10 questions to ask Joe Fugate

[Malenfant]

Also, I don't think that publishers tend to tell people how much product they're selling (other than on these industry surveys) - they tend to keep such things confidential.

SJG has a Traveller license til the end of 2005, IIRC. Whether they renew it depends largely on how well the Interstellar Wars book does when it's supposed to be released in the first half of next year (I say "supposed" because already their schedule for other books is slipping. Apparently they set some unrealistic targets). They also may be releasing new 3I material through e23 if that ever gets up and running, so how well that does could factor into things too.

They certainly haven't at this stage said "we're definitely dropping Traveller" though. It seems to be a case of "we may reassess whether we'll continue to develop the game based on how well the new projects do".

 

[etherflyer]

Originally posted by T. Foster:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by daryen:
Well, considering that SJG is giving serious consideration to letting its Traveller license lapse, I don't think you want to ask Steve Jackson how Traveller is doing.

Is this based on reliable information or just wild internet speculation? </font>[/QUOTE]SJG has made no statements on the matter at all, beyond saying that they won't discuss confidential business information.

 

[hunter]

This is a thread for Joe to answer question, not a thread of rampant speculation on the future of GT. No one posting so far is in any position to speak on the future of the GT line, so drop it. This is the same kind of crap that hurt GDW towards the end.

Hunter

 

[RainOfSteel]

Originally posted by whartung:
This has been a fabulous thread . . .

Whartung,

Pretty impressive for post #1!

Welcome to Citizens of the Imperium.

 

[jfugatesr]

Sorry to have started all the OT discussion, but I've found it helpful. It gives me a much better idea what's happened since my DGP days with RPG gaming and Traveller.

Anyhow, back to the topic with the next question!

21. If there were one thing he could change in DGP's body of work, what would it be?
====================================================

That's an easy one ... I'd rewrite several of our TD feature adventures. They were experiments to push the envelope of what a good Traveller adventure could be (more than bar room brawls, rumors, and hauling cargo) and although they may have made good fiction stories, some of them just never worked out all that well in their execution.

Some of the plots were rather contrived, and others real yawners (TD2 comes to mind).

One thing that these adventures depended on, rather than lots of action and shoot-em-up, was a focus on really *role-playing*.

Consistent with the discussion we've just had on what is popular with the age 15-30 gaming crowd, it's more the anti-thesis to what we used to call the "hack and slash" mentality. At DGP, we wanted adventures with less violence and more good old yarn play-acting.

However, I bet your typical Traveller (or any genre, including D&D) game doesn't have a lot of people staying in character around the table for 80-90% of the session.

Thanks to Gary, who was a big advocate of this sort of play, he taught this ol' wargammer that it wasn't all imagination, mechanics, and a fast pace, but improptu character interaction. And that's how we did our games, which in my opinion took them off the scale in fun-factor.

Trying to do impromptu role playing puts you on the spot if you've never done it, but once you get over the awkwardness of trying it out, it gets to be *really fun*.

My guess is the average role player gamer doesnt do this much? And I suspect most Traveller GMs are game mechanics oriented rather than "role playing ambiance" oriented. Just seems to go with the Traveller mind set more.

Anyhow, that's what I would redo ... some of our weaker TD adventures. TD1, TD3, TD8, and TD17 stand out in my mind as the best of the lot. I don't recall specifically the weakest ones other than TD2 (I wrote it, so I remember it best), the rest are somewhere in between.

 

[Malenfant]

Well, just because one may be hacking and slashing, doesn't mean that one doesn't do "proper roleplaying". In most games there is plenty of character interaction between the combats.

