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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 8626809" data-attributes="member: 82106">I think the confusion here may be like if I say the agenda for this super hero game could be simulationist; now someone else says "but we played supers and that wasn't the agenda!" OK, sure, genre is not wedded to an agenda. I'm sure a LOT of super hero games are not simulating some Silver Age comic. Many of them might be just fun skirmish games with the genre as color. Many of them might be about telling the stories of people that have weird powers. Each of those is PROBABLY going to use a different system, process, and principles of play. Again, what a theory of agendas can do for you is explain why when Mike min/maxes the power system and has his character run around 'winning every fight' single-handed that it clashes badly with David, who's trying to figure out how his character handles the fact that his sister is a super villain. They just don't mesh, right?Done it a few times. I think you probably kinda have to agree on the sort of thing you're aiming for with that setup as well. I mean, OK, maybe it could work where one GM is running a highly gamist "level up and get more powerful than the rest" D&D game that happens in the 'Bone March' and the other guy is running cutthroat intrigue games that explore just how evil you're willing to be to get ahead over in 'The Great Kingdom'. Still, if they're both stuck with the same system and compatible table cultures one of those is going to labor with system issues and whatnot.Traveller is an odd duck of a game in some ways. It is a classic mid-70's 'activity resolution system', but then it has these places where it is specifically a LOT more involved in story. I mean, if you roll up a D&D character, using any classic edition, the ONLY real indicator of anything beyond basic physical traits is alignment, that's it. Your class choice may or may not tend to imply some other social/ethical considerations, but not to a great degree in most cases (and most PCs by earlier systems won't even qualify for classes like Ranger or Paladin anyway). Now look at Traveller, you MUST describe at least the last 4 years of the PC's life to some degree just to get the numbers on the sheet! It could be a LOT more than that. Even your stats are much more about your story, EDU, and SS, are basically all story, they aren't traits relating to anything except your place in society, really. And then beyond THAT is the way the Universe is vast and cannot possibly be comprehensively mapped. Going by the base rules of Traveller, the GM probably knows almost nothing about even the subsector the PCs are in. While the game does lack the sorts of PbtA "ask questions use the answers" sorts of procedures, it definitely does beg to do what you suggest and have players expand on, for instance, their service history. Because there's an objective system for generating "terrain" (planets and what is on them) you can even just hand that off to players and they can follow the process in the book, and then it is unlikely to be an issue if they interpret that and embellish it some. D&D, at least in its basic form, doesn't really cater much to any of that (though obviously a GM CAN ask you to describe your home town or something like that). I always found that Traveller characters were a lot more likely to have some kind of actual CHARACTER to the PC, at least some bits of history, connections (which is also fostered by the whole patron thing), etc. Heck, many of them have bank loans and an ongoing business! Not to say that Traveller took all that very far, but further than other games of that era at least.</blockquote>

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