Real World and Traveller

[creativehum]

Everyone has their own level of suspension of disbelief so you have to adjust the rules so they fit your personal level.

Without doubt.

What one person gets fixated on is another person's hand wave. I'm sure I could gather up five MIT grads for a game of Traveller -- and have the whole thing come to a halt after character creation as soon as they realized Jump Drives didn't satisfy their sense of "making sense" and spent months trying to design and justify an interstellar empire. (They might never get around to playing and simply set up shop on a chat board endlessly reworking the logic of the fictional technology with the infinite and improbable goal of of J Drive technology making sense -- that is, actually working!)

Moreover: If I play Traveller with a group of anthropologists, or a group of histories, or a group of guys from a government think tank on international relations, what each one gets bumped on is going to be different. What the focus of play will be about will be different. What needs to be re-worked and "fixed" and what can be hand-waved will be different.

At what point does it matter that a book of 150 or so pages designed to get humans into the driver seat of adventure fiction does not map 1:1 to reality?

I'm not being flippant at all. It's an incredibly valuable question. Because the needs of an RPG may not be the needs of a simulation of the universe as we know it. And then the question becomes, knowing it will never be a 1:1 map of reality, what can we, knowing we're here to play an RPG and not make a in-our-head simulation of the universe, accept and let go of to have the fun.

(This post assumes the point of Traveller is to play an RPG at the level of detail it establishes for convenience of play. I understand there is another hobby of Traveller, which assumes creating a simulation of an interstellar society with actual RPG play either not being a concern or a "If I ever get around to it" concern. I think the two goals often work at odds to each other. Others obviously don't believe that. But I wanted to be clear as to where I was coming from.)

 

[salochin999]

...

What one person gets fixated on is another person's hand wave

....

I think that's the core and it's more a problem for Traveller because it seems the people attracted to Traveller are on average more inclined to want gritty - but as you say both the degree of grit and the particular bits of the game they want to be gritty varies with each person.

 

[robject]

First to the OP

how is Traveller a "science fiction role-playing game", instead of a "science fantasy role-playing game" similar to say the old TSR Metamorphosis Alpha?

I think by definition, "science fiction" is a subset of fantasy. Traveller and Gamma World, Star*Drive, et al, are in the same genre.

Traveller has a degree more consistency in its use of some science-based concepts, perhaps. But Traveller is not a science text (even though it has some math in it). It's not realistic, but it generally uses scientific concepts in a reasonable way. It appeals to science in general, in a way that other games typically do not.

I like it better than the other SF games because of that use of science concepts.


Now to the current bunny-trail:

I think that's the core and it's more a problem for Traveller because it seems the people attracted to Traveller are on average more inclined to want gritty - but as you say both the degree of grit and the particular bits of the game they want to be gritty varies with each person.

People who like RPGs are a varied bunch, as we all know by now. As with all other RPGs, you have to find a group of people who like each other well enough and are in it for enjoyment.

Each person can have a different personal 'kick', but everyone has to be able to get along and have some basic social skills.

 

[Enoff]

The following weapons all cause 3D6 of damage, regardless of range.

Automatic Pistol: A 9mm caliber weapon firing a 10 gram/154 grain bullet at 400 meters/1312 feet per second. I am not using 500 meters per second, as that velocity is hard to achieve in an automatic pistol, and the recoil for the average shooter would be prohibitive. The above load is a bit hotter than the standard 9mm Parabellum at a 7.5 gram/115 grain bullet at 347 meters per second/1140 feet per second. The muzzle energy of the Traveller automatic pistol would be about 600 foot pounds, and is on par with a good .357 Magnum load.

Carbine: A 6mm caliber weapon firing a 5 gram/87 grain bullet at 900 meters/2952 feet per second. These ballistics are pretty close to the .250 Savage round, of an 87 grain bullet at 3020 feet per second for a 6.35mm round. The muzzle energy of a .250 Savage is 1780 foot pounds and it is an excellent cartridge for hunting up to and including deer. Similar rifles, in the hands of expert shots, firing round nose full-jacketed bullets, have been used successfully on brain shots at elephants.

Rifle: A 7mm caliber weapon firing a 10 gram/154 grain bullet at 900 meters/2952 feet per second. A .30-06, firing a 150 grain bullet at 2970 feet per second, has a muzzle energy of 2930 foot pounds. The .30-06 round has more energy at 200 yards than does the .250 Savage at the muzzle.

