An RPG From the Past: Traveller

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 . . .
This is Free Trader Beowulf . . .
                                        Mayday . . .

--The iconic distress call gracing the cover of various editions of Traveller

Back in the late 90s when I worked as a Software QA Engineer, one of my friends there* and I would spend about a half hour after 5 PM chatting about whatever was on our minds. He wasn't interested in "traditional" sports, but he was an absolute racing nut. He preferred the CART series** back then, so we frequently talked open wheel racing. One day, however, we geeked out over RPGs, mainly because of the upcoming D&D 3rd Edition.

"I never really played D&D," he confessed. "I played Traveller."

"What's that?" I thought I knew of most of the RPGs at the time, but this one was new to me.

"It's a Sci-Fi RPG."

"Like Gamma World?" Gamma World was put out by TSR, the publisher of D&D, and was essentially D&D in a post apocalyptic setting.

Be warned, the prices for the
Gamma World 1e rulebook can
spike. A LOT. From eBay.

"No, although it was closer to Star Frontiers." Another TSR game, this time set in space.

Yikes. This is the $90 copy on eBay.

"I'd never heard of it before."

"Oh yeah, it was really cool. It came out right around the time Star Wars was released in theaters, so it got kind of a boost from that."

A few days later when I stopped by his cubicle, he handed me a small booklet. 

"The Travellers' Digest?"

"Yeah! It was a periodical that was put out to support Traveller. It had premade adventures, like early Dragon magazines, but in a scientific journal format."

I flipped through it. "Looks pretty cool."

"Hey, you can have it. I don't play any more, and I happened to stumble on it the other day while I was moving boxes."

"Thanks!"

It's digest sized too, much like the
original Traveller rulebooks were.

That was the extent of my knowledge of Traveller until several years later, when I was perusing the RPG section at a (now deceased) local game store and came across a few Traveller books under the GURPS license.*** As it turned out, the employee at the store was in a long running campaign of GURPS Traveller, and over the course of a half hour he filled me in on the history of the game.

I found this pic from
talestoastound.wordpress.com.
No, I've never acquired a copy of
the original version.

Traveller was published by Games Designers' Workshop, a wargaming company, in 1977. Marc Miller was the primary designer, with Loren K. Wiseman, Frank Chadwick, and John Harshman assisting. The original intent for Traveller was to be a generic space RPG system, but what ended up happening was that the Charted Space setting, released by GDW over the years, became so associated with Traveller more people think of Charted Space when they think of Traveller. (Kind of like how D&D and Forgotten Realms are so intimately intertwined.) GDW also kept up with an "official" timeline of what is going on in the Third Imperium****, in much the same way that White Wolf did with Vampire: the Masquerade, so that further integrated Charted Space into the Traveller RPG.

Traveller has seen many iterations over the years. There was the original Traveller, then Megatraveller in the late 80s, then Traveller: The New Era, and Marc Miller's Traveller (4th Edition). There is also a 5th Edition of Traveller put out by Marc Miller, but that version has returned to its roots as a "generic" space RPG system and is mostly comprised of tables upon tables of stuff. Hey, if you like tables to generate things for a space RPG game, there you go.

But for me, Traveller took on new life when it escaped the confines of GDW after GDW closed up shop in 1996.

Among the first of the "non-GDW" Traveller games was GURPS Traveller, supposedly a deal made with a handshake between Loren K. Wiseman and Steve Jackson of Steve Jackson Games, the publisher of GURPS. GURPS Traveller followed an alternate timeline than the "official GDW timeline", and Steve Jackson Games put out quite a few high quality settings books for Traveller.*****

The starship on the cover of Behind the Claw
is the Beowulf Class Free Trader.
The Spinward Marches is a contested sector
in Charted Space that is the starting
point for many Traveller campaigns.

There was also a d20 version of Traveller, called Traveller20, Traveller Hero (using the HERO System), and what is commonly known as "Mongoose Traveller" (a version of Traveller put out by Mongoose Publishing). Of all of those various versions of Traveller out there, the most popular one that's currently being supported and published is Mongoose Traveller, which is presently on its Second Edition.

Over the years I acquired several GURPS Traveller splatbooks, but I could never get into the GURPS system enough to warrant running the gauntlet of configuring GURPS for a campaign of my own. But Mongoose Traveller...

Now, that's a system I can get behind.

The late Andrew Boulton created several short videos
based on Traveller and the Charted Space setting
about 15 or so years ago. This is the best of the bunch,

using "He's a Pirate" from Pirates of the Caribbean:
Curse of the Black Pearl for the music.

***

Mongoose Traveller is a bit of a throwback to the original Traveller system in as much the same way as D&D 5th Edition borrowed from Old School D&D. If you want to play a game of Traveller today, most people will be expecting a game of Mongoose Traveller, so if you say "Let's play Traveller!" this is what people expect you to pull out:

It is functionally the same as the
Traveller Second Edition Core
Rulebook, just tweaked for clarity.

