What do we like about traveller!!!

[Elliot]

Quote by Aramis
'BTW, Elliot: MT's task system was originally the DGP Task system for CT. It saw print (using 1d10 instead of 2d6) in 2300.'

I know that

(a while back someone dissing DGP (sadly so common now) said that DGP were 'jumping on the band wagon then fashionable in gaming' by putting out the task system for Traveller. That infuriated me as apart from early Steve Jackson stuff (which wasnt too developed IIRC) there was no generic task system in RPGing.

I may stand to be corrected, however.

 

[rancke]

What I like is the (comparatively) huge amount of background material that has been produced for the OTU/GTU over the years. It's still only tiny part of a fraction of a sliver of what a multi-world SF setting should have, but it's miles ahead of any other setting. And despite my incessant carping over inconsistencies, it is an amazingly coherent background when you consider how many people have worked on it over the years.


Hans

 

[BetterThanLife]

What I love is the ability to run virtually any scenario from any other game, with a little modification of course, and still have a wide range of choices with the published materials.

What I love is the simpler starship design sequences of HG and now T20.

What I love is the wealth of deckplans, software, support and information available to make sure I can write scenarios.

Shotguns in space? Give me Cutlasses and Boarding Axes. You can't have true swashbuckling without Cutlasses.

Though how do you make someone walk the plank on a Kinunir?

What I love is a Universe with a coherent government and system that isn't watching everything all the time.

But what I love most is teh ability to have all the information at my fingertips, being able to make a few minor alterations to fit my ideas on how certain things should work and still get to use all of the material.

Oh and I do love the lively discussions that the OTU tends to create among its more vocal fans.

 

[jchurchill]

I have been reading some of the T4 material latety having purchased used books or downloading it from Drivethru and I happen to be one of those people who like it. TNE generally leaves me rather cold but all I have seen is Regency sourcebook and a few other things -- not the rules set or the new characters, which leads me to the following thought:

Lawyers? lawyers in space? What were they thinking? I can just imagine that no one would play that character and that the NPC lawyer characters would spend inordinate amounts of time being used to test faulty airlocks or nuclear hand grenades:

"Boom. Oh dear, the ship's lawyer seems to have disintegrated. Oh dear, those six chasers with skin like battle dress are eating our lawyer alive. No use in shooting at them but maybe we can shoot our lawyer to save him from suffering...on second thought bullets are very expensive and he isn't screaming as loudly as he was a few minutes ago..."

 

[jchurchill]

"Though how do you make someone walk the plank on a Kinunir?"

It's called an airlock now. Or you could use those snappy jump tubes but forget to put the jumper in a capusule.

 

[daryen]

Originally posted by secretagent:
Lawyers? lawyers in space? What were they thinking? I can just imagine that no one would play that character and that the NPC lawyer characters would spend inordinate amounts of time being used to test faulty airlocks or nuclear hand grenades ...

You might be surprised. I am currently in a PBeM campaign, and we have a bureaucrat character. No, not a lawyer, but close enough. Not surprisingly, he is very useful, and the player makes him [an] absolute scream. (Our two funniest characters are the bureaucrat and an "other" who obviously didn't completely recover from a torture session or something.)

Also, lawyer characters can be incredibly useful. Even Schlock Mercenary has a lawyer character as part of their crew.

[Edit: added the "an" above. I meant that the character is funny, not that he screams a lot. Fortunately, it looks like you figured that out.

]

 

[jchurchill]

"You might be surprised."

Perhaps but little surprises me anymore.

"...and we have a bureaucrat character. No, not a lawyer, but close enough."

True, often bureaucrats/politicians are people who could not hack it in law or law school.

"Not surprisingly, he is very useful, and the player makes him absolute scream."

They are very useful and when played properly can be hilarious. But do people really like the character? Is the player a bureaucrat in real life?

"Also, lawyer characters can be incredibly useful. Even Schlock Mercenary has a lawyer character as part of their crew."

Indeed. The lawyer jokes always stop as soon as those who make them need the help of a lawyer. Then the dialogue becomes more like the exchange between Peter Lorre and Humphrey Bogart in "Casablanca." "Save me Rick, save me. You must help me."

 

[Elliot]

One thing I noticed about published CT adventures was that Admin was often a more important skill than rifle. How 'real life' and no doubt why Mr Malenfant's friends at RPGnet hate traveller so much - 'I am just going to fill in the Form N2456R Requisition Data Sheet' is not quite as romantic as 'I will use my psionic powers to evade Stormtroopers and turn off the tractor beam'

Me - I love the whole approach that Traveller has to red tape and annoying bureacracy.

