Would You Buy a Solo Traveller Product?

[Supplement Four]

I've been so negative on MGT that I thought I'd surprise people and post a positive post! :shock: (thumb up).

I'll make this quick, short, and to-the-point (and somewhat redundant, I guess :wink: ).

I've noticed that many people interested in Traveller aren't as lucky as some of us to have gaming groups and actually get to play the game. Many, many posters on these Traveller forums only talk about Traveller--hardly ever playing. (Poor saps. very sad.) Right now, even, there's a thread over at CotI discussing Solo Traveller adventures.

Well my wonder is: Would it be a profitable idea for Mongoose to publish Traveller adventures aimed at solo play? Would the masses of Traveller lovers out there buy such a beast?

I'm talking about one guy, grabbing his rule book and his new solo adventure, sitting down by himself, and having an excellent Traveller experience without a single other person.

Would that type of thing sell?

Would you buy it?

 

[rust]

A Traveller Solo Adventure would have to be very good to make me buy
it, and I am not sure whether Traveller is the right system for a solo ad-
venture.

There have been excellent solo adventures for other systems (e.g. "Alone
Against The Dark" for Call of Cthulhu), but with Traveller ... ?

 

[Supplement Four]

A Traveller Solo Adventure would have to be very good to make me buy
it, and I am not sure whether Traveller is the right system for a solo ad-
venture.

There have been excellent solo adventures for other systems (e.g. "Alone
Against The Dark" for Call of Cthulhu), but with Traveller ... ?

Any product has to be "good" to encourage sales. I'm curious, though...why do you think a good solo adventure for Traveller would be difficult to publish?

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

I also voted yes, but I see from the results that I am in the minority... Well, I guess I just need to get a group started.

I think the IDEA of a Solo Adventure would be cool, but the market might be limited, too limited for publication, but as a PDF..

Maybe under the OGL, someone out there would take this idea and run with it!

 

[rust]

Science fiction is usually driven by technology and a wide choice of
equipment and relevant skills.

A single character could have a hard time to have all the necessary
skills for most of the adventure types I can imagine, in any case the
designer of the story most probably would have to restrict the charac-
ter's choices considerably - otherwise he would have to create an ex-
tremely high number of adventure paths through the adventure.

It is the same with equipment. Unless the designer restricts the cha-
racter's choices severely ("You have an ACR - nothing else is possib-
le"), he would again have to write a very high number of adventure
paths for characters with different types of equipment.

So, in the end you would probably have a character with fixed skills
and fixed equipment, or only very limited choices in both fields -
and I do not think I would like this ...

 

[Supplement Four]

I also voted yes, but I see from the results that I am in the minority... Well, I guess I just need to get a group started.

I think the IDEA of a Solo Adventure would be cool, but the market might be limited, too limited for publication, but as a PDF..

Give it a chance, bro. Only 7 people have voted. I only posted the poll less than an hour ago! You're not in the minority yet--the sample is large enough yet to determine that.

You could very well find yourself in the majority after the poll has been up a week. We'll just wait and see.

 

[EDG]

If we're talking about something like the "Fighting Fantasy" style of solo book (like, well, the Starship Traveller book that FF published) then it could work, but I think that's a totally different market to "group roleplayers". Plus I'm not sure if kids of today are into that sort of thing much (though I know Mongoose rereleased the Lone Wolf books).

A solo adventure (a la Marooned Alone) though would be lame IMO, because I hate that sort of thing. I'd want to play a proper adventure, not just roll up an endless sequence of events to interact with on my way to a destination.

The irony is that Traveller has plenty for people to do on their own if they're bored on a rainy day - character generation, ship design, world/sector generation, etc. That all tends to get shunted aside and sneered at nowadays because of the insistence on actually "playing the game", but this sort of gearheading is a perfectly valid way to get some good solo use out of a game.

 

[Klaus Kipling]

T'would be the proverbial piece of p*ss to do an FF style text and animation based solo game in Flash or something similar. Wouldn't even need dice then.... Think interactive story with sound effects and cutscenes. Be more viable than doing it in print.

 

[AKAramis]

Yet again, I abstain due to S4's inability to have an unqualified "yes" option.
For me, I'm in the "yes, but not very enthusiastically" camp.

 

[crazy_cat]

No. It doesn't sound interesting to me at all. I wouldn't buy it.

 

[Deniable]

T'would be the proverbial piece of p*ss to do an FF style text and animation based solo game in Flash or something similar. Wouldn't even need dice then.... Think interactive story with sound effects and cutscenes. Be more viable than doing it in print.

