I have learned that the Starship Images used herein are the work of Ian Stead, or are derivative works of his models. He is a render artist in the Traveller RPG community. He has his own UA-cam Channel here: ua-cam.com/channels/tlgj9484n_B0zZd3raBXmw.html
Honestly, I think part of what's holding Traveller back is precisely _because_ there's so much fragmentation and variation in the rule sets. Coming back to Traveller, my first question was "What's the best version to play?". With most games, there may be one new edition after another, but there's not the schism between, say T5 and M2E (and Cepheus etc).
Putting out videos about Traveller can't hurt. I know your videos have lead to me purchasing some of the Marc Miller's Traveller books, and thinking about running that one day.
I don't know. I guess I play Traveller for reasons that are at odds with what you're saying here. First, ignoring the fact that Traveller has always had skill progression mechanics in one form or another (the MGT V2 training rules are as clean an elegant as any version yet, btw) since 1977, I tend to play exactly *because* it by default doesn't do the "zero to hero" shtick that drives me insane in class and level systems. I like being a competent, awesome hero from the get-go in any game. I like that Traveller allows for people who can come and go (players missing sessions, for example) without having a sudden level imbalance due to the missing game time, which is more forgiving given real life tends to happen and disrupt gaming. You can inject new players into a game with just a few minutes of character creation and they'll be as relevant as the rest of your crew. I love that. Second, I tend to play in the spirit of the original 1977 books in that there is no Third Imperium. Period. My campaigns tend to take place entirely within one or two subsectors (from LBB book 1 - "Initially, one or two sub-sectors should be quite enough for years of adventure (each sub-sector has, on the average, 40 worlds)...") that were created explicitly for my games. When we get to the point where one campaign ends, we either start a new one in the same custom setting, or roll up a new one. I think that people tend to forget that each and every "system"/world in Traveller is an entire setting of play, and that a small cluster of five or six such worlds can provide truly massive amounts of adventure in their own right. In my own opinion, I think for a "Renaissance" to occur, Traveller fans need to stop talking about the grand sweeping history of the Third Imperium. People's eyes glaze over when that stuff comes up. Put it in the core book and they'll run screaming never to return. Instead, start talking about all the cool stuff you can do in a Traveller game. How the Traveller scope is more wide open than the default mode of some of the other, more "popular" games out there. It need not confine itself to the limitations of medieval fantasies but can include them on a given world. In the spirit of your own idea, maybe include one or two "mini" settings the way Fate games tend to and show off what the game can do, setting wise. Ultimately, a Traveller renaissance should be about the adventure that awaits the player.
Savage Schemer for my part, the Traveller fanbase, and the group of players that might adopt the game, are two vastly different things. As the field of choices for rpgs grew across the 80s and 90s, and through the myriad poorly produced editions that debauched and confused the setting, what was special about Traveller was lost. At the same time, the player basd of the RPG hobby became more illiterate to the Sci-fi genre, which is a cornerstone issue for me. Sometime around 1990 games that bundled genre into their core book came along, making genre illiteracy a non-issue for their adoption and success at the table. This is the primary issue I'm pushing: I haven't read a slice of vampire fiction, I didn't watch True Blood, and yet I feel confident in my mind's eye and in my gaming skills that I can run, play, and have fun in a Vampire The Masquerade game. While I have my criticisms of Shadowrun, it does the same for a semblance of Cyberpunk. What's more, the older fans of Traveller that keep the flame, do not seem to alight the enthusiasm of new or younger folks in the hobby in the same way that the D&D side of the OSR has. This is why I put such a high priority on the game on the page bundling genre and feel, rather than leaving a Toolkit system; there are a great, great many toolkit systems nowdays (you yourself mentioned FATE). There won't be any Traveller police knocking at your door to change editions, but I think some of the cantankerousness and even hostility from the LBB fans is misplaced...there is nothing that can rub out how fun that game was for you when it was new, but it is not a game or a community that in today's RPG hobby or community has the equipment to grow. It's possible that a change or an upwelling of community could accomplish growth without a new game, but that is not where my own chips are.
That's where the "mini setting" idea came from though. I think you have to keep Traveller as a toolkit because different people have different ideas of what kind of sci fi or even space opera they want to emulate. Some people want to play "The Expanse" while others want "Guardians of the Galaxy" and others still want "Firefly" and some even want the Third Imperium. Traveller can do any of these despite what the "hard" sci fi blowhards tell you. To align with what you're talking about, I'd want a book that illustrates how I could do any of these, and gives enough food for thought about how you'd tinker from there for even more. I brought up Fate because that's what they do. In their opening statement of the FAE book, you get allusions Harry Potter, The Hobbit and Star Wars right out of the gate. The entire rest of the text talks about how you emulate those given the options provided by their engine. Then they make mini setting books on top of that for people to riff off of. You get the best of both toolkit and genre specific emulation.
I think those different ideas are actually why I am in favor of a more persuasive setting ... because as one convenes a group of players you're already flying off in different directions. I'm poking at this when I say 'people can turn toward a narrow band of just what they like ... Like you say, I wanted something like the Expanse as the GM, others wanted something zany like Guardians, others were unfamiliar with Sci-Anything but were open to where'er the game took them. In this landscape, centrifugal force sets in. 'What do you mean I have to wear a spacesuit?' My first Traveller Campaign I became woefully aware of how the player group's widely spaced touchstones were undermining a fun course of play ... some players touchsontes were soapy, character-focused Anime, and Star Trek, another player thought of Warhammer 40K as 'science fiction,' another player hadn't seen Alien, Star Trek, or anything from Sci fi (and he wasn't a reader), and his touchstone was... Farscape. There was a thread on R/Rpg where the various Sci-Fi RPG's were discussed, and one comment hit the nail on the head, 'if you play fate, you will get something like Farscape.' As players pull in different directions with their narrative power in Fate, the genre feel is undermined and there is a zaniness that creeps in. For my part, when a novice GM picks up a game with a 'lite' setting, he is immediately set upon by the players who begin to tinker with what is, and isn't, in the game. A little of this is fine at the start, and maybe at defined punctuations in the middle. But by itself the table is always on 'tilt,' and there is little incentive to continue using the system at all rather than just have a free-form cannabis-fueled collaborative flight of fancy (which is fine, but ceases to be an RPG for me) It's a GM new to Sci-Fi, and a player group flirting with taking their adventures out 'IN SPACE' that are who I mean to court. Veterans of the table and the genre that have robust grounding don't need as much, and can freestyle more, but they also tend to self-select and play with each other in their long-established groups or online where they can always pull the cream of the crop. But a new GM, one that has the task of creating the looking-glass for him and his freinds to fall through, all of whom have played different Video Games which obey different logics, all of whom have watched vastly different Sci-Fi on film and screen, and very, very few of whom will have read a book... I think that GM could use a game that at least begins from a point of, 'this is what is in this game, and this is what is not; what is here is exciting and here are some roadmaps of varying detail.' That's what even the lightest-weight incarnations of D&D do by sketching out classes, races, skills, equipment lists, and monster manuals with confidence, but to me Space Travel and Space Adventuring is something a bit more specific, and perahps could use the cohesion of Shadowrun or WoD...or if you prefer something lighter, Leagues of Adventure. It may be that Traveller is too ensconced in the minds of its most devoted fans as something a sci-fi specific, lighter-weight form of GURPS, rather than as a vector of 'space adventure with a golden-age sci-fi ambience.' For me that's how I learned it and loved it :: I grew up reading Niven and Asimov, and while their writing and the 'science' in their works have become hopelessly dated, there's an ambience in their work that I felt lived on through an eternal looking-glass in Traveller as it was shown to me by Loren Wiseman. For me that's not a 'hard-sci-fi blowhard' idea, but something more like the desire to recapture sword and sorcery that many in the OSR have, while others are achieving the pulp feel with Ubiquity that they never got from other games. 'golden age sci-fi Adventure RPG' is what Traveller means to me, but it's becoming clear that for the LBB fans and anyone in the school of 'Traveller is Generic' it is something else...it is hard for me to identify what is worth saving in that bare, bare bones vision.... There are new, reductionist, bare-bones games coming along all the time--PbTA and now FAE. The White box folks have their White Star (which also has a 'mini-setting' in the back...) I don't really see how a setting-less, setting-agnostic, or setting-lite Traveller differentiates itself from those. '
It sounds like the kind of disconnect described above could be avoided by getting the table consensus on what the campaign parameters are going to be before play begins. If I found that many people at the table wanting that many styles of game play at the table, I'd might suggest doing a series of smaller campaigns of say 3-6 weeks apiece - or possibly even one-shots, each targeting a different tone, to see what the group latches onto before settling into a larger/longer game. As far as the "golden age of sci fi" goes, I think one of the greatest criticisms that can be leveled against Marc Miller and co. is that they weren't very forthright about the inspirations they drew from while designing Traveller. There's a great series of articles entitled "Traveller: Out of the Box" at the "Tales to Astound" blog (link below) that peels back Traveller to the LBB's to find out what kind of game you'd have if you only played with those - and looked at the kinds of sci fi literature Marc grew up on or had available, and the conclusion the author draws in many cases is that it is very much in line with the kind of game you seem to want. My guess if you get a lot of push back or angst from the LBB crowd is that they may be looking at what you want and what the game delivers from their perspective and they're seeing alignment. Maybe. It could also be that they're just a bunch of grumpy old turds too. I dunno. Another thing that occurs to me is that the OSR crowd have their OGL. The same kind of disconnect between what you want, and what I want exists in that space. They all have the original "game that shall not be named" chassis to build from, and so a bunch of different games emerged with each tuned to a specific taste, and targeting a specific kind of game play. Think of the difference between Crypts and Things and Godbound or even Stars Without Number. Thanks to Mongoose, we have an "open" game now too. For a renaissance of our own, maybe what we need is the same kind of dissemination. You can get a game that took the 2D6 engine and made "golden age science fiction" and another that draws on comics or anime and so on. They'd all be united / similar by the core in the same way OSR games are, but with each delivering something tuned to an explicit style of play. As an aside - have you ever checked out Thousand Suns? The author of that game explicitly states Asimov and H. Beam Piper and the like as inspiration for what he dubbed "imperial" science fiction. While he still leaves setting mostly open for the table to design, he does provide a more specific framework from which to build using his own literary inspiration as guideposts. It might be just the kind of game you're looking for. Traveller: Out of the Box [talestoastound.wordpress.com/traveller-out-of-the-box/]
Agree. I think the 3rd Imperium stuff is amazing, but dang it's a lot to internalize for running a game. Prefer using home brew Traveller subsectors/sectors/settings.
You should check out Stars Without Number by Sine Nomine Publishing. You can start out as an inexperienced nobody and rise up with moxie and good dice rolls. The combat system is based on B/D/ D&D but the skill system is pure Traveller.
Some good points, you bring up here. I think a good step to bring Traveller to a wider audience was the release of the ruleset for fantasy grounds. At least this was what brought me back to the game after a 20 year break.
I've been interested in the Traveller RPG since the early 90's when I was first introduced to D&D and other TTRPG games. However, I ended up investing in Cyberpunk 2020; I had all the official core books and most of the supplemental books. Sadly, they got lost over the years. In the past few months Traveller has once again caught my eye. I really like the sci-fi Cyberpunk world of the dark future, but am looking for something more Future Fiction Sandbox. Traveller seems to be the ticket. Having skimmed through many PDFs of MGT 2e I get the sense that it is an open framework that really leaves the setting and theme of the game up to the GM and Players; with plenty of wiggle room for that to change.
In the 77 edition of classic Traveller, the advancement track was not explicitly laid out, but was easily discernible. Characters would start as hardscrabble rogues, trying to scrape together enough for a passage to the next world. They would be limited to the space lanes generated by the Referee (sadly, the space lanes were removed in the 81 edition). Eventually, if they were lucky, they'd put together enough for a down payment on a starship of their own. They would still be limited to the space lanes, since they were unlikely to have enough for the Generate program that would allow them to generate their own navigation tapes. Finally, they'd get enough money to acquire the Generate program and be allowed a wider range of mobility. There are some alternate paths that can happen, such as being a lucky enough player to roll up a Scout who both survives and gets a Type S, or the even less likely chance of getting a Merchant Captain who has already acquired a Type A with payments due. Still, the path to the Generate program in the 77 edition is a clear path of group advancement.
Chris Vermeers - The "Hero's Journey" at a group level. Yep, that works as a framework. And it comes back to my point about advancement being one based on finance, social interaction and circumstance - rather than one of game-mechanical advancement at a PC-level. And I thoroughly agree with you that this is the most important aspect of advancement. And the fact that Traveller has no PC-level advancement helps to make this even MORE important. Which is a good thing. But the fact that a character is mechanically the same when they have a Starship-Generate combo as they did when they were interstellar hitch-hikers means that they're no more or less capable in and of themselves at any point in that story-line. The real character-advancement therefore is at the meta-level of the Players becoming more competant within the setting, rather than the characters they are playing.
+Graham Charters I totally agree, though I think that "owns a starship in the game" is mechanically different than "must purchase a passage to travel in the game". Also, I'd say that this is a strong argument in favor of the procedurally-generated setting rather than the predefined one, since it becomes impossible to become more competent with the setting by reference to outside materials. Everything is learned in play.
I really wish they'd republish the LBBs, maybe making each SLIGHTLY longer or detailed, but not much so. I bought them from eBay last year, to replace my long lost old ones, and have started a campaign, and I think the LBBs are simply great. Elegant.
