Quote from: KoltarED: "Seen any episodes of "Firefly" ? Yeah well its kind of like that - except there are also 3 or 4 alien races and the Goverment body is called the Imperium.  But the spirit is VERY similiar . "

CUSTOMER: "Cool ...I saw some Firefly eps ...it looked fun. "

Uh-oh.  Klingon wins.

Quote from: droogThat's all really boring, and I actually like the Traveller setting. Can anybody do it in a snappy paragraph or two?

There's this massive 11,000 world empire run by humans, there's rival human and alien empires including one human psychic empire, there's constant conflicts within the empire and between the empires.  You play guys trying to make a living in the middle of all this.

But as I say, it was originally a generic ruleset in which you made your own setting, the Imperium came later.

Quote from: Dr Rotwang!Uh-oh.  Klingon wins.

I usually go with "Everyone is Han Solo."

TNE hatred in a nutshell: TNE took the largest, most fully realized sci-fi setting in gamerdom and simply broke it.  The new post-apopcalypse-among-the-stars setting had its own merits, but many fans couldn't see it because they couldn't look past the shattered setting it was built upon.

My Trav gme, for example, is so zoomed in on a subsector of the Imperium (one of my own creation) that the Imperium's concerns are just too big to see.  

Fifth Frontier War?  Jump-torpedoes?  Strephon's assassination?  Important stuff I'm sure, but on Marden, there's a rampant drug problem.

I think the agglomeration of detail on the Traveller setting was completely contrary to the spirit of the game and helped kill it.  The Imperium was better when it wasn't detailed, once you have sector maps for the whole of known space something in the game dies.

Traveller is about the freedom of having your own ship and nothing to lose.  It's not about what happened in the reign of some guy 4,000 years ago.

i agree with Balbinus, but I'm not certain that detail 'killed' it.  I find 'official' traveller history to be fairly interesting as science fiction, but my game is focused elsewhere, in worlds of my own creation.

In the end, I use the canon setting's structure and ideas, but not always its actual content.

Quote from: BalbinusI think the agglomeration of detail on the Traveller setting was completely contrary to the spirit of the game and helped kill it.

I so disagree. I think that the cornucopia of material helps build the shared experience and provides rich fodder for GMs to pull from.

I think that one should consider that after 4 or 5 editions have come and gone, it's what helped keep the game alive.

Quote from: Balbinus...once you have sector maps for the whole of known space something in the game dies.

There's a certain truth to this, but to put a positive spin on it, I should have included something of a post script about the role of the individual in the Third Imperium setting.

Against this vastness of space and history, your character can barely see beyond to the next subsector (a relatively tiny chunk of known space that will take you months to cross).  Your fortunes are made locally.  Your concerns are the planet you're standing on and the political and trade relations it has with the few systems nearby.  Your world is a tiny, tiny speck within the Thirs Imperium...and yet it's so vast you'll be exploring it and exploiting it for years before you're ready to move on to the next.

I dunno.  I guess that still sounds boring, but it's true, and it's cool.  When I started playing back in high school, my friends and I were all concerned with The Spinward Marches and the Jewell Subsector in particular, and the Third Imperium was just backdrop.  Our world was our ship and the tighrope it travelled between worlds on the brink of war.

!i!

Quote from: BalbinusI think the agglomeration of detail on the Traveller setting was completely contrary to the spirit of the game and helped kill it.  The Imperium was better when it wasn't detailed, once you have sector maps for the whole of known space something in the game dies.

Certainly Traveller could have gone in a different direction than it did. The original rules were pretty generic and supported many campaigns before the appearance of the third imperium.

In a nutshell the 3rd Imperium to Traveller is like if Greyhawk became THE world for D&D and much of the product support focused on how D&D worked in Greyhawk to the exclusion of other types of fantasy.

In Traveller's defense the later rule sets continued to support non-imperium campaigins the best of which is the vilified Traveller TNE with Fire, Fusion & Steel gave alternative FTL rules for campaign that want to brake away from Traveller's Jump Drive.

Speaking from memory, the 3rd Imperium was one of the first detailed settings I encountered. It echoed perfectly, in my mind, much of the Sci-Fi I grew up with and the grungy look of the original Star Wars gave such perfect visuals.

The Third Imperium also perfectly supported the two most common types of traveller campaigns, the ethical challenged merchant, and the smash em up mercernary campaign.

And frankly without the Third Imperium I doubt that Traveller would have survived as it did.

CUSTOMER/Newer GAMER: " You keep mentioning this TRAVELLER universe that you GM or reff ...why do you like it? Whats it like ? "

ED(at the game store setting): "You know all that moralizing that STAR TREK did ? Not present in TRAVELLER universe. You want to pretend to be  gods to a more primitive culture or aliens - you can. Ever read old Harry Harrison books? Poul Anderson's series about Space Merchants? Asimov's FOUNDATION books?  Heinlein's STARSHIP TROOPERS? Well, the TRAVELLER universe is like the best parts of those books all mashed together in a nice blend."



The above might work for a customer /new-gamer-looking-for-a-setting who had NEVER seen an episode of "Firefly".

- Ed C.

Quote from: jrientsTNE hatred in a nutshell: TNE took the largest, most fully realized sci-fi setting in gamerdom and simply broke it.  The new post-apopcalypse-among-the-stars setting had its own merits, but many fans couldn't see it because they couldn't look past the shattered setting it was built upon.

the change in mechanics to the GDW house system (like twilight 2000, IIRC) also soured me.  those two things changed it from "traveller" in my mind to something else.  

dr r--why am i not surprised your preferred planet (marden) is TL 7?  

the sheer size of the third imperium meant everybody could choose a spot, make it their own, and yet still have similarities between gaming groups.  as long as you established stuff like era, rebellion or no, etc.  

we always ended up in efate (spinward marches 1705) with our group.  something about TL D (13) and law level 0 made everyone happy. . . .

Quote from: droogThat's all really boring, and I actually like the Traveller setting. Can anybody do it in a snappy paragraph or two?

You could have expended just a tad more energy and come up with a "snappy paragraph or two" rather than a threadcrap.

Quote from: ColonelHardissonYou could have expended just a tad more energy and come up with a "snappy paragraph or two" rather than a threadcrap.

But, it's droog!  Posting more than one-line threadcraps would break his whole schtick!

Newbie Gamer: "No, I've never seen 'Firefly' ."

EdC.: "Okay have you seen the movie ALIEN:RESURECTION?"

Newbie Gamer: "Oh yeah, parts of that were really fun. "

Ed C.: "Well you know that merchant ship crew that was practically pirates in the beginning of the movie?"

Newbie Gamer: "Yeah, they were one of the fun parts...I wanted to see more wiuth them."

 Ed C. : "Well, in a typical TRAVELLER game, the players are that starship crew and the GM is playing the part of the space station personnel..."

Newbie Gamer: "Okay , now you have me interested. "

Mayday...mayday...this is Free Trader Beowulf....

It's a huge, galaxy-spanning game where just getting a message to somebody could take weeks. Space is big, but full of opportunities. What are you going to do when you can't meet the payments on your ship?

TRAVELLER...there's never a final frontier.