Cover of GURPS Traveller
Jonathan Woodward
-The most recent issue of _Pyramid_ has an ad for _GURPS
Traveller_ in it and, let me say, it gave me a very fond nostalgia-rush.
Assuming the ad is similar to what the actual product will look like (and
this is a pretty safe assumption), SJGames has discarded the standard
GURPS look, and done it in the style of the classic Trav "black books",
complete with a quote from a starship responding to the _Beowulf_'s
distress signal. Which, in the context of the rumors I hear about
Imperium, takes on a whole new layer of meaning...
"Help is on the way!"
-JW
Jonathan Woodward wood...@guesswork.com www.io.com/~woodward
Writer Code v0a: Y+ $- SF+ F+ RPG++ C+ W++ U++ L++++(c++++) Wwff!!
You are what you eat. I am a person.
Nick Eden
On 13 Feb 1998 17:07:20 GMT, Jonathan Woodward <wood...@io.com>
wrote:
> -The most recent issue of _Pyramid_ has an ad for _GURPS
>Traveller_ in it and, let me say, it gave me a very fond nostalgia-rush.
>Assuming the ad is similar to what the actual product will look like (and
>this is a pretty safe assumption), SJGames has discarded the standard
>GURPS look, and done it in the style of the classic Trav "black books",
>complete with a quote from a starship responding to the _Beowulf_'s
>distress signal. Which, in the context of the rumors I hear about
>Imperium, takes on a whole new layer of meaning...
>
> "Help is on the way!"
>
> -JW
Also: Loren Wiseman is GURPS Traveller's LINE MANAGER. Which is a
little odd, since usually GURPS books stand alone. Are they planning
sequals? Surely not.
Also Again: Science Fiction Roleplaying in the Near Future. Was that
just a line for the ad, or has that changed?
---------------------------------------------------------------------
www.pheasnt.demon.co.uk/Pheasant/Pheasant.html
Comics. TV. Games. Stuff.
J. Hunter Johnson
Nick Eden <ni...@pheasntDOTdemon.co.uk> wrote:
> Also: Loren Wiseman is GURPS Traveller's LINE MANAGER. Which is a
> little odd, since usually GURPS books stand alone. Are they planning
> sequals? Surely not.
Yes. There will be a series of GURPS Traveller books. Scheduling for
subsequent books in the series is yet to be determined. (Cribbed from
http://www.sjgames.com/general/press_releases/970904.html)
Hunter
--
J. Hunter Johnson /\ SJG Errata Coordinator (sjg-e...@io.com)
http://www.io.com/~jhunterj/ /()\ Knightmare Chess Development Coordinator
jhun...@io.com /____\ The Games of '98 by # of times played:
Gin Pitch Brain Robo LamPoker Catan EmpBuild 1870 Set Crib GrPrix BopIt UNO
Guy McLimore
In article <6c1uk8$ffn$1...@nntp-2.io.com>, Jonathan Woodward
<wood...@io.com> wrote:
> The most recent issue of Pyramid has an ad for GURPS
> Traveller in it and, let me say, it gave me a very fond nostalgia-rush.
> Assuming the ad is similar to what the actual product will look like (and
> this is a pretty safe assumption), SJGames has discarded the standard
> GURPS look, and done it in the style of the classic Trav "black books",
> complete with a quote from a starship responding to the Beowulf's
> distress signal. Which, in the context of the rumors I hear about
> Imperium, takes on a whole new layer of meaning...
>
> "Help is on the way!"
God love you, Steve, Loren, and compatriots! (And thanks, Jonathan, for
spreading the word. I missed the latest Pyramid and hadn't seen this!)
Among about eleventeen-thousand other old-time Traveller fans, I held out
for them to do this with the new edition of the original game, but the
"conventional wisdom" that every new game has to be hard cover with a
color cover won out.
I was already gonna buy one when this hit the stands. Now I gotta buy two,
just to say "thanks".
Kudos for this simple but overwhelmingly RIGHT decision.
Guy McLimore / gu...@evansville.net
MC+ Creations Game Design and Consulting
http://bounce.to/mcplus
Tim Westlake
I wouldnt be surprised if this didnt turn out to be a huge seller once it
hits the stands. Traveller was always a good idea and no one has ever been
able to come up with something in its genre that beats it.
Tim
John Tynes
In article <34e798d4...@news.demon.co.uk>, ni...@pheasntDOTdemon.co.uk
(Nick Eden) wrote:
>Also: Loren Wiseman is GURPS Traveller's LINE MANAGER. Which is a
>little odd, since usually GURPS books stand alone. Are they planning
>sequals? Surely not.
