2300AD - A suggestion

[Bryn the 2300AD guy]

Allow me to quote MWM from Challenge 27:

Traveller: 2300 is GDW's new science fiction role-playing game, but the conceptualization, design, and development of the game has taken more than a year. During that time, the GDW staff working on the project has thought and rethought just about every possible approach to a high quality science fiction game and sought out the best possible approach.

From a design standpoint, I adopted a guiding phrase early in the process- playable realism. My aim was to produce a game that had the utmost in realism, but was also totally playable. Realistic games that aren't playable tend to sit on the shelf; playable games that aren't realistic are unsatisfying. I made it a goal for Traveller: 2300 that it would be both. One of the central concepts in the philosophy of playable realism was the concept of tasks.

[Skip half a page on the task system]

OTHER PARTS OF TRAVELLER: 2300
Task resolution is not the only part of Traveller: 2300 that we spent a lot of time on. Frank Chadwick produced an excellent personal combat system, and he wasn't above making the great movie tricks (such as leaping attacks and wrestling holds) part of the action. The GDW staff simulated the course of history from 2000 to 2300, creating a totally plausible, consistent future which reflects developments of technology, and centuries-old power struggles. Tim Brown crafted a space combat system that plays well and also reflects realistic future battle systems. I built on my Traveller researches to develop a realistic system that creates star systems with a minimum of effort.

Next Month: The Traveller: 2300 star map- the most accurate star map ever produced for a game.

THE RELATIONSHIP OF TRAVELLER: 2300 TO TRAVELLER
The common name for Traveller: 2300 and Traveller leaves some room for confusion, and it helps to clear that sort of thing up early. Frankly, I consider Traveller one of the best games ever designed. To quote a recent review, it "set the standard for science fiction games." Traveller: 2300 is not advanced Traveller; it is a completely different game. The similarity of names is due to the continuing dominant theme in each game: players are travellers to the stars. Traveller: 2300 is not intended as a direct replacement for Traveller. They have different backgrounds, different approaches, different rules. Traveller is going to be around for a long time, and we will continue to support it. Traveller: 2300 is an alternative game system that incorporates new game technology and a different approach to background. The two game systems can co-exist and will for years to come.
-Marc W. Miller

 

[MasterGwydion]

2300 seemed to be a big, missed opportunity to do the Interstellar Wars Milieu.

 

[boggo2300]

Allow me to quote MWM from Challenge 27:

Traveller: 2300 is GDW's new science fiction role-playing game, but the conceptualization, design, and development of the game has taken more than a year. During that time, the GDW staff working on the project has thought and rethought just about every possible approach to a high quality science fiction game and sought out the best possible approach.

From a design standpoint, I adopted a guiding phrase early in the process- playable realism. My aim was to produce a game that had the utmost in realism, but was also totally playable. Realistic games that aren't playable tend to sit on the shelf; playable games that aren't realistic are unsatisfying. I made it a goal for Traveller: 2300 that it would be both. One of the central concepts in the philosophy of playable realism was the concept of tasks.

[Skip half a page on the task system]

OTHER PARTS OF TRAVELLER: 2300
Task resolution is not the only part of Traveller: 2300 that we spent a lot of time on. Frank Chadwick produced an excellent personal combat system, and he wasn't above making the great movie tricks (such as leaping attacks and wrestling holds) part of the action. The GDW staff simulated the course of history from 2000 to 2300, creating a totally plausible, consistent future which reflects developments of technology, and centuries-old power struggles. Tim Brown crafted a space combat system that plays well and also reflects realistic future battle systems. I built on my Traveller researches to develop a realistic system that creates star systems with a minimum of effort.

Next Month: The Traveller: 2300 star map- the most accurate star map ever produced for a game.

THE RELATIONSHIP OF TRAVELLER: 2300 TO TRAVELLER
The common name for Traveller: 2300 and Traveller leaves some room for confusion, and it helps to clear that sort of thing up early. Frankly, I consider Traveller one of the best games ever designed. To quote a recent review, it "set the standard for science fiction games." Traveller: 2300 is not advanced Traveller; it is a completely different game. The similarity of names is due to the continuing dominant theme in each game: players are travellers to the stars. Traveller: 2300 is not intended as a direct replacement for Traveller. They have different backgrounds, different approaches, different rules. Traveller is going to be around for a long time, and we will continue to support it. Traveller: 2300 is an alternative game system that incorporates new game technology and a different approach to background. The two game systems can co-exist and will for years to come.
-Marc W. Miller

That's what I was trying to say, but worded so much better

 

[Azgulor]

That was then. This is now. 2300AD is now a Traveller game. If it wasn't, I wouldn't have bought it, despite higher interest in the setting than the Third Imperium. I don't care what the original form of 2300AD was while I'm playing 2300AD using Traveller rules today any more than I care about original D&D if I'm playing, say, an OSR game built on a B/X engine. I can appreciate what came before, but if that was what I wanted to play, that would be the edition of the game I'd be playing. I'm all for improving the game and full confidence Mongoose will do so. But quibbling over whether or not the current incarnation of 2300AD is Traveller - when it obviously is, is pointless.

