Is Traveller Relevant Anymore?

[LeperColony]

Traveller has been incredibly significant in the history of role-playing games, and has even been acknowledged in other fields (Computer Science thanks to TCS and Popular Entertainment from its probable influence on Firefly). But what does Traveller have to offer in the modern RPG environment?

I do not mean to imply that it is in any sense a bad game, or that people don't or shouldn't enjoy playing it. But I do wonder if Traveller's time has passed? Or, to put it another way, if Traveller is still relevant from an industry standpoint, what does it offer?

I've heard it mentioned as far back as TNE that new player retention was a problem for the product line, and in fact one of the motivations behind Virus was to wipe the slate clean, so new players would come in. But did they?

New versions of Traveller come out with some regularity, but who buys them? Are they the same core of die hards? What would inspire a new player to pick Traveller over the many existing space RPGs in the current market?

 

[RandyB]

What's currently 'hot' in sci-fi entertainment?

Is it a specific setting or property? A multi-property genre?

If the latter, a setting that uses the Traveller rules to model the genre for gaming would have potential.

If the former, licensing terms and fees tend to be... challenging.

 

[Condottiere]

Intellectual Property, which means Third Imperium setting.

I don't know if Traveller was the first with the four year term character generation, but it's an interesting variant to fast track and randomize that aspect of play.

Even Warhammer is now prepared for a large scale electronic play of it's battle system, after years of trying to milk it's miniature lines for all they're worth.

 

[Spinward Scout]

What would inspire a new player to pick Traveller over the many existing space RPGs in the current market?

I've thought for while now that Quick-Start rules and pre-gen characters would draw more people in.

 

[LeperColony]

Yeah, that's not really what I meant to ask. It's not that I'm doubting whether the Traveller brand has any value. I more meant what is Traveller's place in the current RPG market. What does it have to offer that another space game doesn't?

Originally, the idea of a highly adaptable system was novel. Today there's dozens to choose from.

The OTU is amazing. I enjoy it. I love the fact that you can come to sites like this and discuss the economic or strategic implications of the universe, and extrapolate "real world" conditions from game rules and assumptions. I think that's awesome.

But does the setting draw? Does it still appeal? Or is it too old, too dated? I'm a second generation gamer. I picked up Traveller from my dad. But it's been noted many times that the setting is difficult for new players to appreciate.

Does Traveller remain relevant? Will it attract new people? Or in twenty or thirty years, will I be the only one here, surrounded by the posts of Absent Friends?

 

[LeperColony]

I've thought for while now that Quick-Start rules and pre-gen characters would draw more people in.

Yeah, but almost every game has those now. I more mean, what would inspire someone to grab the Traveller Quick-Start over one of the other space games?

Traveller, like all games, means something. It's a set of assumptions and world views, given form with rules and a setting. But do they still hold relevance in today's RPG market?

 

[creativehum]

The "industry" has always been very small. And, remember, the hobby has never needed the industry. A clever framework of rules to kick things off along with some papers, pencils, and paper could keep a group of friends busy and happy for years. So, in some ways, I always consider questions like this a bit of a sand trap. Relevant to whom? In what way? In what numbers to satisfy your questions? The value of the answers will in and of themselves be open to debate.

Even when TSR was king, people bought some basic rulebooks, blew off the rest of the product line, reworked the rules to they were unrecognizable, and played something they called D&D (but not really) for maybe five to ten years on and off with friends. Was that part of relevance or not?

But to answer your question as best I can in the manner I think you mean, Mongoose Traveller seems to be doing well. So, it is relevant in some sense.

Also, (and I say this as someone who spent from 2000-2015 playing games like Sorcerer, Dogs in the Vineyard, Burning Wheel, and Primetime Adventures) last year I picked up a copy of Lamentations of the Flame Princess and started a regular gaming group (which I hadn't had in years). LotFP is a reworded Basic D&D. We had a blast. Is Basic D&D "relevant" anymore? For my players it is.

And now I'm digging into original Traveller. When I wrap up my LotFP I'm pretty sure that will be next. I'm finding there's a wisdom in the 1970s designs that can't be beaten (for a variety of reasons).

