the target market

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by Jeffr0:
[QB] Gurps Space is a great product for what it does. It may be derivative of classic Traveller, but it does not "do" what the classic LBB's did. If you don't understand this then there's no way that you can understand the need for T5.

Let's see, GURPS Space 3e.

CH 1: Creating a Universe. CT gave no guidance on this whatsoever. And yet this is a critical part of coming up with your own scifi universe, which is what CT was supposed to have allowed you to do (In fact, IIRC all CT did in this regard is say "read some scifi books").

CH 2: Choosing Technology: Again, CT didn't give any assistance in this regard. It gave you a pre-set bunch of technologies, but the only time anything in Traveller came close to giving a GM ALL the options was FF&S, which was a TNE product.

CH 3: Characters. Well, CT does that at least. Though it gives you a limited range of mostly military options, all randomly determined.

CH 4: Gadgets/CH 5: Weapons/CH 6: Medicine: CT provides a limited selection in Book 3 (I think?).

CH 7: Environments: Don't recall CT ever having anything as detailed as this.

CH 8: Starships, CH 9: Space Combat: CT covered that in Book 2 and 5.

CH 10: Stars and Worlds: CT covered that in book 6. But in nowhere near as much detail, and much less realistically.

CH 11: Civilisations: CT has precious little about actually making alien societies.


All of the chapters in GURPS Space are useful sources of information to make a scifi background. But CT misses out some really critical stuff - not least of which is HOW TO COME UP WITH YOUR OWN SCIFI BACKGROUND.

No matter what you may think, CT was originally designed to allow GMs to come up with their own scifi backgrounds (albeit within a very limited framework provided by the tech and society assumptions implicit in books 1-3). It got mired in the 3I background later on, but that doesn't change the original purpose.

GURPS Space also is designed to allow GMs to come up with their own scifi backgrounds, but unlike CT it gives you all the core information you need to do it (and you can use GURPS Aliens or Uplift or Ultratech etc for the other aspects).

So I'm kinda curious to see what you think CT was supposed to be or what it was supposed to allow you to do. And what you think the point of a T5 would be, if not this.

If the CT Reprints weren't available I'd probably have ended up putting my Traveller collection up for sale on ebay and telling people not to bother.

Interesting. So you'd sell a game that you enjoyed playing just because it wasn't current anymore? I don't get that. CT isn't being actively supported by FFE today anyway though.

And if GT shuts down it won't be because of T5.

You don't know that. SJG might pull out before T5 comes out, true. But then Marc might just pull all the licenses when it does come out too.

And I liked the eighties. I'd like more options on the table than just GURPS & D20.

Why? Most other games only have one option. You're spoiled enough with Traveller's two active ones and several previous editions available on Drivethrurpg and the CT reprints. Why the heck do you need even more??

And if T5 is as big a disaster as you say it is, then GT and T20 will pick up and move on and not be affected by it after it tanks.

If Marc pulls the licenses to give T5 more of a chance, this will not be the case. Granted, we don't know that he will yet, but I'm finding it hard to see why he wouldn't do that. Why would he come up with a new version of the game that everyone would probably just end up ignoring in favour of better alternatives?

 

[Jeffr0]

Look. GT is a supplement for CT.

I did not enjoy my GT books until I got enough CT books to understand them. A great conversation was begun with the release of Books 1-3. GT is a deep an well articulated answer to questions raised in the seventies. I could not understand the answers without first getting a feel for the questions.

I may be the only person in the universe with this experience, but there it is. May I'm learning disabled. Whatever.

>>So you'd sell a game that you enjoyed playing just because it wasn't current anymore?

No. I was not enjoying GT. I agonized over it and got extremely aggravated. I'd have sold it because I was going crazy.

I'm just the kind of person that looks at Striker and Snapshot and goes... "this is so kewl." I look at GURPS Vehicles and the GT Weapons tables and my eyes glaze over.

CT fires the imagination for me. GURPS Space makes me say, "now what?"

(And after studying Books 1-3 I've concluded that it was not meant to be a complete game. There are several places where Marc says to fill in the blanks with your own ideas or to add your own codes or to make up your own stuff. It was a framework that provided a basis for growing all kinds o' space games. It never takes itself too seriously and was never embarassed for being a game.)

