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RPG Review - Traveller
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In this episode, Mark and Ben talk about Traveller. Its a system whose origins lie in the fateful summer of 1977 when another huge science fiction release (Star Wars) ensured it would gain instant traction with people hungry to embrace the stars. After several iterations, today's line of books is published by Mongoose publishing with great art, lots of technical details, and a wide range of adventures and sourcebooks. So, join us for a review of the highs and the lows, and if you've got a group of science-fiction enthusiasts at your table, we might be able to help you figure out if you want to give Traveller a try.
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Transcript
Introduction and Welcome
00:00:05
Speaker
Now basically, the only new principle involved is that instead of power being generated by the relative motion of conductors and fluxes, it's produced by the modial interaction of magnetoreluctance and capacitive diractance.
00:00:17
Speaker
The original machine had a base plate of prefamulated amulite, surmounted by a malleable logarithmic casing in such a way that the two sperving bearings were in a direct line with a panometric fan.
00:00:29
Speaker
The lineup consisted simply of six hydrocoptic Marzal veins, so fitted to the ambifacient lunar wane shaft that side fumbling was effectively prevented. The main winding was of the normal Lotus O deltoid type placed in panendermic semi-boloid slots.
00:00:46
Speaker
Come get your tune-up. It's time for your tune-up. Your game needs a tune-up.
00:01:11
Speaker
everybody, welcome back to Tabletop Tune Up. Mark, I gotta give you credit for what is a really awesome beat there. What a great bit of music. Yeah, that that one turned out really fun.
00:01:23
Speaker
And let's just talk about that for just a moment because we're kind of running to the end of our music. And it's not that there's not more music out there, guys. Like there's a lot out there. I could do this for days, like Steve Rogers.
00:01:36
Speaker
However, my bank account can't, and I'm not going to pay for Suno anymore. All right. we're going to see some old tracks coming back. Yes, that' that that is correct.
00:01:49
Speaker
That'll be fun. I it look in fairness, I think this 46 episodes in this point. and Good heavens, man. We've had unique music for all of those. i think we've got a pretty good library. So I'm excited to see ah what stuff we we pair up with what intro clips. And speaking intro clips, I don't know where you found that intro clip, but what what was that even?
00:02:13
Speaker
i There is a, I don't know. I'll to send you a video of it or something. It's just some guy going on for good, I think five or six minutes of just absolute gibberish,
00:02:25
Speaker
Technical jargon. Technobabble. Technobabble. And it makes no sense. Do you even know what he was talking about? Like, is he talking about like ah a vehicle or a piece of machinery or? I think he's literally, well, he's standing in front of a, like a, some sort of big technical device.
00:02:42
Speaker
And he's acting as though he's talking about this device, but I think he's just talking about nonsense. Wow. Well, We'll never know because we have no idea what that device is.
00:02:54
Speaker
and the segue here is that that's a little bit how I feel about this game we're going to be reviewing today. Oh my gosh. All right. Yeah, let's get to it. Let's get
Review of Traveler RPG Begins
00:03:01
Speaker
to it. Hey, everybody. So this week we are going to do a review of Traveler.
00:03:06
Speaker
ah Traveler is a storied game. It has been around for a long time, actually. ah Here's a little bit of interesting trivia about Traveler. Traveler was released the same year that Star Wars israel was released.
00:03:19
Speaker
And basically within a couple months, this is 1977. And so if you ever wondered what would be like the perfect thing To help you get your home RPG game turned into a blockbuster ah RPG industry hit.
00:03:36
Speaker
Well, guess what? If you can get George Lucas to release a brand new science fiction epic, like within, you know, a couple months of the release of your game, that's about what it takes. And Traveler benefited greatly from Star Wars.
00:03:47
Speaker
For some reason in my mind, I always thought it was a Steve Jackson property or something like that. He was involved with it, I think. I'd have to go back and check. But there's been a GURPS traveler option for people that are into Steve Jackson's games.