+Bob's Trick Tips I think it's an ideal format for RPGs. The density of information is amazing. The choices of what not to make flowery, just matter of fact, make the LBBs very useful at the table. I find myself wishing star Trek Adventures had an LBB style format, the rules would just fit in one, starships in another, etc. And for the fluff we'd suggest... watching the show and your imagination. I love the third Imperium but part of why is that its story is told in library data maps, and UPPs and not so much in paragraphs and paragraphs. I wonder if the cepheus engine PDFs from Drive thru rpg print on demand come out with similar page counts to LBBs...
Reading Marc Miller's Agent of the Imperium book gave me a real appreciation of the setting, but I still find it kind of oppressive for GMing. I prefer a lot more of the "unknown". Uncharted space, etc. There's this guy Michael Brown, who publishes 1-3 page adventures on Drive Thru RPG, and his stuff is actually really cool. Easy to drop into a game, generic, but he comes up with great little story hooks.
I have tried Traveller before, once with GURPS, the other time with Savage Worlds, but it never worked out. However, i'm finally in a proper MgT2 campaign, and it's great. The MgT2 ruleset is great in terms of design philosophy. I like the no bullshit-task resolution, the simulationist but immersive spaceship and trading rules, and the idea that whatever character you end up with, that's what you get and you have to make the best of it. That's true for skill training too; you CAN improve your character (as you should), but you just can't rely on him/her improving steadily. The rules feel old-school in this way, but still modern regarding useability, although there is still room for improvement, and I think Traveller (at least this version) has enough idiosyncracies to stand on its own in the rpg hobby and even be successful beyond satisfying existing Traveller veterans... but maybe it's just the fact that it fits my own taste so well. BUT The books (or PDFs) as a product are bad. It's really unacceptable for Mongoose to release something with THIS many grammatical, layout and rules errors at THAT price. When i say i like the rules, i mean i like how they're meant according to my and my group's interpretation, because they're unclear and written very sloppily a lot of the time. Mongoose Traveller, as great as it is in concept, desperately needs a new edition, because this is how you DON'T usher in a renaissance. Still, i can't imagine playing the game with any other version, and to me that shows how badly this game needs, if not deserves a truly great edition.
Need to bring back an expanded 'living' gaming community to allow people to learn about and enjoy the game at local game shops and conventions with a wide among of material for various versions to allow most everyone become happier. Other game systems have done well with this setup such as 5th edition and pathfinder to promote their material, plus mini 4-5 hour games are good for a busy people.
A renaissance requires an open license. That's why we have an OSR renaissance to begin with -- the D&D 3.x OGL. Even now, that revolution in gaming is launching new flights of fantasy-gaming every day. Traveller, interestingly enough, ALSO has an SRD that Mongoose published along with the 1e version of their game . As for White Wolf -- I am aware of no such open gaming license that allows for creative variations on a common set of shared and popular rules.
I'd say a good part of the issue around here is accessibility. No where stocks it and having it shipped is expensive. It's also not a small investment. The Classic should form a "Basic" game with the rest (Mongoose 2 with T5 addons). People (especially those newer to gaming) appreciate the simple 2d6 system. A key will be in adopting other genres. Cowboys vs Aliens was genius.
Legend of the Flame Princess has made B/X d&d popular again. I think any effort to get it into stores will naturally come from someone with some vision about remixing the visuals and tone, if not the rules. People Don't buy FATE or Apocalypse World, they buy games that use the rules. Cepheus/CT could get into stores, but I think it would have to follow the lotfp path to do so
I think I played Traveller exactly once and I quite enjoyed it, but other than that one time I had difficulty finding another GM to run it. This aside, my questions however is: what incentives does the Traveller setting offer to players that help it stand out from other space opera style RPGs in existing and popular settings? Some examples that come to mind include Firefly RPG and the different Star Wars RPGs. Both Firefly and Edge of the Empire Star Wars RPG offer much the same thing that Traveller does (small crew, small ship, you're on a frontier, go out there and have adventures) but are an easier "sell" to players.
So First, FIRST, on the rules-system side I think it's totally possible, and fun to use either of those systems to play a Traveller Campaign in the Traveller Universe. And as I've written and made a video about elsewhere, I'm keen to use EOTE to run my next Traveller game. I generally believe in using the rules system that's the sexiest to you at the moment and also fits the genre, and whether it's a strict 'match' if it was a setting that came bundled with the engine is another...secondary consideration. I am primarily an advocate of 'the Traveller Mode of Play,' and 'the Original Traveller Universe,' and In my videos I'm a little bit transitive with the rules side, but truthfully I'm agnostic to rules sets when it comes to this mode of play, in the same way that it's possible to go into dungeons and get treasure and kill monsters playing Torchbearer as it is playing OSRIC or LotFP. As a disclaimer to the below, I really do think there are good reasons, fun reasons, to play in both the Star Wars Universe and Firefly, but in my videos I am advocate for the logic that there is, in fact, good reason to play some more Traveller, chiefly to make use of all the GM resources that are vast when you do. A second disclaimer: what I offer below is also not something Traveller comunicates well, at all. It is not sexy, and it doesn't come out and say what it is (to, me, now, and I think the only version of itself that can succeed in the coming years). It was originally written by Marc Miller as something of a Proto-GURPS-for-Scifi-only and the setting that GDW published for it and the prototypical mode of play that most people have experienced it as...were something that came later. But there is a militant group of fans that wants something more adaptable and open to homebrew settings and a 'toolkit game,' and it seems everyone that publishes the game is loathe to anger this faction. For my part, Traveller won't win any converts if it is just another, liter version of GURPS.... Now, what is it about Traveller that differentiates it? 1) there is no Star Wars, there is no "Independents v. Central planets' central cornerstone of the setting that prejudices your campaign toward that single thing, and away from which it will be hard to steer. This may seem droll or unexciting at first, but this means that a GM has much freer rein to sculpt plots and stories that are far more zoomed in. And this also means that there can be variety that can sustain a campaign in a way that there might not be otherwise--you can go from Trampy Space Trading like Firefly, to bounty hunting like Blade Runner or Cowboy Bebop, to Heists like Shadowrun (and several Firefly episodes)... and you can run away or take the next adventure hook. And the universe of Traveller is Big enough to have all those quests in it, and also sized in a way that means that there are manifold people that can oppose you or compete for them. 1a) in contrast, the Firefly Universe is (for one) small. It's only one/several star systems, and there's less room for the GM to carve out his own stuff, and at the same time with such a small canon of stuff to work from (the boardgame, the show, the movie....? there's also less reason to run the game in that universe to make use of (for me) convenient ready-to-use content). Finally, there is some apocrypha that Joss drew heavily from Traveller when developing Firefly, so in some respects Firefly is just a small bubble inside of Traveller (it is so much more because it's Joss, to be sure). 1b) No matter how big the Star Wars Universe is, for me, it's got very strong centers of gravity. The empire, the Rebellion, the Light and Dark Side of the Force, and Scum and Villainy. As big as it may be, one of those things is always close which means that if you'd like to try something new as a GM or be surprised by something wholly unexpected as a player, it's hard. Which isn't to say that there aren't remote places and 'the orient' in Star Wars, but (for one) what exactly that remote locale is was developed in some comic or other EU property which may, or may not, be any good or easy to get hold of...and (for two) the rules about distance in Star Wars are really fuzzy, which brings us to... 2) Traveller's canon is built up from a consistent set of rules on how things work. Gravity, FTL, etc. have rules that are set down, and then the content, the maps, etc, obey that and are built into a structure of cause and effect. This means that there's a logic which can be felt across all of it, which is both an inspiration for developing your own stuff, and just sells the feeling of immersion that much more than, say, Star Wars, Where the reason one planet is remote and another is a trivial journey is really opaque and really doesn't have a set of meaningful rules to it (SWd20 had a fair attempt; and more so the rules for things as important as Hyperdrive seem to be on 'tilt' nowdays to whatever is most convenient to the story. If ships can go to Hyperspace from inside the docking bay, if ships can come out of hyperspace right on top of a planet, then why are there space battles at all? The 'JJ Abrams rules' when applied to things like Transporters and Hyperdrives really undermine cause and effect in a way that I think is bad for RPGs, chiefly becuase the players can't really form plans about how to use their Hyperdrive on their own, and when they take a risk or feel they're calculating things...well, the canon is saying now that the table can tilt and say 'GOTCHA' if that's the exciting thing to happen next. Which is all fine and good if you'd like a pulpier tone, or if you feel confident you can lay out a version of Star Wars Hyperdrive that's more restrained in Session Zero and that 'forgetful' players won't draw more from their film knowledge than the experience at the table...but I am getting into a bit of a rant about Force Awakens rather than focusing on the postitive.... When things all pull on each other in a web because of obeyed rules in a universe, it's a huge resource as a GM for improvisatoinal play and for Sandbox play, because when the players cut a rubber band in that web, the pusle of effects going outward is something that can fuel your imagination as a GM, and also lend believability to the game. Meanwhile, if you want big space battles, and things like AT ATs or even Gundams, they can be fit into places in the VAST Traveller universe. But Traveller needs to come out and say what it is...something vast, that has room for just about anything short of Zaniness like Farscape, something that was the inspiration that begat Firefly, and something in which you can fit almost any sci-fi anime or a miniature version of Star Wars and still have room for a campaign two sectors away where the players start out pulling weeds.....
Thank you for the long and thoughtful reply. You almost answer my original question, but a niggling question still persists, and I think that you also recognize it when you say that "It is not sexy, and it doesn't come out and say what it is." What sells Traveller aside from "It's a giant space sandbox!" that draws the players in right away? The big conflicts of Star Wars (Light Side vs. Dark Side, Empire vs. Rebels) help clarify right away to the players what kind of game and setting they might look forward to. The "cowboys and gangsters in space" premise of Firefly immediately informs the players what kind of shenanigans they may expect their characters to get into. Nothing in Traveller (so far, I really want to be persuaded otherwise!) really stands out as "This is the big theme/conflict of the setting and this is what your characters will most likely be doing." And "you're small space traders free to go anywhere you want and do whatever you want" doesn't sound like a hard sell to me... I definitely wouldn't be able to sell my players on that. If you were to do an elevator pitch for Traveller to new players (new to Traveller, not new to TRPGs), what would it be?
+razorboy251 as it is organized and presented at the moment, Traveller has no elevator pitch, and because it's trying very hard not to anger the folks that use it GURPs style, for my part I wouldn't even bill it as Traveller. I would say, I'd like to run a space adventure game set in Earth's future, and then I'd fire off lots of sex appeal material, mostly homemade posters and stuff that nailed the feel, off into my immediate circle of gamers. I have sort of an oddball approach to launching unfamiliar systems, I treat the uocoming game as a sort of movie or tv show that is launching, creating hype ads, showing the ambience instead kf telling. Sometimes it works, sometimes not. This only works, of course, when you have an audience of folks to hypetrain, and most people that I know lajnch their games by saying 'I'm looking for players to run x' and maybe, just maybe, they will ckme back with, "oh I've never heard of that, whatsit?" And that's where elevator pitches come in. My best shot at that: "Traveller is thr kind of Sci Fi gaming for the expanse, for alien, the Martian. The stakes, and the dangers, are human ones. The people in it are real, like someone you know or you..like in zombiepocalypse games. But instead of grimness and endtimes, thkse same folks are getting into adventures in space. When your character suceeds or fails ina TRAVELLER game, it gets you *right here* because that person is like you. Oh, and it's the quintessential setting for space pirates." My approach is different, more tailored to the person I'm talking to, and I also am willing to play and run 5E, pathifnder, and the like to develop a brand as a gm and as a cool guy before pitching from left field. People are usually anxious about both the person amd the game, but their amxiety over the second is easy to get past once they aren't anxious about the first. All that said, Traveller needs better branding, amd from where I am sitting I can't fix that problem.
To take what you say about Traveller being a big space sandbox is true. Yet to say that Star Wars RPG is easy to know what your playing is also true, Light v Dark, Alliance v Empire, Jedi v Sith...Etc., Etc. Take D&D for instance, What is it? It is Fantasy Sandbox, unless you have a particular campaign setting such as Raven Loft, which is fantasy horror. The PC's are heroes dealing with the minions and trickery of an Elder vampire overlord. More to the point Traveller is what you make it. It is sandbox, It is an open canvas and it needs paint. Do you want a paint by number? Adapt a story and follow the progression. Do you want creative free form? Then get a crew, get a ship, get a job and cruise the black. You've mention Firefly RPG, funny, Firefly is perhaps the best example of Traveller on television, Now Scy-fy has given us The Expanse, A military intrigue Traveller ,,,, The is also Killjoys, A Canadian SciFi very close to what could be a Bounty hunter styl Traveller campaign. Look around, Traveller is everywhere.
I've certainly enjoyed coming back to Traveller (MGT2) after 30 years. The skill acquisition system feels like an afterthought. It seems OK for fine tuning middle aged characters, but would be a disaster for developing young characters that mustered out after a term or two, since the rules make levelling up skills something your character does when they are NOT adventuring and gaining life experience. There are some obvious possible house rules, though...
