Why don't new people play Traveller?

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by flykiller:
lots of buzzwords there. can I get you to be more specific? describe an adventure you would like to run in. [/QB]

Hm. Oh, I dunno off the top of my head. Something along the lines of your average Indiana Jones movie with an Ancient artifact of great power, but with say Sollie or Zho as the bad guys, with chases and races against time across several systems getting various bits of the puzzle? All the while with some other party looking on with interest...

 

[Morte]

Originally posted by Evo Plurion:
It's ridiculous to accuse Traveller or any particular RPG of hindering easy creation of a campaign settings.

I gave specific, concrete reasons as to why traveller, the system and the setting and the publishers, creates extra work. Refute them, don't say "it's ridiculous". Use your brain.

Our creative muscles have softened to the point where we want everything spoon-fed.

I don't want to spend six hours prepping a four hour game. I'm not a 14 year old with nine week summer vacations anymore. Other games involve less prep work. Traveller could too. How hard is that to understand? What is it about it that you can't grasp? It seems pretty simple to me. Even with my inferior, uncreative brain.

It's become too taxing to conceive anything on our own.

Are we supposed to suffer for our art or something, prove that we're worthy before we can play? I've got this cult you can join, you donate all your money and starve for five days of the week. If you like the classic traveller publishing model, you'll just love this...

Or are you saying that if you enjoy GM prep everyone else should enjoy it too. Everybody must be like you think like you, enjoy the things you do, because you say so? Nobody is allowed to be different from you, because you're better than the rest of us and we should all ape you?

Did you think about the content of what you were saying before posting at all, or just chuck a few emotive phrases together and hope to get away without close examination?

 

[Malenfant]

Now now, steady on people... let's keep it civil!

I do think it's unecessary to drag out the "bah! use your imagination" line though. Everyone in gaming has imagination, it's just plain wrong to suggest otherwise. What people lack now is time. If you have the time, ability, and/or inclination to spend weeks lovingly building your own TU, then great. But sneering at people who don't - for whatever reason they cite - doesn't accomplish or prove anything other than make you look thoroughly obnoxious.

This is just like the old "bah! when I were a lad, we had to dig coal mines with toothpicks! And we loved it!" argument. Well, that's great, but that's not how it's done now

. The RPG industry has changed dramatically in the past 20 years - people are into different things, and are exploring different styles of gaming. It's moved a long way from its wargaming origins.

There are also other things competing for peoples' attention now that simply weren't an issue when Traveller first came out. - computer games and the internet in particular. True, all RPGs face that competition, but part of the challenge now is to make an RPG that the current market would prefer to play instead of go and do something else. You're not going to do that with a game that, despite being re-published in the 90s and 00s, still feels like it's out of the 70s.

There's an element of the fanbase that doesn't want to see things change. They don't see why it should change, because they're so divorced from the current gaming market that they don't have the slightest clue about what sells games today. "If it was good enough for us back then, it should be good enough for people now" simply doesn't hold.

 

[TheEngineer]

Is there any other SF game out there, which has a larger fanbase as Traveller ?
I am not an "insider" by my personal impression is, that there is nothing comparable..
Any sophisticated knowledge somewhere ?

 

[Malenfant]

I'd be curious to know some actually numbers myself.

Thing is, Traveller might have many fans, but how many fans does each individual version have? (I guess that would equate to "how many copies of the corebooks did each version sell?". AFAIK, most companies keep a close life on sales numbers for business reasons.)

From the blurb at the front of the CT Book Reprint, it sounds like CT has somewhere of the order of 100,000 fans. At least, that's about how many copies were produced of the basic books (High guard and Mercenary are the most popular books by far, with just over 100,000 copies produced). But you could see the popularity waning over time after that. Book 6 only sold about 25000 copies, and books 7 and 8 only sold about 10,000 copies each.

Of course, how many of those 100,000 fans are still playing CT is anyone's guess. I'd guess that not that many of them are.

 

[TheEngineer]

Oh, another remark about the fanbase.
I dont think these fans to be actively against changes. They are perhaps just not interested in new things, which do not fit into their well-working gaming world.
But they are surely against throwing away everything they know and own.

