Traveler Question...

[Egil Skallagrimsson]

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.

I am not familiar with the Birthright campaign, though I have been involved in D&D campaigns which did stress role play and diplomacy rather than skirmish warfare, hence my comment about typical, and my acknowledgement that there are also atypical D&D campaigns. I tend to think that those kinds of D&D campaigns don't really need the D&D system at all, (or perhaps any system, just using free form story telling instead). In my, very considerable, experience of playing "Old School AD&D" in the 1980s and early 1990s, I do think that a game focussed on the acquisition of character levels is the norm, though how naked that is depends on the players and the DM. Of course, sometimes lots of role-playing is possible.

It's certainly possibal to have a carnage based trav campaign, with access to nukes and chemical weapons this goes far beyond the wildest dreams of a would be Sauron, but I think that Trav better adapts to other kinds of stories.

I am certainly not to making any claims of "moral high ground", in the end it is "you play football, I play rugby" kind of distinction. Frankly, I think AD&D was an excellent game (can't comment on the later incarnations), and it is hardly surprising that it worked best when replicating the kinds of scernerios (Conan, Grey Mouser etc) that Gygax had in mind when he wrote it. If I ever again have the urge to take some fantasy characters on an underground monster hunt, I will blow the dust off my Player's Handbook.

Egil

 

[rust]

I am certainly not to making any claims of "moral high ground" ...

Oops - I just realized that the second part of my post reads as if it were
aimed at you, while it was actually intended as a general remark - sorry,
my bad.

 

[Egil Skallagrimsson]

I am certainly not to making any claims of "moral high ground" ...

Oops - I just realized that the second part of my post reads as if it were
aimed at you, while it was actually intended as a general remark - sorry,
my bad.

No problem, thanks, I took it as a general point anyway.

Egil

 

[Egil Skallagrimsson]

D&D is a nice system if one wants to concentrate on combat scenarios
(and so is Traveller, too)

Agreed, but the kind of combat is very different, even if you leave the laser rifle at home and get stuck into the Darrians(whoops, I meant elves) with a cutlass, as both games are trying to portray a very different "story" of how a fight happens (and how easy it is to get hurt!), leading to a need for different approaches by players and probably, in the end, different characterisation.

Egil

 

[BP]

Lot of great points in this thread and nice to see it has remained friendly.

Haven't played a lot of other systems in a long, long time, but one key difference, I think, related to the slash and destroy type adventures, is that in Traveller versions, using the rules as written, can make for very short PC lifetimes compared to other systems, I suspect.

 

[alex_greene]

Traveller's combat system can be breathtakingly deadly. One wrong roll of the dice, and bang - roll up a new one. Roll up several new ones.

The nice thing about Traveller combat is that, no matter how experienced the characters get, the same bad dice roll is just as deadly to seasoned Travellers as to raw beginners.

 

[IanBruntlett]

In my last Traveller game, the PCs ship (an Imperial Scout) ended up in a fleet action. They were disabled very quickly and fortunately for them, the hostile forces ignored them thereafter. They survived. Just.

 

[rust]

The nice thing about Traveller combat is that, no matter how experienced the characters get, the same bad dice roll is just as deadly to seasoned Travellers as to raw beginners.

Yes, I agree, and I like the way this encourages a certain kind of role-
playing. A veteran character who has to take a high risk is still brave,
while a high level character who does not have to take any serious risk
because of lots of hit points and of magic to bring him back from the dead
often tends to behave more like a schoolyard bully towards all creatures
less powerful than a dragon.

 

[alex_greene]

Knowing the closeness of mortality, even with a rock solid supply of anagathics to keeo them young, the most veteran Traveller characters are still encouraged by the combat system to think strategically and act tactically, often as a team, in order to ensure success and minimise the collateral damage from a combat engagement.

 

[apoc527]

Traveller is rapidly becoming one of my favorite systems. For me, MGT is the first "real Traveller" I've played, though we quickly ditched the 3I as a relatively bland, uninspired setting (ok, that was baiting--don't take it personally, we just didn't like it. However, that new Secret of the Ancients makes it seem far more interesting than the old school The Traveller Adventure, which is what we played).

In my X-com Traveller game, the combat was brutally short and to the point. Even a few points of armor matters a ton (and 6+ is actually quite a bit it turns out) and any amount of AP ability is deadly.

By the end, the PCs were invading a small alien base in the Amazon. The muton soldiers were firing heavy plasma rifles (6d6+8 damage in my conversion...I had to be true to the X-com computer games after all). Those really, really hurt. One PC, who was already wounded, was struck. He had used all his Fate Points (which I stole and adopted from RQ2--works very nicely in Traveller). And I rolled damage...