 

[jackleg]

Pretty much true about the CT/LBB. It was supposed to be a framework that a science fiction game was supposed to be run on. Some of the best work on Traveller came from DGP on MT. Ships, exploring, & aliens were greatly expanded by them. Alot of the stuff from GDW came in the original JTAS that could only be done on a couple of pages due to the size of the magazine.

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by Jeffr0:
Look. GT is a supplement for CT.

Um, no. "Traders and Gunboats" or "Library Data N-Z" are supplements for CT. GT is a new version of CT, released for a different system. It is in no way a supplement to CT, anymore than MT or TNE are supplements of CT.

I did not enjoy my GT books until I got enough CT books to understand them.

I find that somewhat baffling, considering that the GT corebook alone is much more complete and coherent and has much more information than Books 1-3.

GT is an answer to questions raised in the seventies. I could not understand the answers without first gettng a feel for the questions.

Well I don't even know what you're talking about here. So please enlighten us - what are those "questions"?

I may be the only person in the universe with this experience, but there it is. May I'm learning disabled. Whatever.

Yeesh, you make it sound like a religious experience. I know Traveller talks about 'canon' but it IS just a game.

No. I was not enjoying GT. I agonized over it and got extremely aggravated. I'd have sold it because I was going crazy.

Why? I mean, what was it that you just didn't 'get'? Was it the system? You do need to know the GURPS rules already to understand that (but you can get by with GURPS Lite, which was free).

I'm just the kind of person that looks at Striker and Snapshot and goes... "this is so kewl." I look at GURPS Vehicles and the GT Weapons tables and my eyes glaze over.

You wouldn't be alone in that either. I can't stand GURPS Vehicles myself.

CT fires the imagination for me. GURPS Space makes me say, "now what?"

That's the point though. CT was supposed to allow GMs to come up with their own backgrounds - but it did it by hamstringing them into a load of pre-set assumptions about tech and society, and didn't give them the tools to create anything beyond that.

GURPS Space does the same, but provides a lot of useful advice and help and doesn't have the implicit restrictions that CT has. Therefore it's a much more useful toolkit to make your own backgrounds with. Ditto for the other games I mentioned.

(And after studying Books 1-3 I've concluded that it was not meant to be a complete game.

A lot of people claim that it was. Personally though, I think the 'complete game' is CT Books 1-6 at the very least.

There are dozens of places where Marc says to fill in the blanks with your own ideas or to add your own codes or to make up your own stuff.

Yes, and he provides no guidance at all for you to do so.

It was a framework that provided a basis for growing all kinds o' space games.

All kind of space games that were like the OTU, at least.

It never takes itself too seriously and was never embarassed for being a game.)

I never got the impression that it DIDN'T take itself seriously. I don't know why it would be 'embarrassed for being a game', I don't even understand what that means or why it would be relevant.


The point is that if you want a toolkit to make your own scifi backgrounds - of any sort - then CT is not it, and the other games I mentioned earlier are much more useful in that regard. But the fact remains that CT was originally touted as a toolkit to make your own scifi backgrounds.

Now, if T5 is still touted as that, then it will fail because there are better options out there. As it is, from the intro document on the playtest it sounds like it's still a schizophrenic beast that is intended to be useful for general backgrounds (even if the rules aren't actually remotely practical) but is still actually focussed on a preset one (that doesn't necesssarily resemble the OTU at all, from the description).

 

[Fritz_Brown]

Originally posted by Malenfant:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />I may be the only person in the universe with this experience, but there it is. May I'm learning disabled. Whatever.

Yeesh, you make it sound like a religious experience. I know Traveller talks about 'canon' but it IS just a game.
</font>[/QUOTE]No, Mal, not a religious experience. But, there are different experiences out there - a lot of us just think CT is the best (though MT is growing on me). And, we usually think that because it allowed for so much imagination.

Mal, there are times you sound like that rumpled, crazy guy down on the corner telling everyone that the world is going to end. But, since you are a pretty smart guy, and all, I listen (read) anyway - just in case.

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by Fritz88:
No, Mal, not a religious experience. But, there are different experiences out there - a lot of us just think CT is the best (though MT is growing on me). And, we usually think that because it allowed for so much imagination.

