Traveller 5E

[Sigtrygg]

I was just thinking if the aim it to bring new players into Traveller, we already have 2D6 for the realism. So, lets expand the player base by introducing new players and entice them with heroic Traveller 5e.

I can see the arguments both sides make.

There are some who dislike 5e (a minority considering its sales numbers), and see it as a poor fit for Traveller. Others see the benefit of introducing Traveller via the larger audience.

I was actually thinking about the planet Eox from the Starfinder setting. The thought of Eoxian bone structured ships just makes me smile.

I never bothered with Starfinder, or Pathfinder for that matter.

It could be, but doing that just doesn't feel worth the effort to me. We already have 2D6 Traveller that does that well, so going in a heroic fantasy direction just feels like a better way of expanding the player base. We will then have 2 offerings, realistic 2D6 Traveller and heroic d20 Traveller, with a bit of fantasy, as I tend to think of fantasy elements when I think d20 , probably as that's where I had the most fun with d20 in the past.

I agree with you, 5E can bring something different.

Sounds like fun. I'll just wait... hopefully Dark Conspiracy comes out in the first half of 2026, well at least the PDF.

I'm looking forward to it as well. Dark Conspiracy as a setting has a lot to offer.

 

[Micky]

I'm not sure how well 5E gamers will relate to Traveller. Granted I have zero experience with 5E.. or 4E .. or 3E. Hell I still play BECMI. In fact next year we hit 30 years on our ongoing Mystara campaign. Still have the character sheets my little girls doodled upon who are now adults with kids of their own now. As precious to me as the photos in the scrapbook are.

Anyhow... as Seth notes... the real difference between 5E and old school games like Traveller isn't just just rules or setting.
It is the type of game you play. Epic v. grounded.

Great interview he did. Also mentions the very problem that has been a hot topic here... Traveller and new players. What is the disconnect. It is all about the setting dummy... though found it sad that one of the bigger RPG personalities on the internet had not even heard of Traveller. A great watch if you have not seen...

 

[Jame Rowe]

My initial reaction was, let’s put it nicely... shock! But after thinking about it more, 2D6 Traveller leans toward realism, while Traveller 5e, drawing on other d20 systems, will lean toward the heroic side. I don’t think the Charted Space setting is the best fit for Traveller 5e, but imagine a setting where an entire planet of undead roams the stars in undead-piloted starships. Combine that with dungeons and regions of space ruled by evil empires, all waiting for heroes to intervene. That could work. I might have been tempted, but honestly, I’m far more excited for Dark Conspiracy.

That said, I do think Traveller 5e has the potential to attract a large number of d20 players. I expect it will include all the familiar Traveller rules for character, planet, starship, and vehicle generation, but reworked for heroic d20-style play. That provides a solid foundation, and then the setting itself will need to carry the weight to make it successful.

At the end of the day, if this helps Mongoose earn a bit more revenue, enough to hire more staff and deliver even more 2D6 awesomeness, I’m all for it.

I think this is my opinion, as well.

 

[Studio Cat]

Won't go into details, but lines have already been drawn in this arena and would be extremely difficult to breach.

I had a feeling your team had already dotted the i's and crossed the t's in this regard. I'm just naturally a worry wart.

 

[MonsterX]

No one is "getting worked up about a Holy War". That's just you being a jerk and disrespecting other peoples' opinions.

I am getting worked up to have a Holy War about it. You might think it a trivial matter, but Holy Wars are generally fought over trivial matters, of no consequence to anyone.

Also, it won't actually affect me in any material way, since I won't actually be required to play the crap which will no doubt result from this effort. This, also, makes it perfect Holy War material, since Holy Wars are all about getting up into other people's business. The knowledge that blasphemers may be defiling the holy game of Traveller with their blasphemous polyhedron dice, class systems and hit points disturbs me .

