General New Ref, with very trigger happy players.

[Tiikeri]

Part 2 - The Solution

* First, address the players intellectually. Explain to them, as I’m sure you already have, that Traveller works very differently than D&D, and combat will hurt their characters like they would expect a normal person to get hurt. Tell them that you don’t want to see the crew take casualties because of a misunderstanding, so you’re making it clear before the session begins. They should treat their characters like people who feel pain. The players put time and effort into creating their characters, so they should treat them that way. The players will still be dealing with their emotional need for hack and slash excitement, but read on.

* As other posters have suggested, run a few practice combats so they can see the effects of combat on some throwaway characters. Then the players should know what weapons will do to their characters. They’ll also have a better idea of how their characters will stack up when it comes to fighting. Do the same thing for ship combat, so the players will know how things will shake out.

* Run an adventure as normal, but be prepared for a malenky bit of the usual player character ultraviolence. If the player characters hurt people or do something destructive or outrageous (like literally stomping down an old lady in the spaceport hotel lounge over a trivial slight; I wish I were joking), have the authorities respond with the level of force they need to take down the player character threat. The crew can’t be the first bunch of heavily armed ne’er-do-wells to trash the local Startown. Feel free to have the locals take potshots at the offworld trash shooting up their neighborhood. Try to take the player characters alive. Stunners, tranq rounds, riot control gas, net guns, grav carrier mounted microwave anti-personnel burners (Active Denial System), laser dazzlers, do what you have to. Make up some stats for this gear beforehand. If the crew wants the screw with the authorities, have the authorities screw back hard and screw to win.

* Once the authorities have the crew in custody, have the player characters explain themselves at a tribunal. They probably won’t have much in the way of rights and the tribunal will be focused on determining what the crew did to whom, why they did it, and how they’ll be punished. Use the tribunal scene to let the players explain their actions in character. Hopefully they’ll see that their actions were pointless and destructive.

* Now here’s the fun part:
1. The authorities sentence the crew to 15 years at hard labor in the guano mines… or, they can volunteer to sign a 10 year mercenary contract with a penal battalion conducting counterinsurgency operations on behalf of the subsector government. Yes, it’s the French Foreign Legion in Space, and if the player characters go AWOL, the Imperial authorities will now have a piece of them.

2. Drop the crew into a unit filled to the ever-lovin’ brim with the most low down scum in the subsector. Training? Yeah, right. They’re tough guys, aren’t they? They can learn on the job. Make a table with 20 or so crimes on it (murder, assault, robbery, thuggery, theft, possession of contraband, smuggling, illegal salvaging, illegal mining, illegal gambling, piracy, treason, sedition, insurrection, human trafficking, consorting with corsairs, gang crime, fraud, bribery, unfair labor practices, vagrancy, Vargr shaving, Hiver slapping, tipping lawful K’Kree citizens of the Imperium, possession of unseemly Solomani sympathies, failing to meet production quotas, failing to show appropriate adulation for a member of the Imperial aristocracy, creative accounting, poaching, indebtedness, terrorism, illegal weapons, whatever you can think of) and roll 1 to 3 times for each of the hardened criminals and sociopathic freaks in the crew’s new platoon. Make a short backstory about the crimes. Example: Private Eneri was convicted of gang crime, mass murder and illegal weapons possession when his gang accidentally breached a mining habitat while fighting with another gang over a mining claim, causing the deaths of 100 people. Now he’s doing 20 years in the penal battaltion, fighting the Duke’s dirty wars. Make the NCOs and officers hard bastards with criminal convictions themselves who keep the scoundrels in line with brutal discipline and field executions if it comes to it. The stocks, the lash, the electronic agonizer, hard labor, protein crackers and water, spending 24 hours staked out on the parade field in the scorching sun, 2 days in the cockroach pit, it doesn’t matter. Show all these things happening to NPCs in the unit so the players know what awaits their characters if they screw around. As the NCOs will tell the crew, “You are mercenary soldiers in order to die, and the Duke is sending you where you can die.” Treat the player characters has having light wounds for a week whenever they suffer these punishments. Feel free to have the other mercs steal their gear, beat them up for the offense of being new guys, stick them with all the crap duties like shoveling out the latrines, searching for mines and boobytraps. If the player characters get violent, 30 hardcore mercs beat them to a pulp just for laughs. Show them that there are people tougher than they are, who are just waiting to beat them down just for something to do. If they desert, any local will turn them in for the prize money, any rebel will kill them, and any starport worker will have them arrested by starport security and returned to their unit for 100 lashes and a week in the cockroach pit.
The point of this is to let the player characters see how much fun it is to get stuck with people as callous and violent as they are.

