GDW - wargaming or role playing company?

[kafka47]

I was looking over my Classic Reprints and it struck me yet again how much of the Traveller line has been upsurped by war gamers. Now, I know that Traveller came first. But, if you trace through the history of Traveller you see a company that could not escape from their main product line - wargames.

We have all lamented on this board what are the faults of Traveller - that it is not modern (technically savvy) enough, its does not want to employ more cinematic aspects, its endless tables, etc.

Could the root cause of this be that we are playing a game that is a wargame in guise of an RPG?** Could it be the very aspects of wargaming have crept into Traveller and turned off potential role players? Even the upgrade to MegaTraveller was not to expand the role playing horizons of the game but to create an enormous battlespace for rival fleets.

Then comes the difficult question, how do we begin to turn around what must be a subconscious perception? So that the newer versions of Traveller have a chance to expand and grow?

**Yes, I know the easy answer is Traveller is how individual groups play it and it can be played either way.

 

[hunter]

Honestly I've never gotten a wargame vibe from Traveller. A military one yes, but not wargame. Frankly I find D&D3e more wargamish with it's emphasis on the use of minis.


Hunter

 

[Rover]

I was looking over my Classic Reprints and it struck me yet again how much of the Traveller line has been upsurped by war gamers. Now, I know that Traveller came first. But, if you trace through the history of Traveller you see a company that could not escape from their main product line - wargames.

We have all lamented on this board what are the faults of Traveller - that it is not modern (technically savvy) enough, its does not want to employ more cinematic aspects, its endless tables, etc.

Could the root cause of this be that we are playing a game that is a wargame in guise of an RPG?** Could it be the very aspects of wargaming have crept into Traveller and turned off potential role players? Even the upgrade to MegaTraveller was not to expand the role playing horizons of the game but to create an enormous battlespace for rival fleets.

Then comes the difficult question, how do we begin to turn around what must be a subconscious perception? So that the newer versions of Traveller have a chance to expand and grow?

**Yes, I know the easy answer is Traveller is how individual groups play it and it can be played either way.

Personally I never got a Wargame vibe from Traveler. Back in the day I knew it existed, but I never had any interest in playing any of the war game aspects like trillion credit squardon. For me it was first and formost about the characters.

I don't think the CT system suffered any because of GDW's wargame line, it works and there are still many gamers who swear by it. I will commit heresy here and say I never liked the CT system, but I was fully engrossed by the OTU and the potential for adventure.

R

 

[RandyT0001]

FYI - GDW had published several wargames before publishing Traveller. GDW was founded as a wargame publisher. I personally believe that many of the first role playing gamers were wargamers looking for something new and different so the fact that GDW published several Traveller related wargames really shouldn't be a suprise.

 

[LKW]

Both.

GDW was a wargaming company first because the company was founded before RPGs were invented. GDW became an RPG publisher, and continued to publish wargames too.

At no time, however, was GDW ever a breath mint or a candy mint.

 

[hunter]

Both.

GDW was a wargaming company first because the company was founded before RPGs were invented. GDW became an RPG publisher, and continued to publish wargames too.

At no time, however, was GDW ever a breath mint or a candy mint.

LOL! Hi Loren. Always good to see you.


Hunter

 

[kafka47]

Cool, hopefully Loren comes back or if Avery is lurking somewhere...their insight/comments would be most welcome. I should add a preamble maybe some of vets have being role playing Traveller for too long that we fail to see some of its original design flaws because we have either made house rules to ignore them or ignore them outright. So, the vibe would buried very much under the surface.

Both.

Yes, but of out interest were there discussions to shift over completely to RPGs at any time? Or what was the percentage actually spent thinking about RPGs as your prime revenue source - say after MegaTraveller was released? When you would visit trade shows and the like, what was GDW known for?

GDW was a wargaming company first because the company was founded before RPGs were invented. GDW became an RPG publisher, and continued to publish wargames too.

Did you find the wargaming influence the direction and thought that went into the game? Say, unlike Dark Conspiracy which seems to be pure role playing. Traveller in incarnations does have always built up a solid emphasis upon military action. Was this due to the lingering/continuing wargaming legacy? What is at the root of the military mode of thinking in Traveller? When you look at Science Fiction of the day, military SF had yet to get started, films like Star Wars protray the military-industrial complex in quite a bad light (the Empire) and Traveller seems to buck the trend and somewhat embrace the military.

