Interesting Traveller Article

[Supplement Four]

Here's a very interesting article on Traveller, over at the Internet Review of Science Fiction.

They require you to create a log-in with them, but it's free. You'll probably need the log-in for this link to work.

http://www.irosf.com/q/zine/article/10119

(Sig...I think you'll dig this article.)

 

[Supplement Four]

Here's a very interesting article on Traveller, over at the Internet Review of Science Fiction.

They require you to create a log-in with them, but it's free. You'll probably need the log-in for this link to work.

http://www.irosf.com/q/zine/article/10119

(Sig...I think you'll dig this article.)

 

[Jeffr0]

Wow.... He didn't take a single easy dig against the game. He goes out of his way to avoid even the appearance of doing so: "This is not to condemn CT but to establish its noir character beyond any shadow of doubt."

Heh.

This explains a lot.

 

[Jeffr0]

Wow.... He didn't take a single easy dig against the game. He goes out of his way to avoid even the appearance of doing so: "This is not to condemn CT but to establish its noir character beyond any shadow of doubt."

Heh.

This explains a lot.

 

[Droptrooper.]

But later he goes on to have a blast at MT, TNE, 2300, 1889 and T2k (incidentally this is the first time I have seen 2300 written as T2.3K ).

Obviously he is a CT purist.

 

[Droptrooper.]

But later he goes on to have a blast at MT, TNE, 2300, 1889 and T2k (incidentally this is the first time I have seen 2300 written as T2.3K ).

Obviously he is a CT purist.

 

[Jeffr0]

What specific line is a blast at the later games? I don't see it...

 

[Jeffr0]

What specific line is a blast at the later games? I don't see it...

 

[Zob10701]

Facinating article. Well-researched and well-written. A must-read for anyone playing any form of Traveller, if just for the history of the literary underpinnings alone. Jeez, I never knew the Sword Worlds were lifted from some obscure SF series!

 

[Zob10701]

Facinating article. Well-researched and well-written. A must-read for anyone playing any form of Traveller, if just for the history of the literary underpinnings alone. Jeez, I never knew the Sword Worlds were lifted from some obscure SF series!

 

[rancke]

Originally posted by Zob10701:
Facinating article. Well-researched and well-written. A must-read for anyone playing any form of Traveller, if just for the history of the literary underpinnings alone. Jeez, I never knew the Sword Worlds were lifted from some obscure SF series!

That's because they're not. Traveller's Sword Worlds are probably a homage to Piper's Sword Worlds, but that's as far is it goes. The idea of naming a bunch of worlds after legendary swords. The Traveller Sword Worlds were not lifted from Piper. Some of the names Piper used weren't used in Traveller (and T added a lot more), and the societies are certainly not especially similar.

Even the fact that the Traveller Sword Worlds were also settled by military refugees was something I added many years afterwards (and for a specific reason that had nothing to do with Piper).


Hans

 

[rancke]

Originally posted by Zob10701:
Facinating article. Well-researched and well-written. A must-read for anyone playing any form of Traveller, if just for the history of the literary underpinnings alone. Jeez, I never knew the Sword Worlds were lifted from some obscure SF series!

That's because they're not. Traveller's Sword Worlds are probably a homage to Piper's Sword Worlds, but that's as far is it goes. The idea of naming a bunch of worlds after legendary swords. The Traveller Sword Worlds were not lifted from Piper. Some of the names Piper used weren't used in Traveller (and T added a lot more), and the societies are certainly not especially similar.

Even the fact that the Traveller Sword Worlds were also settled by military refugees was something I added many years afterwards (and for a specific reason that had nothing to do with Piper).


Hans

 

[Droptrooper.]

What specific line is a blast at the later games? I don't see it...

Read the comments.

I'm not so sure that the confusion was limited to the consumers, but I acknowledge that this has been asserted by GDW people after the fact. (I don't mean to be cryptic: it seems like there were a number of missteps in "MegaTraveller," "Traveller 2300"/"2300 AD," and "Traveller: the New Era"; branching out into "Space: 1889" was also a questionable move, in my opinion.)

