Why Other Versions of Traveller Failed

[kafka47]

Originally posted by GypsyComet:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by kafka47:
I think the real problem is dating when Traveller actually took off. Sure, CT came out in 1977 and was an instant hit, but that was because there was no other competition. I think it was only in 1982 that a regular stream of products began appearing unless we count the licencees.

Eh? Those years were marked by the near constant (for the time) march of Books, Supplements, Adventures, and Double Adventures, not to mention JTAS, newer printings of the main rules, the boxed games (Tarsus, Beltstrike, AHL), and the Traveller Adventure.

Judges Guild and FASA were early licensees, true, as was Games Workshop UK (serving also as the UK publishers of the game itself). DGP was a *very* late arrival by comparison, as were Grenadier and Gamelords. We could have generally done without Group One, IMHO, though time-wise they were about in the middle of the CT era.
Of these companies, only FASA and GW UK even came close to the volume produced by GDW for CT (the bulk of DGPs work being MT).</font>[/QUOTE]So then when was the publishing peak of GDW for CT. I have the stat buried with the Challenge article celebrating 10 years of Traveller. One thing is for sure that I think those double adventures & supplements never really defined Traveller as much as JTAS did and that was a quarterly. My point is it is not until the Traveller Adventure that the 3I Campaign begins to take shape, prior there is a lot of loose threads and inconsistances that it would take MT to straighten out. And, because by that time they had lost their core supporters GDW was bailing out of Traveller until TNE. For like it or not, TNE was GDW statement that the Traveller line was theirs alone.

I think the creativity and the wackyness of the early licences (here I am thinking of Group One & Judges Guild) help define what Traveller is not. This unfortunately was resurrected in T4, where I am surprised that some of this actually passed by Marc without him going... Whoa! What is THAT!

 

[themink]

Sorry about this but I have to reply.

I played CT for a fairly long time (8 years) and at various times we added or removed books 4&5 depending on the feel we were going for.

About half the time we played in a star wars style universe using CT rules (nobody got the force - we agreed that we could get it, but we tended to focus on stuff that was more fun)

about 10% of the time we were using the rules as a basis for wargaming - either HG fleet battles or using book4 as background for ASL type games

The rest of the time we used the imperium for background but tended to stay in our little subsector where the story got more and more detailed and we knew more about it.

During that time I bought a couple of adventures as thought provokers but we never played them (I vaguely remember using a published book as a seed for a terrorist explosion but the plot line was very different by the time it saw light)

Mostly I reffed although not always - and we were happy to retrospect and edit the last adventure so it didn'y break things too much.

I really enjoyed Traveler for the simplistic rules that allowed us to focus on play. I've recently bought GURPS/GT and am thinking about starting another group. I don't intend to buy the companion books, GURPS basic seems more than detailed enough.

I've had a read through T20 Lite and must admit that I'm not enthused (Does reading rule books count as RPG ⌧?). I'll solo play for a little while to get the feel for it, but it looks like either being CT with a custom background or GT with the same.

I'd say I was a successful Role/Roll player however as a supporter of gaming companies I'm a failure, I probably bought a dozen CT books over 8 years playing 6(ish) hours a week - great value for money for me - but I suppose my lack of spending contributed to the demise of CT. Now I'm on a reasonable wage, I tend to buy rule books to read and scheme and have very little time to actually play.

 

[hunter]

Originally posted by kafka47:

I think the creativity and the wackyness of the early licences (here I am thinking of Group One & Judges Guild) help define what Traveller is not. This unfortunately was resurrected in T4, where I am surprised that some of this actually passed by Marc without him going... Whoa! What is THAT!

As far as T4 goes part of the problem was that a lot of the material wasn't passed by Marc before they printed it.

