Help Get Me Fired Up For Traveller!

[Lhorgrim]

So I was perusing my RPG bookshelf and found my copy of Mongoose Traveller. I've never played it, and I've only mostly read through it.

So give me some books, movies, T.V. shows, and/or music to help get me motivated to get to grips with it. I want to get in the right mindset to sell it to my small group of gamers.

The closest we've ever been to playing a Traveller type game would have been Battletech/Mechwarrior. We played the board game and used the RPG rules for our characters. I think a couple of the players have some experience with West End Games D6 Star Wars.

I like the artwork and feel of Traveller, but I've never played it in any of it's incarnations. I'm not sure how to handle adventures in the system, which is why I'm seeking motivation. In Star Wars we always had the problem of specialized characters with little to do in an adventure if the GM didn't make special effort to include them, and it usually felt forced.

I guess I need adventure ideas/examples, and a sense of appropriate pacing. I'm hoping to find some of that in books, movies, etc.

 

[TarionzCousin]

Go Traveller! Rah, rah, rah!

Are you fired up yet?

----------------

A good place to start is wikipedia's Traveller RPG page. Or look up "Space Opera."

But the main difference between Traveller and all other games is the character generation. That element of character generation creates a history and many potential hooks for the GM to use in creating the storylines and plot elements of the game.

 

[smetzger]

Firefly/Serenity type game would work with Traveller rules.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Firefly/Serenity type game would work with Traveller rules.

One might go so far as to say that Firefly is a Traveller TV show.

 

[ssampier]

I always do this by taking a toy spaceship and make various engine noise ("Rrrrooooooooo") and firing noises ("Zap, zap").

My name is ssampier and I'm 30 years old, going on 10.

 

[jedavis]

Not to repeat, but that was my first thought upon watching Firefly; "Wow... it's Traveller." You might also look at Elite or other space-trader type games as being similar to a mercantile-style Traveller game, with Hammer's Slammers or Schlock Mercenary being closer to a merc-style Trav game.

I'd also say that specialized characters are somewhat less of a problem in MongTrav due to the inclusion of Skill Packages at the end of character creation, and the connection rule is also helpful. Basically, both mechanisms let you get skills that a character of your careers normally wouldn't have access to. My current group has an ex-Marine / Scout, an Agent, a Doctor, and a Psion. I was initially a little worried about the non-combat classes being useless in combat, because they had been in Traveller d20, which I had played previously (they got 1/4 BaB... painful). However, the agent rolled Gun Combat 3, so he's a better shot than the marine. The doctor chose Gun Combat 0 from the skill package, and has decent Dex, so he can shoot competently, and the psion ended up more than capable of killing people with his brain. Similarly, everyone has some capability in starship combat / operations; the marine has Pilot and Comms, the agent has Astrogation and Gunner from Skill Package, the doctor has Engineering and Pilot, and the psion has Sensors (and maybe more Astrogation... not really sure). The psion tends to dominate social situations (high soc and telepathy will do that...), the agent is sneaky and can hack computers, the doctor heals people and has streetwise, and the marine kills people, but they're all useful in most situations, which I've been pretty happy with.

As for adventures... I have an adventure log for the campaign at CMU Traveller | Obsidian Portal . It's a little fragmented (it's actually the psion's player's notes that he's uploaded and that I've commented in italics), and in reverse order (start from the post furthest down the page), but it might give you some idea of what they've been doing.

 

[Thunderfoot]

Second on Schlock Mercenary. Great long running web comic with great artwork and in depth story lines.

There were a ton of comedy shows made in this vein "Quark" - a short lived NBC series about a space garbage company. "Red Dwarf" - a long running BBC series that is part "Star Trek" part "Gilligan's Island". "Star Trek" could give you the feel about pacing and serialization of plot, though it's much more sterile than Traveller.

There are also a ton of books that can give you the comedic feel (The "Phule's Company" series is a great resource if you can get past the really bad puns, which I actually enjoy), but I can't recall and straight space pirate series, except possibly "Ice Pirates" (the books NOT the movie).

You might have to pull a Gene Roddenberry, he pitched "Star Trek" to the western happy CBS executives as "Wagon Train" to the stars. It worked, the show wasn't anything like that, but he got his time slot and his money. So you may need to get some pirate movies, and then say "imagine this in space."

 

[Thunderfoot]

I always do this by taking a toy spaceship and make various engine noise ("Rrrrooooooooo") and firing noises ("Zap, zap").

My name is ssampier and I'm 30 years old, going on 10.

[AA meeting group]Hi ssampier...[/AA meeting group]

 

[Lhorgrim]

Thanks everybody.

This is just the kind of info I was looking for. The Wiki link was fantastic. I had done a search on wikipedia and all I got was information about the basic premise and a list of editions.

I'm definitely going to watch Firefly. It sounds like a great motivator/idea farm.

 

[mhensley]

Go find Outland and Alien on netflix.