Fun Fact: Since the 1930's audiobooks were a very niche market primarily for the blind. Most major books were never even given an audio option, and even then, were usually highly abridged. But then truck drivers discovered them. They started selling books on tape at truckstops and this previously tiny market exploded. The entire audiobook market owes that to truckers. Audiobooks are my biggest market. My last novel, I told my agent that without an audiobook option I wouldn't sign. So as an author with 7 audiobooks and two Audie Award noms, I freaking LOVE you well-read truckers.
@@SSkorkowsky There's also been continued growth due to advances in portable electronics capable of playing audiobooks. I know quite a few people who are listening to a book non-stop while jogging, doing chores, shopping, etc. Not everybody zoning out on the bus is listening to music or a phone call, lot of them have a book plugged in to their ear - which is a good thing, considering the rotting corpse traditional publishing is turning into.
Oh yeah, Audible and streaming audiobooks have turned audio into the fastest-growing publishing market. I'm an audiobook addict myself and have a book playing whenever I'm driving, doing chores, or working out (back when the gym was open). But before that could happen, the market needed to show it was big enough to sink that much money into. A professionally-read book can easily cost you around $1,000 per final recorded hour to produce (and can get much higher if you have a famous narrator). That's a big up-front investment. Audible ACX and similar programs, where costs are reduced through various options has also allowed smaller authors and publishers to get into audio now, when once, it was only something the biggest names could do. One of the biggest pieces of advice I tell authors is they need to get audio editions. For me, audio is 70% of my book sales. And since I'm talking about it, might as well drop a shameless link to my audiobooks ;-) www.audible.com/author/Seth-Skorkowsky/B00JO2GKX6?ref=a_search_c3_lAuthor_1_1_1&pf_rd_p=e81b7c27-6880-467a-b5a7-13cef5d729fe&pf_rd_r=X2E6GPBH1T6B6E04SZXA
@@SSkorkowsky As a writer I must thank you for the excellent tip. I had not thought much of audio books, but your endorsement of the concept has caused me to reconsider.
God dammit Seth! You're awesome series of videos on Call of Cthulhu got me so into Call of Cthulhu, that it took me a couple weeks to convince my players to try it out. And now they're super into it and happy. So naturally this series of videos is starting to get me into Mongoose Traveller so I got to start this horrible cycle all over again. Why must you always tempt me with these shiny pretty new systems? If my players kill me for constantly changing systems, I'm blaming you!
If your players get upset at the constant system changing, try playing Golden Sky Stories with them, it's sure to improve their mood. /s (For real tho, GSS is amazing & I wish more people knew about it. It's like Animal Crossing as a TTRPG)
If memory serves (it's been a couple of decades) improving skills through study was a lot harder in the original game, your character had to go on extended study leave and so was out of commission for a while AND the improvement wore off so I think Mongoose is helping out in the modern game.
One thing we do is when you roll a natural 2 or a 12 you get 1/10th of a skill point. Crisis/Critical success bonus if you will. 10 of those and your skill goes up a level. One game I rolled those numbers on the same skill 5 times. 3 2s and 2 12s. You learn as much from complete failure as you do from complete success - most of the time.
There are many aspects this game excels in, and some given little if any clarification. I made myself a retired old spy who had acquired some good gear over his long career. In our game, we captured a ship and needed to get full control of the systems to prevent Imps from remotely taking the ship from us and allowing us access to secrets in the ships computer. So I tried to hack the ships computer. With the gear, and the modifiers I was nearly +8 to hack. The rules for hacking give it high difficulty with an additional penalty( like +4 or +6). This puts any hack attempt out of reach of any player. No bonuses for physical access, no mechanic for letting me spend X number of days/hours/weeks letting the hacking software run. Now we are forced to use NPC's for the hack. So, some areas in the game need some more polish/tweaking. Great lore and freedom of choice.
Get the Companion. It plugs a lot of holes in the core book. Should have even been included in the core in my opinion. If you have more money to spend Highguard and Central supply catalogue is pretty much essential as well.
Central supply catalog is amazing!!! High guard is good if you like building ships, and the vehicle handbook if you like building non-spacecraft vehicles
I get that your intuition as a GM says that deception shouldn't be the skill for what you might considered a 'sleight of hand' check coming off D&D and CoC and such, but by Traveller's mechanics, it being a deception (dextery) check (or whichever way the system writes that up in the rulebooks) makes a lot of sense to me, and I can see what they are going for.
DnD is also very strict in how you can use your skills normally. Other systems want the players to come up with creative ways to justify and use there skills to there advantage. Traveller is clear close to this idea.
Thank you so much for these videos, Seth! You've basically kickstarted my Traveller campaign, which is scratching a Sci-Fi itch I've been ignoring for way too long.
It's official, I want to join *_your_* Traveller games. I like the house rules you've implemented regarding rolling once for combined skill checks and modifying the optional IP rule to only apply to skills the character used in the session or is actively studying.
I think having to decide in what "style" your character wants to achieve something brings alot of dramatic flavour into it. If you want to solve something in a streetwise style as opposed to an advocate style, really paints different mental images.
Boons and banes is the exact mechanic from Shadow of the Demon Lord, but you can have more than one boon and bane dice, but still only using the highest
The way you describing what skill(s) to pick for a task reminds me of Star Trek Adventures where you can Use different “skills” for the same or similar things and might vary on your strengths in the game.
Yeah...dunno what that's about. First thing I do when I load a vid is change the name from my the file name, but it's just not updating. UA-cam is wacky today.
