Traveler Question...

[R Arceneaux]

I was thinking of buying the basic Traveler book.

Before I purchase the book I have a question....

Is the Traveler System mostly a Story Driven system (such as vampire, Firefly, etc) or is it mostly a skill driven game (such as Star Wars, D D, etc)? Or is it a combination of both such as Rifts where percent dice and story driven kind of merge together in just about equal parts?

 

[DFW]

I was thinking of buying the basic Traveler book.

Before I purchase the book I have a question....

Is the Traveler System mostly a Story Driven system (such as vampire, Firefly, etc) or is it mostly a skill driven game (such as Star Wars, D D, etc)? Or is it a combination of both such as Rifts where percent dice and story driven kind of merge together in just about equal parts?

It is a game mechanics system. Story provided by the GM.

 

[rust]

Is the Traveler System mostly a Story Driven system (such as vampire, Firefly, etc) or is it mostly a skill driven game (such as Star Wars, D D, etc)?

I do not know your definitions of "story driven" and "skill driven" well
enough for a reliable answer, but I think that Traveller is much closer
to a skill driven than to a story driven system, although it is flexible
enough to play it with the story in the foreground and the mechanics
in the background.

Anyway, if you download the Developer's Pack from this page (down at
the bottom of the page, under Main Rulebook) you will get a good idea
of what the game is like:
http://www.mongoosepublishing.com/home/series.php?qsSeries=51

 

[R Arceneaux]

Is Traveller closer to D & D aka skill and dice mechanics focus game or is it closer Vampires RPG that uses little dots and only D10s aka a game where dice mechanics count little and skill focus in minimal if at all.

OR is it a game of both where neither format dominates the other.

 

[dmccoy1693]

Is Traveller closer to D & D aka skill and dice mechanics focus game or is it closer Vampires RPG that uses little dots and only D10s aka a game where dice mechanics count little and skill focus in minimal if at all.

OR is it a game of both where neither format dominates the other.

Traveller is not like D&D in that D&D the main goal of the game is reach another level and a story is merely how you get there. The system is relatively rules light and more serves to allow the GM/players craft the story that they want to play in. So it is more story driven. I hope this helps.

 

[BP]

Skills and Stats are used to modify the results of rolls.

Stats are numeric in nature and cover broad physcial/mental attributes, but, other than social standing in certain settings, the interpretation of the stats is up to the player (i.e. - they do not define the character in words).

Traveller characters generally start with all the skills they will ever have (and a somewhat detailed background) - there are no experience points/character levels or such.

(Skill and Stat advancement are available - but this is not the focus of the game.)

This supports roleplaying character a bit better than others, but it is still quite heavily a dice based rather than a roleplay based game mechanic system.

That is the mechanic side - as DFW and dmccoy1693 pointed out, the story is very much up to the Referee and the mechanics just are there to support that.

Hope that helps a little.

 

[alex_greene]

Traveller is unlike either Vampire / World of Darkness or D&D.

Traveller character generation, for one thing, is very much unlike the above two games. Your characters' career up to the start of play is as important as the game itself. You can make Traveller chargen as adventure in itself.

D&D and World of Darkness characters enter play with a bunch of selected characteristics, Skills, Merits and other advantages, and gradually accumulate more characteristic/Skill /Merit points through XP expenditure. The Traveller character comes more or less equipped with all the skills he will ever have. He can improve his skills, but only with great effort: Traveller doesn't have an XP system.

In Traveller, also, the Travellers - while they may have come from certain careers - don't generally belong to those careers when play starts, other than Scouts (who remain Scouts-on-Detached-Duty until their sixties or until death) and Psions (who generally remain psionic until death).

In Vampire as in Werewolf, Mage, Changeling, Promethean, Hunter and Geist, a character belongs to his Clan/bloodline and his Covenant from the moment play starts, and remains an active member of that Clan / Covenant. The Clan, Bloodline and Covenant / Tribe / Path, Order and Legacy / Lineage and Refinement / court / cell, compact or conspiracy /Krewe play an important role in the character's development: in Traveller, your character only has loyalty towards his shipmates.