Still, with superhuman effort I'll try to calm down, since there are actual real problems in the world to worry about, which in the end will likely turn out to be more important than this one.

 

[J. L. Brown]

This is about bringing in players who currently play the TTRPG that, like it or not, has for years had a bigger market of players than every other TTRPG put together.

I haven't checked this claim, so maybe it is true -- but I thought the most popular RPG around the world was 'Call of Cthulhu' by Chaosium. They already have a non-CoC version of their ruleset called 'Basic Role Playing'. Having no classes or levels, and being entirely skill-based, it seems like a far better match for Traveller than anything derived from 'Chainmail'. Call me a grognard, but if I was compelled, under extreme duress, to include 'class and level' into Traveller, then I would be looking for a team up with Iron Crown Enterprises, the same folks who brought us 'SpaceMaster'.

 

[Endie]

I haven't checked this claim, so maybe it is true -- but I thought the most popular RPG around the world was 'Call of Cthulhu' by Chaosium. They already have a non-CoC version of their ruleset called 'Basic Role Playing'. Having no classes or levels, and being entirely skill-based, it seems like a far better match for Traveller than anything derived from 'Chainmail'. Call me a grognard, but if I was compelled, under extreme duress, to include 'class and level' into Traveller, then I would be looking for a team up with Iron Crown Enterprises, the same folks who brought us 'SpaceMaster'.

As a fan of the game since the 80s I sincerely wish that CoC was the most popular TTRPG in the world, but it simply and absolutely can't be. We know a lot about sales figures for TTRPGs over the last few decades, and even the period when D&D was allegedly knocked off the top spot by Pathfinder during the nadir which was 4e turns out not to have been true.

Judging by employee counts (while allowing for the fact that WotC has other product lines) I suspect that D&D has substantially more than ten times as many players as CoC, and that's being very conservative. There was a kerfuffle five years ago when - perhaps thanks to the exposure granted to all things Eldritch Horror by Lovecraft Country - CoC squeaked for a short time into the second spot of the market, just ahead of Pathfinder. But even then it was only about sixth in the Amazon TTRPG sales charts, with the places ahead of it all fillled by various D&D books. In other words, WotC had multiple individual D&D products each of which sold more than the CoC product. It has, to my knowledge, never been close to knocking the 800lb gorilla off the top spot.

 

[J. L. Brown]

As a fan of the game since the 80s I sincerely wish that CoC was the most popular TTRPG in the world, but it simply and absolutely can't be. We know a lot about sales figures for TTRPGs over the last few decades, and even the period when D&D was allegedly knocked off the top spot by Pathfinder during the nadir which was 4e turns out not to have been true.

Judging by employee counts (while allowing for the fact that WotC has other product lines) I suspect that D&D has substantially more than ten times as many players as CoC, and that's being very conservative. There was a kerfuffle five years ago when - perhaps thanks to the exposure granted to all things Eldritch Horror by Lovecraft Country - CoC squeaked for a short time into the second spot of the market, just ahead of Pathfinder. But even then it was only about sixth in the Amazon TTRPG sales charts, with the places ahead of it all fillled by various D&D books. In other words, WotC had multiple individual D&D products each of which sold more than the CoC product. It has, to my knowledge, never been close to knocking the 800lb gorilla off the top spot.

Like I said, I haven't checked it. But CoC is apparently crazy popular in Japan; but all the sales go to the licensee who did the translation work. German-language TTRPG games seem to be lead by 'Dark Eye' and 'Vassen', in Spain a big part of the market is 'Aquelarre'. In English, specifically, and especially in the US market, D&D is solidly in the lead -- but I remain unconvinced that globally it is 'more played than all other TTRPGs combined'.

It is a difficult thing to measure.

Quite aside from that, another no-classes, no-levels, skill-based RPG seems like a far better match for Traveller than any version of that Gygax thing.

 

[actionman]

Thoughts?

