Sell me on Traveller

[Parmandur]

To add to this, I think you can certainly plan some generalities, but specifics are going to be difficult. For example, imaging your Traveller going to university and then medical school to become a doctor. This is pretty easy to find ways to make happen. Thinking the Traveller graduated with honors and served on a ship that they now own before rolling a single dice isnt likely to turn out (but could).

If I or some of my players like doing extensive backgrounds, Id go to the Traveller creation session as a blank slate. Maybe have an idea like I want to be a military guy, or an investigative journalist, etc.. Roll up the Traveller and afterwards, fill in the blanks with detail. Notice in my example above of Gretchen Ross that her career terms and events are pretty sparse. I could go back and make a story out of all of those. The best part, is the group chargen allows you to write backstories that demonstrate how the Travellers know each other. Its emergent and very fun.

Yeah, writing the extensive detailed Background after Session 0 is the way to go here. And if you go all in on stuff like the full Hexidecimal homeworld generation, the game provides plenty of colorful details to key off of.

 

[Celebrim]

I've certainly heard about Traveller, but apart from the whole "you can die during character creation" thing I know next to nothing about it, and I doubt that's a part of the current game. There's a pretty great Humble Bundle going right now with the 2022 update rules. What's the game like? Why should I buy this Bundle?

The character burner is pretty amazing, especially when you consider how early in RPG development the concept was developed.

Mongoose Traveller is amazingly well written and put together.

 

[Jorren]

I picked that up from the context. This sounds like a lot of fun!

I'm curious, for those players who come to the table with pages of background already, are there options to directly choose portions of the character generation to match the character they had in their head, or is that sort of thing discouraged and against the spirit of how the game is set up?

The easiest way to account for a pre-established background is to just allow the player to choose results from the skills, life events, and other related rolls to match the background. While this isn't necessarily intended from the generation system, I've found it works fine even though it circumvents the generation mini-game a bit.

There is also a shortened point-buy alternative character generation system in the Traveller Companion, but I didn not find it to be very well fleshed out and it requires a bit of referee adjucation to make it work.

 

[payn]

A houserule/homebrew activity I like to do as Ref is come up with custom home worlds and life event tables. I wrote up a big series of them for Pirates of Drinax. It helps tailor contacts and events right to the campaign. A little bit of work upfront, but gives chargen a little more specificity if you are looking for that. I often do, because the Firefly template is often aimless and needs some very proactive players to make it sing.

 

[Parmandur]

I will say, while you can play traveller in a lot of different kinds of scenarios, the char gen is the one made for the rag tag team with a tramp steamer going different places on the map. If you want to play traveller on a military warship, or as a group of badass soldiers, you'll probably want to adjust the character generation to suit.

An interesting element of early Traveller Adventure books is that they provide an alternative frame situation to the Free Tader default (Firefly-like). For example:

- Adventure 4: Leviathan makes rhe characters the handpicked bridge crew of an Enterprise level ship exploring a distant sector...for a megacorporation, admittedly.

- Adventure 7: Broadsword has a full-on mercenary battle cruiser campaign for full use of ship to ship combat rules.

- Adventure 10: Safari Ship has the characters be the hired crew of a space Big Game Hunter...the 70's, yall...

- COACC with thwt ever flavorful Megatraveller title scheme has a campaign for playing Top Gun on a planetary Cold War situation. The 80's, y'all...

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Honestly, a big part of the appeal for me is that its scientific assumptions are forever stuck in the mid-1970s. Spaceships have computers the size of rooms. The information revolution that happened in our world in the 1990s never occurred in this timeline.

Like Alien, it's not futuristic science fiction so much as a completely divergent timeline, which really adds to the color and flavor for me. Teleport me into a scout ship and I'd instantly know what RPG universe I was in, as it would look and function much differently than other sci-fi franchises do.

 

[Parmandur]

Honestly, a big part of the appeal for me is that its scientific assumptions are forever stuck in the mid-1970s. Spaceships have computers the size of rooms. The information revolution that happened in our world in the 1990s never occurred in this timeline.

Like Alien, it's not futuristic science fiction so much as a completely divergent timeline, which really adds to the color and flavor for me. Teleport me into a scout ship and I'd instantly know what RPG universe I was in, as it would look and function much differently than other sci-fi franchises do.

Yeah, it's Sci-Fi in the vein of Asimov's, Heinlein, or Herbert. Though Mongoose Traveller goes a long way towards modernizing some of that tech stuff, IIRC.

 

[pemerton]

One of my kids repeatedly complains about a "far future" in which people still use walkie-talkies and drive cars.

 

[Parmandur]

One of my kids repeatedly complains about a "far future" in which people still use walkie-talkies and drive cars.

I find the tech differential from planet to planet based on the in-universe history and logistics one of the more fascinating parts. Though to a large degree this is "yesterday's future" (less so with Mongoose products).

 

[Parmandur]

I picked that up from the context. This sounds like a lot of fun!

I'm curious, for those players who come to the table with pages of background already, are there options to directly choose portions of the character generation to match the character they had in their head, or is that sort of thing discouraged and against the spirit of how the game is set up?

I did a little digging, and the latest Traveller Cpmpanion is sort of the "Unrarthed Arcana" for the game, and includes an alternate chargen where you assign attributes and pick a Background package and a Career package. Going to result in significantly less colorful characters, but it probably works fine.