 

[boggo2300]

That was then. This is now. 2300AD is now a Traveller game. If it wasn't, I wouldn't have bought it, despite higher interest in the setting than the Third Imperium. I don't care what the original form of 2300AD was while I'm playing 2300AD using Traveller rules today any more than I care about original D&D if I'm playing, say, an OSR game built on a B/X engine. I can appreciate what came before, but if that was what I wanted to play, that would be the edition of the game I'd be playing. I'm all for improving the game and full confidence Mongoose will do so. But quibbling over whether or not the current incarnation of 2300AD is Traveller - when it obviously is, is pointless.

well I have no interest in playing a bastardised 2300 with poorly fitting traveller mechanics, so I will never buy it as it stands at the moment, and I know I'm not alone. But no-one is quibling over it currently using Traveller rules, we are saying it sucks that it uses Traveller rules. (not wanting to speak for anyone else I will change that to I am saying)

 

[MasterGwydion]

I won't play it just because it is not the setting I want. If I want to play something around the year 2300, I play the Interstellar Wars period of Charted Space. Since Traveller now owns 2300, I doubt we will ever see an Interstellar Wars Mileu since that would be too similar to 2300AD and that is a real shame.

 

[Sigtrygg]

The Expanse.
GURPS Transhumans Space
GURPS Terradyne

All can be run with the Traveller rule set.

They are all near future settings much like T2300AD

 

[Bryn the 2300AD guy]

GDW wrote what became 2300AD, which was originally called "Overlord" with the intent to use the most advanced mechanics available (task system etc.) in a very realistic setting. This led to some pretty deadly combat. This combat was criticised by some for being too deadly, but was still much less deadly than reality.*

Anyway, I digress. The point being that in an effort to ramp up realism, they used a relatively recognisable world, with countries etc. people recognised. They also decided to knock America down from being a major power to a regional one, which led to large swathes of the fanbase and even writers trying to buff America. They deliberately didn't want to use the Traveller universe. I guess the change from "Overlord" to "Traveller:2300" was an attempt to draw in Traveller fans to buy the new product.

Now, the mechanics, lets call them the "Overlord Engine," stand up as an excellent engine in their own right. I thought it was one of the best GDW produced.


* For example, using the getting hit with a FAM-90 gauss rifle at typical combat range without armour (DPV = 2, rounded up from 1.2) was instantly lethal with a head or chest (upper torso) hit (20% of hits), would inflict a serious wound and 2 shock points if hitting the lower torso (20%, also with a -3 initiative penalty), but only a light wound if hitting a limb (60%) with a knockdown and -1 initiative penalty. The gutshot would progress due to shock mechanics (i.e. bleeding out) but typically would not progress to killing.

In the 1988 an additional optional rule allowed for a second roll (d10) for potential wound type based on location:

Head: 1-6 = kill, 7-8 = serious wound, 9-10 = light wound
Chest: 1-4 = kill, 5-6 = serious wound, 7-10 = light wound
Abdomen: 1-3 = kill, 4-5 = serious wound, 6-10 = light wound
Upper leg: 1-2 = kill, 3-4 = serious wound, 5-10 = light wound
Lower leg or arm: 1 = kill, 2-3 = serious wound, 4-10 = light wound

This was pretty good, and far better than Traveller's knocking down stats and to hit modifiers based on armour/weapon combinations. I found it much more intuitive.

 

[boggo2300]

GDW wrote what became 2300AD, which was originally called "Overlord" with the intent to use the most advanced mechanics available (task system etc.) in a very realistic setting. This led to some pretty deadly combat. This combat was criticised by some for being too deadly, but was still much less deadly than reality.*

Anyway, I digress. The point being that in an effort to ramp up realism, they used a relatively recognisable world, with countries etc. people recognised. They also decided to knock America down from being a major power to a regional one, which led to large swathes of the fanbase and even writers trying to buff America. They deliberately didn't want to use the Traveller universe. I guess the change from "Overlord" to "Traveller:2300" was an attempt to draw in Traveller fans to buy the new product.

Now, the mechanics, lets call them the "Overlord Engine," stand up as an excellent engine in their own right. I thought it was one of the best GDW produced.