In D&D, characters progress through levels, learning feats and improving upon their abilities, including their ability to suck up damage: in Traveller, a character's health remains fixed: his physical characteristics, Str, Dex and End, determine how much damage he can take before dying. And Traveller characters do not have levels or feats.

Finally, while D&D focuses on the dungeon, and Vampire focuses on the Danse Macabre, Traveller can have any kind of focus, any kind of adventure: it all depends on what the Patron wants the crew to do, or on where the speculative trade die rolls lead. Do you want your characters to become privateers, to develop psionics, to explore strange new worlds or to rise to the position of Archduke and run an entire sector? Whatever your goals, the Referee has a story that will let that happen - or not.

 

[hdan]

BP said most of what you need to know.

Another part of Traveller is that characters will generally start off as competent professionals, not 18yo "newbies". Character Generation in Traveller is a mini-game in itself, and players will enjoy "growing" their characters in preparation for play. Rolling up a Traveller character doesn't really take any longer than rolling up a D&D character these days, and you can tie the "Back stories" of your players together in interesting ways so that they're not just "a few roving adventurers who meet up in a TAS lounge".

Because of this aspect of Traveller, games don't focus on skill improvement as much as they do on other tasks - making money through means both legal and illegal, exploration, etc. In this sense, the Story is more important than it would be in D&D - sure, you might be raiding a pirate base that's been harassing the local star system, but you might just as easily be transporting a famous musician to her next gig, when her "pet" alien undergoes metamorphosis and then escapes in mid-jump, putting everyone's lives at risk.

As another oddity - Traveller is great of "one-off" adventures. Either provide or roll up the characters, play a scenario, then you're done with those guys. Great for doing "a little something different" or for allowing your players to determine some action that doesn't directly involve their own characters. Like how many movies have an opening scene where everyone dies, then the rest of the movie is about the "real" stars trying to figure out what went wrong.

But from a mechanics perspective, Traveller is very much skills based. Everything is handled with 2d6 instead of a pile of polyhedral dice, but you still make plenty of rolls. (Though some GMs don't bother with rolling unless the result is going to change the way the story goes - you don't need to "keep rolling that piloting check until you are able to dock" unless there's some reason that the delay would be interesting.)

 

[alex_greene]

It's not just "making money," any more than Vampire is about "exsanguinating mortals." If all you want is to make money, here's a desk and a phone. Get to work. In Traveller, anyone can make money. The lowliest desk clerk can engage in spec trade and work up a fortune to rival a Megacorporation. It only needs a whole bunch of good dice rolls, and zero art or fun - just basic number crunching, about as enjoyable as budgeting and finance IRL without even the feel of real money.

Travellers make and cultivate networks of contacts and Allies, and probably Patrons, and those walking bags of money exist to pay the characters handsomely for their expertise. The thrill of Traveller comes not from trade, trade, trade, but from the adventures.

And what sorts of adventures! The characters could be hired to steal cash, data or items from some secured area, transport a non-trade cargo (living or otherwise) through dangerous space, act as a bodyguard, hunt down some missing relative, or visit a Hellworld, survive it and bring back a specific kind of flower that only lives on the highest slopes of the mountain in the worst part of the Hellworld.

The adventures, and the sheer variety of them, mark Traveller as unique in its way from both Vampire and D&D.

 

[Bense]

Traveller is not like D&D in that D&D the main goal of the game is reach another level and a story is merely how you get there.

That's a stereotype, and a pejorative one at that.

For Traveller, you can focus on the crunchy bits or you can focus on the story, like just about any other game.
Mongoose Traveller is probably less complex than D&D but more complicated than Vampire.

 

[dmccoy1693]

That's a stereotype, and a pejorative one at that.

You are correct. I am making a generalization, but there is a certain degree of truth to it. A degree, I believe, the OP was looking for. The OP asked if the game was more "story driven" or "skill driven," citing vampire and D&D as the book ends. Vampire enthusiasts tend to prefer the richness of the setting (hence why the oWoD is even now more popular than the nWoD) while D&D enthusiasts tend to look for character options (feats, spells, etc). And while love of a setting is also important to many, books that focus on crunch outsell books that focus on setting.

 

[Bense]

That's a stereotype, and a pejorative one at that.

