Attracting New Players..

[Adam Dray]

"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.

I think you missed my point, which is that there is a dedicated Firefly/Serenity RPG, and if you're gonna describe Traveller as "It's Firefly!" then the next question ought to be, "Why is Traveller better to play Firefly than the actual Firefly RPG?"

Is Traveller gonna hit that "Firefly feel" better than the Firefly RPG?

I'm definitely not arguing that Traveller is not Firefly.

 

[flykiller]

it's wrong to exclude them.

no-one is excluding them.

 

[robject]

I don't want to make [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.

Did someone tell you he felt excluded, when you tried to get him to play Traveller? In what way can we help you with that particular problem? Is there a way we help you attract new players to Traveller?

 

[Nick H]

When I first joined CotI, I mentioned that I've been playing Traveller and RPGs since 1981. In the 1980s, I could run (or play in anything): Gamers generally played anything and everything that came on the market. The 1990s was more pick-n-choose your favourite genres and exclude the rest.

I will say, hand on heart, that I don't "get" a lot of current RPG gamer attitudes to gaming. I appear to be an old fogey. There seems to be an emphasis on systems rather than settings, of long, drawn out combats, levelling and powering up, generic systems and...as a 4th ed D&D referee so eloquently put it at my old club "*bleep* this role playing *bleep*, we've got this combat we have to do tonight". I know another ref, who plays Savage Worlds almost exclusively, who freaks out when he sees a rulebook that is more than 50 pages long. "Don't worry" I assure him, "only a part of this book is rules...the rest is colour". I've tried to sell these gamers not just on Traveller, but with other games such as Champions, Call of Cthulhu and Pendragon. My style has been to create "worlds" that they can roam around in, not just have fights and play the game mechanics to "win". I don't have a lot of success in getting players. Someone just had to walk in to the club off the street clutching a copy of Pathfinder and offering to run a game and before you know it, he'll have an oversubscribed game.

How to attract new players? I wish I had a definitive answer. A lot of gamers want to get to the table and start bashing creatures, level up, gain new powers so they can beat up more creatures, and having sessions with not much combat is a turn off.

You can try to jazz up the artwork, you can try to represent a more diverse gaming universe and you can tweak Traveller to reflect more current gaming styles but in the end there's an ethos to Traveller that makes it stand out from the others: The game is unlimited in scope. There is far more that players can do in Traveller than any other game I can think of. Even with the TI setting, you can emulate nearly anything you have seen or read in sci-fi. Fight a rampaging alien on a cargo ship? Fight an evil empire? Try to make money and look for adventure? Explore mysterious derelict spaceships? Play detective? Be a powered armour mercenary in a brush fire war? Make contact with strange aliens? Try to unlock the mystery of all-powerful immortal aliens? It's all there...and a lot more.

That, for me, is the pitch. You want that, it's there. If you just want to bash monsters with a sword using a system you know so well it might as well be a security blanket, then this game might not be for you. The best Traveller players tend to be the ones who are more creative and imaginative, not the ones who try to "win" games and play the system. Perhaps the question should be not "how to attract new players" but "what kind of players is Traveller hoping to attract?"

 

[flykiller]

Perhaps the question should be not "how to attract new players" but "what kind of players is Traveller hoping to attract?"

this.

 

[whartung]

I think you missed my point, which is that there is a dedicated Firefly/Serenity RPG, and if you're gonna describe Traveller as "It's Firefly!" then the next question ought to be, "Why is Traveller better to play Firefly than the actual Firefly RPG?"

Actually, you're missing the point.

When someone asks what Traveller is, you can do something like drone on about the imperium and the 1000's of years of civilization, dogs, cats, Hivers, commie psychics, wave 30 years of canon, go in to the nuances of drop tanks, talk 7 versions of rules, throw the T5 phone book at them, etc.

Or.

"Have you seen Firefly?"

"Yea."

"It's like that. Does that sound like fun?"

"Yea"

"Great, roll 8+"

Is Traveller gonna hit that "Firefly feel" better than the Firefly RPG?

