Traveller_5th_Edition_-_Book_03_-_Scout.pdf

T RAVELLER

Scouts

C REDITS

C ONTENTS

Classic Traveller

Marc Miller

I NTRODUCTION

C REATING A S COUT C HARACTER

Loren Wiseman, John Harshman, Frank Chadwick, Darryl Hany,

Winston Hamilton, Tony Svajlenka, Scott Renner, Doug Poe,

David MacDonald, Wayne Roth, Paul R. Banner.

S COUT M ISSIONS

E QUIPMENT AND S HIPS

Mongoose Traveller

A UTHOR

Lawrence Whittaker

F IRST C ONTACT AND S URVEY

S URVIVAL

A DDITIONAL T EXT

Martin Costa

I NDEX

112

E DITOR

Nick Robinson

L AYOUT

Will Chapman

I NTERIOR I LLUSTRATIONS

Andrew Dobell, Marco Morte, Tim Hartin, Chad Sergesketter,

Travis Leichssenring, Jason Banditt Adams

S PECIAL T HANKS

Dominic Mooney, Stuart Machin, David Ives

significant characters, names, places, items, art and text herein are copyrighted by Mongoose Publishing.

This game product contains no Open Game Content. No portion of this work may be reproduced in any form without written permission. To learn more about the Open Game

License, please go to www.mongoosepublishing.com.

This material is protected under the copyright laws of the United Kingdom and of the United States. This product is a work of fiction. Any similarity to actual people, organisations,

places or events is purely coincidental.

Traveller is a trademark of Far Future Enterprises and is used under licence.

Printed in the USA.

IISS S COUT S ERVICE

I NTRODUCTION

In the same way that Mercenary and High Guard have examined the

roles of the fighting and naval services respectively, Scouts takes a

detailed look at the Scout service. In the pages of this book you will

find rules for expanded Scout character generation, new career options,

vastly enhanced Event and Mishap tables, additional, new, mustering

benefits and a full overview of the work the Scout service undertakes.

along with commentaries on their areas of use and advantages/

disadvantages.

The work of the Contact and Survey branches of the Scout service

receives in-depth treatment in its own chapter. The extensive

First Contact Protocol outlines how new civilisations should be

approached and treated, whilst the Survey section details the

essential stages of a survey mission, and offers an enhanced

cartography system for detailing a stellar system

Further chapters expand on the missions available to both Scouts

and retired Scouts – a boon to referees who may need to quickly

generate a scenario seed for rapid play. In addition, Scout Base

Cygnus X-3, along with its eclectic crew, is detailed as a starting

point for Scout-centric adventures to take place.

The book rounds out with a chapter for referees playing in the Third

Imperium. The organisation of the IISS is detailed, with a particular

focus on the work of the Imperial Grand Survey – those responsible

for mapping and plotting the Imperium’s expansion.

The Equipment and Ships chapter offers a plethora of new

devices available to Scouts, and a selection of additional ships,

C REATING A S COUT T RAVELLER

This chapter provides the rules for creating scout characters.

It takes a special strength of will to undertake the hazardous

exploration of the unknown, and whilst this is, to a large extent, the

purpose of many Traveller games, characters may find themselves

in this position by accident or coincidence; scouts, however, do

this for a living. It is a vocation; a calling; a way of life. Scouts

deliberately, and constantly, push themselves beyond the reaches

of the known in order to satisfy the curiosity of society and their

own, restless souls.

open mind can make those career-enhancing discoveries; and,

understanding the nature of both space and stellar systems greatly

assists the prospects of success.

