How is Traveller? Looking for a Space RPG...

[johnnype]

What about psionics? I recently saw a book on the topic at my FLGS and it looked interesting.

What other supplements are worth buying? I have the MongTrav pocket edition but that's it.

Tell me more about Gateway to Destiny. Is it old or new? Is it available in hardcopy?

 

[Psion]

One of the first Traveller adventures I ever played was 100% exploration with no combat whatsoever. The challenge was in figuring out how the place worked and why it worked.

The adventure I just ran Friday had a combat (with looters), but no real villain. It was all about the players dealing with the consequences of a shuttle crash on a moon base.

It was the adventure published in S&P 55:
Mongoose Publishing : For All Your Gaming Needs ...

 

[Psion]

What about psionics? I recently saw a book on the topic at my FLGS and it looked interesting.

There is a psionic book for MongT, but alas, I don't own it. I don't feel a great urge to use psionics. (Remember, I'm the one who thinks psionics is magic and therefore fantasy, not SF. )

What other supplements are worth buying? I have the MongTrav pocket edition but that's it.

Still talking Mongoose Traveller here? Depends on what you want. I was sort of disappointed by Mercenary, but have it anyways because I like the chargen options.

1001 Patron Encounters is a good book, but for fans of CT: it's more a book of NPC encounters with a few plot seeds rather than mini adventures the way traditional patron encounters go.

From a setting-toolkit and deckplans wonkery perspective, I found Traders & Gunboats interesting.

High Guard again I liked mainly for the character options and Naval campaign ideas; not sure I'd ever do capital ship battles using their rules.

I hear good things about Agent, but don't own it yet.

Tell me more about Gateway to Destiny. Is it old or new? Is it available in hardcopy?

It's a few years old, came out shortly after T20. It was available in print, though the PDF can be had now; print might be hard to find.

Here's the PDF:
Gateway to Destiny - The Gateway Domain Campaign Sourcebook - QuikLink Interactive, Inc. | EN World PDF Store

If you look around QLI's RPGnot offerings, you'll also see a number of adventures using the setting (all the "blue border" ones).

It's set in the classic traveller setting in the Domain of Gateway in Y993 (about 100 years prior to the CT baseline.) It has one sector that is dominated by the Imperium and 3 largely outside it. It has lots of plot hooks, and is on the frontiers of two other major empires: the K'kree and the Hivers.

 

[Korgoth]

I'd like to run a science fiction game once our current D&D arc wraps up, and I've been looking at a few systems. The name 'Traveller' comes up an awful lot, but I know almost nothing about it mechanically. So, to those who've played it; how is it? Is the system good? I'd really like a certain lethality to the combat; these characters are not meant to be gun-toting space marines who can storm an enemy compound on their own (though they would know how to handle a weapon in a pinch). Also, I would like to get away from a d20 system... we've been playing a fair bit of d20 lately, so a change would be nice.

My plan is to run a game of space exploration with infrequent combat. The PCs would be on a ship, and that ship would explore uncharted star systems, dealing with hazards both in space and on planets, clash with rival explorers, set up claims for valuable commodities or land, and generally explore the cosmos.

Does Traveller work well for this sort of game?

Traveller works great for this sort of thing. I'm talking here about Classic Traveller, because that's the edition I know.

One thing that is interesting about Traveller, and a nice change of pace, is that Traveller is not a "bildungsroman". You don't start as an 18 year old kid out to make your fortune (there was an unlucky character upthread who only made it to age 22 in character gen, but that's the Army for you!). Adventurers in Traveller are often much like adventurers might be in our world: middle-aged ex-military types who have money, skills and freedom.

There is little provision for character advancement in Traveller... you can undertake some measures to improve skills or stats but only one or two at a time and a course can take years to complete (and make the increases permanent). In the main, your Traveller character is about as good as he's going to be, and the years will take their toll. But this can be very liberating: you don't have to second-guess the GM to figure out how you can convince him to award you a bunch of experience points. Instead, the rewards for survival and success are... survival and success. There's no need to kill every last space pirate or get every last unclaimed credit to maximize your XP count. There is no XP count so just do what you want.

