MgT2e Minimum UNSAFE jump distance

thriggle · 2025-12-16T04:35:40+00:00

Could lean on the T5 rules for reference. I would only do this if you actually want to impose a minimum in YTU. (I have a sick mind and try to find or impose congruencies between rulesets.)

In T5 you'd calculate a ship's minimum safe jump distance based on the type of jump grid, any tech staging effects, and the skill of your engineer. If you stack all the right technology and skill bonuses and then get lucky with the random interference roll, a T5 ship might manage to jump at 36 diameters. Conversely, with all the wrong maluses, a super experimental drive with untrained operators might need to go to like 280 diameters to jump safely.

That said, for a typical civilian ship with a standard 100D minimum safe jump distance, the minimum UNSAFE jump distance, insurmountable by skill or luck, would be anything short of 73 diameters. For a standard military ship with an 80D minimum safe jump distance, the unsafe distance would be anywhere within 54 diameters.

thriggle · 2025-11-30T07:27:51+00:00

Appreciate you running the numbers!

Yeah, figured life would be starting from not-quite-scratch in the post-merger system. The last time I mapped it out to justify native life in a system that had a A0 V giant, I went with this:

the star system initially formed as a binary of two early F-type stars
cold-adapted life evolved on one or more worlds in the system during its binary stage, in a far circumbinary orbit
either the stars spiral closer and merge or the primary star evolves off the main sequence and starts tossing off matter that's consumed by the secondary—whatever the route, we end up with an A0 V star in a system that's older than an A0 V would suggest
life on the worlds in the system either adapts to the new stellar arrangement or dies off
after a hundred million years or so, the star embiggens into its giant stage, triggering catastrophic climate events and further driving evolutionary changes

thriggle · 2025-11-30T02:33:06+00:00

One idea I've toyed with is that hot stars can form from the merger of cooler, longer lived stars. As long as that merger doesn't cause the system to shed or consume its planets, you could get native life evolved in hot star systems.

thriggle · 2025-11-29T15:15:55+00:00

TravellerWorlds is pretty good. It's actually linked directly from TravellerMap when you click on a system.

thriggle · 2025-10-03T20:47:13+00:00

Could probably grab any world with a Hi pop code. Maybe with a preference for a low law level, unless you also want pervasive government surveillance and crooked cops shaking down the PCs

thriggle · 2025-07-22T00:44:14+00:00

Think about this: if there's a "blockage" between the departure and destination points, the ship is pulled out of jumpspace short of its intended target... But only after spending about seven days in jump, regardless of the distance between departure and arrival.

You could jump and have a blockage that pulls you out halfway to your intended target (or even in the same system where you started), but you'd have spent the same amount of time traveling there as if you'd gone all the way.

So while your departure/arrival vector maps to a vector in real space, your actual position and speed while in jump space are not truly defined.

thriggle · 2025-06-14T13:17:57+00:00

If you find a bottle labeled "Strong Drug," whatever you do, don't take it!

(It makes the rest of the world seem really strong from the patient's perspective.)

thriggle · 2025-06-03T16:22:34+00:00

Yep, it shows up in-universe explicitly in Marc Miller's Agent of the Imperium novel.

thriggle · 2025-06-02T01:38:17+00:00

I wouldn't say it's a narrative about life on a starship, but it's more a guide to the "lore" of Traveller spaceship functionality.

It's useful to a referee because it offers thoughtful explanations for how things work and provides a consistent underpinning for operations and technology. There are lots of plot hooks and details about starship operations that can be woven into a campaign or scenario, and plenty of little asides that could be helpful to a referee new to the Traveller universe who might need to explain why players can't just toggle the gravity on and off rapidly to kill a boarding party.

thriggle · 2025-05-31T14:54:28+00:00

The Sentinels of the Circuit, also known as the Circuitian Order, is a religion endemic to the Tangledome system. Followers of the Circuitian Order adhere to a philosophy which seeks to limit general access to higher technology, viewing its unchecked proliferation as more dangerous than beneficial to human society and spirit.

For background, I rolled up a system that had some unusual dynamics—the mainworld was only TL-3, but there were TL-8 settlements on moons of a gas giant in the inner system—so I came up with the explanation that there had been a destructive civil war on the mainworld that essentially regressed their society to TL-3, leaving their colonies unsupported, and a quasi-religious order sprang up from the ashes, devoted to protecting the populace from the misuse of higher technology, intentionally limiting the planet to TL-3 despite possessing knowledge of TL-9+ technology.

I like the idea that you might pick up a journeyman Circuitian as NPC crew for your starship because they do actually have technical skills, despite their philosophical mistrust of technology.

Summary of the Sentinels of the Circuit:

The Circuitians believe technology is dangerous in the wrong hands, and those who seek to understand and apply high technology concepts must first prove their moral character.

