One player undertakes some journey or adventure alone. He handles the effects of the rules himself. Solitaire is ideal for the player who is alone due to situation or geography.
I started playing Traveller in 1983, around the time that The Traveller Book was released – more than four decades ago now. In all the years I've played the game, I've never known anyone to play the game solitaire as described here. In fact, until the last few years, I don't think I recalled that solitaire was even mentioned as a possible way to play the game. That's not to say that Traveller isn't suitable for some degree of solitaire "play." The Traveller Book, in its section on "Basic Traveller Activities," notes that "many of the subordinate game systems lend themselves to solitaire ... play." This is absolutely true in my experience.
Traveller's character generation system is, in my opinion, one of the best ever devised, beautifully blending randomness with choice while also evoking the thrill of gambling. The system is so good that it's probably worthy of several posts about it, but, for now, what's important is that generating characters in Traveller is fun. You never quite know what you're going to wind up with, thanks to the unpredictability of the dice rolls. But no matter how things unfold, you (generally) wind up with a character who has a rough history of what he was doing between the age of 18 and when he enters the campaign after some period of time in service to one or another interstellar career, usually military.
Indeed, character generation is so fun that, to this day, I sometimes still generate a character or two as a way to pass the time. I used to have a nice little computer program that helped with this. It was called "TravGen" or something similar, but I lost it when I got a new computer and have never been able to find a functional version of it on the Internet since. Even without the program to speed things up, generating characters for Traveller is enjoyable as an activity in its own right – the kind of solitaire play I associate with the game.
Another form of solitaire play in which I still regularly engage is generating subsectors. This is a bit more involved than generating characters, but it's still a lot of fun. The last time I did this in earnest, I wound up creating an entire sector and starting up a non-Third Imperium Traveller campaign that I refereed for three years. That's the "danger" of generating subsectors: after a while, ideas about the various worlds you create, their inhabitants, and their relationships to one another start to percolate and the next thing you know, you're imagining an entire setting for a campaign. None of this is bad, of course – far from it! – but it is dangerous, in the sense that it can very easily feed gamer attention deficit disorder, something to which I was once very prone.
A third potential source of solitaire play within Traveller is trade and commerce. Choose a starship, pick a starting world in a subsector (whether published or one of your own creation), get some cargo and/or passengers, and then set off to try and turn a profit as you direct your ship from world to world. This is a great way to learn the speculative trade system in Traveller, as well as to better understand the economic ties that connect the worlds of one region of space. I have a vague recollection that GDW itself released a computer program in the 1980s that handled trade and commerce, but perhaps my aged brain imagined it. Regardless, trade is another fun way to play Traveller by oneself.
Compared to OD&D, which was released just three years prior, Traveller is a design of considerable elegance. All of its rules systems work well with one another and support and encourage its intended gameplay styles. Many of these systems, like the three I mentioned above, are enjoyable in themselves as separate "min-games" that can be "played" between sessions and that generate additional content for use in an ongoing campaign. It's absolutely brilliant design work and a big reason why I keep coming back to Traveller.
I think this is what you are looking for http://www.ace-dog.com/downloads/TravGen.htm
ReplyDeleteThat's the one, but, when I try downloading it, the resulting file isn't recognized by my computer.
DeleteIf someone else doesn't beat me to it, I'll take a look after work this evening. What OS are you running? Windows 10? 11?
DeleteI'm using Windows 10.
DeleteI have this Classic Traveller character generator here. It also includes the Citzens of the Imperium careers.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.batintheattic.com/traveller/
It's a very useful generator for creating NPCs. I'm hoping to find one that lets the user decide which rolls to make, which charts to use, etc. rather than automating the whole thing.
DeleteI have used it for PC creation, it gives you a more random PC. But there are "command line options" (you put them in the URL - Rob has a front end that allows setting some of them) that allow for adding a requirement for the character which helps when, for example, you want a PC to have a ship.
DeleteI added that after some folks used the original generator to roll up PCs, hitting refresh until they got a PC they liked. I also fixed bugs like the way it handled benefits at the end of generation, first taking cash benefits, meaning a Scout that had a ship HAD to be several terms old. Now if you want a Scout with a ship, you ask for that. And you may get a 1 term Scout who happened to get a ship and no other benefits...
