New setting for Traveller needed
- Thread starter F33D
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alex_greene
Guest
No, it's more like having a setting where there are no problematic Hivers and K'Kree, no Aslan sexism, where the Ancients' back story is completely different - or there may be no back story - and where, most importantly, Mongoose can retain the rights to their setting even if MWM and FFE withdraw the 3I license.Reynard said:
High Orbit Drifter
Mongoose
alex_greene said:
But what you have is a generic SF role playing game. Not in itself a bad thing, if the basic rules are good, but harder to sell. Traveller is a BIG name. "Generic Science Fiction Game" is not, and is practially taken by GURPS as it is. You don't want to fight against either one - you want people to buy those games AND your game. At least until RPGs are as mentioned causually on the Daily Show or Good Morning (City You Live In) without a snicker or story about teenage Satan-worshipers.
High Orbit Drifter said:
Traveller IS a Generic Science Fiction Game - even more so since Mongoose started publishing it, and nowadays Traveller is generally thought of as such too. It kinda amazes me that people still think Traveller = Third Imperium, when it really obviously isn't.
I have no idea where you're living that you think that this still happens - while it may have happened in the 1980s, people who think that roleplaying is about 'teenage satan-worshippers' are the ones who get snickered at nowadays.
High Orbit Drifter
Mongoose
Wil Mireu said:
Traveller isn't Judge Dredd or Star Trek, obviously. Its basic mechanics are tied to the communications limits of FTL replicating age of sail. You can make a setting that isn't Third Imperium but its going to feel a lot more like that than it does Hammer's Slammers.
Or you can just apply the Traveller name to a book of generic rules. Robots comes to mind - I won't review those rules but it has no connection with previous Traveller rules regarding robots that I could see. Again, not a bad thing per se, but you can see where Mongoose is going with it - they had a great idea on a rules set, based on Classic Traveller, but needed the sales they'd get if they papered over a Traveller cover on some of the expensive licenses they got.
I guess you didn't see the Daily Show bit on World of Warcraft. Or know anything about American politics - if its different its Satan worship. Its not as bad as producing After School Specials about the dangers of D&D, but don't kid yourself.
Here is a neat trick - try explaining RPGs to your relatives during a holiday get together. I bet you'll get at least 50% blank face/polite attention reactions.
CosmicGamer
Mongoose
It's all in how you explain it and who your audience is. Not everyone is the same.High Orbit Drifter said:
One Example:
"What is this Traveller you keep talking about?"
"I'm having a mid life crisis and reliving my youth but instead of Cowboys and Indians or Cops and Robbers we make believe we are astronauts in the future."
For D&D "We pretend we are Sir Lancelot, Merlin and other heroes and villains of the middle ages"
For me, I probably get more blank/polite looks from the family when I get into the details of computers or day trading than RPG's.
My family already knows I play and ask me about my games. My wife has played in some of the games with me. Unfortunately the kids don't like the RPGs I'm into. Too many rules and restrictions for them, or maybe I'm just too much of a fuddy duddy to adapt the game to their wild imaginations. They are constantly imagining their characters suddenly having power ups and special attacks, or a ice/fire/lightning or other strange weapon, magical attacks (perhaps use psionics) or they want to transform into a power ranger or robot and other stuff from cartoons and video games. You thought the players in your group could take an adventure off track? Try keeping up with the outside the box thinking of kids!
My family enjoys, or at least knows about Star Trek, Buck Rodgers, BattleStar Gallactica and other old and new sci fi shows. Kids on my side of the family are just as likely to have sci fi dolls/figures, games, bedding, towels, and so on as they are Disney stuff. For a D&D reference, they all know about the Lord of the Rings books and movies. I am currently playing a version of LotR.
Dave Chase
Mongoose
CosmicGamer
Sounds like the Amber RPG might work well for them
Instead of doing a campaign (regular characters) style game, why not do some one shot games
Tell them that you have a scenario in mind, give them the bare bone of the situation, any background about the game (it's like Star Trek, Star Wars, Merlin, StarGate, or some other TV show or movie) and then ask them how they would like to handle it with characters from that background.
It might get them more interested specially if they know they don't have to worry about messing up other players games.
We use to do this in College, we had one individual who was good GM and love murder, mystery, 007 type games, but few that would play them. But once he started offering one shots with limited seating, he had to turn people away. Our college gaming group grew quite nicely after this as people got to try before you buy kind of marketing (gaining new players)
Some times this GM would offer the same kind of plot twist, change the era (like instead of 20rh Century, he set the same basic game in early 19th Century) and give a bit more background twists. In the one that hinted at just now, the twist was cult/low power magic/PSI happened but only around certain objects and in certain parts of house/estate/factory.
Dave
Sounds like the Amber RPG might work well for them
Instead of doing a campaign (regular characters) style game, why not do some one shot games
Tell them that you have a scenario in mind, give them the bare bone of the situation, any background about the game (it's like Star Trek, Star Wars, Merlin, StarGate, or some other TV show or movie) and then ask them how they would like to handle it with characters from that background.
It might get them more interested specially if they know they don't have to worry about messing up other players games.
We use to do this in College, we had one individual who was good GM and love murder, mystery, 007 type games, but few that would play them. But once he started offering one shots with limited seating, he had to turn people away. Our college gaming group grew quite nicely after this as people got to try before you buy kind of marketing (gaining new players)
Some times this GM would offer the same kind of plot twist, change the era (like instead of 20rh Century, he set the same basic game in early 19th Century) and give a bit more background twists. In the one that hinted at just now, the twist was cult/low power magic/PSI happened but only around certain objects and in certain parts of house/estate/factory.
