What is Traveller... Redux.

[Infojunky]

Ok I admit I opened a can of Hivers with my question. I meant to.

Every "Traveller" Game I have ever run or played in have been vastly different from each other. So the real question is what is Traveller to you, because it is plainly obvious that there is no core agreement of what Traveller is.

Now if if you want to prove my above statement wrong, find the consistent elements that make a game Traveller.

I'll give you one, Jump Drives and how they work.

Beyond that some one else will have to make a case.

SO I repeat was does Traveller mean to You?

 

[rust]

To me, "Traveller" is a series of roleplaying systems with the same
assumptions, for example grav vehicles, jump drive, fusion guns,
and so on.

Most of these systems used or use a version of the same roleplaying
setting, the Third Imperium.

I would compare it to D&D, where there is also a series of systems
(D&D, AD&D, D&D 3, D&D 4) with the same assumptions (e.g. the
basic character classes, etc.), and where these systems also use the
same settings (World of Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms).

So, "Traveller", without a qualifier (Classic, Mega, Mongoose ...), is a
certain kind of roleplaying system that is mostly - but in no way ex-
clusively - used to play the Third Imperium roleplaying setting.

With Mongoose's strategy this is now changing somewhat, there will be
more commercially published settings for the current version of the Tra-
veller system, while in previous years most of the non-Third Imperium
settings were created and published by fans of the system.

Otherwise, apart from this very basic framework of a definition, Travel-
ler is whatever someone decides to make of it.

 

[alex_greene]

Traveller is a roleplaying game in which the players assume the personas of rootless Galactic wanderers and adventurers, making their way across the face of the Galaxy in search of adventure.

Simple as that, really. Your Galactic setting might be simple - early pioneer space explorers on a six year Grand Tour of the Sol system or exploring Ancient ruins buried deep beneath the surface of the planet Mars - or it may be grand - spanning entire universes and quantum realities a la Olaf Stapledon's Star Maker.

But deep down, the story is the same. Something in each character's past meant that they could no longer stand living the lie that was their career. Packing their bags, they said goodbye to everything stable and "normal" and chose Open Space, with all its attendant risks, over collecting a steady pay cheque.

That, to me, is Traveller.

 

[Matian]

Traveller is, and has always been, hard science fiction. Whether it's CT where space is so deadly only a quarter of your friends from basic training make it to their thirtieth birthday, or Virus/TNE where the arms race reaches its logical but tragic conclusion, Traveller, to me, has always meant you will die.

For all the criticisms that Mongoose is making things easier and less deadly, the fact remains that if your vacc suit rips, your life span from that point on is measured in seconds. Armour protects less, and weapons do more damage than any other sci-fi RPG I've tried. The life path system and means for character advancement prevents the ridiculous power creep seen in Star Wars or D&D. Two years into the adventure, the most the characters have are some new scars and a bunch of, "No shit, there I was..." stories.

Myself and my friends wouldn't have it any other way.

 

[Dave Chase]

Traveller

A person who travels, mainly to distant lands
A RolePlaying Game
A horse (U.S. Civil War period)
A group who helps others plan out their traveling
A music group



Dave Chase

 

[Vile]

Traveller is a rule system. What it was is open to debate.

 

[Supplement Four]

Traveller is a rule system. What it was is open to debate.

Like a nation not recognized by the UN at large, is MGT a viable version if it's ignored by a sizable group of Traveller players?

Those who stuck with CT and MT when TNE came out, ignoring that version of the game. With Mongoose's version, for many, it's the same.

 

[Vile]

As MGT is recognised by the UN (the "UN" being the IP holder), the feelings of the allegedly sizable group of previous Traveller players is only relevant insofar as their custom makes or breaks the brand. If MGT demonstrably flounders on the shores of grognardism, feel free to shout "I told you so" from the internet forumtops.

On which note I withdraw from this topic, as I am not interested in debating hearsay and unproven allegations regarding the nature of a bit of fun.

 

[GypsyComet]

Traveller is a rule system. What it was is open to debate.

Like a nation not recognized by the UN at large, is MGT a viable version if it's ignored by a sizable group of Traveller players?

Those who stuck with CT and MT when TNE came out, ignoring that version of the game. With Mongoose's version, for many, it's the same.

