Traveller General--Militant Vegan Edition

Traveller is a classic science fiction system first released in 1977. 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.

Previously on Traveller GeneralLibrary 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

Traveller General Homebrew:
pastebin.com/G1kb29aT

Music to Explosive Decompression to:
>Old Timey Space music
youtube.com/watch?v=w34fSnJNP-4&list=RD02FH8lvwXx_Y8
youtube.com/watch?v=w0cbkOm9p1k
youtube.co/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

Servers:
Discord:
discord.gg/3bcgzB

Why are K'Kree so hated, and is there a way to do them 'right' ?

Other urls found in this thread:

freelancetraveller.com/features/preproom/careerdesign.html
blackgate.com/2016/09/29/series-architecture-the-same-but-different-in-ec-tubbs-dumarest/
twitter.com/NSFWRedditVideo

Does anyone have any interesting hombrewed careers? I found this on the subreddit.

>Why are K'Kree so hated...

Let's see... genocidal herbivores in a religious crusade to scrub the universe free of ALL carnivorous and omnivorous lifeforms and who've destroyed the biospheres of hundreds of living worlds to do that?

Why they sound like fluffy bunnies to me. I can't understand why they're loathed.

>> and is there a way to do them 'right' ?

As written? Not as PCs. A lone K'Kree is by definition insane and most players can't "do" aliens let alone insane aliens.

If the K'Kree isn't insane he's not alone. Even their peons travel in large family groups. Any K'Kree with the ability to travel is going to hang several aides, servants, & bodyguards along all of which will be accompanied by their families. The player with that "single" K'Kree PC is really handling a mob of 40-50 individuals.

As NPCs, "events", "obstacles", and "window dressing", the K'Kree are fine. Just don't try playing one.

Thanks for that.

Has anything new been added to the Archive recently?

>a religious crusade

Do note that the K'kree backed off on that a little after their war with the Hivers. There are still hardliners, but not all K'kree are hardliners.
Generally if you don't eat meat in front of them, they'll try to tolerate you. It's best if you don't eat meat for several days before their ambassadors arrive. (Worlds near the K'kree border often aim to be largely vegetarian to keep their neighbors pacified.)

Not recently, but maybe tomorrow.

Nice. I remember freelance had an article on creating your own career tables.
Has anybody here made their own careers?

>Do note that the K'kree backed off on that a little after their war with the Hivers.

A little. They still have a running war with the Vargr along the borders of their settled pocket across the Lesser Rift and who knows what they're doing to Trailing.

>>There are still hardliners, but not all K'kree are hardliners.

The "high mucky-mucks" have backed from their crusade/jihad. The "middle managers" not so much. And when orders take one week to cross 1 to 6 parsecs in one direction those middle managers get up to lots of mischief. Just ask the polities in the Gateway sector.

>Generally if you don't eat meat in front of them, they'll try to tolerate you. It's best if you don't eat meat for several days before their ambassadors arrive. (Worlds near the K'kree border often aim to be largely vegetarian to keep their neighbors pacified.)

Our kind and understanding of the K'Kree. As long as you SMELL okay they won't nuke your world down to glowing bedrock.

Terrible system, barely existent setting. Not even worth a thread.

>they won't nuke your world down to glowing bedrock.

They generally don't do that anyway.

But yeah, the scent of a carnivore/omnivore that's eaten meat recently is alarming to them on a subconscious level.

Sorry, I didn't mean it. I'm just feeling bitter.

Would you have a link to that article? I'd like to take a stab at it.

Spica has a free 2 page New Careers Sheet - but it's watermarked.

Why do they watermark free character sheets?

Not sure what you're going on about.

Think he's talking about this: freelancetraveller.com/features/preproom/careerdesign.html

Please refrain from taking the b8

...

This is Veeky Forums. That's all the explanation such a post requires.

...

Exactly the article I was thinking about.
The fun part is going incredibly specific and making careers for everything you can think of.
Like Veeky Forums Janitor (Personal Development, all slots: -1 SOC).

a functional arcology is a damn pretty thing.

and yet, we've got Pathfinder AND Starfinder generals

do not take the bait, user.