This was attributed to someone named mantis but I checked and it is still M.A-D. On with direct quotes.

The missteps with MegaTraveller are plain: the product is so riddled with mistakes and omissions that it is not usable "out of the box." This is very strange, since the project should have been easy, simply compiling all the additions and refinements (mostly gleaned from published adventures and supplements) to the original, and adding the task system (from Digest Group Publications, iirc), to create the final form of the game (as well as the system, which we might call "2d6" in the style of "d20," the game system with roots in D&D and twenty-sided dice).

On the one hand, "MegaTraveller" was the spearhead of a company push. The two computer "MegaTraveller" games attest to this. Yet on the other hand, it seems the company's heart was not really into it, as shown by the poor quality of text, and the subsequent abandonment of "2d6" for "d10". The one hand does not seem to have known what the other hand was doing.

"MegaTraveller"--unuseable out of the box, built up yet abandoned 2d6 system.

"Traveller 2300"/"2300 AD"--needless repeated confusion with Traveller where a clean break was necessary; additional confusion as company and players try to figure out the new d10 system; abandoned.

"Traveller: the New Era"--the third try, finally linking real Traveller with a d10 system that has been shaken out a bit. In a way, what "MegaTraveller" should have been, but at the same time rather dramatically cut off from all the Classic Traveller material (except through the laborious process of conversion).

Someone with a very perverse view of megatraveller, MT is D20 using D6

 

[Droptrooper.]

What specific line is a blast at the later games? I don't see it...

Read the comments.

I'm not so sure that the confusion was limited to the consumers, but I acknowledge that this has been asserted by GDW people after the fact. (I don't mean to be cryptic: it seems like there were a number of missteps in "MegaTraveller," "Traveller 2300"/"2300 AD," and "Traveller: the New Era"; branching out into "Space: 1889" was also a questionable move, in my opinion.)

This was attributed to someone named mantis but I checked and it is still M.A-D. On with direct quotes.

The missteps with MegaTraveller are plain: the product is so riddled with mistakes and omissions that it is not usable "out of the box." This is very strange, since the project should have been easy, simply compiling all the additions and refinements (mostly gleaned from published adventures and supplements) to the original, and adding the task system (from Digest Group Publications, iirc), to create the final form of the game (as well as the system, which we might call "2d6" in the style of "d20," the game system with roots in D&D and twenty-sided dice).

On the one hand, "MegaTraveller" was the spearhead of a company push. The two computer "MegaTraveller" games attest to this. Yet on the other hand, it seems the company's heart was not really into it, as shown by the poor quality of text, and the subsequent abandonment of "2d6" for "d10". The one hand does not seem to have known what the other hand was doing.

"MegaTraveller"--unuseable out of the box, built up yet abandoned 2d6 system.

"Traveller 2300"/"2300 AD"--needless repeated confusion with Traveller where a clean break was necessary; additional confusion as company and players try to figure out the new d10 system; abandoned.

"Traveller: the New Era"--the third try, finally linking real Traveller with a d10 system that has been shaken out a bit. In a way, what "MegaTraveller" should have been, but at the same time rather dramatically cut off from all the Classic Traveller material (except through the laborious process of conversion).

Someone with a very perverse view of megatraveller, MT is D20 using D6

 

[Vargas]

IMO, there are a few round pegs being beaten into square holes in this article although there was obviously a lot of research done on the books which might have influenced CT. As an aside, for all of the scholarship represented by this article, it fails to mention the historical influences claimed by various folks at GDW as underpinning the game background.

 

[Vargas]

IMO, there are a few round pegs being beaten into square holes in this article although there was obviously a lot of research done on the books which might have influenced CT. As an aside, for all of the scholarship represented by this article, it fails to mention the historical influences claimed by various folks at GDW as underpinning the game background.

 

[Whipsnade]

Originally posted by Zob10701:
Facinating article.

