What I would do differently as a new Classic Traveller Referee

The highs and lows of trying the Grandfather of science-fiction roleplaying

NOTE: I was tipped off to this amazing blog after writing my experience here which is a more thorough treatment of the same premise, “What if Classic Traveller, straight out of the box?” I highly recommend it!

https://talestoastound.wordpress.com/traveller-out-of-the-box/

We recently finished our 9 month long Classic Traveller campaign. I had dabbled a bit in Mongoose Traveller 2nd Edition (what some might consider “modern” Traveller) as both a player and Referee but had wanted to run a longer, sprawling, sandbox, science fiction campaign pretty much since I started running and playing RPGs regularly.

And, oh boy! Was it sprawling, sandbox and science fiction!

Having ran or played in many science fiction roleplaying games, including some I truly adore, I can say with certainty-

Classic Traveller tops the list of science fiction RPGs for me

You can listen to the majority of the campaign on our podcast “Adventures in the Void” - https://adventuresinthevaletaverncast.podbean.com/

And you can see the entire thing including it’s strange and stuttering beginning on our Youtube channel - https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3c4xRmyQ_SKvpKNPdq4r5wsS51HW7JNp&si=HXgp3EKbEJGbHQ76

While I had tremendous fun running this campaign, and enjoyed the thoughtful, dedicated and often hilarious players that were in the group for the long haul, I have to admit I didn’t find the process of learning Classic Traveller to be easy or intuitive.

There are some things I’d do differently.

I also don’t think it has to be as hard as what I went through to learn for those with no experience.

I was incredibly intimidated by Traveller. I had put off running a serious campaign of it for several years.

What I hope this post will serve to do is aid others like me who are also standing at the precipice as a new Classic Traveller referee, perhaps feeling a bit intimidated by it’s scope and major departure from the tried and true D&D formula.

I also hope this post will be useful to the many veteran 2D6 Referees out there to give a perspective of what it felt like being a new Referee coming into the 2D6 Sci fi world.

I’ll briefly decsribe the game and our campaign. Then I’ll go straight into what I’d do differently and why. That section will read as a list of things to do for new Referees, but should be taken as advice I would have given my past self. Hopefully it will be useful to someone else also.

Lastly, I’ll offer some personal “dos and don’ts” about the Traveller experience and community.

Before we begin there are are a few parameters I’d like any reader to understand to help with the context of this information:

• This information is just an expression of my experience as a new Classic Traveller Referee. It shouldn’t be taken as an opinion on what works for everyone or strict rules for anyone.

• This is from the point of view of someone who is trying to run Classic Traveller, “by-the-book.” I fully recognize there is an entire world of Traveller RPG content (and have enjoyed a lot of it!), and am not in this post explaining why I chose to try to run Classic Traveller or to try and do it strictly “by-the-book.”

  Perhaps that could be for a later post. What I will assure the reader is that the rules work, straight from the pages of the 3 little black books from 1977, and that it produces a very fun game.

  Whenever I engage with the Traveller community I find they often have different goals than me. While I love most of what the Traveller community has to offer, consider this 2nd precept please before commenting, else I will say “please go back and see what the blog post is about!” This not about Traveller in general, this is about a by-the-book, sandbox campaign of Classic Traveller.

What is Traveller?

Traveller is to science fiction adventure gaming what Dungeons and Dragons is to medieval fantasy adventure gaming.

Or at least it ought to be.

Traveller (1977) is the original science fiction space-faring roleplaying game. While elements of sci fi existed in many D&D communities and settings, and Metamorphosis Alpha would publish the first sci fi RPG in 1975, Traveller was the first roleplaying game to truly depart from D&D completely.

The entire formula of D&D is subverted. You aren’t seeking gold, treasure, or necessarily even adventure. In Traveller adventure finds you. You take on the role of a space-faring pulp sci fi inhabitant who specializes in xeno-medicine, starship piloting, driving ATVs on low gravity planets in a Vacc-suit all while trying to profit and stay alive.

The cover of the original 1977 Traveller by GDW and Marc Miller

I’ve found Classic D&D to be an easy game to sum up to new players:

“You are a fantasy medieval adventurer who travels to dangerous places to find treasure while evading or defeating lethal monsters.”

