Traveller 5E

[Sigtrygg]

I think the penny has finally dropped as to what you are saying, upon running the numbers I have to conceed that 3d keep 2 and 2d then reroll one is mathmatically the same. There are still issues with how you presented it which is what lead to my confusion, but that is likely down to my misunderstanding, if we were face to face andsshowing the numbers I think we would actually reach similar conclusions.

I apologise for the misunderstanding and I regret any sleight I have caused.

On the fundamentals we agree, a multi dice mechanic has many more possible uses than the limited 1d20.

Still it was fun to look at the numbers and have the discussion.

 

[swordtart]

I think the penny has finally dropped as to what you are saying, upon running the numbers I have to conceed that 3d keep 2 and 2d then reroll one is mathmatically the same. There are still issues with how you presented it which is what lead to my confusion, but that is likely down to my misunderstanding, if we were face to face andsshowing the numbers I think we would actually reach similar conclusions.

I apologise for the misunderstanding and I regret any sleight I have caused.

On the fundamentals we agree, a multi dice mechanic has many more possible uses than the limited 1d20.

Still it was fun to look at the numbers and have the discussion.

Thank you for your courtesy in acknowledging the misunderstanding. Not everyone will front up when they realise they have misunderstood a point and just leave a response hanging.

I felt sure it was some miscommunication as your thought processes generally align with mine even when we disagree about the conclusion and you are clearly an old hand at this. The ability to keep whatever result is also not usual in the roll 2 and reroll mechanism and I suspected you had overlooked it. I am sometimes not as concise as I would prefer.

I welcome challenge as I only know the game from my own perspective and many "obvious" conclusions I have previously come to have turned out to be flawed due to some aspect that had slipped my attention (or was explored in more depth in one of the more obscure supplements). A supported argument is always beneficial.

 

[swordtart]

Well, your anecdotes and bad faith ad hominems are fine

Where did I attack the character, motive, or some other attribute of the person making an argument? Where did I show Bad Faith?

Where did I

...literally describe why you believe the game doesn’t work as written in your own attempt to claim otherwise!

I have set out my stall. It is you that started with the bad faith misrepresenting arguments and putting inflammatory words into people mouths.

“oh but don’t let your players have cyberware or advanced medical equipment you incompetent excuse for a GM!”

 

[Endie]

Where did I attack the character, motive, or some other attribute of the person making an argument? Where did I show Bad Faith?

Where did I


I have set out my stall. It is you that started with the bad faith misrepresenting arguments and putting inflammatory words into people mouths.

Oh sure, you've been snide rather than open about it. To quote you: "Your argument seems to be that we should change the rules because they break your game." It is very hard to spin that as a good faith statement.

I'm an experienced referee and I know how to work around the broken elements of a system in several ways (after all, I ran long and enjoyable Vampire: the Masquerade and Shadowrun campaigns, in the 1st edition of each! I confidently expect and entirely understand that you don't read the overly-wordy blogs from either of the very successful Traveller campaigns I run (I'm amazed that even the 30 or so regular blog visitors that I do get reading each site do so!) but if you did you'd be aware that we have great fun, despite it taking some sleight-of-hand from me.

But we are debating in a thread that is talking about a 5e version that is needed because Traveller has a very small player base. This is despite decades of existence, one of the widely-accepted top-10 campaigns in the industry, and arguably one of the top three best and most detailed settings of any RPG. And there is another large thread dedicated in a less concrete fashion to how we do that, too.

The fact is that 2D6 is not a popular system in the way d20, PbtA or BRP are, to list a few examples. It is just not seen as a positive aspect of the game. It has great aspects, but either you have extremely limited progression (no xp, limited gear etc) as in the early days (which modern players hate) or you have progression and an exciting array of gear (all of which modern players love) but the maths of 2D6 simply don't support it. The 2d6 systems that lack the Charted Space setting are utterly insignificant, commercially.

I'll say again: the RAW are broken when parties progress in skills and wealth. You clearly tacitly accept this and say "just don't use the equipment in the rules" but even then you cannot bring yourself to accept your own, clearly and repeatedly stated position. I get that: everyone is prone to be defensive of the things that they love. We define ourselves by our tastes and interests.

