Why Other Versions of Traveller Failed

[jalberti]

I agree with Aramis. I would like to see MT reprinted. The final edition of MT with all the errata removed, was an excellent and useful rules set.

After playing MT and the enhancements it provides, I could never go back to the CT rules. MT adds a great deal to the game, and keeps many of the goods things from CT.

 

[T. Foster]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by jalberti:
I agree with Aramis. I would like to see MT reprinted. The final edition of MT with all the errata removed, was an excellent and useful rules set.

After playing MT and the enhancements it provides, I could never go back to the CT rules. MT adds a great deal to the game, and keeps many of the goods things from CT.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

No kidding. Leaving aside the obvious (errata, lack of clear examples, whether the Rebellion was really such a good idea, and lack of anything to actually PLAY) my only complaints about MT are these:

1) Interrupts in combat confuse me to this day, I'm not crazy about the multiplication and/or division involved in figuring penetration and damage, and having 2 different damage systems (Life Force points vs. stat damage) seems pretty clumsy and half-baked (I use neither, going with a simple AHL-esque Superficial, Minor, Major, and Destroyed/Dead).

2) A simple 'Book 2 equivalent' craft design system is sorely missing. With practice (and a spreadsheet) it's possible to become an expert at MT craft design, but it's a nightmare for casual vehicle designers (i.e. GMs who don't design navies but still think it might be cool to have a couple of custom-made ships in his campaign, i.e. me). Just to see if time and age made a difference, I sat down a couple months ago with pencil, paper, and calculator and tried to design a simple grav-tank using the MT rules -- I gave up in frustration after about 45 minutes, with no tank.

3) The chapters on Travelling and in-system operations shouldn't be hidden away in the Imperial Encyclopedia, and several sections from the Referee's Companion (technology, research, mass combat, the blank maps) should be included in the main rules, but this really goes back to editing (and, I suppose, available space).

And that's really it. Nowadays I'd also tweak char-gen a bit (including background skills and a system for picking up contacts and/or enemies (like the Cyberpunk Lifepath system) and making the rolls task-based) and I'd like to see world creation and trade at least a little more scientific/realistic, but as far as the core bulk of the rules go, I think MT was a good 75-80% of the way there.

 

[lostpict]

Originally posted by lamar:
As we are moving toward the fifth edition of Traveller, I think it might be useful to take a look at why the previous editions of Traveller failed. ...

I am a very old Traveller hand - I started playing the weekend after I saw StarWars during it's first run. I have bought almost every thing Traveller that has come down the pike (exception being GURPS Traveller)and it is my favorite RPG(s) in all it's incarnations.

Here is my point, Traveller the "franchise" is a rip-roaring success (it's success is attested to by the many feet long stack of Traveller books that fill my bookshelves), but I think the challenge that Traveller has always faced is "diversity".

As an example, back during CT days we had at least 3 ways of resolving hand-to-hand combat (LBB version, Ashanti High Lightning, & Snapshot), we had at least 5 ways of resolving ship actions (LBB version, Mayday, HighGuard V1 & V2, & Trillion Credit Squadron), and a plethora of source material (some canon and some not but all authorized by GDW) that nearly drowns the GM. And that was just CT. Add to the mix MT, TNE, T4, GurpsT, & D20T. We end up with Traveller as the most roll-your-own RPG off all time.

The other factor is the extreme divesity in Traveller campaigns (you can conquer the galaxy, your starsystem, your planet, your town, or just your bar AND you can do it with Money, Force, Influence, or Intrigue - that just covers one set of possibilities).

I think you could make a strong argument that the other RPG oldie (that unnamed fantasy game from WI) managed to keep the franchise in tact by keeping a tight grip on things through it's 3 editions. Heretics were eradicated

So the challenge any future Traveller version faces is somehow getting enough of these ducks in a row to make it a financial success. I think one way to do that would be a computer-mediated version that somehow pulls all that source material together, offers rule diversity, and manages to convince everyone it's canon.

Just my 2 cents

LostPict

 

[Murph]

Truely brilliant analysis gents. I used MT as a suppliment to the Classic rules. But part of the affection was the classic 3rd Imperium. After things got wanky, I just transferred to CP2020.

Ship design: High Guard, High Guard, High Guard! FOr the gearheads, ok, maybe something really complex where you need a PIII/800 system to just design a ships boat.

