Attracting New Players..

[DickNervous]

(Note: I am sure this has been discussed in these hallowed halls on several occasions in the past, but I haven't seen it since I have been lurking and contributing so I thought I would bring it up. If there is a comprehensive discussion of this topic please feel free to point me to it.)

I guess we could also title this thread How to Make Traveller More Accessible to the "D&D" Generation. It seems that what many of us consider one of the best features of Traveller (the lack of levels, XP, etc) is also the thing that confounds potential players the most and makes them leery of trying the game out.

I have been running a campaign for about 6-7 months now and have advertised via Meetup.com and posters at my FLGS as well as word-of-mouth and have found it very difficult to find people interested in the game, though I have managed to get 4 regular players. Yet, at the same FLGS D&D/Pathfinder groups are regularly attracting 8+ people, which confuses me a bit.

I understand the whole marketing aspect of it and how to most people D&D = RPG, but it still confuses me that with the popularity of Science Fiction in our society that it is so difficult to get people to play Traveller. So I have two questions that I would like to toss out there for some discussion.

1. What have other people done that has worked in attracting new players to a traditional pen & paper Traveller game? Did you use posters, signs, Meetup.com, Craigslist, tie people up, bribe them to try the game with food and drink? What worked for you?

2. What, if anything, do you think we as a community can do to make Traveller seem more appealing and inviting to new players?

I look forward to hearing what everyone else has done to get people interested in our favorite game. :coffeegulp:

 

[DickNervous]

I figured I would start the discussion with my experience so far.

I have been running a Traveller campaign for about 6 months now and it has been difficult to get players. I started by advertising via a Meetup.com group for my FLGS that I hang out at. I am on very good terms with the owner and he gave me access to post events and promised that my group would always have priority in getting space for a session I had scheduled via Meetup.

The first night which I allocated to character creation the only person who showed up was my a friend who had been part of my inspiration to run the game because he wanted to play it. I kept advertising via Meetup and posters in the store and after about a month I had 3 people interested enough that they had met with me to create characters, so we got started.

After about 3 sessions we had 1 person, who was in a D&D group with one of my players, decide to give it a try. He even met up with me and we rolled up a character. He left after the fist session claiming that the setting just "didn't do it" for him. A few sessions later another person, who had seen us playing at the store, decided to join. That went better and she came to several sessions until life got in the way. I haven't heard from her for about 2 months now, which is sad because she was a very good role-player.

A few weeks ago I was at an X-Wing tournament at a different FLGS and wearing my Traveller t-shirt (it says "You haven't lived until you died in character creation" in a style similar to the classic Traveller box/book covers) when someone asked if it was for a different RPG system which I had never heard of. I took that opportunity to tell a few people about Traveller and how it worked (I do that A LOT) and one guy asked me if I was looking for new players. Of course I said yes and gave him the choice of using an NPC that I had created to be with the group or rolling a character. He chose the pre-made NPC, played and loved it, and is now part of the group.

So now, after 7 months, I have 4 players, though it seems we can only ever get 2-3 together at a time due to scheduling conflicts. Ideally I would like to have 5-6 players so that even if 1-2 can't make it we still have at least 4.

I talk about Traveller every chance I get at two different FLGS that I hang out and find that it is a real uphill battle to get people to try it out. It seems that word-of-mouth is the best recruiting tool, but even that isn't all that great.

 

[atpollard]

I don't have access to a general 'FLGS', so dispersed population makes face to face ANYTHING hard to find. Above and beyond that, even if a place with 100 regular gamers suddenly sprang up, I have too erratic of a schedule to meet at a certain place and time regularly ... sad, sad, sad.

I have placed my energy into PbP.
I have played in a few games here on COTI over the years.
I have played on other sites to support Traveller (and have fun).

Currently, I am referee on a game (see my signature below).
I really can't see much that I could do to 'recruit' new blood into the Traveller game, but I am doing what little I can ... my PbP has been designed to accommodate new players at almost any time.

I just wanted to wish you good luck with your efforts.

 

[DickNervous]

I don't have access to a general 'FLGS', so dispersed population makes face to face ANYTHING hard to find. Above and beyond that, even if a place with 100 regular gamers suddenly sprang up, I have too erratic of a schedule to meet at a certain place and time regularly ... sad, sad, sad.

I am lucky (or cursed, depending on the topic) to live on Long Island which is very densely populated. Of course that comes with many other "side effects", but that is a very different discussion.

I have placed my energy into PbP.
I have played in a few games here on COTI over the years.
I have played on other sites to support Traveller (and have fun).

Currently, I am referee on a game (see my signature below).
I really can't see much that I could do to 'recruit' new blood into the Traveller game, but I am doing what little I can ... my PbP has been designed to accommodate new players at almost any time.

