Some Folks Were Looking Forward To It

[Jeffr0]

Originally posted by flykiller:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />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.

</font>[/QUOTE]MJD has written a nice spread of old school LBB style material with a focus on backward compatability to CT and usefulness to a campaign. With a ship pdf, an adventure pdf, and a pdf covering part of a Spinward Marches subsector, it looks like I've got what I need to run a real game. I actually bought these instead of the CT CD-Rom because, at the moment, I value accessability/usability over completeness/depth/scope.

 

[Hyphen]

Dear Folks -

Originally posted by Jeff M. Hopper:
The fuzzy nature of Traveller may be what has ensured its longevity.

Agree with Jeff's whole post. My understanding is that when Marc Miller pitched the whole s-f ruleset thing to GDW, it was precisely that: a ruleset alone, non-specific to any one "universe" or "setting", that you could use to play any number of backgrounds with.

You want alien monsters? Sure. Laser swords? Come up with some house rules, add them in, and go for it. Conspiracies? Merchants? Mercs? Go for your life.

The original LBB's didn't have a setting. The whole "Imperium thing" came later.

FWIW, there were a couple of "horror" scenarios published for Traveller. An early one is called Death Station - ring any bells? JTAS and Challenge magazines included a number of nasty surprises. There was the noble who lived in a castle in a remote, snowy part of the world - and who was transporting blood products back home. There was the small town were everyone disappeared into the snow. One involved a nasty "Alien" who ripped apart a scientific research party. And there's the one I threw at my players was the Lorens Ecliptic, mis-jumped and stuck forever in jumpspace...

 

[Malenfant]

Well if the "generic sf-ruleset" thing really is what defines Traveller, what's Traveller got to set it apart from GURPS Space or Star Hero, other than the fact that it was the first of its kind? And more importantly (yanking it back vaguely onto the original topic) is T5 going to keep that property of the game?

I mean, sure, you can run a wide variety of stories in Traveller. I'm sure you could run a low-tech game set entirely on a TL 2 planet too if you wanted. But you could do that with any of the other generic rulesets I mentioned too. Why use Traveller?

 

[Jeffr0]

I use Traveller because of the useful tools it provides: UWP's, subsector maps, easy/quick life-path char gen. Traveller's the only game, IMHO, to successfully give the players a large swath of star systems to roam across... and the setting parameters are rigged to make this more or less interesting and playable. The official setting is supported with a good range of background, adventures and deckplans. As a bonus, there's a wargaming element to the tradition that gives a nice "hard" supporting framework to the background.

 

[flykiller]

I value accessability/usability over completeness/depth/scope.

I use Traveller because of the useful tools it provides: UWP's, subsector maps, easy/quick life-path char gen. Traveller's the only game, IMHO, to successfully give the players a large swath of star systems to roam across... and the setting parameters are rigged to make this more or less interesting and playable. The official setting is supported with a good range of background, adventures and deckplans. As a bonus, there's a wargaming element to the tradition that gives a nice "hard" supporting framework to the background.

these two statements just don't go together. sure, traveller is flexible - so is GURPS, x20, and hey I've even heard of people using BESM to support sci-fi games. surely traveller is more than just a rule-set.

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by Jeffr0:
[QB] I use Traveller because of the useful tools it provides: UWP's, subsector maps, easy/quick life-path char gen.

OK... but the rest of what you say isn't really relevant for using Traveller as a generic scifi toolkit.

Traveller gives you some options, but not all of them. GURPS Space and Star Hero give you ALL of the options for any sf campaign you want to run. Unless you have FF&S, Traveller limits you to having jump drives that take a week to get from A to B, provides no info on alternative interstellar governments, or different technologies (where's the nanotech and biotech?). GURPS Space and Star Hero make no such inherent assumptions out of the box - they really do give you a blank canvas to work on, whereas with Traveller you're already given an outline and can basically only paint by numbers to fill it.

I'd argue that if you wanted a system to create any SF background, there are much better tools to use than Traveller today.

A related question is that if T5 is specifically going to be more generic than CT was (is it?), then why should anyone use that instead of the established sf-toolkits that already exist that are described above?

 

[Jeffr0]

OK... but the rest of what you say isn't really relevant for using Traveller as a generic scifi toolkit.

I'm not arguing; you seem to be trying to create a debate where there isn't one.

I simply answered the question of why I use Traveller and, before that, why I purchased MJD's pdf's. Can you answer why you use Traveller?

 

[ravells]

Originally posted by Malenfant:

I mean, sure, you can run a wide variety of stories in Traveller. I'm sure you could run a low-tech game set entirely on a TL 2 planet too if you wanted. But you could do that with any of the other generic rulesets I mentioned too. Why use Traveller?

