Traveller the 5th: What the Game’s About

Quick upkeep, it’s been over a month since my last post. I’ve been working on the dungeon for Gygax75 week 3 and … I might be putting too much thought into this. I’m maybe a third done(?). Hopefully, by the end of writing this thing, I’ll have something I can flog off onto some adventure design contest.

As a brain relaxer, let’s write something easy. Some time ago I acquired a copy of Traveller 5, specifically the three-volume in a slipcase set. I used it when developing my sector for my original Stars Without Number game and was impressed with its breadth, but since then it has lain on my shelf gathering dust. Why Traveller 5 and not Mongoose 2e, Cepheus Engine, or even Classic Traveller? I think the all-in-one Toolbox sensibility appealed to me. So what follows are my thoughts and impressions from reading through the tomes. Part 1 of X.

Traveller is a Role Playing Game

Someone once said that the first good indicator of what an RPG is about is what the book tells you it’s about. Traveller5 is very direct about what it expects from the very first section.

“These characters journey to the many different worlds of the Galaxy, encountering unique challenges which may bring rewards or disaster, but which always bring adventure”

Page 8

Traveller in a nutshell ladies and gentlemen.

Reading through the examples on the next page there is an immediate red flag. The player is attempting a really difficult roll and “after 3 tries it’s clear this approach is unfruitful”. Sorry, but you should only be rolling when there are consequences for failure. You should have rolled once and it should have been clear based on the roll that the approach was unfruitful. If you can try 3 times and just give up with no other consequences then that’s bad design there. Maybe he was just trying to keep it simple for the basic intro to RPing but it’s not a good sign for GMing advice to come.

“Much of Traveller is solitaire,” I think he meant many of the subsystems and tools of traveller can be used solitaire. Is playing Traveller the thing you do at the table with friends or alone with a stack of index cards?

A Brief History of the Universe

Ah, setting. Sometimes I love you sometimes I don’t. The setting presented here is… interesting at least. I like how old it is and how well I think it’s presented here.

This History is divided broadly into milieux or eras dominated by two controlling principles. A few intelligent species, and a few important facts. Each milieu is focused on some specific step in the progress (or temporary decline) of interstellar civilization

Page 11

This passage and the whole chapter give me major vibes of The Cycle of Empires article from TV Tropes. You have the ancient empire which achieved ultimate power and shaped the galaxy and then killed itself in a civil war (Grandfather and the Ancients). The Ancients just makes me think of another race of the same name from Stargate which did roughly the same thing. You have the predecessor empire which falls to decay (First Imperium/ Vilani Empire) and eventually to an upstart. The upstart empire which overreaches and fails to hold onto what it gains and falls into a dark age while resisting the inevitable(2nd Imperium/Rule of Man). and then the current order which was created by a grand unifier out of the chaos of the prior dark age (3rd Imperium).

I will note that the timeline listed here includes many milieux for the 3rd imperium which have no detailed listings, including the fall of the third imperium but do include references to other games in the traveller line.

Looks like the timeline goes

• Traveller 4 (Early imperium)
• a lot of eras with no listings,
• Classic Traveller (Golden Age, 1k years after the prior one)
• Megatraveller (The Rebellion)
• The New Era (Virus Era and New Era)
• Traveller 5 (The Far Far Future).

I really hope there’s more detail on these things elsewhere. I shouldn’t be teased with an expansive history and then not given enough to know what’s happening. Cut some of the Vilani Stuff instead, please.

The Foundations of the Traveller Universe

Fundamental to the system are answers to many questions about life, society, and civilization in the universe. Everything is part of a cohesive structure that gradually unveils itself… to the participants and to the observers(whether they are readers, viewers, or players)

page 14

ok, are we imagining that this will be a TV series someday? “Viewers”, really? Restatement…

… Everything is part of a cohesive structure that gradually unveils itself to Players and Referee alike.

Me

It’s a very bold claim that this RPG system will contain the answers to life the universe and everything. Given the collected size of this ruleset, I hope that you can deliver on this promise Marc. I expect this thing to outdo Jesus, The Buddha, and The Good Place. You’ve raised my expectations very high.

