Some Folks Were Looking Forward To It

[Jeff M. Hopper]

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.

Go look up "Reticulan Parasite" in the old JTAS archives on CD. It'll be a hoot, trust me!

 

[Rhialto the Marvelous]

Even as we get bogged down in details, perhaps we can agree that on balance it's a good thing, rather than a bad thing, that Traveller continues to resonate with a number of scifi tropes, some of which date from the 80s (Alien), some from the 90s (Hamilton's Reality Dysfunction), and some from the 2000s (Firefly/Serenity)?

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by The Shaman:
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.

It seems to me that you're confusing the "feel of the game" with the actual game itself. Yes, Traveller can have that gritty, average joe feel to it, but that's not unique to Traveller (and certainly not all of Traveller is like that either).

It's like claiming that movie where you have a hopeful future where man explores the stars and encounters alien races must be a "Star Trek movie". Or that any space fantasy polarised between Good and Evil where people wave around energy swords must be a "Star Wars movie". They're not.

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

Which part of "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" is inaccurate? OK, maybe they're not necessarily on a ship, and they may not necessarily be trying to make money all the time, but the rest is certainly true. That's what makes Traveller what it is, and not Star Trek or Babylon 5.

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.

I'm puzzled as to how anyone can define Traveller as a system given that it's had six (or seven?) different rules versions that define it - does your definition keep changing with each rule set? Traveller is very clearly "a set of assumptions" that various rules systems have had in common - and that set of assumptions is what makes the game identifiable. And I mentioned many of those assumptions in my definition - the week long jumps, five (specific) major alien races, lots of human races, sprawling interstellar empires, etc.

More to the point, I'm puzzled as to how anyone can say "Traveller is a system" and then compare that to a film or TV series, which don't even have 'systems'. You might as well compare apples with internal combustion engines.

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

Then I guess we disagree completely.

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

No it doesn't, and it baffles me as to why you keep insisting that it's Traveller. You've very clearly got a movie that shares only the lowest common denominators with Traveller - that it's in the future, on a spaceship crewed by humans, with an alien running around - and then you're claiming it's Traveller? Come off it - where are the Aslan or the Vargr then? Are the crew of the Nostromo working for the Imperium? Or the Solomani? Did they drop out of jumpspace after travelling for a week? I don't recall seeing that at all, did you?

There's a few commonalities, that's all - doesn't even remotely make it "Traveller", any more than Conan is "Greyhawk" because it's got a guy swinging around a big sword fighting monsters.

Can you fit Alien into Traveller? Sure, absolutely. You can do the same for Outland. Or Dune. Or Riddick. Or Event Horizon. But are any of the above "Traveller"? Not remotely.

 

[flykiller]

For me, RPGs are a creative outlet.

when you play an rpg, what is it that you create?

Many (most?) people are passive consumers

what is it that they consume when they purchase and play rpg's? what are they looking for?

 

[Jeff M. Hopper]

Originally posted by Malenfant:

Can you fit Alien into Traveller? Sure, absolutely. You can do the same for Outland. Or Dune. Or Riddick. Or Event Horizon. But are any of the above "Traveller"? Not remotely.

Why not?
You already agreed that they fit into Traveller.

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by Jeff M. Hopper:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Malenfant:

Can you fit Alien into Traveller? Sure, absolutely. You can do the same for Outland. Or Dune. Or Riddick. Or Event Horizon. But are any of the above "Traveller"? Not remotely.

Why not?
You already agreed that they fit into Traveller. </font>[/QUOTE]Because it'd be like saying Xena or Krull or Willow or Princess Bride or Conan are "Dungeons & Dragons movies" just because they have swords and magic and monsters in them - they're not, they're just fantasy stories that you could run in D&D.

Just because a movie/TV show/story has swords and magic and monsters in it, doesn't make it D&D. Similarly, just because a movie/TV show/story has spaceships, regular joes, and maybe aliens in it doesn't make it "a Traveller movie".

 

[The Shaman]

Originally posted by Malenfant:
It seems to me that you're confusing the "feel of the game" with the actual game itself. Yes, Traveller can have that gritty, average joe feel to it, but that's not unique to Traveller (and certainly not all of Traveller is like that either).

It's like claiming that movie where you have a hopeful future where man explores the stars and encounters alien races must be a "Star Trek movie". Or that any space fantasy polarised between Good and Evil where people wave around energy swords must be a "Star Wars movie". They're not. . . .Which part of "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" is inaccurate? OK, maybe they're not necessarily on a ship, and they may not necessarily be trying to make money all the time, but the rest is certainly true. That's what makes Traveller what it is, and not Star Trek or Babylon 5.

Wow, I thought I was getting on the merry-go-round and ended up on the tilt-a-whirl by mistake!

Seriously, we're going in faster and faster circles here, so I'm gonna offer an observation, pose a question, and then go hurl my lunch in a trash can and call it a day at the carnival.