Why not use Traveller? Sure there are lots of other systems out there but if you're comfortable with the traveller mechanic why not go with what you know rather than buy a new system to learn? If there's stuff not present in Traveller that you want to include(e.g. nanotech) you can always write house-rules for it if you want.

Ravs

 

[The Shaman]

Originally posted by Malenfant:
I really can't help it if you can't follow the discussion.

I can follow it just fine, thanks for asking. I've exceeded my talking-in-circles limit, that's all.

Originally posted by 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.

Yes. It makes a few core assumptions about society, technology, and the nature of interstellar travel, and says, "Go to work." The OTU is one expression of those core assumptions, but one can create a different setting with those same assumptions just as readily.

My first experiences with Traveller often took place in friends' homebrewed universes. We went back and forth between adventures set in the nascent OTU and these user-created settings, rather like playing AD&D in Greyhawk with one dungeon master and in a homebrew setting with another.

It's a shame that there aren't more published ATU settings out there. I gather from looking at the boards here that QLI was looking at an Honor Harrington setting for T20? I'd like to see more of that sort of thing - if I had anything resembling the time, making an ATU based on C.J. Cherryh's Alliance-Union universe could be fun. . .

 

[The Shaman]

Originally posted by Malenfant:
But you could do that with any of the other generic rulesets I mentioned too. Why use Traveller?

I like using Traveller as a generic rules system because I like the life-path chargen system and the ease of creating new careers, because the simplicity of the core mechanic makes it easy to tweak, because I like the 2d6 approach to randomization, because it gives me an array of tools that other systems don't, and because I like the surprise on other gamers' faces when I roll out a Call of Cthulhu campaign using Traveller.

 

[Jeffr0]

Traveller is generic enough to accomadate a wide range of playing styles.

The core rules systems are transparent enough that its easy to use them to construct your own variant setting to get the exact thing you're looking for.

The "core assumptions" of Traveller take a large burden of the referee: with GURPS space, coming up with these is your first order of business. Also, a lot of smart people have thought about the implications of these assumptions. You don't have that benefit if you strike out on your own.

Traveller hits the sweet spot, in my mind. It falls short of being totally generic, but it is flexible. It's various subsystems (that range from ship combat to trade rules) address gaming needs that a more generic approach cannot.

Traveller is great! We love Traveller!

 

[Rhialto the Marvelous]

Originally posted by Malenfant:
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!

Ah but how can you say something's a Traveller game if you don't know what Traveller IS?

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by Jeffr0:
[QB] </font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />OK... but the rest of what you say isn't really relevant for using Traveller as a generic scifi toolkit.

I'm not arguing; you seem to be trying to create a debate where there isn't one.</font>[/QUOTE]Well it's a discussion board, what are we supposed to do if not debate?

I'm not arguing either though, I'm just trying to see if anyone has an answer to the question (which I know I've posed many times before, and never really got a good answer to).

I simply answered the question of why I use Traveller and, before that, why I purchased MJD's pdf's. Can you answer why you use Traveller?

I don't even know if I can say that I use any Traveller material for much as it is out of the box, but I definitely use it as a toolkit rather than as a setting. I use FF&S because it's a brilliant summary of a wide range of technologies that you can fit into anything. I use the worldgen system as a base for the realistic stuff I do because at its core it's an elegant way to provide information. Beyond that I've played MT and GT a few times, adopted the ship combat from TNE for my own sf games, and tried character and ship design from CT and MT and TNE (hated playing CT though).

So, I use certain elements of Traveller that lend themselves to generic sf design - beyond that, I don't really use it for anything else. (course, now I'm going to get people screaming about how I shouldn't be talking about it if I don't actively play it, but I don't see why how much one plays any game should be used to determine the validity of anything that one says about it).

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by The Shaman:
It's a shame that there aren't more published ATU settings out there. I gather from looking at the boards here that QLI was looking at an Honor Harrington setting for T20? I'd like to see more of that sort of thing - if I had anything resembling the time, making an ATU based on C.J. Cherryh's Alliance-Union universe could be fun. . . [/QB]

That's the insane thing about all this - if Traveller really is at its heart a generic sf toolkit then why on earth doesn't Marc allow people to publish their own sf settings using Traveller rules? Why does he insist that everything must fit into the OTU?

Heck, why not allow ATUs? If someone wants to publish a realistic Traveller universe, then let them! Or if someone wants to publish a Traveller universe where history turned out differently then why not let them? Obviously one has to ensure that the product is high quality, but otherwise the sky should be the limit. I know there's GT, but why is that the only one?

