How to make Traveller more popular with TTRPG players
- Thread starter MarcusIII
- Start date
shirgall
Cosmic Mongoose
Mostly the miniatures scene, generally.
Maybe Mongoose should get back to the UK's real Traveller roots and organise a crossover with GW...
Mongoose just did a big miniatures campaign with the Fifth Frontier War (with designs and prints from 2nd Dynasty).
Local report here:
Two local game stores within 30 minutes (Annapolis Maryland, USA). The closer one (10 minutes) only about a foot of self space with Traveller 2E products and it is pretty neglected -- an incomplete set of Deepnight with some of the line having THREE books and most none. No core books of any sort. I prodded them to get A core rulebook, they got three and all have moved but that didn't prompt them to do any restocking. They're good folks, and I have been pressing them to get Cluster Truck the moment they can to show customer interest in the line. Too bad they closed their gaming space after COVID because I'd happily run a pickup game there. Anyway, it's forensically clear there are no Traveller players in town.
The farther one (30 minutes, towards Baltimore) has about five feet of shelf space, a good assortment of books with rulebooks and I see regular churn in the inventory so there is SOMEBODY else out there local (haven't spoke up here of course). No 2300 stuff. There is a gaming space but it doesn't run many pickup games -- dominated larger tournament style Warhammer/Magic stuff.
Overall, the lack of local players has my Traveller game as the incomplete group backup.
I'd be really interested in a player finder at this point.
Two local game stores within 30 minutes (Annapolis Maryland, USA). The closer one (10 minutes) only about a foot of self space with Traveller 2E products and it is pretty neglected -- an incomplete set of Deepnight with some of the line having THREE books and most none. No core books of any sort. I prodded them to get A core rulebook, they got three and all have moved but that didn't prompt them to do any restocking. They're good folks, and I have been pressing them to get Cluster Truck the moment they can to show customer interest in the line. Too bad they closed their gaming space after COVID because I'd happily run a pickup game there. Anyway, it's forensically clear there are no Traveller players in town.
The farther one (30 minutes, towards Baltimore) has about five feet of shelf space, a good assortment of books with rulebooks and I see regular churn in the inventory so there is SOMEBODY else out there local (haven't spoke up here of course). No 2300 stuff. There is a gaming space but it doesn't run many pickup games -- dominated larger tournament style Warhammer/Magic stuff.
Overall, the lack of local players has my Traveller game as the incomplete group backup.
I'd be really interested in a player finder at this point.
andreaslundin
Mongoose
It is strange really. Here in Sweden we have a pretty solid rpg community, with both bigger publishers like the The Free League, and lots of smaller publishers. People play all sorts of games, but Traveller has very little mind share. This is despite the fact that one of the rpg legends in Sweden, Anders Blixt, has talked about Traveller quite a bit.
There aren't many FLGS left in Sweden, but the biggest one, Alphaspel, has a decent selection of Traveller stuff.
There aren't many FLGS left in Sweden, but the biggest one, Alphaspel, has a decent selection of Traveller stuff.
First time poster, getting back into Traveller after a 4 decade break. Been active in other RPGs, just wanted a break from fantasy and diving back into Traveller.
From my perspective what is most needed is more referees. Trying to find a game has been an exercise in frustration. As an experienced RPGer looking at the amount of material out there, I can only imagine what someone new to our hobby would feel. Imagine a younger person new to RPGs wanting to try this game. They can hop online and find dozens, if not hundreds of D&D type games. A group of them can grab an excellent starter set like Lost Mines of Phandelver and be playing in a short time. There is nothing equivalent for Traveller. There needs to be an easy onramp, with all of the requisite handholding that requires, if there is going to be successful influx of new players and referees. LMoP is not just a starter adventure, it is also a Game Master starter set. There is a significant amount of text given over to comments for the GM on options and how to run the game. We will need that in order to grow this game.
The game I managed to find has people's ages ranging from 51 to 80. That is not a sustainable demographic. (Granted not statistically valid, but all that I have seen.) Make a starter set that has the most basic elements to get people playing and enjoying without overwhelming amounts of data.
From my perspective what is most needed is more referees. Trying to find a game has been an exercise in frustration. As an experienced RPGer looking at the amount of material out there, I can only imagine what someone new to our hobby would feel. Imagine a younger person new to RPGs wanting to try this game. They can hop online and find dozens, if not hundreds of D&D type games. A group of them can grab an excellent starter set like Lost Mines of Phandelver and be playing in a short time. There is nothing equivalent for Traveller. There needs to be an easy onramp, with all of the requisite handholding that requires, if there is going to be successful influx of new players and referees. LMoP is not just a starter adventure, it is also a Game Master starter set. There is a significant amount of text given over to comments for the GM on options and how to run the game. We will need that in order to grow this game.
The game I managed to find has people's ages ranging from 51 to 80. That is not a sustainable demographic. (Granted not statistically valid, but all that I have seen.) Make a starter set that has the most basic elements to get people playing and enjoying without overwhelming amounts of data.
This thread has covered a lot of ground now, but the demographic point is important.
In the 2000's, tabletop RPGs fell off a cliff. Aside from D&D, which endures as ever. But it's worth noting that Traveller was a non-starter in that era, pretty much. GDW was long dead, SJG carried the flame for a while, then a bit later Mongoose came along.