00:04:02
Speaker
We should talk about GURPS one of these days, too. Oh, man. let's Let's make a character in GURPS. It'll take us a good couple days. Yeah. Oh, boy. All right. Well, we'll have to to spend some time with that. But today we're going to talk Traveler.
00:04:17
Speaker
And ah Traveler has, over the years, since 1977, had a lot of different incarnations. It's had yeah five full versions. the Essentially, the the sort of the godfather of it, the Gary Gygax, if you will, of Traveler is a guy named Mark Miller.
00:04:30
Speaker
And I believe Traveler is kind of a UK phenomenon. I think that's where he's from. And he has basically shepherded a lot of the ah production of this. Although over time, rights have gone to different companies.
00:04:41
Speaker
There's been different versions. The current people that are producing the most stuff and I think have all the copyrights these days is Mongoose Publishing. And the game that we played, you've probably, if you're a longtime listener of the podcast, you've heard us talking about a traveler game we were running a little while ago.
00:04:59
Speaker
We wrapped up our first major story arc of that. And that's essentially what's set our expectations for this game. We've been playing that in the Mongoose second edition Traveler.
00:05:11
Speaker
And ah it's been I think it's been a great experience. But as we do, we're going to talk about the high points, the low points, and ah any kind of further insights or things that we'd recommend if you want to take this game on.
Aesthetics and Theme of Traveler
00:05:23
Speaker
ah Mark, why don't we start there? What are what are some of the parts you liked? Well, there's a few things. And I'll start with i'll start with the aesthetics. the The books are great.
00:05:34
Speaker
yeah they They get you excited to play. And they got everything you want out of a you know a space saga book. you know It's got these cool ships, all of which you could be you know captain of.
00:05:48
Speaker
There's all sorts of mech things you can get. and... you know guns and All sorts of cool stuff. and um So it kind of hits the tropes well with sci-fi.
00:06:00
Speaker
Yeah, it really does kind of hit those tropes. And hits them well. And it gets you kind of it draws you in and makes you want to play a game. In a very similar way that we talked about how riffs would draw you in with their really cool presentation.
00:06:14
Speaker
Traver does a great job of just making this look exciting. Yeah. I think that one of the most important things any game's going to do, and I think if you if you really nail this, like, maybe somebody will convince me otherwise, but I think the worst you're ever going to do, you know, as a grade is going to be a B. you know what I mean?
00:06:34
Speaker
Like, if your game can really inspire imagination, people are really excited they want to play it because they saw that art, they saw that great writing, your system could be middling to dreck, and people would still give it a go.
00:06:46
Speaker
But one thing to do, Will, I'll say this too, and They know their audience. So they're making artwork that appeals to what people want out of that game.
00:06:58
Speaker
So it's very different than say like, I could pick up maybe like some, like the older versions of Dungeons and Dragons. And I look at the artwork, particularly i'll we'll say Pathfinder because, you know, they get these amazing covers. I like to use Pathfinder because I think their covers are some of the best in the business.
00:07:15
Speaker
Those get you viscerally excited to play that game. Travelers are a little different. You got to be excited about science fiction and you'll look at that and you'll get excited.
00:07:27
Speaker
Yeah. It's not going to appeal to everybody. Now that's interesting. So we've drawn this distinction before, and I mean, it's not like we're the originators of this, but people have observed the difference between science fiction and science fantasy. And so when you think about like, say science fiction, you're thinking about stuff like the expanse science fantasy, of the go-to example would be like star Wars where, you know, it's using space travel and it's using, you know, psionics and interesting mystical powers and stuff like that, but robots and things, but it really is kind of like a a fantasy. Yeah.
00:07:55
Speaker
it This is definitely little more science fiction in the you know classic sense, not in the fantasy sense. Right. So the artwork is a little bit more crisp. It's a little bit more illustrative is not the word I'm looking for. Well, some of it's more like a technical illustration as to like a painting. Yeah, it's exactly what was thinking of.