I'm not saying that nobody should like CT though. And while it may 'allow for so much imagination', there is other material out there now that allows for a lot MORE imagination. If you look at those and don't like them, then fair enough. But CT is not the be-all and end-all of scifi gaming - not even remotely.

Plus, I'm just trying to get my head around what Jeff is saying. He doesn't explain what it was about GT that apparently antagonised him so.

Mal, there are times you sound like that rumpled, crazy guy down on the corner telling everyone that the world is going to end. But, since you are a pretty smart guy, and all, I listen (read) anyway - just in case.

Thanks, I think...

At the end of the day, if Jeff wants to see what T5 will be like, then he can become a paid subscriber and access the T5 playtest files on the Moot. I think he'll be disappointed though.

From the looks of it, T5 will not be the 'updated version of CT' or consolidated rules from previous games that most people want to see. It seems to be a totally different system built from the ground up - similar in some ways to CT perhaps, but different in many others. The hints that Marc has dropped about the background in the intro document also imply that the "OTU" will be very different in feel to what it is now too.

If you want to change that then good luck, because it looks like Marc isn't listening. If you're fine with that, then go join the playtest and have a ball. But it sounds like most of the Traveller community wouldn't be interested in playing T5 if it continues the way it is.

 

[Fritz_Brown]

Originally posted by Malenfant:
At the end of the day, if Jeff wants to see what T5 will be like, then he can become a paid subscriber and access the T5 playtest files on the Moot. I think he'll be disappointed though.

Disappointed, you might be Jeffr0, but I think it's worth a look. (And, you get that 10% discount and a free TAS Journal, too!)

 

[Malenfant]

You added this later...

GURPS Space does not have a trade system.

That is true. But the CT trade system, from what I've heard, doesn't actually work in practise anyway. If you wanted mechanics for trade, then GURPS Traveller has Far Trader - that contains a vastly more detailed and realistic trade system than CT ever had. Advantage GURPS.

It has only an abstract space combat system.

So does CT. Or are you going to claim that High Guard is not an abstract space combat system?

Striker and Snapshot are not part of the basic CT game. If you're going to claim that they are, then I can just say that GURPS has a detailed alien design system (GURPS Uplift), a detailed robot and mecha design system (GURPS Robots and Mecha), more tech than you can shake a stick at (GURPS Ultratech), and so on. GURPS gives you a VAST choice of material to pick and choose from. CT doesn't.

It has only one example starship.

So? How many do you need?? That's really clutching at straws. (plus, GURPS Starships has a lot of examples in it).

It doesn't have CT's super cool TAS forms.

One does not need TAS forms to run a space game. That's hardly a reason not to use GURPS Space. GURPS can be run using any pieces of paper to write on, it doesn't require you to photocopy various obscure and obtuse forms. Advantage GURPS.

You are left to your own devices to determine how FTL works and what the terrain is like.

It's left for you to decide what FTL to have in your campaign, yes. That's the whole point though. The option to choose exactly what technology to have in your setting is something that CT does not offer at all though. If I wanted an RPG book that helped me design my own setting, I would not choose CT for this reason.

What if you wanted your setting to use a warp drive, like star trek? How does CT help you figure out the effects of this on your setting? It doesn't. But GURPS Space does. Advantage GURPS.

CT's subsector is just an all around brilliant solution.

I'll admit that it's fairly elegant. It's not exactly something you couldn't figure out yourself though. And GURPS Space has mapping too, it just uses a different system (and what's more, it can incorporate three-dimensional mapping, which Traveller doesn't cope with at all). Advantage GURPS.

CT has J-O-T 4, whereas GURPS emphasizes role playing to the exclusion of everything else.

So CT has an unbalanced skill that lets you do anything, and GURPS doesn't (though GURPS has a skill selection that dwarfs CT's), and this is a bad thing?! Advantage GURPS.


And of course GURPS emphasises roleplaying. It's a roleplaying game. What the heck should it be emphasising if not that?


I mean, if you just don't like GURPS then fair enough. But the reasons you state here for why you think GURPS Space is inferior to CT as a way to make your own background are very tenuous to say the least. In most of the cases above, GURPS has a clear advantage. In the rest, either it's the same or you're making an issue out of something that isn't an issue at all.

