How to make Traveller more popular with TTRPG players

[Sigtrygg]

No, correct. Both are set in THIS galaxy. In this part of this galaxy. Same setting, different period.

No you are completely wrong.
Different historical events.
Different technology paradigms.
Different alien races.

Pioneer does not lead to 2300. Nor does it lead to the discovery of jump drive, the Ziru Sirka and the interstellar wars.
2300 does not tie in with the Third Imperium setting.

 

[MarcusIII]

No you are completely wrong.

No, you are completely wrong. A Grewhawk with some different monsters and spells is still Greyhawk

 

[Sigtrygg]

Lol, you are now displaying either complete ignorance of the various settings or you are trolling.

Is Dark Sun a Greyhawk setting?

Is Stargate a Star Trek setting?

You are completely wrong, ask anyone on this or any other Traveller forum, you are wrong.

I have already outlined how the universes and settings are different to each other.

There are no Kafer or Pentapods or stutter warp in the Third Imperium. By 2300 in the Third Imperium timeline Earth had a unified government fighting agains the Ziru Sirka using jump drives, gravitcs etc.

There are no gravitics, jump drive, Ancients, Droyne, Aslan, K'kree, Hivers, Vargr or Ziru Sirka in 2300. There are still nation states and the future history continues from where the twilight war ended.

Using your logic the Lensmen series and the Xeelee sequence are the same setting.

You are wrong. Accept it. Learn from your mistakes, go and read up on the different settings and stop trolling.

 

[Vormaerin]

No, correct. Both are set in THIS galaxy. In this part of this galaxy. Same setting, different period.

lol. Firefly is set in this galaxy. Farscape is set in this Galaxy. Stargate is set in this galaxy. Earth 2 is set in the galaxy. Battlestar Galactica is set in this galaxy. Star Trek is set in this galaxy.

So are they all Charted Space? They all have this solar system in them, though Firefly alone of those doesn't actually visit it.

 

[MarcusIII]

Is Dark Sun a Greyhawk setting?

YOU are trolling or are completely ignorant of the physical universe. Dark Sun is not a place inside Greyhawk. Is Earth inside the 3I? Too f'ing simple to explain.. YOU are completely wrong. Accept your limitations and move on

 

[Sigtrygg]

Lol, lose the argument, start shouting. You are completely wrong. Can you find a single person to support your interpretation of every sci fi franchise that includes Earth as being the same setting? Even when they have different histories, technologies and alien races?

The 2300 universe is not the same universe as the Third Imperium universe, you are either ignorant or trolling.

You just can't accept you are wrong can you?

2300 - stutterwarp invented 2136
Third Imperium setting - Earth invents jump drive in 2087

The year 2300 - in the 2300 universe the nation states of Earth have established colonies on various worlds, fought a few wars among themselves, discovered several alien races (different races to the Third Imperium universe)

- in the Third Imperium universe the Terrans encounter the Ziru Sirka during theri first trip to another system an a war kicks off, By the year 2300 there have been so many individual wars they are now no longer numbered, just refereed to as "n". They discover a nearby alien race called the Vegans that do not exist in the 2300 universe.

2300 - no gravitics, no jump drive, different history, different aliens
The Third Imperium - no stutterwarp, different history, different aliens

Star Trek, Stargate, Bladerunner, Foundation - all have the Earth, are they the same setting?

You are wrong, stop trolling, accept you are wrong, move on, you are just making yourself look silly now.

Oh, and the Earth of 2300 was not visited by the Ancients thousands of years ago.

 

[Grognardia]

The 2300 universe is not the same universe as the Third Imperium universe, you are either ignorant or trolling.

You just can't accept you are wrong can you?

2300 - stutterwarp invented 2136
Third Imperium setting - Earth invents jump drive in 2087

The year 2300 - in the 2300 universe the nation states of earth heve put down colonies on various worlds, fought a few wars amongst themselves, discovered aeveral alien races

- in the Third Imperium universe the Terrans emcounter the Ziru Sirka during theri first trip to another system an a war kicks off, By the year 2300 there have been so many indivivual wars they are now no longer numbered, just refered to as "n"

2300 - no gravitics, no jump drive, different history
The Third Imperium - no stutterwarp

Star Trek, Stargate, Bladerunner, Foundation - all have the Earth, are they the same setting?

You are wrong, stop trolling, accept you are wrong, move on, you are just making yourself look silly now.

No point in feeding the troll. He's just being deliberately obtuse now.

 

[Studio Cat]

Honestly? Star Wars as a setting would be a loss. The old West End Games d6 Star Wars still exists, is freely available, and is well supported by fan material. Mongoose Publishing would have a very tough time competing with "Free" using a setting people would have to pay for and Mongoose would have to pay a licensing fee for. That, and Traveller works very well for literary science fiction and does not do cinematic science fiction as well, which Star Wars definitely is.

As far as other licensed settings? They are of questionable profitability considering that a licensing fee would have to be paid.

