How Quickly Do You Bounce Off a System?

[Retreater]

Like, in the case of three different perception skills, does it lead to better spotlight sharing in the information gathering department, or does it just mean scout characters have to buy multiple skills to do their job? How does that compare to other specialists and the number of skills they need?

What I think, as a person who would be GMing the game as a Forever GM and explaining the system to players who probably aren't going to buy their own copies of the rules...
How do I explain the difference of these three skills? How do I quell arguments when a player doesn't get to use their highest scores? How do I explain "in the world" something illogical (Sam with a High Strength)? How do I explain to a player that their fighter who is maxxed out in Strength is now the party's face?
How do I remember these rules when they're seemingly assembled randomly? I probably have 2-3 other systems rattling around in my brain - and especially if the rules aren't logical, I'm going to mix up things.
How do I make a case to play "this" game (opposed to others?) If we're already playing a game that we understand, what's the value of learning something that doesn't really add anything? If it's not very clear how I will answer that, it's probably a losing enterprise.

 

[TwoSix]

Depends on what material the book is made of and how fast I'm falling.

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

Depends on what material the book is made of and how fast I'm falling.

Most books don't lend themselves to elastic collisions, true.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Yeah, the original Traveller LBB trilogy wasn't as military focused as often claimed, that's an artifact of hindsight where the earliest career expansion books (ie Merc and High Guard) leaned into it rather than commerce, espionage/diplomacy or exploration - which were the four main campaign movers IME, not two. Presumably GDW was going with what they thought would sell best to a community that was still largely derived from wargamers (RPGs were still very young back then) or maybe it was purely personal interests behind pushing the merc playstyle, but it's colored perceptions of the game ever since then.

I'm not sold that either diplomacy or exploration had nearly the footprint the other two had, in part because the support for them was awfully limited, and the reason for freelance characters to be involved in the first was even more limited (outside of cases where it was mercantile in disguise). However it was intended to be, you could search around through early Trav games a lot without hitting anything but the merchants and mercenaries (possibly, in part, for the reason you mentioned in your following paragraph, but again, what support there was was what there was).

There's some alternate universe where Scouts and Merchant Princes came out in 1978/1980 instead of 1983/1985 and GDW didn't leave politics and spy work to 3PP to focus on, and Traveller has a whole different reputation. Or maybe it doesn't exist, because not catering to wargamers early led to it flopping altogether. Without some TL25 timeline-hopping tech, who can say?

Worth noting that of the six original careers, only two of them are really optimal for ground combat mercs. You can get personal combat skills from any of them in theory, but they're usually not what you're hoping for from Navy and Scouts and Merchant. You need the skills that let you operate and maintain the ship everyone's hoping for when they muster out, and they don't come from Army or Marine terms so much.

Well, it wasn't super practical to support a mercs campaign without a ship anyway, and Scouts and Navy were a good place to get someone who knew how to operate Air Raft, too. You could argue the other two could be useful too (after all, in a way, a mercenaries campaign is a merchants campaign, its just a question of what you're selling, and fair bit of mercenary work could be sub rosa).

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

I'm not sold that either diplomacy or exploration had nearly the footprint the other two had, in part because the support for them was awfully limited, and the reason for freelance characters to be involved in the first was even more limited (outside of cases where it was mercantile in disguise).

I think there's a degree of "which first, chicken or egg" going on with how early Traveller evolved. Did the book release schedule cause it, or were they chosen in response to it, or some mix of both. I recall Mercs as being a huge big deal when it hit originally, and suddenly Army and Marine careers were the new hotness.

Spoiler: Lengthy OT chatter

They certainly didn't once Mercs dropped in 1978 and made that the career of choice for power gamers, but there were still something that I ran into a fair bit even in the early-to-mid 80s when my Traveller gaming peaked. "Diplomacy" often resembled a Retief plot (who, I'll point out, was quite popular in those days) and espionage was something freelancers got sucked into as deniable assets quite regularly (even today, and usually in conjunction with other story beats like mercantile affairs as a cover). Exploration morphed considerably over even a short period of time IME, starting out as going "where no one has gone before" stories and gradually shifting toward more picaresque "what weird local quirks does the next system over have?" travel stories akin to Jack Vance's Ports of Call as the canon setting was fleshed out and mystery evaporated. A fair number of campaigns became exploration focused by accident too - mis-jumps happen.

