How to make Traveller more popular with TTRPG players

[MarcusIII]

Maybe it could be handled with some expectations management, like what the skill levels actually represent as professional competence. So, when a character has a skill at 0 or 1 people have a better idea of what that means.

I made this for my players to give them an idea of what skills levels represented

 

[mavikfelna]

I made this for my players to give them an idea of what skills levels represented

View attachment 6820

That is a really good chart! I'm going to use it from now on.

 

[Vormaerin]

They USED to be that back in the day. But the Mongoose aging system is a bit softer, and the consequences of losing a point or two of physical stats are probably less important, especially if you're coming in from a high total.

Softer than what? CT didn't even use stat modifiers on most tasks and then they were all over the place. Losing stats was bad, but in an amorphous and hard to quantify way.

Guns had a minimum Dex and a Bonus Dex, which varied between weapon types. So if you used a carbine and didn't have a Dex 5+, you took a -1. But if you used an Automatic Rifle and didn't have a Dex 7+, you took a -2. On the other end a Dex 9+ was +1 with a Carbine, but a Dex 10+ was needed to get a bonus with an Autorifle (bonus being +2).

Pilot rolls were straight pilot skill.

You needed a Dex of 8+ AND Medic 3 to be a licensed surgeon, but the Dex didn't actually modify your Medic rolls for the most part.

And SOC was especially wild because a high SOC might be a bonus in certain circumstances and a penalty in others.

 

[Spenser TR]

I love some of the points brought up here - how younger people might perceive the game and how younger characters can be at a disadvantage without some finagling. It led me (back) to thinking about resources for school gaming clubs (I feel like these still exist, yea?). It'd be great if there was a package for faculty members interested in doing that, if Mongoose made it easy for someone to start one of those clubs using Traveller.

Basic versions of the rules (like Explorer/Merchant), pregens galore, a subsector with interesting stuff, but also materials for the faculty member - predone permission docs (or ideas for wording), one page flyers, info sheets to generate interest, lots of imagery to get kids excited about the game. Some thinking about what kinds of content was appealing to younger/new players would go a long way, and having all this in a kit would be great.

I'm aware of the Starter Kit; something like that, but I'm thinking something way more targeted (and inexpensive) for this purpose, I guess.