the target market

[jackleg]

I have been playing Traveller from the LBB to TNE. I do not own any Traveller items after TNE, but I still follow it development. I was wondering, with the reprints of the LBB in bound printing, GURPS & d20 versions, who is the market for T-5?

GURPS & d20 would have gotten many newbies. Is T-5 going after people who play a previous version? What would make someone give up their current game for T-5? Anyone got the answer?

 

[Jame]

Either a gun pointed at my head, or massive infusions of cash into my bank account, or personal interest, would make me interested in it.

 

[Jeffr0]

CT-- The Ultimate House Rules Development Project; Big Floppy Books are unweildy
MT-- Monster Game Carcinoma; Errata all over the place
TNE-- Not necessarily 'Real Traveller.' Don't want Ebay or RPGNow versions though...
GURPS-- Gearhead Extravaganza.
T20-- Yeah people actually play it... but... you know... it's got levels.

T5... I'm hoping for a tidy and compact (and debugged!) game that does everything well without too much overhead. Must have that "Real" Traveller feeling... don't want to play a game that "emulates" Traveller. Want to play a game that integrates well with wargaming components and that is not ashamed of its wargaming roots.

If it integrates and synthesizes the best elements of all that is Traveller into something useable and accessible... then I will be blown away. I'd have no problem dropping my own CT-GURPS hybrid and getting on board-- especially if the publisher gives the message that they care about the line and intend to support it.

The whole concept of Traveller implies all kinds of tough design problems on all kinds of levels. What I'd really like to see is something that makes me feel like I have "the ANSWER" so that I end up spending less time tinkering and more time playing.

Though I confess... the next three gaming purchases I make will probably be CT reprints....

IMO, the GURPS Traveller products are really extensions of CT and never quite attempt to replace or supercede it. It's as if SJG thinks that Space 3e does Books 1-3 on its own. Of course... even Books 1-3 don't quite do Books 1-3. So really... what I'm looking for in T5 is the Platonic version Books 1-3. It's what I've been trying to hash out in my own tinkering... and I'd like to pick up T5 and say, "yes! this is what I've been trying to make!"

 

[robject]

Ditto what Jeffr0 says:

1. takes the best ideas from previous Traveller ( ~ 'feels like Real Traveller')
Chargen, Skills, Tasks, Worlds, Starships?

2. does everything well
Perhaps like a modernized, cleaned-up CT -- or a streamlined MT?

3. usable and accessible
Core Book: Worlds and Adventures?
Player's Book: Characters and Combat?
Trader's Book: Ships and Tech reference?

4. tidy and compact ( = 'without too much overhead')
That would be nice. MT-length books?

5. integrates with wargaming
That would also be nice.

 

[Jeffr0]

Originally posted by r o b:
3. usable and accessible
I don't even know how to define this.

1) Blind Test the Core Book. Seriously.

2) Provide Examples. Of everything. Use a running example throughout the book. A noob Ref taking his players out on their first session.

3) Provide Scenarios for the combat system that cover most archetypical situations. (Like the Mayday/Snapshot scenarios, execept tighter, more fun, and integrated with the new mileau's vision.) A noob referee should be about to do ship-to-ship combat and a boarding action within 30 minutes of picking up the book.

4) A noob referee should understand smuggling and patrols and so forth. These things should be integrated into the Trade rules perhaps. We must know what passes for routine among Han Solo types...!

5) Integrate UWP codes with all the sections (more or less as in Books 1-3) but provide a summary page that give a birds eye view of how that UWP affects play overall. Combat Effects, Trade Effects, Equipment Needed, and anything else it might impact.

6) The characters have just gone to a world and all you have is a UWP. This one page gives you a guide to reading the code and fleshing out the situation.

7) Two things define the Traveller universe: Ancients... and Travelling. Do not mock this. Too many old hands criticize this as being cliche-- even in the rules!? Your goal needs to be to get the Noob into a spaceship and moving across a subsector during his first game session-- with confidence. Anything that undermines this should be put somewhere other than the core book. Everything in the core book should be about furthering this goal. Everything should make this a fun experience for the players and the ref. If you leave the ref feeling like he still has to invent a system for doing this then you have failed and missed your chance to make T5 special.

8) The core book should be completely self contained and should not assume any familiarity with any other Traveller products.