I'm definitely not arguing that Traveller is not Firefly.

Now maybe when you say "It's Firefly" they may jump up and say "Oh boy, I get to be a Reaver and enslave my own Companion! Can I torture Mal?". Perhaps they've taken something meta away from Firefly that I haven't. Maybe they simply look forward to speaking pidgin chinese swear words "吸牛".

That's where you get to summarize the nuanced differences between the universes. But at least you have a more common foundation.

But, I dunno -- seems a lot easier than bludgeoning them with the T5 rule book.

 

[flykiller]

吸牛

I tried running this through google translator, and it comes up as "suction cattle". do I want to know? never mind, I don't want to know.

seems a lot easier than bludgeoning them with the T5 rule book.

some people LIKE that about traveller.

 

[robject]

I tried running this through google translator, and it comes up as "suction cattle".

That second character is definitely bovine (either gender (do animals have a gender, or just a sex?)).

 

[aramis]

I think you missed my point, which is that there is a dedicated Firefly/Serenity RPG, and if you're gonna describe Traveller as "It's Firefly!" then the next question ought to be, "Why is Traveller better to play Firefly than the actual Firefly RPG?"

Is Traveller gonna hit that "Firefly feel" better than the Firefly RPG?

I'm definitely not arguing that Traveller is not Firefly.

Because Firefly RPG is a narrativist game, and Traveller is Simulationist. The two support very different playstyles, even in the same universe.

And Serenity RPG, which is the foot in both camps, and yet generally satisfying to neither camp, is out of print, and hard to find.

Firefly won't give you the ability to strike it rich as a merchant - it intentionally doesn't play that way. (In fact, money isn't factored into the game engine at all, except with a generic "you almost never have any"). Traveller will.

 

[Highorbit_drifter]

"how to attract new players" but "what kind of players is Traveller hoping to attract?"

If you publish games, you want players that will buy your product. If you play the game, you want people that feel comfortable playing with.

There is a demographic shift in roleplaying, and its not all towards kids who only want to "power up". Of course, leveling and gaining "power ups" of whatever kind is an easy way to figure out a "goal" toward an RPG, if you have new players not too sure what the point of this is. But the success of games like Dramasystem show that power leveling is only a part of the growth, and that many people want actual roleplaying in their RPGs.

All this handwringing over getting new players seems mis-placed. It sounds more like people are worried they themselves are missing something.

Traveller is science fiction role playing in the far future. It says it right on the box. (Or used to). If you can't get them with that, they probably want to play D&D or some other fantasy game. Or don't want to role play.

If you can't get new players, I doubt its the game. I'm not saying you are a horrible person and shouldn't be playing - I'm saying look at how you play and if that style can include people that aren't used to your way of doing things.

Then again, playing is about YOU having fun too. You might need to change how you approach the game, but don't put off the parts you like about it. If you like part of the game, it shows, and you attract players who see you are enthusiastic and having fun.

 

[Condottiere]

The future of RPGing is going to depend on how much money is required to support any particular infrastructure, and that will depend on how many people are active participants at any particular time, and how much they're willing to pay for the service.

Grand Theft Auto probably represents the upper end of that future, with the twist that cloud computing will allow players to have individual, joint or worldwide campaigns, organized, run and narrated by really powerful AI programmes, supervised by humans.

The lower end will still be pen and paper, by people who might like that old school feel or perhaps prefer to play face to face.

Inbetween that, you're going to have RPGs that will use apps to enhance that experience, like having the rulebooks all on tablet friendly formats, figure out complex combat calculations, and possibly, using CGI to change players' appearance to simulate that of their characters, when you point your iPhone at them, to three dee goggles, that will allow you to see and possibly some how interact with that fantasy world.

 

[robject]

Because Firefly RPG is a narrativist game, and Traveller is Simulationist. The two support very different playstyles, even in the same universe.

[...]