 

[swordtart]

Oh sure, you've been snide rather than open about it. To quote you: "Your argument seems to be that we should change the rules because they break your game." It is very hard to spin that as a good faith statement.

If you say so. Sounds like a request for clarification for you to confirm or refute that statement. Clearly we have different ideas of what good faith means. I haven't deliberately misrepresented anyone's position or my own to create an effect.

I'm an experienced referee and I know how to work around the broken elements of a system in several ways (after all, I ran long and enjoyable Vampire: the Masquerade and Shadowrun campaigns, in the 1st edition of each! I confidently expect and entirely understand that you don't read the overly-wordy blogs from either of the very successful Traveller campaigns I run (I'm amazed that even the 30 or so regular blog visitors that I do get reading each site do so!) but if you did you'd be aware that we have great fun, despite it taking some sleight-of-hand from me.

I didn't know you had a blog. I too played Vampire and Shadowrun when they first came out and ran long running campaigns in various systems (3 version of D&D, Paranoia, CoC, Traveller (2 editions), Vampire, Car Wars, plus a number of one-offs in some pretty obscure systems, so I have experience of other systems. I don't doubt you have great fun and have come up with work arounds to what you perceive as flaws in the systems. I have done the same, but the more I got into it the more I realised that the more you change the worse the system hangs together and the harder it is for players to understands the game and the harder it is for them to retain agency.

But we are debating in a thread that is talking about a 5e version that is needed because Traveller has a very small player base. This is despite decades of existence, one of the widely-accepted top-10 campaigns in the industry, and arguably one of the top three best and most detailed settings of any RPG. And there is another large thread dedicated in a less concrete fashion to how we do that, too.

I am not convinced that a 5th Edition will significantly increase the player base. I suspect a lot of sales will be made to completists who will never even run it (though they may read it for the ideas). A die-hard Traveller referee might be able to convince a 5th edition D&D group to have a spin in another setting but the game mechanics may not be the issue. Most players (vs referees) do not tend to dwell on the system, they tend to want to play the scenario and let the referee sort that out. If the issue is that space games are not as popular then the game system will be irrelevant.

The fact is that 2D6 is not a popular system in the way d20, PbtA or BRP are, to list a few examples. It is just not seen as a positive aspect of the game. It has great aspects, but either you have extremely limited progression (no xp, limited gear etc) as in the early days (which modern players hate) or you have progression and an exciting array of gear (all of which modern players love) but the maths of 2D6 simply don't support it. The 2d6 systems that lack the Charted Space setting are utterly insignificant, commercially.

Are any of the other non-2d6 systems that are not D&D any more significant commercially or non D&D D20 systems for that matter. It seems to me that D&D has the market share but then it has had a massive PR campaign (and a movie).

I'll say again: the RAW are broken when parties progress in skills and wealth. You clearly tacitly accept this and say "just don't use the equipment in the rules" but even then you cannot bring yourself to accept your own, clearly and repeatedly stated position. I get that: everyone is prone to be defensive of the things that they love. We define ourselves by our tastes and interests.

I have never said don't use the equipment in the rules. That is a blatant straw man. I said the referee needs to consider the consequences of providing equipment that gives too much of an advantage.
Lots of cyber wear will make your game a cyberpunk game. That isn't the traditional Traveller model (or chartered space). I am fine with it. Very little affordable cyber wear provides an excessive benefit that isn't situational.
If you all have +5 on every skill check then there is no need to make any Routine skill checks. Accept that the characters are that good that they can do this stuff in their sleep. You will need be more creative with challenges.
I use more robots than Chartered Space seems to consider normal. They allow me to give the party specific skills that the players don't have. I still require the players to command the robots so they still control what happens.
I have been an advocate on these forums for cheap Level 1 Expert systems these are an ideal way to grant +1 to a skill without unbalancing things as they cannot be used for the more complex tasks.
My groups get the stats they roll. No-one has +2 and there as many -1 as +1 in the stats.

I use the full range of skills and stats in my adventures. Characters cannot be +1 for every stat, they cannot have every skill at level 2. They do not own every item of equipment and carry it with them at all times. They tend to choose a role and equip themselves accordingly. If it makes sense I will provide equipment as necessary. Most of the time it will be to offset a negative modifier.