Zob10701,

Fascinating in the sense that a train wreck is fascinating or fascinating in the same manner a Flat Earth pamphlet is fascinating, yes.

Well-researched and well-written.

Well researched? Bullshit. You apparently know as little about Traveller as the article's author does.

Hans has already pointed out the idiocy inherent in the author's claim that the Sword Worlds were lifted in toto from H. Beam Piper. And if you think Piper's SF work is 'obscure', you know as little about SF as you do about Traveller.

GDW borrowed general ideas from and paid homage to many classic SF sources. Ideas from authors ranging from Asimov to Poul Anderson to E.C. Tubbs and others were used and explored. GDW did the same with historical episodes too. GDW never lifted entire settings unchanged and grafted them into the game however.

I'll give you 'well written' as the author used paragraphs.

A must-read for anyone playing any form of Traveller...

Hardly.

Despite their fundamental differences, the author cannot even distinguish between the Traveller RPG model and the D&D/d20 RPG model. His calling MegaTraveller a 2D6 type of d20 beggars disbelief. His surmises and suppositions regarding the links between the different versions of Traveller are equally faulty.

Other than an unfortunate selection in names that was quickly corrected, 2300AD has nothing to do with Traveller. The games have completely different RPG systems, completely different in-game histories, and completely different in-game technology. Space:1889 had nothing to do with Traveller either. Again, different RPG systems, in-game history, and in-game tech are clearly evident. The only 'links' between the three are the publisher, GDW, and the genre, SF. Even saying a genre links S1889 and Traveller is stretching things as S1889 is a very different kind of SF than Traveller.

Simply put, the article is crap. It is little more than a poorly researched and deliberately confusing whine from some CT fanboy who bemoans the fact that anyone had the temerity to update a RPG system dating from the 1970s.

I'll give it a 1, Dick. The beat sucks and you can't dance to it.


Have fun,
Bill

 

[Whipsnade]

Originally posted by Zob10701:
Facinating article.

Zob10701,

Fascinating in the sense that a train wreck is fascinating or fascinating in the same manner a Flat Earth pamphlet is fascinating, yes.

Well-researched and well-written.

Well researched? Bullshit. You apparently know as little about Traveller as the article's author does.

Hans has already pointed out the idiocy inherent in the author's claim that the Sword Worlds were lifted in toto from H. Beam Piper. And if you think Piper's SF work is 'obscure', you know as little about SF as you do about Traveller.

GDW borrowed general ideas from and paid homage to many classic SF sources. Ideas from authors ranging from Asimov to Poul Anderson to E.C. Tubbs and others were used and explored. GDW did the same with historical episodes too. GDW never lifted entire settings unchanged and grafted them into the game however.

I'll give you 'well written' as the author used paragraphs.

A must-read for anyone playing any form of Traveller...

Hardly.

Despite their fundamental differences, the author cannot even distinguish between the Traveller RPG model and the D&D/d20 RPG model. His calling MegaTraveller a 2D6 type of d20 beggars disbelief. His surmises and suppositions regarding the links between the different versions of Traveller are equally faulty.

Other than an unfortunate selection in names that was quickly corrected, 2300AD has nothing to do with Traveller. The games have completely different RPG systems, completely different in-game histories, and completely different in-game technology. Space:1889 had nothing to do with Traveller either. Again, different RPG systems, in-game history, and in-game tech are clearly evident. The only 'links' between the three are the publisher, GDW, and the genre, SF. Even saying a genre links S1889 and Traveller is stretching things as S1889 is a very different kind of SF than Traveller.

Simply put, the article is crap. It is little more than a poorly researched and deliberately confusing whine from some CT fanboy who bemoans the fact that anyone had the temerity to update a RPG system dating from the 1970s.

I'll give it a 1, Dick. The beat sucks and you can't dance to it.


Have fun,
Bill

 

[Zob10701]

Wow. I know when I've been insulted.

 

[Zob10701]

Wow. I know when I've been insulted.