Talk:Traveller (role-playing game)

Traveller in other media

Would it be worth mentioning the two video games, MegaTraveller 1: The Zhodani Conspiracy and MegaTraveller 2: Quest for the Ancients? Pseudo Intellectual 06:26, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

I was bold and decided: "yes", adding this section to the page. Resolution to this thread of the discussion achieved! Pseudo Intellectual 18:45, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

Traveller is supposedly the framework for the Firefly tv series by Joss Whedon. see http://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/13668/is-the-firefly-tv-series-based-on-joss-whedons-game-of-traveller 72.181.182.218 (talk) 06:37, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

That's an interesting article you linked to. If we could find a reliable source related to this, it would make a nice addition to the article. Rray (talk) 16:51, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

It's reliable enough for its purpose. It isn't intended as a reference to anything else, it simply is a laying out of the argument in favor of the proposition that Firefly is based on Traveller. As long as we note here that this is supposition and the reference presents the facts, it seems like we include the important information ("this is widely understood to be the most likely case, though for some reason the series creator has chosen to remain obscure about it") while also not actually endorsing it. The facts are available and relevant, they belong in the article. Whateley23 (talk) 02:23, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

Message board posts are not reliable sources. There is no reason to believe this isn't some fan theory with no validity. It absolutely doesn't belong in the article. oknazevad (talk) 02:45, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

greetings @Oknazevad: removing all of the changes was a step too far. there were legitimate changes in that set. —¿philoserf? (talk) 03:00, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

Redundant tags and removal of a key setting aspect based on an old spurious tag are not needed. oknazevad (talk) 03:41, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

I was interested in the replacement of the word three with the word more. I found that to be an improvement. it too got whipped away. —¿philoserf? (talk) 03:54, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

But I see you found that. I had a note to come back tomorrow when this was in the past. —¿philoserf? (talk) 03:55, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

Dying During Character Creation?

One of the tidbits about this game that I keep hearing from players of it (I've never played it myself) is that it was possible for your character to die during the creation process with the wrong dice rolls. To me, this sounds mildly hyperbolic, but I thought I'd ask after it. -Fuzzy 20:59, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Nope, quite true, and not exactly uncommon under the original rules. This does bring up the fact that the article really should have a section dealing with Traveller as an RPG, as opposed to an RPG setting. Rindis 22:15, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

It is almost certainly intended as a balancing factor. With the random and career-based character creation system, the player almost always has the choice of aborting the career so that the character can exit it and get started on adventuring, or continuing in the career for another period (of 4 years) so that he can gain more skills, and more "retirement bonuses" in the form of money, equipment and a pension. Thus there needs to be a deterrent against continuing in the career, and there are two (that I know of): Aging, which lowers physical and later also mental attributes (this can be mitigated with so-called "anagathic" drugs, but I don't know how difficult they are to get according to the character creation rules - obviously once you finish making characters and start playing, availability is up to the GM), and the possibility of dying (as far as I know, there is no possibility of being wounded or injured, e.g. so as to get a cybernetic implant, or starting the game with some part of you missing). --Peter Knutsen 15:01, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

As of MGT2, aging is still a factor but outright dying during character generation is no longer part of the primary character generation path laid out in the core rulebook. (It remains an optional rule, published in Traveller Companion.) Being injured - and, if the player wishes, getting implants to heal the injury (which costs money the character must repay, or be in debt at the end of generation) - is possible. Of course, the prior editions still exist, so it remains possible to use them and have a character die during generation. Winged Cat (talk) 19:01, 25 April 2021 (UTC)

From "Characters & Combat" (1981) page 10:

Survival: Each term of service involves some danger; during the term, a character must successfully throw his service's survival number to avoid death in the line of duty. Each service also has DMs which may apply. Failure to successfully achieve the survival throw results in death; a new character must be generated.