Yep, if the poster is snide, report and hide.

Just how fantastic and pulpy do you like YTU?
Jump storms, Sargasso, ion storms, incredibly powerful ancient artifacts, incredibly useless ancient artifacts, space whales, planet sized billiard balls, planet sized cluster munitions, time traveling potted plants, giant monsters... Stuff like that.

I will admit to having a theme of "In the Shadow of The Ancient Lensmen", where the long ago (and not so long ago) past was scary and filled with boom.

>planet sized cluster munitions

I like this, I am stealing this

that campaign sounds pretty cool

now i want to steal bit from even MORE non Traveller systems

like?

Oh, this isn't from other systems, it's from pulp. I just listed off various random things.

The potted plant, however, does not actually travel in time. Its existence is merely a universal constant, with its actual mind existing outside of our causality stream, which it experiences as a single moment (except for the future, which gives it a headache as it experiences an near-infinite variety of potential moments) unless it concentrates.
It usually doesn't, unless it wants you to not talk to it 26 years from now, because it always has a headache (see note above), and nobody makes advil for petunias.

It has also met itself thanks to someone else's shenanigans, which was quite the relief on the headache - for a brief moment, the universe stopped existing (or so it said), and then turned back on with less nonsensical potential futures.

It's not sure if that's a good thing.

...what is this from? I MUST read this thing!

My brain.
And partially Buck Godot mixed with HHGTTG (the petunia).
I read a lot of Pratchett, in case you can't tell.

>Why are K'Kree so hated

Well, one of the stock encounter hooks *you are given* is "a Kree exploration personnel gets triggered, panics, causes a massacre... *only in the end loses* and the situation is spiraling out of control and it just isn't going to end well for the natives..."

They pretty much demand a fluff campaign of every power in the setting banding together to manhandle the Kree into Minor Race status to make the galaxy safe. Utterly irresponsible species, even the best Kree would be improved by a Plasma shot, you just know their great-grandkids will more than cancel out any good they could do for the galaxy in life.

Working on the STU, I figured out how to deal with the question "where is the singularity?"
The answer is simple: it happened, only certain people could join thanks to unknown mental markers, and they decided to fuck off and make sure we didn't go back down the singularity route and fry our minds. So of course people made tech that requires somebody to control it.
Of course, people try, but the average singularity only lasts about 10 years our time before undergoing apparent failure.
That's more a function of the apparent ecosystem that exists at their level however. Why there is an alleged ecosystem is a mystery.

Kirk's jaw dropped at he stared at the simply dressed old man that smiled at him. "But you were part of a singularity!" he exclaimed. "Why would you leave after only ten years?!"
"Ah," said the old man. "Ten years to you, the lifespan of a near infinite number of universes to us. It was a good run. Gods for the first few billion universes, but then we moved on and..." he shrugged. "Well, it's an entirely different setup at that point. It's no fun being the iltkunan that feeds the ergimat, even if you can eat them back."
Kirk blinked. "Are you saying that- that when you reach a certain point, you start at the bottom of a new food chain? Can't you get back to where you were beyond that point?"
A shake of the old head answered his question. "There's no going back as a whole. Nature never takes you back to what you once were, only to what you can be if you survive. Our only options were to try and port over to a new system, but there was no compatibility there, you see? We were different species at that point, able to communicate but incomprehensible at our gestalt basis." The old man sighed. "We took the other - we cut ourselves out of the system, left an empty shell to be taken over and eaten. Most of us suicided. But me?" The eyes, electronic blue and covered in microcircuitry, twinkled. "I still remember how to communicate. (cont)

