Thoughts on the new Traveller game?

[epicenter00]

I'm ... well barely even curious about this. MMOs (true MMOs) cost immense amounts of money to develop. I don't see these guys being able to raise that kind of money.

Perhaps they're going to make a game like EVE Online with a Traveller flavor.

But here's my question: Why Traveller?

Traveller does have a small and dedicated fanbase, but it's very heavily split between older grognards who aren't going to play it (the CT/MT crowd) and some younger players (the MongTrav crowd).

The grognard segment is going to hate anything they produce unless these guys are geniuses (which I have to say I doubt, unfortunately).

The younger players might like something they make, but ... I have to wonder what is so compelling about Traveller that they think that name would create a good MMO? Traveller's own universe works against making a good, fun MMO about it (one week jumps, small player ships in a High Guard universe is, as they say, "lol"). By the time they modify and develop the Traveller universe enough to make a fun MMO, they'll have done enough work where you have to ask, "Why didn't you just make your own setting?"

If they just want a flavor of tramp frieghters in space, do what Firefly/Serenity did: Make a universe that's Traveller with the serial numbers filed off that's sufficiently original that you won't get sued but still has 'tramp friegher in outer space' flavor.

I'd have been very interested if they wanted to make a single player CRPG, but an MMO? Not really interested.

The raging juggernaut of the video game industry almost crushed and destroyed the RPG hobby (and, likely, historical miniatures wargaming, for that matter) and, just for that, deserves a contemptuous smirk.

Video games didn't really destroy the RPG hobby. I think plastic model making in the US and Europe took a harder hit from video games.

What almost destroyed the RPG hobby? Remember Magic the Gathering? Yeah, MTG and all of the CCG games that were like it in the early 1990s that glut the market at that point. Sufficient players were drawn away from TRPGs that most of the RPG companies that were around either outright closed their doors or "downsized" to the point where it was basically the founder(s) holding on to their IPs and little to no new development occurred on their games. GDW and R. Talsorian are casualties of it that I know of. I'm pretty sure FASA decided to call it quits around that time as well (WEG basically died when they lost of the license to Star Wars), White Wolf weathered the CCGpocalypse better than others by tapping into a different playerbase than other RPG makers but even they took a hard hit and when the millennium came and went their whole stick of "the millennial end of the world" popped and so did they for the most part. Sources, you ask? There's various interviews with GDW staffers discussing the death of GDW. There's also a quite recent interview with Mike Pondsmith (of R. Tal) literally a few weeks ago where he makes mention of it. TRPGs are a small, niche ecology whose wallets can get rapidly tapped out, and things like CCGs or MageKnight/*Clix can be killed by their own success like blooms of algae, often taking TRPGs with it.

Historicals? Yeah, you can make an argument video games contributed to their decline. I'd actually argue that fantasy and sci-fi miniatures games have contributed more to their decline as well as many of the historical periods that 'big tray' wargames are made of have fallen off the media radar - you don't many new movies or TV shows about the Napoleonic Wars or American Civil War these days for instance; and this is very important. One has to read books or see movies about these conflicts and that has to fire the imagination and make one wonder "wow, I wonder what it was like to fight during that period?" to get people into historicals. As a case in point, video games actually have increased the number of people with at least some cursory interest in historicals, particularly Ancients and Medieval Europe through games series like Total War. Some historical eras just are pretty out of vogue now (Napoleonics in Europe, American Civil War in the US for instance). Meanwhile WW2 era wargaming (Flames of War) has stirred some interest in the WW2 era within the last 10 years and modern miniatures wargaming is niche but thriving with multiple rules and lots of support recently (Force on Force, Spectre, Fireteam, Black Ops, etc.) has actually seen growth in the last ten years. One thing in common with both of these eras - they're still getting lots of media that keeps them in the public consciousness. But historicals, particularly in the US, have always been a niche market; traditional "big army tray" historicals is pretty much where the definition of grognard neckbeard comes from, they're not very interested in growing their hobby and they're not welcoming of younger players - they prety much grow old and die with their games. Plus there's that hurdle of buying / painting / storing these 15mm-20mm armies, the majority of which don't see play - it's hobby for middle-aged and retired men, not exactly a group with high growth. Historical miniatures wargames that concentrate more on things that skirmish-scale (cheaper to buy, faster to paint, and easier to store) and on subjects in the collective consciousness see more popularity these days. I don't think you can truly blame video games for that.

