How to make Traveller more popular with TTRPG players

[Sigtrygg]

On the subject of robots and aliens using the 77 rules.

aLL OF THE FOLLOWING ARE BUILT USING THE RULES FOUND IN ct 77 EDITION

here is a robot:

688981 computer 1, mechanic 1 electronic 1 engineer 1
here is another

AAFAA1 all skills at 2

here is a vulcan

888788 telepathy,

here is a guild navigator

369AAA prescience (psionic special) navigation 4 pilot 4

"Nowhere in these rules is a specific requirement established that any character (player or non-player) be of a specific gender or race. Any character is potentially of any race or of either sex."

race - human, vulcan, robot

something else that is never specified is that the default race is human...

Fred rolls a character
12 hey I have a str of 12, great you could be a cyborg, or a wookie, or from a really high gravity world or...

 

[MarcusIII]

I disagree.
It had a nobility rank structure that was common in many of the books Traveller was inspired by, the Imperium just so happens to have used it.
You could say the same about the jump drive, again there are many novels that use some form of jump drive. Not everything that is in the 77 rules made it into the setting.

We'd have to ask Marc to be sure. I personally believe think he had the 3I (or a setting very like it) in mind when he wrote those rules.

 

[Bense]

The answer to the question posed by the thread title is "run more games of Traveller and recruit more players to them."

 

[Jarac Rassen]

For term limits, what I'm thinking is doing a maximum of four terms for my group. That way they go right up to where the aging roll kicks in (barring any play aliens with special aging rules). I'm tempted to bump it to five terms for those who really want to push it, knowing they will have to deal with the aging roll twice, but want "one more spin of the wheel."

Some may be good after three terms and decide they are ready. Some may decide to take it all the way to four or five terms. But having a limit feels important.

 

[shirgall]

For term limits, what I'm thinking is doing a maximum of four terms for my group. That way they go right up to where the age limit roll kicks in (barring any play aliens with special aging rules). I'm tempted to bump it to five terms for those who really want to push it, knowing they will have to deal with the aging roll twice, but want "one more spin of the wheel."

Some may be good after three terms and decide they are ready. Some may decide to take it all the way to four or five terms. But having a limit feels important.

Indeed, I think it's more reasonable to impose a limit this way than aging, or dying, in character creation when you push your luck.

 

[MarcusIII]

For term limits, what I'm thinking is doing a maximum of four terms for my group. That way they go right up to where the age limit roll kicks in (barring any play aliens with special aging rules). I'm tempted to bump it to five terms for those who really want to push it, knowing they will have to deal with the aging roll twice, but want "one more spin of the wheel."

Some may be good after three terms and decide they are ready. Some may decide to take it all the way to four or five terms. But having a limit feels important.

Unless it's an unusually difficult game I too limit PCs to 4 terms in generation. 3-4 terms seems to be the sweet spot for character.

 

[mavikfelna]

In MgT I usually shoot for Rank 5, because that's the best for benefits and that's usually around term 6, so 3 aging rolls. More than that the chance for a catastrophic aging roll get too high.
But if I don't have to worry about benefits, honestly all I worry about is skills. With how few skills are supplied per term, you kinda need to target a skill level in a primary skill to know if you're where you need to be. New players aren't going to know this so limiting terms to 3 or 4 probably isn't a bad idea.

 

[Corwin71]

Contrary to a lot of the opinions I see here, the setting is vital to my interest in Traveller. It's a massive setting, and there's no reason one couldn't tell any kind of story they wanted to within some corner of it, anyway.

What would make Traveller more appealing to me is an increased focus on the social and cultural aspects of its thousands of worlds, and less on how their various militaries are organized. I know that comes from Martin Dougherty's interests and background, and I enjoy his writing in general, but my eyes glaze over when reading most of that stuff, and I doubt I'm alone. "The Borderland" was a step in (imo) the right direction, and I'd like to see more books along those lines.

