Why Traveller was different

[RKFM]

First off, pardon me if this gets a but long winded (and rambles) but this is in a way a response to recent and current threads on other specific topics. I'm posting in the CT forum because it applies mostly to the CT version and crowd.

Myself, and I think many old timers here that got into Traveller in the early days, considered D&D as the paradigm for the RPG experience...until Traveller (CT). The 'goal' of players in D&D was to crawl thru dungeons/ruins in order to grow their character, accumulate wealth and aquire powerful items.

Then Traveller came along and opened up the RPG experience. However, I think that some players of Traveller at that time (and still do) stuck to the old D&D RPG experience (in some ways so did GDW. The early adventures/double adventures are basically dungeon crawls in space). Here's why, and a sort of response to recent threads:

Accumulating wealth:
Sounds like some GMs are too worried about their players getting too much money. Sure, that is something to avoid but it's what they are worried about their players spending it on that upsets them. They are worried the players are going to buy FGMPs and Battle Dress and Dreadnaughts. Well, that doesn't really seem reasonable does it? I guess it's a IYTU thing, but sounds like the game they are playing is D&D in space. Instead of Magic Armor and +4 sword of fire to kill the Mega Rat, it's BD and FGMP to defeat the Imperial Marine guards in front of the Bank of Regina.

The GM feels if his players accumulate too much money, he will have to up the 'challanges' (mostly combative) they face. What is really available to players with that amount of money to buy and use? Unless every adventure takes place on a wild animal planet, or secret Zho base, all that fancy expensive equipment will either get the characters arrested, or commited as psychotics.

Again, I think too much (and too little) money is a bad thing also, but I don't think the Traveller universe really rewards this goal. Which brings me to another point:

Goals:
Traveller goes way beyond the simple player goal of aquiring wealth and items. Some GMs think if their players have access to quick and easy money, they won't go adventuring. Why? If they have MCrs, sure the character wouldn't help the Chirper for a few gold coins. But what does the player want to do? Is that the only goals players have? Get rich?

Fortunately, in Traveller your goals can be almost limitless. Maybe the player wants to discover a new planet? Maybe overthrow a small govt with his merc unit? Build a trading empire (here a player with MCrs is perfectly acceptable)? Seems that many GMs and players still see their 'advancement' and 'growth' as accumulation of Credits and weapons.

Growth:
D&D players want to build their characters so they can get new spells and grow strong to squash the bigger beasts (to get even more gold and better items). Now, Traveller does have a difficult and limited experience building system. But in Traveller the real growth of character comes from the building of a history, of fame maybe, or political power.

Finally, I'like to talk about the role of the GM:
D&D started out as basically a miniature rules system. Very clearly defined combat and experience system. Traveller was to me at first vague because all these skills didn't really tell you how to apply them (as some of you have pointed out some did, but most didn't and not in many cases). But then I discovered that it was actually liberating because you could apply them to fit the situation or plot.

Now, I don't want to get into the rule slave vs handwave debate. But I think Traveller has always been nicely balanced between a light rule structure and limited possibilities. Plus, the designers have always said "If you don't like it, change it". We all have different play styles, but I think the GM has ultimate control over the universe and the player has ultimate control of his character. It's been a while since I've GM'd, but almost all my sessions started with the same words:

"So, what do you want to do?"

I hope this hasn't been too much of a rant, I think I started to ramble a bit at the end but I wanted to get some of my thoughts out there concerning some recent threads. Plus, how I think Traveller applies to them.

 

[rust]

Thank you for a very interesting post.

 

[Jason]

The best rpg campaigns I have participated in in any system have always been about player goals (usually influencing the world in a big way) and well-told stories rather than wealth and building characters. That includes games played with D&D.

Traveller came out at a time when RPGs were still a very new thing, and no one knew quite what to do with them. The conventions of storytelling in an RPG were not yet well developed, so naturally you had adventures that were pretty much just a location and NPCs with little plot or personality.

Accumulating wealth was the de facto goal in early Traveller in part because there was no other real character advancement and because of the two adventure types written into the LBBs - speculative trading and patrons - both of which used money as the motivation.

