Infractions notify all the staff. Automatically.
Permission to come aboard
- Thread starter Nick H
- Start date
Infractions notify all the staff. Automatically.
8 editions later! Welcome!
Welcome aboard, Nick!
Thanks for choosing CotI for your Traveller experience.
Now, Aramis, World of Darkness, AD&D Traveller? By the the Elder Space Cows, that smacks of Heresy! :devil:
No seriously, those are real Traveller adaptations?
Yes. Fan done. WoD by PeterN and Me.
Follow the link in my sig...
The AD&D version went dark around 2000, and wasn't on the Archive.org backup when I looked. But it was a thing. It was part of Hunter's awakening to the idea that a d20 Traveller edition might get some sales. (And it did.)
My first group never had enough money to afford meson guns, battledress and FGMP-15s! The published adventures and advice in book 0 and others gave the impression that you should restrict or at least ration that kind of stuff falling into the hands of the characters.
I remember that first group well. It started with 6 of us, which dropped to 5 after a few weeks as one guy didn't like the hard SF elements and wished for a more space-fantasy opera type of game whilst the rest of us totally bought into the Traveller Universe/Third Imperium background. At that time, the Chris Foss, Ralph McQuarrie artwork found in the Terran Trade Authority books were a huge influence on us.
I refereed about 70% of the time with everyone else pitching in every so often...basically whoever bought the adventure book ran the game. We had a Scout, 3 Navy officers and a Marine. We started with "The Imperial Fringe" adventure, had loads of discussions about the Traveller universe, what each planet would be like, and lapped up each new release or JTAS or approved licence product. It was like information about the CT universe was being drip fed to us. We had to use our imaginations to flesh out the rest.
Everyone's favourite book was High Guard. The group had made a sizeable sum after about a year and we designed our own 400 ton trader. We also liked building custom ships for NPCs and baddies. As a result, we did more exploration type of adventures or rescuing vulnerable patrons in distress rather than being gun toting mercs. And there was LOTS of trading and speculating. The player who had the ship captain just went off into a corner rolling on the trade tables and either announcing the good or bad news about the latest transaction whilst the rest of us would find a patron.
This group lasted from 1981 to 1987, when we all went our separate ways to university or work. MegaTraveller was hitting the shops at the end and we were genuinely shocked at the announcement that Strephon had been assassinated. We all pledged our allegiance to Lucan, mainly through default rather than weighing up the options (who was this Dulinor guy anyway?). We bought the new rules and really liked them...although we gave up on the universal vehicle/ship design section and went back to either High Guard or Striker...or else didn't bother and relied on DGP's 101 vehicles instead.
I had other Traveller groups, some good, some so-so. By the mid-1990s the mood of the gamers I was meeting had changed. The buzzword was "dark" themed games, with characters you designed yourself rather than rolled up. One player asked me "so what do we do? What's the purpose of this game? Who do we work for? Is there a plot?" and I said it was a game where the party largely determined its own destiny and were free agents. He couldn't get that idea; the games he knew focussed the players through a tightly designed world which had pre-defined roles for them. Traveller seemed, to many of them, too free form, too optimistic and without the nihilism of the buzz games of that time such as Cyberpunk, Vampire Masquerade or Shadowrun. Law level 7? So I can't just blast people to bits when I want to?
These days it can be a hard sell to get people who are unfamiliar with the game and its concepts playing it. Even though I split from D&D all those years ago, Traveller and AD&D 1st edition sit on my bookshelves side by side. They are still the "go anywhere, do anything" games where imagination and a certain sense of wide eyed wonder at it all enhance the games rather than detracting. I can't think of too many recent RPGs that have that scope. I mostly play miniature wargames these days, but I do have two packs of Traveller warships from Ad Astra games that need painting up and I do look out for suitable 15mm SF Traveller proxy figures at wargames shows for Striker or the MT mass combat system.
Strephon lives!
I remember that first group well. It started with 6 of us, which dropped to 5 after a few weeks as one guy didn't like the hard SF elements and wished for a more space-fantasy opera type of game whilst the rest of us totally bought into the Traveller Universe/Third Imperium background. At that time, the Chris Foss, Ralph McQuarrie artwork found in the Terran Trade Authority books were a huge influence on us.
I refereed about 70% of the time with everyone else pitching in every so often...basically whoever bought the adventure book ran the game. We had a Scout, 3 Navy officers and a Marine. We started with "The Imperial Fringe" adventure, had loads of discussions about the Traveller universe, what each planet would be like, and lapped up each new release or JTAS or approved licence product. It was like information about the CT universe was being drip fed to us. We had to use our imaginations to flesh out the rest.
