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Chris Talbot
Canada
Fort Smith
Northwest Territories
Be seeing you... -Alphonse
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I started playing RPGs in the summer of 1987, starting with the D&D Red Box before moving up through the other D&D boxed sets, into AD&D 2E and having frequent stops in TMNT&OS, Marvel Superheroes and other games of the time. One classic game I never did get a chance to play was Traveller. I'd heard of it and even seen some of the books on my local game shop's shelves, but I didn't know a lot about it and was more into pseudo-medieval fantasy, magic items, supers and mutant animals at the time.
Fast-forward to maybe about six or seven years ago (I really can't remember exactly when it was) and I ended up with an old copy of the original Traveller three-book set. I flipped through them, grinned a bit at the old school layout (ah, nostalgia...) and then stuck them on my RPG shelf to collect dust along with dozens of other games. I thought on several occasions that I really should give Traveller a try, maybe figuring out character generation and running a one-shot or a short campaing for my regular gaming group, but there was always something else that I had my eye on. So Traveller remained unloved.
Fast-forward again to a couple of weeks ago. My new roommate, who has been my regular wargaming buddy for the past two years and who recently joined my Delta Green campaign, is a huge Traveller fan. We've been rewatching Firefly and Cowboy Bebop together, and to say the Traveller bug bit him is putting it mildly. He had acquired the Mongoose version of Traveller and really wanted to run it. With a lot of free evenings with just the two of us hanging out, he asked if I'd be up for a one-on-one campaign, with the idea that we could add other players in when they were able to join us. Finally, I was going to try Traveller.
What I want to detail here and in future session reports (hopefully there will be many) is my experience as old-time gamer who is experiencing Traveller for the first time. I'll try to provide details on the campaign and my own thoughts on the game.
Last week, we sat down to fiddle around with character creation. I'd heard the tales about Traveller's chargen system -- how it was kind of a lifepath system, how you could die in chargen, etc. Will hadn't actually run Traveller in several years, and the Mongoose version of the game was new to him (but apparently still similar enough to Classic Traveller that he was able to get himself up to speed fairly quickly).
My homeworld was determined, and it turned out to be the asteroid cluster called Shangri La. It was decided my character, who eventually was named Ralston Hayes, had grown up around miners and such, but the character I had in mind in the beginning was one who wanted out of the mining life and had dreams of being a scout on the fringes of the Imperium. So we started rolling up a character.
Hayes successfully got into the scouting corps doing exploration, and while his first term was a success, his second term ended with a damaged ship and a long hitchhike back through the systems to home base, where he was drummed out of the corps. Will decided that as part of Hayes' severance, he could take possession of the derelict scout ship, so he had to hitch his way back out, do repairs and then claim it as his own.
Upset at his own misfortune, Hayes turned to piracy, but he was soon arrested and forced into the draft as part of his punishment. He ended up in the army, which turned out to be the career that stuck with him. After three terms of service, in which he rose to the rank of captain, Hayes finally retired and struck out on his own. That rundown scout ship was going to come in handy, but he had to take on two partners to get the vessel operational. Both are NPCs, although another player will likely take over playing the first one at times.
Garashad Moore is the businessman on the ship. Count Daneel Sirishud Chang is a noble with a naval officer background who fell out of favour with the court and had his accounts frozen. Hayes knows little more about either of the two men, and they've only been working together for about six months at the start of the campaign.
Will ran the first session last night. Except for a short police interrogation session that Will ran last year during a Call of Cthulhu session, I haven't really played in a one-on-one RPG session in several years. I know one-on-one can be quite challenging because of how much focus there is on one player, but I was cool with trying it out. Still, I like to have other players around to bounce ideas off of, but it ended up working out quite well.
I know Will is running a published scenario, so consider this a warning that there may be spoilers.
The campaign is set in the Glimmerdrift Reaches. As the campaign began, the ship (The Broadside of a Barn -- the ship is outlined in the scenario, and it's basically a 150-year-old scout ship that is in need of serious repairs) had just docked on the highport above the dirtball world of Arkaene. The crew had just cleared customs and had headed into the common area of the port.