 

[whartung]

MMORPGs offer people adventures which occur within a shared framework. That's their appeal. Adventures are not stand-alone missions which aren't effected previous event and whose results effect nothing afterward. The whole point of a MMORPG is to play within a large framework which your actions effect and which you share with other players.

Again, trees versus forest. You either cannot or will not understand that the adventures exist to influence the setting. Standing on Regina and either learning about or being effected by the actions of one player on Ruie only minutes after they happen is not Traveller. What makes Traveller Traveller instead of some other sci-fi property is the communications lag inherent within it's framework.

Then we disagree. The setting exists to influence the adventures. The narrative is driven not by player actions, but through their participation in the on going storyline as presented by the game system.

There are several important story elements that live behind long story sequences that I, as a player, can not advance without playing through the previous chapters. In these kind of MMOs, the player participate in the story, they don't necessarily affect it.

The Big Bad Boss on the box is going to fall no matter what the player does, it's more a matter of what the player sees and participates in while that story unfolds.

At the end of the previous WoW expansion, the Big Bad Guy, as he was being flung in to the nether after being defeated by the Armies (and players) of Azeroth, thrust his huge sword deep into the planet of Azeroth. This becomes a key element in the story of the new expansion.

No matter what the players did. Whether they participated in the bleeding edge, most difficult content, defeating the most difficult creatures, high level Lore leaders and champions. Or if they just ran around doing Pet Battles. Or if they played the market and accumulated vast amounts of in game currency. Or whether they logged in at all, that sword was ending up in that planet.

No matter what we did, Darnassus, the capital of the Night Elves, was going to burn. Undercity, home of the Forsaken and current Leader of the Horde, Sylvanas, was going to fall.

All we, as players, can do is go and participate. We can go watch.

When I read a book about a vast, multi-year interstellar war, with ships having to cover vast distances, very little time in that book was spent "in space", "in transit". No, the bulk of the narratives were around decisions being made, battles being fought. Not spending time in empty space going from one point to the other. It was made clear that travel took time, that reinforcements weren't a mouse click away. But that was it. As a viewer of the story, travel was abstracted away in the narrative.

In WoW, every player is in a parallel universe, each with their own different sets of progress. Some things are always in sync (like chat, or the auction house). Other, not so much, like story progression for individual characters. You can have two people "standing" next to each other, unable to see each other as they're at different points in the story.

Right now my max level character can not participate in high level content, the character is simply not powerful enough. But it can participate in other group content with characters of wide ranging power because of mechanics in the game to balance all of that out with computer generated creatures we battle.

My story unfolds at my pace. If I play far enough along, I'll be at the end of the current chapter of the story along with others until the next patch comes out that bumps the story further down the road. But if I don't, that story is still going to happen.

So the players are caught in a mix of time streams. Global, lore changing events managed by the game authors, released at their pace. Local, personal events driven by personal play. Group events driven by contributions by all (such as all players contributing resources to a building -- when it gets enough, the building is built, instead of a being based on time).

Hours of time spent in transit to Jump, then a week in Jump -- that's going to be part of the tapestry against which people adventure. It can't be a first class concept, for all the reasons we know that it can't be. Part of the challenge of the authors is to incorporate that aspect of the universe in to their story telling without actually having the players have to suffer through it.

 

[JimMarn]

Uhm, I am not understanding some of the complaints. So I need to ask a question.

