Worth a visit

[hunter]

Originally posted by Aramis:
T20 is "Not Real Traveller" to some, not because of skill resolution, but because of the lack of Tech Architecture.

Huh? Lack of Tech Architecture in T20? Splain please. There is more tech architecture in T20 then there was in the original three LBB, hell more than the first 8 LBBs. The tech architecture is also completely compatible with High Guard and the original LBBs.

And GT could very easily find its license non-renewed if T5 actually starts a draw. Likewise T20.

Not something I am worried about at all.

Hunter

 

[jappel]

T20 is "Not Real Traveller" to some, not because of skill resolution, but because of the lack of Tech Architecture.

I beg to differ. The most frequent issue most veteran Travellers seem to have with T20 is what it inherits from D20 - classes and levels, the BAB, and to some extent feats.

A technical architecture is a "nice-to-have" item, but not essential. Good character generation and play mechanics are much more important for making a viable game that people will actually play, as opposed to "play with".

And coming from the Burgess Shale period of Traveller myself, I'll point out that there is a substantial part of the Traveller community for whom the implied setting and atmosphere created by the rules and their consequences are what's important, not the OTU.

I do agree with Aramis' point that the differing technical architectures between the various rulesets does influence the setting, whether the OTU or a homebrew based on the rules.

< shrug >

I may or may not buy T5; I haven't seen anything about it yet that really grabs me. Personally, the idea Hunter floated last year about a "CT+", cherry-picking and integrating the best parts of the various systems, would be the way to go.

John

 

[robject]

T20 will be around as long as Hunter -- excuse me, QLI -- wants it to be around, more or less, T5 or no.

It seems to me that T20 has all the dispersed rules of Classic Traveller, organized and brought together into one core rulebook, and grafted into the d20 system.

Sounds like just about the right level of detail and usefulness for me.

Re Technical Architorture:

High Guard is just beyond my threshold, and therefore is enough detail for me. MT and the ever-more-complex systems which followed it never appealed to me, mainly because I look at these things from a homework standpoint: if it feels more like homework than playing, then it's not fun anymore. High Guard sometimes feels like homework. Calculators and spreadsheets feel like homework.

Many people feel differently. More power to them: we need FFS1 with FFS2 grafted onto it. However, when I design starships I don't ever want to see decimal places.

 

[The Hinterworlds Rambler]

I sometimes wonder if its the diversity of rulesets/backgrounds that affects Traveller's popularity in the market. Do people clearly know where to go? What system is "best"? What is the Traveller definative? I mean, I've been in it for a long time now, so I sort of "know the ropes"... but to a new buyer, it must be a miasma of contradictory settings and concepts. People know that RIFTS is RIFTS (for some reason, what.) but do they CLEARLY know what Traveller is? Sometimes having many choices can be limiting.

 

[robject]

I agree. One system, or at least one current revision, is best.

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by Baron Saarthuran von Gushiddan:
I sometimes wonder if its the diversity of rulesets/backgrounds that affects Traveller's popularity in the market. Do people clearly know where to go? What system is "best"? What is the Traveller definative? I mean, I've been in it for a long time now, so I sort of "know the ropes"... but to a new buyer, it must be a miasma of contradictory settings and concepts. People know that RIFTS is RIFTS (for some reason, what.) but do they CLEARLY know what Traveller is? Sometimes having many choices can be limiting.

It's got to affect its popularity really - too much choice is just bewildering for newcomers. It can't be that great for the companies involved either - for example, the CT reprints, GT, and T20 are all currently competing against eachother (in fact, all versions are given that you can get the rest on DTRPG). That splits up the Traveller market so that three companies are getting profits from sales - if only one company released all the Traveller material then that one company would make all the money from the sales. I'd imagine that both QLI and SJG also have arrangements to pay MWM/FFE license fees, which also cuts into profits.

It's schizophrenic nature probably can be problematic too. On one hand, Traveller is touted as a "generic sci fi RPG" because that's what it was initially. Nowadays though, it's far from that, even with GT and T20 - it's now very heavily tied to the OTU setting, and not specifically geared towards providing people with a toolkit to create their own scifi universes (for that, you'd be better off with something like GURPS Space or Star HERO).

And frankly, the game has been around in one form or another for a very long time. GT and T20 have attracted a few people to the fold, but I'd guess (especially given the polls here) that most Traveller books have been bought by the same people over the years. The Traveller market probably hasn't really expanded all that much, and T5 won't help it expand further unless it really departs from what it has been in the past (because if it's the same, the same people will buy it and that's it).

 

[mike wightman]

There were over two hundred and forty thousand copies of the various forms of CT printed, I don't know how many of them were sold. This is before taking account of FFE and QLI reprints.

I don't know how many copies of MT, TNE, T4, GT, or T20 have been printed or sold.

The 30th anniversary release offers a great marketing opportunity.

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by Sigg Oddra:
There were over two hundred and forty thousand copies of the various forms of CT printed, I don't know how many of them were sold. This is before taking account of FFE and QLI reprints.

That's over 25 years isn't it?