9) Settle any and all Flameable issues as far possible. The noob's first innocent questions on a message board should not trigger flame fights. Address the mileau/rules well enough that this is not going to happen.

 

[Malenfant]

T5... I'm hoping for a tidy and compact (and debugged!) game that does everything well without too much overhead.

You really haven't seen the crap that's been foisted on the playtest board, have you. The words "tidy and compact" can in no way describe anything that has been presented so far.

Judging by the playtest files (the ones that aren't half-written and somewhat incomprehensible in places), it seems that T5's target audience are people who like clunky, inelegant, outdated, 70s-style games with lots of tables with so much dice rolling that your wrists would sieze up (alien generation alone could require several dozen dice rolls), and who like deliberately arcane and obtuse dice engines that bear no resemblance to anything used today.

What's more, Marc's made it explicitly clear that he's not interested in listening to peoples' ideas to make it more usable, playable, streamlined, and more appealing to the modern market. All he wants are people to test the rules that he's presenting and make sure they're not statistically 'broken', regardless of how flawed they are in use and practise. The rules themselves do not appear to be up for debate at all. IME, playtests should be about all of the above, not just blind testing of existing rules that won't change.

So anything said on threads like this - where people make suggestions of what they'd like T5 to be - is completely irrelevant to how it will be, because Marc just isn't listening. As a result, I'm quite sure that T5 will bomb even among the usual devoted Traveller hardcore (there are plenty of Traveller fans on the playtest who were wondering what the hell Marc was thinking given what he's presented so far).

 

[RobertFisher]

It seems to me that the target market for T5 is Marc.*

I'll probably buy it, because I'm a fan of Marc's previous work. Plus, there are sure to be ideas I'll st^H^Hborrow even if I don't choose to play it. So, I guess that's a secondary market.

But then, I'm a cynical optimist.

(*I don't think this is a bad thing. Indeed, I think the best games are those that are primarily designed by one person & for which the designer is the target market. Ideally you have a good marketing person who--post-design--can figure out how to market it to the people who'd like it.)

 

[Jeffr0]

Hardcore Traveller players will not be satisfied with anything and will continue to refine their personal homebrew Frankenstein games regardless of what happens. Likewise, my own vision of what the Traveller core book should be will continue to percolate whether Marc writes it for me or not.

Of course, if the Traveller community reacts violently enough, I'll have to play T5 just to spite them!

 

[robject]

This is great stuff. I want you to elaborate on this point:

Originally posted by Jeffr0:

7) Two things define the Traveller universe: Ancients... and Travelling. [...] Your goal needs to be to get the Noob into a spaceship and moving across a subsector during his first game session-- with confidence. [...] Everything in the core book should be about furthering this goal. Everything should make this a fun experience for the players and the ref. If you leave the ref feeling like he still has to invent a system for doing this then you have failed and missed your chance to make T5 special.

I want to understand exactly what you're saying. Travellers travel. The goal of the core book, therefore, is to show the reader how to travel.

When you say "invent a system for doing this" it seems like you're thinking of something that's lacking in other Traveller incarnations. Yes?

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by Jeffr0:
Hardcore Traveller players will not be satisfied with anything and will continue to refine their personal homebrew Frankenstein games regardless of what happens. Likewise, my own vision of what the Traveller core book should be will continue to percolate whether Marc writes it for me or not.

Well, I'm talking about people who just find the dice system used in the T5 playtest to be very awkward indeed. From experience, if the majority of people who are on the playtest generally revile the dice system, then it's very unlikely that people outside it will like it either. And if the designer stubbornly insists on keeping a system that most of his playtesters don't like, then there's little point in running a playtest at all. If the designer doesn't care what playtesters thing, then it's all just a waste of time.

But frankly, if you've got your own vision of what Traveller should be like then just go ahead and use it, because it's highly unlikely that anyone else is going to come up with something that you'd find perfect. As it is, Marc's vision of the game seems to diverge wildly from what everyone else would like to see (that much is absolutely clear from his introductory document on the playtest board).

The net result I think is that he'll end up losing the very people who wanted to see what he'd come up with, because the direction he wants to go in is so bizarre and impractical even for them.

And then there's the point of why the market even needs a new edition of Traveller with a new system in the first place, which has never been made clear. Particularly if it means that planned alternative versions of the game would have to be sacrificed or abandoned to make it happen (Hunter's idea for CT+ for example, would have been a good idea for which there was a decent demand in the community, but has been abandoned because of T5).