First, the observation: In twenty-eight years of playing our little game off and on, you are the first person I've met who doesn't think that the Alien movies don't have a strong Traveller vibe. Really. The only one.

Second, the question: Given that the 'Verse lacks anything remotely resembling ". . .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. . .," how is Firefly/Serenity any more Traveller than the other movies or programs mentioned in this thread?

And with that I'm off to re-inventory my lunch. I just don't do well with travelling in circles.

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by The Shaman:
Wow, I thought I was getting on the merry-go-round and ended up on the tilt-a-whirl by mistake!

I really can't help it if you can't follow the discussion. Though you seem to be going out of your way to pick holes in everything I say.

First, the observation: In twenty-eight years of playing our little game off and on, you are the first person I've met who doesn't think that the Alien movies don't have a strong Traveller vibe. Really. The only one.

Then I guess it pleases me to be the first?

Like I said, one could easily run Alien in Traveller. I agree, the gritty 'feel' is similar... but that doesn't make it "Traveller". "Traveller-like" would be a more accurate description... but it's not Traveller.

As I said in my reply to Jeff: does the fact that a film have heroes and monsters and magic make it a D&D movie? Of course it doesn't. Same applies here - spaceships and average joes and stuff happening to them does not make it Traveller.


I guess I'm just able differentiate between "similar to Traveller" (or "could fit into Traveller") and "it must be Traveller". Traveller is just the game we play - but arguing that Alien, or any other film is "Traveller" when the writers probably haven't even heard of the game is just ridiculous.

how is Firefly/Serenity any more Traveller than the other movies or programs mentioned in this thread?

Because it has more in common with the feel of Traveller than the others. But again, you'll note that I've never said that "Firefly is Traveller". They share a lot of similarities in their feel, but they're not the same.

And with that I'm off to re-inventory my lunch. I just don't do well with travelling in circles.

Maybe if you stopped trying to run rings around everything I said and actually paid attention to what I said instead, you wouldn't have this problem?

 

[Rhialto the Marvelous]

What's not particularly Traveller about Alien is the horror element. "Alien horror" simply isn't one of the first five things that come to mind for Traveller. Traveller can accommodate the occasional horror (Chamax Plague), but it's not a default sub-mood, so to speak. In 2300AD, otoh, it is.

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by Rhialto the Marvelous:
What's not particularly Traveller about Alien is the horror element. "Alien horror" simply isn't one of the first five things that come to mind for Traveller. Traveller can accommodate the occasional horror (Chamax Plague), but it's not a default sub-mood, so to speak. In 2300AD, otoh, it is.

Well again I think that just because it's not a primary focus of the game (unlike say Dark Conspiracy), doesn't mean that horror doesn't have a place or can't be done in Traveller. It's a big universe, not everything is going to be nice and friendly

Though you do remind me of a facepalm moment I had with a old housemate of mine years ago (who I couldn't stand) - we'd just finished watching Event Horizon and he declared it was crap because he declared that "you can't have a film that's both Scifi and Horror, it's got to be one or the other". And that was pretty much as far as his argument went.

 

[Rhialto the Marvelous]

Let me tell you... Event Horizon... I'm not saying IT'SNOT SCIFI DOOD... don't get me wrong. But, man, that was some experience. Shudder. I guess what makes it grating for some people is the emergence of horror in what's normally the most "scientific" genre--that makes it doubly horrific. It's like a safe haven is violated.

I'm trying to think... there must be some horror scifi RPGs out there. All I come up with is that supplement for Fading Suns, The Dark Between the Stars (IIRC). Imagine running an ordinary Traveller game, and then springing something like that on them, out of the blue... not exactly canon, but...

 

[MJD]

About four pages back I mentioned divisions in the Traveller community. Case in point - people arguing about what is and is not Traveller.

I'm not going to put my own ideas forward (but you can buy them from Avenger/Comstar if you like) but this sort of thing pretty much sums up the Traveller community: fragmented, subdivided and not very big to start with.

Rather than all the arguments about which rules set is the real thing or whether Jump Masking is canon or not, I'm more inclined to make a simpler division - those who play Traveller of some kind, and those who don't....

 

[Liam Devlin]

Originally posted by MJD:
About four pages back I mentioned divisions in the Traveller community. Case in point - people arguing about what is and is not Traveller.

I'm not going to put my own ideas forward (but you can buy them from Avenger/Comstar if you like) but this sort of thing pretty much sums up the Traveller community: fragmented, subdivided and not very big to start with.

Rather than all the arguments about which rules set is the real thing or whether Jump Masking is canon or not, I'm more inclined to make a simpler division - those who play Traveller of some kind, and those who don't....

Well said.

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by Rhialto the Marvelous:
[QB] Let me tell you... Event Horizon... I'm not saying IT'SNOT SCIFI DOOD... don't get me wrong. But, man, that was some experience. Shudder. I guess what makes it grating for some people is the emergence of horror in what's normally the most "scientific" genre--that makes it doubly horrific. It's like a safe haven is violated.

