Near Future Campaigns?

[tkdco2]

Has anyone tried to run a Traveller game set in the near future (around 50-100 years from now)? I have a near future hard SF campaign I wrote years ago, which I was planning to run using HERO or GURPS. But I'm curious if Traveller would work well as a game system for my campaign.

[Red Baron]

According to current estimates:

In 50 years we will have ai capable of teaching itself and creating stronger ai

If we started creating greenhouse process on mars now, it could be livable warm and have an atmosphere capable of supporting plant life in 100 years.

According to the doomsday theory (some basic statistics math), we have a 95% chance of going extinct in the next 1200 years.

[tkdco2]

AI doesn't play a big part in my campaign. But Martian colonies do. There is a terraforming project going on, although there is a faction that wants to keep Mars as is. And then there's the colony that turned to cannibalism when their food supply ran low.

[foxroe]

Stretch it out to ~300 years from now and you'd be playing Traveller:2300.

I've toyed with the idea in the past. It would be a simple matter to use just the core three booklets and ignore jump drives. I'd rule out anti-grav too, and give over a percentage of ship tonnage to artificial gravity generation (centripital rotation, acceleration/deceleration to target, etc.)

[makofan]

I set up such a campaign once, but never could interest anyone to play it (this was back in the hearly 80's). All my friends wanted TL 15+ stuff

[tkdco2]

I had originally thought about the Traveller 2300 game, since I was going to use that as my setting. I find the system a bit more clunky, however. Instead of the Stutterwarp, I was going to use the Alcubierre Drive. Then when I decided to go hard SF, I decided it wasn't feasible to have it in a near-future campaign, so I limited the setting to the solar system.

My original inspirations: New Battlestar Galactica, Firefly, Cowboy Bebop. I have kept most of the elements I liked: no aliens, ballistic weapons instead of beams (spacecraft use railguns as their main batteries). I started working on this in 2005, so I based my campaign on a lot of predictions/estimates in technology and current events. Some of them are still on track; others have changed. Of course, I have chosen some developments in technology and ignored others in order to fit my campaign.

[tec97]

Personally, I'd be all over using HERO for a game like this...

[tkdco2]

I originally wrote it up for HERO and posted my ideas on the HERO boards years ago. But my players aren't fans of the system, unless it's a superhero campaign, which I'm not interested in doing.

If you're interested in more info on my campaign, see this link. I may have to update it sometimes, as old threads can be hard to find on the HERO boards.

[tec97]

Nov 4, 2014 18:56:47 GMT -6 tkdco2 said:

But my players aren't fans of the system, unless it's a superhero campaign, which I'm not interested in doing.

This is something of a head-scratcher for me. I think HERO is second-to-none for the superhero genre, but I think it does amazingly well for modern, pulp, and sci-fi - back in the late 80's/early 90's, I think I developed a pretty awesome version of Mechwarrior based on it. They only thing I'm really not a fan of it for is fantasy. That said, I'm pretty well embedded in HERO System circa 1982, and refuse to even look at the 5th, nevermind 6th generations of the game.

[tec97]

tkdco2 - Holy Smokes! I just noticed your HERO Board thread is from 2007 - that's a long time to have had this idea banging around your skull!

[tkdco2]

It's a work in progress. I have played out the space combat using Starmada Compendium and some of the land battles using FUBAR or Force on Force. The rpg aspect has seen very little play, and that was a one-shot using GURPS Lite.

Thing is, when I design a setting, I want to be able to run it with as many systems as possible. So my SF game can be played with HERO or GURPS, and hopefully Traveller.

I did use the Traveller system for a couple of skirmishes. I also used it for another one-shot adventure, but it was more sword & planet pulp SF.

As for HERO, I use either 4th or 5th edition. I have used it for fantasy, although my setting doesn't have magic; just kung fu and swashbuckling swordplay. Think of it as the Three Musketeers mixed with Enter the Dragon. I also wrote up some rules for a Highlander campaign.

[sulldawga]

Check out a game called Parsec. It's basically set in the same time period you're looking at.

You could use the setting with another set of rules as well.

[tkdco2]

Thanks for the recommendation, sulldawga. GURPS is another rules option, although I'd use 3rd edition (which I have) instead of 4th.

[tkdco2]

Since I'm thinking of self-publishing my campaign, here are a couple of short stories set in my universe. I posted these on another forum. I hope you enjoy them.

My fiction thread