UA-cam seems to wake up every morning and spin the Wheel of Whacky to decide how it'll behave. Today's error was "Not Updating Titles". I'm just happy it wasn't "Delete Your Channel For No Reason" so I'll consider this annoyance as lucky it wasn't worse. Weirdest one they ever did was after it was all loaded and all that, the video inserted a random frame from somewhere else in the video about every 4 minutes. Real quick little flashes. Evidently other people got it that day, too. Probably the ghost in the UA-cam server screaming for help.
Home brew advancement I use along with the normal study method: Hands-on Experience: each game session where a skill is applied at least 3 times in the field counts as 1 week of study towards the 8 week period. This reflects hands on experience as being a really efficient way to learn something while at the same time not introducing XP to the game system. Example- PC gets into an actual gun fight and shoots 3 times, that’s worth 1 week of firearm skill study (which to me would normally include reading about guns, cleaning them, and spending some DT at a gun range practicing).
Hey Seth, take it from an old school Traveller. The "sense motive" ability you are looking for in Traveller is called Telepathy. In the old days we used to have to roll up a Zhodani (you can't trust them) or keep a Droyne on the team, but now thanks to Mongoose... Anyone with enough money and the connections can be psionic. This was not the case in previous versions. Reading surface thoughts is THE best way to know what the other guy is up to. Deep probes can get the bad guys plan too. So glad you are enjoying playing Traveller. My friends and I have for almost 40 years now. Happy trails.
This is fantastic. The game we're running uses a more homebrew version of skills. The levels of skills determines how long they have to study. Naught to 0 is four weeks, where as 0 to 1 is eight weeks. Meanwhile I have tables and tables worth of random mission and world encounters (we're doing an exploration campaign akin to Star Trek) that have their own skill and stat rewards in whatever stats were relevant for that mission. I think it helps the players feel like they're actually progressing. If it's a common encounter, yellow alert, red alert, or galactic event, there's always something small they can get if things don't go totally awry. I'm glad to see others are using a lot of alternatives though. Traveller is such a magnificent system. Super glad you're doing this series!
5:41 I think you cover in later video that getting an alien princess to marry you is not a one roll feet. It would require multiple rolls slowly lowering the difficulty until it’s actually achievable; along with a lot of role-play.
IRL I rolled a 4 on my check to learn character creation. I have a +1 to INT, but a 0 in carouse, so that meant I had 5 vs a DC 6 to learn from the second video. I almost got it, but not quite, so I'm going to go spend 10D minites watching it again.
Sometimes if there are two skills that are similar you can use the trained skill w/ a -1 DM vs. the character having to make a roll w/ -3 [ untrained ] in situations where the character doesn't quite have the exact skill. Ex -> Pilot Small boats-3 could be used as pilot starship-2 or even pilot starship-1 if its a very large ship or maybe a system they're not used to.
I did a mod of Traveller where we used a D12 to replace the 2D6. We actually did this for MegaTraveller because it has a weird combat system and we wanted to use a system similar to Twilight2000 v2.2. We also wanted to roll a number of Hit Dice equal to the number of bullets in a burst of autofire (like Twilight2000 uses). Using the D12 enabled this.
You can award a week of training equivalence towards a skill when players use it well during role-playing. It serves as a useful stand in for experience points without altering the essential game mechanics. And players get a sense of advancement without becoming supermen in the course of a campaign.
The more and more I lean about other systems, the more I like Call Of Cuthullu. In about half the time to takes to learn a new system I can do all the tweaking I need to adjust it for any setting.
I really like the idea that which skill you use controls the side effects of the action. Bluff and the guard might be intimidated but annoyed. Fake a missing ID and the guard will have different feelings about you. Most cases this might not matter but if you have to get out past the same guard, the way you got in may matter a lot...
The using different Attributes with certain skills, depending on what the player wants to achieve, is something I've pulled across into my Cyberpunk games - it makes more sense than saying "Handgun/Drive skill *only* teaches you how to shoot/drive" (REF + Handgun or Drive as per RAW) when the wealth of experience from gaining that proficiency would also confer other advantages: "I've used/owned/seen numerous firearms/vehicles in my time so I've got a pretty good chance that I've seen/used the ones the BBEG's mooks are using and can identify them and know things about them - like magazine capacity, effective range, strengths, weaknesses, limitations etc" (INT + Handgun or Drive). I like the idea of rolling once to cover the combined skills, I can see that being a house rule here if I were to run a Traveller game.
Seth, thanks for inspiring me to start a Traveller campaign, we started with High and Dry (modified a bit). So far so good, planning on running Marooned on Marduk in a couple weeks when they get there. Loving your videos on Traveller. Many Thanks
Thanks for the info about the alternative experience option. I ran mongoose 1st ed and the advancement was the only compliant I got. This video series is really informative.
The skill roles of mixing and matching character stat with skill points are similar to the WoD mechanics without having to count 1's and 0's. However, there are those charts to consult, which might slow down the gameplay for new players/referees. All in all, it does seem to be a pretty reasonable system.....now, about psionics... :P
16:30 "like those truck drivers who listen to audiobooks". Hey! That's me. Nice! I drive from FL to CA and back 2x a month. Lately i've been listening to the novelizations of the "Alien" franchise to prepare for being the "Game Mother" for the RPG. A trucker GMing for Space Truckers, that should be fun. Btw, I am curious as to your opinion on the Alien RPG. It's by Free League Publishing and (I'm pretty sure) it just won the Ennie for "Best RPG" (or "RPG of the Year"? Something like that.) Oh, and review videos with tips would be awesome! I mean, I've seen you wearing Weyland Yuitani shirts so I figured you'd enjoy them. :)
I've tooled around with the Free League Alien RPG a little (just 1 session so-far). Not enough to give a review yet. For 1-shots (cinematic play) I think it's awesome. Don't know how well it'll really work yet when it comes to long-term campaign play.