 

[Commander Truestar]

Myself, and I think many old timers here that got into Traveller in the early days, considered D&D as the paradigm for the RPG experience...until Traveller (CT). The 'goal' of players in D&D was to crawl thru dungeons/ruins in order to grow their character, accumulate wealth and aquire powerful items.

Actually, I rather hated the who D+D thing. Closest I came to it was playing "Monsters! Monsters!" and heading out to rape, pillage and plunder human settlements. we'd randomly select a monster type(there was a "pick from a deck of cards" method and if you pulled the Ace of Spades you were a Dragon > ) and go so "levelling" was no biggie though there was an experience system in there. I guess we were just into destruction and mayhem

Then Traveller came along and opened up the RPG experience.

I think that it was a double whammy because most of us could not relate to Middle ages stuff. Note, I say "most" because I met the SCA during that time and learned to enjoy the middle ages just fine So we could better relate to Traveller. On top of this, there was the world swallowing effect of the movie Star Wars, which changed everything for many of us.

<SNIP>

Sounds like some GMs are too worried about their players getting too much money. Sure, that is something to avoid but it's what they are worried about their players spending it on that upsets them. They are worried the players are going to buy FGMPs and Battle Dress and Dreadnaughts. Well, that doesn't really seem reasonable does it? I guess it's a IYTU thing, but sounds like the game they are playing is D&D in space. Instead of Magic Armor and +4 sword of fire to kill the Mega Rat, it's BD and FGMP to defeat the Imperial Marine guards in front of the Bank of Regina.

To an extent I agree with you, but not because it is a D+D thing. Or it may be that the crowd I hang with mostly enjoys mayhem. My players all want FGMP's and Battledress for their various reasons. One of my players just wants to kill kill kill and kill some more. Another wants to do the things he wants his character to do without all the petty pauses of having to justify it or get soe snivelling administrator's approval. having the latests super-tech personal gear and a 100 kTon displacement light battleship as a yacht would suffice.
And I have even let one character get a suit of bettledress too! Of course, one of the members of the player's team is an armorer as well. And then there are those "part finding" issues. And you can imagine the look on the player's face when the local big wig said, "You will NOT parade around in your battledress scaring my people". Because those who have run battles vs battledress realize that gauss rifle fire cuts into BD really well and the local big wig had a bunch of GR armed thugs.

The GM feels if his players accumulate too much money, he will have to up the 'challanges' (mostly combative) they face. What is really available to players with that amount of money to buy and use? Unless every adventure takes place on a wild animal planet, or secret Zho base, all that fancy expensive equipment will either get the characters arrested, or commited as psychotics.

Then again, too many adventures are open to armed responses. My current situation in the campaign I am running is largely a medical emergency. While there has been one "shooting situation" it happened while the three characters involved had a .45 and a knife between them. Yes, one was in BattleDress and another in Sealed Combat Armor, allowed because of the additional environmental filtering the suits provide, but they faced down a 150 kilo war bot with an explosive launcher and laser rifle!

So they ran and called the Imperial Marines to save them...heheheh

But the bulk of this adventure has been spent at computer consoles and puzzel piece gathering for now. The real problem solving has not even started for them...muhahahah.
And their combat opportunities will remain very very limited. The bot was a piece of contraband a smuggler had which I needed for a specific reason. I just liked putting it in there in a very dramatic way. So you need not ratchet up the challenges, just change the nature of the adventure.

Goals: Traveller goes way beyond the simple player goal of aquiring wealth and items. Some GMs think if their players have access to quick and easy money, they won't go adventuring. Why? If they have MCrs, sure the character wouldn't help the Chirper for a few gold coins. But what does the player want to do? Is that the only goals players have? Get rich?

IMTU I took the "easy out". I made my players low level Nobility. So now when the Imperium comes calling... And as Knights they are benieth everyone and at the mercey of those who have legitimate aristocratic powers and a desite for.....flarn made from that old Terran show as interpreted in the Mora system....

So we have fun

Marc

 

[skyth]

The biggest problem with Traveller is that equipment and/or money is the only real method of character advancement.

The skills a character possesses are pretty stable, and do not get better with use. Not to mention that skills that a character have are extremely limited to begin with.

There are two different views to RPG's, basically summed up as:

A) PC's are everyday people that have to scrape for anything they want, and they might get scraps if they are lucky. - 'Reality' based.

