CT Only: Space Dragons

[Blue Ghost]

Newborn	Medium sized animal	4 - 8 feet in length	25 kg - 40 kg	Body pistol?
Young	Large sized	8 - 10 ft	225 - 450 kg
Juvenile	Large	10 - 16 ft	450 - 900 kg	Laser Carbine?
Adult	Very Large	16 - 32 ft	900 - 1100 kg
Ancient	Huge	32 - 64 ft	1100 -1400 kg
Mech Dragon	Huge	50 ft	1200 kg	Starship Beam Laser
Replicant Dragon	Various	Various	Various	Chemical agent

 

[Blue Ghost]

The above table is just an idea I've been toying with for years. I've never used "space dragons" in any Traveller session, and the table is a mixture of the D&D table, Imperial and metric units, and space for a speculative or suggested breath weapon.

 

[Spinward Flow]

Counter-proposal on the breath weapons.

Newborn	Medium sized animal	4 - 8 feet in length	25 kg - 40 kg	Chemical Grenade
Young	Large sized	8 - 10 ft	225 - 450 kg	Laser Pistol
Juvenile	Large	10 - 16 ft	450 - 900 kg	Laser Rifle
Adult	Very Large	16 - 32 ft	900 - 1100 kg	PGMP
Ancient	Huge	32 - 64 ft	1100 -1400 kg	Plasma Gun Turret
Mech Dragon	Huge	50 ft	1200 kg	Particle Accelerator Turret
Replicant Dragon	Various	Various	Various	Insidious Chemicals

Newborns basically "spit" caustic substances that are the functional equivalent to chemical grenades.
Plasma Gun and Particle Accelerator Turrets are the equivalent to starship weapons.
Insidious Chemicals functionally equates to a UWP atmosphere code of C (Insidious) "breath weapon" type of caustic gasses.

 

[Spinward Scout]

"Newborn"

 

[Blue Ghost]

Cool GIF. Feel free to tweak the chart or add to it.

 

[Blue Ghost]

Special note; Replicant Dragons are inspired from Blade Runner where the creature is artificially grown, and can be tailored to size and taste. The mech dragon is essentially just that, an AI robotic dragon that is covered in a highly polished (almost mirror) metallic skin ... I picture it with two twin glowing eyes that may be an additional weapon.

 

[Spinward Scout]

Tiny, in the GIF, is probably too small for a Space Dragon, but would make a cool Replicant Pet.

 

[Blue Ghost]

Yeah, I was thinking an adult or ancient might be the size of a scout ship, maybe closer to a Type-R or something in the 200ton range. So eggs would have to be ... er ... maybe the size of a car or air raft. I'm not sure. It's just an idea I've had, and I'm sure other people have had similar concepts.

 

[mike wightman]

I think the weapon progression may be a little off. Think of it in terms of damage dice.
3D most firearms
5D laser rifle
10D plasma gun (TL12)
16D fusion gun

 

[Blue Ghost]

Do space dragons need their own weapons? Or is it a lack of granularity of CT's combat rules?

 

[whartung]

It's the dragons also carrying fusion guns you really have to worry about.

 

[Dragoner]

These on La Lande Five?
I still have the draft of Castles and Dragons you made back in 2011.

 

[Blue Ghost]

Actually space dragons are different critters

The sand serpents "dragons" are inspired from some giant sand snake thingy I saw in a comic ages ago. But it's interesting you bring that up. I'd forgotten about that aspect.

 

[Dragoner]

Nice work on the dragons, always a favorite creature of mine.
It has been ten years since I read Castles and Dragons, I glanced at the first page to make sure it was the same thing I was thinking about. I remember it being a good adventure, and it's funny how that file has traveled across three computers since then.

 

[Blue Ghost]

Has it really been ten years? Wow. The key to that world is that it was supposed to be a "proto-Traveller" adventure where the "Imperium" was optional if the players or Referee needed to reference it or something like it for whatever reason. The world was supposed to be a thriving bronze age like civilization with natives who didn't understand what was going on when their world experienced sudden climate change. And I remember seeing some old pictures of sea-serpents on maps out of the 16th to 18th centuries, and how interesting it would be to have those kinds of critters in a desert. And so I pushed the civ forward to the middle ages, and voila! An adventure was born

 

[Dragoner]

Middle ages is good for CT, take advantage of all the pole arms, like a Halberd. Yes, ten years, how the time flies, doesn't it? Sea-serpents from old maps are a good writing prompt, sometimes when I watch a show, or read something, one can almost tell what was the core idea. That was one thing Philip K Dick said about why he liked writing short stories is that the idea is the hero. Any good idea can also be written up and put on DTRPG too, I was looking at the list of stuff there, and it is up to 710 products for Cepheus Engine.

 

[Blue Ghost]

Phillip K. Dick sure could weave a story

Back when I wrote that adventure I had tons of ideas that I had primed for T5 when it would come about, and so I stuck around on the forum and posting some fan fic hoping that that would show my good intentions. Truth is I'm pretty burnt out on the game and official setting for a variety of reasons, but still like posting some thoughts inspired from the game. C&D was a work of love, and I had lots of proto-Traveller-verse kind of "shorts" like C&D that I thought people would enjoy. Stuff that didn't have the OTU but was inspired by it, and made with the kind of atmosphere that GDW and Keith's sketches and Dietrick's art had created way back when I was a lad. I really don't want to write for it anymore, and Cepheus is very uninspiring for me on a deep personal level.

Space Dragons comes from SFB because I thought the Unofficial TU could use some stuff posted here. The other truth is that SFB Space Dragons are probably considerably larger than what I've posted. Probably just shy of a Federation or Klingon sized frigate, or so I'm thinking. But, Traveller is about PC interaction, so the players need something they can deal with via their hand held ACRs, FGMPs and so forth. I probably should have added a column for armor

I think lots of people have had similar ideas, and posted a few here and there on this forum, but this is my take for anybody wanting to chime in.