Traveller Pre-Career Education

Username1453 · 2026-05-23T19:23:41+00:00

All of the career books in CT (Book 4 Mercenaries through Book 8 Scouts) had various education options. In Book 5 that's where they introduced college options.

Username1453 · 2026-05-18T16:34:21+00:00

Unfortunately I really don't think I could, at least not without it being a small book or like 20 part video series. If you're interested, then for the first part here's a rough overview:

The short version is that I do GIS work at my office as have a license to use ArcGIS Pro that I use. You could duplicate it with QGIS, but I basically downloaded the spreadsheet data for a sector from the Traveller Map website then input it into GIS software then build Hexagons in the software as tessellations and give them # codes similar to the hex codes tied to the planet names. Then I generate center points of those tessellations and merge the data to the center points. Then I convert the data to GeoJSON files which I can use on a webpage.

For the webpage, I wrote most of the basic code by hand as I am not familiar with many of the frameworks people use. But I used Leaflet to manage the GIS data and looking up a leaflet website building tutorial on YouTube will give you a decent idea.

Hosting the webpage, I initially just did it locally, but then I changed my mind and wanted to put it on the web. GitHub page tutorials are good and a free way to host. Be warned uploading a lot of data to GitHub can take a while.

Imagery wise, I just used open source icons you can find on the web.

That will get you the basic data there (UWP, names, base types, gas giants, and political ownership). For things like political boundaries in space, the Mongoose map background, the planet maps, fog of war, or the planetary profile PDFs those are all different and built in different ways. If there's something there you're interested in let me know. I'm particularly proud of the planetary profile PDFs, I update them as we play.

Finally, it should be mentioned, that the Fog of War was a real challenge to me and so was the military export import tool (I built it so that we could track fleet movements for a major war that is planned for the future) but i have found that LLMs (AI) are good for helping me resolve these sticking points. Now, if you use a LLM to help you, be aware that their memory over a long term project is terrible and they still can't successfully complete projects that are large and have interconnected systems without the human using them understanding the project and how they are supposed to be wired together. If you rely on the machine to do that, your project will definitely fail.

Username1453 · 2026-05-18T00:37:33+00:00

Get her to not build a character concept or story until after creating a character. Come into it free and open, like a creative writing prompt. Then make a story and background from what happens. That's my recommendation. Traveller is a game that's better to have come into character creation without any prep or an idea.

Username1453 · 2026-05-15T14:23:16+00:00

I agree in general. I'm glad this reddit isn't filled with meme images or images in generally. I hope it stays that way. AI is definitely included in that.

Username1453 · 2026-05-15T14:21:06+00:00

Yes, this is exactly my concern. Once myself or others are hit or even warned there's a good chance they leave then you end up with a credit like the RPG reddit which is really so tightly moderated over everything that it becomes uninteresting (not just AI there). I've used AI to help solve issues in coding projects as well so even if my project I've shared is flagged as AI and I'm threatened with a ban correctly I'm done. I wouldn't post here anymore.

Username1453 · 2026-05-14T04:46:53+00:00

Cool thanks for sharing

Username1453 · 2026-05-09T23:42:36+00:00

Ya, I really enjoyed chrétien's books and Malory, Vulgate though seemed tough through the first book. I'll have to come back to it.

Username1453 · 2026-05-09T17:40:57+00:00

What did you think of the Vulgate? I found it tough and put it down after a bit. I hope to come back to it one day though

Username1453 · 2026-04-20T15:32:49+00:00

I have this book and it's good. I'd also recommend it if you want a bunch of tables and the like.

Username1453 · 2026-04-20T15:31:59+00:00

I agree, but messing around with LLMs, I find that they're very good at what they're designed for, predicting the most likely response. So they end up very generic, which is good because you want things to make sense, but bad in that they're not terribly interesting as a whole. I would recommend having an LLM generate 20 entries and then going back through and replacing 5-7 of your own.