Firefly won't give you the ability to strike it rich as a merchant - it intentionally doesn't play that way. (In fact, money isn't factored into the game engine at all, except with a generic "you almost never have any"). Traveller will.

This. Each game supports a different play style; the overlap is only in the possible settings you can play.

Any conversation is going to be tailored to whomever you're speaking with. One conversation doesn't fit all.


Sharik: "What's Traveller like?"

Eneri: "It's like Firefly."

Sharik: "Isn't there a Firefly GAME?"

Eneri: "Yes there is, but Traveller has more options."

BRANCH A:

Sharik: "Oh... okay then."

<All play and have a good time>



BRANCH B:

Sharik: "...such as?"

Eneri: "In both games, you can be a freebooting semi-pirate Han Solo lookalike. In Traveller, though, you could instead run a mercenary platoon. Or be a trade magnate. Or an intrepid Scout exploring new worlds. Or be a Mission:Impossible-like agent. Or be an alien. Or fight xenomorphs. Explore asteroid belts for the remains of ancient, extinct civilizations. Battle space pirates. Have a shipyard build you a custom-designed starship from scratch. Be a telepath fighting the Kill Cults for the homicide department of an orbital gigahabitat's police force. Be an interstellar big-game hunter. Or just wander from world to world for years without reaching the end of civilized space. And so on."

Sharik: "You can't do all that in Firefly?"

Eneri: "Not out of the box, no."

Sharik: "Oh... okay then."

<All play and have a good time>

 

[Quint]

Honestly, one of the more helpful things that I've done for games/campaigns is being able to reference some form of visual media for players or potential players to go look at. Traveller tends to be:

Firefly & Serenity, Outland, Alien(s) etc., 2001, The Thing, Stargate (the movie), Battlestar Galactica (the new version), Pitch Black (even the other two films, though Chronicles less so), and even both Starship Troopers and Wing Commander.

Most of these are far from able to be perfectly modelled with Traveller, but they all tend to be relatively low tech in feel, convey that travel requires effort (or is limited) rather than ubiquitous, are humanocentric, and often suggest "other human races" as well as mysterious aliens (ancient or not).

I've been thinking about adding Jupiter Ascending to the list, merely because I think it actually does an interesting job of showing a Red Zone planet, a large Imperial bureaucracy, a megacorporation, Interstellar nobility, and very high tech (in the F-G+ range).

Given that list, most people seem to be at least interested in the "vibe" of Traveller and are willing to give it a try.

D.

 

[robject]

Honestly, one of the more helpful things that I've done for games/campaigns is being able to reference some form of visual media for players or potential players to go look at. Traveller tends to be:

Firefly & Serenity, Outland, Alien(s) etc., 2001, The Thing, Stargate (the movie), Battlestar Galactica (the new version), Pitch Black (even the other two films, though Chronicles less so), and even both Starship Troopers and Wing Commander.

These are very good. My list of 'tropes comes from stories and shows I've read and seen:

• Be a freebooting semi-pirate Han Solo lookalike.
• Run a mercenary platoon, complete with grav tanks and starships.
• Be an interstellar trade magnate.
• Be an intrepid Scout exploring beyond charted space.
• Be a Mission:Impossible-like agent.
• Be an alien.
• Fight xenomorphs.
• Explore asteroid belts for the remains of ancient, extinct civilizations.
• Battle space pirates.
• Have a shipyard build you a custom-designed starship from scratch.
• Be a telepath fighting the Kill Cults for the homicide department of an orbital gigahabitat's police force.
• Be an interstellar big-game hunter.
• Wander from world to world for years without reaching the end of civilized space.
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[Nick H]

So many good points are being made right now, I've had to open up a second window.

High Orbit Drifter wrote:
"Traveller is science fiction role playing in the far future. It says it right on the box. (Or used to). If you can't get them with that, they probably want to play D&D or some other fantasy game. Or don't want to role play.

If you can't get new players, I doubt its the game. I'm not saying you are a horrible person and shouldn't be playing - I'm saying look at how you play and if that style can include people that aren't used to your way of doing things."