I have never done a PbP game, though I think it would be fun.

A good VTT app for Traveller would be very helpful. I play a D&D game via Fantasy Grounds and it is very good. I know that there is a CT ruleset, or at least partial one, for FG and I wish I had the time to learn how to build them so I could create one for MgT, but I don't.

I just wanted to wish you good luck with your efforts.

Thanks!

 

[robject]

That sort of confirms my suspicions: you'll hook new Traveller players from the science-fiction base, not the fantasy base.

It's not that you can't find SF lovers in Fantasy venues. But if you're going to spend your time finding people to try Traveller, you're better off looking in SF venues.

So: people who play Firefly, Babylon 5, Stars Without Number, Battlestar Galactica, Gamma World, Paranoia, and that what's-it-called-game from Wizards of the Coast, you know, that one with X-Wing fighters. THAT player base will give you the best return on your effort.

 

[Adam Dray]

I think the main factors at work against Traveller are:

1. Science fiction in general is not a huge draw.
2. Science fiction fans in general can be offputting to casual gamers.
3. Traveller does not seem to be good at making many new fans.
4. A lot of the rules stuff caters to the hardcore SF fan.
5. A lot of the rules stuff caters to the hardcore Traveller universe fan.
6. There's a pretty big investment of time to even start playing Traveller.
7. There's a pretty big investment of time to play a Traveller campaign.

Science Fiction as a genre, Traveller as a SF toolkit

I think the Traveller rules are a toolkit for telling SF stories, right? Don't focus on the toolkit. That's painfully boring to a new player. Focus on a single story, and make sure it's awesome.

The typical Traveller player

If you look at the player statistics in the Age poll, scan the names in the forum, or attend TravellerCon, you'll find that most of the serious Traveller players are crusty old white guys, aged 35-50. Not all, certainly, but I suspect the demographics of the typical Traveller player make it a lot harder to attract players.

I suspect that we crusty old white guys are the core player base for a couple reasons. First--pure and simple--we played it in the 70's and 80's, liked it then, still like it. Second, the rules are still focused on telling the kind of SF story that was popular in the 60's-80's. It hasn't been updated for modern SF, outside T2300.

Hyperfocus of the rules

The new rules seem to be written by Traveller fans, for Traveller fans. That's great for Traveller fans, but it won't be a driver to create new fans.

One of the reasons I glommed onto Mongoose Traveller as my ruleset of choice, after a LOT of research on the various versions, was that it seemed the most accessible to the average gamer. Still, it could be simpler and more attractive to new Traveller gamers.

Large time investment

You say that only one person showed up for your chargen session (in your words, "first night which I allocated to character creation"). Yikes. I posit that the existence of a whole night allocated to just making characters turns off a lot of gamers already.

Want to increase interest? Lower the "social footprint" of Traveller gaming. Show up with pre-gens for the group and advertise an exciting adventure, playable in a single 3- or 4-hour session, and jump right into play. Keep things simple. After that, see if there's interest for continued play, perhaps with their own characters.

Another thing I'd like to see--and I've talked about this idea here, with marginal levels of interest from Traveller grognards--is a set of quickstart playbooks for different types of characters. A "pilot" book, an "engineer" book, a "merchant" book, and so on. Each would be 8-10 pages, give you the basic skills you need to be a successful whatever, and then let you pick a few additional skills to round yourself out. Maybe a handful of random one-sheet worlds for origins with a quick cultural write-up and some tables for background rolls.

The main issue here is that the licenses prohibit offering new methods to generate the six main characteristics, so any kind of quickstart rules would need to say, "Generate your characteristics the usual way, then pick a book for your role and follow the instructions therein." Not too bad, I suppose.

Sorry, I got distracted.

 

[aramis]

That sort of confirms my suspicions: you'll hook new Traveller players from the science-fiction base, not the fantasy base.

It's not that you can't find SF lovers in Fantasy venues. But if you're going to spend your time finding people to try Traveller, you're better off looking in SF venues.

So: people who play Firefly, Babylon 5, Stars Without Number, Battlestar Galactica, Gamma World, Paranoia, and that what's-it-called-game from Wizards of the Coast, you know, that one with X-Wing fighters. THAT player base will give you the best return on your effort.

WotC doesn't have one. FFG does X-Wing and Armada.

WotC does Star Trek Attack Wing.

Most of the fantasy gamers I know are fans of sci-fi... a large part of the problem is that they don't want to PLAY sci-fi. Many people see sci-fi as constrained by realism, and don't want to play in realistic universes.

