I'm preparing to run a Traveler-style game, and I'm remembering back to the days when I was playing Traveler.
I had the original game with the black half-sized books (1, 2, and 3), and we played that quite a bit (as well as other games)...
But one thing I never really got was how you were "supposed" to play it.
In D&D you're clearly a band of adventurers and your job is to go into underground mazes, kill things, and take their stuff.
In Traveler, it was a lot less clear to me.
As I get my game defined, I'd like to hear about games you folks played, particularly about how they were set up -- who the characters were supposed to be, why they were hanging out together, etc.
Tell me your stories!
Cheers,
-E.
Quote from: -E.;686978I'm preparing to run a Traveler-style game, and I'm remembering back to the days when I was playing Traveler.
I had the original game with the black half-sized books (1, 2, and 3), and we played that quite a bit (as well as other games)...
But one thing I never really got was how you were "supposed" to play it.
In D&D you're clearly a band of adventurers and your job is to go into underground mazes, kill things, and take their stuff.
In Traveler, it was a lot less clear to me.
As I get my game defined, I'd like to hear about games you folks played, particularly about how they were set up -- who the characters were supposed to be, why they were hanging out together, etc.
Tell me your stories!
Cheers,
-E.
Jeff is the man but for us it started as a rag tag group of disperate, usually ex-military types, who banded together bought a smalls ship and travelled the system trading, taking odd jobs, some leagal some not so much and tryign to avoid the authorities - basically just like Firefly.
Later it developed in various ways, usually for us based on 2000ad comics so we played a bunch of traveller games based on Ace Garp and Space trucking. We played a bunch of strontium Dog style games where we were bounty hunters, a bunch where we were agents getting involved in politics etc, but generally most where we were criminals planning some rather ludicrous heists.
So think Firefly and you basically have Traveller down to a tee.
Quote from: jibbajibba;686984Jeff is the man but for us it started as a rag tag group of disperate, usually ex-military types, who banded together bought a smalls ship and travelled the system trading, taking odd jobs, some leagal some not so much and tryign to avoid the authorities - basically just like Firefly.
Later it developed in various ways, usually for us based on 2000ad comics so we played a bunch of traveller games based on Ace Garp and Space trucking. We played a bunch of strontium Dog style games where we were bounty hunters, a bunch where we were agents getting involved in politics etc, but generally most where we were criminals planning some rather ludicrous heists.
So think Firefly and you basically have Traveller down to a tee.
Firefly is -- no doubt -- the go-to for this sort of thing.
And it captures the, "Hey! We have a ship... let's make some money!" aspects of the Traveler universe.
I also think Cowboy Beepbop is a go-to for that sort of thing.
In both of those, though, the characters had a bunch of back-stories and personal agendas driving them beyond just looking for money.
Did your characters start off with anything like that?
Thanks!
-E.
Quote from: -E.;686987Firefly is -- no doubt -- the go-to for this sort of thing.
And it captures the, "Hey! We have a ship... let's make some money!" aspects of the Traveler universe.
I also think Cowboy Beepbop is a go-to for that sort of thing.
In both of those, though, the characters had a bunch of back-stories and personal agendas driving them beyond just looking for money.
Did your characters start off with anything like that?
Thanks!
-E.
inevitablly becuase of who the players were ....
If you switch out the death option in chargen and add a 'life event' table instead it gives you a wealth of background.
So one of my PCs had a robotic left arm, an ex wife and an addiction to a depressant called Blue. Another had a warrent out on him, had a fued with a major arms smuggler, and had 2 mental ilnesses , if I recall Agoraphopia and fear of dogs (randomly generated from the CoC tables I think).
Quote from: jibbajibba;686988inevitablly becuase of who the players were ....
If you switch out the death option in chargen and add a 'life event' table instead it gives you a wealth of background.
So one of my PCs had a robotic left arm, an ex wife and an addiction to a depressant called Blue. Another had a warrent out on him, had a fued with a major arms smuggler, and had 2 mental ilnesses , if I recall Agoraphopia and fear of dogs (randomly generated from the CoC tables I think).
Awesome!
Quote from: -E.;686978But one thing I never really got was how you were "supposed" to play it.
In D&D you're clearly a band of adventurers and your job is to go into underground mazes, kill things, and take their stuff.
