Quote from: ChristopherKubasik;944457I have nothing against GDW having a house setting. Greyhawk helped D&D, and it makes sense for a publisher to create more material for sale.

D&D managed to have multiple settings. Traveller could have done this as well. I'm baffled as to why this did not happen.

Traveller does have multiple settings, particularly after it was opened to OGL.  Admittedly, most of those have moved away from Traveller to The Cepheus Engine after Mongoose stuck these nice shiny knives in our backs, but there was once a thriving group of third party publishers which produced several quality settings for the game which, IMHO, were far less bland and dated as the OTU.  Our Clement Sector setting, the Orbital setting, Outer Veil setting, the Terra/Sol setting.  And, of course, the 2300 setting.  

Almost all of those third party publishers are now involved with The Cepheus Engine which, if you haven't looked into it, you really should.  The Cepheus Engine was born from the OGL portions of the Mongoose first edition and a few other games.  We modified it to produce Clement Sector: The Rules.  

And the Cepheus Engine is now doing quite well and growing every day.  Seriously, check out this page to see what the former Mongoose third party publishers have been doing in just a few short months following The Great Stab in the Back.  

Simply put though, there are multiple settings for Traveller which are, IMHO, more entertaining than the OTU.  Of course, your opinion may vary.

I grew up reading the Andre Norton/North Solar Queen series and "Space Travel is Just Like Air Travel" is not at all how I envisioned Traveller.

I wish the Solar Queen universe had been made an available product.
=

Quote from: ChristopherKubasik;944179...
Shawn has the right of it in terms of the history. Also: the Imperium has always been human based. The Ancients in the OTU scattered human genetic material across the stars a long, long time ago. Humans (or human-based stock) are at war with each other in the board game Imperium. (I owned it, too. Loved it.)

Ah thanks for that (and to Shawn). Interesting. So the Imperium would have a long pre-Terra history, too - did anything ever get published about that?

Ya I quite liked the board game too. Seems like it could be a good setting for a Traveller RPG. If I were to run Traveller, I'd probably set up an Imperium game and have that going on at the same time, to generate a context for what's going on, even if the players chose not to get involved in the war fighting. It doesn't seem like the technology would be particularly different except for the ship equipment available (especially the jump drives)... from what I remember from my now ancient never-deep acquaintance with the tech available - the personal combat gear available was sort of 20th Century guns, medieval weapons, and some high tech armor and lasers were somewhat better but that didn't make those entirely obsolete.

QuoteGDW tended to cram things together (again, ad hoc). They had been working on a much larger board game for interstellar war and used that game's background (involving the Vargr, the Aslan and so on) to create the background for their Traveller RPG. From everything I've read all of this was built up on the fly... which is why you can find Traveller mailing lists and forum boards filled with people arguing about how to make all the contradictory bits of the setting make sense.

But as this happens you can see how the Classic Traveller's game line shifts focus from RPG support to being more about a board game, whether shifting para-military personal combat to skirmish combat; PCs on board a ship starships combat to flee combat (Adventure 5: Trillion Credit Squadron); and the shift of away for material focused on the concerns of adventuring PCs to generating fluff about the politics and concerns of running an interstellar Imperium.

Given the original premise of Traveller (ex-military with a particular set of skills head off to worlds beyond to carve their own fate and fortune) this shift is, in my view, pronounced.

Yeah, I see what you mean.

It seems to me though that the scope of the setting both in terms of time and space should leave near-infinite room for variety. I agree it seems more interesting if there are at least many regions and times where civilization is not dominating things and making things peaceful and organized, and as usual, limits, obstacles and difficulties tend to create interesting situations, while easy conveniences like cheap common space travel tend to make things both more generic and mean the GM may need to make many more worlds available, which is both a volume challenge and can make it less likely that specific situations are important. e.g. The GM sets up interesting local situations and the PCs book travel to Timbuktu instead.

Quote from: Gypsy Knights Games;944463Traveller does have multiple settings, particularly after it was opened to OGL.

Your post is spot on -- especially regarding the current situation. I was specifically referring to the period under GDW's development, however.

Quote from: Greentongue;944467I grew up reading the Andre Norton/North Solar Queen series and "Space Travel is Just Like Air Travel" is not at all how I envisioned Traveller. =

I agree with you about this.

However, when I open The Traveller Book (1982), here are the first two sentences I read (emphasis added):

QuoteWelcome to the universe of Traveller! In the distant future, when humanity has made the leap to the stars, interstellar travel will be as common as international travel is today.

