tbeard1999
SOC-14 1K
This question was posed in another thread and I felt that it deserved its own thread (it's also quite tangential from the topic of the other thread).
Strange. There's something about Traveller (all versions) that people just need to mod it. I'd say it has something to do with the type of players Traveller attracts, but it attracts me, and I typically don't mod other rpgs I play.
Sure, I'll come up with a tweak here, a prune there. But, for most other rpgs, I don't make any major changes--not near as big or as many as I do with Traveller.
Why is that?
I don't know.
Everybody seems to have their own "House" system when it comes to Trav.
Hmm...maybe it's because the Traveller rules themselves, especially the CT rules, encourage one to think outside of the box and come up with rolls and checks all on his own. </font>[/QUOTE]The only game I've ever seen that has a similar level of player-modding is The Fantasy Trip, a FRPG designed by Steve Jackson and published by Metagaming in the late 1970s. It's the precursor to GURPS (and in my opinion a much better game) and appears to have strongly influenced Champions as well (which heavily influenced GURPS). It was also (AFAIK) the first RPG that let you design characters from points. And it had an excellent tactical combat system (it started out as a gladitorial game, Melee) that is *still* better than anything in GURPs or D20. At one time, it was the best selling RPG after AD&D.
When Metagaming folded in 1983, no further TFT products came out. The owner of Metagaming vanished and the copyrights are in limbo (I think that Metagaming's creditors wound up with them, but had no idea what they had).
And yes, I'm a fan. There's a small, but very determined group of TFT players out there and they too have produced innumerable mods. See my website at http://reese.duneroller.com/tft/ for an example.
Some factors these games have in common:
1. Age. Both are from The Golden Age of Gaming, when giants strode the Earth, when the gaming-comic book nexus didn't exist, when the same people played Traveller and SPI's War in the East monster boardgame, when polyhedrals were pretty darned expensive, when d20s were marked 0-9 twice, when Games Workshop was mostly a UK reseller of American RPGs, when few people had home computers (though my first BASIC program was -- you guessed it -- a Traveller subsector generator), etc., etc.
2. Quality. Both games were highly regarded in the marketplace and had impeccable designer credentials -- Steve Jsckson and Marc Miller respectively. Although it must be said that CT was, for that time, far more polished and professionally presented than any other gaming product. At a time when game companies were publishing products typed on typewriters, CT was clearly the work of pros. It really wasn't until the 1980s that CT's presentation quality was matched by other games. TFT's production values were average.
3. d6s. <shrug> Could be just a coincidence, but both games use d6s exclusively.
4. Scope. TFT was the first system that truly had the potential to be a "universal" system. Traveller *was* a universal game simply because it had to handle TL0 through 15+.
5. No "official" support for many, many years. GDW stopped supporting CT when MT came out (and truthfully, I felt GDW's CT support was uninspiring for the most part, and I suspect that CT was eclipsed by the newer -- and very popular -- Twilight 2000). TFT had no official support after Metagaming folded in 1983. Personally, I consider this to be the key reason for rampant player modding. With no "official" support -- and no designer around to say "no, you shouldn't do that" both systems became sorta like "open source" products. Of course, if they weren't good games in the first place, no one would bother.
6. Uninspired Successors. Most of us TFT players couldn't wait for GURPS. We were very disappointed when it arrived. It kept few of the good things about TFT and almost all of the flaws. The CT players I knew couldn't wait for MT. We were very disappointed when it arrived. And alienated by the dispruption of the Third Imperium. The less said of the TNE abomination the better. A crappy game and a crappy setting...hard to do that and still get published. Of course, these are the folks who thought Dangerous Journeys was the bet to make...
I'm not sure if I've ever met anyone who plays CT straight out of the box un-modded either.
Strange. There's something about Traveller (all versions) that people just need to mod it. I'd say it has something to do with the type of players Traveller attracts, but it attracts me, and I typically don't mod other rpgs I play.
Sure, I'll come up with a tweak here, a prune there. But, for most other rpgs, I don't make any major changes--not near as big or as many as I do with Traveller.
Why is that?
I don't know.
Everybody seems to have their own "House" system when it comes to Trav.
Hmm...maybe it's because the Traveller rules themselves, especially the CT rules, encourage one to think outside of the box and come up with rolls and checks all on his own. </font>[/QUOTE]The only game I've ever seen that has a similar level of player-modding is The Fantasy Trip, a FRPG designed by Steve Jackson and published by Metagaming in the late 1970s. It's the precursor to GURPS (and in my opinion a much better game) and appears to have strongly influenced Champions as well (which heavily influenced GURPS). It was also (AFAIK) the first RPG that let you design characters from points. And it had an excellent tactical combat system (it started out as a gladitorial game, Melee) that is *still* better than anything in GURPs or D20. At one time, it was the best selling RPG after AD&D.
When Metagaming folded in 1983, no further TFT products came out. The owner of Metagaming vanished and the copyrights are in limbo (I think that Metagaming's creditors wound up with them, but had no idea what they had).
And yes, I'm a fan. There's a small, but very determined group of TFT players out there and they too have produced innumerable mods. See my website at http://reese.duneroller.com/tft/ for an example.
Some factors these games have in common:
1. Age. Both are from The Golden Age of Gaming, when giants strode the Earth, when the gaming-comic book nexus didn't exist, when the same people played Traveller and SPI's War in the East monster boardgame, when polyhedrals were pretty darned expensive, when d20s were marked 0-9 twice, when Games Workshop was mostly a UK reseller of American RPGs, when few people had home computers (though my first BASIC program was -- you guessed it -- a Traveller subsector generator), etc., etc.
2. Quality. Both games were highly regarded in the marketplace and had impeccable designer credentials -- Steve Jsckson and Marc Miller respectively. Although it must be said that CT was, for that time, far more polished and professionally presented than any other gaming product. At a time when game companies were publishing products typed on typewriters, CT was clearly the work of pros. It really wasn't until the 1980s that CT's presentation quality was matched by other games. TFT's production values were average.
3. d6s. <shrug> Could be just a coincidence, but both games use d6s exclusively.
4. Scope. TFT was the first system that truly had the potential to be a "universal" system. Traveller *was* a universal game simply because it had to handle TL0 through 15+.
5. No "official" support for many, many years. GDW stopped supporting CT when MT came out (and truthfully, I felt GDW's CT support was uninspiring for the most part, and I suspect that CT was eclipsed by the newer -- and very popular -- Twilight 2000). TFT had no official support after Metagaming folded in 1983. Personally, I consider this to be the key reason for rampant player modding. With no "official" support -- and no designer around to say "no, you shouldn't do that" both systems became sorta like "open source" products. Of course, if they weren't good games in the first place, no one would bother.
6. Uninspired Successors. Most of us TFT players couldn't wait for GURPS. We were very disappointed when it arrived. It kept few of the good things about TFT and almost all of the flaws. The CT players I knew couldn't wait for MT. We were very disappointed when it arrived. And alienated by the dispruption of the Third Imperium. The less said of the TNE abomination the better. A crappy game and a crappy setting...hard to do that and still get published. Of course, these are the folks who thought Dangerous Journeys was the bet to make...