 

[TheEngineer]

Yep. Actual number might be great.
Maybe we already reached PnP SF RPG market saturation and its all just about mixing distributions ?
Perhaps we must move on to other media, internet multiplayer games, stuff like StarWars Galaxies or so ?

 

[hunter]

Originally posted by Malenfant:
From the blurb at the front of the CT Book Reprint, it sounds like CT has somewhere of the order of 100,000 fans. At least, that's about how many copies were produced of the basic books (High guard and Mercenary are the most popular books by far, with just over 100,000 copies produced). But you could see the popularity waning over time after that. Book 6 only sold about 25000 copies, and books 7 and 8 only sold about 10,000 copies each.

Actually its more about 250,000 between 1977 and 1984. (Includes revised, the Traveller Book, Starter Set and Deluxe set). This doesn't count the sales of MT or TNE (just looking at GDW).

Supplements (ie: anything beyond the core rules) rarely sell as well as the main rules. Basing the popularity of a game on the supplemental sales is not a good measure. Better to measure the core sales over time.

For a comparison, CoC has sold 225,000 copies of the rulebook since 1981. They have also produced 90 different supplements that have sold an addition 175,000 copies. That's roughly 2000 copies of each supplement. For those interested I am pulling these numbers from the new CoC 'Quick Start' rules.

CoC Quick Start Rules

For us the Traveller's Handbook still outsells our other products. It's been out two years (as of mid Oct) and near selling out the second print run.

Overall, our print products have sold at or above the industry average. The THB has sold well above the industry average.


Hunter

 

[Malenfant]

Nah. Traditionally scifi has never been a big part of the RPG market anyway. (fantasy wins, by miles. I suspect horror beats scifi too). But assuming the market itself is growing, there are presumably new people looking for scifi games to play. But it seems that they're choosing to go to other games instead of Trav, because they interest them more or something puts them off Trav.

And nobody's asking anyone to throw away everything they know and own. Not in the slightest. They can carry on doing whatever they like with and enjoying what they own. But if they choose not to follow a "new Traveller", then that's up to them - all I'd want is for them to stay the hell out of the way and not try to drag it down like they did with TNE.

But I do think that it's high time Traveller as a game ditched the OTU and rebuilt it from scratch into something that may excite new people in the current market. If it's marketed and presented in the right way, TNE:1248 might possibly be able to do that...

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by hunter:
For us the Traveller's Handbook still outsells our other products. It's been out two years (as of mid Oct) and near selling out the second print run.

Overall, our print products have sold at or above the industry average. The THB has sold well above the industry average.
[/QB]

Oh, I'm not doubting that T20 sells well. It's more the demographic that it's been selling to that I'm wondering about - it's likely that most of the customers are the older fans of the existing versions of Traveller, rather than people picking up the game for the first time.

 

[etherflyer]

Originally posted by Malenfant:
There's an element of the fanbase that doesn't want to see things change. They don't see why it should change, because they're so divorced from the current gaming market that they don't have the slightest clue about what sells games today. "If it was good enough for us back then, it should be good enough for people now" simply doesn't hold.

I think it's more of "We know what we like, and we'll complain if you stop publishing what we want to publish things we don't want."

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by Robert Prior:
I think it's more of "We know what we like, and we'll complain if you stop publishing what we want to publish things we don't want."

But that's precisely why today Traveller is still the same as it ever was - and precisely why it's not bringing in new fans. The old guard in the game are somewhat inflexible and intolerant of any change. And while most of them probably wouldn't even buy any GT or T20 products or any other new version of Traveller, they'd still complain about it.

If they don't like it, they can always just carry on playing their old versions - nobody is going to take those away. But instead they essentially blackmail the publishers and say "you'll publish what we like, or we'll all stop buying your games". There's no change, flexibility, or openmindedness there (and then of course they complain when they do that and Traveller disappears from the market). Meanwhile, the game gets more and more out of date in the current market, and then people wonder why they can't find new players.

