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I remember classic Traveller from the old days. I was surprised, in New Zealand in the early 1980s, at how different the system was from DnD (the only other game I knew). 2d6. Roll over 8. No advancement, and ‘hit points’ come off your attributes. Was that it? ! But we persisted because the thing it offered-a gameplay universe that could include dinosaur-filled swamps and medieval castles as well as starships - was just too enticing to give up on. Our early games were not always successful. Action lagged at times in the realistic, ‘real world’ settings. It sometimes felt that we were playing a group of disaffected, jaded mercenaries who had not managed to provide themselves with a decent pension. The old Traveller background and system also had some oddities that caused a degree of mirth. The fact that your navy guy always seemed to come out of the service with three retirement ‘blades’ but no money. The persistence of shotguns and SMGs as apparently futuristic weapons. The now legendary tendency for characters in certain careers to die during chargen. But we got to enjoy it more and more over time. And some of the ‘lonely fun’ aspects of the game-designing spaceships, creating our own planets, working out the specs for exotic animals and species – were just as good if not better than anything DnD had thrown at us.
Buying the Book
I looked at the new Mongoose version with some interest. It was not too expensive, as I managed to get mine for twenty quid. But it seemed pretty slender compared to the boxed set of black books I remembered from the classic days. I liked the look and feel of the volume. The same black and white colour scheme. Quite a tough looking thing-I didn’t think any of the pages would fall out (none have). And interesting and punky line drawn artwork.
Players
The players were a mixed bunch. One was a real Traveller grognard, who like me had played in the old days with the classic rules. His shelves still sported the old boxed set and several expansion books. Like me he was haunted by memories of sessions, probably slightly idealised, from his youth. The other players were newcomers; one a relative newb to the hobby. This fellow, perhaps unsurprisingly, struggled somewhat with the ruleset, but the others seemed to grasp it quickly.
Character Creation
The character creation process impressed me, and the players, greatly. As with the classic rules, characters are generated according to the outcomes of rolls made on career tables. The old system had a very limited number of options. Most players ended up pursuing a military career in the Army, Marines, Navy, or Scout service. But the most interesting characters (playboys, thieves, beauty queens) tended to belong to the last, vague ‘Other’ category. The Mongoose designers have provided many more careers to support the building of such oddball, non-military types.
For no particular reason we chose to begin 'Old School' style , rolling 2d6 six times without changing attribute slots. The players then decided which career to pursue according to the scores generated. This is not a requirement of the system. I think, in fact, it may have constituted some form of bizarre subconscious tribute to the classic rules we were about to jettison.
One player chose to be a snooty aristocrat, and produced a character with high Deception skills. Our grognard generated a combat-effective ex-marine. Our newb produced a redneck mechanic. All good characters, though I think our newest player felt later that he would have been better off attempting to specialise; sticking to the same career to increase proficiency in a narrower number of skills.
The players commented that the randomness of the process had produced oddly plausible results. The characters made sense, or at least, it was possible to make sense of anomalous attributes skills by generating some background story to explain them. A redneck mechanic who can fly a chopper? Of course, on his home world the Boer-like colonists lived in isolated communities where air transport was standard. The copter was his pickup truck. The new chargen process also encourages players to create a narrative around their character as they are being rolled up. Our aristo was betrayed by his jealous younger brother, we ‘discovered’ during chargen. A further step was to link characters by making Connections. I think the players were confused and pleasantly surprised. They had expected this to be a fusty old timer’s game; in fact the chargen proceeded in much the same creative atmosphere as had a recent Spirit of the Century session. Proven mechanics and a beloved setting with a ‘new game’ twist. Not bad.