Hunter

 

[Bob Weaver]

Hi all,

I've been playing Traveller since '82 or so (CT & MT) and I wanted to comment on the technology issue that was raised by Solo. For myself and the group I gamed with, technology was never much of an issue. I guess you could say we liked the "low-tech" approach to high-tech that Traveller used, even if it did so unintentionally. By "low-tech" I mean that the technology was always in the background, never the forefront of our adventures. We flew in starships and air/rafts [dumb name, BTW ] and used lasers & plasma weapons and meson communicators right alongside our canvas tents and binoculars and hard body armor. And it never occured to us that 5000 years of development should have looked different. The games were about who we were, where we were going and who we dealt with on the way.
One of my MANY dislikes about ST:TNG was the near constant use of techno-widgets and -babble to address problems. Whatever was wrong, they had the sparkly hoozit to fix it without sweat or effort. Now please, let's not get into a fight over the merits of ST. What I'm saying is that ST:TNG was the polar opposite of my vision of Traveller. Wits, guts, a gun and some tool kits is all you needed to have a great adventure. Introduce too many techno-goodies and you run the risk of making the game either impossible without them (how many non-magic using 18th level D&D characters are there?) or all about getting the newest goodie. Kill monsters/NPCs take their stuff. Dull.
So to make a long post short [TOO LATE

] I agree with others who have said that Traveller did not 'fail'. It maintained it's own style in contrast to popular trends in SF. My gaming group broke up long ago, but I still have my CT/MT stuff and fiddle with it whenever possible.

My CR0.02,

Bob

 

[kafka47]

Originally posted by hunter:
Whoa! What is THAT!

As far as T4 goes part of the problem was that a lot of the material wasn't passed by Marc before they printed it.

Hunter[/QB][/QUOTE]

I wonder if the stricter quality control was the only issue. It seems like that they were just in a hurry to get a product out and not take the time to consult...unlike, you guys who have done a fantastic job. T4 was an incomplete project from the start, as it seems other M:0 there was hardly any connection with any other forms of Traveller. Sure the names remained the same but content was from the wild sides of T$R.

I must say I really appreciative of MJD article and hints about future releases. Keep up the excellent work and all will be rewarded.

 

[tigger1tom]

IMHO a poor marketing strategy also contributed to the failure of the later incarnations. I drifted away from rpg gaming a little for several years and did more wargaming, but I did keep an eye on what was happening, and TNE and T4 completely slipped by me. I didn't even know they were out they kept it such a secret, and to this day, I still don't know what the h%$# T4 is, I've never seen it that I know of, what else was it called? I have been watching out for TNE & MT stuff to acquire, (I never got around to MT, though I always wanted to). I have pretty much everything that was ever put out for CT (95%) and still love it to death after 15 or 20 years. I hope that T5 basically takes up where CT/MT left off with the better design points of the former with an expanded detail and playbility of the system which was excellent IMHO.

 

[T. Foster]

Originally posted by tigger1tom:
I still don't know what the h%$# T4 is, I've never seen it that I know of, what else was it called?

T4 was officially known as Marc Miller's Traveller and was released by a company called Imperium Games @ GenCon 1996. About 15 supplements followed over the next year and a half, all of them with covers by Chris Foss that were actually recycled poster-pieces from the 70s & 80s and invariably had nothing to do with the contents of the books, or even Traveller in general. Despite the title of the game, Marc Miller was never more than tangentially involved in its development or production, which was handled by a group of mostly ex-TSR folks who (seemingly) had little-to-no familiarity with Traveller or the OTU. A group of fans/freelancers called CORE also wrote a few products, which are generally considered the best of the T4 lot (though even those were usually mangled in editing). In late 97 or early 98 Marc Miller's dissatisfaction with the continuing poor quality of the releases, as well as Imperium Games' routine habit of failing to pay its authors, led him to revoke their license. T4 stuff shows up all the time on ebay, and many game stores still have a few books in their remainder bin, if you're really curious to see what you missed.

Interesting trivia note: the money-man behind Imperium Games was a guy named Courtney Solomon, who later went on to produce (and even direct!) that god-awful D&D movie. It's generally acknowledged as a Good Thing that the relationship was severed before he could inflict the same sort of atrocity on the Traveller brand-name.

 

[tigger1tom]

Thank you for the info, I had been out of general circulation for a few years and missed it. Sounds like I didn't miss much though, probably a good time for a hiatus if there ever was one.