.I can agree somewhat with the concept of Renaissance, ... For a game setting in particular, I like Traveller: The New Era, (TNE), and Marc Miller's Traveller, (T4), it opens up the scope to the reach out and explore the unknown, or revisit what was once known as in TNE. With Mega Trav., there is war, period. These are what many of the general sci-fi adventures focus on. With Classic Traveller, (CT) and the Third Imperium, (3I) in general. It is somewhat limiting at first glance, as it seems everything is already explored and the charted, settled, and well you have to deal with it, could be some of the daunting aspect of perception in the Trav Universe. Of course the same can be said for Trek and Star Wars. Noting the truth is that the 3I is vast expansive and is a Swiss cheese empire. In other words yeah it's charted, and settled and has boundaries, but it is full of pockets, voids, and just plain silliness. :P . There are limitless planets and systems to explore, discovered, not yet discovered and even very well settled. Their is intrigue, espionage, and just plain back alley trade offs and throat cutting... This is Traveller!
For "pluck" to work, how about an advance on skills? Maybe you get 3-5 skill levels to work with at age 22 that sets you back a bit on the advancement trail. While your cohorts are engaging in either the rule-based skill advancement or whatever house rules you have in place to build up your skillsets, your young'un's are essentially frozen for a nominal period of time.
Hrrrmp - The 'advancement track' in Traveller exists with the gaining of Credits. With economic advancement you can by technology and training. I'm amazed at the number of people cannot get this idea.
+Trippy I understand that that is the reply from traditionalists. I can even get behind it a little bit because I am familiar with the game, setting, and mode of play. However, in terms of attracting newcomers, or cleaving at least somewhat to the power fantasy dynamic of the hobby that fuels a lot of folks when they shop for games, I think Traveller either needs to find a branding strategy that acknowledges it doesn't do character progression, and make that sexy for newcomers ... Or make an advancement track. Pick one.
I appreciate the reply. I'm not a traditionalist, insofar that I've only really played Mongoose Traveller in any long term sense (during the last decade or so), although I was familiar with older versions. I'm not calling for a return to old school either, just an appreciation of what works or doesn't in the game. My feeling is that Traveller certainly could do with enhancing it's branding or marketing strategy and would welcome a higher profile for the game generally beyond just game historians and grognards. However, it's game processes have already been modernised effectively in the Mongoose version of the game. I don't think it needs to develop a seperate experience tract, just a better understanding of the process. In D&D, "Experience" is earned through adventuring. This determines a character Level and, in turn, the various powers, magic and heroic competence of the characters. In Traveller, "Credits" are earned (normally from a Patreon) on completion of a job. These can then be accumulated or spent on enhancing individual characters through technology or training, or collectively towards enhancing the spacecraft they all invest in. In both cases, characters advance in terms of their capabilities and power levels. In my games, characters have access to the Catalogue for most items, with more advanced technology sometimes being a target for adventuring in themselves. If you were to introduce an experience tract overlaying the Credits, it would actually undermine the materialistic themes of the Traveller game and introduce something that doesn't really serve any additional purpose beyond familiarity for D&D players. It would be like re-introducing Hit Points to Mutants and Masterminds on top of that game's system for damage saves. It's unnecessary. So, I think the game could be sold as something more sexier, but I see the gaming conventions established in Traveller, as refined in Mongoose Traveller, as features not bugs. I'd argue the same for the character generation system too. Also, if you want to see a modern transhumanist take on Traveller, check out Traveller: Mindjammer. You can play a sentient starship in it....
+Trippy MgT2 is pretty good. Boon and bane dice over modifiers is huge in terms of speeding play and helping the simplicity of play really pay off. I am a little miffed about the dropping of an open license.... An orientation or leaning in to credits-as-experience is a possibility...
I think the open license issue has been a problematic development. I'm not sure what happened in the writing of the new license for the second edition behind closed doors, but in a perfect world they could still make some amends in this regards. Maybe it will happen, although for me there is so much official material coming out at the moment anyway it hasn't affected my gaming directly. Personally, I'm just waiting for the miniature battles and card games to have an impact too.
Hmmmm.... I've got to admit that this was one of those videos where I found myself nodding along in agreement at some parts, and shouting "WTF!" at other parts. But I think that's what you were hoping for.... :-) WARNING: I am writing this and thinking about it at the same time, so it may go on a bit... The most important notes in this video were the advancement tack (and, by derivation, the power-level) for characters, and the importance of setting. On the subject of advancement track, that absense of any such mechanism in Classic Traveller was always an issue for me and my players. Yes, they started off as people with some experience and skills, but no amount of additional experience, learning or exposure to new things was going to make any difference to their character sheets. This makes no sense in the real world, and - for me - one of the most enjoyable things about the TU is that it opens characters up to experiences and ideas which they have never seen or considered before. So the idea that they can't learn, expand and improve as a result just feels wrong. And this is why, in recent years, I've moved over into using GURPS as my Traveller ruleset of choice. It allows for advancement and learning, without trapping the players in a character class. We build characters on templates, so that they START OUT like standard Traveller PCs, but where they go from there, what they learn and how they develop, is all driven through play at the table. This brings me onto the next bugbear: In CT, characters can indeed go through the stages you described - merchants, diplomats, fleet commanders etc - but they don't get any better at it (in terms of game mechanics). So if you weren't born to be king of the corsairs, you won't be skilled at it once it becomes the day-job. The only real way that characters have to advance is in social connections (which I'm all in favour of!) or the aquisition of money. And the 'Starships & Spreadsheets' approach of an interminable mercantile campaign can get very repetative after a while (and will always form the backdrop of any adventures that happen along the way). Whilst it's a great motivator for novice players, most of us old guard can find it a bit of straightjacket sometimes. Power level... In a previous video you talked about how one of the strengths of Traveller is that it's built for adventure. And I agree. But what kind of adventure? How much jeopardy? What are the stakes? This is where games that use Tiers/Levels/etc have an advantage. CT puts you on a playing field, and doesn't really care if that field is level or not. Okay - setting being tied into the characters. TOTALLY agree with this one. In my GURPS Traveller, all players, as part of character creation, have to put time (and character points!) into building relationships with the various factions in my campaign. They all have a designated homeworld, and get skills based on that. They have reputations (positive and negative) with various groups. They write back stories based on all of the above (plus their template, of course). In short, I do everything I can to make sure every new PC is already tied into the setting. This gives them depth, it gives them motivations (to do or not do!), potential allies and enemies and so on. And, of course, it provides me with plenty of adventure hooks to use later... Once I've hit 'send' I will probably violently disagree with everything I've just written, but hey.
Well this seems to have been effective in creating some cognitive dissonance, then! It sounds like you have found your footing with GURPS Traveller, and introduced some of the idea of mechanical grounding (putting points into allies, contacts, patrons, to develop grounding) through your own efforts. My experience with GURPS and with longer form chargen that includes a lot of choices...is tied up with players that are impatient for play to begin (and prefer to sort of invent their character as they play from some stuff on their sheet) and are also learning the system at the same time. And these same folks are usually learning the 'genre of play' or 'what's useful for things that come up often?' pure simulationism (which GURPS has in even more spades than CT), for me, is a roadblock for teaching, in that there's a very steep learning curve for discovering what the game ends up being about, and how your character will fit into it. > 'Starships & Spreadsheets' So, yeah. I think it's kind of dull and in some ways can hedge out some sidetracks into other kinds of storytelling. Some amount of abstraction here, making cargo into tokens, and the profits into coins that could be cashed in for tip-top maintenance, upgrades, NPC crew, or (oh please don't) cashing out for proper credits at coin=1000 or something to that effect might be a way to go. In this way, it becomes a minigame for those that are really interested in the health of the ship, and the ship can be something like a little boardgame that sits on the table and hypnotizes anyone in danger of daydreaming. At the same time, it might be easier to push the bookeeping aside and ignore that whole chapter for when you want a different kind of campaign because 'it's optional.' .,..that is, of course, an overtly 'gamey' or 'gamist' way of going about it, which of course will have its detractors. At the same time, it has a neat little bit of KISS *(keep it simple, stupid) because the pure open-endedness of simulationism is kept at arm's length in the commercial realm (hey GM, I want to buy a geneered slime to coat the hull in, and can we install 3D printers in the cargo bay and just sell what they make?) ...so whatever time is spent diverted from the action/game/story to do bookeeping is more focused (at least to start with, and you can hack in all that craziness later) on whatever menu of cargo strategies/upgrades, etc are presented in the rules. (example--spellcasting in D&D...most people keep to what's in the book and so spellcasting isn't all that diverting). This leads to the question, of course, of if the 'straight-jacket' is about the diverted effort and playtime into bookeeping and entrepeneurship, or if it's more about the thematic restrictions. To me, the idea is something like Paizo's Kingmaker domain Rules, or the stuff in ACKS if you're an OSR person, or the starship combat chapters in FFG star wars...the sort of thing you can leave behind easily as it's in its own little enclave.
Agreed. On the subject of GURPS complexity being a handicap, I can see what you mean, but I would rebut with two points: 1. Yes, chucking the rulebook at a newbie and asking them to get on with it is a MASSIVE mountain to climb, and I would harangue anyone who suggested such a thing. But giving them templates and a selection of pre-priced 'packages' of skills and abilities that they can build together like Lego, means that character creation can be story-driven and take less than 15 minutes. 2. One of the great things about CT is that chargen is a game in itself, and can take AGES. (And still result in a dead character!) I'm not familiar with Kingmaker. I'm off to go and look it up.... ;-)
While I've never used deckplans-as-gameboard nor tokens-for-resources in my Traveller games (although I intend to do so in the future). I have used the ship's papers (the character sheet for the ship) as the actual in-game ship's papers. Whoever is dealing with authorities on behalf of the ship needs those papers to do so. The same with letters of marque. If the facts change and the letter or papers do not reflect those changes, or give leeway for them, then the crew could be in a lot of trouble.
Oh, I missed this before. I have to strenuously disagree with the idea that there is not a skill improvement system in classic Traveller. It's right there, pages 40-41 of LBB77 Book 2, pages 42-43 of LBB81 Book 2, or page 103 of The Traveller Book. What trips people up are the factors that a) it's not tied to success in game actions, and b) that it takes a lot of in-game time (years, in fact) to rise even one skill level. Both of these are because the skill levels in classic Traveller are very large-grained. A single skill level might add a DM of +2 to a die roll, which is a huge difference. A typical roll requiring 8+ has a 42% chance of succeeding, while the DM of +2 changes that to a 72% chance. Of course, not every skill check gets a +2 per skill level in classic Traveller, but it is not an uncommon thing. As a result, any change in skill level has to be due to extensive and extended training rather than a mere few months of on-the-job experience.
Chris Vermeers It may be there, but if it's not something that a player can interact with during a typical course of play, then is it really 'there'? Or is it something like a (deckrative) sword bolted to the wall? I agree that skill improvment has to be kept at bay because the skill system is so narrowly quantized, but there are other ways within the design space for players to perceive motion. If pure 'realism' is at object, then there's still space for something like familiarity and conditioning to play with -- something like boon dice with gear the character has become intimately familiar with, "wins ties or beats miss by 1 TN" vs. specific challenges..." 'does x task faster.' There has been a great deal of interesting talk im the thread, and I'm glad you brought up the generate program. In my dive into th LBBs it was something that I grabbed and retained for my own games, amd in general the concept of a course tape is a great peice of leverage as a "scroll of go here." For my part, thr tapes and the space lanes are a part of my own Traveller games...for me the worlds on the map make up the lanes; while the brown dwarfs, pulsars, supergiants, rogue planets, and deep space objects that are 'off the map.' Red Zones, too.
I'm new to Traveller. I've only had my book a few weeks. I picked up the Mongoose 2nd ed. version. I really like not really having a specific setting. If you think the specific setting would help this game get a wider audience, then maybe it should be tried. No one says I can't take the info from the book and make my own setting anyway if that's my preference and the players don't mind. Seems like it would be the best of both worlds (pun intended).
You brought up Starfinder, so I have a question. If I wanted to buy one Sci-fi/sci_fantasy game to learn, which would you recommend I start my renaissance?
I think a lot of what you describe was tried by GDW when they came out with the 2300 AD setting. They called it Traveller: 2300 for more than just trademark reasons. Though what it didn't do was provide a well-defined mode of play like you describe. I've been playing Mutant: Year Zero recently and it has that well-defined mode of play aspect. It does one thing and it is built around doing that. It is fun, I can't deny. And, something like that may be what you seek in increasing the popularity of Traveller. But, I guess I am the old school reactionary who you are wary of in that I do like the wide realm of possibility inherent in Traveller and feel much would be lost by narrowing it. I've also found the well-defind settings of Traveller, like your Third Imperium, to be restrictive in all their huge backstory. In my play, it's there but, far, far away. However, the possibility of playing wet-behind-the-ears characters has always been there -- just muster out early.
As I mentioned, that's more or less my approach too. Characters are insignificant to the greater flow of history. It's the War and Peace approach. But, a lot of players want to believe they at least have the potential of being Napoleon. Though, my preference is to set things in the wilds of barely explored or isolated subsectors.
Shawn Driscoll - Yep, but it can work both ways. Having the huge expanse of detailed history that the TU provides means that you have a framework within which to focus in on the history of a single Domain / Sector / Subsector / Pocket Empire / System / World / Colony and look at how that grew and developed within that general flow. Just like the shape of a river flowing across a continent dictates (to some degree) the shape of a tidal rapid in an isolated corner (or vice versa). And personally, I play this to my advantage because, you're right, players can get so immersed in local goings-on that they don't worry (or care) about the bigger picture. For example, I used the vast flow of OTU history to build a framework for the Aslan Border Wars in Reavers Deep Sector, and this dictated the attitudes and histories of the pocket empires in the Deep. This in turn helped (alongside the Imperial expansion, psioninc suppressions and establishment of the Solomani Confederacy) to shape the history of the Principality of Caledon. So - my players never really leave the J-1 main that covers about 20 systems from Rejhappur to Germaine, but the sweep of history has made each of those systems unique and interesting in its own right.
