Quote from: The Shaman;309651On a more serious note, something I've noticed is that critics of Traveller can say anything they like, however they like, but if someone defends that canon, they are immediately set-upon as exemplfying everything that is terrible about the game and its fans.

I don't think that people are being attacked for defending aspects of the "canon"; debates over ship computer size or battle armour or whatever can proceed according to their  merits.

Rather, attacks are made on folks who zealously defend the idea that there is, and must be, an Official Canon for Traveller itself. Once you admit the idea of Canon for a GAME LINE, not for an individual campaign (where an outline of which sources and approaches are being used is often appropriate and necessary) you ham-string the group's creativity and give the win to the most coke-bottle-spectacled individuals who are prepared to fork out for the most books.

Sure, this might be a minority opinion. But some of us still see any and all published material as a resource to use in our games rather than words from on high. From that point of view, you just look at a new supplement, say "no Aslan psionics now? Interesting, but I prefer the old way" and proceed. Not that hard really.

Thing is, a consistent canon for the line makes it easier to share home brew add-ons, since all are working from a common point.

My biggest complaint about Vampire:The Masquerade was that the various splat-books all were providing only subjective views of the setting; nowhere in the first edition run did an "objective" This-is-how-it-is presentation of which parts were true and which weren't in the setting ever appear.

It meant that the basic "truths" of the setting were so different that pick any 6 GM's, and if you're lucky, two will take the same approach on a given clan.... because no objective "default truth" was presented.

Whereas, in systems with a strong sense of objective canon, Like Ars Magica, L5R, or Traveller, the baseline facts can be referenced by each GM, and in 6, probably 4-5 will take the same approach to a given bit. Neither defined all that much in detail, but the overall was consistent and presented as a line-wide objective truth. Things like who that L5R Dragon Clan head really is... (Hoshi-sama is Hoshi-kami until after the 2nd edition RPG's timeframe). It also points out that the characters would not know this unless they are Ise Zumi or Family Daimyo...

It means that players are easier to find, and less likely to argue with the GM about the defined materials. It also means that one doesn't have to build the pile of setting truths; one trades a requirement for development for a requirement for study; I've always found the study side more fun than the development side.

I find the contradictory fluff as in Vampire to be a serious flaw... not because it limits, but because, instead of a consistent "Default Truths," one has to go through and pick what is true in one's own game, and a lot of GM's don't do it before hand, and don't think about the interactions until they get brought up in play. If I have to do the work myself, I'd rather the author didn't bother with inconsistent materials at all.

Heck, when I last ran VTM, I literally told my players they could use any powers found in clan books they were willing to give me... but that none of the non-rules text was even to be bothered with, since it contradicted from book to book so badly.

It also means that third party works are easier to judge against the baseline when that baseline is consistent.

I think that canon gives the large percentage of people who love Traveller/Whatever: the Bollocking/L5R but aren't actually playing it something to argue about on the internet. And a weapon with which to bludgeon potential new players.

Quote from: aramis;309687Thing is, a consistent canon for the line makes it easier to share home brew add-ons, since all are working from a common point.

Okay, let's suppose this "canon" actually exists, rather than being what true canon is, which is mutable and subject to interpretation (there's a reason that even the Pope employs an office of dozens to rule on various obscure things).

As soon as you have even one homebrew add-on, that's a deviation from "canon". So you can, by your argument, no longer share ideas - you've moved from your common point.

It reminds me of the GURPS GM I know who insists on using GURPS "so there's consistency between campaigns."
"But mate, you don't know the GURPS rules."
"I don't need to, I have players like you and A to tell me."
"..."

It's nonsensical. Only themes can ever be common between different campaigns.

GURPS is just about the opposite of Canon....

The whole point is that a consistent canon isn't essential for a PLAYER. It's a tool for GMs. It's especially a tool for authors writing supplements to a setting. It's a nicety for players, in that more GM's are likely to have similar approaches.

The moment one starts a game, one is diverging from the canon; that doesn't matter. The consistency of the game materials, however, should always be more than is expected of others' addons.