 

[jackleg]

Once again I ask who will buy this game?

Just because it integrates the systems, so what? Alot of other people have refined the CT rules and are running them right now(ie BITS).

What does it offer to the new person to Traveller that they cannot get right now? Third Imperium info can be purchased from SJGames. From what I have browsed at my FLGS, the quality is there. You can always ignore the GURPS mechanics. I am not sure what the d20 version offers.

Truthfully, I could take bits and parts of the LBB, Books 2&3, and run it with practically any system out there. The main thing that Traveller seems to outdated is chargen, but hell I have fixed that with stuff I have thought of and other material on the net.

When I started playing rpgs, the system was everything, now its is the setting and background. As we all know, people are playing all versions of the Traveller backgrounds with all types of settings.

What will T-5 offer to make me spend my hard earned dollars, as a newbie and a veteran?

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by jackleg:
What will T-5 offer to make me spend my hard earned dollars, as a newbie and a veteran?

That's exactly the question that needs to be addressed. We tried to get it answered at the start of the playtest, but Marc did not deign to enlighten us as to why he feels the market needs a new version of the game, or why people should buy it. So far, the question remains unanswered.

At this stage, all the T5 playtest has provided us with is a half-written, extraordinarily over-complicated alien design system (I'm surprised there isn't a table showing the number of nipples an alien race should have) - previous versions of the game haven't had anything like this.

But that said, this design system is nowhere near as good or as practical as the one in GURPS Uplift 2e, which does the same thing in practically the same way, but with far fewer dice rolls, much more explanation, and less anally-retentive detail and constraints for the GM to deal with. So I don't think it's a selling point really.

 

[Jeffr0]

Originally posted by r o b:
This is great stuff.

Rob... you're nuts, man!

I'm just some guy that's too dumb to referee Traveller.

But seriously.... Streamline the combat and add the scenarios like I've said. Integrate ship encounters, smuggling, trade, and police ships a little better into some sort of system that makes sense and fits the mileau.... Make that handy UWP guide sheet.... Make a seperate book combining Animal Encounters, 1001 Characters, and Patrons type supplement stuff with maybe a few Amber Zones mixed in. Then combine Shadows, Twilight's Peak, and some extra goodies in another book. Maybe another book with the Proto-Traveller universe background and the Spinward Marches laid out (or whatever the mileau is.) Provide an example where a ref cruises through all of this stuff with ease on his first night out.

Revise it all so that it's all consistent. Take the most relevant advances from MT and GURPS... simplify them and boil them down. Take this refined precious metal and put it into a Deluxe Leather Bound Doomsday edition... and you have everything in one place.


The key is knowing what to leave out and what to abstract. Some actual Design work must be done... not just extension and elaboration. Everthing in the core book(s) needs to center around making Travelling work with little prep time and only small exposure to the rules/background. The system should be there to do the brunt of the work... not to show off how 'realistic' things are.

Too much of the wrong kind of detail is to be avoided at all costs. CT was on the right track. If it could be revised in some sort of sane way, you'd have it. Later systems stopped trying to address this issue and obsessed over making the perfect model. Some great things were developed, but the results of all that development need to be applied to a 'real' game.

 

[mike wightman]

Deluxe Leather Bound Doomsday edition

I want this...

I also agree with Jeffr0's other points.

Traveller5 done in the style of... 2300AD perhaps???

 

[RainOfSteel]

Originally posted by Malenfant:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Jeffr0:
T5... I'm hoping for a tidy and compact (and debugged!) game that does everything well without too much overhead.

Judging by the playtest files (the ones that aren't half-written and somewhat incomprehensible in places), it seems that T5's target audience are people who like clunky, inelegant, outdated, 70s-style games with lots of tables with so much dice rolling that your wrists would sieze up (alien generation alone could require several dozen dice rolls), and who like deliberately arcane and obtuse dice engines that bear no resemblance to anything used today.
</font>[/QUOTE]The Alien Race Generation rules, 12 pages, the only section released so far, does clearly state that choice is a valid option when running through it, so the total dice rolls involved in creating a race may be zero.

On the minus side, this section is so completely bio-gearheaded, that I still can't bring myself to believe it will be included in the new Main Rulebook. It has no application to "getting up and running" for a GM and Players who have just picked it up.