 

[bgv]

Originally posted by Solo:
Second, the technology of Traveller has to be seen as more advanced than our own. It was a repeated statement by players in a campaign I ran 10 years ago that: "Traveller the game of the Far Future: Next Tuesday." Biotech, A.I., nanotech, etc. needs to be part of the setting from the start not add ons. Yes, I know people are in love with the Traveller of 25 years ago, but that was 25 years ago.

One of the greatest strengths of Traveller is that the setting and background are compatible with a huge amount of science fiction.

I'd estimate that at least a third of the science fiction has these features:

a. In the background is a vaguely described interstellar state or trade network, which rarely directly interferes with individual worlds.

b. A specific world, which is thinly populated, supposedly more advanced technologically than the contemporary world, but in which there are only a few high-tech gizmos specifically mentioned -- usually hovercraft or antigravity personal transport, and some high-tech weapons and medical equipment. The world usually has only limited contact or trade with other worlds.

Most of this might be called "soft" science fiction. The plots usually focus on the peculiarities of an alternate model of society, or struggles against natural phenomena on the world, or tensions between humans and aliens. Technology and "hard" science are rarely, if ever, the focus of these stories.

There's a lot of this, and more published all the time. Often, when I encounter new science fiction, I try to imagine if I could make the story into the premise for a Traveller adventure. The answer is frequently "yes, easily."

There are other science fiction RPGs, some of which seem very attractive to me. Most of them have their own, distinctive flavors. This is both an advantage -- and a disadvantage. The advantage is obvious. The disadvantage is that it would be difficult to find science fiction stories that you could adapt to such a setting.

Take, for instance, GURPS: Transhuman Space, an RPG which I think looks pretty good. It involves biotech, nanotech, A.I., and space travel. "Transhuman" is an emerging sub-genre of science fiction, with definite roots in cyberpunk.

But the setting has a strong flavor -- strong enough that I have a hard time imagining adapting science fiction I've read to that setting, aside from "transhuman" and "cyberpunk."

There's a tremendous amount of flexibility built into the Traveller setting, and that's the strength to be built upon.

 

[JUrsaMaj]

Personally, I've been playing Traveller since at least '85, altho I owned several of the books before that. What I started in was a campaign that switched from MT to TNE shortly after I joined, with some hybridizing & house rules. I was out of gaming for a while when T4 came out, so I missed it completely, not have I tried GT or T20.

What I really miss about the old stuff is the real hard SF. I've worked (off & on) on my own campaign setting ideas, and would love to publish them, if I thought I might actually make a living at it. I'd be willing to use just about any game system, if it would just hold still long enough for me to produce stuff.

I agree with one post in this thread, that the best Traveller product ever was Fire, Fusion, & Steel, at least from the Ref's point of view. Especially the alternate techs, as my ideas are quit different from the Imperium. It is with joy that I note that "a new setting" is the 2nd most popular choice in the current poll. Makes me think it might actually be time to pull my $#!+ together.

 

[savage]

Been doing Traveller off and on since 82'.
Started in CT (and I still prefer it) been thinking
about GT or T20.

Tried MT and found the details interesting but painful to create a new environment. As I recall
Marc left GDW making the future dubious.

T2300, ok. I played and liked the smaller environment. But when I talked to Smith his explanation for the stutter warp didn't work for me. And a better rule tie in with T2000 made sense.

Tried TNE but the refs made it easier not GDW. They created automations. FFS was a great idea but needed more work.
T4 ---disappointment.

So, lack of structure killed the versions of Traveller and GDW. How many game systems can 1 small company do well. Instead of improving on the original it was rebuilt over and over.

Savage

 

[PapaGolfWhiskey]

Did Traveller Fail?

We are here. most of you tell stories like mine.

Unlike many of you, I found T4 usable. It had sufficient rules in one book to get me off my rear and Reffing games again. There was plenty of errata but that's what the old books and my 'homebrew' were for countering.

T20 looks great. Chargen is nasty. There's no way around it. you have all the time spent in prior history roles plus you make a player level up 6 to 9 times. (average for my group(s) anyway). BUT it get's better with practice.

Failure is too strong a term. After all the game is still here and new material is still being sold.