 

[Adam Dray]

Firefly, Babylon 5, Battlestar Galactica, Gamma World, and Paranoia are settings, and hot ones at that. Stars Without Number is a sandbox science fiction setting for OSR D&D players.

I don't know how big the playerbase for any of these games is, but I doubt they're very large.

"How can we make Traveller more successful?" is a very different question than "How can we make Traveller more successful than D&D?"

 

[robject]

Another thing I'd like to see--and I've talked about this idea here, with marginal levels of interest from Traveller grognards--is a set of quickstart playbooks for different types of characters. A "pilot" book, an "engineer" book, a "merchant" book, and so on. Each would be 8-10 pages, give you the basic skills you need to be a successful whatever, and then let you pick a few additional skills to round yourself out. Maybe a handful of random one-sheet worlds for origins with a quick cultural write-up and some tables for background rolls.

There is some interest in quickstart rules, perhaps not dissimilar to the Liftoff concept.

 

[Jeff M. Hopper]

If you play it in public, they will come.

It has taken me over a year, but having a regular weekly game in a public place (my local FLGS in this case) will attract people. I now have about 15 people in my game, 8 of them regular.

I have advertised via Facebook groups, flyers, forums, and gamer finder sites. I have done demos of Mongoose Traveller at conventions, giving away copies of Book 0: An Introduction to Mongoose Traveller to participants. I comment on messageboards like Reddit.

Now, there are free downloadable or internet accessible resources out there that show off Traveller's virtues:

Book 0: An Introduction to Traveller

Introduction to Clement Sector

The Traveller Map

The Traveller Wiki

Go out there, show off the game. Have interested players just spend a session to create characters. People will come to you. You probably won't get the people who have been sucked into the D&D Adventurer's Guild or Pathfinder Society, but they usually don't like the gameplay of Traveller anyways.

Just be prepared for the long haul, but it will be worth it.

 

[Adam Dray]

There is some interest in quickstart rules, perhaps not dissimilar to the Liftoff concept.

Hopefully very dissimilar to the Liftoff concept, which never quite lifted off, right?

I thought Liftoff missed the point entirely. I can start another thread if you care what my thoughts are on this matter.

 

[Spinward Scout]

Here's a thread we had a while back about making a low-prep version to help new people get started with Traveller. May be relevant to the current discussion.

http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Discuss/showthread.php?t=33101

 

[robject]

Hopefully very dissimilar to the Liftoff concept, which never quite lifted off, right?

I thought Liftoff missed the point entirely. I can start another thread if you care what my thoughts are on this matter.

I'm just showing my ignorance today. I only know that Liftoff was supposed to be an accessible jump-into-the-game rule subset, although it looks like it never got there.

 

[aramis]

I'm just showing my ignorance today. I only know that Liftoff was supposed to be an accessible jump-into-the-game rule subset, although it looks like it never got there.

It was supposed to be MGT light.
It wasn't.

It was Traveller Light.
DonM got quite annoyed when, after reading it, I listed it here as a separate version rather than subversion of Mongoose.

It was ready .... but the funding failed. There are some reasons it failed - and it's not that it was a bad version. It has more to do with a funding site almost no-one on this side of the pond (ie, in the US/Canada) had heard of, and a publisher (13Mann Verlag) that, while a long-term licensee, still is little known on this side of the pond. You have to really be a Traveller Nerd to know who they are. (They're great, by the way. Gorgeous products. And licensees of Marc Miller for a LONG time.)

For reference, by first encounter with 13Mann was following a link from a forum (not here), that lead to products in CT trade dress. I notified Marc. Marc assured me they were legit, not pirate, and licensed by him directly... and allowed to use the CT trade dress.

I've heard from others that 13Mann is to Traveller in Germany & Austria as DGP once was in the US, and Tsukada Hobby is to Japan - Well known for quality traveller products, but not well known elsewhere.

And I'll give 13Mann great kudos - when it failed, they left the public beta files up.

Note that it used a variation on point buy. If I were to start a public play initiative, it's got the right mix of Traveller Career based and MGT point based, with MT derived tasks (but simplified somewhat), and in general, just enough to go forward on.

As "Mongoose Lite", a flop.
As a potential flavor of Trav... it could have been a contender. And that wasn't exactly the plan.

 

[Quint]

There is, fundamentally, two questions embedded in this:

1- How to get new people to play Traveller (the rules engine)

2- How to get new people to play in a canon(ish) Traveller setting.

I happen to think that these require different methodologies. The Imperium(ish) setting has, unfortunately, a very high bar for new players when they are playing with experienced players. Reams and gigabytes of data to absorb, and it takes an experienced GM to manage that process well. I think that this is different when *everyone* is new to the setting, but that rarely seems to be the case. But the setting is fundamentally independent in many ways from the engine. I've run it using the Cyberpunk 2020 engine, I could see doing it with the FFG Dark Heresy line of games as well. I expect I could adapt at least a couple of other game engines to the setting with minimal fuss.

