Traveller General

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>>47638259
Fuck yeah, Traveller

I am interested in Traveller, but I'm not sure if my players will be. How rules-lite is it, and what version should I start with?

>>47639640
>How rules-lite is it, and what version should I start with?
There are eight answers to the first question, based on how important the second question is to your group.

*In play* you'll find Mongoose, Classic, and T4 all pretty rules light, while MegaTraveller and TNE are combat crunchy, and the licensed trio are similar to their origins (GURPS, Hero, and D20, respectively). T5 CAN be run light, but it takes more work on the Ref's part to know which switches to flip and which to ignore.

Where most editions crank up the crunch is in the specialized areas of ship combat, trade and speculation (if you do the crunchy bits during play, which is not necessary), ship and vehicle design (several editions go deep on this one, others not so much) and setting building.

While there is a huge, and some would say limiting or "boring", setting provided, the tools to build your own from scratch (with a few baked in assumptions) are present in every edition, and knowing how to use those rules allows a Ref to deepen the default setting.

As an example, my group was on our current campaign's fifth session before the Ref decided where we were on the map, as we were tucked away on some backwater moon instead of the mainworld. You can do that to every system within reach as your players decide to visit (or are dragged round) and play for months in just a few systems.

>>47640142
>There are eight answers to the first question, based on how important the second question is to your group.
Or, y'know, the other way around...

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>>47639640
The game does use an initially cryptic shorthand for describing planets and the systems around them. The GURPS version ignored that and used a longhand description, the side effect of which was that their sector books were much larger.

>>47640224
Zhdant's planetary shorthand (called a Universal World Profile, or UWP) is listed above the map as A6547C8-F.
In order, those letters and numbers are
Class of Starport ('A' means they build starships)
World size in 1000s of miles diameter (Earth is an 8, Mars 4, Luna 2; Zhdant is 6,000 miles across)
Atmosphere (5 is "Thin, Breathable", or the equivalent of high in the Andes or Himalayas; the top of Everest would be a 3, Mars is a 1, Earth at sea level is a 6)
Hydrographic coverage in 10% increments. Earth is an 8.
Population in orders of magnitude. Zhdant at 7 has tens of millions of inhabitants. Earth is currently a 9 and closing in on 10, which would be represented here as 'A'.
Government Type. Earth is currently a 7, which is the code for "no unified world government". Zhdant is a Charismatic Oligarchy.
Law Level. An 8 means you don't walk around brandishing a weapon unless your job calls for it. Law Level also represents the roll your visiting PCs need to make to keep from being harassed by the local cops on general principals.
After the dash is Tech Level. F, or 15, is the default setting's general maximum.

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Mapping of space is done flat for sanity, and at a scale equal to the ability of the FTL drives of the setting (one of those baked in assumptions).

Here is a small chunk of the default setting. As noted above, you could potentially play for a long time on just this small patch. The worlds vary from watery and important worlds with billions in the system to backwaters with a few thousand people total.