Extremely helpful. I ran my first session this week, and found I'd made a few mistakes, but I tend to learn best by doing, and by watching example, so just reading the books wasn't enough. These videos help make tackling the system much easier, and for that I'd like to say thank you, good sir!
Awesome!! Love that you do this Seth. I find your videos extremely helpful and entertaining. Any chance that you would do a Traveller session or 2 for us to view?
i'm using a variant system that incorporates XP into the usual learning system, basically they can spend XP to automatically succeed their roll for a study period (if they have a point to spend) i've also reduced study periods down to 4 weeks instead of 8, just to speed progress up a little, my players aren't the most patient of people so they would get bored if progress was at the normal rate, anyway, great series so far.
My style has gotten to a very narrative approach so the idea of picking the skill or stat that best describes what it is you want your character to do is a selling point for me.
Traveller is a game I've been almost interested enough to try. I had MegaTraveller for a time and while the background stuff was cool, all those digits describing a spaceship were too much. At the time there was no one to play the game with. Your review so far is showing I should give Traveller a shot.
MegaTraveller had a fairly complex system for vehicles and starships (though nowhere close to TNE or T4). Mongoose Traveller is simpler, though not so much as starships from Classic Traveller. It's probably my favourite version, although there were parts of other editions I do prefer.
yours is really one of the most entertaining rpg channels on the net. Although I am also an old hand gm who has more than 30y experience I am still fond of your tipps and tricks. I also like traveller alot but recently I looked a little bit at Stars without number from Kevin Crawford. Do you know this traveller inspired OSR-system?
This is the 2nd game system you've talked me into buying and running (CoC 7th being the other), hopefully the new Cyberpunk will be a series you can do in the future.
Hey Seth is there any chance you could do a video going over all the things you think a GM should definitely know to play Traveller? Me and a bunch of friends got really interested in the game and we got even more interested after watching your videos so after I get back from Basic Training we were gonna try and run a game.
At 2:08 - are those the (in)famous GDW d6s? Back in the 80s, they were widely renowned as the best d6s because the pips were drilled out so deep it would make the 6 lighter than the 1 resulting in higher rolls.
Much waited for Bring on the reticulan parasites... Excellent series... I have been using classic traveller for 40 yrs with a few mods... Quite interested in adding further mechanics....
I love that multiple skills or characteristics could be used in a situation. My players love trying to convince me how INT is the best one for their Piloting roll. My players try to gain an edge with their best characteristics, and with a good justification, I let them roll for it.
12:00 it is a task chain. Creating forged ID. ahead of time (deception +edu [to make it by memory]) allowing the persuade (soc) roll to better succeed at bluffing that he is meant to be there.
OJT is a great idea for skill improvement outside of the classroom. Honestly I'd say the hands on nature of OJT makes it the faster method of learning when compared to book study.
I would suggest that with "skills" xp thing you just say some number of uses of a skill equals a given study session, modified by EDU/INT. Also... SOC should be gained or lost when used based on how well they do. If someone fails a lot they're going to lose SOC. If they do well they're going to gain, and likewise someone that attempts to be social will have that effect multiplied. Just a thought-o ^.^
I'm going to be using a house rule for learning skills in the field, each Exceptional Success counts as one week of study and gives a DM+1 to the roll to confirm study period. I'm also going to make a sheet for this with each skill listed and 8 boxes next to them that they will put in a X for a ES and an O for a week of study so it's easy to track for all the skills at once.
ON MULTITASKS: Increasing the difficulty makes more sense. The CoC mechanic of using a single role for two different skills or in this case two different bonuses is an illusion, it's a single skill test in disguise. The only thing that matters is if the lowest skill value passes the test because if it doesn't the test failed and if it does the bigger value obviously passed as well.
I think streetwise is probably the best “insight” for most situations, otherwise I was considering home brewing a psychology skill which can be studied in college or the standard 8 week class etc
Around the 18:30 mark of the video skill levelling is addressed. I decided to try something a bit different and I keep track of skill the characters commonly use (you can have the players tic mark or have a Ref notepad). You determine what you consider to be abundant use of a skill and then just have the player level that skill up. The way I moderate the use of this is that I only allow for skill levelling if the character doesn't have the skill or has only level 0 in that skill. So this way, I am allowing for someone with no skill to be considered to have a generic understanding of that skill (level 0) after a lot of use. Then, they can actually get to be considered skilled in it by going to level 1. I don't allow progression beyond L1. I justify that by saying the character is so involved with life and is not getting direct instruction as one would in a university or some program of education. I don't allow OJT to account for becoming someone considered advanced in knowledge, though a Ref certainly could do that. But for me, since your career progression ended before you became a Traveller, that kind of progression is off of the table (kind of a "coasting" phase of life).
On opposed skills, I would compare the Difference between the winning score and the failed score to see what kind of success it was as well. Ties are "uncertain" successes of the aggressor, meaning there will likely be some drama or future consequence even if it succeeded for the moment. Like you get past the guard, but he remembers your face/id and does a security background check(actual skill roll for them). Next time around it won't be so easy.
For me if it's an unskilled mundane I give them a boon and if it is an unskilled dangerous I give them a bane. We might go back and forth a little on whether it's dangerous or not sometimes, but usually the players know danger when they see it LOL And woah be unto the players to argue it's not dangerous, because you know I will use it against them... No, no, that's not a threat, you said it wasn't dangerous...
A few thoughts on learning skills.. - The XP rules you showed seemed to largely trade XP for days of training at a 1-to-1 ratio. It might be easier just to go with that in order to mix time and XP. - It might be interesting to treat the EDU check as any other task roll and let players try it at enhanced difficulty earlier, or lower difficulty later. Failing it could have various fun consequences.
