On Wed, Mar 30, 2016 at 8:53 AM, Michael McKinney
<xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:

> Post-Donald passing, I have found that while Traveller deeply does still
> interest me, I wonder how you actually roleplay this game. I think it would
> be interesting to hear how you did roleplaying in previous generations,
> because most games have the ability to pick-up and play, but did you have
> that with Traveller? Has the knowledge barrier showing up, been something
> you encountered in early editions, or is it a newer dilemma?

The T5 game I'm running has 3 players who have never played a
pen-and-paper RPG before, plus my wife and daughter who have done this
for years. (My daughter is 22, she started RPGs at about 5 or 6...)

Our first game session was about 50% "Q & A", with me laying out a
brief "What is the 3I? What is ___?" followed by the players asking
questions. I admit to using "Firefly" analogies shamelessly, since
they'd all seen the TV show.
We did char gen as a group, one person at a time, but the rest
listening in. As people asked about careers or "what does ___ mean?" ,
we digressed into what Scouts do, what the differences between the
Army and Marines were, etc
I purposefully used examples from the Spinward Marches as much as
possible, trying to tie the PC background into the setting, and give
the player as much background info as a I could tie into the PC so
they'd have mental hooks to remember it.

I got with the players off and on during the following weeks, one on
one, and did some char info expansion - we looked up their homeworld,
figured out their childhoods, etc. Ex-Military got to find out what
battles in the 4th Frontier War they were in, or where they got the
MCUF, and that led to one-on-one conversations about the worlds their
char had been to during char gen.

There were some game sessions where people got called into RL work, or
were sick, and we only had 1 or 2 players.... and those got spent as
free wheeling Q&A sessions on the universe.

All in all, it's worked out pretty well. We started play in Jan 2015,
and are still playing, so I guess we're doing something right.