Introduction

"I never thought I would see this moment.  I could see the planet falling away below me.  The thin shell of atmosphere looking so fragile.  Yet I was here, a new member of the Imperial Scout Service.  I was being taken to Regina for transport to my training and first assignment.  I can't wait..."

Traveller is one of the premiere and oldest Science Fiction role playing games in existence.  It was originally produced by GDW and is now being published by Imperium Games and Far Futures Enterprises.  The role playing system may be used for any scifi setting but the magic of Traveller is the playing environment and genre that has developed over the years.

This introduction assumes that you are familiar with role playing in general.  The thrust of this introduction is to give a basic feel for the Classic and MegaTraveller system.
 

To the Stars!

Your player will be a traveller amongst the many star systems that you encounter.  In the Traveller genre you will be playing one of a number of different types of characters far in Earth's future.  Humaniti has populated a good portion of the galaxy.  You may be a scientist, a scout, a bounty hunter, a merchant or any of the other professions.  Unlike many other role playing systems, you do not start out as a raw recruit (unless you want to).  You work your character through their early profession and detail their assignments and past.  You determine the type of home world they are from and their characteristics.

Traveller has 6 primary player statistics.

The first three characteristics are used to determine your life force.  This is the amount of punishment (damage) that you can take.  Of course, the higher the better.  The six characteristics may affect how well you do things and will also affect what profession you may elect to try to enter.

Once your character is generated (you may also elect to start with a pre-generated character, supplied by the referee), you may start play.  Like most role playing systems, Traveller uses dice.  Unlike D&D and other systems you will only need 6 sided dice for Traveller.  Everything will be done with multiples of dice.  Two dice being the normal minimum.  Most of play in MegaTraveller is based on tasks.  All actions are tasks and certain tasks will be harder than others.  For example, bribing an individual, cold starting a starship powerpplant, fixing a computer or shooting at someone with your laser rifle are all tasks.
 

Resolving Tasks

All tasks are resolved with a roll of two dice.  Certain additions and subtractions will be made to the roll and then the referee will determine if the attempt succeeded or failed.  Depending on the nature of the task, failure could be catastrophic.

The Universal Task Profile (UTP) looks like the following:

The difficulty of the task will be one of the following: simple (roll 3+ on 2D), routine (roll 7+), difficult (roll 11+), formidable (roll 15+), Impossible (roll 19+).  A natural roll of snake-eyes (2) is always a failure.  You will add the modifiers for skills and stats to the rolls.  Time is how long the task normally takes to complete.   The risk qualifier states what may happen upon failure.  These risks include safe, hazardous, fateful and uncertain.

As an example, lets say that Isha Goniiri the Scout is trying to repair his air raft engine so he can keep from having to walk 100 KM back to his ship.  He has a skill of 2 in mechanics.  The UTP may look like:

In order for the task to succeed, the player will need to roll at least a 5 or better.  The task is routine since he has done it before, has the proper tools and is not in any hurry or under stress.  The risk factor is uncertain since it is not exactly known what may happen if he fails.  Does he just think its fixed?  Does he make the situation worse?  If the player rolls well over what they need they may have a exceptional success.  If the player rolled an 8 (three more than what they need) then the success would be exceptional.  This may shave time off the task or may allow them to find and repair some other small problem.  Whatever seems appropriate to the situation.  Like exceptional success there are also exceptional failures.  Failing a task by more than two is exceptional failure.  For example, lets say the task was difficult.  The player would need to roll at least a 9 to succeed with their 2 in mechanics.  If they roll a six they are more than two less than what they need.  This would be an exceptional failure.  But what does this mean?  Do they need parts they do not have?  Did they break something else while trying to fix the original problem?  Do they think it is fixed and will have a catastrophic failure later?  Again, the outcome is up to the referee.