How Punk is your Traveller

[kafka47]

Looking back over the issues of Signal GK made me somewhat nostalgic for the 1980s...and having just watched SF-UK, it made me think how much my Traveller games seem to be influenced by a punk aesthetic (Def. see urban dictionary). For example just having a generalized reaction against authority and making the Imperium much darker than what is usually portrayed in Traveller literature. Siding with the bads against the virtuous white - and characters occupying many shades of grey.

 

[ravells]

I've often wondered about this too. Back in the day when I actually played Traveller (about 25 years ago) the Imperium was taken as a monolithic, unforgiving structure about which we (as players) skirted around the edges of and hoped at the end of the adventure at worst we hadn't annoyed sufficiently to warrant our immediate deaths or at best we had pleased enough to get some sort of reward.

There is a wider question about this and people's view of authority. All RPGs are played by people of all nationalities. Each of those nationalities must have a slightly varying view towards authority (or do they?) and yet, the adventures seem to play out the same in the sense of how the characters see themselves.

I think at the end of it, it is all (did Ursula Le Guin coin it?) 'Cowboys and Indians in space'. The players are the cowboys who live on the fringes of the law (loveable rouges that they are). It's fantasy and we all want to be cowboys - nationality regardless. I guess that's why Han Solo is such an icon and why we all love 'Firefly' so much.

 

[BlackBat242]

If you mean "punk" as in Stainless Steel Rat, then very...
if you mean "cyberpunk", then not at all.

 

[Icosahedron]

I think he means punk in the sense of anarchist - "what're you rebelling against?" "What've you got?" ideology. (It's been with us since way before the 80s).

My Imperium tends to be somewhat darker than vanilla OTU, but not necessarily deliberately evil. The characters I've created and met are rarely outright anarchists causing trouble for the sake of it, they're just trying to live comfortable lives and only rebel against authority when the authority tramples on them, criminalises their normal activity, takes away their freedoms or makes it impossible to earn a living wage.

More often, their opponents are criminals, rival groups or some form of renegade spooks, and the authorities are there simply as a GM tool to ensure the heroes don't solve every problem with battledress and suitcase nukes.

 

[kafka47]

Cyberpunk was just one manifestation of punk. It was rather a whole attitude that permuted the 1980s. It was a time of great avarice and narcissism but at the same time it held out in the blasted ruins that a new world was being reborn. It viewed the world not as utopian but spaces that could be liberated from the dictates of a previous culture.

In Traveller, I see that the Rebellion as both the conduit for a more punkish expression and also an attempt to cash in on Star Wars' fading warm glow. For in shakin' things up (with the attitude - we ain't going to take it any more) the Rebellion stirred up a rebellion with Lucan being the ultimate punk or droog pillaging his way across Chartered Space for a laff.

I don't know about playing things out the same way. When I was playing in post-communist Prague - I found very different playing styles for Traveller. Everyone pretty well plays D&D the same way. But games that require more thinking than just blowin' things up real good - are the hallmark of different personalities/national cultures.

Having said that RPGs do feed into and from a world culture, in which certain, films, tropes have become so universalized that they inform our understanding. For when a Frenchman plays Stargate these days - he does not reference back to the original graphic novel but goes to the TV series - as it is the most shared, current and repeated memory. It is rather sad but hopefully will be remedied when more things are shared otherwise we face the corporate goo that punk was rebelling against.

 

[Meteoric Assault]

Veedback was about as punk as it was for us back then.

 

[ravells]

I don't know about playing things out the same way. When I was playing in post-communist Prague - I found very different playing styles for Traveller

This is very interesting! How did it differ?

 

[shadowcat20]

I was going through 76 patrons the other day and it sort of took me back a little. A lot of games today the characters are lilly white fighting the bad guy. In a lot of the early traveller adventures characters were the bad guy in a Firefly sense. Pulling heists against Megacorps or kidnapping officials. Then the whole smuggling sideline trying to fool security and customs. Most of the missions were very grey back then. A nice change from todays black and white.

The Imperium was a big brother type of operation so wrapped up in it's own agenda that it never noticed the little guys. Megacorps were the major bad guys doing things behind closed doors and pulling all sorts of unlawful stunts because they could. After all they were big, rich, and powerful. A lot of adventures seemed to be rob the big corp without ticking off the Feds.

 

[kafka47]

This is very interesting! How did it differ?

The Czechs (x2) tended to band together and find cooperative solutions & avoid combat for things, our Frenchman (x1) was always eager to blow things up but would avoid a gunfight and the Dane and Swede would argue incessantly but end up doing the same thing and the Yank was eager to go guns blazing.

At first we played the Classic Traveller - Guns n Profit merchant campaign using a heavily modified Traveller Adventure as the backdrop. We then shifted to 2300AD which most of the players enjoyed more - as the world was more recognizable. Adventures based on the exploration of the unknown planet was very popular with the Europeans - as if they were playing an investigation game. Czech were intimately fascinated with technical stuff and had a good grasp of the engineering but not much in terms of social world which is what kept the Frenchman interested - in how did particular societies actually work.

 

[ravells]

The Czechs (x2) tended to band together and find cooperative solutions & avoid combat for things, our Frenchman (x1) was always eager to blow things up but would avoid a gunfight and the Dane and Swede would argue incessantly but end up doing the same thing and the Yank was eager to go guns blazing.

Lol! They almost sound like caricatures!

As far as I remember (it's been a long time since I've played), combat in Classic Traveller was pretty lethal, so in general we tended to stay out of gun fights unless there was no other option.

 

[kafka47]

Well, in the early 90s, it was easy to make [FONT=arial,helvetica]caricatures for national cultures were still very strong, as most of these countries had not even joined the EU - yet (other than France which thought of itself as the EU incarnate) - most travel was done still by rail. Countries needed visas to gain entry and exit. It is sometimes remarkable to think what two decades have wrought but they are there.

When I tried probing, it was partially due to the exposure of to science fiction. The Czechs had only access to the East European stuff preferring mainly the Russian or East German stuff - as it was more riveting then their own and not as plastic as the cheap American stuff that was flooding the market.

The Scandinavians liked the American stuff but found it not really science fiction - preferred novels.

And, the Frenchman had whole series of graphic novels/comics that were in French to share with me - and basically outline his SF cred.

Yes, CT combat was deadly but that was the whole point - some were more risk takers and others were more risk adverse.
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