I don't need to limit choices as I am not running an over powered campaign. By the time the characters are getting +5 on their rolls they will be moving in a larger universe and won't be running routine maintenance, they'll have staff to do that for them.

 

[Endie]

Are any of the other non-2d6 systems that are not D&D any more significant commercially or non D&D D20 systems for that matter. It seems to me that D&D has the market share but then it has had a massive PR campaign (and a movie).

On this factual question, yes: there are several systems which are considerably more commercially significant than 2d6, if you want to restrict influence to that narrow definition.

I'm keen not to rehash this discussion again, only a short time after a bunch of us went through it in detail, but on non-D&D D20 systems, yes: you can find non D&D d20 systems that are massively more commercially successful than Traveller. Pathfinder (and its adjunct, Starfinder) would be the glaring and dominant example, here: it never beat D&D (despite rumours during 4e to the contrary, which were later disproved) but it was a genuine competitor for a long time, and continues to outsell Traveller by a vast margin. This is tier 1.5.

The next tier down would be BRP, and especially Call of Cthulhu (Runequest has faded). CoC sold 200,000 copies in Japan alone, and has sold in the millions worldwide over its life. Leaving aside the commercial criteria, it has also been phenomenally influential on the wider hobby, and has contributed hugely to the growth of interest in Lovecraft's work. While Traveller has faded since its glory days, CoC thrives (despite some very bad business decisions made under the influence of vast quantities of medical-grade mary-hoo-hoo by certain managers of the product, as Sandy Petersen has discussed since).

Then you have systems which have faded for various reasons, but whose historical sales remain larger than 2D6 Traveller. Dice pool systems like Vampire, the Masquerade jump out here.

I don't know sales figures for PbtA games, although they are clearly influential in non-commercial terms, judging by the range of successful games released using them in recent years. Not my thing at all but meh.

Then you have Traveller and similar games. Thus the thread about "how do we make Traveller more attractive?"

If you want more specific data, there was a long discussion a while back where I posted several charts on sales figures, usage on various VTTs etc which search can help you find. It may even have been in this thread vOv 2D6 and Traveller consistently came quite a long way down each list.

 

[Sigtrygg]

There are now over 1.400 signed up following the pre-launch, that is higher than the most successful Mongoose Traveller kickstarter to date - unless there was a campaign I was not part of and didn't back.

With 28 days to go I think there is a high chance of this campaign getting almost doubel the average Mongoose Kickstarter.

They can't all be collectors and completionists.

 

[swordtart]

There are now over 1.400 signed up following the pre-launch, that is higher than the most successful Mongoose Traveller kickstarter to date - unless there was a campaign I was not part of and didn't back.

With 28 days to go I think there is a high chance of this campaign getting almost doubel the average Mongoose Kickstarter.

They can't all be collectors and completionists.

Well, I hope it brings more players to the game (and the discussion).

 

[AKAramis]

I wonder how similar this will be to T20 when it came out? It was similar to D&D in that you started at level 1 and went from there and kind of got rid of the character creation mini-game that Traveller always had. Also, by the time you got to level 20, you were very powerful, just like in D&D.

You don't know what you're talking about. T20 had the character creation minigame quite prominently.

 

[AKAramis]

I haven't checked this claim, so maybe it is true -- but I thought the most popular RPG around the world was 'Call of Cthulhu' by Chaosium. They already have a non-CoC version of their ruleset called 'Basic Role Playing'. Having no classes or levels, and being entirely skill-based, it seems like a far better match for Traveller than anything derived from 'Chainmail'. Call me a grognard, but if I was compelled, under extreme duress, to include 'class and level' into Traveller, then I would be looking for a team up with Iron Crown Enterprises, the same folks who brought us 'SpaceMaster'.

Spacemaster Companion (1986) from SpaceMaster (SpaM) 1st edition included a life path optional ruleset... sadly, it didn't give a full set of them ready to use, just an exemplar. Section 24.1⋯24.2, pp 77⋯80.
SpaM is a bit more complicated than CT, MT, MGT1, or MGT2, and the current edition lacks that option...

Then why the collective apoplexy among the TTRPG community when they thought WotC were coming for them? Mongoose took a lot of flack from the C.E. crowd and there are some of them that will have nothing to do with Mongoose ever again.

All a misunderstanding?

