far-trader
SOC-14 10K
Still basing all your assumptions on that poll
Do I need to point out all the ways that making assumptions based on it is going to be way off?
Is the Traveller Market Fractured
- Thread starter Liam Devlin
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Do I need to point out all the ways that making assumptions based on it is going to be way off?
hunter
Ancient - Absent Friend
No actually I'd say T20 sold to about 70-80% of the total Traveller buying public given sales numbers of the core book and what I know of the fan base. 
Correct me if I am wrong but you seem to be assuming we'd see basically a 50% increase in sales because of a single system, and I just don't see that happening unless someone that new single system was bringing in new players to the game.
Correct me if I am wrong but you seem to be assuming we'd see basically a 50% increase in sales because of a single system, and I just don't see that happening unless someone that new single system was bringing in new players to the game.
nowadays there are any number of fantasy settings with ready-made themes - settings where the main characters are important, have influence, have respect, confer with other important people at will, know what to do, give orders, engage in struggles between good/us and evil/them. all one need do, player or referee, is step into this, and those characters. but traveller just isn't ready-made, and it has no theme. where to start is not obvious, what to do is not clear, its characters are ordinary people to whom no-one says, "yes sir". to even start a game a referee has to start with, "ok, what are we doing here and why do we care?" - and this requires an enormous amount of work.
the other games and settings and rpg-like activities have a hook, a hook that a 14-year-old can understand. traveller has no hook at all.
R
Roger Calver
Guest
For me the hook has always been the freedom you can have in your gaming and allows you to do how you will
R
Roger Calver
Guest
By hook are you saying meta-plots ?, as Traveller has always had many of them but its fair to say maybe not that visible.Later version have used these to greater effect and given better depth to the gamer.
for me too, yes, I enjoy fracturing the market further (smile). but in an environment where so much is provided ready-made and people just aren't used to making things for themselves anymore, I'm sure the market for this approach is shrinking.
and no, a meta-plot is not a hook. a hook is what makes you care about the material long enough to become engaged with it.
Keklas Rekobah
SOC-14 1K
In that case, the question becomes "How best to bring new players to the game?"
Traveller, no matter which version, is defined as "Science Fiction Adventure in the Far Future." Break it down. You'd have to find potential players among the general population that enjoy:
1) Science Fiction / Adventure genre.
2) Far Future settings and props.
3) Role Playing Games, up close and personal.
Consider also that Traveller newbies, once introduced to the game, would likely want to acquire sourcebooks of their own, right now, and couple that with the fact that the availability of those books is primarily through mail-order sources OR experienced players willing to provide free copies of their books, and you see a two-fold problem:
1) A delay, or "bottleneck," in getting materials from the publishers into the hands of new players in a timely manner, and...
2) Pirated copies of the original materials getting there faster and skewing the publisher's marketting statistics towards the "unpopular / discontinue" side of the ledger.
Once the order for my CT disc was placed, it was almost two months before I took possession of the disc for the first time. Finally owning a copy of Supplement 4 was worth the price alone, but how am I going to convince a newbie that it is worth the wait?
I see a multi-layer problem:
1) Traveller is esoteric, in that it is not tied into any mainstream media icons or cultural images.
2) Traveller is insular, in that only those people that already play the game or have the sourcebooks really appreciate the value of the game (and the inside jokes and references).
3) Traveller is social, in that it is best played face-to-face rather than over a network connection (PBEM or interactive).
Your opinions may vary, but how do we overcome these issues?
Jeff M. Hopper
SOC-14 1K
In getting new players interested, I've got a suggestion. Since the d20 market is the largest for tabletop gaming and there already is a T20 Lite version out there for free, how do people feel about the idea of creating some adventures and a small setting specifically for use with T20 Lite and providing it for free? It would be made and distributed with the intent of being an advertisement for Traveller in general through T20. I'd be willing to take a whack at this if it seems to be a worthwhile idea to people.
I heard a comment recently on a gaming podcast that caught me off guard: many GMs these days feel they need to buy everything there is for their chosen game before they can run it. But Traveller has a massive legacy ... there's too much stuff, and this is off-putting for potential new players.