Besides, the 3I is composed of 11,000 worlds which is enough room for anything you may want to place there.

 

[Vormaerin]

Valid points. But you already play Traveller. As do I. Those products wouldn't be aimed at existing players. That is the entire point of the thread. Attracting new blood. It's not a thread about what new products do existing players want for the 3I Traveller. I don't want hyper drives, Jedi, etc, either.

Making stuff you don't like because you imagine someone else might like it is how you get bad product. You get good products by having people who are inspired by the concept make things. That's why we are getting a space trucker campaign and a star roaming musicial road tour campaign.

And, since you read my post, you know I already addressed the issue in the sentences you clipped out. Making a fake Star Trek or Star Wars setting might get Mongoose some money from Star Wars fans, but it is very unlikely to create fans of Traveller. They'll stick around for whatever Star Wars products you make and move on once someone else is making more or better Star Wars stuff.

Just look at Star Trek: They've had licensed RPGs by Heritage, FASA, Task Force Games, Last Unicorn, Decipher, and Modiphius. Possibly more. Star Wars has been through 3 or 4 companies now, too. And that's just the official versions. There's plenty of knock off versions.

 

[Jarac Rassen]

The best way to make Traveller more popular is to play it with friends or at game stores.

I'm a complete newbie to Traveller. I kept hearing about Traveller so many times in in the RPG subreddit. I finally decided to check it out, and wondered why it had taken me so long to finally check it out.

You can easily roll up a subsector with the Core Rulebook, and make your own setting. That being said, I've been on a year with buying the Charted Space books, because it takes quite a long time to make my own setting from scratch, and Charted Spaces is vast and cool. I'd rather plop my own sector in Foreven to make it "my" Charted Space setting.

But again, quality control aside, Traveller doesn't need to change. People need to play it more. Be willing to GM it for your friends. I know I am planning on rolling a campaign in the New Year with mine.

 

[To Tha Moon!]

I've thought about this and it's an idea that was brought up years ago: make a version of Traveller without Character Generation, without Starship Generation, without World Generation. Almost all of that stuff is already out there. Demonstration games wouldn't need any Generation and not have to take the time for it.

• PreGen Characters aka a Starship Crew or other types, too, like Mercenaries or even Robots, depending on the Adventures
• Standard Starships for the type of adventures they will play
• Normal equipment or some above normal equipment or under-the-table equipment even
• The Traveller Map with every World in the Imperium and outside it
• Fun Adventures you want to run with premade NPCs. A list of what NPCs are in which book would help with that.
• Rewards of some sort at the end of each game so the Players want to come back for more

Those 6 things would get new people going into games really quick.

I know some people will complain - especially about leaving out Character Generation. But those people are most likely people who are already in Traveller games. Not new people. To get more new people playing, you'll have to ignore the people who are already playing. They're not your Target Audience or Target Players.

At least setting up a document explaining how to run Traveller without any of the Generation parts would get more new people playing.

And the new Players can use/learn the Generation parts later.

 

[Fluffy Bunny Feet]

You can easily roll up a subsector with the Core Rulebook, and make your own setting. That being said, I've been on a year with buying the Charted Space books, because it takes quite a long time to make my own setting from scratch, and Charted Spaces is vast and cool. I'd rather plop my own sector in Foreven to make it "my" Charted Space setting.

I've been working for some time on my own setting. I've decided the best option is to concentrate on developing the general idea of "the Empire" and work on mapping out a series of subsectors 9 x 6 of them that constitute a border region mostly not IN "the Empire" but just outside.

The worlds outside are mixture of worlds in pocket empires either formed by themselves or by charted Imperial companies preparing them to be assimilated by the Empire or worlds uncontacted by the Empire or pocket Empires in recent time beyond some that are victims of raids by other worlds.

The PCs would start in an pocket Empire not yet contacted by "the Empire" TL 10 just beginning to experiment with some TL 11 things (specifically J2). Less for them to learn at one time and when the time is right there will be contact of some nature. They would have a pocket Empire to explore that is around 6 solar systems to begin with.

 

[Jarac Rassen]

I've been working for some time on my own setting. I've decided the best option is to concentrate on developing the general idea of "the Empire" and work on mapping out a series of subsectors 9 x 6 of them that constitute a border region mostly not IN "the Empire" but just outside.

The worlds outside are mixture of worlds in pocket empires either formed by themselves or by charted Imperial companies preparing them to be assimilated by the Empire or worlds uncontacted by the Empire or pocket Empires in recent time beyond some that are victims of raids by other worlds.

The PCs would start in an pocket Empire not yet contacted by "the Empire" TL 10 just beginning to experiment with some TL 11 things (specifically J2). Less for them to learn at one time and when the time is right there will be contact of some nature. They would have a pocket Empire to explore that is around 6 solar systems to begin with.

See! It's definitely possible to take time and roll up your own, interesting setting with just the Core Rules. With the World Builders' Handbook there if you really want to dig that deep into a few of your systems'/worlds' creation.