3. Send the player characters’ merc unit into a dirty counterinsurgency where they have to root out a determined well-equipped enemy dug deep into brutal thin-atmosphere terrain with the full support of the local population. The despised, corrupt and incompetent planetary authorities would fall in two months if they weren’t propped up by the subsector Duke for his own murky reasons. The insurgents have always stated their grievances are only against the planetary authorities and proclaimed their undying loyalty to the Imperium, so the subsector Duke will not commit Imperial forces. The fighting is left to the incompetent planetary army and a collection of low rent amoral merc units, like the player characters’ penal battalion. Offworld factions support the insurgents with money, equipment, and advisors for their own murky reasons. The insurgency is the tail end of a 20 year civil war that started when some regions tried to break off from the worthless planetary authorities. No mercy is given or expected, and when somebody finally wins, everyone knows there will be bloodbath.

4. Now give the players the action they so desperately crave. Ambushes, air assaults, human wave attacks, defending remote outposts against overwhelming odds, search and destroy missions tearing up villages for weapons and enemy fighters, raiding terrorist cells hiding in the cities, clearing rebel bunker complexes with napalm, poison gas and close quarters combat, tense urban combat in rebel held cities, taking the lead as the first assault element in a division offensive into enemy territory, give them action, action, action! If a player’s character dies, he makes another character who is already a merc in the unit or who’s a fresh convict who took the contract.

 

[Tiikeri]

Part 3 - The Rest of the Solution

5. When you’ve got the player characters amped up on action, twist the knife. Boobytraps claim trooper after trooper. The player characters can’t sleep because of the screams and cries from the field hospital (there’s no funding for anesthetic; they’re tough guys, right?). They’re finally getting good intel from a planetary army scout, when an unseen sniper blows the scout’s brains all over their faces. Weapons fire rips through their rusty prefab barracks, and when the player characters crash out and stand to, it was just two squads of 2nd platoon blowing each other away because two guys were fooling around with the same ‘bar hostess’. Every time the crew eats at a local food vendor, roll to see if they get ground glass in their food. Let them build some cliché safe place over time, like a bar where the waitresses are vetted by the planetary authorities. Make it fun, make it cool, and when they’re finally bonding after a mission well done, the cute waitress walks up with their beers and shanks one of them in the neck with a razor she hid under the tray. Why? Her cousin joined the rebels and some merc napalmed him. It wasn’t even the crew’s unit, but she’s too filled with rage and grief to care. Let the crew form relationships with some locals who finally understand that they’re not like other mercs, and then put these people in danger, or have them get arrested by the planetary authorities as spies. Depict the gradual breakdown of first morale, then discipline, then finally people’s sanity. The officers and sergeants only keep control by brutal punishments, field executions, and reminding the troops that if they don’t keep it together, the rebels will kill them. The only way out is to win.


When the player characters are about to assault the big rebel stronghold and finally get some closure, the air support gets redirected to a higher priority mission and their whole battalion is left hanging. The assault turns into stalemate, and then the battalion gets encircled by rebel reinforcements. Air support comes too little, too late, the lift infantry mercs won’t bring their precious grav carriers into a hot LZ to evacuate them, and the battalion is trapped for a week before the assault turns into a rout and then a slaughter. Instead of winning the final climactic battle, the player characters have to kill their way out then drag themselves back through the hostile territory they’ve been devastating for months. When they make it back, the government controlled areas are in chaos, rebel terrorist cells are bombing and shooting at will, planetary units are changing sides and looking to use captured mercs as bargaining chips, and the Imperial Marines have sealed the starport until this ‘local disorder’ has resolved itself.