 

[far-trader]

Originally posted by Jeffr0:
...CT has J-O-T 4...

Umm, that'd be a house rule or misread wouldn't it? Far as I recall and see on a quick check Jack of all Trades is a special skill that doesn't actually have levels* (might have in MT iirc) and only allows you to use any skill for which you have no levels a pseudo skill level 0 and NEVER a level of 1.

* rolling it more than once is no benefit

 

[aramis]

FT: Jack has levels in CT, just that they don't do any good without house rules. In MT, each level is a free pass on a determination check to retry after failure, but it does not provide the "Level-0" benefit.

Mal: only two games currently available (that I am aware of) have a focus on being the merchant: Traveller (including GT), and Star Thugs.

Now, GTFT can be pulled into other genres (SVC won't do trade rules, even simple ones, for GPD specifically due to GTFT), and that was the intent.

But GTFT, unlike CT, MT, TNE, T4, and T20 is a "Top-down" look, a detailed and (for me excessively) cumbersome system. THe rest of traveller is a "Bottom up" view - we really don't have a need to know how much trade flows... just how much can we get. On smaller worlds, these may be synonymous.

Few other games have done trade for spaceships...
Space Opera
Alternity
Star Thugs
FASA Trek
d6 Star Wars

All of these used the same methodology as CT/MT/TNE/T4/T20: random price, modified by skills and local conditions.

Space Opera is still in print. Star Thugs is still in PDF availability. Due to license issues, FASA Trek and d6 SW are dead and gone...

And D6 space doesn't have the rules for trade.

Traveller has all editions currently in availability. CT in reprint dead tree, MT, TNE, and T4 in PDF. T20 and GT in dead tree.

Traveller appeals because of one of several things:
(1) the mechanics of play are simple but valid (Excepting TNE combat and T4 task resolution)
(2) the setting is comprehensive and compelling, even if unrealistic.
(3) It's close enough to several major SciFi settings to be able to borrow from them, but not so close as to be obviously them.
(4) won more awards than any other RPG line.

As for GTFT: GTFT is a top-down simulationist approach trying to define the 3I, and in so doing, making life rough on those of us with sparser navies, less trade, and a more frontier feel. Plus, it's math intensive, slow, and damned near requires automation.

Using T20 or Bk2, I can crank out cargos with dice and paper in a few minutes, or automate for instant results on my PDA (I should really find my source and update that, then release it... too much to do...). THey dont' pretend to be "Top Down" simulations. They are bottom up approximations, designed to let you have fun, make a reasonable amount of cash by a modicum of caution, and have good descriptive labels for roleplay purposes.

Advantage, T20, CT. An advantage called playability. Something many GURPS players don't seem to grock.

Marc has been ignoring opinions and mishandling survey data since 1995... For example, splitting up CT into the HG and NoHG crowd, task system versus ct Bk1 style mechanics.

For all we know, this multi-die excrement may have been how he's been doing traveller since CT.... but if he's beyond the willingness to make changes by playtest, that won't change.

On the other hand, Mal, you've a knack for wanting things that even a significant amount us here thing are absurd. Just because 6 people like some idea doesn't meant the other 950+ of us like it; heck, most of us try to be polite and not say "I think your idea really sucks", because there are those few who want to see it.

Mark isn't concerned with hyper-realism (GT was a means to appease that crowd...) and has said so in the past. Just because the dice produce the wrong stellar types doesn't mean MWM is going to change them; too few of us really care.

Besides, in the 80's people were griping on alt.games.rpg.(space? I forget... WWIVnet subs)that "Gas Giants can't occur in the inner system, but they do in traveller!" And guess what? Geoff Marci proved them dead wrong. what we don't know yet is huge...

GT is aimed at a market quite unlike the rest of the traveller systems. GURPS players have, as a rule, a lot of different verisimilitude needs than many of the CT or MT fans. (I honestly don't know any TNE fans personally. Everybody I've known who used it liked parts, and hated most of the rest. I know there are some, but I can't think of any.)

And if bad turns to worse, like T5 sucks and flops, since all the other editions are in print or eprint, there is a lot of hope for more. Maybe I'll try to talk Hunter and Marc into letting me do a "MT 2nd Ed: The Wargamer's Traveller"....