People can do what they want, but 5e is the second worst version of D&D, exceeded in horridness only by 4th edition D&D. We already had D20 Traveller in the 90's, and I don't know how successful that was in achieving goals like bringing D20 players into Traveller or generating revenue.

IMO a 5e version of Traveller won't bring new players into Traveller, it will bring 5e players into a 5e game that has Traveller window dressing. IMO, people who play D20 or 5e or whatever generally prefer to stay with D20 systems. And for the D20 players that play games with non-D20 systems, the exceptions do not prove the rule.

• D20's level based system of character advancement will eliminate the Traveller character generation system.
• D20's level based mechanics will eliminate the Traveller skill system, which is approximates a normal distribution, in favor of the D20 1 - 20 probability resolution mechanic.
• D20's abstractions are often arbitrary and nonsensical, like a naked level 20 character can shrug off a gauss rifle round to the face because his hit points increase with every level, while a level 1 character can be killed by one attack of a common housecat. A +5 gauss rifle of slaying is somehow different that an ordinary gauss rifle. Why? Who knows, it just is. Stop asking questions, you're taking up session time and we have experience points to get.
• D20 level based mechanics will require carefully balanced encounters, experience point rewards, and all the rest of it. Gameplay will be utterly different from Traveller gameplay.

It won't be Traveller, it will only be called Traveller, and it will be a 5e D20 game with a scifi setting. If this generates revenue for Mongoose and increases gamer awareness of Traveller, great, but the 5e ruleset simply doesn't support Traveller gameplay as we know it.

 

[Endie]

Like I said, I haven't checked it. But CoC is apparently crazy popular in Japan; but all the sales go to the licensee who did the translation work. German-language TTRPG games seem to be lead by 'Dark Eye' and 'Vassen', in Spain a big part of the market is 'Aquelarre'. In English, specifically, and especially in the US market, D&D is solidly in the lead -- but I remain unconvinced that globally it is 'more played than all other TTRPGs combined'.

It is a difficult thing to measure.

Quite aside from that, another no-classes, no-levels, skill-based RPG seems like a far better match for Traveller than any version of that Gygax thing.

I'm not a market analyst but google agrees with me:



As to which game system would be the best fit, maybe you're right, but there is already a whole range of no-levels, skill-based TTRPG systems in which you can play Traveller (they're mostly, but not all, called Traveller). This is about uncaptured market segments: the monster share of the market, undoubtedly far larger than any other, which is D&D players.

 

[J. L. Brown]

I'm not a market analyst but google agrees with me:

View attachment 6753

As to which game system would be the best fit, maybe you're right, but there is already a whole range of no-levels, skill-based TTRPG systems in which you can play Traveller (they're mostly, but not all, called Traveller). This is about uncaptured market segments: the monster share of the market, undoubtedly far larger than any other, which is D&D players.

Your Google-fu may be misleading you. 'Widely estimated to be over 50%' is hardly definitive; and sales dollars is potentially deeply flawed. A keeper for CoC can get by with just the core rulebook, and have a full player group. D&D tries to sell a Players Handbook to each player -- plus a DMG and MM to each DM; plus cashing in on selling modules, world books, spell cards, and all sorts of other paraphernalia. Virtual Table Tops which provide combat-grids are selecting for games (and players of games) where tactical grid-based combat is an important aspect of the game.

Like I said, it is difficult to measure.

I also disagree that 'gaining access to D&D players' is necessary (or even a good idea) -- and it is certainly not clear that this will lead to any people choosing to buy into and play 'Traveller'. Folks who want to mow down endless ranks of mooks in a violent power-fantasy where 'all the numbers go up == you win' are not the same sort of people who want to play (for example) the underdog 'Firefly' crew. I have played with players who only wanted to roll their attack dice, and entirely tuned out of everything and everyone else in the game -- instantly going back to silly videos on their phone. Those people played D&D, and were not interested any anything with 'complexity'; even addition and subtraction of counting numbers was 'too crunchy'.

