Traveller: the iconic science fiction roleplaying game

Not DnD is a weekly show discussing tabletop roleplaying games. In September we are looking at tabletop RPGs for a sci-fi setting!

Traveller is a long-beloved science fiction roleplaying game first published in 1977. The game has had several editions published over it's almost 50 year history, including GURPS and d20. It's difficult to discuss sci-fi ttrpgs without mentioning this iconic game.

The Traveller Core Rulebook Update 2022 by Mongoose publishing provided new careers, equipment, hazards, world creation, psionics and shipbuilding. Come learn more about Mongoose Traveller 2nd Edition with Matt and Chris from Mongoose Publishing on this weeks (29th September) episode of Not DnD.


Not DnD is a weekly show discussing tabletop roleplaying games. Each week EN Publishing’s @tabletopjess interviews the creators behind different tabletop roleplaying games that aren’t D&D!

You can watch the live recording every Monday at 5pm ET / 10pm BST on YouTube or Twitch, or listen on the podcast platform of your choice.

We've had many other sci-fi TTRPGs on Not DnD over the last three years such as Salvage Union, Terminal, Orbital Blues, You're In Space and Everything is F***ed, Day Trippers, Alien, Paranoia, Blade Runner, Star Trek Adventures, and Dune.

You can watch any of these previous interviews on youtube here. Or listen to the podcast episodes here.

 

[Jeffzilla]

I spent many, many hours playing Traveller with friends in the late 80s and early 90s. It's hard to understand why Traveller's popularity hasn't persisted and grown the way that D&D's popularity did. I always suspected that it was more than the chance of character death during character creation and that younger characters by default were pretty green and nearly unplayable. When I was a 17-year-old running the game, a 40-something-year-old ex-scout character seemed so old. Now that I'm (mumble, mumble) years old myself, being 40-something doesn't sound half-bad, but the lifeblood of this hobby lies with new gamers, not grognards like me.

 

[payn]

I spent many, many hours playing Traveller with friends in the late 80s and early 90s. It's hard to understand why Traveller's popularity hasn't persisted and grown the way that D&D's popularity did. I always suspected that it was more than the chance of character death during character creation and that younger characters by default were pretty green and nearly unplayable. When I was a 17-year-old running the game, a 40-something-year-old ex-scout character seemed so old. Now that I'm (mumble, mumble) years old myself, being 40-something doesn't sound half-bad, but the lifeblood of this hobby lies with new gamers, not grognards like me.

If I had to guess it was more about relating the RPG to media being consumed by folks. There was a fantasy explosion in the 70's that D&D lead right into. Then, in the 80's video games like Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy took the formula and trained youngsters on how to do it. Which led into the 90's with loot systems like Diablo and then right into MMOs like World of Warcraft. Traveller was a little too unique and not Jedi/Ewoks/deathstars with the serial numbers filed off as D&D was to LotR. It just never developed the same pipeline of media synergy that made D&D the king of RPGs.

 

[pemerton]

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 XP-for-gold level up; nor to the standard form that many D&D adventures have taken for a long time now, of a quest whose success is gated behind a series of combat encounters.

This aspect of Traveller was observed in White Dwarf magazine back in the late 70s and early 80s, when dungeon-crawling D&D was still a norm. And I think the advent by the mid-80s of a default approach to D&D that is more recognisably contemporary only exacerbated the issue.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Such a great game. Loved the character creation minigame, death and all.

 

[TheAlkaizer]

I've bounced hard off Mongoose's Traveller. I loved the character creation, I loved the setting and I enjoyed many core systems like the 2d6 and skill system. But some of the rules were mind-blowingly unusable. I bounced it off with experienced players to see if I was crazy or interpreting the rules wrongly, but apparently not.

It's on my to do to list to jump into Classic Traveller and/or Cepheus to see how well it fares because there was so much to like.

 

[payn]

I've bounced hard off Mongoose's Traveller. I loved the character creation, I loved the setting and I enjoyed many core systems like the 2d6 and skill system. But some of the rules were mind-blowingly unusable. I bounced it off with experienced players to see if I was crazy or interpreting the rules wrongly, but apparently not.

It's on my to do to list to jump into Classic Traveller and/or Cepheus to see how well it fares because there was so much to like.

Im curious what those rules were since Mongoose hasnt really changed much of the Traveller base?

 

[darjr]

Im curious what those rules were since Mongoose hasnt really changed much of the Traveller base?

Same here.

Please and thank you.

 

[TheAlkaizer]

Im curious what those rules were since Mongoose hasnt really changed much of the Traveller base?

I'm not saying that Classic will be different, that's why I want to dive in and give it a read.

But I've been marked for life by the rules for freight notably. I don't have the book in front of me, but I remember us going through a list of modifiers (number of parsecs, type of worlds, etc) adding that and roll 2D6 to see how many lots of freight were available. You did this three times, once for each size (major, minor, incidental). A bit tedious but it's okay. And then it suggested rolling to determine how many tons each lot were. The thing is that when we played it, the 2D6 gave us something like twenty-seven major lots available. There's no way they're asking me to roll twenty-seven times to determine the size of each lot.

I asked around, most of the answers I had from experienced players were "yep, that's it". Most told me to roll it in advance, or use some online tools. And a minority of people told me they were rolling once for all the Major cargos and it was the size of all major cargos, which seemed to be counter to what the system is trying to achieve (cargos of different sizes and having to make decisions).

 

[payn]

I'm not saying that Classic will be different, that's why I want to dive in and give it a read.

But I've been marked for life by the rules for freight notably. I don't have the book in front of me, but I remember us going through a list of modifiers (number of parsecs, type of worlds, etc) adding that and roll 2D6 to see how many lots of freight were available. You did this three times, once for each size (major, minor, incidental). A bit tedious but it's okay. And then it suggested rolling to determine how many tons each lot were. The thing is that when we played it, the 2D6 gave us something like twenty-seven major lots available. There's no way they're asking me to roll twenty-seven times to determine the size of each lot.

I asked around, most of the answers I had from experienced players were "yep, that's it". Most told me to roll it in advance, or use some online tools. And a minority of people told me they were rolling once for all the Major cargos and it was the size of all major cargos, which seemed to be counter to what the system is trying to achieve (cargos of different sizes and having to make decisions).

Oh...yeah... I kinda blocked that freight part from my mind but I know exactly what you are talking about. Not only did some of my early groups abandon any adventure as "too dangerous to risk our mortgaged ship" but figuring out caro/goods/lots/planet markets ate so much game time...