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Author Topic: New Products for Traveller or Cepheus Engine Survey  (Read 1516 times)

jeff37923

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New Products for Traveller or Cepheus Engine Survey
« on: September 04, 2020, 08:38:06 AM »
So here is a question for all of you out there. What would you like to see as new products for Traveller or Cepheus Engine[/color][/size]?[/font]
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Lynn

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Re: New Products for Traveller or Cepheus Engine Survey
« Reply #1 on: September 04, 2020, 12:39:00 PM »
So here is a question for all of you out there. What would you like to see as new products for Traveller or Cepheus Engine
I really like the Hostile campaign setting. Id like to see that fleshed out by third party support.
But Id also like to see more settings as well.
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trechriron

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Re: New Products for Traveller or Cepheus Engine Survey
« Reply #2 on: September 06, 2020, 03:38:41 AM »
Cepheus. Great community rolling there with tons of product. A shame Mongoose didn't just OGL again...
Trentin C Bergeron (trechriron)
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SavageSchemer

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Re: New Products for Traveller or Cepheus Engine Survey
« Reply #3 on: September 06, 2020, 08:41:36 AM »
I'd like to see more experimentation with the system for genres and settings you don't typically associate with Traveller. Give me pulpy rockets and rayguns. Give me Barsoom-inspired planetary romance. Give me the science fantasy game Numenera was meant to be, but failed so miserably at in execution.


I'd also love to see different and new subsystems. The random roulette character creation system has, by now, been over done. Let's experiment with that a bit. Or how about alternate abstractions for the game's ecnomics?


As great and wonderful as Traveller / Cepheus engine is, I have to say that as a general rule its fans tend to be about the least creative in all of RPGdom, by my estimation. I always get excited to see products like Zaibatsu because it shows a real willingness to experiment with what's come before.
The more clichéd my group plays their characters, the better. I don't want Deep Drama™ and Real Acting™ in the precious few hours away from my family and job. I want cheap thrills, constant action, involved-but-not-super-complex plots, and cheesy but lovable characters.
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Svenhelgrim

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Re: New Products for Traveller or Cepheus Engine Survey
« Reply #4 on: September 06, 2020, 10:21:14 AM »
As a Ref, I would find the following suppliments useful:


A book of ships and small craft that the playerz might encounter, or acquire. Complete with deckplans and art.


New sophonts, that Travellers could encounter or play as.


More patrons, a la 76 Patrons.


A book of several worlds that a Referee can plop down into a campaign. Complete with adventure hooks and interesting planetside sights.


Ship miniatures.


Short adventures that a ref can run in case he hasn’t prepped or if the players decinde to go off into left field.

Dave 2

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Re: New Products for Traveller or Cepheus Engine Survey
« Reply #5 on: September 06, 2020, 07:18:05 PM »
So here is a question for all of you out there. What would you like to see as new products for Traveller or Cepheus Engine?


About the only thing I need or would buy is stand-alone adventures. Problem is I'm finicky on adventures; a lot of what's published I don't consider good.


As a benchmark, One Crowded Hour which sometimes gets praised I consider to be a great idea with terrible execution. Should be presented as more of a "here's the situation, here are some game aids for the GM, now what do the players do?" Instead we get a linear scene-based progression that assumes PCs actions. You can derive an open adventure out of what's presented, but it's needless work compared to what the writer should have done themselves.


Not sure if that helps you or not.


Cepheus. Great community rolling there with tons of product. A shame Mongoose didn't just OGL again...


Mechanically, Cepheus = Mongoose 1e + [minor house rules]. Fans insisting they're separate games is the equivalent of insisting that OSRIC and AD&D are separate games, or that OSE and B/X are separate games. If you can't run an adventure or setting published for "Cepheus" in Mongoose 1 or 2e I don't know how you're running a game in the first place.

GameDaddy
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Re: New Products for Traveller or Cepheus Engine Survey
« Reply #6 on: September 06, 2020, 11:58:38 PM »
I think some new adventures would be good, either Traveller, or Cepheus are ok, ...no real preference here since they are interchangeable and require about 0% effort to convert back and forth.

I'm running a considerable amount of online Classic Traveller games this Autumn using the BITS task system. First a game for the weekend of October 10-12 Autumn Revel I, a VirtualCon, and of course I'll be hosting three games for Virtual Traveller, on the weekend of October 16th to 18th, and have to come up with some completely new adventures for players... Right now for Autumn Revel I, I'm hosting:

Salvage Rights
Your Starship the Danielle Arcadian is unexpectedly diverted to answer a signal GK Beacon, transmitting the nearby crash location of a Local Navy Heavy Cruiser, the Viking, which has been missing for seven weeks. The Captain of the Danielle Arcadian offers a full share for each and every crew member and and passenger that volunteers to help with search & rescue and/or salvage operations in the dirtside recovery of the Viking.

Autumn Revel I - Sponsored by Luke Gygax@GaryCon, Gaxxworks and Tabletop.Events
https://garycon.com/autumn-revel/

For VIrtual Traveller the weekend of the 16th-18th of October I'll be running another online session of Salvage Rights along with...
Woman in the Dark
Regina Sector Admiral Lord Santanocheev directed Commodore Arabella Von Ericsson to contact you recent Imperial Service members who have mustered out to request your help with a special mission...   a young woman from Zhodane seeks refuge with the Imperium. She is hurt and frightened. The Imperium has her in protective custody however wants to move her out of the war zone at Jewell and deliver her to the Imperial High Command HQ at Regina because she has vital knowledge of the plans of the Zhodani Fleet Operations, and it seems the fall of Jewell is imminent. (this is a 5th Frontier War Adventure). Commodore Von Ericsson wil provide you with a 400t Destroyer along with a detachment of Imperial marines, and your goal is to run the Zhodani blockade of the Jewell subsector, and deliver the young lady safely to Admiral Lord Santanocheev on Regina. 

