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Traveller: Stale Bread?

GLΩAMING

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As a fan of Traveller who was born long after the CT-era heyday, I've always had a nagging question at the back of my mind that a friend has recently reminded me of.

Just how "fresh" is Traveller?

From chatting to some fellow TTRPG enjoyers, I got the (unfair) impression that, to them, Traveller is mostly thought of as a dead or dying game, with a fanbase consisting of a few middle-aged conservative guys who don't know how to let go of something, and are hostile to new publications and new players/GMs.

While I know this is a false impression (young, sprightly me and my friends being counterexamples), the question remains. I've had zero contact with Traveller fans in the real world, aside from my party, so it's difficult to ascertain both the present-day popularity of Traveller and the primary demographics from my point of view.

This post is not intended to spark arguments. I'm just curious on a personal level as to how popular Traveller is, and to whom it appeals. Personal anecdotes going against the above stereotyping are welcomed :)
 
Just how "fresh" is Traveller?
It really just depends.
The first publication for the game is ~45 years old ... but there are materials that are being published for it (still) this year.

If you're asking for how large the "constituency" of players is, it's not going to be as widespread as a lot of other systems.
But if you're asking whether or not "younger players" can enjoy the game and the setting ... some of us encountered the game for the first time when we were 10 years old (in my case) and have never looked back. We've gotten older, but the game hasn't.

There's also the "bandwagon effect" where there's a kind of "wisdom of crowds" assumption that whatever everyone else is into must be good and everything they aren't all that keen on must be rubbish. The most hilarious iteration of the phenomenon happens with server populations for online games ... if a server has a low population then *I* won't join it 😤 ... creating the very self-fulfilling prophecy that people claim they don't want to perpetuate. It's one of those things where if it's not popular enough for everyone else then it can't possibly be popular enough for me! Ironically, that's exactly the wrong solution to the "low population" problem because it just reinforces and perpetuates the (perceived) problem, rather than participating in the (desired) solution. After all, if more people join low population servers, then their population won't stay as low ... right? :rolleyes:

The solution to any kind of "is it any good though?" question is to demonstrate that something actually IS GOOD by actually doing it and enjoying it. The beauty of Traveller is that it's really a game of Ordinary People Doing Extraordinary Things™ ... which is quite different from the premise of a lot of games that are founded on the premise of EXTRAordinary People Do Unbelievably Impossible Things™. That sense of "regular schmucks" getting mixed up in events of a Traveller campaign is part of the charm of the system and the setting. Ordinary people can be "heroes" (or villains) too, and Traveller allows the "ordinary" to be inherently wondrous ... kind of like 60s Star Trek did.
 
Well, this board is populated by a lot of original LBB owners, so I would expect we skew towards the 50s/60s age range.

That being said, many people are playing the MgT versions while never having seen any other version, brought in often by youtube tutorials/examples. Or the OSR types. I am pretty sure thats a large 20s/30s crowd.

And as one of the original LBB crowd, I often buy and use different parts of different versions I like, and have no problem duct taping/welding different rules together.

I’m sure part of that is the pioneering spirit of doing something new and not a lot of published material like we now expect of a supported title. But part of it is also the do your own toolkit nature of the originals.

As such I’ll take in and use new materials and figure out any conversions needed.

The basics are also very modular and skills/chars aren’t that different, so it’s often to taste.

Add in the people who mix and match elements of Traveller with entirely different systems outside of it, and I’d say it’s not an old guy system at all.
 
I mean, how fresh is Conan or Luke Skywalker. As we've learned over the years, the stories are all old and retold from new perspective, and it's the people that bring that perspective. Place a bunch of modern teenagers onto a fictitious Starship and a bunch grognard veterans onto the same Starship, and you get different stories.

I don't know what makes a game "fresh" mechanically. We seem to sway back and forth from simple to complicated and back again, but, what do mechanics have to do with storytelling?
 
As a fan of Traveller who was born long after the CT-era heyday, I've always had a nagging question at the back of my mind that a friend has recently reminded me of.

Just how "fresh" is Traveller?

From chatting to some fellow TTRPG enjoyers, I got the (unfair) impression that, to them, Traveller is mostly thought of as a dead or dying game, with a fanbase consisting of a few middle-aged conservative guys who don't know how to let go of something, and are hostile to new publications and new players/GMs.

Ok, to be honest they were saying things like that 20+ years ago.

While I know this is a false impression (young, sprightly me and my friends being counterexamples), the question remains. I've had zero contact with Traveller fans in the real world, aside from my party, so it's difficult to ascertain both the present-day popularity of Traveller and the primary demographics from my point of view.

