Traveller General: Vilani don't come from no Solomani monkeys! edition

Traveller is a classic science fiction system first released in 1976. In its original release it was a general purpose SF system, but a setting was soon developed called The Third Imperium, based on classic space opera tropes of the 60s, 70s, and 80s, with a slight noir tint.
Though it can support a wide range of game types, the classic campaign involves a group of retired veterans tooling around in a spaceship, taking whatever jobs they can find in a desperate bid to stay in business, a la Firefly or Cowboy Bebop.


Library Data: Master Archive:
mega.nz/#F!lM0SDILI!ji20XD0i5GTIUzke3iv07Q


Galactic Maps:
travellermap.com/
utzig.com/traveller/iai.shtml

Resources:
1d4chan.org/wiki/Traveller
zho.berka.com/
travellerrpg.com/CotI/Discuss/
wiki.travellerrpg.com/Main_Page
freelancetraveller.com/index.html

Music to Explosive Decompression to:
>Old Timey Space music
youtube.com/watch?v=w34fSnJNP-4&list=RD02FH8lvwXx_Y8
youtube.com/watch?v=w0cbkOm9p1k
youtube.com/watch?v=MDXfQTD_rgQ
youtube.com/watch?v=FH8lvwXx_Y8
>Slough Feg
youtube.com/watch?v=ZM7DJqiYonw&list=PL8DEC72A8939762D4
>Goldsmith - Alien Soundtrack
youtube.com/watch?v=3lAsqdFJbRc&list=PLpbcquz0Wk__J5MKi66-kr2MqEjG54_6s
>Herrmann - The Day the Earth Stood Still
youtube.com/watch?v=3ULhiVqeF5U
>Jean Michel Jarre - Oxygene
youtube.com/watch?v=nz1cEO01LLc
>Tangerine Dream - Hyberborea
youtube.com/watch?v=9LOZbdsuWSg
>Brian Bennett - Voyage
youtube.com/watch?v=1ZioqPPugEI

So I've been reading Agent of the Imperium, and I'm getting near the end. So far it's damn good -- I'm actually worried this is going to be one of those books where when it's over, I really just want more.
(That's basically how I felt after reading Gibson's Sprawl trilogy, and then he never wrote any more Sprawl books.)
So here's hoping Marc Miller continues writing.

Yeah I started reading it too it pretty good.
For some reason I never realised there were so many aliens in the third imperium.

Yeah, there's a metric crapload of minor races.

I think my favorite minor race are the Llellewyloly. They're just so damn weird, and yet somehow plausible.

Oh I totally forgot to link it.
Previous Thread:

What books do people generally play from the most? IE, which books are best to start reading for a new person?

Man, how do you do it? How do you run Traveller?

It seemed like a pretty neat game, so I tried running the Mongoose edition for my group. I'd like to think I'm a decently experienced GM, but I still felt like it just had too many fiddly rules and required way too much prep work for me to enjoy running it as much as I wanted to. I was even using Pirates of Drinax, so it's not like I had to create everything from scratch, but I still find kind of overwhelmed.

Anyone successfully run a Traveller campaign? How'd you manage it?

If you want to get started quickly, Mongoose Traveller 1e's core rulebook is pretty much grab-and-go. The stuff outside core is poor, but you don't need any of those.

Traveller does ask a lot of a GM. My advice is to take it slow, maybe start your players without a ship, so you only have to deal with the skill rules and personal combat, then when you've got that down, have them do some ship combat, and maybe move on to trading, so you can take it in stages, rather than trying to cram all the rules modules in your brain all at once.
I guess Pirates of Drinax doesn't take it slow, though.

Well I want to read up on the rules in depth too. I don't plan on playing anytime soon but just want to read on how the game is played. Is Classic Traveller still the most popular? The Wiki page linked in the OP says the newest one is unplayable for anyone but people who have been playing it forever.

T5 is pretty crazy, yeah. The latest revision of T5 is supposed to be better, but the first release was ridiculously complex and pretty much nobody was happy with it at that point.

Mongoose is very popular, but Classic has a lot of devotees as well. (Probably the most popular edition is a mixed one made up of the referee's favorite bits, though. Most Traveller referees end up there sooner or later - Traveller has a lot of editions, and most of them have a few neat things wrapped in a lot of not so neat things)

If you want to give Classic a go, grab Starter Traveller, Citizens of the Imperium (for the extra careers) and DGP's Universal Task Profile (UTP).


The last PDF gives you a unified skill mechanic, as Classic originally only handled certain specific tasks, and it was left up to the ref to decide on the others, if any. (Which actually isn't that hard -- you can roll on just about anything due to everything using the same scale. Like the Bribe skill is rolled under the law level of the planet. The more repressive and bureacratic the world is, the more likely your random clerk is to be corrupt)
The UTP was popular enough that it went from thirdy-party add on to core in Megatraveller.

How is persuasion and the like handled in classic traveller? Classic doesn't seem to have any rules about it.

Generally like old-school D&D, you told the ref what your angle was for persuading the guy and he honestly judged whether the NPC would go for it. The expectation was that you didn't roll for stuff all the time, instead you just kind of ran with it. (This changed over time as skills became more numerous and less powerful.)

Though you could certainly ask for a roll under the PC's stat, or the NPC's stat, or whatever. You could also add a new skill and permit players to swap what they rolled for a point in the new skill.

The social skills of Classic are situational: Streetwise, Carousing, and Liaison. Admin can also be used that way.

Skills are decoupled from stats specifically to allow the skills to be broader.

