I recently aquired a copy of Mongoose Traveller from an old friend, and I'm trying desperately to convince my current DM to try and get a group together to give it a whirl. Many of the current party members are interested in a Sci-Fi rpg, but my DM is adamant and won't explain his reasoning. While we usually play d20, and he's also a HEROS buff, I like the lack of obvious powergaming in MT. (Provided your players don't cheat.) Anyone have any suggestions or pros/cons about Traveller in general that they want to share? I need all the help I can get convincing him.
Traveller - Pros and Cons?
- Thread starter Correleon
- Start date
ThunderChilde
SOC-13
It's a rare GM that will run a system he does not want to learn, because a player, or players want it. Usually one of them buckles down and runs it and the GM gets to play for a change.
One of the built-in advantages to Traveller is the scale of the universe itself. That has some certain potential if you think outside the box a bit.
I have run games of Runequest where I have shared the campaign world with a few of the players so they could have places to run their way and I could play in, and I could do the same. It got to the level where we had basically several opposing or cooperative kingdoms and interacting NPC's/PC's from all of them. It made for a pretty interesting and intricate experience.
In Traveller you could do the same. Cooperatively run a homebrew universe with the guy. Let him have some Ancient pocket universe where he can run his Hero stuff and you run the universe outside it. Or use the 3I OTU for yours and you can still let him have some pocket universe. His character can even be in the party that finds it, then tell him - hey, why don'y you run the alternate reality universe and I'll run this one, then we can trade off nights and we all get to play?
But yeah, its pointless in my experience to try to talk a referee into running something he doesn't really want to. It's one of the reasons I so very, very rarely ever play any games. But when I run a game I am playing too, so I don't mind.
But I have seen it happen when someone starts to play in one of my Traveller (or otherwise) games that they start thinking about trying to run it themselves. Mainly because they get their imagination all fired up thinking about all the sci-fi stuff they want to do in my game but I won't let them for various reasons. So they start running a game and oila'!, I get ot have one of those rare chances to play a PC.
I have run games of Runequest where I have shared the campaign world with a few of the players so they could have places to run their way and I could play in, and I could do the same. It got to the level where we had basically several opposing or cooperative kingdoms and interacting NPC's/PC's from all of them. It made for a pretty interesting and intricate experience.
In Traveller you could do the same. Cooperatively run a homebrew universe with the guy. Let him have some Ancient pocket universe where he can run his Hero stuff and you run the universe outside it. Or use the 3I OTU for yours and you can still let him have some pocket universe. His character can even be in the party that finds it, then tell him - hey, why don'y you run the alternate reality universe and I'll run this one, then we can trade off nights and we all get to play?
But yeah, its pointless in my experience to try to talk a referee into running something he doesn't really want to. It's one of the reasons I so very, very rarely ever play any games. But when I run a game I am playing too, so I don't mind.
But I have seen it happen when someone starts to play in one of my Traveller (or otherwise) games that they start thinking about trying to run it themselves. Mainly because they get their imagination all fired up thinking about all the sci-fi stuff they want to do in my game but I won't let them for various reasons. So they start running a game and oila'!, I get ot have one of those rare chances to play a PC.
beowulf2044
SOC-12
Trying to persuade someone to run a game they have no interest in sounds like it would produce a mediocre game experience at best. As is often the case, it's the one who loves the game world the most who winds up running the game itself and never gets to play in it.
You should probably not try to push. If he's said no more than a couple times, there is probably a good reason. Try running it yourself.
BTW, MT is usually used to reference MegaTraveller. MGT is the commonly accepted code for Mongoose's Traveller.
Well, without disrupting the existing game, why don't you GM it ? Different night. Do your players like the Firefly/Serenity Show ? If so, then have a weekend or evening Firefly marathon and toss out some pre-arranged campaign hooks for the players. Trash, Ariel and the Train Job are all great blueprints for a Traveller session. Even if it's not a full-on campaign, try a set of one-offs and see how things go. You've got nothing to lose. >
Supplement Four
SOC-14 5K
I agree with Thunder. Your only hope is to ignite the GM's imagination somehow in a way that will influence him to embrace Traveller.
Maybe start a dialogue about "gritty" "low-tech" science fiction films like Outland and Alien/Aliens. Then, explain to him, "Man! THAT'S Traveller!"
Or, talk about Firefly.
I think setting fire to his imagination into the genre is key.
Icosahedron
SOC-14 1K
Organise a really good one-off Traveller adventure which you GM. (a precursor Firefly night sounds good, too). If he enjoys the game, he might get the bug and start GMing it himself.
Free samples have always been a good sales gimmick.