-Optional Rule: If the referee or player so indicates prior to character generation, then a failure of the survival roll can be converted to injury. The character is not dead, but instead is injured, and leaves the service (after recovery) having served only two years of the four year term. 2603:6010:1704:35F1:870:83DE:42E7:7367 (talk) 01:57, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

Traveller Wiki

I have set up a wiki just for traveller at Wikicities. I don't see that wikipedia is a place for all the minutae of traveller. Also I am trying to set up a Ship's Library type search resourse. Please feel free to come on over and add content. Dcorrin 19:49, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

I see that wiki no longer exists. However, Traveller now has a robust fan-maintained wiki at https://wiki.travellerrpg.com/ which has already been linked from this article. Winged Cat (talk) 18:57, 25 April 2021 (UTC)

Mark Harrison's Travellers

This currently resides here if someone wants to incorporate a link: http://www.2000ad.org/markus/travellers/ —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.154.240.195 (talk) 16:43, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Over detailed

Regarding this edit and use of Template:over detailed .. I don't edit war and won't revert, but the tag is not justified. It's hard to imagine an article about this game not containing a lot of detail about the game which happens to be fairly detailed. Compared with Featured article Dungeons and Dragons. The only thing one might say is the article is a kind of listy with too many bullet points but that's easily fixed just remove the '*' -- Green Cardamom (talk) 14:24, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

• The major concern is the 26k of purely in-universe game plot, which is over a third of the article (by both code size and length). I'll try to come up with a better way of flagging that. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) - talk 15:30, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
  • I've moved the tag down to the appropriate section. You're correct that the article is far too listy and prone to short sections, but that's more of a basic copyediting problem (and can be fixed without too many hard decisions on removing content). Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) - talk 21:11, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

Magic

Is there any sourcebooks with magic for this or is it pure scifi? Ranze (talk) 07:24, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

Good catch! Psionics is dealt with in the core rules. I'll add the note. Washi (talk) 20:14, 6 July 2016 (UTC)

Cepheus Engine?

I think CE is close enough to Traveller to warrant a mention. I'll put it under the "related rules" section. Washi (talk) 17:52, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

Album

Added back after edit warring to remove it from a sockpuppet. Album has as much right to be hear as any other spin offs (video game etc.) and this sort if thing is normal on a mixed media article like this for approved and licensed products. Primary connection trivia is a made up police by edit warring sockpuppets. Canterbury Tail talk 15:09, 28 February 2018 (UTC)

Ideology

Unfortunately, ideological opinions that aren't supportable from the actual materials have crept in here. The first example I've seen that brings this up is the idea that "capitalism is the major driving force of civilization" is part of a central theme, which is directly contradicted by, for example, the Hivers alien module, the economic model in the Planet Tamer's Handbook for TNE, and numerous other elements of both the official Traveller Universe and various iterations of the rules. This nonsense needs to be cleaned out in favor of a NPOV, but that's a big project in an article of this length, and I was burned out long ago on Wikiedit wars. Even beyond the obviously ideological, there are many, many statements of fact that are not supported by reference to any outside source. I'm surprised that someone allowed this article to be rated "B", or perhaps it's been altered for the worse since that rating. Whateley23 (talk) 07:57, 25 July 2018 (UTC)

For User:Oknazevad's revert, on the basis that "calling this ideology is silly" - the markups were about the original research throughout the article and the specific factual statements which are unsupported. I do think that at least one statement is purely ideological since it is directly contradicted throughout the game material, but more importantly it is unsupported in the article and so constitutes original research. Whateley23 (talk) 12:51, 25 July 2018 (UTC)

Calling a generalization of a fictional universe "ideological" when there's no evidence that the authors have any ideological motive is itself ideological. That is the true issue. Plus, as I said in my edit summary, the existence of some in-universe exceptions doesn't mean the broader generalization is unsupported or original research. It just means that there's exceptions. Maybe those should be noted, which would be fine. But to say that the article is pushing some sort of ideology because its summary is very broad and generalized is reading into it far more than is actually there. oknazevad (talk) 13:13, 25 July 2018 (UTC)

