I'm not sure the point you're trying to make here. Traveller was born from that era.
CT Only: Character Advancement and goals
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GypsyComet
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I had a spiffy, and relatively cheap, 2nd generation scientific calculator that fit in a shirt pocket by 1980. Slide rules were already a curiosity.
creativehum
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I think his point is that Traveller -- born in 1977 (and conceived in the years preceding that year) -- is more a product of Books than it is of TV and Film.
Because it was.
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Ah, that is where Traveller differs from RPGs like D&D - you don't.
Traveller character generation has been described as 'life-path' style (all the way to including death during char gen). The characters have already been through their 'life building experiences' - the post char gen play is about creating those stories.
Characters have adventures - that is the experience.
Of course, there is nothing preventing you from expanding and changing the ruleset to meet your own desires. But I'd call that a psuedoclone, not Traveller (crossing some threads!)
[And I still used a slide rule in 1980 - and my own head as well as paper - since the electronic calculators I had access to lacked the precision and good base 10 support!]
ShawnDriscoll
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Some people had the HP and TI calculators. Everyone still had their slide rules that had worked on the shuttle in the mid '70s.
ShawnDriscoll
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Just trying to keep you grounded in a timeline not involving the '80s or '90s, since they hadn't happened yet.
Sure, but the adventures that were written for the game didn't have generic scifi staples of things like giant mutant monsters, or extra-dimensional beings invading some planet, or other more fantastic offerings, but scenarios that were a bit more grounded.
I think on the upside Traveller had an animal generator that allowed for stuff like "The Blob" or "Day of the Triffads" if you so chose to game out those stories. And I think that was the intent of the game, but it evolved in another direction, is all I'm saying.
Ah, that is where Traveller differs from RPGs like D&D - you don't.
Traveller character generation has been described as 'life-path' style (all the way to including death during char gen). The characters have already been through their 'life building experiences' - the post char gen play is about creating those stories.
Characters have adventures - that is the experience.
Of course, there is nothing preventing you from expanding and changing the ruleset to meet your own desires. But I'd call that a psuedoclone, not Traveller (crossing some threads!)
[And I still used a slide rule in 1980 - and my own head as well as paper - since the electronic calculators I had access to lacked the precision and good base 10 support!]
Ah, quite so. Which is why I thought that addressing the OP's concern or desire might be to create a way that you could put a 18 or even 16 year old character into the game, and let the adventures educate him just as an alternative for those who want more of a D&D exp/level mechanic, verse putting him through chargen.
It's just a thought. I thought it might be worth exploring or tinkering with.
Sure, I get that, but the authors who later contributed other material, took the game towards security as opposed to pulp fiction. I don't recall any "Doc Savage" like scenarios in Traveller, though you could do "Starship Troopers" if you so desired.
A four book series by Jack L. Chalker, I think it was the Diamond Worlds quadrilogy, talked about worlds where a bacteria that gave clones of the main character extraordinary powers, something akin to magic. I think the first book came out in 1981, but it's a product of the 70s (late 70s ostensibly). I just think that Traveller didn't lend itself to those kinds of stories, but as per the moderators, Space Opera.
Maybe there's confusion there on everyone's part, not just my own.
An interesting topic.
ShawnDriscoll
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Sci-fi wasn't all pulp fiction back in the '70s and '60s. There is a list of sci-fi books that Traveller got some of its things from. None of them were pulpy, in the Weird Science style of storying.
As I just illustrated. I'm still not clear what your larger point here is.
Many markets only had 3 channels; there were 4 national networks in the US (ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS), and some on the border got a couple Canadian stations, too...
The Sci-Fi on the air was pretty odd, tho' -
| 1976-1977 | 1977--1978 | 78-79 | 79-80 | 80-81 |
| Six-Million Dollar Man † Hawaii Five-O * Space 1999 (not network primetime) | Six-Million Dollar Man † The Bionic Woman † The New Adventures of Wonder Woman † Project U.F.O. The Man from Atlantis ‡ Quark Hawaii Five-O * Fantasy Island ‡ Lucan‡ | Battlestar Galactica Salvage 1 The Incredible Hulk † Supertrain Mork & Mindy Hawaii Five-O * Project UFO The New Adventures of Wonder Woman † Fantasy Island ‡ | Galactica 1980 Out of the Blue ‡ Mork & Mindy Hawaii Five-O * Struck by Lightning ‡ The Incredible Hulk † Fantasy Island ‡ Buck Rogers in the 25th Century | The Incredible Hulk † Fantasy Island ‡ Mork & Mindy The Greatest American Hero † |
* HI 5-0 qualifies as sci-fi because the tech was well ahead of what was really available to the state police in Hawaii. And some of it shown in the show still isn't here. Additionally, several episodes include ultratech in bad-guy hands or as stuff stolen by the badguys. That said, most don't realize it was really sci-fi. Still, like most good sci-fi, it is an examination of the human condition. The CSI franchise tends also to have futuretech to move the stories along.