What we want is players who ask for a different game experience; and 'Traveller 5e' does not provide it, so it is a poor recruiting tool.

To reach new players, we need to reach new Game Masters. We want to sell Traveller to GMs, who will then run it for some of their players -- and while that may include a few 'just let me roll' types, it is up to the refs to get those players involved. Probably a better set of GM-assistance tools, and/or more attactive short-form adventure modules -- would be more effective at gaining players than this T5e thing.

[Edit:] NOT 'rules light', which often just means 'more work for the referee to make up all the stuff we did not bother with'. Stuff that is conceptually simple, and well-thought out; where the complexity is available on-demand as the referee and players want it. [/Edit]

 

[actionman]

It is the type of game you play. Epic v. grounded.

This is profoundly true, and it is a product of level based D20 type game mechanics, regardless of genre.

Compare Traveller and 5e/D20.

D20: characters' hit points scale with levels, creating characters who are effectively demigods who are greater than mortal men. This creates situations that are simply nonsensical, like a player character killing the entire startown police department with a +5 Jawbone of an Ass.

(No paintbrushes were harmed in the making of this video.)
(Public Service Announcement: When the Hebrew guy whispers "God, give me strength." it's time to call it a night.)

Or destroying an entire installation with a double-damage backstab +5 Twin-Engine Helicopter Gunship of Manifest Destiny and a +5 M-60E3 Machinegun of Freedom.

(If only this video had an experience point counter)

D20 level based game mechanics inescapably create the situation of extremely powerful brazenly fearless player characters easily defeating hordes of ordinary opponents, except for a limited number of boss enemies or big bad evil guy characters, which must be limited or the encounter becomes 'unbalanced'. These game mechanics also create the mindset that all the environments and characters the GM creates are just there to be smashed for experience points.




Traveller, D100/Chaosium, and many other non-level-based game systems:

Character hit points do NOT scale with character advancement, because character advancement occurs through skill improvement, loot, and gear. Characters remain vulnerable. This requires players to use their heads and not rely on their level bonuses to destroy hordes of enemies. There is plausible cause and effect. There is plausible FAFO, and this forces players to interact with the adventure in a reasonable intelligent way. There is no requirement for carefully balanced encounters. Characters need only use a skill successfully to advance that skill, so there is no need to constantly "win" encounters, and this frees characters to attack or withdraw as they please. There is no requirement to gain experience points to advance, so there is no incentive for the players to destroy everything the GM sets in front of them.

Non level based games don't have silly mechanics like roll a saving throw for half damage and other such abstractions. Instead the game mechanics force players to think about how their characters might be able to escape some damage, and they give the GM the freedom to decide whether it works or not and how much effect it has.

Non level based game mechanics require players to use their heads and interact much more reasonably with the game setting, because their characters are still as vulnerable as mortal men. This is the opposite of D20 systems, in which players are accustomed to defeating enemies in balanced encounters. This is why many D20 players have a hard time adjusting to other ttrpgs, and why many of them prefer to return to D20 games.

 

[Endie]

Your Google-fu may be misleading you. 'Widely estimated to be over 50%' is hardly definitive; and sales dollars is potentially deeply flawed. A keeper for CoC can get by with just the core rulebook, and have a full player group. D&D tries to sell a Players Handbook to each player -- plus a DMG and MM to each DM; plus cashing in on selling modules, world books, spell cards, and all sorts of other paraphernalia. Virtual Table Tops which provide combat-grids are selecting for games (and players of games) where tactical grid-based combat is an important aspect of the game.

Like I said, it is difficult to measure.