Classic D&D can be more than that, but it also can be that simple.

Traveller sounds nonsensical when stated simply. To quote Rick Stump

“Traveller is a game about space truckers that sometimes solve murder mysteries.”

To put it even more strangely:

“Traveller is a science fiction game about trying to escape your debt and pay your mortgage.”

To many this proposed gameplay loop ends the conversation then and there. (Nevermind the infamous aspects of character creation among other things!) Traveller is perhaps the first RPG to truly depart from the D&D gameplay loop. Anyone who plays D&D knows that the gameplay loop of beginning in a settlement and travelling through a wilderness to a dungeon, descending into it and exploring it to find treasure while evading monsters will inevitably result in fun.

The gameplay loop of barely escaping character creation alive to have a ton of debt and being forced to take undesirable jobs and trade space burgers between dingy starports while mishaps happen also inevitably results in fun.

I’m not sure what else to say about that except “trust me bro.” This is a quality of Traveller that simply must be experienced.

For an in depth treatment of this “gameplay loop” I recommend “The Four Table Legs of Traveller” by Sir Poley - https://sirpoley.tumblr.com/tagged/FourLegsofTraveller. Albeit, Sir Poley experienced this using modern Traveller, whose differences will not be discussed here.

I’ve found it can only be experienced by actually doing it, not mitigating the game, it’s scope, it’s intent or the rules. Actually using the rules of Classic Traveller will produce the dream campaign of “Firefly” or “Solo.” But, do you actually want to be in a game where you are barely getting by job to job and bounty hunters are tracking you to pay your debts in an unfair galaxy?

You do! It’s a blast I assure you!

Mythic Traveller - Spinward Marches Campaign

Our campaign lasted around 9 months. Character creation in Traveller is one of the game modules you’ll actually play through instead of it being a pen and paper exercise as it is in D&D with charts. There are charts, but you’ll make decisions and roll dice. Not only that, you may perish then and there. Many of the players did lose Travellers and had to start over in the available time. Some of them were booted out of the military (pretty much everyone starts in the military in Classic Traveller) with a few thousand space bucks and hardly any discernible skills.

One player survived about five terms as a Merchant Officer and had the either tremendous luck or misfortune, depending on how you look at it, of rolling a Free Trader. He started with a starship he was paying the mortgage on at the beginning of the game.

From there they set out with a very basic premise in the “Charted Space” setting, which is like the Forgotten Realms of the Traveller community (but far grander and more ubiquitous, many Traveller enthusiasts just like the setting). They had been pushed out after their time in the Fifth Frontier War to the Spinward Marches where they started eeking by to get good work. They started with a job by the Scout Services, quickly became “big damn heroes”, and while most weeks of gameplay consisted of struggling to pay the bills just enough to get to the next starport and pick up the next load of cargo and work, by the end they basically saved the entire sector and were Knighted by the Emperor of the Grand Empire of Stars, Emperor Strephon himself.

The first 2-3 months were pretty shaky, that was for a number of reasons, few to do with Traveller so I won’t discuss it here. Around month 4 we started humming along as a crew and making tough and impactful decisions from planet to planet. And that’s what it was. There was always the need to pay off that mortgage and to have enough money to eat and survive in space, and that meant they were compelled to get into trouble. Once in trouble they had to make hard decisions, and figure out how to turn things around to get the next job, keep getting paid and keep flying.

In the course of chasing space bucks they became Rangers on a world of dog-people they saved from an exploding volcano, probably caused a world-war on an ocean planet, and finally unravelled the mystery of a hidden faction pulling the strings on a seperatist terrorist group, the very Space Vikings they had made friends with to get a pulse laser for their ship. The Captain of the player’s crew duelled the Space Viking Captain on the deck of the villain’s frigate for the fate of the sector. With actual swords.

It eventually became packed with choices and tension, really that was what it was like to me, choice after choice, planet after planet. It was really a sci fi sandbox unlike what I thought would be possible.

What I’d do differently

Unfortunately, I have to confess the game took a lot of work. Many RPGs still contain some kind of underlying kinship with D&D, or depart from having a ‘loop’ all together in some way. Traveller has a loop, but it’s completely unlike D&D.