That is their prerogative. They have decided what Traveller is to them. If there is a lesson to be taken from the last thirty years of this game and many others, it is that those people are only correct for themselves, not anyone else. All those opinions cannot change the fact that TNE did not fail. T4 failed. T20 (arguably) failed. T5 in the last form I saw it would fail.

Mongoose Traveller has already outlived T4 and outproduced (and likely outsold) it and T20 combined. TNE had a five year run that only ended due to the unrelated issues that killed GDW, according to the direct accounts of Loren Wiseman. That TNE's net-side fanbase was driven into hiding is due to their opposition being able to scream louder, not because the screamers were right. I know it annoys the current batch of screamers to no end that the fans of Mongoose Traveller aren't following the TNE fans into "exile".

Too Bad.

 

[Golan2072]

IMHO, Traveller is a set of related sci-fi role-playing systems characterized by the use of skills as the predominant system element, high lethality, relatively conservative technological assumptions, communications which are limited to the speed of travel (which is, at best, 6 parsecs per week) and universe-building toolkit elements.

IMHO, Traveller is not the OTU, even though the OTU is Traveller's default setting. Each and every version of Traveller contains a setting-building toolkit (world generation, shipbuilding, and in some cases vehicle or even weapon building rules) that allows the referee to craft their own Traveller setting from scratch, or, alternatively, extensively modify the OTU to suit their own tastes. Most versions of Traveller can also be very easily adapted to a wide variety of settings existing in literature, film or TV, such as Alien(s) (which is extremely easy to convert CT or MGT into) or Babylon 5 (which has MGT sourcebooks).

 

[rust]

Like a nation not recognized by the UN at large, is MGT a viable version if it's ignored by a sizable group of Traveller players?

Not a comparison I would have recommended ... :wink:

A "sizable group" of nations like Burkina Faso and Guatemala still refuse
to recognize the government at Beijing as the government of China, but
this is quite irrelevant both for the UN at large and China, and in the end
it does far more harm to those nations than it does to the UN or China.

 

[The Chef]

Traveller is a game, that presents a framework for players to build characters and settings into a larger story line.

Traveller is a generic toolkit with large amounts of optional elements, so that players can amend it to fit with their own ideas and stories.

Though predominately focussed on a science fiction slant, Traveller can easily be adopted to a modern or fantasy background.

Though Traveller has many settings associated with it, it is not setting specific and is open to boundless interpretation by an imaginative audience.

Chef

 

[Deniable]

Traveller, like the universe, is big. It holds a lot of stuff.

As for the TNE fans being in exile, we aren't. We're just politely minding our own business while mining MGT for useful stuff.

 

[GypsyComet]

Traveller, like the universe, is big. It holds a lot of stuff.

As for the TNE fans being in exile, we aren't. We're just politely minding our own business while mining MGT for useful stuff.

18 years has taken a lot of the edge off the arguments, thankfully, and the departure of TNE fans from then-mainstream online fora left those fora, most notably the TML and GEnie, shattered wrecks of what they had been.

Significantly, two of the loudest amongst today's screamers were not present at the time, not appearing online until well after the war.

TNE is still a huge blind spot for a lot of Traveller fandom. Fixes for a number of CT/MT issues can be found in TNE, but the baby got thrown out with the bath water.

 

[rust]

That's interesting. :shock:

At the time when TNE was published, I was playing Traveller, but I had
no Internet access, so I obviously missed a lot of "fun".

We did really like TNE's character generation, and - being gearheads at
the time - Fire, Fusion & Steel, but we very much disliked the complica-
ted maneuver drive, and the somewhat depressing setting was also not
what we were looking for.

However, we borrowed heavily from TNE for our homebrew version of
Traveller, probably more than from any other version prior to Mongoo-
se Traveller.

 

[phavoc]

Traveller, like the universe, is big. It holds a lot of stuff.

As for the TNE fans being in exile, we aren't. We're just politely minding our own business while mining MGT for useful stuff.

18 years has taken a lot of the edge off the arguments, thankfully, and the departure of TNE fans from then-mainstream online fora left those fora, most notably the TML and GEnie, shattered wrecks of what they had been.

Significantly, two of the loudest amongst today's screamers were not present at the time, not appearing online until well after the war.

