Yes, another "Impressions and Questions" thread

[Original_Carl]

I'm inclined to agree with Nats on principle. A 700 page rule book does not have broad appeal. Even Pathfinder is introducing a quick-start guide that's 96 pages to get people past the 570 page Core Rulebook.

When I introduce someone to Traveller, and it's not into my game, I point them at Mongoose. It's the easiest to digest and play right out of the gate. That said, I think their supplements are crap and I find their task system cumbersome -- all those mods and die mods and whatnot against a fixed difficulty number are too fiddly for me to use in-session.

I think that T5, in future releases of the ruleset, should make it clear when there is more than one way of doing things in T5, and that selecting the way that works best for your group is what's important -- in other words, favor design over implementation detail. For example, there are at least two ways to handle a fist fight under Personal Combat (three if you try to handle it like a gunfight). Those two options should be explained in the same space, moving from least to most complex, presenting reasons why you'd choose one over the other.

OK, back to lurking.

 

[Hemdian]

It sounds like what you are advocating is a T5 equivalent of Book 0. Probably not a bad idea.

 

[robject]

So who's input is going to sway Marc? We've been told, over and over, that he had, and has, all he ever needed and more than he wanted.

I haven't been telling you that. Don hasn't either. Have we?

Does he ever listen to anyone? Or does he say "this time I'll do it right" (Marc Miller's Traveller). There he blamed "others" and his own "lack of proper supervision" then same ole same ole.

So who is he going to listen to this time? Next time? Ever?

Marc is impressed with someone who works with his system, understands it, can at least partially grok where he wants to go with it, and then offers insights and constructive criticism (CC) that Marc can use to improve what's there. Sometimes it's profound, and changes the way Marc is doing something. Usually, though, the help is incremental but no less useful.

That's who he listens to.

And, T5 is Marc's responsibility, not mine or Don's or COTI's. I don't recall him blaming anybody else for Traveller5, and I do remember Don pounding that point home before.

 

[captainjack]

That's more the business man's task. Marc's a brilliant game designer. His business skills . . . well, let's be generous and say that when the two skill sets conflict, he always lets the designer's priorities come first, and the business priorities second.

There are understandable reasons, but he desperately needs a professional editor with game design experience.

Which suggests that the problem here is that one group sees a game designer as a product develper, and another group sees the designer as the artist.

Im not in the least bit surprised that T5 was such a unique product coming out of funding in what is essentialy an art co-op (yes, kickstarter).
If you have an odd vision that you either can't enstantiate by yourself, or doesnt have an obvious market kickstarter is the way to go; if you have a great product that will sell well you can go that way too.

Marc had a vision for T5, and it was not bog-standard. The same with classic traveller; when it came out it was a big shift , because everything was class and race and level. I have no doubt a playtest would have demanded all those and pole arms to boot. T5 may indeed suck for many or most of us, but it is by god somthing different, and is its own vision of traveller -which for better or worse is Marc's baby.

I'm rather glad he didnt feel the need to restate MGP traveller or follow whatever the playtesters wanted. Very little art is improved by fan input, whereas products are. draw your own conclusion which one I think was in play here.

 

[taustin]

Which suggests that the problem here is that one group sees a game designer as a product develper, and another group sees the designer as the artist.

I think the real question is how he sees himself. And how close that view is to reality.

<bunch of stuff about design philosophy snipped, because it's all perfectly valid, and I don't disagree with any of it>

My objection isn't the design philosophy. Sure, there are things in there I wouldn't choose in any game I were running, but that's going to be true of any game that size.

My objection is not the art, but the errors in craft. Bad editing. Missing stuff, conflicting rules, examples that conflict with text conflict with chapter summaries. The stuff an editor is supposed to catch. It looks to me like this game is going to end up with as many pages of errata as many games have pages in their rulebook. And frankly, that's unusable, even if it fixes all the problem. It's just too much trouble to bother.

What it looks like to me is that Marc too so long writing this, with the whip of a good editor, that he kept getting better ideas, doing rewrites of one section (or part of it) without examining how it interacts with other parts, that he just kept getting distracted. And you know, what's how writing goes, especially when you work on something for a long, long time. And that's why he (and anyone else writing anything) needs an editor, and an editor with some degree of control - someone who can insist he go back and address a problem that's come up, rather than move on to the next section with some vague plan of fixing it later.

And since he's writing games, he needs an editor with game design experience, because making sure that words are spelled right and everything is in complete sentences isn't enough. When you have nearly 700 pages of rules, and spend a decade or more writing them, there will be places where stuff just doesn't work together, and it's virtually impossible for anyone to edit their own work.