No, the true issue is that there are multiple issues with this article. Sorry that I picked the first one I noticed and titled the talk section here after that, but there are numerous instances of original research here, as evidenced by the lack of supporting footnotes in several sections. I see from the history that these issues go back years in this article, and that previous calls to fix them have also been swept away by various editors. For example, the "Adventures" section is entirely original research with not one footnote supporting the taxonomy proposed nor any indication as to how this structure is unique to the topic of the article. Back in April of 2015, there was a flag to support the material that was swept away without any attempt to address it when an editor reformatted the section. Stop fixating on one issue that you disagree with for whatever reason (but still don't want to support with a footnote; and of course that whole "Key Features" section is completely original research as well) and look at the state of the whole article. It's terrible. Whateley23 (talk) 13:39, 25 July 2018 (UTC)

If you used the proper tag then it would have made more sense. The OR template is for issues of people using Wikipedia to publish original thought, not for marking insufficient sourcing. oknazevad (talk) 13:42, 25 July 2018 (UTC)

Are you asserting that the extensive section on types of adventures and the section categorizing key themes (among others) are not original research? From what source were they taken? They are not found in those forms in the game materials, and I am not aware of them being common knowledge found in multiple sources. They are clearly original thoughts published by an editor at some point in the past. If someone wants to keep them here, then they should be sourced. If they can't be, they should be removed or replaced with material that can be properly sourced. Whateley23 (talk) 13:51, 25 July 2018 (UTC)

I don't disagree they need to be better sourced. They do jibe with my (admittedly limited) knowledge of the game universe, so I wouldn't call them original research. It's not original research to put a summary in ones own words; in fact not doing that is a copyvio. But referenced they need to be. oknazevad (talk) 13:55, 25 July 2018 (UTC)

I won't say that my knowledge of the game and the default setting are unlimited, but as I noted from the beginning there are (were) statements in the article that directly contradicted statements made in various game materials, so they do not jibe with the actually published game. Whateley23 (talk) 21:21, 2 August 2018 (UTC)

Things need to be referenced, and don't remove tags without addressing the reasons they were put there in the first place. The details that have been tagged are actually opinion and original research, and unless they can be referenced should be removed. The entire adventures section is purely personal opinion and unsourced original research also. It also appears to be a potential copyright violation, but the sites I found the text on don't have dates so I'm not 100% on that one. Canterbury Tail talk 14:15, 25 July 2018 (UTC)

Starting To Work

It's been a week with no attempts to resolve the marked issues, so I've boldly chosen to simply remove the worst offenses. If someone wants the "Adventures" section back, they can find a source and use that as the basis for a new one, but the section that had been there showed every sign of being someone's personal taxonomy of adventure types. As such, it wasn't even particularly related to the subject of this article. I'm also eyeing the entire "Key features" section even though I've just made some cuts and adjustments. Again, it has every appearance of being someone's personal theory. There's still more to work on here. Whateley23 (talk) 21:16, 2 August 2018 (UTC)

I support your efforts in this area. It's been on my list of things to do for multiple years, along with a rewrite of BattleTech, but I've obviously never gotten around to it. Since I own approximately 95% of all Traveller material published, I can help if you need sources for particular items. Canterbury Tail talk 23:41, 2 August 2018 (UTC)

I too agree with ditching the Adventures section. That was pretty clearly unsourced analysis. The only part you removed that I'd re-add, albeit rewritten, is the part about in-game rewards being material, that is equipment, as opposed to more abstract rewards like experience points, as that speaks to game mechanics as much, if not more, than setting. A rewrite to avoid the use of economic terms, which aren't appropriate anyway, is definitely needed, though. oknazevad (talk) 23:56, 2 August 2018 (UTC)