Dale, I promised you a detailed email letter, and this ain't it. But I can
pass along a couple of things quickly:
1. Traveller (Classic or Mega) requires a very different mindset than D&D.
Mapping, starship combat, trade and commerce, and fun toys are there for
the people who enjoy such things, but the game relies more heavily on real
roleplaying than D&D does, as the characters tend to have more depth and
dimensionality than D&D characters do (assuming an equally talented player;
I've played with excellent D&Ders and with rotten Traveller players before).
In general, Traveller adventures are more like D&D "wilderness campaigns"
than dungeon adventures, although there are exceptions. Random gadding about
for gold and adventure isn't done much; people tend to have careers and goals
and get into and out of trouble following them.
2. The tools of Traveller tend to fall in the following categories: pushes
(bad things that will happen to people if they're not careful), pulls (good
things that COULD happen if parties strive for them), rumors, gimmicks, etc.
Since there's no artificially codified means for advancement (there's a monster
every few turns, kill enough and you go up a level, etc.), the referee has to
have a more substantive game plot than the average D&D DM does. (Most D&D games
are live-action Nintendo scenarios, from what I've seen over the past 15 years.)
3. The easiest-to-run and easiest-to-start adventures in Traveller, which also
give a bang-up description of a small and easy to digest chunk of the Imperium,
are Classic Traveller Adventures 1, 2, and 3, and the Double Adventures 1 and
2, and THE TRAVELLER ADVENTURE trade-paperback. They're ALL out of print, which
is a shame, but they can and should be found and savored. If you read up on
ALL of these books, or several of them, and get a good feel for jumping from
book to book, you can run a campaign that will have new things around every
corner for years. Unfortunately, the adventures for MT as of now are pitiful at
best and godawful at worst...CERTAINLY no way to learn the game. (Who out there
besides me considers Murder on Arcturus Station to be the best idea and format
for a RPG adventure in any game ever? I kept a party of experts tearing their
hair out for WEEKS with that one! |->
If you want to know more, others will have suggestions. But my first piece of
advice is good enough to repeat at the last: throw away everything you know
about D&D and start fresh.
metlay