Traveller Modern

[Werner]

This is an idea for a rules supplement for the Traveller game, not sure which version of Traveller would be best for this. Traveller is a game of the far future, but what if you wanted to set a Traveller game on present day Earth? Some science fiction occurs in the present or the near future, no more than a decade or two, to have adventures in this setting, you need to have modern characters, skill sets and equipment, has there ever been any rules supplements for this?

Seems to me that all the Traveller careers could be translated to the modern world. Some more easily than others. You have Army, Navy, Marines, Mercenary, Merchants, Spy, Rogue, Scientist, Explorer.

 

[Grav_Moped]

Easy peasy!

We're TL 7-8 under most Traveller standards (without the grav tech, though) -- GURPS used a slightly different TL system.
Convert Credits to Dollars (or Euros, or whatever). If memory serves, a Credit was about $1 in 1977 so adjust for inflation.
Adjust the chargen skill list for today's equivalents, and your uncle's name is Robert.

Compared to CT, I'd subdivide Vehicle (ground car) into what are basically the drivers' license endorsement categories -- car, heavy truck, motorcycle; heavy equipment (forklifts, earthmovers) is also a specialization. Vehicle (aircraft) gets split into fixed wing v. rotary wing (RW can do FW at -1, FW can do RW at -2), with fixed wing further split by category (ultralight, light plane, large plane). Boats get subdivided by propulsion (sail v. powered) and size.

Navigation is terrestrial unless otherwise required by the character's career -- space navigation is probably part of the EDU stat (in an Astronomy/Math degree) and most likely used by ground control rather than people working in space.

Computer splits into software use (commercial software, e.g. LibreOffice or business-specific software), coding (actually writing software), and network admin. For game purposes, hacking uses mostly the last two.

Vacc Suit is (almost always) not skill in 0-G in an EVA suit. Think chem warfare or biohazard suit, firefighters' SCBA gear, possibly a deepwater diving suit.

 

[robject]

TWO supplements from Zozer Games, as starting points:

(1) HOSTILE. If you want retro-grit like Alien, Bladerunner, and Outland. HOSTILE has a large clutch of supplements, if you only need one particular thing.

(2) Orbital 2100. A realistic TL9 solar system setting.

I recommend anything by Zozer.

 

[robject]

...present day [or near future] Earth?

1. Stick with the ruleset you know best.

2. Reuse as much as possible or reasonable.

Convert Credits to Dollars (or Euros, or whatever).

This gives you an easy out: Keep the ACTUAL credit listing but call it "Euros". It sounds slightly exotic here in the States, but it's also a real currency, but it allows values to NOT be pegged at the "U.S. dollar" and all of the headache you might get when players might see dollar signs and complain that the prices don't match what they can find on the internet etc etc.

So that handgun that costs Cr300 has become €300. Yay!


(You could use ANY currency... see the last point for clarification)


3. Limit and explain the essential technology. But, Map Only As Really Necessary.

- what's the essential TL? 7? 8? 9?
- does gravitics exist?
- how do you get from planet to planet?
- is life support an important matter?
- how is power generated?
- what sensors are available?
- are there robots? clones? synthetics?


4. Map the careers. Again, reuse as much as possible. However, you may want to redefine and adjust "Navy" for instance.

- army, marines: no change
- entertainers: no change
- scholars: no change
- citizens: no change
- agent: no change
- rogue: no change
- noble: no change

- scouts: needs a name change
- navy: needs a description change
- merchants: might not exist

- psioncist might not exist -- PSIONICS might not exist!

5. Create a skills blacklist. Only worry about skills that absolutely "cannot" exist. Let the rest live as-is. Keep It Simple. It should be a short and obvious list.

- Fleet Tactics
- Grav craft ?
- Astrogator
- Gravitics ?
- Turret Gunner ?
- Jump Drive tech
- Battle Dress
- Spines ?
- Psionicology ? (depends if you want psionics)

6. Map the vehicles and equipment. know what equipment captures the feel of the setting.

- are there gauss guns? lasers? plasma? particle accelerators? meson guns?