The point being, this is a hobby, fractured and with countless social groups and desires. If people are having fun with a game, it is relevant to them. I think focus on the "industry," the hobby as a whole, and such things miss this point -- and it is a vital point. The only relevance any of this stuff has ever had was some friends sitting down and having fun. It's too fractured, too disperse. And even more so with new methods of storage and distribution (PDFs, Kickstarters, online distribution).*

But that's how I look at it.

* I took a break after six months from running LotFP (because of work). Another player picked up the slack, running several months of Cyberpunk 2020. We're now starting up an Unknown Armies 3rd edition game, playing off the plays test PDFs of the Kickstarter. I have no idea if any of these games are relevant. But we're having a blast.

 

[LeperColony]

I suppose a reply along those lines was more or less inevitable, though I had hoped to forestall it by mentioning in my OP that of course people still play and enjoy Traveller, as I do myself.

But it is inaccurate to state, as you do, that Traveller's relevance can be measured solely as a relative value connected to the individual play experience. Just as someone can talk about an artist's relevance to Art, independent of an individuals enjoyment of the artist's work, and just as someone may have the same discussion of a musician and Music, a philosopher and Philosophy, etc, one may also speak of the relevance of a role-playing game to Role-Playing Gaming.

It is in that wider sense I asked about Travellers relevance.

 

[creativehum]

And I would say the difference between Art and Roleplaying Games is a difference of magnitude so great I have no idea how how one could find the sense of data you are looking for. Art (capital A) is all around us, Art has defined our species for 200,000 years, Art moves items for millions of dollars a pop as well as being found for sale in stores along beach communities, and housed in museums for all to see.

When someone is "relevant" in art, it is someone who somehow is well known enough in an international commerce and culture that everyone, even if they don't care about art at all, knows exists.

I'm suggesting that the hobby of roleplaying is so small and fractured I have no idea what "relevance" means. I've your definition was in the OP and I missed it, I apologize. But I can come up with distinct measures of "relevance" for the Art world.

What might be some yardsticks for the RPG hobby?

 

[Vargas]

Yeah, but almost every game has those now. I more mean, what would inspire someone to grab the Traveller Quick-Start over one of the other space games?

Traveller, like all games, means something. It's a set of assumptions and world views, given form with rules and a setting. But do they still hold relevance in today's RPG market?

I think the answer is yes given that it is an active and apparently profitable product line for Mongoose. Why it remains relevant is highly subjective as that depends on the wants and needs of the consumer.

 

[LeperColony]

When someone is "relevant" in art, it is someone who somehow is well known enough in an international commerce and culture that everyone, even if they don't care about art at all, knows exists.

I'm suggesting that the hobby of roleplaying is so small and fractured I have no idea what "relevance" means. I've your definition was in the OP and I missed it, I apologize. But I can come up with distinct measures of "relevance" for the Art world.

Except I'm not really sure why the valuations would be much different.

An artist can be highly relevant to Art and yet never have managed financial success or even widespread public knowledge, just as minor bands nobody has ever heard of can often be highly relevant in to Music and musicians.

Just like everything else, Traveller as a Role-Playing Game exists within a universe or a society. Within that subset, as with any other subset, someone or something can achieve relevance through a number of methods such as:

Influencing subsequent works
Innovating
Demonstrating or mastering certain aspects of the field
Achieving positions of importance within the field (where applicable)
Being recognized by insiders as excelling in quality

and so on.

When Traveller was new, it was innovative. Does it still innovate? Are Traveller materials fresh and new, or is the line stale and static?

For many years, Traveller did influence subsequent sci-fi games. But does it any longer? Do new sci-fi game writers look at Traveller, either for setting or mechanics, as a source of inspiration?

These metrics are not necessarily any different than you might use to judge the importance of anyone or anything in any other industry. Taken from that point of view, is Traveller still relevant?

 

[Vargas]

If you ask on a public gaming forum for recommendations for a sci-fi game you'll get Traveller (in it's many different incarnations) as an answer.

Games like Thousand Suns and Stars Without Number (and no doubt many others) claim, demonstrate or infer a connection back to Traveller.

It continues to make money for Mongoose.

In my mind, this makes Traveller relevant.