B) PC's are a cut above, being heros. They can get flithy rich, and are more skilled than an average person. -'Escapism' based.

Personally, I go for more of B when I'm gaming, as I get enough of A in real life.

And btw, having lots of money doesn't mean that the campaign is ruined and that means that the players shouldn't have a means of getting any and that they won't adventure/be heros any more. See also Batman And Iron Man.

It can also turn the game into more of a political/social game - See also Uncle Chandy in Battletech. Yes, the players are more of Patrons, but they are working on affecting the universe to thier own tune.

 

[Whipsnade]

The biggest problem with Traveller is that equipment and/or money is the only real method of character advancement.

Skyth,

I suppose it's a generational thing but character advancement was never a big part of our RPG play. Super Mario Brothers and all the rest were a decade or more in the future. RPGs may have introduced the concept of character advancement, but computer games blew it all out of proportion. Character advancement became the sole reason to play with everything else subsumed towards that goal.

IMHO, RPGs have greatly suffered for it.

Yes, D&D1e had levels but we routinely retired our characters around level 3 or 4 because it was no longer fun playing a "superhuman" who could wade through his enemies without getting as much as a hangnail. The same held true in our Traveller sessions. We didn't expect or even want to become dukes, admirals, merchant princes, or mercenary generals.

For us and as W. Shakespeare so neatly put it, the play was the thing. It was the journey and not the destination. The puzzle was it's own prize. Making a billion CrImps, wielding a +5 Sword of Orc Smiting, buying battledress, or owning the Scroll of Lost Spells wasn't the point, while being a sell-sword, a starship pilot, a wizard, or a tramp trader was.

Traveller was different in a lot of ways, some of which I'll discuss in another post, but one of the major ways in which it was different was that it provided so many more journeys than other RPGs of the period.


Regards,
Bill

 

[rust]

The biggest problem with Traveller is that equipment and/or money is the only real method of character advancement.
(...)
It can also turn the game into more of a political/social game

To me this seems to be a contradiction. If the characters can achieve a suc-
cess in a political/social game, equipment or money can hardly be the only
real method of character advancement.

In my view the most important "character advancement" in Traveller is that
the characters learn to better understand and to better manipulate their uni-
verse through experience - a game of accumulating knowledge and using it
to make a difference in the universe: Knowledge about planets and their in-
habitants, about political, economic and social relations, about persons, and
so on.

 

[skyth]

IMHO, RPGs have greatly suffered for it.

The whole attitude is just summed up the real thing that RPG's (actually ALL gaming) have suffered for. Too many people having the 'right' way to have fun.

 

[skyth]

To me this seems to be a contradiction. If the characters can achieve a suc-
cess in a political/social game, equipment or money can hardly be the only
real method of character advancement.

Not really...Money and equipment is something that is added to the character sheet, whereas people he knows generally isn't.

In my view the most important "character advancement" in Traveller is that
the characters learn to better understand and to better manipulate their uni-
verse through experience - a game of accumulating knowledge and using it
to make a difference in the universe: Knowledge about planets and their in-
habitants, about political, economic and social relations, about persons, and
so on.

In my view, that knowledge should come along with greater skill levels.

 

[Whipsnade]

The whole attitude is just summed up the real thing that RPG's (actually ALL gaming) have suffered for. Too many people having the 'right' way to have fun.

Skyth,

You're actually right in that opinion...

... just not in the way you think.

You see, character advancement in the Super Mario Brothers vein was always an option in early RPGs. You could play D&D1e and take a fighting man up to "Level 9" or "lord", a magic user up to "Level 11" or "wizard", and a cleric up to "Level 8" or "patriarch". You could also play the games in the manner that we did, where the journey was the goal. Both options were equally valid and both options were equally supported.

Then the Super Mario Brothers mindset won out.

Now if a RPG doesn't have something resembling D&D style character advancement, doesn't have something resembling D&D style levels, and doesn't have something resembling D&D style XP points, people think something is wrong with it.

It's not that the other style of play isn't supported, it's that the other style of play isn't even contemplated.

So, when you say the problem is "Too many people having the 'right' way to have fun" you're absolutely correct.

Too many people think the "right" way - the only way - to have fun is through character advancement and they can't even comprehend any other method.


Regards,
Bill

 

[skyth]

Skyth,

You're actually right in that opinion...