At no time, however, was GDW ever a breath mint or a candy mint.

That comment stumped me? So, hopefully Loren will indeed come back to explain that one...

 

[Vargas]

RPGs grew out of wargames, so early games such as Traveller and D&D have clear wargaming roots. I don't think anyone consciously made a decision to get away from wargaming so much as roleplaying evolved to take advantage of the role part of the hobby at the expense, if you will, of the mechanistic wargaming part. (I will stipulate that never having played straight minitures games, I may have a misapprehension regarding its full nature).

 

[Andrew Boulton]

The great thing about Traveller is that it's far more than just an RPG. It's also a boardgame, and a wargame - at the strategic and tactical levels...in fact, it gives you the tools to build your own universe from scratch.

 

[pendragonman]

The views of an ancient gamer...

Having been around at the "Dawn of RPGs", I can say with some confidence that the roots of RPing come from wargamers who are trying to show how one good leader can change the outcome of a battle, then the roots evolve from there.

I know from my own experiences in squad leader that getting "into" playing a leader counter, like Lt. Stahler, definitely made the board games more interesting to me and led directly to taking that "character" directly into my first CT games.

As to the influences of wargames onto Traveller? There is a definite impression on the game. Most wargames have lots of easy to use tables to determine the results. This could easily be why Traveller has the number of tables it has. As to Striker, Trillion Credit Squadron, etc. clearly there were wargamers turned RPers that wanted to simulation large scale combats.

Now, was GDW primarily a wargame producer or RP producer? Who can truly say. Obviously both aspects were influenced by the other, so the best we can say is that it was somewhat both.

 

[Ptah]

Having been around at the "Dawn of RPGs", I can say with some confidence that the roots of RPing come from wargamers who are trying to show how one good leader can change the outcome of a battle, then the roots evolve from there.

I know from my own experiences in squad leader that getting "into" playing a leader counter, like Lt. Stahler, definitely made the board games more interesting to me and led directly to taking that "character" directly into my first CT games.

...

As a another former player from the "Dawn of RPGs," as a Russian player I despise Lt. Stahler to this day. Our Squad Leader games actually turned into proto-RPGs where we let leaders improve over the course of the campaigns laid out in Squad Leader.

Why I loved RPGs? No -2 for Open Ground.

 

[BlackBat242]

Kafka, Military Science Fiction has been around since the 1940s... I would have thought someone with your handle would know that.

Try EE (Doc) Smith's Lenseman series, much of Poul Anderson's work, Robert Heinlein (Starship Troopers & Space Cadet ring any bells?), Jerry Pournelle (West of Honor [1976] & The Mercenary [1977]), Jack Williamson, and many, many others.


When I first found Traveller in 1983, I had been playing AD&D for about 9 months, and was excited to be able to role-play in a universe where Heinlein & Doc would have been at home!



As I was on active duty in the USMC (air wing) at the time, the militaristic bias and multiple tables seemed normal.

And no, every Traveller game I have ever played in or Refereed was a Role-playing game, not a Roll-playing or Rule-playing game... the characters were the focus of everything.

 

[whartung]

Also don't forget the 2300AD universe was essentially "meta-gamed" out of the remains of the T2K world. My understanding is that GDW setup states and played them out to whatever we got in 2300AD.

Also, I think it's quite clear that Frank Chadwick is a wargamer. He's into simulation, and that's his craft. And he had a dramatic impact on the mechanics of the later RPG games.

 

[hunter]

Also don't forget the 2300AD universe was essentially "meta-gamed" out of the remains of the T2K world. My understanding is that GDW setup states and played them out to whatever we got in 2300AD.

The 2300AD CDRom from Marc has some pics and quasi-rules from the game they played. It's really kind cool. Hopefully Loren might chime in with a few tidbits from those days!

 

[aramis]

MegaTraveller, with the "extended" core rules (PM, RM, IE, Ref's Companion, 101 Vehicles) has almost all the functionality of Striker (except the command and control rules, which were a bear for most) plus the equipment books by third parties, and full functionality of CT Bk1-7 + Supp4 (except Bk2 ships and Bk3 trade), plus the task system.

