Who Plays Traveller

[daltoncalford]

Do you actually play Traveller?

This is a poll to find out how many people actually have gotten into a game of Traveller using any one of the official Traveller rule sets and the OTU, but does not include home rules or non-cannon universes.

The best way to ask is, how long ago was your last real Traveller game.

 

[mike wightman]

Hey, the poll finishes on my birthday

 

[Flynn]

I'll repeat myself here from the original post that inspired this thread, as well as add some clarification based on this poll itself:

I game T20 monthly with a group of five players in a tabletop FTF game. I've been doing so for three years now. The first year was in an ATU, but the last two years have taken place in the OTU and uses 1248 playtest data and fanzine material for support.

I've played T20 since Nov 2002 online as part of an eight-PC PBEM group with Referee, and it has been quite active. This game has been set in and about the Linkworlds Cluster in Ley Sector during 993 and early 994.

I've played CT since January 2004 online as part of a six-PC(?) PBEM group with Referee, and it has been active, but not as active as the T20 PBEM. That game is based in the mid to late 1100s in the Spinward Marches sector, Regina subsector.

I've run Traveller games at numerous conventions and local game days over the last four years, and attendance is usually very high. In fact, I ran the only Traveller games listed in Gen Con Indy 2005's schedule. My Con games are run in the OTU, usually Glimmerdrift Reaches in 993, although a few were set in the Solomani Rim in 1115.

Before I started running T20, I played in a year-long GT game in 2000-2001. That campaign was set during the TNE era, located in a sector coreward of the Gateway Domain.

I'm actively playing Traveller and using the OTU, and I know of about eight other people locally who are doing so, as well. (There's another group of CT Travellers that meet on Monday nights near here.)

I will admit, though, that my next Traveller campaign has a 50/50 chance of being set in an ATU, just for a change of pace. (Otherwise, it'll run in the Hinterworlds sector, which we'll start detailing in Stellar Reaches #5.)

Hope that helps,
Flynn

 

[far-trader]

Originally posted by Sigg Oddra:
Hey, the poll finishes on my birthday

Excelllent

More data for our base, make a note of that.

Sooo, have you got a hand in a game Sigg?

I count myself lucky to have found a seat at a virtual table. Yes we're playing online (via Klooge) but I count it as a game, and about the only kind I seem to be able to get to. We play weekly. T20, Gateway setting, mostly OTU. Oh come on, there are some obviously needed fixes for any game, you can't really rule out all house-rule games and altered TU sets or there'd be nobody playing

Previous to this I was in a long running TNE rule and setting play-by-post (several times a day posting by a few of the players) game that was also very good, and dabbled with a couple other online Traveller games.

As good as these are they do have a different feel to them from the old ftf games. Something is missing, that animal aspect of being in close physical proximity that makes us humans civilized maybe. I'm not knocking the virtual world, just saying I think it will never replace* the real world.

* at least not without a lot more tech than we have available now, and/or not without de-humanizing us in ways we can (and have in many sci-fi stories) only imagine, scary dark ways for the most part.

 

[Ptah]

Yikes and also with OTU. I started in late 1978 so I don't know if there was an OTU outside of the LBB. If the requirement is using commercially provided settings or switching to them when they became available in stores (which considering where I lived then they may have been never available), I've never played "Traveller." Not having alot of money (those LBB 1-3 where not an inexspensive gift for my family to give in 1978) but paper and pencil, I had to create my own traveller universe to play in.

 

[far-trader]

LBB 1-3, pencil, paper, and 2d6 (even paper chit versions) is imo CT. And all you need to play Traveller with it is a friend or several.

 

[daltoncalford]

The big thing is, are you using an official (ie, CT, MT, TNE, T4, GURPS) version of Traveller or at least using the OTU.

Sorry If I was not clear on that. The big thing is I disqualified myself since I do not use the OTU and the home rules we use are not from and official source.

If I don't require official rules or official universe, than ANY rpg would count (anybody tried thieves world fantasy using the traveller rules....they count, star blazers or gamma world do not - you get the idea...)

So, IF you use any official version of the rules, or if you use your own rules but the OTU and you have played the game....when did you last play?

hows that, any clearer?

best regards

Dalton

 

[far-trader]

Much clearer Dalton, and kind of what I figured you meant. Hope I didn't come across as too harsh in my criticism

p.s. You missed T20 in your list of "official" Traveller rules

 

[mike wightman]

The regular game I play in is T20.

