The Sage's Library: Traveller
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- Опубликовано: 15 ноя 2022
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The Sage has a look at the classic sci-fi RPG, “Traveller”.
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Traveller is pretty much my favorite game. For whatever reason, it was _the_ ruleset I looked and and decided, "I can run anything with this!" And that was enough to learn how to make the game my own. One note about the Third Imperium is that the original LBB's from 1977 had no setting beyond an implied, "you're on the frontier far from civilization and communication occurs at the speed of travel." So in the original game, you _had_ to make up your own worlds. Also in the '77 edition, combat's default roll was 8+, but the GM was expected to set the target throw for pretty much everything else. All Mongoose did was make the difficulty scales explicit, which I appreciated. The boon / bane mechanic of Mongoose 2e is actually quite good. I got to the point long ago where I didn't want to figure out all the different +/- 1's to the dice roll and would just sort of wing it with DM's. The boon and bane mechanic makes that unnecessary. Now I simply have to figure out whether the players have an advantage, disadvantage or neither. It vastly improves the flow of the game, imo.
Is it me or has Traveller got a lot of love recently. I always knew of it, from way back with the original black books. But this year I finally played it, and loved the character generation system. So much so I bought a bundle that recently ran.
Love these episodes, Traveller is such a cool game. I assume you're familiar with Cepheus Deluxe, which is based on Traveller's ruleset? It has a spin-off called Hostile, which has that cool gritty Alien industrial atmosphere, and it even has solo rules! It's super cool.
The original Little Black Book (LBB) Classic Traveller boxed set (1977) never asssumed a setting. The embryonic Third Imperium only surfaced in the Supplements - specifically the Spinward Marches (1979).
The *really* great thing with Traveller was the quarterly publication of the Journal of the Traveller's Aid Society (JTAS) which, as well as providing a variety of supplementary material, also carried the Traveller News Service - dispatches of events across the Imperium as a sort of background metaplot for any 3I campaign. The clock in the Imperium ticked the same as the real world. It ran from 1979 to 1985.
Mongoose 2e is great. The Core "Update" version looks better aesthetically, than the original 2e core book, but it's still the same 2nd edition. I'm not familiar with Mongoose's 1st edition but I've seen others praise the 1e to 2e changes.
My first introduction was the old MegaTraveller boxed set from GDW, back in the 80s. It was mind blowing for me, at the time. So different.. and sci-fi was a big plus. Such great character creation. So many wonderful tables to cook with. Plus it wasn't nearly all walls of text like the previous versions at the time. Anyway, I recommend the current Mongoose 2e for those looking to get into it. The lifepath character generation is practically a storytelling game by itself.
Firefly is Rumored to be based on Joss Whedon's Traveller Campaign.
It is an absolutely fantastic science fiction game and Still Remains to this day, my favorite system for a Science Fiction setting
in Mongoose Traveler 2e it reads "INITIATIVE
At the start of any combat, every Traveller makes either a
DEX or INT check (it pays to be quick of the hand or quick
of the mind). The Effect of this check is their Initiative for
the duration of the combat and will reflect when they get
to act in a combat round. Those with higher Initiatives act
quicker than those with lower Effects.
Travellers may freely delay their action until later in
the turn. The Initiative check simply indicates the first
opportunity to act" works pretty well
That’s certainly simpler than the 1st edition’s dynamic initiative.
Some of my earliest solo experiences were of just playing the character generation. I could never find a group for Traveller in the 80’s so it was one of the first games I soloed when I discovered Mythic.
I highly recommend looking at Hostile by Zozzer Games. It’s Traveller but set in a universe closer to the Alien films.
Whoa, I'm running "Ironsworn: Starforged" right now and it sounds like it's the direct child of Traveler! Kinda cool when you learn about the progenitor of a genre or style.
Just about to leave, for work… 🙄 will watch this in full, as soon as I get home! 👌🏻
Great video and you’re only a few years, older than me! Wish I had a friend like you, when I was a kid..
To this day I've still never played a "game" of Traveller around the table. I used to spend time in the 80's generating characters through their careers... did I get into the Naval Academy? Can I get into flight school? And yes... do I actually DIE? By the time I got done making a character he was 70 years old and had already done more cool things than I could ever imagine. So I'd argue that the character generation in that old system was a solo RPG in and of itself. And then I'd muck around creating star systems and ships... lots of stuff to do that never actually involved playing through a pre planned story. I recommend it to this day.
