CT Only: Traveller Drudge = Fun

[Supplement Four]

One thing I was reminded of the other day when I went through the Book 4 Character generation was that the Traveller drudge work--the work that you need to do to play the game--is fun!

Unlike many other RPGs, creating a character or designing a subsector to explore is quite fun. At least, I think it is.

I compare this to the work I have to do, say, on my Conan game. It's d20 based. And, while some of it is fun, designing the stats for new characters/NPCs really isn't that fun. I do it because I have to and because the end result is fun.

But, with Traveller, the background work is a neat exploratory journey where we discover things--things that make the universe cool and interesting.

I enjoy rolling NPCs and "discovering" who they are. I like creating subsector, learning and making decisions about worlds, then "reading" a subsector, allowing the details generated by the dice to tell me about the environment.

If only all RPG could be this fun behind the scenes. I enjoy my solo Ref work with Traveller much more than do just about any other game.

 

[coliver988]

There were long gaps in gaming for me, a decade here, a couple of decades there. The 2nd gap I started playing at Traveller again - rolling up characters, worlds, playing with software just for fun. Then finally got back to the gaming group I played with 20+ years prior (and how did we all get older?)

All the generating parts of Traveller are solo games, or can be. Your expositions on the character as generation is happening show just how powerful and fun character generation can be. Another member did the same thing and grew the universe they were going to play in via the same mechanisms, designing worlds as they generated the characters.

Ship building has always been fun (although my designs are never really practical but fun to come up with nonetheless). Between trying to cram everything you need in small ship to designing a huge battlewagon, you can do anything.

World building from the barebones of the UWP really came alive for me between the 2 part article in the Journal to reading how others do it here. Sometimes I may get carried away, but for me, this is the sort of thing I am doing because it is fun.

Heck - recreating my college universe has been a lot of fun as well. Going from hand-drawn star charts to the amazing tools we have now to create things we can share across this amazing thing we call the internet is just astounding to me. And fun.

 

[Rerednaw]

The star system, character generation, ship building, were all mini-games in themselves. Before the internet it was sometimes the only game we could actually play

 

[mike wightman]

I think it is an absolute masterpiece of game design that playing with Traveller is as much fun as playing Traveller.

Every subsystem is a mini-game in itself and can easily grant a few hours entertainment, sit down with a pencil, notebook and a couple of dice (a glass of whisky is optional):

character generation - you could start with a purpose in mind ie generate s ship's crew, roll up the members of a mercenary squad etc or you could just let the dice take you on a journey as you try to turn the dice rolls into actual events. Every character generated can crop up as an NPC somewhere (note that as a ref I have a special attachment to NPCs I have generated this way, and I have encouraged players to generate characters if they have the time between sessions).

equipment design - I don't mean Striker et al - it is perfectly possible to take the existing weapons and equipment and invent new stuff that is based on it (there are blank spaces in the TL table for a reason...), LKW showed how easy it was to invent a laser pistol from the weapon charts.

ship design - you can lose hours to designing ships and deckplans using nothing more than LBB2

ship combat/travel around a system - can be played solo and may help if you are still in school and need to learn the SUVAT equations and how to use trig to solve vectors (yup, personal experience from many years ago), note use the optional rule in LBB2 77 for only applying half displacement and keep track of velocity and displacement separately

planet/subsector generation: similar to generating characters, great fun is to be had trying to make sense of the numbers and is something players can do for fun, the ref then just 'incorporates' them

animal encounters: tell the truth, how many of you actually generate the ecosystems and encounter tables for every planet you generate, how many generic pouncers etc have you had pounce on characters over the years. It is fun to cobble together what's eating what and let your imagination run rampant as to the appearance and nature of the critters the characters will encounter.

It's actually a problem trying to fit in time for playing the game with others when there is so much you can do solo :devil:

 

[aramis]

The star system, character generation, ship building, were all mini-games in themselves. Before the internet it was sometimes the only game we could actually play

I've been fortunate - the only times I've not had access to a game have been Basic Training, and a couple equally intensive Music Education courses.

Still, I found there were dead times best filled by generating characters, building ships, or detailing populations... but those weren't the times I needed them.

 

[sabredog]

Don't I know it. I sometimes can't tell if I love the working on the game as much as the running the game. It's better than any computer world sim.

Here I've finished a monster 3-year campaign and swore it would be the last, if not forever, certainly for a long time while I pursued my other interests that always end up on hold when I run a game.

Unfinished models gathering dust, writing, drawing, wargaming, jeez...just socializing with friends that doesn't inevitably veer into talking about the current campaign in a semi-role playing way. Maybe even run a different campaign for a change that everyone else wants to play in (Dark Albion is calling).


So here I am now checking in on COTI to drop off some files I made during the game that someone might find interesting....I get caught up in a few discussions...which gets me thinking about some articles I wanted to write for Freelance and here....