Graham Charters. No I haven't tried any of the Mongoose stuff for either 2300 or Traveller. I liked the old system pretty fine for the most part so I haven't felt compelled. Though the 2300 ad Space Cruiser game was totally unplayable. What about Mongoose 2300 do you like?
Brian Renninger - a little bit of a step back before I answer your question directly... Traveller:2300 - I loved the premise and setting for this game. As a physicist, I think stutterwarp is more plausible than jump-drive. I love the 50ly spherical map. I love the system-generation system (the most realistic to date at time of production). The task-system is a great idea. This was also where I first started thinking about how to include homeworlds and upbringing into the whole chargen process. 2300AD: The problem with the earlier incarnation was that it was a bit thin in a lot of key areas. I think 2300AD did a good job of filling a lot of these in, and adding extra depth, and key information on the setting which was just plain missing from Traveller:2300 In summary - a much improved version of the game. Star Cruiser: Yeah, this was crap... :-( Mongoose 2300 is a whole other level. If you like the previous iterations, then you should definitely check out the source books at the very least. They take aspects of the original setting and take them to somewhere much much deeper. Particular favourites are Tools For Frontier Living and Atlas Of The French Arm. The former really looks at the challenges of life on the frontier and in colonies, and gets across the grittiness of the setting in a way that made me rethink the whole idea of a simple equipment list. Just reading the descriptions of the kit made me conjure scenarios... AOTFA is the best sourcebook I have ever read. Whilst CT focuses on the Mainworld of a system, AOTFA goes into detail about every world in the system - to a level of detail where you could make that airless moon feel like a real place with very little trouble. For the colony worlds, the colonial history, politics, flora, fauna, world map, even the climate (!) is covered. And it contains descriptions of the space stations and outposts on all those stepping-stone systems too. I don't play 2300 very often, but the sourcebooks from all three iterations are regular go-tos for my Reavers Deep Traveller campaign. And Mongoose CT? After all the iterations Traveller has been through, Mongoose have brought it back to its roots, given it a cleaner, modern twist and brought it to life again. If the renaissance that CGA is talking about is going to happen, I would suggest that Mongoose Traveller is the place it's gonna grow from...
I just stumbled into your youtube. have you used "Azanti highlightning"? Have you considered merging it with the scenario's world. Frequently I would use one or more floorplan sheets while doing an adventure
When you say Traveller should be "consciously about the Science-Fiction and consciously about the adventurer ethos" can you tell me what this stands in contrast to? You say you want to bring it "back." Can you give me examples of it being gone? I'll note that I am most familiar with the original Traveller rules (Books 1-3 edition specially.) Those editions of the rules are all about being "consciously about the Science-Fiction and consciously about the adventurer ethos." Are you familiar with them at all?
I simply challenge the notion that the current followership of Traveller is much concerned with evangelizing new players; and further, that evangelization is crucial to survival; and finally, that fundamentalism or originalism which seems prevalent does not seem oriented around taking any curative steps to alleviate the deficit of new adopters, and a general dismissiveness of Traveller’s place in the panoply of the RPG hobby on the part of the wider hobby culture. Curative steps of some sort would seem important to survival
The legacy of great science fiction and classic gaming experiences like Traveller unfortunately have to contend with the solipsism and unchallenged ignorance of a generation of what are essentially fad gamers who just want to do what podcasters or the Critical Role schmucks do. They just want their D&D and known brands (licensed games representing the current popular franchises) because they're essentially exclusively Windows users and Amazon customers. So life need not require more than two or three options. Learning that there's another way to do something or another avenue for acquiring information or entertainment boggles their minds with confused panic over assumed perplexity or the frightening thought that they might have to challenge their tastes or preferences with other unfamiliar content. They are the chicken fingers and fry eaters, the people who insist that Chinese restaurants serve chicken wings and hamburgers, and they long for the day when they can just get a single teat to provide them a gray slurry of their few favorite items blended together. If Zendaya being played by Margot Robbie could feed them chickie nuggies whilst memes scrolled across the bottom of the screen on which they watch an unending blur of shows from Netflix they'd be the happiest zombies ever. Also, they don't seem to enjoy gaming as a hobby so much as a social activity or a vehicle for providing them with some sort of social status or assumed personality enhancement. They want selfies of themselves holding dice or to be a talking head on a gaming stream. Let's face it, people are probably more shallow now than ever before and they hate it when you try to make them use more than their favorite spoon or sippy cup, from which they are given all of their base cultural sustenance. Old games rely on people committed to the hobby, old and new, and they desperately need those of us who've been at it for decades to represent them and wave the flags of their qualities and virtues. Videos such as your Traveller content greatly help with that.
Wow, just wow. Bruh you just described one of the reasons I've given up gaming. Most people who play nowadays would not survive any game table I sat or that I ran. Problems were meant to be solved and were usually solved in ways that required imagination, forethought and problem solving skills.
Hmm...seems to me the new Star Wars (8 and 9 especially), Star Trek Discovery and recent Doctor Who are made for morons, unlike Traveller. They feature clueless characters running around making bad decisions and doing things that make no sense because of lazy writing. Good role play sessions are a chance to do better than some of these writers. As for zero to hero there are many rpg's that cater for this so there's no need for traveller to go down this path. You can play an 18 year old with just 3 background skills but they won't be a Mary Sue. Would you want to be treated by an 18 year old dentist, have an 18 year old flying the next commercial flight you take or even doing your tax returns for you? Would you want an 18 year old as the astrogator on your far trader?
Astoundingly young people were allowed to fight world war 2, including commanding the planes and submarines. People in their 20s. Recent times have shown a gallery of folks working on both sides of Watergate returning to camera eye, begging the question of how young they must have been during the days of the OG crisis. Steven Spielberg and Ridley Scott are still making movies, but were also making movies in 1979. In any case I would encourage you to look at The Expanse as a slice of present-day sci-fi that is, in fact, close to the mark as far as Traveller
Agreed! At the moment, I think largely due to the canon changes, many of the system-side innovations that came with MT and TNE (and others) are largely swept under the rug. In some earlier comment Threads, Chris Vermeers brought up the advancement system in MT which had more playability and was mechanically pretty interesting. My thoughts on the topic of advancement tracks center around how much they can fit into the timeline of typical campaigns and adventures. While there's a great deal of variance, in most official Traveller stuff, the mechanic for new or improved skills takes place over the course of years. If, swept up in the events of a campaign and the adventure, the systems don't interface with how people usually play the game, then for me the presence of that advancement system is questionable. However, beyond simply adding new skills or progressing existing ones, there are other kinds of advancemnent--fame, clout, reputation, and the experience necessary to pull off 'a few maneuvers' are the sort of things that nowadays gain some sort of mechanical representation on character sheets. Especially in simulation-minded games, the picture in the GM's minds' eye is almost always different than the players' as he tries something like a 'Crazy Ivan' or the like, and the plan is either rejected out of hand or is given to fail spectacularly due to unforseen Dice modifiers. Which is all fine at the start of a campaign. But over time, as the player invests more 'flight hours' in his character, he starts to believe that he can and should be able to pull off some of the stunts that the GM's characters are able to coreograph. And this is where some amount of mechanical empowerment along advancement tracks becomes worthwhile: things like 'shot on the run' or 'tough as nails,' given form in a game concept.
MT was glacial. TNE, it was pretty damned quick. T4, one skill level every few sessions, with an improvement roll every session, sometimes two. T20 was standard d20 XP table, with up to 1000 XP per session MGT 1e was slow, but in a 6 month campaign, RAW, every character had gained at least 2 skill levels. HT, GT, and GT:IW, all follow standard rates for the system - which isn't slow. T5 - I can't tell.
Traveller really needs an update. Recently I was looking for spaceport plans and what came up when i went through the old products were black and white and very rudimentary style stuff. How can this compete with the material for the Star Wars games ? The Mongoose 2nd edition is a step in the right direction, but not quite there.
well, to start with supplements that include higher quality maps, blue prints, etc. As I said above, Traveller can't quite compete with Fantasy Flight's Star Wars game and the the high quality stuff they put out. The fact that i have to spend hours or days or weeks drawing out a simple space port map to play with younger players is just a drag. It is actually shocking to me that after 40 years and like 12 different versions and supplements and homebrew releases how sparse this kind of material is. It seems there were a lot of military-minded people involved in Traveller from the early days, but very few artists. (not too different than other early RPG core groups, but Traveller has been slow to move on) Next, add in some kind of levelling system that makes the game feel like it is going somewhere other than quick degeneration once your character hits 34 years old. This also can provide some unifying aspect for the minigames- which are currently completely disconnected from each other and hence virtually useless to modern gamers. I am damn happy to be play Traveller in any of its iterations, but the kids are just not into it at all.
So you're a map guy. I've never really needed them for my games. There is a d20 version of Traveller. But it's d20, if you're into that stuff. If you need cool Traveller art, go to Pinterest for that.
It's all well and good to send someone off to make their own maps, or search the internet for images, but insofar as presenting a game that has mystique as one tries to pitch it to their friends, this is an added burden over a system that speaks louder. "Go (away) and do it yourself," Is not particularly effective messaging for a game that (does it, really?) wishes to recruit new generations of gamers. I think Greekvedge and I aren't trying to spoil the fun of folks that like the open-ended, freer-form and more pure-sim take on Traveller, but some kind of Traveller game that had some mechanical progression, had some nice art (there is some out there already, and just needs to be laid out and printed to color glossy....)...a new game that is 'also Traveller' (since there are so many rules sets and games that are 'also Traveller')...that new game probably needs to be made if one would like 'the kids' to take Traveller out for a spin. As for T20 it was Garbage. For one, it didn't attempt to do much to the core d20 engine, which up until Starfinder still hasn't supported gunplay in any fashion that was worth time at the table (all my opinion). For two, the space that it did work inside of: trying to shove the careers of CT into a 'classes n'levels' shaped hole....completely butchered the charm of that system. It would be easy to outdo t20, simply starting from a point of 'well we're gonna change a few things,' in the same way that Mutants and Masterminds does to 3.0, would open up more space for a designer. I don't think mechanical progression in Traveller can be judged, or concluded, by what we see in t20. And also, most of the options and stuff in there were just reskinned D&D things, and were neither Traveller nor sci-fi related. I think progression might be better recieved if what it offered were at all related to the focus of the game...whatever focus that game chooses to have (and it needs to present something as the focus to succeed in attracting new players). Greekvvedge and I seem to be on the same page that character progression sends a message, when the game is sitting on the shelf unplayed, and to the player as he creates is character, about the paths that play can lead down...'Suggested stories' that are tied up neatly in game mechanics. Insofar as players have such a strong role in determining when a given group and game actually are any good or fun, some messaging to players, especially the kind that works while the game is 'dead' or in 'sleep mode' and not being played but merely occupying the game shelf...well, that messaging would be good and is the sort of thing that would bring more people together to play a game. As it is I see in the Traveller community a lot of 'that's not Traveller,' and 'Well, The way _I_ do it is super special because I came up with it myself.' There is a great deal of creativity and setting creation, people making art for Traveller, and brainstorming, but seemingly few a lot of reports or talk of actual play or (outwardly visible) signs of people having fun in the 'gameplay' segment of the game. Runeslinger did a lot to point out how FFG SW has both Classes and progression, and not levels, and that the issues with artificial quantization of real characters and real dangers is less an issue in that environment than full-on D&D. As far as maps, they are not terribly crucial in actual play, but some amount of literacy about outer spacey things, especially the types of planets and moons upon which adventures take place, and how those translate into near-field 'scenes' or 'local canvas of play' (regardless of if one uses 'battle maps') is an important lesson that maps can teach in a visually sexy way that draws a player or GM to engage with those dimensions. Also, Today's video is about how maps can deliver a lot of complexity and interrelated bits in a small space, and the complexity is only there if you look for it rather than slamming you in the face. Graham Charters seems to base his own take on the Reavers' Deep primarily from the map and the UPPs and the core canon timeline, for example.
Sci-fi RPGs are always compared to Traveller, if not to D&D. I don't think Traveller needs to be the same as other games. New players are looking for franchised RPGs these days. Part of what's Geek Collectivism these days. No one wants to be outside the Geek Culture it seems. Traveller is Traveller. Pick an edition of it that pushes more of your buttons than the others do. Or hope that one day, a coffee table book of Traveller with D&D rules will be produced. Players will still only buy D&D anyway. Traveller is judged very differently than how D&D is judged by gamers. Players (new and old to Traveller) will complain about any new art used in a book.
I have learned that the Starship Images used herein are the work of Ian Stead, or are derivative works of his models. He is a render artist in the Traveller RPG community. He has his own UA-cam Channel here: ua-cam.com/channels/tlgj9484n_B0zZd3raBXmw.html
Honestly, I think part of what's holding Traveller back is precisely _because_ there's so much fragmentation and variation in the rule sets. Coming back to Traveller, my first question was "What's the best version to play?". With most games, there may be one new edition after another, but there's not the schism between, say T5 and M2E (and Cepheus etc).