GT was sucking the life out of the older editions, then along comes Marc with reprints of CT and Hunter with T20... Both of which are steady sellers... and neither of which is likely to appeal to GT fans nor GURPS fans: not detailed enough, no control over character design. GT was taking the market by storm, and funded a "Competing" edition; both sold well after the releases...

which should be sufficient empirical evidence that there are different traveller markets.

Just like there are chocolate lovers who love bard, but hate chocolate ice cream, Hot CHocolate, and chocolate milk.... there are different Traveller games but they all are still traveller.... even T:2300.

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by Aramis:
But GTFT, unlike CT, MT, TNE, T4, and T20 is a "Top-down" look, a detailed and (for me excessively) cumbersome system. THe rest of traveller is a "Bottom up" view - we really don't have a need to know how much trade flows... just how much can we get. On smaller worlds, these may be synonymous.

Yes, but going that way means you have a system that doesn't necessarily make sense. Like world generation, you end up with a system that generates nonsensical worlds that may 'work' in the sense of being a bunch of numbers strung together, but don't 'work' in the sense of 'it makes sense that this world is like this'.

I mean, if you want a trading game, then it's not worth doing unless you're going to do it properly. Otherwise it'd be like having a specifically combat-heavy game where the fights were highly abstractified and resolved by one dice roll. That would kinda defeat the point of being that specific, wouldn't it?

You NEED a top-down view to get reasonable, rational results. Now, maybe FT is too cumbersome, but it does have a very simplified version of the system it uses in there, and you could probably put together an intermediate version from the advanced sytem it presents. But from what I've heard of it, at least it's actually based on sound economic principles, whereas the system in CT is not.

Few other games have done trade for spaceships...

So, Traveller is a scifi game that includes rules for trade. I'll agree with that.

I'm not seeing what your point is though. That Traveller fills a niche of scifi games where trading is an important part of the setting?
That's great, but so what? Traveller is not ALL about Trade. It doesn't REVOLVE around Trading (though arguably the default gaming scenarios of Traveller do). It's entire purpose is not set up to allow players to trade.

As for GTFT: GTFT is a top-down simulationist approach trying to define the 3I, and in so doing, making life rough on those of us with sparser navies, less trade, and a more frontier feel. Plus, it's math intensive, slow, and damned near requires automation.

Well nobody's forcing you to use it

.
I mean really, if you don't see the need for it, then don't use it.

Advantage, T20, CT. An advantage called playability. Something many GURPS players don't seem to grock.

And yet, GURPS is very playable - as a system it's pretty simple - roll 3d6, if you roll under your skill you succeed. You're confusing "playability" with "low detail".

There are plenty of Traveller players who spend ages farting around with trade calculators and mortgages and wages and things like that. There are plenty of Traveller players who like that sort of detail. And I'm not talking about GURPS Traveller players - all sorts of Traveller players do that. FT is there for people like that to use. If you don't like it, don't use it.

On the other hand, Mal, you've a knack for wanting things that even a significant amount us here thing are absurd. Just because 6 people like some idea doesn't meant the other 950+ of us like it; heck, most of us try to be polite and not say "I think your idea really sucks", because there are those few who want to see it.

Er, what do you think I want exactly? I want a realistic world generation system and I'm making one. I'm not forcing anyone to use it. I don't care if people think my ideas suck - if they do think that, then my ideas are obvously not aimed at them.

If you care about realistic system design then you'll listen to what I have to say. If you don't, then you're free to ignore it.

Mark isn't concerned with hyper-realism (GT was a means to appease that crowd...) and has said so in the past. Just because the dice produce the wrong stellar types doesn't mean MWM is going to change them; too few of us really care.

I'm not after 'hyper-realism' in T5 though. I don't think it's 'hyperrealistic' to say that you can't have a habitable earthlike world around a red giant or a planet around an O or a B V star. That's not insisting on 'hyper-realism', that's just asking for some flat-out physical common sense. It's the equivalent of complaining about a gun that fires a million bullets a second or a ship that can accelerate to lightspeed in 5 minutes. From what I can see, Marc isn't even concerned with realism of any sort, period.

