Sell me on (or out) Traveller

I'm a SF fan and I heard a lot about Traveller, but I still don't know how the game plays. What are the game loops? What kind of characters you can create? What kind of adventures and stories should I expect? What do I spend most of my time doing in a game session? If you think Traveller is a good game, what makes it good, and what should I be looking for in a game to enjoy it?

Traveller's setting, wonderfully 1970s vision of futuristic technology, etc., and everything else is great, and its character creation is a beloved RPG meme for a reason.

The gameplay loop, though, is what made my players nope out.

Character improvement is almost non-existent, which makes sense, given that character generation tells the story of a character's life over decades. Instead, it's about improving characters' circumstances and, typically, their ship or their career.

In other words, your friends can get together with you and roleplay the far future fun of paying a mortgage (on a spaceship, but still), running a small business (a trader flying between worlds) or trying to succeed in their career (aboard a space-going naval vessel). My players, who already spend enough time worrying about this stuff as adults, said no thank you, and wanted to go back to heroic fantasy.

I think Traveller is a very fun document to own and read and I know many people enjoy it today, but I would probably run a game of Scum & Villainy instead, which has a much more satisfying narrative loop in each of its three modes.

I ordered this a few days ago:


I have been playing since 1979, it is a huge community. The standard setting is the Third Imperium, which is golden era imperial space opera, like from Foundation, etc. with elements of Dumarest or Space Viking thrown in. It can be pretty simple, 2d6 + skill + stat DM vs a tn usually 8. It can also get pretty crunchy. Myself I am a publisher, publishing Solis People of the Sun for Cepheus Engine, which is OGL Traveller, my stuff someone called Traveller updated for the 21st century. I prefer a more rules light approach which the system supports that kind of play style also. One can pick up the Explorer edition from Mongoose, or Cepheus Engine SRD which is made from the Mongoose 1e SRD just to see what the system is like.

Jolly Ruby said:

I'm a SF fan and I heard a lot about Traveller, but I still don't know how the game plays.

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The game system is incredibly smooth. As mentioned it's mostly roll 2d6+mods vs a target number, usually 8. Damage is tracked as ability score loss. More often than not it's played as your typical space-truckers style game. There are options for exploration- or military-focused games, but those are less common. Not quite the criminals of Firefly or the bounty hunters of Cowboy Beebop, but those are really close.

Jolly Ruby said:

What are the game loops?

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In the space truckers variant it's mostly: need money and fuel, find a job, work the job, deal with complications related to the job, complete the job, get paid, fuel up the PCs' stomachs and the gas tank, and back to one. Different referees focus on or emphasize the spaceships & spreadsheets aspect to different degrees. Some are hyper focused on the math, others handwave most of the money-based paperwork.

Jolly Ruby said:

What kind of characters you can create?

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Traveller was the first game to use lifepath character creation. So it's a mini game unto itself. In the old days you could die in character creation. It's still there but as an optional rule. There are no classes or levels, Traveller is a skill-based game. Skill packages come with careers. The current edition is Mongoose 2E, which has 12 careers in the main book, each with three subcategories. The core book has agent, army, citizen, drifter, entertainer, marine, merchant, navy, noble, rogue, scholar, and scout. Other books have additional careers, including criminal and psychic. Based on your lifepath you get benefits, cash, ship shares, and debt.

Jolly Ruby said:

What kind of adventures and stories should I expect?

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Your typical space trucker and space opera style adventures. You jump to a new system, encounter a derelict ship, explore it hoping for salvage, only to discover there's something alive over there. You jump to a new system, encounter a planet of backwater folks barely scraping by and they need your help. Think Star Wars without the Force and far fewer aliens. If you played any WEG Star Wars back in the day, Traveller is a tramp freighter campaign with slightly less wild technology.

Jolly Ruby said:

What do I spend most of my time doing in a game session?

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Depends on what the referee and players focus on. Roleplaying, combat, exploration, dealing with complications, making plans, watching plans go up in smoke at first contact with the enemy, etc.

Jolly Ruby said:

If you think Traveller is a good game, what makes it good, and what should I be looking for in a game to enjoy it?

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I do think it's a good game. It's a slightly more grounded space opera game. I really, really like that. You don't press a button and jump from one side of the galaxy to another. You enter jump space and travel for two weeks and you're either 1-, 2-, or 3-parsecs away. It focuses on the minutiae which really helps with immersion, for me.

If you want an incredibly detailed deep dive, check out Seth Skorkowsky's channel. He has two relevant playlists. One is an overview/review of the game and system. The other is a series of adventure reviews. If you want more info on what a typical adventure looks like, pick an adventure review and watch that.

I'll say it again, any game where you can die in character generation gets bonus points on the should I try it scale...of course I have issues so, /shrug

Traveller is a space-opera game with a slight flavour of hard sci-fi. It's a bit gear-headed, so if you're that way inclined you might enjoy this aspect. A typical Traveller campaign will feature a small party of adventurers doing odd jobs of dubious legality. The Traveller party may or may not have a small starship of their own - it could be a small trading ship, a scout ship on loan from the service or some other vessel. It is rumoured that Firefly is based (at least to some extent) on a Traveller campaign that Joss Whedon played in when he was younger.

The most distinct element is the character creation process, where players roll up characters by setting them on four year career terms to gain resources while also defining elements of their back stories. A character might have served some time in the military then signed up to joint the scout service before trying their hand at being a space merchant. This process encourages a risk vs. reward behavior, as every term runs the risk of the character dying during character creation. The process also makes characters that stand as a huge contrast to their D&D contemporaries. Rather than young, inexperienced heroes hoping to become legends and gods, Traveller protagonists are middle-aged, well versed in the skills they needed to survive, and working class heroes just trying to keep the lights on.

What is the one book that one should get first to learn the game?

Please forgive me for a quick digression. Traveller is one of the earliest rpgs, the first rulebooks were A5 little black books which gave a rough outline of what a story might feel. There were no starter campaigns like Lost Mine of Phandelver. It was assumed that the ref & players would make it up on their own. The writers were basing their game on the scifi novels they loved from the 50s & 60s. Each book that inspired Traveller has been reviewed and described in the book The Science Fiction in Traveller, which is available from Drivethrurpg.

The Science Fiction In Traveller - Game Designers' Workshop (GDW) | Mega Traveller | Traveller 4 (T4) | Traveller: The New Era | Traveller (FASA/GameLords/JG) | Classic Traveller | Traveller Boardgames | DriveThruRPG.com.

You can also think of Traveller as Firefly the rpg.

To learn the game you can buy the core rulebook update 2022. It has sections on character creation, spaceships, trade and world background. As Traveller has been around since the 70s there is a huge catalogue of scenarios, rules expansions & editions. Many of which are scattered around the internet, you can go prospecting for pdfs on derelict websites and abandoned archives.

The recent line of Mongoose books has high production values.

Mongoose Core 2022 has everything you need for a tramp freighter campaign. Other kinds of campaign will require some adjustment to character creation and a bit more information- Pirates of Drinax has systems to run a piracy-themed campaign, and there is a naval campaign sourcebook that in fact has an alternate chargen system designed to produce naval officers, for example.

Your players do need to be somewhat willing to not be completely tied to a character concept, as much of the game is the semi-randomized character generation that optimizes toward middle-aged burnouts.

Little black books Traveller (and Runequest) was the first rpg I played back in the eighties, we had lots of fun.

Today Mongoose 2ed have great products, I love the Third Imperium setting and the game premisses, but I don’t enjoy the mechanics. So this fall I will start up a traditional Traveller sandbox campaign, but with Savage Worlds rules.