New Paizo SF RPG: Competitor with Traveller?

[fusor]

If a book for such options was produced, players would still find something to hate about it. That's why Referees are told to change whatever they want in the game. No one is stopping Referees from playing in their imagined hard-sci-fi setting game.

By that logic people would (and do) find something to hate about every book ever produced for Traveller, so nobody should bother to produce any new products for Traveller at all. Which (again) is ridiculous. You're very fond of coming up with arguments that are trivially easy to disprove and shoot down, aren't you?

No, I think this is just ingrained conservatism speaking. Change is bad, so why give anyone more options? Even, as I've said, if it does even affect any games that YOU play whatsoever, you're against the idea. Heaven forbid that the game is made more accessible, so that it may become more popular and relevant to the modern market. We want to pretend that Traveller's still a big player and the King in of Scifi RPGing, right?

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

By that logic people would (and do) find something to hate about every book ever produced for Traveller, so nobody should bother to produce any new products for Traveller at all. Which (again) is ridiculous. You're very fond of coming up with arguments that are trivially easy to disprove and shoot down, aren't you?

Books will still be produced. Players should expect to hate them if they're used to hating them is all. Just like my posts here. If people hate me, they'll hate my posts. It's an Internet given.

No, I think this is just ingrained conservatism speaking. Change is bad, so why give anyone more options? Even, as I've said, if it does even affect any games that YOU play whatsoever, you're against the idea. Heaven forbid that the game is made more accessible, so that it may become more popular and relevant to the modern market. We want to pretend that Traveller's still a big player and the King in of Scifi RPGing, right?

I like the change Mongoose did. That's why I bought a 2nd edition hardcover. I use Traveller with other sci-fi RPG rules. I like Serenity/BDH as a ruleset. I don't see one game being a winner over another or not.

 

[legozhodani]

All that super tech you mention, we have in our Traveller games. Just don't need/have rules to the nth degree to do it. I just take what we have bend it a little and give the PCs a target to roll. How it works as a tech, I don't know, the players don't know, for us it doesn't matter.

If there are so many 'hard sci-fi' games out there why aren't you playing them? Seems lots are, go have fun.

Traveller has flaws, yes. Should some be changed, maybe. Does it make the game unplayable, no.

 

[middenface]

Did you ever try Hero Traveller? I never saw the rules for it. Mythras is very dry generic rules reading. Puts players to sleep.

Bit like your YouTube posts.. They would put an insomniac to sleep..

Seriously BRP/Runequest6/Mythras and Legend even would make a great scifi RPG.. Check out River of Heaven

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

Seriously BRP/Runequest6/Mythras and Legend even would make a great scifi RPG.. Check out River of Heaven

RPR systems is what they are.

 

[Reynard]

"You mean other than Eclipse Phase, or 2300AD...."

I actually mentioned 2300AD in my statement in reference to Mongoose producing a hard scifi RPG. How did you miss that? Too incensed Mongoose can't do anything right you missed that 2300AD is their product.

"Why shouldn't publishers provide rules for smaller, more realistic computers"

Mongoose did that and yet the detractors still loudly proclaim ship computers are huge room sized things and by your own statement above you see it that way too. You don't want things to change or you will have nothing to complain about.

"Why not change the worldbuilding to reflect what we know about the universe now instead of what the publishers though we knew in the 1970s?"

From the real data, the representation of the galaxy is devoid of life most especially higher life and there are so far no worlds humanity can colonize. As a matter of fact there seems to be very few worlds. Add in flare stars, and we have a few in our local area, that literally kill any chance for usable planets. Won't that make an amazingly... dead game. No where to go, nothing to do, no one to meet. I see no one complaining the other 'hard science RPGs' also populate the universe unrealistically.

"Or enhanced prosthetic limbs/cyberware"

There is a supplement, Cybernetics, that does expand those.

"Why not provide rules for alternate FTL drives? Or even alternate realistic maneuver drives?"

Seriously? Mongoose gave us Jump plus warp, transport and hyperdrive. Did you miss that page? You also have reaction drives and solar sails as real alternates to the maneuver drive. Earlier editions included HEPlaR, ramjets, Ion, and various rockets which didn't seem to catch on. These are in the books. Do you actually own or have access to just the Mongoose books? Do you actually play the game?

 

[fusor]

I actually mentioned 2300AD in my statement in reference to Mongoose producing a hard scifi RPG. How did you miss that? Too incensed Mongoose can't do anything right you missed that 2300AD is their product.

Yes, I mentioned it as well because it was a hard scifi RPG and I'm well aware that Mongoose are producing it. The fact that you mentioned it doesn't change that. You were the one claiming that there were no other hard scifi RPGs apart from that though, I pointed out a bunch of others that do exist despite your claims. What's so hard to comprehend about that?