 

[flykiller]

Does Traveller remain relevant? Will it attract new people ... I do wonder if Traveller's time has passed?

do "new people" want to play a game, or be entertained? seems to me there is a large trend towards entertainment across the board in everything. consider music. used to be if you wanted music you learned an insturment and did it yourself - now you surf the net and download terabytes of someone else's work that is better than anything you could make yourself, so very few people learn musical insturments anymore. same thing with ... "gaming". used to be if you wanted a game most of the effort and product was your own. now there's dozens of detailed rulesets and dozens of explicated settings all highly developed to the point where many people don't play them but visit them as tourists.

"oooh, that's good, keep it coming!" ....

and of course there is great entertainment to be had in critical advocacy.

And, remember, the hobby has never needed the industry.

true, but the entertainment industry is displacing the active hobby.

 

[flykiller]

Does it still innovate?

sure, but on an individual game basis. the scope of traveller is too broad to allow coherent contiguous innovation, and the necessary depth of any traveller game, either official or house-ruled (every game is an atu), prevents subsequent official innovations from being integrated.

 

[estar]

Does Traveller remain relevant? Will it attract new people? Or in twenty or thirty years, will I be the only one here, surrounded by the posts of Absent Friends?

Barring some black swan event, you won't be the only one still playing Traveller in twenty years. The detailed answer is below.

Originally, the idea of a highly adaptable system was novel. Today there's dozens to choose from.

Yeah, that's not really what I meant to ask. It's not that I'm doubting whether the Traveller brand has any value. I more meant what is Traveller's place in the current RPG market. What does it have to offer that another space game doesn't?

The whole RPG market has fragmented, what portion of it are you measuring against?

The OSR? D&D 5e, Pathfinder, Edge of Empire, Fantasy Age/Dragon Age, Fate, Savage World, etc? Each of these have carved out a successful community within the hobby. There are some common elements but some that are very different.

Let's go with two pieces of hard data we have, the Orr report which measure the number of Roll 20 games being played and the IVC2 which relies on a survey of retailers.

The IVC2 reports tells us in the fall of 2015 the top RPGs are
http://icv2.com/articles/markets/view/33911/top-5-roleplaying-games-fall-2015

Dungeons & Dragons
Pathfinder
Star Wars
Dragon Age
Fantasy Age

The two Age system are new to the list, typically Shadow Run in there as well. If they released a fuller list I suspect it would be at #6.

Looking at Roll20 we get
http://blog.roll20.net/post/143493281735/the-orr-group-industry-report-q1-2016

D&D 5e
Pathfinder
D&D 3.5
D&D 4e
Warhammer
Star Wars
World of Darkness
Shadow Run

Traveller is buried deep into the list and Star without Number (an OSR game with the same focus as Traveller) has nearly 5 times the number of games being run.

When looking at the numbers for Fantasy Grounds
http://www.enworld.org/forum/conten...-5-Savage-Worlds-then-Star-Wars!#.V0XDGzUrJpg

We see the same top RPGs repeated D&D 5e Pathfinder, Star Wars, except that here we see a strong showing by Savage World. Which makes sense since Savage Worlds is moderately popular and they really push Fantasy Grounds as an important part of their publishing strategy.

All of these games are unlike Traveller. The two popular sci-fi games are Star Wars and Shadowrun. While Traveller can handle Star Wars, it never really supported that sub genre of sci-fi. And Shadowrun is pretty much its own thing now having grown from it roots as Cyberpunk with D&D stuff. Warhammer 40k appears on some list but again Traveller never really supported that heav

So I would conclude that the type of sci-fi that Traveller support and what the Third Imperium represent isn't a that popular of a genre. Because of the reduction in the cost of distribution and publication due to the internet and digital technology that OK. Not ideal but not the death knell it would have been in the 80s and early 90s.

But does the setting draw? Does it still appeal? Or is it too old, too dated? I'm a second generation gamer. I picked up Traveller from my dad. But it's been noted many times that the setting is difficult for new players to appreciate.

Traveller family of RPGs and the Third Imperium setting are middle of the road in terms of popularity in the hobby and the industry. It has several strengths which will ensure its survival over the long haul, and several weaknesses that allow newer games to continually to eclipse it.

The strength of Traveller is that many of the core concepts of the RULES are under the OGL in the form of the Mongoose Traveller SRD. Another is that Far Future has a clear fan use policy that pretty generous for non-commercial projects. And more importantly the classic rules are really just that good and have a timeless appeal. As a setting the Third Imperium is very flexible and remains so despite the thousands of hour writing canon for it.

