Travellers Wanted!
Me: Just getting back into RPG after many, (many), years away. Rusty but experienced with Traveller. I'm still learning the ropes on this site too!
You: 2-4 creative individuals that are interested in having fun playing an old school Traveller game. I will be using only the original books 1-3 from 1977 (with some errata fixes and minor house rules). You do not need to own OG Traveller to play but great if you have it.
The focus is on mutual storytelling and an enjoyable PbP experience for all the participants. More Roleplaying vs Roll playing.
Posting Frequency: I’m shooting for every third day at a minimum from me. Post, 2 days for players to respond, then a new Post. Rinse, repeat.
Once we get started if you decide the game is not for you, please just let me know so we're not waiting for a reply that's never coming.
To set the stage of play I have unabashedly stolen most the below (with minor edits) from Christopher Kubasik’s wonderful blog “Tales To Astound” and his series Classic Traveller Out of the Box. I encourage you to read the series, it’s the type of game I’m aspiring to run and I can’t recommend it enough for Classic Traveller fans to learn or rediscover the original Traveller game first published in 1977.
(NOTE: The Imperium described below is definitely NOT the Third Imperium of what became the “official” Traveller Universe! It is simply the remote, centralized government and society that the players originally came from and is very, very, far away from where the players are now).
Traveller is Old School/Rules Light. Mostly conversation between Referee and Players, the Referee adjudicating rolls and outcomes on the fly.
The premise is that each of you have served in and mustered out of services (Military, Merchant and underworld) of the Third Imperium, which is currently expanding outward and reclaiming worlds after The Long Night (the collapse of the Old Empire).
Many, many light years away, beyond countless parsecs of dead worlds, news has come of another area of civilization, lost for hundreds of years to your people. A new frontier not yet touched by the Third Imperium, and still holding lost wonders and treasures of the Old Empire.
A few expeditions have been launched, a few diplomatic missions, and a noble house has been sent to establish contact. But the peoples of the Old Empire have their own agendas and fights.
Each of you are men and women who have decided that you don’t quite fit in at home in the Third Imperium. And either from wanderlust, a need to know more about the universe, greed, a need to flee from or cause trouble, a desire to find a patch of space to rule, a path of vengeance that leads across lights years, or any other strong, emotionally grounded reason, you have decided to travel to this distant patch of space and see what there is to see.
I should make this clear now: Traveller does not have an experience system. You define the goals you want. I provide obstacles and opportunities and we find out what happens based on your actions. The only thing that is going to matter is what interests you in terms of what you want to get done.
You create a character who:
a) feels like a real person and
b) is someone who chooses the life of a Traveller as established above.
Think in terms of the Western Territories after the Civil War or the Indian Subcontinent during the British Empire. (And all the problematic Colonialism that entails!) Mix this with a mix of worlds, some broken and poor, others still technologically advanced, along with politics, trade disputes, and you’re kind of on track.
Look to movies (and characters from the movies) like Outland, Alien(s), The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, The Wild Bunch, Gunga Din, The Man Who Would Be King, as well as the series Firefly, The Expanse, Cowboy Bebop and others for inspiration about the types of people we’re talking about.
Where the characters fall on the moral spectrum is up to you all. We can have hard-bitten mercs or romantics searching for lost mysteries of the ancient past… and a mix of types. You decide this.
The premise is that each of you have served in and mustered out of services (Military, Merchant and underworld) of the Third Imperium, which is currently expanding outward and reclaiming worlds after The Long Night (the collapse of the Old Empire).
Many, many light years away, beyond countless parsecs of dead worlds, news has come of another area of civilization, lost for hundreds of years to your people. A new frontier not yet touched by the Third Imperium, and still holding lost wonders and treasures of the Old Empire.
A few expeditions have been launched, a few diplomatic missions, and a noble house has been sent to establish contact. But the peoples of the Old Empire have their own agendas and fights.
Each of you are men and women who have decided that you don’t quite fit in at home in the Third Imperium. And either from wanderlust, a need to know more about the universe, greed, a need to flee from or cause trouble, a desire to find a patch of space to rule, a path of vengeance that leads across lights years, or any other strong, emotionally grounded reason, you have decided to travel to this distant patch of space and see what there is to see.
I should make this clear now: Traveller does not have an experience system. You define the goals you want. I provide obstacles and opportunities and we find out what happens based on your actions. The only thing that is going to matter is what interests you in terms of what you want to get done.
You create a character who:
a) feels like a real person and
b) is someone who chooses the life of a Traveller as established above.
Think in terms of the Western Territories after the Civil War or the Indian Subcontinent during the British Empire. (And all the problematic Colonialism that entails!) Mix this with a mix of worlds, some broken and poor, others still technologically advanced, along with politics, trade disputes, and you’re kind of on track.
Look to movies (and characters from the movies) like Outland, Alien(s), The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, The Wild Bunch, Gunga Din, The Man Who Would Be King, as well as the series Firefly, The Expanse, Cowboy Bebop and others for inspiration about the types of people we’re talking about.
Where the characters fall on the moral spectrum is up to you all. We can have hard-bitten mercs or romantics searching for lost mysteries of the ancient past… and a mix of types. You decide this.
I’ll end with a quote from the last page of Book 3 Worlds and Adventures
The players themselves have a burden almost equal to that of the referee: they must move, act, travel in search of their own goals. The typical methods used in life by 20th century Terrans (thrift, dedication, and hard work) do not work in Traveller; instead, travellers must boldly plan and execute daring schemes for the acquisition of wealth and power. As for the referee, modern science-fiction tradition provides many ideas and concepts to be imitated.