SJG has announced that they'll be producing a whole line of GURPS
Traveller supplements, actually, following their own timeline/continuity.
--
John Tynes r...@tccorp.com [] The rise of Punch the Maker-Killer
http://www.tccorp.com/rev/ [] has brought all of nature to a stop
Pagan Publishing [] <Puppetland>
& Commando Creative Services [] tccorp/rev/rl_puppetland.html
< \ - + freelance writing, editing, graphic design & HTML + - / >
Jeremy Reaban
To me, this is the best part. I absolutely hated the Megatraveller time,
the Virus timeline, and the Milieu 0 timeline. After trying them out, I
went back to playing in the CT era (and also having Strephon not
assassinated when it go to 1116). Which is fine, but it doesn't sell
Traveller books because the backgrounds went from somewhat different (MT),
to very different (TNE), to totally different (Milieu 0)
John Tynes <r...@tccorp.com> wrote in article
<snip>
George W. Harris
In 13 Feb 1998 17:07:20 GMT of yore, Jonathan Woodward <wood...@io.com> wrote
thusly:
= -The most recent issue of _Pyramid_ has an ad for _GURPS
=Traveller_ in it and, let me say, it gave me a very fond nostalgia-rush.
=Assuming the ad is similar to what the actual product will look like (and
=this is a pretty safe assumption), SJGames has discarded the standard
=GURPS look, and done it in the style of the classic Trav "black books",
=complete with a quote from a starship responding to the _Beowulf_'s
=distress signal. Which, in the context of the rumors I hear about
=Imperium, takes on a whole new layer of meaning...
=
= "Help is on the way!"
Yes, but the vital question that all Traveller Classic
fans want answered: will GURPS Traveller lack any
mechanic for skill advancement? Please be true to original
Traveller!
=Jonathan Woodward wood...@guesswork.com www.io.com/~woodward
--
Real men don't need macho posturing to bolster their egos.
George W. Harris For actual email address, replace each 'u' with an 'i'.
Anthony Ragan
gha...@mundsprung.com (George W. Harris) screamed into the Void:
> Yes, but the vital question that all Traveller Classic
>fans want answered: will GURPS Traveller lack any
>mechanic for skill advancement? Please be true to original
>Traveller!
No, but there is the -10 point disad: Died during Character Creation.
*****
--Anthony Ragan
Snotling in Chief, Staadtholder van Marienburg
iris...@mindspring.com (primary) & Iris...@aol.com (secondary)
The Warhammer FRP FAQ is at:
ftp://ftp.westfalen.de/warhammer/FAQ3.3
Joseph M. Saul
I'm wondering if they'll have some sort of mechanic for *random* character
generation. Jokes about dying during generation aside, I feel the random
mechanism is really central to the feel of Traveller.
Joe Saul
jms...@umich.edu
Thomas R Scudder
Joseph M. Saul (jms...@toastman.us.itd.umich.edu) asieoniezi:
: I'm wondering if they'll have some sort of mechanic for *random* character
: generation. Jokes about dying during generation aside, I feel the random
: mechanism is really central to the feel of Traveller.
I see no reason to think they won't. They've done it in the past, when it
was appropriate (cf. GURPS GOBLINS).
--
Tom Scudder aka tom...@umich.edu <*> http://www-personal.umich.edu/~tomscud
I'm called little Ishmael / Sweet little Ishmael
Though I could never say why...
-from _H. M. S. Pequod_, words by H. Melville, music by A. Sullivan
Michael T. Richter
Joseph M. Saul <jms...@toastman.us.itd.umich.edu> wrote in article
<n2KF.1330$N4.84...@news.itd.umich.edu>...
> I'm wondering if they'll have some sort of mechanic for *random*
character
> generation. Jokes about dying during generation aside, I feel the
random
> mechanism is really central to the feel of Traveller.
Yes. It is certainly the single largest contributor to the late '70s
feel of Traveller. I long for a return to the days of Navy doctors
with higher fleet and ship tactics skills than medicine skills
("Doctor, please come to the bridge -- we need your tactical advice!").
I long for the days when an Aslan Tlaukhu (sp?) space force character
could find herself alternating year by year between medicine and
military intelligence. I long for Scout bureaucrats with no ship-based
skills whatsoever who, upon mustering out, got a starship. I long for
Aslan landless sons who have almost as many female skills as male
skills.
...Not!
--
Michael T. Richter - m...@ottawa.com - http://24.112.92.82/~mtr
"A man cannot live intensely except at the cost of the self."
Scott Taylor
Well, I haven't seen Pyramid yet, but I stopped by the
web page...
...very cool.
"...Help is on the way!"