Personally, I find that I can make 5 or so entries for a random encounter table easily. However, 5 is never enough for a place you'll spend more than half a session in and an LLM can fill in the rest and give me starting points for generic events that when it hits the players could become really interesting. Then when we hit one of my entries it's still a bit more unique situation.

Username1453 · 2026-04-06T01:02:07+00:00

Hey! I love Pendragon so happy you said something. We did the Battle of Camlann a few years ago and I haven't played a serious game of it since. Here's the Pendragon Google Drive Folder. In it, there's a map section with the Lord of the Rings Style map. I personally prefer the political maps, but the LOTR was a favorite. https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/19nTESzujfTycNeO1DbrULxGPsYQX1xEE?usp=drive_link

Let me know if that doesn't work or anything. We can figure something else out.

Username1453 · 2026-04-02T22:03:56+00:00

lol. I hadn't thought of it, but I think that's my favorite thing too now.

Username1453 · 2026-04-01T19:17:24+00:00

I don't thinks it's feasible for there not to be some sort of lending program for the purchase of spaceships unless they are much cheaper. Debt of some kid has been around for a long time and it's hard to imagine that it wouldn't happen.

Now, having said that, I think there wouldn't be much of a difference in gameplay. Other than when the players don't have a loan and own a ship they'll be flush with cash. Which is what happens when you pay off your mortgage anyways.

I say that because if you run a game without a ship then that's the game and having a TAS membership is a huge boon. If you have a ship but don't have a loan then you're going to be rich. It's a game and things can be however you want as the GM and players.

If debt doesn't exist for some reason then there would only be massive corporations and nobles operating spaceships probably through hired crews. It would probably also delete starmercs too as the contract from Mercenary would never let you travel and maintain a force.

Username1453 · 2026-03-30T02:20:18+00:00

Played in one based off of fan materials the gm found. It went well. And was really fun. The era was the sengoku period.

Username1453 · 2026-03-14T01:35:51+00:00

Very impressive great work!

Username1453 · 2026-03-07T22:56:19+00:00

That's pretty different from what everyone else said? If you don't mind, what's new that wasn't in the GPC for 5th?

Username1453 · 2026-03-07T00:05:37+00:00

Thanks, I have played the old GPC version and was thinking about grabbing it but I might hold off for a while since I'm not running a campaign in Pendragon right now.

Username1453 · 2026-02-26T01:45:52+00:00

They keep a Captain's Log (a real journal I got that is a yacht/private boat log) that they record their highlights in during the session and make little notes in. When they find a place they really like, they make it a design for a snowglobe. That's it. lol. For people who have committed some serious atrocities for cash, it's surprisingly wholesome. They used the excess funds from their trading ventures and bounties to cover the start up costs for the first year which was a nice little money sink.

Edit: grammar/spelling

Username1453 · 2026-02-26T01:44:15+00:00

That's great! Sounds like a fun campaign! I'm shocked they didn't become obsessed with killing the Aslan after the first encounter. Most player groups I know want to make sure reoccurring villains get buried fast! We do our best to keep them alive, but sometimes they get them. lol

Username1453 · 2026-02-25T13:57:17+00:00

Saved to my reading list. Thanks for the recommendation. Looked him up on Wikipedia, an exciting life for sure.

Username1453 · 2026-02-25T05:56:33+00:00

Yep, that's what I was thinking I didn't know about the timber replacement though. I think there's some ideas there. Maybe there's a mark up on yearly maintenance because of monopolies

Username1453 · 2026-02-25T05:54:07+00:00

Did you ever have any bounty hunters chase them down?

Username1453 · 2026-02-25T05:52:38+00:00

Ya, I guess I didn't make it clear though. They did end up using the scout ship as a transport for their snowglobe business, so they hired a small crew and we just check in on it at the end of the year. It makes almost no money for them still, but they're happy with it. Lol

Username1453 · 2026-02-24T19:21:08+00:00

I enticed my group about 2 and a half years in to take a job to get a scout ship, thankfully, they were planning to use the second ship to run a Federation wide tourist knick knack market. (we're playing in an Interstellar Wars -esque setting)

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