[LFP] 3-5 Reliable, Mature Players for Mongoose Traveller 2e Campaign

[PhilAdams]

No worries about the rules to start. I have the Traveller 2e FG ruleset, so that should (hopefully) be available to players when connected.

[Amatiste]

I wasn't clear, should we make characters before or during session 0

[PhilAdams]

Oh! My bad. My preference is to do character gen during Session 0. That said, there's nothing to prevent you from having one or more PCs ready to build (copy from character sheet into Fantasy Grounds). Plus, Session 0 will be more than just mechanical character gen. I want to have character backgrounds, relationships, etc.

So, feel free to build 1 or more PCs ahead of time. Session 0 will be that and more with the players.

Question answered?

[Amatiste]

Yes sir! I will work on some ideas.

[PhilAdams]

Awesome! Thanks!

[Nephron]

The session 0 stuff that would be of interest to me would be some context to figure out what kind of character fits.

Is the speed of communication, or more specifically the lack of it, going to be a significant element? Having a minimum of a two week lag in command and control simply isn't something that has existed since the age of sail, and that very loose leash had significant implications back then and is totally alien today. Doing a thing was 9/10ths of policy when it took weeks or months for a centralized command and control to get a word in edgewise on events, so a single sailing ship weeks or months from London had more actual power to shape outcomes than a modern carrier group commander operating never more than one phone call away from any desk in the Pentagon.

How significant will G-forces be? Are we looking at something like The Expanse where the ability of the ship and crew to endure high G-forces will be a significant plot factor, or will it be like Star Trek where that is hand waved away with anti-gravity?

What is expected in terms of the planets in other solar systems? Is the expectation rocky planets like Mars and gas giant moons where vacc suits are the norm? Or is the expectation alien biospheres with cloth uniforms and breathable atmosphere?

The background material made it sound like none of the other colony ships had setup colonies and are only just landing or are about to. So is the level of development is very low outside the Solar System?

Multiple earth power blocs were outlined. Is the idea that this will be similar to The Expanse where the rules of the game just changed and sparks are going to fly as the various factions collide? Or is the status quo mostly going to be maintained and it will be more of a cold war situation?

[PhilAdams]

Great questions, some of which is already baked into the Session 0 (S0).

To answer some:

The expectation of the Wednesday night campaign is that the group will operate with significant independence and be expected to make decisions without awaiting guidance. That's the X Boat limitation of the setting (no ansible).

Traveller has artificial gravity as a default, so it's closer to Star Wars/Star Trek in that regard.

The star sector map is based on Near Space, a product that's based on real understanding of stars/systems as of a couple years ago. That doesn't mean we'll be doing a pure hard SF story. Hardly. It does mean we won't be using the massive sprawl of the Third Imperium. You won't have a Star Wars/Star Trek sort of massive stellar empire to contend with. There will be planets that are harder on people and some that aren't.

The timeline doesn't run right up to current. That said, there are no colonies that consist of massive sprawls of multiple metropolitan areas. The more advanced are a core city + other settlements that could be considered starter cities, so, yes, pretty low levels of colonization.

On the various power blocs, that's left to be seen in play.

From a mechanics perspective, I think the characters should be built to be competent and capable. In theory, they should be on the edge of exceptional. The reasons for that will be obvious fairly quickly.

[Quinn]

I just binge-watched The Expanse over the holidays. I hadn't seen it since first season on SyFy. It is by far the most realistic approach I've seen to what I expect reality would be in that situation, and by far the closest to what I've always felt Traveller would be. Between The Expanse and Firefly, I don't have to imagine Traveller.

[Nephron]

Yeah, just binge watched it over the holidays too. My understanding is that the books are actually based on an RPG campaign (supposedly when one of the main characters takes a random railgun shot to the head out of nowhere in season one, it was because that player had dropped out of the campaign).

[damned]

The session 0 stuff that would be of interest to me would be some context to figure out what kind of character fits.

Is the speed of communication, or more specifically the lack of it, going to be a significant element? Having a minimum of a two week lag in command and control simply isn't something that has existed since the age of sail, and that very loose leash had significant implications back then and is totally alien today. Doing a thing was 9/10ths of policy when it took weeks or months for a centralized command and control to get a word in edgewise on events, so a single sailing ship weeks or months from London had more actual power to shape outcomes than a modern carrier group commander operating never more than one phone call away from any desk in the Pentagon.

How significant will G-forces be? Are we looking at something like The Expanse where the ability of the ship and crew to endure high G-forces will be a significant plot factor, or will it be like Star Trek where that is hand waved away with anti-gravity?

What is expected in terms of the planets in other solar systems? Is the expectation rocky planets like Mars and gas giant moons where vacc suits are the norm? Or is the expectation alien biospheres with cloth uniforms and breathable atmosphere?

The background material made it sound like none of the other colony ships had setup colonies and are only just landing or are about to. So is the level of development is very low outside the Solar System?

Multiple earth power blocs were outlined. Is the idea that this will be similar to The Expanse where the rules of the game just changed and sparks are going to fly as the various factions collide? Or is the status quo mostly going to be maintained and it will be more of a cold war situation?

I thought about this post several times today while watching the new Star Wars movie