Now people don't say the same thing about D20 despite the large number of D20 books out there. D20 has a common system but multiple settings. People feel comfortable buying the core rule books and just those setting books that they're interested in. Traveller is preceived as one game. Maybe what we need to do is sell Traveller as multiple (yet compatable) settings. Stress the differences for the newbies and then stress the similarities for the fans ... a meta-game. This would make it more accessable to newbies.
With regards to the hypothetical sales figures on this thread ... I'm a CT/MT person but I buy everything that has Traveller written on the cover. I suspect there are quite a few with such overlap spending habits. So merging the rule systems may not have the same impact as has been suggested.
It would be interesting to know of all the T20 players who had not played Traveller before, if they had to describe themselves as Traveller fans or D20 fans which would they choose. Ditto for GURPS players. In other words have these systems added to the Traveller fan base or just allowed the existing fan base to fragment.
Regards PLST
Now people don't say the same thing about D20 despite the large number of D20 books out there. D20 has a common system but multiple settings. People feel comfortable buying the core rule books and just those setting books that they're interested in. Traveller is preceived as one game. Maybe what we need to do is sell Traveller as multiple (yet compatable) settings. Stress the differences for the newbies and then stress the similarities for the fans ... a meta-game. This would make it more accessable to newbies.
With regards to the hypothetical sales figures on this thread ... I'm a CT/MT person but I buy everything that has Traveller written on the cover. I suspect there are quite a few with such overlap spending habits. So merging the rule systems may not have the same impact as has been suggested.
It would be interesting to know of all the T20 players who had not played Traveller before, if they had to describe themselves as Traveller fans or D20 fans which would they choose. Ditto for GURPS players. In other words have these systems added to the Traveller fan base or just allowed the existing fan base to fragment.
Regards PLST
M
Malenfant
Guest
I know you can't give out exact numbers, but maybe you could confirm/dispel a myth here - how big is the Traveller fanbase, really?Originally posted by hunter:
No actually I'd say T20 sold to about 70-80% of the total Traveller buying public given sales numbers of the core book and what I know of the fan base.
Liam Devlin
SOC-14 5K
10K...hmmmmmmm.
Thanks Hunter! ;D
Thanks Hunter! ;D
After reading all of the comments in this thread (whew!) I figured I'd post a few comments of my own...
Back in 1978 or 1979, a guy by the name of Rich Ess introduced us wargamers and role players to a game called Traveller. At the time, we had various people showing up and partaking of the game when and where we could. Some of us would graduate and carry with us the enjoyment of the game to our own private games in our home towns. Some of us continue to play games at the local hobby shop and if we're lucky, bring in more players/gamers into the fold. Others of us however, have a comfortable gaming group we've known for years. I've got one player I've known since 1980 in my gaming group. Another has been part of the group since 1983, and yet another (My wife) since 1986 or so. We don't participate in our hobby at the local games shop, nor do we even want to. Having had one player die suddenly of a heart attack, we lost a player we'd had in the group for 10 years. So why aren't we attracting new players?
Take a look at your own playing habits. Ask yourself where did you start acquiring your habits from? Me? I gained it at the UB wargames club with PUBLIC participation in the sense that people came and went and were invited to just drop in. Nowadays, the only crowd who can do that seems to be either those of your local gaming store, or your university gaming crew. In this age of Nintendo and DOOM and other computer games (which I should add, we did NOT have when we were young) as well as having had the "collectable card game" craze pass us by - I think you will find that the key to recruiting new players will now require something that no one is willing to do...
Make a TRAVELLER based game with the Traveller Logo, and make it submersive much like Diablo II or WARCRAFT or what have you. You need some method of gaining their attention FIRST. You need to make it FUN and you need to make it something people WANT to do. Lacking all of that means that only those already exposed to it will want products.
Oh, and another thing. How many of us remember the good old days of waiting with baited breath for the next "item" to come out? Judges Guild? FASA? GDW? That was three companies right there that produced things for a SINGLE game line. Now? We have one company producing things for their own game line and the productivity dies down as a result. Now we wait 4 months or more for a new book and our "habit" dies from a lack of infusion. Once you buy WORLD TAMER'S HANDBOOK, do you really need a GURPS TRAVELLER: FIRST IN? Once you have an updated SCOUTS, do we need any other fast random generation system of planets?
