Bugbears and Ballads

In most fantasy tabletop role-playing games, the most impactful decisions surrounding the structure of your character are made at the moment you decide on your class. Maybe later you’ll pick up feats that afford the opportunity to enhance abilities outside the sphere of “druid” or “fighter” or “wizard”, and of course throughout the game you will be granted items of power and significance that help you unlock previously restricted options. But by and large the bulk of the character’s mechanics both immediately accessed, and promised at future levels, are set in stone the moment you select your class. There are of course many schools of thought surrounding this paradigm, some of the more oppositional ones have led to the creation and adoption of “classless” systems. Despite that offshoot of playstyle, classes have been a fundamental part of Dungeons and Dragons since its inception, as they facilitate a diversity in abilities among party members, and allow each character/player to fill a ...

One game design philosophy I’ve started to ponder is the “crunch-optional” philosophy – that is, the amount of crunch (e.g., the straight mechanics, rules, and numbers) one experiences from a game is based only on player investment. Those who wish to simply sit down and enjoy the game only need the base mechanics, while those who want to delve into the meat of a game have the option to explore the different rules and subsystems. Most importantly, however, is that players who do decide to “do their homework” and explore the crunch of a game are not objectively superior to those who did not – system mastery does not make player skill irrelevant, it just allows those who are interested to find more fulfillment in the rules. Enter Traveller I believe Traveller does this well (at least, the versions I’m familiar with; I have only played Mongoose Trav 1e and 2e, and am nominally familiar with Classic Trav), and this is why I play it frequently with both people who are new to RPGs ...