Some Folks Were Looking Forward To It

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by The Shaman:
[QB]In any case, what I think is a mistake is pointing at something in popular fiction, whether it's a book or a movie or a television series, and saying that if it succeeds or fails, then the same will be true of a roleplaying game that is similar to or even licensed from that book, film, or series. The Star Wars movie franchise is the most commercially successful in the history of cinema, but the SWRPG was never the most popular roleplaying game by a long shot, in either its d6 or d20 incarnations - conversely the Dungeons and Dragons movie flopped mightily, and D&D is still the RPG leader by a healthy margin.

That's true, but now I think you're using the dodgy logic - nobody's saying that just because X film is the most popular or unpopular movie of all time, the RPG must also be the most popular or unpopular RPG of all time too. The Star Wars RPGs weren't the biggest ones around, but they were still popular nonetheless. And the D&D film came after the RPG, not before - and it flopped because it sucked enormously.

Aliens was a certainly a good film but to be honest it's a generic scifi movie and not particularly Travelleresque at all, so it's not really fair to point at that and say "oo! it's Traveller!". Cowboy Bebop has a few Travellerish elements (namely, it follows the exploits of a motley crew on a ship) but again is pretty distant from Traveller itself. I think Firefly was a lot closer than either of those to the feel of Traveller (even if the setting was totally different, so it's a much more valid comparison.

I'm sure there must be a fair bit of overlap between those who like Firefly (who are generally of the right demographic to be into RPGs) and those who like Traveller. So if you want to sell Traveller to a new generation, surely the best approach to get their attention is to say "hey, you can do Firefly stuff in this game!"

 

[Rhialto the Marvelous]

Originally posted by Malenfant:
So if you want to sell Traveller to a new generation, surely the best approach to get their attention is to say "hey, you can do Firefly stuff in this game!"

Spot on.

 

[Border Reiver]

Temporary Thread Hijack

Does anyone remember when one of Vampire the Masquerade's creators slagged off players of all other game systems for being nerds, claiming that Vampire players were cooler, more intelligent, dress better and were all round better company?

At the time I looked at those that played Vampire, Mage and Werewolf at my local club and saw that they weren't that cool but were very self obsessed and miserable about nothing in particular. So at that point I stopped playing.

Back on thread, the first edition Vampire lists a number of inspirations for the game including Anne Rice, Tony Scott's The Hunger and Kathryn Bigelow's Near Dark. I think many player of the game that hadn't read or seen these inspirations sought them out.

 

[flykiller]

why do people play rpg's at all?

answer that, and there's your guide on what to do.

 

[far-trader]

Originally posted by Rhialto the Marvelous:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Malenfant:
So if you want to sell Traveller to a new generation, surely the best approach to get their attention is to say "hey, you can do Firefly stuff in this game!"

Spot on. </font>[/QUOTE]Except that movies (and novels) are passive while RPGs are active. Even console games are largely passive. What I think Shaman is saying, at least as it agrees with what I feel, is that the type of person who will enjoy passive (insert genre of type) such as in a movie, novel or console game is not necessarily the type of person who will be attracted to the active participation inherent in an RPG. Not as an "actor" (player) or "director" (referee). So using the popularity of one to gauge potential interest in the other is largely flawed.

 

[The Shaman]

Originally posted by Malenfant:
That's true, but now I think you're using the dodgy logic - nobody's saying that just because X film is the most popular or unpopular movie of all time, the RPG must also be the most popular or unpopular RPG of all time too.

I'm saying that, contrary to what you suggested upthread, success or failure in one medium doesn't necessarily translate to the other.

Originally posted by Malenfant:
Aliens was a certainly a good film but to be honest it's a generic scifi movie and not particularly Travelleresque at all, so it's not really fair to point at that and say "oo! it's Traveller!".

Wow, did we see the same movies?!?

The whole quadrology feels very much like a series of Traveller adventures to me.

Originally posted by Malenfant:Cowboy Bebop has a few Travellerish elements (namely, it follows the exploits of a motley crew on a ship) but again is pretty distant from Traveller itself.