This very much sums up my experiences (and frustrations) with the way my former club went in the last 5 years. We had the old lags, like me, who played and ran anything but that group gradually drifted apart due to work, families and moving to pastures new. Their replacements came in and it was all Pathfinder, 4ed D&D and Savage Worlds a distant third. Gaming went from character and plot driven adventures to combat driven power gaming. And that's where I left it...I accept the problem was, in large part, my take on RPGs and theirs. I'm not saying they were wrong, it's just different and not for me. Saying that, SF RPGs didn't float their boat either; no one ran such a game or intended to.

I think part of the problem is a gaming-wide issue (that affects both board and miniatures gamers as well) of "not my genre, not my system". I'm currently a member of a miniature wargaming club and you'll get players who won't touch certain eras or certain rules...either because they don't like them or that they haven't mastered them and prefer games where they know they stand a better chance of winning.

Condottiere wrote:
"Inbetween that, you're going to have RPGs that will use apps to enhance that experience, like having the rulebooks all on tablet friendly formats"

I started to do that when the Traveller CD-ROMs first came out. It saved me from having to lug a box full of books. I ran the game from a laptop with selected books for support. The ship's captain was the kind of player who would set a course for a planet where I had no adventure prepared so to call on the online Traveller map, or the CotI wiki or LBB web portals without having to have EVERY Traveller/MT/Apocrypha book to hand was a godsend.

Quint wrote:

"Traveller tends to be:

Firefly & Serenity, Outland, Alien(s) etc., 2001, The Thing, Stargate (the movie), Battlestar Galactica (the new version), Pitch Black (even the other two films, though Chronicles less so), and even both Starship Troopers and Wing Commander.

Most of these are far from able to be perfectly modelled with Traveller, but they all tend to be relatively low tech in feel, convey that travel requires effort (or is limited) rather than ubiquitous, are humanocentric, and often suggest "other human races" as well as mysterious aliens (ancient or not)."

I use all that and more to create a vision of the Third Imperium and surrounds.

What's the Imperial Court or Ducal courts like? It's Flash Gordon meets Dune. Double breasted, high neck tunics, capes, massive staircases and ceremonial guards on a floating palace.

What's the naval forces like? Babylon 5, Space Above and Beyond.

Ground forces? Space Above and Beyond, Halo, Starship Troopers.

Scientific Outposts? Space 1999, UFO, Aliens, 2001.

Traders and Scouts? Firefly, Serenity, Spacehunter Adventures in the Forbidden Zone, Alien, Moon Zero Two

And my best players love taking stills or rendered models of those films and TV shows and adapting them for Traveller. It works as shorthand to set the scene.

 

[Quint]

"Not my Genre, Not my System"

That's a really interesting point.

I look at myself, and over the years I've played dozens of game systems (plus editions). At this point I both own and play far fewer. Over the years I've simply pared down what I have on hand to what I enjoy and have returned to over and over again. I play a variety of genres, so that's not my problem, but systems...

I'm certainly not against trying a new system - I've done so now and again - but I'm more likely to invest my cash in ammunition for shooting as I am in a new rule engine. Especially since, over the years I've watched the edition iterations and extinctions savage games I have liked and would have played more.

If I want scifi, I have pickyourversionofTraveller or the same in RTG's Cyberpunk..

For fantasy I have AD&D or, really, these days, D&D 5E which my group is enjoying immensely, and for horror I have Call of Cthulhu or Witchcraft/Armageddon (or, I could not sell my various Pale Pooch games like I keep meaning to) - not counting the new Delta Green game coming out or the new edition of CoC - both of which look like good systems.

If I peruse my shelves, there is also GURPS, ACKS, Space Opera, Fading Suns, Mechanoids, Dresden Files, Victoriana (plus Airship Pirates), The Morrow Project, Boot Hill, Gamma World, Empire of the Petal Throne, Celtic Legends, Blue Rose, Tunnels & Trolls, Ars Magica (1st Edition), Thieves Guild, Artesia, Pendragon, Elric, Psi World, Theatrix/Ironwood, Mercenaries, Spies, & Private Eyes, and Justifiers - plus all of the odd books that I ought for a "cool idea" or to other wise steal maps, or some other content for one of the games I actually play.

