What happened to the Traveller webring?

[Blue Ghost]

I tried going to various sites under the COTI's "Starport" link, and one link lead to another, and I'm discovering that the Traveller webring appears to have been soaked up by some advertisers.

Is the official webring no more, or is it disguised under a different name?

 

[Nathan Brazil]

They might be gone, gone gone. One site Traveller Central

refers to the webring associated with RingSurf.com. Wikipedia indicates this host has not had its rings operating since at least April 2014. Main site up, rings gone. The same with the TML Landgrab ring

 

[Blue Ghost]

Well, I'm sorry it's gone. It seems like Mongooses efforts would revive the game and bring in new blood, but Traveller seems to be gradually fading such that things like this happen. I hope I'm wrong on that.

 

[RandyB]

Well, I'm sorry it's gone. It seems like Mongooses efforts would revive the game and bring in new blood, but Traveller seems to be gradually fading such that things like this happen. I hope I'm wrong on that.

I see it as less a fading of Traveller and more two other things:

1. The collapse of the WebRing concept, total.
2. Consolidation and migration of Traveller fans online to newer and fewer sites, usually blogs and forums rather than the old content sites.

 

[Spinward Scout]

I've got a ton of links on my Way Station (blog), if you're looking for something.

 

[Blue Ghost]

I feel another nostalgia blast entry on my blog coming. Thanks for the heads up and interpretation. Very reassuring and very helpful.

 

[JimMarn]

I had as many as 30, many different subjects, of rings from Surfring, but as noted above many of those rings just went away.

I now have one web ring hosted by the Dragonsfoot web site in England, which deals with the AD&D 1st edition, 2nd edition, and the beige booklets from the 1970s. I do get a few looks at my dungeons and dragons sites from that ring.

Has anyone thought of just having a similar set of links here for Traveller sites the membership here has ?

 

[Blue Ghost]

Spinward, some of your links need updating. The sites still exist, but the addresses are wrong.

Jim; one of the few pleasures I had in the 90s was cruising the various webrings of things like Traveller or Trek or whatever else fans had posted during dialup days.

 

[JimMarn]

I liked the one I was in for about a year that had pages on henges and oher megolithic sites. Interesting that there are over 1,000 such places in England, Scotland, Wales, and the Orkney Islands.

 

[Blue Ghost]

One of the few pleasures in the 90s was rediscovering old hobbies that other fans were still indulging in. And to me that's what the dialup days of the net were all about. It really was a great time to explore the net. There were all kinds of sites for everything, including Traveller.

Regrettably things have consolidated, and the pure richness and variety of fan created material for everything, not just Traveller, seems to have atrophied. I'm sorry that's happened.

 

[RandyB]

One of the few pleasures in the 90s was rediscovering old hobbies that other fans were still indulging in. And to me that's what the dialup days of the net were all about. It really was a great time to explore the net. There were all kinds of sites for everything, including Traveller.

Regrettably things have consolidated, and the pure richness and variety of fan created material for everything, not just Traveller, seems to have atrophied. I'm sorry that's happened.

Much of that happened because of the Quest for Canon, IMO. Fans got to the point of wanting their creations to at least be acknowledged as compatible with published materials, if not accorded official status relative to same.

 

[Blue Ghost]

Much of that happened because of the Quest for Canon, IMO. Fans got to the point of wanting their creations to at least be acknowledged as compatible with published materials, if not accorded official status relative to same.

That's unfortunate if true. One of the joys of the Web Ring was seeing non-canon or alternate universe creations.

When I checked Spinward's site, and even looking here, it just seems like the game would benefit from some form of official network that people could easily access. And I think that was the concept of the old webring for whatever the interest was.

Right now I have to click on the CotI Features link, then scroll down through small print to hit the Starport hyperlink to take me to a list of sites. I wonder if there's an easier way for fans like me to just hit a link and then get a series of sites listed. That's kind of what I was hoping for.

Oh well. Not a big deal.

 

[Nathan Brazil]

Well, we ouselves are examples of the demise of webrings. If it has been down since April 2014 neither you Blue Ghost, nor I, knew. So it shows how long we had been away from it.

Or gave it much thought if we had tried afterwards, before this thread started...

 

[Blue Ghost]

I suppose. It's just that the COTI is a fairly decent forum, but there's been nothing to replace the QLI home page. There's no Traveller home page with a tab to come here or to go to other sites, or even access the library data and so forth.

I have to remind myself that the game has a certain "attitude" about it, for lack of a better term, that doesn't seem to lend itself to "expanding" beyond what gets published. If WOTC makes radical changes to D&D, then it's big news. If Traveller tweaks itself, then it's barely a blip on the radar. But, maybe that's intentional. Oh well.

 

[JimMarn]

One of the few pleasures in the 90s was rediscovering old hobbies that other fans were still indulging in. And to me that's what the dialup days of the net were all about. It really was a great time to explore the net. There were all kinds of sites for everything, including Traveller.

Regrettably things have consolidated, and the pure richness and variety of fan created material for everything, not just Traveller, seems to have atrophied. I'm sorry that's happened.

I've tried to diversify my d&d rtype sites with Tunnels and Trolls, Wizard's Realm, The Fantasy Trip, Space: 1889!, and Mazes and Minotaurs. But I get very few page vierws on those sites. Wizard's Realm was a group of people in the Biloxi, MS area who came up with their own game and published it.

 

[RandyB]

I suppose. It's just that the COTI is a fairly decent forum, but there's been nothing to replace the QLI home page. There's no Traveller home page with a tab to come here or to go to other sites, or even access the library data and so forth.

I have to remind myself that the game has a certain "attitude" about it, for lack of a better term, that doesn't seem to lend itself to "expanding" beyond what gets published. If WOTC makes radical changes to D&D, then it's big news. If Traveller tweaks itself, then it's barely a blip on the radar. But, maybe that's intentional. Oh well.

Consider that the biggest controversy in the history of Traveller had little to do with changes to game mechanics and much to do with changes to the Third Imperium setting.

 

[Blue Ghost]

I guess that's true. To me Traveller seems to be designed to be functional and operative for people who want to indulge in it. As such I'm just sorry that all those other great websites I visited in the past have vanished into the ether.

 

[JimMarn]

Back in 2009 I had a number of surfrings and I wondered what had happened to the emails I used to get from some of the ringmasters saying new people had been added.

They were all gone. So I removed them from my sites. Kinda sad. But life moves on.

 

[aramis]

Back in 2009 I had a number of surfrings and I wondered what had happened to the emails I used to get from some of the ringmasters saying new people had been added.

They were all gone. So I removed them from my sites. Kinda sad. But life moves on.

I deleted most of my webring links about the time I switched from using angeltowns to having my own domain name.

 

[jamstar]

Back in 2009 I had a number of surfrings and I wondered what had happened to the emails I used to get from some of the ringmasters saying new people had been added.

They were all gone. So I removed them from my sites. Kinda sad. But life moves on.

Back in the day, my 'Candles Against The Night' was hosted on Geocities. So were a LOT of Traveller sites. Then Geocities died.

I tried running my game on my own domain, but, not having a ton of money, my domain died the Real Death due to finances. Now, I run it on Unseen Servant. I'm one of 3 Traveller games there.