While I could be wrong given that I came in around 82, I'm pretty sure the structure of the weapon tables makes laser swords very unlikely.

Swords and Broad Swords and Laser Rifles that need a backpack to power them.  Darth Vadar and Luke Skywalker are stated in Supplement Four but Vadar just has Broadsword skill.  No laser swords.

It's the common antigravity, reactionless thrusters, and jump drives that are soft, but they exist mainly to provide a universe where private star ship ownership is fairly common and travel amongst the stars as easy as getting on a tramp freighter.

Quote from: Werekoala;855546Re: Traveller as strictly "hard sci-fi"

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure the 1st edition of LBBs had stats for "lightswords" and even Darth Vader et.al. unless I'm very much mistaken. That's just the 1st 3 LBBs, with no inherent setting. I think they were removed, of course, for obvious reasons.

You're wrong, although a "Star Wars" character or two (but no light saber) did appear in "guess the character" lineups in the back of supplements such as Citizens of the Imperium.

The first edition was published the same year the SW movie appeared, having (like the movie) been in development for some years prior.

Way back when everyone I knew assumed light sabers were powered by the force.  So, in our Star Wars campaigns, they were in Traveller as a special force (renamed psionics) talent, with a handmade hilt as a focus, like the one Luke was given by Obi-wan.  My main 1977 copy still has Light Saber penicled in at the bottom of the weapon tables.  You can not over estimate the insane popularity of Star Wars back then.

It's easy to add stuff. An editorial in JTAS replied to complaints of no laser pistols by showing how easy it was.

For sure Phillip.  The other one penciled in from that time was Blaster, pretty much Han's handgun. ha  Good times

I wonder how much more popular Traveller would have been with a laser sword and a blaster on the tables.

Space Patrol had the Star Wars weapons. Definitely glad the three Traveller books were free of a setting, emphasizing using it for whatever.  We did Star Trek and a bunch of other published fictional worlds, as well as mostly our own fictional worlds.

I preferred Traveller to Gamma World because the selection of what was presented, and the way it was presented, made me feel more at home as more a fan of real SF than of fantasy. I could do Hiero's Journey or Hot House with Traveller, too.

I reckon there's a bigger market, though, for Star Wars or Battlestar Galactica style fantasy with SF trappings.

If 'hard' means a lot of number crunching as in FGU's Other Suns rules set, then I think you lose even more of the audience.

A few examples of games I'd say have a relatively "hard SF" attitude in terms of themes and subjects:

Chaosium's Ringworld, Tri Tac's FTL 2048 and Fringeworthy, GDW's 2300 AD, Talsorian's Cyberpunk Hardwired (by Walter Jon Williams himself) and Near Orbit, and Biohazard's Blue Planet.

To my mind, it's really a matter of how you approach scenarios. Is the central challenge just another whack-the-monsters affair, or does it involve the kind of problem solving that 'science' suggests? Are far-out things just arbitrarily tossed in for color, or are the ramifications dealt with consistently? (Present data derived from science may in the speculative fiction turn out to be an incomplete picture, as it repeatedly has in real life.)

GURPS Space covers the gamut, including fairly realistic treatments of things such as radiation and rocketry. It's one of my all-time favorite game sourcebooks, even though I don't use the GURPS game system.

I would say that in the current context Hard sf is plausible in terms of our current understanding of the universe.  So yes, there will be times when you need to crunch the numbers.  Hard sf doesn't travel at the speed of plot.  There's some limited room for things like anti gravity or ftl if you engage with the issues around them intelligently.

But I personally like Issac Asimov's take on it.  Science fiction isn't mere futurism it's fiction about science and by extension scientists.  It engages with scientific principles and applies them in story and can, as a result, teach about science in an entertaining way.  The fiction in science fiction gives us some wiggle room to tell interesting stories but the goal should be to educate.

Let me tell you, Traveller Book II starship combat was a great preparation for the vector physics unit in tenth grade.

Quote from: Phillip;855596You're wrong, although a "Star Wars" character or two (but no light saber) did appear in "guess the character" lineups in the back of supplements such as Citizens of the Imperium.

Ok, that's what I was remembering. It's been awhile.

Quote from: ChrisGunter;854637I've seen some hard sci-fi shows and enjoyed them quite a bit. I want to know what you guys think of Traveller. It has been around a while but I've never played it. Are there others that might do a better job? If so, give me some names.

http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/58279/Book-0-Introduction-to-Traveller?term=book+0



This is a link to a free download of Book 0: An Introduction to Traveller. Traveller is the game that inspired Joss Whedon to create the series Firefly and the movie Serenity.


http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/153065/Introduction-to-Clement-Sector?src=newest&filters=0_0_10134_0_0&manufacturers_id=3565

This is a link to a free download of a sample setting for Traveller, the Clement Sector.

I would say that no other TTRPG system has been created with the elegance of rules to allow you to dial the realism from soft to hard. I have done everything from Planetes (Hard, anime) to Official Traveller Universe (Medium) to Doctor Who (Soft) with the system. A hard setting to look at is Orbital, a third party product for Mongoose Traveller.

Currently, there is a playtest ongoing for MgT2, which will not be out for a few months yet. We are still watching the changes, some major and some minor.

Some of my favorite games, as a teenager, were Traveller sessions.  The game was hardly perfect, but the character generation system was great and the focus of the setting made it pretty obvious what you wanted to be doing.  In a lot of ways, it was Firefly before it's time.

Quote from: Votan;855690Some of my favorite games, as a teenager, were Traveller sessions.  The game was hardly perfect, but the character generation system was great and the focus of the setting made it pretty obvious what you wanted to be doing.  In a lot of ways, it was Firefly before it's time.

Considering that Joss Whedon used to play Traveller in college, yeah it was indeed Firefly/Serenity before its time.

Quote from: flyingmice;855541The meaning of "hard" in Hard SF has changed in the last thirty years. None of these books would be considered Hard SF now. At best (Hal Clement for example) they would be considered "firm". Using this term has been the source of a shitload of on-line arguments, along with another phrase what has radically changed meaning several times - "Space Opera". Two people using the same word or phrase with different meanings makes communication a mite difficult.

I'm not saying anyone is wrong, mind you, but please be wary, and understand the difference.

The term "role-play" means something different to everyone, too. So it's a long hard slog from the start, communicating about it.

Quote from: Kuroth;855598Way back when everyone I knew assumed light sabers were powered by the force.  So, in our Star Wars campaigns, they were in Traveller as a special force (renamed psionics) talent, with a handmade hilt as a focus, like the one Luke was given by Obi-wan.  My main 1977 copy still has Light Saber penicled in at the bottom of the weapon tables.  You can not over estimate the insane popularity of Star Wars back then.

Ha! There were no Star Wars reverse engineers yet back then. I remember hearing what was said about how the swords worked. I'd forgotten that, because Starlog and Cinefex educated everyone rather quickly.

Quote from: Kuroth;855598Way back when everyone I knew assumed light sabers were powered by the force.  So, in our Star Wars campaigns, they were in Traveller as a special force (renamed psionics) talent, with a handmade hilt as a focus, like the one Luke was given by Obi-wan.  My main 1977 copy still has Light Saber penicled in at the bottom of the weapon tables.  You can not over estimate the insane popularity of Star Wars back then.

Ha! There were no Star Wars reverse engineers yet back then. I remember hearing what was said about how the swords worked. I'd forgotten that, because Starlog and Cinefex educated everyone rather quickly.