In the beginning this game took me hours upon hours of preparation. Now, it takes very little, just like my classic D&D games. This has more to do with mindset, tools and experience than procedure. I hope to offer some of that mindset, those tools and procedures here.

The game system itself did not lend itself to the kind of picky experimentation that I used to dabble in, and eventual dive head long into, the OSR. I would eventually find that some seeming “problems” that existed in the campaign existed only because I simply didn’t read the book thoroughly and employ all of it’s systems. I did probably 90% when I should have done 100%.

Like B/X and old school D&D however, it was less about the rules (especially player facing ones) and more about how the rules work.

Traveller is the most diagetic game I’ve ever seen.

Every game concept is shared by inhabitants of the universe. The character sheet, called the UPP, is a concept in the fictional world. So are planetary profiles and how sectors work. Every mechanic in the world is pretty much something the characters in the world would know about and the way they are described in the rules are the same way fictional characters would talk about them. Terms and names for things have no difference between what players know and what characters know. You can sometimes forget if you are in or out of character.

Even character sheets are an in universe government form!

For this reason, by not fully using the whole book in places, I actually understood less about the implied setting and how it interlocks with other features.

The campaign mostly went well, and I mostly ran it by-the-book successfully. But if I could have done it over again, these are the things I would have told myself to do in the beginning:

1. Gain genre literacy

This is something I’d accomplish closer to halfway through the campaign, but should have done before I started. As a teen I loved golden age sci fi like Asimov, Heinlein and O.S. Card, but pulp sci-fi wasn’t around in my junior high school library. I had no exposure to the science fiction that informed Classic Traveller.

Some will say something similar about D&D, that to really enjoy it to it’s fullest extent you must read Appendix N. I don’t think that’s true. I think Dungeons and Dragons serves almost as an emmisarry of sword and sorcery in the public conscience more than the other way around. Everyone knows what treasure chests, goblins and dungeons are.

Pulp sci fi isn’t something I think people are as acquainted with. At least not me.

Some will say that there are films or TV you might be able to replace with this, or video games. I respectfully disagree with this also. I know the shows and films they speak of, and I watched them before the campaign. No, there are two books I’ll mention shortly that I consider must reads. Watching “Firefly” is a good ‘mood setter’ perhaps but it won’t help you understand Classic Traveller.

Another thing that is important about sci fi pulp genre literacy is that Traveller is one of the most improvisational games I’ve ever seen.

If you are like me and intimidated by Traveller already, I can imagine how daunting that must sound. You must be able to improvise situations entirely from six characteristics given about an entire planet, if you want a true merchant campaign sandbox.

I would propose the key here isn’t raw skill or practice, but to “prepare to improvise.” If you have experience in Classic D&D you do this all the time. You roll 6 kobolds. You know the terrain nearby, the weather and date, the factions and the lairs. The game system tells you how far they are, if they spot you and what their attitude is. From this information alone you use the power of your mind, apophenia, to fill in the blanks. This is the engine of Classic D&D.

The same is true of Traveller. You know the worlds size relative to Earth, with Earth about a “8” on a scale of 1-10 (determines it’s gravity also), you know it’s air, water, government, law level and level of technology. You’ll also know if the solar system has a gas giant and if there’s a military base in orbit. From that information you must improvise what the Travellers will see when they get to the starport, and it must inform the other random rolls of random person encounters, aliens in the wilderness and starships.

That’s pretty much Classic Traveller in a paragraph.

If that sounds daunting, you need to read some pulp sci fi. Prepare to improvise.

If I could do it over again, I’d tell myself I simply had to read two books before beginning the campaign.

Winds of Gath - E.C. Tubb

This one novel is the closest thing to a bible I can point to for Classic Traveller. From the very first few pages it begins to explain a world written within the Classic Traveller rules that otherwise makes no sense to me. A starship-hopping, space hobo named Dumarest has to find just enough money to hop on the next starship to get work or he’ll starve to death or be enslaved. It explains concepts as central to Classic Traveller as low and high passage, space rations, space nobility, a sci fi galaxy of lower tech and high social intrigue, and the actual concept of a “Traveller” itself, which are the central characters of the book series. A “Traveller” is basically a space hobo. Someone desperate for any work at all just to eat, but in space.