Everyone's favourite book was High Guard. The group had made a sizeable sum after about a year and we designed our own 400 ton trader. We also liked building custom ships for NPCs and baddies. As a result, we did more exploration type of adventures or rescuing vulnerable patrons in distress rather than being gun toting mercs. And there was LOTS of trading and speculating. The player who had the ship captain just went off into a corner rolling on the trade tables and either announcing the good or bad news about the latest transaction whilst the rest of us would find a patron.
This group lasted from 1981 to 1987, when we all went our separate ways to university or work. MegaTraveller was hitting the shops at the end and we were genuinely shocked at the announcement that Strephon had been assassinated. We all pledged our allegiance to Lucan, mainly through default rather than weighing up the options (who was this Dulinor guy anyway?). We bought the new rules and really liked them...although we gave up on the universal vehicle/ship design section and went back to either High Guard or Striker...or else didn't bother and relied on DGP's 101 vehicles instead.
I had other Traveller groups, some good, some so-so. By the mid-1990s the mood of the gamers I was meeting had changed. The buzzword was "dark" themed games, with characters you designed yourself rather than rolled up. One player asked me "so what do we do? What's the purpose of this game? Who do we work for? Is there a plot?" and I said it was a game where the party largely determined its own destiny and were free agents. He couldn't get that idea; the games he knew focussed the players through a tightly designed world which had pre-defined roles for them. Traveller seemed, to many of them, too free form, too optimistic and without the nihilism of the buzz games of that time such as Cyberpunk, Vampire Masquerade or Shadowrun. Law level 7? So I can't just blast people to bits when I want to?
These days it can be a hard sell to get people who are unfamiliar with the game and its concepts playing it. Even though I split from D&D all those years ago, Traveller and AD&D 1st edition sit on my bookshelves side by side. They are still the "go anywhere, do anything" games where imagination and a certain sense of wide eyed wonder at it all enhance the games rather than detracting. I can't think of too many recent RPGs that have that scope. I mostly play miniature wargames these days, but I do have two packs of Traveller warships from Ad Astra games that need painting up and I do look out for suitable 15mm SF Traveller proxy figures at wargames shows for Striker or the MT mass combat system.
Strephon lives!
Most excellent post, Nick. Hope you raise interesting topics and find lots of interesting answers on this forum.
As for "heretical" versions, I've always found something good to use out of all of them.
"All Traveller, all the time".
For those interested in an AD&D version of Traveller, there's a "bare bones" version on my site. Go to:
==> Repair Bays
==> House Rules
==> Traveller as AD&D
;-)
As for "heretical" versions, I've always found something good to use out of all of them.
"All Traveller, all the time".
For those interested in an AD&D version of Traveller, there's a "bare bones" version on my site. Go to:
==> Repair Bays
==> House Rules
==> Traveller as AD&D
;-)
Thanks, I left out the other variants of the game: TNE I completely bypassed and that was a feeling shared with the group I was with at the time. I'm not going to slag off TNE but I'll use an analogy: Star Trek for me is the original series, the movies, TNG, DS9 and Voyager....possibly even Enterprise at a stretch. JJ Abrams-Trek is it's own thing, and good luck to them in making it a success but it's not MY Star Trek. There's a departure in style and ethos there that means I'm not on board but no hard feelings for those who are on board.
T4 we liked. We didn't play it much but we ran BITS' "The Long Way Home" and we had a really fun time with it. In the end was it an improvement on CT/MT? We reverted to tradition but still talked about further adventures in Milieu 0.
GURPS Traveller. Like with a lot of GURPS products, we bought the supplements and bypassed the rules...preferring to use other systems. GT enhanced rather than replaced our existing Traveller material.
Mongoose: See T4 above for a similar explanation. Again, not wanting to disparage the product but it felt like going to see a good quality tribute act for a favourite band rather than the actual band itself.
T5, not tried it yet. Want to try it. Need the players!
If I have seemingly poured scorn on your favourite version, my apologies. One thing I will say about them all: If the ethos of the game exists within each version, then they have succeeded. Whether you roll 2 or 3D6 or a D20 is mere detail.
T4 we liked. We didn't play it much but we ran BITS' "The Long Way Home" and we had a really fun time with it. In the end was it an improvement on CT/MT? We reverted to tradition but still talked about further adventures in Milieu 0.
GURPS Traveller. Like with a lot of GURPS products, we bought the supplements and bypassed the rules...preferring to use other systems. GT enhanced rather than replaced our existing Traveller material.
Mongoose: See T4 above for a similar explanation. Again, not wanting to disparage the product but it felt like going to see a good quality tribute act for a favourite band rather than the actual band itself.
T5, not tried it yet. Want to try it. Need the players!
If I have seemingly poured scorn on your favourite version, my apologies. One thing I will say about them all: If the ethos of the game exists within each version, then they have succeeded. Whether you roll 2 or 3D6 or a D20 is mere detail.
While most might see it as shaming, you know a few would wear them like badges of honor.
While most might see it as shaming, you know a few would wear them like badges of honor.
Which is the other reason not to do so.