Putting out videos about Traveller can't hurt. I know your videos have lead to me purchasing some of the Marc Miller's Traveller books, and thinking about running that one day.
I don't know. I guess I play Traveller for reasons that are at odds with what you're saying here.
First, ignoring the fact that Traveller has always had skill progression mechanics in one form or another (the MGT V2 training rules are as clean an elegant as any version yet, btw) since 1977, I tend to play exactly *because* it by default doesn't do the "zero to hero" shtick that drives me insane in class and level systems. I like being a competent, awesome hero from the get-go in any game. I like that Traveller allows for people who can come and go (players missing sessions, for example) without having a sudden level imbalance due to the missing game time, which is more forgiving given real life tends to happen and disrupt gaming. You can inject new players into a game with just a few minutes of character creation and they'll be as relevant as the rest of your crew. I love that.
Second, I tend to play in the spirit of the original 1977 books in that there is no Third Imperium. Period. My campaigns tend to take place entirely within one or two subsectors (from LBB book 1 - "Initially, one or two sub-sectors should be quite enough for years of adventure (each sub-sector has, on the average, 40 worlds)...") that were created explicitly for my games. When we get to the point where one campaign ends, we either start a new one in the same custom setting, or roll up a new one. I think that people tend to forget that each and every "system"/world in Traveller is an entire setting of play, and that a small cluster of five or six such worlds can provide truly massive amounts of adventure in their own right.
In my own opinion, I think for a "Renaissance" to occur, Traveller fans need to stop talking about the grand sweeping history of the Third Imperium. People's eyes glaze over when that stuff comes up. Put it in the core book and they'll run screaming never to return. Instead, start talking about all the cool stuff you can do in a Traveller game. How the Traveller scope is more wide open than the default mode of some of the other, more "popular" games out there. It need not confine itself to the limitations of medieval fantasies but can include them on a given world. In the spirit of your own idea, maybe include one or two "mini" settings the way Fate games tend to and show off what the game can do, setting wise.
Ultimately, a Traveller renaissance should be about the adventure that awaits the player.
Savage Schemer for my part, the Traveller fanbase, and the group of players that might adopt the game, are two vastly different things.
As the field of choices for rpgs grew across the 80s and 90s, and through the myriad poorly produced editions that debauched and confused the setting, what was special about Traveller was lost. At the same time, the player basd of the RPG hobby became more illiterate to the Sci-fi genre, which is a cornerstone issue for me.
Sometime around 1990 games that bundled genre into their core book came along, making genre illiteracy a non-issue for their adoption and success at the table. This is the primary issue I'm pushing: I haven't read a slice of vampire fiction, I didn't watch True Blood, and yet I feel confident in my mind's eye and in my gaming skills that I can run, play, and have fun in a Vampire The Masquerade game. While I have my criticisms of Shadowrun, it does the same for a semblance of Cyberpunk.
What's more, the older fans of Traveller that keep the flame, do not seem to alight the enthusiasm of new or younger folks in the hobby in the same way that the D&D side of the OSR has. This is why I put such a high priority on the game on the page bundling genre and feel, rather than leaving a Toolkit system; there are a great, great many toolkit systems nowdays (you yourself mentioned FATE).
There won't be any Traveller police knocking at your door to change editions, but I think some of the cantankerousness and even hostility from the LBB fans is misplaced...there is nothing that can rub out how fun that game was for you when it was new, but it is not a game or a community that in today's RPG hobby or community has the equipment to grow. It's possible that a change or an upwelling of community could accomplish growth without a new game, but that is not where my own chips are.
That's where the "mini setting" idea came from though. I think you have to keep Traveller as a toolkit because different people have different ideas of what kind of sci fi or even space opera they want to emulate. Some people want to play "The Expanse" while others want "Guardians of the Galaxy" and others still want "Firefly" and some even want the Third Imperium. Traveller can do any of these despite what the "hard" sci fi blowhards tell you. To align with what you're talking about, I'd want a book that illustrates how I could do any of these, and gives enough food for thought about how you'd tinker from there for even more. I brought up Fate because that's what they do. In their opening statement of the FAE book, you get allusions Harry Potter, The Hobbit and Star Wars right out of the gate. The entire rest of the text talks about how you emulate those given the options provided by their engine.
Then they make mini setting books on top of that for people to riff off of.
You get the best of both toolkit and genre specific emulation.
I think those different ideas are actually why I am in favor of a more persuasive setting ... because as one convenes a group of players you're already flying off in different directions. I'm poking at this when I say 'people can turn toward a narrow band of just what they like ...
Like you say, I wanted something like the Expanse as the GM, others wanted something zany like Guardians, others were unfamiliar with Sci-Anything but were open to where'er the game took them. In this landscape, centrifugal force sets in. 'What do you mean I have to wear a spacesuit?'
My first Traveller Campaign I became woefully aware of how the player group's widely spaced touchstones were undermining a fun course of play ... some players touchsontes were soapy, character-focused Anime, and Star Trek, another player thought of Warhammer 40K as 'science fiction,' another player hadn't seen Alien, Star Trek, or anything from Sci fi (and he wasn't a reader), and his touchstone was... Farscape.
There was a thread on R/Rpg where the various Sci-Fi RPG's were discussed, and one comment hit the nail on the head, 'if you play fate, you will get something like Farscape.' As players pull in different directions with their narrative power in Fate, the genre feel is undermined and there is a zaniness that creeps in.
For my part, when a novice GM picks up a game with a 'lite' setting, he is immediately set upon by the players who begin to tinker with what is, and isn't, in the game. A little of this is fine at the start, and maybe at defined punctuations in the middle. But by itself the table is always on 'tilt,' and there is little incentive to continue using the system at all rather than just have a free-form cannabis-fueled collaborative flight of fancy (which is fine, but ceases to be an RPG for me)
It's a GM new to Sci-Fi, and a player group flirting with taking their adventures out 'IN SPACE' that are who I mean to court. Veterans of the table and the genre that have robust grounding don't need as much, and can freestyle more, but they also tend to self-select and play with each other in their long-established groups or online where they can always pull the cream of the crop. But a new GM, one that has the task of creating the looking-glass for him and his freinds to fall through, all of whom have played different Video Games which obey different logics, all of whom have watched vastly different Sci-Fi on film and screen, and very, very few of whom will have read a book...
I think that GM could use a game that at least begins from a point of, 'this is what is in this game, and this is what is not; what is here is exciting and here are some roadmaps of varying detail.' That's what even the lightest-weight incarnations of D&D do by sketching out classes, races, skills, equipment lists, and monster manuals with confidence, but to me Space Travel and Space Adventuring is something a bit more specific, and perahps could use the cohesion of Shadowrun or WoD...or if you prefer something lighter, Leagues of Adventure.
It may be that Traveller is too ensconced in the minds of its most devoted fans as something a sci-fi specific, lighter-weight form of GURPS, rather than as a vector of 'space adventure with a golden-age sci-fi ambience.' For me that's how I learned it and loved it :: I grew up reading Niven and Asimov, and while their writing and the 'science' in their works have become hopelessly dated, there's an ambience in their work that I felt lived on through an eternal looking-glass in Traveller as it was shown to me by Loren Wiseman. For me that's not a 'hard-sci-fi blowhard' idea, but something more like the desire to recapture sword and sorcery that many in the OSR have, while others are achieving the pulp feel with Ubiquity that they never got from other games.
'golden age sci-fi Adventure RPG' is what Traveller means to me, but it's becoming clear that for the LBB fans and anyone in the school of 'Traveller is Generic' it is something else...it is hard for me to identify what is worth saving in that bare, bare bones vision....
There are new, reductionist, bare-bones games coming along all the time--PbTA and now FAE. The White box folks have their White Star (which also has a 'mini-setting' in the back...) I don't really see how a setting-less, setting-agnostic, or setting-lite Traveller differentiates itself from those.
'
It sounds like the kind of disconnect described above could be avoided by getting the table consensus on what the campaign parameters are going to be before play begins. If I found that many people at the table wanting that many styles of game play at the table, I'd might suggest doing a series of smaller campaigns of say 3-6 weeks apiece - or possibly even one-shots, each targeting a different tone, to see what the group latches onto before settling into a larger/longer game.
As far as the "golden age of sci fi" goes, I think one of the greatest criticisms that can be leveled against Marc Miller and co. is that they weren't very forthright about the inspirations they drew from while designing Traveller. There's a great series of articles entitled "Traveller: Out of the Box" at the "Tales to Astound" blog (link below) that peels back Traveller to the LBB's to find out what kind of game you'd have if you only played with those - and looked at the kinds of sci fi literature Marc grew up on or had available, and the conclusion the author draws in many cases is that it is very much in line with the kind of game you seem to want. My guess if you get a lot of push back or angst from the LBB crowd is that they may be looking at what you want and what the game delivers from their perspective and they're seeing alignment. Maybe. It could also be that they're just a bunch of grumpy old turds too. I dunno.
Another thing that occurs to me is that the OSR crowd have their OGL. The same kind of disconnect between what you want, and what I want exists in that space. They all have the original "game that shall not be named" chassis to build from, and so a bunch of different games emerged with each tuned to a specific taste, and targeting a specific kind of game play. Think of the difference between Crypts and Things and Godbound or even Stars Without Number. Thanks to Mongoose, we have an "open" game now too. For a renaissance of our own, maybe what we need is the same kind of dissemination. You can get a game that took the 2D6 engine and made "golden age science fiction" and another that draws on comics or anime and so on. They'd all be united / similar by the core in the same way OSR games are, but with each delivering something tuned to an explicit style of play.
As an aside - have you ever checked out Thousand Suns? The author of that game explicitly states Asimov and H. Beam Piper and the like as inspiration for what he dubbed "imperial" science fiction. While he still leaves setting mostly open for the table to design, he does provide a more specific framework from which to build using his own literary inspiration as guideposts. It might be just the kind of game you're looking for.
Traveller: Out of the Box [talestoastound.wordpress.com/traveller-out-of-the-box/]
Agree. I think the 3rd Imperium stuff is amazing, but dang it's a lot to internalize for running a game. Prefer using home brew Traveller subsectors/sectors/settings.
I think the success of 'The Expanse' boes well for a potential Traveller come back, if handled correctly.
NAAAA.
You should check out Stars Without Number by Sine Nomine Publishing. You can start out as an inexperienced nobody and rise up with moxie and good dice rolls. The combat system is based on B/D/ D&D but the skill system is pure Traveller.
Some good points, you bring up here. I think a good step to bring Traveller to a wider audience was the release of the ruleset for fantasy grounds. At least this was what brought me back to the game after a 20 year break.
I think you are right, although it is odd that only the Mongoose 1e PAK is available, and not the 2e, since 2e has been out a couple of years now.
I've been interested in the Traveller RPG since the early 90's when I was first introduced to D&D and other TTRPG games. However, I ended up investing in Cyberpunk 2020; I had all the official core books and most of the supplemental books. Sadly, they got lost over the years.
In the past few months Traveller has once again caught my eye. I really like the sci-fi Cyberpunk world of the dark future, but am looking for something more Future Fiction Sandbox. Traveller seems to be the ticket. Having skimmed through many PDFs of MGT 2e I get the sense that it is an open framework that really leaves the setting and theme of the game up to the GM and Players; with plenty of wiggle room for that to change.
In the 77 edition of classic Traveller, the advancement track was not explicitly laid out, but was easily discernible. Characters would start as hardscrabble rogues, trying to scrape together enough for a passage to the next world. They would be limited to the space lanes generated by the Referee (sadly, the space lanes were removed in the 81 edition). Eventually, if they were lucky, they'd put together enough for a down payment on a starship of their own. They would still be limited to the space lanes, since they were unlikely to have enough for the Generate program that would allow them to generate their own navigation tapes. Finally, they'd get enough money to acquire the Generate program and be allowed a wider range of mobility.
There are some alternate paths that can happen, such as being a lucky enough player to roll up a Scout who both survives and gets a Type S, or the even less likely chance of getting a Merchant Captain who has already acquired a Type A with payments due. Still, the path to the Generate program in the 77 edition is a clear path of group advancement.
Chris Vermeers - The "Hero's Journey" at a group level. Yep, that works as a framework. And it comes back to my point about advancement being one based on finance, social interaction and circumstance - rather than one of game-mechanical advancement at a PC-level.
And I thoroughly agree with you that this is the most important aspect of advancement. And the fact that Traveller has no PC-level advancement helps to make this even MORE important. Which is a good thing.
But the fact that a character is mechanically the same when they have a Starship-Generate combo as they did when they were interstellar hitch-hikers means that they're no more or less capable in and of themselves at any point in that story-line. The real character-advancement therefore is at the meta-level of the Players becoming more competant within the setting, rather than the characters they are playing.
+Graham Charters I totally agree, though I think that "owns a starship in the game" is mechanically different than "must purchase a passage to travel in the game". Also, I'd say that this is a strong argument in favor of the procedurally-generated setting rather than the predefined one, since it becomes impossible to become more competent with the setting by reference to outside materials. Everything is learned in play.
Chris Vermeers - we're totally on the same page on this one!
I really wish they'd republish the LBBs, maybe making each SLIGHTLY longer or detailed, but not much so. I bought them from eBay last year, to replace my long lost old ones, and have started a campaign, and I think the LBBs are simply great. Elegant.
+Bob's Trick Tips I think it's an ideal format for RPGs. The density of information is amazing. The choices of what not to make flowery, just matter of fact, make the LBBs very useful at the table.
