Interested in a Traveller-inspired video game?
- Thread starter CyborgPrime
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CyborgPrime
SOC-12
Hi!
I'm interested in your opinion!
I'm considering creating a Traveller-inspired video game and I'd like to hear from YOU about what kind of things you'd expect from a Traveller-themed video game.
It's not too late to participate in the surveys.
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Thanks for taking the time to give me your opinion!
I'm interested in your opinion!
I'm considering creating a Traveller-inspired video game and I'd like to hear from YOU about what kind of things you'd expect from a Traveller-themed video game.
It's not too late to participate in the surveys.
Click Here for Traveller-themed Surveys
Click Here for Computer Game Surveys
Thanks for taking the time to give me your opinion!
Enoki
SOC-14 1K
I would say, and this is no endorsement or advertisement for, Eve Online, and similar sci-fi MMORPG's would be the point of departure for a Traveller based game. To make a video game fun for Traveller, you need to make it multi-player. Encourage people through the game mechanics to form parties--temporary or permanent--to make things happen. Using NPC's should definitely be inferior to grouping up.
There should be avenues for business / commerce, PvP, PvE, R&D (like designing your own ship), etc. Without all that, it really isn't Traveller.
There should be avenues for business / commerce, PvP, PvE, R&D (like designing your own ship), etc. Without all that, it really isn't Traveller.
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there are some of us for whom the moment you make it online &/or multi-player, you lose us as potential customers
CyborgPrime
SOC-12
Yeah the first game is going to be single-player JRPG style.
You can follow my progress at my Discord server, my website, or over at makeyourownrpg.com.
3D Multiplayer takes a while longer, so that will come next.
You can follow my progress at my Discord server, my website, or over at makeyourownrpg.com.
3D Multiplayer takes a while longer, so that will come next.
Enoki
SOC-14 1K
On the other hand, if you don't it won't make money these days. Single player has limited appeal as the game play generally has a set storyline attached to it.
Where you have it multi-player you limit the party size and keep it 'small ship.' Players could organize as a party short-term or long-term to do stuff. You could play such a game solo too and enjoy it.
any MMO version requires, essentially, ignoring or chamging jump time, and ceases to be Traveller.
Local multiplayer is doable.
And it's quite possible to have rich threaded multi-story games without multiplayer and without online play... Realmz, Escape Velocity, EV Override, EV Nova, Avernum, Cytheria, and several others, mostly in the 32 bit CPU era, as well as the Ultima line, and the T&T computer game, back in the 8 and 16 bit eras.
Tho' local multi could be enjoyable, online play usually winds up being an oppressive form of DRM... My copy of EV Nova is, fundamentally worthless, as it required a new reg key if not played in the last 3 months, meaning an email to Ambrosia and 3 day wait.
I mean, that's the thing right?
If there is a single "thing" to Traveller, it's the Jump dynamic. After that, it's The Imperium. Throw those two things out, and it's..."sci fi". Running around with starships and shotguns. It could be anything.
It doesn't require it, though if you're linking game time to real time, a lot of it's going to be just a chat-room equivalent with token housekeeping (farming?) for a week at a time.
Doesn’t have to map 1:1 to real-time. 2 hours day 1 night, a comfortable 3 hours of play or 5 for hardcore sessions.
I’d also go 10D for jump and MgT for engagement and time scales.
One thing I can see right away, you want a shared party experience at the core of the game to be Traveller. So it shouldn’t be MMORPG, more like a SSPERPG- shared sandbox party environment role playing game.
So the party signs on, interacts with NPCs on a virtual slice of the same environmental server per local set of planets, their slice is not accessible by other players except by invite, and it closes off and saves when the play time is over. Picks back up where it was next game night, no messy time has passed issues with a massive shared environment.
I am getting paid for this architecting, right?
In an MMO, "game time" is "real time". It's (mostly) a shared world, experienced by everyone the same way.
There are obviously exceptions to this, but at a high level, that's a key component. That shared experience.
Perhaps look at it another way.
Consider a Traveller campaign that takes place on a single world, and makes no mention of the Imperium, Aslan, Vargr, K'kree, Zhodani, etc.
Since it's a video game, the actual dice rolling elements are effectively hidden. 2D6? D20? You can have "skills", and as you improve your character ("leveling" and "gearing", i.e. increasing character power, is an essential aspect of the MMO experience, so rolling a "developed" character is pretty much right out), you can, perhaps, improve your skills or get more.
So, given those constraints. What of that experience stands out as "Traveller"?
There are obviously exceptions to this, but at a high level, that's a key component. That shared experience.
Perhaps look at it another way.
Consider a Traveller campaign that takes place on a single world, and makes no mention of the Imperium, Aslan, Vargr, K'kree, Zhodani, etc.