 

[Gallowglass]

I'm with lostpict on this one:

Traveller (irrelevant of version) was / is successful when people want to play against that (thank you Andy Slack

) "Backdrop of Stars..." that was the official Traveller Universe. You could adapt much of the supplementary and scanrio material into your own game, but we all had, in the middle distance "behind" our games, the Imperium and its politics and rivals. The fatal flaw IMO of MT, TNE and possibly T4 (yep, disliked 1/2 dice so much I never bought it!) was that that Background became foreground: the published material started pushing itself into your game. Yes, people could ignore it, but in the _market_ what succeeds is what keeps the consumer in their comfort zone (hence the D&D juggernaut's success).

So I would suggest that T5 needs to be a flexible, adaptable system that keeps the consumer in their comfort zone (i.e. ready to run scenarios, _useful_ background material and supplements) whilst minimizing the intrusion of canon into their games.

Think 76 Patrons, Shadows, Kinnunir NOT 250 page supplements on the finer points of Domain of Deneb politics.

 

[Dedthom]

The thing I like about classic traveller was the hard science, everything worked by real world standards. The imperium was so big that anything could happen from epic adventure to just buying stuff here and selling it there. I never got into Mega traveller.
TNE was killed by it system, it was a wargamer trying to apply wargame rules to a RPG, the rules for auto fire were an abomination.
T4 was way to buggy to be used, missing charts and typos were everywhere.
I hope that T5 will be what everyone wants, But thank god for the CT reprints, Far Future is awsome just for that.
IMHO Traveller GURPS suffers from one thing, GURPS. I will have to wait and see what happens with Traveller D20.

 

[Uncle Bob]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Dedthom:
<snip>
TNE was killed by it system, it was a wargamer trying to apply wargame rules to a RPG, the rules for auto fire were an abomination.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
No wargamer would put up with the house system. A wargamer/wargame designer knows that the system has to be as simple as possible and still hold the desired level of realism.

The idea was to create one system that could support a number of games, much as GURPs and D20 do. It was not successful, and helped kill GDW.

 

[Dedthom]

Sorry Uncle Bob, But apparently you have never played Advanced Sqaud Leader.....

[This message has been edited by Dedthom (edited 19 May 2001).]

 

[Gatsby]

Actually, the megaSqUad Leader with split squads and huge hexes kinda made my group lose interest in SL...making Bob's point that you have to use as few rules as possible to make it easy to play (especially for those guys getting a wee bit tired at the end of the night), but you have to have enough rules to encompass the 'feel and dram' that gamers want and need.
1) A good system needs a competant Referee. Too many things in this world are now supposed to be handed to us that do all our work for us. A ref can fill in the OCCASIONAL variances needed by the players...a system (NO system) can do that.
However, a bad system can confuse or slow down an adventure as much as any confused DM.
2) I never liked house systems...a system is like the cinematography of the story and should be designed to fit the universe. You don't need John Woo for 'Moulan Rouge' and you don't let Woody Allen direct the Spiderman movie. When picking up a new system, I ask myself "What's the FEEL of the action when players pick up the dice? What is the FEEL of the drama when making a skill roll?" Then people at the game store look at me funny for talking to myself....

Gats'

 

[Dedthom]

Ahhhh, But many war gamers want as much detail as possible, they want every possible effect covered by the rules because for them the game is everything. This is not the case in a RPG,you want everything to be simple because the play is the thing. This is what hurt GDW's house system, combat was to detailed, taken into account things that should have been dropped or made abstract for playability.
CT has a great combat system, you modify 8+ and then roll the dice, if you hit you for damage and apply it to the stats.
I like simply systems that allow alot of leway for the players and GM.
I also do not like universal systems for the reasons given D20 works well for fantasy and might work well for something else but in the end there will always be something lacking in the non-fantasy games it is applied to. GURPS is trying to hard to be everything to everyone that it has become diluted from its original game.

 

[Uncle Bob]

I was reminded: Twilight 2000 (the original rules) was an RPG written written by (and for) wargamers. Just enough complexity to cover the necessary situations. The role-players didin't like the the three-round rule, but it worked and that satisfied the Wargamers.

 

[William]

Rather terribly humorous to me, as this exchange might show:

""Me:
2) OTOH, I really liked the mechanics of Megatraveller better (the task system is second nature by now and that may be why I like it so...

.
Is there any chance of reprinting the GDW copywrite MT materials when the CT materials are finished? "

Marc:
"I like MT as well, but there is not enough pressure for a reprint at the present. ""


So, hey kids, if you're serious about MT, keep up the push. He _knows_ people were bleaking near ready to kill for reprints of the CT books. If you _really_ want the MT books reprinted, then you need to be certain enough to let him know.

Of course all this assumes you give a rat's ass. I'll personally plug for T20 because a) it's less anoying to me than G:T and b) the end rules are mostly irrelevant as 95% of Traveller material translates without change from rule set to rule set.