 

[Anstett]

What would make Traveller more appealing to me is an increased focus on the social and cultural aspects of its thousands of worlds, and less on how their various militaries are organized. ..... "The Borderland" was a step in (imo) the right direction, and I'd like to see more books along those lines.

100%
In my bringing new players into the fold only 1 person (a 6 year old girl in fact)* used a weapon during their starter mission. Most of my current players feel comfortable with having weapons, I only have one though that has made a big deal about what type of weapon/armor get into combat type of Traveller that he plays.
We need a lot more books like The Borderland to help bring out the idea that almost every problem does not need violence to solve it. {insert Asimov quote here}


*She was an incredible natural player. "I pick up a knife and join the high jackers" looks over at another player, "it says on my sheet I make bad decisions sometimes" We all died of laughter.

 

[actionman]

Contrary to a lot of the opinions I see here, the setting is vital to my interest in Traveller. It's a massive setting, and there's no reason one couldn't tell any kind of story they wanted to within some corner of it, anyway.

I completely agree, and I think that much of the Charted Space setting is left undefined to give refs plenty of space to do that.

What would make Traveller more appealing to me is an increased focus on the social and cultural aspects of its thousands of worlds

Yes, yes, because stories come from conflicts between people, and social and cultural aspects of worlds are the macro-version of that. Stories come from the rage and the pride, the grief and the vengeance, the love and the hate, the greed and the desperation, the ambition and the passion. That's where stories come from, not ministers at their computers calculating economic coefficients and determining that another war would stimulate the economy and reduce unemployment.

 

[Corwin71]

*She was an incredible natural player. "I pick up a knife and join the high jackers" looks over at another player, "it says on my sheet I make bad decisions sometimes" We all died of laughter.

That is fantastic. That puts her above at least half of the adult gamers I've played with.

 

[Vormaerin]

Contrary to a lot of the opinions I see here, the setting is vital to my interest in Traveller. It's a massive setting, and there's no reason one couldn't tell any kind of story they wanted to within some corner of it, anyway.

What would make Traveller more appealing to me is an increased focus on the social and cultural aspects of its thousands of worlds, and less on how their various militaries are organized. I know that comes from Martin Dougherty's interests and background, and I enjoy his writing in general, but my eyes glaze over when reading most of that stuff, and I doubt I'm alone. "The Borderland" was a step in (imo) the right direction, and I'd like to see more books along those lines.

While I am not particularly married to Charted Space, specifically, I do agree that it is a very significant source of appeal for the game. It's just that, since there aren't other settings until quite recently, it also turns off a number of people who only know the bullet point review of it.

The rest of your post I agree with.

 

[rinku]

Jump Drive as presented in Traveller isn't really something I'd encountered in the fiction. Of all the stuff that's in the LLBs, that's the MOST Traveller specific idea. However, it's Traveller specific, not Third Imperium specific - the 3I is just a setting that uses Jump Drive.

What FTL you usually had in the old literature was either akin to hyperdrive or warp drive - time spent in hyperspace equates to distance travelled - or wormhole/portal travel without any appreciable time delay. The "one week in jump space" seems to have been done as a campaign convenience (one week on jump, one week in system), and so that a communication delay existed.

 

[rinku]

On the subject of robots and aliens using the 77 rules.

aLL OF THE FOLLOWING ARE BUILT USING THE RULES FOUND IN ct 77 EDITION

here is a robot:

688981 computer 1, mechanic 1 electronic 1 engineer 1
here is another

AAFAA1 all skills at 2

here is a vulcan

888788 telepathy,

here is a guild navigator

369AAA prescience (psionic special) navigation 4 pilot 4

"Nowhere in these rules is a specific requirement established that any character (player or non-player) be of a specific gender or race. Any character is potentially of any race or of either sex."

race - human, vulcan, robot

something else that is never specified is that the default race is human...

Fred rolls a character
12 hey I have a str of 12, great you could be a cyborg, or a wookie, or from a really high gravity world or...

The point is taken.