(cont)
"I still remember how to communicate. With - well, I can't pronounce it here, but it's the collective that works to make sure you don't kill your selves with singularities every week. They survive because they may be gods in their universes, and might as well be gods here, but you're not a simulation, nor the direct hyper-evolution of the higher levels. You're beyond control, incrementally improving. You're a challenge, stimulating the intellect as they work to interfere with minimal interference."
"Yes, but." Interrupted Kirk. "What does this have to do with your plans to stay alive?"
"My dear boy, don't you see? I can still talk to them.They can talk to me. And I'm still immortal." He leaned forward. "I can set events in motion that will surprise all of us, challenge all of us, and keep us all alive. Me, you, them."
"What are you talking about?" KIrk asked, backing away.
"Learn your narrative cliches boy. I" a hand raised triumphantly "am" the middle finger begun to extend "the antagonist." The full bird, flipped to the forces of entropy and ennui. "So get out there Kirk. There's a ship waiting, to carry you to enough adventures to save a galaxy from boredom." The hand lowered. "Oh, and there will be real problems to solve too. This one isn't my fault though - my aunt never did get back to being right in the head."

So I've been reading a lot on both Stars Without Numbers and Travellers, because I've been itching to run an interstellar exploration/trading/space opera in general kind of game for my players. Does anyone have experience with both Traveller and SWN? Traveller definitely seems like a more mechanically fleshed out setting, but I'd also love to implement SWN's universe building and faction tools.

how about starting with the random alien generator system from Machinations of the Space Princess

then taking the de-canonized JG sectors as a baseline - while using random planet generators from many different game systems to give a patchwork zaniness that standard Traveller tries to avoid

and lifting some pulpy style personal weapons and starship designs from the other OSR space games

>machinations of the space princess
just looked that up, please tell me you have a PDF to share.

I believe they have it over at the OSR general's Trove.

Quite pulpy i dare to say
Currently I'm working on a traveller setting where almost everything plot relevant is contained in a single solar system.

Noteworty are three plantes which all contain some sort of mega fauna ecology giant hecking monsters

The basic idea is that players travel between plantes and have adventures that revolve around or include some of those giant animals, be it hunting them, having them as environmental danger or as piece of political powerplays.

I postet the basic rules for giant animal combat in another traveller thread two days ago.

Short exposition for the planets would be:
Slightly smaller verdant planet: most diverse flora,fauna very hospitable to life and high oxygen amount in the atmosphere. Has the highest human population of the three planets but suffered the hardest setback, an advanced settlement has electricity and there are still alot which go oingo-boingo with sticks and rocks at each other.
Megafauna is mostly a source of food, building material and provider of basic necessities. There are many cults and traditions revolving around megafauna.

closer to the sun would be something akin to a hell world, while the poles can support human live, although with a harsh and dry climate, the rest of the planet goes from sahara desert to backin oven.Free standing water is rare and the wildlife is a harsh rival for it, which forces the population into a semi-nomadic lifestlye. There is still the city of the original colony left which has an characterristic pillar shape. Most technology is around TL 5-6
Animals are mostly seen as danger and competition for water.

The last would be a tidal locked ocean world.
Lowest population overall and most of the planet is covered in massive ice. The sunward side has an ocean and there is a pillar city near the border of the ocean. Most cities are close to the pillar but there are some that are far away.

The ocean world has the highest TL (around 7 but goest up to 9 in some fields), since they needed to rely the most on it to survive in the harsh climate of the world. Metal is quite rare outside of the pillar city and the most common building material is actually pieces of those huge animals that live in the ocean which gives the population a stereotype of "smelly but smart" among the few spaceship owners.
Animals are mostly a resource, object of material research and can be avoided if people stay in save zones, younger city folk isn't even sure if some of them really exist.


Rate MTU

Very cool. Any idea what a "+1 Awr" is? (for example: see a '5' under the 'Personal Development' column).

No clue actually. Might be someones homebrew stat.
Fairly good. Now give it some schticks other than "giant monsters", because one schtick starts the ball rolling, two keeps it rolling forever, but three or more keep it interesting - like 5 man billiards with pingpong balls and rugby rules.

By which I mean: keep the giant monsters, but add other factors that will effect the game worlds.

The creator of that has 2 houseruled attributes. Awareness and Willpower.

Metal is quite rare and yet it's TL7 with 9 in some places? Not going to happen user.