You are correct. I am making a generalization, but there is a certain degree of truth to it. A degree, I believe, the OP was looking for. The OP asked if the game was more "story driven" or "skill driven," citing vampire and D&D as the book ends. Vampire enthusiasts tend to prefer the richness of the setting (hence why the oWoD is even now more popular than the nWoD) while D&D enthusiasts tend to look for character options (feats, spells, etc). And while love of a setting is also important to many, books that focus on crunch outsell books that focus on setting.

That might be because from 3.5 onward there really were no books that focused on a setting - they were all "crunch" books with lots of new character options and monsters. When only one type of book is produced then it's not surprising that it is what sells. But then it would seem to represent what the creators of D&D thought was important rather than the what the players did.

A better argument would be that the Living Greyhawk Campaign players tended to think only about where their next level was coming from, since the adventures themselves had to be episodic and rigidly formulaic with little opportunity to develop real plots. And those adventures were largely created by their audience.

 

[atpollard]

As an Old School AD&D player, I would have been scratching my head if after playing 3-4 game sessions my 3rd Level Fighter had not earned enough XP to advance to 4th level. In Traveller, I would not be suprised at all to discover that after playing 3-4 game sessions my ex-Marine Mercenary had exactly the same stats, wealth and equipment as when he started this adventure. In that sense, Traveller is far less focused on levels and abilities than D&D.

On the other hand, Traveller adventurers are more driven by game mechanics than some games that revolve around weaving a common story to the near total exclusion of any dice rolls.

In answer to the OP, Traveller clearly falls halfway between the all mechanics of a wargame and the no mechanics of a story.

 

[alex_greene]

D&D and Traveller both focus in different ways on character development. Traveller's philosophy is "Take me as I am, all in all;" the skills are what the character trades on, and his success or failure is determined by, among other things, money, his social circle (giving Referees nightmares when tracking Social Standing changes) and the size of his networks. A character's stats might never really change over the course of the campaign, but his lifestyle should see great improvement if he plays his cards well.

With D&D, the philosophy is "Practice Makes Perfect." Adventuring leads to gaining expertise - XPs - which lead to the characters learning to do better and more amazing things with what talents they possess.

For me, the pejorative description of D&D is not the focusing on levels - even Traveller has provision for skill improvement - but "Kill everything for the XP and loot their treasure."

 

[BP]

...
In answer to the OP, Traveller clearly falls halfway between the all mechanics of a wargame and the no mechanics of a story.

Oh- very nicely put! 8)

 

[GamerDude]

D&D = Focused on running around killing stuff (maybe getting by traps) and that's it. No provisions in the Rules As Written for rewards (XP or money) from actual RolePlayinig. That chat with the king is just a boring stop before you go kill what he wants you to kill, period. Kill things, get XP gold and magic items, level up, go kill bigger things.

WoD and stuff = Kill things, role play, get some XP to level maybe you got some wealth or gear. A bit more on "mission accomplished?" than "kill things, get XP, level" in part because there are no classes or levels.

Traveller = First have a background thanks to rolling up at least one term in a career. NO experience system at all, no levels. Advancement is taking (game) time to train, doing things to make money & maybe find new gear, build up a rep. It's all about RolePlay and not about "did we kill enough for the next level".

Watch the move "The Gamers: Dorkness Rising". They start out as idiots with D&D being the perfect game for them, and at the end they have become ROLE players for whom Traveller is the better game system.

Traveller also does a better job at various genre's besides sci-fi (there is even Flynn's Guide to Magic in Traveller"

 

[alex_greene]

WoD and stuff = Kill things, role play, get some XP to level maybe you got some wealth or gear. A bit more on "mission accomplished?" than "kill things, get XP, level" in part because there are no classes or levels.

More like "WoD and stuff = discover shadows within shadows, secrets within secrets, and desperate horrors - none moreso than the horror of slow degeneration as the decisions you make lead to your committing dreadful acts to resolve the plot."

