Attracting New Players..

[Scratches]

Art is a big deal to one of my players, he needs it to visualize what's going on, he's not great at turning a verbal description into a scene he can work with. I would absolutely buy pure Traveller digital art packages I could display during games or show potential Traveller players.

Traveller art is quite different than D&D art. In D&D any orc will do. A piece may be commissioned asking to "paint an orc army storming a temple" and pretty much anything of quality is going to work.

Traveller art can be narrower in scope. Different art styles aside, a Hiver, a Beowulf-class ship or Bilandin text have a certain look.

Oh, and I don't care how perfect that lion in a spacesuit looks, Aslan are not lions!

 

[Scratches]

Needs a comic book franchise, which would be cheaper than a movie or a TV series.

Kickstarter, I'll buy!

 

[SanDragon]

You're concerned with how leonine they're not supposed to look?

I'm wondering how they manipulate things with a jackknife laying alongside their thumbs!

 

[Scratches]

You're concerned with how leonine they're not supposed to look?

I'm wondering how they manipulate things with a jackknife laying alongside their thumbs!

Yup, pretty much, the dewclaw and culture is cool, it's the imagery that drives me bonkers. Consider if artists fixated on how piglike orcs look and we ended up with a bunch of ferocious cavemen with Babe Photoshopped onto their heads. And maybe that'd terrifying, I hear more people are killed by pigs than lions.

Sorry, off-topic, full stop.

 

[Patron Zero]

Seconded that Earthdawn had some pug-ugly artwork, conversely the artwork for FASA's Battletech products was much more attractive.

That said, artwork alone is not going to locate new players as the available populous of potential recruits are much more interested in their X-Box/PlayStation systems than sitting at a table with paper & pen and miniatures.

The Millennials in particular are simply an on-demand/all about me generation with no interest in learning about old-school analog games, if it can't be accessed or played on their SmartPhones it's below their notice. The basic social interaction skills just to sit around a table with other persons are non-existent with that group, if you doubt that visit a local fast-food restaurant and observe said persons.

This is no slam on the beloved and endearing game but if Traveller isn't accessible as a phone-app or playable on a tablet then there's not much hope bringing such to those so addicted-dependent on said devices.

The biggest 'failure' of Traveller as a game, and failure not meant in criticism but as missed opportunity, has been the absence of a big-screen multi-million dollar platform to present itself to the 'unwashed' masses.

The success of Star Wars as a role-playing game has been the unstoppable juggernaut of endless franchised films and TV programs, licensed toys and other items, not to mention dedicated publications that promote the Star Wars universe.

No one expects Marc W Miller to be George Lucas in any fashion, I don't, MWM (and the Three Other Wise-men) brought us a great game which by tenure alone shows it's genius and viability. I applaud his conviction not to offer to 'license' or tie-in Traveller to the then-hysteria of Star Wars in the late 1970s or take easy money from George Lucas & company.

Traveller is unique in the world of gaming as more-so it's new players find it rather than the game coming to them, and in such it 'recruits' more loyal and long-lasting members of it's most-excellent community than other RPG generes.

 

[epicenter00]

Traveller has had artwork from William Keith, Steve Venters, Rob Caswell and even Chris Foss and yet the feeling is that Traveller has always had lousy artwork?

Chris Foss' artwork, I believe he did stuff for T4, was fantastic. As I said, however, it was a "dawn of the imperium" RPG, and so it was missing in the element of selling Traveller as opposed to "sci-fi" stuff. It lacks many of the things that I think should be associated with Traveller - the wedge-shaped scout ships, far traders, and so on.

D&D artwork has always had a lurid quality about it. 4th ed. got to the point that the art overwhelmed the product. And do we want Traveller to add more boobies to the art just to appeal to D&D gamers? I don't want the game to go down that route. As an aside, Savage Worlds has minimal artwork other than the front covers and yet that has done very well.

While T&A definitely helps to grab attention, I don't think you really need to have scantily-clad women (or the common sci-fi equivalent, women in skintight bodysuits) it to have eye-catching artwork. You don't need to extend it a bunch of beefcakes and prettyboys without shirts on to say that now it's "because it's 2015 and now it's time for fanservice for everyone!"

Take for instance Halo. The most iconic character is a dude in a chunky suit of armor, not skintight, not even female. But the settings and so on are very well realized; it's very easy to grasp what everything looks like; it's easy to see what an Earth colony world looks like, what alien worlds look like, and so on. There's a "canon" for how an assault rifle looks. A lot of problem with Traveller's cover artwork was that there was no "canon" for the artists to work from, as a result, you have "people" and you have a "starship" but you have no idea what that starship is and you can be sure it most likely doesn't actually exist in the rules. I prefer more unity of the artwork with a setting.

