Now that I'm finally awake I think I agree my point isn't really relevant these days and the Star Trek analogy is probably fair.

Quote from: HorusArisen;963484Which still isn't my point. They may still exist but I can't help but wonder if we would have had greater variety and quality if a better game(s) had been the market leader. Like yourself I played many games but not many gamers did. I do think that has changed mind you.

I think dissatisfaction with D&D was the thing drove the creation of a lot of RPGs, going back to Tunnels and Trolls and RuneQuest. Early D&D works, but it is a system where almost everyone finds a hole in it. "How come armor makes you harder to hit instead of reducing damage?" "If hit points are a combination of endurance, luck, combat skill, and physical injury, why does it take days to get your hit points back?" "What if my fighter wants to sneak around?" "How can we use this to play Star Wars?"

These are the questions that drove people to make hundreds of role-playing games. I'd argue that if D&D has been closer to perfect, we would have seen fewer RPGs, not more.

For example, let's looks at the early days of D&D 3E. It seemed to solve many of the issues people had with the game over the years. It played well at low-levels, so the cracks weren't showing yet. People all flocked to the game, and other game lines underwent an extinction-level event. Fortunately, as the flaws in d20 became more apparent, there was a game in new and resurrected games a few years later. People were dissatisfied with the biggest game, so they had to make other ones. Even within D&D, we got the OSR scene where everyone was busy making their own versions of D&D.

Dissatisfaction breeds creativity. Whether D&D remains on top or not, I hope a lot of people remain dissatisfied with the game on top and keep tinkering.

Quote from: AsenRG;963499It's hyperbole, man. Arguing with hyperbole because it exaggerates is like arguing that the sun is wrong to be radiant:).

Oh, so now you are saying that you think skin cancer is cool? Whatever, man.

Quote from: Baulderstone;963503I think dissatisfaction with D&D was the thing drove the creation of a lot of RPGs, going back to Tunnels and Trolls and RuneQuest. Early D&D works, but it is a system where almost everyone finds a hole in it. "How come armor makes you harder to hit instead of reducing damage?" "If hit points are a combination of endurance, luck, combat skill, and physical injury, why does it take days to get your hit points back?" "What if my fighter wants to sneak around?" "How can we use this to play Star Wars?"

These are the questions that drove people to make hundreds of role-playing games. I'd argue that if D&D has been closer to perfect, we would have seen fewer RPGs, not more.

For example, let's looks at the early days of D&D 3E. It seemed to solve many of the issues people had with the game over the years. It played well at low-levels, so the cracks weren't showing yet. People all flocked to the game, and other game lines underwent an extinction-level event. Fortunately, as the flaws in d20 became more apparent, there was a game in new and resurrected games a few years later. People were dissatisfied with the biggest game, so they had to make other ones. Even within D&D, we got the OSR scene where everyone was busy making their own versions of D&D.

Dissatisfaction breeds creativity. Whether D&D remains on top or not, I hope a lot of people remain dissatisfied with the game on top and keep tinkering.

What you say is what I think. I've never been satisfied by D&D and games derived therefrom. I'll play it when there's nothing else on offer, but it wouldn't rank even in my top 50 in quality or interest. However, without it coming along I probably would not have Traveller, The Fantasy Trip, Call of Cthulhu, Pendragon, Flashing Blades, Boot Hill, and all the rest of the games I prefer.

Quote from: Baulderstone;963504Oh, so now you are saying that you think skin cancer is cool? Whatever, man.

No, I'm saying the exact opposite and if that was an attempt at hyperbole, it was a poor one.

Quote from: Baulderstone;963503I think dissatisfaction with D&D was the thing drove the creation of a lot of RPGs, going back to Tunnels and Trolls and RuneQuest. Early D&D works, but it is a system where almost everyone finds a hole in it. "How come armor makes you harder to hit instead of reducing damage?" "If hit points are a combination of endurance, luck, combat skill, and physical injury, why does it take days to get your hit points back?" "What if my fighter wants to sneak around?" "How can we use this to play Star Wars?"

These are the questions that drove people to make hundreds of role-playing games. I'd argue that if D&D has been closer to perfect, we would have seen fewer RPGs, not more.

For example, let's looks at the early days of D&D 3E. It seemed to solve many of the issues people had with the game over the years. It played well at low-levels, so the cracks weren't showing yet. People all flocked to the game, and other game lines underwent an extinction-level event. Fortunately, as the flaws in d20 became more apparent, there was a game in new and resurrected games a few years later. People were dissatisfied with the biggest game, so they had to make other ones. Even within D&D, we got the OSR scene where everyone was busy making their own versions of D&D.

Dissatisfaction breeds creativity. Whether D&D remains on top or not, I hope a lot of people remain dissatisfied with the game on top and keep tinkering.

You argue a very good point.

Quote from: JeremyR;962703Traveller's Imperium.  Space travel is about exploration. So let's make a galaxy where every single system within reach (because of our slow star travel) is statted up . . .

Oh, you're one of those idiots, huh?

