If for no more than an indulgence of time in my favourite RPG, I am enjoying the exploration of Marc Miller’s Traveller 5, an edition that is seen by many as more toolkit than a ready to play game. I am in no way through all the sub-systems, many of which lie tantalisingly out of immediate cognitive capacity, but the part familiar retelling of many aspects of Traveller play have bathed me in a warm summer’s glow of long memories.
As much as the theoretical appeals, I’m really interested in seeing if this heavyweight can deliver a game that I’d like to run. The early indications are good. Character generation and core tasks are both familiar while intriguingly recast in a somewhat different expression. Familiar character operations, including trade, seem fine and playable. Worlds and star systems are created with good detail and can be generated in a moment using tools from the Traveller Map site that uses T5 as its source. I won’t really know how T5 plays until I take the plunge, with willing or unwitting volunteers, to test the game in action.
I’m an old lag, with good systemic instincts. Although wrapped in good detail, I have wondered if the T5 personal and starship combat sections would actually translate well to exciting play. The starship system covers smaller ‘Adventure Class Ships’ (ACS) with size up to 2400 tons. This is fair enough. as ships over a certain scale start to push the relevance of individual characters to the side. A T5 starship, even a more approachably sized one, has a significant amount of detail in the familiar types of sections. Most noticeably, a ship will have a number of compartments identified, numerically increasing with scale, that effectively provide hit locations to note what has been damaged inflicted. However, the container section on the combat cards don’t match the suggested dice range. Also a D6-D6 ‘Flux’ distribution brings its own probability curve effects that are not acknowledged in the game. Put a component at location zero and that is going to get hit much more frequently. There is little guidance on where you place components on the combat chart.
Starship combat tasks are particularly driven by the technology, with difficulty dice ascending with range and Task Numbers combining Tech Level, possibly twice, unless an individual gunner is outstanding. I decided to take these observations to the T5 experts at the T5 thread on the Traveller Discord. These folk have been very helpful, and form a cadre who love this version and actually play it! The consensus of actual play is to narrate outcomes rather than slavishly following the rule sequence. This also applies to some of the ship design elements. I can see the wisdom of this, though I want my systems to drive these narratives.
Dog with a bone, I know that I am going to struggle with representing starships in T5. The level of detail, the lack of an automated ‘maker’, and the probably laboriously work to create bespoke combat cards with randomised compartments is pushing me away. I know, I hear you, my completist need for an approachable yet system driven level of detail is quite vexing. How often will this stuff come up in play? Just narrate it. Bah, not for me, and after nearly 900 pages of dense rules, I’m looking for something that I can use quickly enough to encourage me to run the game.
Image from Starship Geomorphs 2.0 by Robert Pearce, Pearce Design Studios LLC
So, what to do? I’m at a crossroads. I could just ditch all of T5 and return to a set that I already like. Both Mongoose Traveller and Cepheus Universal are perfectly good renditions of the Traveller game. I could instead draw large twitching chunks of T5 across and embed those ideas in Mongoose or Cepheus Universal. I think a lot of people do that. Maybe I’m just in too deep to do a runner? I think I’m going to try and stick with the T5 core and draw in workable ideas on vehicles, starships (especially) and personal combat from Cepheus Universal and make them T5 adjacent. It’ll be a bodge, but I already think a fairly seamless one. I note that current writers have produced simplifications to starship descriptions. Starships are fine in T5 and strongly detailed. This depth can be used as flavour without taking the system wholesale.
So, here is a blend of Cepheus Universal and T5, with a dramatic task profile:
To hit a target with starship weapons
Difficult(?) 3D < Dex or Int + Gunner +K
Mods
1 Range Band Over Weapon Optimum -2
2 Range Band Over Weapon Optimum -4
Individual Turret 0
3-Turret Group +2
6-Turret Group +3
Attacker’s ship one Tech Level higher/lower +1/-1
Attacker’s ship three Tech Levels higher/lower +2/-2
Attacker’s ship five or more Tech Levels higher/lower +3/-3
Capital ship forced to fight at Short range -2
Defensive fire against missiles
Difficult 3D < Dex or Int + Gunner +K
1d6+Flux missiles destroyed on a success.
Mods as above and
Torpedo -2
I can create any starship from small craft to Dreadnought using Cepheus Universal in 15 minutes.
I think this says something about me. I’m all for narration and vivid descriptions, but after nearly 900 pages of dense rules, I feel you need to have the game strongly support the narration mechanically. Rules light games may lean into narration more, but even then, with a smaller page count, the game can work and base our descriptions actually on something that the rules have given you.
I’m not done yet. With this decision out of the way, I can now delve yet deeper into the recesses of this intriguing version of Traveller.