I loved it myself. Especially the atmosphere in the ship, with all the weird stuff happening, like the banging on the walls and hallucinations... if you watch the special edition you'll see that all the "hell" scenes took several days to film, just for about 30 seconds of flashes in the movie. Apparently it was a bit unpleasant to do.

I'm trying to think... there must be some horror scifi RPGs out there. All I come up with is that supplement for Fading Suns, The Dark Between the Stars (IIRC).

Well there was Dark Conspiracy, and I think there was something for Space Master? and of course you could do Call of Cthulhu in space. I'm sure there's been others...

Imagine running an ordinary Traveller game, and then springing something like that on them, out of the blue... not exactly canon, but...

Why not do that though? I think it'd actually inject a bit of life into the OTU if there were more horror... shows that despite colonising pretty much every system they can find, there are still things that are unknown lurking out there than can do us harm. And the less explanation about that side of things, the better.

You could do Event Horizon as a ship coming out of Jump with nobody on board, despite having a full crew and passengers when it left a week ago. But somehow, it brought something back with it. Why? A weird misjump maybe, sending it somewhere it shouldn't have gone? Who knows. What matters is that the ship is trying to take people back, and the PCs are the ones that answer the siren call of its distress signal...

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by MJD:
About four pages back I mentioned divisions in the Traveller community. Case in point - people arguing about what is and is not Traveller.

Well that's the thing isn't it - how the heck is it that after 30 years people still can't agree on what Traveller even is?!

 

[Rhialto the Marvelous]

Originally posted by Malenfant:

You could do Event Horizon as a ship coming out of Jump with nobody on board, despite having a full crew and passengers when it left a week ago. But somehow, it brought something back with it. Why? A weird misjump maybe, sending it somewhere it shouldn't have gone? Who knows. What matters is that the ship is trying to take people back, and the PCs are the ones that answer the siren call of its distress signal...

Good one. You could play that as a one-off and emerge with your "scientific" Trav universe still intact--the ship jumped in from very VERY far away, and presumably evaporates in some cataclysm at the end of the adventure. I'll be making a note of that.

Dark Conspiracy I have never read or played. There's a CoC module we played that takes our 1920s heroes through a gate onto a secret British space station on the moon. Not bad. And there actually is a whole CoC in Space supplement, or at least in was planned... I've always been meaning to look into that.

 

[Rhialto the Marvelous]

Originally posted by Malenfant:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by MJD:
About four pages back I mentioned divisions in the Traveller community. Case in point - people arguing about what is and is not Traveller.

Well that's the thing isn't it - how the heck is it that after 30 years people still can't agree on what Traveller even is?! </font>[/QUOTE]That may well be a feature, not a bug. Lots of possible angles = lots of fans. What's really fascinating is that few people call Traveller incoherent. They have different views of precisely WHAT it is that makes it coherent (i.e., what its core ingredients are), but they don't doubt that it is that at all. They just want to get rid of incoherences to make it (in their view) *more* coherent.

Blue Planet, now there's a coherent game. Everyone can agree on what Blue Planet is. But so few people play it.

 

[flykiller]

About four pages back I mentioned divisions in the Traveller community. Case in point - people arguing about what is and is not Traveller.

(laugh) like I said, it's inevitable.

I'm more inclined to make a simpler division - those who play Traveller of some kind, and those who don't....

can you make that division without saying what traveller is? seems to me that if you're going to sell something you have to be able to say what it is that you're selling.

'least, to a new customer. maybe not to us.

That may well be a feature

play to it as a strength?

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by Rhialto the Marvelous:
That may well be a feature, not a bug.

I can't really see anything that causes so much confusion as a good thing.

I mean, some people claim Traveller is the system (despite it having had many different systems over its lifetime), some people claim it's the OTU setting itself, some people claim it's a set of assumptions (which ones depend largely on who you talk to, but most share a common core)...

I think a large part of the confusion stems from the fact that it started off as a generic SF game in which you could run a wide range of things (well, so long as they stuck to the general assumptions of the game) - the OTU setting came later on.

Blue Planet, now there's a coherent game. Everyone can agree on what Blue Planet is. But so few people play it.

Well, since you can put Poseidon in a Traveller game very easily (TL 9 waterworld, woo!), some people say that this actually means it's a Traveller game!

 

[Jeff M. Hopper]

The fuzzy nature of Traveller may be what has ensured its longevity. As a rules system, Traveller is a multi-tool capable of working with minor tweaks in a myriad of settings. So when a popular movie, TV show, anime, comic book, or book comes out whose setting people want to play in - then Traveller gets tweaked and used for that. If Traveller were more defined and bound by its rules, then it wouldn't be able to encapsulate different settings as well as it does.