Traveller - The role-playing game - a bit like Elite
- Thread starter Ben Ryder
- Start date
Wow, the off-topic threads are bringing up some nostalgia. Seems to be a lot of 40-50 somethings in the Elite!
Writing an RPG is quite an undertaking so I wish the author luck! I have written my own RPG rules as an inexpensive time-waster over the last 30 years and torn through probably 100,000 words of text, starting literally with pencil and notebook paper notes and drawings before I ever got my first computer. And that includes very little back-story or game-world creation and mostly just rules. This partly because I think every GM should run a somewhat unique RPG world that the players help influence.
I started thinking of a game of one-on-one firefights after going from strategic level WWII war-games to Squad Leader but didn't get any fire to actually design a game mechanic until a neighbor started a D&D game. I had a lot of quibbles with the D&D rules so I just had to do my own- but to no end but my own puttering!
My daughter is almost old enough to start playing a pen-and-paper RPG but they take up so much time I don't know if I will even try to devote it to replace our current hobbies and of course playing Elite Dangerous on the PC under her own account when it is out.
She is a Skyrim and Minecraft girl right now along with the odd Warcraft III co-op game we will play.Someone mentioned Squad Leader as well in this thread. I spent a lot of hours playing that (and other table-top war-games from Avalon Hill, etc.) with rule books in lap. I have a new neighbor across the street that still has his Squad Leader box and we have talked about cracking it open this summer. Not sure it will be as much fun though, now that computer games are so glitzy and easy to hop on and off. Maybe a relaxed afternoon with some glasses of Jameson . . .
I have lately gotten a bit nostalgic and almost regret parting with the earliest RPG books I had, including the original series of Traveller little black books. I do still having an almost complete collection of Dragon Magazine from #1 to #125 (and I think a few prequel Strategic Reviews as well...) that I have been thinking of putting up on eBay.
I think Traveller and Elite are pretty close except for the back-story, with ship design and hyper-space travel seemingly aligned pretty well (1-tonne of fuel to travel 1 LY with class 1 drive, for example and if I recall correctly. Various tech levels, classes of drives, weapons, etc. possibility to trade as a merchant). Generating star sectors and systems with random dice rolls and bar-code descriptors (Universal World Profiles) was a fun solo pastime for a short while and does seem pretty procedural.
I think the RPG tie-in makes sense, but I also think the video game will be a lot more practical and fun for me as I won't have to put so much time into it either being a GM or finding one and making time for gaming.
Speaking of time, I have to get off the Forums, they are really addictive and have just gotten me amped up for Elite. I can't believe I missed the Kickstarter - I guess it was my newborn son that wouldn't sleep more than 2 hours at a time and kept us up and sleep deprived for over a year ...
I agree with the poster you quoted. I glanced at the latest version in a hobby shop on my last holiday and read a review. T5 seems to have been one of the original authors (Marc Miller) sitting down in isolation and banging out rules with no play-testing so not worth it if you actually want to play.
If you can find a version of the original rules, either hardback or the first 3-5 little-black books, they are all you need to start. There is a lot of supplemental material of-course, but you should check out the basic rules to start with. You may find they don't suit your tastes or that you don't have time to adopt another game.
The original mechanic is throwing normally 2d6 +/- mods against a target number (8+ is default for basic actions) with second die roll for damage and the usual shtick of bigger guns doing more damage (although that isn't necessarily realistic or needed if you just take damage from the attack throw which I always have thought makes the most sense for any pen-and-paper RPG, but surprisingly have never seen in a published game). Skill levels are usually fairly low. As I understand it there has been some other versions licensed which kept the back-story but implemented a d20 or GURPS mechanic as well. I have no familiarity with those versions.
My friends got into D&D but while we tried a couple of times and made characters, we never got a Traveller game off the ground. My fave parts of the game were the meta-games of creating characters with the career system, generating systems and sub-sector maps using dice rolls and the original forms and ship design (start with hull size which dictates hard-points and size of power plant, able to fit, etc.). There were some tables to help GMs randomize trade prices for basic commodities between systems.