From the real data, the representation of the galaxy is devoid of life most especially higher life and there are so far no worlds humanity can colonize. As a matter of fact there seems to be very few worlds. Add in flare stars, and we have a few in our local area, that literally kill any chance for usable planets. Won't that make an amazingly... dead game. No where to go, nothing to do, no one to meet. I see no one complaining the other 'hard science RPGs' also populate the universe unrealistically.

If you think there are "very few worlds" then you've not been paying attention. Besides, hard scifi doesn't mean "must be limited only to what we know of reality". There are undoubtedly many habitable worlds and "usable planets" out there.

There is a supplement, Cybernetics, that does expand those.
Seriously? Mongoose gave us Jump plus warp, transport and hyperdrive. Did you miss that page? You also have reaction drives and solar sails as real alternates to the maneuver drive. Earlier editions included HEPlaR, ramjets, Ion, and various rockets which didn't seem to catch on. These are in the books. Do you actually own or have access to just the Mongoose books? Do you actually play the game?

That's a good start. So why do people resist so much when people say "can we have more of that please"? (and yes, I have books from all the editions - it would be nice if more of the stuff presented in those was in Mongoose's edition too).

 

[Sigtrygg]

Can we please dispel a myth, Traveller was not a hard science fiction game.
The fiction it is based on is very much space opera - and MWM himself is on record as saying as much.

The OTU was not a hard sci fi setting - it is set in the 57th century.

Can you use the Traveller rules as written to run a hard sci-fi game - yes you can, I have done so many times. Can you use them to run space opera - yes you can, I have done so many times. Can you use the rules to run just about any setting you care to mention - yes you can, all it takes is a bit of imagination. I have yet to find a book, TV show or film I can not emulate with just CT.
MgT offers even more tools then CT to do this.

I am eagerly awaiting the Mindjammer setting book...

 

[fusor]

Can we please dispel a myth, Traveller was not a hard science fiction game.
The fiction it is based on is very much space opera - and MWM himself is on record as saying as much.

The OTU isn't hard scifi, sure. I don't think anyone would argue that it was either.

The ruleset though? Half a book on astronomical data in CT Book 6: Scouts (and attempts at more realistic world generation GT:First In, and World Builders Handbook)? Detailed economic systems in GT:Far Trader? Ridiculously detailed and realistic tech design in FIre Fusion and Steel? There were certainly options provided for hard sf in the rules, and there have been from the Classic Traveller days. The myth is to claim that the hard sci-fi material wasn't there.

 

[Tenacious-Techhunter]

All that super tech you mention, we have in our Traveller games. Just don't need/have rules to the nth degree to do it. I just take what we have bend it a little and give the PCs a target to roll. How it works as a tech, I don't know, the players don't know, for us it doesn't matter.

If there are so many 'hard sci-fi' games out there why aren't you playing them? Seems lots are, go have fun.

Traveller has flaws, yes. Should some be changed, maybe. Does it make the game unplayable, no.

Except it does matter. Every handwave is a lost opportunity for the player to interact with the world.

 

[Tenacious-Techhunter]

From the real data, the representation of the galaxy is devoid of life most especially higher life and there are so far no worlds humanity can colonize. As a matter of fact there seems to be very few worlds. Add in flare stars, and we have a few in our local area, that literally kill any chance for usable planets. Won't that make an amazingly... dead game. No where to go, nothing to do, no one to meet. I see no one complaining the other 'hard science RPGs' also populate the universe unrealistically.

There is no such data. In fact, there is data to the contrary. The HabCat database is a list of planets with a high degree of Earth-like criteria. While they aren’t necessarily close enough to Earth-like to be a pleasant place to live, or even for many Earth species to live there, they’re close enough that life similar to ours may be found there. Additionally, as the planet-finding process becomes sensitive enough to find smaller and smaller planets further and further away from their parent stars, the trend is toward more rocky planets, not less. The jury is still out as to whether we’ll see more gas giants than rocky planets, but we’ll see.

Further, don’t mistake the sparsity of HabCat data for anything like the real density of habitable worlds out there... it only represents those planets whose orbital plane nearly intersects Earth’s orbit... which is a small number of stars available to use our current set of analytical techniques on...

You also have reaction drives and solar sails as real alternates to the maneuver drive.

Solar sails are not a real alternative to maneuver drives; they are only an alternative to burning fuel, which matters not a damn bit for any craft that has to get anywhere at a reasonable rate of speed.

 

[FallingPhoenix]

Except it does matter. Every handwave is a lost opportunity for the player to interact with the world.

I think I'm misunderstanding something about where you're coming from, T-T. Are you saying that if something in a game is purely imaginary, a player can't interact with it? I don't think that can be the case, but that's what I'm understanding you to be saying here.

 

[Tenacious-Techhunter]

Except it does matter. Every handwave is a lost opportunity for the player to interact with the world.

