Episode 110: I'm A Perfectionist and I Don't Have the Rent to Pay

I have fond childhood memories of playing out spaceship combats on a friend’s pool table – the vector-based velocity calculations were deliciously fiddly and felt oh-so-realistic. The character generation minigame was a solo delight for young me, especially with the Mercenary and High Guard splatbooks.

My gaming groups have come back to it a few times for one-shots or short adventures. We had one all-Vargr game run by the-guy-in-our-group-who-rarely-runs-anything which was great fun.

I largely agree with the sentiment that the canon Imperium setting doesn’t play well with the rag-tag tramp freighter crew which highlights Traveller’s strengths. If I were starting up a campaign, I would use Diaspora to group-generate a pocket empire coming out of a Long Night, and play that out using GURPS Traveller for skills and tech. This setup would facilitate switching GMs as well, so it has that to recommend it.

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With all due respect, you may not have explored the options, whilst the core sectors of the main polities are likely to be dominated by huge mega freighter trade, but at the periphery, say Beyond, Trojan Reaches, Spinward Marches, etc etc, there are loads of low population low technology low asset systems that never justify the arrival of a mega-liner.

Perfect for a Firefly campaign, or was that always a Traveller game anyway?

Plus… is that the only optimal Traveller campaign?

Naval campaigns, war! Scout campaigns, new systems at the edges. Agent campaigns, Ministry of Justic versus megacorps. And my least favourite but well supported, Mercenary campaigns… the fragmented feudal mercantile nature of the Imperium is perfect for the limited wars, hell the Aslan Hierate had to formalise limited wars to contain their natural aggression.

I think that “a bunch of ne’er-do-wells in a starship” is the default and best-supported style of Traveller campaign. (And yes, Firefly is very clearly derived from Traveller though I suspect there may have been something else in between.)

I think the trick is to hit the right pervasiveness of Imperium that these isolated worlds do still consider themselves part of it (so e.g. they respect starport extraterritoriality), but at the same time calling for official help from it will take A While.

Original High Guard didn’t have much to say about active-duty naval campaigns; later versions may have more.

I understand where you are coming from and yet I think you may be out of date. Classic Traveller maybe, but later editions were quite different in style and scenario support, see the Rebellion era campaigns which were quite military, or the TNE Rediscovery and Rebuild campaigns. Mongoose has published a lot of support for Naval, Agent, Scoundrel, Noble and Dynasty level games (primarily MgT 1e).

IMHO Firefly is straight up early Travellers of the kind of which you speak…

May I suggest that sometimes nostalgia does not a good review baseline to work from? You are very up to the present with your GURPS, but maybe less so with some game lines?

(I mean if some one tells me again that you can die in character gen in Traveller I may scream… but noone will hear me in space.)

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Indeed; I try to make it clear where I’m coming from. (Whenever I try to run the TNE setting everyone runs away; I still find it really appealing.)

Yes, I agree. In many ways that was a badly handled own goal. A continuation of the post Rebellion timeline to one side and a new Milieu 0 campaign (as in T4) in parallel could have supported both.

However that, combined with a switch to GDW house system was a shock following the shock of the Rebellion.

Edition wars in the Traveller community are as fierce as anywhere else, but I note that they still tend to buy everything, LOL.

At TravCon I have played games set in all the various campaigns and types, even a full TNE wargame at one point!

Mongoose made a very nice offering with their recent Starter Set… literally in an underdetailed sector far far far away… maybe in the same space as Known Space but not at all necessary.

Interstellar Wars from SJ Games is another cracking Traveller milieu.

Oh and I don’t really mind which ruleset.
Andy Slack has quite successfully run Trav with Savage Worlds for years now, as well as the 5150 rules for his solo games.

Offer me a GURPS Traveller game, I’ll be just as happy as Mongoose or even TNE.

Ironically whilst I will scorn T20, it delivered the Gateway setting and sourcebook (K’kree) which is one of the best out there, and so system independent as to be suitable for any Traveller friendly rules set.

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