 

[Malenfant]

How 'real life' and no doubt why Mr Malenfant's friends at RPGnet hate traveller so much

I like how you make it sound like it's some conspiracy I've organised...

I simply asked people outside of Traveller the question on rpgnet - their responses are unprompted and represent what they think of Traveller and what puts them off it. It's good to get the view from outside... and it's good to actually listen to those views...

 

[FlightCommanderSolitude]

A few days ago I did a search on Google Groups for Traveller. Among the millions of ebay links were some actual comments about Traveller that were kind of interesting. I got the impression that there were a whole lot of people - gamers, no less - who didn't realize that the game had moved beyond the little black books.

 

[jchurchill]

One thing I noticed about published CT adventures was that Admin was often a more important skill than rifle.
==================================================
Good Traveller adventures always involved much more thinking than trigger pulling. The Mercenary based adventures were there for the trigger happy weekend warriors and those could be fun to play too but too much reliance on guns tended to get characters killed off. The real world feel where 1 or 2 bullet wounds would kill your character was a nice check on the cowboy mentality.

 

[BetterThanLife]

Wait a minute! The game moved beyond the little black books?

Originally posted by FlightCommanderSolitude:
A few days ago I did a search on Google Groups for Traveller. Among the millions of ebay links were some actual comments about Traveller that were kind of interesting. I got the impression that there were a whole lot of people - gamers, no less - who didn't realize that the game had moved beyond the little black books.

 

[BetterThanLife]

In CT i thought it was rare, and you had to be extremely lucky to survive one wound. Well it wouldn't neccessarily kill you but it would, at a minimum, render you unconscious. In CT the axiom was always don't get hit. Shoot first, don't miss, make sure you can hit all of them in round 1. And that was successful combat in CT. Combat in CT tended to last one round or at most two. Damn straight Admin, Forgery, Bribery and Negotiation were more important skills than Combat Rifleman in most adventures. But when you needed Combat Rifleman you needed it badly!

Originally posted by secretagent:
One thing I noticed about published CT adventures was that Admin was often a more important skill than rifle.
==================================================
Good Traveller adventures always involved much more thinking than trigger pulling. The Mercenary based adventures were there for the trigger happy weekend warriors and those could be fun to play too but too much reliance on guns tended to get characters killed off. The real world feel where 1 or 2 bullet wounds would kill your character was a nice check on the cowboy mentality.

 

[jchurchill]

Agreed Bhoins, except that the original observation was made by Elliot. I merely seconded it.

The thing I really like about Traveller is that one could just as easily play a diplomat as a retired Marine Commando and that a good mix was to have both. Of course once the rules shifted to 2nd careers one oculd be a retired Marine Commando/Counselor from the Foreign Service.

And yes, when the bullets fly --unless there was a lot of cover -- the first accurate shots counted.

 

[Elliot]

Well the RPGnet people dont like that - they want to be Jedi, 24th level Paladins, Matrix chosen or something like that...

What I think that Traveller offers is Sci Fi gaming that isnt about that - in many respects you play Deckard or the sad cop who makes little origami unicorns in Blade Runner.

Joe Fugate of DGP once slammed a fanboy in the sameway that the worst offenders on these boards slam more junior commentators and said that he had portrayed Lucan too darkly - and this was because Traveller was a big space opera game, not a dark future (MTJ4). I normally like Joe's comments (his adventures are perhaps a bit on the dull side) but this comment is plain wrong.

To me, Traveller has always been about the ordinary Joe in a dark conspiracy. Except the dark conspiracy has more to do with evil bosses and unions (Across the Bright Face), corporate intrigue (the Trav Adventure), blackmail and terrorism (Marooned), plain cruelty (RSG), politic corruption (Kinunir, Prison Planet), etc.

Traveller (which to me at least is synonymous with the 3I) has its own dynamic, it is not derivative of a TV series (I agree Firefly is the nearest), it was (perhaps no longer) a path setter as a rules system and captures that brand of sci fi that puts the dip sh*t in the middle of a universe s/he cant understand.

Heck, now I see why people who play other RPGs hate it

 

[Malenfant]

You may not realise it, but that "rpgnet mindset" is actually very common in the gamer community. People generally want to play characters that make a difference, and that stand out in the setting - they don't want to play pawns, they want to be the ones that do the controlling.