00:08:13
Speaker
Yeah, a technical manual. So it has that kind of aesthetic to it. And that's not good for everybody, but it's good for the audience of this game. So they know their audience. Yeah.
Flexible Gameplay in Traveler
00:08:25
Speaker
Yeah, so I think science fiction is kind of a core thing here that, that and we've said this before, when you're thinking about systems, the system you want for your game is the one that's built around the tropes and the ideas in that setting.
00:08:36
Speaker
And so here in Traveler, you're going to find a lot of focus on technology and engineering and things like that. You're going to be able to basically make any kind of vehicle you want to be in. If you want to make them, you can make robots, you can make all kinds of stuff.
00:08:50
Speaker
They've also got Psyonix. They've got very large universe. There's actually like a traveler map website that's detailed but every system and sector they've come up with and all of the different universal world profiles and all the different details of this thing for like 20 years and however many years it's been, 40 guess.
00:09:11
Speaker
The community is insane. Like they've got so much detail and backstory around all this stuff. So there's a lot of really interesting, fascinating stuff you can do. The kinds of games you can play can vary as well. So just like as in D&D, you could play games that were urban adventures that were focused on intrigues and back alleys. and You could also play exploration adventures on the frontiers and you could come up with with all kinds of different play paradigms.
00:09:36
Speaker
Here, you can play games science fiction adventures that are like Star Trek, kind of, where you're doing exploration. You can play small groups that have their own little ship that they're trying to keep the mortgage paid and the fuel tanks full, kind of Firefly style.
00:09:53
Speaker
There's all kinds of different choices you have in the science fiction genre you can play with here. And folks, there's a lot of there's a lot of material out there. There's a lot of books, which which is good. if you're yeah in a certain sense, it's really good because if you're running games, you want to be able to expand your ah you know you're skills as a GM and you need places to go.
00:10:17
Speaker
and these books will give you a lot of that stuff that you could kind of expand into your your repertoire of skills for this game. And some games have great systems, but they just don't have a lot of books to back it up.
00:10:31
Speaker
I mentioned this one because we love this game a lot was that prowlers and paragons, um, which we really loved the downside of that game was that there just wasn't a lot of like material for us to draw upon to make adventures.
00:10:47
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Well, remember you mentioned even with palladium, for example, you said you didn't find there was an FGM support for that. Um, at the time. No, they they put out so many books for players to make characters and stuff.
00:10:59
Speaker
They just simply did not put out enough stuff just for GMs. Yep. The ratio should be pretty good. They should be a pretty strong ratio one way or the other, in my opinion.
Character Creation Controversies
00:11:10
Speaker
Yeah. And in, in Traveler, I think what's interesting about this is that the approach where you're kind of engineering everything is, is a really interesting kind of way to go because then it kind of doesn't matter if it's players or GMs, they've all kind of got the same rules for how the universe works and stuff like that.
00:11:26
Speaker
um Speaking of interesting things you can engineer, you can also engineer your character's origin story to some extent. They've got this really fascinating life path creation thing that I've found has been, I'll say the people I've introduced that to, it's been a very mixed bag because players these days, I think really expect to have a lot of authorship control over their character's origin story. And Life path creation is essentially i'm going to roll randomly and we'll see what career I can get. I can try for things, but I might not get there.
00:11:57
Speaker
I might want to have ah an experience as a naval officer, but maybe I end up in prison or I end up doing something else. This is probably my first big knock on this game.
00:12:07
Speaker
Okay. ah Is I didn't care for that, um that career path thing. And it wasn't too bad for the character I made. He turned out okay. I just saw one of other players role and get Every role got him more frustrated.
00:12:24
Speaker
And he he eventually, at the end of that session, he it was like a four-time college dropout. was It was just ridiculous. The backstory was just ridiculous.
00:12:36
Speaker
ridiculous. And it was, it was not a character that would inspire any stories. It just didn't turn out very good. And it was just random dice and it works for some people. And for some people, it just was misery.