And indeed some games are ENTIRELY based around interaction. Mechanics are very freeform, and not remotely simulationist in such games. The 90s saw a pretty big wave of experimentation to move beyond crunchy mechanics-driven systems. Now there are games that don't even involve dice. Nobilis is one such game, where you basically play what are essentially gods (ever heard of Neil Gaiman's Sandman comics? You basically play one of those, an anthropomorphication - if that's a word - of a concept). Amber is another (based on Roger Zelazny's books) and was AFAIK the first diceless RPG. Then you have a host of other "narrativist" games that range from being very mechanics light and entirely story driven to being like the simulationist games but with a "hero point" mechanism to allow the players to have some control over the action. Heroquest (the latest incarnation of Greg Stafford's Runequest) has a very 'narrativist' bent to it, because you largely define characters not by numbers of attributes but by keywords that summarise them.

Most of the narrativist games have their own smallish but devoted followings - the majority of the most popular games are much more like your traditional RPGs. But RPGs are still evolving, and people are still trying out new ways to approach things. It all depends on what you want out of the game.

Your "average (through sheer numbers) roleplayer" likes the reward-driven D&D style game. They like to see their character grow and they like to beat challenges. But there are still plenty of people who really want to get inside their characters heads, or who want to focus on character interaction only, or who don't want crunchy mechanics to slow their games down... there's a whole range of gamers out there and a whole range of games to appeal to them.

(dunno if that did anything to address your point, but there you go )

 

[Whipsnade]

rancke wrote:

I blame psionics. My explanation of Virus is that it isn't an intelligent chip, it is a disembodied psionic entity whose natural habitat are chips.

Mr. Rancke-Madsen,

That'll work. Although I'm a little squeamish about using one Belief Suspender Snapper; Virus is psionic, to explain away another Belief Suspender Snapper; Virus can do all these odd things.

Have you tackled this one yet; If Virus is psionic why are the Hivers - the least psionic major race - so good at fighting it? Everything in TNE pins the Hiver's Viral fighting abilities on their Best-In-Chartered-Space cybernetics. Wouldn't the Zhodani or Droyne have the upper hand among the Majors when it comes to fighting a psionic Virus?

Since psionics is the Traveller version of magic, you can then blame all the things that an electronic chip wouldn't be able to do on psionics.

Yup. There is that. Having one type of 'magic' allows you to introduce other types of 'magic'. We never much used psionics anyway, no one was really interested in it. I did use psionics as various plot devices though.

Our discussing Virus is like ST fans discussing why Klingons 'suddenly' had horseshoe crabs as foreheads. There's no 'in-game' or 'in-show' answer to either question so it's best just to ignore them.

Anyway, this all OT to this thread. Pray continue, Mr. Fugate!


Sincerely,
Larsen

 

[Whipsnade]

JoeFugate wrote:

Some of the plots were rather contrived, and others real yawners (TD2 comes to mind).

Mr. Fugate,

Oddly enough, that was one of my group's favorites! And because it depended on so much more than the trite RPG "Hack n' Slash for XPs" trope.

One thing that these adventures depended on, rather than lots of action and shoot-em-up, was a focus on really *role-playing*.

Which was precisely why my group loved TD2. You had an entire tribe you needed to ingratiate yourself to without letting htem know that Aybee was a robot. You had to 'role' play and not 'roll' play.

Speaking of "Hack n' Slash for XPs", if the posts here and on the TML are any guide, T20 has brought oodles of new players to Traveller. That is a very good thing. A few of those players brought along a different idea of RPG play from their other d20 settings and that has led to confusion.

Over a year ago, one fellow new to Traveller posted a question here at COTI. It seemed he was having trouble coming up with "XP harvesting"(1) adventures for his new, low level, Traveller PCs and he wanted to know how other GMs faired.

It took quite a lengthy thread to explain to him about the stylistic differences between play in a Traveller setting and play in a D&D type setting. Just because you may be using big chunks of the same rules, it doesn't necessarily follow that you play the game in the same manner.


Sincerely,
Larsen

1 - My term, not his.

 

[jfugatesr]

Next question ...