Do you role play the time spent in Jump ?

Everytime the characters are in Jump ? Or just part of the time ?

Unless the referee has some malfunction to happen in Jump, it otherwise seems rather boring.

To elucidate on MMOs and quests.

I can run a character through a quest, say o kill certain bad guys. And my character gets experience, a piece o armor, maybe a weapon, for completing that quest.

But those bad guys never go away. They 'repop' as it is called, and another player; next hour, next day, next year, or even next decade; can run the same quest. Get the same reward, if the company doesn't change the quest reward, which has happened.

At low level in Everquest a character can go after the same bad guys as another chanracter, you can see the other characters.

I forget which level it starts, but now there are instances, called pickzones. So if a popular zone is crowded, and it can be on holiday weekends, etc. I can do a /pick and find myself in an instance all by myself. Just my character and a merc. Get done with the quest, exit the zone, and the instance is gone.

The company came up with this because of the complants about going into a zone, and finding all the bad guys dead or missing becase they hadn't repopped back into the zone yet.

 

[Blue Ghost]

Uhm, I am not understanding some of the complaints. So I need to ask a question.

Do you role play the time spent in Jump ?

Everytime the characters are in Jump ? Or just part of the time ?

Unless the referee has some malfunction to happen in Jump, it otherwise seems rather boring.

To elucidate on MMOs and quests.

I can run a character through a quest, say o kill certain bad guys. And my character gets experience, a piece o armor, maybe a weapon, for completing that quest.

But those bad guys never go away. They 'repop' as it is called, and another player; next hour, next day, next year, or even next decade; can run the same quest. Get the same reward, if the company doesn't change the quest reward, which has happened.

At low level in Everquest a character can go after the same bad guys as another chanracter, you can see the other characters.

I forget which level it starts, but now there are instances, called pickzones. So if a popular zone is crowded, and it can be on holiday weekends, etc. I can do a /pick and find myself in an instance all by myself. Just my character and a merc. Get done with the quest, exit the zone, and the instance is gone.

The company came up with this because of the complants about going into a zone, and finding all the bad guys dead or missing becase they hadn't repopped back into the zone yet.

That's interesting, but many days late and many dollars short (or over) for my book.

My chief complaint about Everquest was that it was way overpopulated when I was in Norrath, and on nearly all servers. Of course, that was back in 98 or 99.

But my other chief complaint is that everyone was a "hero" of somekind, even if you were a dark elf, Troll or something. The game, as it started, didn't lend itself to atmosphere on any level. I'm fearing the same will be the such for a Traveller online experience.

 

[JimMarn]

After WoW came out, the EQ player population dropped significantly.

In the EQ forums, several players have posted they think EQ and EQ 2 will shut down when they are no longer profitable. Typically the game company has locked discussions they don't like, but that time they didn't.

I can understand why you, plural, don't like MMOs. I have played mostly free ones, around 15, and most are junk, but they seem to be popular. I go back to EQ, although it wasn't the first one I played.

 

[Blue Ghost]

Well, I liked Sea of Thieves when I played it a couple of months back. I mean that game really looks sharp. If there's overcast, then your immediate area looks like you're in an overcast environments. The water, the storms, the size of the game world and islands, sun reflecting off the water, transitioning from dark to light areas, it's all really lush and vibrant.

But it's like going to Disneyland. As amusing as Disneyland is, and I've always had a decent time going there when I was younger, it's still essentially a "one trip" venue. That is you go there once a year, at most, enjoy yourself with your family and friends, and then head home. It's kind of the same with any theme part or carnival.

Anyway, I don't want to sound like I'm complaining about a future Traveller online RPG, I hope it succeeds in whatever form, but there's shortcomings to the genre, which is why I tend to do RTS or FPS games.

I may have mentioned this before, but I'll mention it here again, I think one of the trends these days is to upgrade old games with newer graphics. I think it would be cool to see the two old Traveller games get a revamp. Just my two ImpCr.