Great video as always!
Wonderful episode. I never got a chance to play this one. The character creation always seemed like the coolest part.
Love the Sage’s Library 📚
Okay this is spooky, I am LITERALLY about to run my first game of Traveller this weekend. Great timing!
Good to see your views on one of my all-time favourites - Traveller! Although I personally prefer Classic Traveller to Mongoose, I have to say the events in Mongoose are a good addition, especially the NPC rivals and allies and links between PCs. I especially dislike dynamic initiative; IIRC Classic Traveller had no initiative as such, everything happened simultaneously. I think you would like Mongoose 2nd edition too, but it is a slightly different animal; dynamic initiative is gone, for example, and there is a tweak to space combat (for space fighters) which looks broken, but I've never had cause to use it, so I shouldn't judge.
This brings back some memories…
I was 14 in 1983, and attending a Christian brothers, all-boys school. We were not allowed to play D&D, despite petitioning the Headmaster, as he didn’t think some of the more conservative parents would approve. But he allowed us to play Traveller during our lunch hours, BECAUSE of the more complicated equations in the rules. He considered it a “safe” RPG, and somewhat educational, as it involved a good deal of math, problem solving, and encouraged social interaction. He was fairly progressive for a Christian brother…
It didn’t hurt that our Technical Drawing teacher loved the game. He allowed us to use his classroom, and joined in with his own PC, happy to play in games we took turns GM’ing. I loved those three little books, and a fourth, “Mercenary”.
This game helped me get through school, as it gave me something to focus my attention on, when everything else was going to pot (I have ASD, but was only diagnosed three years ago. I find social interactions, and acceptable social behaviour, difficult to comprehend at times). It also helped nurture the rpg and board games addiction I have today… :)
So happy you’ve covered Traveller! It’s an absolutely fantastic game and setting. :) It gets extra brownie points from me also because my favorite RPG, Twilight: 2000 (which I do hope you cover on The Sage’s Library someday but I’m assuming probably not anytime soon what with the world political climate being what it is 🤦♂️), is canon in the game Traveller: 2300, the sequel to Twilight 2000 where humanity has healed from the wounds of the Twilight War and spread out into space in a parallel of Traveller.
Traveller also has a really good GURPS conversion as well with its own D-Tons of supplements.
One thing another RUclipsr (Seth Skorkowsky) mentioned about the characters dying in generation is that could be used as a plot hook for your next character. E.g. “my Uncle Terry died on a mission for the Imperial Scouts Service (by rolling a critical fail on the injury table) and I’m going to avenge him and carry on his legacy in The Scouts” or something of that variety.
Excellent video as always!
I have those three black books in a small black box. I so recall my thoughts about Star Wars when I started playing this and then loved how it was different! I did play MegaTraveller, later, which was also fun. It was actually one of the few games I didn't have to Referee/GM! So it was a fun change of pace for me. It's so nice to watch Sage's Library and see all of the fun games you cover. PS: My friends and I loved the dying in character creation thing. Such a strange concept. You really had to like making characters as a mini-game itself, though. I really liked the planetary system and ship creation rules, too! Now I'm trying to get my D&D players to agree to a change of pace one off of CT (Classic Traveller). They're liking the D&D campaign too much, though.
Thanks I've been on the fence about buying the bundle that's running now.
An excellent review. I have to say that I love Traveller and have played a lot of Mongoose 1st and 2nd edition. I totally agree with how satisfying trading can be.
I ran a duet style Mongoose traveller 1e as Gm for about a year plus. I just did 2D+DEX DM. Sometimes some mechanics in MGT were super clunky. I tried to do my best to extrapolate ideas. For example I couldn't find out how much repairs costs would be. So I would take the hull rating if the ship so if HULL=8 1/8=0.125 then multiplied that to the cost of the actual hull and that told me how much it would cost. Some may seem that was alot. My player really was getting rich so I put them up in combat and when ship got damaged i found it challenging but it sure helped balance out the wealth gain. That's what I did
Hi, looking at your descriptiomn of Traveller and the idea to call it "floating seniors home in space" is GREAT! I'm a little bit older then you are, I played a lot of games and my second (TT)RPG was Traveller in German. BTW You could also get kicked out and that happened to my first character ever build in Traveller, the youngster of the group, only two skills and a SOC of 1! Still, when Simon Zeolates crashlanded in his vacc suit on Pixie in the Regina Subsector of the Spinward Marches, I "missed" him as a character 'cos it was fun to play im 1991.