In Traveler, it was a lot less clear to me.
The classic Traveller campaigns, the ones most people talked about and played where the Merchant campaign and the Mercenary campaign.
A Merchant campaign involves a ethically challenged crew on a starship jumping from system to system trying to make a buck using the Traveller trade system. It plays out with one week in jump and one week dockside. The referee would use books like 76 Patrons and other random table scattered thourgh the Traveller line and come up with some interesting adventures.
One unique adventure to Traveller was trying to deal with a bureaucratic mess. It was presented in a compact choose your own adventure format and involved you talking to people and finding out who you ought to talk to. You had to deal with each individual difference and there were multiple failure and success paths.
A Mercenary Campaign is where a bunch of characters explore strange new worlds, seek out new life, new civilizations and blow them up. ;) Traveller supported this by detailing Tickets (i.e. Mercernary jobs) that give a basic outline of the situation along with some referee information.
Both campaigns and other types relied a lot on the referee making up stuff on the fly.
Mixed in all this was the occasional dunge... err exploration of Ancient Ruins adventure.
Plus various possibilities with alien races like the human Zhondani a empire and culture of psionic mind readers. Vargr, sentient Canis Lupus (Dogs) uplifed by the Ancients. Aslans a vaguely cat-like race that is very big on honor and aquistion of land. Solomani, a faction of human of earth who became racist dicks and managed to split off from the Imperium into a empire of their own. THe K'Kree a centauriod race of religously militant vegetarians. The Hivers a hexpod (non-insect tho) race that cooperation well with other alien races, extermely curious, and like to be the secret masters of manipulation.
If you have trouble getting started try looking at my How to Make a Traveller Sandbox (http://batintheattic.blogspot.com/2009/04/how-to-make-traveller-sandbox.html). I had some folks say it helped them to get started. The nice about Traveller preparing half this stuff is like a mini-game in of itself.
Quote from: -E.;686978I'm preparing to run a Traveler-style game, and I'm remembering back to the days when I was playing Traveler.
I had the original game with the black half-sized books (1, 2, and 3), and we played that quite a bit (as well as other games)...
But one thing I never really got was how you were "supposed" to play it.
In D&D you're clearly a band of adventurers and your job is to go into underground mazes, kill things, and take their stuff.
In Traveler, it was a lot less clear to me.
As I get my game defined, I'd like to hear about games you folks played, particularly about how they were set up -- who the characters were supposed to be, why they were hanging out together, etc.
Tell me your stories!
Cheers,
-E.
I recommend using DriveThruRPG and downloading Starter Traveller (http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/80190/CT-ST-Starter-Traveller)( a free basic version of the original Classic Traveller), on the same website download the free Book 0: An Introduction to Traveller (http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/58279/Book-Zero-Introduction-to-Traveller?term=book+0+) for Mongoose Traveller (a backwards compatable in print version of Traveller currently available). If you don't have your original
Traveller books anymore, both of these free items will help get you back in the mindset of the game's style.
Honestly, the character creation in
Traveller for me has always turned out best when it was its own seperate session. The Players tend to talk about the PCs they are creating and then connect with each other how and why they met up. As the individual characters are created, the group very organically forms with them. Once that group concept coalesces, then you can springboard off of that to what adventures are best tailored to them.
As for what is a good default, the Merchant Campaign already mentioned works well. It is similar to
Firefly and
Cowboy Bebop in its execution.
Will you be using a version of
Traveller, or something else for the rules?
Quote from: estar;687047One unique adventure to Traveller was trying to deal with a bureaucratic mess. It was presented in a compact choose your own adventure format and involved you talking to people and finding out who you ought to talk to. You had to deal with each individual difference and there were multiple failure and success paths.
Exit Visa, the one
Traveller adventure I never ran for any of my Players because I thought that they would kill me for putting them through that.
Quote from: estar;687047If you have trouble getting started try looking at my How to Make a Traveller Sandbox (http://batintheattic.blogspot.com/2009/04/how-to-make-traveller-sandbox.html). I had some folks say it helped them to get started. The nice about Traveller preparing half this stuff is like a mini-game in of itself.
This.
That blog post alone is worth its weight in gold if you are trying to start a
Traveller sandbox.