To me, a new Referee interested in Classic Traveller who has no previous experience with pulp sci fi or Traveller like me, seeking to run the game straight out of the book, must read Winds of Gath. Not only are implied setting concepts explained in the novel, but there are two very, very key concepts to understanding Classic Traveller which someone who reads this novel will understand.

• The implied setting of Classic Traveller is profoundly unfair and unequal. It can be like a far future post apocalypse.

• You think being scrappy and gritty is being Captain Malcolm Reynolds or Han Solo. For Classic Traveller, you need to lower your expectations further to the dirt. The math of starting with a starship is so incredibly low with a group of players that you ought to assume that being a scrappy starship crew with a beat up used tin can trying to survive job to job is actually a long ways UP for you! More on this later, but a space hobo with 3,000 credits and a dagger to his name rubbing elbows with a former sector Baron or Knight who due to disgrace and circumstance must struggle to survive is more akin to starting characters than Han Solo. Han Solo is the end game.

Space Viking - H. Beam Piper

Winds of Gath will explain what it is to be a Traveller down in the mud of a poor, scrappy frontier planet in a far future space apocalypse.

Space Viking will explain from the top down what it is to be a Space Baron commanding Starship fleets in that same space apocalypse.

Space Viking is about, well, a Space Viking. A noble lord in a far future reconstruction of viking culture spanning dozens of worlds who have long since forgotten what Earth was about or human progress. Instead they raid and pillage the former planets of what was once an enlightened human interstellar polity.

Space Viking explains tech levels, planetary profiles, interstellar politics, types of governments and isms by planet, the trouble of an “age of sail” in space where signals move slower than starships, and many other things implicit in the Classic Traveller rules become clear by reading this book.

The most important thing is the sense of how seperated planets are by this age-of-sail. Signals cannot travel faster than light, so messages can only be brought from planet to planet in person. It can take months to hear news from another sector, and what you recieve might be whispered rumors in a scummy starport bar.

The other key idea is planetary profiles including wildly different governments, climates and technology. One planet may be a Greek City Republic on a near airless moon maintaining ancient technology for sustenance while another planet might have anti-gravity devices and their own local starship fleets ready for battle…but with an EVIL SPACE EMPIRE (that’s not tired, is it?)

These assumptions about how the far future work, about cycles of history, lost knowledge and the vast differences between planets are crucial to understanding the rules of Classic Traveller in my opinion.

If I could do it over again, I would have read those two books first.

2. Let Traveller be Traveller

This is a complaint I’ll get into later in the “dont’s” section but many people will suggest the key to Traveller is to take it in parts. RPGs can often be taken in parts. If I could do it over again I would not alter the rules of Classic Traveller, at all.

Yes, I broke down a couple of “Chesterton’s fences” for our campaign.

First, because one player had a Free Trader and I had a ‘heroic assumption’ that “this is like Firefly!” because I had no conception of stories of pulpy space hoboes as in “Winds of Gath”, I took a page out of the modern Traveller game and gave each Traveller each skill necessary to operate a 200-ton starship. Everyone started the game with Pilot-1, Navigator-1, Gunnery-1, Engineer-1 etc.

For the most part, I followed the rules of the book closely, but this….

I was wrong. And it did have an impact on the game.

There is a natural tendency to look at a game and simply discard anything that may stand in the way of “fun.” Traveller enjoyers are frequent culprits, which is well and good, especially if you have a specific kind of game in mind and aren’t seeking a by-the-book sandbox sci-fi simulation that is the point of this article.

They will toss out the need to place down a multi-million credit downpayment to even start with debt for a starter ship, they will toss out the rules about dying in character creation, or allow Travellers to start with certain skills and bonuses, or allow for some form of character progression (that’s not really in Classic Traveller by the way). There’s plenty here to toss and change. But for those who this article is for that are starting out, that affects the pacing of the game.