When I was a kid (literally... I was something like 12), I saw
a little black box with red lettering on it sitting on a shelf
in the local game store (it says something about the strength of
the gaming market in Rochester that, in 1980, there was a full
time game store, Adventures & Hobbies, on Driving Park, before
the place burned down). Out of curiosity, I picked it up, and
the words on it's cover seared their way into my brain. I was
instantly transformed into a Traveller fan, then and forever.
I always wondered about the Beowulf; who her crew was, whether
they survived, if someone rescued them. More than one of my
Naval games started with the players as members of a patrol
group responding to a Mayday from a free trader out around the
system's far gas giant... a trader that was off all known
courses, in a place it wasn't supposed to be.
It's good to know my players (and I) aren't the only ones who
remember the ill-fated Beowulf...
Loren, Steve, thank you.
Scott Taylor
Freelancer for Hire
Have Mac, Will Travel(l)
j...@inlink.com
Everyone likes to make fun of classic Traveller, but no one seems to remember
the rules (the basic rules anyway, if you're talking about the supplements, I
can't comment).
There's no such thing as a scout without any ship skills - all of them get
pilot skill (p25, The Traveller Book or p15, Book 1 (Characters and Combat).
(Of course, if you using the book Scouts, YMMV, as I don't have it)
How do you the character is a Navy Doctor? (Well, maybe if you're using High
Guard, which I don't have, so I can't comment on), but in CT, a doctor is
defined as a character with Medical skill of 3 or more. (p26, The Traveller
Book, p20 Book 1). So, a Doctor without Medical skill is impossible.
If if there's a Naval Medicine career (or branch or whatever) in High Guard,
it doesn't mean the character has to be a doctor (er, unless it says so). Not
everyone in the civilian Doctor career (Supplement 4) becomes a doctor - some
are nurses or even receptionists.
I can't comment on the Aslan stuff, but strange things happen. While this
isn't really a great example, on MASH there was a recurring character that
was in military intelligence. Yet, he often spent time lurking around the MASH
unit. Yes, this isn't the greatest example ,as the show's fictional, but so's
the game.
Travellers quirks are no worse than say, Gurp's quirks, which encourages
players to play one-eyed, unstable, phobic, albinos.
In article <01bd3ad9$b1678e30$525c7018@retrotech>,
"Michael T. Richter" <m...@ottawa.com> wrote:
<snip>
> Yes. It is certainly the single largest contributor to the late '70s
> feel of Traveller. I long for a return to the days of Navy doctors
> with higher fleet and ship tactics skills than medicine skills
> ("Doctor, please come to the bridge -- we need your tactical advice!").
> I long for the days when an Aslan Tlaukhu (sp?) space force character
> could find herself alternating year by year between medicine and
> military intelligence. I long for Scout bureaucrats with no ship-based
> skills whatsoever who, upon mustering out, got a starship. I long for
> Aslan landless sons who have almost as many female skills as male
> skills.
>
> ...Not!
-----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==-----
http://www.dejanews.com/ Now offering spam-free web-based newsreading
Joseph M. Saul
Michael T. Richter wrote:
>Yes. It is certainly the single largest contributor to the late '70s
>feel of Traveller. I long for a return to the days of Navy doctors
>with higher fleet and ship tactics skills than medicine skills
>("Doctor, please come to the bridge -- we need your tactical advice!").
> I long for the days when an Aslan Tlaukhu (sp?) space force character
>could find herself alternating year by year between medicine and
>military intelligence. I long for Scout bureaucrats with no ship-based
>skills whatsoever who, upon mustering out, got a starship. I long for
>Aslan landless sons who have almost as many female skills as male
>skills.
>
>...Not!
Obviously, it had to be tempered with a certain amount of judgement and
willingness to intervene on the part of the GM. But it was cool to have
some random elements, and the feeling of having gone through a career that
was not entirely under your control.
In GURPS, you normally get to weaponeer your character to perfection, with
complete control over every facet so you can design "the perfect one-eyed
Marine Commando Captain." That's a very different feel, and contributes
to a very different perception of the universe and culture.
Joe Saul
jms...@umich.edu
Graelorn
Joseph M. Saul wrote in message ...
>I'm wondering if they'll have some sort of mechanic for *random* character
>generation. Jokes about dying during generation aside, I feel the random
>mechanism is really central to the feel of Traveller.
>
Random character creation is central to the "feel" of Traveller?
I thought the setting is what people wanted...
I prefer current character design systems (point based) and can only hope
that random rules are left out in place of setting material.
I never really like Trav, but I know Ill spend cash on it now, since SJG is
in control.
