Traveller's direction; history and future

[Blue Ghost]

When I first signed on to the COTI I rarely posted here. Now it seems like it's the only website I ever visit. Traveller has been a good hobby. Less expensive than model trains, and more interactive as well, and unlike some other hobbies, it allows a good deal of creativity.

On the "Could you live in a Scout Ship thread" the discussion got side tracked into what Traveller was meant to be, verse what it has become. When I first picked up the game it was "D&D in Space", with no real hard background, and a lot of suggestion of how to apply the rules to your gaming tastes.

Traveller has now evolved into a hard setting with a definite history, but also has lots of room for generalities in terms of developing house rules, pocket universes and importing known sci-fi settings using the current rules.

Does anyone think that Traveller can still be a generic RPG, or is it more now a creature unto itself with its own established background?

 

[mike wightman]

I have used the Traveller rules (or rather the cherry picked version I have cobbled together) to run just about any science fiction setting you care to name.

In the early days it was Star Trek, Star Wars, Blake's 7, Deathworld, Stainless Steel Rat, Niven's Known Space, Dune.

Recently I ran a game set in the Culture universe.

MTU is a version of the OTU that is built on the early stuff; it still progresses to the Rebellion, New Era and beyond, with 'historical' forays into the war of the ancients, the fall of the second Imperium, and adventuring during the long night.

Mongoose Traveller has definitely gone the way of generic - adapting their rules to several settings. While T5 is almost totally committed to describing the OTU.

 

[aramis]

I have used the Traveller rules (or rather the cherry picked version I have cobbled together) to run just about any science fiction setting you care to name.

In the early days it was Star Trek, Star Wars, Blake's 7, Deathworld, Stainless Steel Rat, Niven's Known Space, Dune.

Recently I ran a game set in the Culture universe.

MTU is a version of the OTU that is built on the early stuff; it still progresses to the Rebellion, New Era and beyond, with 'historical' forays into the war of the ancients, the fall of the second Imperium, and adventuring during the long night.

Mongoose Traveller has definitely gone the way of generic - adapting their rules to several settings. While T5 is almost totally committed to describing the OTU.

I've seen nothing but complaints about poorly done jobs by Mongoose's adaptations to other settings.

Traveller has a specific feel enforced by the Drive tech and ship building paradigms. Unless you alter that, you don't get anything but the Traveller feel.

I've run Trek with Traveller. It didn't feel like trek until the drive tech was changed. Even then, it wasn't a good emulation of Trek.

And CT NEVER ONCE provided alternate drive tech in a usable format. (The only alternate drive tech provided is the Annic Nova - which can finally be built under T5).

It hard codes large portions of the 3I into various rules elements (T&C, CGen, World Gen)...

There are some settings it borrows from heavily - Foundation, Niven/⌧elle's Codominion... those it can do almost unchanged, but that's because, functionally, Traveller is built close to their paradigms.

[m;]Oh, and Blue Ghost, YOU started the side-track. Don't try to make it look like someone else did. [/m;]

 

[Blue Ghost]

I've seen nothing but complaints about poorly done jobs by Mongoose's adaptations to other settings.

Traveller has a specific feel enforced by the Drive tech and ship building paradigms. Unless you alter that, you don't get anything but the Traveller feel.

I've run Trek with Traveller. It didn't feel like trek until the drive tech was changed. Even then, it wasn't a good emulation of Trek.

And CT NEVER ONCE provided alternate drive tech in a usable format. (The only alternate drive tech provided is the Annic Nova - which can finally be built under T5).

I think the Jump Drive section states something like whatever you choose to call it, be it warp drive, hyperspace, or something else, it's the jump drive mechanic in the game that you use to get your characters from star to star in the setting of your choice.

 

[Blue Ghost]

I have used the Traveller rules (or rather the cherry picked version I have cobbled together) to run just about any science fiction setting you care to name.

In the early days it was Star Trek, Star Wars, Blake's 7, Deathworld, Stainless Steel Rat, Niven's Known Space, Dune.

Recently I ran a game set in the Culture universe.

MTU is a version of the OTU that is built on the early stuff; it still progresses to the Rebellion, New Era and beyond, with 'historical' forays into the war of the ancients, the fall of the second Imperium, and adventuring during the long night.