Great video, I’ve always loved traveller, but a teenage me was freaked out by that very same equation in the little black books too! When megatraveller came out, I thought that was the best version, alas I seemed to have lost all the megatraveller books and box set I had, sigh! I recently bought the entire 2nd edition Mongoose version so I have a lot to read up on!
Love your channel Trevor. This video reminded me that I was waiting for Season 3 to finish up so that I could binge through it like I did the first 2.
You can always go back and binge season 1, 2 and 3 in the meantime.
Always loved Traveller!! Death in character generation was always a great laugh, making characters was its own mini-game!
Wow seeing that original Traveller box set bought me right back to my childhood. So true about the Star Wars phenomenon. It was the dominating pulse of pop culture in the 80s.
Its crazy how TTRPG has exploded in the last 10 years and how it has been embraced and welcomed by everyone. Back in my day it was an underground hobby played by those who didn't really fit in with anyone, most of us were bullied for being scifi nerds. Hell there was only 3 girls who even played on a regular basis.
I LOVE Traveller! I've got a PoD of "The Traveller Book" and the "Facsimile Edition" (both Classic Traveller) as well as Cepheus (OGL Mongoose Traveller 1e). I also just picked up the PDF of SOLO by Zozer for some solo ideas.
Loved this on. I actually have a lot of the stuff for Traveller. I even have the little black books from before I was born.
Thanks for doing this! That Traveller Starter Edition was my introduction to RPGs. It has always been my RPG lodestar.
Traveller is great for those that enjoy classic Sci Fi adventures.
Sci-fi is great! And I loved your first episode of 5 parsecs from home. There is also the fantasy version 5 leagues from the borderland which is in its own right a great game as well! I will possibly take those rules and also advanced Fighting Fantasy rules and make a solo Frankenstein creation of my own.
Traveller rules trading rules were very similar to the ideas in the Elite computer game which I was playing before I started GMing Traveller.
The editing on your videos is always 👌
Great video, as usual, Trevor! I'd really love to watch a solo series based on Traveller. Any chance ?
me 2
Me 3
There’s always a chance :)
Another great video, Trevor, thank you so much!
I saw it so briefly that I had to rewind to make sure -- you have a copy of Villains & Vigilantes in seemingly excellent condition on those shelves, friend. Now that's a system on which I'd love to hear some commentary. : )
That initiative system sounds like something from first edition mongoose. The new one is either group or individual initiative. The leadership or tactics skill test could increase the initiative.
I really loved this game. I wish I could find players for it now. And, preferably, someone to run it. I haven't been a player in any game for several years.
I still have the original 6 books for Traveller packed away somewhere. I need to dig them out.
You paint a great picture of what looks like a very interesting game.
I love these Sage's library vids... I always heard about Traveller but have never played it.
Also, I see Dark Heresy over your right (YOUR RIGHT NOT MINE) shoulder... I loved that game.
The Connections part of character generation encourages the players to have these links in order to earn a free skill outside of the normal career path. It never fails to get players to sign up!
Great video review. Thanks a bunch.
My first exposure was Traveller:2300, which was Traveller-ish, but I loved the system and setting. I came to Classic Traveller later, remembered that I had bought the LBB's back in the 90s while in the Navy, but had never read them. So now I'm a Traveller fan; Cepheus Engine is the Traveller SRD unleashed by indie writers and is very well supported. My favorite is the HOSTILE setting. Classic Traveller still has a lot going for it even today. You can get a facsimile POD of the 1981 version on DTRPG.
The way i run dynamic initiative is every round has a initiative roll and your actions and affects from the previous round effects your rolls as the combat goes on. This means the longer you are in the fight there is a higher chance of getting hurt both for you and the enemy so it promotes real world gun fighting tactics and real world melee combat. Witch really means it makes your players try and focus on ambushing their targets and it makes it nice to run NPCs that are smart and brutal .
FASA must have swiped Traveller's character generation system for their Star Trek RPG. Your character had to go through Starfleet Academy and then through several tours of duty aboard various starships before reaching the point where they became a playable character. I don't remember if you could die during character creation though.
He was eleven years old!
This is Free Trader Beowulf, calling anyone...
Mayday, Mayday... we are under attack...
main drive is gone... turret number one not responding.
Mayday... losing cabin pressure fast…
calling anyone... please help...