Can you see where I'm coming from? You and I agree about the nature of travel in a cool Traveller setting. But then I open a set of rules published in 1982 which focuses on the Third Imperium and find a statement of a sort that was never in the original Traveller rules. Moreover, the statement is at complete odds with the rules that will be found later in The Traveller Book -- since the rules are the same as those found in Books 1-3, and those rules suggest space travel is often dangerous, difficult, and rare.

The second paragraph of The Traveller Book begins like this (again, emphasis added):

Quote"Traveller postulates that mankind has conquered the stars, and that travel from one stellar system to another is commonplace."

Which, again, if you read the rules -- in which there are pirates, hijacking, limited fuel options, risk of drive failures for lack of proper fuel, freelance merchants being paid by governments to carry mail between the stars, and more -- doesn't really click with "commonplace." (I will state once more that in the deeper parts of the government setting interstellar travel might be commonplace. But in the implied Traveller setting in which the government is remote I don't think it seems commonplace at all.)

That's what I'm saying. You and I are in agreement. I don't see interstellar travel like air travel at all either. But the text of The Traveller Book (and later iterations like GURPS) says it is.

That's my point.

Quote from: Gypsy Knights Games;944463And the Cepheus Engine is now doing quite well and growing every day.  Seriously, check out this page to see what the former Mongoose third party publishers have been doing in just a few short months following The Great Stab in the Back.

Is there a forum where everybody hanging out or is it still //www.travellerrpg.com?

For everybody else note the disparity between the two.

Cepheus Game Engine 105 products

Travellers Aid Society 37 products

Quote from: estar;944478Is there a forum where everybody hanging out or is it still //www.travellerrpg.com?

For everybody else note the disparity between the two.

Cepheus Game Engine 105 products

Travellers Aid Society 37 products

And a lot of those products in TAS are Mongoose "clip art" and the like.  Meh.

I'm a bit grumpy about it because I was doing my taxes today and was reminded of just how much the complete changeover cost GKG.  Grumpy John is grumpy.

But as for where folks are hanging out that are involved with such things, there's a bit of action on COTI but, for the most part, it's all on Facebook and Google Plus.  There are some nice thriving communities there discussing The Cepheus Engine as well as several groups dedicated to specific settings such as our "Clement Sector Discussion Group."

Quote from: ChristopherKubasik;943447However, the original three books make no mention of the Third Imperium or any official setting. (The 1977 has not mention at all. The 1981 edition of the books has the Third Imperium creeping in slightly with the introduction of Communication Routes and Travel Zones. And notice how light those two elements are.)

Don't they have thinly disguised sci-fi characters, including darth vader, or am I misrembering?  I seem to recall something like that, which pointed to the openess and flexibility of the system.

Quote from: Votan;944539Don't they have thinly disguised sci-fi characters, including darth vader, or am I misrembering?  I seem to recall something like that, which pointed to the openess and flexibility of the system.

The only character mentioned in Books 1-3 was the sample character presented during character generation.

You are thinking of the unnamed characters drawn from science fiction and presented as puzzles in Supplement 1: 1001 Characters and Supplement 4: Citizens of the Imperium. A short biography was presented as well as characteristics and skills. The first set especially (in S1) provides a guide to the kind of fiction Miller used as inspiration for the rules. (The game was written before Star Wars came out.)

Here is the first description from S1:

Quote1.   Heroic Adventurer   CCC78F   Immortal   Cr - Unconcerned
Broadsword-6, Blade-6, Dagger-6, Leader-5, Gunnery-2, AirIRaft-4, Tactics-3

An expert with tech level 4 guns and a brilliant swordsman, this arrogant and confident hero has climbed to the heights of power on his adopted world (450870). His Terran physique has given him extra abilities on this low gravity world. He is capable of limited telepathy, and of an uncontrolled interplanetary teleportation.

The characters from S1 were:
1. John Carter of Mars, from Edgar Rice Burrough's John Carter of Mars series.
2. Kimball Kinnison, from the Lensman Series by E. E. "Doc" Smith.
3. Jason dinAlt, from the Deathworld Trilogy by Harry Harrison.
4. Earl Dumarest, from the Dumarest Saga, by E. C. Tubb.
5. Beowulf Shaeffer, from At the Core, and other stories of Known Space by Larry Niven.
6. Anthony Villiers, from Starwell, and The Thurb Revolution, by Alexei Panshin.
7. Dominic Flandry, from the Flandry Series by Poul Anderson.
8. Kirth Girsen, from the Killing Machine, one of five Demon Prince novels by Jack Vance.
9. Gully Foyle, from the Stars, My Destination, by Alfred Bester.