You can have the player characters regroup with other mercs and loyal planetary units for a desperate defense of the capital city, or they can make a desperate bid to rush the starport. If they break through, the public makes a mass dash after them to get on any ship they can before the rebels take over the city and slaughter everyone. As the Imperial Marines start firing into the stampeding crowds, the player characters discover that their battalion’s headquarters element survived, and the senior officers are blaming the player characters’ company for failing to advance when ordered and causing the assault to stall. It’s all true of course, and the player characters, some dejected troopers, and a wounded platoon leader are all the battalion commander has to point to when explaining the unit’s destruction to the subsector Duke. If the players get upset, just say that you thought they liked action. If they say the don’t like being stuck in these adventures and they want their characters to be doing something else, say that this is what happens to characters who treat every world like a shooting gallery. If the players make a serious commitment to knock it off, have a mysterious patron buy out their merc contracts and send them on more normal action type missions on different planets, like pirate hunting, trade war, or what have you. If they fall back into their old ways, well, there are plenty of dirty wars to be fought.


After all this, the players should have gotten a big enough action fix to satisfy them for a while, they’ll be experts at the combat system, they’ll be experts at the character generation system, and they will hopefully have learned that if their characters act like violent criminals, you will treat them like violent criminals.

 

[flykiller]

Vargr shaving, Hiver slapping, ... K’Kree ... tipping ...

(laugh)

the French Foreign Legion in Space

that actually would be an awesome addition to any game.

 

[Tiikeri]

(laugh)

the French Foreign Legion in Space

that actually would be an awesome addition to any game.

It's a good way for the authorities to punish player characters who are causing trouble, instead of sending them to prison, a forced labor camp, or something else boring which the players would hate. In a mercenary unit, the referee can send characters on interesting missions while having a lot of control over them. You can use these missions to set up adventure hooks for later on. The players won't like losing some control over their characters, but that's why its a punishment.

Like Forrest Gump said, "There was always somewhere to go, and something to do."

Something else Forrest Gump didn't actually say:

"Serving in the Space Foreign Legion is like a bag of Halloween candy. You never know when you're going to bite into a razor blade."


Unfortunately, I've dealt with a lot of players who just thought everything was a big joke, and tried to 'win' the game by being as destructive as possible, then attacking the authorities in open battle. For example, one group's line of thinking went something like, we did something outrageous and got away with it, so we win, and we shot all your cops, Ref, so we win. Ha ha ha, what are you going to do? They were like a bunch of llamas bleating with pleasure as they kicked their feces all over the game session. After the all points bulletin went out over the x-boat network a lot faster than their clunky Aluminum Falcon free trader could go, and the Imperial Marines detained them for extradition a couple ports of call down the line (with overwhelming force), then their tune became this is boring, they wouldn't do that, they can't prove it, we have rights, we bribe someone, this sucks let's go back to D&D.


Something else is the leveling addiction people pick up from D&D.

Like the hack and slash excitement addiction and the everything-is-a-joke condition, the leveling addiction is emotionally-based and hard for people to recover from.

One solution I have for this I ask a group what they want to play. They invariably say they want the best marine in the galaxy, or a smuggler/martial artist/pilot/mechanic/gambler called Leg Duet, or the best fighter pilot since the dawn of flight on Terra who can instantly bribe officials with his mesmerizing charisma.

Then I say, okay but there won't be any advancements after this. You'll all be (drum roll please) ...Epic Level! Then I give them a generous point buy to make characters, and away we go.

Hopefully, this will alleviate the withdrawal pangs the OP's players seem to be suffering from. They're already 20th level. There's nowhere to advance to, so they can just enjoy the game.

 

[aramis]

@Flykiller - FFL, more correctly, the Legion Etrangier, isn't all that cool. It's now just a fast path to French Citizenship via harsh military service (IIRC, 6 year minimum). Also, it's part of the 2300 setting already... and was Meh there.

@Tiikeri - not a bad analysis of one particular mode of D&D play, but that's not how a significant portion of the D&D players play.

False premise: That D&D doesn't reward non-tactical play. (See the DMG for 3.X, 4.X, 5.X) In 5E, each session has an RP award equal to a minor encounter, and encounters XP is not based upon killing, but dealing with the encounters. ISTR 3.X and 4.X being the same. Goal accomplishment is moderate encounter.

False premise: D&D encourages Rules Lawyering more than other games.
Rules Complexity tends to, but rules complexity peaked at 3.5
Rules being self-contradictory does as well, but that peaked in AD&D 1E.

False Premise: That D&D requires killing for maximum XP value.
Explicitly false in EVERY edition after LBB/LWB D&D.

 

[Tiikeri]

...but that's not how a significant portion of the D&D players play.

Thank goodness!