In the end _it_ happens. Deal with it.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR> MWM has been (over 4 of the last 6 years; the last two I stopped bugging him about it and gave up on traveller) hostile to anything MT in nature.

[/B]<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

William
--
You better watch out What you wish for;
It better be worth it So much to die for.
Courtney Love

 

[Elliot]

As the name Digest Group Publications has been mentioned - does anyone know if they are still writing or planning anything???

 

[PinkSplice]

DGP is long defunct. Someone else has the rights to the material they produced (not FFE).

 

[William]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by PinkSplice:
DGP is long defunct. Someone else has the rights to the material they produced (not FFE).<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

His Name is Rodger Sanger. I can't find the email right now, though I just bought a MT book from him recently. He is reasonable to deal with unless:

a) one of the companys he owns owes you money, or
b) you expect a sane price for reprduction rights.

Shrug. Life is bitch: Then you die. This is a perfect example thereof.

William

 

[aramis]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by William:
His Name is Rodger Sanger. I can't find the email right now, though I just bought a MT book from him recently. He is reasonable to deal with unless:

a) one of the companys he owns owes you money, or
b) you expect a sane price for reprduction rights.

Shrug. Life is bitch: Then you die. This is a perfect example thereof.

William<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Roger also is notorious for disappearing email addresses, and lack of ability to complete a project he starts. Now if only he'd sell mark the MT related rights (which Roger can't use anyway!) for something less than 6 figures, MT might see a real and complete reprint. Roger, if you're reading this, do MT fans a real favor, as well as yourself: sell the MT stuff to mark for a flat 10K.

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-aramis
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Smith & Wesson: The Original Point and Click interface!

 

[aramis]

Re: MT

As I've said in other places, the MT space combat system was compatible with HG/HG+TCS ship designs. It is a system that CAN be streamlined into slightly non-optimzed designs. (The big problems were the picayune detail levels, down to the decilitre for some systems, and the dekawatt as well). The only thing I really liked about TNE/T4 ship design was the surface area. MT had one other problem: armor lacking volume. For mostt reasonable designs it was a non--issue; the "short" displacement ton (13.5 Kl) made up for much of the issue in relation to the "Long" dispalcement ton (14.0 Kl) of other editions.

In fact, I've used HG ships as adveraries in MT games. For PC-scale craft, MT gave my PC's JUST Enough detail. For the wargaming side, it was a bit much.

And yes, FSotSI stank. But then, so did many of the T4 supplements.

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-aramis
=============================================
Smith & Wesson: The Original Point and Click interface!

 

[Mår Ekkertsen]

I have meet RS and we will never, ever see anything from him. Consider the DGP stuff gone until the copyright has expired.

 

[lucasdigital]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by n2s:
I have meet RS and we will never, ever see anything from him. Consider the DGP stuff gone until the copyright has expired.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

That is a crying shame. The DGP material was mostly of a higher quality than the 'official' GDW stuff.

DGP's in-house 'breakway from Traveller' product A.I. Looked to be about the most interesting and progressive SF RPG that was never produced...

I assume that it's fate is the same as that of DGP's Traveller products.??

Mark



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Mark Lucas
Lucas-digital.com

 

[RobertFisher]

I disagree that the Imperium was what made CT succeed. The Imperium is a great thing, but I'm buying the CT reprints for the simple, elegant, generic RPG system. Granted, it could use some minor updating, but compared to the vast majority of RPG systems that have been developed, it is still one of the very best.

One of the important concepts of CT (and I'm certainly not the first on this board to point it out) was that the rules were only loosely coupled to the Imperium, and it was easy for people to use the rules with their own melieu.

This is also a strong point of D&D. Despite what you might think, the vast majority of D&D players, in my experience, do not adventure in the Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, or any other published melieu.

(Although I understand the arguments behind doing so, I never thought continually updating the timeline of a published melieu was a good idea. So, I never liked any of the alternative/updated versions of the Imperium.)

I believe the importance of great artwork is over estimated. I've heard many people say they'd rather pay for a RPG book with good, useful content rather than lots of great artwork. If the content is good, people will buy it for the content. If the content is crap, good artwork can make more people buy it than if it wasn't crap, but that's tantamount to bait-and-switch.

Good layout/typesetting is very important, of course. Also, marketing materials needs great artwork. And great artwork can be important to illustrate things they reader might be unfamiliar with. (The D&D Monster Manual would not sell very well without artwork, great or not.) But, in the end, it is worthwhile content that is going to sell.

In any case, I never bought any of the Travellers past MT. For me, the reason the other Travellers failed is that they were too different from CT.


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Robert FISHER