snrdg082102
SOC-14 1K
Hello Frankymole,
Silly question Do you have a link to his WD articles?
Thank you either way.
Silly question Do you have a link to his WD articles?
Thank you either way.
alien race generation in Traveller ?
- Thread starter JimMarn
- Start date
snrdg082102
SOC-14 1K
BlackBat242
SOC-14 1K
IDIK is my mash-up of "Make Your Own Aliens" and "Anything But Human" - pretty much using MYOA as the base, and adding just what ABH had that MYOA didn't cover.
snrdg082102
SOC-14 1K
Hello BlackBat24,
Very nice mash-ups in my opinion to boot. Thank you for the work.
Very nice mash-ups in my opinion to boot. Thank you for the work.
At this point, I would agree with Constantine and suggest waiting for the revision, unless you absolutely cannot wait. Perhaps in this instance Murphy is helping you.
I think you're lowering the bar unnecessarily for yourself by thinking like that. When something -be it software or RPG - is officially published, the publisher is saying "this is done. It's usable, it's playable, it does what it's supposed to do". Before that, it's "in development" or "in playtest" - after that, any errata are found, bugs are fixed, patches are released, and/or second editions come out.
Software is a different world - there, bugfixes come out, software patches are released etc after release. RPGs aren't generally considered to work that way though (even though there are similarities) - it's not as easy to push the fixes to customers in a way that will integrate with the product (unless the product is a PDF that is easily updated online). Saying that "no RPG is ever finished or fixed" implies that you're happy with receiving a flawed product that doesn't work properly, and that's selling yourself short I think.
Maybe we're shifting towards a software-like model of patches and bugfixes with tabletop RPGs, but I wouldn't want to see that myself. Certainly in the past - before PDFs - most people generally considered an RPG product to be "finished" when it was released and expected it to be playable without requiring lots of houserules.
Baron
SOC-12
I don't consider that attitude to be 'in the past.'
If you publish a game (or anything else!), it had darned well better be 'finished.' You've had your chance to play-test it. You've had your chance to proofread it. Now you published it, you're charging money for it, you're saying, "Here's a game for sale, you should buy it." If you weren't ready, then you shouldn't have published yet.
There is no excuse for doing a shoddy job. The game must be playable, and enjoyable, as-is. It should also not look like a 5th grade term paper; you need to be able to write, and you need to have proofreaders.
I'm not aiming this at any particular author or product, this seems like common sense to me. You may disagree, but objectively, I can't imagine how you could justify any other position.
Really, the bar of what people are willing to spend money on has been lowered much too far. Start demanding your money's worth, and we won't have to put up with this nonsense.
The gaming industry has long been plagued with "revisionism" and incomplete rules.
Original D&D, for example...
And, in Tunnels and Trolls - released in 1974, it hit 5th edition in 1979... mind you, it stayed there, in print (essentially continuously) until 2004. 2nd ed changed missile to-hits; 3rd expanded the gear and saves; 4th tweaked several small items and added several special cases; 5th added a die to every weapon, altered monster attack dice by MR, and made several more additions. The Related Monsters! Monsters! was originally grounded in 3rd (It's essentially 3.5 light), revised to match 4th (being 4th light); it was always a subset.
And RuneQuest hit a second edition within a few years, as well, making changes to attribute generation and combat resolution.
Boot Hill went through 4 editions in about 6 years, as well.
And then there's Traveller -
1st edition CT was tweaked slightly in each reprint. The PDFs are only 1st printing and the 1981 2nd edition (which was stable through MT's release).
Original D&D, for example...
It looked only a little like what most people would recognize; only three classes, funky hit point progression, no thief class, att 16+ gave a +1 on rolls, and att 5- a -1.
It wasn't until almost a year later that the game we would now recognize emerged, with the publication of Supplement 1: Greyhawk (henceforth, S1). S1 revised the following rules: Hit points (adding different hit die types by class, and changing to a steady 1 HD per level), classes (adding paladin, thief and druid), alignment, combat modifiers, multiclassing, spell acquisition, experience for slaying monsters, weapon versus armor tables.
It wasn't until almost a year later that the game we would now recognize emerged, with the publication of Supplement 1: Greyhawk (henceforth, S1). S1 revised the following rules: Hit points (adding different hit die types by class, and changing to a steady 1 HD per level), classes (adding paladin, thief and druid), alignment, combat modifiers, multiclassing, spell acquisition, experience for slaying monsters, weapon versus armor tables.