Again, I disagree, as would two of the players in our group who, when I explained the premise of Traveller without recourse to movie examples, said, "Like Cowboy Bebop?"

Originally posted by Malenfant:
I think Firefly was a lot closer than either of those to the feel of Traveller (even if the setting was totally different, so it's a much more valid comparison.

That's clearly a matter of personal taste, but I do agree that Firefly feels like Traveller as well.

Originally posted by Malenfant:
I'm sure there must be a fair bit of overlap between those who like Firefly (who are generally of the right demographic to be into RPGs) and those who like Traveller. So if you want to sell Traveller to a new generation, surely the best approach to get their attention is to say "hey, you can do Firefly stuff in this game!"

It's certainly one approach, and one if I were MWM I would probably incorporate as part of a wider approach to influences and sources, but I don't know that it's "surely the best approach" absent some hard marketing data on the relationship between RPGs and genre fiction. I think perhaps that's putting too many eggs in one basket.

 

[far-trader]

Originally posted by flykiller:
why do people play rpg's at all?

I've always figured it was the Peter Pan, Walter Mitty, and such in us. WE are the ones who never grew up and stopped playing Make-Believe but haven't managed (largely) to make it into the careers of Acting and/or Directing and/or Writing, so we play our games

Originally posted by flykiller:
answer that, and there's your guide on what to do.

Like most things, answering the question is not the hard part, applying that answer to the problem at hand is the tricky bit.

 

[The Shaman]

Originally posted by far-trader:
What I think Shaman is saying, at least as it agrees with what I feel, is that the type of person who will enjoy passive (insert genre of type) such as in a movie, novel or console game is not necessarily the type of person who will be attracted to the active participation inherent in an RPG. Not as an "actor" (player) or "director" (referee). So using the popularity of one to gauge potential interest in the other is largely flawed.

Proof that I really need an editor when I post - thanks for making sense of what I was trying to write.

 

[The Shaman]

Originally posted by Border Reiver:
Back on thread, the first edition Vampire lists a number of inspirations for the game including Anne Rice, Tony Scott's The Hunger and Kathryn Bigelow's Near Dark. I think many player of the game that hadn't read or seen these inspirations sought them out.

Was the opposite true? Did people who read the books or saw the movies gravitate toward the game, in your experience?

 

[Klaus]

A point about ratings, and why sf tv is seen to tank.

The way networks gather ratings is widely inaccurate and will always boost the apparent appeal of mainstream family type shows, meanwhile under representing more niche or minority shows.

It works by volunteer households having a spybox on top of the telly that monitors both how many people are in the room and what is being watched. In the UK it works out as 4500 viewers per person in such a household in the room with the box.

So you can see how crude a measure it is. The spybox can't tell whether someone's actually watching telly, or reading with the tv on in the background, or just talking over it. It doesn't record whether a household member wants to watch something on another telly in the house.

And, in the case of cult tv style shows, how likely is it the typical fan would want the tv networks monitoring their viewing habits? How many on COTI here would allow that?

Despite this tv execs treat the ratings figures like the word of god.

So it is probably the case that sf tv is alot more popular than it seems, and it's just the system that's skewed against it.

Sorry to meander off topic there, guys, just thought it was worth mentioning here.

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by The Shaman:
Wow, did we see the same movies?!?

The whole quadrology feels very much like a series of Traveller adventures to me.

Doesn't look remotely like Traveller to me.

I think one problem is that some people watch or read something and think "oo! people doing stuff on a ship!" and then go "see, it must be Traveller". It's not though - Traveller doesn't have a monopoly on the concept of "a bunch of people on a ship do stuff". It doesn't even have a monopoly on "a bunch of people on a ship doing stuff to earn money" either really.

Now, you can obviously point to it and say "it's scifi!". But to be Traveller specifically, I'd say it has to be "a bunch of people doing stuff on a ship to make money in a sprawling interstellar empire consisting of lots of human races, five major alien races and lots of minor ones and it takes a week to get to the next system". Because that's pretty much what makes Traveller unique and identifiable.