The other points are not my premises. I never stated that D&D doesn't reward non-tactical play or that killing is required for max xp. I said that the rules encourage killing as the fastest way to get rewards. I never said D&D encourages rules-lawyering more than other games, I said it encourages rules-lawyering to create the most efficient killing machine as a character. I should have been more clear that I was addressing that particular character-engineering issue or used a different verb, since people can argue rules in any game.

Unfortunately, silly or destructive behavior is usually the only way a lot of players can think of to interact with a setting. They're essentially poking the setting to see what it does. It's pretty sad, and once they see they can gain from it, they're hooked. I think a big issue is that everyone gets the action part and the silly part, but not everybody understands or cares about the roleplaying part. A lot of players just want to get some cheap laughs while they Get to the Next Level and they couldn't give a rat's about the journey because they're on their way to their next fix. Woe betide any NPCs in their way.

A lot of people just want to poke the setting and laugh at the zany antics that follow, instead of thinking through who their characters are and how they would reasonably act.

There's a big difference between games in which characters become intrinsically harder to injure as they advance, and games where the characters remain just as vulnerable to injury, like Traveller and the Chaosium games like Call of Cthulhu and Stormbringer. Remaining vulnerable and not mysteriously getting new abilities at predetermined levels lets people enjoy the journey instead of rushing to the next goal.

In Traveller, characters will have better skills and better equipment as they advance, but without their battledress and FGMPs, they are but men.

 

[flykiller]

It's a good way for the authorities to punish player characters who are causing trouble, instead of sending them to prison, a forced labor camp, or something else boring which the players would hate. In a mercenary unit

it's a great idea, especially in a region like that between junidy and efate. lots of moderate-tech moderate-pop worlds, with no dominating polity anywhere. lots of yellow and red zone worlds with minor ports that would otherwise be significant - wonder what's going on up there and how the imperium keeps possible trouble suppressed ....

 

[Tiikeri]

True, and it's also a great way to get the players into higher level political intrigues.

Think of it like a funnel.

Into the big end go the lost and the doomed who end up in the mercenary battallions.

They end up in miserable little skirmishes all over the subsector.

Disorder suppression, strike-busting, peacekeeping, bug hunting, Aslan removal, crushing insurrections, you get the idea.

Then, the funnel narrows a little bit. The characters start to see inconsistencies, like the battalion crushes a planetwide miners' strike as if it were an insurrection, then they're ordered to destroy the independent outlying settlements but leave the megacorp facilities alone. When they're assembling at the starport after a job well done, they see massive bulk freighters unloading thousands fresh-faced new colonists wearing company uniforms. Then they get called out of formation to help suppress disorder at the starport, and what do you know, it seems the wives and kids of the independent miners they blew away are having second thoughts about the 20 year out-system labor contracts they all happened to sign after they showed up in Startown as refugees. All perfectly legal, you see. Of course it's not slavery! The Emperor forbids it! Soldier ask not. Now get on the ship unless you want to stay here.

There are a few more missions that are some hard campaigning, like cleaning out a corrupt planetary government that was giving aid and succor to suspected pirates, and then restoring order in the face of an angry population deprived of its livelihood. During restoration, the characters' company is pulled off their critical riot control mission and tasked with assaulting a rural agricultural manor. Then the order comes down: no quarter, no survivors. One of the characters hears it from the radioman that the commander's request for a written order was denied. After desperate close quarters combat throughout the complex, the mercs are dragging out about a couple hundred bodies for an 'intelligence officer' they've never seen before. He gives the bodies barely a glance until he stops at one corpse in combat fatigues that bears a striking resemblance to the Imperial aristocrat assigned to the planet. The unknown officer bows his head for a moment, then orders that body shipped out. The battalion commander orders the rest of the bodies burned. A week later, the Imperial flag flying over the starport is lowered to half-mast. The planetary media reports that the world's Imperial aristocrat was slain by a rampaging mob sympathetic to the villainous planetary government, and that the starport administrator will serve as the Imperial representative until the subsector Duke's nephew arrives and restores peace and prosperity.

Then, the funnel narrows even more.

