Some Folks Were Looking Forward To It

[Jeffr0]

Looks like several folks were looking forward to T5.

Hopefully they never lurked on this forum. [img]graemlins/file_28.gif[/img]

[kafka47]

WOW! Six pages of pure nostalgia and then followed by 41 pages of people responding. Only fueling the argument, you build it, they will come.

Come on, friends, fellow travellers, citizens we have a Future to build.

Originally posted by Jeffr0:
Hopefully they never lurked on this forum. [img]graemlins/file_28.gif[/img]

Y'know, I've read a lot of criticism of Traveller and its various editions over the years, and never once has a critic's words spoiled even a few minutes of the fun I get playing this game.

Originally posted by kafka47:
[QB] WOW! Six pages of pure nostalgia

i.e. no actual content...

and then followed by 41 pages of people responding. Only fueling the argument, you build it, they will come.

Uh, did you actually read the comments? That's not 41 pages (or whatever) of people who are just responding positively to the idea of T5 - that's 41 pages of people talking mostly about D&D, while mentioning that they see Traveller in their store and nobody buys it. Sure some say "yeah I really liked it", of course there's people who would be looking forward to seeing what Marc is going to produce (the poor shmucks, if only they knew). But this isn't 41 pages (or whatever) of unadulterated praise for Traveller, it's 41 pages of people just discussing things relating to the original post.

Also note that the article was posted in March 2006. This isn't new.

[scout_harris]

Originally posted by kafka47:
WOW! Six pages of pure nostalgia and then followed by 41 pages of people responding. Only fueling the argument, you build it, they will come.

Come on, friends, fellow travellers, citizens we have a Future to build.

If it involves T5 in its current form. Count me out. I'm out of shelf space for books that will never be used (my 6 T4 Books are currently taking up the room).

Unless T5 is an improved MT... then I will be involved... I go with what my player base will accept!

[MJD]

One alarming thing I saw here and I've seen elsewhere: "Oooh, Traveller. Traveller was great you could do this and this and that..."

Past tense.

My experience is that Traveller is seen as one of the great games of yesterday by many gamers, leaving just us, the faithful, playing on.

Which is why I sometimes grind my teeth over the divisions among the faithful....

[flykiller]

Which is why I sometimes grind my teeth over the divisions among the faithful....

probably inevitable. traveller is hard. you have to come up with entire PLANETS, minimum, to even start a game, and in the beginning and to this day we're all on our own as to what those planets, worlds, systems, are. takes a certain kind of ref to do that - the kind that go their own way.

My experience is that Traveller is seen as one of the great games of yesterday by many gamers, leaving just us, the faithful, playing on.

yeah, and that was kind of inevitable too. kid walks into a store, looks at two games. one is "realistic", "gritty", "ordinary people in extraordinary situations", "shotguns in space". the other has artwork of cute babes, pictures of colorful flashing energy weapons, and ever-increasing powers for the character. decisions, decisions ....

My experience is that Traveller is seen as one of the great games of yesterday by many gamers, leaving just us, the faithful, playing on.

Which is why I sometimes grind my teeth over the divisions among the faithful....

If people want it to be a great game for the current generation, then the game surely needs to adapt to fit the mores of the current generation - one can't expect it to appeal to people today by waving it in their faces and saying "Look! It's older! It's better!". What's Traveller got in it to appeal to the current market?

Serenity/Firefly shows that something similar to Traveller could appeal to the 20-30 age market today. Maybe people need to start thinking about what Firefly had that Traveller doesn't have and try to get more of that in Traveller to sell it that way.

[Jeff M. Hopper]

I think a distinction needs to be made here between Serenity/Firefly the movie/TV show and Serenity the role-playing game. One was a pretty good science fiction show and another was a RPG that has had poor sales and reviews. Its like comparing apples and oranges.

I can tell you what the few younger gamers I've run across who played CT have told me: They can't believe the rules are so simple and that they work, although there has been complaints about the math. They love the random character generation and do chargen just to see what they come up with and try to create a backstory for the result.

So I think there is still some appeal to the current generation for this 30 year old game.

[bryan gibson]

at the risk of fanning flames, but this is something that ACT could have accomplished - because simple elegant systems have an appeal regardless of generational approach, especially when they work.

Whereas, after all these years, Traveller seems to have been evolving into more and more complex, obscure and just plain unclear rulesets and such, while there is less and less exploration of the setting proper.

This is why i am always happy to see more setting stuff pop out ( the setting is vast, and the timelines many, and lots still to be explored) and always stumped to see more mechanics ( like T4, T5, ad infinitum) being cranked out - one causes the game to grow, while the other merely confuses the issue.

If we must have mechanics, why not build on the originals, rather than yet another set of rules incompatible with all thats gone before? many of the fans ( Supplement 4 and his UGM, and ACT are two such examples) do so nicely, while others only add confusion and lack cross compatibilty ( such as- do i design my ship with High guard, FFand S, GURPS, T4, T20 or....you get the picture)