7. Know what captures the feel of the setting.
- Outland
- Alien?
- Blade Runner
- 2001: A Space Odyssey
- Space: 1999
- The Expanse?
- Jack McDevitt's novels (set around 2200 AD, a bit further than "near" future).


If the political structure of the world is slightly different from today, then you'll need a Map Of The Earth and you'll have to make decisions.

Make any decisions that you like. Do NOT be bound by analysis or other peoples' opinions. This is a game.

One side effect: you'll probably want to use the dominant country's currency sign for the prices of things. So instead of Cr300, you'd have

€300. (Euros). <-- I like this one best.
元300. (Yuan)
L300. (Lira). <-- My second choice.
₺300. (Turkish Lira)
₹300. (Rupees)
₽300. (Rubles)

...or whatever. Just avoid emoji or else your players will be distracted.


I like the straightforward "L", for Lira or Libre or whatever, but it begs the question: where did this currency arise from? Did Greece suddenly stumble upon such overwhelming material, technical, and political power that it now dominates the world? Or is this the currency of the North American Union? Or something else entirely??


If you can deal with those points, then you have a viable setting for adventures.

 

[Werner]

Generally the default is todays world with one big science fiction exception.

For example: Artificial Intelligence, in a world that looks much like today a computer company makes the breakthrough in artificial intelligence.

Another example is Castaways in Time, a town or an Island gets sent back in time several centuries or millenia their presence creates a parallel timeline with them in it, and the time travel phenomina is not revisited and may never be explained, similar to the Ring of Fire series by Eric Flint or the Nantucket Series by S.M. Stirling, you have a bunch of modern tech items and people with modern skills within the area of effect that is transported back in time.

Another theme is the near future exploration and colonization of Mars, put something interesting on Mars, a technological artifact perhaps, this takes place from the 2030s to 2050s.

Flash Gordon: a rogue planet enters the Solar System and is seemingly on a collision course with Earth

Rendezvous with Rama, an alien starship enters the Solar System, it is huge, it is a cylinder 4 miles wide and 24 miles long rotation around it's long axis once every two minutes, the ship is on a hyperbolic orbit around the Sun, and we just barely have a spaceship that is advanced enough to intercept it. A crew is chosen and it is launched into space.

 

[robject]

Oh, I was thinking you wanted to sketch out a particular near-future setting.

Instead, you're exploring the space, so to speak.

 

[Werner]

Oh, I was thinking you wanted to sketch out a particular near-future setting.

Instead, you're exploring the space, so to speak.

Why not talk about the five above or perhaps someone might think of something else? Basically it is the modern setting but we add one science fiction element that changes everything. This science fiction element is a stand alone, in that it doesn't need a science fiction setting to plausibly exist in our modern world. Artificial intelligence, for example, could happen at any time, because we don't know how close it is, but it would change everything.

A Mars mission is all about geology, and planetology, and the means of getting there, but its needs something extra to spice it up, some functioning artifact of alien origin is the usual trope, another possibility is a stole away, or an accident or a murder mystery perhaps.

Castaways in time is you take a town or perhaps a vehicle, a ship works best and send it back in time with a bunch of people with varied skills and limited resources to work with.

The last two involve introducing modern characters to science fiction settings,

Flash Gordon is a pulp setting with a mobile planet, a megalomaniac villain, and a bunch of characters opposed to the villain but with conflicts between themselves, and a bit of diplomacy and heroics are called for.

Renderous with Rama is a more hard science fiction take, it is a bit more alien and mysterious.

 

[Nathan Brazil]

In the here and now, there are no galactic empires as far as we know. Leaving the SOC stat scale AS IS means no one rates higher than a B because on Earth no-one rules more than entire planet. Not European nobles like the Queen Elizabeth of the UK and Pope Francis of Vatican City (he is still has a title of monarch in there, but it is generally impolitic to bring that up :CoW: :rofl and all that. Other heads of state like elected presidents, dictators for life, etc. Do they rate higher, equal or lower to those nobles?