This post is not intended to spark arguments. I'm just curious on a personal level as to how popular Traveller is, and to whom it appeals. Personal anecdotes going against the above stereotyping are welcomed :)
Ok, the thumbnail census I did 10 years ago the average age was 42.... I suspect if I did it again it I probably would get the same results.

The thing to remember is Traveller is a Niche, in a Niche market. With that if you bring up Science Fiction Rpgs Traveller is most likely the first game mentioned.
 
OK, now that I'm home and not frantically typing on my phone between shovelling food in my mouth on my pitiful excuse for a break at work...

I don't think Traveller is stale at all. It has grown over the years, and except for the rules blip called "The New Era" it has remained remarkably consistent within the core rules for almost 50 years. Mongoose Traveller and Traveller 5 have more in common with the original game from 1977 than, say, the latest iteration of D&D has with the 1974 version.

I personally prefer Classic Traveller. It has less rules to get in the way of my making stuff up. And what few rules there are have a nice 1970s sci-fi feel. I was a kid in the 1970s, and there was Space: 1999, UFO, and the first round of Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica. And I was reading Aasimov, Clarke, Heinlein, and Niven. Classic Traveller (just Traveller back then!) allowed me to create all of that. I had to do some tweaking to emulate Star Trek, but it got done.

Now? I'm probably not going to find a Traveller group to play before I die. So I am going to tinker with Classic for the rest of my life, just like I have been most of my life anyway.
 
Traveller is doing well enough to keep Mongoose in business...
kickstarters usually attract ~1000 pledges
drivethru shows pdf sales are doing well
they are putting out lots of good to excellent content

try asking the same question over at the Mongoose forums.
 
I play in a biweekly MegaTraveller game online. 3 of our players are in their 20s or 30s, I'm in my early 40s (wow, has it been 20 years since I found Traveller?), and television GM and another player are in their 50s.
So there's hope yet!
 
As a fan of Traveller who was born long after the CT-era heyday, I've always had a nagging question at the back of my mind that a friend has recently reminded me of.

Just how "fresh" is Traveller?

From chatting to some fellow TTRPG enjoyers, I got the (unfair) impression that, to them, Traveller is mostly thought of as a dead or dying game, with a fanbase consisting of a few middle-aged conservative guys who don't know how to let go of something, and are hostile to new publications and new players/GMs.

While I know this is a false impression (young, sprightly me and my friends being counterexamples), the question remains. I've had zero contact with Traveller fans in the real world, aside from my party, so it's difficult to ascertain both the present-day popularity of Traveller and the primary demographics from my point of view.

This post is not intended to spark arguments. I'm just curious on a personal level as to how popular Traveller is, and to whom it appeals. Personal anecdotes going against the above stereotyping are welcomed

These people you are talking to are remarkably ill informed. If you just want to stick to the "Traveller" brand, Mongoose is putting out material about every other month and expanding the fanbase.

If you want to go further afield to people who are using Cepheus Engine (and you absolutely should) which uses the basic 2d6 rules to create new material, their attitude becomes even more ridiculous. Cepheus Engine publishers put out new material at a rate of approximately 2-3 new books per week. The OTU (which is based in older materials and may generally attract older people) has nothing to do with Cepheus Engine that has such a gigantic variety of settings that there's two straight-up 1880s Westerns (one by me and one by Michael Brown), a fantasy version (Sword of Cepheus), a WW2 setting (Fortress Europe), a cyberpunk setting (Zaibatsu), a modern warfare setting (Modern War), and that's just naming a few of them.

That huge variety should complete how ridiculous their notion of it being dead is.... but wait, there's more!

If you want to stay with science fiction, there's two space Westerns (Scoundrels of Brixton and my own Clement Sector, a setting literally the direct opposite of the Imperium), a 1980s style science fiction setting ala Aliens, Blade Runner, and the like (Hostile), and the excellent Terra Arisen featuring humans after a war with what amount to the grey aliens. And, again, that's just the tip of the iceberg of science fiction settings that are alive, thriving, and gathering new varied fanbases of their own which are independent of that of the Traveller setting.

Seriously. Just take your friends to the DTRPG page for Cepheus Engine and let them see how much wide and varied material is being made. If they still think it's dead or just for old white guys (despite the fact that, yes, I'm an old white guy), there's not much you can do for their complete denial of reality.
 
These people you are talking to are remarkably ill informed. If you just want to stick to the "Traveller" brand, Mongoose is putting out material about every other month and expanding the fanbase.

If you want to go further afield to people who are using Cepheus Engine (and you absolutely should) which uses the basic 2d6 rules to create new material, their attitude becomes even more ridiculous. Cepheus Engine publishers put out new material at a rate of approximately 2-3 new books per week. The OTU (which is based in older materials and may generally attract older people) has nothing to do with Cepheus Engine that has such a gigantic variety of settings that there's two straight-up 1880s Westerns (one by me and one by Michael Brown), a fantasy version (Sword of Cepheus), a WW2 setting (Fortress Europe), a cyberpunk setting (Zaibatsu), a modern warfare setting (Modern War), and that's just naming a few of them.