I find myself wishing star Trek Adventures had an LBB style format, the rules would just fit in one, starships in another, etc.
And for the fluff we'd suggest... watching the show and your imagination. I love the third Imperium but part of why is that its story is told in library data maps, and UPPs and not so much in paragraphs and paragraphs.
I wonder if the cepheus engine PDFs from Drive thru rpg print on demand come out with similar page counts to LBBs...
Reading Marc Miller's Agent of the Imperium book gave me a real appreciation of the setting, but I still find it kind of oppressive for GMing. I prefer a lot more of the "unknown". Uncharted space, etc. There's this guy Michael Brown, who publishes 1-3 page adventures on Drive Thru RPG, and his stuff is actually really cool. Easy to drop into a game, generic, but he comes up with great little story hooks.
I have tried Traveller before, once with GURPS, the other time with Savage Worlds, but it never worked out. However, i'm finally in a proper MgT2 campaign, and it's great. The MgT2 ruleset is great in terms of design philosophy. I like the no bullshit-task resolution, the simulationist but immersive spaceship and trading rules, and the idea that whatever character you end up with, that's what you get and you have to make the best of it. That's true for skill training too; you CAN improve your character (as you should), but you just can't rely on him/her improving steadily. The rules feel old-school in this way, but still modern regarding useability, although there is still room for improvement, and I think Traveller (at least this version) has enough idiosyncracies to stand on its own in the rpg hobby and even be successful beyond satisfying existing Traveller veterans... but maybe it's just the fact that it fits my own taste so well.
BUT
The books (or PDFs) as a product are bad. It's really unacceptable for Mongoose to release something with THIS many grammatical, layout and rules errors at THAT price. When i say i like the rules, i mean i like how they're meant according to my and my group's interpretation, because they're unclear and written very sloppily a lot of the time. Mongoose Traveller, as great as it is in concept, desperately needs a new edition, because this is how you DON'T usher in a renaissance. Still, i can't imagine playing the game with any other version, and to me that shows how badly this game needs, if not deserves a truly great edition.
Need to bring back an expanded 'living' gaming community to allow people to learn about and enjoy the game at local game shops and conventions with a wide among of material for various versions to allow most everyone become happier. Other game systems have done well with this setup such as 5th edition and pathfinder to promote their material, plus mini 4-5 hour games are good for a busy people.
A renaissance requires an open license. That's why we have an OSR renaissance to begin with -- the D&D 3.x OGL. Even now, that revolution in gaming is launching new flights of fantasy-gaming every day. Traveller, interestingly enough, ALSO has an SRD that Mongoose published along with the 1e version of their game . As for White Wolf -- I am aware of no such open gaming license that allows for creative variations on a common set of shared and popular rules.
I'd say a good part of the issue around here is accessibility. No where stocks it and having it shipped is expensive. It's also not a small investment. The Classic should form a "Basic" game with the rest (Mongoose 2 with T5 addons).
People (especially those newer to gaming) appreciate the simple 2d6 system.
A key will be in adopting other genres. Cowboys vs Aliens was genius.
Legend of the Flame Princess has made B/X d&d popular again. I think any effort to get it into stores will naturally come from someone with some vision about remixing the visuals and tone, if not the rules. People Don't buy FATE or Apocalypse World, they buy games that use the rules. Cepheus/CT could get into stores, but I think it would have to follow the lotfp path to do so
I think I played Traveller exactly once and I quite enjoyed it, but other than that one time I had difficulty finding another GM to run it. This aside, my questions however is: what incentives does the Traveller setting offer to players that help it stand out from other space opera style RPGs in existing and popular settings? Some examples that come to mind include Firefly RPG and the different Star Wars RPGs. Both Firefly and Edge of the Empire Star Wars RPG offer much the same thing that Traveller does (small crew, small ship, you're on a frontier, go out there and have adventures) but are an easier "sell" to players.
So First, FIRST, on the rules-system side I think it's totally possible, and fun to use either of those systems to play a Traveller Campaign in the Traveller Universe. And as I've written and made a video about elsewhere, I'm keen to use EOTE to run my next Traveller game. I generally believe in using the rules system that's the sexiest to you at the moment and also fits the genre, and whether it's a strict 'match' if it was a setting that came bundled with the engine is another...secondary consideration.
I am primarily an advocate of 'the Traveller Mode of Play,' and 'the Original Traveller Universe,' and In my videos I'm a little bit transitive with the rules side, but truthfully I'm agnostic to rules sets when it comes to this mode of play, in the same way that it's possible to go into dungeons and get treasure and kill monsters playing Torchbearer as it is playing OSRIC or LotFP.
As a disclaimer to the below, I really do think there are good reasons, fun reasons, to play in both the Star Wars Universe and Firefly, but in my videos I am advocate for the logic that there is, in fact, good reason to play some more Traveller, chiefly to make use of all the GM resources that are vast when you do.
A second disclaimer: what I offer below is also not something Traveller comunicates well, at all. It is not sexy, and it doesn't come out and say what it is (to, me, now, and I think the only version of itself that can succeed in the coming years). It was originally written by Marc Miller as something of a Proto-GURPS-for-Scifi-only and the setting that GDW published for it and the prototypical mode of play that most people have experienced it as...were something that came later. But there is a militant group of fans that wants something more adaptable and open to homebrew settings and a 'toolkit game,' and it seems everyone that publishes the game is loathe to anger this faction. For my part, Traveller won't win any converts if it is just another, liter version of GURPS....
Now, what is it about Traveller that differentiates it?
1) there is no Star Wars, there is no "Independents v. Central planets' central cornerstone of the setting that prejudices your campaign toward that single thing, and away from which it will be hard to steer. This may seem droll or unexciting at first, but this means that a GM has much freer rein to sculpt plots and stories that are far more zoomed in. And this also means that there can be variety that can sustain a campaign in a way that there might not be otherwise--you can go from Trampy Space Trading like Firefly, to bounty hunting like Blade Runner or Cowboy Bebop, to Heists like Shadowrun (and several Firefly episodes)... and you can run away or take the next adventure hook. And the universe of Traveller is Big enough to have all those quests in it, and also sized in a way that means that there are manifold people that can oppose you or compete for them.
1a) in contrast, the Firefly Universe is (for one) small. It's only one/several star systems, and there's less room for the GM to carve out his own stuff, and at the same time with such a small canon of stuff to work from (the boardgame, the show, the movie....? there's also less reason to run the game in that universe to make use of (for me) convenient ready-to-use content). Finally, there is some apocrypha that Joss drew heavily from Traveller when developing Firefly, so in some respects Firefly is just a small bubble inside of Traveller (it is so much more because it's Joss, to be sure).
1b) No matter how big the Star Wars Universe is, for me, it's got very strong centers of gravity. The empire, the Rebellion, the Light and Dark Side of the Force, and Scum and Villainy. As big as it may be, one of those things is always close which means that if you'd like to try something new as a GM or be surprised by something wholly unexpected as a player, it's hard. Which isn't to say that there aren't remote places and 'the orient' in Star Wars, but (for one) what exactly that remote locale is was developed in some comic or other EU property which may, or may not, be any good or easy to get hold of...and (for two) the rules about distance in Star Wars are really fuzzy, which brings us to...
2) Traveller's canon is built up from a consistent set of rules on how things work. Gravity, FTL, etc. have rules that are set down, and then the content, the maps, etc, obey that and are built into a structure of cause and effect. This means that there's a logic which can be felt across all of it, which is both an inspiration for developing your own stuff, and just sells the feeling of immersion that much more than, say, Star Wars,
Where the reason one planet is remote and another is a trivial journey is really opaque and really doesn't have a set of meaningful rules to it (SWd20 had a fair attempt; and more so the rules for things as important as Hyperdrive seem to be on 'tilt' nowdays to whatever is most convenient to the story. If ships can go to Hyperspace from inside the docking bay, if ships can come out of hyperspace right on top of a planet, then why are there space battles at all? The 'JJ Abrams rules' when applied to things like Transporters and Hyperdrives really undermine cause and effect in a way that I think is bad for RPGs, chiefly becuase the players can't really form plans about how to use their Hyperdrive on their own, and when they take a risk or feel they're calculating things...well, the canon is saying now that the table can tilt and say 'GOTCHA' if that's the exciting thing to happen next.
Which is all fine and good if you'd like a pulpier tone, or if you feel confident you can lay out a version of Star Wars Hyperdrive that's more restrained in Session Zero and that 'forgetful' players won't draw more from their film knowledge than the experience at the table...but I am getting into a bit of a rant about Force Awakens rather than focusing on the postitive....
When things all pull on each other in a web because of obeyed rules in a universe, it's a huge resource as a GM for improvisatoinal play and for Sandbox play, because when the players cut a rubber band in that web, the pusle of effects going outward is something that can fuel your imagination as a GM, and also lend believability to the game.
Meanwhile, if you want big space battles, and things like AT ATs or even Gundams, they can be fit into places in the VAST Traveller universe.
But Traveller needs to come out and say what it is...something vast, that has room for just about anything short of Zaniness like Farscape, something that was the inspiration that begat Firefly, and something in which you can fit almost any sci-fi anime or a miniature version of Star Wars and still have room for a campaign two sectors away where the players start out pulling weeds.....
Thank you for the long and thoughtful reply. You almost answer my original question, but a niggling question still persists, and I think that you also recognize it when you say that "It is not sexy, and it doesn't come out and say what it is." What sells Traveller aside from "It's a giant space sandbox!" that draws the players in right away? The big conflicts of Star Wars (Light Side vs. Dark Side, Empire vs. Rebels) help clarify right away to the players what kind of game and setting they might look forward to. The "cowboys and gangsters in space" premise of Firefly immediately informs the players what kind of shenanigans they may expect their characters to get into. Nothing in Traveller (so far, I really want to be persuaded otherwise!) really stands out as "This is the big theme/conflict of the setting and this is what your characters will most likely be doing." And "you're small space traders free to go anywhere you want and do whatever you want" doesn't sound like a hard sell to me... I definitely wouldn't be able to sell my players on that. If you were to do an elevator pitch for Traveller to new players (new to Traveller, not new to TRPGs), what would it be?
+razorboy251 as it is organized and presented at the moment, Traveller has no elevator pitch, and because it's trying very hard not to anger the folks that use it GURPs style, for my part I wouldn't even bill it as Traveller.
I would say, I'd like to run a space adventure game set in Earth's future, and then I'd fire off lots of sex appeal material, mostly homemade posters and stuff that nailed the feel, off into my immediate circle of gamers. I have sort of an oddball approach to launching unfamiliar systems, I treat the uocoming game as a sort of movie or tv show that is launching, creating hype ads, showing the ambience instead kf telling. Sometimes it works, sometimes not.
This only works, of course, when you have an audience of folks to hypetrain, and most people that I know lajnch their games by saying 'I'm looking for players to run x' and maybe, just maybe, they will ckme back with, "oh I've never heard of that, whatsit?"
And that's where elevator pitches come in. My best shot at that:
"Traveller is thr kind of Sci Fi gaming for the expanse, for alien, the Martian. The stakes, and the dangers, are human ones. The people in it are real, like someone you know or you..like in zombiepocalypse games. But instead of grimness and endtimes, thkse same folks are getting into adventures in space. When your character suceeds or fails ina TRAVELLER game, it gets you *right here* because that person is like you. Oh, and it's the quintessential setting for space pirates."
My approach is different, more tailored to the person I'm talking to, and I also am willing to play and run 5E, pathifnder, and the like to develop a brand as a gm and as a cool guy before pitching from left field. People are usually anxious about both the person amd the game, but their amxiety over the second is easy to get past once they aren't anxious about the first.
All that said,
Traveller needs better branding, amd from where I am sitting I can't fix that problem.
To take what you say about Traveller being a big space sandbox is true. Yet to say that Star Wars RPG is easy to know what your playing is also true, Light v Dark, Alliance v Empire, Jedi v Sith...Etc., Etc. Take D&D for instance, What is it? It is Fantasy Sandbox, unless you have a particular campaign setting such as Raven Loft, which is fantasy horror. The PC's are heroes dealing with the minions and trickery of an Elder vampire overlord.
More to the point Traveller is what you make it. It is sandbox, It is an open canvas and it needs paint. Do you want a paint by number? Adapt a story and follow the progression. Do you want creative free form? Then get a crew, get a ship, get a job and cruise the black.
You've mention Firefly RPG, funny, Firefly is perhaps the best example of Traveller on television, Now Scy-fy has given us The Expanse, A military intrigue Traveller ,,,, The is also Killjoys, A Canadian SciFi very close to what could be a Bounty hunter styl Traveller campaign. Look around, Traveller is everywhere.
Most Traveller games are a sandbox played inside of a railroaded boxcar.
I've certainly enjoyed coming back to Traveller (MGT2) after 30 years. The skill acquisition system feels like an afterthought. It seems OK for fine tuning middle aged characters, but would be a disaster for developing young characters that mustered out after a term or two, since the rules make levelling up skills something your character does when they are NOT adventuring and gaining life experience. There are some obvious possible house rules, though...
.I can agree somewhat with the concept of Renaissance, ... For a game setting in particular, I like Traveller: The New Era, (TNE), and Marc Miller's Traveller, (T4), it opens up the scope to the reach out and explore the unknown, or revisit what was once known as in TNE. With Mega Trav., there is war, period. These are what many of the general sci-fi adventures focus on. With Classic Traveller, (CT) and the Third Imperium, (3I) in general. It is somewhat limiting at first glance, as it seems everything is already explored and the charted, settled, and well you have to deal with it, could be some of the daunting aspect of perception in the Trav Universe. Of course the same can be said for Trek and Star Wars.