There's a good one for Mongoose Traveller First and Second edition here: https://www.munsondev.com/chargen/
DeleteIn the last couple of years I've seen a massive rise of interest for solitarie play.
ReplyDeleteThere's a flourishing community here in Italy, with a massively partecipated Telegram chat and lots of fan-made and DIY tools and supplements.
My first encounter with Traveller was solitaire game play...sort of. Because my parents were briefly national financial officers for a nonprofit, I ended up spending a lot of time with kids I didn't know very well. One of them, a bit older than me, got very excited when he found out that I played RPGs and fetched his Traveller set. I'd never seen Traveller before, but that didn't slow him down. He ran me through character generation and then announced, "Now you need a ship!" So he then guided me through several cargo runs using the trade tables so that I could get the money to pay off my ship. I began to wonder why they called this a role-playing game, since all I was doing was rolling on tables...
ReplyDeleteYou've identified one of the reasons I have a hard time considering solo gaming (whether it be the vast majority of c-RPGs, journaling, adventure books, or what you're describing) as actual roleplaying games. I dislike just defining things out a category for convenience, but when they come up in discussion my thought is always "who are you roleplaying with?" If the answer is "just myself" then, well, that's more acting practice (or creative writing) to me than roleplay, no matter how much you may identify with your character.
DeleteWhen I read Traveller I find it difficult to understand it as it was meant at the time without the knowledge of what went after leading me astray. I see a game that is very close to En Garde - one where the trade and commerce *is* the game, and it is generally meant to be played at one remove from the characters (you are not in the moment with the DM describing the world and you interacting with it in real time).
ReplyDeleteIt is a well suited to solitaire system in some ways. Create star systems, set up subsectors, design starships, and generate characters. It was a game toolkit, and T5 is still in that mode.
ReplyDeleteMarc, we'd like a player's guide!
We who? The beauty of Traveller is not having a player guide. Its the whole point.
DeleteI know a lot of people treat the trading game as the default mode of play, but I think that an examination of the books shows that the patron encounter is instead the main game theme. Since ships are fairly rare without fudging the results (except for Scouts, but we all know their survival rate), the game loop, as written though not necessarily as played, is more like E.C. Tubb's Dumarest Saga than Frederik Pohl's Space Merchants: arrive on a planet, find a patron, resolve the patron's situation, get paid, buy a ticket to the next world. There are several other encounters possible in between patrons, of course.
ReplyDeleteThat's one of the two things about Traveller I like to point out to people, as they often miss them (the other is that, in classic Traveller and MegaTraveller at least, the rules are set up to allow a human with a cutlass to effectively fight a human wearing powered armor, setting things up to permit something like the sword and blaster style of old SF with space marines fighting pirates in the asteroid belt and such, and this is why Marines in those editions are given Cutlass skill; this style of play is precluded in all or nearly all of the later editions and most of them remove the likelihood of Marines having Cutlass skill as well).
My only gripe concerning Traveller has ever been the lack of character improvement. I understand that with a 2d6 system, there’s only so “high” you can go (skill-wise), and I get that character generation is, in a way, so interesting as to perhaps “pre-load” your improvement (?). I also get there are the “social/story” improvements that come with any rpg.
ReplyDeleteNever-the-less, when introducing the game to various groups over the years, every single time I’ve had the question asked: “So, how does my character get better?”
Players like seeing mechanical rewards to their playing. I’m not saying you should start as a “First Level” goomba and someday be “lord of the land 12th level hero”, but some (better than RAW) character improvement system would go a long ways, in my humble neck of the woods, anyway.
All that being said, I LOVE Traveller. I’ve dabbled with it for over 4 decades now and I look forward to your insights, views, and opinions.
I don't totally disagree but another way PCs get better is that they get better "stuff"; better personal weapons, cool tech, a triple laser turret to replace the sand caster on their ship, maybe even an Ancient artifact.
DeleteThere is an experience system in Classic Traveller, pp.42 - 43 of Book 2. It mirrors the character generation system, so is based around 4-year terms of self-improvement.