My experience with traveller (Mongoose 2nd edition), is that the ship being a bunch of badass geriatrics has been replaced with a crowd of people having a midlife crisis. A whole bunch of middle aged people who left their careers to wander the stars, yep sounds like a mid-life crisis to me
Starfield brought me here. Very interesting.
Your description of a bunch of bad ass old timers in an adventure reminds me alot of the last Allan Quatermain book
Then you should take a look at Ironsworn: Starforged! 😁
Thank you very much for making these videos. I really enjoy hearing your take on various games to which I may not have been exposed.
In this case, however, starting in 1979 I picked up the little black books and some early White Dwarf mags exploring optional or additional rules (WD 11 had Star Wars weapons for example). I have regularly picked up the books from newer editions but have rarely played the game; I use the books most often as source material for other games or concepts. Some of the Fire, Fusion and Steel stuff was mind-boggling, amazing stuff but was my last foray into Traveller until GURPS Traveller (I have never looked at the Mongoose products).
I develop Game Systems on Foundry VTT and your issue with the initiative system sounds like it could be "easily" solved by building a custom combat tracker for it, and likely has been, but I have not looked. I have built a few that behave similarly.
Thanks again.
I was more into TSR's Star Frontiers than Traveller but I did like Striker but then I stopped rolling dice and started chasing tail in my teenage years but now looking back I should have stayed rolling dice! LOL
I'm disappointed that I was not the first one that had the ideas of replacing the character creation with a minigame, and characters know each other by binding events created on that minigame. 😞 But about the idea of managing initiative, I'm making an web app that solves that problem. Actually, it will be a whole new RPG system.
On the topic of traveller, a newer pair of systems ive currently really enjoyed that blends a lot of the world making and 2d6 skill system of traveler, with a lot if the intentionality and d20 behind AD&D (and adnd world simulation based games like ACKS) is worlds without number (fantasy) and stars without number (si-fi) from Sine Nomine.
Id really recommend checking them out. ESPECIALLY if you are into random tables and world buildin. well made stuff for more sandbox adventures. Im particular into worlds without number because its Jack Vance Dying Earth sort of standard setting (though can perfectly do classic fantasy as well).
I ran a SWN campaign. I’ll definitely do a Sage’s Library on it.
@@MeMyselfandDieRPG great! ive only used worlds without number, but I think they have the same system in general. But again, i really liked the gm tools and how its compatible with osr, and to an extent, traveller stuff. The use of both the floppier d20 for combat and the more consistant 2d6 for skills was a nice way to differentiate the havok of battle and the consistent of a more methodical skill.
but really it was the spirit of the book that got me, and the insight into game design.
thanks for the reply!
glad you are talking about traveller, one of my favorites.
even just the premise and general system of it really lit a spark of imagination in me. the idea of having to take care of your own ship, cargo, etc. it becoming an actual thing rather than an abstracted transportation method. going from planet to planet. things feeling weighty and intentional, like they are actually there and the implactions that had on making a world feel more real. I think that more then anything got me to have a soft spot for it. that and me liking 2d6
also, as a side note, something i liked about character creation death was that it made pcs feel really mortal and one of a thosand stories that could have been ended short. idk, to me its like a tone setter. these are other stories that ended abruptly and untimely.
also, that floating old folks home of grizzled badasses sounds great! Even more so because it doesnt seem unfeasible that a bunch of old army buddies set out for retirement together to get a last few kicks in.
These are all really great observations :)
There was no initiative in Classic Traveller, it was all simultaneous per round. Also, it had no unified skill test or any stat modifiers. Combat target is ways 8. Many use the homebrew rule of "68A" (or 6, 8, 10 in hexadecimal) as target numbers for a skill check plus skill level and any modifiers determined by the Referee.
So, Exaltes 2nd edition had an initiative system based on “ticks” of time. Each action has a cost in “ticks.” I’m sure other games have done the same.
Traveller sounds similar just with different terminology. The way I would track it is on a dry erase board with a graph.
Player A: initiative 7
When player A does something that knocks them down, just move their little token down on the initiative tracker. When they reach the “bottom” and have to wait until next turn, just move them to the side or to the top! It would allow you to easily see the initiative order!
With Exalted, it didn’t count down but up. So you just kept moving up the track until combat was over.
great! Thank you very much!