I rolled 11 on the 6d6 (five 1s and a 6) and he survived! Truly astonishing.

 

[R Arceneaux]

re "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. "


And the other reply that said it was basicly to my definition a game of skills.

And if its true the philosophy of game system.


Many thanks for those who replied. Your assistance was of great help

 

[OddjobXL]

I think in the basic spirit of the design (and this has something to do with the age of the core system) Traveller is closer to D&D than World of Darkness.

The focus of the basic product is combat, not setting, and both games provide a mechanistic focus around which those combats revolve. Either trading between planets or visiting dungeons. Both tend value the random encounter and emergent narratives where character death can easily be arbitrary and characters easily replaceable through random generation.

Given the Judge's Guild sandbox approach, old school D&D (at least) could feel significantly like Traveller as players wander around and explore a big world under their own power. The Starport Bar and The Tavern aren't exactly worlds apart nor are the concepts of patrons hiring wandering bands of adventurers for cash.

World of Darkness focuses much more on setting, storytelling, ambiance and mood. The core rules tend to be more fascinated by politics and intrigue as well as in-character roleplaying than actual combat (aside from things like Werewolf and Hunter to some extent). The games tend to focus on specific geographic locations (cities, haunts, caerns, etc.) because the relationships between NPCs are so key.

There can be power inflation here but gaining wealth and power is only a means to a narrative end, ideally.

Ultimately the biggest philosophical difference is that either D&D or Traveler can be played successfully without the players doing any roleplaying at all. At heart, there are game systems in those books that can be played and enjoyed on their own merits. There's no real metagame in World of Darkness products as the enjoyment is almost entirely derived from roleplayed interactions.

This isn't to say there isn't great roleplay to be had with a good DM and players in, primarily old school, D&D and certainly in Traveller as well. There's also no denying powergamers and rules lawyers exist in WoD circles of course.

 

[alex_greene]

There can be power inflation here but gaining wealth and power is only a means to a narrative end, ideally.

Ultimately the biggest philosophical difference is that either D&D or Traveler can be played successfully without the players doing any roleplaying at all. At heart, there are game systems in those books that can be played and enjoyed on their own merits. There's no real metagame in World of Darkness products as the enjoyment is almost entirely derived from roleplayed interactions.

This isn't to say there isn't great roleplay to be had with a good DM and players in, primarily old school, D&D and certainly in Traveller as well. There's also no denying powergamers and rules lawyers exist in WoD circles of course.

Yeah, but the powergamers tend to get weeded out pretty quickly because we Storytellers find them so tasty.

The point of using Traveller is listed in the description: "roleplaying game." It really gets boring if it's one long series of dice rolls, combat by table and no real sense of belonging in the setting. If you find yourselves just rolling for combats and encounters, spec trade and counting the profits and losses, you're really getting less out of it than you would be if you joined the military and spent your entire tour of duty stuck behind a desk in the accountancy department counting beans.

The roleplaying comes in those moments between the dice roll flurries and counter movements across the maps, where your characters engage with one another and with the NPCs, the players can play in character and stuff like that.

This, by the way, is what they mean by "game balance." Everyone gets what they want out of the game. The drama gamers get to run their characters and walk about inside their skin for a time, and the power gamers can ignore the fact that they're just basically playing a video game with pen and paper instead of a Wii.

 

[Stainless]

The focus of the basic product is combat, not setting, and both games provide a mechanistic focus around which those combats revolve.

RE: Traveller,. Sorry I don't agree with you. Combat-related text is a minority of the content of the main rule book. There are ample non-combat skills and a generic task resolution system that can be adapted to extend non-combat situations. I really like the system because it's so easy to develop a logical and system-consistent ruling on the unexpected. Also, the effect mechanic gives the GM some roleplaying prompts by indicating the magnitude of success/failure.

"So, let me get this right, you want to hack into the drinks machine and set up a hidden camera to take an image of all users? OK, lets start with getting physical access to the machine. What's your DEX bonus and/or mechanic skill? I'll say it's a routine task, a bit fiddly, hence the DEX bonus, and definitely helped by some general mechanical knowledge...."

 

[rust]

Basically the system is just a tool. Believing any game system can "enforce better roleplaying" is ... marking somebody as a fan

True, although a system can go a long way to encourage and support role-
playing.

