Three things I learned from running Classic Traveller for the first time
Back in early May, I posted about a crazy idea of mashing up the two Battlestar Galactica series into one setting, and running it using Classic Traveller.
Since then, I've fleshed out this concept into a subsector, some alterations to chargen, a submission to GameHoleCon which was accepted and now a series of playtest games of that same scenario.
The effort took flight on Monday (12 June) and it was a fantastic experience! It was definitely worth the 45 year wait. The players all said they had fun, we explored an option in that scenario with some moral/ethical decisions that players had to make, and in general, things went off without much of a hitch.
So what did I learn from my first session of referee'ing Classic Traveller?
Traveller was written to get out of the way
I remember, when I looked at the three little black books of Traveller in 1978, feeling confused and a bit overwhelmed. Compared to the (relatively) straightforward nature of the 1977 Basic D&D that I had been obsessing over at the time, this sci-fi game seemed way more complicated. Not like just delving a dungeon, casting magic and fighting monsters by rolling dice against a chart!
I think that the nature of the character generation, all the available expertises and the nature of the procedures in creating subsectors, worlds, characters, spaceships gave me the impression that playing Traveller was complicated.
Having a bit of experience over those 45 years with other systems, I now understand that while preparing things might require a few dice rolls and some procedural crunch, the actual game itself is exactly as Marc Miller describes it in the original Little Black Books:
“Above all, the referee and the players work together… The referee simply administers rules in situations where the players themselves have an incomplete understanding of the universe. The results should reflect a consistent reality.” (Book 3, pg 44)
That's exactly what happened here. I don't think I looked at the rulebooks once to see how things should be run. I understood the basics of the system, how to apply the mechanics when needed to determine results, and mostly had to just engage in the back-and-forth with the players as they worked through the scenario.
In some ways, it felt a little more free-form than OD&D and AD&D. Possibly because of point two...
Traveller gives the players a lot of role playing tools
I purposefully set out to limit the number of rolls that the players would make. They'd describe to me what they were doing. In some cases, I asked for clarifications or reasons why they thought they could do what they wanted. I referred to them as "experts" when they were talking about using their skills, which I called their "expertises".
The first couple of obstacles they ran into, or things they wanted to do, they were asking "I'll use my Computer skill and roll" or "I've got a good Streetwise skill, so I'll roll against that"... but I didn't prompt for throws. In fact, I don't remember a single roll that the players had to engage in, at all, in 3 hours.
To be sure, they were using all those expertises, but they caught on that these were tools, starting points to engaging the problem. They didn't use those skills as throw targets or bonuses, rather they used those expertises as the building blocks to explaining why they could go onto a freighter's bridge and look at the logs and inventory lists to determine what the captain had been up to, or why they could look at a freighter's drive and determine that yes, these parts would work on a Battlestar.
It was really cool to see [1] and I can say that this something that I think OD&D/AD&D perhaps don't do quite as well.
What are the building blocks, the tools for role-playing for a D&D character? There's the general idea of the class - which is a good starting point, but can still be somewhat abstract for a player to engage with. Some classes provide magic, which has specific mechanics. An enterprising DM might extend what magic does and how it works, but that's a bit of lifting. Similar for thief skills - they're specific to a task.
Compared to Traveller which has these concepts of expertises and they have good definitions even in just the name.
That's not to say OD&D/AD&D can't have this! The classes themselves give some starting points, and it's something I think isn't as emphasized in learning how to DM -- the idea that a "fighter" is more than just a sword swinger who rolls against a combat table. Some food for thought!
I podcasted about this very topic in May and preparing/running Traveller reinforces it. It was pretty easy for me to take a sci-fi setting that is fairly opposite what the (now) default Traveller setting, and implement it using CT77. CT77's implied setting is, for the most part, pretty vague and the bits that are there are fairly easy to replace.
Take, for instance, chargen. Some of the skills/expertises don't exactly match, so it was easy enough to adapt them. I took out polearms and laser weapons, opting for a Battlestar Galactica 2003 approach with "real life" projectile weapons. I adapted the mustering out tables - the benefits one gets in their chargen when they leave "service" and become a civilian. Having "passages" (free travel tickets that allow players to move from star system to star system) or even actual starships given to the PCs didn't make sense for a BSG setting, but having favors that could lead to the use of ships, or relationships that get the PCs somewhere, or specialized tools of their favorite skill - that fits. And easy enough to add.
All this to say that Classic Traveller is very much in the vein of OD&D in allowing you, if not outright expecting you to take it and make it your own. I think that's less true as one progresses in the editions/versions of Traveller. By 1983, it reads like the Third Imperium implied setting is very firmly ensconced in the rules, but CT77 definitely is wide open, and it's very good at being a framework.
One final bit
When I first set out to possibly run Classic Traveller, I quickly was pointed to a series of blog posts by Chris Kubasik on the blog "Tales To Astound". They are, quite simply, some of the best blog posts on refereeing a game like CT77, or OD&D, or any game that relies on the referee to take an active role, similar to how Free Kriegspiel works. I never thought a scifi game would inform my OD&D game, but damned if it hasn't.
The whole blog series is worth going through: https://talestoastound.wordpress.com/traveller-out-of-the-box/
But my top 3 recommended posts from Chris:
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[1] In post session feedback, since this was a playtest, the players mentioned that I might want to point out to convention players that rolls by them may be few and far between. Good point!