T5 Support and Supplements
- Thread starter MJD
- Start date
So, a PDF with titles. What of it?
It's the contents of the T5 CD-ROM. In response to your earlier post:
HG_B said:
Well, the T5 CD-ROM is a rules set. Some background material is there, centered on the 1105 Spinward Marches era, used as examples. But it isn't a milieu sourcebook, for example.
I don't see the use of two milieux under T5 fragmenting the market, either. They should serve to illuminate and even support one another.
T5 supports multiple milieux. It is a foundation so that writers can get on with the business of creating adventures and resources. Rebellion-era tech benefits, TNE-era ship's crew requirements, Yaskoydray-era weapons, Ziru Sirka-era warships, Core Expedition sector generation, et cetera.
Each milieu provides a change in color, as design, technology, and cultural constraints change. So you could see how a merchant in 1105 is similar and different to a merchant in 1248, or 1500, or year 100. You can see how different squadron combat is during the Ziru Sirka from that in the Fifth Frontier War, and how different they both are from TL 19 combat.
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Umm, That was my point. So, if it ISN'T (operative word) just shipping as a rules set, the release is a couple years off still.
Andrew Boulton
The Adminator
Supporting them does.
Let's say you can publish one milieu-specific book every 6 months. With a single milieu, you can sell everyone 2 books/year. With 2 milieux, each only gets 1/year.
Very true. That was always my biggest beef with the Rebellion. Not the new setting itself, but the cessation of support for the Classic Era.
However, to be fair, when a setting has the scope of Charted Space, or even "just" the Imperium, a lot of the material is going to be split between relevant and less relevant and hardly relevant at all anyway. Whatever material that covers the Solomani Rim or Gateway or Core is going to be well-nigh irrelevant to a campaign set in the Spinward Marches. Come to that, the same PCs are unlikely to participate in adventures set in District 268 and adventures set in Regina subsector (It can be done, but it costs the characters considerable in-game time away from their main stomping ground. This may be of little import if the worlds are all cardboard cut-outs, but quite a serious matter if the campaign features extensive interaction with local NPCs).
Hans
Ah. Well yes, that's true, under those circumstances.
No, don't ask me under what circumstances my mind operates. Please don't.
Fingers in too many pies was one of the mistakes made by QLI. At one point there was an attmept ongoing to do Gateway 993 (mainly written by me), T2320 (Colin), Legacy of the Aldenata (err..) and Honor Harrington (umm...)
This was really far too much to have taken on, and in the end money spent on the latter licenses was just wasted; nobody got any return on it. Unless you have a large team of writers, multiple mileux can't be done - folks will lose interest waiting long months between products.
I don't know how many people are involved in T5, nor how many of them could write sourcebooks, but from what I hear there's really nobody lined up to write any books at all to support T5. As I've said, I think that's a mistake - it needs a setting book to follow it up, and a stream of product thereafter to maintain interest. Not sure if that will happen at all, but it would certainly be a bad idea to split the efforts of whoever does it between different milieux or settings.
This was really far too much to have taken on, and in the end money spent on the latter licenses was just wasted; nobody got any return on it. Unless you have a large team of writers, multiple mileux can't be done - folks will lose interest waiting long months between products.
I don't know how many people are involved in T5, nor how many of them could write sourcebooks, but from what I hear there's really nobody lined up to write any books at all to support T5. As I've said, I think that's a mistake - it needs a setting book to follow it up, and a stream of product thereafter to maintain interest. Not sure if that will happen at all, but it would certainly be a bad idea to split the efforts of whoever does it between different milieux or settings.
But should we even expect to see that level of support? I'm not yet sure what sort of game T5 is supposed to be:
- a full-fledged revival line with major game-company support and third-party products (like Runequest II, to pick a revived Traveller contemporary);
- a comprehensive but over-sprawling game system which uses occasional sizable print releases, and more frequent small-scale PDF products, to support independent tinkerers rather than dedicated consumers (like GURPS, of late);
- a boutique game, with few or no supplements to speak of, designed to appeal to the nostalgia trade without requiring ongoing investment in a stable of writers and designers.
My (admittedly limited) view of the Traveller demographic is of a mainly traditionalist, home-brewed, "old school" bent, no matter which specific rules set is used. If we wanted a steady stream of new releases telling us what and how to play, we'd long ago have left for another game system's products. On the other hand, we seem to have a love for comfortable tradition, thus the enthusiasm for the "Classic Era" above all others and a willingness to deal with many of the blemishes to the existing setting rather than overturn the whole apple cart.
I suspect that a bundled setting which hewed close to the "Classic Era" would be all that we would ever get: such a release would be hard-pressed to distinguish itself from Mongoose's product line, would be unnecessary to many of the old guard who already own previous editions, and would rapidly subside into the unsupported and unremarked "boutique game" category. If that's really all we want, well, I suppose that's easy enough to get.
I freely confess my own preference for a "timeline and toolkit" approach, in which no milieu sees much ongoing development (except perhaps through PDF adventures and magazine articles), but we see regular releases of background material exploring "wider views" of astrography, history, and alien species/cultures, designed to let referees "roll their own" game settings using the included outlines and ideas and (most importantly) whatever gaming system, T5 or not, that they prefer, using some light conversion notes to be freely posted on the FFE website. Such a release plan could hope to offer product (and produce sales) to a wide variety of the shattered Traveller market, if written carefully enough to appeal to a wide enough variety of gamer styles, gaming campaigns, and game systems, and might even induce Traveller gamers from other system to try the new T5 rules after buying a supplement to use with their original preferred rules set.