Noting the truth is that the 3I is vast expansive and is a Swiss cheese empire. In other words yeah it's charted, and settled and has boundaries, but it is full of pockets, voids, and just plain silliness. :P . There are limitless planets and systems to explore, discovered, not yet discovered and even very well settled. Their is intrigue, espionage, and just plain back alley trade offs and throat cutting... This is Traveller!
For "pluck" to work, how about an advance on skills? Maybe you get 3-5 skill levels to work with at age 22 that sets you back a bit on the advancement trail. While your cohorts are engaging in either the rule-based skill advancement or whatever house rules you have in place to build up your skillsets, your young'un's are essentially frozen for a nominal period of time.
Hrrrmp - The 'advancement track' in Traveller exists with the gaining of Credits. With economic advancement you can by technology and training. I'm amazed at the number of people cannot get this idea.
+Trippy I understand that that is the reply from traditionalists. I can even get behind it a little bit because I am familiar with the game, setting, and mode of play.
However, in terms of attracting newcomers, or cleaving at least somewhat to the power fantasy dynamic of the hobby that fuels a lot of folks when they shop for games, I think Traveller either needs to find a branding strategy that acknowledges it doesn't do character progression, and make that sexy for newcomers ...
Or make an advancement track. Pick one.
I appreciate the reply. I'm not a traditionalist, insofar that I've only really played Mongoose Traveller in any long term sense (during the last decade or so), although I was familiar with older versions. I'm not calling for a return to old school either, just an appreciation of what works or doesn't in the game.
My feeling is that Traveller certainly could do with enhancing it's branding or marketing strategy and would welcome a higher profile for the game generally beyond just game historians and grognards. However, it's game processes have already been modernised effectively in the Mongoose version of the game.
I don't think it needs to develop a seperate experience tract, just a better understanding of the process. In D&D, "Experience" is earned through adventuring. This determines a character Level and, in turn, the various powers, magic and heroic competence of the characters. In Traveller, "Credits" are earned (normally from a Patreon) on completion of a job. These can then be accumulated or spent on enhancing individual characters through technology or training, or collectively towards enhancing the spacecraft they all invest in. In both cases, characters advance in terms of their capabilities and power levels.
In my games, characters have access to the Catalogue for most items, with more advanced technology sometimes being a target for adventuring in themselves. If you were to introduce an experience tract overlaying the Credits, it would actually undermine the materialistic themes of the Traveller game and introduce something that doesn't really serve any additional purpose beyond familiarity for D&D players. It would be like re-introducing Hit Points to Mutants and Masterminds on top of that game's system for damage saves. It's unnecessary.
So, I think the game could be sold as something more sexier, but I see the gaming conventions established in Traveller, as refined in Mongoose Traveller, as features not bugs. I'd argue the same for the character generation system too.
Also, if you want to see a modern transhumanist take on Traveller, check out Traveller: Mindjammer. You can play a sentient starship in it....
+Trippy MgT2 is pretty good. Boon and bane dice over modifiers is huge in terms of speeding play and helping the simplicity of play really pay off.
I am a little miffed about the dropping of an open license....
An orientation or leaning in to credits-as-experience is a possibility...
I think the open license issue has been a problematic development. I'm not sure what happened in the writing of the new license for the second edition behind closed doors, but in a perfect world they could still make some amends in this regards. Maybe it will happen, although for me there is so much official material coming out at the moment anyway it hasn't affected my gaming directly.
Personally, I'm just waiting for the miniature battles and card games to have an impact too.
Hmmmm.... I've got to admit that this was one of those videos where I found myself nodding along in agreement at some parts, and shouting "WTF!" at other parts. But I think that's what you were hoping for.... :-)
WARNING: I am writing this and thinking about it at the same time, so it may go on a bit...
The most important notes in this video were the advancement tack (and, by derivation, the power-level) for characters, and the importance of setting.
On the subject of advancement track, that absense of any such mechanism in Classic Traveller was always an issue for me and my players. Yes, they started off as people with some experience and skills, but no amount of additional experience, learning or exposure to new things was going to make any difference to their character sheets. This makes no sense in the real world, and - for me - one of the most enjoyable things about the TU is that it opens characters up to experiences and ideas which they have never seen or considered before. So the idea that they can't learn, expand and improve as a result just feels wrong.
And this is why, in recent years, I've moved over into using GURPS as my Traveller ruleset of choice. It allows for advancement and learning, without trapping the players in a character class. We build characters on templates, so that they START OUT like standard Traveller PCs, but where they go from there, what they learn and how they develop, is all driven through play at the table.
This brings me onto the next bugbear: In CT, characters can indeed go through the stages you described - merchants, diplomats, fleet commanders etc - but they don't get any better at it (in terms of game mechanics). So if you weren't born to be king of the corsairs, you won't be skilled at it once it becomes the day-job.
The only real way that characters have to advance is in social connections (which I'm all in favour of!) or the aquisition of money. And the 'Starships & Spreadsheets' approach of an interminable mercantile campaign can get very repetative after a while (and will always form the backdrop of any adventures that happen along the way). Whilst it's a great motivator for novice players, most of us old guard can find it a bit of straightjacket sometimes.
Power level... In a previous video you talked about how one of the strengths of Traveller is that it's built for adventure. And I agree. But what kind of adventure? How much jeopardy? What are the stakes? This is where games that use Tiers/Levels/etc have an advantage. CT puts you on a playing field, and doesn't really care if that field is level or not.
Okay - setting being tied into the characters. TOTALLY agree with this one. In my GURPS Traveller, all players, as part of character creation, have to put time (and character points!) into building relationships with the various factions in my campaign. They all have a designated homeworld, and get skills based on that. They have reputations (positive and negative) with various groups. They write back stories based on all of the above (plus their template, of course). In short, I do everything I can to make sure every new PC is already tied into the setting.
This gives them depth, it gives them motivations (to do or not do!), potential allies and enemies and so on. And, of course, it provides me with plenty of adventure hooks to use later...
Once I've hit 'send' I will probably violently disagree with everything I've just written, but hey.
Well this seems to have been effective in creating some cognitive dissonance, then!
It sounds like you have found your footing with GURPS Traveller, and introduced some of the idea of mechanical grounding (putting points into allies, contacts, patrons, to develop grounding) through your own efforts. My experience with GURPS and with longer form chargen that includes a lot of choices...is tied up with players that are impatient for play to begin (and prefer to sort of invent their character as they play from some stuff on their sheet) and are also learning the system at the same time. And these same folks are usually learning the 'genre of play' or 'what's useful for things that come up often?'
pure simulationism (which GURPS has in even more spades than CT), for me, is a roadblock for teaching, in that there's a very steep learning curve for discovering what the game ends up being about, and how your character will fit into it.
> 'Starships & Spreadsheets' So, yeah. I think it's kind of dull and in some ways can hedge out some sidetracks into other kinds of storytelling. Some amount of abstraction here, making cargo into tokens, and the profits into coins that could be cashed in for tip-top maintenance, upgrades, NPC crew, or (oh please don't) cashing out for proper credits at coin=1000 or something to that effect might be a way to go. In this way, it becomes a minigame for those that are really interested in the health of the ship, and the ship can be something like a little boardgame that sits on the table and hypnotizes anyone in danger of daydreaming. At the same time, it might be easier to push the bookeeping aside and ignore that whole chapter for when you want a different kind of campaign because 'it's optional.'
.,..that is, of course, an overtly 'gamey' or 'gamist' way of going about it, which of course will have its detractors. At the same time, it has a neat little bit of KISS *(keep it simple, stupid) because the pure open-endedness of simulationism is kept at arm's length in the commercial realm (hey GM, I want to buy a geneered slime to coat the hull in, and can we install 3D printers in the cargo bay and just sell what they make?) ...so whatever time is spent diverted from the action/game/story to do bookeeping is more focused (at least to start with, and you can hack in all that craziness later) on whatever menu of cargo strategies/upgrades, etc are presented in the rules. (example--spellcasting in D&D...most people keep to what's in the book and so spellcasting isn't all that diverting).
This leads to the question, of course, of if the 'straight-jacket' is about the diverted effort and playtime into bookeeping and entrepeneurship, or if it's more about the thematic restrictions. To me, the idea is something like Paizo's Kingmaker domain Rules, or the stuff in ACKS if you're an OSR person, or the starship combat chapters in FFG star wars...the sort of thing you can leave behind easily as it's in its own little enclave.
Agreed.
On the subject of GURPS complexity being a handicap, I can see what you mean, but I would rebut with two points:
1. Yes, chucking the rulebook at a newbie and asking them to get on with it is a MASSIVE mountain to climb, and I would harangue anyone who suggested such a thing. But giving them templates and a selection of pre-priced 'packages' of skills and abilities that they can build together like Lego, means that character creation can be story-driven and take less than 15 minutes.
2. One of the great things about CT is that chargen is a game in itself, and can take AGES. (And still result in a dead character!)
I'm not familiar with Kingmaker. I'm off to go and look it up.... ;-)
While I've never used deckplans-as-gameboard nor tokens-for-resources in my Traveller games (although I intend to do so in the future). I have used the ship's papers (the character sheet for the ship) as the actual in-game ship's papers. Whoever is dealing with authorities on behalf of the ship needs those papers to do so. The same with letters of marque. If the facts change and the letter or papers do not reflect those changes, or give leeway for them, then the crew could be in a lot of trouble.
Oh, I missed this before. I have to strenuously disagree with the idea that there is not a skill improvement system in classic Traveller. It's right there, pages 40-41 of LBB77 Book 2, pages 42-43 of LBB81 Book 2, or page 103 of The Traveller Book. What trips people up are the factors that a) it's not tied to success in game actions, and b) that it takes a lot of in-game time (years, in fact) to rise even one skill level. Both of these are because the skill levels in classic Traveller are very large-grained. A single skill level might add a DM of +2 to a die roll, which is a huge difference. A typical roll requiring 8+ has a 42% chance of succeeding, while the DM of +2 changes that to a 72% chance. Of course, not every skill check gets a +2 per skill level in classic Traveller, but it is not an uncommon thing. As a result, any change in skill level has to be due to extensive and extended training rather than a mere few months of on-the-job experience.
Chris Vermeers It may be there, but if it's not something that a player can interact with during a typical course of play, then is it really 'there'? Or is it something like a (deckrative) sword bolted to the wall? I agree that skill improvment has to be kept at bay because the skill system is so narrowly quantized, but there are other ways within the design space for players to perceive motion. If pure 'realism' is at object, then there's still space for something like familiarity and conditioning to play with -- something like boon dice with gear the character has become intimately familiar with, "wins ties or beats miss by 1 TN" vs. specific challenges..." 'does x task faster.'
There has been a great deal of interesting talk im the thread, and I'm glad you brought up the generate program. In my dive into th LBBs it was something that I grabbed and retained for my own games, amd in general the concept of a course tape is a great peice of leverage as a "scroll of go here."
For my part, thr tapes and the space lanes are a part of my own Traveller games...for me the worlds on the map make up the lanes; while the brown dwarfs, pulsars, supergiants, rogue planets, and deep space objects that are 'off the map.' Red Zones, too.
I'm new to Traveller. I've only had my book a few weeks. I picked up the Mongoose 2nd ed. version. I really like not really having a specific setting. If you think the specific setting would help this game get a wider audience, then maybe it should be tried. No one says I can't take the info from the book and make my own setting anyway if that's my preference and the players don't mind. Seems like it would be the best of both worlds (pun intended).
You brought up Starfinder, so I have a question. If I wanted to buy one Sci-fi/sci_fantasy game to learn, which would you recommend I start my renaissance?
I think a lot of what you describe was tried by GDW when they came out with the 2300 AD setting. They called it Traveller: 2300 for more than just trademark reasons. Though what it didn't do was provide a well-defined mode of play like you describe. I've been playing Mutant: Year Zero recently and it has that well-defined mode of play aspect. It does one thing and it is built around doing that. It is fun, I can't deny. And, something like that may be what you seek in increasing the popularity of Traveller. But, I guess I am the old school reactionary who you are wary of in that I do like the wide realm of possibility inherent in Traveller and feel much would be lost by narrowing it. I've also found the well-defind settings of Traveller, like your Third Imperium, to be restrictive in all their huge backstory. In my play, it's there but, far, far away.
However, the possibility of playing wet-behind-the-ears characters has always been there -- just muster out early.
As I mentioned, that's more or less my approach too. Characters are insignificant to the greater flow of history. It's the War and Peace approach. But, a lot of players want to believe they at least have the potential of being Napoleon.
Though, my preference is to set things in the wilds of barely explored or isolated subsectors.
Shawn Driscoll - Yep, but it can work both ways.
Having the huge expanse of detailed history that the TU provides means that you have a framework within which to focus in on the history of a single Domain / Sector / Subsector / Pocket Empire / System / World / Colony and look at how that grew and developed within that general flow.
Just like the shape of a river flowing across a continent dictates (to some degree) the shape of a tidal rapid in an isolated corner (or vice versa).