Traveller is one of those games whose character creation was a mini-game of its own. You start out as a fresh faced 18 year old, then you go through some (or many) iterations of "professions". You could be a student. Or join the military. Or be an assistant on a trading crew. Or... you get the idea. After that iteration is over, you make a few rolls to see how that period of your life came out, you gain skills, potentially gain "defects", and either join the campaign or spend more time in another iteration.

If somewhere in the back of your mind you're thinking, "That's nice and all, but it's not like your character is ever in any real danger during this character creation process, right?" Well, it's a good thing you're not playing the original version of Traveller.

Why? Because in the original release of Traveller back in 1977, your character could actually DIE during the character creation process.

You read that right.

It was one of the quirks that Traveller was (in)famous for.

Thank you, John Kovalic.
Dork Tower April 4, 2019.

The modern game, starting with GURPS Traveller and Mongoose Traveller, does not allow for character death during the creation process; it's merely "optional" in Mongoose Traveller. I suppose you could use that rule if you really wanted an "old school" feel to your game, but why bother? The point is to create a character that you can play, not realism to the point of having a useless or dead character.#

Another quirk that is not so unusual these days is that character creation in Traveller is a shared experience. Instead of creating a character --in consultation with the GM-- and then showing up with the completed character on the first group session, Traveller expects that character creation for the entire group is what happens in your first session. Along with other RPGs, such as FATE and Burning Wheel, characters in Traveller are created with character hooks, so that each character has a connection with the others. (Or some of the others.)

This is one of the big editing changes
in the 2022 Update version of the rules.
If only other RPGs did this!
(I'm looking at you, Ars Magica...)

***

One thing that distinguishes Traveller from, say, Paizo's Starfinder or the various iterations of the Star Wars RPGs is that Traveller skews much more toward hard SF. Elements of Fantasy --Magic, Force wielders, etc.-- are not found in Traveller. There's SF handwaving in terms of how faster than light (FTL) travel is achieved via the Jump Drive, and there's Psionics among some species --such as the Zhodani, a sub-species of Humans-- but aside from that, Traveller is very much a hard SF setting. Even The Ancients, a mystery species (well, not to the GM) who planted human ancestors across Charted Space and tinkered with and/or uplifted others, are less Fantasy and more SF. I mean, CRISPR-Cas9 exists already.

Unlike Star Trek, where players typically are members of the crew of a Starfleet or Klingon starship, the Traveller crews can fill any number of potential roles:

• Independent Trader
• Naval
• Mercenary
• Pirate
• Espionage
• Smuggling
• Warzone/Rebellion
• Exploration
• Diplomacy
• Etc.

All that's limited is your imagination.

Yeah, Smeghead.
From zhodani.space.

• Want to play a campaign inspired by Firefly? Traveller can do that. 
• Want to play a rebellion campaign without Fantasy elements, such as Star Wars Andor or Blake's Seven? Traveller can do that.
• Want to play a bounty hunter space campaign inspired by Cowboy Bebop? Traveller can do that too.
• Want to play James Bond in Space? Or an Ocean's Eleven in space? Traveller again.
• Want to play a space exploration/horror campaign where your crew encounter aliens based off of Alien or The Thing? Or even Men in Black? Yeah, Traveller has you covered.
• Want to play a military oriented campaign in the same vein as John Scalzi's Old Man's War? Hey, if you want to homebrew the setting a bit, Traveller can do it. After all, there's a Traveller setting called 2300 A.D.
• Want to play a space opera where Duchies encompassing different star systems vie for power and prestige in a galactic empire? Let me introduce you to Traveller's Third Imperium, set in the Charted Space universe.
• Want to play a game with a lot of starship oriented combat and maneuvers? Traveller was built with starships in mind at the beginning, not bolted on at the end (Starfinder) or added in an expansion (Star Frontiers).

In fact, Traveller's Charted Space setting can handle all of these campaign ideas and more, while providing a familiar framework to fall back upon. Even Charted Space itself may feel familiar to SWTOR fans in an unexpected manner, as the Third Imperium's modus operandi is that the Imperial Space doesn't mean that the Imperium centrally controls worlds or systems, but the space between the systems.

***

Mongoose Traveller uses the six-sided die as its main mechanic --typically 2 six-sided dice rolled, with the nomenclature of 2D instead of 2d6-- but aside from that the basics of RPGs are still intact. There are skill checks, combat checks, etc., all things you'd expect in an RPG. While Traveller is definitely a hard SF game, don't mistake the game as being entirely centered around combat. 

It's not.

Traveller was designed from the beginning to handle a lot of campaigns, and while the "free form trader" type of campaign is the most ubiquitous type of Traveller campaign, that doesn't mean that you spend all of your time examining spreadsheets and figuring out optimal profit margins as if you were playing a pencil-and-paper version of EVE Online.## 

Heh. If you really want to, I guess both.
From imgflip.com.

But campaigns aside, let's talk about another elephant in the room: advancement.

