Traveller Aliens

I've put up some information about the Simioids in a previous post and on the LOH Traveller wiki.    That's really not a huge issue for integration in the Official Trav universe, since various uplifted species are present in small numbers (there may even be official uplifted apes somewhere).

I also added our old friends the Span-Kee and Mavorians to the mix over at the wiki.  It's not too much of a stretch to figure that the Zhodani might have a few allied minor races, especially psionic ones.

I guess I should explain Minor/Major Races in Traveller.    A species that invented Jump Drive all on its own is called a Major Race.  The Major Races include 3 sub-species of humans:  The Vilani, The Zhodani and the Solomanni (i.e Earthmen);  also the Vargr (dog-men), Aslan (lion-men), K'kree (a centaur-like race), Hivers (weird octopus-like aliens) and the Droyne (small flying winged lizard-like guys).   All the major races have their own space empires except the Droyne who exist only on scattered planets across the galaxy.  The Imperium the players live in is most a mixture of Vilani and Solomani humans, with a huge number of minor races here and there.    In the corner of the galaxy we are playing, we will likely encounter Zhodani, Vargr and Droyne, but it is vary unlikely that we'll see K'kree or Hivers, who are on the other side of the empire.

I left the Aslan off the list.  They have colonies nearby, but they are the ones I'd like to change.   Instead of a race of Klingon-like Lion men,  I think I'd prefer to change them into a coalition of various reptilian and amphibian type aliens.  For one thing, I have lizardmen aplenty in miniature, but only like 3 lion men.  For another thing, what's more fun than blasting space lizards?  I know it sounds pretty weak sauce, but I guess the Aslan always seemed super-lame to me.

Card Stock Models for Traveller Campaign

The following site has some neat-looking card-stock models (it looks like they're free) of vehicles from movies and TV shows that might be totally excellent for Traveller


Dave's Designs

Here are a few pictures:

#1  an ATV from "Captain Scarlet"

#2 An ATV from "UFO"

A hover cop car from "Fifth Element"
There are many, many more, including just about any Batmobile you might imagine.

Haven't tried them yet, but they look pretty cool

Assembling the Sky Mall

I'm assembling/editing the SKY MALL (i.e., Gear Book) for the Traveller campaign.   It's basically a re-edit of the Rhylanor Express book, but I've re-done the armor names and progression a little bit, and changed some of the weapon data in a minor fashion.

I'm having a few bouts of indecision here and there on a few issues.  

Melee Weapons:  Traveller has always had and used melee weapons, in fact the Marine career gets "Cutlass" skill as a free skill at enlistment, rather than any sort of gun skill.   There aren't any super advanced "vibro-blades" or "energy knives" or anything else, just plane old knives and swords.  I don't know whether to add a few of high tech sci-fi type blades in.    Regular weapons are plenty dangerous most of the time, unless the targets are in Combat Armor or Battle-Dress, which should not be a common event outside of a high-powered mercenary game.  On the other hand, COOL TOYS!.

Weird Weapons:   I'm also wavering about adding some additional experimental, weird or rare weapons.    On the one hand, I'm thinking that shoving all the weapons I possibly can into the Sky Mall--things like the Insidious Face Melter-- might be Hella-cool, on the other hand, there's much to be said for the Sky Mall book is just for the commonly found items, and the weird stuff should pop up as surprises during play.

Metagame Mechanisms for Traveller

The Traveller combat rules we're going to use are based on the Traveller Boardgame called "Mayday" for ship combat using Classic Traveller ships, and on the Traveller miniatures game called "Striker" for ground combat.   But since we're porting them into the role-playing realm, I think it would be good to add a few meta-game (i.e., non-simulationist) features to up the heroics and lessen the lethality a bit.  

Now, I don't want the lethality totally nerfed.   I find that when there's no real risk the fun drops out of the game entirely.   In fact, I'd prefer a lot more "dead" to a lot more "critically injured and out of action" on the whole.

Anyway here are some ideas:

XP for Damage Saving Throws:
I touched on this in a previous post, but after some thought, I think this is the scheme I like:
        To reduce the Wound Effect (Dead/Destroyed to Serious Wound, or Serious Wound to Light Wound for example)  1 XP for 25% chance, 2XP for 50%, 3XP for 75% for the reduction to take place.

XP for Re-roll
Spend 1 XP to re-roll 1 skill roll or ability check that you yourself need to roll.

END SCENE NOW
On majority vote of the players, once per game session, the players can cash in the "END SCENE NOW" card to end an encounter--this of course won't allow them to get something they don't have in their hands, but might allow them to escape while running away with a stolen item  etc.

AWESOME STUNT WAGER
Once per session, each player can call for an awesome stunt wager.  He describes an awesome stunt and what he intends to accomplish by the stunt.  The GM then proposes an evenly disadvantageous result for a failure of that stunt.   If the player accepts the wager, both the player and GM rolls 1d6.  If the player rolls higher, he wins and the stunt is successful and he gains the benefit.  If the GM rolls higher, the stunt fails and the player suffers the consequence.   If the rolls are a tie, the GM must raise the stakes by about twice and they re-roll.

XP System for Traveller idea

EXPERIENCE POINT SYSTEM

One notable feature of Classic Traveller was the absence of any experience point or other sort of adventure-based skill advancement. The only way to improve your character was by training, which was long, slow, uncertain and didn't reward adventuring. Most of the many, many, many subsequent versions of Traveller had some sort of adventure based experience point system included. I used a version of one of them in the Rhylanor Express campaign, but was a bit dissatisfied with it and would like to try another.

Here's the basic scheme: each adventure, each PC gets a number of XP based on a schedule something like this:

Showing up and playing: 1 XP

Achieving the main goal of the session: +1 XP

No serious wounds or deaths on your side: +1 XP

Making a profit for the session: +1 XP

Voted MVP +1 XP

Voted “Hard Luck Charlie”: +1 XP

These XP can be spent as follows:

Converting a level 0 skill to level 1 2XP

Converting a level 1 skill to level 2 4XP

Converting a level 2 skill to level 3 9XP

Converting a level 3 skill to level 4 16 XP

Converting a level 4 skill to level 5 25XP

Converting a level 5 skill to level 6 36 XP

Increasing an ability score by 1 point 12XP

Re-roll a die in an adventure session 1 XP

The last is sort of a base place-holder, I'm thinking of letting people use XP in some fashion like Bennies are used in Savage Worlds.

I'm looking for some feed-back, suggestions etc on this whole process.