The only reason 101V is in the above list is the missing weapons tables from the Ref's Manual.

MT can easily be used for Wargaming (Striker or TCS styles), Roleplaying, or solo trade board/P&P gaming.

It shows the blending of the two divergent lines.

2300 has a combat system that lends itself well to skirmish scale minis play for characters, and a board-game style ship combat system (with ship design in the boardgame adaptation).

GDW was a wargames company, based upon their product approach, but one that respected role-playing as well, and blended the two genres freely.

Space: 1889 likewise was a strange hybrid of roleplaying game and wargame.

It can be safely said, from an outsider perspective, that they specialized in their later days in hybrid RPG/Wargame designs.

More than anything, tho', GDW was great at interesting themes with well developed settings. Space 1889, T2K, Traveller, 2300, Cadilacs and Dinosaurs, Dark Conspiracy (Probably the least popular of the bunch in my neck of the woods), as well as Europa, Boots and Saddles, and a few other wargame lines. For the day, (mid 80's), CT/MT, T2K, and 2300 were games where adventure was inherent in the settings, and characters being well developed (by comparison to other systems) was a major selling point.

 

[whartung]

Heh, I liked Cadillacs and Dinosaurs. I also liked the Merc 2K and Twilight Nightmares stuff.

Never got any of the 1889 or DK stuff, which is kind of surprising being as I bought most everything else of theirs.

 

[Merxiless]

Well to Me, GDW is / was GDW.

TSR had D&D, Gamma World, Metamorphosis Alpha, Boot Hill.
Timeline had Morrow Project.
GDW had Traveller, Twilight:2000...

To me, it was just the flavor / focus of the specific games, I played them all, back in the day.

Twilight, though a military setting, was, for us an RPG with a really smooth combat system, that allowed the good guys to take a few hits, and survive.
What I liked about those modules was the setting, and the towns, some encounter charts, NPCs, and you pretty much wrote your own scenarios as you went, from what happened.

Traveller, for us, emerged from the ability to do it all solitaire, and derive everything from charts, which, with some imagination, and inspiration from films and books, ..we did a lot with it. Star Warsish, Aliensish, Bladerunnerish, although a lot of the early official Traveller scenarios seemed like "Dungeons in space."

Even Early FASA Trek was ships, and the crew, but visiting a more or less "Dungeon-map style-keyed adventure."

Not until West End Games came out with Star Wars:d6, did I really see a sea-change in gaming, from "Dungeons in Space" to 3 act plays, and character arcs. You could do it that way with Traveller, but you had to bolt it on. After that, many companies jumped onto the "Make it like a TV show" bandwagon, to the extent that nowadays, except for D&D, a lot of games are film and TV licenses.

Strangely, Traveller didn't seem to go much in that direction at all. Well, except for some of the novels. But that isn't necessarily a bad thing to me.

I really wish Traveller had the kind of novels support that Battletech, and Forgotten Realms, and Dragonlance had, which really defined them, and thier backstory.

.

 

[hunter]

Heh, I liked Cadillacs and Dinosaurs.

Still have my copy! Never played it, but love to read through it occasionally and wish I could get into a game or two.

 

[hunter]

Traveller, for us, emerged from the ability to do it all solitaire, and derive everything from charts, which, with some imagination, and inspiration from films and books, ..we did a lot with it. Star Warsish, Aliensish, Bladerunnerish, although a lot of the early official Traveller scenarios seemed like "Dungeons in space."

Hmm. I had the exact opposite feeling. When we first picked up the game we found it difficult to figure out how best to use the adventure material because it wasn't anything like what we were used to seeing with D&D.

 

[aramis]

For me, D6 Star Wars was pretty much me running it exactly how I'd been running Traveller.

It was much like the modules I'd come to know: A plot thread, some maps, and a bunch of NPCs to drive the encounters from one to another.

But, at the same time, I'd been GMing since my second year of Gaming...

GDW stuff was harder to run, mostly because the links from encounter to encounter were more tenuous in the module, but unlike most other companies' modules, they were not so much adventures as "Adventure Framework and Mini-supplement."

SW D6 also had some elements of supplement in most adventures. Not nearly so much as GDW materials, but still, it was there.