Flailsnails Traveller

Here are some ideas I have been kicking about for a while, that may well not work but could be worth trying.

Lots of fun has been had over on G+ with hangout based games of D&D and near D&D, with players with characters made up in any number of different systems dropping in and out of various GMs games more or less on a whim, GMs linking different campaign worlds, running games in other people's homebrew settings, all kinds of unholy inter-game miscegenation and perversity.

While there have been some Traveller games run, there hasn't been the same buzz. The closest thing to it has been Jez Gordon's Star Wars game, with ever changing parties drawn from a moderate sized group of characters.

Traveller ought to be ideal for the Flailsnail style of play – PCs are space bums, liable to turn up on any planet anywhere (any GMs pet planet/subsector) and dive into the first outrageously daft money making scheme dangled in front of their snotty noses by a patron (whatever evil scheme the GM has up his sleeve for this session).

But things have got a bit chaotic in the Flailsnails looniverse – I have to say I roll my eyes whenever a mutant race/sub-class undead amphibiod PC whips out a ray gun these days.So rather than colliding universes, how about a loose-ish collaborative meta-setting thingy in which a GM can concoct some pretty outlandish planets and scenarios, but which maintains some internal coherence and puts some limits on the crazy? If it takes off a wiki will have to be organised to collect the bumph, but I'll worry about that later

Known Space 2312AD

Tech level maximum 12

Guns and lasers, no (or very, very few) twerps turning up in power armour with a plasma cannon and wasting everything in sight.

No Psionics

State of play with spooky powers is as it is today, the province of a lunatic fringe, charlatans and conspiracy nuts. Doesn't happen, won't work, and if your cousin's brother-in-law's mate's sister reckoned she saw some twit levitating on Epsilon 5 it was because she was high as a kite on Cake (THE party drug of the 24^th century). Of course if the GM wants to deploy them then that's just fine, as long as they are in the hands of some drastically alien villain NPC, but see below...

No Aliens

The human race has bimbled across a good couple of thousand cubic parsecs of the galaxy and has found some alien ecosystems with suitably oddball animals, but no actual intelligent alien civilisations. There's arguments as to whether species A is actually intelligent, and whether humans would recognise an alien civilisation if they saw it. But no blokes in furry suits and bandoliers making bear noises, no people in fake tan with corrugated heads, humanity it appears is alone. Of course there almost certainly will be alien civilisations out there someplace we just haven't met them yet.

As with psionics, aliens should be something truly spooky and out of this world, and first contact fraught with strangeness and unguessable hazards and complications, not something you meet by the zooload down at the local bar.

Limited Cybernetics

Not that many people have managed to successfully stick silicon into themselves in Known Space and most of those only did it to replace genuinely injured and damaged parts of the body. I have no idea of how real science is really doing at splicing electronics onto nerves, but in the Known Space setting it's dubious and unreliable and the people that do it are regarded as a bit wrong in the head and to have eaten too much Cake.

Anarchy!
Human beings in the 24^th century are no better organised than humans now. World governments? Only on worlds of a million or fewer people of the same general origin, otherwise there is bound to be several rival statelets, factions, commercial exploitation enterprises etc.

When the human race made jump drive work every country on Earth launched colonisation missions, mostly grabbing land on the same few vaguely inhabitable planets. Then it got cheap enough for corporations to have a go, then every separatist, religious, extremist, utopian, libertarian, authoritarian and otherwise misunderstood gang of loons leapfrogged the lot and plunged into the void looking for a place to set up their dream society away from anyone else. Some worked, some didn't. Any world in known space could have any kind of society on it, usually several, and usually at loggerheads with each other, if not actual war.

Genuine interstellar wars have been few and far between, but plenty of Earth states and alliances and the more established and populous off-world colonies are geared up with space navies. With Known Space so vast and sparsely populated and so many colonies having hostile planetbound rivals to fend off there hasn't been much call for them as yet.

A world of your own

When a player generates a PC he generates a home nation and sketches in a planet for that PC too, all of which will become setting canon, to be drawn on by any later GM or player if they so wish.

Earth

In 2300AD Earth is still the centre of the human universe, and I have no better idea than the next man as to what is likely to have happened to it in the next couple of hundred years. Players and GMs will be free to make up whatever stuff they like about the history of their own nation or district, and how this affects Known Space at large.

Rules

I only know Classic 1ed Traveller and Mongoose, but any Traveller ruleset should in theory be permissible, and if reliable conversions from other sci-fi systems can be made then lets use them.

House rules for world generation

As per the Mongoose Traveller/Classic Traveller rules with the following exceptions:

Starport roll is at -1, -2 for pop 6, -3 for pop 5, -4 for pop 4 or less. Refers to the biggest atarport on the planet, often multiples exist.

Population is maxed at 8 for everywhere except Earth. Colonies simply haven't been there long enough to get that big.

Population is still rolled on 2d6-2, with -1 for size 0-2 or A+, -1 for atmosphere not 5,6 or 8, +1 if it is 5,6 or 8. An additional -1 is levied per 5 full parsecs away from Earth – the frontiers are sparsely inhabited.

