Mongoose's New IP: Traveller is BACK

[buzz]

I wouldn't even go that far; lots of Traveller flamewars are sparked by various setting differences (Virus is probably the biggest one). I don't know if there is a commonality among all Traveller fans, but if there is it's probably in terms of general setting parameters - characters firmly within the human range, comparitively cheap interstellar travel, very lax interstellar government, that kind of thing.

Right, there's still the commonality of interest in the setting, even there's dissent on what details are preferred.

 

[Mytholder]

First off, they need to modernise the game so that they can get new players into it; this means decoupling at least some of the setting-defining stuff from the rules (such as the one-week jump drive), which turn everything you do with Traveller into some variety of the OTU (which suffers from its greatest asset: the wealth of history and information that already exists about it; not the easiest setting for the new fans to get into).

There'll definitely be a sidebar on the effects of making jumps instantaneous, or using a B5/Trekesque FTL drive instead. The core book will be OTU-flavoured, but I'm also aware that I have to make it capable of running Starship Troopers and other settings with minimal tweaking. (I've got my own 'you're all playing giant starships' game, for example, that will be one of my testbeds for the new ruleset).

(To be clear, I'm scheduled to be the writer for the Mongoose Traveller project.)

 

[Ed_Laprade]

A couple of years ago--when I ran a cT game--the players loved chargen. Yes, even the dying. (I gave them the injury option, they often refused it.)

Well, you left my smiley off my quote. :\ And I might have had a better appreciation of the 'roll character and die before playing' rule if it hadn't happened to my very first Traveller character. (The second RPG character I'd ever made.) Then again, I never did get to play much of it...

 

[Lurks-no-More]

There'll definitely be a sidebar on the effects of making jumps instantaneous, or using a B5/Trekesque FTL drive instead. The core book will be OTU-flavoured, but I'm also aware that I have to make it capable of running Starship Troopers and other settings with minimal tweaking. (I've got my own 'you're all playing giant starships' game, for example, that will be one of my testbeds for the new ruleset).

Sounds good to me; I hope you (both you and the Mongoose) are going to succeed!

(To be clear, I'm scheduled to be the writer for the Mongoose Traveller project.)

Yup, I saw you in the Traveller thread on RPG.net.

 

[Gez]

I've always considered that take terribly naive. What you think of a computer probably has little correlation to what would be required of computing systems on a ship.

In my day job, I work on a specialized system that goes on sea ships has less computing power than the PC you are probably working on right now if your system was made in the last 3 years. But it has numerous specialized peripheral boards to interpret data and interface with other system which make it quite a bit bigger than my laptop or desktop. I suspect that a starship computer would be composed of numerous such specialized systems, many of which cannot be reasonably combined or subjected to Moore's law.

Yeah, but still... When you watch 2001 and you hear dialogues such as "HAL, print me the punch card" (from memory), you can't help but be amused by these people who engineered interplanetary spaceships, Turing-passing artificial intelligence (with feelings, even), perfect voice synthesis and recognition (and even lips reading) -- but couldn't come up with anything better than the punch cards as far as media are concerned.

It's like these old sci-fi stories with hyperspace-capable starships whose instrumentations rely on old-fashioned dials, without any electronics (let alone computers) in sight.

 

[RFisher]

When it comes to "de-anachronizing" Traveller: There's a school of thought that says that the time for sci-fi (Traveller's brand of sci-fi) is over. That the reason we see such a decline of it on book store shelves is because that type of literature was a product of a specific times & those times are past.

I wish I could remember the name of the sci-fi author who wrote that editorial.

I think that why I prefer my sci-fi to be anachronistic, whether it's Traveller's 1970s vision of the future or Doc Smith's 1930s vision of the future.

(To be clear, I'm scheduled to be the writer for the Mongoose Traveller project.)

While I may be expressing low expectations for this product, your appearance here is a huge counteracting factor. Thanks!

Well, you left my smiley off my quote. :\

My sincerest apologies! Bad form on my part.

 

[QLI/RPGRealms]

When it comes to "de-anachronizing" Traveller: There's a school of thought that says that the time for sci-fi (Traveller's brand of sci-fi) is over. That the reason we see such a decline of it on book store shelves is because that type of literature was a product of a specific times & those times are past.

That school of thought wouldn't be familiar with the sales figures for Traveller. Until the Mongoose deal, you had 3 active licensees for Traveller, each apparently satisfied enough with the return on their investment to continue to renew their licenses. I don't have the sales figures for the other two, but I know the THB alone sold more than just a few thousands of copies.

 

[Plane Sailing]

When it comes to "de-anachronizing" Traveller: There's a school of thought that says that the time for sci-fi (Traveller's brand of sci-fi) is over. That the reason we see such a decline of it on book store shelves is because that type of literature was a product of a specific times & those times are past.

Ian M Banks seems to do a good enough job with his culture novels, and to be honest most of the sci-fi that I read in the 70s was written in the 30's to 60s!

Mind you, I could happily believe that the '69 moonwalk energised the thoughts of people towards space stuff, and provided a real boost to popular sci-fi (explaining why such a wide range was around in the early 70s compared to recent decades)

 

[Ed_Laprade]

When it comes to "de-anachronizing" Traveller: There's a school of thought that says that the time for sci-fi (Traveller's brand of sci-fi) is over. That the reason we see such a decline of it on book store shelves is because that type of literature was a product of a specific times & those times are past.

I wish I could remember the name of the sci-fi author who wrote that editorial.

I think that why I prefer my sci-fi to be anachronistic, whether it's Traveller's 1970s vision of the future or Doc Smith's 1930s vision of the future.

My sincerest apologies! Bad form on my part.

Ok, it was at the end of a two part reply anyway. As for the school of thought you mentioned, I doubt that whoever it was who wrote the editorial has read any David Weber. Or quite a few other Baen sci-fi authors for that matter. It ain't dead, its just that a lot of publishers think it is. (Or ought to be.) And while I love Doc Smith's stuff, I doubt that I'd care to play in a universe quite as primitive as most of it. (Despite the Super Science!)

 

[Flynn]

I definitely find it interesting that a few new options are going to be available because of the support for other campaigns. I imagine that the ol' FF&S may inspire some of the possible variant FTL drives and such, as well as just general trends in sci-fi.

I look forward to seeing a few new campaigns out there, as well, under the Mongoose OGL/TLL. I'd love to see something based on the Confed from the Matador series by Steve Perry. I ran a T20 campaign in an ATU based on the Confed, with a mix of Stargate SG-1 and a few ideas liberated in spirit from the OTU, just for grins. It was a lot of fun, and a great way to test the T20 rules back in the day.

The thing I think I'm most looking forward to is that Traveller tends to be pretty rules light, especially compared to 3E. Characters don't take much to build and use, and with a simple task system, the system is pretty easy to adjudicate on a whim when needed. A subsector or quadrant map, some dice, some index cards and your imagination, and you're set to run the game.

I think that the rules light nature of Traveller will appeal to a lot of the gamers that are burned out on the amount of prep work it takes to run a 3E game, and I hope that players remain open to trying new things.

Do you guys think the rules light nature of Traveller will be a good thing or a bad thing?

With Regards,
Flynn