Free samples have always been a good sales gimmick.
mbrinkhues
SOC-14 1K
Cons:
+ Huge and very complex universe / background that requires both GM and players to read up on it to enjoy
+ Rules sets ranging from the primitive-unuseabel to the hyper-complex and not so well adapted
+ A somewhat "broken" universe when it comes to ships sizes
+ Background elements that range from silly (Doggies in space) to not completely thought through (a "near perfect" Nobility)
+ Huge and very complex universe / background that requires both GM and players to read up on it to enjoy
+ Rules sets ranging from the primitive-unuseabel to the hyper-complex and not so well adapted
+ A somewhat "broken" universe when it comes to ships sizes
+ Background elements that range from silly (Doggies in space) to not completely thought through (a "near perfect" Nobility)
Gaming Glen
SOC-12
From the OP's post I was under the impression that it was the game system that the DM did not want to use: MGT is neither D20 or Hero.
Some other points...
There's no powergaming in MGT? Wait until they get their hands on Battledress and FGMPs.
(my campaign won't have that high of a tech level; speaking of which...)
---- I'm setting up a Traveller campaign in my own universe; I've written up my own version of human's near future. Recently (like started last week ), I've given some thought to a subset of it for a smaller-scaled version: a large colony ship misjumped a far distance (about 200 parsecs) to a local star cluster teaming with stars that are not far apart. Add a few hundred years you have one main world, a few colonized worlds, and some outposts for a "Firefly"-esque set up. To help speed up the colonizing I was thinking of having a nearby alien species (I have 15 mm lizardy-people) just coming out of their own "Long Night"; they had already gone through the area long ago and "terraformed" a lot of worlds (i.e., tossing comets at a few, seeding others). This could leave a few "alien ruins" for exploration purposes. And this sets up a hostile alien species that is quite upset that someone took their "lands". 
----- You won't have hundreds of large ships for fleet actions, a la Star Wars, but you might have a few precious capital ships (battlestars
) and some escort type ships. You also have a lot of exploration room. And, when the people realize they need help from Earth to fight the aliens, they send an exploration cruiser (read: Aurora class from TNE) to find and contact Earth (they know the general direction, but nebula, dust clouds, and dark matter block the view). But that's for a second campaign.
----- My main issues at the moment is how long does it take for a 20,000-30,000 Terran flora/fauna/human mostly-seeds/embryos cargo (plus crew) colony ship to set up a civilization with a decent sized population (say, 1 billion humans)? Even with some pre-terraformed worlds, how fast can Terran ecology be set up on a planet? I read that the blasted island remnants left after Krakatoa are now lush with vegetation so it seems that plant life only needs about 100 years to settle in, on Earth anyway.
Some other points...
There's no powergaming in MGT? Wait until they get their hands on Battledress and FGMPs.
(my campaign won't have that high of a tech level; speaking of which...)
---- I'm setting up a Traveller campaign in my own universe; I've written up my own version of human's near future. Recently (like started last week
), I've given some thought to a subset of it for a smaller-scaled version: a large colony ship misjumped a far distance (about 200 parsecs) to a local star cluster teaming with stars that are not far apart. Add a few hundred years you have one main world, a few colonized worlds, and some outposts for a "Firefly"-esque set up. To help speed up the colonizing I was thinking of having a nearby alien species (I have 15 mm lizardy-people) just coming out of their own "Long Night"; they had already gone through the area long ago and "terraformed" a lot of worlds (i.e., tossing comets at a few, seeding others). This could leave a few "alien ruins" for exploration purposes. And this sets up a hostile alien species that is quite upset that someone took their "lands". ----- You won't have hundreds of large ships for fleet actions, a la Star Wars, but you might have a few precious capital ships (battlestars
) and some escort type ships. You also have a lot of exploration room. And, when the people realize they need help from Earth to fight the aliens, they send an exploration cruiser (read: Aurora class from TNE) to find and contact Earth (they know the general direction, but nebula, dust clouds, and dark matter block the view). But that's for a second campaign.----- My main issues at the moment is how long does it take for a 20,000-30,000 Terran flora/fauna/human mostly-seeds/embryos cargo (plus crew) colony ship to set up a civilization with a decent sized population (say, 1 billion humans)? Even with some pre-terraformed worlds, how fast can Terran ecology be set up on a planet? I read that the blasted island remnants left after Krakatoa are now lush with vegetation so it seems that plant life only needs about 100 years to settle in, on Earth anyway.
Andrew Boulton
The Adminator
Or T20....
Yeah. This is actually how I got into Shadowrun, however. I knew of it because some friends of mine played it, but hadn't really looked into it. Then my regular group of players told me they were interested in playing it, and they thought I'd be good as the referee. They might have even given me a copy of the original rulebook, too.
Other systems, though, I won't even play, let alone run, even if I'm given the books.