Crew of a trader ship or scout ship is the norm, though I have played and ran military or mercenary games, espionage games, and so forth.
For an example of a recent MongT game I ran (based on a T20 adventure by the talented Martin Dougherty), see here:
http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=13171
Guys,
This is solid gold -- exactly what I was hoping for. I'm going to go read the resources now.
Ok, actually, I'm about to do about 23 hours of flying now, but when I get home and un-jetlagged I'll be looking this stuff up.
Thanks!
-E.
As with old D&D, there was a context of inspirational source material; players acquainted with that would have some idea what to expect.
Some examples for Classic Traveller:
Poul Anderson's Nicholas van Rijn and Flandry
Isaac Asimov's Galactic Empire and Foundation
A. Bertram Chandler's John Grimes
Gordon R. Dickson's Dorsai
Harry Harrison's Deathworld and Stainless Steel Rat
almost anything from Robert Heinlein
Keith Laumer's Retief
C.L. Moore's Northwest Smith
Andre Norton's Solar Queen and Forerunners
H. Beam Piper's Space Viking
Quote from: Phillip;687548As with old D&D, there was a context of inspirational source material; players acquainted with that would have some idea what to expect.
Some examples for Classic Traveller:
Poul Anderson's Nicholas van Rijn and Flandry
Isaac Asimov's Galactic Empire and Foundation
A. Bertram Chandler's John Grimes
Gordon R. Dickson's Dorsai
Harry Harrison's Deathworld and Stainless Steel Rat
almost anything from Robert Heinlein
Keith Laumer's Retief
C.L. Moore's Northwest Smith
Andre Norton's Solar Queen and Forerunners
H. Beam Piper's Space Viking
Don't forget Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. In particular their collaborations in the CoDominion setting like
The Mote In God's Eye.
Traveller's flavor seems to me a mix of "space opera" and "hard SF" elements. Some more potential literary sources that are not too far afield, including works from after Traveller's initial publication:
C.J. Cherryh's Alliance-Union
Hal Clement's Mission of Gravity and Star Light
David Drake's Hammer's Slammers
Alan Dean Foster's Humanx Commonwealth
Frank Herbert's Dune
Ursula K. Le Guin's Hainish Cycle
Frederick Pohl's Space Merchants, Heechee and Cuckoo
Charles Sheffield's Behrooz Wolf, Chan Dalton, Heritage Universe
E.E. "Doc" Smith's Lensmen
George O. Smith's Venus Equilateral
E.C. Tubb's Dumarest
Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky
James White's Sector General
If you like more modern authors, then easily do Alastair Reynolds, John Scalzi, and Allen Steele fit in with the game.
My best Traveller campaigns have been Space Horror. Trav's Imperium is a much quieter place on the surface than Warhammer 40k's Imperium, but there is a lot of dark between the stars. Also Trav's pony express level interstellar communication and its byzantine bureaucracy means that plenty of strangeness can occur long before the engines of Empire can react. Trav's 3rd Imperium doesn't have shining Blood Angels or Space Wolves which can soar to the rescue with inhuman awesomeness.
Also, Trav's Imperium's hands-off policy on individual worlds means that plenty of grotesque mayhem happens without the interference of 40k's Inquisitors who on paper are at least supposed to defend the common man from any evil by their leaders.
Games Workshop used to create adventures for Classic Traveller, most notably Adventure 4 Leviathan and many articles in White Dwarf magazine, which is the basis for Rogue Trader. The entire Warhammer 40K universe is just Warhammer set in the Official Traveller Universe with the GrimDark turned up to 11.
The long-time Traveller campaign I was in during college was a Firefly-ish campaign, if with a bit more money. What we did was smuggling, under the guise of running charters on a small luxury casino packet. Our most lucrative runs were drug smuggling, involving a planet with outstanding hashish, and a number of our adventures revolved around that. Our hash contacts were a rabbit-like race rebelling against their oppressive overlords, and we'd run arms in to them and do the occasional combat sortie for them (they completely lacked air support).
Beyond that, we eventually had to skip lightly around the Imperial Navy, given that we'd used our arms contacts to have illegal pop-up triple turrets and genuine war shots in our missile tube ... something of a mixed blessing, since thereafter we had to avoid being boarded by the authorities.
