On 3/7/22 07:11, Rupert Boleyn - rupert.boleyn at gmail.com (via tml
list) wrote:
>
>
> On 03Jul2022 0744, Alex Goodwin - alex.goodwin at multitel.com.au (via
> tml list) wrote:
>> Evening all,
>>
>> After Parental Advisory died in an in-game fireball nearly six months
>> ago now, I'm starting to get an itch to run Traveller again.
>>
>> I've got a few ideas, and figured would ask the Learned Members (yes,
>> Collision, that means you as well) for feedback and advice.

Learned Members, thank you for your feedback.  The very effort of
rubberducking (my original email), your combined counsel, and me ending
up in a twilight zone has helped me resolve most of my queries.

Short and long of it - I can just about have my cake, and eat it.

For the ZS renegades, I'll run chargen-modulo-aging (somehow - maybe
port MT aging and have players also keep track of original attributes,
for when I re-run aging in G4) in MGT2, then hand-convert the raw
characters into G4.  No psi, though - Badass Badass-Moustache and Old
Joe well and truly overdrew _that_ account.

Riding the Shockwave will take my concerns about untrained psi fading
with age, and verily chuck them out the nearest airlock. That will need
a template + psi lens approach.

Maghiz Avoided(?) is, I judge, the least likely to come off with my mob,
but if it does, I'll do the generate-and-port approach.

My previous error running GT with this mob was _not constraining GURPS'
potentially-paralysing breadth of choice_.  Having done a lot of
programming, I found that breadth of choice a _feature_, not a _bug_. 
My mob, not so much.

<snip>

>
>>
>> TNE/T4/T20 - Don't know much about it.
> I love TNE, but it's a very different system. Chargen still uses
> terms, etc., but they give far more control to the player. Spaceships
> require fuel to manoeuvre in normal space as well as to jump, which
> has the possibly unfortunate effect that most ships carry enough fuel
> for several jumps between refuellings if they're careful about their
> normal space fuel consumption. If they're not, well... oooops.
>
> TNE's *World Tamer's Handbook* also has stuff on system and world
> surveying (and is available for online purchase), but doesn't discuss
> out-of-system long range survey at all, and has a focus on planetary
> surveying with an eye to colonisation.
I adapted GT: First In _anyway_ for the final chapter of Parental
Advisory.  If that happens again, out it comes holus-bolus.
>>
>> GT/GT:ISW, through its parent systems, scratch my itches for
>> consistency, character development, etc.  However, one thing notably
>> lacking which powered _a lot_ of Parental Advisory was a lifepath.
> It's the thing I miss most when using GURPS to do Traveller.
I've resolved my concerns about it as far as I can, above.
>>
>> Best idea I have to fix that is to knock off MGT2's lifepath, and
>> beat the stuffing out of the character conversion notes in GT: 2e. 
>> However, concerns about point balance still have currency.
>>
>> Referring to Parental Advisory, it would be sheerest folly to expect
>> the raw recruit, Rhett Shird (age 26, blamed for causing IW2) to work
>> out to the same point value as Badass Badass-Moustache or Old Joe
>> (both psykers, Joe in his 70s, Badass-Moustache (I think) in his mid
>> 60s).
> Well, their objective power in MgT, CT, etc. would be wildly different
> as well. In play differing point values in GURPS don't matter that
> much as long as everyone has some skill or talent they can bring
> that's useful to the party - assuming that the players don't care
> about it. Note that learning new skills is fairly easy in GURPS, and
> stats influence skill level very strongly, and there's no built-in
> niche protection to stop a high-IQ engineer quickly also becoming the
> best at science, sensor ops, piloting, etc., so you need to be aware
> of this and have players that are in board with not trampling too hard
> on other PC's niches, especially if some of the characters are young
> and have limited skills - they need to be able to be the go-to guy in
> their niche or players will rapidly start wondering why that guy is
> even on the crew.
This has been bugging me - would Talents be usable for niche protection?
>
>>
>> <snip>
>>
>> Again, Learned Members, thoughts?
> The G4 psionics books weren't written for Traveller, so they'll need
> some hammering/evisceration to fit. If you want age-weakening, one way
> would be to rule that the later in life the character is when they get
> training, to lower the cap on levels (or points) that can be put into
> a power is. I'd leave psi skills uncapped by age, so an old character
> might be limited in raw power, but with sufficient effort they can be
> just as effective within that power limit as anyone else.
>
GT:ISW handles this somewhat - I suspect I'll have to adapt that when I
bolt in more esoteric powers.

Alex

--