On a traveller forum, someone said that gurps traveller wasn't 'real' traveller but rather an attempt to shie horn traveller into another system.

So, what makes a game? The rules or the setting? Which is more important to you? Is traveller traveller only if it's played with a system created in the 1970's or can a system made in later years still be traveller?

If you take a setting from one system and put it into a new setting, is it still the same game?

I know it's a cop out but.... It depends...

D&D is very much about the rules since it doesn't really come with a setting to speak of so while you could play Forgotten Realms with Fantasy Hero, you wouldn't be playing D&D.

To some extent Traveller (early editions) is the same, since it didn't come with a setting at first.

But now with the Third Imperium and it's fall established as GDW Traveller cannon, I think it's fine to use GURPS and still be playing Traveller. Although technically I think since GURPS Traveller doesn't follow GDWs cannon you arn't using the setting or the rules system, so I can see why people say you aren't playing Traveller.

It's both.  If I run Exalted with Unisystem I'm clearly not playing the same game as someone playing Storyteller Exalted.  That doesn't mean it's better or worse (part of me thinks it would be really cool), it just means that it's a different game.

Conversely, if I take D&D and put it in a post apocalyptic setting where the PC classes are tough because they're radioactive mutants and they dig laserguns and jetpacks out of the ruins of cities, that's a different game than someone killing orcs in a dungeon.

Well I think you answer your own question really- there is Traveller and then there is Gurps Traveller.  If they were the same there would be no need for the distinction. Traveller is a very specific issue, though, much like D&D, the individual rules set provides a certain flavor all on its own. Return to the D&D example, if you will, and consider how many threads on how many forums there are that amount to: what D&D do you consider D&D? Most people who play "D&D" have a definite preference, regardless of setting. For some folks that means feats and Aoo's for others it means that a cleric can't carry a sword. So yeah, Gurps traveller isn't traveller, it's Gurps Traveller- just like ODD isn't AD&D isn't 3.5.

Traveller is a very weird special case.  Lotsa people run the setting with various rules.  "Oh, yeah.  I play Traveller, I just use James Bond 007 for the mechanics."  Plenty of people have also used the various official Traveller rules to run sci-fi games in other settings.  Traveller grognards have poured zillions of words into trying to puzzle out which approach is "more" Traveller.  My personal take is that nowadays Traveller is neither a ruleset nor a setting, it's an umbrella term that encompasses a wide variety of gaming activity.  Much like you can call many divergent genres of music "rock-n-roll".

Most of the time, the "rules" get in the way trying to create arbitrary methods of determining a basic probability of success.  

Story and setting (for me) always win out over mechanic.

Because the stark, honest truth is that if I like the story and the setting, I'll use whatever mechanic I prefer and be done with it.

Hell, we've played Star Wars using Shadowrun rules.  I know a number of people who use GURPS to run Shadowrun.

The mechanic is whatever you like that makes sense to you: the setting defines the experience.

Traveller is a very particular case.  You can play Traveller using any of the Traveller rules but not the setting, and its still Traveller. You can also play the Traveller setting with different rules, and its still Traveller. Most other games don't actually work that way.

You cannot, for example, play D&D with GURPS rules and still be D&D (you could try to do Forgotten Realms with GURPS rules, and it'd still be FR, but not D&D).

RPGPundit

You can't play Rifts with anything that isn't the Palladium setting.

I'm not saying that it wouldn't actually work. But you'd just get sued for trying

Quote from: SosthenesYou can't play Rifts with anything that isn't the Palladium setting.

I'm not saying that it wouldn't actually work. But you'd just get sued for trying

:rotfl:

I think that KS would put microchips equipped with videocameras, audio sensors and transmittersin rifts books to let him know if anyone was trying to play a panhandlium game with other rules if he could do it.

Quote from: RPGPunditYou cannot, for example, play D&D with GURPS rules and still be D&D (you could try to do Forgotten Realms with GURPS rules, and it'd still be FR, but not D&D).

I've never really considered D&D a "setting."  It's a mechanic, in my eyes.  Just a "generic fantasy mechanic" that is, in itself, "settingless."

It is the various settings that use the D&D mechanic that you could easily transfer to other mechanics (some, in fact, would shine brighter using different mechanics).

The game is part of the experience. If some of the mechanics portray the game in a specific way that is important to the experience of the game, then it's not the same game, even if the setting is.

I can't see GURPS doing Traveller or D&D to my satisfaction without engendering changes that Steve Jackson Games would never entertain. To me, Traveller is not Traveller without lifepath chargen.

But that's okay. AFAIAC, GURPS players play GURPS precisely because it gives them a different experience.

As others have already suggested, Traveller is really an assemblage of conceits, declared and accepted ways in which a Sci-Fi world would operate.  There have been a number of different rules sets to portray those conceits mechanistically.  There is one popularly accepted setting (with multiple iterations) that was constructed on the foundation of those conceits.

It's sort of like a chicken-or-the-egg situation.  Did the original rules give rise to the conceits, which in turn gave rise to the setting?  Or did the conceits drive the creation of the original rules in the same fashion that they drove the creation of subsequent rules?  The setting is definitely tertiary to the rules and conceits (chronologically), but it has become an animal of its own.

To me, Traveller is, first and foremost, the interplay between the original rules and the conceits of the game.  Subsequent rules sets are acceptible, but feel to me like they drift farther away from the original intent (though, sometimes, they succeed in clarifying the portrayal of one or more of the original conceits).  All my personal opinion, of course.

!i!

We are talking about several different types of games here. Three groups to be precise.

First we have games that are based almost solely on mechanics that are not tied to a specific setting. With these, it is the rules set you are using that matters most in determining whether or not you are playing that game. Examples include:
D&D 3.x/d20
GURPS
Unisystem
True20


Then you have games that are settings which may be written for a particular rules set, but are more or less independent of the rules you are using. With these it is the setting that matters most. Examples include:
Dark Matter
Star Frontiers
Forgotten Realms
Dark Sun
Tekumel

Finally you have games that consist equally of both a setting and a system, and the name of the game can be used to refer to the use of either. If you say you are playing one of these games it will imply both the system and the setting unless you specify that you are only using one or the other. Examples include:
Shadowrun
Traveller
Ars Magica