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When I started a Traveller game in 2017, I took the advice of one of the early White Dwarf Traveller authors - I think Andy Slack - and had each player roll up two PCs. For some of the players this lead to a main/secondary approach, although for one or two of them both PCs have been "mains"...

Another thought on the low-stakes start. There is a certain interpretation of/approach to the idea that "the player controls the PC, the GM controls everything else" according to which the GM deciding to start things at the adventure site or in situ is the GM improperly playing the PC. I mean...

My observation is that there is a widespread preference (though not universal - see eg @TwoSix above!) to start play in a low stakes environment - like a tavern or the city gates in D&D, or a starport in Traveller - and then have a situation with actual stakes emerge "organically" from there, by...

Why not just start the session with the PCs at the home of the wizard? Or even have them start at or near the entrance to the caves, and tell them what they've been told (perhaps by a wizard!) about what's in the caves. Yes, having "quest-givers" turn up and recruit the PCs as they sit in a...

Book 1 (1981), p 10: Survival: Each term of service involves some danger; during the term, a character must successfully throw his service's survival number to avoid death in the line of duty. Each service also has DMs which may apply. Failure to successfully achieve the survival throw results...

I think that's the 1981 version, rather than the 1977 version.

Yes, the speculative trade system is pretty efficient. But there's also the rolls to determine available cargoes (from Book 2 (1977), p 7): The referee should determine all worlds accessible to the starship (depending on jump number), and roll (for each such world) a number of dice equal to...

There's a lot I enjoy about RPGing. Most of all, I think it's the situations in the fiction.

Thank you - very generous. It's all taken from the rules, but put together in a way that (I think) makes it easier to adjudicate situations, both from the "what do the players roll?" perspective and the "what should I, as GM, do next?" perspective. For me, at least in how I think as a RPGer and...

I don't agree with you about the Magic action - I still think, for the reasons that I've posted upthread, that the most straightforward way of making sense of the casting that takes place "as normal" is that it is a performance of the Magic action - but I agree with you in respect of what I've...

I've read very little sci-fi, but when I first encountered Traveller (in the late 70s, so I was fairly young) it didn't match the sci-fi I was familiar with: Star Wars, Star Trek, Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, Marvel Comics. When I cam back to it more recently, I told my players (a couple of whom...

For my game, I had made my own version of the tables, based on Book 1, Supplement 4, and a few additions of my own. I added some of the newer skills to the older tables, and also took the idea of Special Duty from MegaTraveller and included that, so as to increase starting skill slightly (I...

There's nothing in the original modules that makes me think they're set in the Sea of Dust. That seems like just as big a revision/retcon as placing them in the Forgotten Realms.

I don't know any of the Mongoose versions. But Classic Traveller has lots of tools to support low-prep play: random world generation, random patron generation, random animal generation, etc. When I started a campaign, the players rolled up their PCs, then I rolled up a random starting world...

Dunno. My campaign didn't have much trade in it (only one episode of trade in 20+ sessions, as best I recall) but there was still the need to track mortgage payments, fuel payments, life support payments, upkeep and repair of the vessel, payment of crew salaries (for 12 crew), etc. The player I...

This is pretty similar (not identical) in Classic Traveller. The player of the ship owner/captain in my Classic game has complained about the accounting aspect - and he's a pretty experienced RPGer/wargmaer/Civilization player. I (as GM) have a spreadsheet to keep track of his crew salary...

I think Classic Traveller remains a brilliant, very playable RPG. (See eg this thread.) In terms of popularity, though, I think it is an issue that it doesn't offer a clear core play experience in the way that D&D does: there is no real analogue in Traveller to dungeon exploration, with its...

Greyhawk is one of two D&D settings that I've tried to follow in a comprehensive fashion; the other is OA (including Kara-Tur). Part of what I mean by that is that these are the only two settings that I've bought a product for because it was associated with that setting. But I've never had any...

Not my experience at all! The 2nd ed AD&D spell entries are generally cleaner than the original AD&D ones. The 3E spell descriptions - especially for more complex spells, like Sepia Snake Sigil - seemed to me to be incorporating Sage Advice (and similar edge-case rules). Personally I prefer the...

It's a long time since I've been to a convention (that was also "back in the day"), but the best convention games I played allowed the players to inject a judgement or opinion about resolution at the moment of crisis. I think there's an important distinction between that sort of set-up and a...