 

[flykiller]

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />describe an adventure you would like to run in.

Hm. Oh, I dunno off the top of my head. Something along the lines of your average Indiana Jones movie with an Ancient artifact of great power, but with say Sollie or Zho as the bad guys, with chases and races against time across several systems getting various bits of the puzzle? All the while with some other party looking on with interest... </font>[/QUOTE]write it.

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by flykiller:
write it. [/QB]

Again, you're just full of helpful comments aren't you .

Problem is (other than that I just made that up off the top of my head), that adventure could be run in any game (with a few names changed). Maybe that's why people think that Traveller is bland, because there's not an awful lot to separate it from 'default starspanning scifi". The same can be said for most of the published adventures, too. The only version of Traveller that actually had something more specific was TNE, because that was largely post-apocalyptic but with spaceships.

 

[bryan gibson]

But that's precisely why today Traveller is still the same as it ever was - and precisely why it's not bringing in new fans. The old guard in the game are somewhat inflexible and intolerant of any change. And while most of them probably wouldn't even buy any GT or T20 products or any other new version of Traveller, they'd still complain about it.

If they don't like it, they can always just carry on playing their old versions - nobody is going to take those away. But instead they essentially blackmail the publishers and say "you'll publish what we like, or we'll all stop buying your games". There's no change, flexibility, or openmindedness there (and then of course they complain when they do that and Traveller disappears from the market). Meanwhile, the game gets more and more out of date in the current market, and then people wonder why they can't find new players.

Here , I think, is the crux of the matter, in that one thing Traveller has not really done is evolve to meet the newer sensibilities of the current market.

Certainly there are it's varients, and they are many as also there are its virtues, (also many) but what Traveller has never really done is evolve beyond what is was.

IMO, the OTU is far too grand, and the herd of canonistas that infest its boards and forums (yep, they're out there all right) scare away , annoy or just plain offend newcomers. If its not OTU, canon or what they narrowly define as canon, then they not merely actively discourage but insult, bray and berate those new players, missing the one vital line in the CT rules that made Traveller what it was - the simple statement that the rules were to let one do as they would.

Secondly, the demographic that buys Traveller is less to issue than whos buying everything else, and why can't we get them into the game?

In this, Traveller has also failed, in that its many flaws ( and there are many) haven't really been addressed or dealt with.

Its equally several virtues are a product of its inception, that of a "hard science" fiction game. Space fantasy (Star Wars, Star Trek, and others) make it easier on the playing end, because like it or not, its a simple fact that not everyone feels the need to know base physics and deep sciences to play a game

A solution is to provide suffiecient info in supplements to allow the newcomer to opereate his game without that knowledge. Also, to reconcile the elements that carry over from the games inception. ( how many threads have there been over issues like technological gaps, computer sizes and elements that the rules simply dont allow because as of 1979, nobody imagined that Science Fiction would become science fact so soon or that technology (computers being only one example) would progress in the fashion they did?

regarding supplements, its to be remebered that the market has always supported such items, because as has been pointed out, whats the point of OTU if every GM must build his own? To berate others for not wishing to do so is intellectual arrogance of the highest order and only contributes to newcomers steering clear...I like to build my own, but hell, who has time?

All in all, it comes down to this...I feel morally certain that ( based on talking, as Malenfant did) that many newer younger players steer clear from Traveller for two reasons, and well stated by one 23 years old college student: the OTU is confusing ( agreed, I think by everyone) to newbies, and that the fanbase is frequently hostile.

Given a number of posts all over CoTI and from the actions of a few that tried to start games at the Warroom, (a local gameing spot near me at the time) the latter I regret to say certainly applied.

Well, there ya have it. One, the OTU can be fixed, but the other ( and valid IMO) is one only WE can fix.

 

[flykiller]

Problem is (other than that I just made that up off the top of my head), that adventure could be run in any game (with a few names changed). Maybe that's why people think that Traveller is bland, because there's not an awful lot to separate it from 'default starspanning scifi". The same can be said for most of the published adventures, too.

I asked what kind of adventure you would like to run in. now you're complaining that it's bland? like the published adventures?