Traveller may not be so unusual today, but the concept of a game where there is little if any skill advancement once character creation is complete very much went against the grain back in the 1970s. Think about it this way: what would WoW be like if there were no levels or power ups or skill progression such as is currently found in the game? If the point of the game wasn't to become powerful but the telling of the story and your character's progression through the story? While you may potentially learn more skills (and/or spells, attack moves, etc.) and you might find better arms/armor/weapons, the concept of raid bosses with explicit and/or implicit affiliated gear checks would take on a different meaning. 

If you were a crewmember on the Firefly (or the Bebop), your focus isn't on progression, it's where your next meal is coming from. If you were Fezzik, Inigo, or Westley, your "character progression" in The Princess Bride happened before the real story began, when Princess Buttercup was captured. The entire adventure didn't end with someone "leveling up", but rather their escape from Prince Humperdinck's clutches. Their adventures certainly didn't end there, but they weren't running around looking for loot and better magic items to use. 

My point is that the mindset we have with a lot of our RPGs is very much advancement/loot oriented or maybe min/max oriented, and Traveller is not built for that. Sure, you might end up with a better ship than the Beowulf Class Free Trader --hey, that Empress Marava Far Trader would work-- but how you got that ship in place of your old one is worth an extended campaign all by itself.### In fact, there's a starter adventure hook out there that is exactly this: your crew purchased the rights to a starship that's sitting out in the wilderness, having landed there a while back and the owner wasn't able to get back and take off. It's all yours, but it's out there, somewhere. Surely that's not a big deal, is it? Is it?

***

In the end, Traveller is one of those RPGs whose Charted Space setting is so amazingly deep that if the game mechanics don't suit you, I could easily see Traveller's Charted Space being used as the setting for another RPG, such as FATE or Savage Worlds. Still, Traveller itself has its share of devotees even today.  Not too long ago, my oldest was hanging with a couple of friends from her high school days. The boyfriend of an acquaintance was there, and talk eventually turned to RPGs. "Oh, I play this Sci-Fi RPG that hardly anybody has ever heard of," the boyfriend piped up. "But we like it."

"Oh," my oldest replied. "You play Traveller?"

"Holy crap! You've heard of it?"

"Yeah, my dad has a lot of splatbooks for it."

Score one for the Sci-Fi devotees!

Free Trader Beowulf . . .

Come in, Free Trader Beowulf . . .

Can you hear me?

Come in, Free Trader Beowulf . . .

Hang in there, Beowulf. . .

                . . . help is on the way!

--From Steve Jackson Games' GURPS Traveller website

*Before anybody asks, yes he was one of the people from this story. I still keep in touch with him, even after he left our company and moved to Houston to take a job with NASA. Yes, he works at NASA as a third party programmer, and presently is coding various systems for Artemis. The lucky dog.

**It's morphed into the IndyCar Series of today. It's a very long story as to how CART led to a rival league, the IndyCar Racing League (IRL), and how after several years one league folded and the resultant fallout created the IndyCar Series.

***GURPS is one of many generic role playing systems out there, but also one of the more complicated ones to set up. It is so detailed that it is difficult to configure the way you like it, but once you've decided on a system and customized a set of abilities it is easy to implement. That being said, I frequently like to quip that GURPS is a game where the system tends to get in the way of a good time.

****The Third Imperium is the largest star empire in Charted Space, and so you frequently see Charted Space and Third Imperium used interchangeably. If you're like me and see a space game with a name like "Imperium" in it and immediately think of "Evil Galactic Empire", don't worry. The Third Imperium is definitely NOT that. The closest way I can describe the Imperium --and Charted Space in general-- is that it is the Age of Sail in space. Distances still have to be crossed for communication, and while the Jump Drive does connect star systems, it does take time for a starship to cross the vastness of space. Subspace communications --ala Star Trek and Star Wars-- simply don't exist. 

*****If you ignore the GURPS stat blocks and/or tweak them to your own version of Traveller you're using, the writeups for these GURPS splatbooks are fantastic to mine for ideas and setting materials. I think the only drawback now is that they might be hard to find in print. Not as hard to find as MERP, for example, but definitely not something that'll just show up in the cheap bin in a random game store. However, Steve Jackson Games has PDFs of the splatbooks for sale at their Warehouse 23 website.

#This is a pale echo of the same argument about "realism" by modifying a PC's character stats in AD&D 1e due to aging or gender. I understand the desire to make a PC "realistic" by modifying character stats if you want to play an aged Cleric, for instance, but you don't need to modify stats for that. Any DM worth their salt would accommodate this without resorting to changing a character's stats at all. Same with playing a male vs. female Human PC: just because the average male Human is stronger than the average female Human doesn't mean that female PCs should have a lower ceiling on their Strength stat: after all, you're playing an outlier to the "average" Human, so artificial limitations to the stats for the sake of realism make no sense.

##I know NOW that EVE Online isn't like that, it just seems like it at times. So that little quip here was to just tweak the EVE fans out there.

###After all, we can't all be so lucky as to win a freighter in a game of Sabacc. And if you did, can you imagine that the crew of said ship would be happy about that?