 

[whartung]

But it's like going to Disneyland. As amusing as Disneyland is, and I've always had a decent time going there when I was younger, it's still essentially a "one trip" venue. That is you go there once a year, at most, enjoy yourself with your family and friends, and then head home. It's kind of the same with any theme part or carnival.

I basically consider WoW to be an online theme park. It's got Swamp Land, Snow Land, Jungle Land, the City Train, the Boat Ride etc. etc.

As many So Cal kids, I went to D'land several times, but I had not been back in some time.

Several years ago, I got to go for a company event. Didn't do much besides the dinner party, but at the end of the night, I went over and took the train back to the front gate.

And...yea...there they were. The same, dusty old displays I had remembered as a kid. Pretty much as if nothing changed at all. No different than coming in to WoW and going to an old zone from the game 15 years ago (not quite the same, but close). Even the dinosaurs were the same, and these were dinosaurs from before when dinosaurs were all the rage.

I may have mentioned this before, but I'll mention it here again, I think one of the trends these days is to upgrade old games with newer graphics. I think it would be cool to see the two old Traveller games get a revamp. Just my two ImpCr.

If the Kickstarter folks proposed basically doing a one off RPG similar to those adventures, rather than something open ended like an MMO, or even and open world RPG like Skyrim. Something more thematic, yet perhaps more on rails than some RPGs. It would have been a better idea. Heck, Baldur's Gate style done with Traveller themes and stories.

Perhaps technically less challenging to produce, but still the burden of creating good solid content.

I mean, what if someone just ported The Traveller Adventure to a computer game. There should be 30+ hours of game play doing that, wouldn't you think? Aliens, adventure, combat, space ships, JUMP DRIVE. All the hallmarks. There's prewritten content, now it's a matter of presentation.

I wouldn't play it, because it'll likely be PC only. Doesn't mean its not a good idea.

 

[Whipsnade]

Then we disagree.

Agreed.

The narrative is driven not by player actions...

Then you're not playing a RPG. Player agency is central to the concept of RPGs. Players make a difference. Their actions influence the setting in both big ways and small. Even when the players fail to make a difference, the possibility of making a difference still existed.

If what the players do doesn't matter, you're simply playing a FPS or quest game skipping along collecting gold coins, gathering mcguffins, finding raccoon suits, or shooting zombies until a fixed goal is reached. While such games can wear a Traveller party hat in terms of whatever weapons, equipment, and targets they provide, they're not role playing games and they're not Traveller.

YM obviously Vs.

 

[Ex_Pendable]

Uhm, I am not understanding some of the complaints. So I need to ask a question.

Do you role play the time spent in Jump ?

Everytime the characters are in Jump ? Or just part of the time ?

Unless the referee has some malfunction to happen in Jump, it otherwise seems rather boring.

Unless you're in a low berth, you can roleplay in jump. It's a great time to break out those training courses and tech manuals (those skills just don't happen by themselves), maintain your gear, play a game of cards or something else. Like finding out your captain is smuggling these carnivorous roses that have escaped their hiding place and is stalking the passengers and crew.

One possible thing in the MMORG would be a pay enhancement which allows instantaneous jumps. Turns it from being hard scifi to paywall, but that's possible.

 

[Blue Ghost]

I'm ... well barely even curious about this. MMOs (true MMOs) cost immense amounts of money to develop. I don't see these guys being able to raise that kind of money.

Perhaps they're going to make a game like EVE Online with a Traveller flavor.

But here's my question: Why Traveller?

Traveller does have a small and dedicated fanbase, but it's very heavily split between older grognards who aren't going to play it (the CT/MT crowd) and some younger players (the MongTrav crowd).

The grognard segment is going to hate anything they produce unless these guys are geniuses (which I have to say I doubt, unfortunately).

