Some Folks Were Looking Forward To It

[MJD]

You'll note that I've not been commenting on T5. Two reaosns:

1. Might seem like sour grapes.
2. I've not been following the playtest.

But here we go. Some years ago I sent Marc some thoughts on a T4 based but improved task/combat resolution system when T5 was in its infancy. I don't know if this was ever acted upon or even looked at. Which itself is telling.

Marc also showed me some parts of the projected T5, and it seemed to me that it was the no-longer-plays ex-Traveller player's dream come true. Loads of charts and tables, loads of rules for creating rules for things. Plenty to play aorund with while you're sitting at home not playing Traveller.

It may be that T5 will be just what a significant segment of the fan base wants - lots of number crunching and super-detailing things with die rolls.

It's not for me though. I want to roll a couple of dice and make stuff explode. T5 looks like too much crunchy and not enough fun for me.

Y'see, I don't want a comprehensive toolkit, I want a framework to swing from while I have adventures.

 

[Malenfant]

Following from what MJD said, the diversity of Traveller is not remotely good for anyone who may be interested in getting into it for the first time.

One could argue that they can just look through the range of systems and settings and pick what's good for them. That's all very well if they know what they're looking for, but if they don't and say "hey, I want to get into Traveller, where do I start?" then having six or seven systems to choose from, each with rabidly loyal fanbases promoting them isn't going to help. What happens then is that you get loads of different opinions, all probably contradicting eachother, and no single direction to go on... and the guy asking the question being as confused as he was to start with.

You wouldn't have that problem with just one system.

 

[Scott Martin]

Originally posted by MJD:
This is after all, the same fan community that sent me death threats for writing for GURPS Traveller...

I hope that they were at least creative death threats This does tend to argue that Traveller fans should get out a bit more (myself included!)

I'd like to see a simple rules set as well, but indications are that it will not be 2D roll-high system, which (IMO) was one of the hallmarks of Traveller.

Of course I'm perfectly willing to settle for "framework to swing from" and have no problem with needing to snap some of those pieces together to make the framework.

I just hope that it doesn't come pre-assembled with massive heavily re-enforced 3I components, without which everything falls apart.

FF&S was nice: Did you want a different FTL system? Pull out jump drives, put in stutterwarp and you're off to the races.

Scott Martin

 

[Jeff M. Hopper]

The Traveller Saga
by Douglas & Kirsten Berry
music: "American Pie" by Don McLean


A long, long time ago,
I can still remember how the first game stirred my soul
Known Space on the StarForce map
A fist of stolen dice and that
Was all it took to make my dreams take flight

Every weekend at the game store
With my ten hard-earned bucks to buy more
Now twenty years have flown past
With wars and life and mishaps
I know I'm not that wide-eyed teen
But I still look up and I still dream
Whatever comes I do believe
I still will play this game

(Chorus)
So bye bye, I'm goin' Travellin' tonight
The rules set may be changing
But the concept's all right
And it lets me travel through the stars and through time
Saying: Gonna play this game 'til I die
Gonna play this game 'til I die

Do you remember when CT
Was only Books 1,2, and 3
and a homespun setting that you wrote
Do you recall Bill and Andrew Keith
Early FASA and JG
All the products out to help us play
And slowly the Imperium came to light
With enemies for us to fight
Then in Supplement 3
We met the Zhodani
It was a glorious time of change and growth
And we couldn't ever get enough
So we sat down and wrote our own stuff
And I still played this game

I told my mother...
(Chorus)

Then came some folks called DGP
About as passionate as you or me
About this universe we'd made
They filled in all the holes and cracks
They fixed some rules, they wrote a patch
And changed the way the game was played
But GDW had a plan
Strephon died at an assassin's hand
The Imperium fell to war
Much worse than before
And in '87 we got MT
To play through this galactic catastrophe
But the new rules didn't mean much to me
'cause I still played the game

I told my girlfriend.
(Chorus)

For six years, we played through Hard Times
While pretenders fled and planets died
And we wondered how it all would end
Then we got the horrid news
about a Virus that would use
any means to kill humaniti
TNE made its bright debut
While the Old Timers hissed and booed
Much dissent was spoken
The TML was broken!
And while X-Boat waxed on days gone by
GDW up and died
The hard core fans sent up a cry
They can't have killed our game

They told their children...
(Chorus)

Then Marc Miller took back control
And promised Traveller like we had before
But did they try to push too fast?
For T4 was a sorry mess
Barely edited and the rest
Of the releases, well they didn't shine much more
The authors grumbled we've not been paid
Imperium Games quietly sped away
Then Loren brought our reprieve
A deal with Evil Steve
A return to all those Classic themes
Of hard-sf and future dreams
It may be GURPS, but what the beans?
I still will play this game

We'll tell our grandkids...
(Chorus)

(slowly)
Now twenty years and more have past
From first edition to the last
But the setting is the game to me
I went down to my local store
Where I bought the first books years before
But that store now is part of history
And nowadays the kids play Magic
Glitterboys or Vampires tragic
No more the sound of parties-
Instead, the hum of PCs
And books for which I once did lust
Sit on the shelf collecting dust
But I have them and that's enough
For still, I play this game

(Chorus, slowly)

(Chorus)

 

[Stainless]

Classic!