When all is said and done, we played a crew of thrill-seekers: we weren't in it nearly so much for the credits as for the rush.
As far as my character goes, I still have the character sheet, thirty years on. (I'm a packrat.) Marc Teruzumi was an ex-aerospace colonel, an expert air raft pilot and a wizard with computers. (Seeing a "Filmmaking-1" skill, I have this vague recollection that we shot bootleg pornos for blackmail fodder.) My equipment list runs the eclectic range from the usual adventuring fare to a purple hat with an ostrich feather, a silver fur cloak, a copy of the Imperial Interracial Kama Sutra, a case of Glenfiddich, and a copy of the Necronomicon. (Seriously.)
Good times. Here's to you, Kevin -- our GM -- whereever you are!
My best Traveller campaigns have been as a player; Starting an Interstellar Luxury Starliner Megacorporation, and then running that business on the frontier of the Second Imperium.
As a GM; running a Firefly style campaign where the players started with a 200 ton Merchant ship and worked their way up, all the while exploring Interstellar space, and re-establishing long forgotten trade routes, after the collapse of the Second Imperium.
I've had three experiences with Traveller. The first was a buddy running the classic rules back in the late 80s / early 90s. We never got past character creation. He'd only run Tunnels & Trolls and Bunnies & Burrows for me before, and at that point I'd only played D&D on my own. The players kept dying during creation, and it was awesome.
Second time I played was a hybrid of classic and new empire (or whatever it was called). It was great, but another player made it into "stock market: the game." Every session turned into finding planets to resupply from, what could be traded for, what we could get cheaply, and so on. Kind of took the drama out of adventures, but per rules as written it made sense.
Last time was about three years ago, with Traveler D20 and a rotating GM chair. It was awesome from start to finish. A good base of supply and gritty "what-do-we-need-to-find-this-session" and pure space opera privateering.
I think the Firefly mention is worth repeating.
Most Traveller campaigns I've played in have resembled that setup quite closely: where you have a disparate group of people ostensibly working together to forge a new career in trading, ending up having all sorts of adventures that often detract from the simple goal of making money.
The thing I personally never really liked about the system was that the characters often weren't all that accomplished (in my mind), considering that you could end up with a crew comprising an ex-marine brigadier, an ex-rear admiral, the heir of a planetary system and a pirate.
That's a very personal dislike, however, the game is a pretty firm favourite with most of the gamers in my group. The D20 version was the one that I ended up feeling the most comfortable in when we played it. We were probably a bit too pokey though, all things considered.
Folks,
Just wanted to check in and say "Thanks."
I'm reading through the posts and checking out the various links and free material online.
I'm re-watching Firefly -- it'd been several years since I'd seen it and it really does nail the "adventuring party in space" concept.
One thing that's clear is that the economics model is very important. There needs to be enough money to keep the ship going (and get upgrades over time) but not so much that the characters retire after a couple of runs.
I recall, specifically, Traveler's rules for speculating on commodities (a table of commodity types with a base cost-per-ton and then a roll for the world's mark-up / mark-down).
I... cannot recall rules for cost-to-run-the-ship, but I am absolutely certain they must have existed.
Did, in fact, the rules strike that perfect balance where the costs for running a merchant vessel were aligned properly with the speculation rules so that savvy and lucky players could have an interesting game?
Cheers,
-E.
Probably not, E.
Truth be told, sustaining a Firefly model is hard. That paradigm lives and dies on privation: that the group is pretty much permanently not more than two bad runs in a row from being derelicts in space.
One clever lady on the old Waves in the Black forum (the original forum for the Serenity RPG) came up with this concept: to take numbers out of the equation altogether. Jobs would be expressed in "KEFs" (for "Keep 'Er Flyin'). A 2xKEF job would, of course, keep the ship in fuel, spare parts and grub for two whole runs. A 1/2 KEF ... well, better have had a touch of a cushion.
Quote from: -E.;687839Did, in fact, the rules strike that perfect balance where the costs for running a merchant vessel were aligned properly with the speculation rules so that savvy and lucky players could have an interesting game?
The cost of operating a type A free trader is slightly exceeded by the revenues generated by cargo and passengers. IF the ship ran full consistently, then it was possible to turn a small profit; more importantly, however, if anything added to the costs of operation - damage, fines, whatever - or if revenues were less than optimal, that small profit margin quickly disappeared.