Mongoose Traveller has definitely gone the way of generic - adapting their rules to several settings. While T5 is almost totally committed to describing the OTU.

Yeah, I was talking about it with someone else off the boards about this very issue. I think for a lot of people Traveller has become setting specific. The rules seem fungible enough to create your settings and others, and that's pretty much what the rules stated too.

The only real beef I have with anything regarding an official setting and what rules say you can do to create your own, are some of the equipment descriptions. We had the big heated computer technology debate throughout the years of what today's desk tops and lap tops can do compared to a Traveller starship mainframe. My setting issues are with the official description of "Battledress" and the LASER-pistol; the "1950's spacesuit" description and the LASER pistol needing a backpack powerpack, to me really torpedo the ability to port Traveller to Doc Who, Galactica, or even Buck Rogers. And so you have to come up with stuff to fit the bill for your players.

I think T5 has, to its credit, addressed technology loopholes such that you can go on to create your personal phaser with stun and disintegrate settings, and thus create a backdrop that uses those devices.

 

[rancke]

I think the Jump Drive section states something like whatever you choose to call it, be it warp drive, hyperspace, or something else, it's the jump drive mechanic in the game that you use to get your characters from star to star in the setting of your choice.

But there are many settings where you can't use jump drives to stand in for drive of the setting. All the ones where you can get more than six parsecs in a week, for instance. And all the ones where a small starship costs [the equivalent of] Cr100,000. And the ones where you can detect and intercept moving starships.


Hans

 

[mike wightman]

You can dispense with power packs for energy weapons easily enough if the setting doesn't have them, you just have the good old magic energy cell about the size of a pistol magazine

Similarly you can expand the capabilities of powered armour to be setting specific, you can make up belt screens for personal protection etc.

This to me was/is the versatility of Traveller, I can make stuff up using the stuff in the books as guidelines.

 

[Spinward Scout]

My setting issues are with the official description of "Battledress" and the LASER-pistol; the "1950's spacesuit" description and the LASER pistol needing a backpack powerpack, to me really torpedo the ability to port Traveller to Doc Who, Galactica, or even Buck Rogers.

Honestly, I think that would work perfect in a Doctor Who setting. Especially with the earlier Doctors. The new Doctor Who rpg has a chapter called 'Travelling in the 4th Dimension' and the first thing that came to mind when I saw that was Traveller. Traveller and Doctor Who would be awesome.

 

[Blue Ghost]

Marc Miller isn't big on Time Travel, and I think frowns on it. Still, I think it would be fun for players if Mongoose could wrangle a "Traveller; Doctor Who" license.

mike wightman; yeah, I came up with my own way back when, and I don't know if you were around, but we talked about disposable power packs for weapons; military grade packs, and "mercenary" grade packs that were essentially recycled packs didn't deliver as much juice as a fresh military pack / battery from the factory.

A guy I gamed with a few years back said that T4 was the best iteration of Traveller. I thought he was out of his mind. Through the various revamping of tools and background I've still gravitated towards classic Traveller with either an undefined or partially defined Imperium, with neighbors who also fell into that description.

 

[mike wightman]

T4 has some very good rules hidden within the dross. The psionics rules and the combat system are the bits I've cherry picked - Emperor's Arsenal and Central Supply Catalogue are always near to hand when running a game. Pocket Empires and Imperial Squadrons are two of my favourite Traveller supplements.

The worst things about T4 IMHO are the task system and the poor production values for FF&S

 

[Timerover51]

The RPGs that I am most familiar with are Dungeons and Dragons (Little Tan books, Blue Book and successors to Blue Book) and AD&D, Middle-Earth Roleplaying, Traveller, and Morrow Project.

Dungeons and Dragons has the widest range of what you can do, as there is really no fixed fantasy world that every player is expected to operate in. You do have things like Greyhawk and the Forbidden Realms, but if you want to run your own world and universe, no problems.