00:12:49
Speaker
Yeah. There's a couple of interesting notes on this because it's a very famous part of travelers game system, early editions of it. You can actually die in character creation. It could be the case that you got killed as part of your Navy career, for example,
00:13:02
Speaker
And so that was one of those things that people kind of joked about. was like, it's the only game you play where you die in character creation. That is just horrible. Well, and also from these frustrations you're talking about, the other thing to say is this is an optional system.
00:13:17
Speaker
So they do have ways of of just saying like, I want to have that kind of background from that kind of home world or whatever. And to have that kind of career. And then you basically pick those skills and you get started. that That is a really – I'm glad that's optional.
00:13:31
Speaker
In some ways, I wish we'd taken that option. I think we did eventually, didn't we? I think we did eventually. I think one of the players was is pretty were upset about it. which is I think when we saw the level of stress it was causing, we decided to yeah um take the other route.
00:13:45
Speaker
Nobody wants to play a character. you know in your mind you've you've got In your mind, you're going to build great, you know, scientist or thinker and you end up with a college dropout and you're just like, what am I even doing here? what um What's going on here?
00:14:03
Speaker
What happened? I could have been making it through bootcamp, you know? Um, and this, this isn't a problem with just this game. I mean, this, this is something we encountered with palladium when we were, as we talked in our review of the palladium games, go back and listen guys.
00:14:17
Speaker
Um, We had kind of talked about how these random backstory generations can can have wildly different experiences between players at the same at the same table, which then could have wildly different like party members in the group, some that are completely more powerful than others.
00:14:36
Speaker
And I can see that being a problem with this character creation method as it's presented. Well, so I think in the high points, we'd give it a lot of interesting points for you know having a really expansive community supporting it. I think we give it points for having a really great product line. I think we give it points for really capturing a lot of the tropes and the kind of the feel of science fiction.
Task Resolution System Explained
00:15:03
Speaker
ah For people that didn't know, this is a 2D6 based task resolution system. So typically what's going to happen you're going to roll you're going to add some modifiers for an attribute or a skill or both, and then you'll resolve whatever that is.
00:15:15
Speaker
We didn't, i think, full disclosure, we didn't in our game cover everything in the system. We got through a lot of stuff, but we didn't, for example, do much in the way of space combat, and we didn't do much in the way of psionics.
00:15:28
Speaker
And we actually didn't play in the third Imperium setting that is kind of the house setting for Traveler. It's a far future, maybe somewhere on the year 5000, something like that. We played instead.
00:15:39
Speaker
the 2380 game, which is ah essentially set in the first moments of humanity's steps out into the stars. um Anybody who's interested in that, the I actually as a GM really enjoyed the Project Byron supplement for 2380.
00:15:55
Speaker
three hundred a d But this is a thing that that's got some good parts and some bad parts in the sense that I think it was really, really amazingly well written. It's actually an expansion of an earlier ah module that comes from earlier editions of the 2380 system because it's not the first time they've done that.
00:16:12
Speaker
I think they wrote a really good thing, but I don't think they ever ran it. Well, that's interesting. and This is kind of where I think the the the the critical part of my review of that goes is just, I think it was a very heady kind of 2001 or Star Trek, the motion picture was kind of how I thought of it, right? There's a lot of really interesting big idea moments, but Sometimes your players, a lot of times your players are expecting something that's a little more Rathacon. You know what i mean? They're expecting villains.
00:16:41
Speaker
Hey, GMs out there, you got you got those big moments, those big type of reveals and those big heavy moments. Those come on the backbone of a lot of other work that comes before it.
00:16:55
Speaker
You don't just get those for free. You have to earn those with ah character development. You have to build a bunch of little moments before that. You don't just get that big emotional moment and expect players to to fall in line.