Just out of curiosity, how many old time Trav fans out there are chomping at
the bit in anticipation of SJG attempt at Trav?
Michael T. Richter
j...@inlink.com wrote in article <6cab86$bin$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>...
> Everyone likes to make fun of classic Traveller, but no one seems to
remember
> the rules (the basic rules anyway, if you're talking about the
supplements, I
> can't comment).
Then don't. In this next matter...
> There's no such thing as a scout without any ship skills - all of
them get
> pilot skill (p25, The Traveller Book or p15, Book 1 (Characters and
Combat).
> (Of course, if you using the book Scouts, YMMV, as I don't have it)
...I was specifically talking about Book 6: Scouts. Book 6 was still
considered Classic Traveller last time I checked.
> How do you the character is a Navy Doctor? (Well, maybe if you're
using High
> Guard, which I don't have, so I can't comment on), but in CT, a
doctor is
> defined as a character with Medical skill of 3 or more. (p26, The
Traveller
> Book, p20 Book 1). So, a Doctor without Medical skill is impossible.
Again, yes: I used Book 5: High Guard. You should learn the whole
domain of CT before mouthing off to others with a lot more experience
and knowledge than you.
You also screwed up on another count: I said "a doctor with more
fleet/ship tactics skill than medical skill" not "a doctor without
medical skills". The doctor in question *had* Medical-3 (or it might
even have been Medical-4 -- it was a long time ago). He also had Ship
Tactics-4 and Fleet Tactics-3. That's three (or four) points of skills
in Medicine and a total of seven skill points in various naval tactics.
Only the totally buggered character generation mechanisms of CT (and
MT and T4) would allow this kind of distortion.
> If if there's a Naval Medicine career (or branch or whatever) in High
Guard,
> it doesn't mean the character has to be a doctor (er, unless it says
so). Not
> everyone in the civilian Doctor career (Supplement 4) becomes a
doctor - some
> are nurses or even receptionists.
Yes, but how many of them go to medical school and come out with
Medicine-3 (which, as you stated above, means they're a doctor BY
DEFINITION)?
> I can't comment on the Aslan stuff, but strange things happen. While
this
> isn't really a great example, on MASH there was a recurring character
that
> was in military intelligence. Yet, he often spent time lurking around
the MASH
> unit. Yes, this isn't the greatest example ,as the show's fictional,
but so's
> the game.
You "can't comment on the Aslan stuff" and then proceed to do so....
My Aslan character switching between medicine and intelligence was not
just "hanging around at a MASH unit". My character would spend one
year learning medicine and another year in the functional equivalent of
naval intelligence. (I don't have my old alien modules lying around
any more, so I can't give you the full tables and die rolls set.)
> Travellers quirks are no worse than say, Gurp's quirks, which
encourages
> players to play one-eyed, unstable, phobic, albinos.
I don't play GURPS. I don't play Traveller. Both for pretty much the
same reason: the game systems in each case are too clunky and dated for
me to enjoy. I like much more streamlined and consistent game
mechanisms these days.
Michael T. Richter
Joseph M. Saul <jms...@toastman.us.itd.umich.edu> wrote in article
<My criticisms of Traveller character generation snipped.>
> Obviously, it had to be tempered with a certain amount
> of judgement and willingness to intervene on the part
> of the GM.
Many games are in print now which require less such intervention.
That's why I use them instead of Traveller. (My current favorite in
this regard is Silhouette.)
> But it was cool to have some random elements, and
> the feeling of having gone through a career that
> was not entirely under your control.
Cool idea. Bad execution. Also, these days even the idea is no longer
to my taste. Back when I had no idea how to make interesting
characters, the random generation systems had their place -- they
forced me to consider the "Y-cubed" law: for any facet of the character
ask "Why?" three times. These days I routinely make characters much
more entertaining and fun than any random generation system I've seen.
(To make all the simulationists out there shudder: I don't even balance
point costs any longer when I run games. If the character looks
interesting, it's in.)
> In GURPS, you normally get to weaponeer your character to perfection,
with
> complete control over every facet so you can design "the perfect
one-eyed
> Marine Commando Captain." That's a very different feel, and
contributes
> to a very different perception of the universe and culture.
I was not defending GURPS, I was criticising Classic Traveller. I
don't play GURPS. I don't even own it anymore. Part of this was the
"albino, one-eyed, lame Marine Commando Captain" syndrome.
Brett Slocum
On Tue, 17 Feb 1998 01:29:45 -0500, "Graelorn" <Grae...@gte.net>
wrote:
>Joseph M. Saul wrote in message ...
>>I'm wondering if they'll have some sort of mechanic for *random* character
>>generation. Jokes about dying during generation aside, I feel the random
>>mechanism is really central to the feel of Traveller.