Now off from my work: I have had a total different approach… I got introduced to classic Traveller(black books) in 1985 (age of F (hex)) by a friend and were hooked from the very first minute. The year before I got in touch with D&D and a German RPG but these never got my real attention just because of being much more a SF Fan than Fantasy guy. We played Traveller for years and I was only drawn into this funny games with beardy small guys and thin people having funny ears just because too few players were interested in SF (which is called „SCI-FI“ nowadays…). Funny or not - none of my character creations went to „death during rolling dice in lifepath“… and I still love the idea to get an experienced character and not having this „becoming mightier during play until game becomes totally out of balance“. Years later I noticed many brilliant things that were solved to easily in Traveller decades ago. And yeah - Mongoose Traveller 1 was my approach into a Traveller renaissance, too. ;-)
So thank you for reminding me to many excellent moments of my roleplaying history. Thank you very much. (and please have mercy with my english - it is not my native language)
Always nice to meet a fellow gamer who remembers the old days :)
This is cool. I have never tried Traveller, maybe I should dive into it with some friends. The Pirates of Drinax sounds like a great resource for our Starforged campaign... hehe
Just noticed in your bookcase a copy of Aquelarre RPG (the english version?) and Fudge 10th Anniversary Edition 😊
Aquelarre is the best game I’ve never played…
The thing that made the "death in character creation" mechanic click for me was realizing that the entire character creation process is a big risk-reward gambling mini-game. The more you push your character, the more skills you get. There's ageing, yes, but you can muster out before negatives take hold. Death was supposed to be the biggest risk to balance out the reward of gaining more skills and credits. I still tend to like the injury house rule LOL I also tend to house rule a LOT of Traveller as it is to streamline it for how I like to run games. I use Cepheus Engine version games to do this. Traveller overall is so incredible, tho
Traveller is that game that I've always wanted to love, but when it's on the table, it's always been lackluster. It requires ppl who wanna track money on a spreadsheet and the gm sides' prep is so heavy (sure you can improv it but then worlds feel pastiche). Geriatric adventurers is a result of losing risk of death in chargen! The point was to be a push-your-luck game for that new term!
Lol. In all honesty, as another poster here pointed out, it turns out there was a cap on the amount of terms you could take before you had to, ya know, actually start playing the game! Looks like my old GM was “playing it wrong” 🤪
It would be a lot of fun if you did a season in the future that was... in the future. Whether that's something like Traveller and Sci-fi, or Post-Apocalyptic. Something a bit different. That's my jam.
Never mind, just saw you have Five Parsecs from Home up. :)
I noticed you have diaspora on your shelf. Would love to see a solo game of that
This is the Free Trader Beowulf, calling anyone ...
Mayday, Mayday ...
we are under attack ...
main drive is gone ...
turret number one not responding ...
Mayday ...
losing cabin pressure fast ...
calling anyone ...
please help ...
This is Free Trader Beowulf ...
Mayday ..
Cool would like to see your solo on this... I do a lot of traveller livestreams (we use the rules in the backdrop with more focus on RP)
Mongoose edition 2 is my favorite version of Traveller so far. Granted I have VERY little experience with previous editions. But in my experience with how they have handled Paranoia XP and later editions I can say it has been a lot of fun. Though I am bummed that they changed Communists to Terrorists. I get that they don't want to call out a certain political affiliation to not alienate people but in this instance I feel it's okay because that game is nothing but satire.
Just have to say that I still love my DND. I love the complexity of the combat and all the lore and … well everything. But of course I like other systems as well but don’t feel the need to sh*t on ones i don’t like or don’t play. Too much negative content as it is.
I love this channel because I too only play solo anything and he gives his opinion of different systems and games but he doesn’t trash ones he doesn’t like.
Science fiction was always a different beast for gaming. Nobody really knew how much complexity or realism the players would tolerate. One of the weirder things about Traveller is that it was heavily influenced by a little known series, Dumarest of Terra (low berths anyone?). Also, a spiritual successor to Traveller is a Fate 3.0 rpg, Diaspora. It has an interesting balance of sci fi complexity with the simplicity of the Fate 3.0 system. I love Diaspora abut continue to hope that they update it to the Fafe Core rules.
I would love to see a sages library on the 80's UK rpg Dragon Warriors. That's assuming you know about it of course.
Can't tell you how exciting I got seeing another Sage's Library drop! When is the second episode of Five Parsecs??
Next week :)
I had the game, read it but never got to play. Just bought Cepheus and The Sword of Cepheus that I am looking forward to reading and trying to get my players to play. But getting them to play anything other than 5e is hard.