00:17:12
Speaker
And I think that's maybe a little bit what what this module Yeah. yeah there's a lot of those moments but we're not reviewing a module we're reviewing the system so yeah i do want to talk about nothing i really liked about yeah about this game i liked the chain skills the task yeah can you describe those a little bit for for the audience Yeah, so they have what they call a a task chain resolution system.
00:17:40
Speaker
Now this is interesting. So if you' if you're used to playing D&D or a lot of other games really, they might have like a helping system, right? Where if gonna do something, Mark wants to help me, he'll roll a skill or he'll roll something and then I'll get a little bump or bonus to my task. And then that's kind of where it stops.
00:17:56
Speaker
In Traveler, you can actually chain this through multiple different people and whether or not they succeed or fail isn't a reflection of whether or not you are going to succeed or fail.
00:18:08
Speaker
What it does is it actually creates a modifier for you. So let's say that Mark and some other player are, and I am all, we're all going to try to start a nuclear reactor. And maybe Mark needs to go and make sure that the coolant is activated. And maybe the other guy needs to go and make sure that the fuel rods are being withdrawn. And maybe I need to monitor something at a control station.
00:18:30
Speaker
And so we would all have to do our respective tasks. And this is, by the way, a classic kind of trope of science fiction. You see this kind of stuff all the time when, you know, Captain Kirk is up on the bridge giving an order for this person so that the other person can do something here.
00:18:47
Speaker
So, yeah, this is not an outside the scope of science fiction. Go ahead, Ben. Yeah, yeah. So essentially what happens is that each person prior to the person who's going to make the final role, the role that determines whether or not the task succeeds or fails, every prior person is basically creating a modifier for the next person's role.
00:19:04
Speaker
So that third player we were talking about a moment ago, they make their role. And then if they succeed or fail, that margin gives Mark, let's say, a modifier to whether or not his effort to manage the coolant, let's say, will succeed or fail. And then when Mark rolls that,
00:19:21
Speaker
that will then modify my final effort to activate the reactor, let's say. And so it can create a cascading effect of very difficult roles or very good or bad.
00:19:32
Speaker
But what's interesting is it's recoverable. So if that first person we talked about, if they had a bad role, Mark might still be able to pull it out and recover because he's a really good nuclear engineer or something. Yeah. So really interesting way to put all that together. And what's great about this at the table is that everybody's leaning in and really invest in each other's roles much more so than that solo lock pick role in D and D or something like that nature, you know,
00:19:59
Speaker
everybody's leaned in. I thought that was a fantastic way they they handled it. ah I would say one thing that we had talked about, and I think you kind of adjusted and tweaked a little bit later in the game, is to be very clear about what you want from a result from that role.
00:20:17
Speaker
When we first started playing, it was like, what was the DC in the Dungeons & Dragons terms? What was the difficulty of that role? It's important all GMs out there, it is important to let the players know what the difficulty of whatever role you're having them do is so that they're not just floating out there and you're like having to make a decision of like, think that made it or like, yeah, then it gets because arbitrary that the GM wants this to happen or doesn't want it to happen.
00:20:47
Speaker
Yeah, in fairness, I'll say this is something that I probably should have been better at when we started the game. And what would tend to happen a lot with me was I'd think, OK, well, I want to see X result. And I would think, OK, that's probably like an average difficulty role.
00:21:00
Speaker
But then I didn't sort of tell people, okay, that's an average difficulty role you gotta make to be successful. I might have kind of like a ah sense that like, if they fell short, I might give them a little less information or if they, you know, did a really good high role, maybe I'd give him a little bit more information, but ah Mark, you're right. Like the thing you gotta do is give people that anchor point that says, this is what success looks like.
00:21:21
Speaker
But that's not a traveler. That's a me problem, though. that's not yeah That's not a traveler problem, guys. That's just that's just something as gen we all have to do. And that's something that I don't do all the time either.
00:21:32
Speaker
So just newsflash for everybody out there who's running the game. Pro tip. Pro tip. Make sure you have those difficulty numbers set so that players know what they're trying to reach. They need to know.