I could swear that I have In Nomine buried someplace as well, plus Rolemaster and MERP- and my son is the keeper of Dark Heresy and it's related games.

Yeah, that's the "pared down" list of games.

Most of the gamers of "my generation" have similar, though perhaps not quite as extensive, collections (I worked at a game store for a few years). I also generally the Referee, so I get stuck having to buy anything I want to run as well as anything I want to play.

For me, the issue is not "convince people to play Traveller" it is far more that I need to be convinced to run Traveller - and I'm a die-hard Traveller fan who's been playing since 1979 and has invested hundreds of dollars in the various editions, plus buying old stuff to flesh out his collection...

Some of the points made are right. Traveller used to be a sexy game. It stopped being that a long time ago, and it's been a very, very hard sell to new players. Mongoose has made that much easier - and with their non-3rd Imperium materials people can see that the system has "legs" for a variety of play styles. I don't have trouble with people wanting to play scifi, I have trouble getting them to play what they often seem to perceive as an either dead or very limited system.

My players don't worry about what type of campaign they get to play - they know (or learn quickly) that I'm not willing to the game get in the way of having fun. My goal, as the Ref, is to pick a good game engine that facilitates this rather than being an obstruction. I want Traveller to be that game, but I'm honestly just as likely to pick up Cyberpunk 2020 or Dark Heresy or Fading Suns, heck even Justifier if I want to run a scifi game. They have as much "flavor" as the 3rd Imperium (though not the corpus of canon) and my players find their "crunch" no more or no less of an issue.

And they don't have the long, slow-burning romance that I have with Traveller.

D.

 

[Adam Dray]

Did someone tell you he felt excluded, when you tried to get him to play Traveller? In what way can we help you with that particular problem? Is there a way we help you attract new players to Traveller?

Yes. Not specifically Traveller, but gaming in general. A couple of his friends--also people of color and women--echoed his sentiments. He said that when he picked up rulebooks and flipped through the art, he did not see people that looked like him so he felt like the game wasn't for him. It discouraged him from gaming and made him feel ignored and unwanted. He even tended to play Caucasian characters because he felt that these games and their players expected that.

Generally, if people pick up a book and don't see people that look like them in it, they're going to assume it's not for them. To me, that's not only bad for business, it's also naive (as opposed to conscious) racism or sexism.

 

[Adam Dray]

Because Firefly RPG is a narrativist game, and Traveller is Simulationist. The two support very different playstyles, even in the same universe.

And Serenity RPG, which is the foot in both camps, and yet generally satisfying to neither camp, is out of print, and hard to find.

Firefly won't give you the ability to strike it rich as a merchant - it intentionally doesn't play that way. (In fact, money isn't factored into the game engine at all, except with a generic "you almost never have any"). Traveller will.

Thanks for an actual answer. mega:

 

[Adam Dray]

To go back to the OP...

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'll reiterate some of my points from before.

1. Grow the potential player base. Reach out to groups who do not fall into the usual Traveller demographic (which seems to be middle-aged white dudes). The larger the potential base, the better the chance of getting people at your table.

2. Lower the social footprint of the game. Reduce barriers to entry to make the game easier to get into. Less frightening rules. Smaller time commitments. Quicker start (preferably, instant jump into play).

3. Make the game more alluring. Better art always helps. Focus on story rather than rules. Tie games to popular science fiction properties (books, novels, graphic novels).

4. Advertise better. Get the word out! Run hot Traveller games at conventions. Blog about it more. Can we get a Traveller graphic novel? Certainly cheaper than a movie.

 

[flykiller]

He said that when he picked up rulebooks and flipped through the art, he did not see people that looked like him so he felt like the game wasn't for him.

then it isn't.