thormagni
Explorer
As I have endlessly bored everyone with, I have been watching and really enjoying the cancelled TV series Firefly and the associated movie, Serenity. I have read references that indicate creator Joss Whedon played the old-school RPG Traveller and it was one of his influences for the show. Even if that is just apocryphal, it is still a nearly perfect representative of the type of game that Traveller is: you are on a spaceship, running from place-to-place, trying to earn enough credits to keep flying, using a combination of low-tech and high-tech equipment. For example: the average weapon is still a firearm and humanity has found few better ways to fight hand-to-hand cheaply than a sword. Traveller and Firefly are gritty, hard-core science fiction.
Anyway, the show got me to break out my old Traveller books, which I haven't looked at in years. The basic set was three little (like 5x8 inch, 50-page) pamphlets that really hold up well, useability wise, even after all this time. It is really interesting to see a nearly random character generation system. You have a few choices, but for the most part, you are just rolling dice and following charts to make the character. It is really the exact opposite of today's player-choice-heavy rules like D&D. You can literally fit your entire character sheet into two lines of type.
They came out with a D20 version, Traveller T20, a couple of years back but it really doesn't capture the feel of the original very well. Too many choices.
Anyway, this was the second RPG I ever played.
Anyway, the show got me to break out my old Traveller books, which I haven't looked at in years. The basic set was three little (like 5x8 inch, 50-page) pamphlets that really hold up well, useability wise, even after all this time. It is really interesting to see a nearly random character generation system. You have a few choices, but for the most part, you are just rolling dice and following charts to make the character. It is really the exact opposite of today's player-choice-heavy rules like D&D. You can literally fit your entire character sheet into two lines of type.
They came out with a D20 version, Traveller T20, a couple of years back but it really doesn't capture the feel of the original very well. Too many choices.
Anyway, this was the second RPG I ever played.