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by Jeffr0:
The "core assumptions" of Traveller take a large burden of the referee: with GURPS space, coming up with these is your first order of business. Also, a lot of smart people have thought about the implications of these assumptions. You don't have that benefit if you strike out on your own.

The bit in bold interests me, because as far as I can see that applies to things like GURPS Space and Star Hero, but not remotely to Traveller. In those books you get a lot of sound advice for the implications of having say a space empire, or a loose confederacy of worlds, or an alliance or of adding this or that technology. In Traveller you get none of that at all. So you do have plenty of advice and help in GURPS Space etc, because they're designed to help you create your own universes from the start.

The only Traveller book (with the exception of the entire GT line, which does actually explain things in great detail) that comes close to doing any of that is FF&S.

I've said elsewhere that Traveller is great for running games and creating backgrounds that are like Traveller. But if you really want completely free reign and creative freedom then you're much better off going for GURPS Space and its ilk.

It's various subsystems (that range from ship combat to trade rules) address gaming needs that a more generic approach cannot.

I think ship combat is covered by other generic sf systems well enough. Trade might be missing from many of them, but I don't think it's impossible to come up with a generic trade system.

 

[Jeffr0]

Originally posted by Malenfant:
The bit in bold interests me, because as far as I can see that applies to things like GURPS Space and Star Hero, but not remotely to Traveller.

<snip>

The only Traveller book (with the exception of the entire GT line, which does actually explain things in great detail) that comes close to doing any of that is FF&S.

Except for the incredibly brilliant GURPS Traveller authors, no one has bothered to look at the implications of the assumptions underlying the OTU.

I mean there's this huge resource of over a dozen books that can be had for 10 bucks each. Except for that and FFS, there is NOTHING that explains the OTU in rational/realistic detail.

Sheesh! What a pitiful system; there's hardly any serious support for it.

</sarcasm>

 

[The Shaman]

Originally posted by Malenfant:
I've said elsewhere that Traveller is great for running games and creating backgrounds that are like Traveller.

Yes, and people play Dungeons and Dragons because they enjoy games that are like D&D.

Originally posted by Malenfant:
But if you really want completely free reign and creative freedom then you're much better off going for GURPS Space and its ilk.

Think maybe that's why the very first word in the title is Generic?

 

[Jeffr0]

Originally posted by Malenfant:
I think ship combat is covered by other generic sf systems well enough. Trade might be missing from many of them, but I don't think it's impossible to come up with a generic trade system.

Right... so with GURPS Space, I not only need to come up with my own FTL drive, future history, races, and background... but I need to think through the implications of my assumptions... and design a trade system that is not only playable but realistic. And then I need to playtest everything.

I think I'd rather pick one of the many versions of Traveller instead.

Sure, anything is possible with GURPS Space. That's the point. I'd rather play a game that's, you know, been designed and tested and developed.

 

[Malenfant]

I'm not sure why you're being sarcastic. Look at all of what I said, instead of just a snippet:

The bit in bold interests me, because as far as I can see that applies to things like GURPS Space and Star Hero, but not remotely to Traveller. In those books you get a lot of sound advice for the implications of having say a space empire, or a loose confederacy of worlds, or an alliance or of adding this or that technology. In Traveller you get none of that at all. So you do have plenty of advice and help in GURPS Space etc, because they're designed to help you create your own universes from the start.

The only Traveller book (with the exception of the entire GT line, which does actually explain things in great detail) that comes close to doing any of that is FF&S.

The principles and concepts in the GT books and FF&S (and actually a lot of DGP stuff as well) at least can be applied to any other sf background. But beyond that, there's not much else there to help you use the books to help design your own sf background.

There's nothing in Traveller beyond FF&S that says "here's some other options for FTL travel, and here's what it would do to your setting". Or "here's how biotech and nanotech can affect your setting". Or "here's what would happen if you replaced the Imperium with a different type of interstellar government" - but there's loads of info on that in GURPS Space and Star Hero.

And that's the point I was making - that those books provide ALL the necessary tools and ask ALL the necessary questions and give a lot of advice to help the prospective setting-creator come up with the background he wants to make. Barring FF&S and the more generic info in the GT line and some of the DGP material, Traveller has none of that at all.

 

[Jeffr0]

I don't want to design a background.

I want to play Traveller.

There's more support for playing in the OTU than there is for playing in whatever J. Random Universe that you or I or anyone else comes up with.


And GURPS books that I had practically no use for a few years ago suddenly become really interesting now that I'm looking at MJD's Bowman Arm. And it even integrates seamlessly with some of the old Double Adventures.

There's a synergy between all that supporting material that very few systems have even come close to attaining.

Traveller is great! We love Traveller!