If you go back to my earlier discovery that this isn’t about a scrappy Han Solo, but potentially desperate space hobos, you can see how this would suddenly alter any concerns that exist for new Referees daunted by the size and scope of a Traveller sector. Give the players a ship and the ability to scoop fuel, and suddenly you may indeed have a group of renegades who will travel 500 light years across 3 sectors, investing in nothing and to no point or end as they out run their mortgage and the bounty hunters. Worse, there won’t be any point to it. The drama occuring in a sector, a solar system or a planet won’t matter. I observe this as a “this planet sucks, let’s leave!” phenomenon which we experienced to a light degree. That may sound like the players fault, a bad behavior in D&D to be sure, but it isn’t. Traveller punishes you for getting too close to conflict and problems, it’s lethal, expensive and problems beget more problems. It just makes sense to keep skipping town if you can take a load of cargo and have the ship.

But can you skip town if no one starts with a ship? And even if you have a ship if you have to afford a pilot on hire how would that work? By the way, even if you can scoop fuel, life support is damned expensive and there’s a limit due to that life support of how many people you can cram into state rooms. These aren’t the only restraints and complications that arise either.

Much like in Classic D&D, the paradox here is that restraints enable choices and generate drama. If you allow the restraints to arise naturally by using the rules in the book, it will create all of the natural pacing to get a full campaign out of a sector, heck, to get the better part of a campaign on a planet or in a solar system. This organically solves the problem of space being big for the Referee.

By the time the players do have a Jump-6 starship (which by my reckoning would take years of play), they are fully invested in the world and it’s conflicts and things have developed context. Just like in a classic D&D campaign where high levels with powerful spells, estate and droves of henchmen do not come from a vacuum but from a steady investment in the overworld, which creates the needed high level challenges for characters with such resources.

So don’t give gimmes and alter the rules at the outset! Follow the rules and allow the setting to naturally grow from the ground up.

Speaking of a science fiction adventure setting growing from the ground up, let’s talk about it from top down also, another intimidating aspect for new Referees. How much should you prepare for a planet in advance 15 parsecs away from their starting planet? How much should you prepare for each solar system or faction?

About a paragraph at most but often a sentence. Seriously!

This is another example of something that I should have used the whole book for and not altered things. At the time the use of https://travellermap.com/ just seemed like the “easy button” for getting a game to the table. All the sectors, all the details, everything about every planet is quickly available at the click of a button. It really is a great resource.

If I could do it over again, I would have made my own sector.

What I didn’t realize at the time is that sector generation actually has important rules for the game, including the way the implied setting works. In my case just to point to one error I made, I had assumed that since the fuel of the setting was liquid Hydrogen and this was processed primarily from gas giants, that gas giants must be a rare and contested resources. This would create problems I hadn’t anticipated, including the subtle suggestion that there are automatic things which occur arriving into a system and assumed times and distances.

When I began creating my own sector after the campaign was over, I discovered the opposite was explicitly stated about worlds, that gas giants are extremely common and it’s a very rare thing to have a solar system without one. Having a solar system without a gas giant is something akin to having an extremely difficult terrain in a hex map, or a passage which is very difficult to pass through. Especially considering some parsecs are completely void.

The idea that most systems should work that way subtly guided the campaign world for us toward one of unecessary desperation and difficulty for the players. This is just one example, sector generation also explains a lot about tech levels, trade, military bases and more.

In some ways the sector generation section is like the DMG of the game. It says too much about the implied world and how it can be game-able as a campaign for it to be left unvisited by the Referee.

Of course, the other benefit of creating your own sector is that you come to know that sector, and your mind will automatically begin filling in details about how trade routes and polities might work. Don’t feel intimidated by this or held back, this is something to aim toward not to have nailed down completely.

If you run Classic D&D, think of it this way. You should be able to spend between an afternoon to 2 weeks depending on how much elbow grease you use creating the required elements for a Classic D&D sandbox. You need a starting town with necessary places to buy, sell, rest, train and identify items. You need a few hexes, maybe between 6-12 around the area with points of interest to travel through. You need a dungeon within a hex or so of the starting town to start things off with. That dungeon ought to start with a level or 2.

Voila! You have the minimum ingredients that will naturally grow in time for your sandbox. For the town you might need between 1 page to 3 about it’s NPCs and locations. For the wilderness each hex probably only needs between a sentence to a paragraph and some will be empty. The dungeon needs about a sentence to a paragraph per non-empty room, consisting of 5-15 stocked rooms, maybe you would like a page about the setting, a page about the nearby area and a page about the dungeon including wandering monsters.

