Crunch-Optional – a design philosophy, and how Traveller does it well

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 and seasoned players.

Introducing new players to Traveller usually goes a little bit like this:

1.      Send them to this character generation website and explain in 5 mins what each attribute does, what the lifepath process is like, and how they will interact with it through the website. (This tends to be very intuitive for most people – when you automate the process and simply leave the player to make decisions, it goes very quickly.)

2.      When they finish, help them output their character sheet into something they can read easily and do finishing touches like picking benefits, purchasing equipment, party skill packs and finalizing character traits/background. (takes 5 mins usually – a character sheet can easily fit on an index card, and the lifepath process creates a backstory as you play the character creation minigame)

3.      Begin playing the game. When the first time they need to make a skill check arises, simply explain that they roll two 6-sided dice and add their attribute modifier and skill level. Higher is better. (this takes less than a minute to explain).

4.      Congrats! You are playing Traveller. Any other mechanics (combat rules, HP/damage, ship combat, etc.) are introduced as they come, and at their core base themselves off of the 2d6+attribute+skill mechanic.

Total time to get started – about 15 minutes, in my experience.

This level of engagement is more than sufficient for most people I play with, and the simple mechanics tends to lend itself very well to OSR-style play – that is, players tend to utilize creativity and problem solving to solve issues.

(Tangent: I wish Traveller was discussed more in the OSR-spheres of the web, as I think it’s a great example of the philosophy in action. Alas.)

It's rumoured that Firefly was inspired by a game of Traveller Joss Whedon played in college.

How does this lend itself towards the crunch-optional philosophy?

-        Players can make their characters quickly and simply with the online tools, OR

-        Players who want more robust character creation options can find careers in the supplementary books that introduce extra mechanics and options. (The Robot creation rules in Book 9, the Organization Rank and trust rules in Book 5, the investment/trust fund rules in Book 8, etc.).

Sure, these can create characters who are richer/have more connections/tougher in combat than other characters, but I’ve rarely found that to be too much of an issue – my campaigns tend to have enough of a mix between combat, exploration, trade, and political and social situations that characters who excel in one specific area don’t overshadow those who don’t, and interplay between Law Levels on different planets and the high-lethality of the combat system prevents those with better combat skills and gear from completely overshadowing those without, as combat is rarely the best way to solve your issues.

-        Players who want to buy vehicles and starships/start out a campaign with one can just crack open a book and choose what looks best to them. If characters ask if they can add a few things, it’s simple enough to find the cost of, say, a particle beam and slap that baby on, OR

-         Players who want to design their own aerospace fighter-bombers can dive right into the ship design chapter and create whatever they want.

Players might design ships that are better optimized than the ones in the core book. If so, good for them! They deserve to be rewarded for good engineering.

Players might also design ships that have all the bells and whistles and can take on any system defense boat they encounter. If so, it’s going to be prohibitively expensive, and governments are going to be suspicious why a pocket warship is frequenting their space lanes (plus, governments have much more money to spend on a naval budget than even the wealthiest players…)

-        Players who want to make money off of trade can pick up cargo for a flat rate/ton and be done with it, OR

-        Players can examine the starchart, find the different trade codes, and delve into speculative trading to potentially make (or lose) hundreds of thousands of credits.

Most trade situations in my campaign end up like this, but with more guns

This crunch-optional design has also been valuable to me as a sandbox GM and worldbuilder.

-        To create an NPC, all I need to do is jot down attributes (In the simple to use UPP format) and a short list of skills and equipment. I add two notable character traits, and boom! Jimothy the starport attendant is ready. I can do this on the fly in the middle of a session, OR

-        I could use any of the robust careers in any of the splatbooks to fully realize an NPC’s background and skills. Time to generate can be variable from 5 mins to an hour, but fully depends on how long I want to spend creating this character.

-        Space encounters work the same way – grab a ship from a book, choose a general crew level to add to all rolls and I’m ready, OR

-        I spend hours building their ship and generating the crew with the lifepath system, while outfitting each crew member with interesting personalities, weapons, armor, other equipment, and thinking of specific tactics and plans for them. Again, it only takes as long as I want it to.

-        World generation can be just as simple – I can head over to the donjon Traveller system generator and have a whole star system created for me in seconds, OR

-        I spend as much time as I want not only hand creating the UWP, but also the extended UWP to create a system with my own personal touch.

Heaven and Earth is my favorite world creation tool - I highly recommend it

Of course, what largely contributes to this is the ease that Traveller’s subsystems can be automated and the wealth of resources available online for GMs and players (One needs to look no further than the wonderful Traveller Tools created by Grauenwolf to find most everything you need to run the game), and you’d be right, it helps a lot. That’s the power of a small but dedicated community right there.

Traveller is definitely not perfect in this regard – for example, in both Mongoose Traveller 1e and 2e, the ship combat rules could be improved for both those who wanted low-crunch and high-crunch options. As they stand, they require a bit too much investment for new players, and lack a variety of tactical options for players seeking high crunch. Someday I’ll think of an alternative, if I get around to it.

I’ve spent hours thinking of and writing Traveller scenarios with custom ships, fleshed out NPCs, and in-depth planets and systems. I’ve also run sessions where literally nothing has been prepared beforehand and everything was improvised. This crunch-optional game design lets both my players and myself prepare just as much or as little as we want, yet have good rewarding games.

In the end, all you need to do is roll 2d6 and play the game.