And, in Tunnels and Trolls - released in 1974, it hit 5th edition in 1979... mind you, it stayed there, in print (essentially continuously) until 2004. 2nd ed changed missile to-hits; 3rd expanded the gear and saves; 4th tweaked several small items and added several special cases; 5th added a die to every weapon, altered monster attack dice by MR, and made several more additions. The Related Monsters! Monsters! was originally grounded in 3rd (It's essentially 3.5 light), revised to match 4th (being 4th light); it was always a subset.
And RuneQuest hit a second edition within a few years, as well, making changes to attribute generation and combat resolution.
Boot Hill went through 4 editions in about 6 years, as well.
And then there's Traveller -
1st edition CT was tweaked slightly in each reprint. The PDFs are only 1st printing and the 1981 2nd edition (which was stable through MT's release).
snrdg082102
SOC-14 1K
Howdy robject,
How much is Murphy paying you guys anyway? ;-)
I'm not really in a rush to get T5 since I'm still cycling through CT, MT, TNE, and T4 from FFE (GDW). I'm also on occasion going through GT, T20, MgT, or one of the other gaming systems I own when my current project progress hits a brick wall.
Oh, yeah one more item, I'm still trying to get the Traveller Universe application to run on my Windows 7 computer.
Thanks for the comments about not rushing out to get T5 just yet.
How much is Murphy paying you guys anyway? ;-)
I'm not really in a rush to get T5 since I'm still cycling through CT, MT, TNE, and T4 from FFE (GDW). I'm also on occasion going through GT, T20, MgT, or one of the other gaming systems I own when my current project progress hits a brick wall.
Oh, yeah one more item, I'm still trying to get the Traveller Universe application to run on my Windows 7 computer.
Thanks for the comments about not rushing out to get T5 just yet.
The vast majority of games work fine in the form that they were initially released. I think you're confusing "revisonism and incomplete rules" with "natural evolution through new editions".
We're not talking about new editions here. Those are pretty inevitable as games thrive and develop. I don't consider a game to be "incomplete" just because at some point someone decides to make a new edition for it. Sometimes games get rule tweaks in supplements, and then the publisher decides to integrate them all in a new edition (GURPS springs to mind). Sometimes publishers figure that a new direction or approach is required, and a new edition is the result (as is the case with D&D over the years, or Traveller). Sometimes a game changes hands and the new publisher wants to use their own system with it. All of those are fine.
At the other end you get things like Eclipse Phase, which is treated more like software and "new printings" happen where the PDFs (and ultimately the print product) are updated whenever enough errata accumulate. That's fine too.
The point is, when an RPG is released, it's generally because the publisher considers it "ready for release". It's been tested, it's been edited, everything that they wanted to put in the game on release is there and ready to be used.
T5 isn't like that though. My understanding (from attempting to convert UWPs to a T5 format with Don) is that there are pretty huge issues with parts of it, and all its bits are not really that well integrated - really it should be considered more like a "first draft" or "development draft" that shouldn't have been released in its current form at all. Some parts may be usable but there are a lot of gaps in it (e.g. none of the UWP extensions actually mean anything, except possibly Importance). My understanding is that Personal Combat is being looked at again, and worldgen needs to be looked at too.
So I don't think anyone can justifiably treat T5 like other games that have been released. It's still very much a work in progress, whereas the other games are considered "final drafts" in their released forms.
No, I'm not. You may not see it, but it's very real. Traveller was quite incomplete at release.
There were no civilian careers until 2 years later (with Supplement 4).
There was no coverage for anything other than mainworlds until 6 years after release (with Book 6).
There was no system for ground vehicle design or modification until 4 years later, and even then, it was in a companion miniatures game (striker), not the RPG itself. The first system of rules for design of vehicles specifically for Traveller isn't until 1987 - 10 years after CT - with MegaTraveller. CT itself has a couple contradictory sets of rules for use of ATV's, and a guideline for surface to orbit times for Air/Rafts and G/Carriers.
The Computer Programs and Programming rules, which appear in 1977 Mayday and in JTAS #1, don't migrate to CT until 1981.
And the different printings of CT1E have included differences in wound wording, the deletion of the route generation table, the inclusion or not of Jump Torpedoes (1st printing says they're possible; I've been told one of the later printings pre-6th has actual stats for them.).