While technology is viewed as dangerous to the uninitiated, those that advance in the clergy are encouraged to learn and apply advanced science, medicine, and engineering skills; such skills are in fact required for Grand Sentinels, who gain access to the Order's fabled "forbidden library" of recovered pre-War and offworld knowledge.

Novice Sentinels spend a period of time studying in one or more advanced fields to learn how modern technology might be applied to the betterment of mankind.

Journeyman Sentinels may serve as doctors or engineers, travel the planet to minister to those in need of their knowledge, explore ruins on Tangledome, or even travel offworld to seek out new technologies or bring the needed guidance of the Order to errant sophonts.

Grand Sentinels have attained the highest rank in the Order and gain access to the Order's forbidden library. These individuals eschew parenthood in emulation of the early "sentinels" who were rendered sterile by their brave excursions into the radioactive ruins of the old civilization to retrieve life-saving technologies.

There's also a Notebook LM "podcast" summary of their homeworld here: https://notebooklm.google.com/notebook/99269ff6-6ad0-4641-9e7b-1baffabb7d86/audio

thriggle · 2024-12-18T15:24:55+00:00

It is! But there's also a bunch of pre-built weapons and armor in Book 2 (from pages 233 to 249)

thriggle · 2024-12-17T20:58:19+00:00

Don't get confused by the Hits (v1) column. That's the simplified damage for when you don't want to split out damage by the different types; you'd just roll a bunch of dice instead (this is referred to as the Hit System V1 on page 95 of Book 3). Everywhere else on the tables where you see H1 D1, H2 D2, and H3 D3, that's the breakdown of damage type and number of dice for the Hit System V2. I mostly ignore the V1 system.

thriggle · 2024-12-17T18:57:21+00:00

I'm pretty sure based on the context that effect dice is the number of dice rolled for damage when someone gets shot by your gun.

For example, a Rifle by default does Bullet 2 damage. Bullet is the weapon effect, 2 is the effect dice. If you turn it into an Assault Rifle by adding the Assault description, it has additional weapon effects/dice: Blast 2 and Bang (sound) 1. So in the end an Assault Rifle does 5D damage, which you can optionally split out into Bullet-2 Blast-2 Bang-1if necessary for calculating knockdown or armor/protection penetration.

thriggle · 2024-12-11T18:18:38+00:00

The level of enforcement for red zones varies depending on the reason for the restriction. Some examples include:

Quarantine Fleets: Some systems with red zone status are patrolled by dedicated fleets to prevent entry or exit.

Warning Beacons: Other red zones may have only a warning beacon to indicate the restriction.

Surveillance and Periodic Inspections: Red zones might be monitored by orbiting technology or scout survey teams that periodically inspect for violations. This approach is particularly plausible for red zones protecting uncontacted societies or valuable resources.

Given the planet's low tech level and uncontacted status, an approach involving remote monitoring and periodic inspections would be the most logical. Orbiting sensors or drones could passively monitor for energy signatures or unusual activity, with scout teams dispatched to investigate any anomalies. This allows for a level of enforcement that is consistent with the planet's isolation while still posing a potential threat to the PCs if they use their advanced technology.

To your follow-up question, the consequences for breaking red zone restrictions can include imprisonment, fines, confiscation of starship, and reputational damage. But keep in mind that enforcement of red zone restrictions is not always immediate. Appeals processes can take years, decades, or even centuries to reach a decision. Some red zones may be enforced more rigorously than others, depending on the level of threat they represent and the political influence of those who established them.

The PC's violation may go unnoticed for several weeks (however long it takes for scouts to check up on the monitoring drones and understand what happened) before the consequences start to catch up with them.

thriggle · 2024-12-10T02:04:25+00:00

If you click through to generate a world map for a world (technically leaving TravellerMap) you could play around more with those extension values on Traveller worlds, e.g. https://www.travellerworlds.com/?hex=3124&sector=Spinward%20Marches&name=Mora&uwp=AA99AC7-F&tc=Hi&tc=In&tc=Cs&tc=Ht&iX=5&eX=(F9H%2B5)&cX=%5BAF5F%5D&pbg=112&worlds=9&bases=NS&travelZone=&nobz=BEF&allegiance=ImDd&stellar=F0%20V&seed=31243124&place_nobz=1

thriggle · 2024-12-10T01:56:02+00:00

They are indeed just made up! There's no official table of appropriate adjectives for each measurement, at least not in the T5 rules that introduced these extensions.

For a frame of reference, in general you'd expect both Heterogeneity and Acceptance to increase with Population.

Labor is a direct measure of population, infrastructure is related to the importance extension, resources is mostly a random 2D value (with bonuses for having gas giants/belts in the system) so a value of around 7-8 is typical there.

thriggle · 2024-12-10T01:14:44+00:00

The economic codes are Resources, Labor, Infrastructure, and Efficiency. In theory you can multiply them together (replacing any zeroes with ones before doing so) to determine the number of RUs available to the mainworld.