The younger players might like something they make, but ... I have to wonder what is so compelling about Traveller that they think that name would create a good MMO? Traveller's own universe works against making a good, fun MMO about it (one week jumps, small player ships in a High Guard universe is, as they say, "lol"). By the time they modify and develop the Traveller universe enough to make a fun MMO, they'll have done enough work where you have to ask, "Why didn't you just make your own setting?"
*snip*

Eh, I don't think so. I think they believe they can do it, so they're going to give it a shot. I think you're right in that a week or two in jump doesn't lend itself to the MMORPG genre.

I can't think of any gripe I would have with such a game, other than I've played a few of them to know that most of the players are young kids. Kids are cool, but pre-teen boys are, well, pre-teen boys.

I think the generational thing will probably be more aesthetic. Call of Duty Infinite Warfare and Battlefield 2142 were very "Traveller" like in feel and appearance, but ratched up several notches to satiate today's young males. Call of Duty Infinite Warfare is an extremely sleek looking game, and the opening sequence is really gorgeous in terms of graphics. It's shortcoming is that it's short on actual gameplay. In fact it's one of the worst shooters I've ever played. But pre-teens and teen males like it a lot.

The Planetfall series, the Half Life 2 games, and a few others, have set the bar pretty high for graphics. I think young males just want point and shoot games. How a Traveller themed shooter will do, to me, is up in the air.

 

[whartung]

Then you're not playing a RPG. Player agency is central to the concept of RPGs. Players make a difference. Their actions influence the setting in both big ways and small. Even when the players fail to make a difference, the possibility of making a difference still existed.

You're right. We're playing an Online computer based MMO RPG. A genre where, truth be told, vendors to GREAT EFFORTS to limit player agency. As in MMO RPGs, Player Agency typically get abused and morphed in to griefing other players.

Player Agency is mostly confined to the growth of the individual characters, not to broad world changing events, at least in terms of how the world is experienced by other players.

Contrived example in WoW Mists of Pandoria. In the Jade Forest is a very nice, huge Green Dragon statue. On one of my characters, a character that has gone through the entire Jade Forest storyline, that statue ends up being destroyed. Again, I didn't destroy it, I didn't choose to destroy or not to destroy it. The story decided to destroy it. So, now, when I travel there, that statue lies in rubble.

On another character, I have not advance him through that story line, so when he travels there, the large statue remains in all its glory.

Now, in another part of the land, at the start of the expansion, there was a valley with a very large statue that we would travel under acting as a significant monument in the valley.

Later on during the expansion, an invasion occurred through the valley. The effect of which a large furrow was carved through the valley and the statue was destroyed. It, too, now lies in rubble.

But this story element was global in scope. All of the players now see the destroyed statue and the after affects of the invasion. We didn't see the invasion, we couldn't stop the invasion, it was just, one day, after and expansion patch, we'd get a message "Hero, hurry to the Valley, we have grave news!" to wit when you traveled there, you were informed of what had happened. Sometimes they'd introduce a cinematic storytelling element for large events like this.

If what the players do doesn't matter, you're simply playing a FPS or quest game skipping along collecting gold coins, gathering mcguffins, finding raccoon suits, or shooting zombies until a fixed goal is reached. While such games can wear a Traveller party hat in terms of whatever weapons, equipment, and targets they provide, they're not role playing games and they're not Traveller.

So, then the question to you is: "Is Agent of the Imperium 'Traveller'"? It's not a game at all, there are no players. No agency. No mcguffins, nothing.

Is that 'Traveller'? I guess there can be no 'Traveller' movies or other media. Is Arrival Vengeance Traveller if you read it, or only if you play it? What about The Traveller Adventure? If you have characters that are solely marched through either of these rather long adventure chains, but never used again, yet basically played "on rails" to keep with the publish adventure, is that Traveller? What agency did these characters have if the story unfolds as laid out in the published adventure?