The 30th anniversary release offers a great marketing opportunity. [/qb]

Assuming all 240,000 people who bought it are still interested in the game... if only 10% of those even qualify as such then it doesn't sound quite so impressive.

 

[The Hinterworlds Rambler]

What's all this then about reading comics giving you a -1 to education in the "Rate Yourself" page of the Character Creation pdf from the T5 site? Stuff and Nonsense! Someone needs to read "Watchmen" or "V for Vendetta". Even an Archie comic is the work of another mind, what?
Pfah! Geeklitetism!

After looking over the files supplied from the site, There is going to need to be a LOT of Crisping and Cleaning! I hate to naysay to any Traveller project, but this looks so convoluted that your average modern gamer (IE, the young) would mistake it for a thesis on orbital mechanics, or perhaps a Korean-Translated-into Japanese-Translated-into-English DVD Player Owner's Manual. It may be easier to grow a real Traveller Character in a test tube than it would be for a novice gamer to generate one using this.

It is possible to think TOO much, what?

Will it appeal to the Hardliners? Sure. The very existance of FF&S and such proves this. But being a hardliner is starting to sound like being a Shaker. There is as of yet no existing Traveller Dating Service.

Can it compete and sell well in today's market, with the new generation of gamers coming up? Unlikely, unless each copy comes with its own hatchable Droyone egg! These kids today with thier Lara Crofts and Pearl Jams simply do not have the attention span for it, by and large. Not to say that the darling little cherubs aren't smart, It's just that its a different world now. Skulking about in various MMPORPG offerings has shown me one thing. A good number of the kids see "Pen and Paper" RPGs as tatamount to making buggy whips and singing in a barbershop quartet.

The community must adapt and grow, or be Dodo-ized.

I'll take two copies, damn you.

 

[Malenfant]

Can it compete and sell well in today's market, with the new generation of gamers coming up? Unlikely, unless each copy comes with its own hatchable Droyone egg! These kids today with thier Lara Crofts and Pearl Jams simply do not have the attention span for it, by and large. Not to say that the darling little cherubs aren't smart, It's just that its a different world now. Skulking about in various MMPORPG offerings has shown me one thing. A good number of the kids see "Pen and Paper" RPGs as tatamount to making buggy whips and singing in a barbershop quartet.

Well really, it's more that the RPG market has evolved a lot since the 70s. RPGs don't need to obsess about minutiae or even be particularly realistic anymore, most players want a lot more choice about making their characters what they want them to be, and they don't want to spend more than an hour or so making their characters and cross-referencing charts and tables.

I'm a regular player on the World of Warcraft MMORPG (and formerly on EVE Online) and to be honest, it does have a lot of advantages over pen and paper RPGs - it's a more immersive environment, it's more directly interactive in many ways than a TRPG, and you can do it anytime you like. I'm not sure that MMORPGS are in a position to really directly compete with TRPGs yet though, so we probably don't need to worry about that.

I will agree that the Traveller community needs to be more adaptable and openminded if it's to grow though. But then maybe it's grown as far as it can already - maybe Traveller has had its day and can't really compete in the modern market.

 

[The Hinterworlds Rambler]

Where can we find reliable statistics on TRPG vs. MMORPG sales? Is there a "Consumer Reports" type thing for gaming?

 

[jappel]

My dear Baron,

I suspect digging up those statistics would be quite a project. However, MMORPGS have far more people involved in them than traditional RPGs.

For example, EVE Online is a relatively small MMO, but it still has a daily peak of over 10,000 players on-line most days, with a total subscriber base of around 50,000. The original Everquest has over 100,000 users online at peak times. World of Warcraft and EQ2 have similar numbers.

(The Asian games Lineage and Lineage 2 claim over 1 million subscribers, but many of these are accounts at cybercafes in Korea where people "farm" the in-game resources for real-world money, hence they often aren't included when discussing MMO subscription stats.)

D&D aside, I would be shocked if any current RPG (except possibly the GURPS core rules) had print runs larger than 10,000 copies. I suspect most are considerably smaller. Hunter would probably need to buy a new pair of pants if he realistically though he could sell over 100K copies of a product.

This is analogous to the differences in sales for other computer games vs. boardgames; for example, the original Squad Leader sold over 100K copies, but Halo 2 sold enough copies that it accounted for a single-digit percentage of Microsoft's profit that quarter. These are very disparate markets in size.

John

 

[Maynard]

I never got into the 'Canonical VS. Non Canonical' stuff. It seems to me that unless you're writing modules or rules, or playing in tournaments, then there is no such thing as 'Real' Traveller; it's all somebody's House Rules in the end. Otherwise, why all the world building tables, star system expansions, blank hex maps, solitare playability built into the LBB's, etc., that came with the very first books???

They are just guidelines, according to their own authors; there is no 'OTU', just Whom Ever's personal House Rules, so that whole argument is moot.

I'll probably never buy another Traveller product, or a D&D product, or any other RPG product, unless it really stands out in quality and is packed with content, simply because I already have so much of the stuff that I don't need it, and I really don't need just a bunch of fluff story filler.