Originally posted by Malenfant:
What's more, Marc's made it explicitly clear that he's not interested in listening to peoples' ideas to make it more usable, playable, streamlined, and more appealing to the modern market. All he wants are people to test the rules that he's presenting and make sure they're not statistically 'broken', regardless of how flawed they are in use and practise. The rules themselves do not appear to be up for debate at all. IME, playtests should be about all of the above, not just blind testing of existing rules that won't change.

Well, that depends. Playtesting does mean "test by playing", not "gimme design advice".

However, it is true that when almost every single playtester stands up to agree that a certain something is a bad idea, and the message heard in return is, "No, it's really a good idea," . . . well, it doens't bode well for the future (for it seems to be borderline on ignoring reality).

It can also be quite disconcerting to hear that there is no intention to improve some rules sections at all, despite known serious flaws. Especially when, at the very least, I personally was counting on that specific rules section to get redone.

Originally posted by Malenfant:
So anything said on threads like this - where people make suggestions of what they'd like T5 to be - is completely irrelevant to how it will be [...]

I see the situation a little more grey than this. There does seem to be a little bit of bend, but nothing major.

 

[RainOfSteel]

Originally posted by Malenfant:
From experience, if the majority of people who are on the playtest generally revile the dice system, then it's very unlikely that people outside it will like it either.

We should have counted heads and gotten real numbers, and they'd we'd have been able to see what sort of statistical sample we had.

Originally posted by Malenfant:
And if the designer stubbornly insists

Well, you have to be pretty stubborn to design and print an RPG game.

Originally posted by Malenfant:
on keeping a system that most of his playtesters don't like, then there's little point in running a playtest at all.

Well, I think it would be better to say there is no hope for improving the rules and mechanics through the playtest.

There are other things it can accomplish, like weeding out errata and simple bugs.

Although the end-result is that you are still right. If a large enough sample population doesn't like those rules and mechanics, it will be reflected in the general population.

 

[RainOfSteel]

I will go ahead and post another reference to my "Vision for T5 Success."

See: *Another* System?: Post 000072

 

[robject]

Originally posted by RainOfSteel:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Malenfant:
From experience, if the majority of people who are on the playtest generally revile the dice system, then it's very unlikely that people outside it will like it either.

We should have counted heads and gotten real numbers, and they'd we'd have been able to see what sort of statistical sample we had.
</font>[/QUOTE]No real need there, I think. A guesstimate of 90% against and 10% neutral wouldn't be too far off.

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Malenfant:
And if the designer stubbornly insists

Well, you have to be pretty stubborn to design and print an RPG game.
</font>[/QUOTE]I think you're right. That, and refusing to be intimidated.

If a large enough sample population doesn't like those rules and mechanics, it will be reflected in the general population.

I think this is likely true.

Your previous post mentioned 'bend'. Playtesters should be as patient as they are insistent, especially in the early phase, when bending can occur with little notice.

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by RainOfSteel:
The Alien Race Generation rules, 12 pages, the only section released so far, does clearly state that choice is a valid option when running through it, so the total dice rolls involved in creating a race may be zero.

Yes, but if choice is a valid alternative, then there's no guidance whatsoever on making reasonable choices - you're not more likely to get a reasonable or realistic alien race by choice than you are if you did it randomly. And if you can just choose things anyway, then why have all those tables and random choice at all?

Plus, there's still a huge number of steps and tables to go through anyway even if you did choose everything by hand.

On the minus side, this section is so completely bio-gearheaded, that I still can't bring myself to believe it will be included in the new Main Rulebook. It has no application to "getting up and running" for a GM and Players who have just picked it up.

It does seem fairly irrelevant. But then Marc also seems to think that players will accept having to make both alien and human characters in order to play T5.

Well, that depends. Playtesting does mean "test by playing", not "gimme design advice".

And as I pointed out, it's impossible to playtest what's there anyway. It's incomplete and half-written - you can't playtest something when you don't know most of the rules, how it fits in, or what most of the things even mean.

And Playtests are in part about giving design advice. Playtesters are representative of the people who are going to be playing the game - if they find the rules are overly and/or unecessarily complicated or clunky then the designer had better listen to them and change the rules, because people outside the playtest will think the same thing.