 

[Jeffr0]

Originally posted by Malenfant:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Jeffr0:
Actually... we now know that the shortcomings of the Traveller community had a direct impact on the design of 4e GURPS: the core system was shifted away from a "hard"/realistic/wargame-ish/gearhead focus and more towards being a foundation for GURPS Powers. (I can document that last bit if you're interested.)

Please do, I'd be interested to hear more about this. (it also might explain why G4e has (to me at least) become largely indistiguishable from HERO system). [/QB]</font>[/QUOTE]Here it is:

How the Tightwad Traveller Fanbase Sounded the Death Knell for a Realistic GURPS 4e

There's been a mention of the Munchkin explosion and the GURPS cut backs. I have more details on that here:

Evil Stevie’s State of the Union Afterbirth

Sorry if my language is over the top, but it's a bit boring to try go go through and synthesize a bunch of random forum posts. I really don't even know what a sycophantic prole is... I just thought it would make me sound cool.

 

[Merxiless]

Hey, Jeff.

That smoked. Amen.

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by Jeffr0:
How the Tightwad Traveller Fanbase Sounded the Death Knell for a Realistic GURPS 4e [/QB]

I think you're somewhat overstating Traveller's role in this. Kromm's saying that things like the Powers and Psionics books sold more than other books (unsurprising, as they give snacky powers to people), and then saying that if specific realistic settings like Traveller and WWII had sold more then G4e would have been more like those.

But by and large people don't buy GURPS for specific settings anyway - they buy them for their own generic stuff. It seems hardly fair to single out Traveller as being the reason that GURPS 4e turned out like it did - SJG just saw that their generic 'powers' books were selling more (unsurprisingly) and focussed on that instead. It's not like people failed to support Traveller for G3e after all.

 

[Jeffr0]

Yes... I hope its obvious from the tone of my posts that my tongue is in my cheek.... But it remains a fact that the lackluster sales of SJG's WWII and Traveller material resulted in a very different focus for 4e than would otherwise have occurred.

 

[MJD]

But here's a thing... a huge segment of the Traveller fan base won't touch GT. Hell, some of them send death threats to the authors.

This comes back to my diversity / viability point. How far can you subdivide a closed market before it becomes unviable?

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by Jeffr0:
Yes... I hope its obvious from the tone of my posts that my tongue is in my cheek.... But it remains a fact that the lackluster sales of SJG's WWII and Traveller material resulted in a very different focus for 4e than would otherwise have occurred.

Yes, but I'm not convinced that they honestly expected those games to sell enough to influence their thinking though, so it's hardly surprising that they refined GURPS based on the stuff that actually was popular. It was certainly clear that WWII wasn't going to be all that popular right from the start anyway - that genre has never been big in the RPG market, after all. And by the time GURPS 4e was in the works GURPS Traveller was in its twilight years anyway when it came to sales.

I just think you're putting a bit to much weight on that statement by Kromm, is all.

 

[Qstor2]

Originally posted by Malenfant:
But I do recall people like Jon Zeigler and Andrew saying that the thing with GT 3I was that it had pretty much naturally reached the end of its run anyway. Pretty much everything that anyone wanted for it was out by the end, the only thing remaining for it really were more sector books. [/QB]

I like Jon's work and sector books in general. I don't mind the GURPS rules for RPG's and have most if not all of the GT books including Interstellar Wars.

I PM'd Jon on the SJG boards and he said he'd like to write an Aldebarran sector book. I'd buy it. But I'm pretty sure that SJG isn't going to do any more GT books even for e23.

This is more of responding to this post generally.
I didn't get any of the MT material originally although I have all of the DGP materials and 2 of the MT books Fighting Ships and the Rebellion Sourcebook. I'm a fan of the CT/GT alternate timelines. I happen to like BtC so I'm only sent MJD praise e-mails and PM's

I have a few of the TNE books and I got the deadtree version of TNE 1248 from Comstar. I got most of the T4 books too

Since I play/DM D&D a lot my prefered rules system now for Traveller is T20. I agree that Traveller needs one rules system not to dilute the market Since both T20 and GT seem dead something else I guess...

Mike

 

[Malenfant]

Since both T20 and GT seem dead something else I guess...

Actually GT is still alive, in the form of Interstellar Wars.

Though one could argue that no version of the game is currently "alive" in the sense of anyone producing new rules or supplements for it today. CT is probably the closest to "alive" because Avenger still produces adventures and supplements that are compatible with it.

So what we really have is a large number of different rules systems that are shambling on in an undead state because they're still available from places like DTRPG or on CDROM, but nothing new will be available til T5. People still play them of course, but the only publisher actively supporting Traveller right now seems to be Avenger.