Dave
Wil Mireu said:
I'd have to disagree with this as something that doesn't really jive with reality. Perhaps that was GDW's intention when they published the "black books" in 1976. Besides them, the only people who think of Traveller as separate from the Third Imperium setting are long-time fans of Traveller (already familiar with the Third Imperium setting) who for whatever reason grow enamored of the Traveller system and apply it to other genres for various reasons (usually to proselytize to "the world" about how great the LBB version of the rules are). Others are long-time fans of Traveller who've ... become dissatisfied with the setting.
Conventions such as Social Standing, the distribution of careers, and the technology assumptions all channel Traveller towards the 3I setting. While it can be argued if the Traveller system shaped the 3I or the 3I shaped the Traveller rules in a chicken-or-egg argument, Traveller is intimately associated with the 3I.
Epicenter said:
Sorry, but it does very much "jive with reality". Traveller is a generic SF ruleset. Judge Dredd (and the other 2000AD games), 2300AD, Hammers Slammers, Outer Veil, Terra/Sol etc all attest to that. They use the Traveller ruleset, but are not 'Third Imperium' and most of those are nothing like the 3I setting.
F33D said:
HERETIC! NO!
There is no universe but 3I and Marc is it's prophet!
I'm quite happy with what we have and don't personally want to learn or play in another. Adaptations for specific settings i.e. HAMMER'S SLAMMERS is fine. More should be done as GURPS did in old days.
Wil Mireu said:
I think it's arguable that Traveller has become a generic system, when you take all it's supplements and variants such as Judge Dredd into account. If you go on a shopping trip on the Mongoose online store you can put together a fair variety of material to support a wide variety of possible SF campaigns.
However I'd say that the core Traveller rulebook isn't at all generic. Apart from about one page worth, in total, of sidebar options that are perfunctory at best, it sticks pretty solidly to a single set of social and technological assumptions. It does provide basic support for a fair variety of possible campaign types, but only a fairly narrow set of setting assumptions.
Simon Hibbs
alex_greene said:
We should be doing this Tech Levels amendment anyways - the stuff they put at TL 17 should be available at lower TLs anyways! It's like the bioscanner in the Core Book: 3.5 kg and three hundred thousand at TL 15 when that price and weight needs to be TL 8.
Traveller, trademark, copyright, etc.; is intimately tied to the 3I. For example, would you do the 3I without Traveller? Probably not. Judge Dread and the other games, et al; while cool and that use the mongoose core rules, but they wouldn't be called "Traveller". There is no onus to use the house setting though.
Yes, the Traveller rules support a certain kind of Golden Age science fictionsimonh said:
settings, but they do not support many other types of settings. At the mo-
ment I am working on a setting based upon the German Perry Rhodan series,
and it would be almost impossible to modify the Traveller rules for this set-
ting. In my view the Traveller rules are at best "semi-generic", for settings
which are very different from the assumptions of the Third Imperium setting
I very much prefer a truly generic system like BRP.
Legend is a BRP clone, and therefore a science fiction version of it could beHopeless said:
a lot more generic than the Traveller system. However, another BRP science
fiction rules system will be published in the near future, so this niche of the
RPG market will soon no longer be free.
Prime_Evil
Emperor Mongoose
dragoner said:
But the Third Imperium has already been done a number of times without the Traveller rule system - there's the GURPS version, the d20 version, the Hero System version, etc. Mongoose are simply trying to do things the other way around by using the established rule system to simulate a range of different SF universes. Sure there are some artifacts of the Third Imperium baked into the rules, but most of these reflect concepts drawn from the literary SF that inspired Traveller - Poul Anderson's Ensign Flandry stories, E.C. Tubb's Dumarest saga, etc. Furthermore, in most cases these universe-specific assumptions are only skin-deep. And the few elements that are not cosmetic reflect the needs of running an ongoing campaign in any SF universe. For example, the game mechanics of the jump drive are cleverly designed to limit the range of FTL travel in such a way that the GM does not need to generate large numbers of worlds between game sessions. And the restrictions on FTL communication prevent PCs affiliated with an organisation from being micro-managed by their superiors while on a mission. It would require fair amount of work to update the alternative rules for warp drives to address the practical needs of the system in this area, but it is certainly possible. GURPS Space has become the dominant rule system for those who want to design their own SF setting precisely because it has made a serious effort to address these issues. The problem is that the GURPS system is not to everyone's taste and lacks the tight focus of the Traveller game system.
Prime_Evil
Emperor Mongoose
Hopeless said:
A Legend SF book might be a good thing in itself, but many people are attracted to Traveller by the elegance of the rules.
rust said:
With all due respect, but I don't believe this can be true. Yes, there are certain assumptions built into the Traveller rules, and in some areas they are more pervasive than in others; but it should be trivial to easy to adapt the rules to any setting you wish. What's giving you trouble?
Prime_Evil
Emperor Mongoose
Hopeless said:
A Legend SF book might be a good thing in itself, but many people are attracted to Traveller by the rule system. The one advantage that a Legend SF game would have is that it could be released as Open Game Content, while it increasingly looks like the Traveller SRD is not going to be updated beyond High Guard.
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