I thought the GURPS Traveller core rulebook did a great job of establishing the setting. The first 80 pages give a setting overview, history, and library data. The ubiquitous sidebars add more flavor commentary.
General Is there any concise summary of Traveller setting lore to help potential players?
- Thread starter Tiikeri
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ShawnDriscoll
SOC-14 1K
I play a session zero first for new players. It's to teach them the mechanic of the game, and show them how to role-play in character. A very small town is the sandbox I use.
After the session, we talk about either continuing on from that sandbox, or doing something in the 3rd Imperium setting for our next session. A lot of times, jumpdrives are never mentioned. And sandboxes happen to be in the 3rd Imperium without the players knowing. Races might be introduced to them over time as encounters. The longer the contact with other races, the more the players learn about them.
I very briefly describe Feudal Technocracy to new players when asked what the 3rd Imperium is. Basically a rundown of Space Viking. Players can then decide where they want their characters to fit into such a society. If the players are not excited about that kind of space culture, we do something else based on a sci-fi movie or TV show they enjoy.
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Most referees that I know use a 1 or two-page handout with an overview of the setting.
The wiki has almost anything you could want... You can easily copy and paste from it to your preference.
Here's a few key links:
http://wiki.travellerrpg.com/What_is_Traveller?
http://wiki.travellerrpg.com/What_is_Traveller?/FAQ
http://wiki.travellerrpg.com/Setting
http://wiki.travellerrpg.com/Theme
Here's another helpful link to this question being asked before:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/travellerrpg/permalink/2116584315126399/
Hope that helps. Books 1 to 3 of the LBBs are also very concise. So is the Imperial Encyclopedia.
However, just the first few pages of the T5 Core rules is about best and it was written by Marc Miller.
I know that several of the referees who created their own "cheat sheet" overviews have shared them online.
Shalom,
M.
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Ya, it was pretty good for presenting a Third Imperium setting and the required rule tweaks necessary to represent it within the GURPS rule set.
Putting aside all the other flaws and criticisms you sll may have, The 1248 books represents the structure format I was thinking of in the idea of the main campaign book/sub-campaign book structure.
Volume 1 Out of Darkness describes the overall area of "Charted Space" in the year 1248 its history (Virus messes everything up, organic life survives, rebuilding occurs) . It also provides the primary common rules tweaks (UWP collapse rules, new UWP codes)
The other 3 volumes tie bsck to the themes in the orignal volume. Not so great in execution, but it is whwhat I was thinking.
Perhaps an appropriate link to one or more of these, or a similarly specially created page or pages, could be placed directly on the TravellerWiki Main Page in a side box.
(I.e. "What is Traveller" / "What is the OTU" - OR - "OTU History" / "What are the Major Races", etc.)
From Mongoose's Imperium books, MJD's "The Spinward Marches" has an excellent introduction. Pages 2-38 are about basic game concepts, tropes in Traveller, and the Imperium. Pages 39-54 introduce the Spinward Marches, and develop an even wider understanding of the setting. For people who dive into the reading, it's a great introduction.
I think book 1 and the big black book with Keith's dust jacket give a great intro into and for CT. The other two books and the rest of The Traveller Book fill in details of how to run your scifi campaign no matter the setting.
Mongoose or T5 don't do this? I'm confused.
Mongoose or T5 don't do this? I'm confused.
ShawnDriscoll
SOC-14 1K
Most players won't buy such books that know nothing of Traveller beforehand. That's why this thread.
Go for it, Wayne. I trust your judgment implicitly. There are already existing links, but make it better!
Shalom,
M.
That doesn't give an explanation. Mongoose and T5, it sounds like, don't offer any introductory to the Traveller Universe. I'm confused as to how that can be, if that is the case.
ShawnDriscoll
SOC-14 1K
Traveller settings are in the rules for those books. Just like in the old days of adventure gaming.
I just looked through The Spinward Marches book for MgT1. It goes into describing the 3rd-Imperium as well as describing how it relates/affects with the Spinward Marches Sector. The book will work just the same for MgT2. And the MgT2 core rulebook itself has a few paragraphs on the 3rd-Imperium in a nutshell, as players begin thinking about what kind of adventuring they want to do in the setting. The Tech Timeline on the next page should be all most players need to know at first when reading up on the sci-fi of Traveller.
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Yes, these are people to whom im pitching a traveller game. Theyre not going to buy books or invest an hour looking up things on their own unless the pitch interests them enough to do so.
They need a premise like...
Traveller is a game about... where adventurers... in a... setting.
They need to know what character choices they have. This is the question who am i in this game?
Then they need to know what theyll be doing in the game and why. They need this general narrative to see if it interests them.
Its not easy to answer these questions because traveller is so wide open with many races, careers, and adventures to choose from.
