Kudos to the TML for spotting this first. Slightly (but not terribly) surprised this wasn't mentioned before by TPTB.
http://www.rpg.net/news+reviews/columns/edit18jul05.html
http://www.rpg.net/news+reviews/columns/edit18jul05.html
When It's Cold I'd Like To Die (July 18th, 2005 interview with MWM on rpg.net)
- Thread starter clementk
- Start date
Liam Devlin
SOC-14 5K
Thanks for the link Casey!
M
Malenfant
Guest
Oh man, there are some really silly sounding statements in here.
Riiiight. Sorry, no. I really don't think it is. I've never seen anyone just starting roleplaying (in any form) say "ooo, I'm a real man now" or think they were different somehow.
Honour is not even remotely unique to Traveller. Aren't most Traveller games about running round doing morally dubious things for people to eke out a living? Where's the honour in that? OK, a lot of D&D may be about killing things and taking their stuff just because they're there, but most games do not encourage you to be 'dishonourable'.
And with that statement, MWM proves he's REALLY out of touch with the modern gaming public. He really thinks that NOTHING since the original D&D first came out has been easier to learn or as fun to play? That there's no better game at all in nearly 30 years of gaming history? Maybe that really is what he thinks, but that really doesn't do anything to add to his credibility. Someone who thinks that is clearly NOT trying to connect with modern gamers.
Madarin Dude
SOC-13
Too short I wanted the interview to be longer.
hirch duckfinder
SOC-13
great to hear mwm! im not sure about the rules but those t5 supliments sound good. i just hope marc will write at least one new adventure for us. his are still my favourites.
as for desert island rpg - why not let the man take his nostalgia trip? i think your expectations are unreasonable mal - he's just a guy doing his best. if you disagree, do so with respect and honour.
its easy to shoot anyone down any time. we are all flawed. for me, mr. miller has contributed greatly to my enjoyment of life. and he intends to attempt to contribute more. which is all good by me.
as for desert island rpg - why not let the man take his nostalgia trip? i think your expectations are unreasonable mal - he's just a guy doing his best. if you disagree, do so with respect and honour.
its easy to shoot anyone down any time. we are all flawed. for me, mr. miller has contributed greatly to my enjoyment of life. and he intends to attempt to contribute more. which is all good by me.
Shadowdancer
SOC-14 1K
I got to play in a Cyberpunk 2020 session run by Ross Winn at a convention several years ago. He was a good GM. Glad to see he's also a talented writer.
Jeff M. Hopper
SOC-14 1K
Seconded.Originally posted by hirch duckfinder:
as for desert island rpg - why not let the man take his nostalgia trip? i think your expectations are unreasonable mal - he's just a guy doing his best. if you disagree, do so with respect and honour.
its easy to shoot anyone down any time. we are all flawed. for me, mr. miller has contributed greatly to my enjoyment of life. and he intends to attempt to contribute more. which is all good by me.
Lets face it, mal - mwm has has created a legacy in gaming with Traveller. Whether you like it or not, he's been a major influence for quite some time now.
M
Malenfant
Guest
A major influence? On what?!
Sure, CT was a different way of doing things for the time, but it's been vastly superceded since then. And T5 looks like a great 70s game - but it's not going to stand a chance in today's market.
Like Morte says, MWM really has lost the plot. He simply isn't relevant to roleplaying today.
Scarecrow
SOC-14 1K
Well, it's a pretty poor interview. Almost the first half of it is the writer masturbating over the industry folks he's known. I REALLY don't care.
I have to say though, that I think you are being a bit harsh, Mal. I think by 'right of passage' he simply means that roleplaying is something that pretty much all boys do in one form or other, be it emulating their favourite footballer, playing videogames or roleplaying games.
By 'Honour' he may be referring to the feudal system at the heart of the OTU and a big part of character gen. Though I must confess to still finding that statement a little odd. There's honour in a lot of settings, sci-fi and fantasy.
Traveller - specifically the OTU - just isn't 'kewl' and a new ruleset isn't going to change that. T20 might have made it appeal to the D&D crowd but it's all rules and very little setting colour - which is what would have really sold it. What little setting colour is in there is pretty pedestrian compared to most other sci-fi settings. Look at it from the point of view of a lot of kids out there. Why play in the frankly insipid Traveller setting when you can play in the oh-so-more colourful Star Wars, or Star Trek, or Matrix (etc etc etc) settings with a ruleset that allows them to do all manner of kewl stuff?
Okay, Many Traveller Grognards love the OTU. And there are a small number of Hobby Newcomers that want a realistic, hard-sci-fi setting. Great! That's fine, but these people allready have several rulesets to choose from and are happy with the ones they've got. Adding a Fifth won't change that.
Traveller is Traveller. Rebooting it or updating it will make it something other than Traveller. So it shouldn't be done.
My advice to MWM would be to move on. Do something new. Traveller as a rule system is a dead horse. Stop flogging it.
Crow
I have to say though, that I think you are being a bit harsh, Mal. I think by 'right of passage' he simply means that roleplaying is something that pretty much all boys do in one form or other, be it emulating their favourite footballer, playing videogames or roleplaying games.
By 'Honour' he may be referring to the feudal system at the heart of the OTU and a big part of character gen. Though I must confess to still finding that statement a little odd. There's honour in a lot of settings, sci-fi and fantasy.
Traveller - specifically the OTU - just isn't 'kewl' and a new ruleset isn't going to change that. T20 might have made it appeal to the D&D crowd but it's all rules and very little setting colour - which is what would have really sold it. What little setting colour is in there is pretty pedestrian compared to most other sci-fi settings. Look at it from the point of view of a lot of kids out there. Why play in the frankly insipid Traveller setting when you can play in the oh-so-more colourful Star Wars, or Star Trek, or Matrix (etc etc etc) settings with a ruleset that allows them to do all manner of kewl stuff?
Okay, Many Traveller Grognards love the OTU. And there are a small number of Hobby Newcomers that want a realistic, hard-sci-fi setting. Great! That's fine, but these people allready have several rulesets to choose from and are happy with the ones they've got. Adding a Fifth won't change that.
Traveller is Traveller. Rebooting it or updating it will make it something other than Traveller. So it shouldn't be done.
My advice to MWM would be to move on. Do something new. Traveller as a rule system is a dead horse. Stop flogging it.
Crow
hirch duckfinder
SOC-13
the honour thing is about the speed of communication and mode of governence.
my advice to you guys is stop worrying. you can play whatever version of traveller you like. and if the game dies out with us old gits, so what? its a game.
preventing canon revisions? its his intellectual copyright but in your games you can play whatever canon you like.
my advice to you guys is stop worrying. you can play whatever version of traveller you like. and if the game dies out with us old gits, so what? its a game.
preventing canon revisions? its his intellectual copyright but in your games you can play whatever canon you like.
What he obviously (to me at least) meant is that RPGs are something that boys naturally come into contact with at one point or another nowadays. And reading the next sentence, he includes video RPG games in that, so he has got a point I guess.
Malenfant, it seems to me that you have some deep-seated problems with MWM and CT. You don't like CT, okay we get that. You don't have much appreciation for the work MWM has done for the RPG industry, fine, if you must, but IMHO it's like dissing the original Star Trek for its shortcomings. Turns things on their heads.
But in any case, I think we got it now. You seem to think - with justification no doubt - that you could make contributions to a more modern, more scientifically version of Traveller. So why not go ahead with it? Unless of course you can't be bothered to work with a "fossil" like MWM, but in this case I would frankly say that your attitude is the problem.
Regards,
Tobias
Sorry, but this sounds a *lot* like a whiney Star Wars fanboy ranting about George Lucas.
It's his creation. It's his business what he does with it. It's your business whether you spend money on it.
Of course, you *could* try and make your wishes felt and actually give the man feedback and suggestions. However, with an attitude like yours I doubt he will listen to you. I wouldn't.
Regards,
Tobias
M
Malenfant
Guest
He's made it fairly clear that he's not interested in useful feedback or suggestions.
M
Malenfant
Guest
I am doing that and I have done that.
I was willing to help out on T5 and initially I tried to, but then it became clear what MWM's attitude was - that he's only interested in T5 as he wants it to be, which is about 25 years out of date with the modern RPG market. His 'vision' is totally out of step with today's market. Marc hasn't listen to a word that anybody has said in the Traveller community about T5, and most people just aren't impressed with what they've seen of it at all. Even people who really like Traveller and who were looking forward to T5 have been sorely disappointed it what he's produced so far. And if there is a fundamental disconnect like that between an author and fans, then there's going to be a problem.
Marc needs to get the hint - that most people just aren't interested in what he has to say anymore. He should retire and leave it to the people who really know what they're doing and know how to make a marketable game, which is SJG and QLI.
Didn't anybody except hirch duckfinder read that sentence in context?
Because all these settings are cliche-fests, make Traveller look like the end-all, be-all of Hard SF and are (especially Star Trek) fairly unsuited for RPG purposes.
The modern Star Wars and Star Trek RPGs are, in many cases, not meant to be played. People "collect" them and rarely, if ever, play in my experience. Even more so for the Matrix, which is no wonder either - the number of interesting RPG situations in Matrix' extremely narrow-scoped background is rather limited.
The Traveller universe - for me at least - is a background which gives enough detail to be defined, and enough open possibilities for all kinds of adventures.
Regards,
Tobias
Mal, when you say that you have approached MWM. I was wondering is this only in the play test stage or actually come with a proposal and outline of manuscript in tow.
I do agree that Traveller must get much more scientific and tweak out those things that make sense in the 1970s however, we still have to left with a game system we can all play in. To be fair, I think this is what is Marc's objective, without putting words into his mouth; it is create a framework that we can all discuss things in. Whether, it goes more Hard Core like you & I would like to see or more Space Operish, as others would like to see will be left up to the individual referee.
Yes, this does not produce a game worthy of the 21st century but it sets up the potential for all of us to have a good time. Otherwise, we might as well, chosen our profession as medieval ecleseclasts arguing over how many angels can dance on a head of a pin or for that matter whether the UPPs represent real worlds or just a device for adventure.
I do agree that Traveller must get much more scientific and tweak out those things that make sense in the 1970s however, we still have to left with a game system we can all play in. To be fair, I think this is what is Marc's objective, without putting words into his mouth; it is create a framework that we can all discuss things in. Whether, it goes more Hard Core like you & I would like to see or more Space Operish, as others would like to see will be left up to the individual referee.
Yes, this does not produce a game worthy of the 21st century but it sets up the potential for all of us to have a good time. Otherwise, we might as well, chosen our profession as medieval ecleseclasts arguing over how many angels can dance on a head of a pin or for that matter whether the UPPs represent real worlds or just a device for adventure.
M
Malenfant
Guest
I was in the playtest. I was singularly unimpressed there - the material wasn't even written, and what wsa there was overcomplicated, largely random-based, and very dull.
Thing is, people have talked about T5 for several years, and its apparent that MWM hasn't listened to them. He wants to develop the game according to his "vision", which is contrary to how the people he's hoping to buy it want to see it developed. All he's doing really is to stick with what was originally proposed for T5 - which was proposed several years ago, before GT or T20 were around. There's just no room for it on the market, and nobody really needs it either since most people have got their own ideas of what Traveller is and have tweaked the game themselves to their satisfaction.
Who's going to buy T5? A small minority of obsessive collectors who'd probably buy toilet paper if it was produced by Marc? Who's it aimed at? The tiny minority of people who aren't satisfied with any of the six versions of the game released so far? Why is it being written? I have no idea about that - it seems like Marc is writing it because he wants to write it, not because anyone actually wants it or because there's a need for it on the market.
Thing is, people have talked about T5 for several years, and its apparent that MWM hasn't listened to them. He wants to develop the game according to his "vision", which is contrary to how the people he's hoping to buy it want to see it developed. All he's doing really is to stick with what was originally proposed for T5 - which was proposed several years ago, before GT or T20 were around. There's just no room for it on the market, and nobody really needs it either since most people have got their own ideas of what Traveller is and have tweaked the game themselves to their satisfaction.
Who's going to buy T5? A small minority of obsessive collectors who'd probably buy toilet paper if it was produced by Marc? Who's it aimed at? The tiny minority of people who aren't satisfied with any of the six versions of the game released so far? Why is it being written? I have no idea about that - it seems like Marc is writing it because he wants to write it, not because anyone actually wants it or because there's a need for it on the market.