So I pulled the trigger and bought a few traveller books, I cannot wait to dm these with my friends. Appreciate all the effort you put into these videos On a side note, you should ask people to like the video to help you get up on the UA-cam analytics. I know I forget, but it's always nice to be reminded
Hope you enjoy Traveller! I do ask at the very end, but I have a weird hangup about mentioning that early in the video because I really hate channels that spend the first 5 minutes telling you Like, Subscribe, join Patreon, and all that stuff. So I kinda compensate too far the other way.
I think you kind of inferred this during the personal hurdles portion regarding a lack of a specifically named skill. Whether intentional or not, the lack of a specific skill rewards skill diversification. In DnD, for example, it's been my experience that a lot of people pretty much always have their PC be proficient in Perception. Mainly because it is frequently useful. When the system allows the flexibility Traveler does, it gives players "permission" to diversify not only their Traveler's skills, but, the rest of the team's. Helpful video. P.S.: I checked out that Traveler map site. It is helpful, but, also not. How the heck do I figure out where to start them!? 😅
If I remember correctly, in the first edition of Mongoose Traveller, a training session required no toll, but took a length of time equal to the sum total of all your skills, with 0 counting as 0, 1 as 1 week, etc. I might be forgetting some key element, but I like the 2nd edition method better, to be honest.
Check out Pg. 65 of the Traveller Core update under the Art skill: Write: Composing inspiring or interesting pieces of text. [...]Writing the Update of Traveller: Formidable (14+) Art (write) check (1D months, INT) Hehe Sorry, I just found that funny...😅
At 12:30 a skill to read someone elses intent. In classic Traveler there was a skill called interrogation. This was not rubber hoses in the back room but the ability to closely question a person. Possibly without their knowledge. (I tend to be very liberal on skill description.)
Your sessions run eight hours? I'm envious. I've been running for younger people (college students) for a while now; it's hard to get them to sit down for a four-hour session. I envy you your players.
There's also a great deal of chit-chat and bullshitting we do during it. Now that's we're using Roll20 thanks to the Covid, we start winding down in about 5.
What if you used the standard training rules for skills. BUT, when things happen in game where their use of a skill would be a great 'teaching moment' they can put a star by the skill. Then, the next time they are making that training roll, they can get a +1 to the roll for every star they have in the skill. Or, they can erase the star to subtract a DAY from the required training time.
Boons and Banes show up in a game called shadow of the Demon Lord as well. It's by Robert J schwalb, who is done quite a bit of work in RPGs for the last two decades, having his hands in Warhammer fantasy role-play and even Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition. I do believe the Boon and Bane mechanic is his oh, but I am unsure
"Those are some well read people." Heh... My audible account has been getting some interesting additions lately; including some lecture courses and audio versions of several RPG related books Like Robin's Laws of Good Gamemastering and Your Best Game Ever. They do pass the time while driving. :)
I’m honestly okay, happy even, with traveller lacking a specific skill mechanic for telling an npc’s motive/whether they’re lying. I much prefer to resolve such situations within roleplay, rather than with a dice roll.
Second edition has a much better skill advancement system than first which was based on how many total skill points you had divided by some number in weeks to train so in theory younger characters had an easier time learning.
suggestion; GIVE A skill percent per use of skill 5% they can add this up through different adv then roll to improve percentile till they wish to roll higher percent if fail lose percent if pass increase skill
So I've never bought any other rpg then d&d and now I own COC and traveller
Nice
Similar to me. Just bought traveller.
@@dansantospirito5310 the Seth effect
@@theknightofbadassness301 Indeed. This is not the first time this has happened!
seth inspired me to get every rpg i have other than DnD. Traveller, cthulhu, pulp cthulhu, Alien and i'm hopefully going to buy cyberpunk red soon
Hey seth!!! I'm one of those well read truck drivers!! Thank you for the shout out and the Valducan series. Stay safe and healthy. :)
Fun Fact: Since the 1930's audiobooks were a very niche market primarily for the blind. Most major books were never even given an audio option, and even then, were usually highly abridged. But then truck drivers discovered them. They started selling books on tape at truckstops and this previously tiny market exploded. The entire audiobook market owes that to truckers.
Audiobooks are my biggest market. My last novel, I told my agent that without an audiobook option I wouldn't sign. So as an author with 7 audiobooks and two Audie Award noms, I freaking LOVE you well-read truckers.
@@SSkorkowsky There's also been continued growth due to advances in portable electronics capable of playing audiobooks. I know quite a few people who are listening to a book non-stop while jogging, doing chores, shopping, etc. Not everybody zoning out on the bus is listening to music or a phone call, lot of them have a book plugged in to their ear - which is a good thing, considering the rotting corpse traditional publishing is turning into.
Oh yeah, Audible and streaming audiobooks have turned audio into the fastest-growing publishing market. I'm an audiobook addict myself and have a book playing whenever I'm driving, doing chores, or working out (back when the gym was open). But before that could happen, the market needed to show it was big enough to sink that much money into. A professionally-read book can easily cost you around $1,000 per final recorded hour to produce (and can get much higher if you have a famous narrator). That's a big up-front investment. Audible ACX and similar programs, where costs are reduced through various options has also allowed smaller authors and publishers to get into audio now, when once, it was only something the biggest names could do. One of the biggest pieces of advice I tell authors is they need to get audio editions. For me, audio is 70% of my book sales.
And since I'm talking about it, might as well drop a shameless link to my audiobooks ;-) www.audible.com/author/Seth-Skorkowsky/B00JO2GKX6?ref=a_search_c3_lAuthor_1_1_1&pf_rd_p=e81b7c27-6880-467a-b5a7-13cef5d729fe&pf_rd_r=X2E6GPBH1T6B6E04SZXA
@@SSkorkowsky As a writer I must thank you for the excellent tip. I had not thought much of audio books, but your endorsement of the concept has caused me to reconsider.