No. The WOGL 1.0a license text is copyright WotC, and WotC can, in theory, withdraw permission to use it. In so doing, any license requiring its inclusion then becomes unfollowable and thus unusuable. By sticking to the Wizards license, they were very rightly concerned that Wizards could effectively end the legality of the Traveller Compatibility Licenses... And it wasn't just the Traveller/CE community facing that... any of the various d20 and 5e derivative works using the Wizards Open Gaming License 1.0a were facing that same potential doom.

The CE community is skittish about CotI even being owned my Mongoose because Mongoose wasn't decisive nor quick in response, and (from what I've seen as an admin on COTI) not providing an alternate license for MgT 1e SRD.

In Re T⁵ vs T5E

The T5 vs T5e issue is totally different - it's trademark, not copyright, which is a wholly different kettle of IP laws. Note that US Trademark laws are quite directly cribbed from the era of King George Ⅲ of England, And it's a case where, since Marc sold the Trademark last year, the brand confusion is entirely Mongoose's issue to deal with; besides T5 isn't the actual Trademark, IIRC... those are T⁵ and Traveller⁵ ... but I can see ill informed newbs «bleep»ing up the distinction... not like T⁵ has a terrible large body of works to confuse.
"T5" is an informal fan term, but it is a point of confusion already.

Building one's own setting is a fairly advanced activity that takes a lot of preparation. Play Charted Space, or detail hundreds of worlds, governments, political conflicts, trade systems, and wars yourself. Play Dune, or figure out centuries of scifi history and culture yourself. Some people, including me, like to do that. ]

A quite playable setting can be a subsector or two in size. At least a half dozen groups (only one of them mine) have use my Elestrial Concordat setting, at least that I'm aware of - yes, 5 people have told me they have used it...
The setting itself took about 20 hours of work of mine outside the two prep sessions, plus the 7 players & I some 5 hours (1 session) for setting, and 1 for campaign PC/NPC generation. It helps that we capped TL at 10, used MGT1 alternate world gen, and the basic writeups of the concordat systems were player done.
http://aramis.hostman.us/ec/body.html if you want to look. Or use. I don't have the deckplans of the one ship class with them... The TP-BX Patrol Corvette.

 

[AKAramis]

Traveller doesn't work with a system that has class levels. I don't see how Trav5E is going to be any good.

Worked fine in T20. My name is in the credits... one of the lead playtesters - which was a bit of a miscredit. Several of us were essentially doing additional development.

I disagree that it is a main criticism of the game. It is certainly not everyone's favorite though and has been optional since Megatraveller.

And not dying in CGen was optional in CT-81.

2D6 isn’t really broken but it is limited. GURPS did 3d6 but 4D6 with Average TN=16 is interesting… you’re really wanting that +1 or +2 DM when you’re lacking decent gear but then Formidable 20+ and Impossible 22+ are exactly what they say without the proper gear for the job. And that’s probably a very exciting story.

The original DGP Task System is labeled based upon the odds for a stat 7 skill 1 PC, who gets +2, and an additional +4 for extra time.
Simple 3+ Cannot fail
Routine 7+ Cannot fail with extra time., has a 1/6 chance of fail and 1/36 chance of exceptional fail without extra time.
Difficult 11+ Needs 9+ without extra time; 13/18 chance of fail, 7/12 of exceptional fail, 5+ with extra time
Formidable 15+ Needs 9+ with extra time, cannot be done without extra time
Impossible 19+ even that +6 cannot be done by Joe Average UPP 777777 skill 1.

Refs - use the Difficulty scale! Not everything is nor should be 8+ !!!

Agreed

 

[swordtart]

On this factual question, yes: there are several systems which are considerably more commercially significant than 2d6, if you want to restrict influence to that narrow definition.

I'm keen not to rehash this discussion again, only a short time after a bunch of us went through it in detail, but on non-D&D D20 systems, yes: you can find non D&D d20 systems that are massively more commercially successful than Traveller. Pathfinder (and its adjunct, Starfinder) would be the glaring and dominant example, here: it never beat D&D (despite rumours during 4e to the contrary, which were later disproved) but it was a genuine competitor for a long time, and continues to outsell Traveller by a vast margin. This is tier 1.5.