A Classic Traveller sandbox works the same. You need to create a sector, which the book will guide you by the hand very well in doing, unlike most classic D&D games. This will take about an afternoon, and you’ll have between a sentence to a paragraph about each planet. Maybe you want to make a page about the overall situation in the sector. For your starting solar system you’ll want some details to start, companies, random persons and patrons. The game will naturally pace attaining interesting jobs and adventures (you only get one chance a week to find a patron on 5+ on a D6!) With the starting area, a nearby “sandbox” wilderness which might be work on the planet or interplanetary work in a solar system, and a rough sketch of the sector, you have everything you need to start and the rules will do the heavy lifting of anyone’s concerns about how vast space is or how daunting it sounds to create an interstellar sandbox.

While there are some who would say this for all RPGs, in the case of Classic Traveller I advise my past self to read the entire book front to back. Including sections that might not yet seem relevent like vehicles, drugs and sector generation. The point here isn’t to try and memorize or get down each rule, but as in my classic RPGs of the 70’s, to get a sense of how the rules and the implied world work.

3. Download and use the 1981 Starter Set - “Charts”

Page flipping is a major problem in the original books. If you want to create the rules for trade on a planet (crucial if someone starts with a free trader) you have to look in 3 seperate places across the 3 booklets, all of whom have their own page numberings and tables of contents. You’ll need to understand the “basics of Travelling” then you’ll need to go to the section that tells you to generate the state of trade in the parsecs that surround the current world and use those rules, then you’ll need a seperate section later for the mini-game on speculative trade.

Another example of this is items. For some reason, after character creation weapons and armor are listed right away for purchase, but actual gizmos and items arent mentioned until the 3rd book in a section near vehicles and world information. I’m embarrased to say this led to a situation where at first I simply assumed gizmos weren’t even part of the game (it’s true that Classic Traveller has a much more constrained and generic list of items, and imo makes it actually easier to run than modern Traveller!)

I can think of other examples but the bottom line is if you are just using either the 3 little black books or the Facsimile (by the way, use one of those two, not the “Traveller Adventure” or “Starter Set” box sets) you are gonna do a loooot of page flipping to use the rules. My facsimile book is smothered in little bookmarks which proved to be so many that at a certain point useless to discern from one another.

Worse, you may not naturally come to know or memorize rules this way. We had the experience of adventuring on a planetary wilderness for nearly six sessions of play, only to return to space and forget where the section in the book is for safe jump distances/misjumps and starship encounters vs. space combat. Traveller is really a bunch of different games, and you won’t use all of them all the time.

For this reason, I found it utterly essential to find and use the Starter Edition 1981 - “Charts” book. This is really just the end pages of condensed rules or GM screen that is essential imo for running Classic Traveller by the book.

This lists the implied procedures of Travelling in order, would have been handy to have in the rulebook itself! Page 9 - Starter Edition “Charts”

The Starter Edition - “Charts” book is essentially the condensed procedures of Classic Traveller, in order, by phase of gameplay from creating a character to creating a sector. It also makes character creation easier and more streamlined, lists space operations from jumping to combat to random encounter in order as it would be done during the game. The 1981 rules are slightly different and add some things, but the new Classic Traveller Referee shouldn’t have trouble sussing that out as they use this tool.

The rulebook simply doesn’t do this. If the license were open, I could imagine a world where we could have an OSRIC or an Old School Essentials of Traveller, where the procedures are put together in an easy index or reference for the table. In the meantime, “Charts” is the closest thing to that I found and I used it every single time we played after I discovered it.

Unfortunately, it looks like you’ll need to get the entire Starter Set to use the Charts book, which is one book of 3 in that set. You can find that here: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/80190/CTSTStarter-Traveller

(NOTE: I do not recommend the rest of the Starter Set for the purpose of this blog post, for the Classic Traveller Referee who is new and wanting to experiment with the original game as written. The Starter Set includes a lot of new content, ideas and concepts not included in the original game and was released in an era of Traveller where many linear adventures and modules had been published. There is a slight tilt in the boxed set toward this idea of linear adventures, which isn’t what we are trying to achieve here.)