The fact that you could run a movie plot like Alien in the OTU doesn't really mean much. Yes, the OTU is so huge and varied that you probably could run Alien in it, but that really doesn't make Alien specifically a 'Traveller movie' - it's just something that happens to be able fit into it without much modification.

Again, I disagree, as would two of the players in our group who, when I explained the premise of Traveller without recourse to movie examples, said, "Like Cowboy Bebop?"

I'd be curious to know exactly how you explained it to them then. Bebop is about a misfit crew of bounty hunters trying to earn a living hopping around the solar system via hyperspace gates and chasing crooks. Traveller can be about bounty hunting too, but they're trying to earn a living hoping around a very large volume of space with 10,000 different planetary systems.

They're similar enough in concept that you can describe it as "guys in ships earning money doing stuff", but the settings themselves are very different.

 

[flykiller]

applying that answer to the problem at hand is the tricky bit.

only if the answer is unclear or undeveloped. try forgetting the problem at hand for a minute.

saying that people play rpg's out of "make believe" doesn't quite go far enough. "make believe" in what? being a milkmaid? living as a grocery clerk? commanding a merc company?

walter mitty is pretty good. when he fantasizes, what is he trying to do?

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by flykiller:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />[qb]applying that answer to the problem at hand is the tricky bit.

only if the answer is unclear or undeveloped. try forgetting the problem at hand for a minute.</font>[/QUOTE]We could undoubtedly waste time arguing about this, but from this comment it sounds like you think you already have an answer - so why don't you just tell us why you think people play RPGs?

Personally, I think we play RPGs because (a) it's a good excuse to hang out with friends, (b) because we like exercising our imaginations, (c) because it's an effective, fun way to escape from the mundanities of real life, (d) because it gives us a way to make a difference and be a hero somewhere, and/or (e) because we can explore sides of ourselves or of human nature in a safe, controlled environment. All of the above apply probably, to various extents for different people.

 

[Stainless]

Originally posted by far-trader:
I've always figured it was the Peter Pan, Walter Mitty, and such in us. WE are the ones who never grew up and stopped playing Make-Believe but haven't managed (largely) to make it into the careers of Acting and/or Directing and/or Writing, so we play our games

I think that's possibly viewing it in the pejorative. "Make-believe" is also the stock in trade of novelists, and when they do it well, it's called Art, and is looked up to. For me, RPGs are a creative outlet. You can actually create, be you player or GM. Because it's largely a verbal medium, it's a lot harder to create something, so I liken it more towards poetry or black-and-white visual art. It's inherently more difficult to do. OK, RPGing is for personal consumption, but there's highbrow justifications of that. Keats once stated he would have written poetry whether it was published or not, the creative urge was simply undeniable within him.

As for more popular involvement in RPGs, there's in RPGs requires effort because it involves creation. Many (most?) people are passive consumers whose minds do not go easily towards something that requires effort. But I think I've now lost the thread.....

 

[Roger Calver]

What was the thread about again ?, was it something to do with T5

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by Stainless:
As for more popular involvement in RPGs, there's in RPGs requires effort because it involves creation. Many (most?) people are passive consumers whose minds do not go easily towards something that requires effort. But I think I've now lost the thread..... [/QB]

I think that's a little unfair... while it's probably true that peoples' attention span has got shorter in recent years I think the real problem is that there's just not enough time to do it anymore, at least for our generation - most of us have fulltime jobs and families now, we're not students who can afford to kill time every evening of the week with beer and RPGs.

And also, there's a lot of readymade entertainment out there now that wasn't around in the 70s and 80s (or at least not to the same extent) - sure, you could play D&D on a tabletop and spend hours writing your character and preparing plots etc and doing combats, but why do that when you can get a computer game that does the exact same thing for you (and I mean that - the engine for the Star Wars KotR games was literally a virtual D20 game. You could even get it to show you the dice rolls). Less prep time means more playing time which means you get into the fun part faster.