Homeworld

Whilst scouts can ostensibly come from any Homeworld, those

worlds that engender curiosity, resistance to hardships and a frontier

spirit tend to produce those with the natural tenacity to excel as

scouts. If your character comes from any of the below worlds, he

gains a +1DM to enlistment in the Scout service:

And it is risky work. A newly discovered system holds many

dangers: asteroid and radiation belts; uncharted stellar anomalies;

undiscovered, perhaps hostile, inhabitants – either aliens, native to

the system and others, or isolated colonists, lost to the empire, that

have little wish to be reconnected with the old regime. Scouts are the

ones who get there first. Their initial observations and attitudes may

make or break future relations. Scouts are pioneers, researchers,

surveyors, ambassadors and diplomats, troubleshooters and

peacemakers. In many ways, they are the essential Travellers .

Asteroid

Vacc

Low Pop

High Technology Ice Capped

Gov Type 0 or 5

Industrial

Desert

Infrastructure

Although they often operate alone or in small teams, scouts are

backed by a solid infrastructure: a governing directorate that

establishes scouting needs and missions; a communications wing

that co-ordinates the often far-flung scout outposts; a technology

wing that procures and assigns the essential equipment every scout

needs; an operations wing that co-ordinates scouts and missions in a

localised area (which may span several neighbouring systems, or be

limited to just a single system); and an administrative bureaucracy

that handles the necessary permissions and paperwork all scouts

need to navigate at some point, especially if travelling through areas

that have special interest to other parties (such as the military or

scientific establishments engaged in specialist areas of study).

Scouts may therefore arise naturally during the course of play,

and the rules found in this book can be used to adjudicate the

outcome of their activities, but equally there needs to be a way

for scout characters to be developed as a career path before play

begins. Traveller characters may have been scouts before moving

onto a different walk of life, but the skills developed as part of their

previous career have equipped them for the unknown. This chapter

is therefore dedicated to creating the scout character – whether a

character who later goes on to another career or who remains in

pursuit of the wider excitement of the unknown.

This infrastructure is common to all scout operations irrespective

of the background used in your Traveller campaign. Any formal

scouting service requires sanction, and this is what differentiates

it from freebooters and chancers who prefer to operate beyond the

rules and laws of civilised administrations. However, any scout

service has to operate with a certain autonomy, and scout services

tend to have more flexibility than other arms of the government, such

as the army or navy, whilst still occupying the same importance of

position. This does lead to certain complications though. The scout

service is often viewed as a maverick branch, employing loners and

rule-bucking renegades who can cause more harm than good in

certain situations. Certainly the scout career tends to attract those

with a taste for high adventure but prefer to disregard the kind of

discipline essential to the military services. But, at the same time,

the scout service fulfils an important need in that it takes the hard

risks first – and so most other services grudgingly accept that scouts

are allowed to bend, or sometimes ignore, certain rules, even if this

is not a universally popular view.

B ASIC S COUT C HARACTER C REATION

This chapter follows the normal stages of character creation as

detailed in the Traveller core rulebook, pointing out where and how

players and Referees can branch away from the standard career

paths in order to use what is available in Traveller: Scouts .

Characteristics

The basic six characteristics of a scout character are the same as

for any other character. Scouts tend to have higher than average

Endurance characteristic owing to the rigours of long hours, often

alone, in space flight or surveying hostile and potentially hostile

environments. Scouts are tenacious and are physically and mentally

prepared for both the isolation of space, including the boredom of

long periods of travel, and the hazards of new environments. High

Intelligence and Education characteristics are also beneficial for

achieving promotion within the scout career – those with a curious,

C REATING A S COUT T RAVELLER

T HE S COUT C AREER P ATHS

The following career paths are designed for those with a career in

the scout service. This is a dangerous career, especially when it

comes to exploration and survey, and it requires a certain hardiness

of mind, body and soul to cope with the rigours of the job.

Exploration

The Exploration branch is responsible for the high level exploration

of new systems prior to a survey team being despatched for a more

detailed survey of the area. Exploration deliberately heads into

uncharted or barely charted regions of space, searching for a variety of

things: stellar anomalies, habitable worlds, worlds and systems with

particular characteristics, and so forth. Its remit is as broad as space

itself, and Exploration crews often spend long periods amongst the

stars, working on faint traces, hopeful glimmers and potential sites

of interest as it does working with hard facts and evidence. Much

of its work is involved with accurate charting and route definition:

humdrum work that is, nevertheless, essential to many agencies.