On a totally different tack, I confess I'd also enjoy a new Traveller edition which emphatically emphasized and supported a single new setting, as GURPS' Interstellar Wars (but with more support!) or Imperium Games' abortive Milieu 0 (with better writing and quality control) or, of course, GDW's last New Era (with more buy-in from fans). However, it sounds to me like such an approach combines the worst of all possible worlds: much of the old guard would pass it by as irrelevant to the Classic Era, and many newcomers would be put off by their reaction and by a perceived need to be familiar with the rest of the Traveller canon to fully enter into the single presented universe.
A different option, of course, would be to aggressively embrace the "boutique game" concept for rules/setting tinkerers: release the rules set, and a set of milieu outlines (such as robject has suggested), and then encourage independent and unpaid development of the background, perhaps with the FFE website as a clearinghouse for links. If someone wants to put up a web page describing their "Guardians of the Regent" campaign during Arbellatra's reign, and another group produces a wiki carefully detailing their "Grand Empire of Stars" Vilani setting, and someone else crafts a "History of the Imperial Fleets" collection of starship designs, then the T5 rules become the seed-pearl for a pool of open-source (though probably highly variable in quality and style!) material exploring the universe it offers.
Much like the Traveller universe itself, these are prospects full of possibility. I just wish I knew more about which avenue Marc & Co. were aiming toward, both to know that they've actively considered it themselves and to better prepare myself for the product(s) yet to come.
I am very late to this discussion. So much is already done taht I doubt taht I have much to say.
I gather that many, many people like the Traveller milieus. My college days, though, did not include much in the way of available milieu, so I have ALWAYS considered the rules a system of play, along with a structure of the possible and impossible. I bought a lot of stuff -- I still have far too much of it -- but used mainly equipment and rules. I own a badly degraded copy of the original boxed set, and quite a few other items. I liked the MT rules, and still think that they did quite a bit to make the equipment workable. I understand that quite a bit of the non-GDW books are not available as scanned reprints, which is too bad -- there were useful items in the DGP stuff. The divorce and custody battle must have been tremendous for the kids to be kept apart from one another....
Anyway, my two cents: what matters is having workable rules and sufficient information to make a game work. The referee brings imagination and a focus for player action (and indignation at incredible referee hutzpah), regardless of "official" settings or entirely original material. My one published contribution to the material many years ago tried to be just that: a recipe for an adventure, just add referee. The ref has to work in this approach -- but since when is that new?
I suppose I should order the T5 CD-ROM and see whaat's happening to the IMPORTANT things: playability and assumptions.
Greg Lee
Grumpy Old Attorney Who Once referee'd Traveller/MegaTraveller.
I gather that many, many people like the Traveller milieus. My college days, though, did not include much in the way of available milieu, so I have ALWAYS considered the rules a system of play, along with a structure of the possible and impossible. I bought a lot of stuff -- I still have far too much of it -- but used mainly equipment and rules. I own a badly degraded copy of the original boxed set, and quite a few other items. I liked the MT rules, and still think that they did quite a bit to make the equipment workable. I understand that quite a bit of the non-GDW books are not available as scanned reprints, which is too bad -- there were useful items in the DGP stuff. The divorce and custody battle must have been tremendous for the kids to be kept apart from one another....
Anyway, my two cents: what matters is having workable rules and sufficient information to make a game work. The referee brings imagination and a focus for player action (and indignation at incredible referee hutzpah), regardless of "official" settings or entirely original material. My one published contribution to the material many years ago tried to be just that: a recipe for an adventure, just add referee. The ref has to work in this approach -- but since when is that new?
I suppose I should order the T5 CD-ROM and see whaat's happening to the IMPORTANT things: playability and assumptions.
Greg Lee
Grumpy Old Attorney Who Once referee'd Traveller/MegaTraveller.
Does that make you a rules lawyer?
So back to milieu support. Let's assume that support can mean lots of things, from a sourcebook to oodles of supplements and adventures.
Writing a resource is no small feat. Look at 1248: it's not a re-hash of TNE. It's a well-thought-out book, and does interesting things to the setting. It brings the milieu to life for me, because I used to just look at the Regency and go "meh". Now I see danger and opportunity and wheels within wheels. Not that Nilsen didn't have those. I'm just sayin'.
Now look at it backwards. We have milieu support from other rulesets, including the Rebellion, the Classic Age, Milieu Zero, and the New Era. To some degree these resources can be used for T5. What I'm not sure of is: to what degree are they useful to rulesets they're not built for -- Mongoose Traveller and T5 in particular?
In other words, if there's value in leveraging what we've already got, then by Great Cleon's Ghost perhaps it ought to be leveraged.
Writing a resource is no small feat. Look at 1248: it's not a re-hash of TNE. It's a well-thought-out book, and does interesting things to the setting. It brings the milieu to life for me, because I used to just look at the Regency and go "meh". Now I see danger and opportunity and wheels within wheels. Not that Nilsen didn't have those. I'm just sayin'.
Now look at it backwards. We have milieu support from other rulesets, including the Rebellion, the Classic Age, Milieu Zero, and the New Era. To some degree these resources can be used for T5. What I'm not sure of is: to what degree are they useful to rulesets they're not built for -- Mongoose Traveller and T5 in particular?
In other words, if there's value in leveraging what we've already got, then by Great Cleon's Ghost perhaps it ought to be leveraged.
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.. and why not build on that foundation... GO FOR IT!
