An excellent read; I don't recall how I came into possession of the link (I had it for a while before I actually looked at it - too much hands on my time...), but I'm glad I did.
I am the editor/curator/publisher of _Freelance Traveller_, a community-effort fanzine for all versions of Traveller. I'd like permission to reprint this in a future issue of the magazine. I can be reached by email at editor@freelancetraveller.com if you feel further discussion is warranted.
Really excellent summary of your experience! I wonder if you're aware of the following, since you opted for '77 Classic Traveller (which I mostly did too, but then violated your precept by looking at other versions of CT):
Using Starter Traveller's charts & tables with '77 CT will have some differences (e.g., weapon wounds, space encounter tables, subsector generation). Which is probably why that doc exists. I'll give the actual play podcast a try next...cheers!
You friend, are excellent and I’m so glad this chart exists. Yes! The 81 game that was the Facsimile has differences in the chart from the Starter Set Charts book (I thought it was 81 oops)
What I *didnt* know until later was the differences in some of the charts from 77 to 81 which, as you’ve shown, very much alter the implied setting!
Increasingly, I desire a “OSRIC” for Classic Traveller. I messaged Marc Miller asking if I could create an OSRIC document for 77 Traveller and simply release it for free (to meet the requirements of his FFE fair use) and sadly he did not respond.
I’m hoping in the future this can happen. The text could really use a potent reference and index tool similar to the charts document from the later starter set. In the meantime, I use the starter set charts doc particularly for the math, as we play in a very simulationist way using as much of the math as we can.
An "OSRIC" for Classic Traveller would be very neat (though you'd have to make some design decisions related to the differences). I don't think Marc is very responsive, as I've seen questions about FFE orders, too. I'd give it time, or maybe ask on the CotI fora?
I'm kicking myself for not referencing the Starter charts & tables before, so thanks for the tip!
The 1977 Book 1 - "Characters and Combat" - Suggests between 1 to 8 players. So your typical number for a roleplaying game. If doing a scenario with a ship operating at greater than 200 tons, you will need either players that can fill each required role, or there will have to be hired NPCs. If doing a campaign in the style above, I suggest just using the rules from the book with an optimum number between 3 and 8, and allowing character creation to guide what kind of things the players can get into and who they are.
The early Traveller adventures, like "The Kinunir", "Twilight's Peak" and "Death Station" are places you can drop in, or are breadcrumb trails. Much less linear or than current modules.
Certainly! As I said there are a few good ones. Broadly speaking I think my characterization remains true. Many of the Traveller adventures both by GDW and third parties proved to be Hickman-esque novelizations of an RPG adventure. In my opinion, for the premise of this blog post, the new Classic Traveller Referee who is seeking to run the original game by the book, is better served reading "Winds of Gath" in order to "prepare to improvise", then employing the procedures of the game, rather than trying to make a module fit into the content available from patrons or on planets.
I love classic Traveller and always have since I first encountered the black box in 1978. We played it more than D&D in those early years, and I've followed it through every edition and change since. My only dig against the original is that CT never had personal combat rules that lived up to the rest of the game's quality. Swordfights were OK but gunfights had too many situations where the combination of weapons and armor made it so you either couldn't miss or couldn't hit no matter what. The problem was manageable with the 3LBBs but roared out of control with the introduction of military weapons in Mercenary. I'm running a Spinward Marches campaign even now, but we're using Savage Worlds as the base rules - mainly because all my players already knew SvgW inside-out and no one wanted to learn a "new" system, but also because I knew they would hate CT's rock-paper-scissors shootouts.
That was an entertaining post! I haven't run Traveller for a while, but if I ever get there again, I will probably use Classic over Mongoose too. I will have to immerse myself more in classic pulp sci-fi though. I've read Space Viking, I have The Voyage of the Space Beagle on my bucket list, and now added The Winds of Gath (which seems to be part of a 30+ book series, which is something I will pretend I didn't see).
I very much enjoyed this and have experienced both sides of it, having run GURPS and Mongoose Traveller. I do fall into the camp of a grognard with decades in the hobby, so I feel comfortable mixing and matching to achieve a desired result while understanding you can't just add or subtract from the recipe without knowing what you're doing, or it just won't work.
Case in point was a discussion I had with a player once who said he didn't want to worry with mortgages, or fuel, or even having to pay bills, since he did all (or most) of that in real life and he wanted to be a hero! So that game ran with more external constraints and guideposts, and it was fun, but in the end it would've been better served in an entirely different system and setting, because I felt we were fighting both of those instead of working with them.
I really felt this when you delved into how important the sector and world building parts of it are, and how if you're not using those (even if you're hewing close to the rest of it) you're missing so much of what makes CT work so well. Let the system work for you, let the game's built-in constraints and guidelines do their job.
An excellent read; I don't recall how I came into possession of the link (I had it for a while before I actually looked at it - too much hands on my time...), but I'm glad I did.