† Comic-Book-style Superheroes
‡ Implausible and/or supernatural.
There was plenty of stuff on TV to feed the Sci-Fi... but a lot of it was not conducive to Space Opera. Space 1999, BSG and Buck Rogers, however, influenced a LOT of people's TU's.
Still, the years from 1976 to 1980 were good for "speculative fiction television" in general. Including some made for TV supers movies...
creativehum
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Blue Ghost,
Most of your observations are correct:
Traveller didn't have much to do with the movie and TVs before the game's release. Marc is on record as saying the influence of the game came from books and short stories, not film and TV.
As the setting grew it became an SF setting without many SF concepts the characters could interact with*. As you point out there wasn't that much weirdness. Miller said in a recent interview he wanted people to be able to buy setting material and understand it right away. He did not want particularly odd concepts in the setting. (I think it also prevented people "turning off" the setting since the line where people say "That makes no sense" in an SF setting varies so much among people.) So, yes, the setting is as you describe.
Into this "Pretty Much Like Us" setting lots of adventures were based crime driven/security driven scenarios.**
Ultimately, however, my points stands: Your observations are about the OTU material, not the game. The game has a TL charge with the lower quarter waiting to be filled out by the Referee with all sorts of wondrous SF concepts. That the OTU never gets around to do that is an issue of the setting they built, not the game.
It is your use of the term "the game" (which was published in 1977 and not influenced by the 80s or 90s) that keeps throwing me off.
I bring all this up because if someone is looking for how to set up long term goals for the PCs I would definitely hand them SF novels and short stories to fire up their imaginations. I read many of the adventures from from GDW in much the same way you do... and I find them narrow in many of the same ways you do.
_____
* The Ancients are all past tense, and even when the PCs do interact with the Ancients via the published adventures they do it in a bubble universe that prevents an interaction in the "reality" of the setting.
** At least from GDW. Have you read any of the FASA adventures?)
Most of your observations are correct:
Traveller didn't have much to do with the movie and TVs before the game's release. Marc is on record as saying the influence of the game came from books and short stories, not film and TV.
As the setting grew it became an SF setting without many SF concepts the characters could interact with*. As you point out there wasn't that much weirdness. Miller said in a recent interview he wanted people to be able to buy setting material and understand it right away. He did not want particularly odd concepts in the setting. (I think it also prevented people "turning off" the setting since the line where people say "That makes no sense" in an SF setting varies so much among people.) So, yes, the setting is as you describe.
Into this "Pretty Much Like Us" setting lots of adventures were based crime driven/security driven scenarios.**
Ultimately, however, my points stands: Your observations are about the OTU material, not the game. The game has a TL charge with the lower quarter waiting to be filled out by the Referee with all sorts of wondrous SF concepts. That the OTU never gets around to do that is an issue of the setting they built, not the game.
It is your use of the term "the game" (which was published in 1977 and not influenced by the 80s or 90s) that keeps throwing me off.
I bring all this up because if someone is looking for how to set up long term goals for the PCs I would definitely hand them SF novels and short stories to fire up their imaginations. I read many of the adventures from from GDW in much the same way you do... and I find them narrow in many of the same ways you do.
_____
* The Ancients are all past tense, and even when the PCs do interact with the Ancients via the published adventures they do it in a bubble universe that prevents an interaction in the "reality" of the setting.
** At least from GDW. Have you read any of the FASA adventures?)
Thanks.
Yeah, I wasn't really sure what you were getting at. I think I understand better now.
Ultimately, to me, it was a shortcoming of the rules and adventures because of the stated goal in the rules to be able to create whatever you wanted, but all the addons skewed towards space opera.
It's not a big deal to me, but I became a lot more cynical regarding Traveller's intent and origins because of its dryness. Even so, I still have fun with it, which is why I still come here.
But like I say, this is all hindsight, but it seems like Traveller could really take off if it had smoething that was more conventional for experience and levelling [skills], such that it would create a mechanism for players who want a bit more meta-structure to their games. And I think that's kind of what the OP was getting at.
I was never a big D&D guy for a variety of reasons, I don't hold with D&D's version of experience and levelling, but I think if it was tweaked for Traveller such that EXP points went towards awarding skill levels, then it would solve a lot of problems ... possibly including the game's borderline popularity; i.e. having notoriety, but never really busting onto the scene and taking the scifi world by storm, so to speak.
