New to traveller

[Orwellian]

That sounds like something I want to check out.
Marian

Vatta's War

Synopsis: In Trading in Danger, Ky Vatta, daughter of the wealthy and powerful trading family, chose to leave the family business and attend Spaceforce Academy...but in her final semester, she makes an error of judgment and is expelled. Her family puts her aboard an old tub of a spaceship, and tells her to take it off to the scrapyards--Ky looks for something better to do, and ends up in what seems to be a pirate attack on the planet where she's buying farm equipment.

Pretty much Traveller the series in the first couple books, then it gets all military. Very fun reads.

As I remember from MGT rules, his aging roll has a negative equal to the number of total "terms" of the character. So he's pretty much losing D6s characteristic points when he makes that roll. If it gets too stressful to get anagathics, he may just decide the character retires to a comfortable world. If I wanted to I could suggest him do that at any time and he'd go along with it, might even make a couple session plot about his character's desire to hang up the shipboard life.

 

[ShapeShifter]

Welcome to Traveller!
(Just avoid the grumpy grognards here.)

Your best bet is to get into Classic Traveller: still in print at Far Future Enterprises (FFE, run by creator Marc Miller himself) and the rules are much easier on player and referee alike.

The CT rules are very flexible and can be adapted to fit pretty much whatever campaign you want to design.

The poster Supplement Four has many posts that have certainly inspired me, and if you look for them, I'm sure that they will give you many ideas as to how to apply the rules in your home setting.

I'd avoid Mongoose products altogether. They're expensive and fraught with problems. (They push their writers too hard and have tight deadlines, leading to flawed product in more than one license-line.) However, if you're determined to get MGP Traveller stuff, go the way of used copies: much, much cheaper.

The players are trying to screw you?? WTF? Hmph. Well, I've heard this from RPGers who are weened on d20 or recent RPG philosophy, believing that an RPG is a conflict or competition between the referee and the players, i.e. "The GM is out to kill off the players, and the players try to find ways of exploiting the rules to keep the GM from bumping them off." The proper philosophy of any RPG is that the game is collaborative storytelling with everyone participating and contributing together. If the players understand that the GM is a facilitator and 'lead narrator' and not some despotical, sadistic rules-tyrant, then things should be resolved.

 

[sabredog]

I second the motion to stick with Classic Traveller: it is the only one I have played consistently since 1977 and have never seen a reason to switch after looking the other versions over when they came out. It's simple to learn, elegant in mechanics, and easily modded to your individual taste.

If you really just have to have Mongoose Traveller for some reason - you can download it from DriveThruRpg here for less than the cost of the bound books.

http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/advan...ption=1&search_in_author=1&search_in_artist=1

 

[Orwellian]

The players are trying to screw you?? WTF? Hmph. Well, I've heard this from RPGers who are weened on d20 or recent RPG philosophy, believing that an RPG is a conflict or competition between the referee and the players, i.e. "The GM is out to kill off the players, and the players try to find ways of exploiting the rules to keep the GM from bumping them off." The proper philosophy of any RPG is that the game is collaborative storytelling with everyone participating and contributing together. If the players understand that the GM is a facilitator and 'lead narrator' and not some despotical, sadistic rules-tyrant, then things should be resolved.

just to reiterate, that phrase was more a humorous way of saying "What are the players going to do that messes up my game because I didn't expect it" I have good players, generally. However, to tangent a bit, IMO there should be a touch of that friendly confrontation between the players and GM. The GM is the world they are playing in, sometimes the world needs to be a bit confrontational to add the spice.

I personally hate gaming under a GM who pulls punches and gives in to players too much. A character means the most to me when there is the real chance of losing it, or other bad things happening to it. If there were no confrontation between players and GMs we would all play in settings with no mechanics.

 

[Whipsnade]

Well, I've heard this from RPGers who are weened on d20 or recent RPG philosophy, believing that an RPG is a conflict or competition between the referee and the players, i.e. "The GM is out to kill off the players, and the players try to find ways of exploiting the rules to keep the GM from bumping them off."

ShapeShifter,

That's more of an attitude learned from computer RPGs than from d20.

In a computer game, you either "beat" the computer or the computer "beats" you. The fact that many computer RPGs are First Person Shooters doesn't help matters. True collaborative play doesn't take place in many of the web-based MMORPGs either as those games little more than Multi-Player Shooters.

When the majority of current players' RPG "experience" comes from solitary shoot-em-ups, there's going to be a bit of a learning curve around the table.


Regards,
Bill

 

[ShapeShifter]

The GM is the world they are playing in

Hmm. I like that. Deep, weird and kinda groovy. Marc Miller should have gone with that as a tagline for the LBB's back in 1977. Let your players explore your inner space! :rofl:

That raises a really good point: what if CT were not created by a former member of the military, but a hippie from the very heart of the Counter Culture movement? Less "enlistment" and "careers"...more astral journeys and psychedelic visions of alien worlds. Not Traveller, but TRIPPER!

ShapeShifter,

That's more of an attitude learned from computer RPGs than from d20.

In a computer game, you either "beat" the computer or the computer "beats" you. The fact that many computer RPGs are First Person Shooters doesn't help matters. True collaborative play doesn't take place in many of the web-based MMORPGs either as those games little more than Multi-Player Shooters.

When the majority of current players' RPG "experience" comes from solitary shoot-em-ups, there's going to be a bit of a learning curve around the table.


Regards,
Bill

Yup. I think you're right. That's just yet another reason I have to throw on the "I hate video games" pile. I've also seen it after several years of being tortured by the d20 System's whiny rules-lawyers out there.

 

[Orwellian]

just in case u were curious, had our first session. It went extremely well, and the players are loving the system. I left the crunchy rules player to design their new ship (first session rewarded them with some ship shares to go along with what they had at creation) looks like he will be making a modestly equipped far trader. They will still have a fairly hefty mortgage.

We will get more deeply into the game starting next week since they will have their own ship instead of being crew like they started. I think I'll give them a fairly mundane session of trades with a few minor occurrences/difficulties thrown in. I'm thinking of only dropping in big story encounters every other session or so until they get comfortable with the routine stuff.

 

[aramis]

lol, I just can't win Oh well, is the MGT spinward any good? I'm trying to pick an area with the most written about it so I have to do less.

It's very well done, tho' I hesitate to call it good overall. It gives a column or so on a couple worlds per subsector, has items reverted to the 1983 published values even tho' the intervening 25 years used different values (which were consistent across those 25 years) for a handful of worlds (no major fault of the author... Mongoose mishandled fan responses and Marc Miller then overreacted to both sides).

It will get the job done. It's better than the CT version, and on par with the TNE version for content, but the TNE version (Regency Source Book) gives four sectors, not 1.

No matter where you set, you have work to do... and how much depends on the nature of your game. One of the best detailed worlds anywhere is Tarsus/District 268... whole CT boxed set.

The Traveller Adventure (CT, 8.5x11x0.5" softcover) gives useful thumbnails of over a dozen worlds.

Generating a subsector isn't a lot of work... but generating one, interpreting it, and providing a useful setting can be. Generating a whole sector is a bit of a chore, and interpreting it, and knowing what's where, is a whole lot more. Generating one for an ATU like mine, where every system is detailed out with older editions' tools is quite a bit, especially since every major population is getting a paragraph.

You're not goint to find my detail level in anything I've seen published for a whole subsector. (I might just publish mine when done.)