@@SSkorkowsky I have read (listened) to two of your books off audible. How do you get paid with the return, streaming options? Seems hard to track.
God dammit Seth! You're awesome series of videos on Call of Cthulhu got me so into Call of Cthulhu, that it took me a couple weeks to convince my players to try it out. And now they're super into it and happy. So naturally this series of videos is starting to get me into Mongoose Traveller so I got to start this horrible cycle all over again.
Why must you always tempt me with these shiny pretty new systems? If my players kill me for constantly changing systems, I'm blaming you!
If your players get upset at the constant system changing, try playing Golden Sky Stories with them, it's sure to improve their mood.
/s
(For real tho, GSS is amazing & I wish more people knew about it. It's like Animal Crossing as a TTRPG)
It does sound pretty cool. I’m not even that into the sci-fi setting that much but I want to try it.
If memory serves (it's been a couple of decades) improving skills through study was a lot harder in the original game, your character had to go on extended study leave and so was out of commission for a while AND the improvement wore off so I think Mongoose is helping out in the modern game.
Great video. Played lots of Traveller in the 80’s. Watching your videos inspired me to pick up the game again and get it to my table in ‘22.
I'm happy you like Traveller. It's nice to see people playing one of my faves.
Seth dropping awesome videos that make my day is a mundane action & doesn’t require a skill check ☺️
One thing we do is when you roll a natural 2 or a 12 you get 1/10th of a skill point. Crisis/Critical success bonus if you will. 10 of those and your skill goes up a level. One game I rolled those numbers on the same skill 5 times. 3 2s and 2 12s. You learn as much from complete failure as you do from complete success - most of the time.
There are many aspects this game excels in, and some given little if any clarification. I made myself a retired old spy who had acquired some good gear over his long career.
In our game, we captured a ship and needed to get full control of the systems to prevent Imps from remotely taking the ship from us and allowing us access to secrets in the ships computer. So I tried to hack the ships computer. With the gear, and the modifiers I was nearly +8 to hack. The rules for hacking give it high difficulty with an additional penalty( like +4 or +6). This puts any hack attempt out of reach of any player. No bonuses for physical access, no mechanic for letting me spend X number of days/hours/weeks letting the hacking software run. Now we are forced to use NPC's for the hack. So, some areas in the game need some more polish/tweaking. Great lore and freedom of choice.
Ordered my Traveller core book now. I'm thinking I'll be getting the Companion as well. Thanks Seth.
Get the Companion. It plugs a lot of holes in the core book. Should have even been included in the core in my opinion.
If you have more money to spend Highguard and Central supply catalogue is pretty much essential as well.
Central supply catalog is amazing!!! High guard is good if you like building ships, and the vehicle handbook if you like building non-spacecraft vehicles
I get that your intuition as a GM says that deception shouldn't be the skill for what you might considered a 'sleight of hand' check coming off D&D and CoC and such, but by Traveller's mechanics, it being a deception (dextery) check (or whichever way the system writes that up in the rulebooks) makes a lot of sense to me, and I can see what they are going for.
DnD is also very strict in how you can use your skills normally. Other systems want the players to come up with creative ways to justify and use there skills to there advantage. Traveller is clear close to this idea.
I used to strictly play old-school stuff til I found your channel. These in-depth reviews are real great. Thanks for all your work.
Thank you so much for these videos, Seth! You've basically kickstarted my Traveller campaign, which is scratching a Sci-Fi itch I've been ignoring for way too long.
I was just think about the lack of "sense motive," yesterday. I am glad I continued my join down these video :)
Thank you for this series Seth,it's helping me a lot with the understanding of the system.
Ive only just found Traveller and this series of review. This is excellent stuff and really building my appetite to play!
It's official, I want to join *_your_* Traveller games. I like the house rules you've implemented regarding rolling once for combined skill checks and modifying the optional IP rule to only apply to skills the character used in the session or is actively studying.
I greatly appreciate you making these.
Just rewatching because i got a upcoming traveller project and need a refresher.
I am officially getting into this game because of you. Please keep up the awesome content!
I think having to decide in what "style" your character wants to achieve something brings alot of dramatic flavour into it. If you want to solve something in a streetwise style as opposed to an advocate style, really paints different mental images.
Boons and banes is the exact mechanic from Shadow of the Demon Lord, but you can have more than one boon and bane dice, but still only using the highest
For skills like recon you could say they aren't necessarily reading but running VR simulations of training scenarios.
The way you describing what skill(s) to pick for a task reminds me of Star Trek Adventures where you can Use different “skills” for the same or similar things and might vary on your strengths in the game.
Got here so soon that the title is still 'Traveller 3'
Yeah...dunno what that's about. First thing I do when I load a vid is change the name from my the file name, but it's just not updating. UA-cam is wacky today.
@@SSkorkowsky Lol just today XD
UA-cam seems to wake up every morning and spin the Wheel of Whacky to decide how it'll behave. Today's error was "Not Updating Titles". I'm just happy it wasn't "Delete Your Channel For No Reason" so I'll consider this annoyance as lucky it wasn't worse.
Weirdest one they ever did was after it was all loaded and all that, the video inserted a random frame from somewhere else in the video about every 4 minutes. Real quick little flashes. Evidently other people got it that day, too. Probably the ghost in the UA-cam server screaming for help.
...wandering the chasms of the UA-cam datacenter's cold rack wailing "compression... compression!"
Do you have backups of your videos in case UA-cam deletes one?