An example is that in the Rebellion sourcebook for MT, towards the back there's an image of what is a Scout. I love it because it reinforces two concepts of Traveller - there's a "canon" starship design, but it also shows that humans being humans the Scout has been modified by its operators, giving traction to the idea of the 'used' future (admittedly, the technical quality of the artwork could be better but I think it's still acceptable for B&W interior illustration).

"What is Traveller?" "It's Firefly."

I may be in the minority here, but I like Traveller. I didn't particularly care for Firefly. I didn't find Firefly's universe to be very rich or well-realized. I didn't think it was terrible, but I never had any interest, for instance, in buying the Firefly RPG. I understand that Whedon probably based Firefly on Traveller, but it felt very much like a hastily-written TV show to me. It lacked the kind of "grandeur" that I expect of a TI setting - the contrast between the sort of (careworn) "wild west in space" concept and the ancient civilizations of the Imperial core worlds. The role of nobles in the Imperium, and so on.

 

[aramis]

I may be in the minority here, but I like Traveller. I didn't particularly care for Firefly. I didn't find Firefly's universe to be very rich or well-realized. I didn't think it was terrible, but I never had any interest, for instance, in buying the Firefly RPG. I understand that Whedon probably based Firefly on Traveller, but it felt very much like a hastily-written TV show to me. It lacked the kind of "grandeur" that I expect of a TI setting - the contrast between the sort of (careworn) "wild west in space" concept and the ancient civilizations of the Imperial core worlds. The role of nobles in the Imperium, and so on.

When I finally watched Firefly (around 2004), it was like seeing some of the Traveller games I'd played/run come to life. My players generally agreed... Firefly is Traveller without Jump.

Grandeur isn't a significant part of the OTU as experienced by any PC's I've played nor Reffed... And Firefly has as much as most of my Traveller campaigns.

The biggest difference? The OTU has aliens and FTL, the Firefly 'Verse has no aliens and somewhere around 10 PSL peak steady speed drives... with tramps like the Firefly class having somewhere around 1-1.5 PSL.

I tend to run a medium-Trade/small-merchants flavor of OTU, and post-5FW pre-rebellion... And PC's are ex-cog-in-the-machine types. It's a universe where there's always a difference to be made, but it may not matter on the big scene... but then, it just might.

Pournelle & Niven's Falconberg's Legion series was a spot on for my friend Bill's Traveller (and later Rifts) games, and I'm certain Peter N would have preferred more Asimov's Foundation in my take on the OTU. (The only way I've made it any way through Foundation was the BBC radioplay version, and even then, I made it only half-way...)

So, for me, Firefly is a great analogue to what I run.

 

[rancke]

While you can play Traveller that isn't Fireflyesque, I feel that Firefly is undeniably Travelleresque.


Hans

 

[Patron Zero]

Did not Josh Whedon say his experiences during college playing Traveller was his inspiration for Firefly ?

 

[aramis]

Did not Josh Whedon say his experiences during college playing Traveller was his inspiration for Firefly ?

He didn't specify Traveller. "... a major Science-Fiction RPG..." I remember quite clearly him weasel wording the answer in the on-line interview.

He implied it quite heavily, and there is plenty of evidence in the show that points to Traveller.

 

[SanDragon]

It's too bad that Traveller AR folded.

That may have been a way to get these "unwashed, phone-staring masses" spoken of into Traveller.

I was looking forward to it.

 

[Adam Dray]

How do we deal with this:

"What is Traveller?"
"It's Firefly."
"So why don't we just use the Serenity RPG or the Firefly RPG from Margaret Weiss Productions?"


Will making Traveller's art more inclusive attract more players? No, but it will turn away fewer players. Nothing spoils your mood faster than a book that seems to say, "Hey, we envision a future that doesn't include you." I don't think anyone here is asking for cheesecake art. That's the last thing we want in Traveller. But we do want to see more women, more people of color, in our vision of the future.

Just curious: Of the human races (Solomani, Vilani, Zhodani), is there any default skin color for them, or are they all as varied as on modern Earth? If you take the Solomani Hypothesis as fact, then humankind was scattered in year -300,000. That's a long time to evolve, and their skin color would change based on their new environments. Why should they be white unless their new world was basically like Europe? Why should their facial features be European at all?

Is the artwork important? Yes. Is the existing Traveller artwork good? Some is great. Some is terrible. It's uneven. We need to stop using rendered ship models, because a lot of them feel really artificial, and they certainly don't look old, used, and beat up like the Millennium Falcon and the Firefly. I'll second the vote for Gypsy Knight's art being great, though it relies a lot of rendering of people and ships and has some of the same artificiality problems, but in general their art is dynamic, eye-catching, even arresting. Stuff is happening in it.