I buy game stuff if offers something I don't have, or is well written, but I no longer buy just anything, if the producers of whatever it is don't bother to index their books; I'm not going to spend much time thumbing through 200 pages of rules or whatever, just because some 'Professional Game Designer' thinks he's too important to spend his time doing a really professional job.

If it lacks a good index, it probably sucks everywhere else, too, and that's been my experience in general, with only very few exceptions. The last Traveller product I bought was GURP's StarPorts, and Far Trader, because they had some content that wasn't available elsewhere.

Computer games are fine, but they will always lack the depth and richness the P & P games have, at least for those of us pre-cheap desktop dinosaurs who remember reading books, who still have our Avalon Hill Arab Israeli Wars and other board games clutttering up the house.

 

[clementk]

Is this announcement really ready for prime time? It's not linked in from the main FFE page. It is on the site map, but that has some broken links, and the last link is broken. <shrugs> That whole FFE site has like three layers or versions still lurking somewhere.

The ship is well painted but I'm getting Chris Foss painting a 1950's submarine car vibes in 1975 from it. Fossmobile activate; 2 out of 4 thrusters on, hindparts flap at the ready, scope fin up! The white blanks stand out badly to me on the other cover. <shrugs> Ted Lindsey's mockup though still sticking to LBB style at least put a starship on it, and one that's both recognizable and not as retro.

For the rules / books themselves the writeup’s a little confusing. Are the player’s book etc. separate products from the core rules and if so then is the listing of what’s in T5 for the core rules only?

As for the “REAL” Traveller “hype”, as a Traveller player who doesn’t stick to any one particular set of rules it grates and frankly turns me off on T5 even though it doesn’t seem to be official hype. It likely only means anything positive to grognards who will be buying it sight unseen. I might be one of those except I already did that with T4. That was “REAL” Traveller too.

Updated previews, options in the main book (like alien, point-based chargen, and a modular multi-tiered Tech Architecture that actually meshes and is written out beforehand), and as few errata as possible will go a long way in whether or not I buy this. I’ll likely get the freebies when I next order a FBB. Oh well, I’ll see how things are 3 Origins from now.

Casey goes back to the Tekumel luv; now with 32 Unspeakable Acts! Free chlen, eye of wonder, and tubecar ride with every order.

 

[FlightCommanderSolitude]

Originally posted by Baron Saarthuran von Gushiddan:
... I'll take two copies, damn you.

Baron, that was the funniest thing I've ever read on these discussion boards!

 

[kaladorn]

Originally posted by Baron Saarthuran von Gushiddan The Satirical:
There is as of yet no existing Traveller Dating Service.

Damn. And I was soooo hoping. I always thought there were a lot of stunning concubines in Marc's retinue.

Chuck, your postings are usually worth a read, even when they make me wonder about your sanity.

 

[kaladorn]

Originally posted by Baron Saarthuran von Gushiddan The Satirical:
There is as of yet no existing Traveller Dating Service.

Damn. And I was soooo hoping. I always thought there were a lot of stunning concubines in Marc's retinue.

Chuck, your postings are usually worth a read, even when they make me wonder about your sanity.

 

[Malenfant]

Is this announcement really ready for prime time? It's not linked in from the main FFE page. It is on the site map, but that has some broken links, and the last link is broken. <shrugs> That whole FFE site has like three layers or versions still lurking somewhere.

I'm somewhat baffled at the FFE site - it's traditionally been hard to navigate, very basic, and usually ugly to look at IMO. Given the web is a pretty important way to get information out to people nowadays, it seems to me that FFE are shooting themselves in the foot somewhat by not making their website a bit more exciting and informative. (heck, the link to GURPS Traveller now points to the T5 announcement).

 

[aramis]

Maynard:

canon, in any roleplaying game is unimportant to many groups; it does, however, have value for the following reasons:

1) New Members who already have played
2) multiple GM groups
3) vast settings where it is easier to let players read than to have them discover in play
4) verisimilitude, but only if the materials are good.
5) rules-canon describes the expected physics, meta-physics, and sociodynamics of the universe; it is arguably more important than setting canon in some ways.
6) Convention Play.

Take for example Shadowbear. he joined my group during the T20 playtest. Since I stick pretty close to canon, I merely had to tell him a couple of bits where I knowingly go astray, and several bits that were Rules-canon contradicting soft bits of setting canon (to wit: are all marines BD troopies? Not IMTU, since until the TML BD flame wars of 94-95, I'd never even heard of that article of LKW's, and found it contradictory to rules canon, and to the boardgames). It erupted into heated discussion during the playtest; the solution was a compromise: Make BD feat available to all marine 1st levels, but don't make it automatic; the GM can chose. So once he knew that IMTU, all landed nobles were enfeoffed with starports, he also knew that starport problems could be solved with Peter's Noble.

By having a knowledge of canon, neither he nor I had to spend lots of time discussing where and how I'd tweaked the setting, and also, I had loads of materials to provide answers to many common questions.

 

[robject]

Hey, good idea about making starports a fief.