The practical effect is no-one should get more than a +1 DM from SOC in rolls, not even the heads of state. Are you good with that? If not, you should consider adjusting the scale in some manner.

 

[Werner]

In the here and now, there are no galactic empires as far as we know. Leaving the SOC stat scale AS IS means no one rates higher than a B because on Earth no-one rules more than entire planet. Not European nobles like the Queen Elizabeth of the UK and Pope Francis of Vatican City (he is still has a title of monarch in there, but it is generally impolitic to bring that up :CoW: :rofl and all that. Other heads of state like elected presidents, dictators for life, etc. Do they rate higher, equal or lower to those nobles?

The practical effect is no-one should get more than a +1 DM from SOC in rolls, not even the heads of state. Are you good with that? If not, you should consider adjusting the scale in some manner.

One could adjust Soc upward for just the planet.

Here's an idea for a campaign. What if we swapped out the real Mars for Ray Bradbury's Mars in the Martian Chronicles. That Mars has the same size and gravity as real life Mars, but a thicker atmosphere, would qualify as Thin by Traveller standards, it is criss-crossed with canals and the ruins of ancient Martian cities, and Elon Musk's Starship could land there. In fact they look much like the rocket ships used to colonize Mars in the Martian Chronicles miniseries. So basically what we are talking about is an alternate history where just one thing is different, a different Mars, the Martians also have psionic talents, and this introduces a new race a player can play. Mars is a dying planet, and the Earth is colonizing it. A colony is being set up called New Jamestown, in the Valles Marineris - which also happens to be one of the major canals on the planet's surface, still filled with meltwater from the icecaps. The topography is the same as real Mars, the atmosphere is breathable to humans.

So how would this alter the history of the Space Race?
The history proceeds much as in our timeline up until Apollo 11. NEIL Armstrong plants a flag on the Moon's surface, then Project Ares kicks off, as does the Shuttle Program. NASA gets bigger budgets, but going to Mars is expensive. The Ares I spaceship is assembled in low Earth orbit from Apollo hardware, the Space Shuttle Columbia launches from Cape Canaveral carrying the seven astronaut crew to the Ares I the mission goes to Mars in the mid 1980s, the crew lands and when the dust clears they find themselves seemingly in Greenwich, Connecticut, after that Mission Control loses contact with the Astronauts and they are never heard from again, there is a commission to determine what went wrong and what happened to the crew. NASA receives a budget cut and project Ares is canceled, until around 2007 when Elon Musk starts up SpaceX.

 

[mike wightman]

You can easily use the CT rules for just about any historical era, all the rules are there for ancient through to early slug throwers.

Running Traveller as a modern era technothriller - Mission Impossible and its ilk - is perfectly doable.

 

[AsenRG]

I'm going to answer with a link.

DriveThruRPG

www.drivethrurpg.com

 

[daryen]

So how would this alter the history of the Space Race?

The first mission to Mars would not be manned. It would be unmanned. At that point the owners of the probe have to figure out whether to release the data, or suppress it. Assuming it is even possible to suppress it.

If the new data is successfully suppressed, the nation owning the secret will quickly move to create a manned mission irrespective of the cost. This sudden interest would certainly gain the interest of any potential competitors, which would cause them to immediately start their own effort. Both to lay the foundation to do their own manned mission, and to find out the secret. They will eventually succeed and massively ramp up their own manned effort.

If the new data is not successfully suppressed, everyone who can will be spending whatever is necessary to get those manned missions off. I don't see this being fully cooperative. Some groups might combine forces, but there would still be at least two main competitors.