* For example, using the getting hit with a FAM-90 gauss rifle at typical combat range without armour (DPV = 2, rounded up from 1.2) was instantly lethal with a head or chest (upper torso) hit (20% of hits), would inflict a serious wound and 2 shock points if hitting the lower torso (20%, also with a -3 initiative penalty)), but only a light wound if hitting a limb (60%) with a knockdown and -1 initiative penalty. The gutshot would progress due to shock mechanics (i.e. bleeding out) but typically would not progress to killing.

In the 1988 an additional optional rule allowed for a second roll (d10) for potential wound type based on location:

Head: 1-6 = kill, 7-8 = serious wound, 9-10 = light wound
Chest: 1-4 = kill, 5-6 = serious wound, 7-10 = light wound
Abdomen: 1-3 = kill, 4-5 = serious wound, 6-10 = light wound
Upper leg: 1-2 = kill, 3-4 = serious wound, 5-10 = light wound
Lower leg or arm: 1 = kill, 2-3 = serious wound, 4-10 = light wound

This was pretty good, and far better than Traveller's knocking down stats and to hit modifiers based on armour/weapon combinations. I found it much more intuitive.

Gotta say I preferred personal combat in 2300 even above Twilight. I honestly think the lethality of combat was a big part of what made the game what it was.

 

[MasterGwydion]

GDW wrote what became 2300AD, which was originally called "Overlord" with the intent to use the most advanced mechanics available (task system etc.) in a very realistic setting. This led to some pretty deadly combat. This combat was criticised by some for being too deadly, but was still much less deadly than reality.*

Anyway, I digress. The point being that in an effort to ramp up realism, they used a relatively recognisable world, with countries etc. people recognised. They also decided to knock America down from being a major power to a regional one, which led to large swathes of the fanbase and even writers trying to buff America. They deliberately didn't want to use the Traveller universe. I guess the change from "Overlord" to "Traveller:2300" was an attempt to draw in Traveller fans to buy the new product.

Now I know why that company failed. Let's make a game almost identical to the Traveller Interstellar Wars-period, but specifically avoid making it a Traveller Charted Space game, then change the name to Traveller to attract the buyers of the very game they didn't want to be like? Wow!

 

[Bryn the 2300AD guy]

Now I know why that company failed. Let's make a game almost identical to the Traveller Interstellar Wars-period, but specifically avoid making it a Traveller Charted Space game, then change the name to Traveller to attract the buyers of the very game they didn't want to be like? Wow!

Nonsense, GDW lasted a decade after this, and the new, non-Traveller products were a large part of the lifeblood of the company. This is especially true of Twilight:2000 which was a huge seller.

What killed GDW was essentially that they stopped publishing products for 2300AD, Space:1889, Dark Conspiracy etc., and that was large a consequence of the Dangerous Journeys lawsuit from TSR. It sucked all the time from the company, and compelled a lot of people to jump ship. Despite winning the lawsuit, Traveller: the New Era absorbed prettymuch the entire remaining staff, but the rumours from the lawsuit meant people thought GDW was going under, and so people didn't invest in the new material.

There are other factors, like the huge loss on the Gulf War Factbook, DPG pulling their support for Traveller in favour of their own AI, and CCG's sucking all the money from the sector, but that was, I believe, the crippling blow.

For 2300AD, it's "golden age" was when Lester W. Smith was the line manager, but he switched to Dark Conspiracy and 2300AD entered the final "gold border" era with two modules in late 1990, and no-one else working on it. 3W put out Operation Overlord on licence, and were working on a starship sourcebook, but that never saw the light of day. By the end of 1990, 2300AD was shelved, with Space 1889 to follow in 1991.

 

[MasterGwydion]

Nonsense, GDW lasted a decade after this, and the new, non-Traveller products were a large part of the lifeblood of the company. This is especially true of Twilight:2000 which was a huge seller.

What killed GDW was essentially that they stopped publishing products for 2300AD, Space:1889, Dark Conspiracy etc., and that was large a consequence of the Dangerous Journeys lawsuit from TSR. It sucked all the time from the company, and compelled a lot of people to jump ship. Despite winning the lawsuit, Traveller: the New Era absorbed prettymuch the entire remaining staff, but the rumours from the lawsuit meant people thought GDW was going under, and so people didn't invest in the new material.

There are other factors, like the huge loss on the Gulf War Factbook, DPG pulling their support for Traveller in favour of their own AI, and CCG's sucking all the money from the sector, but that was, I believe, the crippling blow.