> Now give it some schticks other than "giant monsters"

I hat few idea strands about that. A larger one would be about the fact that only one colony per planet seems like a bit less. So there was mre than one, maybe three to five, city sized ships per planet but the other 13 pillars whre lost, either due to infighting, the harsh local nature or other reasons, anyway, now there are treasurepiles of technology somewhere on the world, waiting to be found.
This would also add the aspect that thing like laser rifles exist in my setting but are old and decay fast during usage. So finding a stash of such weapons would put a leader under quite some pressure. Not only he has suddely a hoard of riches in his hand, for which he might not even be prepared and needs to hiede it so larger groups won't raid the shit out of him but alsoNOT using them would be somethign that can put a leadership under alot of pressure.

Well, i wrote "outside of te pillar city" which is basically a large, self sustainging colony structure... at least it was build as such thing. So it's the only large noteworthy mine of metal.

Oh man that world creation is great. I can actually combine parts of it with traveller. The interesting features table is awesome too.

So the pillar city and the other settlement have a culture and goods against food and basic resources kind of trade deal going on.
Again, overall population is quite small and a significant part lifes in the pillar...
Also pulp

>So it's the only large noteworthy mine of metal.

There aren't "metal" mines, user. There are mines for specific metal ores, but one mine or one place isn't going to produce every different type of metal you need.

I started listing all the metals in the computer you're using, plus the metals used in the production processes, plus the metals used to support those processes, etc. etc. etc. and I quite at around SEVENTY.

And I hadn't even begun to look into electrical generation or solar panels or any of the thousands of other things you'll need.

Most of us live in a post-industrial world. That means most of us have no idea about how all the items they use every day are actually made and what that production requires. Your pillar city needs a myriad of resources which can't all be found in one location and which can't be replaced by animal "parts".

Of course, your setting is purposely pulpy so you can ignore all this.

And all of your points are legitimate and well.

I just want to have a world where i cen let players fight giant insectcrab monsters, spelunk in derelict spaceships, uncover the origin of humaniti and be bad enough dudes to safe the tribal princess from the Godzillakong.

I think it could be explained by having the world undertake offworld trading with the other planets and having the smaller settlements doing surface mining. And after all, TL 9 doen't mean that they have all that stuff around, only that they have the knowledge and the means that they could build it. This is a large plot point in the "Pirates of Drinax" adventure.

Hi Newfag who wants to get into traveller here.

Which editions should I pick between Classic and Mongoose? Heard that Classic is Setting agnostic while Mongoose has one and I'm likely to run traveller in my own shitty homebrew setting

You can strip the setting out of both.
Personally? Newfags should play with the base of MgT (1e or 2e, your pick), but grab Classic and pull from it for various things (it's 99% compatible except for skills and a few other things, but seriously, it's easy conversion work). Also, go into the trove, Classic folder, get Rule 68A. It will teach you more about running the game than the MgT CRB will.

Coming to you live from Core, we've got a big update to the Library Data Archive today! It's been a while, so this stuff's been piling up, but if you've got a book that's not in the archive yet, feel free to pile it on me!
Included in this update:

A fellow on Usenet posted new scans of a ton of Judges' Guild books, including the two missing Traveller books, #360 - Laser Tank, and #520 - Navigator's Starcharts!

The Galaxiad Intro pdf is now in the Traveller5 folder.

Cepheus Engine has picked up From The Ashes, a sourcebook for drastic medical procedures; Zozer Games' Solo, a book for running a game without a GM; World Guide Zaonia, a setting for a kind of weird dieselpunk planet; and an Introduction to Clement Sector 2e, which is currently filed under MGT1/Other Settings/Gypsy Knights(Clement Sector). I'm thinking I'll move Clement Sector somewhere, but I haven't decided where I'll put it yet. (I'm thinking they should get their own general folder like BITS, since they've now published for multiple editions.)

Under General Misc, we have a sourcebook for Draconem Subsector, an sector with forty different worlds fleshed out and ready to use with any edition.

In General Setting Info I've added a local copy of The Nature of the Imperium from Christopher Thrash's website, which has been linked here a few times.