Mustering Out
One of my classic adventures from last year, on your very first jump just after you muster out, you wake up from low passage to find your starship transport disintegrating as it enters the atmosphere of an unknown planet. Think Pitch Black, ...but set in the Traveller Universe!   
VIrtual TravellerCon
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1205944649744350/?ref=bookmarks

I was also invited to run an online D&D game for Virtual Greyhawk, but haven't decided whether to run one for that yet. Really wish there was a virtual gaming convention for Mystara
https://tabletop.events/conventions/virtual-greyhawk-con-2020

« Last Edit: September 07, 2020, 12:08:36 AM by GameDaddy »
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Simlasa

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Re: New Products for Traveller or Cepheus Engine Survey
« Reply #7 on: September 07, 2020, 04:07:23 PM »
I'd like to see more experimentation with the system for genres and settings you don't typically associate with Traveller. Give me pulpy rockets and rayguns. Give me Barsoom-inspired planetary romance. Give me the science fantasy game Numenera was meant to be, but failed so miserably at in execution.
Yeah, I'd definitely go for some that sort of thing. I was never into the OTU, and most Traveller games I've played in could easily have taken place on modern or near future Earth.
I've never run much Traveller, but when I did it was inspired by the scifi stories I used to see in Heavy Metal, like The Incal, The Long Tomorrow, Exterminator 17, Lone Sloane... wild/weird one shots from Moebius, Bilal, Druillet, Macedo, etc.

Like with GURPS, I think one fault, IMO, of a lot of Traveller stuff is that it is made by Traveller fans, for Traveller fans. It gets in a feedback loop of equipment stats (often for modern or near future tech) and militaristic wankery... vs. interesting people in interesting places doing interesting stuff. I've never played in a Traveller game that even attempted to approach the classic scifi the game was inspired by. The Facebook Traveller group I'm in seems to love statting up modern tanks and armaments but there's not much love for anything too 'out there'.
I'd like to feel a bit more Star Trek (TOS) and less Firefly/mercenaries/gun porn.
« Last Edit: September 07, 2020, 04:10:02 PM by Simlasa »

The Witch-King of Tsámra

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Re: New Products for Traveller or Cepheus Engine Survey
« Reply #8 on: September 09, 2020, 12:56:55 AM »
If you want Sword and Planet type games using Traveller I can recommend Sword of Cepheus. https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/304840/The-Sword-of-Cepheus

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Running: Tales of Gor, FKR Star Wars, Vampire 4th edition

Nobby-W

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Re: New Products for Traveller or Cepheus Engine Survey
« Reply #9 on: September 29, 2020, 11:02:42 AM »
As a Ref, I would find the following suppliments useful:


A book of ships and small craft that the playerz might encounter, or acquire. Complete with deckplans and art.
This is definitely a useful one - compare and contrast CT S7: Traders and Gunboats with S9: Fighting ships.  A book of adventurer-sized ships, not necessarily any more than a dozen or two designs, provides a useful background piece with resources that actually might get used.  Once they have deck plans and stats - and they are in the size and power range that works for bunch-of-yobs type adventures - then you've got them on a low-prep basis for most things you might use them for.

New sophonts, that Travellers could encounter or play as.
Less useful, I think. Although a handful of alien races with some mechanical distinction is useful, they're less useful if they're not readily playable, or are too similar to some other race in their mechanical effects.  IMO for things like races you want something that sits in about 5-10 different niches, and after that you're starting to get into diminishing returns.  The exception to this is if you want to do something like Star Wars, where the large proliferation of alien races is a core part of the look-and-feel of the universe.

More patrons, a la 76 Patrons.
I think you can never have too many patrons or adventure hooks, although the first edition of 760 patrons has shown that they still need to meet a reasonable quality standard to be much use - a lot of it felt really phoned-in.  76 good, well thought out ones is more useful than 760 bad ones.

A book of several worlds that a Referee can plop down into a campaign. Complete with adventure hooks and interesting planetside sights.
This sort of thing is quite useful, although a significant amount of effort to do.  However, I think a small sandbox of a couple of subsectors with 20 or 30 well thought out and written up worlds would be quite useful as a low-prep setting.  Particularly if you had write-ups for factions, various sites drilled into in detail, and encounters, rumours, patrons etc. for all of the starports or other places your players might hang out.  Not a five minute job to do, but I think it would be a useful game aid.

[ . . . ]
Short adventures that a ref can run in case he hasn%u2019t prepped or if the players decinde to go off into left field.
And, in this day and age, you can make maybe a dozen or two such adventures, but skin them for various different worlds via electronic publishing as PDF.  In conjunction with the detailed sandbox above, you have a low-prep campaign pack for a busy referee with a job and 2.4 kids.  Add a few modules for specific campaign arcs - aimed at 6 months play each or so, then your sandbox becomes quite a useful low-prep-for-busy-refs product.

Now, this is quite a substantial body of work - it could easily run to half a dozen volumes - but it's quite high value.  The scale doesn't have to be the whole Imperium, just enough space to run a sandbox in.
« Last Edit: September 29, 2020, 11:16:34 AM by Nobby-W »
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