Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
The book cover creates the ambiance and expectation.
How to make Traveller more popular with TTRPG players
- Thread starter MarcusIII
- Start date
Very little to do with the mechanical rules, but a lot to do with how the core rules are presented. And maybe to do with how a lot of adventures are set up.
I'm not FULLY agreeing with Actionman that MGT2e assumes space hobos. As I did mention, the CRB seems much more focussed on enabling the Trader Campaign to me. But he's got grounds for his point of view. There could be more discussion about running a campaign, and mostly what is presented outside the Trading stuff is random patron jobs and combat.
Studio Cat
Cosmic Mongoose
Pick a spot, one where nerds may congregate. Then do your demo there. Advertise it in nerd spaces online and in real life. Show up regularly, like once a month to run the demo. It doesn't take that much effort.
For the demo itself, you should just need the material that is in the Traveller Starter Pack. Traveller's greatest strength is its character creation, so start by doing some character creation with a manageable number of people (like 1-6). Next up is the lethality of the combat system, so take those newly made characters and run a bar brawl to show them the differences between that and D&D. Whole thing should take maybe two hours.
If the enthusiasm is still high, break out Death Station and run it. Prepare handouts like a one sheet on the Charted Space setting to keep up interest. Be prepared to have a new Traveller Player group.
NOLATrav
Emperor Mongoose
This is very easy to do. Every career Event, connection, etc, is given a place on the map, a relevant company, person, etc. Whether it’s Travellermap, or a home brew setting.
Granted, a line in the rules suggesting such would be a great add.
Sigtrygg
Emperor Mongoose
The Third Imperium setting is the problem.
there is no society to fit into because very planet it its own society and "the Imperuim rules the space between the stars" (rubbish but that is a different argument)
Where is the Imperial society that the ex-Imperial services career character can be part of? Make two jumps and you are on a new planet with completely different society, culture, laws etc... there is no overarching Imperial society (I would argue that there is but it has never been developed in any meaningful way). Where is the "free traders" guild? Where is the "mercenary's guild"?
The Third Imperium is not the Empire of Star Wars, nor does it have Star Wars tech tropes despite Mongoose shoehorning them in because that is the setting they want. That said do you really think a potential Traveller customer is looking for a Star Wars with the serial numbers filed off setting? Is making the Charted Space setting a melting pot for every Mongoose Traveller rules, equipment item and technology option a playable setting?
"Traveller is necessarily a framework describing the barest of essentials for an infinite universe;* obviously rules which could cover every aspect of every possible action would be far larger than these three booklets. A group involved in playing a scenario or campaign can make their adventures more elaborate, more detailed, more interesting, with the input of a great deal of imagination.
The greatest burden, of course, falls on the referee, who must create entire worlds and societies through which the players will roam. One very interesting source of assistance for this task is the existing science-fiction literature. Virtually anything mentioned in a story or article can be transferred to the Traveller environment. Orbital cities, nuclear war, alien societies, puzzles, enigmas, absolutely anything can occur, with imagination being the only limit.**
The players themselves have a burden almost equal to that of the referee: they must move, act, travel in search of their own goals. The typical methods used in life by 20th century Terrans (thrift, dedication, and hard work) do not work in Traveller; instead, travellers must boldly plan and execute daring schemes for the acquisition of wealth and power***. As for the referee, modern science-fiction tradition provides many ideas and concepts to be imitated.
Above all, the players and the referees must work together. Care must be taken that the referee does not simply lay fortunes in the path of the players, but the situation is not primarily an adversary relationship. The referee simply administers the rules in situations where the players themselves have an incomplete understanding of the universe. The results should reflect a consistent reality.
Welcome to the universe of Traveller!"