A breadbasket world is discovered to be rich in minerals. Guess who shows up with its miners and security troops, but the megacorp the characters' battalion helped out before. The megacorp rips up the land, causing the farmers and ranchers to take up arms. Before long, the characters' battalion is sent in again. After a year of counterinsurgency work, the characters notice a pattern. They spend a lot of time patrolling the bush, they fight a few battles, but they always stop and do civil affairs work, or redeploy to a quieter province, or get sent to babysit a newly formed planetary army unit. The megacorp security troops are coming back battlescarred after bearing the brunt of hard fighting, and they glower at the mercs over their beers. The mercs are withdrawn from province after province to let the planetary army take over, just to see these provinces fall to the rebels. Finally when most of the megacorp's mining installations are in flames, the balance sheets are in the red, and bitter recriminations are flying between the corp execs, the planetary politicians, and the commanders of the several military forces on planet, the Imperial aristocrat assigned to the world suggests a dialogue be opened with the rebel leadership.

It all ends with the megacorp's stock in the tank, dead colonists, embittered security units on the verge of a troop riot, a new coalition government in power, and the suddenly competent planetary army looking into alleged war crimes committed by corporate security troops and mercs. The battalion commander assures the player characters' unit that they fulfilled the terms of their contract, which was held by the planetary authorities, not the megacorp. Then it's on full kits, sound board ships, and up the soldiers go. The battalion's officers all seem quite pleased with compensation packages, which consist of generous shares in the new mining cooperatives set up under the ceasefire agreement, courtesy of the planetary government. It seems the mining cooperatives have 100 year contract to supply the subsector Navy, and at a price cheaper than the megacorp's, too! Funny how things work out. Soldier ask not.

Now that the unit has a solid reputation as a dependable tool, let's narrow the funnel even more.

By now it should be clear that the battalion has a close relationship several highly placed officials of the court of the subsector Duke. Whenever there's work too tough for a planetary army or too dirty for the Duke's Own Huscarls, in go the mercs. Now they're tasked out as expendable deniable company sized black ops elements.

Start a war between the Imperials and the Aslan settlers as a pretext for an Imperial occupation? The mercs will take care of it.

Start a rebellion and then lose, so potentially disloyal populations can be smoked out, arrested and shipped off planet en masse? The mercs got it.

When two subsector Dukes contest the ownership of a trading hub, the mercs are their Duke's men in a knock down drag out covert ops brawl that has nothing to do with honor or the Imperium, just the ambitions of two powerful men.

At the end of the funnel, the characters are known to the Duke as a team of reliable operators who will take on any mission. Then the characters have a patron in the subsector Duke, and he can send them on team sized missions that affect the state of affairs of the subsector and possibly the sector. The characters will be introduced to the power politics that go on at these levels of governance, and to powerful people who may require their expertise. If the campaign goes on long enough, the characters might even get knighthoods out of it.

 

[Condottiere]

Ala Falkenberg, mercenary companies have clauses and ambiguous conditions written into their contracts by expert legal minds.

Or very explicit ones, depending on the desired outcome.

 

[kilemall]

that actually would be an awesome addition to any game.

There is a really gritty comic series that did exactly that-

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_Legion

 

[kilemall]

OP, I have a unique solution set to offer, which is a reality-feel system to my wargaming/combat vet players, but also has a metaref goal of sinking in just how dangerous a firefight is.

Twoparter- I have a hit location system with modifiers, based on CT/Striker, and I have a gritty QND medical system.

I haven't really discussed the two together but they are meant to work in tandem.

The hit location system does a base 1-3 die damage depending on whether it is an extremity, thoracic region or head. A second roll can add or subtract up to 3D based on pen vs. armor, plus 1D for blunt trauma weapons.

So a pistol hit in the hand may do less damage then a dagger to the head.

I can deal with vest armor vs. no extremity armor, and helmets become rather important.

So that helps me get across the visualization of where the hit went, how badly, etc.

The medical system tells me what sort of wound it is, complications, etc. and the treatment regimen, especially if one is out in the field vs. in a ship medicbay or hospital.

STR=bones/muscle/cardio
DEX=nervous system
END=digestive/immune system

Between hit location, damage done and resulting treatments, I can describe what is happening, makes it less a stats tank experience and far more personal.

'You were hit in the right hand by the magnum revolver, you had a Cloth glove on that reduced the damage to 1D, that's a 4 that goes against your DEX, shot clean through and no broken bones, oh looks like your hand is non-responsive but not destroyed, you aren't going to shoot well until that's healed'.

As most of us know that's a real light easy wound by Traveller standards, but even that is vexing and gets your players to visualize.

Run em through some personal woundings and hospital stays and neardeath field stabilization, make them pay for it, and I think the message will get across.

