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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 7731490" data-attributes="member: 82106">I guess it might be moving a LITTLE outside the bounds of the thread, but this game is one where there certainly are POSSIBLE ways to generate tension, and some that work pretty reliably for some definitions of it. Its a weird game though in the sense that your characters don't really progress, and don't really have any defined reasons to either stick together or to actually adventure. It tends to become either very DM driven, or very sandboxy sort of just drift around trading and raiding. I mean, think about it, you've got some SS11 guy who's basically a Count or something (one of your elites, though I don't ENTIRELY share your view of the Traveller milieu). WHY is he out grubbing around playing supernumerary on a 200 ton Free Trader? How, given the number of pirates, misjumps, bad cargo runs, etc, does ANYONE actually make a living in such a way anyhow? The 'scouts give away their almost worthless surplus ships and let them be used as a sort of unofficial intelligence network' kinda ALMOST made sense, except the ship is worth like CR10 million and even if you sell it for 10 cents on the credit you can still go retire. The system is 'tight', but it isn't tight in a way that actually drives forward story very well! Which leads to problems with tension, because death is utterly meaningless in Traveller. There's no progression,  and IME little accumulation of serious wealth that would even substitute for that (though that seems to be the idea of the game, such as there is one). Players tended to actually like to die and play the 'create a character' subgame again, because doing THAT 100 times was the most reliable way to 'upgrade' your character!!!! There was NO system at all for things that were OBVIOUS like, who is my family? I got this SS 11 but I don't even have a list of suggested names or family histories, etc. The Empire milieu of official Traveller didn't really help there AT ALL. It was filled with sector maps and planet attribute strings, and not much else. There wasn't even a way to find out what planet you came from, so without a planet, a family, etc. all characters are rootless and lack any motivation such as "save the planet!" or anything like that. It was such a frustrating game for that reason. Lots of really good solid mechanics, a perfectly fine combat system, lots of add-on supplement systems for equipment out the gazoo, and a fairly interesting interstellar travel system, but without anything at the heart of it. There is just literally no reason given or even suggested to care one bit about a character in this game. Obviously GMs and players CAN rectify all of this, but oddly no supplements or articles really seemed to move much in that direction. Eventually variant systems and settings were devised that seemed to want to fill that void, but IME none of them really ever overcame the core limitations of the original presentation. Many times I've considered revving up a Traveller campaign, and done it a couple times, but if I ever do it again I will utterly ditch all of those parts of the game and build something different on the core. Once you decide to go THAT far then there's little reason not to just go ahead and use something like Cortex+ instead!</blockquote>

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