Welcome to the Far Future as only 1977 can bring it to you! In this show the Halfling trio covers the granddaddy of all space-traveling Sci-Fi games, Traveller by Marc Miller and Game Designers’ Workshop. Starships, aliens, (non-light) saber-fighting (?), and death during character generation – You get it all!
Links mentioned in this show:
Chris “Clangador” Yoder’s Passing
https://www.facebook.com/Rassilon/posts/10212271869084243
GURPS Traveller by Steve Jackson Games
http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/traveller/
History of Traveller on the Traveller wiki
http://wiki.travellerrpg.com/History
The Traveller Book on DriveThruRPG.com
http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/80192/CTTTBThe-Traveller-Book?src=hottest_filtered
Don’t forget to drop us an email at saveforhalfpodcast(at)gmail.com to give your opinions of the show!
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7 Responses to “Episode 6: Classic Traveller by GDW”
Yeah, while I still own Classic Traveller, its mostly for inspiration. I much prefer the Mongoose incarnation. Not to say I don’t still love Classic, or MegaTraveller, but the Mongoose version does apply “lessons learned”. Especially in their new 2E version, which I am currently playing. Still, warts and all, Classic is still a very playable game, and I do sign up to play it at Conventions. Just for my own gaming, and long term playing, I much prefer Mongoose. Plus Traveller is still my most favorite, while I also have a love for many other sci fi RPG’s, such as Eclipse Phase, Cthulhu Tech, Interface Zero, Mindjammer, which now has a Traveller rules set, and others.
I’ve been waiting for five years for someone I like and whose opinions I respect to do this show. Thank you!
Dying during chargen? Never used it. In my games it resulted in a medical discharge. The term in which you failed to make the survival roll was considered only two years, no skills or promotion and doesn’t count toward terms served for mustering out benefits. The player would have to undergo their next aging crisis early and character generation was complete. I only hope their only skill wasn’t “steward”. BBTW ane cobb had Steward-1.
First, this podcast has become one of my favourites, keep up the good work.
Regarding experience, whilst four years game time seems long remember that jumps take a week and you’ll spend a week in system, so this represents only 100 or so jumps, easy in the scope of a campaign, I recall some published adventures covering 30+ weeks of travelling. It’ll go by really fast as most referees will just wave by the rather boring bit in jump.
Regarding rules for robots, these were first proposed in JTAS #2 in 1979, Book 8 was a final compilation, so it wasn’t that long to wait.
Regarding Steward, quite a valuable skill as it would be needed for carrying those in high passage in your ship, a far more lucrative trade than carting vegetables.
Glad that no-one mentioned computer size! Even though I have an explanation for that.
Finally, a last word on survival. This is like in Pass The Pigs where you have to make a risk on whether to carry on and gain skills, or die and start again. Taking an easier career is no better, you may have lots of skills, with the travel time applied to an older character you’ll soon be making aging rolls between adventures.
Traveller was an alternative at the time to level based game systems, you did it justice, thanks.
Space combat. Yeah – no. Reading that section, I just wrote I AM A FISH on one of the pages and passed out.
Enjoying this episode. I just got all the old Traveller stuff last year, and I’m trying to decide on a game setting (not crazy about using non-homebrew stuff). Great discussion of Traveller.
Mind blown. I just listened to this podcast for the first time and just heard Liz mention that her first Dragon Magazine, was issue 51… This was also my first Dragon! I got rid of my Dragon collection years ago, but I did replace my issue 51 a few years ago!
Before JTAS #2 the Space Gamer issue #15, Jan-Feb 1978, had an article on robots in Traveller. These were just pre-made robots, no design system suggested, though.