... just not in the way you think.

Actually, exactly in the way I think I can see people having fun with static characters...It's just not my cup of tea, and my comment applies equally to almost any gaming situation where someone is demonized because they have fun in a different way. (The only exception I can think of is 'grief players' who are definitely trying to ruin someone else's fun. Then again, my caveat below applies).

Now two people with opposing mindsets wouldn't have fun playing in the same game. They shouldn't game together. I know I wouldn't have fun playing in a game being run by Tbeard or Far Trader, thus if they offered me a chance to game with them, I should politely decline.

 

[Whipsnade]

I can see people having fun with static characters...It's just not my cup of tea...

Skyth,

You should play a game in a manner that is fun to you. Nothing else matters.

... applies equally to almost any gaming situation where someone is demonized because they have fun in a different way.

It's not a question of demonizing, it's a question of incomprehension and deliberate design choices. RPG designs have more and more precluded game play that does not involve character advancement in the D&D sense. And not even in the original D&D sense either.

I'm not some old poop grousing about some perceived change. The late Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson spoke for years about the same process I'm pointing out here; RPGs are resembling computer games more and more and that is not good for RPGs.

Now two people with opposing mindsets wouldn't have fun playing in the same game.

And they shouldn't.

However, both styles of general game play should be supported by any given RPG and it's become steadily apparent that most RPGs don't even bother to support any other style of game play than that of D&D style character advancement.


Regards,
Bill

 

[skyth]

However, it is easier to design a system with advancement and not use it (Or slow it down) than it is to add in rules for character advancement to one designed for static characters.

 

[rust]

However, both styles of general game play should be supported by any given RPG and it's become steadily apparent that most RPGs don't even bother to support any other style of game play than that of D&D style character advancement.

I do not really agree with the second part of that sentence. While there are
doubtless many RPGs that show this tendency, there is also a huge number
of RPGs that in my opinion support both styles of roleplaying quite well, in-
cluding BRP and GURPS as well as almost all of the "narrative" roleplaying ga-
mes.

Moreover, the extreme "D&D style" does not seem to be very successful any
more, from all I hear D&D 4e does not sell as good as expected, and over he-
re the German version has been discontinued, with lower than expected sa-
les probably the reason why WotC withdrew the license.

It seems that people who want to play "computer game style" increasingly de-
cide to play what is "the real thing" for them, computer games like WoW, and
not so much RPGs that only attempt to copy the features of such computer
games.

However, this is of course only what I hear and see around me, I have no idea
whether it is in any way "representative" or just a local / regional thing.

 

[far-trader]

Ah, now I get the computer game leveling up thing I don't play WOW and the like, largely for that reason. My computer/console games are much more story oriented with no real character advancement (Halo, Splinter Cell, and the like). There's some replay value in just trying to complete the story with different self imposed limits even after completing it on the highest difficulty.

So my computer/console gaming choices very much reflect my preferred RPG game style. Even my D&D (and yes Bill, T20 )* is not level driven but story driven.

* besides, to be fair, most of the T20 leveling is done pre-adventure, very much like CT's prior history, any post creation leveling up would be slow, about like CT's experience, and not the central part of the game the way I see it, it was really well done in this respect imo, in fact we used to play the odd game of D&D like that, create mid to high level characters with a history and skills (levels) and then play a few adventures, those games weren't about gaining levels but having a (high level) adventure

 

[Whipsnade]

Ah, now I get the computer game leveling up thing I don't play WOW and the like, largely for that reason.

Dan,

I don't mind leveling up. All this began when I pointed out that a lack of levels is what made Traveller different.

in fact we used to play the odd game of D&D like that, create mid to high level characters with a history and skills (levels) and then play a few adventures, those games weren't about gaining levels but having a (high level) adventure

We did that too. I remember making specific characters for the Giants trilogy for example. We played through those, enjoying the hell out of them, and set the surviving characters aside.