I find this section and the supplements very inspiring. I bought some supplements and savage worlds....
I don't know if is your voice or your passion when you talk about them... Maybe even the interest you awake on me in some of the books. xD
If you’re getting excited about different games, then I’m doing something right! 😀
In classic Traveller, the characters who were most likely to be older were Merchants and "Other", more so Merchants. Still, there was a soft cap of 46 years old at start. Army characters were very frequently 22 years old with six total skill levels at start, Navy and Marines tended to be slightly older on average but with far fewer skill levels at any given age, and Scouts were typically younger due to the very hazardous nature of that service but also tended to have many more skill levels when they did manage to survive for very long and could be of nearly whatever age the player was willing to risk. Again, though, that risk was very high for Scouts, and it pushed surviving Scouts toward having a high Endurance stat. As an aside, characters starting the game with a ship were very rare, but Scouts were the most likely to have one, again if they survived in the first place.
When later editions softened or eliminated the "die in character creation" rules, it upset that carefully crafted balance and feel, and suddenly older characters who were very high-ranking began to dominate the game instead of that earlier formula of young and talented soldiers and astronauts, grizzled veteran merchant officers, tough as nails scouts of various ages, and the occasional other character. After that change, a lot more characters, especially Scouts and Merchants, started at 46 years old, with the military ones, especially Army characters, who managed to stay in their services for that long tending to be of high rank.
Another change that occurred that is more subtle but which has huge effects on the game's feel is that later editions (from Traveller: The New Era onward, with the possible exception of the D20 Traveller edition) removed the possibility of a melee weapon harming a target in even the heaviest armor. This changes things from the "sword and pistol" feel of '30s/'40s/'50s sci-fi that caused the earlier editions to give, for example, Marines skill in Cutlass and Revolver to the more gun-bunny approach common today. I leave it up to others to decide whether this is an improvement to their games.
(edited to remove one possibly confusing term)
That’s interesting. Our crews of ass-kicking senior citizens were in Classic Traveller, not the newer editions (this was in the late 80s). Maybe our GM missed the “age cap” on careers that you mention? I don’t remember seeing those rules in CT, but as I said in the video, I wasn’t very familiar with the Starter Set that I had.
@@MeMyselfandDieRPG In Starter Traveller, page 10, "Retirement" (starts right under the picture): "A character may serve up to seven terms of service voluntarily… Service beyond the seventh term is normally impossible, and retirement is mandatory for an individual who has completed a seventh term of service." Seven terms of four years is 28 years, plus the starting age of 18 comes to age 46.
Well look at that. As I said in the video, I was 11 when I last looked at the starter set. The things you miss when you’re thinking about going bike riding with your friends ;)
traveller is my favorite and least played rpg
I bought the older gen humble bundle... a lot of the PDFs are VERY LOW QUALITY and pretty much unreadable due to the low-quality scan job... but it was still worth it.
Hi, would it be possible to do a show/review with Mythras? Their combat system looks really cool, resembles Harnmaster to some extent.
It’s on the list :)
A game so deadly that your character can die BEFORE the game even starts lol 😂
I played Traveler one time in 1986. The GM/Ref just read and read and read that we got board and never played again. So much text, I wasn't even following anymore. I feel bad about that. I wish I would have got into it and Refed it myself. The only non D&D games I liked were 007 and Marvel Heroes more at that time.
Wish you would do a solo traveller 😔
Thank you for this interesting review.
You asked for ways to tackle dynamic initiative. Well, I don't know exactly how it works but from the things I heard in this very review I'd like to suggest the following.
What I would try is probably using index cards and tokens. One index card per charakter, placing time tokens on it based on the initiative the player rolled. When you're reducing initative, reduce the time tokens. You could also sort the index cards by the number of tokens on it. Maybe this idea consumes too much table space and requires a fair amount of manual manipulation.
Or you could lay out a time line with initiative numbers to put the index card next to. Required table space could be reduced by using smaller charakter tokens instead of index cards. The amount of handwork is probably slightly less than the first idea.
I'd love to hear any experience with these ideas!
I was thinking about dynamic initiative a while back and considered a circular tracker. Like a clock face you could have 12 or so numbered slices. Place a token for each active combatant according to their initative. Advance through the slices from 1 upwards. If someone receives a penalty, move their token to a higher number. If they cross the border from high numbers to low numbers, place them on their target slice, just a bit farther away from the center of the circle - like a second track. This shows that they are one turn behind. Once every combatant in the first round is done, move the tokens from the second track to the inside and then reroll initiative for everyone else.