The Morrow Project assumed a nuclear war in the 1980s, with you and your group in what amounted to stasis for a couple of hundred years, whereupon you were revived and then ventured out into the world. You had current weaponry and equipment, but how the world looked depended on your view of things. Some adventures were released, but they were quite localized, so what you did as Gamemaster was pretty much up to you. It did help if you had some knowledge of weapons and what they could do.

Middle Earth Roleplaying, aka MERP, had an extremely well developed milieu courtesy of Professor Tolkien, but oddly enough, was not that restrictive. While the setting of Northeastern Middle Earth was pretty well fixed, you had the option of adventuring in the Courts of Ardor area in the Far South, or heading out to the Far East, in the area where Alatar and Pallando headed. Those areas were a lot more open to a creative GM. However, even the Northeast gave a range of operations anywhere from the First Age to the early period of the Fourth, so roughly 7,000 years to play with, and a very large area. The First Age was not so thoroughly sketched in by Tolkien, so players and GMs could use their imaginations based on the published material, which for the First Age focused on the major characters and creatures.

Then you have Traveller, which I started out with the LBBs, and purchased all of the further editions, but still need to get T5. While the LBBs gave hints of an Imperium, you could work up your own setting and adapt them to cover a wide range of existing science fiction, from the Solar Queen series by Andre Norton to H. Beam Piper works to some of Christopher Anvil's stuff. Then Supplement 3, the Spinward Marches, came out, and the Imperium was there with a vengeance. The JTAS added to the established canon, although some of the Amber Zones occurred on no recognizable planet in the Marches. At that point, the creativity seemed to have died a bit, and the focus was on how the Imperium operated and what the restrictions were. Then the Civil War and Virus came along and at that point, I lost interest, and figured that I would stick with Classic, and ignore the published material.

The one really creative idea that I have seen published in Attack Squadron Roswell, but that works because Mongoose Traveller is adapted to work in the early 1950s, way before any established canon.

Basically what I am saying is that the canon is too rigid. Let people toss the Imperium and included matter out and work up their own universe based on Traveller. Have a universe without the Zhodani and the K'kree and the Hivers, and some of the other alien races. Start from a recently settled planet and then explore an entire sub sector, without having everything fixed in advance. Let the Scout Service actually scout something for a change. Let the Free Traders really operate on the fringes, rather than struggle for crumbs on the established shipping routes.

 

[mike wightman]

Basically what I am saying is that the canon is too rigid. Let people toss the Imperium and included matter out and work up their own universe based on Traveller. Have a universe without the Zhodani and the K'kree and the Hivers, and some of the other alien races. Start from a recently settled planet and then explore an entire sub sector, without having everything fixed in advance. Let the Scout Service actually scout something for a change. Let the Free Traders really operate on the fringes, rather than struggle for crumbs on the established shipping routes.

I agree with you completely.

The OTU could have remained an exemplar, loose setting, instead of the contradictory sprawling mess it became (often due to third party authors making up stuff).

 

[rancke]

Basically what I am saying is that the canon is too rigid. Let people toss the Imperium and included matter out and work up their own universe based on Traveller. Have a universe without the Zhodani and the K'kree and the Hivers, and some of the other alien races. Start from a recently settled planet and then explore an entire sub sector, without having everything fixed in advance. Let the Scout Service actually scout something for a change. Let the Free Traders really operate on the fringes, rather than struggle for crumbs on the established shipping routes.

That seems to me to be completely wrong and missing the point of having an official game universe entirely.

There's nothing, and never was anything, that prevents anyone from doing exactly as you say, toss the Imperium and all the rest. The only thing that is, arguably, missing is an explicit statement to that effect. And I'm puzzled as to why something like that would be necessary, although I have to admit that the evidence shows that there are a lot of people who don't understand that they're free to do it. I just don't get that.

The Third Imperium setting is an official game universe. As such, it's supposed to be as rigidly defined as is practically possible. And that should not be a problem. If a referee doesn't want a rigidly defined game universe, all he has to do is to not use it. What could be easier? But if a referee does want a well-described setting and there isn't one, he's out of luck and the ones who don't want one is not one iota better off.

It's true that the Imperium does not have an open frontier, which I'll grant you was a mistake (IMO). But Charted Space does have one. All around it, as a matter of fact. All you have to do to use it is to not use 99% of everything that has been written about the setting. Start your campaign on the far side of the Vlazdumecta and explore unknown space to your heart's content. Or set your campaign in an earlier era.