*the Imperium as an example of how to run your own setting would come later
** sadly as soon as you have an "official" setting you have introduced limits
*** they don't have to be criminal though...
there is no society to fit into because very planet it its own society and "the Imperuim rules the space between the stars" (rubbish but that is a different argument)
Where is the Imperial society that the ex-Imperial services career character can be part of? Make two jumps and you are on a new planet with completely different society, culture, laws etc... there is no overarching Imperial society (I would argue that there is but it has never been developed in any meaningful way). Where is the "free traders" guild? Where is the "mercenary's guild"?
The Third Imperium is not the Empire of Star Wars, nor does it have Star Wars tech tropes despite Mongoose shoehorning them in because that is the setting they want. That said do you really think a potential Traveller customer is looking for a Star Wars with the serial numbers filed off setting? Is making the Charted Space setting a melting pot for every Mongoose Traveller rules, equipment item and technology option a playable setting?
"Traveller is necessarily a framework describing the barest of essentials for an infinite universe;* obviously rules which could cover every aspect of every possible action would be far larger than these three booklets. A group involved in playing a scenario or campaign can make their adventures more elaborate, more detailed, more interesting, with the input of a great deal of imagination.
The greatest burden, of course, falls on the referee, who must create entire worlds and societies through which the players will roam. One very interesting source of assistance for this task is the existing science-fiction literature. Virtually anything mentioned in a story or article can be transferred to the Traveller environment. Orbital cities, nuclear war, alien societies, puzzles, enigmas, absolutely anything can occur, with imagination being the only limit.**
The players themselves have a burden almost equal to that of the referee: they must move, act, travel in search of their own goals. The typical methods used in life by 20th century Terrans (thrift, dedication, and hard work) do not work in Traveller; instead, travellers must boldly plan and execute daring schemes for the acquisition of wealth and power***. As for the referee, modern science-fiction tradition provides many ideas and concepts to be imitated.
Above all, the players and the referees must work together. Care must be taken that the referee does not simply lay fortunes in the path of the players, but the situation is not primarily an adversary relationship. The referee simply administers the rules in situations where the players themselves have an incomplete understanding of the universe. The results should reflect a consistent reality.
Welcome to the universe of Traveller!"
*the Imperium as an example of how to run your own setting would come later
** sadly as soon as you have an "official" setting you have introduced limits
*** they don't have to be criminal though...
Studio Cat
Cosmic Mongoose
So how does your critique of the Charted Space setting prevent running a demo session like the one I described upthread?
If anything, a debate on the strengths and weaknesses of the Charted Space setting (like you are doing) would help to increase the visibility of Traveller and can be used to help educate potential Players and Referees. It should probably be done on more public spaces like subreddits and discord channels in order to reach the most people.
Well, I agree that Mongoose's efforts in the way of campaign guides are not as good as they could be. The Naval Campaign Guide is okay, but buried in an expensive box that most people probably don't have any use for. The Mercenary Campaign Guide is flawed in execution. The Deep Space exploration set doesn't really address running a campaign of that so much as just provides pieces you can use if you already know what you want to do. And the Trader campaign has nothing whatsoever about how to run in practice, just some tables that do more to lead people astray than guide how to run a viable campaign. And I'm sure there are plenty of people who would love a campaign guide for doing a colony building campaign. Space Hobos is the default in Traveller only in the sense that the vast majority of RPGs assume the characters are 'for hire' adventurers.
I also agree that there should be a CHARTED SPACE SOURCEBOOK just as much as there is one for 2300. And as I said when it came out, Charted Space could use a lot more stuff like "The Borderlands" that is an area and how to play in it instead of the traditional sector books that mostly ignore the question of why you'd pick this place to set your campaign and what's uniquely playable here.
I don't think that Traveller is the Charted Space RPG. So I don't think the Core rules should be even further bound to that setting. The D&D core rules don't tell you how to tie your characters into the organizations of the Forgotten Realms either.
Well, the current ones do tell you how to tie the player characters into Greyhawk.
shirgall
Cosmic Mongoose
I'm not sure why you didn't make these guilds you wanted.
This statement bothers me because Traveller was not originally tied to the Third Imperium/Known Space. It was at first an example setting. Traveller rules are pretty good for application to other settings and can be used to emphasize roleplay over luck, which is the opposite direction of 5E.