I am the editor/curator/publisher of _Freelance Traveller_, a community-effort fanzine for all versions of Traveller. I'd like permission to reprint this in a future issue of the magazine. I can be reached by email at editor@freelancetraveller.com if you feel further discussion is warranted.
Really excellent summary of your experience! I wonder if you're aware of the following, since you opted for '77 Classic Traveller (which I mostly did too, but then violated your precept by looking at other versions of CT):
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jsH-EgKvaR0mdbtJMj_Xj7X3TcYyZTqQGf-Gwu58PX0/edit
Using Starter Traveller's charts & tables with '77 CT will have some differences (e.g., weapon wounds, space encounter tables, subsector generation). Which is probably why that doc exists. I'll give the actual play podcast a try next...cheers!
You friend, are excellent and I’m so glad this chart exists. Yes! The 81 game that was the Facsimile has differences in the chart from the Starter Set Charts book (I thought it was 81 oops)
What I *didnt* know until later was the differences in some of the charts from 77 to 81 which, as you’ve shown, very much alter the implied setting!
Increasingly, I desire a “OSRIC” for Classic Traveller. I messaged Marc Miller asking if I could create an OSRIC document for 77 Traveller and simply release it for free (to meet the requirements of his FFE fair use) and sadly he did not respond.
I’m hoping in the future this can happen. The text could really use a potent reference and index tool similar to the charts document from the later starter set. In the meantime, I use the starter set charts doc particularly for the math, as we play in a very simulationist way using as much of the math as we can.
Thanks again!
An "OSRIC" for Classic Traveller would be very neat (though you'd have to make some design decisions related to the differences). I don't think Marc is very responsive, as I've seen questions about FFE orders, too. I'd give it time, or maybe ask on the CotI fora?
I'm kicking myself for not referencing the Starter charts & tables before, so thanks for the tip!
What's a good number (of players/PCs) for a Traveller game?
The 1977 Book 1 - "Characters and Combat" - Suggests between 1 to 8 players. So your typical number for a roleplaying game. If doing a scenario with a ship operating at greater than 200 tons, you will need either players that can fill each required role, or there will have to be hired NPCs. If doing a campaign in the style above, I suggest just using the rules from the book with an optimum number between 3 and 8, and allowing character creation to guide what kind of things the players can get into and who they are.
Welp, time to open my old box set.
Great post, you didn't mention Chris Kubasik's Traveller Out of the Box blog post series, a mandatory read for all Classic Traveller junkies
Can you post a link? I want to make sure I get it right
The early Traveller adventures, like "The Kinunir", "Twilight's Peak" and "Death Station" are places you can drop in, or are breadcrumb trails. Much less linear or than current modules.
Certainly! As I said there are a few good ones. Broadly speaking I think my characterization remains true. Many of the Traveller adventures both by GDW and third parties proved to be Hickman-esque novelizations of an RPG adventure. In my opinion, for the premise of this blog post, the new Classic Traveller Referee who is seeking to run the original game by the book, is better served reading "Winds of Gath" in order to "prepare to improvise", then employing the procedures of the game, rather than trying to make a module fit into the content available from patrons or on planets.
Great read.
Thanks!
Great article!
I love classic Traveller and always have since I first encountered the black box in 1978. We played it more than D&D in those early years, and I've followed it through every edition and change since. My only dig against the original is that CT never had personal combat rules that lived up to the rest of the game's quality. Swordfights were OK but gunfights had too many situations where the combination of weapons and armor made it so you either couldn't miss or couldn't hit no matter what. The problem was manageable with the 3LBBs but roared out of control with the introduction of military weapons in Mercenary. I'm running a Spinward Marches campaign even now, but we're using Savage Worlds as the base rules - mainly because all my players already knew SvgW inside-out and no one wanted to learn a "new" system, but also because I knew they would hate CT's rock-paper-scissors shootouts.
That was an entertaining post! I haven't run Traveller for a while, but if I ever get there again, I will probably use Classic over Mongoose too. I will have to immerse myself more in classic pulp sci-fi though. I've read Space Viking, I have The Voyage of the Space Beagle on my bucket list, and now added The Winds of Gath (which seems to be part of a 30+ book series, which is something I will pretend I didn't see).
I very much enjoyed this and have experienced both sides of it, having run GURPS and Mongoose Traveller. I do fall into the camp of a grognard with decades in the hobby, so I feel comfortable mixing and matching to achieve a desired result while understanding you can't just add or subtract from the recipe without knowing what you're doing, or it just won't work.
Case in point was a discussion I had with a player once who said he didn't want to worry with mortgages, or fuel, or even having to pay bills, since he did all (or most) of that in real life and he wanted to be a hero! So that game ran with more external constraints and guideposts, and it was fun, but in the end it would've been better served in an entirely different system and setting, because I felt we were fighting both of those instead of working with them.
I really felt this when you delved into how important the sector and world building parts of it are, and how if you're not using those (even if you're hewing close to the rest of it) you're missing so much of what makes CT work so well. Let the system work for you, let the game's built-in constraints and guidelines do their job.
Thanks again, great stuff.