Playing – RPGs Recently: Traveler

I’ve been lucky enough to squeeze in a few RPG sessions in October.

Traveler

A buddy has been running Traveler game about once a month this year. It’s a classic game, dating back to the late 1970s, and over time the core mechanics have remained pretty consistent. Roll 2d6 + Modifier + Skill Level vs TN#8 (or more for tougher things), repeat as needed. The gem of this system is the Life Path that determines your skills, starting assets, connections and enemies, and even the consequences of failure. The joke we made back in the 80s was that your PC could die even before the generation was done (though currently there are other options to that will allow a PC to at least finish). Our party has a wide range of space opera types – a noble as skilled in combat as in social skills, a hot shot naval pilot, a scientist / doctor, a wolf person rogue, a trusty engineer, and the guy who brought in the burnt out agent / hacker that has more in common with a cyberpunk game.

Character generation does take a bit, but it really paints a story. Our GM also encouraged us via a rule that might be optional – build up to two connections with the other PCs and take a skill level related to that. It’s a think I might try to bring into other skill focused games that favour team building like that. As far as character advancement, that’s going to be very different from the level based XP most gamers are used to. Downtime can be spent on improving skills, but it’s likely going to be mostly gaining a base proficiency in new skills than really improving any of the higher ranked ones depending on the amount of time available (most time comes from travelling between jump points).

The other path of advancement is money. This is something that gives me pause in most games, when a PC can buy their way to success via better equipment, advanced cyberware, and so on. I haven’t seen too much of that creep so far as we haven’t really been raking in the cash to date nor have we dug too deep into the hardware aspect of it, though we are now discussing upgrades to our current ship.

Am I having fun? You bet! Combat has been a minor part of our exploits so far, with investigation and skill challenges being the primary encounter types. It’s a system new to most of the table so it’s been an interesting learning curve. It’s also been super accessible as several bundles have come out in recently across numerous providers, various free PDFs of earlier editions and adventures on Drive Thru RPG, and a free Mongoose 2E Traveler PDF. The more recent editions have definitely improved their layout and editing, but from what I can tell, the mechanics are still largely compatible though the world building changed greatly depending on where you jumped on. I spent a fair amount of time trying to find the right Traveler handbooks, but from what I can tell, there are a few in the middle that got weird but most are interchangeable enough.