Comments for Halfway Station

Comment on Free Traders Setup Part 8: Kiev by andyslack

andyslack — Sat, 18 May 2013 07:28:59 +0000

Just so, my very thought.

Comment on Free Traders Setup Part 8: Kiev by andyslack

andyslack — Sat, 18 May 2013 07:28:32 +0000

Colour me “excited”!

Comment on Free Traders Setup Part 8: Kiev by thetailrace

thetailrace — Fri, 17 May 2013 21:18:30 +0000

I think you mentioned in an earlier Free Traders post that the Farside route linked systems that were out of range of regular stardrives. Perhaps you could have a number of systems that could host slightly reworked scenarios clustered about each portal.

Comment on Free Traders Setup Part 8: Kiev by Kevin Crawford

Kevin Crawford — Fri, 17 May 2013 19:31:27 +0000

I really need to get you an advance copy of Suns of Gold. This thing you’re doing here is precisely the sort of campaign it’s supposed to be useful for.

Comment on End Game by andyslack

andyslack — Thu, 16 May 2013 18:35:08 +0000

“…and we will call it… this landing.”

Comment on End Game by finbikkifin

finbikkifin — Thu, 16 May 2013 10:40:18 +0000

Of course, he could do that with Pilot-4, but with Pilot-5 he could come up with a good reply to the worried NPC.

At Pilot-6. he could simultaneously explain exactly how he was performing the landing. With puppets, or toy dinosaurs.

Comment on End Game by thetailrace

thetailrace — Thu, 16 May 2013 09:50:41 +0000

I recall playing a Scout (of course) in the Traveller 4 milieu 0. He had ended up with Pilot-5. A situation arose when one of our options was to land an unstreamlined subsidized liner that had misjumped to a world with an atmosphere but no starport. A Npc asked my character how good a pilot he was. I replied that ‘I am the best starship pilot you will ever meet and I am good enough for this course of action to succeed rather than being a death sentence’.

Comment on End Game by andyslack

andyslack — Wed, 15 May 2013 22:02:36 +0000

That was explained right at the start of the Experience chapter, I just didn’t get it when I was a 20-something D&D player. It said:

“As characters travel through the universe, they already know their basic physical and mental parameters; their basic education and physical development have already occurred, and further improvement can only happen by dedicated endeavour. The experience which is gained as the individual character travels and adventures is, in a very real sense, an increased ability to play the role which he has assumed.” – Traveller, Book 2.

It was right there in front of me the whole time, I just didn’t get it. In Classic Traveller, the character doesn’t improve; the player gets better at playing him.

Comment on End Game by David

David — Wed, 15 May 2013 20:50:34 +0000

Given default Skill-0 in most other areas for CT characters, one begins to see why the whole “leveling up” thing was relatively unimportant. CT characters were meant to go out and explore strange new worlds and get filthy rich in spec trading, not worry about getting their Pistol-1 skill to Pistol-2.

If you look at the novels that were the reading matter behind Traveller – H. Beam Piper, Doc Smith, Niven and Pornelle, Norton, E.C. Tubb, Poul Anderson – the characters were problem solvers and explorers. Tangible rewards are, at best, of secondary concern.

Comment on What CT ‘77 Got Right by andyslack

andyslack — Tue, 14 May 2013 19:46:19 +0000

Nicely argued; I believe the intelligence community refers to this as “the jigsaw effect”. For the CT-77 subsector, with no empires and some sort of postal authority type scheme tying together the scout bases on different planets, the debate also includes “Do we learn more from their scouts landing here to refuel than they do?”

Of course, there is no reason why the scouts have to be a government service; think of the trade pioneers from Poul Anderson’s Van Rijn stories, or Murray Leinster’s Med Ship and the “scouts” disseminating medical knowledge for altruistic reasons.