What is wrong with CT now? It came before the Internet.

[Slapdragon]

And not that the writing of CT did not predict data nets -- what is the XBoat system but a huge data net running through interstellar space? But that the average thirty or fourty something Traveller player no longer lives in a community where they can find four friends and and evening to play Traveller.

I would like to see CT do what Gurps is not currently doing, and accept that Internet play is as big, or bigger, than face to face. All CT rules should be written with an eye to coding them for use on a computer. A secure server package for Linux and BSD (probably OS-X) could be written that would be a GMs package. It would be a chat server, mail group, and have a database connection that could include components to roll up characters, handle money, list equipment, even handle combat. Somehow this effort would have to pay for itself -- perhaps by making a client side application for Windows and Macintosh.

Wargaming in recent years has gone increasingly to the web. Combat Mission, probably the best of the wargames out now, is played maybe 95% on the Internet and supports several very large interest groups. A colorful client / server application for T5 might not be that bad of an idea.

 

[Granpafishy]

Doesn't GRIP cover this area for CT?

 

[Slapdragon]

Originally posted by Granpafishy:
Doesn't GRIP cover this area for CT?

Does it integrate with current Traveller rules, and new Traveller rules, in a close fashion? Grip may serve I think, but I also think it needs a bit of customization to get it to function seemlessly with Traveller.

Also, the issue of it being a Windows application is always there. I was involved in a group where GRIP was tried (I think, I am assuming this is what the GM meant) and the application was Windows only.

 

[Slapdragon]

I have never administered a grip server, but we tried to play a grip based game. The administrator had a lot of problems with the Windows based server application so we went Yahoo, which of course does not do anything except act as a chat group. So that is a concern. The application would not be a generic application grafted on Traveller, but one written from the ground up for Traveller, with Traveller rules.

A possibility though is to see if a Linux (Lindows?) / Unix version of Grip could be made by that company, with close sharing of information on T5 with Grip. Then a custom version of the server may be workable.

Of course, that may not be financially viable, but if anyone has gotten Grip to work in a cross platform client / server fashion I would love to give it a run again.

 

[kaladorn]

Not speaking for Hunter here, just as someone who runs half his campaign with GRIP:

1. It takes some getting used to. It has things I'd like changed in the UI if there was an overhaul. Also in the scripting engine. But it has lots of potential, just a lot of it poorly documented.

2. It has been customized a bit for CT. And on the net are a lot of other cool customizations.

3. It is Windows mostly due (I suspect) to the front end. Underlying IRC-ish functionality certainly shouldn't require Windoze. But I'm also figuring that the system architecture wasn't laid out cleanly so it probably is an ironclad sonofagun to break out the UI - it probably is *not* isolated inside of an interface.

4. What would pay for a LINUX port? The LINUX geeken never like to pay for things...

5. If you want to run a real server with serious traffic, you'd better make it *NIX compatible and be able to thump it onto a Solaris box. I worked with a company doing a MMORPG with LINUX/Java/C++/OpenGL (the latter two on the client side - server was pure Java on LINUX). But even *we* made the server as portable as possible, knowing LINUX just can't scale well enough yet.

6. On line is nice, but I've got players who really dislike it. They play RPGs for the 'face time' and 'screen time' is no substitute. In that case, they'd rather go have a beer or play Evercrack or something. So keep in mind not everyone is comfortable with that transition.
I use on-line stuff because it is better than nothing IMO, but not everyone agrees.

 

[Slapdragon]

Originally posted by kaladorn:
Not speaking for Hunter here, just as someone who runs half his campaign with GRIP:

1. It takes some getting used to. It has things I'd like changed in the UI if there was an overhaul. Also in the scripting engine. But it has lots of potential, just a lot of it poorly documented.

This may be. I wish that the application could evolve with Traveller and be very tightly integrated, and that the average person had the ability to reach it.

Originally posted by kaladorn:
2. It has been customized a bit for CT. And on the net are a lot of other cool customizations.

And ignorance on our part probably hurt. I did not even know it was called GRIP. Of course, half the virus infections in the world are probably caused by ignorance of the latest security update. We had 35 PCs crash and stay crashed for nearly a month until we found out one update file in that lastest huge virus protection service pack was not actually included, and we caught a silly virus everyone has known about for months. Ignorance on our part caused a lot of hatred of those Dells, and it was not Dell's fault.

Originally posted by kaladorn:
3. It is Windows mostly due (I suspect) to the front end. Underlying IRC-ish functionality certainly shouldn't require Windoze. But I'm also figuring that the system architecture wasn't laid out cleanly so it probably is an ironclad sonofagun to break out the UI - it probably is *not* isolated inside of an interface.

Probably you are correct. One programming group I Beta for, Combat Mission, does a lot of work trying to keep the engine free from legacy problems, and even then needs to do an entire update to go from OS9 to OSx.

Originally posted by kaladorn:
4. What would pay for a LINUX port? The LINUX geeken never like to pay for things...

A serious problem.

Originally posted by kaladorn:
5. If you want to run a real server with serious traffic, you'd better make it *NIX compatible and be able to thump it onto a Solaris box. I worked with a company doing a MMORPG with LINUX/Java/C++/OpenGL (the latter two on the client side - server was pure Java on LINUX). But even *we* made the server as portable as possible, knowing LINUX just can't scale well enough yet.

I keep hoping for someone to realize how cool BSD UNIX is. I said that in a gaming group and was laughed out of the site. But BSD, especially the new OSX version, is a real winner for stability and resistance to attack.

Originally posted by kaladorn:
6. On line is nice, but I've got players who really dislike it. They play RPGs for the 'face time' and 'screen time' is no substitute. In that case, they'd rather go have a beer or play Evercrack or something. So keep in mind not everyone is comfortable with that transition.
I use on-line stuff because it is better than nothing IMO, but not everyone agrees.

I agree that the roots need to remain face - to face. I just think that now days RPGs went the way of wargames. How many board based wargames have hit the shelves for true grogs in the past couple of years and made killings in the store, then compare that to how many have for Internet play. If Internet play is ignored, then the power of the Internet for bringing people together is lost.

Now, any game can be played internet with the GM taking on all rolls, but I think of it as a new paradigm (twenty cents) that can join the old paradigm and keep the games expanding. To many games have no human interaction at all. If you live in Newberry, South Carolina where the only person I have ever met who knew about Traveller I was arresting and he was wearing a shirt about Regina / Regina, then there is a market for Internet products, or at least their maybe. Perhaps I am rare and most people live in big cities with gaming groups.

 

[kafka47]

As this is the T5 forum could we begin to speculate what type of RPG would be suitable for a world audience.

I figure it is something beyond the gladilator sports that now dominate net-games and away from the stategic into developing an Interpersonal suite of programs. One where activity is random generated with impressive graphics from a vast library of images. Why go that far?

We already have this with pen, paper and imagination. Computers will always be an aid but never a substitute for real life or real imagination, that is beauty of the RPG form.

 

[Slapdragon]

Originally posted by kafka47:
We already have this with pen, paper and imagination. Computers will always be an aid but never a substitute for real life or real imagination, that is beauty of the RPG form.

This will always be the CODA, why go past paper and pencil? But right now I am playing a Traveller game with people in 11 time zones and four continents. Meeting face to face may be superior, but how can we afford to do that on a weekly basis?

The goal is to provide a gaming aid that allows T5 to be seemlessly played by people around the world. And indeed, it would be much better then masses of people fighting it out playing DOOM -7.