Is it the charm?

[GypsyComet]

I meant that MS Gundam was the daddy of all giant robot animes.

Sort of. The "god robot vs the giant ugly monster of the week" shows predate Gundam by many years, both in anime and in rubber suits.

What Gundam is the "daddy" of is the "giant robot as expendable military hardware" sub-genre. The original Gundam series, the TV series "Armoured Trooper VOTOMS", and "Super Dimensional Fortress Macross" were the power trio that started and then cemented the move away from the god-robots. Suddenly the big piece of hardware wasn't as important as the guy in the pilot chair. The next two Gundam serials, Aura Battle Dunbine, Orguss, and a few others contributed to the early trend.

The other change these series brought was an actual serial writing style. If the bot/plane/etc gets shot up in episode 7 it might still be damaged in Ep 8, or it might get scrapped and replaced by Ep 9, but they would make the point of showing (or at least mentioning) that progression. Very little serial writing was being done prior to that in anime (such as Yamato), and the live action shows were usually only weakly serial.

 

[Alexander Cecil]

The trouble I have had with Traveller in the past is that you can play an ex-military type who now travels around as a merchant... and that's about all. Firefly, aside, it's also so boring to me that it makes me want to curl up in a fetal position and cry. I know that sort of thing figured prominantly in Foundation (and I love Foundation), but a good game it does not make. Not to me, anyway.

Really? Traveller lends itself very well to a very player-centric gaming style, but that does not have to devolve into interstellar accountants at all.

In my current game, the PCs are a crew of ex-military, ex-pirate, and ex-Imperial intelligence agents who have a common history through a black ops. mission in which they overthrew a Solomani-sympathizing planetary government during the Solomani Rim War. They are all middle-aged men looking to make a buck while keeping up the level of excitement they became used to in their previous careers.

My PCs have already:

• Tried and failed at starting a mercenary company
  Salvaged equipment and data from a derelict vessel which is actually a clandestine Imperial data processing ship using experimental psionic biocomputers
  Been arrested for possession of said data and are in cold storage as they are shipped to an unknown prison planet

In the future of the campaign, it seems likely the PCs will:

• Escape from prison after many years of hard labor
  Rediscover their lost ship which was removed from Imperial impound by a close ally
  Misjump into deep space
  Go into cold sleep to survive and wake up in the New Era, where the society and technology they have come to rely on are lost to the AI Virus

To me, this seems hardly to be a bunch of ex-military playing merchant in space. The campaign is what you make of it as the Referee.

 

[whtknght]

The trouble I have had with Traveller in the past is that you can play an ex-military type who now travels around as a merchant... and that's about all. Firefly, aside, it's also so boring to me that it makes me want to curl up in a fetal position and cry. I know that sort of thing figured prominantly in Foundation (and I love Foundation), but a good game it does not make. Not to me, anyway.

I use to play a lot of ex belter and ex scout characters. Sometimes I would play an ex noble looking for excitement. There is more than just military prior histories. In CT and MgT you can do many different kinds of adventures.

How does Traveller handle FTL communications and travel?

There is no FTL Communications in the OTU. That is why they have X-Boats and couriers.

As for travel, it is done through Jump. The ship makes a Jump through space a distance determined by the Jump Drive of the ship. A jump always takes about a week.