 

[etherflyer]

Originally posted by Malenfant:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Robert Prior:
I think it's more of "We know what we like, and we'll complain if you stop publishing what we want to publish things we don't want."

But that's precisely why today Traveller is still the same as it ever was - and precisely why it's not bringing in new fans. The old guard in the game are somewhat inflexible and intolerant of any change. And while most of them probably wouldn't even buy any GT or T20 products or any other new version of Traveller, they'd still complain about it. </font>[/QUOTE]Given that many of us started in the days of CT, I think you're stretching things. I've been playing Traveller since 1977. I've been a Traveller writer since 1988. I've corresponded with hundreds of Traveller fans in the old pre-Internet days, and frankly I haven't noticed that attitude. A sense of ownership, yes, born in the days when fan publications were keeping the flame going -- and also a desire not to throw out the baby with the bathwater.

Originally posted by Malenfant:
If they don't like it, they can always just carry on playing their old versions - nobody is going to take those away. But instead they essentially blackmail the publishers and say "you'll publish what we like, or we'll all stop buying your games". There's no change, flexibility, or openmindedness there (and then of course they complain when they do that and Traveller disappears from the market). Meanwhile, the game gets more and more out of date in the current market, and then people wonder why they can't find new players.

So they should buy what they don't like?

There's no blackmail involved, just consumer choice and consumer feedback. They are saying "if we don't like it, we won't buy it even if you call it Traveller", which is a very different thing.

 

[etherflyer]

Originally posted by TheEngineer:
Oh, another remark about the fanbase.
I dont think these fans to be actively against changes. They are perhaps just not interested in new things, which do not fit into their well-working gaming world.
But they are surely against throwing away everything they know and own.

Exactly how I see it.

Especially the part about not throwing out what they know and own...

 

[etherflyer]

Originally posted by Malenfant:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by flykiller:
write it.

Again, you're just full of helpful comments aren't you .

Problem is (other than that I just made that up off the top of my head), that adventure could be run in any game (with a few names changed). Maybe that's why people think that Traveller is bland, because there's not an awful lot to separate it from 'default starspanning scifi". The same can be said for most of the published adventures, too. The only version of Traveller that actually had something more specific was TNE, because that was largely post-apocalyptic but with spaceships. [/QB]</font>[/QUOTE]That's the adventure you said you wanted, though.

 

[signless]

IMO, the OTU is far too grand, and the herd of canonistas that infest its boards and forums (yep, they're out there all right) scare away , annoy or just plain offend newcomers.

Hear, hear! It took a great deal of courage to make my first post to ANY of the Traveller boards, and I'm an educated man with plenty of real-life experience travelling the world. There's plenty of superior snobbery in this game.

If its not OTU, canon or what they narrowly define as canon, then they not merely actively discourage but insult, bray and berate those new players, missing the one vital line in the CT rules that made Traveller what it was - the simple statement that the rules were to let one do as they would.

Again, well said. And here I thought I was all alone.

Secondly, the demographic that buys Traveller is less to issue than whos buying everything else, and why can't we get them into the game?
In this, Traveller has also failed, in that its many flaws ( and there are many) haven't really been addressed or dealt with.

Exactly. Simply re-packaging the same setting in a "new/old era" doesn't really DO anything...other than confuse newcomers, and complicate the whole system for the rest of us.

Its equally several virtues are a product of its inception, that of a "hard science" fiction game. Space fantasy (Star Wars, Star Trek, and others) make it easier on the playing end, because like it or not, its a simple fact that not everyone feels the need to know base physics and deep sciences to play a game

Exactly. Traveller shouldn't strive so much to be a "model" of the physical universe...but a "model" of what science fiction is, in general. That includes a LOT of different sub-genres.
Many of the obvious problems come from the games relative dotage (big, honkin' univac computers), and resistance to accept scientific advancement (bio/nano/ultra tech). The damn place got TOO big, TOO fast, and painted itself into a corner. Keep it small and flexible. Manuever, punch and jab, keep moving your feet and don't stand still!