Since it's a video game, the actual dice rolling elements are effectively hidden. 2D6? D20? You can have "skills", and as you improve your character ("leveling" and "gearing", i.e. increasing character power, is an essential aspect of the MMO experience, so rolling a "developed" character is pretty much right out), you can, perhaps, improve your skills or get more.
So, given those constraints. What of that experience stands out as "Traveller"?
And, let me be fair here.
Firefly is very "Traveller". So was Outland. Neither had anything "Traveller" about them.
I think one aspect of what makes Traveller Science Fiction stand out is how grounded it is in "todays tech".
Traveller sci-fi is the 1980's extended, not reimagined.
We don't get blasters, we get better rifles. We don't have huge, walking robots, but we do have grav cars and heavy armor.
Our starships are tight and dirty like Alien, not clean, and roomy like Star Trek.
There's a grit to Traveller.
There's a chaos to Traveller (as manifest in the different worlds in Firefly).
While we have our share of gleaming, floating cities, we also have a component of parties sitting around a camp fire, with halogen lanterns, while guards stand watch staring off in to the darkness to keep the local fauna at bay during the night. And those guards don't even have night vision. Just a rifle, a blade lashed to their hip, and maybe a bit of fear in their hearts. We don't know what's out there, but it seems to be big.
Firefly is very "Traveller". So was Outland. Neither had anything "Traveller" about them.
I think one aspect of what makes Traveller Science Fiction stand out is how grounded it is in "todays tech".
Traveller sci-fi is the 1980's extended, not reimagined.
We don't get blasters, we get better rifles. We don't have huge, walking robots, but we do have grav cars and heavy armor.
Our starships are tight and dirty like Alien, not clean, and roomy like Star Trek.
There's a grit to Traveller.
There's a chaos to Traveller (as manifest in the different worlds in Firefly).
While we have our share of gleaming, floating cities, we also have a component of parties sitting around a camp fire, with halogen lanterns, while guards stand watch staring off in to the darkness to keep the local fauna at bay during the night. And those guards don't even have night vision. Just a rifle, a blade lashed to their hip, and maybe a bit of fear in their hearts. We don't know what's out there, but it seems to be big.
Common people not "heroic" PC's. Typical are regular joe types, not super heroes with special abilities. It is one of the main things that separates Traveller from other franchises; though recently, other games are encroaching that space.
Spinward Flow
SOC-14 5K
THIS.
Traveller PCs are anything BUT The Destined Chosen One like so often times is the excuse for way too many JRPGs, manga and anime plots.
If anything, Traveller PCs are The Random Ones who just happened to be there when everything goes down. There's no "fate" or destiny or any supernatural/mythological power involved ... stuff just happens to people. The people themselves might be a little exceptional (high stats) or specialized (high skills), but there was no interdimensional chess match moving them into THIS place at THIS time to do THIS thing.
You have adventures with whoever was along for the ride, not the preordained Destined Ones.
Some adventurers succeed.
Some adventurers fail.
And some die during character creation ...
Nothing emphasizes "you're not that special" quite so much as dying during character creation.
Combat also, Traveller has NPC's and PC's die just the same, thus why combat is considered deadly.
Condottiere
SOC-14 5K
The point is that your character contributes something to the story or adventure.
Even if it's only the sharpness of his wit.
Even if it's only the sharpness of his wit.
Or the stopping of a bullet. Possibly in Char Gen.
Condottiere
SOC-14 5K
Some games have luck as a characteristic.
But no canonical Traveller does. (GT and HT both have it as an advantage, but HT isn't canon, and GT rules mechanics aren't canon except for GT.)
The world is becoming a bigger place. The Luck characteristic exists in an official Traveller Book. Unless MGT2 is not Traveller?
Ummm. I dont agree with your statement. It depends on what you are counting as canonical. To me it seems you are retaining the grognardy CT idea of Traveller as a ruleset AND OTU as its only "official campaign in-that game, percolating all future versions. One and inseparable. I don't agree because that is simply not the case case any longer. The opening of Traveller in MGT as a general system allows new characteristics. None as primary ones true, but as additional ones as TNE had a stat or two extra....
MGT1 Judge Dredd introduced INF - Influence as an additional characteristic to reflect the different hierarchies between Judges and non-Judges. Both still have Social Standing, but Influence better reflects the actual formal authority the Judges have.
MGT2E Traveller Companion (pp 3-10) introduces "Additional Characteristics" to reflect nuances in specific campaigns:
WLT - Wealth
LCK - Luck
MRL - Morale
SAN - Sanity
with rules on how to use these. Also SOC is expanded to reflect use in non-nobility/non-corebook (as they say) hiearchies.
Later the book touches on "Alternative Characteristics". When read, that section sounds like the use of C1 thru C6 array of characters as found in Traveller 5.