I also disagree that 'gaining access to D&D players' is necessary (or even a good idea) -- and it is certainly not clear that this will lead to any people choosing to buy into and play 'Traveller'. Folks who want to mow down endless ranks of mooks in a violent power-fantasy where 'all the numbers go up == you win' are not the same sort of people who want to play (for example) the underdog 'Firefly' crew. I have played with players who only wanted to roll their attack dice, and entirely tuned out of everything and everyone else in the game -- instantly going back to silly videos on their phone. Those people played D&D, and were not interested any anything with 'complexity'; even addition and subtraction of counting numbers was 'too crunchy'.

What we want is players who ask for a different game experience; and 'Traveller 5e' does not provide it, so it is a poor recruiting tool.

To reach new players, we need to reach new Game Masters. We want to sell Traveller to GMs, who will then run it for some of their players -- and while that may include a few 'just let me roll' types, it is up to the refs to get those players involved. Probably a better set of GM-assistance tools, and/or more attactive short-form adventure modules -- would be more effective at gaining players than this T5e thing.

I added my "I'm not an analyst" because the figures I saw suggested way over 50% of market share but I could not assess the expertise of the rating agencies since my analysis expertise is in the rather unrelated field of international shipping . That's me being responsible and open in how I present data. Do the same!

I've given plenty of data, much of it hedged responsibly. Please do feel free to offer your own data instead of just your belief that CoC, a game that has never even approached D&D sales, is the dominant game in revenue, number of players (where D&D absolutely undoubtedly dominates the only metrics we have available, which are online players on the major platforms) or, well, anything else at all.

As regards you wanting to keep out the D&D players, nobody will force you to play with these people you look down on so, but many of the rest of us play with D&D players, and ex-D&D players all the time and they are amoungst our best friends. Your distaste, disregard and sweeping generalisations, based wholly on anecdote, are going to continue to be absolutely (and rightly) ignored by Mongoose.

As someone who has played RPGs for four decades, and who experienced people making sweeping statements, snobbish judgements and prejudiced assumptions about me and my friends as D&D players, I have little time for people in the hobby who make the same, ugly mistake about others.

 

[Endie]

Oh hey, this should shut down the idea that CoC (which again, I love) is played by more people than D&D 5e (which, again, bores me):



There are seven years of data here: https://wiki.roll20.net/Orr_Industry_Report If you think that CoC (which had 1/5th of the players on Roll20 during the pandemic when virtual was the only game in virtual town) has experienced a minimum of a tripling of its market share since 2021 (all of it at the expense of D&D) to take the number one slot then I have some swamp land in Florida to sell you.

 

[J. L. Brown]

Oh hey, this should shut down the idea that CoC (which again, I love) is played by more people than D&D 5e (which, again, bores me):

View attachment 6755

There are seven years of data here: https://wiki.roll20.net/Orr_Industry_Report If you think that CoC (which had 1/5th of the players on Roll20 during the pandemic when virtual was the only game in virtual town) has experienced a minimum of a tripling of its market share since 2021 (all of it at the expense of D&D) to take the number one slot then I have some swamp land in Florida to sell you.

And you keep coming back to 'Here is a platform which is completely designed around d20 as a measure for how popular a non-d20 game is'. I have never contested that D&D 5e is the most popular TTRPG in the USA, and probably the English-speaking world. I do contest the 'D&D is the vast majority of all role-players, everywhere' -- even on Roll20 it only made up 53%.

The point is that T5e does NOT seem like it is a suitable tool for popularizing Traveller, or recruiting D&D 5e players to playing (non-T5e) Traveller.

Anyhow, I am done discussing this with you.

 

[Endie]

And you keep coming back to 'Here is a platform which is completely designed around d20 as a measure for how popular a non-d20 game is'. I have never contested that D&D 5e is the most popular TTRPG in the USA, and probably the English-speaking world. I do contest the 'D&D is the vast majority of all role-players, everywhere' -- even on Roll20 it only made up 53%.

The point is that T5e does NOT seem like it is a suitable tool for popularizing Traveller, or recruiting D&D 5e players to playing (non-T5e) Traveller.

Anyhow, I am done discussing this with you.