That huge variety should complete how ridiculous their notion of it being dead is.... but wait, there's more!

If you want to stay with science fiction, there's two space Westerns (Scoundrels of Brixton and my own Clement Sector, a setting literally the direct opposite of the Imperium), a 1980s style science fiction setting ala Aliens, Blade Runner, and the like (Hostile), and the excellent Terra Arisen featuring humans after a war with what amount to the grey aliens. And, again, that's just the tip of the iceberg of science fiction settings that are alive, thriving, and gathering new varied fanbases of their own which are independent of that of the Traveller setting.

Seriously. Just take your friends to the DTRPG page for Cepheus Engine and let them see how much wide and varied material is being made. If they still think it's dead or just for old white guys (despite the fact that, yes, I'm an old white guy), there's not much you can do for their complete denial of reality.
I've had good fun with Cepheus myself, and spread the dice-roller bug around to a few people with it 😉

I imagine those of my friends that have heard of Cepheus - which is a decent proportion - don't make the connection between Cepheus and Traveller. Heck, I know people who think Traveller's a relic who play Cepheus regularly! Ignorance and cognitive dissonance are really bonkers.
 
I've had good fun with Cepheus myself, and spread the dice-roller bug around to a few people with it 😉

I imagine those of my friends that have heard of Cepheus - which is a decent proportion - don't make the connection between Cepheus and Traveller. Heck, I know people who think Traveller's a relic who play Cepheus regularly! Ignorance and cognitive dissonance are really bonkers.

Well, Cepheus does have its roots in Traveller but most of it is growing away from its roots a little bit more with every product that gets released. So they are not entirely wrong on that count.

But, by the same token, with Cepheus having its roots in Traveller and with their familiarity with it, that should go a long way to convincing them that the overall system isn't dead.
 
Well, Cepheus does have its roots in Traveller but most of it is growing away from its roots a little bit more with every product that gets released. So they are not entirely wrong on that count.
The cognitive dissonance is often due to the mistaken idea that Traveller is only about the Third Imperium...
Indeed. I view Cepheus and the IG work more as an example of what can be done with Traveller rather than some offshoot sect.

I mean, look at GT Interstellar Wars. Sure it's "pre-history", but that's it. Get rid of that detail and it's as much Traveller as the IG stuff is. Just the sector names sound familiar.

The core fundamentals are there (notably cheap space flight, communication limited by travel). And how much of all that really matters when your air raft drops from low altitude with a thud because it blew an elementium fuse (note that the fuse compartment of the toolbox has a hand written yellow sticky "Get more elementium fuses"), knocking you from your seat, on some lost world near ancient ruins and Holy Mother of God what is that HUGE BEAST that's noticed us and is coming this way!!! "Where's my rifle!?" "It slid under the seat in the accident...it appears to be stuck."
 
You have to compare Traveller (editions) to their current competition, in both setting(s) and game mechanics.

Dungeons and Dragons is easy to set in your custom milieu, and you are sort of steered towards the optimal playing style for specific professions.

That tends to work out for medieval fantasy, but not quite for a modern or futuristic one, where we tend to think the possibilities are endless.

Probably should have licensed out the game mechanics, and/or hoovered up any and all science fiction franchises, specifically Star Wars and Star Trek, in the beginning of the Eighties.
 
You have to compare Traveller (editions) to their current competition, in both setting(s) and game mechanics.

Dungeons and Dragons is easy to set in your custom milieu, and you are sort of steered towards the optimal playing style for specific professions.

That tends to work out for medieval fantasy, but not quite for a modern or futuristic one, where we tend to think the possibilities are endless.

Probably should have licensed out the game mechanics, and/or hoovered up any and all science fiction franchises, specifically Star Wars and Star Trek, in the beginning of the Eighties.
Licensing can be dangerous due to the expense. SPI went down with licensing Dallas.
 
I got into Traveller as a Teen through a friend with the '81 LBB's, got rid of everything I collected in my mid 20's 😭 because I thought I was too busy with life, and in my late 30's early 40's discovered 😍 Traveller T20 and the CotI forum (I like the T20 system because I was also into D&D back in the day).

As a Sci-Fi setting, there are a lot of different directions you can go. If you look at the movie Cowboys and Aliens, Traveller can be like that. You could be the low technology people dealing with the high technology visitors from the sky, or the high tech people visiting the low tech people wondering where the profit is. Or anything in between.
 
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