 

[Liam Devlin]

Garf, Bravo! Stars fer you!
Traveller ain't dead yet. Its not over till we say its over folks!(ala Archduke Norris' speech "We Keep the Flame"..). SO now the torch has passed...as MJD said, lets set fire to something!

heretically yours,

 

[Secrect Cow Level]

All previous versions of TRAVELLER "failed" for the same reason that all other games "fail"; they stoped making money for their publisher. The reason we have D&D3e is because AD&D2e stopped making money for WOTC. We had AD&D2e because AD&D1e stoppped making money for TSR.

The same is true for TRAVELLER. Once the market for CT dried up, GDW released MEGATRAVELLER. Once MT stopped making money they released TNE. If T4 had sold like gangbusters I guarentee you that Imperium games would still be around (or at least somebody else would have bought the rights to contiune publishing it).

There are only so many people intreasted in any given game. While some new converts will always buy a sucessful game, other fans of said game will stop playing/buying new product. Once sales of a game drop to certain levels, publishers market a "new and improved" version and all the game's loyal fans buy this new version (or it fails if they have lost intreast in the game). Make no mistake, QLI won't be selling T20 in ten years but if they are still around and T20 has made enough money for them, they may be publishing something else (T5 perhaps?).

 

[Father Fletch]

Secret Cow I do agree with your blanket assessment as to why a new one comes out and why old ones fade (SALES!)
Publishing is based upon making money and putting out product. BUT, there are other factors that can affect sales. Marketing successfully, quality product, timely product, flooded market, dry (or hungry) market, economy and its influence on sales of non-essential goods.
I could go on and on but I suspect that various forms of Traveller hit some of those factors (and others unmentioned) better than the "Failures"
You are likely correct that T20 may not be the flavor of the week, month, year in a score of years or so, but like Liam and others have said, the torch keeps getting passed, no matter how it dims.
Father Fletch, proud to be working and living in one of the oldest continuous community created fictional universes on Earth.

 

[Gallowglass]

Originally posted by Secrect Cow Level:
All previous versions of TRAVELLER "failed" for the same reason that all other games "fail"; they stoped making money for their publisher. The reason we have D&D3e is because AD&D2e stopped making money for WOTC. We had AD&D2e because AD&D1e stoppped making money for TSR.

The same is true for TRAVELLER. Once the market for CT dried up, GDW released MEGATRAVELLER. Once MT stopped making money they released TNE. If T4 had sold like gangbusters I guarentee you that Imperium games would still be around (or at least somebody else would have bought the rights to contiune publishing it).

There are only so many people intreasted in any given game. While some new converts will always buy a sucessful game, other fans of said game will stop playing/buying new product. Once sales of a game drop to certain levels, publishers market a "new and improved" version and all the game's loyal fans buy this new version (or it fails if they have lost intreast in the game). Make no mistake, QLI won't be selling T20 in ten years but if they are still around and T20 has made enough money for them, they may be publishing something else (T5 perhaps?).

Minor point but in the case of two of the previous four editions (T4 and TNE) the sales of Traveller had nothing to do with the line stopping, it was financial difficulties of the parent company caused elswhere that did for T4 (and MWM pulled the license IIRC) and GDW (the whole DJ bisiness). And I'm not convinced that it was lack of commercial potential that did for MT or CT either.

On the T$R/D&D scale, Traveller may not have been a runaway success, but judged against pretty much every other RPG it holds its own respectably.

 

[Psion]

Originally posted by Garf:
Did Traveller Fail?

We are here. most of you tell stories like mine.

True, but I thought the point of this thread was various versions failed, not "Traveller" in general.

CT never really failed, IMO. MT is basically CT 2.0; I almost see them as the same product. MT just formalized the task resolution into one of the most simple to use yet robust task resolution systems on the market -- and remains so even in comparisons to the many systems that have been introduced since. (Alas, I think they may have lost some people by using striker as the baseline for starship creation; even I thought it was tedious, and some Traveller GMs I knew had trouble with High Guard!)

The problem, if there can be said to be one, with MT is that there was a metaplot. For the most part the metaplot was palatable, but the background was similar enough to CT that you could continue running it with the CT background if you didn't like it.