The next tier down would be BRP, and especially Call of Cthulhu (Runequest has faded). CoC sold 200,000 copies in Japan alone, and has sold in the millions worldwide over its life. Leaving aside the commercial criteria, it has also been phenomenally influential on the wider hobby, and has contributed hugely to the growth of interest in Lovecraft's work. While Traveller has faded since its glory days, CoC thrives (despite some very bad business decisions made under the influence of vast quantities of medical-grade mary-hoo-hoo by certain managers of the product, as Sandy Petersen has discussed since).

Then you have systems which have faded for various reasons, but whose historical sales remain larger than 2D6 Traveller. Dice pool systems like Vampire, the Masquerade jump out here.

I don't know sales figures for PbtA games, although they are clearly influential in non-commercial terms, judging by the range of successful games released using them in recent years. Not my thing at all but meh.

Then you have Traveller and similar games. Thus the thread about "how do we make Traveller more attractive?"

If you want more specific data, there was a long discussion a while back where I posted several charts on sales figures, usage on various VTTs etc which search can help you find. It may even have been in this thread vOv 2D6 and Traveller consistently came quite a long way down each list.

If we are going to talk about systems that are commercially more significant we need to ignore anything that was in the past but is no longer in the frame. As you say CoC and percentile systems have been eclipsed, ditto dice pool systems. If we are looking to increase the player base we need to look at what players are buying now, not what was popular 10 year ago.

The current main player in the field is the hugely resourced 5th Edition. As for pathfinder, Piazo was originally set up to support 5th Edition and is pretty much a direct competitor to that product and appeals to those who just plain don't like the way D&D has gone and wanted to keep playing an older edition. The release of the SRD was what gave the D20 games a massive creative boost as it put a lot of product on the market that didn't have to be funded by the owners of the system.

If you want to play a fantasy Tabletop game that is known about by the ordinary public and supported extensively then those are your two main choices. They have nostalgia draw as 5th still taps into the old campaign material. The success of D&D indirectly supports Pathfinder as it is pretty much the same game and is often cheaper. Depending on your view less support or overhead. If you found RPGs via 5th Edition (or the movie) then Pathfinder is right across the street. 5th did a good job of pushing the idea of RPGs into the mainstream market, but to do so they tuned it to be more popular with the mainstream and it plays more like a board game in my opinion. If you want that mainstream success then you need to be in chain bookstores rather than relying on your FLGS.

Is it the D20 mechanic that is popular or is it the fantasy genre? Fantasy took a big boost with LOTR films. Whilst SF is always out there it is less homogenous as every future is different. It is also somewhat tied to real life and less escapist. We might dream of living in a comfy home in the shire, we probably don't dream about living in the cramped, oppressive and utilitarian Star Wars or Firefly universe. Mud on hobbits looks wholesome, mud on people in SF looks like poverty. SF looks like hard work. It also ages quickly, (one of the common criticisms of Traveller is that it hasn't kept up). That isn't going away with a port to 5th Edition.

Starfinder is much less popular than Pathfinder despite it using the same mechanic. There is an argument that if you are playing Pathfinder anyway and have most of the books you might put a toe in the water for Star Finder (similar to the way that Spell Jammer was introduced). That argument might apply to 5th Edition. As you have pointed out there are plenty of SF games out there but they are all small compared to 5th, Pathfinder or even Traveller. Mongoose seems to be doing pretty well (better then SJG by all accounts). How much of that is Traveller is less clear.

We'll see.

 

[Vormaerin]

Fantasy has always been substantially more popular than sci fi.

Genre wise, it looks to go
1) Fantasy
2) Horror
3) Sci Fi
4) Everything else

And there are pretty big gaps between each of those categories. Even when you look at the most popular online and convention sci fi, it's actually mostly Horror (Mothership, Aliens, etc).

Of course, we don't have much information about what people are actually playing outside of those specific genres. There's about 20 people in my gaming community and 0 of them show up in "games played at conventions" or "games found via an online game matchmaker", which where two of the main sources of data from the previous discussion. (And no, they are not all my age. About half of them are in their thirties or younger).

This is again going to come up against the lack of a definition of "successful". There was never a point where Traveller (or any other game) was competing on D&D's level. The closest any game ever came was just another D&D fork (Pathfinder) and it didn't actually get there.