22. What does he think of GURPS Traveller alternate time line? (whereby, Stephon Lives and Dulinor Dies) For that matter, what does you think of GURPS Traveller itself?
====================================================

I'm probably not a good person to ask this question of since I've never looked at GURPS nor have I ever looked at GURPS Traveller.

It does sound like, however, that the alternate timeline follows my heart-of-hearts and sticks with the Classic Traveller setting. But that's the gamer speaking.

If I was to put on my old DGP game manufacturer hat, I would have to agree with comments made on here earlier that the Third Imperium setting is kind of limited if you want "anything goes" sorts of action. For that reason, the Rebellion makes sense, or even the Virus of TNE.

Having said that, personally, had I been calling the shots with these options, I would have handled them more gingerly and not made them so much of a sledge hammer.

The Third Imperium setting always felt very real, and the timeline became more of a caricature with the Rebellion (felt more unreal) and that unrealness really went into overdrive with Virus.

I really don't want to start any more Rebellion or TNE bashing threads with my comments, but it is interesting to me that Traveller has remained a niche game or an "old kodger" game to a large degree.

Playing a "regular Joe" which is what many characters are in Traveller always furthered the realism to me, and we often talked about that at DGP.

Most people role-play to vicariously see what it would be like to be something they are not. Me, I role play to be *somewhere fun* that I'm not. I could just be me and have a blast in the setting if it was fun enough.

Perhaps that's the difference here. Maybe many Traveller fans like the "somewhere" angle over the "someone" angle? As long as Traveller maintains that emphasis, it's probably destined to never gain significant market share. If I take my DGP marketing hat off, the gamer in me doesn't care, and I would probably be a big fan of GURPS Traveller today if I were still a Traveller gamer.

But from the sounds of it, the vast majority of the RPG market likes the "someone" angle over the "somewhere" angle. Otherwise, once you seen one dungeon crawl, you've seen them all. They're just not *that much* different unless you have a clever Dungeon Master.

As an interesting side note, Steve Jackson himself approached Gary and me shortly after GURPS was released to see if we wanted to write a GURPS Traveller line. We said no, since we had all the work we could handle as it was, and it would be work for hire rather than sales income.

Had we said yes, it's interesting to wonder how things might have turned out different. I know I would have been sorely tempted to do just what Loren has done, and maintain the Classic Traveller timeline in that version of the game.

For us old koger Traveller fans (speaking as a gamer now), I prefer the somewhere fun angle of the CT Third Imperium. To make it all more real, then I need to be more of a regular Joe (no pun intended) in that somewhere fun place. And that somewhere fun place can't be too dangerous or it will ruin things if I get creamed. That's why a stable Third Imperium appeals to me, I think.

Sticking with CT probably doesn't do much to increase Traveller's market share appeal, but it would sell this loyal fan products, to be sure.

 

[al duc]

Originally posted by JoeFugate:
It does sound like, however, that the alternate timeline follows my heart-of-hearts and sticks with the Classic Traveller setting. But that's the gamer speaking.

As an aside, the TNS dispatches give a good idea of how the G:T timeline progresses:
Traveller News Service

 

[Malenfant]

GT is basically the same as CT in terms of the setting, just moved on a few years. A lot of people dismiss it (rather unfairly though, I think).

First, character generation in GURPS is entirely points-based, and not 95% random like CT. You make the character you want, not one that the dice tell you that you have. For some reason, despite the setting outside of chargen being largely the same in GT as in CT, this causes some people to dismiss GT as being "not really Traveller". I suppose that for some people game mechanics are more important in defining the identity of an RPG than the setting.

Second, some people just plain don't like GURPS. Which is fair enough. But a lot of the GT books can be applicable to CT. They are very detailed, and at least attempt to explain some of the many, many inconsistencies and contradictions that plague the OTU in CT. There are detailed trade models, realistic world generation systems, recently GT: Nobles finally came out, and there is tons of other background info that could be useful for any Traveller game set in the pre-Rebellion era. Maybe some people don't like that detail, but I think it's great myself.

