Quote from: John MorrowTwo things to consider.  First, I don't think it's an accident.  I think both D&D and Traveller did and do some things very well, even if not everyone likes things that way or appreciates it.  While not generic, both were very flexible.  Second, even the games designed to really be "generic" often fail to be entirely generic, too.  GURPS, Hero, and every other game with a claim to being generic handles some things better than others, and when dealing with fantasy or science fiction, as soon as you define a spell system, magic items, starship technology, or technical equipment list, you've made the setting less than generic.  

The question of whether the first two games on the market did things well or not isn't the point. I can't speak for anyone else, but it was the idea of roleplaying games that sold me (as soon as I heard about it). You could have sold me FATAL at that point.

D&D and Traveller only had to be good enough – and they were.

QuoteStar Wars doesn't have phasers.  Star Trek doesn't have blasters.  The only alternative to remain generic is a very low-level toolkit which, in return for flexibility, requires a many choices and often a lot of work on the part of the GM before you they can use it.

Traveller doesn't have blasters or phasers. It has shotguns and cutlasses in space – and at the other end, tank-melting plasma guns.

Quote from: SettembriniWhat is cold space?

An RPG by our very own Clash, really clever alternate history-ish setting.  I'll probably be reviewing it in about a week.

RPGPundit

If you like "Cold Space: try to get  acopy of Activision's "Battlezone" PC game which was set in an alternate universe where the sovs and america fought a war thruout the solar system, covertly, during the 60's and 70's.

I played and Reffed oriiginal classic TRAVELLER when I was a teenager, then a tad when I was in my early 20s.
 About the time that the JTAS became CHALLENGE ...I was running FASA's SAR TREK:RPG. A couple of years I thought about picking up more TRAVELLER books or trying to get back into the game  - but that whole assassination/Rebellion?shattered Imperium/Mega- T/New Era stuff just turned me off to it.  So, from the FASA ST game I drifted to CAR WARS , then  GURPS:AUTODUEL ,  then GURPS.

 When SJ Games got the license for TRAVELLER I decided to check it out.
 Looked over that hardback book, thougyt "Now THIS is TRAVELLER!!"

 The return to having Emperor  Strephon alive got me back into the game.
 If there is a "Rebellion" in my version of the universe  - then its because my players have started it , not a company's meta-plot.

 GURPS:TRAVELLER just feels like continuation of the classic story and timeline.

For me the ONLY editions I'd play are Classic and the GURPS versions of it ...or a blend of the two.


- Ed C.




This is NOT a "Necro" , one of the posters was looking at this thread , I clicked and found it interesting.

Quote from: KoltarIf there is a "Rebellion" in my version of the universe  - then its because my players have started it , not a company's meta-plot.

Huzzah, I say!  Huzzah!

Though one could construct an argument that the whole point to the official setting is that macro decisions are beyond the control of the players, but their micro level responses are given maximum latitude.

Quote from: SpikeIncorrect, there Red.  CP2020 had a lifepath, but it had very little to do with character generation. CP2020's lifepath was nothing more than a hook generator with a few benies thrown in the mix for playing the lotto with.

The first edition of Cyberpunk is the one with lifepath character generation.

Quote from: GabrielThe first edition of Cyberpunk is the one with lifepath character generation.

True enough, and something I forget sometimes, though that edition is often referred to as 2013.  2020 specifically refers to the second edition.

Quote from: flyingmiceFor Azimov, read his Foundation series: Foundation, Foundation and Empire, and Second Foundation. I'm not a big fan of Azimov's - I am of the others I listed - but that's his best work, and a lot of Traveller is based on it.

For Niven, read anything set in Known Space, including Ringworld.

For Anderson, his Poleisotechnic League novels - like The Man Who Counts - and his Flandry of Terra series are best for inspiration.

H. Beam Piper was a major influence on Traveller. I think almost anything he wrote would work, as he had a short writing career.

Cordwainer Smith is mostly a short story writer, but his one novel Norstrillia is usually available somewhere. He also had a couple of collections.

This is all off the top of my head, BTW. I hope I got the names of the books correct...

-clash

ASIMOV, dammit!

I think anyone who likes "traveller" in any form would enjoy a good SF novel called "The eternity artifact" by Modesitt. It's an excellent hard SF novel that doesn't let technology dominate characters or story, and is very well written.

I really do recommend it to any traveller afficianado, except koltar who doesn't deserve to read a book this good.

Quote from: RedFox

• The cover art is really minimalist.  So much so that one gets no feel for what the game is.

Minimalist, yes. But I always felt it gave a pretty good idea of the game.

Quote from: CaudexMinimalist, yes. But I always felt it gave a pretty good idea of the game.

Oh God yeah. In fact, it was, and still is, one of the most evocative RPG covers I've ever seen. It absolutely gave me, and the guys I gamed with, an idea of what the game was like. As for interior art...well, Traveller art was certainly minimalist, almost to the point of non-existence. What little there was in some of the main books such as Mercenary, was quite evocative. Supplements like "Traders and Gunboats" and "Fighting Ships," and adventures like "Leviathan" and "The Kinunir" were glommed onto because of all the starship pics. The Journal of the Traveller's Aid Society, when it could be found, was also interesting mostly due to the art, which was just so rare in the game line in general.

Preach it, Colonel.

In fact, IIR the chronology C, for a while the only color art in Traveller were the JTAS covers. As a result, they're etched into my brain. I still remember the cover for the issue on Azun(?), that planet with like 10 billion inhabitants who are living in a handful of monumental skyscrapers.

One loved the art for Traveller because it was so rare, because the reproductions of the gigantic starships in the supplements were so small--because there was just enough of art in the game to fire up your imagination to add the rest.

Bill Keith´s ink drawings are unbelievably inspiring and fit nicely into my preference for Space:1999, 2001, Star Wars and Galactica model building.

There´s nothing like a real spaceship model, seconded by Bill Keith´s inkys.

CGi is still not highly enough developed to be an actual improvement.

Just compare the battle of Endor to the Byzantine Fresko that is Episode III.

Hey, all this talk about traveller begs the question:

ANY UPDATES ON T5 YET?!?!

I loved the LBBs because when they came out, they really fit what I was looking for in a game. Classic Traveller was a toolkit you could use to create your own SFRPG setting. You've got to remember that before this, you had to wait for a published book with worlds, critters, starships, and whatnot - so Traveller was really groundbreaking (at least to me) with that create-your-own approach to gaming.

There are parts of what came later that I like, just not all of it. Megatraveller had the cinematic nugget format for adventures which I still use. TNE had Fire, Fusion, and Steel which is a gearhead's wet dream come true. I like how T4 handles combat and its smooth progression from personal combat to vehicle combat. GURPS: Traveller has both Far Trader and Starports which are amazing sourcebooks. Traveller20 is really close to the feel of CT, but being geared for the d20 system - it works well for me to recruit people into playing Traveller from DnD.

Each later version has its strengths and weaknesses. I look at which version I'd like to use based on who my players are, what kind of campaign they'd like, and then pick the best tool for the job.

I have no idea what Traveller: HERO system looks like and I know that T5 has undergone a severe rewrite to fix its task system.

Yet, overall, I'd have to say that I like to curve back over to Classic Traveller often because it is an elegant system with LBBs 1-3. Its just complex enough to allow for a lot of variation and just simple enough to be a quick start.