You might, if you were lucky and played it very safe, break even without speculating, but you were just one malfunction or failed inspection away from running in the red. Careful speculation could make up that gap.
Aggressive speculation is how you become a merchant prince, though.
-E, you might want to check out our (regrettably short-lived) pbp Traveller campaign here on theRPGsite: ooc thread (http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=21940) | ic thread (http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=21977)
My last Traveller game was all merchant trading all the time. In three years of gaming I think they got into three fights.
Mm ... I think the biggest fight I got in in Traveller was in the aforementioned civil war -- there was a big, static trench battle I won for our guys by buzzing the enemy lines in my spiffy armed air raft, doing Mach 3 at NOE, and then strafing the deafened, dazed enemy with gauss fire so as to open up a three hundred yard gap in their lines.
HTH? Not a whole lot of that. You could get killed that way.
Quote from: -E.;686978I had the original game with the black half-sized books (1, 2, and 3), and we played that quite a bit (as well as other games)...
But one thing I never really got was how you were "supposed" to play it.
Generically.
Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;688743Generically.
Care to elaborate?
Quote from: Black Vulmea;688002The cost of operating a type A free trader is slightly exceeded by the revenues generated by cargo and passengers. IF the ship ran full consistently, then it was possible to turn a small profit; more importantly, however, if anything added to the costs of operation - damage, fines, whatever - or if revenues were less than optimal, that small profit margin quickly disappeared.
You might, if you were lucky and played it very safe, break even without speculating, but you were just one malfunction or failed inspection away from running in the red. Careful speculation could make up that gap.
Aggressive speculation is how you become a merchant prince, though.
This kind of perfect, economic balance is really impressive. As I look at my old traveler stuff, I'm more appreciative than ever of the kind of thought that went into the game.
-E.
Quote from: Black Vulmea;688002The cost of operating a type A free trader is slightly exceeded by the revenues generated by cargo and passengers. IF the ship ran full consistently, then it was possible to turn a small profit; more importantly, however, if anything added to the costs of operation - damage, fines, whatever - or if revenues were less than optimal, that small profit margin quickly disappeared.
As you point out, it's a big IF! In my experience, that's not a bad thing, as "this and that on the side to make ends meet" has been where the really exciting adventures came in.
I've never tried much financing of a scout-courier's operation by means of normal commerce, but it's clearly not built for that.
Owning a ship with a small jump range can be a bit of a drag when you want to go where it can't. Some people prefer to buy passages and hire ships as necessary.
Quote from: -E.;688793This kind of perfect, economic balance is really impressive. As I look at my old traveler stuff, I'm more appreciative than ever of the kind of thought that went into the game.
In a real economy, of course, yesterday's status quo is often out of balance with today's demands. Real economics tends to rear its head sooner or later in a big multi-player campaign, the market creating new price relationships.
With a single-party game, changes in supply and demand instigated by the GM (playing the world) can still be causes of adventures.
One bearing it may be hard for some players to get is the game's default assumption that the characters are self-reliant adventurers. That they have mustered out (or even retired) from various services is notably different from games in which it is expected that characters will remain -- for the campaign's duration -- Star Fleet officers or agents of the Rebellion. Traveller characters are rather expected to find themselves in a variety of positions according to swings of fortune and shifting interests.
Characters (and players) should have a drive to explore, to take on challenges because they are challenges, to make their own place in the world. Those lacking that drive may be suitable for other kinds of campaign, but not for the kind of sandbox envisioned.
The "sandbox" is like its namesake rather a toy for improvised play. If players with enough imagination are at a loss to think of anything to do, then the material is not interesting enough.
Remember that, just as D&D was created as a game not of (e.g.) Middle Earth but of fantasy, so Traveller was created as a game of science fiction. Even if you use some "canon" such as the Third Imperium, the galaxy should be big enough to include almost any SF scenario.
Traveller:
Player: A Belter sound scool...I mine asteroids for a living.
Uh oh...I died on my second tour of duty...before I started playing.
Actually I enjoy traveller character creation a lot, just joking.
Traveller to me is all about the 'jump to the next system' and exploration with scouts in the frontier.
I never did much with the built up empire elements.