Traveller: Tips For A New GM

[MortalPlague]

Hey folks! I'm going to be running a game of Traveller with my current group. The game's had a bit of a rocky reception thus far, but my group has agreed to give it a go. So I want to run a really, really solid session.

So for those of you who are familiar with Traveller (We're playing the Mongoose edition), what are some tips and tricks for making things flow smoothly? What are some pitfalls to avoid? How can I give my group the best possible Traveller experience?

 

[Shades of Green]

Welcome to Traveller! it's an excellent ruleset!

Mongoose Traveller is a very good game, and should be very smooth to run; the whole ruleset is around 180 pages in total, including everything, and you only need a fraction of this to actually run the game.

Which setting are you using? Making your own setting (a subsector in size, no need for anything bigger) is the most fun IMHO, but it takes time; if you're using a commercial setting, be sure that you're fully familiar with it.

Traveller combat is deadly. keep that in mind. Encourage your players to use cover and other tactics as well as surprise; and allow them to avoid some of the combat encounters if they are careful or resourceful enough. This isn't D&D; you don't get any experience for killing things, so if you can complete your objective or defeat/neutralize your opponents without a shot being fired, it should be the preferable option. Think of Traveller combat in real-world terms, not in D&D terms, as a gunshot (or, for the very least, a few gunshots) can kill you in Traveller. Also, encourage your players to get the best armor they can get their hands on. It saves lives.

Which type of a campaign do you wish to run? Trade? Exploration? Military/Mercenary?

 

[nedjer]

Very sound advice above. MT is pretty much as good as Classic and ideal for open-ended, rules light/ improvise as you go. Got to keep on your toes as a GM but a spirit of compromise (rather than concession) builds up quick.
There's a great post in a recent thread, (sorry don't know which), where a GM describes a player kill being patched to get a more game friendly and interesting set of player consequences.

Big help with Traveller, as space is seriously deadly and believable works better than realism. Do like a fair bit of combat though, so PCs get extra armour and some other handy tech to keep them alive unless they're dumb/ want to fight their way through everything. Of course, they've gotta may the loan payments . . .

There's some pretty decent 'research' to help get started too . . . AvP, all Resident Evil movies, Alien, Joe Haldeman's Forever War and Day of Triffids (in book), which can put several light years between your campaign and Star Warsy, 'let's all hug' soap opera.

 

[Korgoth]

I ran a couple one shots in Classic Traveller pretty recently. What kind of adventure are you shooting for? I think if you give us some details you can get more specific advice.

For inspiration, I usually think Outland, Alien and Firefly.

 

[Cerebral Paladin]

I recently ran my first Traveller game (a one-shot, at a con). Here are a couple of rules observations:
1. The rules specify that you often don't need to make a check if you're skilled and doing a routine task. It is essential that you follow this rule if you want to avoid Keystone Kops komedy. Characters often have low skill levels--a total DM of +2 is pretty common in skills that characters are pretty good at (level 1 skill plus a +1 stat modifier, or level 2 skill plus a 0). If you force the players to make routine checks ("I hail the other ship." "Roll me Comms + Edu."), they will frequently fail utterly routine checks, and it will be frustrating all around. Handing out substantial DM based on task difficulty can eliminate this, of course, but why bother? Only make the PCs roll if they are unskilled, doing something hard, or under serious pressure.

2. If you let the PCs buy even reasonable armor (flak jacket or armored cloth), I did not find that combat was as deadly as people make it out to be (unless of course you're hitting the PCs with artillery.) If you have an armor of 5 or 6, pistols doing in the ballpark of 3d6 only average 4 or 5 damage. That means that a character with average stats can take something like 4 hits before going down, and when brought down has very low risks of being killed outright unless they both carefully spread the damage and are unlucky. However, I did find that it was deadly boring. I would use combat sparingly in most Traveller games.

3. Traveller supports lots of different aspects of vaguely hard scifi play. Make sure you get a handle on what your players want, and give them that. That could be exploration, discovery, and weird aliens; it could be weird supertech of the Ancients; it could be politics and interstellar intrigue; it could be buy low, sell high in a tramp freighter. If you tailor your game to your players' interests, it will be better. If you don't know, aim for a mix of all of the common elements. Get the PCs a spaceship, set up some commercial opportunities, spice it up with some interactions with a strange culture on an alien world, throw in some rumors of the Ancients, and have interstellar intrigue interfering with their plans. Then follow their lead as to which elements are important.