DeleteThe experience system is much more realistic but given how many sessions would pass before seeing one skill bump up a rank, I could see how players used to D&D and the like would be frustrated. On the other hand, games like EPT largely plateau at middle experience levels.
DeleteTraveller has another one-time (potential) improvement mechanism: finding and visiting a Psionics Institute. The PCs need to be young, though, so will have fewer skills and other benefits. The search for one could easily be one chapter of a campaign, given how secretive they need to be, what with the Imperial bias against psionics and suspicion (possibly correct) of Zhodani complicity/affinity.
There is also an experience and improvement system in MegaTraveller. It seems to offer a middle ground between fairly quick improvement systems like, perhaps, D&D and the glacially slow one of classic Traveller.
DeleteOnly in the case of increasing EDU is the pace of the experience system slow; in the cases of Weapons, Skills and Physical Fitness programs the gains are immediate, assuming one makes the dedication roll at the onset of the program.
Delete@Jeff: Immediate, but only so long as the dedication roll is made, and then made again after four years. And of course the character gains two skill levels, but with the weird requirement that both either be combat or non-combat, no mixing the two. It's still a gain of no more than one skill level per four game years, and with a fairly high chance of failing to keep the levels.
Delete@faoladh: Yes, it's not without limitations, but it's not a total lack of an experience system, either (re: the original comment I was replying to). Right out of chargen one could increase two skills (weapons or otherwise) or all three physical characteristics by 1 each. It's not D&D, but is in keeping with Traveller's approach. Cheers!
DeleteYea, the dedication roll really limits it. For my house rules, you could do any two skills, and you could get a bonus to the dedication roll (for weapons, your Advantageous STR/DEX modifier). I also revamped the dedication roll for sabbatical to an application roll, so you could try again for a different skill. Even with all of this, only a handful of PCs were in progress on a skill.
DeleteAlso, if increasing a weapon from 0 to 1, you only need 4 years, not 8. Recall that PCs have all combat skills at 0 (and I ruled that Gunnery is a Combat skill - it's listed with the other combat skills, at least in the 1977 rules).
Yes, I houserule it as well (to match my prior career houserules of 2 rolls/term for all careers for a standard CT game). Just pointing out that there is an experience system in CT, not a total absence of a system.
DeleteTraveller and Marvel Super Heroes (FASERIP) are two games where I have spent far more time making characters than actually playing the games, and because character generation is so much fun I don't have the least problem with that!
ReplyDeleteI got the 3 book set as a kid and I liked the gametastic character generation and sector generation with the cool charts and codes. What really stopped me cold was the ship combat. In contrast, it struck me as very un-gamey - like a series of vague math problems? It scared me so much I didn't really pursue Traveller as a system after that. This is a 40 year-old memory, though. Curious about your thoughts on this.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I agree there. Why are we plotting velocity and vectors? If it’s for realism’s sake, we need to get rid of the gravity plates on the floors of the ships. You float around in zero-g, unless you’re accelerating, decelerating, or changing course.
DeleteI believe the example re: interplanetary travel assumes 1-g constant acceleration to halfway, followed by 1-g deceleration for the second half of the trip. Notwithstanding the massive amounts of fuel this would require, I also believe the rules state that ships have grab plates in the floors, so everyone can walk around, like Star Trek, or Star Wars?
IMO, it should have been made a bit clearer what’s going on, onboard a star ship. AND, ship movement (in combat) should have been simplified.
It’s kind of a mish-mash of real world physics and sci-fi space opera technology.
Traveller has never had a great starship combat system in my opinion. It's the one area where I feel the game has always been less than it could be. This is especially true in the 1977 rules, before the introduction of range bands, which at least made combat easier to use, if not necessarily very fun.
DeleteWow, good to see my memory wasn't far off! Yes, vectors as a 12 year-old (Or even at 54 years!) really sent me into a panic. I closed up my box shortly after getting to those. It honestly upset me, because by that time I had chewed through quite a few different sets of rules with no problems. These were rules that were beyond my technical abilities! A sense of gamer shame that I'd never felt before. Is there any preferred bolt-on rules to handle ship combat and movement? Something that's more in the spirit of the rest of the rules? Interesting charts, sensible 2d6+modifiers? It feels like the weapon speed factor of Traveller.
