Here’s a line of thought that interested me today: you don’t really need to roleplay the starship trading in Traveller because it is a little game in itself.

This morning, I was thinking about how much I’d enjoy playing a simple Traveller game with a character, a starship, a subsector of space, and running around trading goods between the stars.

I know a lot of players have said to me over the years that this is exactly the Traveller game they DON’T want to play but I’ve always fancied it. It’s not that I am big into economics but rather that the idea of travelling between stars wheeling and dealing is an appealing idea.

Then it struck me: in the Introduction to Traveller booklet, when it talks about learning to play, one of the tasks is to grab a starship, roll up some star systems, and see how much money you can make trading. This is a mini-game in itself… and you don’t need a character.

The follow-up thought was striking too: Traveller isn’t just a roleplaying game; it’s a series of games that provide exactly what the cover says it offers – “Science-Fiction Adventure in the Far Future”. Roleplaying a character is just one part of that experience.

Which led to me wonder when we dropped this aspect in roleplaying game design?

D&D gave us Dungeoncrawls and (eventually) Hexcrawls. Traveller gave us a life-path character creation game, a trading game, a combat game, a starship combat game, and tools for the Referee to generate interesting challenges for roleplaying.

When did we reduce the scenario options to just being (basically) combat? Modern D&D doesn’t give you the Dungeoncrawl and Hexcrawl scenario rules anymore. In fact, most RPGs are devoid of all but the combat game sequence. We act as though we don’t need the rest.

Would it really be so bad to roll up a Traveller subsector and just play the trading game? What happens when we add in random star system encounters? What happens when the pirates we (randomly) encounter board the starship?

The Traveller toolbox all links together to provide a larger experience which, in some ways, doesn’t need to begin with character generation at all. We could roll those guys up when we need them and just kick it all off with a starship making trades. Couldn’t we?

Game on!