Some Folks Were Looking Forward To It

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by Jeffr0:
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.

Sure, because that's the whole damn point! That's what a generic scifi toolkit is supposed to let you do - help you come up with your own backgrounds. If Traveller doesn't let you do that, and instead says "here's some readymade ideas for you" then it can't justifiably be called a "generic sf toolkit" at all.

GURPS Space et al just give you the pieces with with to assemble any setting you like. Something like Fading Suns or Blue Planet gives you a fully fleshed out setting to play in. But Traveller seems to just give you a predefined bare framework - just restricting enough to prevent you from doing whatever you like, but not detailed enough to give you all the information you need (and then of course it goes on to provide you with the OTU to put on that framework to make it more specific).

If Traveller really is a specific setting then why not just drop any pretense of of it being a generic toolkit and just have it embrace the OTU fully instead? Then the Traveller system (whatever it is at the time) becomes the engine that lets you run games specifically set in the OTU.

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. [/QB]

GURPS Space has been designed and tested and developed, very thoroughly in fact. And then of course GURPS itself has been tested and tested and tested to death. All the end user is doing is using those very well designed, very thoroughly tested tools to make their own background. What one comes up with as a result may be untested, but the building blocks that it's made out of are very solid indeed.

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by Jeffr0:
[QB] 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.

OK, so let's just stop assuming that Traveller is a generic toolkit then. Marc should abandon any and all pretenses of that and just design an engine specifically to run the OTU. That way everyone can play Traveller and that'll be that.

 

[Jeffr0]

Right... so the best thing to do is use that wonderfully tested and revised GURPS ruleset to play in that wonderfull supported setting that is the OTU.

That's the best of both worlds.

 

[Jeffr0]

Originally posted by Malenfant:
OK, so let's just stop assuming that Traveller is a generic toolkit then. Marc should abandon any and all pretenses of that and just design an engine specifically to run the OTU. That way everyone can play Traveller and that'll be that.

No. It is a toolkit. Not nearly as intentionally generic as GURPS Space, but otoh it has more nifty toys to play with out of the box.

Something's ought to be left ambiguous or undefined in order to maintain the flexibility that Traveller is famous for.

But in any event, Marc is free to do what he wants. It's his baby.

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by Jeffr0:
No. It is a toolkit.

But what exactly is it a toolkit for? It seems to be a toolkit for running games that run close to someone else's vision of a sf setting. You could do that with any other setting on the market just as easily.

Something's ought to be left ambiguous or undefined in order to maintain the flexibility that Traveller is famous for.

Flexibility to do what exactly though? I mean, stories like Alien or Outland are so generic that you could run them a vast range of SF settings, not just Traveller. What's Traveller giving you that these other RPGs don't provide? At the end of the day, all of them (including Traveller) are just rules engines with a setting attached - you can discard the setting and replace it with something else if you just want rules to play with. Maybe that's not the intended use for those games, but there's nothing stopping anyone from doing it.

Again, the point is that if people want to design their own sf backgrounds, they're usually going to want to do it following their own vision, not Marc Miller's or anyone else's - so they'd use GURPS Space or Star HERO or even pilfer the rules engine from another game and write their own over it.

The only reasons I can see for why they'd want to use Traveller are if they're attracted by either the engine itself or the setting assumptions that are built into it - if the Traveller "bare framework" matches what they have in mind then it's usable, otherwise if they just have to tear it down and build what they want instead then they'd have much more support using GURPS Space etc.

It's for these reasons that Traveller is so ill-defined I think - it can't decide whether it's a toolkit to build universes, or a specific setting.

 

[robject]

Traveller rules have long been the framework on which GDW and now FFE hangs the OTU.

It's like UNIX and the C programming language. UNIX came first, and was used to create the first C compiler, and later UNIX itself was rewritten in C.

The OTU sprung from the Little Black Books, but the rules in turn have grown almost exclusively as a support for the OTU. As Mal and Jeff both note, being a generic system alone isn't enough.

The rules are modular and flexible to an extent, but their primary purpose is supporting the OTU. They allow creation of Alternate TUs, but they're still TU's, following the mechanical rules of the OTU. Referees add to, take from, or modify the rules, in order to support something that's not part of the OTU. In other words, the rules aren't built to support anything other than the OTU.

The OTU can and has been ported to another rules systems -- GURPS and D20, others unofficially -- but that rules system has always had to limit or morph itself to support the OTU. Generic rules systems must form an adaptation layer to mesh properly with any setting. And that's proper, for that's what they're built for.

Traveller rules are tailored to its setting. The setting is tailored to the rules. Is it symbiotic, or a dependency, or something else?

 

[Malenfant]

Traveller rules are tailored to its setting. The setting is tailored to the rules. Is it symbiotic, or a dependency, or something else?