I figured Traveller was supposed to be more about being the master of your own ship and able to ply the spaceways than being a pawn in a conspiracy, myself. But obviously you could play it either way. Regardless, you're still playing ordinary joes, and that just isn't that attractive a concept in the RPG community. Otherwise, you'd get people falling over themselves to play hapless peasants in D&D instead of fighters and clerics and wizards, right?

I think the trick is to present the "ordinary joe" angle as something that is actually quite cool.

captures that brand of sci fi that puts the dip sh*t in the middle of a universe s/he cant understand

That doesn't help either. Traditionally, games with very complex backgrounds aren't that popular, largely because people don't know where to start explaining them to their players (c.f. Skyrealms of Jorune, Tekumel, Runequest, Transhuman Space...)

 

[daryen]

Originally posted by Malenfant:
You may not realise it, but that "rpgnet mindset" is actually very common in the gamer community. People generally want to play characters that make a difference, and that stand out in the setting - they don't want to play pawns, they want to be the ones that do the controlling.

I want to point out there are two separate concepts here. The first is "making a difference". The second is "being a superhero".

Traveller, especially the incarnations after CT, gave players every chance to "make a difference". (And, depending on who you played, you could still make a difference in CT, too.) Traveller gives plenty of chances to "make a difference".

What Traveller does not do is give you a chance to "be a superhero". There are no Jedi. There are no Lensmen. There are no 24th level Rangers able to slay a Kobold army single handedly. The only real option is to be a powerful psion, but the game is stacked against that ever happening.

So, if you want to be Luke Skywalker, then Traveller isn't for you. But if you want to be John Sheridan, then we can definitely make that work.

 

[signless]

On this particular matter, I beg to differ. You COULD be Luke, a Lensman, or even John Sheridan in Traveller...heck in a couple of the original supplements they even statted those (and plenty of others, too).
What my assertion has always been, is that Traveller was a game of science fiction, admittedly it was geared toward taking a "harder" bent...but man, you can't get ANY further AWAY from hard science than psionics.
Perhaps what bothers me so much is that I bought into a game which promised me science fiction adventure in the far future, delivered with supplements such as Citizens of the Imperium
Annic Nova and Marooned, and then promptly decided to tell me to stuff my universe up my rear end because SOMEONE ELSE was gonna make an "official" setting. I got patronized and patted on the head and told that it was okay to keep playing in my lil' universe (ain't he just so cute), but the big boys were taking control, now...so just stay out of the way.
I LIKED the simplicity of world and starship design in CT, the chargen was a little goofy - but there is plenty of validity to point to that as a "game within a game" - but it didn't really do much to detract from the game. Creating an Imperium hemmed-in by rather unimaginative alien polities (I'm sorry, they're STILL cat-people, dog-people, starfish-people and centaur vegetarians from hell...I LIKE 'em - but I always preferred my aliens a bit more...alien), making it so vast that crossing it to play published adventures with the same party became a ROYAL pain in the ass, and then deciding to canonize the game so much it couldn't keep up with the times was simply ridiculous.
Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the sweat and effort talented and creative people have put in to developing the OTU...I just wish it wouldn't have been the ONLY path the powers-that-be decided to take.

 

[Elliot]

Malenfant said

'I think the trick is to present the "ordinary joe" angle as something that is actually quite cool.'

absolutely concur - which is why I agree with you that the Firefly angle is the best way to present Traveller at the moment.

 

[BetterThanLife]

I love the rabid, vegan fanatic horses of a different color. I'll bet they get along well with PETA, at least until the PETA people realize they are on the endangered species list as far as the K'Kree are concerned. I like the Hivers, the we don't want to fight you, just manipulate your tendencies so you don't want to fight us and then we can ram our Supersoldiers down your throat.

And of course you have to have Vargr, I mean look at Spaceballs. In it there is a Mog. Half man, half dor. He was his own best friend.

Without Vargr how would you get to ask questions like do Vargr keep dogs?

Now given limited frames of reference that we all share. What is wrong with Uplifted Dogs and Bears? I mean look at various sciencefiction films and see what our choices in humanoid aliens seem to be. BattleStar Galactica, Robots. StarTrek, Vulcans, Klingons, Romulans (Look suspiciously like Vulcans.) Andorians. They all look like Humans. Granted there are a few that don't but they generally were one episode each, Gorn and Tholians for example. Oh and lets not forget the intelligent cloud.

At least Aslan and Vargr are humanoid without looking Human. I am seriously thinking of putting "The People" on a planet in MTU. (Treecats) But I would have to find a planet where Cellery can grow.

How would you describe a Wookie or an Ewok? DOg and cat people as far as I am concerned and contempory to CT.