D&D original even states it isn't complete, and that DM's will need to invent new rules to cover some fairly common situations (most of which didn't get covered in D&D rules until the AD&D 1E DMG or later), but which people kept asking for consistent official rules for. That the designer was running something totally different than what was available at conventions prior to the release of Supplement 1 (and that something totally different turns out to be essentially the game with Supplements 1 & 3) shows that Gygax felt the game wasn't complete at release - he released a development snapshot, and probably should have done a new edition in 1975 rather than a supplement - the changes are THAT drastic. (D&D 1974 - the original Beta Release.) There is no shortage of evidence that D&D 1974 was released prematurely due to financing issues.
RuneQuest was expanded in the second edition (an additional 8 pages of material) because the Author felt the original was too incomplete (it's mentioned in the designer's notes).
It's actually fair to say that most games are released when "good enough to be played" not "when finished." Otherwise, we wouldn't see the raft of "Player's Guides" and rules expansions we see throughout the RPG market.
Very few games don't have rules expansions in supplements - Hero System 5E comes to mind as the best example of a "complete" game on that score, and T&T 7 is about as complete as it gets for T&T.
I have the beige D&D books, about 1979 version, and I used to have the blue D&D book. They seemed very 'scattered' to me, especially the blue cover book.
My players and I liked the AD&D 1E books, and I enjoyed DMing them. More consistent than the beige books.
I played T&T solo dungeons in 1979. I felt it was well put together, but preferred 1E over it.
My players and I liked the AD&D 1E books, and I enjoyed DMing them. More consistent than the beige books.
I played T&T solo dungeons in 1979. I felt it was well put together, but preferred 1E over it.
Only if you use hindsight to declare what is "complete" and "incomplete".
Can you play Classic Traveller using the Books 1-3? Yes.
Can you play AD&D using the PHB, DMG and a Monster Manual? Yes.
Can you play Runequest using the rules from the core box? Yes.
Can you play Blue Planet using the Players Guide and Moderators Guiide? Yes.
Can you play Eclipse Phase using just the core book? Yes.
Can you play Rifts using just the core book? Yes.
Can you play Vampire the Masquerade using only the core book? Yes.
And so on. I'm sure you get the idea.
I would say all of these are "complete" games in themselves, because they're not missing the core material you need to be able to play them. Are they missing supplementary material that help you play other things or that expand on what's in the core rules? Absolutely - but that doesn't make them "incomplete".
If Traveller's core was missing rules for combat and other parts of the game referenced those rules, then people would quite justifiably say "this game is not complete!". I know T5 has UWP extensions but it doesn't contain anything that describes what the UWP Extensions actually do to anything involving trade or how they may feedback on UWPs. Hence, that is "incomplete".
"incomplete" means "it's missing components that you need to play it", not "it has what you need to play it but you want more". A game that has a combat system that only has stats for basic weapons (swords, axes, polearms, etc) isn't "incomplete" because it's missing some specific form of obscure polearm. A game that contains spaceships isn't "incomplete" because it doesn't have stats for a 4-man trading vessel or a lab ship.
Again, I think you're using hindsight to say that. I think most publishers would say that a corebook is ready for release when they've got enough material for people to be able to play the game without needing anything else to play it other than a bit of creative effort. While some may deliberately plan to spread things out over "Players Guides" or other supplements (possibly because the core rules would be too big if it was all in one book), often RPG supplements aren't planned in detail in advance. Mongoose may have had the idea of releasing lots of LBBs for every career, but I'm sure they wouldn't have had any idea what those books would actually contain until they were written by their authors.
Sure, but that doesn't mean that games that have rules expansions are "incomplete" before those are released.
snrdg082102
SOC-14 1K
Evening all,
First my apologies for nudging the discussion off the topic of Alien Race Generation In Traveller.
Next, everyone, myself included, has a slightly different take on what is or is not complete in a product.
Not having access to T5 I cannot comment on whether or not the system is complete. Of course since I am not near any gaming groups my current thing is going through the various versions of Traveller and other games building spreadsheets, Excel and Open Office, to keep myself out of bars and off the street ;-). Which is only possible because I'm retired military and not finding a new line of work.
To get the topic back on track does anyone have more stuff appropriate to Alien Race Generation in Traveller?
First my apologies for nudging the discussion off the topic of Alien Race Generation In Traveller.
Next, everyone, myself included, has a slightly different take on what is or is not complete in a product.