I think the large, omnibus T5 book terrifies new players. There needs to be a short version of that book, 32 pages tops, that gets players into the game quickly, making up their own characters from a handful of roles, flying ships around and getting into firefights. Go read some DriveThruRPG reviews of T5 if you don't believe me. The makers probably should go in a separate collection. There's really room for a "Basic" and "Expert" version of this game.

 

[robject]

Quick, how many non-Caucasians have you seen in Traveller Artwork over the past 35+ years?

Answer: Less than 10.

This is something we need to work on. Actually,it is something I have noticed in both SF & Fantasy.

I dunno... I can see a lot of near-Eastern ethnicities in there. Some raven-dark hair, etc. And that guy with the Hawai'ian shirt is surely Polynesian.

Rebellion Sourcebook has one generic man of no color (no hope of placing his home country, alas), one Pakistani, and a man of color who may be from anywhere - unfortunately I'm not able to place his country, either.

MegaTraveller Player's Manual has two women in the foreground. I believe DGP's stock crew had two men, two women (at least one of whom did not look caucasian), and a vargr.

Is there a particular required ratio that's written down somewhere?

 

[flykiller]

But we do want to see more women, more people of color

do they play?

do they play the way YOU want to play?

 

[flykiller]

I think the large, omnibus T5 book terrifies new players.

the original d&d players handbook, monster manual, and dm's guide were pretty hefty and densely packed with information. I dug into them, and so did many others.

look, I'm all for more players, but there's a point where attracting more players means you're getting people who don't want to play traveller but want to play something else. if you alter traveller to "bring in more players" then after a while it's not traveller.

 

[Adam Dray]

do they play?

do they play the way YOU want to play?

I'm not sure how that's relevant. I don't want to make them [women and people of color] feel excluded, for a variety of reasons including a) Traveller needs more players and b) it's wrong to exclude them.

Once they are playing Traveller, I don't really care how they play. But why would we assume that they'd play any differently than I do?

 

[Adam Dray]

look, I'm all for more players, but there's a point where attracting more players means you're getting people who don't want to play traveller but want to play something else. if you alter traveller to "bring in more players" then after a while it's not traveller.

If your argument is "Traveller is fine, don't change anything," then I'm not sure why you're participating in this thread.

 

[robject]

look, I'm all for more players, but there's a point where attracting more players means you're getting people who don't want to play traveller but want to play something else. if you alter traveller to "bring in more players" then after a while it's not traveller.

The topic has strayed from "how to bring in more players" to more philosophical points. In short, the discussion has gone as far as it can in this direction and is played out. Either we get to move to a heated but pointless argument over more politicized topics, or else we go back to practical matters.

Practically, we recruit where we are. And that means locally, within the local group of people who like to play games of any kind. From there it is easier to draw from people who already know the name 'Traveller' and are interested in seeing what it's all about. The wise referee runs the types of games people like to play, and if that can be done with Traveller, then by all means.

 

[whulorigan]

Just curious: Of the human races (Solomani, Vilani, Zhodani), is there any default skin color for them, or are they all as varied as on modern Earth? If you take the Solomani Hypothesis as fact, then humankind was scattered in year -300,000. That's a long time to evolve, and their skin color would change based on their new environments. Why should they be white unless their new world was basically like Europe? Why should their facial features be European at all?

That question is dealt with in this thread:
Stereotypical Terran Looks

Further discussion of this particular topic should probably be taken up there.


Vilani & Zhodani came from a more limited gene-pool.

Vilani (if pure-blooded) have a tanned skin tone (Vland has a bright type-F Star), brownish to darker shades of hair, and a certain prevalence of golden eyes (based on my memory of DGP/MT: Vilani & Vargr).

Zhodani tend to be tall and olive-brown/swarthy complected, with dark hair (and a significant minority sporting premature grey).

 

[whartung]

How do we deal with this:

"What is Traveller?"
"It's Firefly."
"So why don't we just use the Serenity RPG or the Firefly RPG from Margaret Weiss Productions?"

"What's <random Fantasy RPG>?"
"It's like Lord of the Rings"
"So why don't we play <other random FRPG>?"

If you're dealing with a sophisticated player that actually cares about the rule base they're using, then that's an honest question.

But most players, especially new players, can give a rip about the rules set. They're looking for a genre, for a feel.

I never correlated Traveller with Star Trek or Star Wars. I don't even agree that you can do "ST or SW in Traveller". The tech base and general feel of those universes are very different from what Traveller projects.

But Firefly fits right in. Not because of The Alliance, or Browncoats, or Reavers, etc. But the idea of landing a starship, a personally owned starship, filled with cattle, the low tech living hand in hand with the high tech, the ship is the home, not the port. All that works in Traveller.