Home brew advancement I use along with the normal study method:
Hands-on Experience: each game session where a skill is applied at least 3 times in the field counts as 1 week of study towards the 8 week period.
This reflects hands on experience as being a really efficient way to learn something while at the same time not introducing XP to the game system.
Example- PC gets into an actual gun fight and shoots 3 times, that’s worth 1 week of firearm skill study (which to me would normally include reading about guns, cleaning them, and spending some DT at a gun range practicing).
Such a great game, hopefully you're creating a spike in fans and sales
I love this series. I bought the Core Rule Book after watching this and I'm having so much fun playing Traveller with my son. Thanks Seth!
Awesome to hear! Hope you both have fun storming the galaxy.
Hey Seth, take it from an old school Traveller. The "sense motive" ability you are looking for in Traveller is called Telepathy. In the old days we used to have to roll up a Zhodani (you can't trust them) or keep a Droyne on the team, but now thanks to Mongoose... Anyone with enough money and the connections can be psionic. This was not the case in previous versions. Reading surface thoughts is THE best way to know what the other guy is up to. Deep probes can get the bad guys plan too. So glad you are enjoying playing Traveller. My friends and I have for almost 40 years now. Happy trails.
Awesome! I've been waiting for this one!
This is fantastic. The game we're running uses a more homebrew version of skills. The levels of skills determines how long they have to study. Naught to 0 is four weeks, where as 0 to 1 is eight weeks.
Meanwhile I have tables and tables worth of random mission and world encounters (we're doing an exploration campaign akin to Star Trek) that have their own skill and stat rewards in whatever stats were relevant for that mission.
I think it helps the players feel like they're actually progressing. If it's a common encounter, yellow alert, red alert, or galactic event, there's always something small they can get if things don't go totally awry.
I'm glad to see others are using a lot of alternatives though. Traveller is such a magnificent system. Super glad you're doing this series!
5:41 I think you cover in later video that getting an alien princess to marry you is not a one roll feet. It would require multiple rolls slowly lowering the difficulty until it’s actually achievable; along with a lot of role-play.
IRL I rolled a 4 on my check to learn character creation. I have a +1 to INT, but a 0 in carouse, so that meant I had 5 vs a DC 6 to learn from the second video. I almost got it, but not quite, so I'm going to go spend 10D minites watching it again.
Sometimes if there are two skills that are similar you can use the trained skill w/ a -1 DM vs. the character having to make a roll w/ -3 [ untrained ] in situations where the character doesn't quite have the exact skill. Ex -> Pilot Small boats-3 could be used as pilot starship-2 or even pilot starship-1 if its a very large ship or maybe a system they're not used to.
I did a mod of Traveller where we used a D12 to replace the 2D6. We actually did this for MegaTraveller because it has a weird combat system and we wanted to use a system similar to Twilight2000 v2.2. We also wanted to roll a number of Hit Dice equal to the number of bullets in a burst of autofire (like Twilight2000 uses). Using the D12 enabled this.
Traveller is awesome!
You can award a week of training equivalence towards a skill when players use it well during role-playing. It serves as a useful stand in for experience points without altering the essential game mechanics. And players get a sense of advancement without becoming supermen in the course of a campaign.
I'd argue that Streetwise could be an Insight roll. Your streetwisdom makes you aware when you're being hustled.
The more and more I lean about other systems, the more I like Call Of Cuthullu. In about half the time to takes to learn a new system I can do all the tweaking I need to adjust it for any setting.
I love these videos so much
I really like the idea that which skill you use controls the side effects of the action. Bluff and the guard might be intimidated but annoyed. Fake a missing ID and the guard will have different feelings about you. Most cases this might not matter but if you have to get out past the same guard, the way you got in may matter a lot...
The using different Attributes with certain skills, depending on what the player wants to achieve, is something I've pulled across into my Cyberpunk games - it makes more sense than saying "Handgun/Drive skill *only* teaches you how to shoot/drive" (REF + Handgun or Drive as per RAW) when the wealth of experience from gaining that proficiency would also confer other advantages: "I've used/owned/seen numerous firearms/vehicles in my time so I've got a pretty good chance that I've seen/used the ones the BBEG's mooks are using and can identify them and know things about them - like magazine capacity, effective range, strengths, weaknesses, limitations etc" (INT + Handgun or Drive).
I like the idea of rolling once to cover the combined skills, I can see that being a house rule here if I were to run a Traveller game.
Seth, thanks for inspiring me to start a Traveller campaign, we started with High and Dry (modified a bit). So far so good, planning on running Marooned on Marduk in a couple weeks when they get there. Loving your videos on Traveller. Many Thanks
Awesome. Have fun with it.
Thanks for the info about the alternative experience option. I ran mongoose 1st ed and the advancement was the only compliant I got. This video series is really informative.
The skill roles of mixing and matching character stat with skill points are similar to the WoD mechanics without having to count 1's and 0's. However, there are those charts to consult, which might slow down the gameplay for new players/referees. All in all, it does seem to be a pretty reasonable system.....now, about psionics... :P
A-ha! I thought it was one of the prime numbers of the Zeeman series. *I* haven't changed. - Dr. Hans Zarkov - Flash Gordon (1980)
16:30 "like those truck drivers who listen to audiobooks". Hey! That's me. Nice! I drive from FL to CA and back 2x a month. Lately i've been listening to the novelizations of the "Alien" franchise to prepare for being the "Game Mother" for the RPG. A trucker GMing for Space Truckers, that should be fun.
