Discussing how we can attract more players and stuff fine.
My answer to this question was to start a blog where I talked about the ability to use the Classic Traveller rules without having to concern oneself with 40+ years of OTU cannon setting.
I did this because when I first arrived here I had questions about playing the game and creating a setting... but was constantly interrupted by people showing up in threads to tell me I was doing everything
wrong. I wasn't using such-and-such information provided in such-and-such volume of
GURPS: Traveller, and so on. And therefor whatever idea I wanted to talk about didn't make sense or couldn't exists because it didn't comport with cannon.
This startled me (naively, perhaps) because I had always considered
Traveller a game first, and the OTU as a setting you could use
if you wanted it.
As I noted unthread my clever plan has worked. I've gotten notes from folks who have read my blog and are happily playing
Traveller again after realizing they could make their own setting and didn't need to master the OTU before the could play.
So I have a question -- a genuine question about this site -- because I really don't know and am really curious.
Is COTI about using
Traveller to play any setting one wants with the tools offered in the rules? Or about playing in the OTU (whether one uses
Traveller rules or not.)
I ask this because if someone arrives excited to play
Traveller but is told -- essentially if not literally -- here are 24 issues of the OTU house magazine along with 14 volumes of rules across three editions you have to read before you can really play the game I would consider that a challenge to getting people to play the game.
Because who wants to do that much work to play a roleplaying game?
The fact is, several of the rules sets for
Traveller are quite functional without any concern for the OTU. So I'm not talking about "dumbing down" play for "beginners." I'm pointing out that while the OTU is awesome, it is not
required for play and if someone doesn't want to deal with it there is no need for anyone to deal with it.
I also want to make it clear that if COTI is about playing in the OTU and that's the site's focus then that's
fine. That's
great.
I would offer, however, that if that's the purpose of the site then it should be more front and center somewhere. Because the fact is telling people that "If you want to play Traveller you have to master the OTU" is in fact a false statement. But telling people that who have heard about this thing called Traveller and are looking for more information and told "Here's your syllabus of 40 years of books" is going to turn off at least
some people.
So I really want to know:
What is the purpose of COTI? Is to encourage the use of the
Traveller rules (across editions)? Or to encourage the use of and understanding of the OTU?
i understant that these two agendas are not mutually exclusive. But certainly the focus of one can come at the expense of the focus of the other.
Again, either focus is fine.
But I've never asked this question before (and again, when I arrived it didn't occur to me that I would have to ask). But given this thread and conversation I am really curious: What is the focus of this site? What is its purpose? Because how new players are greeted and what answers are given and what subforms are available will be colored by the answers to those questions.