T5 skills use two different ways to adjust difficulty. Some of those who have been using T5 from the beta days will tells you to pick one and stick with it.

T5 is "roll under target of stat plus skill/knowledge" the more difficult the task is, the more dice you roll. OR, you can modify the target by a fixed DM. Sanity suggests picking one of these methods and sticking to it. Note that combat and perception skills use the variable dice side, so that's probably the one to use. It is actually a slick mechanic: Target size is a number that makes your roll easier; target range makes your roll harder. They use the same set of values, and are intended to result in a zero mod if an object takes up about the same amount of your visual field regardless of actual size.

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Traveller has always interested me. The Third Imperium setting sounds pretty neat, and space westerns are my favourite genre.

How does Classic compare to Mongoose?

Mongoose is basically a retro-clone of Classic.

>How does Classic compare to Mongoose?

They have some similarities, but some differences. Mongoose is all complete in the core, while CT the rules are a bit more spread out. CT also has more options, with several different systems available for both personal and ship combat.

Mongoose chargen is more detailed and slower. Skills are more numerous and less powerful than Classic's basic chargen, though about on par with the advanced chargen.
Combat is different, as MGT has initiative, while CT's default combat has simultaneous resolution, where both sides declare and then you resolve who got shot.

Classic has the most stuff available for it, but Mongoose has had a fair amount published. Unfortunately, Mongoose's quality control and editing is pretty bad, and so a lot of the stuff made for varies in quality quite a lot.
The two are fairly compatible, though Mongoose uses the more trendy armor as damage reduction, while Classic uses the old wargamer standby of armor as hit reduction, and animal encounters are mechanically very different between the two, meaning you'd have to translate those to run an adventure for one edition in the other.


There's also Cepheus engine, an OGL clone of MGT 1e, which is supposed to have been tweaked to be more compatible with classic material.

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Also Interrogation. MegaTrav added a few more.

There was' IIRC' a early Classic "bureaucratic nightmare" adventure where what skills you used depended on which particular official you were dealing with. Some were amenable to bribery, some gave a positive reaction from Streetwise, and actually reacted badly to Liaison: some preferred to deal with ex-Navy characters, others liked dealing with Merchants, and so on. It might be useful to give random NPCs prejudices and quirks like this, just to keep interactions unpredictable.

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Anyone have any stories from games you've played of Traveller?

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Couple of action packed green texts from our campaign. We took a big break after this, but came back to it earlier this year, they were able to rescue their patron and had just got back to their base when a civil war started with Sol Sec and the Solomani Party on one side, and the Solomani Navy and Mega Corps on the other side.

For once the PCs were on the side of Sol Sec, effectively allies against the Navy and the Mega Corp who was secretly sponsoring the COTA group

It's 2 AM. I just finished rolling up my character's father and mother, so I could give my character a proper backstory.

Send help.

How compatible is T5 with classic and mongoose? I started reading through T5 and the setting info at the beginning was pretty good reading but character creation is a bit confusing.
How easy is it to rip out and use specific systems like weapon or vehicle creation or whatever?

Exit Visa.

Using the planet generation parts of T5 or the ships is pretty modular and adaptable to other editions, though the armor ratings of T5 are very much their own thing.

T5 takes a "size is everything" approach to weaponry, so it isn't necessarily easy to take Maker results straight to other editions, but some of the concepts of the Maker chapters can certainly be ported.

Start with a scenario that doesn't use most of the rules. For example have a completely planet bound adventure where you all get comfortable with the basic rules. Then introduce the star ship elements. Then optionally include the trading stuff.

If you don't like the rules of a sub-module, there is no need to make use of them. For example, my group decided to drop the trading rules. At first we thought it was confusing. Then I spent several hours building a trade matrix for the systems in the subsector they might plausibly travel through. The next session they spent 90 minutes deciding how many funny T-shirts they were going to buy from the local supplier. Looking for good deals using the sub-system was a chore, so we dropped it.

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I've heard some of traveller's rules translate well to a modern-day or even earlier game, how true is that?

There was a guy around Veeky Forums who used MGT for a 19th century military riflemen game to some success.
Traveller's tech scales from primitive to superscience pretty readily, so it's possible to climb out of your spaceship in your vacc suit and have cavemen throwing spears at you, or men on horseback firing bows, or flintlock weapons, or assault rifles, whatever.

One edition shares mechanics with Twilight 2000 2e, another with GURPS, and a third with Hero, so you have some outside help.

The more proprietary 2d6 high or Vd6 low systems are also pretty adaptable, and the game includes normal melee weaponry in all editions and bows in several. The game has a "magic" mechanic already in psionics, though others like Vancian or something else could easily be grafted on.

There's a magic supplement for MGT1, Flynn's Guide to Magic in Traveller, which is in the Mongoose folder under Third Party/Rules and Careers

There's also this

It could be worse:
>Steward is a Branch Skill for the Navy
>In the Army and Marines, Steward is an NCO skill, limited to E9 only.
>You're really gonna tell the Sergeant Major he's a lousy cook?

People who are used to an M1911A1 having different stats than a 9mm Browning won't like Trav's generic Autopistol.

TL6-7 chemical rockets are usually only available as 3rd party supplements/homebrews. Traveller is fine with TL6-8 worlds as backwaters of a TL12-15 interstellar state: TL8 as cutting edge tech in only one system, not so much. There's also those horrible, clunky computers.

Someone in another thread suggested Twilight 2000 as a better choice for actual modern-historical campaigns.