Originally Posted by
rcruk
Welcome to Traveller.
I'm fairly new to Traveller myself, I started hosting my campaign a year and half ago, with a murder mystery adventure. Other than pausing for a few months to get another game up and running, this campaign has continued on a regular basis since. Some great advice already been given in the previous posts, which I won't repeat, but I will add a few things you might like to think about before you start playing Traveller.
To start off with, don't get overwhelmed by the sheer amount of material out there, particularly if you're using the Third Imperium setting... it's mind blowing. Enthusiasts have been adding to this game for decades, and there is so much stuff available. Once you get into it, you will likely disappear down rabbit holes and not see the light of day for hours, coming back up again with fresh understanding of particular things and a whole bunch of new ideas. But at the beginning, I would say, only take what you need. After a little while the main concepts which hold the setting together fall into place. If you're homebrewing the setting though, well then you can make it as complicated or as simple as you want. You could also pick and mix with the 3I setting as much as you want. In my own experience, the constraints of using the existing 3I helps me evoke a warts n' all, living, breathing universe. It has helped me build a convincing sense of reality that envelops the players. It frees me up to spend prep time thinking about how these particular characters fit into the world/setting, and focus on preparing the 'touch points' where they connect with and interact with that setting.
Coming from D&D to Traveller, and I think it was alluded to in one of the previous posts, you will likely find the published adventures are structured differently. If you use published adventures I would advise not only a careful read through, but a careful think through whilst prepping. The adventures provide a lot of background material to help situate your game, but can leave a lot of information lacking, and whilst some of this can be enjoyable to improvise, it will make your life a hell of a lot easier if you can prepare some the information you will likely need, before hand - so you have it at your fingertips when the time comes. Sometimes this can be making a chronology, to understand events, places and dates, or a few notes about NPCs so you have a handful of well defined people for the crew to interact with, maybe it's just finding a logo to give an identity to a group they come into contact with, or sometimes it can be pinning notes on a map to take you quickly to useful references, you get the idea. The prep will take a lot of stress out of running the game and free you up to enjoy it more. Maybe also, prepare of a couple of alternative events or small branching storylines that appeal to each of your players/PCs. For if the group go off in a completely different direction than the main one you have planned, or the written adventure assumes.
I started a second group last month and they are playing the highndry scenario, which I hadn't played with the first group. I think this can be a really good starter. It will challenge you all to step away from the D&D mindset a little. The whole thing can be run with no combat at all! Or you can throw in some bar room brawls, or have an enemy of one of the players turn up if you're getting combat withdrawals. I will say that in Traveller, combat doesn't need to be the meat of the session, as it can often be in D&D. Highndry starts off at a relatively slow pace, which will give you a bit of breathing room to get everyone familiar with the game, and if they survive this adventure they can walk away with the use of a small starship. This is great if you want to start the kind of campaign where they are some sort of ragtag troubleshooter crew. I've found the crew naturally get tangled up in all sorts of things and before you know it they have to be part diplomat, part spy, part bounty hunter, part merchant... the beautiful thing about the Traveller system is that it allows the players to approach problems from all different angles.
One last thing I will mention. We've played a year and a half and had one ship combat, which consisted of them scrambling to plot a jump whilst fleeing from the approaching craft. They jumped, just at the moment the enemy craft was coming into firing range... Unless you specifically want spaceship combat to be a big part of the game, it doesn't have to be.
Hope it goes well!