Btw, I am curious as to your opinion on the Alien RPG. It's by Free League Publishing and (I'm pretty sure) it just won the Ennie for "Best RPG" (or "RPG of the Year"? Something like that.) Oh, and review videos with tips would be awesome! I mean, I've seen you wearing Weyland Yuitani shirts so I figured you'd enjoy them. :)
I've tooled around with the Free League Alien RPG a little (just 1 session so-far). Not enough to give a review yet. For 1-shots (cinematic play) I think it's awesome. Don't know how well it'll really work yet when it comes to long-term campaign play.
Extremely helpful. I ran my first session this week, and found I'd made a few mistakes, but I tend to learn best by doing, and by watching example, so just reading the books wasn't enough. These videos help make tackling the system much easier, and for that I'd like to say thank you, good sir!
This skill system reminds me of World of Darkness. Combining different skills and attributes to specify how exactly you do things.
Awesome!! Love that you do this Seth. I find your videos extremely helpful and entertaining. Any chance that you would do a Traveller session or 2 for us to view?
i'm using a variant system that incorporates XP into the usual learning system, basically they can spend XP to automatically succeed their roll for a study period (if they have a point to spend) i've also reduced study periods down to 4 weeks instead of 8, just to speed progress up a little, my players aren't the most patient of people so they would get bored if progress was at the normal rate, anyway, great series so far.
In Classic Traveller the skill used to detect deception is either Interview or Interrogation
My style has gotten to a very narrative approach so the idea of picking the skill or stat that best describes what it is you want your character to do is a selling point for me.
Traveller is a game I've been almost interested enough to try. I had MegaTraveller for a time and while the background stuff was cool, all those digits describing a spaceship were too much. At the time there was no one to play the game with.
Your review so far is showing I should give Traveller a shot.
MegaTraveller had a fairly complex system for vehicles and starships (though nowhere close to TNE or T4). Mongoose Traveller is simpler, though not so much as starships from Classic Traveller. It's probably my favourite version, although there were parts of other editions I do prefer.
yours is really one of the most entertaining rpg channels on the net. Although I am also an old hand gm who has more than 30y experience I am still fond of your tipps and tricks. I also like traveller alot but recently I looked a little bit at Stars without number from Kevin Crawford. Do you know this traveller inspired OSR-system?
This is the 2nd game system you've talked me into buying and running (CoC 7th being the other), hopefully the new Cyberpunk will be a series you can do in the future.
Hey Seth is there any chance you could do a video going over all the things you think a GM should definitely know to play Traveller? Me and a bunch of friends got really interested in the game and we got even more interested after watching your videos so after I get back from Basic Training we were gonna try and run a game.
At 2:08 - are those the (in)famous GDW d6s? Back in the 80s, they were widely renowned as the best d6s because the pips were drilled out so deep it would make the 6 lighter than the 1 resulting in higher rolls.
Much waited for
Bring on the reticulan parasites...
Excellent series... I have been using classic traveller for 40 yrs with a few mods...
Quite interested in adding further mechanics....
Boons and Banes look like a good add.
It’s interesting that you can’t use XP to increase social, but your can increase endurance and strength and reverse the effects of aging lol!
Thanks Seth for another great video for a game system that my group really enjoys!
I love that multiple skills or characteristics could be used in a situation. My players love trying to convince me how INT is the best one for their Piloting roll. My players try to gain an edge with their best characteristics, and with a good justification, I let them roll for it.
The skill learning system and being stuck in jump space for weeks at time reminded me of Nathan Lowell's Quarter Share. Great series of books.
12:00 it is a task chain. Creating forged ID. ahead of time (deception +edu [to make it by memory]) allowing the persuade (soc) roll to better succeed at bluffing that he is meant to be there.
Sound like the next RPG für SciFi-games ;-)
You make it sound really interesing. Thanks for the review.
OJT is a great idea for skill improvement outside of the classroom. Honestly I'd say the hands on nature of OJT makes it the faster method of learning when compared to book study.
Right now your my favourite UA-camr keep going man
I've got the first edition, but 2nd doesn't seem much different, so I'm quite enjoying these. Stay safe everyone.
Thank you for making this series Seth. I run Savage Worlds but I can see implementing some of these rules into that system.
I would suggest that with "skills" xp thing you just say some number of uses of a skill equals a given study session, modified by EDU/INT.
Also... SOC should be gained or lost when used based on how well they do. If someone fails a lot they're going to lose SOC. If they do well they're going to gain, and likewise someone that attempts to be social will have that effect multiplied. Just a thought-o ^.^
I'm going to be using a house rule for learning skills in the field, each Exceptional Success counts as one week of study and gives a DM+1 to the roll to confirm study period. I'm also going to make a sheet for this with each skill listed and 8 boxes next to them that they will put in a X for a ES and an O for a week of study so it's easy to track for all the skills at once.
ON MULTITASKS: Increasing the difficulty makes more sense. The CoC mechanic of using a single role for two different skills or in this case two different bonuses is an illusion, it's a single skill test in disguise. The only thing that matters is if the lowest skill value passes the test because if it doesn't the test failed and if it does the bigger value obviously passed as well.
That xp rule sounds similar to how it was in Star Frontiers
Oh I still regret selling my signed copies 20 years ago ,,,
Thanks!
Than you very much.
@SSkorkowsky, watching you on the Glass Cannon podcast, and these review videos led my crew and me to start playing traveller.