QuoteA dot on a Traveller map is assumed to represent a planet in the habitable zone. It may have a satellite; it may be a satellite itself, perhaps one of many, or maybe an asteroid, again one of many. But let's say it's a planet, just for the sake of discussion, with one sizeable natural satellite of its own. It's in a system with three other terrestrial planets, one of which has small two satellites as well, two planetoid belts, and three gas giants. Each of the gas giants has several significant satellites and dozens of tiny moons, as well as significant ring systems around two of them. The system is one half of a binary pair, and the companion is also home to a half-dozen rocky and icy planets of its own, as well as another planetoid belt. The whole is surrounded by an Oort cloud which includes a small wandering planet in a highly eliptical inclined orbit, captured from interstellar space.

The next hex is "empty" according to the map, but it in fact is home to a brown dwarf and its six satellites.

A single binary star system with a fourteen planets, scores of satellites, and an uncounted number of small rocky and icy asteroids and KBOs. Plus a brown dwarf and another half-dozen satellites. In just two hexes.

How much is known about them? The First and Second Surveys were Class IV surveys - the Scouts spent an average of seven months surveying the habitable zone around each star.

A Class V survey, the most detailed, takes an average of seven years. They are only undertaken by special request to the IISS.

There are an estimated 11,000 worlds in the Golden Age Third Imperium.

But for the sake of argument, let's say that a Class V survey was undertaken for our hypothetical system. That covers the main planets and perhaps their satellites, but not the belts or the Oort cloud. Does the Class V survey discover every Ancient ruin, every exotic organism, every sentient species, every wrecked starship, every pirate lair, every secret lab, every military cache, every alien probe? According to the survey descriptions, the surveyors do not contact sentient species - that's the Exploration Office's job, not the Imperial Grand Survey's. The surveyors take samples of alien biota, but do not catalog every species in every habitat. And they do not map every asteroid, every KBO.

And things change. Indigenous sophonts die off. Colonists arrive, and depart. Battles are fought. Natural disasters occur. Things change.

And maybe what is "known" is really a myth. Or at least that's the rumor.

Everything's been explored extensively? Really?

The idea that the Third Imperium setting in its Golden Age is too settled, that there's nothing left to explore, suggests to me that too many referees have never really considered the scale of what a star system is really like.

I've never lacked for places to explore, for things to discover. I hope new referees don't find their imagination constrained by the myth of the "too settled" Imperium.

Quote from: Dumarest;963482My goodness, I have to disagree if you are referring to The Once and Future King; that was one of the most annoying books I've ever tried to slog through.

No accounting for taste. I think it is brilliant and it is widely viewed as a classic.

Quote from: JeremyR;962703Traveller's Imperium.  Space travel is about exploration.

Is it, though?  That's one approach you can take in a space-oriented science-fiction game.  However, most of the Traveller campaigns I've run have been for parties of merchants, troubleshooters, or some combination of the two, with sessions structured more or less like heist movies with planning and execution phases.  (A tone and feel a lot like Firefly, except years before it ever existed.)

Quote from: Baulderstone;963503I think dissatisfaction with D&D was the thing drove the creation of a lot of RPGs, going back to Tunnels and Trolls and RuneQuest. Early D&D works, but it is a system where almost everyone finds a hole in it. "How come armor makes you harder to hit instead of reducing damage?" "If hit points are a combination of endurance, luck, combat skill, and physical injury, why does it take days to get your hit points back?" "What if my fighter wants to sneak around?" "How can we use this to play Star Wars?"

These are the questions that drove people to make hundreds of role-playing games. I'd argue that if D&D has been closer to perfect, we would have seen fewer RPGs, not more.

For example, let's looks at the early days of D&D 3E. It seemed to solve many of the issues people had with the game over the years. It played well at low-levels, so the cracks weren't showing yet. People all flocked to the game, and other game lines underwent an extinction-level event. Fortunately, as the flaws in d20 became more apparent, there was a game in new and resurrected games a few years later. People were dissatisfied with the biggest game, so they had to make other ones. Even within D&D, we got the OSR scene where everyone was busy making their own versions of D&D.

Dissatisfaction breeds creativity. Whether D&D remains on top or not, I hope a lot of people remain dissatisfied with the game on top and keep tinkering.

Huh, that's a good point.

Quote from: HorusArisen;963484Which still isn't my point. They may still exist but I can't help but wonder if we would have had greater variety and quality if a better game(s) had been the market leader. Like yourself I played many games but not many gamers did. I do think that has changed mind you.

I think it likely that better games dominant in the market early on would have led to even less diversity and quality than we have today.  Many good games have come about as responses to what the designers viewed as bad games. I'll grant many bad games have come about for the same reason.

Exalted? Nobody? Doesn't it count?

Quote from: Alderaan Crumbs;963569Exalted? Nobody? Doesn't it count?

I figured that by now everyone was tired of hearing it from me.

Quote from: Alderaan Crumbs;963569Exalted? Nobody? Doesn't it count?

I liked the hot mess that was first edition, but 2nd edition was an unlimited font of wank and I was amazed at how popular it became. Still on the fence about third as there's a lot to like fluff-wise but the system...it burns...

Quote from: Alderaan Crumbs;963569Exalted? Nobody? Doesn't it count?

It's popular?  I thought it was just a flash in the pan, in the long view.  And I'm being honest here.  It has none of the life expectancy of Vampire.