 

[The Shaman]

Originally posted by Malenfant:
People still play them of course, but the only publisher actively supporting Traveller right now seems to be Avenger.

BITS (British Isles Traveller Support) continues to publish for Traveller - they released a new adventure earlier this month (Cold Dark Grave), have an extensive line of excellent supplements and adventures, and recently entered into an agreement with Ad Astra to distribute Power Projection, a miniatures wargame fusion of High Guard and Full Thrust as well as produce a new line of capital ship and escorts miniatures.

I'd call that active publisher support.

 

[Malenfant]

Ooops! Yes, and BITS (I keep forgetting about them!).

The point remains the same though - the bigger publishers seem to have stopped producing new material for Traveller, it's the little ones that keep it going.

I think things like DTRPG do create an obstacle to unifying the game though - if those old lines weren't available there then the only way to get them would be via ebay and convention stalls and the most commonly recommended options would be to get GT or T20 (which are still available in the gaming stores).

With those old lines still there on DTRPG, you can just point people to those instead, giving them more choices and thus maintaining the fragmented market. I know there are people who argue that choice is a good thing, but as Martin said it's dividing a small market too thinly and that is never good for publishers trying to break into it.

 

[kafka47]

The point remains the same though - the bigger publishers seem to have stopped producing new material for Traveller, it's the little ones that keep it going.

I think this where you are having the most difficulty. All publishers save Wizards are small publishers. The demise of GDW has been filled children filling the shoes of their parents. Sometimes, the children are teenagers like SJG and can adequately fill the shoes because they have the resource base behind them. Others like QLI are very much shoestring productions hence just leaving childhood. And, others are just tweens neither here nor there i.e. BITS or Imperium Games --people interested in the property with varying degrees of success (in spite of their poor customer service record, T4 is still Traveller). I think you expect these companies to be huge entities, they are not. And, even if you can intellectualize the problem, you cannot feel the problem. The problem also goes the other way, some us can feel the problem, but not intellectualize it.

 

[MJD]

The best thing that could happen for Traveller is for there to be a single rules set blessed by Marc Miller and to which all licensed material must adhere. Even then a large segment of the players will just ignore it.

Ths hypothetical rules set wouldn't have to appeal to a new generation of gamers really, because the main audience isn't new players, it's the existing market.

T5 won't (IMO) fulfil this need because only a CT-based system will appeal to the great mass of existing players. Only a CT based system will draw folks away from their houseruled-to-playability CT sets and into using something that's similar but offical.

After 30 years of railing against TNE, sniffing disdainfully at T4, frowning in puzzlement at GT and casting sidelong glances at T20, these people are still playing CT or maybe MT.

They are not going to adopt a new system in any great numbers.

And so, it seems that Traveller needs a single unified rules set based on CT but updated, cleaned up and adapted to contain the best ideas from the past 30 years without becoming overcomplex.

Sell enough exisitng players on this rules set, enforce a policy that all licensed products use it as well as whatever rules they are designed for, and there may be a chance to reunify the Traveller fan community somewhat - enough perhaps that it stops looking like a fragmented mess to the point where outsiders begin to take the game seriously.

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by kafka47:
I think this where you are having the most difficulty. All publishers save Wizards are small publishers. The demise of GDW has been filled children filling the shoes of their parents. Sometimes, the children are teenagers like SJG and can adequately fill the shoes because they have the resource base behind them. Others like QLI are very much shoestring productions hence just leaving childhood. And, others are just tweens neither here nor there i.e. BITS or Imperium Games --people interested in the property with varying degrees of success (in spite of their poor customer service record, T4 is still Traveller). I think you expect these companies to be huge entities, they are not. And, even if you can intellectualize the problem, you cannot feel the problem. The problem also goes the other way, some us can feel the problem, but not intellectualize it. [/QB]

I am very aware of the size of RPG companies (even GDW wasn't all that big, to be honest) - that's why I said the "the bigger publishers" in my post, not "the big publishers". I really do know how big and small the companies involved are though - I'm not having any trouble with the concepts involved at all, trust me

.

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by MJD:
Sell enough exisitng players on this rules set, enforce a policy that all licensed products use it as well as whatever rules they are designed for, and there may be a chance to reunify the Traveller fan community somewhat - enough perhaps that it stops looking like a fragmented mess to the point where outsiders begin to take the game seriously.

This man speaks wisely (as usual! Geez, face it MJD - we agree on stuff. Just stop fighting it ).

What really baffles me is why Marc doesn't seem to realise this too. Or if he does see it, why he's ignoring it.

 

[Rhialto the Marvelous]

What Martin said has been said many times, and bears repeating many times, over and over and over again.

Any doubters, check out this RPGnet poll re. "What should T5 most closely resemble, rules-wise?"

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?referrerid=&t=276602&highlight=traveller+poll

If T5 task resolution is roll-under, I won't buy it. I'm serious, and more importantly, I'm not alone.

Look at the poll, dear designers. Forward it to Marc, send it by snail mail or strip-o-gram, any would be fine: Just. Bring. It. To. His. Attention. Please.