Third, obviously some things (particularly some technological and ship design assumptions) have had to change to make everything fit into GURPS. But still, it's quite obviously Traveller, and it's about as faithful a conversion of the game to another system as it can be.

Fourth, it's an "Alternate Traveller Universe" in which the Rebellion never happened, which in itself causes a small number of people to stick their noses up at it and justify their assertions that it's "not real Traveller". This despite the fact that for several years (before T20 was released ) it was the closest thing to the CT OTU that was being actively developed. Some have been very disparaging about it, claiming that "it was what Loren Wiseman wanted Traveller to be" (as if this is a bad thing) not what "true Traveller" should be.

Some of this hostile attitude toward GT mystifies me no end. It's one thing to just not like it, but sometimes I get the impression that some people see it as a threat. It's all Traveller, and it's among the best written, most well-researched material ever written for the game, if only people would just open their eyes to it.

 

[jwdh71]

I agree with Malenfant in this (surprise surprise , G:T is a worthy take on advancing the CT timeline, without the Rebellion or Virus. I have liked the vast majority of the products released (I'd better, I've bought all of them), and the changes from CT have been to make the OTU fit into GURPS, not just change for changes sake. I do run into the "I HATE GURPS" attitude a lot, mostly from younger gamers who started with either rules lite systems like WOD, or die-hard D&D types who don't like anything not in their system. Most of the old time Traveller grognards have been surprisingly accepting of it, at least on the TML. Maybe it's due to so many of the contributing writers being old grogs themselves...

 

[jwdh71]

Joe, I find the idea of you and Gary having written a Traveller line for SJG to be a fascinating one. What would the results have looked like? Would it resemble G:T that is out there today, or would it have goe in a different direction?

 

[jfugatesr]

Originally posted by jwdh71:
Joe, I find the idea of you and Gary having written a Traveller line for SJG to be a fascinating one. What would the results have looked like? Would it resemble G:T that is out there today, or would it have goe in a different direction?

You know, I'm not really sure. We never gave it much thought given we were so busy with what we had planned.

I would like to think we would have stuck with the CT timeline as an alternative background. I also think we might have pressed into more character development type adventures ... but I'm not sure just what we would have done.

It's easy to say, in hindsight what perhaps I would like to have seen us do, but whether or not we would have done them ... well, what we *did* do is not even touch GURPS at all.

In hindsight from a business perspective, that may have been a mistake. But had we done that, you can figure the number of products that came out from DGP directly would have been fewer.

Traveller gamers might have seen that as a betrayal. And the other wrinkle is I'm not sure Marc would have given his permission to SJG (the competition) to do GURPS Traveller, either. That was well before GDW started to hit the skids, so it's an awful lot of "what if'ing".

Reality is, that's not what happened although it sounds like GURPS Traveller is closer to the game I like to play as a Traveller gamer than MegaTraveller or TNE. T20 looks pretty cool too, and I'd like to learn more about it as well. As does T5 ...

Kind of ironic, isn't it, since I did most of the MegaTraveller rules rewrite. Well, that was following GDW's desires mostly, and wearing my DGP marketing hat, not just being theTraveller gamer I wanted to be in my heart-of-hearts.

 

[aramis]

Originally posted by Hyphen:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Aramis:
(there were four active RPG croups at CHS in 1986-87 school year. I asked last year, and the gamers told me that there were 4 or 5 games running at lunch last school year... That CHS hhas always had 45-50 minute lunch periods helps.)

As in Craig High School, Prince of Wales Island, Alaska?

</font>[/QUOTE]No, Chugiak HS, Chugiak, Alaska.

 

[jfugatesr]

Back to the official question list!