Those are the 3 things I would have told myself to begin with at the outset of preparing a Classic Traveller campaign. I believe they would have helped me earlier on, and I hope they are useful to others.

There are also some things I’d tell myself to steer clear of:

Some “do’s and don’ts”

1. DO NOT listen to people on the internet

One might say this about D&D also, but I think it’s especially true of Traveller. Here is where I’ll note what I think is the greatest barrier to the new Referee interacting with the Traveller community.

The Traveller community seems at pains to emphasize that Traveller doesn’t need to be Traveller.

A harsh criticism. But a warning I would issue to anyone who wants to try Classic Traveller straight out of the book and experience a sci fi sandbox, who has never done it before.

The truth is that the writer of the original 3 black books did a great job, the game works and is fun, and you can read it and run it and it will be great.

Most of the discourse online, and in fact most personalities that enjoy Traveller, will right away suggest modifying Classic Traveller in some way. Many of these people have played Traveller for decades. The problem with this is that these people have had those decades of experience. I have not. It might seem strange to them that anyone would want to try the original game the way it was originally presented. They after all, were the very arbiters of change, the community which saw the various modifications and splat books like the Merchant Prince and Mercenaries splat books. They endured upheaval and changes to the game, many of which are reviled to this day. Finally they arrived at a Traveller renaissance in the modern era, where they have their own favorite form of Traveller whether it be Cepheus, Mongoose or some modification of the original.

There are also an immense number of people in the Traveller community who are here for the setting. They might even still be employing T20 (D&D Traveller) or GURPS, which don’t even use the Traveller game system. The charted space setting is immensely popular, and I too am a fan. Much like D&D, there are droves of casual fans of the products who don’t really use the rules and aren’t interested in a serious game of Traveller.

It’s also true that you don’t need to do this ambitious project at all. You can chuck a couple of D6’s to get an ‘8’, and engineer a scenario around rescuing some alien people from a slaver ship or something and bam! You’ve got a great Traveller game on your hands. This was indeed true from the beginning according to the creator of the game. Traveller also had in mind scenario play, modular play and even solitaire play. You don’t need a grand merchant campaign to enjoy the game.

Lastly, the true veterans of the community that understand the game suffer from a general problem I see in tabletop, which I’d simply call humility. They love Traveller, but are open to new ideas, to newcomers and variant approaches. Because of this humility they are likely to simply tell you “Eh, as long as you are having fun, it’s still Traveller.” While they aren’t wrong, this will not help the intimidated Referee seeking to do a by-the-book Classic Traveller campaign.

For those reasons, I’ve included a couple of resources for those that I know do Classic Traveller by-the-book:

First there’s “Ancient Faith in the Far Future.” If you aren’t into religion, or whatever, don’t worry. The blog actually has little do with that regardless of if you don’t like religion. It’s mostly a blog about the person’s experience with a serious treatment of Classic Traveller.

https://ancientfarfuture.blogspot.com/

Secondly, I recommend Rick Stump’s blog and community “Don’t Split the Party.” His blog resources are more slim regarding Classic Traveller, but if you contribute to his patreon, his Discord is one of the best for a serious and mature treatment of classic games I’ve ever seen.

https://harbingergames.blogspot.com/

Others could be mentioned, honorable mentions go to “RPG Elite” who has a series on Classic Traveller (and he has the philosophy that games are better when done by the book and with serious investment), Ardwulf’s Lair which has a great couple of videos on Traveller in general and character creation specifically, The Last Redoubt blog which focuses on classic sci fi tabletop, The Careful Rogue blog, TheBasicExpert who has a whole series on Classic Traveller and going through the books and The Love of Wargaming which has a great video explaining vector based space combat (which isn’t usually necessary, even according to the book, but is fun to look at.)

2. DO NOT use a linear module for this

Much like D&D, there came a time when people were disatisfied with the sprawling, ambitious, perhaps inaccessible wargame culture of tabletop for Traveller from which the game arose. Indeed, few had the necessary tools, time or expertise to run games the way many of the progenitors did and the way Marc Miller did with his friends in college communities dedicated to wargames.

Within a couple of years after Traveller’s publication the company began writing adventure modules. Some of them are real gems including “Startown Liberty” and “Prison Planet”, but frankly, most are poorly written novels with a fixed plotline and the expectation that players will do the next thing, and the next thing.