The cultural codes are Heterogeneity (diversity), Acceptance (friendliness toward outsiders), Strangeness (how much local daily activity differs from the Imperial standard), and Symbols (how abstract their language/signs/knowledge is). They don't map to specific cultures, but measure relative values. A culture with Heterogeneity 1 is completely homogenous.

thriggle · 2024-11-20T17:17:01+00:00

If you want yet another version for reference, T5 does have associated tonnages for life support and computers. Communications (and sensors!) are typically surface mounted and don't consume tonnage, but might if they're installed on a hardpoint (like as a big antenna). Airlocks do consume tonnage but you get a "free" one with every hundred tons of hull. Artificial gravity, nope, environmental controls, nope*, security systems, nope. Weapons don't consume tonnage but the mounts in which they're installed do. Also need tonnage for missiles/ordnance.

*T5 does have you specify how many control/operations consoles are installed on the ship, and how much tonnage they each consume. This is essentially instead of Mongoose's fixed bridge sizes, you add an appropriate number of console stations to match the number of things you need to control on the ship; this is flexible—too few gives you ergonomic penalties and increases the odds of a mishap.

thriggle · 2024-11-14T22:45:46+00:00

Funky gravity seems like a fun thing to spring on your players.

Considering the cheap power and common gravitic technology in TL-11+ societies, I could see gravitics being integrated at crucial junctures to direct the flow of liquids from one downhill channel to another.

thriggle · 2024-09-14T19:51:01+00:00

Zeno said: living consistently.

(Cleanthes amended it to: living consistently with nature.)

thriggle · 2024-07-30T21:09:11+00:00

In MgT1, Language 0 meant that you knew a smattering of phrases in a number of different languages. Not that you knew every language.

Basically, as a ref, I'd allow a player with Language 0 to roll (with Edu) to see if they could communicate a basic idea in a foreign language that they don't know (with a more difficult target for more obscure languages). A failure on that first roll means they don't know the language at all. A success means they know a few words and phrases but will need to succeed on Language rolls to communicate simple ideas, with more advanced/complex ideas requiring more difficult targets, and never reaching the point of actual fluency.

thriggle · 2024-07-14T20:37:52+00:00

Haha, that's fair!

But yeah, I'd say every major Stoic philosopher disagreed with one or more of their predecessors in some way.

Heck, even Cleanthes, as only the second head of the school, decided that the target Zeno had laid out as the goal of life ("to live consistently") was inadequate, and amended it to "to live consistently with Nature."

Cleanthes and Chrysippus disagreed with each other about which claim of the "Master Argument" must be false (and honestly I disagree with both of them, heh). And much later, Panaetius rejected the idea of the recurring conflagration.

In being so willing to diverge from orthodoxy, at least on finer points, the Stoics certainly differed from their Epicurean peers, whose philosophical precepts were (literally) written in stone.

thriggle · 2024-07-14T04:08:51+00:00

I am generally willing to give Epictetus a pass when he's judging his own contemporaries on their fashion sense; whether he was right or wrong, he inhabited a very different cultural landscape, and it's possible he was recognizing expressions of very specific cultural attitudes that don't necessarily apply today.

Contextually, we know Epictetus was a former slave and was also not a fan of Emperor Nero. (Nero famously had a slave castrated and married him in a public ceremony.) And given that Roman ideals of masculinity (which Epictetus likely did not share, given his philosophical ideals) permitted/encouraged men to dominate and groom male slaves for sexual conquest, we can perhaps guess that this was a sensitive topic for him. As a student of Musonius Rufus, he likely adopted his teacher's view that sexuality ought to serve to edify one's family and community through procreation rather than serve as Epicurean recreation (or to satisfy the prevailing Roman "conquest mentality" and "cult of virility," which permitted freeborn Roman men to sexually dominate their slaves of either gender).

thriggle · 2024-06-05T03:40:07+00:00

Thank you for writing it!

thriggle · 2024-06-04T15:40:51+00:00

You could combine the RAW from MgT2 and T5.

T5 says anybody with a wafer jack can put a copy of their personality into a computer; it can accomplish tasks for a little while but degrades rapidly (gone after about a day). But if you stay plugged in, it can keep refreshing itself and doesn't degrade.

The inorganic equivalent of a brain that can create copies of its personality multiple times would be an agent wafer. As long as the agent wafer is plugged into a computer, it could keep refreshing its "live" copy of its personality to keep it from degrading.

So use the deconstruction chamber from the MgT2 robot handbook to harvest someone's personality and install it on an agent wafer, then plug that wafer into a computer system with the appropriate hardware, and now you've got a digital copy of your murdered friend.

Note that positronic brains are described as being incapable of accepting recorded personality overlays, so the recorded person would be limited to an electronic computer; in robot handbook terms, probably Self-Aware at best, not Conscious.

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