That could get messy with many separate NPC combatants, who would have to get individually recognizable tokens. Maybe colored dice could work here. But personally I was thinking in terms of video games, and there everything is automated :p
@@ruolbu Hmm, interesting idea, especially if you do away with rounds. Just move the token further down the clock. By this you get an endless timeline with maybe less table space involved. Thanks for sharing it!
great stuff as always, and Traveller is great - really great. As someone who discovered it with 4th edition (AKA Marc Miller's Traveller), it's amazaing I would even say that, right? :)
How is the resoluton system? It seems like the whole game is quite flexible theme-wise, so I assume that the same idea follows when it comes to Lifepaths and Skills?
The system is 2d6+mods against a target number, basically. Works like a charm in most cases.
Sadly, I didn't have a good experience with Traveller in the early 80s. I recently tried to GM the 2022 core book edition, but it's too old school for my players. We switched to a contemporary system but kept the background of the characters because they liked that part.
In the 80s we played Star Frontiers by TSR which was closer to Star Wars style.
Ironically, one of my best Traveller campaigns was run using Savage Worlds ;)
@@MeMyselfandDieRPG LOL! It's a strong system. My best cyberpunk game used SWADE. ;-)
You seem to miss the whole point about classic traveller, it is a box of paints! use as many or a few of GDW's colours (rules and guide lines) as you wish to create your own vision.
The rules are clunky at face value so embed them to smooth them out, their whole purpose is to keep the action / story moving,
As for the "Death in character generation" this can be used as background / a reason why the next character is adventuring... it also reduces the number of "I can do everything on my own" play styles (which does seem to be a by-product of modern games)
So, Space Monopoly?
Essentially 😂
Heinlein and Asimov were actually fairly uninfluential as compared to "second-tier" sci fi writers like Anderson, Chandler, Herbert, Laumer, Norton, Piper, Pournelle, Tubb, and Vance, traces of whom are clearly in the rules.
Go HEXIDECIMAL !!!
Having you character die during the character creation, who thought that was a good idea ? It's one of the stupidest things I've ever heard 🙄 Dying before you even start playing... What.
Also: there was talk about a Solo Traveller book, was that ever released?
Well, there’s actually a lot of good reasons to use those rules. Seth Skorkowsky did a video on Traveller where he talks about the benefits. Another poster here mentioned it. Seth is great, and knows Traveller a lot better than I do :)
@@MeMyselfandDieRPG Thanks! I'll check it out then :)
You will not regret it! Seth is one of my favorite YT creators.
@@MeMyselfandDieRPG Oh, I've seen him before! Loved his Cthulhu and D&D adventure reviews 👌
Man why arent you playing five parsecs from home
seriously i could care less about this kinda videos we want to see the RP not the junk surrounding it we come here to see the solo rp so please just stick to what your audince is here for please
Ummm……
@@MeMyselfandDieRPG 7 days i have anixously awaited the next episode i will be completely honest i have watch two videos of yours that arent the storyline rp solo games which i have watched all of but the reason i have only watched two of the other videos is i dont care to hear about random books and other games i want to see you Role play not give reviews and if you check your numbers (i have) you will see your rp adventures do way wya wya better than your others and it is very irrating to find a good rp live show these days with everyone and their mother doing them so to find one that i look forward to is extremely rare then to wake up today looking forward to another episode i get a review of at best a medicore system at worst a poor knock off of several other systems combined half heartedly and present with enthusatically to hopefully help . I know this sounds a bit harsh and a little angry it is not my intent to be a thorn in the provibal back side but i cant help but think your time effort and energy would be better served by sticking to what we love the most about your channel
Thanks for watching!
@@xXDDKJefferyXx Easy there, gunsmoke. Your sense of entitlement is off the Traveller charts. As you pointed out, MM&D is, indeed, Trevor's channel; therefore, he can do what he wants with it. It isn't about "the numbers". Be grateful you found a YT channel that entertains you. Or make your own. Or move on.
I had that exact same box. Had forgotten all about it until I saw it here. I wonder what happened to it. Nostalgia tinged with melancholy are descending on me now :)
Traveller & Call of Cthulhu were our games of choice mid 80s, with the occasional Runequest