Basic Traveller5

[Baltech Budapest]

I'm curious about this (ahead of my book arriving), but my son asked me to post these questions:

When we play CT we play very rules-light. We don't scrutinize every last detail.
In a nutshell, it's Traveller for kids.

So the question is:

Using the T5 Core Rules Book, how straight forward would it be to extract the very basic rules we would need (as we do with CT): Char Gen, Task Res and Combat?

I hope to be able to take the very basics of those 3 aspects and bookmark the relevant pages in the core book.

If we can achieve this I will be very happy (and so will my kids).

 

[robject]

Don McKinney might be the right guy to talk about this.

 

[Baltech Budapest]

Thanks rob.

 

[Muad'dib Pendragon]

A quickstart guide would definitely go a long way to making T5 more accessible.

 

[Baltech Budapest]

A quickstart guide would definitely go a long way to making T5 more accessible.

That would be good.
I see a lot of game designers making a quick start guide available as a free PDF on their websites.
If Marc, or indeed Don makes such a quick start guide (once the madness of fulfilling orders has subsided) then I'm sure we can all benefit.
As I don't have the book yet I don't know what is in it but I was just curious (via my son) if it is possible to lift just the basics out of the book to get started.

Something else has me curious though. I didn't order the CD-ROM and I noticed in photos of the book that the Character Cards are printed on the inside front cover. Photocopying these cards would be no problem but I wonder if there are any plans to make the Character Card available as a PDF, or would I need to purchase the CD-ROM?

 

[robject]

Using the T5 Core Rules Book, how straight forward would it be to extract the very basic rules we would need (as we do with CT): Char Gen, Task Res and Combat?

I didn't fully answer your original question. Which is how we all work sometimes.


Example: Starships

In an earlier thread, I walked through how I've notated my copy of The Traveller Book so that TTB's starship gen system produces a subset of T5 starships. That's the sort of thing you're talking about, and it's not difficult.


Chargen

Now, this can probably be done to character generation by simply taking things away:

(1) skip initial education
(2) skip service branch selection
(3) turn all medals into generic "Medal" (or "MCUF") -- no need to flip to p.109.
(4) skip Reward rolls.

In this way, you end up with one page for chargen -- the career page -- plus the skills chapter for reference of course.


Tasks

In the end, task rolls all boil down to difficulty versus assets. Difficulty is in dice; if the situation is more dire, more hasty, or more constrained, increase the dice. If it's a better situation, or the player is taking the time to "do it right", then decrease the dice. Assets are everything the referee decides are reasonable to add together: characteristic, skill, knowledge, special equipment, whatever.

That's all there really is to the task system. No target numbers to memorize. Dice <= Assets.


Combat

I note that combat in CT is not basic. It is a body of rules to make player combat reasonably tactical.

Combat has to have some nuances, because the player has to be able to make decisions. But, once again, combat is part of the Task System, and it boils down to Difficulty, in Dice, which is typically equal to Range ... but the referee can modify that as he goes. The target number is asset-based, with some special DMs for speed and size of target.

Speed and size DMs are useful, but in a pinch you could ignore them, reducing combat to (essentially) a bare task roll. It may not be satisfying enough at that level of abstraction (the system is already abstract).

 

[Baltech Budapest]

I didn't fully answer your original question. Which is how we all work sometimes.


Example: Starships

In an earlier thread, I walked through how I've notated my copy of The Traveller Book so that TTB's starship gen system produces a subset of T5 starships. That's the sort of thing you're talking about, and it's not difficult.


Chargen

Now, this can probably be done to character generation by simply taking things away:

(1) skip initial education
(2) skip service branch selection
(3) turn all medals into generic "Medal" (or "MCUF") -- no need to flip to p.109.
(4) skip Reward rolls.

In this way, you end up with one page for chargen -- the career page -- plus the skills chapter for reference of course.


Tasks

In the end, task rolls all boil down to difficulty versus assets. Difficulty is in dice; if the situation is more dire, more hasty, or more constrained, increase the dice. If it's a better situation, or the player is taking the time to "do it right", then decrease the dice. Assets are everything the referee decides are reasonable to add together: characteristic, skill, knowledge, special equipment, whatever.

That's all there really is to the task system. No target numbers to memorize. Dice <= Assets.


Combat

I note that combat in CT is not basic. It is a body of rules to make player combat reasonably tactical.

Combat has to have some nuances, because the player has to be able to make decisions. But, once again, combat is part of the Task System, and it boils down to Difficulty, in Dice, which is typically equal to Range ... but the referee can modify that as he goes. The target number is asset-based, with some special DMs for speed and size of target.

Speed and size DMs are useful, but in a pinch you could ignore them, reducing combat to (essentially) a bare task roll. It may not be satisfying enough at that level of abstraction (the system is already abstract).

Thanks Rob
This is EXACTLY what I was looking for.
Task resolution sounds like it can be straight forward, so does Combat.
My youngest child is only 10 years old and I think that starting off with the basics and slowly building it up from there (especially when it comes to combat) is how I would like to approach this.

Many thanks

 

[Scathsealgaire]

Thanks Rob
This is EXACTLY what I was looking for.
Task resolution sounds like it can be straight forward, so does Combat.
My youngest child is only 10 years old and I think that starting off with the basics and slowly building it up from there (especially when it comes to combat) is how I would like to approach this.

Many thanks

You are an awesome parent. Keep up the good work.

The Geeks shall inherit the Earth.

 

[Baltech Budapest]

You are an awesome parent. Keep up the good work.

The Geeks shall inherit the Earth.

I meant to add that my youngest child is my 10 year old daughter. So that dispells the myth that Traveller is a predominantly male game.

As far as getting the kids into Traveller goes, I like to say that the kids are "The New Era of Traveller players" because I like the double meaning.