Where charting is concerned, the Exploration team must correctly

note and quantify all factors that have a bearing: asteroid fields,

dangerous anomalies – anything that might pose a hazard or risk to

any space traffic that will make use of a route in the future.

There are five distinct scout career paths: Contact, Courier,

Exploration, Special Operations and Survey. Each career branch has

several specialist areas within its function that determine the skills

derived in a particular term of service.

Contact

The Contact branch specialises in making contact with new races

and civilisations, or re-establishing contact with old ones. It involves

a variety of skills and techniques, including the general assessment

of conditions, detailed study and survey of the subject, ‘First Contact

Protocols’ where a new race is encountered, and first-line diplomatic/

ambassadorial functions before the diplomatic corps takes over. The

Contact branch therefore requires people who have an eye for detail,

the ability to accurately extrapolate factors such as technology level,

military strength, propensity for hostility, political climate, specific

biological considerations, and so forth. Contact scouts might spend

years studying a system before any actual contact is made; and, if

a new race or life-form is discovered, Contact frequently works with

other agencies to ensure that the ‘First Contact’ is as successful

as possible. Where it is necessary to re-establish contact with an

isolated colony or civilisation, the branch studies the history of the

subject extensively so it can be fully prepared for the likely reaction

and reception to renewed communications.

Special Operations

Special Operations covers a wide range of activities, many of them

highly secret or covert in nature. Special Operations might be required to

undertake undercover work on behalf of an agency such as the army or

navy, or supply advanced information relating to an enemy – existing or

potential. Similarly, it might be required to make discreet contact with a

new discovery, find out as much as possible, and then relay its findings

in advance of a formal exploration, survey or contact team going in. The

branch is also responsible for subtly manipulating civilisations according

to a specific agenda. This might mean averting a war or starting one;

imposing a new ruler or deposing the old. The agenda is dictated by a

higher power, but Special Operations is chosen to conduct it because

it has the skills and capabilities to effect transformation under the

radar, and can be officially denied by a government or imperial power if

needs require it. A scout service might even deny it has anything like a

Special Operations branch, whilst, in reality, it readily engages in ‘black’

missions under the guise of its standard branches, but using specially

trained and briefed operatives.

Courier

Unfairly viewed as the ‘messenger boys’, the Courier branch is

responsible for transporting messages across vast distances quickly,

efficiently, safely and securely. In settings where faster-than-light

communications are not possible, the Courier branch comes into its

own, as it forms the vital link between the central hub of civilisations

and far-flung systems, colonies and outposts. In settings where FTL

communications are both possible and the norm, the Courier branch

establishes relay points, provides encryption/decryption services,

and takes responsibility for certain high priority communications

that cannot be entrusted to another agency for specific reasons. The

Courier branch also provides ‘bodyguard’ services for transporting

dignitaries or VIPs, especially into newly discovered or established

territories. Whatever the function, the Courier branch is anything

but a glorified message service: it is frequently in charge of highly

sensitive communications that require the full gamut of skills

available in other branches, particularly Contact. Courier scouts are

those who can prove their dependability, reliability and the ability to

be both tactful and discreet.

Survey

The Survey branch is responsible for the detailed assessment and

survey of systems, stars and worlds once the high level assessment

has been completed by the Exploration branch. Scout surveyors are

specialists across a wide range of sciences and research techniques:

these are professionals and experts in their field. Survey teams tend

to incorporate a wide body of skills but may, just as equally, consist

of a small group of specialists in a narrow range of disciplines,

depending on the task in hand. Members of the Survey branch are

used to spending long periods in situ: patience and diligence are

watch words. Working with all the other Scout service branches, they

compile detailed and accurate reports on their subject matter that

form the core of the intelligence for a number of external agencies.

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