Canon can never be too rigid (at least for referees -- writers is, or can be, another story), because there's nothing that prevents referees from ignoring any and all canon.


Hans

 

[Ran Targas]

IDIC

Can there be two or more OTUs like was done with D&D? Why only one? Alternate timelines? Alternate dimensions? Different areas of the Milky Way or even another galaxy?

The OTU was not created overnight and was the result of a lot of input from fans of the game. A second OTU would allow for another Burgess Shale moment where designers and fans could build something quite unique and new, perhaps encouraging a new generation of fans to take up the game and submit ideas. Then too, if something submitted fit better in the existing OTU, it might find a home there instead. Or maybe it stars a third OTU at some point. The idea is to create a new or several new venues for creativity and cooperation to develop and grow with the cream rising to the top.

Isn't this how the OTU developed? And how many great ideas had to be cast aside and forgotten because they didn't fit within the limited confines of the OTU at the time they were submitted?

 

[aramis]

I agree with you completely.

The OTU could have remained an exemplar, loose setting, instead of the contradictory sprawling mess it became (often due to third party authors making up stuff).

Most of the Third-Party stuff was decanonized in 1984... Like all the Judges Guild sectors. (which, really, were the best thing JG did besides the screen).

It's worth reiterating, tho', much of the OTU-ish feel is strongly encoded in the jump mechanics.

What little Foundation I've read works with Jump alright; it's a pretty close ringer for the Codominion Universe's Alderson drive (but note that Alderson Drive is a bit finicky about entry exit points; add that, and MiGE is pretty much about straight TL 16... due to the screens. Yeah, we love the MacArthur... because we can build the ol' Mac.

Traveller tech is too low for Star Trek (even in 1E, it's at or off the charts).

BSG tech is pretty firmly around 12, but has a different space drive, FTL commo, and a number of other things that don't work for Traveller.

Buck Rogers is yet another space drive and FTL commo setting. Both hyperdrives (on big ships) and stargates. Stargates in Traveller are TL 22+... (Adv 12). But even if someone wanted to, it was tied closely to TSR by 1984.

Dune, popular as it was, was a wacky tech paradigm. Not a good fit.

The Fuzzy series looks like a good fit, but it's one I've read but not committed to memory well.

Tweaking CT to do other settings is not a trivial task, unless those settings have no FTL commo, and no or slow FTL drives, no teleporters, etc.

The best results from Traveller as quasi-generic came from simply rolling up a setting, and using what's there. It may not be the OTU, but it's no worse a play experience. I've heard lots of complaints about using it for other SF settings. Including my own players. (Star Trek really isn't a good fit. Even tho the speeds in TOS are actually comparable. The tech paradigm really is quite different.)

By 79, the rules were being written to support a big ship OTU... when I came to Traveller, most of the people I knew considered Traveller to be the OTU. I wouldn't encounter a non-OTU game run by anyone else until 1994. And I ran a Trek game in '90, and (I'm almost embarrased to admit) a Tron session in 1984. And I was able to use Car Wars as a Traveller addon... (1 CW DP = 2d6 personal combat wounds.)

My Trek conversion involved a rescaling of the tech levels... Jump didn't exist, but Warp did. TL 10 was Antimatter plants. M-Drives were 1 G and rating x 10 PSL. PP Fuel was 5 years in the drive itself. Ship Phasers were meson gun equivalents. by the time I got done, it was unplayable. It was the wrong tone of mechanics. Traveller mechanics impose a strong feel, and it didn't overcome it.

The Judge Dredd conversion for Mongoose feels VERY wrong to me; even more wrong than their D20 one. Fortunately, I've still got the old GW Judge Dredd RPG.... when I want a dredd fix, I use it. Despite having both the others. What's wrong? They upped the complexity. They make age 18 several terms done. They issue skills at T4/T5 rates for Judges... but not for crooks. Only a surprise attack has much chance of even making a judge worry...

One conversion has promise; the Bab5 one. It feels incomplete.