Now, on to the landing. It is highly unlikely that the psionic Martians would be able to wipe out the first mission. Unlike in the books/series, I seriously doubt the first mission would be a single person, and I very seriously doubt the entire crew would leave the ship. In fact, I would expect a two-piece vessel that leaves one in orbit, so the Martians would be unable to lure the holdout crew to the surface. Also, psionics doesn't affect actual imaging and electrical equipment. The landed crew will be able to use visual imaging to see what is actually going on around them irrespective of what their eyes are telling them. Likewise, the crew still in orbit will be able to help out, too. And the crew in orbit will know that the landed crew is seeing weird things and that Martians exist. The landed crew is still probably dead, because they have to take the risk to mingle and will still be poisoned. But the crew in orbit will now know what happened. Once the captain figures out what is going on, he will probably be able to radio back before he dies. Even if not, the orbiting crew still knows they aren't responding anymore after contact. Not hard to put the pieces together at that point.

At that point, at the least, the Earth will know that Martians exist, Martians can screw with human minds, and the landed crew are no longer responding/are dead. No telling what the response from the Earth governments will be at that point to a planet with occupants hostile to Earth. Do they take the hint and stay away (at least for a while), or do they send a military expedition instead? I'm gonna bet on the latter.

In the end, I would expect a landrush by any country that can afford to make the trip. With many others paying to join those who can.

Back on-topic, sure, you could easily use any version of Traveller to run this scenario. You wouldn't even need to modify anything. List limit the TL to be appropriate for the setting and go for it. CT would require TL 7 (no maneuver drives earlier than that). But other versions of Traveller might allow for a more appropriate TL 6 or maybe even TL 5. The Martians could then be whatever mismash you want them to be. IDK, say TL 8 or 9, but with no space-based capabilities? That lets them have lasers and fusion power, which Earth can then appropriate after they finish killing off the Martian survivors.

 

[mike wightman]

If you have been following the latest MgT JTAS kickstarter then you may have noticed this stretch goal, which as been further detailed in the latest state of the Mongoose:

New Traveller Universe: Pioneer
Around the bottom end of 2022, we will be releasing a brand new universe for Traveller, with the current working title Pioneer. This will be a self-contained book (so no need for the Traveller Core Rulebook), as we will be tweaking the Traveller rules somewhat for this one.

Pioneer is set in our own Solar System, around 10-30 years in the future. Humanity is just starting its new wave of exploration of the planets and moons, and you will be on the leading edge of these missions – this is a game where you will be the first to walk on Mars, the first to establish a Moon base, the first to test mining operations on an asteroid... and if you push the timeline forward, the first to look for life on Europa, to visit Saturn’s moons, and much more. The whole Solar System will be your playground and you will be the first to explore it. The likes of Gravity, The Martian, Interstellar (in terms of atmosphere, not the actual mission), Sunshine and 2001/2010 are very much our touchstones for this new universe.

To do this, you will create characters from around the world, and engage in missions funded by both governments and private enterprise. There is no dedicated combat chapter in this book as your main adversary, by far, is the hostile environment of space and the planets and moons of our sun.

The lead designer for Pioneer will be Sandy Antunes, a name that will be familiar to a lot of you. Dr. Antunes worked as a NASA contractor at NASA/GSFC, an NSF fellow at the Naval Research Laboratory, and is currently a senior programmer at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab. He also taught as a Professor of Astronautical Engineering for 10 years, and holds a Ph.D. in computational astrophysics. He has written operations, flight and analysis software, and worked with multiple satellite missions in the US and Japan, including CUBIC, ASCA, XTE SUZAKU, STEREO, and Parker Solar Probe, and was the lead for the CACTUS-1 CubeSat mission. He has written 4 books on ‘DIY Space’ for Maker Media and presented talks at both World MakerFaire and Gray Hat/Aerospace Village on the risks from malicious satellites, as well as publishing scientific research on topics ranging from radiation damage to space hardware through to modelling solar coronal mass ejections (CMEs). He has written for multiple gaming books (including Miskatonic University and A Faery's Tale) and short form works (including GURPS: Starbases and Doom: Semper Fidelis), and he is the co-founder of RPG.net.