I think I'm misunderstanding something about where you're coming from, T-T. Are you saying that if something in a game is purely imaginary, a player can't interact with it? I don't think that can be the case, but that's what I'm understanding you to be saying here.

If something in the game is purely imaginary, a player cannot reason about how to interact with it. They cannot apply their real-world expectations to it. The might be able to experiment with it, but then the onus for consistency is squarely upon the shoulders of the GM; just like a person who has spun a web of lies they have to keep consistent with to keep from being found out, the GM has to maintain the consistency of how the imaginary object performs under all the circumstances the players interacted with it before, so the players can produce predictable results. That sure doesn’t sound like fun to me, for either the player or the GM! Better that the thing has some realistic expectations baked into it, so that both the players and the GM are on the same page with regards to how the damn thing performs.

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

Except it does matter. Every handwave is a lost opportunity for the player to interact with the world.

I think I'm misunderstanding something about where you're coming from, T-T. Are you saying that if something in a game is purely imaginary, a player can't interact with it? I don't think that can be the case, but that's what I'm understanding you to be saying here.

If something in the game is purely imaginary, a player cannot reason about how to interact with it. They cannot apply their real-world expectations to it. The might be able to experiment with it, but then the onus for consistency is squarely upon the shoulders of the GM; just like a person who has spun a web of lies they have to keep consistent with to keep from being found out, the GM has to maintain the consistency of how the imaginary object performs under all the circumstances the players interacted with it before, so the players can produce predictable results. That sure doesn’t sound like fun to me, for either the player or the GM! Better that the thing has some realistic expectations baked into it, so that both the players and the GM are on the same page with regards to how the damn thing performs.

Nice spinning there with your answer.

 

[Condottiere]

I used my limited understanding of physics and chemistry all the time when playing Mage.

 

[Tenacious-Techhunter]

Nice spinning there with your answer.

No, I’ve been consistent on that point from the beginning. You’re just choosing to neglect that fact because you’re a pathological troll.

 

[alkibiades]

If I want to go for D&D in space with a neat Mass Effect vibe I will go for Esper Genesis. I use FFGs for Star Wars. But if I want to play anything SciFi from The Expanse to Battlestar Galactica (old show) I will surely stick to Traveller. Btw. with Mindjammer for Traveller, you have a really fantastic approach to modern transhuman SciFi, definitely worth a read.

 

[paltrysum]

Saw the ads for Starfinder. Sharp-looking art. This reminds me a bit of the 80's when I was an avid Traveller player and TSR put out Star Frontiers. My friends and I tried it and had a little fun with it, but Traveller was still king.

Starfinder has a fantasy/sci-fi theme, so I'm sure it's more akin to Star Wars than any hard sci-fi story. I might buy it because it looks good and for an entertaining read, but I don't see myself devoting time to running it.

 

[Juums]

Starfinder is a competitor to Traveller in the same way that a great white shark is a competitor to a lionfish: They are both saltwater carnivorous fish, but they live in different worlds and fill different ecological niches, "competing" with each other only in the sense that they both prey upon the same global amalgamation of oceanic biomass. So Starfinder and Traveller will "compete" in the sense that they're both pen-and-paper sci-fi rule-sets, but if you Venn diagrammed their intended audiences, you'd find little overlap between the two of them.

I'm rather biased regarded Starfinder, as I've been playing D&D 3.x -- and its successor in Pathfinder -- since 2002 or thereabouts. So a space operatic reskinning of an established rule-set with a nearly infinite number of portable encounters, adventures, and even entire campaigns through the decade of Pathfinder plus a myriad of third-parties is just what the doctor ordered. Finally might be able to get my group to try the Third Imperium setting once Starfinder launches, as we'd finally have a rule-set whose character creation process didn't leave everyone too cross to actually play.

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

Starfinder is a competitor to Traveller in the same way that a great white shark is a competitor to a lionfish: They are both saltwater carnivorous fish, but they live in different worlds and fill different ecological niches, "competing" with each other only in the sense that they both prey upon the same global amalgamation of oceanic biomass. So Starfinder and Traveller will "compete" in the sense that they're both pen-and-paper sci-fi rule-sets, but if you Venn diagrammed their intended audiences, you'd find little overlap between the two of them.

I'm rather biased regarded Starfinder, as I've been playing D&D 3.x -- and its successor in Pathfinder -- since 2002 or thereabouts. So a space operatic reskinning of an established rule-set with a nearly infinite number of portable encounters, adventures, and even entire campaigns through the decade of Pathfinder plus a myriad of third-parties is just what the doctor ordered. Finally might be able to get my group to try the Third Imperium setting once Starfinder launches, as we'd finally have a rule-set whose character creation process didn't leave everyone too cross to actually play.

Yep. Artwork, mechanics, setting.