Greetings (new recruit)

[Starlock]

Hi folks.

I'm new to Traveller, and this forum. I've run/played in a handful of systems over the years, and a collector friend decided to part ways with all his classic books. We've talked about it a few times, but until now, I've identified mostly with classic D&D, and other fantasy RPG's. Playing in GURPS was a bit of a departure into scifi, which I loved, but I wasn't really happy with GURPS as a system.

Now, skimming through these, I really like what I see. The amount of material is good, and I'm one of these geeks who loves to read rulebooks!

So, being a newcomer, I'd like to ask if there's a thread/section for new recruits that might answer common questions, or the proper forum for asking the questions you guys have probably heard too many times.

Logan Starlock

 

[Ackehece]

This section is fine for asking neophyte questions in. You will find a surprisingly amount of information just reading the forums for each of the systems used over the years. Ask away if you have questions here or in the forum for the system you find yourself using. We have many 35 year vets of the game in here...

Just don't get bogged down in the trivia - be willing to make house rulings related to apparently contradictory rules and above all... HAVE FUN

 

[Dragoner]

Welcome.

This thread is good for asking questions, or tack a question on an already ongoing one or make a new thread.

 

[ShapeShifter]

Welcome aboard! Wipe your boots off in the airlock before entering.
Your background sounds similar to mine (predominant D&D-heavy past), and have been enjoying CT for about 4-5 years now. It can be very intimidating for initiates to get into not only a new RPG, but a new genre (I had long associated the hobby solely with Fantasy/Sword-n-Sorcery). Happily CT is relatively easy to learn. The weird thing for me was the peculiar chargen process and the gritty/pessimistic implications of chargen and aging effects, inter alia, and some of the equations throughout the LBBs were initially off-putting, but I soon got over that -- not to forget Marc Miller's penchant for long strings of serial numbers.

 

[Starlock]

Thanks for the welcome folks.

The character generation process is very different from anything I've played. When I read the part about making a survival role for a tour of duty, I had to read that a few times to make sure I wasn't imagining it.

"You can die--while you're making your character? What madness is this?"

I can just imagine it at the table. PC 1 rolls incredible stats, and gets wiped out in his first tour. PC 2 rolls average, and muddles through 2 tours. PC 3 rolls an obvious underachiever, but goes on--through the miracle of dice--an outstanding officer.

The thing I like about this, is it has the hard old-school feel to it. Death is just around the corner, and we haven't even started playing. That's both hilarious and great at the same time. Using the optional injury rule makes it even better. You could roll up some really crummy characters this way--which I am a BIG fan of. There's really nothing like seeing a low-stat character climb his way through the campaign to be a decent hero.

The aging stuff--well that's just icing on the cake here. So you were a bottom of the barrel Scout, and stayed in the service as long as you could to pick up stats and skills? Well now that you're older, you're back to square one! I love this concept.

The serial numbers--I'm not sure how I feel about it yet.

 

[Andrew Boulton]

Many houseruled the death into injury (and later editions changed it to that).

Beware: you're likely to get several answers to each question, most mutually exclusive but all arguably correct (and boy do we argue...)

 

[Hyphen]

One of the first secrets is: don't just chuck the "dead" characters away, use them for NPCs.

After all, those redshirts have to come from somewhere...



One more thing - take a look through the Webring and other web directories (this site has one such directory) to find Trav fan sites. There's a wealth of useful information out there...

 

[Gray Pennell]

Welcome to the game and forum. Death and aging are part of life. I like the idea that you can go for broke to make an assume character but their is risk and price in doing so. You will find that the term system is also nice when it comes to making up character backgrounds. I also agree dont waste dead characters, if an NPC dies in creation they even go into my deep secret agent file. As for the forum have fun it is just a game.

 

[saundby]

For us chargen is a gaming session.

We sit around the table and watch each person roll up their character, following their progress as they go, and pitching our suggestions on their choices. "Go another round!" "Muster out, muster out!" "Change branches, get a point in Nav!" When a character craps out, we have a 20 second "funeral service" then carry on with the next player that still needs a character.

Our crews start out with some bonding already in place that way. The players already "know" the other players' characters.

Plus, yes, we have a supply of prebuilt NPCs. Sometimes they get the Snake Pliskin line when they show up and are recognised.

 

[Starlock]

Thanks, great ideas here. Throwing Snake in there is brilliant and hilarious.

For the web ring, are you talking about the Imperial Starport on this site?

 

[DangerousThing]

Grinnings and Greetings,

I started with CT shortly after it first came out, and loved the system. I've ran it on and off since them. Currently I'm running Traveller 5 (what there is of it now) and I like it a bit better. Most of the old stuff can be used with just a bit of conversion.

If you want a *lot* of the old CT stuff, you can get CDs from http://www.farfuture.net/. This is Marc Miller's company. There are at least four discs of the CT stuff (one with the official books, two from various other dealers, and one with the run of GDW's JTAS).

Another resource is the Freelance Traveller Fanzine which is free and available for download in PDF format. We all have our favorite articles, I like John Sneed's from issue 11 which talks about modernizing the Traveller tech levels based on how things have worked out for the last 30 years without changing the flavor of Traveller much.

But good luck, and keep things fun!
-
Jay

 

[aramis]

Thanks, great ideas here. Throwing Snake in there is brilliant and hilarious.

For the web ring, are you talking about the Imperial Starport on this site?

As a GM, I tell you: Do NOT throw away dead characters! Appropriate them as ready made NPC's. (go ahead and muster them out. Then file them for your future use. Even let players name them for you!)

 

[saundby]

Thanks, great ideas here. Throwing Snake in there is brilliant and hilarious.

For the web ring, are you talking about the Imperial Starport on this site?

I believe Hyphen's referring to:
http://hub.webring.org/hub/traveller

 

[Fritz_Brown]

Keep this part of the rules in mind, ALWAYS:

At times, the referee (or the players) will find combinations of features which
may seem contradictory or unreasonable. Common sense should rule in such cases;
either the players or referee will generate a rationale which explains the situation,
or an alternative description should be made.

This comes up in lots of places and lots of wordings, but they all essentially say, "do what you need to do to play a good game and have fun."

Oh, and WELCOME!