Don't want to do hit location or MgT2e doesn't do that well? Just do translation-

1-2 cut/bruise anywhere
3-4 arms/legs minor
5 chest minor
6 head minor
7-10 arms/legs major one inoperative
12-14 chest wound major
15-16 head major knocked out
17-21 arms/legs one lost
22-26 chest wound massive, 1+ organ lost
27+ head wound massive, consider rolling for INT/EDU loss

If a shotgun/flechette or autofire hits, consider dividing half and then half again, etc- so a 20 point gauss hit is a 10, a 5, a 3 and a 2.

Don't know if MgT2e does END first.

Anyway, that's a major part of my consequences package for the trigger happy.

 

[kilemall]

Ho-ho-holy cow!

 

[flykiller]

Then, the funnel narrows even more.

you write fairly well. you should post some stories here.

 

[aramis]

Thank goodness!


The other points are not my premises. I never stated that D&D doesn't reward non-tactical play or that killing is required for max xp. I said that the rules encourage killing as the fastest way to get rewards. I never said D&D encourages rules-lawyering more than other games, I said it encourages rules-lawyering to create the most efficient killing machine as a character. I should have been more clear that I was addressing that particular character-engineering issue or used a different verb, since people can argue rules in any game.

You're wrong. D&D doesn't require nor actively encourage killing at all. You get the same XP for scaring them away, or simply sneaking past, or beating them at cards. One opposed roll is much faster, and by the rules exactly the same XP.

It doesn't encourage rules-lawyering any more than Traveller does. The rues lawyers do so in any game, and the rules, unless stupid-simple, don't affect that much. So, again, it's a false premise making your conclusions invalid. A logical follow-on, but based upon a false premise, and thus poisoned.

And, to make it clear: [m;]edition warring, no matter the game, is NOT APPROPRIATE. That includes GameA vs GameB[/m;] If you want to bitch about your misperceptions of the D&D game, please do so elsewhere. RPG Pundit's The RPG Site is a place that will listen. RPG.net, EnWorld, Kenzerco.com, and RPG geek all discourage edition warring, as do we.

 

[pendragonman]

You're wrong. D&D doesn't require nor actively encourage killing at all. You get the same XP for scaring them away, or simply sneaking past, or beating them at cards. One opposed roll is much faster, and by the rules exactly the same XP.

And this has been true since first edition. All you have to do is look up the XP generation tables in the DMG. In fact, it will tell the GM how to use role play to make for multipliers to the XP value, and how to scale XP for treasure collection.

"Defeating an opponent" does not always mean you have to kill them.

 

[epicenter00]

I've got a fairly good group of players, but they're still stuck in the D&D/Pathfinder "I see it I shoot it" mentality. I've tried to tell them that getting shot in Traveller is considered a Very Bad Thing, but I'm looking for advice on how to demonstrate this to them, so that they don't get the entire crew killed 3 sessions in.

To play Devil's Advocate here...

I believe that RPGs are a collaborative effort that involves compromises between everyone involved. The "us GMs vs. them players" viewpoint isn't very productive as far as I'm concerned. What you're experiencing is a difference in expectations of a game. I don't think they can really be solved through killing the players off or showing them how deadly combat is - it won't change anything if what they expect/want is a game where violence is used to solve conflicts.

Myself, I would have some honest discussion with your players about the game.

Depending on my group, start first, just to frame the discussion; I'd explain to them the kind of Traveller game I want to run and what kind of game I think Traveller is - a place where non-combat resolutions to problems are often a thing, combat is deadly (for the players), and so on. That the amount of combat in the game is going to result in large gaps in the player party and perhaps total party kills.

Then let them speak. I wouldn't ask my players what they want of the game. Ask them instead what they imagine a Traveller game to be like. Do they want conflict (gun combat or whatever) to be a significant part of the game? Do they want dungeon crawls with a futuristic dressing?

Are they interested in trying a kind of game like Traveller where there's less combat?

It's good to gauge responses here; a lot of players will say they want to try something with less combat but they'll get bored without it. It's important to find out what the players are feeling before they just stop showing up to your games or vote to play something else (unless you're fine with that). You might want to try a relatively self-contained Traveller game that will be over in 3 sessions, a game that you think has what you believe to be the correct elements of a Traveller game.