23. In TD#18. Marc W. Miller said it was planned from the inception of the Aslan and held as a deep secret until the Aslan were 'outed' in TD#17.
a) What was the reasoning behind the whole 'Aslan are not _really_ a major race' thing? Much of the canon related to the Ancient coyns and the whole 'six races' thing from Twilights Peak seems to infer that the Aslan are/should be a major race.
====================================================
I see this as a fun bit of back history mostly. It's something Marc had cooked up as a bit of irony.

I've always seen this as a lesson to us in how trying to come up with labels for the "haves" and the "have nots" needs to be tempered with fairness and good sense. And sometimes those labels are just plain wrong.

In fact, the Aslan are a major race. Period. The definition is a poor one. A major race is a race who has the moxy to parley the use of jump technology into a star-spanning empire. Who cares where they got the jump technology?

Do you see? The have/have not labeling is most often devised by the haves to further their agenda. And to be used to look down their noses at the have nots.

So here we are, the Solomani with a star spanning empire, and the Aslan with a star spanning empire. A Solomani and and Aslan meet in a bar. The Solomani brags that *his* ancestors painstakingly, with much sweat and tears, finally devised the first jump drive.

Then the Solomani looks at the Aslan with a sneer. He points at the Aslan and proclaims, "While this Aslan here, lying through his teeth, didn't shed one tear or one drop of sweat, stole jump drive technology from the Solomani -- and has the *gall* to claim his ancestors invented it on their own. The Aslan are nothing but a bunch of dirty lying thieves, with no honor."

Blah, blah, blah. Does all this talk and minor/major race definition maneuvering change the fact that both races have this massive star spanning empire? Nope.

But then Grandfather engineered humans into their various sub-races. Maybe that ought to make humans some sort of second-rate aliens?

The point is, it's always something. Somebody wants to define themselves into prominence and there's always a way to define another group into being second-rate.

I consider the sheer drive of the race is the kind of *drive* that makes a major or minor race. Not whether or not you invented jump drive on your own.

The prominence of the Aslan in known space speaks for itself. The definition be hanged. The Aslan are a major race, and nothing is going to change that, no matter what happened thousands of years ago in their distant past.

 

[mike wightman]

I always wondered how the Droyne ended up with major race status?

Which is a shameless way to get back to did you have any plans for the Droyne?

 

[jfugatesr]

Originally posted by Sigg Oddra:
I always wondered how the Droyne ended up with major race status?

Which is a shameless way to get back to did you have any plans for the Droyne?

We did, but that was Gary's part of the next alien module, and the Zhodani were mine.

Gary was keeping his part close to the vest, saying it was going to be fun ... etc. "Wait till you see what I have planned for the Droyne" was his general comment.

So Gary would have to comment on that part, since he never shared it with me. I would not hold my breath though, because it's been 10 years and Gary tends to forget things easily.

I recall things we had discussed the year before and when I approached Gary again, he would not remember. It's easy come, easy go with Gary. He's brilliant and loaded with clever ideas all the time, but it's like his brain offloads extra baggage to make room for all the new ideas, so I don't expect he'll remember much after all these years.

But maybe we can get him on here and have him comment. It could be interesting, if he remembers any of it.

 

[Elliot]

Posted by JoeFugate

'But maybe we can get him on here and have him comment. It could be interesting, if he remembers any of it.'


That would be cool - I felt the Droyne always had more to them than just the Ancients...

 

[aramis]

Joe: GT is more than just CT continued, timeline wise. It adds amounts of detail (some contradictory to CT/MT products in minor details), and does so in many areas.

GT is Detail-Heavy, and purports to be realistic (but then tries to cupport the classic traveller trophes...); in a few areas, this led to detail beyond (at least mine and several others) playability. (WBH was about as detailed as I ever go without computer assistance... And WBH for me usually was used by using one of the WBH-derived software packages...)

GT, when released, was one of the best selling GURPS product lines EVER, besides the core.

Now, here's rhe related question: How much computer assistance did you guys use for Game-Support?

How much would you have been comfortable with?
Computations and maps ouside of play?
Laptops for GM? Palmtops for GM?