Traveller - Where Prep Is Play
We say quite often in the solo gaming world that "prep is play." Meaning that preparing for your solo game - rolling characters, building a world or map to explore, getting all of the scaffolding of a campaign together - is a part of playing the game. I'm not sure I've ever managed to have as much fun prepping for a game as I have with Traveller.
It's tedious and time consuming and just fun.
I've rolled up four characters. I'm halfway through creating a subsector. It's taken days upon days of prep, stuff that I usually wish would go faster, and for once I don't want to hit fast forward. I'm just that into it.
Now, it isn't perfect. Especially with Mongoose Traveller 2e, there's a lot of info spread between different books, and the organization could be better. Especially when it comes to tinkering around with creating your own setting, which I'm invested in. Frankly, I find the Third Imperium setting to be intimidating with all those years of history behind it, so for my first game I'm doing my own thing.
There's a certain amount of implied setting in Traveller that I'm a big fan of. I don't plan on changing that up too much.
My setting conceits so far, are as follows:
*Human-centric: mankind fled a dying Earth, populated the stars, and found themselves alone (so far) in the universe. Yes, there was life, but no self-aware, intelligent life.
*Psionics exist, but are extremely rare and highly distrusted, often required to register as such and watched closely by governing bodies.
*True AI does not exist. Robots are common, ubiquitous even, but a true self-aware Artificial Intelligence is not known to exist at this time. If it did, that technology would be wanted by militaries and governments in every sector.
Otherwise my universe is pretty standard Traveller fair. Communications over vast distances are reliant on couriers, there's a certain techno-feudalism and actual feudalism inherent to society's structure, etc. I am toying - with my Religious Studies brain - with how religion might manifest itself in a post-Earth society. Maybe that's just the Hyperion fan in me, but I did roll up a priest character.
I am using the optional Morale and Luck scores from the Companion and I did try to make my Traveller characters a little more competent/hardy than average, just because with Solo play I don't want to be rolling up new characters because of a bad END roll three sessions in.
Rolling up my own sector by hand has been quite a journey. The New Hope Sector is coming together, slowly but surely, though I realize I can jump into gaming after I finish the first subsector and build out from there as needed. I need to practice reading UWP codes, but I think they're a brilliant idea. Timeless, too, apparently, since they've been in every edition as far as I know.
The books I've made use of so far are:
Core Rulebook Update
Companion Update
Robot Handbook
Supply Catalogue Update
Zozer's Solo Rules
I'm planning on buying High Guard soon, when it comes time to get into ship design. That's what I love about Traveller: you can make it as granular or grab-n-go as you want. I can track every credit and play a mercantile game, or not. I can design a custom ship from the ground up, ditto robot, ditto vehicles, or not. I can dive into a rich and long-lived setting, or make my own. I'm really having a blast and I wish I'd jumped on board sooner.