My take on Wypoc, for example... it's not canon, but it makes use of canon to make it useful to other GM's. They know where the world is, because Wypoc and it's basic stats are canon, and thus if they choose to use my take on it, they know that certain ground rules about it apply... so I don't need to restate those, and my material is a usable "quick and dirty" plug-n-play add-on.

Now, if I'd ignored the GT canon bit about a testing station, or directly contradicted it, it would mean that GT players had to pick which is true in order to use my add-on. (I didn't... so it has an Imperial Marine Insidious Environment Testing station on-world...)

Quote from: Halfjack;309690I think that canon gives the large percentage of people who love Traveller/Whatever: the Bollocking/L5R but aren't actually playing it something to argue about on the internet.

I'm not one of the big bitcher, but I did figuratively roll my eyes.

And my main concern with canon is being able to use old material or new with minimal pain on my part. Every deviation some new author who thinks he "imagined it better" makes his book more difficult to fit into my game.

The Mongoose guy probably cost them some sales, though possibly not actually given how many bitch but then buy, and it was probably dumb of him to post that.

But I'll still buy him a beer if I ever meet him, because it really is a kickass post.

Quote from: Age of Fable;309001The original Traveller rules had no specific setting, so the idea of a Traveller canon is non-canon.

Abso-fucking-lutely.

Traveller is a generic sf game.  The Third Imperium is merely a published setting for it.

Not one I personally use.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;309042:eek:

"Changes to the minimum size for bay weapons?"

:jaw-dropping:

"Made without Marc Miller's permission?!"

:rant:

Serious fucking business indeed.

Come Kyle, surely it's obvious how that could impact actual play?

I'm very tired right now, so specific examples evade me, but the actual play impact would I suspect be dramatic.

I for one refuse to play in any game with innacurate bay weapon stats.

When I bought the Traveller box set, around about 1982, I thought it was incredibly cool.

Still do actually, the whole thing just reeked of adventure.

We played the hell out of it, great game, after we'd played the hell out of it for some months we discovered there was a published setting for it too.  Sometimes we bought supplements and nicked bits out of them for our game, and eventually some folk got into canon, but mostly we just ran our own game using that marvellous generic sf toolkit I'd bought in box set form.

Traveller is a generic sf rpg, just as D&D is a generic fantasy rpg.  Now nothing's truly generic, there's always some implicit setting stuff because the rules need to say something, but it remains true that for all some may claim otherwise the 3I and Traveller are not coterminous.

But hey, I just play the fucking game, I haven't memorised 30 years of setting development and collected every supplement put out for it.  

I've no problem with those who enjoy canon as a tool to help their actual play, Koltar for example likes canon but he uses it in play.  That's cool, I'd play Star Trek under him (though I'd be happier with ToS) and I might even research some canon because that would make the game overall more fun.

But canon for its own sake is empty.  Canon is a tool, like anything else in gaming.  You use it or abuse it as best suits your game.  It has no higher moral value in itself.

Quote from: RPGPundit;309441Um really, isn't the official version of Traveller basically "Traveller: the New Era"? That's the original setting, before (in rebellion to how much it sucked) people retconned most of the events associated with it and created other versions of the setting.

So really, anyone who isn't defending TNE is actually violating Canon anyways. And anyone who is defending TNE is an idiot. Either way, I'd say Traveller is the LAST game for which people should issue complaints about "violation of Canon".

I admit I'm a little confused by this. The only "people" who retconned the setting for publication, at least pre-'goose Trav, were Steve Jackson Games, by creating an alternate, no-Rebellion timeline.

On the other hand, if you're referrring to gamers who pick a starting point somewhere along the multi-millenia history of the Imperium and allow their game to move forward from there, changing in response to the events of the around the table, then how is that different from playing a historical game set in our own past and doing the same thing? Should historical games never diverge from the actual timelines?

There's no such thing as "canon" in role-playing games.
Just what happens at my game table.

Quote from: The Shaman;309972I admit I'm a little confused by this. The only "people" who retconned the setting for publication, at least pre-'goose Trav, were Steve Jackson Games, by creating an alternate, no-Rebellion timeline.

On the other hand, if you're referrring to gamers who pick a starting point somewhere along the multi-millenia history of the Imperium and allow their game to move forward from there, changing in response to the events of the around the table, then how is that different from playing a historical game set in our own past and doing the same thing? Should historical games never diverge from the actual timelines?