In system travel originally was like Frontier with accelerating half-way to target and flipping the ship and decelerating, using some basic equations for travel. No FSD in Traveller! Ship to ship combat maneuvers handled as addition of force vectors based on the ship's kit and any interfering gravity well from a nearby planet or moon. Ship types as pictured looked much more like Elite than SC. Jumps worked similarly to Elite hyperspace with mass-lock and fuel usage per jump, but if I recall, in Traveller all jumps take one week (game time). Routine maintenance expenses and fuel costs/skimming are there with also possibility to refuel from a water source if the ship can land planet-side (since hydrogen is the fuel the water just has to be split with electrolysis - I would like to see this option implemented in Elite when Planetary Landings are possible).
Some of the ideas in Traveller it doesn't seem were ever shared with Elite are defenses like Sandcasters to stop or weaken lasers, ablative or reflective armor, psionics and anti-gravity. Artificial intelligence is above the reach of most games being so high in tech, which I think Elite treats differently but says AI is outlawed.
might have had a go back in the day, but was mostly playing D&D, Marvel Role Play and Car Wars..Hi Folks,
Did anyone else ever play Traveller the role -playing game?
Just wondering if you came from the game to Elite, went to game from Elite and stuff like that.
Best strip ever!
Pretty sure Elite was pre-Traveller at least in the UK......
Does anyone else remember the Traveller style (rip off) cartoon in White Dwarf?
Pretty funny and surprisingly accurate (at least with the characters i used to dice with)
Paranoia however was just insane fun! many Squirrels......err brown unknown dangerous subversion lifeforms incinerated in the name of the Computer!
You sir have put me out of many years of misery! I've been wracking my brains for years trying to remember the name of Paranoia! Played it quiet a number of (drunken) times and it was hilarious, but I forgot what it was called
. The gadgets from the R&D section used to crack me up, hehehe.Traveller was after the original Elite I think, as I played Elite on the Model B BBC at school, yet I played Traveller (and other desktop RPG games) a few years after. Still got all of my original Traveller books and characters somewhere in a box
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You sir have put me out of many years of misery! I've been wracking my brains for years trying to remember the name of Paranoia! Played it quiet a number of (drunken) times and it was hilarious, but I forgot what it was called
Traveller was after the original Elite I think, as I played Elite on the Model B BBC at school, yet I played Traveller (and other desktop RPG games) a few years after. Still got all of my original Traveller books and characters somewhere in a box
According to its wiki page, Traveller dates from 1977, although I'm not sure how long it took for people to start noticing it. I'm pretty sure I'd played Traveller before ELITE. I remember thinking ELITE felt like it was in the same world.
Paranoia! was great fun. Although I seem to remember it was a bit of a diminishing returns game, the first time you played it it seemed like the best thing ever.
Traveller was after the original Elite I think, as I played Elite on the Model B BBC at school, yet I played Traveller (and other desktop RPG games) a few years after. Still got all of my original Traveller books and characters somewhere in a box
Classic Traveller was first published in 1977. Ian Bell played Traveller and the name Commander Jameson was a nod in its direction according to this interview with him:
http://www.konradlischka.info/2013/07/rpg/how-old-school-role-playing-influenced-elite/
I think I started playing Traveller about 86 / 87 time. Similar time to Paranoia and, of course, D&D / AD&D. Then later MERP became a favourite.
Ahhh, much simpler days with much more time for fun
Ahhh, much simpler days with much more time for fun
Pretty sure Elite was pre-Traveller at least in the UK......
Does anyone else remember the Traveller style (rip off) cartoon in White Dwarf?
Pretty funny and surprisingly accurate (at least with the characters i used to dice with)
Paranoia however was just insane fun! many Squirrels......err brown unknown dangerous subversion lifeforms incinerated in the name of the Computer!
A truly fun game. I have all the books still.
You might be interested in this:
http://www.paranoia-live.net/news.php
They just recently completed a successful funding campaign to keep it going.
:smilie:
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Thanks! That's great stuff!