It's true that a little rules homogenization and character creation innovation is required for a new setting, but a lot of Traveller referees are used to that just from making new races and polities.
This statement bothers me because Traveller was not originally tied to the Third Imperium/Known Space. It was at first an example setting. Traveller rules are pretty good for application to other settings and can be used to emphasize roleplay over luck, which is the opposite direction of 5E.
It's true that a little rules homogenization and character creation innovation is required for a new setting, but a lot of Traveller referees are used to that just from making new races and polities.
TrippyHippy
Emperor Mongoose
They may do this, although they haven’t before and while the default or example setting in the DMG is the World of Greyhawk, the brand that sold the recent D&D movie was based in the Forgotten Realms.
Forgotten Realms is similar to Charted Space, however, because it is essentially a loose setting that remains generic enough to allow for a wide number of stories. Both Forgotten Realms and the Third Imperium actually predate D&D and Traveller respectively though, but have since become default settings. As I said above, I don’t have a problem with having a default setting, with implications in the rules of how this plays out. I also prefer, and have argued a lot for, alternative settings having their own core rules books as standalone.
There isn’t really much evidence that the connection between Traveller and Charted Space harms sales, marketing or the Traveller brand. Indeed, when I look at things like this:
….I actually think Traveller looks quite cool….
To reiterate, I don’t think having a default setting is really anything to do with making the game more popular. It is a feature of the game, not a hindrance. The hindrance is a lack of awareness amongst potential fans - as I say, the game needs to be made more available with a structured, organised approach to increase participation.
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I entirely agree: of course there isn't! There are just a small handful of forum posters who insist non-stop - with zero evidence - that what Traveller needs is either to be system neutral (ignoring that most humans engage with narrative, not rules) or to act like TSR in the years running up to bankruptcy when they split their audience into tiny sects, each playing different settings (and not buying the other settings).
Luckily, Mongoose have for years stuck to their successful formula, and the result is that Traveller is healthier than it has been since the mid-eighties.
Very few people are arguing that Charted Space is a bad thing or that it should have no settings at all. Actually, the argument is that Charted Space is harmed by being the default Traveller setting, so that anything you want to add to the Traveller rules gets treated by default as belonging in Charted Space.
So when you want alternate FTL technologies, advanced AI, robot PCs, new aliens, funky new weapons systems, or any of the many things that Traveller can easily support, they automatically get included into Charted Space.
The rules on empty hex exploration are great. But they also make a mockery of the idea that the Rifts are actually barriers the way they are presented in Charted Space. Likewise, personal energy shields, ion cannons, and all kinds of other cool stuff that absolutely belong in the rules.
Charted Space is a great thing, but you want people to know that they can play things other than Charted Space with Traveller. Just like you can play D&D without using the Forgotten Realms. Because no setting suits everyone.
When talking to people who have heard of Traveller, it's very rarely anything about the *rules* that they have concerns about. Some don't like the idea of the semi-random character background, but I get a lot more guff about Charted Space's particular tropes, as if you had to adopt those to use Traveller.
I want people to know that they can use Traveller to play Space: Above & Beyond or Firefly or Earth 2, or The Expanse, or Star Trek, or Star Wars or The Culture or Stargate if that's their jam. Because you can. You can also take advantage of all the coolness that is in Charted Space if that's your jam.
actionman
Emperor Mongoose
You're right. It would be very easy to do with a paragraph or two, and maybe a table. The career events, etc. don't do it, because they're so bare-bones. You get a Rival. Great. He probably lives on a planet somewhere that the characters will never go to, and he's probably gotten on with his life. Or maybe he'd like to hassle the player character, but his wife is telling him to forget about all that and take the kids to sportsball practice. Because he has a wife, he has a family, and he's not some wandering monster.