And personally, I play this to my advantage because, you're right, players can get so immersed in local goings-on that they don't worry (or care) about the bigger picture. For example, I used the vast flow of OTU history to build a framework for the Aslan Border Wars in Reavers Deep Sector, and this dictated the attitudes and histories of the pocket empires in the Deep. This in turn helped (alongside the Imperial expansion, psioninc suppressions and establishment of the Solomani Confederacy) to shape the history of the Principality of Caledon.
So - my players never really leave the J-1 main that covers about 20 systems from Rejhappur to Germaine, but the sweep of history has made each of those systems unique and interesting in its own right.
Brian Renninger - Have you tried the Mongoose incarnation of 2300? I think it does a much better job than the original GDW version.
Graham Charters. No I haven't tried any of the Mongoose stuff for either 2300 or Traveller. I liked the old system pretty fine for the most part so I haven't felt compelled. Though the 2300 ad Space Cruiser game was totally unplayable. What about Mongoose 2300 do you like?
Brian Renninger - a little bit of a step back before I answer your question directly...
Traveller:2300 - I loved the premise and setting for this game.
As a physicist, I think stutterwarp is more plausible than jump-drive.
I love the 50ly spherical map.
I love the system-generation system (the most realistic to date at time of production).
The task-system is a great idea.
This was also where I first started thinking about how to include homeworlds and upbringing into the whole chargen process.
2300AD: The problem with the earlier incarnation was that it was a bit thin in a lot of key areas. I think 2300AD did a good job of filling a lot of these in, and adding extra depth, and key information on the setting which was just plain missing from Traveller:2300
In summary - a much improved version of the game.
Star Cruiser: Yeah, this was crap... :-(
Mongoose 2300 is a whole other level. If you like the previous iterations, then you should definitely check out the source books at the very least. They take aspects of the original setting and take them to somewhere much much deeper.
Particular favourites are Tools For Frontier Living and Atlas Of The French Arm.
The former really looks at the challenges of life on the frontier and in colonies, and gets across the grittiness of the setting in a way that made me rethink the whole idea of a simple equipment list. Just reading the descriptions of the kit made me conjure scenarios...
AOTFA is the best sourcebook I have ever read. Whilst CT focuses on the Mainworld of a system, AOTFA goes into detail about every world in the system - to a level of detail where you could make that airless moon feel like a real place with very little trouble. For the colony worlds, the colonial history, politics, flora, fauna, world map, even the climate (!) is covered. And it contains descriptions of the space stations and outposts on all those stepping-stone systems too.
I don't play 2300 very often, but the sourcebooks from all three iterations are regular go-tos for my Reavers Deep Traveller campaign.
And Mongoose CT? After all the iterations Traveller has been through, Mongoose have brought it back to its roots, given it a cleaner, modern twist and brought it to life again.
If the renaissance that CGA is talking about is going to happen, I would suggest that Mongoose Traveller is the place it's gonna grow from...
I just stumbled into your youtube. have you used "Azanti highlightning"? Have you considered merging it with the scenario's world. Frequently I would use one or more floorplan sheets while doing an adventure
I would participate in a Traveller Renaissance but I died in character generation
I suspect Silhouette would rule the sci-fi gaming side if it had ever gotten a push but without that, Traveller is the goto system.
When you say Traveller should be "consciously about the Science-Fiction and consciously about the adventurer ethos" can you tell me what this stands in contrast to? You say you want to bring it "back." Can you give me examples of it being gone?
I'll note that I am most familiar with the original Traveller rules (Books 1-3 edition specially.) Those editions of the rules are all about being "consciously about the Science-Fiction and consciously about the adventurer ethos." Are you familiar with them at all?
... and you think editions after the original are the best ones to attract new players?
I simply challenge the notion that the current followership of Traveller is much concerned with evangelizing new players; and further, that evangelization is crucial to survival; and finally, that fundamentalism or originalism which seems prevalent does not seem oriented around taking any curative steps to alleviate the deficit of new adopters, and a general dismissiveness of Traveller’s place in the panoply of the RPG hobby on the part of the wider hobby culture.
Curative steps of some sort would seem important to survival
The legacy of great science fiction and classic gaming experiences like Traveller unfortunately have to contend with the solipsism and unchallenged ignorance of a generation of what are essentially fad gamers who just want to do what podcasters or the Critical Role schmucks do. They just want their D&D and known brands (licensed games representing the current popular franchises) because they're essentially exclusively Windows users and Amazon customers. So life need not require more than two or three options. Learning that there's another way to do something or another avenue for acquiring information or entertainment boggles their minds with confused panic over assumed perplexity or the frightening thought that they might have to challenge their tastes or preferences with other unfamiliar content. They are the chicken fingers and fry eaters, the people who insist that Chinese restaurants serve chicken wings and hamburgers, and they long for the day when they can just get a single teat to provide them a gray slurry of their few favorite items blended together. If Zendaya being played by Margot Robbie could feed them chickie nuggies whilst memes scrolled across the bottom of the screen on which they watch an unending blur of shows from Netflix they'd be the happiest zombies ever.
Also, they don't seem to enjoy gaming as a hobby so much as a social activity or a vehicle for providing them with some sort of social status or assumed personality enhancement. They want selfies of themselves holding dice or to be a talking head on a gaming stream.
Let's face it, people are probably more shallow now than ever before and they hate it when you try to make them use more than their favorite spoon or sippy cup, from which they are given all of their base cultural sustenance. Old games rely on people committed to the hobby, old and new, and they desperately need those of us who've been at it for decades to represent them and wave the flags of their qualities and virtues.
Videos such as your Traveller content greatly help with that.
Wow, just wow. Bruh you just described one of the reasons I've given up gaming. Most people who play nowadays would not survive any game table I sat or that I ran. Problems were meant to be solved and were usually solved in ways that required imagination, forethought and problem solving skills.
Hmm...seems to me the new Star Wars (8 and 9 especially), Star Trek Discovery and recent Doctor Who are made for morons, unlike Traveller. They feature clueless characters running around making bad decisions and doing things that make no sense because of lazy writing. Good role play sessions are a chance to do better than some of these writers. As for zero to hero there are many rpg's that cater for this so there's no need for traveller to go down this path. You can play an 18 year old with just 3 background skills but they won't be a Mary Sue. Would you want to be treated by an 18 year old dentist, have an 18 year old flying the next commercial flight you take or even doing your tax returns for you? Would you want an 18 year old as the astrogator on your far trader?
Astoundingly young people were allowed to fight world war 2, including commanding the planes and submarines. People in their 20s.
Recent times have shown a gallery of folks working on both sides of Watergate returning to camera eye, begging the question of how young they must have been during the days of the OG crisis. Steven Spielberg and Ridley Scott are still making movies, but were also making movies in 1979.
In any case I would encourage you to look at The Expanse as a slice of present-day sci-fi that is, in fact, close to the mark as far as Traveller
Only CT lacks an advancement system. Only one of more than 10 editions.
Agreed! At the moment, I think largely due to the canon changes, many of the system-side innovations that came with MT and TNE (and others) are largely swept under the rug. In some earlier comment Threads, Chris Vermeers brought up the advancement system in MT which had more playability and was mechanically pretty interesting.
My thoughts on the topic of advancement tracks center around how much they can fit into the timeline of typical campaigns and adventures. While there's a great deal of variance, in most official Traveller stuff, the mechanic for new or improved skills takes place over the course of years. If, swept up in the events of a campaign and the adventure, the systems don't interface with how people usually play the game, then for me the presence of that advancement system is questionable.
However, beyond simply adding new skills or progressing existing ones, there are other kinds of advancemnent--fame, clout, reputation, and the experience necessary to pull off 'a few maneuvers' are the sort of things that nowadays gain some sort of mechanical representation on character sheets. Especially in simulation-minded games, the picture in the GM's minds' eye is almost always different than the players' as he tries something like a 'Crazy Ivan' or the like, and the plan is either rejected out of hand or is given to fail spectacularly due to unforseen Dice modifiers. Which is all fine at the start of a campaign.
But over time, as the player invests more 'flight hours' in his character, he starts to believe that he can and should be able to pull off some of the stunts that the GM's characters are able to coreograph. And this is where some amount of mechanical empowerment along advancement tracks becomes worthwhile: things like 'shot on the run' or 'tough as nails,' given form in a game concept.
MT was glacial.
TNE, it was pretty damned quick.
T4, one skill level every few sessions, with an improvement roll every session, sometimes two.
T20 was standard d20 XP table, with up to 1000 XP per session
MGT 1e was slow, but in a 6 month campaign, RAW, every character had gained at least 2 skill levels.
HT, GT, and GT:IW, all follow standard rates for the system - which isn't slow.
T5 - I can't tell.
Traveller's "renaissance" is called Stars Without Number.
Traveller really needs an update. Recently I was looking for spaceport plans and what came up when i went through the old products were black and white and very rudimentary style stuff. How can this compete with the material for the Star Wars games ? The Mongoose 2nd edition is a step in the right direction, but not quite there.
And what would an update for it look like?
well, to start with supplements that include higher quality maps, blue prints, etc. As I said above, Traveller can't quite compete with Fantasy Flight's Star Wars game and the the high quality stuff they put out. The fact that i have to spend hours or days or weeks drawing out a simple space port map to play with younger players is just a drag. It is actually shocking to me that after 40 years and like 12 different versions and supplements and homebrew releases how sparse this kind of material is. It seems there were a lot of military-minded people involved in Traveller from the early days, but very few artists. (not too different than other early RPG core groups, but Traveller has been slow to move on) Next, add in some kind of levelling system that makes the game feel like it is going somewhere other than quick degeneration once your character hits 34 years old. This also can provide some unifying aspect for the minigames- which are currently completely disconnected from each other and hence virtually useless to modern gamers. I am damn happy to be play Traveller in any of its iterations, but the kids are just not into it at all.
So you're a map guy. I've never really needed them for my games. There is a d20 version of Traveller. But it's d20, if you're into that stuff. If you need cool Traveller art, go to Pinterest for that.
It's all well and good to send someone off to make their own maps, or search the internet for images, but insofar as presenting a game that has mystique as one tries to pitch it to their friends, this is an added burden over a system that speaks louder. "Go (away) and do it yourself," Is not particularly effective messaging for a game that (does it, really?) wishes to recruit new generations of gamers.
I think Greekvedge and I aren't trying to spoil the fun of folks that like the open-ended, freer-form and more pure-sim take on Traveller, but some kind of Traveller game that had some mechanical progression, had some nice art (there is some out there already, and just needs to be laid out and printed to color glossy....)...a new game that is 'also Traveller' (since there are so many rules sets and games that are 'also Traveller')...that new game probably needs to be made if one would like 'the kids' to take Traveller out for a spin.
As for T20 it was Garbage. For one, it didn't attempt to do much to the core d20 engine, which up until Starfinder still hasn't supported gunplay in any fashion that was worth time at the table (all my opinion). For two, the space that it did work inside of: trying to shove the careers of CT into a 'classes n'levels' shaped hole....completely butchered the charm of that system.
It would be easy to outdo t20, simply starting from a point of 'well we're gonna change a few things,' in the same way that Mutants and Masterminds does to 3.0, would open up more space for a designer. I don't think mechanical progression in Traveller can be judged, or concluded, by what we see in t20. And also, most of the options and stuff in there were just reskinned D&D things, and were neither Traveller nor sci-fi related. I think progression might be better recieved if what it offered were at all related to the focus of the game...whatever focus that game chooses to have (and it needs to present something as the focus to succeed in attracting new players).
Greekvvedge and I seem to be on the same page that character progression sends a message, when the game is sitting on the shelf unplayed, and to the player as he creates is character, about the paths that play can lead down...'Suggested stories' that are tied up neatly in game mechanics. Insofar as players have such a strong role in determining when a given group and game actually are any good or fun, some messaging to players, especially the kind that works while the game is 'dead' or in 'sleep mode' and not being played but merely occupying the game shelf...well, that messaging would be good and is the sort of thing that would bring more people together to play a game.
As it is I see in the Traveller community a lot of 'that's not Traveller,' and 'Well, The way _I_ do it is super special because I came up with it myself.' There is a great deal of creativity and setting creation, people making art for Traveller, and brainstorming, but seemingly few a lot of reports or talk of actual play or (outwardly visible) signs of people having fun in the 'gameplay' segment of the game.
Runeslinger did a lot to point out how FFG SW has both Classes and progression, and not levels, and that the issues with artificial quantization of real characters and real dangers is less an issue in that environment than full-on D&D.
As far as maps, they are not terribly crucial in actual play, but some amount of literacy about outer spacey things, especially the types of planets and moons upon which adventures take place, and how those translate into near-field 'scenes' or 'local canvas of play' (regardless of if one uses 'battle maps') is an important lesson that maps can teach in a visually sexy way that draws a player or GM to engage with those dimensions.
Also, Today's video is about how maps can deliver a lot of complexity and interrelated bits in a small space, and the complexity is only there if you look for it rather than slamming you in the face. Graham Charters seems to base his own take on the Reavers' Deep primarily from the map and the UPPs and the core canon timeline, for example.
Sci-fi RPGs are always compared to Traveller, if not to D&D. I don't think Traveller needs to be the same as other games. New players are looking for franchised RPGs these days. Part of what's Geek Collectivism these days. No one wants to be outside the Geek Culture it seems. Traveller is Traveller. Pick an edition of it that pushes more of your buttons than the others do. Or hope that one day, a coffee table book of Traveller with D&D rules will be produced. Players will still only buy D&D anyway. Traveller is judged very differently than how D&D is judged by gamers. Players (new and old to Traveller) will complain about any new art used in a book.