....and now I'm doomed. I'm all excited about wanting to run another campaign about something I thought of just the other day while going through some notes .........

 

[Timerover51]

I think it is an absolute masterpiece of game design that playing with Traveller is as much fun as playing Traveller.

This is true, and does include Traveller 5, puzzling out what Marc meant in spots.

Every subsystem is a mini-game in itself and can easily grant a few hours entertainment, sit down with a pencil, notebook and a couple of dice (a glass of whiskey is optional):

Coffee, please.:coffeegulp:

character generation - you could start with a purpose in mind ie generate s ship's crew, roll up the members of a mercenary squad etc or you could just let the dice take you on a journey as you try to turn the dice rolls into actual events. Every character generated can crop up as an NPC somewhere (note that as a ref I have a special attachment to NPCs I have generated this way, and I have encouraged players to generate characters if they have the time between sessions).

I started generating a sector, and now I find myself generating Non-Player Characters as well. Wyatt Holiday on El Paso, Professor Hartzenbosch of the University of Baldur, and System Scout Travis Foxx so far, and probably more for El Paso and elsewhere.

equipment design - I don't mean Striker et al - it is perfectly possible to take the existing weapons and equipment and invent new stuff that is based on it (there are blank spaces in the TL table for a reason...), LKW showed how easy it was to invent a laser pistol from the weapon charts.

I can see that is on the way as well. For one thing, remote scouting drones for planet surveys, as I have a some planets that really do not like visitors.

ship design - you can lose hours to designing ships and deckplans using nothing more than LBB2

That is starting as well, as I need to design some basic ships for the Rim Scouts, along with some traders, and some Space Viking raiders.

ship combat/travel around a system - can be played solo and may help if you are still in school and need to learn the SUVAT equations and how to use trig to solve vectors (yup, personal experience from many years ago), note use the optional rule in LBB2 77 for only applying half displacement and keep track of velocity and displacement separately

That I will leave to the existing rules to handle.

planet/subsector generation: similar to generating characters, great fun is to be had trying to make sense of the numbers and is something players can do for fun, the ref then just 'incorporates' them

That is, so far, the most challenging area for me. I have named the planets, and then thinking about what sort of planet would get that name. Then there will be the extended planet write-ups.

animal encounters: tell the truth, how many of you actually generate the ecosystems and encounter tables for every planet you generate, how many generic pouncers etc have you had pounce on characters over the years. It is fun to cobble together what's eating what and let your imagination run rampant as to the appearance and nature of the critters the characters will encounter.

I am working on this as well, as animal ecologies are sort of one of my many hobbies, and I have collected a lot of data over the years. One very useful book is a field guide to animals of Britain that I picked up on a visit to the UK.

It's actually a problem trying to fit in time for playing the game with others when there is so much you can do solo :devil:

Playing, who has time for playing when I am having so much fun designing?
:coffeegulp::coffeegulp::coffeegulp::coffeesip:

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

I've used computers to program various aspects of Traveller since the beginning. That's a game in itself.

 

[Garnfellow]

A few years ago this disparaging idea of "lonely fun" was making the rounds in the RPG community. The thought was, any game time not spent at the table with other players was wasted, misguided, and pitiable. Badwrongfun, indeed.

While I do think the critique has some small amount of merit, I also think it completely fails to account for the deep enjoyment many people get out of tinkering and creating solely for the sake of tinkering and creating.

And no game best exemplifies the enjoyment of solitary fun like Traveller with all the many subgames. As others have already noted, you can spent endless hours creating characters, ships, systems, and more. If you're having fun, how could that ever be considered wasted time?

It's like fans of Scrabble shitting on fans of crossword puzzles. They are two similar, but ultimately different pastimes.

 

[coliver988]

...Playing, who has time for playing when I am having so much fun designing?
:coffeegulp::coffeegulp::coffeegulp::coffeesip:

Exactly!

Although I've found in recent years it is more fun if the world building gets shared and actually used. I spent almost 20 years mostly just re-reading stuff, then got up the nerve to referee a game a couple of years ago. While I of course overdid a lot of the background, at least part of it was used, and can be re-used later. So that was very gratifying, and helped my to start trying to do better about the background in an actual usable manner. I'll still go overboard, of course, but as per this thread: all the creation part of Traveller is just plain fun.

 

[aramis]

A few years ago this disparaging idea of "lonely fun" was making the rounds in the RPG community. The thought was, any game time not spent at the table with other players was wasted, misguided, and pitiable. Badwrongfun, indeed.

While I do think the critique has some small amount of merit, I also think it completely fails to account for the deep enjoyment many people get out of tinkering and creating solely for the sake of tinkering and creating.

And no game best exemplifies the enjoyment of solitary fun like Traveller with all the many subgames. As others have already noted, you can spent endless hours creating characters, ships, systems, and more. If you're having fun, how could that ever be considered wasted time?