Just me. Just some more ramblings.
Take it for what it's worth. I hope this has helped spark some ideas for readers of this thread.
Yeah, I wasn't really sure what you were getting at. I think I understand better now.
Ultimately, to me, it was a shortcoming of the rules and adventures because of the stated goal in the rules to be able to create whatever you wanted, but all the addons skewed towards space opera.
It's not a big deal to me, but I became a lot more cynical regarding Traveller's intent and origins because of its dryness. Even so, I still have fun with it, which is why I still come here.
But like I say, this is all hindsight, but it seems like Traveller could really take off if it had smoething that was more conventional for experience and levelling [skills], such that it would create a mechanism for players who want a bit more meta-structure to their games. And I think that's kind of what the OP was getting at.
I was never a big D&D guy for a variety of reasons, I don't hold with D&D's version of experience and levelling, but I think if it was tweaked for Traveller such that EXP points went towards awarding skill levels, then it would solve a lot of problems ... possibly including the game's borderline popularity; i.e. having notoriety, but never really busting onto the scene and taking the scifi world by storm, so to speak.
Just me. Just some more ramblings.
Take it for what it's worth. I hope this has helped spark some ideas for readers of this thread.
Except, it didn't. T20, using the insanely popular d20 system, while commercially successful, was not critically nor popularity-wise a huge success.
Class & Level doesn't work well (even when the class is just a skills clade) for science fiction.
Sci Fi is a MUCH MUCH MUCH smaller base that Fantasy, and at the time, CT was THE go-to Sci-Fi game.
Late 70's Sci-Fi games of note: Traveller, Starships & Spacemen
Early 80's Sci-Fi games of note: Traveller, Space Opera, Spacemaster, Mechanoids, Robotech, FASA STRPG, FASA Dr. Who, Star Frontiers, Ringworld.
Of those:
Class & Level advanement: S&S, Mechanoids, Robotech
Skill Driven in play: All but S&S.
Attribute Driven in play: S&S
ShawnDriscoll
SOC-14 1K
I watched The Starlost. I can't remember if it was broadcast from Los Angeles (we had a special antenna to receive their stations), or from Mexico (which aired topless Benny Hill shows).
Sci-fi without real science in it doesn't mean it then can only be creature-feature BEM fanfare. I would even argue that if you removed any "hard" science from Traveller, that you would still end up with Traveller.
Traveller is still one of the main sci-fi biggies of tabletop RPGs without its D&Dness. We will see if Starfinder rules them all though. I don't see Star Trek Adventures doing anything beyond its short license span.
I like that about Traveller 77. Even in Traveller 5.09, there are blanks the Referee can fill in for future TLs.
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I think what you want with a game is, for the subgenre it represents, for a starting character to have a useful starting skill package and the ability to improve that to an impressive skill package (time and difficulty depending on subgenre).
Traveller was the first science fiction game I played, and the second RPG overall, and I think in retrospect it suffers from characters being relatively fixed in ability from the end of character creation. Titles, wealth and gear can all be taken away or destroyed -- the character's attributes and skills is what defines him, and unfortunately in Traveller this was generally unchanging. While this certainly appeals to some players, it doesn't appeal to most (and I will state I do not like class and level systems).
Unfortunately, without a better improvement in play system, for me Traveller is just for one shots these days.
Traveller was the first science fiction game I played, and the second RPG overall, and I think in retrospect it suffers from characters being relatively fixed in ability from the end of character creation. Titles, wealth and gear can all be taken away or destroyed -- the character's attributes and skills is what defines him, and unfortunately in Traveller this was generally unchanging. While this certainly appeals to some players, it doesn't appeal to most (and I will state I do not like class and level systems).
Unfortunately, without a better improvement in play system, for me Traveller is just for one shots these days.
Well, I'm not really disagreeing here with that. It's not so much the science but the types of fiction that led me to the observations and conclusions that I've posted.
In the end it's not a big deal. Any game you play, even something like Monopoly or Yahtzee, if you have fun with it, then it's achieved its job.
As for it being "big", I think it has a certain staying power, but in the last two conventions I attended I saw two games listed; one a demo of a card game, and another which was an actual session. I remember a time when Traveller won an award or two at some convention (Origins?), and won other notoriety outside gaming (I can't remember what ... Hugo Nebula? ... not sure, really).
It's around, and guys like the OP express an interest, which is cool.
Well, I guess it's the reason I never became a game designer. That's really strange though, because it seemed like D20 came on like gangbusters, and is still around. Or am I not reading that correctly?
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