You were also more likely to see homebrew campaigns in the very early days when Traveller was more of a toolkit and less of a defined setting. Real frontier exploration is harder to fit in a 3rd Imperium game, while playing merchant is much harder when the GM's setting is loosely defined and lightly populated, and relatively peaceful settings don't support military campaigns as well as canon does. Quote a few GMs also skipped the "freelance sandbox" thing in favor of having the PCs all share an actual employer/patron, or be reservists called back to duty for one thing or another.

It was a different and less uniform environment in terms of campaign styles back then, at least IME - but you're right in saying it became dominated by merc/military and merchant campaign styles over time, and pretty quickly too. Still think that's largely the result of what order the books were released in, along with the obvious need to make every credit you can to pay for your ship (if any). It's actually nice to see how Cepheus and indie publishers have shifted things back toward more diverse settings and gameplay styles IMO. Takes me back to the days of my relative youth.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I think there's a degree of "which first, chicken or egg" going on with how early Traveller evolved. Did the book release schedule cause it, or were they chosen in response to it, or some mix of both. I recall Mercs as being a huge big deal when it hit originally, and suddenly Army and Marine careers were the new hotness.

Spoiler: Lengthy OT chatter

They certainly didn't once Mercs dropped in 1978 and made that the career of choice for power gamers, but there were still something that I ran into a fair bit even in the early-to-mid 80s when my Traveller gaming peaked. "Diplomacy" often resembled a Retief plot (who, I'll point out, was quite popular in those days) and espionage was something freelancers got sucked into as deniable assets quite regularly (even today, and usually in conjunction with other story beats like mercantile affairs as a cover). Exploration morphed considerably over even a short period of time IME, starting out as going "where no one has gone before" stories and gradually shifting toward more picaresque "what weird local quirks does the next system over have?" travel stories akin to Jack Vance's Ports of Call as the canon setting was fleshed out and mystery evaporated. A fair number of campaigns became exploration focused by accident too - mis-jumps happen.

You were also more likely to see homebrew campaigns in the very early days when Traveller was more of a toolkit and less of a defined setting. Real frontier exploration is harder to fit in a 3rd Imperium game, while playing merchant is much harder when the GM's setting is loosely defined and lightly populated, and relatively peaceful settings don't support military campaigns as well as canon does. Quote a few GMs also skipped the "freelance sandbox" thing in favor of having the PCs all share an actual employer/patron, or be reservists called back to duty for one thing or another.

It was a different and less uniform environment in terms of campaign styles back then, at least IME - but you're right in saying it became dominated by merc/military and merchant campaign styles over time, and pretty quickly too. Still think that's largely the result of what order the books were released in, along with the obvious need to make every credit you can to pay for your ship (if any). It's actually nice to see how Cepheus and indie publishers have shifted things back toward more diverse settings and gameplay styles IMO. Takes me back to the days of my relative youth.

I think there's something to all that, but the mercs and merchants thing seemed to happen awfully early--but you can certainly make an argument that was accelerated by what books came out early. Frankly, I think exploration games were largely dead in the water even when just the black box existed unless someone did some seriously heavy lifting; even the planet generation system (and that was liable to be something an exploration game was going to desperately need for many if not most people) was heavily biased toward already connected planets that interacted with other systems. The bit of ecosphere generation helped a little, but note that there was nothing in planet generation that would normally throw a pre-spaceflight or even pre-starflight new civilization. Let alone things like dead civilizations. It basically assumed something at least like the Imperium baked in.

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

The bit of ecosphere generation helped a little, but note that there was nothing in planet generation that would normally throw a pre-spaceflight or even pre-starflight new civilization. Let alone things like dead civilizations. It basically assumed something at least like the Imperium baked in.

Very true. The "Traveller as toolbox" argument always stumbles over the number of setting assumptions the rules use - although usually it's the (frankly bizarre) fuel-intensive FTL system, lack of FTL, casual STL drives and absence of FTL comms that does that more so than the lack of a good system generator.