00:21:46
Speaker
Very good. Okay, Mark. I feel like we've held this off long enough. Give us the bad news.
Challenges in Managing Game Information
00:21:51
Speaker
What is that you found challenging about Traveler? Okay. So you, you really liked this game. There's no doubt about it. I, I, I, thought it was a lot of, ah there was just a lot of talking and it felt like, um,
00:22:09
Speaker
There was a lot of techno babble. And also, there was so much stuff in those books that it was very difficult to play online. Like, if you had all the books out there and you could kind of like, you know, pass it across the table, this is the ship, I think it would have been a different experience.
00:22:27
Speaker
We played virtually. This game was really tough to play virtually um because of some of that. I thought the character creation, i really... Let me actually, let me, let me stay with that point just for a moment. It's, it's, in a certain sense, it's very information intensive is I think a different way of putting your point.
00:22:45
Speaker
It was something where you, to your point, like we did have a lot of material around, I'd be opening three and four books every time I'm running the game. Yes. You know, and I had, I had tabs of PDFs open.
00:22:56
Speaker
Yeah. And I couldn't keep track of it all. like Like the items, like your character would have all these different items on them and they were on page 343. And then this item was on page 121. And this item was another book on page 210.
00:23:13
Speaker
yeah Like it was, the stuff was all over the place and I could not keep track of it. And it was frustrating because of that. Like every time I came to to do something, I had to go find that part of the book.
00:23:25
Speaker
Um, organization is key in this game. i was not organized. yeah I'm not an organized person by nature. So this was a, this was a tough haul for me.
00:23:39
Speaker
Um, Yeah. I do think that not every group is going to be like that. And we could say, oh, that's the player's fault. That's fine. And that's fine. And so our first rule with any game is like everything depends on your group and whether or not they're into it.
00:23:51
Speaker
We did have players that were into it too. But there's other games where everything is on your character sheet. That's true. Everything you need to know is on one sheet. we We talked, we are playing ah Broken Compass, which we'll talk about in the future.
00:24:04
Speaker
Everything you need to know about that game is on one sheet. And I love that about it. Yeah. the excitement To me, that is an important aspect of a game is that I'm not spending time looking through books because if I'm looking through books, I'm not paying attention to what the other players are doing.
00:24:21
Speaker
And I had to look through the books way too much in this game. Yeah. I, you know, your point earlier about kind of knowing your audience, I definitely think that traveler's audience is one that is heavy with the math and engineering crowd.
00:24:33
Speaker
You know Like people who look at the, at the science and they look at the astronomy and the, you know, the physics and the engineering and all those different kinds of disciplines. And these are people that really want to see the detail. They really want to kind of quote unquote, get things right.
00:24:51
Speaker
And so I think a lot of the, um, consistency that they want to create in all those books and across all those books. I mean, this is what people talk about when I've seen reviews from players and, you know, when they have, when the community has a problem with a book that, that Mongoose puts out, the problem is,
00:25:09
Speaker
hey, I noticed you published this the ship. And when I tried to use the rules to create that same ship to replicate that ship, it didn't come out with the same math. And I didn't, you know, the tonnage was off or something.
00:25:20
Speaker
And you're like, wow, that's a lot of homework. All right, Cliff Clayton, thank you. Yeah. So if you don't have a group that's kind of got some of that DNA, some of that, you know, stem in them, then this might be a little bit of a haul.
00:25:33
Speaker
And we had some in our group that had that DNA. And I got to say, he loved it. He had a great time. And he loved this game. He loved everything about it. So this is a me problem.
00:25:46
Speaker
Well, I want to come back to this other point you made about it being a lot of kind of talking. And I think that's another kind That's not a traveler thing though. Okay. And I don't have a problem with the talking too much. You think that was more the module? Yeah.