So the question is "What do you mean by successful?" The publisher seems to be doing well, since Traveller is by far the most heavily supported sci fi game out there in terms of product releases. It also has 3rd party spin offs and it has community publications. It's main competitors in the area of "do a wide range of sci fi" are basically D&D spin offs (Pathfinder and Stars Without Number). Or some very specific games like Aliens, Star Wars, Cyberpunk, etc that just do that thing.

The second question, raised by this thread, is "what is the 'Traveller' that's being successful?" There's a long history of other companies treating Traveller as synonymous with the Charted Space setting. GURPS Traveller, T20, Hero Traveller, and (I assume) this game are about running the Charted Space setting with some other game system. If I run a Forgotten Realms game using Rolemaster, am I playing D&D?

In other words, do we think that people will pick up Traveller 5e (presumably from having played D&D 5e) and then slide over to the actual Traveller game mechanics? I'm sure it will be good for Mongoose, between whatever licensing fees they are getting and people picking up MgT2e Charted Space sourcebooks.

 

[swordtart]

This is again going to come up against the lack of a definition of "successful". There was never a point where Traveller (or any other game) was competing on D&D's level. The closest any game ever came was just another D&D fork (Pathfinder) and it didn't actually get there.

I agree with your entire post, but I think this is the key point for me.

I am not expecting Traveller to suddenly become the new D&D. I am hoping it will just bring a few more players into Traveller in some way and that will provide incentives for greater development by small publishers (I think Mongoose will be fine regardless). I worry that we might just split the audience and end up with 5e vs. 2d6 turf wars or people having to produce dual system supplements if they want to cover both bases. If there is no synergy you are just producing another competitor version of Traveller.

I don't wish the endeavour ill, it just is not for me because of my disdain for D&D 5e. I hope it will be at worst an irrelevance to those of us who don't back it. I have no great hopes that it will significantly improve the overall landscape (but I would love to be proved wrong). I have real concerns that it will fracture the community as every time we have a new edition it seems to end up in people falling out over what is the "true" version of the game.

 

[Endie]

If we are going to talk about systems that are commercially more significant we need to ignore anything that was in the past but is no longer in the frame. As you say CoC and percentile systems have been eclipsed, ditto dice pool systems. If we are looking to increase the player base we need to look at what players are buying now, not what was popular 10 year ago.

The current main player in the field is the hugely resourced 5th Edition. As for pathfinder, Piazo was originally set up to support 5th Edition and is pretty much a direct competitor to that product and appeals to those who just plain don't like the way D&D has gone and wanted to keep playing an older edition. The release of the SRD was what gave the D20 games a massive creative boost as it put a lot of product on the market that didn't have to be funded by the owners of the system.

If you want to play a fantasy Tabletop game that is known about by the ordinary public and supported extensively then those are your two main choices. They have nostalgia draw as 5th still taps into the old campaign material. The success of D&D indirectly supports Pathfinder as it is pretty much the same game and is often cheaper. Depending on your view less support or overhead. If you found RPGs via 5th Edition (or the movie) then Pathfinder is right across the street. 5th did a good job of pushing the idea of RPGs into the mainstream market, but to do so they tuned it to be more popular with the mainstream and it plays more like a board game in my opinion. If you want that mainstream success then you need to be in chain bookstores rather than relying on your FLGS.

Is it the D20 mechanic that is popular or is it the fantasy genre? Fantasy took a big boost with LOTR films. Whilst SF is always out there it is less homogenous as every future is different. It is also somewhat tied to real life and less escapist. We might dream of living in a comfy home in the shire, we probably don't dream about living in the cramped, oppressive and utilitarian Star Wars or Firefly universe. Mud on hobbits looks wholesome, mud on people in SF looks like poverty. SF looks like hard work. It also ages quickly, (one of the common criticisms of Traveller is that it hasn't kept up). That isn't going away with a port to 5th Edition.

Starfinder is much less popular than Pathfinder despite it using the same mechanic. There is an argument that if you are playing Pathfinder anyway and have most of the books you might put a toe in the water for Star Finder (similar to the way that Spell Jammer was introduced). That argument might apply to 5th Edition. As you have pointed out there are plenty of SF games out there but they are all small compared to 5th, Pathfinder or even Traveller. Mongoose seems to be doing pretty well (better then SJG by all accounts). How much of that is Traveller is less clear.