T20 gained new TRAVELLER players from the D&D crowd. GURPS TRAVELLER players more or less gained players from the GURPS CROWD (although I must confess, I like the GURPS RULES over the CT rules for character growth by a large margin!) Still...
I am attempting to merge/fuse certain game mechanics from CT or MT for use with my GURPS Traveller campaign. I look to T4's POCKET EMPIRES for ideas on a macro approach to running my campaign. I'm using T4's IMPERIAL SQUADRONS as a source book guide for a GURPS TRAVELLER naval campaign for a one on one gaming environment. I am looking at TNE's PATH OF TEARS for detailing militaries (thanks to the unknown individual who pointed out its exitence to me!) that other of TRAVELLER books failed to deliver in some guise. In short? I've grown accustomed to buying traveller IDEAS from the various book incarnations of TRAVELLER in what ever guise it takes. Oddly enough? The ONLY Traveller series books I don't have is T20's! And I've been meaning to get around to it - but with the recent troubles involved in ording things, I've held off (that plus being unemployed for the moment). Some day, I may very much like to pick up the T20 sourcebooks just to see what ideas they contain that aren't in any of the other books. I am exceedingly happy with a certain IMPERIAL NAVY pdf I purchased
only because someone finally put together something that more or less made SENSE.
So - to answer the question regarding T5?
I likely will pick it up just to see what it contains. If it is a decent enough system, it may even supplant my natural disinclination to use new game systems with my gaming group. Why? Because we've already experienced my search for the ultimate game system and settled on GURPS. The time we invest in learing ONE game system means that we don't have to relearn a new one every other month (and some of us refuse to do that for reasons of either and/or time constraints or monetary constraints).
T5 ultimately, becomes a purchase item to see what I can mine it for later on, or it becomes an "idea factory" for me for my campaigns. If it is GOOD enough, it may even be my ruleset (But I don't count on it).
Final note: My 12 year old daughter is playing a Drive Hand in my Empress Nicolette campaign. She is entranced with the idea of gaming having seen how much fun my gaming group/crew has with it. For her, it is a rite of passage in a way. How much do you want to bet, that if she can get her hands on a SIMPLE Traveller game system such as CT, that she could handle the GM'ing duties for her own friends should she be so inclined? As adults, we revel in the more complex designs to stretch our abilities. CT for a 12 year old I think is JUST right - not too complex, not too boring.
Back in 1978 or 1979, a guy by the name of Rich Ess introduced us wargamers and role players to a game called Traveller. At the time, we had various people showing up and partaking of the game when and where we could. Some of us would graduate and carry with us the enjoyment of the game to our own private games in our home towns. Some of us continue to play games at the local hobby shop and if we're lucky, bring in more players/gamers into the fold. Others of us however, have a comfortable gaming group we've known for years. I've got one player I've known since 1980 in my gaming group. Another has been part of the group since 1983, and yet another (My wife) since 1986 or so. We don't participate in our hobby at the local games shop, nor do we even want to. Having had one player die suddenly of a heart attack, we lost a player we'd had in the group for 10 years. So why aren't we attracting new players?
Take a look at your own playing habits. Ask yourself where did you start acquiring your habits from? Me? I gained it at the UB wargames club with PUBLIC participation in the sense that people came and went and were invited to just drop in. Nowadays, the only crowd who can do that seems to be either those of your local gaming store, or your university gaming crew. In this age of Nintendo and DOOM and other computer games (which I should add, we did NOT have when we were young) as well as having had the "collectable card game" craze pass us by - I think you will find that the key to recruiting new players will now require something that no one is willing to do...
Make a TRAVELLER based game with the Traveller Logo, and make it submersive much like Diablo II or WARCRAFT or what have you. You need some method of gaining their attention FIRST. You need to make it FUN and you need to make it something people WANT to do. Lacking all of that means that only those already exposed to it will want products.
Oh, and another thing. How many of us remember the good old days of waiting with baited breath for the next "item" to come out? Judges Guild? FASA? GDW? That was three companies right there that produced things for a SINGLE game line. Now? We have one company producing things for their own game line and the productivity dies down as a result. Now we wait 4 months or more for a new book and our "habit" dies from a lack of infusion. Once you buy WORLD TAMER'S HANDBOOK, do you really need a GURPS TRAVELLER: FIRST IN? Once you have an updated SCOUTS, do we need any other fast random generation system of planets?