However, it is true that when almost every single playtester stands up to agree that a certain something is a bad idea, and the message heard in return is, "No, it's really a good idea," . . . well, it doens't bode well for the future (for it seems to be borderline on ignoring reality).

It can also be quite disconcerting to hear that there is no intention to improve some rules sections at all, despite known serious flaws. Especially when, at the very least, I personally was counting on that specific rules section to get redone.

Absolutely. I've been on many other playtests and have never seen that attitude before - if the designer just ignores the feedback he gets, then there really is no point in wasting peoples time.

I see the situation a little more grey than this. There does seem to be a little bit of bend, but nothing major.

The only bend I saw was that he was willing to change a couple of largely irrelevant modifiers.

Originally posted by RainOfSteel:
We should have counted heads and gotten real numbers, and they'd we'd have been able to see what sort of statistical sample we had.

Well I'm sure the threads must still be there. It certainly seemed like most of the people who voiced their opinions on the system didn't like it. In fact, I think the only person who said they didn't mind it was robject.

Originally posted by Malenfant:[qb]
Well, you have to be pretty stubborn to design and print an RPG game.

I don't think that's a requirement.

Originally posted by Malenfant:[qb]
Well, I think it would be better to say there is no hope for improving the rules and mechanics through the playtest.

There are other things it can accomplish, like weeding out errata and simple bugs.

Yes, but if the rules themselves are flawed, or over-complicated, or based on incorrect assumptions then what's the point? You just end up with a bad system that's flawed as heck but is internally consistent in its flaws. Which isn't much use really, since nobody will want to use a flawed system.

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by r o b:
No real need there, I think. A guesstimate of 90% against and 10% neutral wouldn't be too far off.

And yet, despite that, he's still sticking with it?

I think you're right. That, and refusing to be intimidated.

Intimidated? By whom? Me?! How could I, or any other mere "playtester" possibly intimidate a supposedly "great and wondrous game design genius" like Marc? (and yes, I'm being sarcastic).

I do not think it is unreasonable for playtesters to expect a professional, well organised playtest (or even one that is organised at all, as is the case with T5). Or to expect that enough material should be provided for playtesters to be able to fully assess how it works without having to guess at things that aren't there or haven't even been written yet. Or to expect that the designer to interact and respond directly with the playtesters instead of doing it through lackeys (if he has time to do the latter, then he has time to talk to us directly). Or to expect that the designer listens to, accepts, and acts upon the criticisms of his playtesters when it comes to the usability, elegance, and practicality of his rules. These are basic aspects of every playtest I've ever been involved with at SJG and QLI. I do however think it is unreasonable for a designer to flat out ignore his playtesters opinions in favour of just testing what he gives them.

Or do you think it's intimidating to expect that those principles - that everyone else (including QLI, for that matter) seems to be able to adhere to - should be considered and implemented here? No other playtest I've ever been on (and I have participated in at least ten others) has worked the way that the T5 playtest does.

There's simply no reason for this one playtest to be run the way it is, and all it's doing is alienating people and putting people off from helping who could have provided a lot of useful input. And those people are not likely to say good things about the playtest to encourage others to join either. Others may be less vocal about it than I am, but there are definitely other people who have already given up in frustration and walked away.

Playtesters volunteer their time so that they can help designers clear up inconsistencies in their rules and settings, and get their systems working in as straightforward, consistent, and elegant a manner as possible. If a playtest isn't geared toward that end because the designer isn't interested in peoples' opinions about how it works and can't get his act together enough to provide enough material for them to playtest it properly with, then not only is it a waste of time for all involved but it is also an insult to the playtesters. I said that on the playtest and I'm saying it again here. I don't think these expectations are remotely unreasonable or "intimidating" at all.

Your previous post mentioned 'bend'. Playtesters should be as patient as they are insistent, especially in the early phase, when bending can occur with little notice.

Given that Marc showed no willingness to bend at all over the dice systems used faced with a lot of opposition to them, I don't think this is happening here. Marc has told me that he doesn't believe a playtester's opinions on whether he likes the rules or not, or whether he thinks they are impractical or overcomplicated are relevant - he thinks that all a playtester should do is point out where they are functionally broken. That flies against every other playtest I've been on or heard of. If that's his attitude, then there is no reason for anyone to participate in his playtest.

EDIT: And remember, playtesters are invariably part of the target audience. If they're ignored and alienated, then the target audience is being made that much smaller.