In WoW, the player agency is how the players go about completing the quests and storylines. How they use their class, what gear they get, etc. So, they don't have global, broad story/world changing capability. But they do have broad control over how their character experience the story.

The computer based aspect of the game offer great limitations on the flexibility of the system, even for open world games like Skyrim (there's only so much story too tell). EVE Online is almost ALL player agency, but there's no story. Rather it's bickering, corporate politics as manifest by player actions in a sandbox universe. It's also known as "spreadsheets in space", which isn't attractive to all players. But I'm sure many have heard about some of the epic battles and betrayals that have happened in EVE. As a casual observer, it's fun to watch but I don't think I'd want to participate -- looks more like work to me.

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

Then you're not playing a RPG. Player agency is central to the concept of RPGs. Players make a difference. Their actions influence the setting in both big ways and small. Even when the players fail to make a difference, the possibility of making a difference still existed.

If what the players do doesn't matter, you're simply playing a FPS or quest game skipping along collecting gold coins, gathering mcguffins, finding raccoon suits, or shooting zombies until a fixed goal is reached. While such games can wear a Traveller party hat in terms of whatever weapons, equipment, and targets they provide, they're not role playing games and they're not Traveller.

Truth.

I wish most tabletop RPGs were played this way.

 

[aramis]

Agreed.



Then you're not playing a RPG. Player agency is central to the concept of RPGs. Players make a difference. Their actions influence the setting in both big ways and small. Even when the players fail to make a difference, the possibility of making a difference still existed.

If what the players do doesn't matter, you're simply playing a FPS or quest game skipping along collecting gold coins, gathering mcguffins, finding raccoon suits, or shooting zombies until a fixed goal is reached. While such games can wear a Traveller party hat in terms of whatever weapons, equipment, and targets they provide, they're not role playing games and they're not Traveller.

YM obviously Vs.

Your concept of player agency isn't the same as mine. Having run a bunch of narrativist games (let's not bicker over the term - I'm using it in the "System Matters" definition, generally)...

It is NOT player impact upon the universe.
It is NOT players controlling the storyline, tho' that is often a result of high player agency.

It is determining what you try.
It is having your choices matter; consequences for failure, different consequences for success.

In, say, Sentinel Comics, Cosmic Patrol, or even Marvel Heroic RP, the general consequences are resource depletion, not story redirection. It's not "Will we succeed" so much as "How much will success cost us in the long run?"

See, in CP, each scene automatically follows on - the limit on player agency is, "No leaving the scene until it's resolved or you're dead." Pretty much anything else goes. The next scene presumes you overcame the last. And so on. And it plays out differently with each different group of players. One's status at the end of one scene impacts the next, because it carries forward... changed gear, and/or changed health.

Sentinel Comics has a more obvious failure mode - and the adventures have a clear failure condition - one that ends the campaign in 4 of the 6 modules. Heck, each of the 3-5 scenes in each module has a failure condition that fails the module, often the ticking scene timer. The drama is real, the tension is present, and anything else goes, within the reasonable bounds of the character. There's no branching path, per se - 3 of the modules can be done in a player decided order, but all three are there.

The players complaint wasn't lack of agency, it was that the first two were too easily finished.

An MMO likewise has the same level of agency - players control how they attempt to solve the issue, and have personal consequences - resource expenditures, character injury, etc.

Player agency over the story is often illusory, even in a traditional RPG.

 

[Whipsnade]

Your concept of player agency isn't the same as mine.

It isn't, but your points and observations are - as usual - well made and well thought out.

 

[JimMarn]

There is one game I know of, its gone away, called Everquest Next. Some areas could be destroyed and they apparently stayed that way, not just for one player or one group.

As for players and their characters having no influence on a paper and pencil rpg, my Crestar game world, the player characters had varying amounts of influence.

Sometimes they made changes to various events, and historical changes, were made. Haunted castle became a road guading castle. A massive evil was permanently defeated. Some characters are renowned, some are forever unknown by all except their compatriots.