In contrast to 'Daniel's' review, this piece will not make any allowances for Traveller's hoary antiquity. OK, so it's twenty-four years old, but is Classic Traveller (as opposed to re-vamped later versions) actually any good? Reprinted virtually unchanged from its original incarnation the Far Future Enterprises offering is undoubtedly good value for money based on simple arithmetic. 'The Classic Books' includes reprints of Traveller Books 0 to 8 and in total costs less than they did twenty years ago!
I'm going to review Classic Traveller as if it had just come on to the market. If you're new to role-playing and want an SF RPG, how does Traveller shape up? Well ... it's hit and miss. Book 0 provides a comprehensive introduction to role-playing and to Traveller. Advice I read there over a decade ago still comes in useful. This is a magnificent little volume.
Book 1: Characters and Combat provides a character creation system, task resolution rules and the all-important combat system. Character creation in Traveller is bonkers. Truly unique. One-of-a-kind. Both inspired and flawed at the same time. It involves randomly determining six characteristics (Strength, Intelligence etc.) and then running the character through a career path, picking up a random spread of skills based on time served and on promotions. You never know what you're going to get. In fact you might not even get it because you have to make a 'survival roll' every four years. Fail and your protean character dies. Begin again. This is an unusual approach to say the least.
The careers on offer and the skills available are pretty limited - no journalists, no scientists or cops, for example, and seem orientated toward the military or military-style organisations. Still, you can produce some very interesting characters. On the downside the system can throw up some bizarre results: a spaceship engineer without electronics skill, a pilot without navigation skill, a space marine without firearms training and a 30-yr old Army major with no skills at all. Quirks of the system. There is a rule for default skills that a GM can utilise if need be - but you get the feeling of a brilliant system concept with some holes shot through it. In actual fact, the character generation system is a game in itself, players try to create a useful, useable character without dying or getting too old. Frustrating for those used to points allocation and clear visions of their characters to be, but a fascinating approach nonetheless.
Task resolution is not well organised. Characteristics are rated 2-12, skills rated 1-6 (or higher). Players are advised to roll 2d6 and the GM sets the difficulty number as well as the skill to be added and may or may not award a bonus for a relevant characteristic if it's over a certain (to be decided) level. It's "make-it-up-as-you-go-along" time and it really strains the gameplay. Some examples are littered throughout the skill descriptions but they are varied and inconsistent. Some demand a default roll of 5 , others 11 . Some ask you to add your skill level, at least one asks to double your skill level. It all needs unifying, something later versions of Traveller thankfully addressed as a priority.
Thankfully the designers set out a specific combat resolution procedure. Players must roll 8 to hit an opponent, adding the relevant skill level as well as modifiers for range, environment, target armour etc. It's a fairly workable combat system, pretty deadly and fast to play. Now for the peculiarities. The weaponry is archaic. I mean, out of a list of twenty-three possible weapons to use, only two (the laser carbine and laser rifle) have yet to be invented. And this for an SF RPG that claims to be able to reproduce "any science-fiction situation". You get spears, revolvers, shotguns, SMGs - all modern-day weapons, and yet Traveller's optimum technology level boasts hyperdrives, laser cannon, anti-gravity motors, fusion power and more (on a related note the equipment lists suffer from the same 1970's-centric problem). Now I'm no scientist, but the discovery of anti-gravity alone suggests at least half a dozen wicked little weapons to me!
The second peculiarity is the use of abstract movement based on range from the target. This makes tactical play and movement in urban or cluttered environments difficult to adjudicate as read. I understand the push to simplify - but it pushes combat into the realm of the absurd to use this range band system. The third peculiarity of Traveller combat is the application of an armour modifier on the to-hit roll. These can strain credibility. At the extreme, imagine a level-2 gunman firing an SMG at a target 10m away. If his Dexterity is 9 he gets bonuses to hit totalling 7. If his target is unarmoured that goes up to 12! On a 2d6 roll to get 8 . Huh? Shotguns, autorifles and big swords also get these crazy bonuses to hit. When I laid I always applied these armour modifiers to the damage roll instead.
Book 2 and Book 3 round off the core rules of Traveller. Book 2 details starship use, economics, design and combat. I think it's all fantastic stuff. The space combat movement system seems a little overblown (it uses vectors) when you consider that in most space combats position is irrelevant - it all comes down to range. A later version of the game, 'Marc Miller's Traveller' utilised the range band concept from Book 1, which seems highly appropriate and very playable. The starship design rules in Book 2 are very well put together, and provide an absolutely brilliant tool for the use of the GM (and players!).