Of course, for reasons that still baffle me, GDW decided to make the next step of the metaplot TNE, which I absolutely hated, and I know I am not alone. I hated the system too. I don't know what the personal situation was at the time, but it seemed that GDW wasn't doing much of their own writing at the tail end of TNE and the best stuff was coming out of DGP in actuality or in spirit, and I am guessing when GDW took it back in house, their staff didn't have the capability to churn out anything as good.

Unlike many of you, I found T4 usable. It had sufficient rules in one book to get me off my rear and Reffing games again. There was plenty of errata but that's what the old books and my 'homebrew' were for countering.

I really wanted to like T4... and I love Chris Foss' artwork (have loved it since I picked up some old SF art books in the 70s and 80s) and thought it was a nice touch. Chargen was pretty nice, basically a very cleaned up version of CT/MT.

However, the task resolution system absolutely sucked. They felt that they had to jump on the "dice pool bandwagon", but the scale of the dice didn't fit well with the scale of the skills, so they had to wrench it in with 1/2 dice steps. Even then, the probabilities were wacked and there was entirely too much emphasis on attributes. If it also had a botch mechanic, it would have encapsulated all of the classic blunders of dice mechanics into one system.

Other people on this board have complained about the non-canonical nature of the books after the core book, but I didn't last that long.

T20 looks great. Chargen is nasty. There's no way around it. you have all the time spent in prior history roles plus you make a player level up 6 to 9 times. (average for my group(s) anyway). BUT it get's better with practice.

I think this is just a symptom of non-familiarity. As both a fan of CT/MT and d20, I found it pretty easy. I can understand why someone who is not familiar with one of the other might have some problem at first... but I remember when I ran my d20 players though a MT game a while back it took them a while to roll characters too, simply because they weren't familiar with it.

 

[PapaGolfWhiskey]

I have to agree with you about T4 suckage. I didn't use the milleau. I didn't -buy- the book it was a gift given in early 2000/01 (can't remember for sure) the half dice were a pain and I had to start artificially capping the stat/skills for high statted characters.

It had one MAJOR bonus. I played games with it. And the people who played came back for t20. That's more can I can say for ANY traveller product all the way back to the first three black books. .. okay maybe only as far back as the Traveller adventure (and I used that for the basis of one of my t4 campaigns.)

once t20 came out I dropped t4 like a hot potatoe.

Did get me wrong I remember taking all evening to generate characters with CT. and MT with it's one year system was worse.

t4 was quicker than that. but it was basically ct/coti with some name changes.

with photocopied skill sheets I can run one player through a term while the other is buying his skills but two players is the limit and it STILL takes all evening. even with over ten characters under my belt.

 

[julianlove]

Well, I began with Starter Traveller back in about 1984 and ended up collecting most of the CT and MT stuff. Then I did a very stupid thing - I stppoed playing for a while and sold it all (gasp! what was I thinking!!)

So, now trying to get back into Trav, I have picked up GT and some of the supplements, but using imperial weights and measures and mangling the tech levels don`t do it for me.

So I am very interested in T20. When I get back to UK (on a *very* extended vacation at the moment) I will pick it up and take a look. The Gateway setting sounds interesting too. If it maintains enough of the ´feel´of old CT/MT then I will be happy.

Where does this leave T5? Well, like at least one poster above, I would love to see an updated errata free MegaTraveller. Essentially an updated version of CT including all the extras from books 4-7 (no robots, alas). The tasks system was superb, the vehicle design system had a few flaws but was amazing in concept - FFS perfected it. Thats really what I want.

To those who say the 3i background has been done to death, rememeber there are new players and then idiots like me who sold their stuff who want the classic timeline material back in print. GT is useful to me for this alone.

Thanks for listening

 

[Vargas]

PSION nailed it in so many ways. . .

Here's my condensed 0.02Cr. . .

CT: Didn't fail, 10 years is impressive for any RPG, especially without a revised edition of rules. (I don't think even D&D did it).

MT: Failed due to lack of product support for an unsupportably broad metaplot and due to financial mismanagement. It was in fact Advanced CT (burdened with a lousy ship design system).

TNE: Failed due to demise of GDW (any other comment is speculation).

T4: Failed due to lousy production values (from all reports, I never did more than flip through it).

GT: Hasn't failed but is it a success?

T20: Too soon to tell.