I first encountered Traveller in the mid-80's. It was the LBB. I was 15 or so and Traveller was confusing to me and seemed rather boring compared to the other, flashier games I had seen. I think at some point we messed around with vector space ship combat with yarn and a cork board, got bored, and went back to Star Frontiers.
Fast forward to this year. I attended Dreamation, a game convention in New Jersey, and took the opportunity to play Classic Traveller. We rolled up characters at the table in about 30-40 minutes using a handy one-sheet reference. Bk1 only. I ended up drafted into the Marines, served 3-4 terms, mustered out as a Captain with a ton of cash, high passage, and a number of Soc increases that got me knighted. I had failed my last promotion roll, so I was a bit grumpy about that but my aging roll took a huge toll on me, so I stopped.
Another player at the table -- the ref's brother IRL -- had a character die in generation. Hey, it happens.
The referee had a prepped scenario. I don't know if it's something published or his own thing, so forgive me if I blather on about something you're all familiar with. I'm still a newb.
We started with a sort of flashback. We didn't know each other. We were all on some kind of space station orbiting a gas giant. My dude was there, assigned to some kind of scientific mission; I declared that my dad was an important general and he arranged my soft duty to keep me out of danger, much to my chagrin.
So we're all on this space station, and the ref declared that a rogue ship was careening toward the station at high speed and collision was imminent and unavoidable. Everyone was evacuating. He gave each player a scene to establish what we were doing on the station (normal duties or daily life) and we each played our way out of danger.
My Marine was trapped outside the station in a vacc suit and the emergency sealed the hatches to the station. I used my Marine's vaccsuit-2 to hustle a lengthy distance in zero-g to get back to my ship. As this was a flashback, I don't think the ref would have killed my character, but who knows. I rolled well.
Another PC was in the command center of the station when he got offered a bribe to break protocol to let some religious dignitary escape the ship early using someone else's berth. The PC rejected all the bribes but failed to stop the briber from finding another officer to do the dirty work.
Another PC was a merchant marine who was faced with some kind of turtle alien who could not board the escape pods due to some other people stealing their berth. It was all wrapped up in racial bigotry and other ugliness. The merchant's player totally failed to think on his feet and ended up leaving the turtle for dead.
Turns out, that bribe from the one scene caused the death of the turtle in the second scene. That's important for the next bit.
Back in present time (post-flashbacks), we're all at some kind of space bar for the third-year anniversary of the destruction of the space station. It's more of a solemn commemoration than a party but it's also a reunion for a bunch of us. I declare that my character found herself and underwent gender reassignment after leaving the military, but the other Marine character knew and is cool with it. We're at the bar having drinks.
The family of those dead turtles are there. They're bereft and maudlin. They meet the Merchant, who in a moment of conscience, admits that he left the turtles for dead on the station. There's a bar fight, but we manage ourselves well. One of the PCs--not mine--unloads a shotgun into the angry turtle. I make noises IC and OOC like, "who pops off a shotgun in a barfight?!"
The police arrive. They're about to haul people off to jail, but a few of us are knights, so we pull rank and with a little luck and bribery, talk them out of an arrest.
We start talking about the station crash, and we put together the bit about the bribed official and the dead turtles. I talk the group into a revenge mission.
My father is an important general. We break into his office to get access to military computers so we can access video data from the day of the station crash. We figure out all the details about who accepted the bribe and broke protocols. The woman who did it is military, assigned to a world nearby.
We book passage on a ship headed there. There's a lot of discussion about high passage vs. low passage, and the risks of the latter. There's really a 1/6 chance of death if you don't have a medic? Even with a medic, it's like 1/36 chance? Seriously?
Two of us also have a lot of spare cash, so we make some investments and play the market a bit. Planetside, we hire a broker and sell our goods for a nice profit.
The woman we're targeting for assassination (vigilante justice!) is hard to reach. We try to get to her, but she spots us and uses her resources to leave the system. We catch wind of her escape early, though, and finagle our way onto her ship. Problem is, there aren't enough high-passage berths for all of us. I am using my high passage from chargen, but I agree to give it up to another character. Turns out my skills are not at all useful for any kind of up-close combat problem, or really even any kind of social maneuvering. I swap with the Merchant and become a Marinecicle for a while.
The woman's people are onto us, somehow. I watch helplessly, my character in cold storage, while the others find out that the enemy has raided the weapons locker as they slept. I believe that one of our folks has a chat with the ship's captain and explains what we're doing and why, and with some good dice rolls, gets the captain and crew to help.
I figured they'd just shoot the woman, or send her out the airlock. Instead, they decide to wake me up without a medic, put the woman into the low passage berth, and let me have her high passage berth. I fail my survival roll.
Luckily, it's at the end of the four-hour game session, so I didn't miss any real game time, but *grumble*.
Nonetheless, that four-hour game made me want to play Traveller more, really bad. I came home and bought the Indie Bundle for Classic Traveller, read all of it, read a ton of stuff on the TravellerWiki, then bought the Mongoose Traveller core rules, and T2300. I own the T20 and GURPS Traveller rules, as well. They've been sitting on my shelf, untouched, for years. I should crack them open and see what they have for me.
I'm building an ATU called New Rome and I can't wait to start playing.