Before I started binging on Charted Spaces, I thought about making a sector-sized map. The core is a human-dominated cluster of worlds - a Confederacy of Man. The rest are either growing colonies, independent systems that didn't want to join the Confederacy, and some alien worlds. In a far corner, an alien empire would slowly be extending its reach towards the Confederacy. Tech Level for most "core" worlds would range from 11-12. With some worlds racing to reach TL 13. But the colonies and independents might have TL 9 or 8, with the best ones having TL 10.

A lot of the core would be engaged in political squabbles between the strongest worlds of the Confederacy. Independents due there own thing. The strongest independent state would be a collection of asteroid belt colonies that are a hub of trade between the independent frontier and the Confederacy. A place of free commerce and free people; welcome to all comers. If players want something, chances are they can find it there.

But many are concerned about the rumored encroaching alien threat that may have technology that surpasses their's.

So yeah, you can make your own setting with the Core Rule Books (the Hexagon books), but it is work.

 

[To Tha Moon!]

Mindjammer isn't a Traveller product.

Mindjammer – Traveller

A version of Mindjammer for the Traveller game. It means you can use all the material from Mindjammer with the Traveller system. Mindjammer Traveller is a supplement for the Mongoose Traveller syst…

mindjammerpress.com

 

[Condottiere]

The funny thing is, because the way characters are generated, it's almost perfect for media franchise adaptations.

There is no further need for skill development, and ages are more or less fixed.

Firefly and The Expanse were supposedly adapted from Traveller sessions.

 

[Sigtrygg]

Firefly probably, Joss refuses to give a definitive answer but the clues are there, The Expanse was based on their d20M/F game according to the actual author.

 

[Sigtrygg]

Pre gens, NPC cards, tokens, maps, equipment cards, dice, adventures, basic rules and character generation - all of this is in the D&D Borderlands themed starter set, I started a thread on how I would do the same thing for Traveller based on Death Station.

Thread 'Death Station as a starter set.'

Saturday at 3:17 PM

The after play report for the Pioneer scenario got me thinking, what if the Death Station adventure were expanded to a full starter set...

Take the adventure and offer options for each act - options for the hiring, options for the journey to the Death Station, options for the threat faced at the station, options for follow up adventures.

Lots of maps, a set of quick play rules, pre-generated characters, a condensed quick character generation system, equipment/weapons and armour cards, NPC and "monsters" cards...

I recently got the new D&D Borderlands starter set which is aimed right at...

• Sigtrygg
• Replies: 18
• Forum: Traveller

• 

 

[Maxijohndoe]

Ignoring the bun fight the way I see it Mongoose Publishing is doing fine as it is. They are clearly selling enough books and products and having successful kickstarters to pay the bills, buy their office building, and to start building up a war chest.

I think a lot of players in the TTRPG market were fooled by the extraordinary circumstances of the last few years. You had D&D 5e bring D&D back from the 4th edition hole it was in.

Then you had Critical Role and the explosion of TTRPG content on social (anti-social?) media.

And Stranger Things.

Finally you had COVID and the lockdowns that kept people in their houses.

You could probably add the success of BG3 to that.

And as they say a rising tide lifts all boats including Traveller.

However, strip away the gloss and look at the raw numbers and compare them back to the 1980s and factor in the higher population today the TTRPG market is smaller not larger. Because you need free time and for people to actually meet up whether IRL or virtually, and there is so many other forms of entertainment out there all competing for both peoples' spare time and money.

And Mongoose itself has stated that they are struggling to find a marketing manager who is a fit with their business.

If I was to suggest anything it would be...

Find a group to play Traveller like Critical Role. Not a bunch of voice actors, but people from the community who already put out Traveller material on YouTube and other places.

I'd also put out a series of pocket adventures. By this I mean small self-contained traveller stories that can be played from start in finish in a few hours as a single session. That would (a) give new Referees a place to start and introduce new players without needing months or years to complete a grand campaign. And (b) could be inserted into those grand campaigns if needed, or could be played at a gaming store as a one-shot.

My campaigns are sadly on pause due to RL, but recently I met up with several of my players and they mentioned that they really enjoyed to little mini-adventures that weren't part of the bigger story.

 

[Fweeba]

Honestly, Charted Space being this big behemoth with a bunch of history and a million sourcebooks was precisely why I got into Traveller a couple years ago. That kind of fully realized setting is rare.

I probably wouldn't like Traveller as much as a universal sci-fi system independent of setting. There's a bunch of systems it'd be competing with it if it tried to enter that particular field, and I'm not sure it wins that comparison, at least as far as my interests go.

 

[Vormaerin]

I don't think anyone except Marcus is advocating for ditching Charted Space, just making more people aware that Charted Space is not the sum of Traveller.

What other systems are there that are dedicated general purpose Sci Fi besides Traveller and SWON? (I'm not counting the various "we have no genre, we just let you roll dice in whatever outfit you want" games like GURPS/HERO/BRP.)

Not being snarky, either. Practically everything in the genre is SETTING (the game).