General Is there any concise summary of Traveller setting lore to help potential players?

[Tiikeri]

Hi,

I lost a new player because when she went to read up on Traveller she got tired of doing internet detective work to be able to answer questions like what race did she want to play and wtf is a Spinward Marches.

Yes, tiikeri almost had a new player. It was like poe in altered carbon saying "I have a guest..."

Anyway, she was quite interested but she couldnt take researching obscure websites to figure out the relationships between the races and empires, how technology worked, and so on.

Is there a concise noob friendly source i can direct potential players to?

How does all of you handle bringing players who have never heard of traveller up to speed?

[mike wightman]

I used this to start off my last Third Imperium based game:

http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Dis...ad.php?t=36222

It gives the players enough of an overview and then we can fill in details as the game progresses.

[Timerover51]

Originally Posted by Tiikeri

Hi,

I lost a new player because when she went to read up on Traveller she got tired of doing internet detective work to be able to answer questions like what race did she want to play and wtf is a Spinward Marches.

Yes, tiikeri almost had a new player. It was like poe in altered carbon saying "I have a guest..."

Anyway, she was quite interested but she couldnt take researching obscure websites to figure out the relationships between the races and empires, how technology worked, and so on.

Is there a concise noob friendly source i can direct potential players to?

How does all of you handle bringing players who have never heard of traveller up to speed?

Which Traveller setting are you playing in? That has a major effect on what sources you might use to put a handout together. Personally, I would say to go through the Classic Library Data books for most of your stuff. If you are not using Classic, it is going to be a bit more complicated.

[Tiikeri]

Classic Traveller was the intended setting.

[Blue Ghost]

I believe mister Marc Miller has a primer posted on Far Future to orient new prospective players. I think it may also be available on DriveThruRPG.

[Nathan Brazil]

Originally Posted by Tiikeri

Hi,
Is there a concise noob friendly source i can direct potential players to?

How does all of you handle bringing players who have never heard of traveller up to speed?

I beg to differ with the other grognards. There is no single concise sourcebook, not in the way I believe you are looking for. The Library Data sources / books just dont cut it. If I may, by example another setting: Forgotten Realms and D&D 3.0/3.5

There is a Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting Book. It has a "big map", allows you generate nuanced characters from all over the planet Faerun of different races and cultures. talks of the general history and gods and its rules variations, prestige classes, etc. different from the "standard" rules of the PHB, DMG and and MM Core Books. Even details of cool or important places and people Elminster is a xx lvl Wizard, The Open Lord of Waterdeep,

Within that there are region sourcebooks, racial splat books, magic books and such detailing an aspect of the setting.
City of the Spider Queen, Sons of Gruumsh
Unapproachable East, City of Splendors: Waterdeep, Underdark
Magic of Faerun, Faiths and Pantheon
are some examples....


We have the equivalent of racial splat books (the Alien Modules) that tells you how to generate and roleplay an Aslan or Vargr or etc. or etc.
We have the equivalent of regional sourcebooks (The Sector Sourcebooks) with their own focus, places, minor races (Vegans, Sword Worlders, et. al), UWPs
Tech books (Element Class Cruisers)

BUT

Traveller does not have an equivalent main campaign book of the Third Imperium SETTING in the Golden Age in a similar format to Forgotten Realms had done with the planet Faerun as a whole.
Nothing in one spot that says :
Here, generate any of the Major Races (except maybe K'kree I don't need to generate the whole Herd/Family ), here is how you play one. Want more info? Found in Name of Alien Module #
Exploration campaigns. Kinda like this in The Great Rift Region, Want more details? Get The Great Rift
Deneb Sector is a Sector of petty nobles vying for supremacy...
Frontier? The Spinward Marches is yada ada yada. Want more info? Buy...
The Imperium is headed by Emperor Strephon (Age:xx UPP xxxxxH Skills:yada yada). Archduke Dulinor (Age:xx UPP xxxxxG Skills:yada yada), Archduke Craig (Age:xx UPP xxxxxG Skills:yada yada) etc. run regional groups called Domains.... Interestingly an up and comer Duke Norris (UPP xxxxxF yada yada) lots of flavor text to suck in a new player.
This is what is desired, yes?