We'll see.

You doubt the importance of the simple D20 system to D&D's success (not one I have great fondness for, but ok: that's the ground you want to discuss this on).

The explosion in popularity of D20 has certainly increased with media exposure and resulting cultural ubiquity, but that is a reciprocal arrangement: the media exposure was due to D&D's profile, and then the profile was further boosted by the media exposure. But it didn't happen with 3e (or lawl 4e): it took the production of a balanced and coherent ruleset that featured bounded accuracy for that growth to occur. If you don't understand why the introduction of bounded accuracy was such a genius move; or why it is so applicable and matters so much to the very specific discussion we are having regarding DM inflation, then I'd hugely encourage you to take a day or two to read up on game design theory.

As an introduction I'd suggest the Kobold Guide to Game Design. Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design, by Geoffrey Engelstein and Isaac Shalev, is also quite approachable. For a good explanation of why making tasks trivially easy is a Bad Idea, the superb A Theory of Fun by Raph Koster (who is known for designing Ultima Online, Star Wars Galaxies and other MMOs, but who writes (and draws) widely about Game Design) is brilliant and accessible: his explanation of the cycle of exploration and mastery in gaming is hugely enlightening .

Yes, this is a lot of work if what you want is just to notch up debating points in an argument with strangers on the internet. But any modern gamer who wants to have the discussion we are having should be deeply aware and educated about the mechanics of a vast array of systems, with a cohesive understanding of why they work or don't work. You don't get to be a fashion writer for Vogue just because you started buying Wrangler, stonewash, stretch-to-fit jeans in 1986 and have never worn anything else since.

Edit: to correct the implication in your post: by the only measures that we have (surveys and VTT usage) Starfinder, while substantially less popular than Pathfinder, remains more popular than Traveller. Some of that is marketing budget; some of it is game system. I would assert that very little of it is setting, where Traveller retains a competitive advantage.

 

[swordtart]

You doubt the importance of the simple D20 system to D&D's success (not one I have great fondness for, but ok: that's the ground you want to discuss this on).

The explosion in popularity of D20 has certainly increased with media exposure and resulting cultural ubiquity, but that is a reciprocal arrangement: the media exposure was due to D&D's profile, and then the profile was further boosted by the media exposure. But it didn't happen with 3e (or lawl 4e): it took the production of a balanced and coherent ruleset that featured bounded accuracy for that growth to occur. If you don't understand why the introduction of bounded accuracy was such a genius move; or why it is so applicable and matters so much to the very specific discussion we are having regarding DM inflation, then I'd hugely encourage you to take a day or two to read up on game design theory.

So it wasn't the D20 system that created the rise in popularity of the game (since every edition of D&D has had that game mechanic). When I am looking to identify a change to the outputs of a system I tend to look at what has changed in the system or the inputs to the system.

Bounded accuracy is a mechanism to specifically control the run-away effects of levelling up which was an issue in earlier editions in D&D due to how they implemented increasing THAC0 per level and the way that armour simply made you harder to hit rather than able to resist damage. Eventually armour became an irrelevance and it just became nibbling to death by ducks. It is certainly an improvement in many regards over previous editions of D&D but it is only applicable to that type of game and even in 5th edition it doesn't completely eliminate the issue as even kobolds get a proficiency bonus.

D&D 5th still has magic items that can add significant bonuses. Stat bonus are still high, class feats can double the benefit of the proficiency bonus. Characters still have the ludicrous hit points that is a function of the levelling mechanic. With the "rest" mechanic you can basically reset to your abilities and hit points which is more like a video game level mechanism. There are plenty of 5th edition features that don't appear to have been play tested and plenty of ways of breaking the game if you min-max.

Most games did not have such a dramatic levelling mechanism and Traveller doesn't have a default levelling mechanic at all (other than terms in character generation). It still allows progression but it is not about "kill these monsters and steal their stuff" to progress. Death in Traveller is a threat regardless of how long you your character has been around. One bullet from a mook can take down a 5 term marine. A kobold is going to have to hit you hundreds of times to extract every hit point before you go down.

It isn't better, it is a different type of game.