T20 gained new TRAVELLER players from the D&D crowd. GURPS TRAVELLER players more or less gained players from the GURPS CROWD (although I must confess, I like the GURPS RULES over the CT rules for character growth by a large margin!) Still...
I am attempting to merge/fuse certain game mechanics from CT or MT for use with my GURPS Traveller campaign. I look to T4's POCKET EMPIRES for ideas on a macro approach to running my campaign. I'm using T4's IMPERIAL SQUADRONS as a source book guide for a GURPS TRAVELLER naval campaign for a one on one gaming environment. I am looking at TNE's PATH OF TEARS for detailing militaries (thanks to the unknown individual who pointed out its exitence to me!) that other of TRAVELLER books failed to deliver in some guise. In short? I've grown accustomed to buying traveller IDEAS from the various book incarnations of TRAVELLER in what ever guise it takes. Oddly enough? The ONLY Traveller series books I don't have is T20's! And I've been meaning to get around to it - but with the recent troubles involved in ording things, I've held off (that plus being unemployed for the moment). Some day, I may very much like to pick up the T20 sourcebooks just to see what ideas they contain that aren't in any of the other books. I am exceedingly happy with a certain IMPERIAL NAVY pdf I purchased
So - to answer the question regarding T5?
I likely will pick it up just to see what it contains. If it is a decent enough system, it may even supplant my natural disinclination to use new game systems with my gaming group. Why? Because we've already experienced my search for the ultimate game system and settled on GURPS. The time we invest in learing ONE game system means that we don't have to relearn a new one every other month (and some of us refuse to do that for reasons of either and/or time constraints or monetary constraints).
T5 ultimately, becomes a purchase item to see what I can mine it for later on, or it becomes an "idea factory" for me for my campaigns. If it is GOOD enough, it may even be my ruleset (But I don't count on it).
Final note: My 12 year old daughter is playing a Drive Hand in my Empress Nicolette campaign. She is entranced with the idea of gaming having seen how much fun my gaming group/crew has with it. For her, it is a rite of passage in a way. How much do you want to bet, that if she can get her hands on a SIMPLE Traveller game system such as CT, that she could handle the GM'ing duties for her own friends should she be so inclined? As adults, we revel in the more complex designs to stretch our abilities. CT for a 12 year old I think is JUST right - not too complex, not too boring.
Jeff M. Hopper
SOC-14 1K
You've got my support. Be happy to make anything along these lines available from here and the other sites I offer T20 Lite from. </font>[/QUOTE]I'm starting work on this tonight.
If you have some suggestions on this project, here's a thread in Lone Star for them.
M
Malenfant
Guest
Well, if that's correct then that blows a few peoples' preconceptions right out of the water - in the past some people have claimed that Traveller's fanbase is more like 100,000.
10,000 is a rather small slice of the RPG market - that's at the upper end of the Indie RPG portion, isn't it?
hunter
Ancient - Absent Friend
Well, if that's correct then that blows a few peoples' preconceptions right out of the water - in the past some people have claimed that Traveller's fanbase is more like 100,000.
10,000 is a rather small slice of the RPG market - that's at the upper end of the Indie RPG portion, isn't it? </font>[/QUOTE]100k yes at it's peak during it's heyday (CT). I'd say that number would probably be a little low but close given the print run numbers for CT. If I remember correctly the print runs for MT were smaller and for TNE considerably smaller. I don't know the numbers for T4, but I doubt it had total runs of more that 10k or so (I could be wrong).
Current core (buying) fan base? I'll stick with 10k. I am talking active fans who regularly purchase new Traveller products.
Pretty much anyone who isn't WotC, WW, SJG Mongoose and AEG could probably be labeled as Indie as far as I am concerned. I honestly don't see the point in the term. If you publish books you publish books. Some just print a helluva lot more than others
There is the D&D fanbase, easily 80%-90% of the market, and then there is everything else.
I am speaking of the print/distribution market.
Liam Devlin
SOC-14 5K
Okay Boss,
what does the 'MMO' stand for(I get the second half)? is that like a Major Monster Online RPG?
Multi-Media-Online RPG?
what does the 'MMO' stand for(I get the second half)? is that like a Major Monster Online RPG?
Multi-Media-Online RPG?
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