I suppose i could start new players in a trope they recognize and localize it to one subsector. Fighting against the evil empire? Fine its a pocket empire a subsector away from the imperium. A privateer fighting against an alien invasion? Fine theyre fighting against an aslan land grab in a subsector. Space pirates? Fine, they can space pirae in northwest middle Beyond. Hello kitty adventure island? Fine they can do that on Ganulph. Then after they understand things a bit, i can open up new areas for adventure, eventually bringing them into the the main setting.
They need a premise like...
Traveller is a game about... where adventurers... in a... setting.
They need to know what character choices they have. This is the question who am i in this game?
Then they need to know what theyll be doing in the game and why. They need this general narrative to see if it interests them.
Its not easy to answer these questions because traveller is so wide open with many races, careers, and adventures to choose from.
I suppose i could start new players in a trope they recognize and localize it to one subsector. Fighting against the evil empire? Fine its a pocket empire a subsector away from the imperium. A privateer fighting against an alien invasion? Fine theyre fighting against an aslan land grab in a subsector. Space pirates? Fine, they can space pirae in northwest middle Beyond. Hello kitty adventure island? Fine they can do that on Ganulph. Then after they understand things a bit, i can open up new areas for adventure, eventually bringing them into the the main setting.
ask them what they'd like to do, give them a choice of three pregens that meet or come close to that, run a few short games introducing them to the setting. they don't need to understand the entire sector and its thousand years of history, they just need to know what's immediately around them and to interact with that.
(this of course presumes that they and you yourself view traveller as a role-playing game and not a chewtoy.)
Most potential players ive run across regard everything as a chewtoy.
They think the setting is a romper room for their cartoonish power fantasies and giggling absurdities, a modeling runway for how special their characters are.
As soon as i say scifi they want their lightsabers and swiss army knife cyberlimbs. They want to be the best whatever in the galaxy at 18 years old because theyre just that kewl. They want nanotech magictech to instantly grow whatever they want so they can say, "I win again!!1!"
As for asking what theyd like to do, they respond with 'well, what can i do?'
I think ill just oresent them with a narrative that they might enjoy like freewheeling space pirates or good guy underdogs against the jackbooted meanies (because of all that mud in space) or the corporate greedheads from which they liberate a cute furry pet that is intelligent and has psionic powers.
Its always intrigued me how people playing ostensible good guys do the most horrible things with the most threadbare of justifications. Perhaps the jackbooted meanies ysed to wear regular shoes and ve pretty mellow until they had enough of 'good guys' wrecking every startown on the main. They restored order to the sector and this is the thanks they get.
They think the setting is a romper room for their cartoonish power fantasies and giggling absurdities, a modeling runway for how special their characters are.
As soon as i say scifi they want their lightsabers and swiss army knife cyberlimbs. They want to be the best whatever in the galaxy at 18 years old because theyre just that kewl. They want nanotech magictech to instantly grow whatever they want so they can say, "I win again!!1!"
As for asking what theyd like to do, they respond with 'well, what can i do?'
I think ill just oresent them with a narrative that they might enjoy like freewheeling space pirates or good guy underdogs against the jackbooted meanies (because of all that mud in space) or the corporate greedheads from which they liberate a cute furry pet that is intelligent and has psionic powers.
Its always intrigued me how people playing ostensible good guys do the most horrible things with the most threadbare of justifications. Perhaps the jackbooted meanies ysed to wear regular shoes and ve pretty mellow until they had enough of 'good guys' wrecking every startown on the main. They restored order to the sector and this is the thanks they get.
I was being a bit indirect. I know why they profess to be the good guy but do bad things. Its because accepting that theyre the bad guy conflicts with the social conditioning thats been drummed into them their whole lives, but they still want to do bad things. Enter the fig leaf of being the good guys.
"You just killed 39 people."
"So? They were orcs. Orcs are bad. We're good."
"Why are orcs bad?"
"Orcs kill people."
"Dont your characters kill people?"
"Yes, but we only kill bad people."
"Mhmm. How do you know the people are bad?"
"Well, theyre evil!"
"Did you see them do something evil?"
"Well, no... but theyre orcs! Everyone knows orcs are evil! And the humans, they were in the evil army!"
"Ah. So, because you heard orcs were evil, you accepted that at face value, and killed 39 thinking feeling orcs who may have been protecting their ancestral lands from violent racists. Is your characters kingdom at war with the allegedly evil kingdom? Wait, your characters owe no allwgiance to any kingdom, so no. That means you murdered those soldiers. Your characters are evil racists."
"Dude, whatever man, whatever. How much xp do we get?"
No, they cant tolerate peer opponents. They get upset and then they want to play something else.
(laugh)
... maybe they just have trouble conceiving of something stronger than themselves. just a random thought, maybe present them with an opponent that so obviously outclasses them that they realize they must run away. introduce them to the concept of something so much more powerful than they that they simply must step aside. maybe that might cast a ray of illumination on them.
Shadow Shack
SOC-12
"Here's your character you just generated, and here's where you are having just left the service. At present you have (X) credits and (Y) equipment. What do you want to do now?"
How concise does it really have to be?
How concise does it really have to be?