TNE is still a huge blind spot for a lot of Traveller fandom. Fixes for a number of CT/MT issues can be found in TNE, but the baby got thrown out with the bath water.

Oh man... I haven't seen anyone reference GEnie in a VERY long time. As far as the old BBS world goes, I certainly did like it.

My take on Traveller is that it's not quite like other RPG's. As a character you can get more cash, more stuff, but basically you never "level" as you would in say D&D.

I think that the different versions of Traveller (usually) help to expand the game by fleshing things out. However, like any other franchise, they don't make money unless they sell, so in some ways it behooves publishers to constantly "destroy" the gaming system so they can sell new books. At some point the number of people buying expansions tends to drop off, so they shake up the world so they can sell more.

I have always steered clear of which version of Traveller is best. It really just falls to what version you like. I do think that the GURPS stuff had the highest publishing standard of any of the Traveller materials. For the most part it was very well thought out and done to the standard SJG high design standards. I was hoping that Mongoose would have picked up upon that and done the same, but so far I haven't seen that level of design effort. Maybe when they actually create some new stuff from scratch we'll see that.

 

[rust]

I do think that the GURPS stuff had the highest publishing standard of any of the Traveller materials.

This may well be true, and GURPS Traveller made it easy to "cross over"
to other potentially interesting GURPS settings, from Terradyne through
Alpha Centauri or Blue Planet to the Uplift Universe.

 

[Withered]

I just "discovered" Traveller in the last few weeks. I jumped right in and started exploring the game, reading all sorts of things here and there.

I have always been aware of the game, but never played it.

So, what is Traveller, obviously is a question that everyone has to answer for themselves. In my case...

It is a game published (now) by MGP, that is useful for creating a wide variety of scifi related settings to play in.

In fact, i was very close to not picking this game up, since i have an unabashed HATRED of cat people. The fact that the Third Imperium is no longer incorporated in the rules was a huge plus for me.

On the other hand there was a lot of the setting material that was originally "built in" that i liked, a lot. Either way, the modular nature of this later version is what sold me.

So that is what traveller is to me? An alternative to the Alternity that i love, with a huge amount of setting material i can use if i just find a away to euthanize the Aslan species...

(I am still reading to determine what sort of effect this would have on MTU in regards to the OTU.)

 

[captainjack23]

In fact, i was very close to not picking this game up, since i have an unabashed HATRED of cat people. The fact that the Third Imperium is no longer incorporated in the rules was a huge plus for me.
[snip]

(I am still reading to determine what sort of effect this would have on MTU in regards to the OTU.)

They work great as wookie like things say for instance if you were using another SF RPG's plastic prepaints..... Or Warm blooded furry raptors, really. What they look like is pretty minor. They're pack chasers in traveller terms. Don't have to be cats. "Aslan" simply means "I beg your pardon ?", the first contact response to the nosy question, "what does your race call itsself," which came across as "what is the name of your god penis"

 

[captainjack23]

Here's what I posted in another forum on the subject*:

How bout:

"Traveller is the game I run (or play) when I'm using some mishmash of rules and/or setting details ultimately derived from Marc Millers Classic traveller ?"

I've run GURPS traveller, and CT traveller , and mostly a mishmash of whatever I liked from whatever rule editionin and out of the OTU; for me, the zeitgeist created and derived from MWM's rules seems to be the common thread. MGT clearly is part of that.

For me, I tend to currently define the OTU setting as a big part when I'm playing in it; but I still have said I'm playing traveller in a starwars, star trek or complete homebrew (all of which I've played and run).

There's also some stuff about
Science fiction roleplaying using possible, if often highly skilled, characters
a humanocentric universe
based on a particular family of SF from 1930 to about 1970(ish).
Foucus on character over tech.
Pre cyberpunk/nanotech sensibility.

But really, Its something about the rules and the setting - the rules intrude on any setting, and make things travellerish, and so far, the setting has been shaped by the rules making things travellerish. TNG is traveller setting without much of the rules; Gurps also. Original CT is the rules without much setting. Megatraveller is Rules plus setting, as was T4; MGT seems to be rules plus some setting. It has some different mechanisms, but it really seems to be a traveller incarnation -and much closer to CT than even MT.










*don't worry, I gave myself permission to quote myself, on a case by case basis, at least.