Then... a strange thing happened. Kids started watching each other play games, and one of things was D&D. NOT "tabletop RPGs" to any great degree, just D&D. My 25 year old daughter barely plays any tabletop, but she's enough of a Critical Role fan that she travelled interstate to see them live. And bought merch.
So we pretty much have a division between the older gamers who played the games back in the day, and the younger ones who are quite focussed on online and streaming, with the tabletop experience a quaint variation. VTTs and players being physically located all over the globe are the norm now. And when they meet face to face, it's still D&D.
But if you look at the genres played, there's another big strike against Traveller. Space fiction is a ghetto. The most popular non-medieval fantasy genre is horror. The most played space game may be Starfinder, which is obviously an easy switch for the Pathfinder and D&D kids to try out (and is in fact a well thought out space opera, not just a reskinned Pathfinder). Cyberpunk usually does well on the play charts, which is not hurt by the video game.
Traveller is left to pick up the crumbs amongst the indies and the other legacy games played by old people.
In the 2000's, tabletop RPGs fell off a cliff. Aside from D&D, which endures as ever. But it's worth noting that Traveller was a non-starter in that era, pretty much. GDW was long dead, SJG carried the flame for a while, then a bit later Mongoose came along.
Then... a strange thing happened. Kids started watching each other play games, and one of things was D&D. NOT "tabletop RPGs" to any great degree, just D&D. My 25 year old daughter barely plays any tabletop, but she's enough of a Critical Role fan that she travelled interstate to see them live. And bought merch.
So we pretty much have a division between the older gamers who played the games back in the day, and the younger ones who are quite focussed on online and streaming, with the tabletop experience a quaint variation. VTTs and players being physically located all over the globe are the norm now. And when they meet face to face, it's still D&D.
But if you look at the genres played, there's another big strike against Traveller. Space fiction is a ghetto. The most popular non-medieval fantasy genre is horror. The most played space game may be Starfinder, which is obviously an easy switch for the Pathfinder and D&D kids to try out (and is in fact a well thought out space opera, not just a reskinned Pathfinder). Cyberpunk usually does well on the play charts, which is not hurt by the video game.
Traveller is left to pick up the crumbs amongst the indies and the other legacy games played by old people.
actionman
Emperor Mongoose
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Limpin Legin
Emperor Mongoose
True.
That is true of all life, hobbies, etc. When I fists started RPGing, there was a young persons group and an mature persons group. Not deliberately defined upon those lines , just happened to turn out that way.
You wont encourage many participants, old or new, if you think along those lines!
actionman
Emperor Mongoose
Stranger Things showcased the characters' D&D campaign as a major theme from Season 1. People doing it on TV suddenly made it not just for nerds anymore.
Critical Role did a very good job with their youtube show, and having celebrities come on was a great idea too. What's funny is that posers criticized legitimate D&D players for failing to play just like Critical Role to such a degree that Matt Mercer himself had to publicly make a statement against it.
So, it looks like several important things happened in relatively quick succession:
1. D&D 5e comes out in 2014.
2. Critical Role comes out in 2015.
3. Stranger Things airs in 2016 and becomes a very highly rated show, with 1.2 billion total views as of this year.
5e coming out, that only matters to people already playing D&D. But, Critical Role showed cool talented professional voice actors having fun playing D&D to millions of people online, then Stranger Things showed D&D in an interesting positive light to millions of viewers out in TV Land.
Notice how Pathfinder was D&D before D&D 5e was D&D, but nobody was playing "Pathfinder" on Critical Role or Stranger Things, so it didn't get any benefit.
Of course, because twentysomethings and older don't want to listen to the nonsense.
True. The franchises in the public imagination are Star Trek, Star Wars, and to a much lesser extent, Firefly.
So, IMO, the only thing that is practical for Mongoose to do is hire talented mediagenic voice actors or regular actors who love gaming to do a Traveller campaign podcast. Show millions of people out there in Internet Land cool mediagenic people having fun playing Traveller. If the podcast does well enough, Mongoose can hire a reputable competent professional screenwriter to create a screenplay for a high quality Traveller movie or show and pitch it to Netflix or Amazon Prime (no low budget piece of crap). In this way Mongoose can hook up its own crank to the wheels of fate and turn them.
actionman
Emperor Mongoose
That's no joke. It's hard to introduce a new player to Traveller without a flood of exposition.
Good points, AM, especially about Stranger Things. I'd probably discount BG3 a bit - that's not part of the resurgence, but later consolidation. By 2023 D&D was back, and well entrenched.
I dunno. As far as I can see, Mongoose is doing all the right things. Maybe they could sponsor webcasts and streaming, maybe they could push Traveller VTT integration. Discoverability and profile online. But those things cost.
I did notice that Cluster Truck is remaining visible in DriveThru, though. So that's good.
I do think Cluster Truck may be the single best thing they've done to draw attention to Traveller for years.
I dunno. As far as I can see, Mongoose is doing all the right things. Maybe they could sponsor webcasts and streaming, maybe they could push Traveller VTT integration. Discoverability and profile online. But those things cost.
I did notice that Cluster Truck is remaining visible in DriveThru, though. So that's good.
I do think Cluster Truck may be the single best thing they've done to draw attention to Traveller for years.
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