Government stat refers to the number of different governments, what type they are is up to the GM.

Number of 'states' table

Population	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8
D6 roll
1	1	1	1	1	1	1	2	1d3+1
2	1	1	1	1	1	1d3+1	1d3+1	1d6+1
3	1	1	1	1	1d3+1	1d6+1	1d6+1	2d4
4	1	1	1	1d3+1	1d4+1	1d6+1	2d4	3d3
5	1	1	2	1d4+1	1d6+1	2d4	2d4	3d4
6	1	2	1d3+1	1d6+1	2d4	2d6	2d4	3d4

For the proportion controlled by each state roll 1d10 for each state and divvy up the population accordingly. Eg Ares has a population of 3 000 000 and 5 states. Rolls are 1, 5, 6, 10 and 10. State 1 has 1/32 of the population = 93 750, state 2 has 5/32 = 468 750 and so on.

Law level refers to the largest state on the planet and is based on population, not govt type.

Tech level always has a +2 and a maximum of 12.

3D Mapping

IMO the main reason Traveller maps are the way they are is the A5 format of the original LBBs and lack of space in them. 3D subsector maps won't make a huge difference to the game, but I like them for atmosphere's sake and they are honestly not difficult to do, as I will show in a future post.

A planet to start on

Epsilon C 643 643 A

Epsilon is a moderately sized rather cold world, with massive ice caps reaching down into the tropics and a water sea surrounding its equator bordered by inhabitable land and with a few islands. It has a primitive ecosystem, algae and bacterial sludge in the oceans with a few multicellular sponge and graptolite-like creatures, and a few hardy liverwort-cum-lichenoids on land. Humans have mucked about with this quite extensively in many areas, but the air remains low in oxygen, low in CO2 and high in SO2 and thin as the high Andes even at sea level.

Epsilon has a population of 7 000 000 and four rival colonies, Neuland, New Canaan, Adelbert PLC and the Cyber-Raj (relative sizes 8, 7, 2 and 3)

Neuland (the Bakhuninite Extents)

Leftist Euro-anarchists with a participatory democracy (Govt Type 4, Law level 3, TL 10) and a bit of a fetish about computers and software (TL 12 electronics available), often called 'the Bakhuninite Extents' or 'Sodom and Gomorrah' by the New Canaanites. One of the few places you can get cyberware, but it is expensive. Everyone is an eternal student plugging into online university courses, only local currency is used (Roks) and handcrafted goods are sold offworld at premium prices. Main exports; subversive MMORPGs, expertly pirated media and software, freelance 'creatives', punk rock bands, designer drugs and financial brigands who use corporate buyouts to break up other states economies to keep their own ramshackle system going.

New Canaan

Dominated by fundamentalist Christian religious nuts, theoretically an extra planetary territory of the US. Govt Type 13, Law level 8, except for guns, TL 8, but with plenty of higher tech imports. Everyone is required to be armed and all males required to put time into the national guard. Plenty of small farming communities defecting to the Neulanders as they like the libertarianism and lack of interference by pontificating religious busybodies. Government is a not very representative democracy (only true believers may vote and only pastors can stand for office) and is heavily influenced by the corporation running the only viable industry, dredging biological gunge off the sea floor and turning it into oil. Exports are petrochemicals, a little bit of farm produce and missionaries. Many people hate the Neulanders and claim they are 'squatters' on New Canaan territory and limbs of Satan to boot, while corporate contractors and bored US colonial marines love going there to have some un-Biblical fun on their days off.

Adelbert PLC (the Napoleonic Tendency)

A corporate state within Neuland, citizen/employees have traded in a lot of democracy for stability and protection. Govt Type 3, Law Level 5 (within their own installations and when protecting their own people), TL 10. Often called 'the Napoleonic Tendency' by Neulanders, and has a constantly rotating citizenship as people fall out with the petty bureaucracy and snotty Francophone bosses and leave, or get equally pissed off by the uncertainty of self-employment, temporary workers coops and outright violence of some bits of Neuland. With tensions rising with the New Canaanites many feel being part of something with a proper army would be a good idea, not trusting the bolshie survivalist eco-terrorists who 'defend' Neuland by picking fights with the Christian Militia and blowing up oil installations. Adelbert's execs are trying to get recognition as an EU member state. Mainly involved in mining, but also food production and manufacturing.

The Cyber-Raj (the Principality of Silikanbagh)

The oldest colony on Epsilon, the Cyber-Raj occupies an equatorial island where the eccentric CEO of an Indian cybernetics firm has created a Hindu Bollywood version of North Korea with robot peasants and computerised Brahmins. Govt Type 10, Law Level 11, TL who knows? Have extensively mucked about with the environment, and have a forest they claim is stiff with cloned Bengal tigers who will eat intruders. Export only foodstuffs, including tea and spices, their robot technology while obviously advanced is a secret. Very few people go in or out. What are they building in there?

So what is your planet like?