A paragraph like, "On mustering out, the referee should start characters off on their career of
There could be an example table for each sector of the Imperium, featuring the noble houses governing the worlds and subsectors, the notable corporations and megacorporations operating in the sector, notable mercenary units, pirate bands, Imperial agencies, agencies of the subsector dukes, and so on. Most of the information could probably be culled from the sourcebooks already published and consolidated into tables.
IMO, Mongoose would do well to develop numerous region-focused adventures that could easily connect to people and conflicts already in the published sourcebooks. These adventures could then connect new characters with long-term patrons established in the setting. It would give a party of new characters someone to work for, with, or against. It starts developing relationships, for good or for ill, with the people in their region of space. It's a lot more interesting for the referee to roll a random space encounter and have it be the pirate band the characters have been battling off an on, than some generic pirate. It gives everything more meaning, more relevance, more significance. This is where rivals, enemies, and contacts should come from.
Experienced Traveller players can easily create this kind of thing on their own, but for new or inexperienced players and referees, it's no small feat for them to come up with a variety of noble houses, megacorporations, mercenary units, conflicts, and adventures to fill in the largely blank canvas of Charted Space. Hence, they default to "you all meet in a bar" and the characters remain disconnected rootless people. One reason characters being connected to the setting is important is because if the characters are rootless, the players don't care. They don't care about where they go or what they do or who they meet, because it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter because they'll just wander on. It's all scenery outside the spaceship window. They're not invested, and this is much less satisfying that having adventures in a place the characters are connected to and dealing with people the characters have relationships with.
IMO, Mongoose should lean in to Charted Space as Traveller's default setting, and make character generation reflect that. For people who want to design their own settings, the rules support it, and there's the setting-less Traveller SRD. https://www.traveller-srd.com/
The problem probably isn't the 3I at all, but the default SCOPE of general Traveller (which the 3I is the result of).
A subsector has 80 hexes, usually around 30-50 systems. That's a LOT of map, and travel between systems is in practice easy, despite lingering influences from Dumarest.
But wait! Subsector implies a Sector... so here you go - 15 more of them. And why not keep on with that... have another Sector. And another. And another.
But you know what would suffice? One interesting solar system or a small cluster of them. That's what Firefly did. That's what the Expanse does. That's what Starfinder does in the core book. Yes, Traveller provides the tools in CRB to roll up a planet, but not a system. But rolling up their own worlds is probably not what most people want anyway (the posters on this forum are likely an exception, but this thread is about attracting general gamers). A well fleshed out series of star systems (or one really good one) is probably the meat that other games provide that Traveller has historically lacked. When Traveller HAS done a focus system, it's never been a hub. Tarsus and Beltstrike are in District 268, for example.
How can you really have a setting hub with such an enormous map?
Traveller's default mode isn't space hobos as such, but it IS Planet of the Week. Whether Trader, Military, Explorer or Jobs For Hire Drifters, it's expected that the characters will travel, and because the tools are provided to easily create world after world after world, that's what usually happens.
Maybe it's time for a version of the game whose setting's focus ISN'T system hopping, but in-system or cluster based, allowing for deeper lore? I suspect Mongoose already realise this - Pioneer is such a project, Cluster Truck is such a project.
A subsector has 80 hexes, usually around 30-50 systems. That's a LOT of map, and travel between systems is in practice easy, despite lingering influences from Dumarest.
But wait! Subsector implies a Sector... so here you go - 15 more of them. And why not keep on with that... have another Sector. And another. And another.
But you know what would suffice? One interesting solar system or a small cluster of them. That's what Firefly did. That's what the Expanse does. That's what Starfinder does in the core book. Yes, Traveller provides the tools in CRB to roll up a planet, but not a system. But rolling up their own worlds is probably not what most people want anyway (the posters on this forum are likely an exception, but this thread is about attracting general gamers). A well fleshed out series of star systems (or one really good one) is probably the meat that other games provide that Traveller has historically lacked. When Traveller HAS done a focus system, it's never been a hub. Tarsus and Beltstrike are in District 268, for example.
