how to start a Traveller group?

[Johan Larson]

Getting a group together to play Traveller can take some doing. The game has a rich history, but it's not exactly at the heart of gaming these days. Pretty much every time I've been present at the formation of a new RPG group, we ended up playing D&D, because that's the game everyone knew.

What's the best way to kick off a Traveller group?

[woodchuck]

Post something in Gamer Finder and let us know if you want an online or in person group and your location in the case of the latter.

[Mike Wightman]

Roll some characters, generate a few planets in a subsector, generate some random patron and NPC encounters for inspiration and then just play.

My favourite introductory adventure for Traveller is the double adventure Death Station - you can customise it to suit your group in so many ways.

Do not even think of the setting behemoth that is the third Imperium, you can introduce setting fluff later.

[Johan Larson]

I've never tried generating a setting randomly. Do the sub-sector generation rules produce something playable?

I'm a bit skeptical. Making a casserole by choosing a handful of ingredients from your pantry at random would produce something edible, but probably not something good.

flour + vegetable oil + apples + crisp-bread + black pepper = ?

[Mike Wightman]

Originally Posted by Johan Larson

I've never tried generating a setting randomly. Do the sub-sector generation rules produce something playable?

Yes, it is what it was originally designed to do.

I'm a bit skeptical. Making a casserole by choosing a handful of ingredients from your pantry at random would produce something edible, but probably not something good.

flour + vegetable oil + apples + crisp-bread + black pepper = ?

Fair enough, here is my last contribution to this thread.
Traveller was designed to give referees the tools to create science fiction adventures - use you favourite science fiction books, TV shows and movies for inspiration.
Traveller was not originally 'The Third Imperium Role Playing Game'.

Do you and your players want to play Traveller or do you want to play 'The Third Imperium - the role playing game'?

[hal]

Originally Posted by Mike Wightman

Do you and your players want to play Traveller or do you want to play 'The Third Imperium - the role playing game'?

What Mike is saying above has some merit. The accretion of the third Imperium as written by multiple authors over a span of nearly 40 years (darn, now I feel really old!) over multiple game system engines like classic TRAVELLER, MegaTraveller, TRAVELLER: The New Era, TRAVELLER 4th edition, GURPS TRAVELLER, T20 TRAVELLER (which your D&D buddies might prefer), TRAVELLER 5th edition, and Hero's TRAVELLER - has led to serious inconsistencies in the background material for the third Imperium.

Start small with a subsector's worth of material, and branch out from there. My advice as a GM is that you use a fusion of materials from classic TRAVELLER and GURPS. Do not use GURPS Traveller Far Trader for any of the rules for free trader based games as (in my opinion) it is equivalent to computing pi to the last decimal place.

For what it is worth, I have Fantasy Grounds 2 with an Ultimate license for it. It means that you can download the demo version of the software for free, and connect to me pc for chat mode with dice apps and the like. We can chat real time in a question/ answer mode. If you want to do that, email me and we'll take it from there. I can even give you a demo of play if you want.

[Drifter]

Ask the people you plan to play with.

If they are up for a trading game, the best rules are in Far Trader. If they want exploration, First In. But you should let them know you want to try Traveller and see what they are comfortable with.

If you aren't into random subsectors there is a LOT to choose from. To make it easy on yourself go with either the Spinward Marches or the Solomani Rim. Behind the Claw is pretty bad - don't bother. The Mongoose Traveller version is a lot better. Both the GURPS and Mongoose versions of the Solomani Rim are great books, get both if you can.

And you can use the amount of canon you are comfortable with, and your players feel like absorbing. You don't NEED to lay it all out in an endless introductory story, that can be boring. But its there if you need it, like when the players go left instead of right.

If you don't already have the GURPS books its going to be problematic to get them. FFE has the rights but I don't think they're available. Mongoose is a pretty good system.

But back to the point - ask your players. If you get them to agree on something, explorers, mercenaries, reporters, nobles, crime-fighters, warrior space cats, then figure out how much work you want to do.

Good luck

[DAT]

Originally Posted by Johan Larson

Getting a group together to play Traveller can take some doing. The game has a rich history, but it's not exactly at the heart of gaming these days. Pretty much every time I've been present at the formation of a new RPG group, we ended up playing D&D, because that's the game everyone knew.

What's the best way to kick off a Traveller group?

My suggestion is to prepare a Convention Style game. By that I mean:
1) Pick a general theme (explorer, merchant, criminal, mercenary, treasure hunt, ...) - e.g., treasure hunters
2) Develop a general adventure scenario - e.g., the crew of a scout ship, doing merchant and mail runs in the backwaters of the Spinward Marches, pickup a clue for a "treasure", they follow the clue, have to fight some rivals, and get the chance to make a decent score with a "treasure"
3) Brain storm some social, mental, physical, and some potential combat challenges - e.g., hiring crew/getting hired as crew/negotiating passage, purchasing speculative cargo, finding a strange clue hidden in the cargo, deciphering the clue, fighting off an attempt to steal the clue. a little freefall accident, crew functions (pilot/navigation/engineering) to race the ship to the location of the treasure, some physical and mental challenges to find the treasure, combat against guardians and/or rivals, crew of the scout ship,
4) Brainstorm some character concepts, with the needed skills/background for the different challenges (and of interest to potential players - e.g., a retired scout with a ship, a very good pilot/navigator, a very good engineer, a gunner for the ship's weapons, a medic/steward, a secret psionic passenger, a gun fighter passenger, a smooth talking ex-cargo broker passenger, and a Droyne Scout (because your friend Joe always likes playing flying characters)
5) Refine your challenges into chain(s) of 6-8 encounters to make the general adventure
6) Brainstorm several possible follow on adventures - e,g., other treasures, NPC friends to get into trouble, etc.
7) Weave a clue/hook for a follow on adventure into the current adventure
8) Refine your character concepts to make interesting Pre-Gen PCs/NPCs, and possibly weave one or more clues/connections to future adventures into the PCs/NPCs backstories
9) Prepare character sheets and background sheets for your Pre-Gen PCs/NPCs
10) Finalize the adventure, seeing if you can develop a natural follow on cliff hanger into the end of the adventure

When you have it all prepared, either propose it as a one shot between campaigns/rest session for the current GM of a group you are current playing with, or run it at as pickup game at your FLGS.

-Dan

[Fortitude]

I start in SOL
Your players can choose either imperum or solomanii as backbone for their team, You can have alien characters too.

You just have to use google to know what is the atmosphere on a particular planet. It means that you will have spare time for preparation of further adventures .

When you have finish with SOL you can easily leave it, without having to give the team their particular starship (hitchhiking is possible too ;-) ).

And finally players will keep their marks for beginning, they already have to learn how to open safety doors, don't harass them with gravity problems.

[whswhs]

I've always listed multiple possible campaigns, run in different systems. Normally this includes at least one system I've never run before but am interested in trying out. I expect my players to be willing to play under rules they haven't encountered before; it isn't as if the effort of learning a new set of RPG rules were all that great. Perhaps my players are unusually cooperative; we're all old enough to have gamed in the era where playing under a lot of different rules systems was a common experience.

But you might try a presentation that focuses on "I want to run a campaign about first contact with alien species/interstellar trade/military action in an interstellar empire/crime and political intrigue in a future civilization on a distant planet" and treats "and I'll run it in X rules system, which has rules for this science fictional stuff" as a secondary point; that's how I've always approached the issue.

The important thing, to my mind, is to figure out the theme that you want to address and that the particular game system enables you to address.