Delete@James Maliszewski: I was pretty happy, at least conceptually, with Battle Rider. Too bad it was for TNE, which, while not my most hated Traveller system, is certainly not my favorite. It's also among the least easily converted to other Traveller systems.
DeleteOther than that, the range band system in Starter Traveller was pretty good if there's just one PC ship and one opposing ship. It's not terrible for multiple ships, but the Referee should be very flexible in those situations.
Contrariwise, I'm very glad Traveller (and Mayday, and Triplanetary, and Double Star - and SPI's Battlefleet Mars as well- pushed vector movement on me as a kid. By the time games like Full Thrust (well, with the Fleet Books, anyway) and Hard Vacuum came along, I had that kind of thing down pat. And Mayday was excellent training even for a kid.
DeleteIf anything, I was always disappointed when a game would get partway to vector movement and then balk the way early Full Thrust, Knight Hawks and Bab 5 Wars did. You don't just retain your velocity, people. Inertia doesn't work that way.
Mayday
ReplyDeleteTrue. Mayday is pretty decent, though, as a separate product, I suspect a lot of people don't make use of it.
DeleteAnd High Guard if you want something more abstract with hexes and counters.
ReplyDeleteAs I recall, the High Guard combat system is abstracted into battle lines. Jefferson Swycaffer wrote up a system to use hexes and give it more tactical maneuver which he published in the Ares section of an issue of Dragon magazine. I believe that the system in MegaTraveller may have taken quite a bit of inspiration from Swycaffer's.
DeleteI just re-read the Grognardia review of Mayday, and it seems like too much of a full game within game, and still too complex for my 12 or 54 year-old self! From the review, it doesn't feel akin to the other rules in Traveller? (Not that I'm that familiar with the rules!) I think I'd want a simplified, mini-game that is not (potentially) 2 hours long. Something more akin to the character and system gen mixed with combat? Must not use vectors! Maybe High Guard fits that bill? I don't mind hit points, so abstraction is not a problem.
ReplyDeleteMayday still uses vectors, so it's not exactly easy to use if that sort of thing bothers you.
DeleteIt is 16 pages long and much of it is a restatement of what in 3 LBBs. The vector system is far more straight forward with hexes than it is with the 3 LBB setup.
DeleteThere are two principles.
1) If you don't use thrust you will keep moving in the same direction indefinitely.
2) Where you move is defined by a future position marker placed. When you do move, you put your ship on that marker and move the marker in the same number of hex columns and rows in the same direction.
3) If you do use thrust you can shift the future position marker one hex by for every G rating your maneuver drive you have.
Because the focus is on a duel between two or more spaceships it is rare that you have to deal with a crazy amount of hexes.
And the last thing about Mayday: Absence of "terrain," like fighting in the Jovian system, there is no real reason to use the hex grid. All that matters is the relative G rating of their respective maneuver drives. If your opponent has a higher G rating they will get away from you. If you have a higher G rating you will close the range.
DeleteSo can just use a range band setup where each band equals 300,000 km. And remaining rules you need starts on page 5.
The issue with High Guard is that it is oriented towards Fleet combat. Mayday is oriented toward adventure class starship.
I've been slacking off blogging lately, but my other hobby is building and using Space Sims, and thus, I have a lot of experience with how spacecraft operate. As it turns out, while there are some situations where you have to do the match with the right instruments and a bunch of fuel, you can wing orbital maneuvers.
DeleteBut the rules are not the same as flying an aircraft and are not obvious.
I really need to write a post explaining this and how it can be used by players and referees. Using Mayday and High Guard as practical examples.
If Mayday is too much for you, I advise staying well clear of things like Ad Astra's Strike Vector or Saganami Island Tactical Simulator. I love my vector movement, but when you get into truly realistic vector change over time, fully 3D movement and ship facing (which matters a ton in the Honorverse), the need to balance heat generation with realistic restrictions on how to get rid if that heat - well, you are writing for the Project Rho readers, not your everyday gamer.
DeleteI think I need to first look at the original rules and see if I can understand vectors in my 50's!
Delete