Re: Classic Psionics in Traveler

[raito@raito.com]

Why on earth would the guy with power and influence allow anyone he didn't
explicitly trust within a distance that allowed for attack?

Neil Gilmore
raito@raito.com

> That's all very true and nice as far as it goes, but what you're missing
> is that my guy was a total nut job and attacked regardless of the
> immediate situation or the big picture.  So all those "other factors" that
> I painstakingly crafted for better role-playing were effectively
> meaningless, and the guy with the power and influence was just as dead as
> the poor beggar that got run over by horses in the fight.  So clearly
> self-preservation wasn't an issue for him, no matter WHAT his partners
> thought about the issue...
>
>
>       From: "raito@raito.com" <raito@raito.com>
>  To: tft@brainiac.com
>  Sent: Wednesday, October 26, 2016 1:25 PM
>  Subject: Re: Classic Psionics in Traveler
>
> One of the better things about my campaign was that the players learned
> pretty quickly to only engage in combat if they had an edge of some sort.
>
> If you want to just do a pile of combat, get a commission from The Thorsz
> to clear out some land somewhere. Don't try it in the city. Or join the
> army.
>
> Sure, your character may be a badass. But that doesn't mean much when the
> other guy has a lot of money and favors owed to him, and pays his people
> well.
>
> I liked having a campaign where temporal power was at least as much of the
> game as the numbers on the sheet.
>
> Neil Gilmore
> raito@raito.com
>
>> I had a player like that.  After the first two or three TPKs because of
>> him, the other players would jump him if he so much as flinched in a
>> non-combat situation. 
>>
>> Also, any time he got killed, the other players would have a serious
>> debate about wishing him back to life or not.  On several occasions,
>> they
>> refused to do so.  Eventually, he was running a 32 point character with
>> their 40+ point guys, and at that point, given that the level of their
>> opponents was correspondingly higher, they would see him do something
>> like
>> that and just stand back and watch, claiming they'd never seen him
>> before
>> in their lives.  I guess they figured if he wanted to be an "army of
>> one,"
>> go for it, but it didn't require them to die because of it...
>>
>>
>>      From: David Carter <clumsyspider@hotmail.com>
>>  To: "tft@brainiac.com" <tft@brainiac.com>
>>  Sent: Wednesday, October 26, 2016 8:23 AM
>>  Subject: Re: Classic Psionics in Traveler
>>
>> The same thing sometimes happened in our ITL campaigns. We would be
>> peaceful negotiating to pay a bridge toll to local NPCs and one of our
>> characters would charge and pull a Leroy Jenkins. Usually the same dude
>> each time.
>> D
>> On Oct 26, 2016, at 11:16 AM, David Bofinger <bofinger.david@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>
>>> after years of loyal Imperial service a new character would muster out,
>>> grab their ray gun and go on a murderous rampage!
>> So many groups have noticed this effect that it seems like it must have
>> been something about the game itself but it's hard to pin down what.
>> My recollection of Traveller massacres was something like this:
>> 1. Some irresponsible player has their character fire on the first NPC
>> they see.2. A segment of the party think this is a criminal action, and
>> fire on the PC in protection of the innocent NPC.3. Another segment of
>> the
>> party this this is betraying a comrade in arms, and fire on the previous
>> segment.4. The only survivors tend to be characters who found really
>> good
>> cover early on.
>> The point is that the characters acting in phases 2 and 3 both felt they
>> were role-playing their characters and acting as soldiers, etc., should.
>> They saw themselves acting in an extraordinary way because they found
>> themselves in extraordinary circumstances, not because their character's
>> psychology was extraordinary. It was only the first character whose
>> actions were completely unreasonable, but the chain reaction only needed
>> one of those to start a cascade.
>> --
>> David
>>
>>
>> On 27 October 2016 at 01:29, Chris Nicole <chris.nicoleuk@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>> I liked the character creation system from Traveller. One thing seemed
>> odd
>> to me was that after years of loyal Imperial service a new character
>> would
>> muster out, grab their ray gun and go on a murderous rampage!Maybe it
>> was
>> just the people I played with, but ew of our characters rarely lasted
>> long
>> enough on civvie street to gain anything more than a hangover and
>> bodybag!One of our most memorable games was an Imperial Navy campaign
>> where our mustering out point became the characters current rank in
>> service and we played on as Imperial officers or crew within the
>> navy/marines.It gave the game a lot more structure as we were ordered
>> out
>> on patrols or missions, but we could call on the navy and subordinate
>> troops when we needed backup.
>> Chris
>> On Mon, Oct 24, 2016 at 7:31 PM, Tom Ellis <trellis66@verizon.net>
>> wrote:
>>
>> Hi Rick,                When I used to GM Traveller I spent a good
>> several
>> hours with each player building backstory during the character
>> development
>> over their career, but I also modified house rules to allow for further
>> growth.   No RPG rules are ever carved in stone despite what current
>> game
>> rules out there seem to want.  A former Marine of the Imperium could
>> certainly increase his aim in my house while in game.                I
>> think one lesson here is that no system is perfect and we (GMs) need to
>> manage that and allow for it.  A static character who can’t grow in
>> skill
>> can start to get boring for a player.  That all being said the psionic
>> system was far better balanced in that regard than I’ve seen before or
>> since. Tom From:tft-owner@brainiac.com [mailto:tft-owner@brainiac.com
>> ]On
>> Behalf Of Rick Smith
>> Sent: Monday, October 24, 2016 12:23 PM
>> To: tft@brainiac.com
>> Subject: Classic Psionics in Traveler Hi Tom.  Welcome to the list.    
>> I
>> confess that the thing I liked least about basic Traveler wasthat all
>> character development happened before the game began.Perhaps getting
>> experience points and improving skills and attributes was less realistic
>> than people gaining most of their skillsearlier in their career.   
>> However, seeing the characters you spent time with was definitely more
>> fun. Warm regards, Rick.  On 2016-10-22, at 3:21 PM, Tom Ellis wrote:
>> Hi, people.  To answer the question, I preferred Classic Traveler vs.
>> D&D
>> psionics  because of how they balanced it.  Be skilled based vs. level
>> based, Traveller made people make choices.  You could spend 20+ years in
>> the service and have mad skills, but at that point you also wouldn’t be
>> able to achieve your full psionic potential.  Then there was the whole
>> drama of finding a Guild to study at. So, as an introduction.  Hi
>> again. 
>> My name is Tom and I still have my paper D&D books from the 70s.  I look
>> forward to more fruitful discussions on this list.
>>  
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
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