00:26:00
Speaker
I think you're a little bit more of the module. I don't want to throw this module under the bus because I'm sure some writer was doing his best. and I talked to him online, actually, on the Traveler's ah Discord.
00:26:11
Speaker
It seemed like a very wonderful guy. and i flattering I think it's a good module. and and Let me tell you, to my point also, Ben, I've ran modules and I've run them like I've run them to the ground too. yeah So like, and it wasn't that you ran to the ground. I'm not saying that.
00:26:24
Speaker
I'm just saying that like running modules is difficult as it is. And sometimes they don't translate well. Sometimes they do. And sometimes it's the audience. There's so many things that make, a game and adventure work for some people and not for another.
00:26:38
Speaker
But I would say my biggest, I've, I have one other beef with the game, yeah but that was my one. My first beef was really was the fact that I was flipping through books way too much.
00:26:49
Speaker
Too information. at me Got it. Okay.
Narrative Tension in Sci-Fi Settings
00:26:51
Speaker
um Number two, and this is a problem with a lot of science fiction games. You get into this, these traps of science fiction, and this is true for tv shows.
00:27:03
Speaker
Okay. Like, I'll give you an example. In Star Trek, they teleport down all these things. And one of the movies, I think it's like the Kahn, one of the New Warrior ones with Kahn.
00:27:16
Speaker
And they're chasing this guy, Kahn, through the city. And they keep teleporting people in to go chase after him. But they always teleport them in behind them as they're running.
00:27:27
Speaker
And I'm like, first of all, can't they just teleport him up? into the ship and they capture him. Number one. Of course they can, but assume they can't do that.
00:27:37
Speaker
Why can't they just teleport the security team ahead of the guy who's running and they're right there to catch him? This kind of stuff is what happens in the traveler game.
00:27:49
Speaker
Okay. We have things like this happen all the time. i think we have teleporters in traveler, but but like lay it out here. What are you talking about There are solutions for science fiction problems that are science fiction related within the within the rule set, but you don't use them or can't use them because as a GM, you need to have a scene.
00:28:09
Speaker
ah Example might be, we had this ship on the Byron. We have all these drones. We can send the drones in. Why are we even sending people in? yeah I mean, is it exciting to have drones in there?
00:28:22
Speaker
No, it's not. It's not. Could they do the job? Yes, they absolutely 100% could do the job. Reference people. This is like, hey, if you come across another alien ship in space where there's dangers in there, you don't need to go in there like actual science fiction, adventure movie, literature type people. You can just send in. They had in this book, they had all kinds of like drones that were capable of running around and doing all that stuff for you that are what the size of a dog maybe so what are we doing to serve the story and to serve the module we're putting on our gear and going into the ship when we really know that we could send drones in to do it interesting those are the kind of things that like we saw multiple times during the course of traveler you have to kind of make those decisions as a table and decide that this is more cinematic
00:29:08
Speaker
I do think that one of the things about Traveler is that it has, broadly speaking, a similar kind of sci-fi aesthetic that Star Wars has. mean, that analogy we made at the beginning of the episode was apt. Star Trek.
00:29:25
Speaker
and No, no, I'm saying Star Wars. what i mean What I mean by that is that, like, you don't, I don't think I've seen, i could be wrong about this. haven't, like, read every book. But, like, I don't think I've seen the kind of, like, super sophisticated internet, or there's no faster than like communication. That's actually one of the kind of core principles in traveler.
00:29:43
Speaker
There's certain things that you kind of look at and you're like, well, this is in the same sense that star Wars is kind of like stuck in a seventies era technology where you still kind of to go places and do things. You can't, you don't kind of operate remotely in the same way.
00:29:56
Speaker
there's There's all kinds of ways that we The technology is advanced since the 70s and a lot of the game is kind of built around. And frankly, a lot of sci-fi experiences are built around these older kinds of science fiction assumptions. So, yeah, it's a there's kind of these interesting limitations that you point out that are like, oh, you've got to kind of roll with it. That's kind of the nature of the tech in this space, I guess.