The version I run every now and then is houseruled CT.

The longest OTU campaign I ever ran used MT/Hard Times.

 

[daltoncalford]

Originally posted by far-trader:
Much clearer Dalton, and kind of what I figured you meant. Hope I didn't come across as too harsh in my criticism

p.s. You missed T20 in your list of "official" Traveller rules

Sorry, T20 as well. I keep forgetting about it. I own everything that hunter has produced for it. Hardcover, pdf, the works. I have yet to get anyone even slightly interested in a game.



Now, Tunnels and Trolls, that has caught on. I ended up getting ahold of Rick and ordered everything he had for T&T just so that I can get some of the old D20 fantasy players off of my back.

best regards

Dalton

Best regards

 

[Pickles]

I've only ever played one game with the CT rules, back in '83. I played another game using GT about 3 years ago.

However, I played BRP/CT for pretty much all of the intervening time. I suppose I just like BRP ...

 

[daltoncalford]

BRP?

What is BRP?

best regards

Dalton

 

[SanDragon]

It's been 25 years since I last played a FTF game of Traveller. A friend ran with the LBB and we had d6s piled all around us.

*twitch*

No, I'm fine. Don't miss it at all.

*twitch, tic*

 

[Whipsnade]

Dalton,

The last time I played was at a minis convention in the summer of '05.

I ran a heavily modified version of Across The Bright Face disguised as a minis combat game. It was meant to be a 'lite' interlude between rounds of DBM, WAB, A Hotter Fire, and others.

I had 3x5 cards made up with the PC's stats and weapons, used a combat rules the minis group was already familiar with (it's a rule set oriented towards gunfights in the Old West), and handled ATV movement on the map 'off table'. I presricpted most of the 'rolled' events in AtBF; the players ecnountered the pursuing workers twice, a mining camp once, dust pools twice, and a back-to-back earthquake/landslide.

I used those 'gem-like' darkness markers from the LOTR collectible card game as fatigue markers and handled fuel expenditure on a chart marked with a chit.

I got three parties completely through it twice and another party through is ~75%. Playtime ranged around 90 minutes with the bulk taken up by the firefights. A few twigged to the fact it was a role-playing scenario but all liked it due to the 'campaign' nature of their flight across the Bright Face.

I've run similar things with much lees success at other wargaming 'cons.


Have fun,
Bill

 

[sid6.7]

maybe its me but this is a really silly question
on a "traveller" forum....or at least confusing...

at least the first part...

and "how long ago" would not relate to "have you ever" played traveller...

you should change the poll to reflect the real question "how long has it been since you played"

 

[Badbru]

Like Flynn I try to play once a month. This year one of my players is joining the Navy and has has to go to the other side of the country for training, so my regular group and their campaign is on hold.

Fortunately for me I recently discovered more local gamers and have begun playing in a Twilight 2000 game weekly. The last session the GM complained that weekly was too often for him so I volunteered (Doh!) to run TNE on alternate weeks. So I'm about to run an OTU RC campaign again and my regular group was TNE OTU though not RC also.

So, yes. TNE rules set, OTU setting, within the last 30 days. Not as a player though.

 

[Pickles]

Originally posted by Dalton:
What is BRP?

Basic Role-Playing (or Runequest III if you're old enough ) by Chaosium. A basic percentile-based system, easily adaptable. We use BRP rules and CT (Spinward Marches) setting.

 

[Berg]

Here is a conversion... Traveller / BRP

It's very adaptable, and I'm going to be using it in a Western game I'll be running... maybe even Serenity

 

[Jame]

I, too, play monthly, using any kind of Traveller except T20 and GURPS. We started out in an ATU, moved to my TU, moved to the G-OTU (using a non-GURPS rules set), moved back to the first ATU, and now we're using the Traveller Adventure. My last meeting was this past Sunday.

I may run Shadows...

 

[daltoncalford]

Originally posted by Berg:
Here is a conversion... Traveller / BRP

It's very adaptable, and I'm going to be using it in a Western game I'll be running... maybe even Serenity

Thanks Berg!

I have Runequest original, Runequest Deluxe edition and, before my first wife had a bonfire, every chaosism supplement for runequest and glorantha.

I like the game, played it alot when I was younger and modified the magic systems to work with those young fools who are using THE for a fantasy setting.

best regards

Dalton