Pretty bad faith to say I "keep coming back to a platform designed around d20" the very first time I mention it!

I accept entirely that you believe that my beloved CoC somehow outranks D&D, and that you reject all the data that I have produced. I just ask that you produce any data of your own. Otherwise you're just continuing to say stuff that really doesn't agree with what we see on Amazon, on Roll20, in independent market reports or any of the other data I have given.

Since you complain that Roll20 is biased to D20 systems (not nearly so true as, for instance, for D&D Beyond which hoovers up vast numbers of the D&D players and so gives other systems an unrepresentative market share on Roll20) here is Fantasy Grounds: six year old data but still data showing a 70% market share for D&D at that point, which was before the massive leap in D&D popularity during the pandemic: https://www.belloflostsouls.net/2019/10/dd-claims-70-percent-of-users-on-fantasy-grounds.html

Edit: D&D Beyond claims an astonishing 19 million registered users, all playing D&D, and still only representing 50% of online D&D players. No wonder Mongoose wants even a few percent of that sweet, sweet market share! https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/31/...ic-dungeons-and-dragons-transformers-business

 

[Talon Greyfeather]

I'm not sure how well 5E gamers will relate to Traveller. Granted I have zero experience with 5E.. or 4E .. or 3E. Hell I still play BECMI. In fact next year we hit 30 years on our ongoing Mystara campaign. Still have the character sheets my little girls doodled upon who are now adults with kids of their own now. As precious to me as the photos in the scrapbook are.

Anyhow... as Seth notes... the real difference between 5E and old school games like Traveller isn't just just rules or setting.
It is the type of game you play. Epic v. grounded.

Great interview he did. Also mentions the very problem that has been a hot topic here... Traveller and new players. What is the disconnect. It is all about the setting dummy... though found it sad that one of the bigger RPG personalities on the internet had not even heard of Traveller. A great watch if you have not seen...

Very interesting video - thanks for sharing!

 

[Vormaerin]

We don't have world wide sales data. Sandy Peterson has said that Call of Cthulhu is the most popular TTRPG in Japan. I know that there are other games in Europe and other non English speaking areas that dominate local markets. But I doubt that CoC's overseas sales is enough to make up for the substantial disparity in the US market.

The real point is that no amount of D&D 5e games is going to get any more people playing Traveller. It might get them playing in Charted Space but they aren't playing Traveller and they aren't likely to switch from 5e to Traveller. The licensing money will likely be helpful to Mongoose, because money generally is.

GURPS, HERO, and D20 have done reasonably successful Charted Space games and some of the material is good enough to be used by Traveller players. So perhaps World's Largest Games will produce some supplements that cover Charted Space that aren't the same places we already have. That's a win.

But there isn't much evidence that any meaningful number of people who picked up GURPS or T20 Charted Space stuff moved on to actual Traveller and I doubt anyone who plays this 5e game will migrate to Traveller either.

 

[Arkathan]

I haven't checked this claim, so maybe it is true -- but I thought the most popular RPG around the world was 'Call of Cthulhu' by Chaosium. They already have a non-CoC version of their ruleset called 'Basic Role Playing'. Having no classes or levels, and being entirely skill-based, it seems like a far better match for Traveller than anything derived from 'Chainmail'. Call me a grognard, but if I was compelled, under extreme duress, to include 'class and level' into Traveller, then I would be looking for a team up with Iron Crown Enterprises, the same folks who brought us 'SpaceMaster'.

I cannot see Iron Crown Enterprises without chuckling over their Arms Law fumble chart:
"Stumble over an unseen imaginary deceased turtle. You lose 2 rnds of offensive action but can parry"

Every house ruled fumble chart for a D&D-like game I've run has included some variant of this entry.

 

[Condottiere]

Going by isekai/fantasy manga, I'd say that the Japanese and Korean demographic are more fascinated by Dungeon And Dragonesque genre.