This was a major mistake I made multiple times, and was a false premise upon which I started the campaign with two groups. Thinking that perhaps some Classic Traveller modules might be like the open ended, location based “B” modules of ancient D&D, I had promised many players “We will play some of the classic adventure modules!”

I will not mention it’s name here, but I started with a modern module which seemed simple. Frankly, for the goal of kickstarting a science fiction sandbox, it was just terrible. I couldn’t imagine a worse module, and I really didn’t understand the extent to which it was stifling play until we were already a couple sessions in.

Later I’d employ a couple of other modules, which fall apart like all linear modules including modern WOTC culprits. For one I had to completely rewrite the thing so that it had actual choices. This was really time wasted imo, for a campaign that really sang when the players were making choices rather than having choices strongly recommended because the Referee prepped something so hard.

I’m happy to say today that I use zero-prep or low prep modules or no modules (modules as tools and locations), and I do almost no prep for our ongoing Classic Traveller campaign. The world is the prep. The rest is up to the players.

3. DO NOT over prep planets, solar systems beyond your sector generation.

Just have at most a paragraph per planet until it becomes relevent. You must improvise from the UWP (Planet’s information)! If they end up on adventures on the planet or in the solar system THEN prep maybe a page or so to improvise from.

4. DO find very invested players with an equal interest in pulp sci fi and science fiction simulation

This might be the hardest part. If you also want to take on the amitious project of a Classic Traveller campaign, by-the-book, you will need some dedicated players, which I was blessed to find.

They will need to be dedicated because it will be up to the players to know what their ship’s software is and when to exchange it in space combat, and how to calculate the costs of life support, fuel and whether or not it’s feasible to upgrade to cover new software or a ship’s module.

They will need to be dedicated so that they can do their own calculations on whether they can kill through ablative armor at medium range with a revolver.

Yes, Classic Traveller can actually be really simple compared to modern games for the player (not for the Referee.) But it has areas with crunch. It also demands someone that understands the basics of the world for anything to work. If you present an honest game of Classic Traveller, they will perish if they don’t understand the world of the game.

If you find a group of players who will dedicate themself to the Classic Traveller sci-fi simulation, you can have the “Firefly” dream campaign. But it’s not for everyone!

5. DO create your own sector and read the novels above, even if you don’t have players or a game yet -

This is like the “world first” aspect of classic gaming in general. It can provide years of play regardless of the players and time played. Classic Traveller from the very beginning assumed solitaire play was a viable option.

From the very beginning, the assumption for play was different modes including solo gaming. Traveller players across the decades mastered solo play, including creating their own aliens, starships and space operas, before it ever became popular in D&D - Page 2 - Characters and Combat - Book 1 - Traveller (1977)

Much like the ambitious classic gamer preparing a campaign of 1st Edition Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, if you use the rules, then emphasize the world, it will enable play for many players over a very long period of time.

In the case of many Classic Traveller Referees they have “In my Traveller Universe”, beginning with a single sector, the development of a far future civizilation that can be adventured in has been a decades long passion project.

Like other classic games, this can be the best starting point when you don’t have players yet. Of course, if you can find a group as a player, that’s great! But don’t wait to start creating your science fiction world. As the old movie quote goes, “If you build it, they will come.”

And when they do, you’ll be ready.

Conclusion

I hope this advice to my past self from a year ago will prove useful to others that aspire to try the original science fiction roleplaying game by the book.

It is a challenge. It’s a challenge worth confronting and you will succeed. On the other side of that challenge is the dream of scrappy starship crews getting into trouble and trying to survive in space.

If you disagree or have your own experiences to share, please share them below! (Please keep in mind the two starting precepts for this blog post)

Happy Travelling! 07 Travellers

Cover artwork is by Alex Dzuricky of “Knight at the Opera” blog and Dwiz - see their artwork here: https://www.instagram.com/knight_at_the_opera/

And check out their blog here including a post about the cover of the original Traveller RPG - https://knightattheopera.blogspot.com/2024/05/the-best-rpg-cover-of-all-time.html

The 1981 version of the game is completely free here:

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/355200/Classic-Traveller-Facsimile-Edition?

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