So I don't think it's because "people's minds do not go easily to something that requires effort" - that may be part of it sure, but I think it's more that RPGs are now competing against other distractions that are more persuasive and that weren't there when the industry first started.

 

[far-trader]

Originally posted by Stainless:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by far-trader:
I've always figured it was the Peter Pan, Walter Mitty, and such in us. WE are the ones who never grew up and stopped playing Make-Believe but haven't managed (largely) to make it into the careers of Acting and/or Directing and/or Writing, so we play our games

I think that's possibly viewing it in the pejorative.</font>[/QUOTE]Not at all what I meant. Not quite sure where you can see that in my post, but to be clear I don't see any of what I said meant in a belittling way.

It looks to me from your post like we're on the same page

Up to and including losing the thread but that's par for the course

 

[far-trader]

Originally posted by RogerCalver:
What was the thread about again ?, was it something to do with T5

Mebbe

What's your point? You trying to get this back on topic?!

 

[Malenfant]

Given that most of the comments in the link in the OP were talking about D&D and not Traveller, I think there's a precedent to wander off topic here .

 

[The Shaman]

Originally posted by Malenfant:
I think one problem is that some people watch or read something and think "oo! people doing stuff on a ship!" and then go "see, it must be Traveller". It's not though - Traveller doesn't have a monopoly on the concept of "a bunch of people on a ship do stuff". It doesn't even have a monopoly on "a bunch of people on a ship doing stuff to earn money" either really.

"Bunch of people on a ship do stuff" could be anything from Star Trek to Star Wars to Flash Gordon to Silent Running - of those, the only way that I would compare to Traveller is the last.

The quadrology shares the gritty, work-a-day look and feel with the Traveller I know and enjoy, of merchants and salvors and soldiers and colonists and scientists and pirates, of technology that's only slightly more advanced than that with which we are familiar, of travel in space that is long and rather dull, when it's not brutally murderous, that is.

Originally posted by Malenfant:
Now, you can obviously point to it and say "it's scifi!".

I could, but I didn't, and I don't.

Originally posted by Malenfant:
But to be Traveller specifically, I'd say it has to be "a bunch of people doing stuff on a ship to make money in a sprawling interstellar empire consisting of lots of human races, five major alien races and lots of minor ones and it takes a week to get to the next system". Because that's pretty much what makes Traveller unique and identifiable.

For someone so critical of the canon OTU, it's interesting that you identify Traveller so strongly in those terms.

For me, Traveller is both a setting, one which can be played with a variety of systems, and a system, one which can be used to create a variety of settings. Since the OTU flows from some critical assumptions made by the system, such as the way jump drives work, the absence of magitech, and so on, I tend to think of the system as Traveller first, not the setting.

With that in mind, I think your definition of Traveller is far too narrow and specific.

Even if we accept that definition for a moment, however, you also take a more constrained view of what can be done in the OTU than I do - over the years we've run the gamut of trading, warfare, exploration, and noble intrigue in the OTU, and only the first one involved "making money" as a primary goal.

Again, we must disagree on what Traveller "is."

Originally posted by Malenfant:
The fact that you could run a movie plot like Alien in the OTU doesn't really mean much. Yes, the OTU is so huge and varied that you probably could run Alien in it, but that really doesn't make Alien specifically a 'Traveller movie' - it's just something that happens to be able fit into it without much modification.

It happens to fit in without much modification, but it doesn't look anything remotely like Traveller to you?

Ouch, there goes that whiplash again!

Originally posted by Malenfant:
I'd be curious to know exactly how you explained it to them then. Bebop is about a misfit crew of bounty hunters trying to earn a living hopping around the solar system via hyperspace gates and chasing crooks. Traveller can be about bounty hunting too, but they're trying to earn a living hoping around a very large volume of space with 10,000 different planetary systems.

They're similar enough in concept that you can describe it as "guys in ships earning money doing stuff", but the settings themselves are very different.

If you assume the setting, and specifically the OTU, is Traveller, as you do, I can see how you might get stuck at this conclusion.