As an introduction I'd suggest the Kobold Guide to Game Design. Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design, by Geoffrey Engelstein and Isaac Shalev, is also quite approachable. For a good explanation of why making tasks trivially easy is a Bad Idea, the superb A Theory of Fun by Raph Koster (who is known for designing Ultima Online, Star Wars Galaxies and other MMOs, but who writes (and draws) widely about Game Design) is brilliant and accessible: his explanation of the cycle of exploration and mastery in gaming is hugely enlightening .

Yes, this is a lot of work if what you want is just to notch up debating points in an argument with strangers on the internet. But any modern gamer who wants to have the discussion we are having should be deeply aware and educated about the mechanics of a vast array of systems, with a cohesive understanding of why they work or don't work. You don't get to be a fashion writer for Vogue just because you started buying Wrangler, stonewash, stretch-to-fit jeans in 1986 and have never worn anything else since.

Did you intend this to come across as patronising?

Edit: to correct the implication in your post: by the only measures that we have (surveys and VTT usage) Starfinder, while substantially less popular than Pathfinder, remains more popular than Traveller. Some of that is marketing budget; some of it is game system. I would assert that very little of it is setting, where Traveller retains a competitive advantage.

You have inferred, I did not imply. I am sure that the leverage of a company with the financial clout of Piazo is a significant multiplier in all their product ranges.

 

[Endie]

So it wasn't the D20 system that created the rise in popularity of the game (since every edition of D&D has had that game mechanic). When I am looking to identify a change to the outputs of a system I tend to look at what has changed in the system or the inputs to the system.

Bounded accuracy is a mechanism to specifically control the run-away effects of levelling up which was an issue in earlier editions in D&D due to how they implemented increasing THAC0 per level and the way that armour simply made you harder to hit rather than able to resist damage. Eventually armour became an irrelevance and it just became nibbling to death by ducks. It is certainly an improvement in many regards over previous editions of D&D but it is only applicable to that type of game and even in 5th edition it doesn't completely eliminate the issue as even kobolds get a proficiency bonus.

D&D 5th still has magic items that can add significant bonuses. Stat bonus are still high, class feats can double the benefit of the proficiency bonus. Characters still have the ludicrous hit points that is a function of the levelling mechanic. With the "rest" mechanic you can basically reset to your abilities and hit points which is more like a video game level mechanism. There are plenty of 5th edition features that don't appear to have been play tested and plenty of ways of breaking the game if you min-max.

Most games did not have such a dramatic levelling mechanism and Traveller doesn't have a default levelling mechanic at all (other than terms in character generation). It still allows progression but it is not about "kill these monsters and steal their stuff" to progress. Death in Traveller is a threat regardless of how long you your character has been around. One bullet from a mook can take down a 5 term marine. A kobold is going to have to hit you hundreds of times to extract every hit point before you go down.

It isn't better, it is a different type of game.

Did you intend this to come across as patronising?

You have inferred, I did not imply. I am sure that the leverage of a company with the financial clout of Piazo is a significant multiplier in all their product ranges.

No, I didn't intentionally strike a patronising tone: you were attempting to have a discussion of game design principles despite struggling with any wider understanding of the subject and I thought that you might be interested to pick up some basic knowledge, and so went to the trouble of providing you with a few texts that are often thought to be good introductions. If you feel that you know all that you need to, then you do you. Socrates and I will be in the corner shrugging wryly at each other. But here's the condescending bit: with your obvious inability to grasp the concepts involved, and disinterest in changing that situation (probably, I admit, because you simply don't realise that fact - Dunning Kruger is a hell of a drug), you are absolutely not worth discussing this particular subject with, any further.

 

[swordtart]

No, I didn't intentionally strike a patronising tone: you were attempting to have a discussion of game design principles despite struggling with any wider understanding of the subject and I thought that you might be interested to pick up some basic knowledge, and so went to the trouble of providing you with a few texts that are often thought to be good introductions. If you feel that you know all that you need to, then you do you. Socrates and I will be in the corner shrugging wryly at each other. But here's the condescending bit: with your obvious inability to grasp the concepts involved, and disinterest in changing that situation (probably, I admit, because you simply don't realise that fact - Dunning Kruger is a hell of a drug), you are absolutely not worth discussing this particular subject with, any further.

To be fair I didn't specifically request your engagement, but fare thee well.