All data on ammunition is taken from Cartridges of the World, by Frank C. Barnes, 3rd Edition. This book is a standard reference work on small arm cartridge data and performance.

As stated, all of the above weapons have the same damage rating of 3D6, regardless of range. Cloth body armor also gives the same hit reduction to all three weapons.

I was being flippant in my post, having worked all day and had a couple glasses of wine. I had meant to delete the post in the morning but you beat me to it by answering. I guess the gist of my meaning was that there is no way you are going to recreate true reality with a pen and paper game and why would you want to? Personal if I was shot even one time I would probably be out of any action unless some heroic effort spurred me on.

 

[rancke]

I think by definition, "science fiction" is a subset of fantasy.

False. Science fiction is characterized by one set of tropes; Fantasy is characterized by another set of tropes. The two sets overlap to a degree, so that you have tropes that are SF but not F, tropes that are F but not SF, and tropes that are both SF and F.

If you mix SF-only tropes with F-only tropes, you get Science Fantasy.

Traveller has a degree more consistency in its use of some science-based concepts, perhaps. But Traveller is not a science text (even though it has some math in it). It's not realistic, but it generally uses scientific concepts in a reasonable way. It appeals to science in general, in a way that other games typically do not.

And that's what make it Science Fiction. Fantasy-only tropes are not part of Traveller.

I like it better than the other SF games because of that use of science concepts.

All SF games use science. If they don't, they're not SF.


Hans

 

[Blue Ghost]

Legislated.

Because if one of your players dobs you in for not following canon, a Game Police SWAT team will come round at 02:00am and no-knock raid your ass

The way I see it, as a GM you own your own game at your own table and you are responsible for the rules you use, the setting you present and the situations you put in front of your players. Nobody else, just you. Published rules can be a powerful tool in your kit, and we reasonably have high expectations as customers that they will do what they say on the tin, but at the end of the day they're just tools.

Tabletop pencil-and-paper RPGs are fundamentally different from most board games and card games. The printed rules and setting information are a starting point, they're a point of reference from which each game will inevitably diverge, if they even all actually start from that point in the first place. They're never truly complete, never totaly consistent, and always open-ended.

Simon Hibbs

I have an adventure all ready to go to Drivethru, I just need to tweak it some to fit with Foreven.

I was angry that there wasn't more "sci-fi" in this "sci-fi" RP game, but now I just toss my hands up in the air and say "Whatever." To me sci-fi isn't just about exploring yourself and social groups, but really pitting people against the unknown; i.e. perhaps in situations where they really shouldn't be. And by that I don't mean in the the bad part of town, but really in some place where physical laws don't apply.

And yet Traveller tries to be grounded, and yet we have jump drive, which, according to DGP, uses a silly hydrogen bubble around the ship to get you into jump space. We have grav tech and grav science, but no Mechas. We have "The Ancients", and grandfather's pocket universe, but no time travel nor alternate dimensions or parallel universes. We have the Chamax plague, but no "Doomsday Machine" (which, given the tech levels involved, would wipe out any CT player group with one casual shot).

Like I've said in the past, I've often wondered when more science-fictiony adventures would be coming to Traveller, as opposed to me having to make stuff up for the players. But, I guess it's my bane to make stuff up for players. Oh well.

Traveller players (thank goodness) tend to be more well grounded, as opposed to your hack-n-slash dungeon crawlers types. But at some point you have to let the players enjoy the world their playing in, otherwise you might as well be playing cops and robbers in space, as opposed to "adventuring".

Realism? I don't know. What do you consider real for the game? What translates as a car driving skill of 1 into the Traveller game play?

 

[rancke]

The following weapons all cause 3D6 of damage, regardless of range.

All game rules simplify reality and introduce inaccuracies. It's just a question of which inaccuracies you're willing to put up with.

For instance, I'm quite unhappy with the fact that some people can't possibly be killed by a single shot from any weapon doing less than 7D+3 damage. Granted, the number of people with 15 in all three physical stats are very limited, but a 3D weapon can't even kill¹ the average 7/7/7 person. So I've changed the damage rules I use.

¹ Or as I prefer to think of it, mortally wound².

² "Is there an ultra-tech doctor in the house?!?" ​

​

Hans