This section details what I might call “The principles of the Setting” aka the basic assumptions of the setting and underlying goals of those decisions. These are

• Traveller is based on both hard and soft sciences. I’m not expecting the expanse here but traveller does have a reputation for harder science than the space magic of Star Trek and Star Wars.
• The Jump Drive and Jump Space concepts make star travel both easy to achieve and easy to understand. AKA Here’s how we handwaved FTL. A reasonable solution in service of classic sci-fi adventure stories.
• A communications Speed limit establishes an independence for characters at great distances from their superiors. Situations demand resourcefulness and initiative. Big fan of this. I once read a series of articles explaining how much territory one can directly govern is essentially determined by the speed of communication and how improvements in communications tech have led to the centralization of power normally delegated out to subordinates.
• Different levels of Technology allow players significant alternatives in how they approach situations. Who wants to violate the prime directive? Everyone does because it’s a stupid rule and Traveller threw it out the window. Thank Granny Goodness.
• Gravity Manipulation makes it easier for players to conceptualize the actions of their characters; illustrations are more understandable if they show people standing up. AKA no one likes dealing with 3d space in an RPG so here’s how we handwaved it away. Cool. Hopefully, the actual zero gravity rules are good enough to compensate for if I want to ignore this. Spin and Thrust.
• Cheap Fusion Power also supports vehicles: travels are not contained by fuel depots or resupply concerns. Probably the least handwavy thing here considering fusion power looks like something achievable within my lifetime. Considering all I’ve heard about fuel in traveller I’m kind of surprised he’s saying you won’t need to worry about it. Maybe he means you won’t have to worry about getting stranded and unable to refuel? That would make more sense.
• At Higher tech levels Robots and other Artificials are possible and often present. It’s interesting how this is reserved for higher tech levels. this is another tech I expect to see within my lifetime. Probably just an anachronism from the time period traveller was originally published.
• Psychology supports the role and skill of a counsellor; psycho-history adds the potential for large-scale manipulations of society; archaeology helps understand the relics of the past; and sophontology helps understand the intelligent beings of society. Always love me a good social manipulation system. Will T5 unseat “On the Non-Player Character” for me?
• Traveller accepts diversity and allows (even requires) a wide variety of beings to interact for their mutual benefit. Such a Universe is richer than a purely Human environment. The cosmopolitan universe is nevertheless human-dominated for a sense of familiarity for the players. You see, I think humans are varied enough already and roleplaying as aliens/other races is nonsense unless the players are given very strong mechanical reasons to act in an alien manner. I think Burning Wheel is the only system I’ve read that’s been able to accomplish this.
• There are no artificial rules constraining player action. Nevertheless, their actions have (potential) consequences. A good statement of my GMing philosophy. Invictus Approved!
• The rationale behind events or situations has a surface explanation, but when examined fully there are often deeper explanations which in turn give a greater understanding of how the universe works. I love how this principle is called “Wheels within Wheels”. How ominous! Actually the first really insightful thing so far. A first sign of living up to that first quote about having all the answers to everything perhaps?
• Many Choices and Alternatives give both the players and the referee an opportunity to choose between them, which makes for more interesting and more exciting adventures. I believe it was Sid Meier who said that “Good games are a series of interesting decisions.” One of the reasons I’m a fan of games like Into The Odd is that it and its ilk embrace that philosophy. It’s all about interesting decisions.

Driven By Characters

The final parts of this chapter refer to the players and offer what I think Traveller’s actual progression system is. Characters first seek Money, then use Money to acquire Power, then use Power to acquire Understanding.

Players can be casual, merely enjoying the game for the intuitive joys of Travel, Exploration, Interaction, negotiation, Combat, etc. Marc says these players don’t even have to know the rules. Now there’s a challenge, run Traveller 5 so that players have to engage with as few rules as possible. Players can be detail driven, with strong motivations and intricate backgrounds. and then there are Systems Engineers who engage with the system and are usually on their way to becoming referees and game masters.

It surprises me that he says that becoming a referee is an achievement. Yeah buddy, I suppose that is great for someone who already has a traveller group, but isn’t much encouragement for someone who is looking to become a traveller referee all on their lonesome. That’s a pretty high bar, especially by this book’s standards for complexity.

First Thoughts

So the introductory material has set a very high bar for itself. It wants to be a book about adventure, and the handwavium it uses all seems to be in service to that. It’s a little anachronistic with its tech. I love that it seems to want to have background explanations for why everything is the way it is and that it expects players to eventually come to understand these things. I like the progression players are supposed to follow is intended to allow players to come to this understanding naturally. I’m skeptical that the underlying mechanical systems will actually produce all of this.