What are we playing here?

I've watched a few of those already 😁 good stuff!
I'm also excited to start this.

Looks like the other WoDu group I was starting in has a ghosting GM unfortunately. Died in character creation :(

Hey! That's my line!
-Traveller RPG, circa 1977)

😁

😀

For the record, I got up to page 22 (Agent) before having to leave off. I will probably skip reading most of the careers until the players need me to read and advise on specific ones.

So far I am still enthusiastic for the system.

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Reading the rules through completely really helps, there are things that are unclear till later parts have been read, so don't stress if things don't make sense right away, it should come together later (a second reading definitely seems called for).

So, should we wait to get started until everything has been read?
Cause it seems like we're all on board with a low "magic" sci-fi traveller game.
Also, I have no plans this weekend so I'd love to roll up a character!

I have not gotten back to the book yet.

But I also feel confident I could run a character creation session with what I have read, we will need to look up the Careers that interest us, and I can not give advice on which to pick (or comparisons) till we do (I can comment on the differences between University and Military Academy, but that is all:).
It does seem like it.

We still maybe have one more player incoming, but I think the decision is made and they will need to decide if they want to join and live with that choice.
That is another benefit of leaving the inter-character connections till after, we don't have to wait for other players.

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@TheGenerator: Shall we make a thread where you can get started?

What do you need from me to get started? A summary, or advice? Anything?

Do you want this first attempt to be a 'test character' (warning, they tend to be sticky:) to experiment with the system?

Just the thread will do, I think. I might do a test-run on my own and if I have any questions I'll ask before starting my 'official' PC.
Sweet! :)

Do you want a 'test character' thread where we can all learn, and use that thread afterwards. I don't think it is necessary. You can do the test character in 'TheGenerator's Character Generator' thread.
And ask questions along the way of the test character. This is not meant to be 'lonely fun'.
If not, we can may look at recruiting. Else we may need to adjust the rules about number of Connections pre pair.

So I was looking at some of the term end events and one of them was "a war breaks out and you are drafted". Technically, it would be possible for 2 PCs to roll that event on a different term, right?

It would make sense then that both PCs were in the same squad (to link PCs). But since it was on a different term in their career they were not the same age when that happened.

Is that the way it's supposed to be done?

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Second question: Can I be a robot/android? I know you can be an alien race, but how about mechanical constructs? In RL it wouldn't make sense that robots go to school and learn a career, but maybe in the Traveller world it does?
Or am I just going to over-complicate things?

Indeed. We will make it work. If you roll that war breaks out in year 2344, and another player rolls that war breaks out in 2348 (and we only learn this when all the Terms are over and we know the current date and work backwards) we could simply ignore the exact time and force the character together in that shared event; or we can learn that the war took a few years to reach where the later player was; or we can have them get drafted later in the war than you did; or we can have two wars (look at history, we live in unique times when it comes to 'number of wars per decade').

Mainly I found in useful to build a list of Events, and then shift them around to make interesting connections.

The 'you must start at age 18' can get in the way, but we can fudge that a bit too, maybe you started at age 15 and then bummed around for 3 years (not even being a Drifter), maybe you started at age 20 and skipped 2 years and graduated 'early'. The final numbers do actually matter, but everything in between could be the result of sloppy-record-keeping. We can also buffer the ages and dates a bit at the end.
Would be nice, but the rules fight that a bit (and still don't seem to realise it:). We can work to make that happen if we want.

I have had Life Events in one player's character creation affect other player's. "Oh, so that's why you joined the rebellion in your third Term?"
Forget 'supposed' we will make it work. This still feels very much like a game from the pre-internet 70s, it relies a lot on the people at the table to deal with these issues.

I am generally not a fan of 'aliens as painted humans', so I tend not to have intelligent/playable aliens unless the players are able to lean into the alienness (similar with 'Elves', really:).

I don't know if the book gives rules for being robots or androids. I have a recollection that the aliens in the setting were problematic (boring, one-dimensional, racist, humans with fur, all of the above?), but I could be wrong.

If the group wants we can make a plan and make it work. It is possible (with them going to school, as you say) that they are just 'synthetic humans', which could just be an extreme set of prosthetics (all parts) by the rules. We should look at the rules for Prosthetics before we say more.

I have had some success with character learning later that they are (or are not) actually androids. Sometimes with the players already knowing, and sometimes a surprise to everyone.
I am not sure if the rules allow it. We can look. But first:...

Question to the group:

What is the in-world situation with robots, androids, AI, and such things?

Do we want to explore this, outlaw this (which means it is real and part of the game and will come up), or leave it out of our setting.

What about 'aliens'?

We might need to know this answer if it affects character creation. Else we can change our minds later, or learn the truth during play.

If anyone knows, offhand, what the book says, let us know.

