M
Malenfant
Guest
I think if you can't make a storyline yourself that has the drama, guns, explosions, heroes etc, then you shouldn't be a GM. OK, maybe that's a bit extreme, but the point is that it's the GM's task to keep the players excited and entertained. Even today, people don't need the background to do that for them, and people can actually still struggle to do that even if that sort of background you describe is there.
Someone on RPGnet posted about a Traveller game they were playing (which I can't find now since search there is down) in that was dead bloody boring. The archetypal bean counters in space thing, absolutely nothing exciting going on despite many opportunities for something to go wrong.
You've got some very odd ideas about how the RPG market works. Better task targets and realistic worldgen systems won't bring in more people. A better presented system, that is designed from the ground up in a similar way to the ones that are around today (ie uncomplicated, few tables, easy to learn, fairly loose) will probably go some way to attracting people though. An interesting and relevant background (which Traveller lacks currently. TNE was the only attempt at that, and the grognards revolted against it) will also attract new people.
But then again, I'm starting to think that Traveller has had its day anyway. Conversions exist for two very popular systems (GURPS and d20), nothing is going to top that in terms of popularity. And at this stage, nobody really needs anything else from the game other than some ready made adventures and new milieus to play in, and the last thing anyone needs for Traveller is yet another system to play it with, that's for sure.
Someone on RPGnet posted about a Traveller game they were playing (which I can't find now since search there is down) in that was dead bloody boring. The archetypal bean counters in space thing, absolutely nothing exciting going on despite many opportunities for something to go wrong.
You've got some very odd ideas about how the RPG market works. Better task targets and realistic worldgen systems won't bring in more people. A better presented system, that is designed from the ground up in a similar way to the ones that are around today (ie uncomplicated, few tables, easy to learn, fairly loose) will probably go some way to attracting people though. An interesting and relevant background (which Traveller lacks currently. TNE was the only attempt at that, and the grognards revolted against it) will also attract new people.
But then again, I'm starting to think that Traveller has had its day anyway. Conversions exist for two very popular systems (GURPS and d20), nothing is going to top that in terms of popularity. And at this stage, nobody really needs anything else from the game other than some ready made adventures and new milieus to play in, and the last thing anyone needs for Traveller is yet another system to play it with, that's for sure.