[DAT]

Greetings,
Was thinking about some ideas for alternative Traveller settings. These are settings that are not part of the Charted Space history (ISW, Long Night, Milena 0, Classic, 1120, etc) and GURPS Traveller Alternative history (no assassination/rebellion/Virus). To keep the alternatives still “Traveller”, I want to keep the main setting assumptions/key features (as paraphrased from Wikipedia):
• Space travel: Interstellar travel is through the use of the FTL (Faster-than-light) jump drive, which moves a ship through "jump space" 1-6 parsecs at a time. Each jump always takes about one week. Normal-space travel is accomplished through relatively efficient and powerful reactionless gravitic drives. Newtonian physics tends to be followed.
• Limited communication: There is no faster-than-light information transfer. Communication is limited to the speed of travel. Decisions are made on the local level, rather than by a remote authority.
• Morals and mortality: People remain people and continue to show courage, wisdom, honesty and justice, along with cowardice, deceit, and criminal behavior.

I’ll add posts with a few I’ve been playing/building/thinking about.
Please comment and or add your own.
-Dan

[DAT]

Here is #1:

Traveller StarFlight (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starflight)
Description: Humans from Earth colonized other worlds, including the Planet Arth. A few hundred years ago, huge radiation storms ravaged Arth, forcing the humans underground. There was a larger loss of life. Much knowledge and technology was lost in the scramble to survive, including the location of Earth and most advance technology not needed to live underground. After decades, the radiation subsided, and after further decades, the human population was able to return to the surface and start rebuilding their civilization. The humans of Arth have recently returned to the stars and are searching for Earth. The PCs are the crew of a planet survey ship. Ruins of humans, aliens, and Precursor/Ancients aliens civilizations are found, along with live aliens (some not so friendly) and strange phenomena.
Adventure Themes: This is mainly an Exploration game, with a few over arcing Mysteries. First contact, diplomacy, combat, and commerce also come into play.
Races: The game starts human centric, but with Transhuman elements as bioengineered light worlders, heavy worlders, human upgrades, parahumans, and AIs are viable starting characters. A few different aliens from Starflight, Traveller, and GURPS Space will make appears as the game proceeds, and player characters from some of those races become available as replacements.
Technology: At the start, hard science Transhuman Space tech elements with super science Traveller starship tech is available. As artifacts are found and investigated, and other cultures are contacted and technologies traded, the technology available will expand.

[Centisteed]

I've had a few ideas of using Traveller to build an ME: Andromeda-like story. The background would be that the main Traveller sector space was about to be ravaged by either a supernova or X-ray burst in a few centuries, so large cryopod starships were built & then migrating en masse to Andromeda in waves (separating each wave by a year apart or something comparable). I haven't decided if any ships would be generational ships as well, instead of just cryo...probably each ship has its own personal preference.

The races that are part of the mission could consist of any of the Traveller races, GURPS, or even steal other races to put in the game from ME or other sources like Star Frontiers (or using the GURPS Space alien creation system to build facsimiles).

Like the ME:A story, the star systems in Andromeda would be dead systems filled with relics, puzzles, & other mysteries.

Aside from GURPS, I found a few resources that complement this type of story on Drivethrurpg (all very cheap):
- Fate Core Andromeda (direct story-line/ideas for going to Andromeda).
- Fate Core Ghost Planets (ancient/dead planet exploration, sort of like ME:A or Prometheus).
- Alien Body Plans: Hexapods and other Ecdysoza (Andromeda may only have aliens as "Things" per GURPS Space, making this book an excellent resource).

Tech would start with standard Traveller, but then deviate to other tech in UltraTech & Biotech as research is uncovered & advanced in certain areas (perhaps useful for a long-term, multi-character saga).

I've also had my eye on the latest Stars Without Number Revised Edition as it's supposed to have some really good system-neutral info that could work with the game, based on the stellar reviews. If I get this I might change some of the default Traveller positions (I think it has some vehicle & starship design stuff, that could be useful, it seems to cover everything sci-fi in one 300pp book).

Rereading what I just wrote, it looks a bit like a mashup.

I've read a lot of sci-fi RPG materials as you can probably tell. :-)

[warellis]

Your ideas are pretty neat!

Hmm for your ATUs, are there certain pieces of Traveller tech that are common in the OTU 3I setting that wouldn't be common, or are non-existent possibly, in your ATUs?

Have you also seen some of the ATUs for the Cepheus Engine, like These Stars Are Ours!, HOSTILE, Clement Sector, & Orbital 2100?

[Centisteed]

Originally Posted by warellis

Your ideas are pretty neat!

Hmm for your ATUs, are there certain pieces of Traveller tech that are common in the OTU 3I setting that wouldn't be common, or are non-existent possibly, in your ATUs?

Have you also seen some of the ATUs for the Cepheus Engine, like These Stars Are Ours!, HOSTILE, Clement Sector, & Orbital 2100?

None that I can think of. Although for an Andromedan venture, the ships would have to be larger, such as hollowed out asteroids equipped with jump drives & ecology/space tech. Most of the non-existent tech would probably show up in Andromeda through research around discoveries and/or alien contact. I can't recall if Mongoose Traveller had any bio/cyber-tech in it (pretty sure 2300AD does).

I've never read these other systems you've mentioned & will need to check them out. I've added them to my Drivethrurpg wishlist. Most of the sci-fi stuff I've read is GURPS, Mongoose Traveller as well as some of the original books (got the CD of the PDFs for the originals), Mongoose 2300AD, Diaspora, X-plorers, Numenera, Star Frontiers, & some of the online RPGs for Aliens & Mass Effect.

My next book to get is probably Stars Without Number: Revised Edition in PDF format (with art).

[tanksoldier]

. To keep the alternatives still “Traveller”, I want to keep the main setting assumptions/key features

Well, an alternate universe with jump drives and slow ship-speed Comms is fine... but what makes Traveller “ Traveller” is the back story and history.

It’s like saying there’s no federation, Klingons or romulans but we have warp drive and phasers... so it’s Star Trek.

Why bother even using the name?

[Mike Wightman]

Traveller is not the Third Imperium role playing game.

The Third Imperium is just a part of the much larger OTU that was used as an exemplar setting because of fan demands.

The original intent of Traveller was to be a generic set of rules to allow a referee and players to game any sci-fi setting they could imagine.
It says so in the original rules and Marc Miller has said so in interview after interview.

If you want to know what Traveller really is read this blog:

https://talestoastound.wordpress.com...at-gary-con-x/

[tanksoldier]

...because things don’t evolve or change over time.

Traveller today is exactly what it started out as almost 50 years ago.

OK.

What does OTU stand for again?

Setting your campaign so far from the center of the OTU or any ATUs is one thing and seems to be where OP is going.

Creating a universe where nothing is the same.... or a point of divergence so far back that this ATU is unrecognizable is also OK... but then why bother calling it Traveller?

[warellis]

Traveller is just a ruleset. The OTU 3I setting is just an overall setting using that particular ruleset.

A number of ATUs have been published using the 2D6 OGL rules (which is Traveller with the Third Imperium stuff filed off thanks to Mongoose) that have no connection to the OTU 3I setting.

It's like trying to claim Greyhawk is D&D when in reality it's just a campaign setting using D&D rules.

[jason taylor]

Why is there need for an alt when you can just put it in a different time or place in the trav verse we are given?