Preference: OTU or Original Setting?

[Anonymous]

I love the established traveller setting - which is what actually makes traveller for me. Rules are rules and basically boil down to "roll some dice to see if it works". I think it has endless potential and I hugely enjoy the wealth of material developed over 30 years which adds to the depth and believability of the setting.
If it wasn't for the constant enchantment of this most excellent setting, traveller surely would not have stayed the course.

Whenever I think of the initial concept ......."human kind finally struggled its way off Earth only to find that there were already humans everywhere...." I am just instantly hooked in. Brilliant.

 

[MrUkpyr]

So, that begs the question: What do people really prefer? If I'm going to do Traveller support, should I do generic, plug-and-play stuff that can be slotted into a house campaign (since the OTU is off-limits, so generic is essentially the "core universe" option), or should I come up with a groove-tastic original SF universe, and set the projects there?

Personally I like semi-generic, where the adventures can be used on any of a number of worlds and recommendations are included for which world to use.

There was an old Traveller Aid which had different adventure hooks and ideas. Each hook had described where the adventure could happen, and at the end of each hook it listed possible planets in the Spinward Marches and Solomani Rim which could easily be used.

 

[IanBruntlett]

(I've posted this over at RPGnet, but wanted to get a wide opinion, so....)
So, that begs the question: What do people really prefer?
Thoughts? Opinions?

It depends. I think looking at Mongoose' schedule that we will be amply supplied with OTU material. However, OTU friendly adventure books will always be welcome - from anyone .

Also, taking a hint from Mongoose (Babylon 5, Hammers Slammers, Judge Dredd) there is a market for single (or a couple) book universes. In that vein, there are various universes that are interesting - pick your favourite science fiction novels or films.

 

[nightlamp]

Speaking as a relative Traveller newbie with little-to-no-interest in the OTU, my vote is for more toolkit material not tied to any specific setting. Generic adventures and adventure hooks, worlds, ships, beasties, and so on that I can drop into whichever setting I want.

 

[Jame Rowe]

I like the OTU fine, but am willing to play in original creations if I like them.

 

[pasuuli]

I think Traveller needs some different settings. [...]

I would really like to see a NEW, UNIQUE and ORIGINAL setting using the Traveller rules.

The trick is having a vision. A nice, coherent, interesting vision to hang an original setting on.

You could make the setting smaller in scope with more exploration use some of the alternative rules for spacecraft.

A small setting where exploration is important, and uses alternative spacecraft rules. I agree. What's the vision here?

 

[Ishvar]

As far as I am concerned there are already far too many "generic" books in the current Traveller line. I would prefer something tied to the OTU or to an alternate setting.

 

[hdrider67]

(I've posted this over at RPGnet, but wanted to get a wide opinion, so....)

Adamant has been thinking of dipping our proverbial toes into Traveller support, via Mongoose's open license, and it got me thinking about my own past history with the game. I've probably only played Traveller in the default "Traveller Universe" (Third Imperium, mostly) a couple of times. The rest of the times I've played the game, it's been emulating some well-known SF universe (I've done Trek, BSG and Firefly), or in an original universe of the GM's creation.

So, that begs the question: What do people really prefer? If I'm going to do Traveller support, should I do generic, plug-and-play stuff that can be slotted into a house campaign (since the OTU is off-limits, so generic is essentially the "core universe" option), or should I come up with a groove-tastic original SF universe, and set the projects there?

Thoughts? Opinions?

How about Generic with sidebars for plugging in to the Marches? It wouldn't be that much more effort (I imagine) but it would be useful to both groups of players.

I'd prefer OTU if I really have to choose, though. It's easier to ignore parts that I don't like than to change the generic pieces to match what already exists.

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

As an OGL product, you cannot mention the OTU. So, you either have to make it generic or make your own setting.

Only within the Foreven Sector can you play in the OTU.

 

[GypsyComet]

As an OGL product, you cannot mention the OTU. So, you either have to make it generic or make your own setting.

Only within the Foreven Sector can you play in the OTU.

There is "playing in the OTU" and then there is the little sidebar that says "to adapt this to the OTU, take these steps". This could be as simple as saying "swap out the not-shurikats for LAGs and recast the Thumpums as Aslan" or could be complicated enough that you'd have to stick to vague advice. If this involves placement or specific institutions, then the Foreven clause comes into effect.

At least, that's how it *should* work.

 

[EDG]

I don't think you're correct there, Gypsycomet. You can't mention the OTU at all beyond the Foreven licence, period. That's Mongoose's territory now.

You can't do what you suggested any more than you can say "recast the X as the Klingons and the Y as the Romulans, or "Weapon Z can be done as a Photon Torpedo". If you do that, you're then trying to piggyback on someone else's IP without their permission.

The closest you could get is do do something similar, but leave it up to the audience to figure out the connections and equivalences if they want to turn it into an existing property.

 

[GypsyComet]

I think I was getting there. The idea is that you don't mention it except to swap out one SRD item for another until you have to invoke places or institutions, THEN you use the Foreven license for those. Vague is indeed better, where possible.