Dumping the text into html would be even easier, but you'll probably need the Flash to get the current target audience. Production costs would probably kill it.

As an aside, I once got bored at work and figured out how I would put one of these into the auto-attendant / voice-mail system. Press 1 to go north, press 2 to go east... I couldn't be bothered reading an entire book into the thing, so I gave up. It would be a hell of a hold channel for a games company though.

 

[shotgun-toting chipmunk]

I'd have to vote no. The only reason I'm even looking for new RPGs is because I'm trying to find one both my wife and I can get into. 'Swhy I passed on Lone Wolf.

 

[Klaus Kipling]

T'would be the proverbial piece of p*ss to do an FF style text and animation based solo game in Flash or something similar. Wouldn't even need dice then.... Think interactive story with sound effects and cutscenes. Be more viable than doing it in print.

Dumping the text into html would be even easier, but you'll probably need the Flash to get the current target audience. Production costs would probably kill it.

Actually I'd totally disagree with that. HTML could work, but Flash would be orders of magnitude better, and easier (seriously). Production costs needn't be so high. I've worked on similar stuff in the past. Even come up with a few plans (though I always add too many features to it and never get 'em finished); given time I could put together a simple mock-up. Hmmm.... Once the final rules come out it'd be interesting to see how easily they could be 'converted' into interactive solo play.

 

[Supplement Four]

Yet again, I abstain due to S4's inability to have an unqualified "yes" option.

Keep holding your breath, Aramis, and maybe one of these days you'll be able to vote in one of my polls! :shock:

 

[nezeray]

I didn't vote because what I want may or may not fit the poll:

I would like a solo adventure to help a new player learn the rules. Much like the hints that some introductory modules for GMs use. Where it outlines what you need to do step by step.

The adventure would have a generic character with a variety of skills common to most classes. It could start off with a dialog with an NPC trying to convince them to give you passage for less than the listed price.

The next encounter could be skill rolls based on the ship crashing and the PC trying to control the landing of the ship.

Then there could be a quick combat against a wild alien boar, maybe with a spitting attack. Walking you through initiative, ranged and melee combat.

Then perhaps a few skill rolls to find food and repair the ship.

THIS I would buy so that I could walk through the rules on my own, then hand it off to anyone else interested in seeing how the game works.

James / Nezeray
I learn games through playing/running them, not through reading the book cover to cover.

 

[AKAramis]

Yet again, a poll with no moderate answer.

Yes, I'm likely to buy it. No, I'm Not going to be in any rush to do so. No, I won't be excited for it.

But I do think it an excellent idea for the newbs and the playerless. I've played a lot of Car Wars, T&T, and TFT solos over the years.

 

[gnytro]

Since there was no "maybe" answer, I voted yes, but it depends. If the product also featured something useful to a broader campaign (new gear, new ships, new aliens, new whatever), I'd buy it. Also, if the adventure included an appendix section with some notes on scaling the adventure up to a more traditional crew of 4-6 players, I'd probably buy it.

Cost would also be a factor, of course, I can't see spending more than 5 or 10 USD for such a product, so it might be better off as a pdf.

 

[Shane_Mclean]

To be honest, the only kind of solo Traveller product that would make a huge impact would be a PC game. These days things liek choose your own adventure and all those goodies are only really for thos eof us old enought o enjoy the nostalgia, or the children of those gamer parents who really value reading.

So, I am afraid, I had to vote 'no'. I'd not play it, and I still have my old Flighting Fantasy books for when my daughters are older (not to mention the Lone Wolf books that are being redone by our hosts here).

Regards,

Shane

 

[Jame Rowe]

I voted yes, but only for collectorism. That and the potential to convert it for multiple players.

 

[Eris]

There are already "solo" games in Traveller.

Generating characters

Creating a subsector, or three,

Building a starship

Travelling about trading


all can be...sort of... a game in an of itself.

Write a supplement that makes one of the above *more* of a game and less of just a past time and I think a lot of us would buy it.

How about a supplement with a ship, a crew of pre-generated characters, a couple of subsectors of detailed (in the trade sense) worlds, ship/npc/etc encounter tables for the worlds and space around them, and some more advanced rules for finding, buying and selling cargoes. The purchaser would "play" the Captain of the ship and try to earn a profit, get rich, or at least keep the wolves away from his door. That could be a lot of fun...I think.