Not having access to T5 I cannot comment on whether or not the system is complete. Of course since I am not near any gaming groups my current thing is going through the various versions of Traveller and other games building spreadsheets, Excel and Open Office, to keep myself out of bars and off the street ;-). Which is only possible because I'm retired military and not finding a new line of work.
To get the topic back on track does anyone have more stuff appropriate to Alien Race Generation in Traveller?
Baron
SOC-12
Well, I like adapting aliens from literature and media. And animal-aliens are a time-honored tradition in SF. I would freely use other games' aliens too.
What would I try as source material? Maybe Andre Norton, or Star Trek. Barsoom, or Venus (Cosoom) from Burroughs. Larry Niven. Cthulhu mythos. D&D lizard men.
The only trick is to give them an alien perspective. I would look over various games' "personalities & quirks" tables for ideas there.
What would I try as source material? Maybe Andre Norton, or Star Trek. Barsoom, or Venus (Cosoom) from Burroughs. Larry Niven. Cthulhu mythos. D&D lizard men.
The only trick is to give them an alien perspective. I would look over various games' "personalities & quirks" tables for ideas there.
If you take EDG's position on the completeness of Books 1-3, then T5 was complete before beta. The systems were present and worked.
Can't have it both ways - either he's dead wrong about either CT or T5 - but he's the one shifting the goals for T5 from CT. (All the issues he states for T5 are issues people have had with CT since the early 80's. Modern tolerance for them may be lower.)
And remember: "Playable", "complete", and "covers the stated subject material adequately" are 3 separate benchnmarks.
I vehemently reject his definition of "complete" - and also that CT was even to his definition of complete in books 1-3. It wasn't playable without massive interpretation/interpolation - few games of the era could be adequately learned from the rules in print.
Complete is, at least to me, "Covers all areas that you expect to occur in routine play" - and CT didn't. The lack of definition of other bodies in system, and lack of use rules for vehicles other than spacecraft (despite including several non-spacecraft vehicles) is a VISIBLE gaping hole.
CT's lack of system gen in the core wouldn't have been so big a hole if it hadn't had travel rules that mentioned other bodies in system. The lack of vehicle operation rules would have been less an issue if there hadn't been 10+ ground & air vehicles in the equipment list. The lack of overland movement rates was an oversight, as well - it's clear that there are stable assumptions at GDW by comparing Across the Bright Face and Marooned, but is there a movement rule in Books 1-3 for long distance movement on an hourly, daily, or weekly basis. Again, a gaping hole.
3 very common situations, 3 uncovered situations.
Likewise, it's very common to shoot at vehicles in sci-fi - no mechanics at all for damage to vehicles in CT, except in the sister game, Striker, and those don't mesh well with CT unless one adopts striker/AHL as one's combat system.
The issue isn't whether CT or anything else is complete. The issue is that T5 isn't complete. Case in point: UWP extensions are defined, but most have no practical game effect. It's like having a combat system with armour, and then not saying how the armour protects from incoming attacks. Or defining a bunch of weapon effects and then not saying what they do or in what order they apply (which I think I saw was also an issue in T5?). That's why it's "incomplete" - that's why it's "development draft" quality and not "final quality".
I wouldn't say that omitting systems that cover any situtation that could possibly come up is "incomplete". It's inconvenient, but (especially in the early days of RPG design) designers had a limited budget, and also didn't think of including everything and figured that GMs could just wing it. Now, budgets have increased (especially in the case of T5) and peoples' expectations are different. And half-defining terms and then leaving them hanging without application is what I'd call "incomplete", and that's why I say that about T5.
Either way, perhaps we should be allowing the thread to get back on topic?
I wouldn't say that omitting systems that cover any situtation that could possibly come up is "incomplete". It's inconvenient, but (especially in the early days of RPG design) designers had a limited budget, and also didn't think of including everything and figured that GMs could just wing it. Now, budgets have increased (especially in the case of T5) and peoples' expectations are different. And half-defining terms and then leaving them hanging without application is what I'd call "incomplete", and that's why I say that about T5.
Either way, perhaps we should be allowing the thread to get back on topic?
I'm talking about Extensions (Infrastructure, Resources, Labour, Infrastructure, Efficiency, Resource Units, Homogeneity, Acceptance, Strangenes, Symbols), not Trade Codes. As far as I'm aware, Extensions aren't used to influence anything in trade or anywhere else, and are not influenced by things they probably should be influenced by (e.g. government, law, tech level). Unlike say, their equivalents in the DGP World Builders Handbook (extensiveness, aggressiveness, progressiveness).