 

[Ed_Laprade]

Haven't played Traveller in a looong time, but I did pick up the Mongoose book. Very much like classic. One thing I do remember is that unless the players want to be accountants just give them a ship. Preferably one with a lab, a few extra cabins, some weapons and armor. This gives them lots of leeway to do different things without worrying about some creditor taking the ship away from them. (Once that becomes a real concern the game often boils down to 'what can we do to earn enough money to keep the ship'?) Of course, repairs and such can keep them on their toes and lead to adventures them might not consider normally.

The extra cabins are for paying passengers or rescuing damsels in distress. You can never tell what your passengers are really up to! This can lead to all kinds of tension and speculation, even if they are exactly what they say they are.

 

[Ycore Rixle]

Decide what your rewards are going to be. There isn't a whole lot in the way of character advancement or "leveling up" in Traveller. The rewards could be money, tech, equipment, contacts, influence, property (I want to own that resort on Smade 6's moon!), story revelations, etc. Story revelations can be the most difficult to pull off but among the most satisfying. I recommend using a mix of all types of rewards, but notice what each player (not PC) likes the best and make sure you load up on that.

Ask your group what kind of a campaign they envision, look at what their characters are, and outoline your campaign from there. Is it going to be exploration, a fight to liberate a frontier world from an occupying force, running trade routes through hazardous space lanes, trying to escape the core before the government forces catch up with you, investigation in the name of a powerful noble sending the PCs to see why a world went silent?

Find a way to deal with the ship. What is your group comfortable with? Having no ship of their own for a long time, being passengers, commanding a borrowed ship, buying a ship with a loan they have to constantly repay, "borrowing" an ex-wife's ship and having to constantly convince her oh no Imelda I would never have taken your ship to kill Zhodani while you were visiting your mother on Regina, or inheriting a ship they could not otherwise afford?

 

[Plane Sailing]

I played and ran loads of traveller back in the day, and the new Mongoose rules are a good fit with the old stuff. Thus my advice would be

1) find out what kind of campaign the players want to be in. Mercernaries, Merchants, Spies, Criminals... it will go much better if your plans match their expectations!

2) there where some really top quality adventures back then. A really neat one for a mini-campaign is "the traveller adventure", all the ones by FASA were good (especially the "Sky Raiders" series, starting with "Legend of the Sky Raiders") and some of the ones in the little books by GDW were also good (although they were more of a mixed bunch). Even if you don't run one of those, getting hold of the adventure and reading it would give some really useful ideas about running successful adventures yourself.

Cheers

 

[S'mon]

I have more experience with pitfalls than success sadly - I GM'd Traveller in the New Era era.

My advice: Avoid railroading "You must do this" plots. Traveller is all about exploration in an open universe. Make sure from your campaign premise that the PCs are motivated to Travel - to explore - prep enough that you can handle whatever they decide to do, then let them loose.

I think a typical D&D sandbox approach would work - the PCs start in a (well-prepped) starport bar with a spaceship and a big mortgage. There are a bunch of adventure hooks and NPCs in the bar, but nothing they MUST do - the PCs are free to go wherever they want and do whatever they want. Take the old man and his youthful apprentice to Alderaan? Smuggle spice on the Kessel Run for Jabba the Hutt? Investigate rumours of a captive princess? Seek the Imperial bounty on some missing androids?

 

[Bluenose]

Are your players experienced with sandbox play? Are you? If so, set one up, perhaps a subsector in size. They start off in a startown bar, looking for work, and go from there. Or, as I did it once, being released from their cells after a fight in a startown bar ended with the police turning up. Make friends in the cells overnight.

The only things I carry around these days when I'm planning to GM Traveller are maps and floor plans and a folder of NPC stats. Mind, I've played Traveller since it first came out, so while a book like 76 Patrons is within reach it's quite possible I've used everything in it twice before. If you're happy improvising, and your players are happy looking for their own hooks, that's a perfectly satisfactory way to go. Over time, you'll find out what sort of hooks they're interested in, what sort of things they'll do, and then you can build towards something larger behind it. They've constantly been interrupting the plans of some corporation? that corporation is backing a corrupt nobleman who is trying to become subsector duke, and the PCs are the only ones who can stop him. Find out his secrets, track down his k'kree mistress and obtain her testimony, and blackmail him out of the race. Or visit the local moot, participate in the parties, and make sure he doesn't win that way. Or... whatever they come up with.

Alternatively, go with a pre-existing adventure. There are plenty. Plane Sailing suggests anything from FASA, and I agree. I'll suggest anything from Digest Group Publications, though it's really hard to find. Or if you can find the reprints, the GDW CT adventures are worth a look. The Double Adventures would be my suggestion, since they're often quite short but have an interesting twist.