The Ancient Faith is the Orthodox faith, which will endure as long as mankind endures. The Far Future is the Classic Traveller role playing system, and the game universe which I've created. This blog is where those two come together.
Today the Orthodox Church across the world celebrates Great and Holy Pascha, the Feast of Feasts, the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. To Him be Glory Forever!
Let God arise, let his enemies be scattered; let those who hate him flee from before his face! As smoke vanishes, so let them vanish; as wax melts before the fire,So the sinners will perish before the face of God; but let the righteous be glad.This is the day which the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it! Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death,and on those in the grave bestowing life!
May the Blessing of God Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit be with you always. For those who will, I share here a link to the famous Paschal Homily of St. John Chrysostom. And if the Lord tarry until we reach the stars, then we will celebrate Pascha in the Far Future.
Not long into my current Traveller campaign, I concluded that there wasn’t enough sci-fi "stuff" in it. It seemed too generic. All the standard technology is very familiar to me. None of it evokes a sense of wonder or the fantastic. I sensed the same from the players. I try to describe the setting and especially the not-earth-like-at-all planets they visit; to give that sense of being in another place, another time. Mind you, they've not complained; it was me who wanted to give it more, to give them a "Wow!" moment or experience. One session I explained to the players the concept of Tech Level Change Factor (TLCF) and making gradual improvements to devices. They then had a fun time for most of that session designing and purchasing upgraded weapons on a TL-12 planet. One player now has a very dangerous boarding axe (halberd) which doubles as a cutting torch! I explain some of the TLCF here.
The Tales to Astound blog also talks about the lack of sci-fi in Traveller, as leaving it up to the referee to add in whatever bits of fun tech goodies will make the game more exciting for the players.
I felt the need to remedy this situation. While they were exploring a space station parked way out in the outer reaches of a system, I decided to give them a fun surprise:
I spent some time
reading through the introductory material in The Traveller Book, and
I found not an explicit pattern, but many indicators that High Level
Play was anticipated, maybe even intended.
The introduction
section gives lots of hints, starting with the mention of "star
spanning empires, huge star fleets, Larger-Than-Life heroes". (emphasis mine)
And
how about this?
“Traveller is
open-ended, which means that there are no set conditions for winning.
Each player sets his or her own goal, and has a lifetime (in game
terms) to achieve it. Traveller can continue for as long as the
referee and the players desire. Like the universe, Traveller has
no limits.”
“The characters
have an opportunity to undertake genuine adventures as they search
for their own self appointed goals.”
"The typical methods used in life by 20th
century Terrans (thrift, dedication, and hard work) do not work in Traveller;
instead, travellers must boldly plan and execute daring schemes for
the acquisition of wealth and power."
The expectation,
then, is that players will have goals beyond the wishes of their
current patron, or the referee.
I have not played any of the versions of that other RPG from the 1970's, where they re-named the Thief class to the Rogue class. Why, I wonder, did GDW feel it was necessary to use the vague and dissembling nomenclature 'Rogue' when 'Criminal' would have been more accurate? Or would it have been?
Something shady is going on here.
The text description of the Rogues reads as follows: "Criminal elements familiar with the rougher or more illegal methods of accomplishing tasks." I guess it would be more accurate, then. But wait. The word rogue is defined as: 1) a vagrant or tramp, 2: a dishonest or worthless person, a scoundrel. There are a few more connotations, but none are specifically criminal in nature. So, many Traveller PCs could be characterized as Rogues, regardless of what career they went through.
Let
us speak truth, a great many Traveller PCs from back in the day were
essentially criminals regardless of their chosen background career. They
were smugglers, bandits, thieves, hired guns, burglars, and so on. Why
the need for a separate career to breed them? Most player, myself
included assumed that if you wanted a criminal PC, you went with the
Other service. So this ground has been covered already. Most of the skills the Rogues career offers (discussed later) are not specifically criminal, and with the random skill allocation process, there's no guarantee a PC will come away with a criminal CV. The free Service Skill is Streetwise, not a necessarily criminal skill. This would have been the time to introduce some new skills for the criminal class, but Supp4 does not do this.
Later editions of Traveller introduced more criminal skills like Intrusion or Lockpicking. I suggested elsewhere that espionage activities (criminals on a payroll) could be handled with Basic skills and attributes. That way any PC could try their hand at clandestine activity
I actually have the chronology backwards. Supplement 4: Citizens of the Imperium, in which the Rogue career made its appearance, was first published in 1979. This is several years before that other game made the change. So why did they go along with GDW?
Now I've got the Trio: Light, Pocket Light and Faster than Light!
Three versions
The good folks at Stellagama Publishing have provided me with physical copies of all three versions of their streamlined Cepheus Engine rules. I gave CL & CL:PE to my boys, and they've begun building their own worlds, characters creatures and adventures.
FTL in Traveller takes one week, more or less, whenever you want to go from one star system to another. Whether it's a wimpy Jump-1 or a once in a lifefime Jump-6, the time to get there is still 168 hours +/- a bit. Many of Traveller's literary antecedents (most notably to my mind is H. Beam Piper's Terro-human future history) depicted interstellar travel as taking a long time. For fans of more modern SF media, this can seem odd. In other SF settings, FTL travel is accomplished instantly. Now, in visual media (Trek/Wars) this is necessary to not drag down the flow of the plot. Rogue One would not have worked if Traveller's jump drive limitations were in effect. The plot required everything to move quickly. That's fine, and it is not for me to say that one method is better/worse than another.
A Youtube character known as the Complex Games Apologist has a number of videos discussing Traveller in different aspects. Here's the CGA explaining the setting implications of the way FTL works in Traveller.
Faster Than Light
The rules of a game build its setting.
Many folks over the decades have noted that "speed of travel is speed of communication" defines the setting of Traveller, whether the OTU or an alternate like my Church & Empire setting. Decentralized governments and local control are the accepted methods when it takes weeks to get reports to and from the borders. It is also this reason that I've focused on the Corridor, a region removed from the Talaveran Empire, but still one where Imperial influence can be felt. PCs have a greater latitude for independent action when the Imperial bureaucracy is too far away to directly monitor everything. If you want to change the rules of FTL to make it more what you want, that's fine, but remember that you will have to redesign the setting as well, to reflect the internal reality of that setting. 'Fast' FTL will mean more direct control from the home office, as information can be transferred in hours rather than weeks. This in turn means less agency for the players, as their PCs who do sneaky things will be fretting about news of their doings getting back to the Government, which will probably try to stop them.