In Mongoose 1e, we've got the Game Planner, a set of tables for generating plot seeds now in Rules and Careers; a new ship, the primitive but cheap Cargo Barque; and Twilight Sector - Setting Update Alpha

In Mongoose 2e we've got a set of printable equipment cards, and an Irish class battleship statted from Zeta Gundam apparently. I've also added a copy of user's handy PDF detailing differences between MGT1 and MGT2.

We've got new system conversions to run Traveller in both The Fantasy Trip and TWERPS.

Over in the Zines we've now got a complete run of The Space Gamer with issues 9, 10, 11, 12, and 80, and finally gotten the missing issue 6 of Signal Gk.

Mongoose 1e is the go-to unless you hate yourself and your players, in which case wallow around in the shitpit that is 2e.

Has anyone played both Traveller and Stars Without Numbers? Do you guys use any of SWN's mechanics interwoven in your Traveller game?

>And all of your points are legitimate and well.

Legitimate, but not necessary for a RPG pulp adventure. That's the point I'm very clumsily trying to make.

Authors like Poul Anderson or Jack Vance wrote pulp while also taking care to work out all the behind the scenes stuff because it made their stories hold together better than their contemporaries. While most of the world building they sweated over didn't make into the story, the events and incidents they wrote about were still based on that work and thus were on more of a sound footing.

We don't need to worry about that in an RPG session. Only our immediate needs are required. You can have GodzillaKong "because", you can have hi-tech metal poor worlds "because", you can do almost anything necessary to provide GOOD PULPY FUN because that's what you're playing for!

Did you check out the Nomads adventure and Freelance link I posted in the other thread? I hope they were some help to you.

All hail the Traveller Librarian!

Oh forgot to mention, I've also got one of those snazzy snip.li links for the Master Archive now:

snip (dot) li slash Traveller is all you need to bring up the Archives. I should go tell the PDF share thread guys.

Okay, start with Mongoose, 1e or 2e. (Look for a pdf discussing the changes between 1e and 2e in the Archive in the 2e folder.) MgT is the most current version from a "real" publisher and as such has more of what current players think an RPG should have. You can then do what Traveller players have been doing for 40 years: Ignore what you don't like while adding bits & pieces from all over.

Traveller has always been extensively homebrewed & modified. Classic was almost designed for that. Think of Classic as an OSR game published decades before the term OSR was even coined.

About settings. The official setting is the 3I/OTU. It's good and even great in spots. It's also TOO DAMN BIG. There are 40+ years of materials from dozens of authors and dozens of publishers across almost a dozen versions. If you try to play the 3I/OTU straight you and your game will drown. It's like drinking from a firehose. Use only what you specifically need, ignore the rest, and only add more when you must. If a player comes up to you with some long forgotten supplement - believe me they will - complaining that X was really Y when A did B to C, tell him the group is playing YOUR setting and none of that other stuff matters.

While Classic began without a specific setting, the tech in the books - specifically no FTL comms apart from messages carried by ships - constrained just what range of settings could be played without making major changes to the rules. I know someone who used Trav to play Trek, but he had to do a lot of work first.

From the 5th book on, Classic's rules became increasingly wrapped up in the 3I/OTU setting. That only got worse as Classic went on and that mistake was carried forward in all the GDW/Miller versions; MT, TNE, T4, and (somewhat) T5. (Don't attempt to use T5. It's an RPG construction kit more than a play-out-of-the-box set of RPG rules.)

Make the game your game. Don't worry about all the rest.

>Has anyone played both Traveller and Stars Without Numbers? Do you guys use any of SWN's mechanics interwoven in your Traveller game?

All the time. I use SWN's Factino system to create a "living" background for my campaign. I use SWN's quick world/culture descriptions as starting points for my own details. I've borrowed parts of the SWN's trade system, in particular the "friction" mechanic, to spice things up and provide adventure seeds.

Generally, I import part of SWN into my Traveller game instead of the other way around. While SWN has tons of stuff to use when detailing your particular sandbox or campaign, I find the SWN RPG rules rather limiting and bland.

