Traveller?

[payn]

Classic Traveller has a lot of "storygame" in it - Streetwise skill, Vacc Suit skill, Admin and Bribery, the rules for avoiding adverse interactions with the law, are the first things I think of; but much of it can be approached in this spirit.

Its simulationist break-points, in my experience, are (i) the money/accounting rules (they're tedious), (ii) the onworld exploration rules (they're ineffective and degenerate into "GM decides", and (iii) Book2 ship-to-ship combat (not very exciting after the first one or two shots are fired).

It's true, the rules are just enough to almost not enough. It works for me because I have taken to running Traveller as a hybrid narrative driven game but also rules based kind of Frankenstein.

 

[aramis erak]

It's true, the rules are just enough to almost not enough. It works for me because I have taken to running Traveller as a hybrid narrative driven game but also rules based kind of Frankenstein.

CT as written is "each non-weapon skill is a custom rule"... some treat those like AWE/PBTA moves; others as starting points to mechanicalize further...
Most CT players I played with played '81... which hardly changes the variety of unique skill rules... and Books 4-8 add more. So does Sup 4.

My preferred edition, however, is a somewhat hacked MegaTraveller (needed rolls up 1 point, atts as assets changed from att/5 to att/3, use vehicle mechanics and large scale combat mechanics with mayday movement, alter the Pen:AV thresholds).

But, to be snarky, it's likely replaced by Alien.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

CT as written is "each non-weapon skill is a custom rule"... some treat those like AWE/PBTA moves; others as starting points to mechanicalize further...
Most CT players I played with played '81... which hardly changes the variety of unique skill rules... and Books 4-8 add more. So does Sup 4.

My preferred edition, however, is a somewhat hacked MegaTraveller (needed rolls up 1 point, atts as assets changed from att/5 to att/3, use vehicle mechanics and large scale combat mechanics with mayday movement, alter the Pen:AV thresholds).

But, to be snarky, it's likely replaced by Alien.

ROFL! Back when I was really actively running Traveller all the time I pretty much ignored all the 'skill specific' rules, unless they happened to embody a particularly significant sub-system within them. We played strictly an 8+ success with standard factors sort of game, no varying that number, etc. While we didn't codify our approach in any way, at least at my table, any check had to lead to story significant outcomes. So if you went to certain venues and looked for a specific sort of patron, you would be checking Streetwise, and SOMETHING would always happen. There was no such thing in our games as an 'empty result'. If you didn't hit 8+, well you found something, it just wasn't a guy that was going to pay you money to do a job!

I found the skill rules to be useful in terms of helping to define and differentiate the various skills from each other. While Traveller didn't tend to pile HUGE numbers of skills into the game, like BRP-based games for instance, there could be times where you asked "is this carousing or streetwise?" The books would generally clarify where a given course of action was intended to fall, though not always.

Of course the combat rules are a bit of their own thing in this regard, as they provide some more complex interactions between various factors, and form a larger cohesive system. I'm pretty sure we always played those straight up in accordance with the '77 rules, although in most situations we may have 'fudged' certain things a bit.

This is why I say that something like a PbtA framework would slide right into place with Traveller. While our understanding of 'narrative play' wasn't very sophisticated, I think it does come close to what was intended by Marc. Basically when you make a check, you state a GOAL, and the outcome of the role is adjudicating that, not necessarily the detail of "did I crash?" but maybe more "are we in a fictional situation to continue the chase?"

 

[pemerton]

Back when I was really actively running Traveller all the time I pretty much ignored all the 'skill specific' rules, unless they happened to embody a particularly significant sub-system within them.

For me, these various specific rules are part of the charm of Traveller. Though I do have my own write-up which presents them more systematically (eg all the stuff under Admin, Bribery, Forgery, Streetwise, Law Levels and similar is systematised into rules for dealing with officials and bureaucracy), and that generalises some of them (eg I combine the evasion rules from the combat section with the evasion rules in the Ship's Boat skill for a general evasion framework, which I have also used for eg ATVs to escape to cover while being shot at from a ship in orbit with an enemy Forward Observer calling in the fire).

There are not actually that many of these sub-systems - many skills (eg most of the technical ones) have no independent subsystem - and that is part of what makes Classic Traveller pretty playable. It's ratio of mechanical complexity to fictional capacity is pretty impressive! (Especially when compared to AD&D which was coming out at the same time.)

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

For me, these various specific rules are part of the charm of Traveller. Though I do have my own write-up which presents them more systematically (eg all the stuff under Admin, Bribery, Forgery, Streetwise, Law Levels and similar is systematised into rules for dealing with officials and bureaucracy), and that generalises some of them (eg I combine the evasion rules from the combat section with the evasion rules in the Ship's Boat skill for a general evasion framework, which I have also used for eg ATVs to escape to cover while being shot at from a ship in orbit with an enemy Forward Observer calling in the fire).

There are not actually that many of these sub-systems - many skills (eg most of the technical ones) have no independent subsystem - and that is part of what makes Classic Traveller pretty playable. It's ratio of mechanical complexity to fictional capacity is pretty impressive! (Especially when compared to AD&D which was coming out at the same time.)

Yeah, it is overall a pretty conceptually simple game. I mean, all there really is is a skill system! That, ability scores, and their use as hit points, plus a few misc combat rules dealing with range, turn order/initiative, and parrying/dodging, and a few equipment specific rules like how armor and various types of guns work. So at heart there is not a ton to remember. Obviously the ship rules, the vehicle rules, patron rules, and the trading rules are additional 'stuff', but they're kind of additional things that help work the plot more than being resolution related stuff.

And this, frankly, was always why I liked the system. It is just very minimalist, but not TOO minimalist. However, being lazy and forgetful, I just didn't bother with a lot of the little nitty smaller 'rules' that show up in various skills and such. Like those vac suit rules, I never bothered with those, you just rolled your skill for 8+ when you decided that going out in the vacuum to do some silly thing was a good way to accomplish something. On a 7- you were going to be in trouble, "Oh no, you grabbed the alien widget, but you tore a hole in the left arm of your suit, now you have 12 seconds to get back to the airlock before bad things happen!"