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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 7358562" data-attributes="member: 82106">Simply because, at the time (1977) when Traveler was published it was literally inconceivable to do it any other way. I would imagine Marc Miller started working on Traveler virtually as soon as he saw a copy of D&D in 1974, since it would have taken 2-3 years to design, playtest, edit, and layout and print, a game in those days, and then get it to the distributors. Thus it was probably literally written before anything like even Greyhawk had been published. At that time the only example of a working RPG and process would be whatever you saw Gary do at a con, or what someone who had one of the early 'woodgrain box' D&D sets was doing. These were all wargamers, thus a scenario (adventure, dungeon, whatever) was laid out ahead of time for sure.So, when it came to designing an adventure for Traveler, the only thing anyone knew how to do was to make a bunch of maps and keys, and some sort of story arc which would presumably propel the PCs from their starting point to the adventure location (or on to the next location if there was one). What I remember of the early Traveler adventures was that they were all location-based. It was all something on the order of "go to location X and explore the base/ship/ruins found there" with various permutations of how you got there (shipwrecked, hijacked, hired, misjumped, etc.) and of what exactly needed to be accomplished at the location (find something, blow it up, steal it, loot it, etc) if anything. TBH I don't recall the specifics of any one single adventure, though I do remember that there were a number of products like 'Azhanti High Lightning' which had a whole bunch of maps of a large warship and various scenarios for using them (sneak on board to do something, find ship a floating wreck and explore, etc).I don't recall that Traveler ever really evolved beyond that level. Its an odd aspect of that game, it seemed to be born whole in 1977 and it basically has been stuck there ever since. It never evolved even a tiny bit. I guess Megatraveler and maybe the newer Mongoose version have some very modest provisions for things like general action declarations ala the Streetwise skill check in CT, though I have never played any of those myself. Functionally they all look pretty much like very slightly tweaked updates to the CT rules.That being said, Traveler is an easy game to modernize! For example you could go the 4e path and introduce SCs to it. At that point you could add in 'special benefits' for high skill levels (IE you can get extra advantages to certain types of checks with skill level 3+). You could also fold these benefits back into the logistics side of the game (make an Engineering check to see if you packed the right spare parts before leaving port when they're needed).You could also allow some fun stuff with SS, like risking a loss of SS in return for doing certain things, or add a debt factor to it to represent calling in obligations or incurring new ones. Abstract wealth would also work well in Traveler, and you could basically establish a separate wealth stat which worked much like SS.</blockquote>

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