Classic Traveller is somewhat freeform in some respects. Combat is well-defined. Other skill checks are left to the Referee to adjudicate: he may set the target roll and the modifiers on the fly (or he can set them in advance, of course). So if you're playing in my game and you want to try to use the de-powered space station's emergency life support system power to boot up the computer system to do a diagnostic, I'm going to say that's a use of the Electronics skill. That sounds fairly do-able if you have any skill at all so I'll say you have to roll 7+ (on 2d6). You get to add your Electronics skill (say you have Elec-1 so a +1). I'll also let you add +1 for every 2 points total of Computer and Mechanical skill... say you have each at 1 (you're a real handyman!) so that's another +1. I won't give a bonus for high education, but I'll give another bonus for above-average Intelligence (no soup for you; you've only got a 7). So that comes to +2, so you need a 5+... miss that and you can't figure your way around the bypasses and incompatibilities.

Here are some links to get you started:

FFE- HardCopy

Bat in the Attic: How to make a Traveller Sandbox

Classic Traveller - Citizens of the Imperium

 

[nedjer]

First or Mongoose for me. Love them both. Syndicates, conspiracies, rival empires - Traveller's an excellent game.

 

[Shades of Green]

A good previous ENWorld thread about Traveller

Anyhow, both Classic Traveller and its Mongoose remake are excellent games, and fit your desired exploration gameplay style very well. These games also give you ample tools for worldbuilding and generating your own universe (or your corner of the official Traveller universe, if you prefer it).

 

[Ariosto]

It was perhaps convenient for the purpose that young Lieutenant Trask was (one supposes) a victim of "down sizing" -- fiduciary responsibility in peacetime, ya know -- but I would indeed be inclined to roll up a few more characters in hopes of getting one older (and probably frailer) but wiser. It's a matter of personal ethos and aesthetics how far to go down that route, especially considering what an automated computer program can rapidly turn out.

Youth is an advantage if psionics are in play, and skills can be developed in play. That the latter typically happens not much faster (or even more slowly) than beforehand leads some folks (steeped in the D&D concept of "getting better all the time") to dismiss Classic as having no "experience system" at all.

The thing in my experience is that, even with the skills list, play is really more about the players' choices than about "stats".

Still, one sign you're not a kid anymore does seem to be that you're older than that first favorite Traveller character ...

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

I had a bad experience with GURPS traveler.

The completely random character generation method ended up with most characters being very wealthy. Their aim was to pay off their ship mortgage, rendering them unwilling of taking risks of any kind, as trading for the cash to pay off the mortgage wasn't particularly risky. Naturally this didn't fit in well with a few characters who rolled differently. It became a game of accounting rather than adventure or exploration.

 

[Ed_Laprade]

*Sigh* One of the first RPGs I ever played was Traveller. (On the same day I was introduced to D&D, no less!) This thread makes me want to go out and find a game! Unfortunately, I had to dump my (Classic) books many moons ago, so I think its about time I looked into buying some new ones. (Moongoose looks to be the way to go.) Even if I can't find a game, which seems likely, I'll at least be able to make up some characters. (And maybe they won't die as they are mustering out! A possibility no one has mentioned to the OP yet, for Classic Traveller.)

Oh yeah, one other possibility for the OP: the original Star Trek RPG, with the trader book, the name of which escapes me at the moment. (But good luck finding copies!) I won't recommend any of the other Trek RPGs because I've never read, let alone played, any of them. Anyone else have anything to say about them?

 

[shocklee]

My plan is to run a game of space exploration with infrequent combat. The PCs would be on a ship, and that ship would explore uncharted star systems, dealing with hazards both in space and on planets, clash with rival explorers, set up claims for valuable commodities or land, and generally explore the cosmos.

Does Traveller work well for this sort of game?

Everyone has done a very good job of describing the history of Traveller and giving you a feel for the system. While trying to 'sell the system', I think that your requirement for doing exploration hasn't been completely addressed.

Traveller space craft use a jump drive engine. Traditional Traveller star maps are drawn on hex paper, with each hex representing one parasec of space, or about one star system (which could be a single, binary, trinary, etc. system). The jump drive rating of the ship is the number of hexes it travels when it makes a jump, and the ship consumes virtually all of its hydrogen fuel when it makes that jump. The ship either needs to refuel at the end of the jump or scoop and process the fuel from a gas giant.

What that means is the typical Traveller game is about a tramp merchant ship owned by ex-military personnel running cargo, mail, and passengers between known star systems. While the Traveller rules could be used as the basis of a game where you receive government backing for the exploration, there are probably better rules choices for exploration games.

Now I don't want to get jumped by everyone on the discussion - I am not trying to knock the Traveller rules, I bought the little black box when GDW published it originally and I've also purchased the Mongoose rules more recently, so I've played under these rules for a long time. I'm just trying to point out that it might not be the ideal rules for an exploration game.