Sunday, 31 July 2016, 05:17pm +01:00 from Abu Dhabi <xxxxxx@gmail.com>:

>>Yes you can jump in less time, but on most worlds there is the trip to/from 100D or out of the jump shadow, plus refuelling, maintenance, dealing with starport authorities,
>> finding passengers and cargo.
>Jump shadow? What's that?

When a planet is within the 100 diameter limit of a star which necessitates a bit of extra travelling to the planet's 100 diameter limit.

>>People tend to underestimate how much they spend just living, both in game and in real life, so yes they will make money but also they will spend it. If they want to arrive at their
>> destination with a TL15 hand comp from that planet they passed, or a new set of clothes, then fine. If they want to replace the air/raft, upgrade the turret weapons or buy a battle tank,
>> that will add time and cost to the trip.
>Sure, but next to none of the players around here actually RP that. They live on the ship, they eat on the ship, they almost never leave the ship unless they have a pressing need.
>The only food they eat is what the ship's quartermaster acquires, and the only shopping they do is when the quartermaster hands out cash for upgrading their weapons and armour.
>They almost never go whoring, even.

In as much as you can't really 'cheat' playing Traveller (it's your game, do what you like), this - for me - would come about as close as maybe. Richard has already covered the sex and trading side of thing as well as not wanting to miss the opportunity for ref's to actually have interaction and adventure for the players. But it strikes me as completely unrealistic role playing on just about any level. Equivalent to waving a gun and saying 'bang, you're dead' regardless of aiming, armour, terrain etc, etc, etc. In fact, just what I recall any rules at all in Traveller being designed to stop IIRC from introductory section.

No, there are no rules to *make* people get off a ship in port, perhaps because it's obvious that *in general* they must. If only psychologically. I spent two years on a ship in SE Asia and we'd do anything from 2 or 3 days at sea to our longest journey at 10 days I think it was. We had pretty regimented lives but NO ONE would fail to take their first free time and go ashore. Failing that, at least to walk down on the quaysides. Remember that here at least we had the opportunity to peer over the prom deck or boat deck railings at a horizon. In Jump you can't even do that. I'm not sure I'd use the word stir crazy but it was always just a relief to have a change of scene and a curiosity to find out what the next port held - even if was just a short exercise jog around the dockside. There was only one port in two years where I didn't step ashore and that was because a) we only stopped for 12 hours to drop off our book store, b) we'd already been to that port once, c) I thought it would be kind of fun to be able to say there was a port I didn't get off at and d) next port was next day or the day after. (So yes, an exception to prove the rule). Oh, and we had 40 odd nationalities feeling the same so I'm pretty sure it's not a cultural thing.

I daresay typical Travellers would be way more ready to disembark after a week in Jump. Some of those adventure class ships are tiny when that is ALL there is. Our ship was 130m with 350 people and had loads more interior space than a Scout or Free Trader but still felt TINY. I would penalizing PCs who behaved like this regularly with mental problems, social problems and probably health problems eventually leading on from those. If the players really kept on like this I suspect we'd be going our separate ways pretty soon thereafter! I know Traveller is all things to all people, but this doesn't sound like Traveller to me. Even I was abstracting longer trips, I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that PCs simply *have* to get out and about. Hey, isn't there a sanity rule in a Freelance Traveller article I read recently? I'd be adopting that tomrrow. And that's before you take into account lower tech worlds where you *can't* do everything from the ship, or worlds with cultures where they just *won't* do anything except face to face. Boy would my players being hitting a cultural region where that was the norm if I thought that was the way things were going! Let 'Em play like that if they must but there's no way they'll even be breaking even in my book. It's not just die rolling and number crunching, too much 'stuff' happens in the real world. Even the fictionalised real world!

The whole point of Traveller is to travel. And that includes seeing the sights, meeting the people (one of the absolute joys of my time abroad and a much undervalued part of Traveller NPCs), and encountering the adventures along the way. Indeed, my Swedish cabin mate and I for a day off 's entertainment - given we had very very little money as volunteers - would be to catch a bus to the end of its route for a photo exped and see what we could find. No 'point' to it in traveller terms but we weren't unusual, we were just human.

Sorry, rant over. Back to your usual programming....