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Another "Traveller" ripoff?

Well, Starcraft is an amalgamate of sci-fi, true, but specific aspects of it are lifted directly from well known sci-fi shows, books and what not.

This just looked to me like "a bunch of hack-n-slash type of adventurers with guns come across a really nasty animal encounter".

Just me.
 
Ah, but to me Halo is a mega lifting of Traveller concepts, some discussed here on these boards years before the game came out. :mad:
 
I think Narnia fans have more to complain about, Traveller appears to have lifted a major character and created a entire race in his likeness :)

We all stand on the shoulders of giants.
 
My son remains convinced that Microsoft owes Marc $$$ for Halo. He once had a list of things Microsoft got wrong, that if fixed to match Traveller fit the HALO continuity better.

I wonder where that list is. Kids these days...
 
Your son and I have a few things in common.

When Halo came out, I was really bristling at not only the obvious rip offs, but the fact that it came out a few years after we discussed Dyson spheres and ringworlds on this board ... it made me raise my eyebrows several times over.
 
Well there was this novel named Ringworld by Larry Niven which came out 1970 or so. Traveller came out in 1977.

Just saying...
 
Blue Ghost said:
When Halo came out, I was really bristling at not only the obvious rip offs, but the fact that it came out a few years after we discussed Dyson spheres and ringworlds on this board ... it made me raise my eyebrows several times over.
Click to expand...
What rip-offs? I don't know Halo, so I wonder if Halo used elements that were unique to Traveller (like the Low Lottery and wedge-shaped starships and Reticulan parasites :rolleyes:) or just elements that everyone could have gotten from the same SF works that GDW drew from?


Hans
 
Nathan Brazil said:
Well there was this novel named Ringworld by Larry Niven which came out 1970 or so. Traveller came out in 1977.

Just saying...
Click to expand...

And Mote in God's Eye, which has a blend of nobles and US-isms very much like Traveller's in 1974.

And the 1976 short West of Honor (part of the CoDominion series).

Plus there are bits of Dune in Traveller, too. And Asimov's Foundation.

Really, a lot of stuff can pull from the same influences and look like it's borrowing from Traveller when it's actually borrowing from the same sources Marc, Loren, Dave, Frank, and Tim did.

There has to be compelling reason to suspect a gaming origin rather than the source fiction for Traveller parallels -

  • With Firefly, Joss fessed up in an online interview to being a gamer
  • With the Era Ten line of games, Red's notes include direct inspiration from Traveller.
  • 6-Stat is clearly Traveller derived because it does SO MUCH exactly like CT.
  • Space Opera can be seen to be partially inspired by Traveller. Careers are similar, but not the same. Plus, Phil McGreggor is a long timer Traveller player.
  • Anything by FASA can be looked for for Travellerisms - FASA started out as a 3PP for Traveller, and then expanded out.

Many more - it's best just to say "This has a similar look and feel" - this includes almost anything by Niven, Pournelle, Doohan, Cherryh, Herbert, or Stirling.

Now, Kevin J. Anderson can't be so easily cleared - he's a gamer. Same for the late William H. Keith (and his pseudonyms). (Truth is, Larry Niven is a boardgamer/wargamer... So are Larry Bond and Tom Clancy.)

In the Tabletop Roleplaying Game industry, there is a lot of cross fertilization from about 4 "ancient" rulesets - Original Edition D&D, Tunnels and Trolls, Classic Traveller 1E, Runequest 1E. Each introduced key concepts that would be imitated/emulated/incorporated in later games.
 
Well yeah, there was all that stuff before hand, but the armor, the weapons, the AFVs, the military setup, a number of other earmarks had Traveller and "COTI BBS" and Traveller written all over it.

Halo didn't have Larry Niven's architect race, nor "control jets" for a super huge ring world around a sun, nor a number of other artifacts from the Niven books (and no offense, but Niven is not one of my favorite authors).
 
I seem to remember in one of the books I got from Marc's CT disk a page with Traveller stats of SciFi characters that players may know. The one I remember off the top of my head was Luke Skywalker, lightsaber and "the force" included.

I find it very counter productive to "Cry Wolf!" and complain that everything is a "rip-off" of Traveller. I appreciate your fandom and loyalty, but I know that Traveller borrowed heavily from earlier literature and films and should not be considered the beginning of all things SciFi.
 
You're right, it did, and the premise of the game was to be a generic set of rules for people to play all sorts of sci-fi venues. But the HALO game, for my money, isn't so much as an homage as it is a direct lifting with a few tweaks to mask what it really is.

It reminds me of "Coming to America" with the fast food owner who's ever so close to a law suit with McDonald's...sort of.

*EDIT*
Example; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfE98T10hu0
 
Last edited:
Blue Ghost said:
You're right, it did, and the premise of the game was to be a generic set of rules for people to play all sorts of sci-fi venues. But the HALO game, for my money, isn't so much as an homage as it is a direct lifting with a few tweaks to mask what it really is.

It reminds me of "Coming to America" with the fast food owner who's ever so close to a law suit with McDonald's...sort of.

*EDIT*
Example; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfE98T10hu0
Click to expand...
Funny you should mention that movie...

Note that Buchwald may have won $150,000, but he spent $200,000 to do it.
 
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