The Slammers one lacks the rules for integrating the new tech into the (released later) vehicle design system... and it's not too outré... but it's also a setting very much not about spaceships.

When even the pros seem to botch adaptations... is it truly generic?
When it's bloody hard to adjust the tone due to setting encoding in rules, it s it really generic?

I genuinely think the claims of genericness are mere lip service until TNE's FF&S. T5 is the most generic ruleset yet, but still, it has a lot of setting encoded and enshrined in rules. And not in the fluff, either. Too much to really be generic.

 

[rancke]

Can there be two or more OTUs like was done with D&D? Why only one? Alternate timelines? Alternate dimensions? Different areas of the Milky Way or even another galaxy?

There's no reason why not. GDW and its successors just never chose to go that way (Unless you count the different milieus).

The only problem with multiple supported settings (to me, personally) is that an interstellar setting is really big and logically a vast amount of information would be available to PCs. It takes a lot of work to detail such a setting adequately¹. Doing more than one official setting splits the available effort between them.

¹ What do I regard as 'adequate'? A level of detail similar to what you find in The Traveller Adventure and GT: Sword Worlds. With selected regions (a world here, a starport there) even better detailed.​

Thje one thing that annoyed me most about the Rebellion was that GDW and DGP stopped supporting the Classic Era.


Hans

 

[Blue Ghost]

Alatar and Pallando

Most interesting, as I was looking up those two characters a couple weeks back ... something was niggling by brain about Gandalf's "order"...but nevermind.

Can there be two or more OTUs like was done with D&D? Why only one? Alternate timelines? Alternate dimensions? Different areas of the Milky Way or even another galaxy?

The OTU was not created overnight and was the result of a lot of input from fans of the game.

Yeah, I think it's doable. How many people would buy it is another matter. But, if this were the 80s, I could imagine the powers that be getting licenses for something like a "Star Wars", "Buck Rogers" or even "Galactica", and putting them out there.

I don't think adopting nor adapting settings with the Traveller rues is hard at all. I think what may bog some people down is trying to find the right Traveller tech to mimic or supplant the actual tech from the setting desire.

Example; I probably would have just created a starship phaser bank as opposed to letting Meson Guns = Star Trek phasers on starships. The phaser bank would cause all kinds of havoc by taking out chunks of starships, and shield technology would (and does) operate differently from black or white globe generators. It might take some elbow grease, but in the end you're going to have your Star Fleet personnel using transporters, tricorders, hand phasers, zipping around at warp speed instead of poking around at maneuver.

I wasn't around for the Virus era (much). I was changing careers at the time and back in school, so I only bought a handful of books just as Imperiumgames was about to close up shop. That and Rebellion, to me at least, were more or less "generic seasoning" for what I've always looked at as a "generic sci-fi game" in spite of the official setting. But that's just me.

John Watt's line of games does offer an ATU. Maybe there's possibilities there that people would like to ask for?

 

[Independence Games]

Can there be two or more OTUs like was done with D&D? Why only one? Alternate timelines? Alternate dimensions? Different areas of the Milky Way or even another galaxy?

I feel that we are doing quite well with our Clement Sector "alternate Traveller universe" and there are other publishers out there doing a great job with it as well. Spica's Outer Veil and Zozer's Orbital immediately leap to mind.

 

[Blue Ghost]

I agree with you completely.

The OTU could have remained an exemplar, loose setting, instead of the contradictory sprawling mess it became (often due to third party authors making up stuff).

What's interesting is that as Traveller was evolving I never got a sense of "The Imperium", so much as a kind of open ended setting that you could define as you saw fit.

Vargr, Aslan and the rest, at that time, were generic aliens you could use if you needed some. Even CT adventure "Leviathan" was more or less a generic microgame that allowed players to act as explorers and merchants in an undefined sector. That wouldn't work with T5 or even T4 or TNE, now that the Imperium is the Imperium. One wonders if the CT adventures or the seeds in Far Traveller or JTAS would pass muster with T5. I'm not sure that some of them would.

Are there going to be future events for the OTU? More rebellions? Viruses? The classic "Alien Invasion"?

 

[mike wightman]

Well there is the promise of the Galaxiad for T5 which will move the setting forward once more.