It has a very enthusiastic fanbase that noted for doing quality work. Like this forum, the errata project, the second survey project, the Traveller Map, the wiki, and so forth and so on.

The weakness of Traveller are Mongoose's pricing vs. the quality of their books, that latest official rules, T5, is a huge voluminous ruleset in a hobby that currently prizes stuff that is lite and lean. That Traveller fragmented among multiple editions of rules along with the fact it is split between those who play Traveller for the rules and those who play Traveller for the Third Imperium.

Recently it doesn't help that we have yet another edition of Traveller in the form of Mongoose 2nd edition, and that initial release of the TAS publishing program contracted third party publishing options instead of expanding them.

But the kicker is that pretty much describes Traveller situation since the sunset of classic Traveller and the initial batch of third party publishers. And it has managed survive to this day so I don't see any of the above as an existential threat however irritating they are at the present.

Is there a way to make things better? Sure, if your goal to get at least the popularity of the OSR Sci-fi clones, then what needs to happen is that classic Traveller rules or more of the Mongoose Rules need to be released in a SRD under the OGL. Either one can be used as a foundation for a much lighter and inexpensive version of Traveller. And if it well-written that would generate more interest in the wider hobby.

 

[flykiller]

It has a very enthusiastic fanbase that noted for doing quality work.

heh. my local k-mart has half-life-size starship trooper and darth vader dolls. and they sell ....

 

[mike wightman]

Traveller has been incredibly significant in the history of role-playing games, and has even been acknowledged in other fields (Computer Science thanks to TCS and Popular Entertainment from its probable influence on Firefly). But what does Traveller have to offer in the modern RPG environment?

First thing is to define what you mean by Traveller.

A set of rules for running science fiction roleplaying sessions in a setting of your own creation - using the rules as a baseline but adapting to your needs and the type of adventures you and your players want

or

The Third Imperium Role Playing Game powered by Traveller [insert edition number here]

I do not mean to imply that it is in any sense a bad game, or that people don't or shouldn't enjoy playing it. But I do wonder if Traveller's time has passed? Or, to put it another way, if Traveller is still relevant from an industry standpoint, what does it offer?

That question is so dependant on edition.
Whenever a recommend a sci-fi game comes up on rpg net Traveller is always mentioned - unless dismissed from the start by the OP.
My recommendation is always the FFE CT cd plus the MGT core rulebook for anyone who wants a 'living' game.
I wonder what sales are like for the cd, or the pod version of The Traveller Book by the way.

I've heard it mentioned as far back as TNE that new player retention was a problem for the product line, and in fact one of the motivations behind Virus was to wipe the slate clean, so new players would come in. But did they?

Without the hard numbers it is pure internet conjecture.
GDW dropped Traveller in favour of T2300 for many years, farming out MT to DGP, and the interviews with Gave Nilsen and Frank Chadwick mention that MT lost an awful lot of the player base - hence bringing it back in house and the reboot - it wasn't TNE that started Traveller's decline, it was MT.
T4 bombed, GT was niche, T20 likewise never had anywhere near the sales of CT, MgT has done well enough to warrant continued production of adventures, supplements and now a second edition and a new starter set is in the works...

New versions of Traveller come out with some regularity, but who buys them? Are they the same core of die hards? What would inspire a new player to pick Traveller over the many existing space RPGs in the current market?

We buy them of course.
New blood tends to go for MgT or purchase of electronic versions of CT.

I have to wonder if Marc has ever considered pod version of the original LBB1-3 set.

 

[whulorigan]

I have to wonder if Marc has ever considered pod version of the original LBB1-3 set.

You can get CT:TTB as POD on Drivethru:

http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/80192/CTTTBThe-Traveller-Book

 

[mike wightman]

I've thought for while now that Quick-Start rules and pre-gen characters would draw more people in.

If I had a pound for every thread about a Traveller(light) or quick start...

There was an effort on these boards to promote a CT+ ruleset, and to produce CT lite.

A year or so ago the 13Mann group actually produced a starter edition in draft form which was killed off thanks to a rather silly kickstarter goal - Mongoose are now moving ahead with their own starter edition.

 

[mike wightman]

You can get CT:TTB as POD on Drivethru:

http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/80192/CTTTBThe-Traveller-Book

I know, I have bought three of them for personal use and as presents
Shame you don't get the dust jacket