What type of game do we want, what is out tone?

See page 4 of the rulebook.

I vote for 'continuous campaign', with occasional 'episodic' bursts, but mine is just one vote.

What 'type' of campaign are we wanting? Trader, Military, Explorer? Probably a mix, but which do we care about most?

Suggestion: How about a universe where Robots, androids, ... do exist, but only as an aid to sentient races. Kinda like in the movie "I-Robot" if you've seen that. Before they go berserk.
Basically, they are advanced versions of Alexa with a humanoid (or other) shell.
I'd say yes to aliens, but not the ones specifically from the book. I'd like there to be all kinds of weird creatures. If someone wants to be an alien race, that's fine by me. The book mentions stats shifts for alien races. One stat -2, another +2. I have no issue with that either. It would be nice if there was a story behind those stats though. From our FFA experiences, I don't think any of us are power gamers :)
I agree with "a mix". For me it would be Trading first, Exploring second, Military third.

Do we want to keep things light or go for a serious thing? I think I'd enjoy a futurama-style game where we get a job to do something simple, but end up in some complicated situation that only we can fix (either through skill or sheer luck).

To all players:
I created a character sheet template.

I like that idea.
I’m not a power gamer. I am okay with PC and NPC aliens, but I’d imagine the alien-ness would be more narrative than stats/mechanics. They think and behave differently than humans.
For me, I think it would be exploring first, trading second, military third. I like trading as a story beat but I don’t want to get bogged down in the Traveller math of tonnage and finding just the right seller and just the right buyer where we can make a profit. For example, in Firefly, they were trading but the details of the business deals were glossed over, unless it was important for the story. That’s the approach I’d prefer. Similarly, Han and Chewy agreed to take Obi-Wan and Luke on as passengers without much bargaining back and forth.

I also could see us responding to a distress call - either real or a fake one sent by pirates.

A continuous campaign with episodes sounds great, VagueGM. I have enjoyed how you have divided the fresh faced adventure into chapters.

Sounds good to me! :)

Sure. That shoves them to the background of the story and is pretty much the same as not having them as a factor.

With this we don't have to think about them yet. If they come up as a more involved part of the story we can deal with them then.
I read the book, but I believe it was quite different from the movie... and was a long time ago.
They went berserk? Do we want ours to follow suit?
OK. So not playable (that we know of).
I think we can work with that. I agree about not being enthused by the aliens in the book, I got bored and stopped reading that section. Can go back to it if we need.
Noted.
Hmm... Maybe more along the lines of Firefly than Futurama?

It can be lighthearted, but I don't see Futurama-style being sustainable, I don't think it can deal with consequences in the long-term (but it has been a long time since I saw the show).
Um? Have you played and RPG before? It sounds like you are describing 'an RPG'. :)

What do you like about it? If this is more than just set-dressing, I fear I am missing the significance.
Given the wildly different stats characters can have at the end of character creation, I don't see the +/-2 being at all significant unless the player chooses (as I would) to push stats to the extreme. I like low stats, so I would definitely want to put the -2 in my lowest stat, to get it extremely low. I care less about high stats, and it would be coin-flip, but can help embody the alien.
What stumped a lot of players (though it took a while to notice) and what I really liked at Star Wars World (and Impulse Drive?) is that they don't do 'alien stats', you pick whatever 'race' you want, and use your words to make them come to life.
One would think that they should but they seldom do. :(

I do want my aliens to be alien, but it is really hard to play alien, especially for the sustained duration being a PC calls for. If you want to try it, I welcome it, and if they end up humanish in most situations we can live with that too.

There are many ways to justify all the aliens we meet being human or human-like: Panspermia, Diaspora, Convergent Evolution (or "Intelligent Design"), Ancient Alien Kidnap, Penal Colony, ..., are a few that come to mind, or it could just be that real aliens are 'too alien' for us to interact with often.

We can also just play and see how it turns out, this does not need to be a big deal, we are already fudging and f-ing with most of science, so realism is out the airlock.
I also put military last, but had no opinions on the other two. That can change based on our whims.
We can let the player who is interested in this take the lead (in-character or out) on this and set up the deals, then we head out there and explore. The amount of detail that goes into the 'trading' can depend on how much anyone wants to put into it each time, and can happen in the background to a more immediate situation (brokering deals in the midst of the firefight sound like... not sure 'fun' is the word:).

I have not looked at that section of the rules, but we can (and I am sure the rules will back me up) toss some dice to decide profit any time we don't want to 'do the math'
They did not need to. Mainly because Obi-Wan was offering to way over-pay, and Han was happy to take advantage of him, and Obi-Wan was quite possibly not really planning on making the second payment. I strongly suspect the Jedi are the bad guys of those stories. :)
Good.
That is mainly to keep the threads at manageable length, but something like that will probably happen here too.