It's like fans of Scrabble shitting on fans of crossword puzzles. They are two similar, but ultimately different pastimes.

Similar circles also circulated the ideas that people don't know what they really want/enjoy, and that any level of simulation was badwrongfun, as well as a bunch of other batshit-crazy ideas.

They themselves were engaged in the real badwrongfun: denigration of others for differences in playstyle and experience desired.

 

[Kilgs]

Playing around with Traveller Drudge Work is almost all I do nowadays... and I'm having a blast!
==
On a different note, I see a lot of games with solo play rules nowadays. I think, with gamers getting older, it's far more of a thing.

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

Playing around with Traveller Drudge Work is almost all I do nowadays... and I'm having a blast!
==
On a different note, I see a lot of games with solo play rules nowadays. I think, with gamers getting older, it's far more of a thing.

People have been bugging me to connect to their Discord servers to be in their Traveller games, but I know zilch about it. I've always used Google Hangout for gaming in, because of the video/mic feature. Maybe when Hangout is gone for good, I'll look for another video/mic site (something like Blab, if it still exists).

 

[aramis]

People have been bugging me to connect to their Discord servers to be in their Traveller games, but I know zilch about it. I've always used Google Hangout for gaming in, because of the video/mic feature. Maybe when Hangout is gone for good, I'll look for another video/mic site (something like Blab, if it still exists).

discord is worth looking into - I've had better luck with it than with hangouts or skype.

 

[BlackBat242]

Roll20 also has vid/mic functionality - I am at this moment in the middle of our weekly session of a 1E AD&D game on Roll20 - we all have our cameras fired up and our mics on.

 

[Rerednaw]

People have been bugging me to connect to their Discord servers to be in their Traveller games, but I know zilch about it. I've always used Google Hangout for gaming in, because of the video/mic feature. Maybe when Hangout is gone for good, I'll look for another video/mic site (something like Blab, if it still exists).

I used skype, discord, teamspeak, r20, hangouts, whatever works. I prefer face to face but the glory of the internet makes it much easier to find groups.

And regarding solo play...as the other poster said I also had fun programming a character generator, star system and then subsector generator, and a ship builder. But you know what? Sometimes I just like having the tables out and rolling dice low-tech style.

It's just so...fun and satisfying

 

[creativehum]

They themselves were engaged in the real badwrongfun: denigration of others for differences in playstyle and experience desired.

From a post from two years ago:

Orinally Posted by Willie Dewitt
One of the biggest difficulties with MgT is the referee having to decide the difficulty and time required for a task in a second or two in order to keep the game flowing. I guess Traveller will always be like that because there are so many possibilities that will arise during a typical game.

Having spent decades winging it with 1st edition D&D (and OD&D) unclear wonkiness, I took to CT recently like an old friend. For a true old school rpg gamer, what is quoted above is a feature of a true classic rpg, not a negative. "Rulings not Rules." I'm really finding it's as simple as I want to make it. Sure I have to take into account and remember some basic duck and cover modifiers for combat for the sake of consistency, but for the most part I've been winging it with recent CT sessions. None of my players have seen the rules, and this helps a lot (no "hey, but the book sez...").

For non-combat skills it's even more open and fun. Apply mods at will! No two situations are ever exactly alike. I'm also finding it easy to hit on ideas for various ship personnel to make skill rolls for. Players love to roll for stuff, even if it's just the computer tech slapping cartridges in and out of the processor during an encounter.

I started in 1981... with AD&D and Moldvay Basic...

And the moment task systems appeared in products I had (Grand Survey), I never went back to the non-system that was CT RAW. Many of us "Grognards" found the lack of coherency a HUGE drawback, often, a fatal flaw. Especially once we got to systems with coherent single-mechanic designs, like BRP/RuneQuest, STRPG, MegaTraveller, Twilight 2000 1E, Hero System, Star Frontiers...
Even many other games kept it to two discrete mechanics - one for combat, and one for non-combat actions - with coherent difficulty systems in place, starting in the mid to late 1970's - Starships and Spacemen, Tunnels and Trolls, what would be later published in 1981 as Palladium's core engine for The Mechanoid Invasion.

Of the grogs I have gamed with who have gamed the entire time, most have come to despise the "Gygaxian Spew"... both the incoherency of the rules and the lack of organization, plus the so many digressions that should be sidebars... So many were looking for better that it turned into an industry...

Just because we've gray beards and have been playing for 3.5+ decades doesn't mean we actually liked the crappy rules of the era. We played them for lack of knowing anything better... until we did.

Some of the grogs do like it... but many more don't.

Whatever, boss...

 

[aramis]

From a post from two years ago:



Whatever, boss...

Pointing out that he does not speak for all is not the same as accusing him of having badwrong fun. And if you think it is, then you have a fundamental misunderstanding of what I wrote, both then and now.

ETA: If you'd targeted anyone else with that comment, you'd be up an infraction point for insulting another member.