But really, if the adventure is close enough in feel to be easily adapted to the OTU, the people that know the OTU will have little problem converting it without any help at all.

 

[Gamerguy]

Products for both really. A good product works for anything actually.

8)

 

[Infojunky]

Products for both really. A good product works for anything actually.

Bing! Give the man a cigar......

Quite frankly back in the "good-ol-days (tm)" A lot of the fan based stuff was set in the OTU, but really only in the roughest sense. As the years went on things got codified to the point of silliness, about this point I began not to care what Duke Bozo did when. Some of this is the blanks got filled in so there was no place for my ideas, the other is that the speed which events happened and how everybody knew about the next day started to strain my fun and sense of fictional reality.

I have more spleen to vent.... Just not today.

 

[BP]

...things got codified to the point of silliness, about this point I began not to care what Duke Bozo did when. Some of this is the blanks got filled in so there was no place for my ideas, the other is that the speed which events happened and how everybody knew about the next day started to strain my fun and sense of fictional reality...

Very well put! For me the problem is that instead of providing setting - i.e. descriptions, and history - we were being given transpiring events and tech 'details'...

The setting should have a start point - everything from then on is created by the players! Leaving the future open is the best approach...

 

[GMSkarka]

The setting should have a start point - everything from then on is created by the players! Leaving the future open is the best approach...

Which, honestly, is one of the reasons why we're considering an original setting. That approach appeals to me, personally.

 

[Vile]

I don't think you're correct there, Gypsycomet. You can't mention the OTU at all beyond the Foreven licence, period. That's Mongoose's territory now.

Not to derail the thread, but the above is not that much of a restriction when you think that still gives you an entire sector to play with. If you look at the Spinward Marches materials, and speaking from OTU sector-building experience, there is really very little 'outside the borders' which ever gets a mention. In fact, most of those mentions are one-offs, such as Leviathan and Chamax Plague / Horde.

But, anyway, I still say that generic 3rd-party supplements are the more commercially sound choice. New settings can be fun, but as others have mentioned they do need that special spark to fire the imaginations of a reasonably large audience. For every truly original (or even not-too-original-but-really-well-done) setting, there are countless numbers of less worthwhile efforts. That's not an implied criticism, it's just recognising the fact that not everyone has the makings of a best-selling SF author.

 

[Corvus]

It is quite possible to have an original setting in the Official Traveller Universe. The OTU includes tens of thousands of worlds over hundreds of millennia, only a few of which have been described in much detail. There is ample time and space for every GM to have their own setting; new aliens, new technologies, new heroes and histories. All you need to do to have an original setting in the OTU is not go out of your way to break things, that's all.

I have read of and played in a few alternate Traveller settings, and most new settings have some perverse need to contradict established Traveller conventions for no reason. I have seen settings where there is instantaneous FTL communication, where there is no Imperial nobility, no Ancients, or where psionics are common. Settings where there are only a few starships or they don't need hydrogen to jump, or Earth is desolate and the last humans are on a remote megastructure.

Every single one of these settings could have taken place in the OTU, were it not for the writer's obsession to prevent it. The adventure with FTL communication would have been better if the messages were recorded, not realtime. There are hundreds of non-Imperial planets, or Imperial ones where the nobility is irrelevant. If the Ancients, psionics, or a specific alien is not appropriate to an adventure then just leave them out, you don't need to declare such things never existed. Conversely, if the adventure is about the Ancients, psionics, or a specific alien then set the adventure in a time and place where those things are common. If you want players to fly around in TL20 Ancient spacecraft, why not just set the adventure during the time of the Ancients?

You can use all kinds of new technologies, so long as they do not obsolete all existing Traveller technologies. Yet that seems to be the precise goal of many of the proposed alternate technologies. It certainly isn't creating a fun adventure, the adventure with new FTL (or whatever) would have been the same if if were slower than Jump-1.

There are many marginal or desolate planets in the OTU history, if you want a post-collapse adventure set it on one of those, don't blow up Earth or Capital so you can play Traveller Damnation Alley.

Sorry, I don't want to rant. I only want to say there is vast opportunity in the OTU for all kinds of original settings. Erasing the OTU is not only unnecessary, but counterproductive.

 

[kristof65]

You make a good point Corvus. Planet, system or even a few neighboring systems can easily be a setting on their own, and as long as they don't break some (or very many) of the OTUs underlying assumptions, could be fitted into the OTU in many different ways.

One of the source books I've been comptemplating would be one on "lesser" megacorporations. While we can't use the official OTU megacorps outside the Foreven Sector, if someone would publish a book on generic megacorporations that were also OGL, it would be helpful for other authors needing/wanting to have common corporations to use for their own works.

 

[Vile]

I don't think the OP or anyone else is implying that you can't have an original setting within the OTU. It is simply asking whether we (as customers) would prefer generic-but-OTU-flavoured supplements, or an entirely new setting with none of the assumptions of the OTU.

Let's not drive the thread off the rails into a pro/anti-OTU flame war ... :wink: