Why do we like older rule systems?

[Traveller]

Blix brings up a point regarding this site not bothering with anything beyond the OTU. More to the point, if they do focus on rules, it's only on the first four editions of Traveller (CT, MT, TNE, T4), T5, and nothing after that. If that is the case, then why not actually build the site around that idea and stop pretending that anything else matters?

To me, this site is misleading. It pays lip service to the idea of being "the" home of ALL Traveller, and yet the focus of the participants is on one thing and one thing only: the OTU as presented in the first four editions of Traveller and in T5. MgT, GURPS Traveller, and T20 are generally ignored.

If MgT, GURPS Traveller, and T20 are generally ignored, then why have them here? MgT players and GURPS Traveller players have their own sites they can go where the environment is far less intimidating, the people friendlier, and discussion doesn't always center around whether Cleon I was a magnificent bastard of an Emperor or not. Since the two current editions of Traveller have their own message boards, this means two things:

1. You're lying when you say this is the home of All Traveller.
2. The message boards here need to change to reflect what the site's focus should be.

On this site, there are way too many forums, which makes it difficult to navigate the site. If there is any inclination to actually have the forums reflect the site's focus (OTU and the rules of the first four editions of Traveller as well as T5, you really should look into making the following substantial changes:

• Administration Forums: need to combined into one and moved to the bottom of the index page.
• General Discussions: needs to be re-labeled "Off Topic Discussion" and have all its subforums except for "The Lone Star" and "Duty Free Shop" combined along with their posts into a new "Random Static" subforum, along with the discussions from the old Random Static forum. The board software is not so decrepit that links are going to break, moderator complaints to the contrary notwithstanding.
• Other Versions of Traveller: the following forums need to be deleted: MgT, GURPS, T20, Traveller wargames. The Traveller5 forum needs to be folded into this category, though at this point, T5 is a white elephant. Traveller wargames can be combined with the appropriate edition of the game, e.g. Invasion Earth discussion in Classic Traveller, Brilliant Lances discussion in TNE.
• 2300/2320AD: None of the subforums in this area are part of the OTU, and thus of no benefit for discussion of the OTU, which is the site's focus.
• Play By Post: Keep it.
• Far Trader: Move it to its own message board on another part of the server if desired, but it is of no benefit for discussion of the OTU, which is the site's focus.
• Random Static: combine in the new General Discussion subforum, as noted above.
• Wiki Discussion: You have the wiki up and running. Each page and each registered user has a talk page, so this forum isn't needed.

The final forum setup would look much like this:

___________________________________________________________
Off-Topic Discussion
|
|__>The Lone Star
|
|__>Random Static
|
|__>Duty Free Shop
|
Traveller Discussion
|
|__>Classic Traveller
|
|__>MegaTraveller
|
|__>Traveller: The New Era
|
|__>Traveller, 4th Edition
|
|__>Traveller5
|
Play By Post
|
|__>In Character
|
|__>Out of Character
|
Administration (no child forums, viewable only by moderators)

___________________________________________________________

I dare anyone to tell me that what you see above is more difficult to navigate than the mess on the index page now. This is a site that keeps to the site's actual focus without being difficult to use and consequently without being a headache to moderate.

There are other issues regarding this site that need fixing as well, though a complete streamlining of the forums is the highest priority when it comes to making this site relevant once again. Nevertheless, in no particular order.

1. Annoying Restrictions: No custom avatars, no more than 15 PMs in the PM space, and having to register before even seeing a post. If you want to make the site accessible so people can determine whether they want to participate, they need to be able to see what people are writing. They can't do that if they have to register to do so. Most people will simply go and find another site to visit that actually allows them to read posts for a while before participating. The other two things are absolutely laughable because virtually any modern message board package can handle these things. Any server can handle them as well, moderator complaints to the contrary notwithstanding. If the server truly cannot handle these kinds of things, then it's time to upgrade the server.
2. Getting Nothing For Something: The Moot needs to go. The promise of early access to material was false advertising and thus theft, and the benefits of Moot membership other than that false advertising just mentioned are not worth the expenditure.

To those who maintain this site, this is your opportunity to make this site into something relevant again by focusing on what makes CotI strong. You can't fix the people, but you can fix the site and try to make the experience better for those who may come here. The main question is this.

Are you willing to take the risk or will you stand by and do nothing?

Given past history, my bet is on you doing nothing. Prove me wrong.

 

[mbrinkhues]

Sorry but IMHO you go way overboard traveller. You are not forced to play in the OTU but neither is anyone forced to abandon the OTU because YOU don't like it for whatever reason.

A board is defined by the interests of the majority of members. If the majority here likes OTU well than the board is about the OTU mostly. Seems to be the situation here. Other stuff is discussed, actually including the systems you claim are not(1)(2)(3).

You may not like it but majority of members/interests rules and that is the way it should be. There are other Traveller boards who don't care much about the OTU (MGT i.e) and are equally (in)active, maybe they are more to your liking.


(1) There has been quite a bit of discussion about GT and how to use/integrate it here. It has died down mainly because there is no new stuff for GT and all has been said. Search for "Starports", "Space stations" etc. and you will find quite a few

(2) There is little T5 discussion since T5 is NOT YET OUT. There is a draft but most people don't care for drafts (And after the workover from MGT/Public Draft to MGT/Release my guess is the number shrunk even more)

(3) T20 has a lot of discussion here. Used to be the T20 board. But T20 is dead and so discussion has died down

 

[Jeffr0]

If MgT, GURPS Traveller, and T20 are generally ignored, then why have them here? MgT players and GURPS Traveller players have their own sites they can go where the environment is far less intimidating, the people friendlier, and discussion doesn't always center around whether Cleon I was a magnificent bastard of an Emperor or not.

Listen:

I play GURPS Traveller, but I like good information on Classic Traveller for my games. The grogs on this site have never let me down.

I understand we get into... heated debates... occasionally.

BUT IF IT'S FREAKING ON TOPIC FOR WHATEVER THREAD IT'S IN I WILL FREAKING PUT UP WITH IT!

...

Please...

Spin off another thread called "two minutes hate", "fixing COTI," or whatever....

...

The topic of this thread is "Why do we like older rule systems."

 

[mbrinkhues]

I didn't say it was new. I'm saying that when it comes to Traveller, CotI doesn't really bother with anything beyond the OTU (or GDW's other releases).

Yes because quite a few people here define Traveller as "The universe" rather than "the rules set(s)" And a board is defined by the interest of the majority of posters.

<cut>
In your opinion. Judge Dredd has been around as a setting for longer than the OTU (the first strip was published in 1977), and unlike the OTU has been growing constantly with each new story published throughout that time. I would argue that it a much more detailed setting than the OTU. YMMV obviously.

Setting != Role playing setting. Published non RPG material may be a lot but if I have to do all the translation to RPG and/or if the setting does not allow much RPG opportunities than it does not help.

JD is not of interest to me (not into comics, not into distopian future) but from skimming the Wiki entry it falls into the above category: One defined setting (MC1), rest of the setting is "changed by story needs" and "little defined". Add in "big hero" and it looks like a so-so setting.

Same for Hammers Slammers. The universe has lots of detail - IF the Slammers operated on that world. Otherwise we get nothing. We know battles - Those that involved HS. And HS always comes out the winner. I like the books but as an RPG setting it's not enough meat. The HS SB is more a "Meet the Slammers" than a real RPG supplement, all it offers you is to fight the wars from the books. That's like leading Red Squadron against the death star and uttering "I am almost there..."

This goes for a lot of settings. Pournelles "CoDo" gives little information past the heroes battles so unless you prefer being "Soldier Asch, 3. Battery" it is pretty useless as a setting depite at least a thousand pages published. Or take "Footfall", 500 pages and yet all you could play is "da heros".

 

[Vargas]

Perhaps it's a semantic difference only of importance to me, but neither Judge Dredd nor Hammers Slammers is Traveller. They are their own RPGs which use the Traveller rules as their core. The closest analogy I can think of is to use Decipher's rules for Lord of the Rings for Sword of Shannara and calling it a LotR setting. That's just my view, I'm not saying anyone else is wrong or looking to get into a debate about it, I just wanted to put that out there.

 

[mbrinkhues]

Perhaps it's a semantic difference only of importance to me, but neither Judge Dredd nor Hammers Slammers is Traveller. They are their own RPGs which use the Traveller rules as their core. The closest analogy I can think of is to use Decipher's rules for Lord of the Rings for Sword of Shannara and calling it a LotR setting. That's just my view, I'm not saying anyone else is wrong or looking to get into a debate about it, I just wanted to put that out there.

Actually that IS the core of travellers and blix "problem"

MGT has defined "Traveller" as a rulesset that like GURPS, HERO or Fuzion supports various universes and guys like traveller or blix support that

Most forum members here are (more) used to "Traveller" meaning the OTU as it was true for the later half of CT, all of MT, TNE, T4 and T20 as well as GT

 

[Prometheus]

Simple because it is where it all started. It is home.

 

[BardicHeart]

I understand we get into... heated debates... occasionally.

Seems more than occasionally to me, my impression is that there are a number of people here who tend to get a tad obsessive about things to the point of being unable to dispassionately discuss things. That, in my opinion, is probably the core of the problem... too many too strongly attached to singular views and not enough of people able to cheerfully discuss or embrace other POVs just for the sake of conversation.

The topic of this thread is "Why do we like older rule systems."

Yup, and I posted my thoughts on it... but people don't seem interested in the topic, they'd rather have an argument.

Going back to that however... like I said, I like the older games because I have them, I have complete collections and there's still so much left in them I haven't done with them. What are new games offering that is necessarily any better than what I have now? In most cases I don't see anything that makes it worth shelling out the money. And as I said, I migrated to Traveller almost by accident, but there it was a case of finding things that did offer something I felt was worth it.

Another thing occurred to me, in many cases with the older games they are also out of print or at least out of production for the most part. So any timelines and so forth are done, no more tinkering with them. Now that I think about it, I think the metaplots in many games tend to annoy me and on the whole I'd rather they weren't there. With older games, its done, its a set thing, I know the timeline from start to finish (or at least where they left off at) and can work with that if I want to use their setting. That can be nice, for me at least.

 

[Jeffr0]

Doesn't work the way you think it does; just as many new, young canonhawks for those proportionally as ever. And the secondmost intense canonhawk I've ever met is in his early 20's now. (Took my lunch away asking me canonista questions as a junior about 5 years ago, when he realized Mr. Hostman the Band sub was the Mr. Hostman in the T20 book credits.)

That is just plain full of awesome.

What do you think motived this guy to get so into it?

I know for me... I picked up GURPS Traveller... and knew (of course) they were building on this older rpg... but I could see that they were making these big decisions about the setting and rules that weren't necessarily in line with the way the game was experienced back in the day. Also... GURPS had mostly adventure seeds... I really wanted to have REAL old school Traveller adventures. Ultimately, I didn't think you could really understand even the OTU *without* having book 3. Also, I came to the conclusion that there is a great deal of easy-to-absorb "implied setting" that is relevant to the setting built into the character generation rules-- you can especially see that in something like the Aslan char gen in Alien Module One.

 

[BardicHeart]

What do you think motived this guy to get so into it?

I think it is perhaps easier for younger gamers to get heavily into a game setting than it is for older players for two reasons. First, they tend to have more free time. By the time you're in your 30s+ you have a career to worry about, mortgage payments, possibly family, and a social life to keep up with. I had to drop out of gaming completely for a few years because I just didn't have time for it at all (running three businesses will keep you hopping). Younger gamers also tend to be more enthusiastic, they've got more energy for it. As we get older, we tend to settle in more... we're less likely to be as passionate about games (probably because we're too busy being passionate about families, jobs and so forth), our focus is elsewhere in our lives.

 

[Blix]

(1) There has been quite a bit of discussion about GT and how to use/integrate it here. It has died down mainly because there is no new stuff for GT and all has been said. Search for "Starports", "Space stations" etc. and you will find quite a few

If people want to talk about GT, they go to the SJG boards. Why? Because the SJG boards are populated by people who like GT and who are enthusiastic about it. CotI is not - most people here still sneer at it as an "Alternate Traveller Universe", and interest in discussion is low here.

Same with MGT. On the Mongoose boards, people are enthusiastic about it. Here on CotI, it is greeted with either apathy or outright hate. Again, if anyone wants to ask questions about Mongoose Traveller, they are better off going to the Mongoose boards to do so.

As you said, it's about what people here are interested in. By and large, people on CotI are not interested in supporting GT or MGT.

(2) There is little T5 discussion since T5 is NOT YET OUT. There is a draft but most people don't care for drafts (And after the workover from MGT/Public Draft to MGT/Release my guess is the number shrunk even more)

I also do not see why there is a need for a public T5 discussion board here. If it is in development (as it supposedly has been for almost a decade, if not longer) then that is happening in private. All that a public board allows is for people to point and laugh at it.

(3) T20 has a lot of discussion here. Used to be the T20 board. But T20 is dead and so discussion has died down

So why not remove the board? T20 gets less discussion than the other old Traveller editions, it just seems like a waste of space to me. CotI does not support Traveller Hero either, which also sank without a trace.

 

[Vargas]

Seems more than occasionally to me, my impression is that there are a number of people here who tend to get a tad obsessive about things to the point of being unable to dispassionately discuss things.

More to the point, at least for me, the setting has become the whole focal point for some people. It's no longer, or at least less the case of, the background context for game adventures and instead has become an end in itself. It seems like some of the points being thrashed to death on these boards are of little or no relevence to actually playing Traveller.

. . . As we get older, we tend to settle in more... we're less likely to be as passionate about games (probably because we're too busy being passionate about families, jobs and so forth), our focus is elsewhere in our lives.

I think I'm lucky in that I'm "coming out on the other side". My kids are mostly grown, I'm fairly secure financially and I've got more time to devote to gaming. Now I just need to find more games to play in.

 

[Blix]

Actually that IS the core of travellers and blix "problem"

MGT has defined "Traveller" as a rulesset that like GURPS, HERO or Fuzion supports various universes and guys like traveller or blix support that

Most forum members here are (more) used to "Traveller" meaning the OTU as it was true for the later half of CT, all of MT, TNE, T4 and T20 as well as GT

We are not the ones with a problem, you are the one denying reality to suit your own personal beliefs.

The FACT, as stated by Mongoose (who are the current license holders, and therefore unlike you are able to speak with authority on the matter), is that Traveller is now a ruleset for multiple settings.

The FACT, as defined by Marc Miller (the original creator of the IP, who therefore unlike you is able to speak with authority on the matter), is that Classic Traveller was originally designed as a ruleset for multiple settings. The OTU came later, as one specific setting.

Your OPINION is that the OTU is Traveller, or that Traveller is "more than just a ruleset". Your OPINION is incorrect, and always has been. I have no doubt that you will protest, but that does not change the fact that you are wrong, and if you still insist that you are correct then you need to understand that you are rejecting reality in favor of your own beliefs.

(as for being on-topic or not, the Moderators have the tools to split the Off-topic posts from this thread and put them in a new one if they choose to).

 

[Blix]

As for liking old rules, by and large I find that some older rules systems are less innovative and more unnecessarily complicated, but there are newer systems like that too.

Either way, I do not judge a rule system by its age, I judge it by whether it is consistent and useful for my purposes. Personally, I find Classic Traveller unplayable as a system, but I do like older systems like BRP and GURPS. I also like D&D4e and FATE. "Age" does not seem relevant to my tastes.

 

[Jeffr0]

If every conversation about Traveller first had to resolve the issue of defining Traveller, then no one would ever actually get around to talking about Traveller.

I like the CT materials because this was not yet an issue at the time. J Andrew Keith just flat out loved the game *and* the rules and didn't fret over any of rules/setting flamewar topics.

I love every modicum of implied *setting* contained within the original CT *rules*.

Everything was optimized for sci-fi rpg gaming....

 

[mbrinkhues]

We are not the ones with a problem, you are the one denying reality to suit your own personal beliefs.

The FACT, as stated by Mongoose (who are the current license holders, and therefore unlike you are able to speak with authority on the matter), is that Traveller is now a ruleset for multiple settings.

The FACT, as defined by Marc Miller (the original creator of the IP, who therefore unlike you is able to speak with authority on the matter), is that Classic Traveller was originally designed as a ruleset for multiple settings. The OTU came later, as one specific setting.

Your OPINION is that the OTU is Traveller, or that Traveller is "more than just a ruleset". Your OPINION is incorrect, and always has been. I have no doubt that you will protest, but that does not change the fact that you are wrong, and if you still insist that you are correct then you need to understand that you are rejecting reality in favor of your own beliefs.

(as for being on-topic or not, the Moderators have the tools to split the Off-topic posts from this thread and put them in a new one if they choose to).

Thank you for proving the point I wanted to make. To put it into harsher words:

YOU: "Mongoose is the licence holder so what Mongoose says about Traveller is the holy writ. They say Traveller = Universal System and so it is"

ME: "Many posters here have a different opion. For them Traveller = Setting and they don't care that Mongoose says different"

And that IS the problem in this thread. Two opinions "What is Traveller" colliding. That's all I said in the post above.

And a board is defined by the interests of the majority. So if most here prefer the "Traveller=OTU" concept that is how the board is set up and populated. If you don't like the way the majority on a board works, it's best to choose another one.

I.e I don't frequent german scale modeling boards since 80+ percent there prefer "WW2"(and mostly WW2/german). Instead I choose US boards with a large population of "Cold war" and "modern" builders.


Obtw: Please read a post. I adressed among others that CT only became the OTU partway through it's life

 

[Blix]

YOU: "Mongoose is the licence holder so what Mongoose says about Traveller is the holy writ. They say Traveller = Universal System and so it is"

ME: "Many posters here have a different opion. For them Traveller = Setting and they don't care that Mongoose says different"

And that IS the problem in this thread. Two opinions "What is Traveller" colliding. That's all I said in the post above.

The problem is that one view (the Mongoose one) has actual validity (being based on fact and reality), and the other does not (being based on belief and opinion). A billion people could believe that something is true, but that does not mean that it actually is true when the evidence is examined.

And a board is defined by the interests of the majority. So if most here prefer the "Traveller=OTU" concept that is how the board is set up and populated. If you don't like the way the majority on a board works, it's best to choose another one.

That was my point though. The "majority" (at least of the handful of vocal posters who actually post regularly here) on CotI believe that Traveller is the OTU. The reality is that Traveller is not the OTU, and most people in the Traveller community have accepted that and moved beyond it.

Most people have chosen other boards to go to, which is why CotI is dying and has been dying for a long time. The recent change of management is not going to change that.

If CotI wants to become relevant again, then it needs to accept reality and embrace that there is more to Traveller than the OTU. If it does not do that, then it can quite happily remain as "the last bastion of the OTU" populated by a handful of stubborn holdouts with their heads in the sand. But if that is what you want, then people remaining here should accept that they are a minority and should not be complaining all the time about how quiet the board has become.

 

[mbrinkhues]

Mongoose view only is valid for the MGT Rules set. Only that system is marketed as "generic"

Not for Mega, Classic(with all supplements) or TNE. And since the three older systems are still legally availabel and as much "Marc Miller/GDW" work both views have IMHO equal merrit.

And since Mongoose (despite Gems like Reft Sector and Sector Fleet) still fails to convice me it's rules engine is better than TNE or Mega the MGT rules set. And since I won't use their rules engine their philosophy is of little interest to me.

===========

As for "dying": To me it looks like this board gets at least as much posts as the Traveller board over at MGT. And definitly a lot more than the 13Mann board in germany

 

[Blix]

Mongoose view only is valid for the MGT Rules set.

And I have no doubt that you will continue to believe that despite reality and what anyone else says.

CotI has always had an overblown view of itself as "the home of all Traveller". It is nothing of the sort. If you look at the Mongoose Traveller board, it is full of people who are actually playing the game in all its settings, not bickering about irrelevant minutiae about one specific background and tenaciously refusing to acknowledge that anything else is worth talking about (which is what CotI has been for a long time).

CotI is about as relevant to the current Traveller community as the Coelocanth - a living fossil, a fish thought to be long extinct but still somehow surviving today. Its continuing survival in its current fossilized form is only due to the stubborn refusal of the handful of people who still post here regularly who refuse to admit that their views are no longer relevant to the rest of the gaming community outside of this board. Those outside it view it as a quaint curiosity, nothing more.

That is fine if that's what you want, but you need to stop believing that this board is "the home of Traveller" and recognize that it is actually just caters to an ever-decreasing group of people who still insist on clinging to "the old ways".

 

[BardicHeart]

More to the point, at least for me, the setting has become the whole focal point for some people. It's no longer, or at least less the case of, the background context for game adventures and instead has become an end in itself. It seems like some of the points being thrashed to death on these boards are of little or no relevence to actually playing Traveller.

I think you summed that up nicely.