Well, if you just took the rules exactly as written (and for starters we have to identify exactly what "the rules" means here, because CT, MT, TNE, and T4 are all different to some extent) then using those on their own is it possible to produce a different setting using the assumptions built into them?

I think it is possible, but you're still going to end up with a setting that has ships of a specific structure, where jump takes a week, with older characters than other games, where trade works a specific way, and where the general feel is of "18th century sail in space". Otherwise you can ditch all the aliens and replace them with whatever you like (assuming those aren't being included in "the rules") and change the history completely. But at the very least the character design, the ship design, and the world design (again, whatever those are defined as) would probably have to be used to make this a valid exercise.

It's something I touched on earlier - what IS the "traveller ruleset" that everyone is referring to here? Is it CT Books 1-3? CT Book 1-6? 1-9 even? MT? TNE? T4? What?!

 

[flykiller]

Traveller rules are tailored to its setting.

(laugh) which rules? CT? MT? TNE? T4? which setting? OTU? Rebellion? Virus? 1248? and where do the houserules and personal settings fit in?

 

[kafka47]

Poor James Maliszewski is depressed again...

 

[Rhialto the Marvelous]

Wasn't Fourth Millennium going to be published after all? This year, even? What's up with that?

 

[Stainless]

Originally posted by Jeffr0:
Right... so the best thing to do is use that wonderfully tested and revised GURPS ruleset to play in that wonderfull supported setting that is the OTU.

That's the best of both worlds.

Funnily enough, after being totally away from Traveller or any other RPG for something like 17 years, I came back to Traveller about 6 months ago. After refamiliarizing myself with the rules (mainly CT & MT), then designing and starting a campaign, I've decided to go GURPS with OTU background. The only thing I'll miss from any of the Traveller rule sets is the MT task system. Everything else can be done just as well, if not better, with GURPS, plus there's active, high quality, proof-read support for GURPS products which is more than can be said for most of Traveller (Avenger/Comstar excluded). As for T5....

 

[Jeff M. Hopper]

Just a little tie-in to the conversation. Because ultimately, Traveller is what you make of it.

A Tribute to the Burgess Shale Period of Traveller

 

[Jeffr0]

Yes.

I wish someone would simply publish "The Revised Classic Traveller Compendium" and "The Revised MegaTraveller Compendium" in hardback... and then make Revised Snapshot and Revised Mayday boxed sets.

Or all of the above in PDF.

Or make all of the above and call it T5....

 

[Roger Calver]

Originally posted by Jeffr0:
Yes.

I wish someone would simply publish "The Revised Classic Traveller Compendium" and "The Revised MegaTraveller Compendium"

They did and called it ACT

 

[Jeffr0]

Is it for sale?

 

[Roger Calver]

No, I wish it did but T5 killed it.

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by Jeffr0:
I wish someone would simply publish "The Revised Classic Traveller Compendium" and "The Revised MegaTraveller Compendium" in hardback... and then make Revised Snapshot and Revised Mayday boxed sets.

Apparently this is what a lot of the fanbase wants, and this is what MJD was going to product with ACT (and what Hunter had proposed earlier with CT+). Marc, however, isn't interested in providing this, and instead vetoed them and is producing T5 instead.

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by Rhialto the Marvelous:
Wasn't Fourth Millennium going to be published after all? This year, even? What's up with that?

I thought it HAD been published a while back hadn't it? I'm sure I saw a proper PDF of it released on one of the online shops.

*checks*

Yeah, it's published by Ronin Arts, available on e23 at least, been around for at least as long as e23 has been there IIRC.
http://e23.sjgames.com/item.html?id=PJR150

 

[robject]

Originally posted by flykiller:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Traveller rules are tailored to its setting.

(laugh) which rules? </font>[/QUOTE]

CT?

All except for LBB1-3.

MT?

Yes.

TNE?

Yes, with a caveat. I suspect that FFS is the most general-purpose of all Traveller supplements.

T4?

Yes.

Which setting?

CT supported the OTU. The "classic" adventures, starmaps, etc.
MT supported the Rebellion-era TU.
TNE supported the New Era TU, and then some.
T4 supported Milieu Zero.

T20 supports 1248, I presume. 1248 might be able to piggy-back on TNE, isn't that correct?

and where do the houserules and personal settings fit in?

As Mal and/or I noted, houserules are when you want to do something that's not like the OTU: implicitly, then, the rules don't support things much beyond the OTU. Except FFS, of course.

Personal settings may fall well within the OTU; if you use the rules as-is, your personal universe will likely resemble a splinter of the OTU, complete with Scout and Naval bases. To the degree you incorporate houserules, you depart from an OTU-like setting. Again, the reason we add house rules is largely because we want an effect different from the OTU.

 

[Malenfant]

1248 is systemless, IIRC.

Though it's interesting that you split up the rules to support their settings. Does that mean that really there's no such thing as "Traveller" - just the individual rulesets and settings themselves?