If they're not enjoying it, then it's time to hash it out what will work. Remember, while it is very important for them to have fun, you also need to have fun running it. So perhaps in the end, maybe Traveller is not for them. Maybe you could modify the game so that combat isn't quite so deadly so the players can engage in more of it. I'm not unsympathetic to players who like combat. I enjoy it myself. I love myself some D&D dungeon grinds - they're simple and fun, something you can play with a few beers and some good laughs even if I die. A group of players like this, we tried Traveller and they decided they liked combat too much for Traveller to ever be fun for them - so we eventually compromised and played a Dark Heresy "Law and Order" style game - there was a group of low-combat investigators whose job it was to figure out what was going on and generally try and keep things low-key where pistols were considered a deadly escalation. Once they had figured things out, they could call in the Space Marines (an alternative set of characters) to engage in huge fights with the cultists and so on where a pistol was considered a laughable weapon and players leveled things with plasma guns.

I think the first step is to ensure you and your players are at least roughly on the same page as to what is expected from the game.

 

[AsenRG]

So, I'm a fairly new Ref, I've run a few games in a few different systems, but Traveller seems to be the one which has stuck (Much to my enjoyment). I've got a fairly good group of players, but they're still stuck in the D&D/Pathfinder "I see it I shoot it" mentality. I've tried to tell them that getting shot in Traveller is considered a Very Bad Thing, but I'm looking for advice on how to demonstrate this to them, so that they don't get the entire crew killed 3 sessions in.

Use cannon fodder. Give them an NPC that needs some protecting. Have him die by a sniper shot.
Drop a casual remark that you didn't fudge anything, it can happen to everyone:devil:.

You should also prepare who sent the sniper, and everything else, of course, in case the PCs decide to take revenge. But hey, free adventure!

On a somewhat tangential note, they're also struggling with Travellers lack of character progression ala D&D. I've houseruled that instead of simply not learning anything after 8 weeks if they fail their check, they just have to try again next week. Does this sound reasonable? For reference we are playing Mongoose Second Edition.

I'd advise against said houserule. You're bound to see way too many Skill-3 (and more) characters with this, and those might be in multiple areas.

 

[kilemall]

On the skill progession front, I'm CT all the way, which means it's a lot harder to get skill then Mongoose Traveller. Even with Instruction, chances are you'll only be able to get training up to 1, maybe 2, and they would have to be in a dedicated class doing nothing else.

Except for the Eureka rule.

The idea is that sometimes skill progression is not always practice study work, but sometimes an ah-HA! moment occurs where the player does something great or horribly wrong and a breakthrough occurs.

So on a roll where the player got natural 2 or 12 and in MgT terms was harder then routine, they may have that Eureka moment.

They can roll again anytime in the next game time month.

On another natural 12 they gain a level in the skill they were using during the Eureka roll.

On another natural 2 they LOSE a level in the skill they were using.

This models the fact that the character may have learned the WRONG lesson and is acting with bravado or is delusional.

Or they were very scarred by the failure and learned hesitancy, self-doubt and in general is reluctant to get 'back in the saddle'.

From a game play perspective this gives the immediate skill boost crowd an option, but is self-regulating against skill bloat.

 

[atpollard]

D&D doesn't require nor actively encourage killing at all. You get the same XP for scaring them away, or simply sneaking past, or beating them at cards.

While completely off-topic, I found that most of my AD&D XPs came from the Treasure in the modules rather than the monster encounters. [and having to drop everything and go find some place to 'level up' in the middle of a dungeon was always a PITA.]

That was one of the attractions of Classic Traveller.

 

[Leitz]

Hmm.. 1st ed AD&D repeatedly uses the word "slain" monsters with regards to XP awards. DMG pp 84, 85. There is a line about tricking or outwitting monsters being a subjective XP award but the recurring theme is "slain". My first real group was all younger guys in the 18-24 age range. Didn't really do "subtle". What's was funny to me was the G.P. cost per week of training was more XP than a 1st level thief needed to go up in level. If they needed more than one week it was worse.

I do understand the "trigger happy" theme, I've been that way myself. Even in Champions, a super hero RPG. Took me a while to catch the "hero" concept even though I usually play good guys.

In Traveller the options for "game" are so much wider than scraping for credits or the next gunfight. Maybe show them life on the other side; mega credit deals but hey, you go have fun shooting people and being poor. They get a reputation for legal troubles and no one will hire them. Sorry, no ships going that direction, too bad you don't have your own.

Usually people only change if the new option is worth the effort. What would be "worth it" to them? What would be fun for you?