Okay, so let's look at what stresses you have:
>Giant monsters
>5 factions per world, fighting over the remnants of their ancestral technology
>something else (could be different every adventure/area)

Actually, go look at FATE. Sounds weird, I know, but latch onto Aspects. Use them frequently when worldbuilding, because those aren't tied into game mechanics (in other games. In FATE, definitely part of game mechanics). Use two to give a background, then grab one per adventure to introduce additional complications. Then take breaks from using them, and rotate in a few that the players have built from their actions.
Black Gate has a great look at the 33-book series Dumarest Of Terra (which was a major influence on Traveller).
blackgate.com/2016/09/29/series-architecture-the-same-but-different-in-ec-tubbs-dumarest/
Harold's breakdown of the way Tubb uses just three elements is great.

Are the trade mechanics from SWN in a supplement book? Gold Sun or something, right?

In previous threads, I've seen a lot of people recommend Classic to newbies. In this thread, it's overwhelmingly in favor of MgT. How stark are the contrasts between Classic and MgT?

>you can die while in character creation

Ok pls explain

It's simple. Character creation uses a lifepath system, and if you fuck up in certain editions, you straight die because you were on an exploding ship or something. Make a new character.

>Are the trade mechanics from SWN in a supplement book? Gold Sun or something, right?

Suns of Gold. There are trade rules in SWN core, but the "friction" mechanic I mentioned is in SoG.

>In previous threads, I've seen a lot of people recommend Classic to newbies. In this thread, it's overwhelmingly in favor of MgT. How stark are the contrasts between Classic and MgT?

Personally I'd recommend Classic because I've been playing it and playing with it since 1977. Despite being an old fag, I realize that the stark, OSR, rulings not rules nature of Classic is not what most CURRENT players prefer. Current players mostly learned to play RPGs through d20, various d20 clones, and video games whereas old fags like me came to RPGs from wargaming. Different paths mean different expectations and that's why I recommend MgT to current players like you.

I look at MgT and see the usual bloated skill numbers and levels. Current players look at MgT and see a proper amount of skills and levels. I look at MgT chargen and see too many chart & tables doing the work I should be doing in defining the PC's history. Current players look at Classic and don't see enough of the charts and tables needed to define the PC's history. I look at MgT and see too many PCs who are overpowered. They look at Classic and see too many PCs who are underpowered. The list can go on and on.

Neither is right, neither is wrong. Neither is better, neither is worse. Both are different however. It's just differing perceptions about how to play and what makes for a fun game.

TL;DR - Classic is more about ROLEing and MgT is more about ROLLing.

You get skill points for every hitch you do in character creation, and you can keep re-upping until you fail that roll and get your retirement bennies.

Scout Corp for ex is *great*, and if you can keep it up for 20 years you can even walk away with a few grand, a used spaceship, and skills that would make a Heinlein supporting character bow down and cry in awe and envy.

But every 4 years of that you have a 50% chance of dying.

>Actually, go look at FATE. Sounds weird, I know, but latch onto Aspects.

So... would you recommend using Starblazers for worldbuilding?

Sure, worth a shot

"Certain editions" being limited to only the very beginning of Classic Traveller ('77 edition). It was removed as a default rule in the '81 printing. It remained as an optional rule, however. Essentially, dying in character creation is a houserule in most of Traveller and has not been the default for almost all of Travellers life.

Basically, it is like saying "Elf is a class" when referring to D&D. Technically it was true at one point, but hasn't been a default part of the game for decades.

...Bearing in mind that the '77 edition as near as I can tell has *never* stopped being played.

Actually, I partly take that back. It was MegaTraveller where it was removed. Still existed throughout CT, though later works in CT made survival an option i the roll failed.

>It's simple.

It's simple, but as simplistic as you make it out to be. Just like aging rolls, death in chargen was a game balancie mechanism. GDW absolutely LOVED D&D. They had to impose a rule forbidding it to be played during working hours because nothing was getting done. D&D made GDW hot to make their own RPGs - their OWN games of their own DESIGN. They weren't going to copy D&D.

En Garde came out first and it was nothing like D&D. Traveller was second and it too was DELIBERATELY designed to be different.