The Adventure
I wanted to play an old adventure, Twilight’s Peak, that I never got around to running in the old days. It was available online as a pdf for five dollars-about three quid in civilised money- and I was delighted. I added a few touches. Instead of having to deal with the adventure’s main protagonists, who I felt might be too challenging (no, no spoilers here) I adjusted the description so that their enemies were Vargr pirates, sponsored by the bad guys. This chimed well with some of the players’ character concepts- I had encouraged them to choose ‘Red Star Pirates’, if possible, as enemies during chargen and two had developed effective side-stories around this idea. The characters soon found themselves in a bar crammed with (less impressive) representatives of the Imperium’s major alien species. Scruffy Vargyr dogmen, a couple of grim lion-like Aslans and even a slithery Hiver playing with a cocktail (really, of course, an undercover crew of hated Red Star Pirates!). I was inspired at this point by an idea I had come across in the rulebook. This was the fact that in the Imperium there existed ‘uplifted’ animals (a gorilla, or dolphin for example, with genetically enhanced intelligence). The toughest of the pirates, I therefore decided, was a bruising uplifted chimp. The chimp and the marine character tussled briefly and the marine won.
This clarified two things for me. Firstly, the core book is clearly packed with some of the best ideas from the game’s long history. The uplifted animal concept is expounded in a few lines. Secondly, the skills (and identical combat) system is very fast and simple. 2d6 plus mods is, in my humble opinion, the most elegant mechanic ever invented and it here seems to have been polished to a tee. I was impressed by the fact that ‘excess’ on attack rolls (where the rolled number is higher than the target number) can be added as damage.
I was also delighted to learn that characters could ‘choose’ which attributes to use for their skill roll according to the situation. A computer hacker could use Education or Intelligence, for example to break into a system. Melee could be strength-based (whack the dude hard) or agility-based (do some kung-fu jive). Our lordly aristo managed to get round some security staff by Persuading using his Social Status (‘listen here my good man’). But a streetwise rogue could have used their Intelligence given the appropriate spiel. Once again this ‘old’ game felt very ‘new’ in terms of design and feel.
My favourite part of the adventure was the players’ hustle across the planet surface, using an air-raft they had wangled for hire at the starport. It was fun to trace their progress over the familiarly-formatted planet map. They encountered several obstacles on the way. A flock of razorwings were avoided (by using Recon with Intelligence to spot them in time). A sandstorm proved too much for the driver’s Drive ability though, and they had to crash land and wait until it blew over. There was not enough time to run the dungeon-like section of the adventure once they arrived at Twilight’s Peak. We had agreed that finding and reaching the place would be the adventure’s objective. But there was time for a shoot-out with a posse of baddies (Red Star Pirates! You guys raided my farm! Grrr!) who there waiting for them when they arrived. The combat was fast and lethal. Players may have felt, I think, it was too fast and easy as the pirate enemies dropped quickly under their laser fire. This was partly a question of the damage meted out by their futuristic weapons. But a different roll or two could have made the victory less comfortable. Perhaps perceiving this more keenly more the players (who could not see the pirates’ poor dice rolls) I felt that the system was appropriately risky and rightly poised between rapid success or failure.
Reflections and Some Pretentious Stuff about Theory
All in all then, a very satisfying game. I was left with a sense that the Mongoose crew had done a good job at bringing the system and setting up to date while retaining the strength of its original design. Looking at the ‘footbars’ at the bottom of some of the rulebook pages, I realised how much the traveller universe had been expanded and deepened since I had last seen it. Alien technology, the origins of institutions like the posh Travellers Aid Society, differences between ‘high’ and ‘low’ passage in flights. Much was familiar but there were also signs that the Imperium had got a whole lot bigger, and the setting info deeper, since the days when I first played.
Just a Theoretical point. Mongoose made this old game work well, better in fact, by applying new insights and ideas from more recent systems. But I do not think that they applied Theory in the normal sense. It was still Traveller, but just with some tricks and techniques ported into the system and made explicit in chargen and gameplay. They did better ‘fixing’ an old game with a few innovations, in my opinion, than many designers do working from scratch. I’m not sure what this means exactly but it’s deeeeep, believe me. The players all said they wanted to play again.
