It’s immediately followed by a detailed section on animal encounters. The section on encounters with humans seems to have been written by someone who finds human interaction to be a distasteful, remote process best glossed over. The main downside is that it requires fairly complex systems that may seem intimidating at first glance. Although for aesthetic reasons I’m personally not a huge fan of procedurally created content, the idea of using it in a tabletop roleplaying game resonates. Instead, the procedural exploration system allows for randomly creating worlds and connections between. A person’s personal wealth greatly impacts travel comfort. There’s a Psionics Institute and people with psionic ability are reviled. The game doesn’t really feature a setting, although some details may be extrapolated from how different systems are described. Indeed, Traveller is explicitly designed to accommodate solo play. This is a fun idea, like a mini-game for solo players inside the bigger Traveller experience.
Indeed, if your initial stats are weak, the book actually recommends making lethal choices so you can start over. You accumulate experience, grow older, gain rank and may even die.
Instead of rolling stats or spending points you take your character through a career path. Traveller’s most famous system is character creation. Indeed, it’s amazing to think that this game was published just a few years after roleplaying games came into existence. These systems are extremely interesting and feel innovative even now. It’s based on the idea of procedurally created content, both in terms of character creation and exploration. At one point, you’re required to calculate a square root.ĭespite having unusually complex maths, I don’t think Traveller is needlessly complicated.
TRAVELLER RPG VIDEO GAME SERIES
Traveller is the only roleplaying game I’ve ever seen that uses the hexadecimal system, even if only for a cosmetic method of expressing character traits as a series of digits. However, I don’t hold this against Traveller. Reading the books, I felt that I wasn’t included in the game’s target audience because I’m not mathematically inclined enough. The game is clearly meant for a mathematically minded player. At one point, we’re told that if a player uses an electronic calculator, the character should also be made to buy one in-game. This is typical of early games but makes it a strange exercise to try to decipher the kind of game culture that works best for Traveller. The original 1977 Traveller boxed set contains three books, none of which really explains what play concretely looks like. The characters are adventurers who can engage in trade, go to new worlds, chart territory and so on. Traveller is a hard science fiction game set in a far future of space travel and exploration. It’s referred to so often in game design discussions that I felt I had to read it. My reading project is already in the Nineties, but there was one Seventies game that I originally skipped that I wanted to return to: Traveller, from 1977. The cover of the original 1977 Traveller boxed set. Selection criteria is whatever I find interesting. I started to feel that I didn’t know roleplaying games well enough so I came up with the plan to read a roleplaying game corebook for every year they have been published.