I'd pay real money for Marc to cut a deal with Greg Porter to edit T6. I really would.

 

[aramis]

I haven't been telling you that. Don hasn't either. Have we?

It's come across that way to many people.

Most of the complaints are about things that people complained about during the playtest.
:frankie:

 

[Vladika]

I haven't been telling you that. Don hasn't either. Have we?

No, neither you, nor Don have. That has been the often stated opinion of numerous play-testers from kickstarter.

Marc is impressed with someone who works with his system, understands it, can at least partially grok where he wants to go with it, and then offers insights and constructive criticism (CC) that Marc can use to improve what's there. Sometimes it's profound, and changes the way Marc is doing something. Usually, though, the help is incremental but no less useful.

That's who he listens to.

Rob, I am not attempting in any way to alienate, or offend you. You do seem to be one of the few people who have approached T5 evenhandedly. If not for your work with ship design, I'd have given up on T5.

Even so, I believe there were things there you "winged" due to lack of clarity.

And, T5 is Marc's responsibility, not mine or Don's or COTI's. I don't recall him blaming anybody else for Traveller5, and I do remember Don pounding that point home before.

You are quite right that this is Marc's responsibility. I've never seen where you or Don were claiming anything else. To the best of my knowledge Marc hasn't passed the buck either.

These threads always get out of hand due to BOTH the apologist/cheerleader types overlooking pretty much everything AND the detractor/discontented not being able to stomach that. In addition, since T5 really isn't clear (ergo Don's errata), it's hard, if not impossible to find the gems that lie within T5.

There are a lot of 37 year old traditional failures; wonderful, and welcome, revisions of many 37 year old oddities; plenty of "new" items; way to much retcon; and so on.

T5 is both good, and bad, but until it's revised I doubt it is capable of getting a fair chance from either side. Most seem to admit extensive home-ruling or giving up in frustration.

Marc rushed T5 to print, poorly edited and organized. T5 reviews, even here on CotI have been mixed and controversial. Reading CotI isn't going to inspire a great deal of faith in T5 from potential new player/buyers.

I think this is unfortunate all the way around. The only "winner" so far is Mongoose.

 

[aramis]

No, neither you, nor Don have. That has been the often stated opinion of numerous play-testers from kickstarter.

When one notes how certain problems repeatedly called out in playtest were never addressed, it's raising the question of what the designer wants from the playtest.

 

[Vladika]

When one notes how certain problems repeatedly called out in playtest were never addressed, it's raising the question of what the designer wants from the playtest.

True.

Did Marc do T5 for Marc, and if so, way bother publishing it? If he did it for Traveller fans it was an odd way to go about it. If he did it as his "Magnum Opus", either way, it could have waited a bit longer.

As Marc has remained silent, publicly at least, we can only wonder and speculate (Which we seem to being doing quite a bit of).

 

[DonM]

True.

Did Marc do T5 for Marc, and if so, way bother publishing it? If he did it for Traveller fans it was an odd way to go about it. If he did it as his "Magnum Opus", either way, it could have waited a bit longer.

As Marc has remained silent, publicly at least, we can only wonder and speculate (Which we seem to being doing quite a bit of).

Sigh. And I was in the wait a bit longer group as well. I was having Marc make book changes at the publisher's from the galley sheets he sent.

But, the question the other direction is, would T5 have EVER come out. Do some searching, and you'll find many, many posts about that.

All I'm saying is, the facts are the facts, and we have the T5 that was published. Marc is working on going forward with that, and I and others are willing to follow, despite the events so far. Others want to grouse, and I'm just thinking that's a lot of wasting time.

If you don't like T5, keep playing your favorite Traveller edition. Marc still sells the CDs, so it's available on the cheap. But if you want to come in here and grouse, it's now just annoying.

Many years ago, I was the MegaTraveller guy -- that's all I did. And some annoying person rofl would keep coming in the MT forum and post about how great UGM was. For those of us who were quite happy with the MT task system, the weekly UGM troll was very, very annoying. We complained.

That's where I'm at now with the T5 trolling. It's actually gotten worse, as if some of you feel the need to convert those who actually find T5 interesting enough to stick with it back to some older edition.

So, here's where we're at:

IF your post in the T5 forum disparages Marc or T5, without contributing, I'm going to open a special thread labeled "Grousing For This Week" or something similar and move your post to that, so it doesn't clog up other threads. I will probably miss some, but given the notes I get, I'll have help in tracking them down.

Sorry it's gotten to this, but I'm not the only one tired of it, so it's time to do something about it. If you don't like it, feel free to post pictures of Grima Wormtongue and King Thoeden to various websites depicting myself and Marc. Won't be the first time.

And this gets locked.