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What makes Traveller great?

A

Azezel

SOC-6
That's the question I've been asked by one of the folks in my group. Can I email him back with 'what makes Traveller great'.

Mmm, tough question. I think it is great, but I admit, I'm struggling with how to condense it into an email.

(If it matters, I'm specifically talking about classic-flavoured Mongoose circa 1105)


Some of the things which instantly occurred to me:

Character generation is a game in itself, and quite a fun one.

The Third Imperium is vast enough and hands-off enough to have almost anything in it.

The Age-of-Sail in space tropes make it a massively adventuure-friendly system/setting where player characters are not only permitted to be exceptional, but often required to be. It's a game where heroes are required.

I love the feudal-future society. I love the incestuously mixed nobility, government and megacorps. The combination of Dune and Gormenghast and luis the 14th.

I love that time a group of PCs accidentally went six months back in time and started the war they were investigating, by being mistaken for spies. And that chase-scene with the grav-tanks and grav-bikes through a city full of skyscrapers. And the PC skipper who hijacked his own ship from other hijackers by using their own plan. And my planet so polluted that there's an ocean on fire. And Arbelatra's general awesomeness in everything. And a million other things.

I like the fact that Traveller skews away from being Space Fantasy for the most part. It's classic sci-fi in the tradition of Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein and LeGuin.


All of these things and more make it a great game, but I really struggle to synthesize an answer for my mate. Little help?
 
Good question and response.

One thing that stands out in my mind is that I learned to play Traveller (Classic) at about the same time that I learned Gamma World and Star Frontiers and Basic D&D and AD&D 1st Edition. Of those games, I still play Traveller (Classic and Mongoose) regularly and would probably be willing to play AD&D 1ed if I found a game.

So what makes Traveller and AD&D 1ed stand out from the crowd?
In both cases, the core mechanics of the game are easy enough to quickly grasp and start having fun the same day. On the other hand, both settings and rules (AD&D 1ed and Traveller) have enough richness and depth to continue to delight and surprise.

That (strictly my opinion) is why both Classic Traveller and AD&D 1ed appeal to enough people in a way that few other games do, that Mongoose would start with CT when building a new Traveller edition and Mongoose house rule system, and D&D 5ed is rumored to be returning to some of its AD&D 1ed roots.
 
To me, the thing that makes Traveller great is that it's wide-open; the sky is literally the limit.

You can run any possible type of campaign; espionage, trading, military adventures, or anything else you can think up, including every possible combination of multiple genres.

There's an enormous resource base if you want to use the Third Imperium and associated material, or you have complete freedom to make up your own universe.
And a mini-game of generating your universe, just as character creation is a game in and of itself.

And as a GM, one of the best things for me is the character creation game. The fact that characters have a history before they start adventuring goes a LONG way toward giving you a handle on a personality before you introduce any new character.
New NPCs practically write their own background stories in my current game before my players meet them.
 
Azezel said:
That's the question I've been asked by one of the folks in my group. Can I email him back with 'what makes Traveller great'.

Mmm, tough question. I think it is great, but I admit, I'm struggling with how to condense it into an email.
Click to expand...
I love these kind of convos with other players. First I find out what game they play and then give them a comparison with Traveller. Compare everything. CharGen, combat, skills, skill checks, health, armor/defense, character types, generics, ease of GMing, etc. And is the game still fun if you strip out initiative and combat rounds/turns, or does it become broken? And I would argue that Mongoose Traveller can be used for any genre. Not just sci-fi.

I don't tell them it's great. They figure that out themselves.
 
The first thing that ever caught my eye with Traveller was the artwork in The Traveller Book. And there's been some seriously great artwork with all of the editions over the years.
 
I agree that diversity is the best element of Traveller games.

My players who like Traveller told me they like it because they can be trying new stuff every game and never run out. The game is a natural sandbox with few confines, except of course the characters' resources.
 
Hehe, thanks, Shonner!

T'be fair (and I'm trying very hard to be it) all RPG artwork was pretty hilarious/terrible back in the day. Some of it still is (I'm looking at you, Mage the Awakening!)

Did anyone else notice that picture of Alan Moore in the Mongoose pocket core book?
 
Probably the thing that makes me like Traveller the most was the ease of use of the original three Little Black Books, and the flexibility of the game to allow for a very wide range of technology.
 
The two biggest factors for me is that it (CT in this case) is fairly rules light and that its subsystems fit together well. Planet generation has elegant links to both the trade and animal creation rules.
 
Azezel said:
That's the question I've been asked by one of the folks in my group. Can I email him back with 'what makes Traveller great'.

Mmm, tough question. I think it is great, but I admit, I'm struggling with how to condense it into an email.

(If it matters, I'm specifically talking about classic-flavoured Mongoose circa 1105)


Some of the things which instantly occurred to me:

Character generation is a game in itself, and quite a fun one.

The Third Imperium is vast enough and hands-off enough to have almost anything in it.

The Age-of-Sail in space tropes make it a massively adventuure-friendly system/setting where player characters are not only permitted to be exceptional, but often required to be. It's a game where heroes are required.