And besides, if Marc wanted to know if his rules were broken, well that's an example right there. If he doesn't want to acknowledge that then that's not my fault.

"Gas Giants can't occur in the inner system, but they do in traveller!" And guess what? Geoff Marci proved them dead wrong. what we don't know yet is huge...

Yes, but that doesn't mean we should continue to use a system that is 25 years out of date just because it wasn't wrong about one thing. Though I'm sure you'll consider First In (which does attempt to update the world generation system) as 'needlessly complicated' or something, and probably just because it's done for GURPS.

(and besides, the gas giants in the inner system migrated there from outside the snow line. So their moons should all be water worlds formed from melted ice moons, not habitable ones with land that are typical in Traveller).

GT is aimed at a market quite unlike the rest of the traveller systems. GURPS players have, as a rule, a lot of different verisimilitude needs than many of the CT or MT fans.

True, GURPS players do expect a more realistic, detailed, coherent, and consistent settings. It saddens me to hear that people think these are BAD qualities for a game to bring to the table.

(I honestly don't know any TNE fans personally. Everybody I've known who used it liked parts, and hated most of the rest. I know there are some, but I can't think of any.)

Well, you're addressing one now.

GT was sucking the life out of the older editions

That's an utterly ridiculous, totally false, and complete hyperbole. GT was around when the older editions weren't. How could it 'suck the life out of older editions' when it wasn't even competing with any of them?!

And funnily enough, it's given us more detail about the Traveller Universe than any other version of the game, hands down (except possibly for some of the DGP MT material). Four large alien races books (bigger than the CT modules). Entire books about Nobles and Starports. A Detailed trade system. A complete, modern, and pretty realistic world generation system. Two detailed Sector books (one of which - Rim of Fire - beats the crap out of the CT version), and one very detailed subsector book (Sword Worlds).

And you call that 'sucking the life out of other editions'? Please. If GURPS Traveller is guilty of anything, it's of giving us what CT should have damn well given us in the first place but didn't.

then along comes Marc with reprints of CT and Hunter with T20... Both of which are steady sellers... and neither of which is likely to appeal to GT fans nor GURPS fans: not detailed enough, no control over character design.

T20 is a steady seller, I dunno how well CT does by comparison. Considering that one sells to the market that uses the most popular system on the planet, and CT sells to people who can't get their head out of the 70s, I think T20 is doing all the work there.

And I don't know how you think that T20 wouldn't appeal to GURPS fans. I'm a GURPS Traveller fan, and I like T20. But then I like d20 too. I don't think I'm particularly exceptional in this regard.

GT was taking the market by storm, and funded a "Competing" edition; both sold well after the releases...

"taking the market by storm"? It was the ONLY Traveller game on the market at one point!

which should be sufficient empirical evidence that there are different traveller markets.

There may well be empirical evidence for that. I don't think you have provided any here though.

they all are still traveller.... even T:2300.

Um, no, T:2300 isn't a Traveller game. It is really really obvious that it isn't. It doesn't use the same game engine at all, and it's not even the same universe. And the second edition of it dropped the "Traveller" for that very reason.

If you can't even get THAT right then that doesn't really bode well for the credibility of your other arguments.

 

[Pickles]

I can only speak for those players with whom I've had the honour of participating, but IMO Traveller was always a framework system in the beginning. I remember buying my first adventure (Adv.7, ah, the memories ... ) and thinking "OMG, I'm going to have to write up a lot of this myself!". Then I found out how much more story fits into a LBB if you minimise the detail (which is just number-crunching, anyway, which we gear-heads love).

Originally posted by Aramis:
Maybe I'll try to talk Hunter and Marc into letting me do a "MT 2nd Ed: The Wargamer's Traveller"....

Put me down for a copy!

 

[Jeffr0]

Originally posted by far-trader:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Jeffr0:
...CT has J-O-T 4...

Umm, that'd be a house rule or misread wouldn't it? Far as I recall and see on a quick check Jack of all Trades is a special skill that doesn't actually have levels* (might have in MT iirc) and only allows you to use any skill for which you have no levels a pseudo skill level 0 and NEVER a level of 1.

* rolling it more than once is no benefit </font>[/QUOTE]See Scout # 104 in Supplement 1.