I think streetwise is probably the best “insight” for most situations, otherwise I was considering home brewing a psychology skill which can be studied in college or the standard 8 week class etc
Around the 18:30 mark of the video skill levelling is addressed. I decided to try something a bit different and I keep track of skill the characters commonly use (you can have the players tic mark or have a Ref notepad). You determine what you consider to be abundant use of a skill and then just have the player level that skill up. The way I moderate the use of this is that I only allow for skill levelling if the character doesn't have the skill or has only level 0 in that skill. So this way, I am allowing for someone with no skill to be considered to have a generic understanding of that skill (level 0) after a lot of use. Then, they can actually get to be considered skilled in it by going to level 1. I don't allow progression beyond L1. I justify that by saying the character is so involved with life and is not getting direct instruction as one would in a university or some program of education. I don't allow OJT to account for becoming someone considered advanced in knowledge, though a Ref certainly could do that. But for me, since your career progression ended before you became a Traveller, that kind of progression is off of the table (kind of a "coasting" phase of life).
Definitely gonna try this system out soon
On opposed skills, I would compare the Difference between the winning score and the failed score to see what kind of success it was as well. Ties are "uncertain" successes of the aggressor, meaning there will likely be some drama or future consequence even if it succeeded for the moment. Like you get past the guard, but he remembers your face/id and does a security background check(actual skill roll for them). Next time around it won't be so easy.
For me if it's an unskilled mundane I give them a boon and if it is an unskilled dangerous I give them a bane. We might go back and forth a little on whether it's dangerous or not sometimes, but usually the players know danger when they see it LOL
And woah be unto the players to argue it's not dangerous, because you know I will use it against them... No, no, that's not a threat, you said it wasn't dangerous...
I think the name of the video came wrong but the video is nice
Title is the filename I used. UA-cam is wacky and refusing to use the video title I told it to use.
@@SSkorkowsky No big deal man, keep up with the good content
A few thoughts on learning skills..
- The XP rules you showed seemed to largely trade XP for days of training at a 1-to-1 ratio. It might be easier just to go with that in order to mix time and XP.
- It might be interesting to treat the EDU check as any other task roll and let players try it at enhanced difficulty earlier, or lower difficulty later. Failing it could have various fun consequences.
Great work!
So I pulled the trigger and bought a few traveller books, I cannot wait to dm these with my friends. Appreciate all the effort you put into these videos
On a side note, you should ask people to like the video to help you get up on the UA-cam analytics. I know I forget, but it's always nice to be reminded
Hope you enjoy Traveller!
I do ask at the very end, but I have a weird hangup about mentioning that early in the video because I really hate channels that spend the first 5 minutes telling you Like, Subscribe, join Patreon, and all that stuff. So I kinda compensate too far the other way.
I think you kind of inferred this during the personal hurdles portion regarding a lack of a specifically named skill.
Whether intentional or not, the lack of a specific skill rewards skill diversification. In DnD, for example, it's been my experience that a lot of people pretty much always have their PC be proficient in Perception. Mainly because it is frequently useful.
When the system allows the flexibility Traveler does, it gives players "permission" to diversify not only their Traveler's skills, but, the rest of the team's.
Helpful video.
P.S.: I checked out that Traveler map site. It is helpful, but, also not. How the heck do I figure out where to start them!? 😅
If I remember correctly, in the first edition of Mongoose Traveller, a training session required no toll, but took a length of time equal to the sum total of all your skills, with 0 counting as 0, 1 as 1 week, etc. I might be forgetting some key element, but I like the 2nd edition method better, to be honest.
Check out Pg. 65 of the Traveller Core update under the Art skill:
Write: Composing inspiring or interesting pieces of text.
[...]Writing the Update of Traveller: Formidable (14+) Art (write) check (1D months, INT)
Hehe Sorry, I just found that funny...😅
That DC seems kind of high.
At 12:30 a skill to read someone elses intent. In classic Traveler there was a skill called interrogation. This was not rubber hoses in the back room but the ability to closely question a person. Possibly without their knowledge. (I tend to be very liberal on skill description.)
Your sessions run eight hours? I'm envious. I've been running for younger people (college students) for a while now; it's hard to get them to sit down for a four-hour session. I envy you your players.
There's also a great deal of chit-chat and bullshitting we do during it. Now that's we're using Roll20 thanks to the Covid, we start winding down in about 5.
What if you used the standard training rules for skills. BUT, when things happen in game where their use of a skill would be a great 'teaching moment' they can put a star by the skill. Then, the next time they are making that training roll, they can get a +1 to the roll for every star they have in the skill. Or, they can erase the star to subtract a DAY from the required training time.
New Traveller video! You sir just made my evening! (UK) Gonna watch now!!!
No skill improvement in Classic Traveller... I used to give the players XP anyway, they just had no way to spend it LOL
Boons and Banes show up in a game called shadow of the Demon Lord as well. It's by Robert J schwalb, who is done quite a bit of work in RPGs for the last two decades, having his hands in Warhammer fantasy role-play and even Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition. I do believe the Boon and Bane mechanic is his oh, but I am unsure
There is the skill Science(Psychology) in Traveller.
Really want to grab a copy of traveler but sounds like definitely need the supplemental books that's alot of money
"Those are some well read people."
Heh... My audible account has been getting some interesting additions lately; including some lecture courses and audio versions of several RPG related books Like Robin's Laws of Good Gamemastering and Your Best Game Ever.
They do pass the time while driving. :)
I’m honestly okay, happy even, with traveller lacking a specific skill mechanic for telling an npc’s motive/whether they’re lying. I much prefer to resolve such situations within roleplay, rather than with a dice roll.
Second edition has a much better skill advancement system than first which was based on how many total skill points you had divided by some number in weeks to train so in theory younger characters had an easier time learning.
Nice Traveller IOI
I will wear Armour next episode.
Armor is highly recommended.
suggestion; GIVE A skill percent per use of skill 5% they can add this up through different adv then roll to improve percentile till they wish to roll higher percent if fail lose percent if pass increase skill
hey seth where'd you get that flask? it looks cool
*time to keep robbing ideas and information so I can run my mutant amalgamation of many systems for my new group*