I love the feudal-future society. I love the incestuously mixed nobility, government and megacorps. The combination of Dune and Gormenghast and luis the 14th.

I love that time a group of PCs accidentally went six months back in time and started the war they were investigating, by being mistaken for spies. And that chase-scene with the grav-tanks and grav-bikes through a city full of skyscrapers. And the PC skipper who hijacked his own ship from other hijackers by using their own plan. And my planet so polluted that there's an ocean on fire. And Arbelatra's general awesomeness in everything. And a million other things.

I like the fact that Traveller skews away from being Space Fantasy for the most part. It's classic sci-fi in the tradition of Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein and LeGuin.


All of these things and more make it a great game, but I really struggle to synthesize an answer for my mate. Little help?
Click to expand...

I need to finish painting the house, fix a few things, and prep some publications (paper / dead-tree ... sorry folks, no PDFs), but will offer some thoughts on why I stuck with Traveller for such a long time.

I discovered Traveller as a game actually after I was introduced to Dwarf Star's small series of games given to me by a good friend. The Dwarfstar Publications were really first rate games; excellent production values; great printing, professional quality artwork, and excellent story material within. My friend and I discovered a whole new world gaming during the summer with the atrium open to the stars, and listening to 80's tunes with a coke and pizza. You can't beat those memories.

Not soon after Traveller came to the fore. I had always seen the LBBs on the back rack of the game store, but was unimpressed with the production values. I love the Keith brothers' writing, but even thirty plus years later I think Bill Keith still needs to attend an art academy. Sorry, mister Keith, if you're reading this, but though your subjects are no Venus so it is that you are no Botticelli. So I dismissed it, even though I'd heard about it, and had perused a few of the books.

But, somehow, I had come across a brand new box edition of "Starter Traveller". The cover art was incredible, and creating characters was a game unto itself, to borrow from the OP. Star Wars was still a big thing, and so that, John Williams in the background, referencing the TTA and other sci-fi for inspiration ... it just all came together. Then when "Aliens" hit the big screen, it was a "wow, how cool is that?!" kind of moment.

I'll be honest here, after going through some of the classic adventures a second time, I think quite a few are police-criminology "thought experiments", but, even so, there's still that elements of science fiction allowing the players to take themselves away from that, and into more far-out realms. Time-travel and alternative universes may not be canon nor part of the rules of Traveller, but you as the player and GM can do anything you want with your sessions.

The 8+ on 2d6 rule is genius. It's simple, basic, doesn't deal with all kinds of strange and esoteric circumstances, and is easy to pick up and understand by novice players.

Traveller has survived because people have a fondness for it, as opposed to some popular media properties which were kind of pushed on the public. Traveller, to me at least, has a kind of grass roots appeal stemming from lots of fairly intelligent people.

In the offing; adventures in lost cities, adventures in environments that will boggle the players' imaginations as the GM shrugs and smirks and answers "I don't know where you are. Why don't you scan the area and see, or step outside", the flash of a premonition witnessed by EVERY PLAYER, an infinite surface that your ship cannot escape from that stretches to infinity, a plague that cannot be stopped, and to borrow from Miyazaki; a toxic jungle with fresh air and light underneath its root system! Those are some of the things I've been drafting up and writing, and hope to share next year or the year after, after I get things settled domestically.

Traveller is a great game, and offers a lot of fun as a hobby.

Like my friends at Impressions' used to say; "Have fun. Play games."
 
To me, Traveller's greatness is predicated quite firmly on the Third Imperium setting, a shared universe (in effect though not in name) created by scores of people over a period of 35 years to become the largest, most elaborate roleplaying setting in existence.

Mind you, even with all the material that has been created it still has only scraped the surface of the setting. But that's better than any other setting of comparable scope has done. You can find individual settings that are more detailed[*], but only at the cost of reducing the scope of the setting drastically.

[*] And not infrequently you can port it to some place in the OTU with a little ingenuity. ;)​

But as for the rules, I usually play my Traveller adventures with non-Traveller rules. (I did use the GT rules for a while because I wanted to familiarize myself with them).


Hans
 
Blue Ghost said:
The 8+ on 2d6 rule is genius. It's simple, basic, doesn't deal with all kinds of strange and esoteric circumstances, and is easy to pick up and understand by novice players.
Click to expand...

Yes, new players in my groups love that mechanic when introduced to the game.
 
atpollard said:
So what makes Traveller and AD&D 1ed stand out from the crowd?
In both cases, the core mechanics of the game are easy enough to quickly grasp and start having fun the same day. On the other hand, both settings and rules (AD&D 1ed and Traveller) have enough richness and depth to continue to delight and surprise.
Click to expand...

Fully agreed on the easiness of game mechanics (at least for players, in CT) is a major factor.

Aside from that, two more points were:

- Abundant support material.
- Support for the referee when having to expand it (system creation method, etc).
- AFAIK, it was the first game where you had a (more or less) coherent system to design your own ships (and latter other equipment, as robots or vehicles).
 
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