Book 3 looks at worlds, animals and a number of other odds and ends (such as equipment). The world design system is elegant and efficient - and like character creation and ship design, pretty addictive! Beware! There are some curt guidelines on expanding the numbers to create fully realised SF worlds, but nothing to compare with the awesomely useful article called "A Referee's Guide to Planet-Building" which appeared in volume 10 of The Journal of the Travellers' Aid Society (JTAS). The animal creation rules are equally well done, but again suffer from the same lack of advice as the world creation rules. Get hold of JTAS 10 at all costs!
With the exception of Book 8: Robots, Books 4 to 7 provide expanded character generation rules for the five main services. These rules are complex and time-consuming, but they do provide a fantastic level of detail for the character, and generally cure the problem of strangely absent skills from Book 1. Another problem with these systems (which also feature lots of new and funky skills) is that they create very, very skilled characters that seriously out-perform those created solely with Book 1. It seems you use all of the advanced chargens - or none at all. Like me, you may not think it worth the hassle. Each book provides rules expansions related to the character service it is detailing - and my comments about these advanced chargens could apply equally well to these. Advanced trading rules, advanced world and system creation rules, advanced space combat and ship design rules and so on ... All additionally provide valuable data on the default setting for Traveller (the 'Third Imperium').
By far the most useful of the expanded character books is Book 4: Mercenary, detailing as it does military technology and weaponry in detail beyond the 1970s (!), and thereby stifling one of my earlier gripes. It also gives us a cool 'mass combat system'. All good stuff. Oh yes, and Book 4 includes the Instruction skill. With this characters can actually increase their skills as play progresses over time - they can actually learn and develop. The basic rules do feature a character development system, but it is painfully slow (we are talking 8 years to raise a skill by one level ...).
Book 8: Robots disassembles a subject that is bizarrely not mentioned in any other rulebook (although Adventure 2: Research Station Gamma includes some serviceable rules for robots). It goes to town on the subject and packs in more Third Imperium data as well as extensive rules for the design and construction of robots of all kinds. This book stands out from the others because it fails to fill a gap in the rules. In my view robots are so numerous and so ubiquitous that I'd never design a single one (and I never did!). A book of pre-generated robot designs would have been better (alternatively check out Adventure 2...).
Back to my original question, then. Is 'Classic Traveller: The Books' worth buying as a game to play and not collect (as I suppose many are doing). I bought my copy to cherish, not play, but I find myself itching to play again. Upcoming game designers will want to buy it (and should!) as a source of ideas and mechanics, while the gaming archaeologists out there can analyse and study one of the very first RPGs ever written. I'm not too sure of the chronology, but by 1977 I'm sure there were only three RPGs in existence: 'D&D', 'RuneQuest' and Traveller. If you could buy these games as they appeared then, would you? If so, 'Classic Traveller: The Books' is a golden opportunity to see the RPG industry at its very beginning. If only WOTC and Chaosium could do the same ...
My overall ratings reflect Traveller's essential playability. There's plenty of meat here. More than enough in fact. Personally, I played Traveller non-stop from 1982 to 1990. I was passionate about the game (and this passion has inevitably turned into nostalgia). I think it affected many players the same way. When I joined the university RPG club in 1989 the annual meeting decreed that Traveller would be supported and played, but the new kid on the block, 'Traveller: 2300AD', would not. "It's crap!" Someone shouted, "nothing like Traveller at all!". Of course that wasn't the point. The passion Traveller engendered may have been due to the fact you had to put effort into getting a game to the table. It took work. Looking at the rules afresh, you get the feeling that the foundations are not built strongly enough.
Today's players probably find Traveller to be strange and unfocussed. What do we do? Who are we? Where are we going? Modern RPGs seek to answer these questions even before the obligatory fiction, or before any mention of mechanics and dice. In Traveller there is no mention. Ever. I always considered the game to be one giant tool-kit with which to build starships, worlds, characters, situations ... universes. I still think of it that way. You can play Traveller for years - but you will need your own house rules to plug gaps left by Book 1. But as the designers themselves admit: "no set of rules can totally define the universe and how it works".
Mithras
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