Spoiler: More OT chatter

That said, 3PP were carrying a lot of weight for GDW in pretty short order, with Paranoia Press doing books for both merchants and scouts (bundled with assassins, of all things - there's some espionage/tough diplomacy for you) by 1981 and some mags and zines running their own ideas even earlier. The first eight years or so of its existence were the Golden Age for Traveller articles in non-GDW mags, that's for sure. Can't recall the first time I saw a variant world generator in some periodical but it was certainly in the Seventies. Lot of GMs didn't randomize anything anyway, they just wrote up what they wanted, often happily cribbing from popular scifi of the era. I know I've been to thinly disguised versions of Tran-Ky-Ky in at least three old campaigns...

Of course, none of that stuff had the same impact as official GDW books, even when they were more-or-less tacitly approved like FASA's output was. Having three or four scout and planet generation variants scattered around as many mags and publishers meant less than the single GDW LBB in 1983.

 

[payn]

Very true. The "Traveller as toolbox" argument always stumbles over the number of setting assumptions the rules use - although usually it's the (frankly bizarre) fuel-intensive FTL system, lack of FTL, casual STL drives and absence of FTL comms that does that more so than the lack of a good system generator.

Spoiler: More OT chatter

That said, 3PP were carrying a lot of weight for GDW in pretty short order, with Paranoia Press doing books for both merchants and scouts (bundled with assassins, of all things - there's some espionage/tough diplomacy for you) by 1981 and some mags and zines running their own ideas even earlier. The first eight years or so of its existence were the Golden Age for Traveller articles in non-GDW mags, that's for sure. Can't recall the first time I saw a variant world generator in some periodical but it was certainly in the Seventies. Lot of GMs didn't randomize anything anyway, they just wrote up what they wanted, often happily cribbing from popular scifi of the era. I know I've been to thinly disguised versions of Tran-Ky-Ky in at least three old campaigns...

Of course, none of that stuff had the same impact as official GDW books, even when they were more-or-less tacitly approved like FASA's output was. Having three or four scout and planet generation variants scattered around as many mags and publishers meant less than the single GDW LBB in 1983.

I love the lack of FTL comm/travel system. Gives an age of sail feel to a sci-fi setting keeping it on the hard side of things.

Honestly, that has always encouraged exploration in my experience since you need to plan it out carefully and be smart about it. You cant just jump in and communicate like a cell phone and jump away easily.

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

I love the lack of FTL comm/travel system. Gives an age of sail feel to a sci-fi setting keeping it on the hard side of things.

So do I, but it's not great to have baked into a hypothetical toolbox. A lot of scifi franchises expect it, and how common and reliable it is is a Big Deal. Similar problem with different FTL approaches (including "none") not fitting the jump drive model. A lot of people wanted Traveller to be more versatile out of the box than it really was. I can still remember reading magazine reviews rating Gamescience's Space/Star Patrol as better than Traveller because it was "easier to adapt to Star Trek and other scifi settings."

Which it was, but it was also a nearly-unplayable everything-and-the-kitchen-sink rules set that gleefully cribbed from every sf/f book the designers had ever read. Even got approval from some of the authors involved, although certainly not all of them. Really the kind of game that could only exist in an era when IP rights were a casual concern, but it's an interesting read if you can ever find a copy.

 

[ART!]

One of the first things I look for in a new (to me) game is the character sheet. If I can't get a sense of what the game is about from that - the contents, the layout, the approach, the style, etc - then I will probably move on.

I figure if the character sheet makes the game look like something I won't like, then I probably won't like it.

If the character sheet is poorly designed, then that's a bad sign.

The other thing I'll do is just flip through and look at the layout. If things are presented in a digestible, easy-to-find, and flavorful way, I'll be interested. If information is buried in paragraphs of text or the formatting is clunky, I'm probably gonna move on.

I'm impatient like that, but it's at least partly because I'm very visually-oriented. I have to want to look at the thing, and if it's making my brain hurt by being clunky or confusing, I ain't gonna wanna.