For 2300AD, it's "golden age" was when Lester W. Smith was the line manager, but he switched to Dark Conspiracy and 2300AD entered the final "gold border" era with two modules in late 1990, and no-one else working on it. 3W put out Operation Overlord on licence, and were working on a starship sourcebook, but that never saw the light of day. By the end of 1990, 2300AD was shelved, with Space 1889 to follow in 1991.

So, you are saying that that took their eye off the ball due to a lawsuit unrelated to 2300 and that caused them to go under? That would make sense.

 

[boggo2300]

what really killed GDW was the Desert Storm Factbook, much more so than the lawsuit, and the reason for the Desert Storm Factbook was the out of the park succsess of the Desert Shield Factbook. that made them more money than they knew what to do with.

I recommend Shannon Applecline's EXCELLENT book "This is Free Trader Beowulf: a System History of Traveller" for a really fascinating in depth history of what happened.

 

[collins355]

Collectable card games (M:TG) killed GDW along with a lot of the rest of the industry. It was an extinction-level event.

 

[Condottiere]

Apparently, for quite a number of hobbies.

Both for the pocketbook, and attention span.

Considering current developments on social media, attention might have been the more serious threat.

 

[TrippyHippy]

What heavily impacted Traveller in the late 1980s - and I think this has been cited by Shannon Appelcline too - was the release of WEGs Star Wars, Games Workshop’s Warhammer 40,000 and, to a degree, R Talisoran’s Cyberpunk. All of these somewhat diluted Traveller’s market to a degree which led to a drop in relative sales from Classic Traveller’s heyday in the late70s/early 80s. GW also released Mega Traveller in 1987 which wasn’t as successful as the original edition (and we can all debate about why this may be, but Marc Miller has been quite transparent about unit sales for some time).

The other games, including Twilight: 2000, 2300AD, Space: 1889 were probably never as popular as Traveller while all of them started to feel a little out-of-kilter when the 1990s came about due to their ‘classic’ tone which started to feel old fashioned. Gamers in the 1990s collectively started to get more interested in dark, gothic, urban fantasies rather than classic science fiction settings. GDW’s own Dark Conspiracy is a nod to this trend, as is Traveller: A New Era to a degree (with its darker meta plot). Ultimately, they couldn’t win enough of the new market trends.

The CCG explosion certainly did make a lot of game companies end in the mid 90s, but GDW (and other companies) had been spluttering along for some time before.

 

[boggo2300]

What heavily impacted Traveller in the late 1980s - and I think this has been cited by Shannon Appelcline too - was the release of WEGs Star Wars, Games Workshop’s Warhammer 40,000 and, to a degree, R Talisoran’s Cyberpunk. All of these somewhat diluted Traveller’s market to a degree which led to a drop in relative sales from Classic Traveller’s heyday in the late70s/early 80s. GW also released Mega Traveller in 1987 which wasn’t as successful as the original edition (and we can all debate about why this may be, but Marc Miller has been quite transparent about unit sales for some time).

The other games, including Twilight: 2000, 2300AD, Space: 1889 were probably never as popular as Traveller while all of them started to feel a little out-of-kilter when the 1990s came about due to their ‘classic’ tone which started to feel old fashioned. Gamers in the 1990s collectively started to get more interested in dark, gothic, urban fantasies rather than classic science fiction settings. GDW’s own Dark Conspiracy is a nod to this trend, as is Traveller: A New Era to a degree (with its darker meta plot). Ultimately, they couldn’t win enough of the new market trends.

The CCG explosion certainly did make a lot of game companies end in the mid 90s, but GDW (and other companies) had been spluttering along for some time before.

Twilight was, I think it may have been GDW's biggest selling game

 

[TrippyHippy]

Twilight was, I think it may have been GDW's biggest selling game

What is your source?

This source, suggests that Traveller sold almost 10 times as much as Twilight: 2000 over it’s lifetime:

The GDW Production Records, Part Two: A Traveller Overview – Designers & Dragons

Total Traveller sales between 1977 and 1986 - 1,654,996 units
Total Twilight: 2000 sales from 1984 to 1986 - 183, 608 units
Total 2300AD sales in 1986 - 10,104 units.

Obviously, Traveller has a longer lifespan tracking sales, but even allowing for Twilight: 2000 overtaking Traveller sales on it’s initial release (at the end of Traveller’s 10 year publication), it wasn’t anything as much as Traveller was selling a few years previously. Moreover, GDW overall sales were in decline from the mid-80s onwards.

 

[Bryn the 2300AD guy]

That's the print run, but graph it by year:



Traveller was no longer the best selling rulesset. Twilight: 2000 overtook Traveller in 1985-6. Remember, this is all materials, including supplements etc.