Of course, my point when I said that was that CT does a lot of different types of games well. Wargames, grand strategy-- even character creation is a solitaire mini-game that's just fine to play all by itself. I know of no other system that manages to create such a compelling tapestry of diverse games.

GURPS, of course, focuses on roleplaying, world-building, and gearheading (and does quite well in those departments) but I prefer "light" wargaming to that.

Looking at Marc's vision for the future, I note that it includes wargames. I'll buy into T5 if only because there is a chance that the "real" games will make a comeback.

And when I made that point about Snapshot and Striker vs GURPS Vehicles, etc... I wasn't trying to get into a version war of which system is best supported if you happen to buy everything on the market for it. My point is that...

Well...

Um...

I just like CT. What are we arguing about again?

 

[robject]

Originally posted by Jeffr0:
I just like CT. What are we arguing about again?

About whether J. Random Traveller ought to consider T5, and why.

 

[Jeffr0]

Originally posted by Malenfant:
Plus, I'm just trying to get my head around what Jeff is saying. He doesn't explain what it was about GT that apparently antagonised him so.

Mal. Don't make me do this.

I like GT. I like all the authors. Steve Jackson is my hero. He's my favorite game designer.

Just try to read between the lines of what I'm saying.

There's obviously a great deal one can get from CT reprints that you can't get from GT. GT has a great many refinements and extensions of the basic CT concept. I didn't appreciate them or have a real use for them until I first got ahold of some CT material.

CT's Books 1-3, Mercenary, Highguard, Patrons, Animal Encounters, the Spinward Marches supplement, Mayday, Striker, Trillion Credit Squadron, and Twilight's Peak together give me what I'm looking for in a space game. GT doesn't-- but as a supplement to the above CT material it is most excellent. The GURPS books are clearly some of the major sf gaming resources of the market-- IF you already have a game/campaign you are competent to manage.

To some extent GT:IW will fill this gap in the GT line I imagine.... But at the time I was just starting out, there was a hole there.

(And as an aside... GT is hurt tremendously by not having "Behind the Claw" revised and in print. The lack of a pick-up-and-play sourcebook on that region is a major deficiency for any line. Doesn't CT practically have a monopoly on in-print Spinward Marches resources?)

 

[Malenfant]

Jeff - well, now you've made it clear that you're a wargamer and not a roleplayer that's made your perspective clearer. I don't particularly agree with it, but at least I know where you're coming from now.

But the point is that GURPS is built around roleplaying, not Wargaming. If you expect it to approach things in a wargame-like way, then of course you're not going to like it. (I imagine you aren't into T20 for the same reason?).

I should also point out that in Marc's 'vision' document on the T5 playtest, there's no mention made of wargames.

As for BTC, yes, they should revise it. But you're really not doing yourself any favours by ignoring Rim of Fire or the Sword Worlds book - they're both excellent, viable settings for the game and provide you with more than enough detail to get up and running. The Marches have, IMO, been done to death in Traveller as it is.

 

[Jeffr0]

Yes. Rim of Fire is a killer book.

But I would not hand it, GT, GURPS Basic Set 3e, Compendium I, Space, and Ultra-Tech to a noob and say, "welcome to Traveller."

That ain't it.

It's stunningly brilliant, but it isn't it. That isn't Traveller.

And that's why there's a need for something like what T5 might could be.

I am a little suspicious of GT and T20 'cause you still 'need' one more book to run it. I much prefer "everything you need in one box" approach. Especially if it's in LBB/ADQ format.

 

[Jeffr0]

Originally posted by Malenfant:
But the point is that GURPS is built around roleplaying, not Wargaming. If you expect it to approach things in a wargame-like way, then of course you're not going to like it. (I imagine you aren't into T20 for the same reason?).

Oh that's obvious. In retrospect. But the GT line has Steve Jackson's name on it. It has "Traveller" written on it, too. And it comes with ship design rules and stuff like that. Given all that I was sure it'd be my cup o' tea. I really had no idea how much the industry had changed since 1992.

Yeah, you don't understand me... and I don't understand non-wargaming "Gearheaders." It just seems so pointless to me. How can they go through life without scenarios and campaign rules to go with their designs?! Argh!

 

[aramis]

For me, GT filled in the gaps in ways I would not have.