00:30:17
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. It'd be very difficult from a campaign design point to cover all those types of possibilities. It's a lot easier in a fantasy game, you know, like an old sword and sorcery game because technology just technology just changes how we approach problems.
00:30:38
Speaker
There's a lot more limitations in a fantasy game that can kind of keep you as a GM. You can kind of keep the players and everything controlled a little easier. Traveler is a different beast altogether.
1970s Sci-Fi Assumptions in Game Design
00:30:48
Speaker
And you have to be really on your feet as a GM to kind of, I think, to run that game.
00:30:53
Speaker
Here's what I'll say is I think a lot of that will depend on, to your point earlier, the extent to which you are a science fiction nerd. There's a lot of those STEM types that we talked about earlier, the people that are super into the science and the technology and the engineering and who are going to obviously think about that kind of stuff in their spare time. They're going have those kinds of problems figured out. I'll give you an example from the module we played, right? You remember there's this one part where there's radio frequency communication coming in from an alien and they are giving it to us ah with a whole bunch of like scientific encryption around like wavelengths that have to do with like what's called the water hole, I guess. It's like this wavelength where moisture is that indicates life and that's supposed to indicate like, oh, there's intelligence here.
00:31:44
Speaker
And That's one of those things that like our science friend was like, oh, that's so cool. And we were like, I literally have no idea what that is. So I do think that you're you're you're definitely on to something. I think if you're kind of a standard D&D player, standard D&D group, and you you hop into this game, like you're going to have to start really rethinking a lot of the basic assumptions around what kinds of problems you're going to find, how you solve them, what kinds of expectations you should have when you run around space or other planets or whatever.
00:32:14
Speaker
It's also a game where if you have players at your table that are really smart about this kind of stuff, they could make your life very miserable if if you're not smart. Like, Sean, God bless you.
00:32:25
Speaker
Your brain is much, much bigger than mine. And think you were keeping up with them well, Ben, I got to say. But, like, it's it's not an easy task. Well, you guys, that is everything I think we could tell you about Traveler. i recommend it.
00:32:42
Speaker
I think it's fun. But I do think ah to the point of our conversation at several points here. You really do need to think through your science fiction assumptions and and what kind of group you have and if they're going to like that too.
00:32:53
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Check in with the players. If they're really into that science fiction stuff, they might just love it. And i there's definitely a lot of people out there like that, that just um just gravitate to that kind of crunchy, crunchy science fiction.
00:33:08
Speaker
And this is the game for them. Probably not for me. All right. Good to know. I think I'll play it again. I'm going to be curious, Mark, if we can flex this into something that's a little bit more adventure-y than maybe some of the work we did in the earlier game. but it's It's strange because my my favorite show of all time is like on TV is The Expanse.
00:33:34
Speaker
Yeah. And so I definitely love science fiction. I always get wowed when I watch some of the the good science fiction shows of how brilliant they act in certain situations. Like, oh, that's really cool. you know Because that's probably just not me.
00:33:49
Speaker
yeah But I enjoy
Conclusion and Recommendations
00:33:51
Speaker
it. um And I probably would enjoy it in in certain game settings. I don't know if Traveler the game, though. Well, we definitely learned a lot.
00:33:59
Speaker
Again, I think I'll recommend it if you've got the right kind of group for it. And i think there's so much there to draw on that I think you can play a lot of different kinds of games and have a great time with it. So that's our review of Traveler.
00:34:11
Speaker
I don't think we're going to do a tune-up this week. We're running a little long, but yeahp we will look forward to bringing you more tabletop tune-up a couple weeks from now. Until then, keep those dice rolling.
00:34:59
Speaker
We'll show you
00:35:38
Speaker
Level up your fun to know Your quest has now begun to know You'll show you how it works
00:36:17
Speaker
To me
00:36:57
Speaker
Come get your tune-up It's time for your tune-up Your game needs a tune-up Come get your tune-up