The characters from S4 were:
1. Luke Skywalker, from Star Wars, by Gene Lucas.
2. James "Slippery Jim" di Griz, from The Stainless Steel Rat, by Harry Harrison.
3. Sargeant Major Calvin, from Sword and Sceptre, and The Mercenary, by Jerry Pournelle.
4. Senior Physician Conway, from the Sector General series, including Major
Operation and Ambulance Ship, by James White.
5. Jame Retief, from the Retief series, including Galactic Diplomat and Retief's War, by Keith Laumer.
6. Lord Darth Vader, from Star Wars, by George Lucas.
7. Harry Mudd, from Star Trek.
8. Simok Artrap, from The Stars, Like Dust, by Isaac Asimov.

Quote from: Gypsy Knights Games;944463Traveller does have multiple settings, particularly after it was opened to OGL.  Admittedly, most of those have moved away from Traveller to The Cepheus Engine after Mongoose stuck these nice shiny knives in our backs, but there was once a thriving group of third party publishers which produced several quality settings for the game which, IMHO, were far less bland and dated as the OTU.  Our Clement Sector setting, the Orbital setting, Outer Veil setting, the Terra/Sol setting.  And, of course, the 2300 setting.  

Almost all of those third party publishers are now involved with The Cepheus Engine which, if you haven't looked into it, you really should.  The Cepheus Engine was born from the OGL portions of the Mongoose first edition and a few other games.  We modified it to produce Clement Sector: The Rules.  

And the Cepheus Engine is now doing quite well and growing every day.  Seriously, check out this page to see what the former Mongoose third party publishers have been doing in just a few short months following The Great Stab in the Back.  

Simply put though, there are multiple settings for Traveller which are, IMHO, more entertaining than the OTU.  Of course, your opinion may vary.

Is the Cepheus Engine core available in print?

Quote from: Celestial;944630Is the Cepheus Engine core available in print?

Not yet though I do know that they are working on it.

On the other hand, our version, Clement Sector:The Rules is available in print. Here is the link:http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/194731/Clement-Sector-The-Rules

Our version differs in that it is geared to our setting with changes to how FTL travel works, our character generation is more like Mongoose's, and we have made some additions to space combat that match our setting.

So if you want to try us out, ours is in print from. If you'd like to wait on the base version, I know they are working on it but I don't know when it will be released.

You could play the rest of your life with just Books 1-3. You have to be very careful after that. Characters made from Book 4 Mercs are just plain better than characters made from Book 1. There is power creep, unfortunately.

With regards to the issues about Traveller's open licence, I'd prefer to let the various parties involved to resolve it themselves. As far as I, a consumer, am concerned having products labelled '2D6' rather than 'Traveller compatible' is really no different to products labelling themselves as '5E' rather than 'D&D compatible'. If the products are good enough, then I hope people keep buying them.

For the question about why Traveller only stuck with one official setting, I think the main reason was that GDW had decided to keep evolving new game systems at the same time as releasing new settings. So when they released classic settings like 2300AD, Space 1889, Twilight 2000 and Dark Conspiracy, they all had new systems and were released as complete new games. By the time that Traveller: TNE came about, they attempted to unify these games with a single house system, but it wasn't well received.

Mongoose Traveller also had multiple settings for their edition of the game - The Third Imperium, 2300AD, Hammer's Slammers and the 2000AD games (mainly Judge Dredd, although I thought that Strontium Dogg was also pretty good) all operating from the same core system. If fact, I think they possibly missed a beat by not bringing back more of the original GDW settings (especially Space 1889) as they may have tapped into a pretty loyal fanbase.

Quote from: TrippyHippy;944711If fact, I think they possibly missed a beat by not bringing back more of the original GDW settings (especially Space 1889) as they may have tapped into a pretty loyal fanbase.

I would have bought a hardcover of that, depending on who the writer was. The original Space 1889 had terrible game mechanics, so I never bought into it. I always liked that setting though.

They re-released Space 1889 with an apparently improved game system. I want to pick it up sometime too. Looks fun.

Yep the Ubiquity system that powers the new Space 1889 is a good, simple dice-pool system with some genuine merit.