The engine itself ranges from the elegant to the ornate depending upon the edition, and is also transferable to a whole range of settings (as seen by MgT's setting books). I don't think anyone yet has managed to come up with a good way to differentiate the engine from other engines on the market, perhaps other than CharGen. The rest of the unique parts of the engine (trade, ship creation) starts to tie very closely to the setting rather than being truly supportive of any or a truly generic setting. It's a simultaneous strength and weakness, but it's there.

D.

 

[rancke]

The Imperium(ish) setting has, unfortunately, a very high bar for new players when they are playing with experienced players. Reams and gigabytes of data to absorb, and it takes an experienced GM to manage that process well.

Only in the sense that playing a game set on some unfamiliar part of historical or modern Earth has a high bar for new players. Reams and gigabytes of data available, but you don't have to absorb them all in order to play.

Some years ago I and some others wrote a set of articles for a common setting, Regina Startown. It was designed to be accessible to new referees and players alike. To quote from the introduction:

Most people living in the startown are barely aware of the world around them, much less the rest of the universe, and they don’t care either. Referees can run adventures in Regina Startown without knowing very much about Regina, the rest of the Regina system, the Duchy of Regina, the Spinward Marches, the Domain of Deneb, the Imperium, or the rest of Charted Space (the explored part of the galaxy). At the same time, these places do exist and they provide a background for the startown. The various population groups that live there do come from specific places and some of the inhabitants do have links to the outside world. A referee can gradually expand the scope of his campaign at a pace that he and his players are comfortable with.​

The main point was that it wasn't necessary to read those 35 years' worth of prior material in order to play. Everything needed to get started was provided in the articles.

Something similar could be done for MgT. Unfortunately, Regina Startown is set in the RTU (Rebellionless Traveller Universe ) in 1120, so it can't be used as is for the OTU in 1105, but something based on the same principle could easily be written.


Hans

 

[robject]

13Mann has fantastic production quality.

Note that [Liftoff] used a variation on point buy.
If I were to start a public play initiative, it's got the right mix of Traveller Career based and MGT point based, with MT derived tasks (but simplified somewhat), and in general, just enough to go forward on.

Interesting. I should dig up the old T4.1 point-buy chargen rules.

 

[Adam Dray]

I think Traveller should embrace modern science fiction technology: post-cyberpunk, transhumanism, singularity, etc.

The problem is, you grognards who have played Traveller since the 80's or before don't seem to like it. Could that be holding back the game from attracting new players? :CoW:

 

[atpollard]

I think Traveller should embrace modern science fiction technology: post-cyberpunk, transhumanism, singularity, etc.

Mongoose Traveller does, the Third Imperium does not.
Transhumanism requires a rewrite of a lot of the assumptions of the Third Imperium.

T5 is looking to push into the post singularity realm ... disintegration, intergalactic travel all the TL 20+ stuff that looks like 'magic' at TL 15.
(I have no idea when, I just hear rumors and bits of conversations that say it is coming.)

The problem is, you grognards who have played Traveller since the 80's or before don't seem to like it. Could that be holding back the game from attracting new players? :CoW:

Not really.
There are other RPGs that embrace the new Sci-Fi tropes, and they are not attracting hoards of new RPG enthusiasts either.
The real competition is not 'Fantasy RPGs' or other 'Sci-Fi RPGs', it is computer games.
PacMan grew up and it's great grandchildren can be played on an iPhone.
That is just a lot more 'available' than a group meeting one day a week at a set time. (100% IMHO)

 

[aramis]

I think Traveller should embrace modern science fiction technology: post-cyberpunk, transhumanism, singularity, etc.

The problem is, you grognards who have played Traveller since the 80's or before don't seem to like it. Could that be holding back the game from attracting new players? :CoW:

Hardly - most of the people playing Sci-Fi I've seen are firmly rejecting those elements. They have very small (and extremely vocal) proponents, bitching about the lack of those elements outside the very, very niche games that have them. They're too weird for most of the people I've seen.

Cyberpunk itself has a pretty strong adherent base, but they generally play Cyberpunk.

Then again, most people playing in space games aren't playing Sci-Fi, either - they're doing space fantasy like Star Wars and 40K. 40K qualifies as post-human/transhuman, and it portrays it in a really absurd way, and not as a positive (excepting Adeptus Mechanicus characters - but they are parody of the highest order). 40K almost explicitly makes the point that AM and Cyber-augmented soldiers are somewhat less than human, and Space Marines are all psychotic.