Regards,
Bill

 

[sabredog]

When I first started playing Traveller my friends and I had come from D&D in ’76 and we didn’t quite know what to do, or rather where to start, with the freedom Traveller provided. It felt far less limiting than D&D did since there wasn’t any pre-made house universe. In fact, rummaging through my old collection of White Dwarfs I found the review of Traveller from WD #6 (1977) where they say “it remains to be seen if anyone actually plays Traveller or not, which I suspect they won’t given that it doesn’t have the background to support it that Metamorphosis Alpha does…”

Wow, amazing got-it-wrong review there, but it shows how much was stacked against the game at the time. No experience levels, no “career path” laid out, no classes, heck no aliens to blast with the, er, revolver!?

So in the early days, yeah it was about getting “stuff”, scrounging to get a ship, players feeling like they were at the mercy of the cosmos. And me worrying about them getting a hold of FGMP’s, battledress, and a hot ship. Nowadays it’s different. I realized long ago that the challenges for the players were of their own making as much as they were of mine, and with the entire universe I designed as just one big sandbox for us to play in. Sometimes I did what I wanted, sometimes it was what they wanted (though always with some larger story arc in the background).

Some of the same players from over 20 years ago are playing the same characters in an “older” campaign and are now playing a higher level game. They have money, they have a hot ship (several actually), and they have a powerful patron who is the head of a semi-privately owned megacorp. Caveat: this is in MTU – not the OTU. They are now playing the politics game in a tradewar to the death with the trade routes and Imperial Charter to the rights of an entire subsector at stake. All the FGMP’s and battledress in the universe won’t help them, only being smart will.

So they put together a scheme to take down the opposing megacorp and choke off their shipping while trying to hit them in the market before the same is done to them. “Wall Street” with lasers.

Then they were hit with the biggest challenge: as their patron told them – if they pull this off they will be in a position to set up either an independent pocket empire (which will attract Imperial attention even though its outside Imperial space), or they can just own controlling shares in the opposing megacorp and be rich enough to fund the exploration expedition they want to go on while someone else runs the company. They can get introduced at court and may even get titles. But either way they will no longer be dealing with petty gunsels and riff-raff when it comes to opposition. Instead they’ll be dealing with people like themselves.

They suddenly realized they would no longer be the free agents they thought they were and they were really worried about that level of trouble!

 

[Whipsnade]

Gents,

Getting back to the actual topic, "Why Traveller was different?", these are a few of the things that immediately drew my friends and myself to the game.

Guns - Seriously. The game had guns, guns and lots of other modern equipment. No more healing potions, there were med-kits instead. Compasses, not location spells. ATVs, hovercraft, cars, airplanes, ships, binoculars, simply too many things to list. All of this everyday equipment gave the came a somewhat realistic feel.

Realism - Even with the various sci-fi elements, Traveller felt more realistic than the various fantasy RPGs. Traveller had it's dungeons, but those dungeons were in a setting. There were actual worlds and many ways to describe them, where D&D1e barely touched upon the villages and kingdoms the adventurers travelled through on their way to the next dungeon. The results of the player's actions were more realistic too. Characters could die, weapons routinely killed people with one shot, and there were no handy resurrection spells.

Normal People - The characters were us more than any D&D character could ever be. They were pilots or engineers or grunts and not Conan or Gandalf. Even better, the characters were no better than the non-player characters they met. There weren't the levels that meant a fighting man could stomp an entire village at will. NPCs were just as capable as PCs, there was no level up the "big-bads" as the players leveled up. Players aged too and gained skills as they aged, just like normal people.

And that's some of what attracted us to Traveller way back in 1977.


Regards,
Bill

 

[Max]

The biggie for me was that Traveller (pre-OTU and even early OTU) was so open. It ws very much a sense of go out and see what type of universe the ref has created. D&D had some of the same but you still had more of a sense of how D&D was going to turn out. With Traveller we as players never knew what the limits were and as refs had few constraints on what we could do. The emphasis was less on defeating things but more on figuring out how things worked. Sure we had our periods when we gamed the system and built up fortunes or became unbeatable supersojers, and they were fun, but in the end we go back to the joy of figuring out the boojum (a telepathic lurker which convinced people that it was what they were looking for so they actually went to it). Traveller's a good place for a creative ref to devise a puzzle for the players and for the players to figure it out.

 

[beowulf2044]

At the trailing end of a years long campaign, it seemed that even with wealth, high-tech goodies and immortality, I could always get the group to take off and find out "What's over there?"

Mysteries to solve, with all the trials and adversity that comes with them, was always the best motivator.