We fell into some roleplaying, playing out some conversations and immediately setting up some light personality clashes between Hayes and the pretentious Count Chang (who Will described as being an overweight man with a very big, well-groomed moustache). It felt like Will wanted me to take the lead as to what to do on the spaceport, but I wasn't really sure what to do in a sandbox where I wasn't very familiar with the setting or the rules.
Eventually it was decided (in old school RPG fashion) to visit Ed's Bar & Grill for a refreshment. From there, we learned of a ship crashlanding on the spaceport, but we paid it no mind. After drinks, we headed down to the traders' level to try to get some work. We were in desperate need of operational cash, as well as money to do some much-needed repairs.
We were approached by a courier with a handwritten note for Captain Hayes. It was an invitation to lunch from a man named Jasin Sariss. We accepted the invitation and met Sariss for lunch at a posh restaurant, where he offered us work transporting gifts to the Grand Duchy of Stoner in the hopes of opening up trade negotiations. He told us that while we were transporting his cargo, we couldn't take on passengers, but we could take on extra cargo if we'd like (Will pointed out that this was not the usual policy in transporting cargo, but that patrons usually demanded that no additional cargo be transported).
We were given 24 hours to think it over, and in the meantime, we looked around to find some other cargo to take. Will opened up a bunch of tables related to goods we could purchase to sell offworld, and it turned out the only thing that was available and that we could afford (barely) was a ton of mechanical parts. We made the purchase, with Garashad negotiating the price down to 80% of the asking price.
We split up for awhile, with Garashad completing the purchase transaction, Chang going off to find a nice hotel to spend the night in, and Hayes heading to the market to purchase a simple set of cloth armour for when he was on spaceports.
We ended the session with Hayes calling Mr. Sarris in the morning to confirm he and his crew would be taking on the job.
I can see the old-school flavour of Traveller. Many of the rules, and part of the session, were all about making astrogation plans, figuring out costs for transportation, negotiating fees and prices, checking availability of goods for purchase to sell offworld, and engaging in business transactions of one type or another.
Traveller seems to have a fair bit of crunch in the trader rules, which seems to be a core focus of the game. It instantly reminded me very much of the old Privateer PC game that came out in the '90s.
It was a good first session, and I enjoyed the back-and-forth roleplaying between Will and I, as well as the rules related to conducting business. I had been worried that conducting business would seem tedious, but I liked the way it worked.
Anyway, that's my first introduction to Traveller. I enjoyed it, and I'm looking forward to continuing the story soon.
Chris
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Rod Batten
Canada
St. John's
Newfoundland
Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing. --R.E.Howard
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I'm pretty much an old-school gamer, or, more accurately, I'm becoming one again.
I remember looking through the books back in the early 80's, a couple of friends had the game but none of us ever tried it. Some people were put off by the lifepath character generation (I tried it a few times for the hell of it, it seemed like an interesting game in itself.)
I ordered Traveller a couple of weeks ago, so I'm glad to see some session reports about it. Maybe I'll finally get to try it out! I've never GMed sci-fi before, I'm sure it'll be an interesting change.
Traveller always reminds me of Outland, Starship Troopers, Silent Running, Firefly, etc. Something about that grim'n'gritty future seems much cooler to me than guys in bathrobes with neon swords.
Thanks for the session report. Hope to see more! 
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Chris Talbot
Canada
Fort Smith
Northwest Territories
Be seeing you... -Alphonse
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Firefly is very much Traveller, but on a smaller scale. Traveller is a huge expanse of space (on a galactic scale, really), whereas Firefly is more focused around one star system.
If you liked Firefly, you'll like the concepts in Traveller, I think.
Come back and post session reports once you've run the game. I have two more sessions to summarize and post about, but I just haven't quite got around to it yet.
Chris
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Chuck Tewksbury
United States
Massachusetts
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I'm looking to get back into this too - I'd be interested in helping out on either the player or referee side -- shoot me a PM if you'd like to organize some online adventuring.
-Chuck
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Medievalbanquet
United States
Wellesley
Massachusetts
And if you never have, you should. These things are fun and fun is good.
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ctewks wrote: I'm looking to get back into this too - I'd be interested in helping out on either the player or referee side -- shoot me a PM if you'd like to organize some online adventuring.
-Chuck
Cool report.
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