Well, my point is that if we were anal about "canon", everyone into Traveller should be playing, and the current books and sourcebooks should be detailing, the New Era setting. THAT is the direction the "Official Canon Setting" went.
Everything else is either prehistory or diversion.

Yet, most of the same Imperium-fanboys who are going apeshit about laser guns or whatever the fuck it is, were also the ones who so resoundingly denounced this New Era "Canon" to the point that the creators of the game had to turn away from it.

RPGpundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;310009Well, my point is that if we were anal about "canon", everyone into Traveller should be playing, and the current books and sourcebooks should be detailing, the New Era setting. THAT is the direction the "Official Canon Setting" went.

I see.

I approach it differently: anything from the Interstellar Wars to post-Virus Charted Space is still canon, and you're no more obligated to play in 1248 than you would be obligated to play in Rome AD 2009 as opposed to Rome AD 29.

YMMV, et cetera ad nauseum.

TNE was developed by different authors from the prior editions...
CT and MT had plenty of MWM inputs, and a lot of it was written by LKW. (MT was written, however, by Digest Group, a 3PP, and then printed by GDW under the GDW logo and copyright.)

TNE was (essentially) turned over to Dave Nilsen, and the Rules were Frank Chadwick. The TNE basic approach didn't need the prior OTU to work, and mechanically was several generations removed. (2300 was derived from the concepts of traveller mechanics; T2K2E was mechanically derived from 2300AD, then tweaked in 2.2, and TNE was tweaked away from T2K2.2. It was almost unrecognizeable to CT/MT players as being derived from the Traveller mechanics. So it wasn't JUST "Trashing the setting" but also that it altered the fundamental nature of spaceflight, travel, and ship deisgn, as well as the base competencies of PC's. It changed WAY too much at once to be accepted by the extant fanbase to any great degree. In short, it ran into the established fanbase idea that the Traveller setting was the 3rd Imperium, and it lacked the 3I.

T4 was Marc Miller doing a new chunk of time and a new chunk of setting area... and it was closer in feel to CT/MT as far as setting tropes. It was also mechanically closer to CT and MT. It also suffered for massive errors.

GT was done by one of the GDW staffers, LKW, but was, in part, SJ's decision to not do the rebellion... MWM didn't make them do that; SJG, SJ and LKW made that decision, and MWM permitted it.

T20 likewise was not done by MWM. It was done by Hunter Gordon, and while it was all approved by MWM, it wasn't done in the TNE timeline because Hunter likes the Classic era, and hunter wanted to backtrack a century to put it in a postbellum section of the 3I... and didn't want to compete with GT settingwise.

GTIW was done by fanboys; fanboys working for SJG. MWM again approves product, but isn't done at MWM's insistence.

Mongoose chose the Classic setting because that's where the one MG staffer who expressed any love of the game prior to the license liked. MWM approved it.

And the TNE setting IS supported... Avenger/Comstar have a license via Mongoose, and HAVE advanced the timeline from the TNE basepoint. TNE, however, wasn't the setting chunk that one awards as literature (Hugos and Nebulas); those awards were given for CT line, and are the reason those awards now have a games category.

The various editions and their timeframe and location:
T2300/2300AD: -2300, but in a totally different universe
GTIW: -1000
T4: -10 — 100, Core (Domain of Sylea)
T20: 990-1050, Gateway domain
CT: 1100-1110, Spinward Marches and Solomani Rim (opposite ends of the Imperium)
MGT: 1105. Spinward Marches.
MT: 1115-1135, Domain of Deneb (includes the Spinward marches), plus some stuff set elsewhere. Covers the Rebellion
GT: 1115-1135, Domain of Deneb (includes the Spinward marches), plus some stuff set elsewhere. But the rebellion never happens.
TNE:1200-1235, Old Expanses
Comstar 1248: 1235-1260 Old expanses.
Publication order: CT, T2300, MT, 2300AD, TNE, GT, T4, T20, GTIW, 1248, MGT

Essentially, the later editions ignored TNE because it was a nearly isolated fanbase all its own.