Remember, I wrote WoD stuff. Mostly crunch, sure, but everything in WoD has to either generate a story or be a plot hook for a story. It's all about the stories, about resolving the conflicts in the plots, about developing the character - by deciding whether the character would prefer to be a person rather than a monster - and you can generate XPs through uncovering grim secrets best left untouched, through damned good in-character roleplaying and wrestling with your PC's conscience, through coming up with a brilliant plan that leaves even the Storyteller breathless with awe and surprise, through working as a team, or even just for the player turning up.

Now Traveller could somewhat uncharitably be described by comparison as "starship combat, spec trade, dice roll dice roll credits gold farm gold farm ooh Patron and a little bit of combat, credits, next system, starship combat ..."

Which is why I've always tried to incorporate some of the dramatic aspects of WoD into Traveller, not as random fluff in between the combat scenes but in order to get the players to immerse themselves in the setting.

I mean, what better way than, say, to introduce a rumour than to have some in character scene on board a Free Trader mid-Jump, when one of the crew (having just rolled Steward skill) just sits down and has a chat with the bored passenger in the passengers' mess, who happens to be a retired ex-Imperial Marine who remembers the last Frontier War, and the hidden Ancient base he found deep in the jungle on his last sortie ...

And how else to get the players involved to actually help out an Ally or Contact, or relative, in trouble than by having an in character convo with those connections? Of course the damned relatives keep getting into trouble. It's virtually the only way some Referees can get the players to think outside of "Right, let's find that broker. We've got some spec cargo to offload."

And by the way, anyone playing under me gets warned. If they think "Oh, not to worry, it's just an Ally. The Ref will conjure up a new one next scenario to replace her," I will shoot them myself.

 

[AndrewW]

D&D = Focused on running around killing stuff (maybe getting by traps) and that's it. No provisions in the Rules As Written for rewards (XP or money) from actual RolePlayinig. That chat with the king is just a boring stop before you go kill what he wants you to kill, period. Kill things, get XP gold and magic items, level up, go kill bigger things.

While D&D does focus mostly on XP for killing things, that's not entirely accurate. The 3.5 Dungeon Masters Guide even has an entry in the table of contents: "Story Awards", and "Variant: Story Awards" for the 3.0 version. A "Variable Goals" for AD&D 2nd edition...

 

[Egil Skallagrimsson]

Traveller is not like D&D in that D&D the main goal of the game is reach another level and a story is merely how you get there.

That's a stereotype, and a pejorative one at that.

No, not really, more typical of D and D play, rather than a streotypical view. That's not to say that there is not a lot of atypical play as well, I remember the AD&D DMG makes clear that NPCs can be a lot more than just monsters, but the game system per se has never really rewarded that. The base dynamic of D&D is you start as a 10 stone weakling and end up as Conan (or start as Rincewind and become, eventually, Gandalf), and I am not against that, it is a different type of fiction to that put forward in other games, and a very enjoyable one (as anyone who has nurtured a character from 1st level to 14th will know).

Other games offer a very different dynamic, e.g. in Trav your character may already be 14th level (o.k, there is not direct comparison, lets say a 6 term served admiral or something), the game starts at that point with what he does next.

The dyanmic that always seems odd, in Call of Cthulu, is when you get progressively worse as your sanity disintergrates, but it fits well with that world, and leads to a very fun game!

And before anybody accuses me of munchkinism, my characters have slaughtered their fair share of legions of orcs, ogres, trolls, giants etc over the years.

Egil

 

[rust]

No, not really, more typical of D and D play, rather than a streotypical view. That's not to say that there is not a lot of atypical play as well, I remember the AD&D DMG makes clear that NPCs can be a lot more than just monsters, but the game system per se has never really rewarded that.

I am not so sure. I remember a Birthright campaign with the focus on di-
plomacy, economics and politics, and almost no combat at all, except an
occasional border war fought as a wargame with the battle cards. Well,
and the AD&D system supported this style of roleplaying quite well, just
as well as it supported the usually more common dungeon crawl.

D&D is a nice system if one wants to concentrate on combat scenarios
(and so is Traveller, too), but most of its versions can also be used for
less martial scenarios (just as Traveller, too). Personally I do not see
much difference, and certainly no "moral high ground", if one plays mer-
cenaries in Traveller instead of monster slayers in D&D - it is exactly
the same "make a career by killing things" theme.