An example could be Pendragon with its personality traits and passions -
they do not enforce roleplaying, but they provide guidelines for players
who want to roleplay a character who has a different personality than
their own, by reminding them how that character would probably think,
decide and act in a specific situation, and by rewarding the kind of beha-
viour his culture expects of the character, and he therefore was educated
for.

 

[OddjobXL]

Yeah, but the powergamers tend to get weeded out pretty quickly because we Storytellers find them so tasty.

In good groups.

The point of using Traveller is listed in the description: "roleplaying game." It really gets boring if it's one long series of dice rolls, combat by table and no real sense of belonging in the setting. If you find yourselves just rolling for combats and encounters, spec trade and counting the profits and losses, you're really getting less out of it than you would be if you joined the military and spent your entire tour of duty stuck behind a desk in the accountancy department counting beans.

That's certainly the case for me! I agree wholeheartedly. That said, and I mean this as a strength and not a criticism, there is a game that holds together conceptually and is playable as a game underneath it all. It's not dissimilar from, say, Ars Magica, in this regard. Some players really do get into the bean counting/trading or magical research aspects as they accumulate wealth and power. That's the stock of the gumbo. What makes any campaign tasty for most of us are all the other bits, the actual adventures, that break up the routine.

But make no mistake there is a default routine. And this is not a bad thing! Not every GM is particularly gifted and confident. Some are just busy. Having something ready to do and that can serve as a goal for a campaign (getting more powerful, by default) is a great way to get people thinking about side-adventures that can serve this end and to introduce roleplaying that is tied into something that's mechanically, not just dramatically, "real".

In the World of Darkness, the OWoD which is the one I'm familiar with, you have to reach out to much later products like Gilded Cage or Midnight Siege before any kind of overarching hard mechanics for running a campaign come into view - and even then it's more focused on atmosphere than die mods. Much more is expected of a Storyteller in games like these because so much depends on improvised interactions without anything to fall back on. I'm not saying this kind of approach makes for a better roleplaying game in general though.

My ideal would be a game with a strong core metagame and also heaps of atmosphere, setting and systems to help inspire strong roleplaying and non-combat situations. Fading Suns is very much like a WoD in space (for obvious reasons) but I can't tell you how many times I've wished for the Fading Suns setting to use Traveller rules!

Center game from a Guild perspective, which would be most natural for Traveller, and evolve it from there. Then borrow systems from other games that reward in-character roleplaying, more strongly defined personalty types (WoD's nature and demeanor/willpower) or opposing character traits (Pendragon's more successful with this than FS's attempt) with mechanical perks and bennies.

The roleplaying comes in those moments between the dice roll flurries and counter movements across the maps, where your characters engage with one another and with the NPCs, the players can play in character and stuff like that.

I'd say in a good group those dicerolls can inform the roleplaying and visa versa. I'm not making fun of "valuing random encounters and emergent narratives" at all! Maybe it's my old school background but I always liked all those tables and charts.

Trying to find the story as it created itself, to make sense of things that were just happening, without any premeditation on the part of a DM, always felt more like a real adventure to me than heavily scripted and railroaded adventures. Hell, it's why I still love Traveller as I do. Give me some blank paper and a handful of dice. Give me a table with imaginative players. And let's all be surprised by what we find out there!

This, by the way, is what they mean by "game balance." Everyone gets what they want out of the game. The drama gamers get to run their characters and walk about inside their skin for a time, and the power gamers can ignore the fact that they're just basically playing a video game with pen and paper instead of a Wii.

Actually, I think game balance refers to the mechanical balance of combat or other systems in a game. <.< >.>

But I like what you're saying.

 

[Bense]

Comparisons of role-playing systems almost always turn into "this is my favorite system " fanboy turns. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but remember that there is no definitive answer.
It's like arguing whether a Star Destroyer could beat the Enterprise - there is no real answer.

 

[R Arceneaux]

Re sub topic game balance....

This is where we are going to have to agree to disagree....

At the strictly personal level I like a game that allows any player character to develope their characters skills, feats, talents or whatever to develope into the stage of an extremely powerful broken character.

Once you have played a powerful broken character with an attitude problem you will always want to play one.

 

[rust]

Once you have played a powerful broken character with an attitude problem you will always want to play one.

Sorry, no. After a short while this type of character becomes just as bo-
ring as any other stereotype. I very much prefer to play more original
characters and to leave the cliches to Hollywood. :lol:

 

[Vargr]

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?

None of the above. Traveller is a game "driven" by the will of whatever each group of people gathering around to play it at any given time and location decide.