TNE:GreatExpedition

The Great Expedition: an adventure of exploration for Traveller: New Era.

In a fragile alliance of recovered worlds on the fringe of a once-massive human civilization, the flame is lit again.

Basic Description

Despite the massive destruction of interstellar war — secession, rebellion, and finally invasion by a truly alien intelligence — a few worlds have, slowly and carefully, taken to the stars again. The stories of how this came to be are long and various, but now the Dawn League, a coalition of a dozen worlds, exists, and has done so for a dozen years, despite threats from within and without.

Every world within two jumps of the League's space has been scanned and explored. The renewed industries of Aubaine's starport have begun to produce jump-3 drives for the first time since the Collapse. The League's nascent governing body has voted, and six ships will go out – to explore the silent worlds, to rekindle the flame, and to find news of the War. What happened to the Others, what happened to the Terran Unions, and what became of the Virus, the hybrid secret weapon that destroyed the organization of both species?

The dangers are many – sleeping ships from the old succession wars, pirates, dictators, savages, and behind it all the spectre of the Others, the machine intelligences left over from the War. But the rewards… are the stars.

Notes on Setting and Tone

This isn't exactly the canonical TNE setting, but rather inspired by it. Many names are the same, but details are changed, as is tone in some places. The Reformation Coalition is the Dawn League's government arm responsible for exploration and stellar expansion.

Drifter says, "Setting-wise, I'm going to play the Reformation Coalition as gritty cinematic, so expect coincidental meetings for contacts, etc. I hope to create a game with mixed moral areas, but I'm not into putting PC's into completely lose-lose situations. Feel free to put yourself there of course. Politics can have an effect in this game, so choose wisely. While this game will have an overarcing plotline, I still like to run a more sandboxy style… if for some reason you go sideways, I'll run with it. On the flipside, I'm big on consequences and the world keeps turning, so you'll see results from anything you do."

The Dawn League is the multiworld government, and the Reformation Coalition is akin to a (real-world) U.N. agency, responsible for exploration and stellar exploration. Drifter says, "I know some of the RefCol stuff reads a bit gung ho, but I think that's the point, that the PCs actually end up questioning their own roles."

The Virus was the result of an interstellar war black weapon snafu against a cybernetic intelligence. In a way it worked, because the alien race is gone – it was an easy victim to the Virus. Humans fared somewhat better; their entire society collapsed under a wave of insane Virus spreading through the jump lanes.

To keep it simple, all the worlds in the two subsectors of the Dawn League are (more or less) as per the book. Anything beyond that is open to change; Drifter imagines a much sparser area of space, with significant areas of rift.

Helpful Links

• The BARD pages for background information: http://www.downport.com/bard

Character Generation

General Concept

PCs will be members of a "pathfinder" team, exploring ahead of the mothership, running errands, checking up on the other scouts, and generally doing PC-like things.

They are all from the first formal class of the Dawn League Academy, one of 16,000 chosen from across the League to build a true interstellar Coalition, training with the League's top scientists, technicians, revived cold sleep survivors from the old Imperial states, and the odd anagathic survivor from the old days. For four years, you learned as you worked, combined theory with practice, and helped put into place the upgraded starports and orbital defenses needed to protect League worlds. There is a 4% death rate.

The graduates of the year 1201 all put their names in for crew positions on the first six ships to go out "Beyond the League." For the 139 that made the list, it was a dream come true. For the rest, it was back to building infrastructure, manning patrol vessels, and recovering old resources. Except for a few… who got caught up in something else.

Guidelines

• Movers and shakers. PCs should be big damn heroes, even if it's in a quiet way. While it's fun to play a noble/drifter in the standard setting, these characters need to stand out to be on one of these ships.
• Best of the best. A rank 4 in a skill is considered brilliant. Have one. Or two at 3. In a skill useful to the game would be even better.
• Contacts. These will be vital, especially high-ranking ones. The Dawn League is still a small organization, and being in on the ground floor means friends in the right places.
• PC choices influence ship choices. If you're a fighter jock, there'll be at least one fighter. If you're a merchant, there'll be a trade envoy and cargo space. We'll use something like Rank to determine influence. Ship shares will represent 1 MCr per share; the actual ship will represent 10% of its book value in MCr.

Characters should be from within the Dawn League, though Drifter is open to one or two adopted outworlders, corpsicles, or aliens.

The Rules

• Characters start with attributes of 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, and 4, placed anywhere you like (Strength, Agility, Constitution, Intelligence, Education, Charisma).
• Roll 1d6, add the result to your stats anywhere you like, to a maximum of 11 in any single stat. Note the amount less than 6 that was rolled — this number will generate bonuses after character generation.
• Roll Social Status on 2d6, no modifiers.
• Follow the TNE career paths as usual, with the following house rules:
  • Any career gives a minimum of 7 points of skills in its first term; if the career lacks that many, add more points until you reach 7.
  • In every term after the first in the same career, you may choose to add [number of terms in career] skill points to any skill previously learned in the career. This simulates specialized career choices.
  • Each term, use the Events tables from Mongoose Traveller, adapting as necessary to the system. For injury results, use the Mishaps table, but character generation is not necessarily ended.
• The last term for every character will be the Dawn League Technical Academy, "where they separate the men from the goats."

Transfer of rank into the RefCol is automatic if you were from a recognized memberworld.

Rules Information

House Rules

• ChalkLine has requested use of a rule where firearms use STR or AGL, instead of simply STR, on the reasoning that the latter drives him bonkers.

Player Characters

Drifter: GM

Drifter is our erstwhile GM.

The Ship

GaoGaiGar suggests for the ship:

A TL12 400-ton Victrix-class Multi-Mission Sloop.

• Jump-3 (some later upgraded to Jump-4 with relic powerplants and drives).
• 4Gs acceleration.
• Crew: 12.
• 40-ton multi-mission pod. Either for:
  • A pod specific to the PC team.
  • A general-purpose "exploration pod", with a vehicle, cargo space, and perhaps a lab. The mothership carries things like a troop carrier pod, missile pod, etc., should a multi-ship combat operation be needed.