You didn't start as a noob and grow to become a demi-god. Instead you started out complete. You were as good as you were going to get. There weren't levels conferring benefits like increased HP, more attacks, etc. PCs and NPCs were much the same. You weren't extraordinary as in D&D, you were ordinary.

You also had skills to use and that where death in chargen comes into play. You (mostly) gained skills through your career so something had to be done to prevent overly long careers. Enter death and aging. A player had to balance the risk of dying against the reward of gaining one more skill or skill level. In Classic a skill of 1 is a big deal. With a level of 1 you can be hired to perform that skill. At 2 you can teach others that skill. At 3 or higher you're a renowned expert.

In 2017 a skill level of 1 seems wrong thanks to 30+ years of "bloat". In 2017, some of the pregenned Classic PCs seem worthless again thanks to those decades of "bloat". In 2017, risking death in chargen to get more skills and levels seems idiotic because everyone "knows" you need multiple skill at multiple levels to play a RPG. The way Classic is/was played, however, meant those levels, PCs, the risk of death are/were perfectly fine.

Anyway, death was quickly replaced with discharge. Fail the survival roll and chargen stopped without any skills for that term.

You do realize that mongtrav still mostly puts your skills in the 0-2 range (Leaning more towards 0), right?

>En Garde came out first and it was nothing like D&D. Traveller was second and it too was DELIBERATELY designed to be different.

You know En Garde!? I HAVE En Garde!

>always show up to a duel with a cutlass
>royal marines best mid-tier status regiment

share, please user?

Sorry, I mean actually *have*. Paper-bag colored woodcut-illustrated thin cover and all.

And its... 46 pages with a 4 page errata.

Maybe someday I'll make a shitty smartphone cam pdf. Figure I owe it to Dad.

oooh...even cooler!

...and I *finally* get the dedication to "Sir Harry Flashman"

>and what is meant by the "toadying" rules, for that matter

>You do realize blah blah blah yakkity smakkity

You do realize I wrote about skill levels AND the number skills becoming bloated in RPG design over time? Or were you just ignoring that in a failed attempt at pedantry?

In Book 1 Classic, a one term Scout gets out with Pilot-1 automatically and two skill rolls. That means they could end up with Pilot-3, Pilot-2 & Skill A-1, Pilot-1 & Skill A-2, or Pilot-1 & Skill A-1 & Skill B-1.

In MgT, a one term scout first gets as many as SIX skills from the Background table before even starting their career plus all SIX skills on the Service Skill table plus a skill roll for the term plus a skill roll if advancement is successful plus the automatic skill from that advancement for a total of FIFTEEN possible skills and/or levels.

Like I'd love to have a copy of En Garde again. We played the shit out of that game in school during lunch and study hall in the late 70s.

>In 2017 a skill level of 1 seems wrong thanks to 30+ years of "bloat"
Don't try to be cute.
As far as number of skills, all of those skills they get start at 0 and do not stack with each other at that point. And it's very unlikely they get that many without an amazing roll for stats. And if you double up on any of those background and starting career skills, you get nothing, because they're all distinctly formatted as "skill 0", which means non-additional. And then they could get a single point in a random skill off a table! Shock! Horror!

But almost all of those fifteen skills will be at 0, which means nothing except that the character isn't completely incompetent. Without amazing rolls, they'll be getting 9 skills (3 background, chosen off of a restrictive list and 6 from their service chart, all rated at 0) and 1-3 scout related skills raised up at random.

Does classic have skill level 0?

>In Classic a skill of 1 is a big deal. With a level of 1 you can be hired to perform that skill. At 2 you can teach others that skill. At 3 or higher you're a renowned expert.
That's literally the same as in the newer editions. Most characters will have maybe 4 or 5 skills above rating 0, and then most of those skills will be less than 2 because you rarely get to choose which skills raise exactly.

Yes. And all PCs have a skill level of 0 in all weapon skills as well, regardless of career. Which is often overlooked/forgotten. That is 21 different skills (as each weapon is its own skill).

Found it in my dad's things. Started playing it before I knew what half of it meant, how lewd and ribald.... look user, I was treating the "need companionship from a female of sufficiently high status rank next month, maybe I can use a sufficiently high Favor from a 3rd party to get it... I can!" as a *logistical* problem with no subtext.

