Sell me on (or out) Traveller

[Thourne]

There are a lot of games that can be described that way, not the least of which are the two different Firefly RPGs themselves.

Don't pick Traveller because it's the only way to play Firefly. Pick it because it's the way to play Firefly that otherwise best matches with your gaming tastes, or because you want to experience the game that is to science fiction what D&D is to fantasy.

I personally, cant divorce the various cortex systems from Firefly at this point. Updating them to prime isn't to difficult and it just really feels right.

 

[HaroldTheHobbit]

Your Glorantha may vary is a core theme of Runequest. So it is with Traveller & its many editions & variants. When I search on Drivethrurpg for 'System: Traveller' there 2238 items in the list.

Yes, and the variation I choose is Traveller Savage Worlds. Me and my players enjoy the system and have used it for different genres and power levels. And since it will be easy to adapt it to Travellers setting and premisses, I see no reason why not to use it. Fun is fun, no matter where you find it.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I'm a SF fan and I heard a lot about Traveller, but I still don't know how the game plays. What are the game loops? What kind of characters you can create? What kind of adventures and stories should I expect? What do I spend most of my time doing in a game session? If you think Traveller is a good game, what makes it good, and what should I be looking for in a game to enjoy it?

Traveller with any of the original/semi-original mechanics is a terrible retro-sci-fi RPG with some fascinating design that no-one should actually play unless they really, like to like an insane degree, love semi-hard 1970s-style sci-fi, and don't want any modern, elegant or well-designed systems involved in their game. The setting is flat as hell, and desperately 1970s (including the updated versions!), so even ditching the mechanics for more modern system won't save you. It's basically Niven/Pournelle: The RPG, only without anything really cool or really wild from their works. Only staid things are allowed in Traveller. It's a very beige kind of game.

Also as you can tell there is an absolutely ridiculous and confusing proliferation of systems for it and editions of it.

It really doesn't deserve it, either. It's solely the result of being the original SF RPG. And surprisingly not a particularly influential one!

Everything @Whizbang Dustyboots is saying is true. Including it having fun character generation.

 

[pemerton]

@Ruin Explorer

My view is pretty much the opposite of yours. The original Traveller rules (1977) are highly playable. It's a mostly well-designed system that lends itself easily to a PbtA-ish approach. The implied setting is clear if rather miserable - interstellar poverty lorded over by pointless nobles putzing about in their interstellar yachts.

Given that it's one of the earliest RPGs, I think it's remarkable how playable it still is. (Though like many early RPGs the rules would benefit from a bit of an edit, to make the presentation of the different resolution systems a bit clearer.)

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Given that it's one of the earliest RPGs, I think it's remarkable how playable it still is.

I 100% agree with this. The Little Black Books hold up much better than the earliest versions of D&D (sorry, Team OSR) and especially other contemporaries, most of which aged far worse than D&D did.

 

[Bagpuss]

Traveller's setting, wonderfully 1970s vision of futuristic technology, etc., and everything else is great, and its character creation is a beloved RPG meme for a reason.

The gameplay loop, though, is what made my players nope out.
In other words, your friends can get together with you and roleplay the far future fun of paying a mortgage (on a spaceship, but still), running a small business (a trader flying between worlds) or trying to succeed in their career (aboard a space-going naval vessel). My players, who already spend enough time worrying about this stuff as adults, said no thank you, and wanted to go back to heroic fantasy.

It's why I preferred Traveller: New Era as a setting, the Reformation Coalition gave a decent reason to adventure and recover lost tech, establish trade, found new settlements, and deal with Vampire Fleets. A bit more interesting that space trucking.

 

[Thourne]

I 100% agree with this. The Little Black Books hold up much better than the earliest versions of D&D (sorry, Team OSR) and especially other contemporaries, most of which aged far worse than D&D did.

 

[payn]

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[ThrorII]

Traveller's setting, wonderfully 1970s vision of futuristic technology, etc., and everything else is great, and its character creation is a beloved RPG meme for a reason.

The gameplay loop, though, is what made my players nope out.

Character improvement is almost non-existent, which makes sense, given that character generation tells the story of a character's life over decades. Instead, it's about improving characters' circumstances and, typically, their ship or their career.

In other words, your friends can get together with you and roleplay the far future fun of paying a mortgage (on a spaceship, but still), running a small business (a trader flying between worlds) or trying to succeed in their career (aboard a space-going naval vessel). My players, who already spend enough time worrying about this stuff as adults, said no thank you, and wanted to go back to heroic fantasy.

I think Traveller is a very fun document to own and read and I know many people enjoy it today, but I would probably run a game of Scum & Villainy instead, which has a much more satisfying narrative loop in each of its three modes.

This almost 100%

I tried to get my players into Traveller years ago. They balked after session 1. Having to figure out how much fuel per jump to get from A to B, how much cargo they needed to pay for fuel, and the 'lets find cargo' mini game, just killed it for them.

I ran a fleshed out Adventure 1: Kinunir for them. They generated characters (I ruled that 'death' just ended your career prematurely) and I gave them an A2 Far Trader. They were hired by a fence on Regina to find the Kinunir in the Shinothy asteroid belt and steal the Black Globe Generator.

Seems easy enough.....They had to figure out info on the Kinunir, plot a course, take fuel and cost in to the equation, and then find cargo to pay for the above. But all those issues (fuel, money, cargo) was un-fun for them.

When they got to Shinothy, they found it was basically "Space Vegas" for the contra-terrine asteroid miners: Lots of various sized ships offering supplies, food, lodging, gambling, women, etc. They asked too many questions about the Kinunir to the wrong people, so I had the mob boss who ran the hotel/casino/pleasure operations send goons after them to see what they were up to. They got to fight them, board and fight the ship, and get the BG generator.

They also did not care for Traveller combat rules.

 

[rgard]

We played in the late 70s, early 80s with the LBB. It was a hoot. We rotated GM responsibilities. We all rolled characters until one of us rolled up an octegenarian (ok, that's an exageration) who mustered out with a scout ship. Lots of characters died during character creation. It was a hoot. There are lots of charts in that game. At one point we were selling F-16s to farmers on an airless planet. Eventually, though, you will probably run out of money and end up being space pirates to pay the bills.

Coming from AD&D where there was level advancement, we found it annoying that characters couldn't get better at what they did.

During the OGL/D20 boom. There was a D20 Traveller (T20) published by QuikLink Interactive (Martin Dougherty and Hunter Gordon) under license. The game still has the prior service character generatioin like the original, but you can still start as 1st level if you want and you can advance in levels. I liked the T20 adaptation of the original.

You can find the T20 books on ebay and the like. If you aren't invested in the Traveller universe, but want to have the prior history and a D20 ruleset, QuikLink Interactive published a version of the rules that don't mention the Traveller universe:

SciFi20 Player's Guidebook - QuikLink Interactive, Inc. | SciFi20 Rulebooks | DriveThruRPG.com

SciFi20 Player's Guidebook - The SciFi20 Player's Guidebook (Book 1) This volume covers everything you need to know about creating and developing yo

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