GTFT was, for me utterly incomprehensible.

Thrash: SVC= Steven V Cole & GPD = GURPS Prime Directive.

Top Down: Meaning looking at it from a "Godlike point of view"; it would still be a top-down approach even if it went no furth.er than the subsector. It generates trade nu bers by looking for a total volume of trade, making several assumptions about how much is big lines, and finding the remainder.

Bottom up: Figure out how much is trade available.

And Chris, it doesn't matter one whit what you guys intended, what matters is how people are using it... most references I've seen to it support a big fleet model (because, with your numbers, a sector trade flow is generating way more than enough to support more than the MT numbers.

Just like a remington rifle: it doesn't matter that it was intended for putting meat on the table, California is going to sue if it's convenient enough for shooting people.

Oh, and lets not forget: Game design is a balance between Playability, Realism, and intelligibility, as well as fun.

GTFT Takes a lot of time without assistance; most of it prepwork, done once and recorded. For me, it takes too much time, and is too much work for the added realism. Most of my players think it sucks rocks, becuase it's no fun.
Bk2 and T20 are FUN. every other RPG trade ruleset I know of is bottom up: generate only enough data to play, and don't worry about the big picture.

Mal: When GT came out, the reprints were not a factor (they weren't out yet), CT, MT, and TNE were out of print, and T4 was on shelves but not doing well. GT was not exactly kind to the way a significant fraction of people had interpreted the material; It's Loren's vision, and many of Loren's assertions pre GT were controversial. It was making it hard to find traveller PLAYERS for other editions... it's always harder to find layers for out of print games, especially ones where the only in-print makes their settings "Wrong". (GT specifically is a counter to MT and TNE settings... and makes some of loren's assertions into fait accompli. The real hot button for me is "Every Marine is a BD Troopie"; Loren created that in an article, and reinforced that by putting BD in the marine template; in CT it was hard for marines to get under Bk4 and not covered in bk1; in MT it was rare but not totally unreachable.) For those who liked GURPS and liked Loren's vision, GT was a blessing.

For those of us who find GURPS too fiddly, too many skills, it ws a so what... but to canonistas, the small glimmer of hope was that MWM said it wasn't canon/authoritative in a missive to the TML, before it was released.

Then hope was restored when the Reprints were released, and when T20 was released... and things flourished.

in 1996, MWM said that MT was dead, and going to stay that way... but in 2004, he decided to let it go into e-release... which acutally does make it easier to find players, when I say they can get it on DTRPG. T4 and TNE, too.

Few game systems have all their editions available....

But even with all the editions in print, T5 is going to need to find a way of either
(1) converting existing players
(2) reaching yet a different audience.
(3) finding a point of ballance between realism, playability and fun.

as for the "Combat heavy game reduced to a single die roll": It's called Tunnels and Trolls. Highly abstracted combat systems, for a game which is combat heavy. It's to the heart of "Old School Roleplaying". May be that it's not YOUR cup of tea, but lots of people swear by it. Which reminds me, I need to check and see if KSA has made progress towards T&T6...

Oh, and the marches data is split between MT PM (map) and MT IE (Data)... if you count e-releases...

 

[Anthony]

Originally posted by Aramis:

And Chris, it doesn't matter one whit what you guys intended, what matters is how people are using it... most references I've seen to it support a big fleet model (because, with your numbers, a sector trade flow is generating way more than enough to support more than the MT numbers.

This has been a fairly obvious problem ever since Trillion Credit Squadron. There's just Too Much Money out there. If you actually assume that military expenditure is a fraction of trade, rather than a fraction of sector GDP, GTFT winds up around an order of magnitude less than TCS.

Bk2 and T20 are FUN. every other RPG trade ruleset I know of is bottom up: generate only enough data to play, and don't worry about the big picture.

The problem with Bk2 trade is that if you actually used it to figure out revenues, it was Horribly Broken (depending on the technique used, either you go broke really fast, or you become massively wealthy in no time flat, neither of which is actually a good result from a trade system. A trade system should keep PCs on the edge of profitability). If you just use it to figure out what interesting cargo the PCs have this week, a system like that is perfectly fine.

I tend to agree that GTFT was written in a way that made it very difficult to use in a gaming environment.