How can you really have a setting hub with such an enormous map?
Traveller's default mode isn't space hobos as such, but it IS Planet of the Week. Whether Trader, Military, Explorer or Jobs For Hire Drifters, it's expected that the characters will travel, and because the tools are provided to easily create world after world after world, that's what usually happens.
Maybe it's time for a version of the game whose setting's focus ISN'T system hopping, but in-system or cluster based, allowing for deeper lore? I suspect Mongoose already realise this - Pioneer is such a project, Cluster Truck is such a project.
MarcusIII
Cosmic Mongoose
I have about a sub-sector worth of systems almost all non aligned with mostly TL 5 - 9, a few between that and 15 and one 15. They are scattered.
TrippyHippy
Emperor Mongoose
This is all based on personal anecdotes though. I don’t see many new players, myself, in the interactions I’ve had with them, that are actually that fussed. Moreover, the game system already does support multiple settings so all of this seems like a moot point to me.
actionman
Emperor Mongoose
I'll quibble.
There is a society to fit into, because each planet's society is an amalgamation of Vilani and Solomani/Sylean culture, with the exception of the homeworlds of the minor human races. Planetary cultures will have their variations to be sure, sometimes great variation, but they still have their roots in either Vilani or Solomani culture. The vast majority of people speak Anglic and/or Vilani, and it even says in Classic Traveller that the people of the Imperium regard themselves as "Imperial", which suggests that they feel a common identity. The Imperium, over time, would impose its own norms in some areas of culture in order to maintain order and ensure the flow of trade, and it would do this through the nobles overseeing each of its subject worlds (I know it's supposed to be "member" worlds, but let's not kid ourselves). I mean things like imposing regulations that Anglic is the only language used in Imperial starports, and that the Imperial Credit is the only currency accepted in Imperial starports. I'm not suggesting that this is all stated in the rules somewhere, I'm stating that logically empires do things like this, and so the planetary cultural variations are going to be just that, variations, not different cultures unintelligible to each other. The Falkland Islanders didn't turn into headhunting savages or raise up idols to sea gods after 200 years of separation from Britain, they stayed British. Icelanders stayed culturally stable for 1000 years despite their remote location. My point is that Vilani and Solomani populations on the worlds of the Imperium would remain mostly culturally and linguistically stable, even over the centuries, and they would have some fundamental commonalities with each other, and therefore it is possible for characters from the Imperium to be connected to this culture.
But let's take it down to a smaller scale. You've stated that characters can't be connected to society because there is no society to connect to, because all planets are their own different societies. I say that characters can be connected to society because they can be connected to part of it, like the part of it that hires them after they muster out, and they can care about that part of society. If they become retainers for the noble house ruling the Lunion subsector, they're going to become accustomed to the culture of the world of Lunion. In the course of their missions they'll become familiar with other worlds of the Lunion subsector. They become connected to the society of Lunion and the other worlds of the subsector to a greater or lesser extent.
MarcusIII
Cosmic Mongoose
It isn't about supporting settings. It's about Mongoose creating multiple settings that are popular. Like the owners of D&D did.
Exactly. The Borderlands supplement or the Aramis Trace from The Traveller Adventure are excellent small areas that you can easily restrict by only having a J1 or J2 ship. If you are a bit more ambitious, you can do an isolated area like the Islands subsectors, which is about 2 dozen worlds. I talked that up a lot when Borderlands came out.
The reason Charted Space is so big is that, originally, all these sectors were designed for different kinds of play by different organizations. IIRC, the 1980s adverts for the Reaver's Deep product line was big on Trade pioneering and exploration type stuff. Other places were frontiers or completely outside the Imperium or barely explored wilderness, etc.
And GDW also put out Tarsus (single world campaign) and Beltstrike (single system campaign).
That stuff all exists. But it's all poured into the same pot and you have to know the product line to know what you'd want for the kind of game you are trying to do.
TrippyHippy
Emperor Mongoose
They do already.