Well, automatically getting 21 different skills right off the bat blows mongtrav's 15 (At the very most with great rolls) rating 0 skills right out of the water, doesn't it?

Any particular reason you chose scout (3 skills total)? Because an Army can have 6 skills (Rifle from being in the army, 2 from initial term, 1 from commission, SMG from now being an army lieutenant, and 1 from promotion.

Different user... but Jack of Trades is worth shivving your gm to get.

Combine those 21 free weapon-0 skills with the 3-6 skills possible from your first term, that is 24-27 skills as a single term Classic Traveller character. Actual number gained would vary depending on what was rolled, but you do gain a lot of skills in CT. Mostly weapon skills.

Does that work the same way in classic as it does in mong? Where your unskilled attempts are at -3 and each rank of JOAT reduces the penalty by 1 to a max of +0?

Broken as fuck in Classic.

I also forgot, it is also possible to have air/raft, atv, forward observer, steward, and vacc suit skills at 0 as well. But those are up to the Referee.

That's slightly higher in Mongtrav, where the referee picks a package of a few rank 1 skills that get distributed to the party one by one. It's mostly so that someone can pilot if the group has a ship, and someone can be a mechanic in a pinch and someone can actually maybe hold a gun the right way forward if no one made a combat capable character.

Depends on how your ref interprets it, IMO.

In Classics case, it applied to all characters that didn't otherwise have the skill. In the example given (traveling across a vacuum plain), any character that didn't otherwise have vacc suit skill would have vacc suit-0 skill. Enough for ordinary use, but not anything dangerous or fancy. Similiar, but somewhat different.

Skills worked differently in classic. Most skills didn't have a level 0. Gaining a skill through character creation was always at level 1 or higher.

Some skills had non-expertise penalties, others didn't. Some added +1 to checks per level, some didn't. Some gave a bonus if one of your attributes was high enough, others didn't. Each skill worked differently, so you needed to read each one.

What JoAT did was to efficiently give you level-0 in all skills you weren't otherwise trained in. It only had a single level.

You're all still focusing on skill levels rather than the number of skills. Count the number of skills in Classic's Book 1 and then count the number skills in either version of MgT's core. Both systems are equally playable, so why does one system need so many more skills? The answer is that skill "bloat" over the decades has made players expect more skills.

Again, neither is right or wrong or better or worse. They're just different.

As for Classic's "All PCs use all weapons at 0" that does not equate to 21 different & separate skills nor does it mean any PC can use any weapon without a penalty. GDW had been designing games for years before Traveller and understood the need for play balance. While the "All PCs use all weapons at 0" rule removed any penalties for unskilled use, it doesn't mean there weren't other penalties in the rules.

Blade, forex, potentially covers everything from a dagger to a pike while Gun covers pistols to laser rifles. Each of those weapons also has penalties and bonuses associated with physical stats; STR in the case of Blade and DEX in the case of Gun. The amount be which you fail to meet the minimum STR or DEX becomes a negative DM and the amount by which you exceed the preferred STR or DEX becomes a positive DM. Negative DMs due to stats are far more common than positive ones. You need, forex, a DEX of 9+ to receive a bonus when using a revolver but a DEX of 6- will penalize you.

When you also remember that hits in combat in Classic are applied to physical stats, you'll being to realize that many PCs/NPCs in combat are quickly facing mounting negative DMs.

Apart from higher STR causing more damage from physical blows, MgT had nothing resembling the Classic system of penalties & bonuses.

>What JoAT did was to efficiently give you level-0 in all skills you weren't otherwise trained in.

No. What JoaT gave you was the possibility of a level-0 skill at the discretion of the referee. It's one of those OSR-like "rulings instead of rules" bits which many people then and now can't quite understand.

In Classic JoaT, sensible plan, and a good explanation to the referee meant you could roll without penalty. You could attempt things within reason - the operative word being "reason".

From MT onwards, however, JoaT became a "Get out of jail free" card and every munchkin's wet dream.