Traveller: Character Histories are Important

As some of you know, I lost my best and only player in the last year, and it has been a tough transition. Most of the games we played together are packed away, and I do not really have the time to join a group at a hobby store for two reasons: my free time is limited, and there are no hobby stores close with regular games.

I probably should try anyways, I know.

Our gaming room has been taken down and re-purposed, and I haven't played a game with someone in over a year. I have tried MMOs but they don't replace the fun of tabletop gaming. The rules of MMOs are terrible time grinds designed to take all your free time and money, and the roleplaying in those games feel like they are less concerned with high adventure and more concerned with interpersonal relationships.

T&T Solo Play

For a while I felt I could get by with Tunnels and Trolls solo play. It hasn't really panned out for me because of a feeling of 'so what' that I felt when playing. This may not be others' feeling, of course, but for me the acquisition of combat dice, XP, levels, spells, and gold hasn't really given me a good motivation to keep going. In my loss, I am not feeling the "need for greed" that a power-gamer or character builder is feeling.

The individual adventures are fun, and I should give them another chance. I just have this feeling I need something a little more, something more group focused and less single player focused, and something more story and character-history focused.

M2E Traveller

So on a whim I got the 2nd Edition of Mongoose's Traveller game. I got the starter set because people said it was a streamlined version better for new players, and that seemed to appeal to me because of my time limitations and desire for OSR simplicity.

The game seemed like previous editions, and I read through the books, casually happy with the game but not feeling a commitment to play. This one felt like it was going to sit on the shelf next to the others and I would be back to searching again.

And then I generated a character.

One Character Opened the Stars

Wow. That is all I can say about the character creation system in Traveller. This isn't a fresh-faced newbie, but someone with scars, history, rivals, enemies, injuries, good moments, massive debts, bad moments, losing their job, going to jail, getting involved in a war, having something great happen, losing their crew, been through hell and back character.

A complete story before we begin, and someone I feel like I know personally because I have been there with them the whole time.

And then I watched a Youtube video on character creation, and you do this as a group, and other players' characters can get involved in your timeline as people you know, met, became rivals with, friends with, or bumped into along the way as you made your way through life. Not only does the character generation system develop a rich backstory for you, but it gives the entire group plenty of moments to figure out ways they met and know each other across a vast universe of infinite stars.

Amazing stuff.

They have solved the problem of "how do we know each other" through character creation. You no longer have to bump into each other in a bar, your characters have potentially met time and time again before this moment. You may know each other already before you begin. If not, you could easily figure out relationships given the connections that have already been created through a couple easy assumptions.

Let's say character A and B bumped into each other and became rivals. Character C has no connection to them after character creation, but both characters B and C spent a tour of duty in the Space Marines. You could easily say "these two were squadmates" and connect the three of them. The links you create become the strong framework in which to pull in everyone else.

And then your group gets to distribute "group skills" that ensure you are well prepared to do the campaign of your choice. If you are running a merchant campaign, the group package ensures your group has the basic "need this for being a merchant" skills in the party.

And now I want to generate another character, and see their story, and how I can tie them into the first character's story. And another...

Or better yet, design the entire party at the same time and see how I can get them all to meet.

Write Your History Down!

On the back of my character sheet, I made sure to write the events of my character's history down, term-by-term, the events that happened, the skills gained, the rolls made and failed, the enemies/allies/rivals gained, and every result of every roll made. Even "barely passed the survival roll" or "just failed the advancement roll" matters! Do this for every term spent in character creation, and then look back at your character's history and be amazed.

You can then use that list as your character's personal backstory and history, and it gives you things to talk about and roleplay with. "Yeah, the piracy scourge of 12 years ago was pretty bad, I barely managed to live through that, but I did get a commission out of the entire campaign after us Marines were done clearing out the pirate bases in that asteroid field." Okay that bit of background information with the referee, giving your barely made survival roll and commission result, and your character's history is richer along with the universe's history as well.

And just perhaps, that bit of history may come up again should ships start disappearing around those asteroids again...

"Hey, I know about that place...!"

I can see this character background history becoming indispensable for referees. Now your characters are connected to events in the subsector, and those become tools to use for future stories.

I love writing and recording my character's history during character creation, and I can see doing that for every character I create. Every bit of info is something you can use, along with the time that it happened, and what happened as a result. I will even leave a little space on each term of service to add details and more information as this is developed through play.

A Personal Connection

Until I gave the game a chance, played it, I felt differently about it. I guess maybe I have been distracted as of late, and assumed "this edition was like the rest." I need to do some more, like play through a sample adventure, get some combat, exploration, trade, psionics, encounters, and starship combat under my belt, and give more parts of the game a chance. I plan on doing that very soon.

But moreso, this game strikes a chord in me with that deeper and story-based character creation. It writes a history of someone I didn't know, but I do now. I am invested in, I am interested in, and I want to see what happens next.

Even by myself, this feels like the game I have been looking for and needing to play.