[Tiikeri]

Yes.

Think about it this way.

Star wars has a paradigm. It goes roughly like good mystical knights and plucky rebels fight a militaristic bad guy empire in a science famtasy setting filled with ecletic alien races blasters and laser swords.

Expanse goes a crew of misfits navigate the treacherous political and cultural currents of a humanity divided between a militaristic dynamic mars, a screwed up overpopulated bureaucratic earth, and a hard edged radical revolutionary outer planets alliance while exploring a cosmic anomaly.

Traveller goes well, a crew of misgits or a mercenary battalion or a bunch of unemployed soldiers or an aristocrat or a trader crew or a secret agent or a talking dog whos a priest of a talking dog supremacist religion or racist earth fascists can pretty much do anything they want in several empires which are neither good nor bad excep the racist earth fascists or they can hang out on the frontiers which are the way they are because of 3000 years of lore history based on roman history. Get it?

Its hard to explain traveller to someone who has never heard of it, who cant read UPPs and so on, who isnt going to buy and read through the library data supplements, and who isnt going to spend hours reading the traveller wiki when she can play star wars or star trek or firefly or some other game which provides an encapsulated summary of what the game is about and where the player fits into it.

I made handouts and so on, directed her to the traveller wiki, gave her some other links, but people arent going to read through all that unless they already know and love traveller.

[Tiikeri]

Another complication is the changing of generational perceptions. People under 30 think post apocalyptic setting means some zombie tv show instead of thermonuclear World War 3. They didnt see Aliens, they didnt see Outland with sean connery, they didnt see bladerunner, they didnt read jerry pournelle, andre norton, heinlein, or other classic scifi, and they think vampires sparkle.

In othrr words, they are unfamiliar with the cultural knowledge that traveller is grounded in. That cultural knowledge is lived experience for us, but it is history for them, history they didnt have to study in school.

[Tiikeri]

And one more thing.

We probably discovered traveller in small easily absorbed pieces, little black book sized pieces. Ok spinward marches came out, its 4 bucks at the game store and about as long as an oversized pamphlet. Oh, the newest double adventure is out, ill read it during lunch. We absorbed traveller over time.

Now traveller is 40 years of canon over 7 versions of the game. How is a potential new player going to sift through wikis, websites, forums, etc when a lot of it is so old it doesnt show up on google searches? I just checked now and only the traveller wiki could provide info IF someone wanted to spend hours sifting through it.

[coliver988]

Originally Posted by Tiikeri

And one more thing.

We probably discovered traveller in small easily absorbed pieces, little black book sized pieces. Ok spinward marches came out, its 4 bucks at the game store and about as long as an oversized pamphlet. Oh, the newest double adventure is out, ill read it during lunch. We absorbed traveller over time.

Now traveller is 40 years of canon over 7 versions of the game. How is a potential new player going to sift through wikis, websites, forums, etc when a lot of it is so old it doesnt show up on google searches? I just checked now and only the traveller wiki could provide info IF someone wanted to spend hours sifting through it.

This is really the key - start small. They don't have to know everything (and I doubt there is anyone who actually does) about Traveller. They are playing a character just as in any other game. Create some background or have the players create what background they want, then fit it in and grow your universe around that. Somewhere on this forum someone indicated that they had each player go through character generation and basically design the world they grew up in. This was not OTU but if you want to stick with OTU, start with what sort of world they want to start out on, find something that matches in the area you want to play in.

I am always overwhelmed when starting new games - playing Shadowrun the next 2 months. Everyone else has played it before, knows the setting and details. I know nothing about it other than a little bit of research, and came up with a background that I passed to the GM. We'll do character generation in the first session and she will be wrapping her game universe around what I came up with. Some may not fit and we'll figure a way to either make it fit or change it entirely. The point is: I am starting small and the character will grow as I learn the aspects of the game universe.