>>
>
>
>Random character creation is central to the "feel" of Traveller?
>I thought the setting is what people wanted...
Some random elements might be nice, but more in the realm of military
assignments and such. I liked the fact one could get decorations and
such. Perhaps a modification to the "What Happens to the Characters"
rules from Mass Combat could be used to do this. As far as skill
choice, I'd like to, at the very least, be able to pick from classes
of skills.
>Just out of curiosity, how many old time Trav fans out there are chomping at
>the bit in anticipation of SJG attempt at Trav?
Chomp, chomp, chomp. I've never had as much fun in a SF setting as I
have in Traveller. I'm one of those old-timers who bought it in 1977
and loved it to pieces several times. And I hated Mega-Traveller.
That's when I stopped playing. And from all the things I've seen
about the project, (maintaining the Free Trader Beowolf bit, the look
of the cover, Loren Wiseman, etc.) this is going to be one of the best
games of the year.
Brett Slocum, slocum AT io DOT com, unSPAM address to reply
http://www.io.com/~slocum/
Tekumel Home Page: www.io.com/~slocum/tekumel.html
GURPS Home Page: www.io.com/~slocum/gurps.html
Jonathan Woodward
Thomas R Scudder <tom...@umich.edu> wrote:
> Joseph M. Saul (jms...@toastman.us.itd.umich.edu) asieoniezi:
> : generation. Jokes about dying during generation aside, I feel the random
> : mechanism is really central to the feel of Traveller.
-Indeed, there's a random generation system in _GURPS Basic_
-JW
Jonathan Woodward wood...@guesswork.com www.io.com/~woodward
Writer Code v0a: Y+ $- SF+ F+ RPG++ C+ W++ U++ L++++(c++++) Wwff!!
In one year, the AltaVista count for "home phone number" dropped from 3000
to 1000. Is it possible people are getting smarter?
Bruce Baugh
>Chomp, chomp, chomp. I've never had as much fun in a SF setting as I
>have in Traveller. I'm one of those old-timers who bought it in 1977
This isn't GURPS-related, but fans o' classic Trav should look at the
LORDS OF THE EXPANSE campaign set for Star Wars. It's basically a cool
set of subsectors, with politics and economics and looming empire in the
distance (set at about the time of the first movie). Good fun.
--
Bruce Baugh <*> bruce...@mindspring.com
The Codex Brucaica <*> http://www.mindspring.com/~brucebaugh
New science fiction by S.M. Stirling, rolegaming, writers' tools
Joseph M. Saul
Michael T. Richter wrote:
>Back when I had no idea how to make interesting
>characters, the random generation systems had their place -- they
>forced me to consider the "Y-cubed" law: for any facet of the character
>ask "Why?" three times. These days I routinely make characters much
>more entertaining and fun than any random generation system I've seen.
I'm sure you design great characters. You're creative, and have been
gaming long enough that I'd expect you to have some skill at it. Me too.
I play in a variety of systems, including Amber, which is about as
non-random as it gets.
I enjoy systems where I have full control over my character designs.
I also enjoy systems where I do not.
They both have their place, and they both affect the feel of the game. To
me, the random career thing is part of the feel of Traveller (I started
playing in 1978, by the way, so I'm well aware of its problems too).
If you hate both Traveller and GURPS, why are you bothering to participate
in this thread? Do you plan to use the SJ Games Traveller source material
with another system, or systemless, or is it purely hypothetical to you?
-- Joe
David L. Pulver
On Sun, 15 Feb 1998, Thomas R Scudder wrote:
> Joseph M. Saul (jms...@toastman.us.itd.umich.edu) asieoniezi:
> : I'm wondering if they'll have some sort of mechanic for *random* character
> : generation. Jokes about dying during generation aside, I feel the random
> : mechanism is really central to the feel of Traveller.
>
> I see no reason to think they won't. They've done it in the past, when it
> was appropriate (cf. GURPS GOBLINS).
I can't see any reason why they should. The Traveller character generation
system is a relic of En Garde, a solitaire game. It has a certain
nostalgic appeal: it was the first-skill based system that I know of, and
certainly the first that I ever used, and it was more interesting than
rolling up D&D characters. Nevertheless, it's sole utility is
to assist players in coming up with a character concept, and IMHO, a good
set of guidelines for character types ("Merchants will have these
skills...") has equal or greater utility. If you really _can't_ come up
with an interesting character on your own, some sort of story-telling life
path system (like the one in Renegade Legion or the various RTG games)
would be more useful. It might be fun to learn I was stationed with the
Imperial Navy performing a strike mission in my 28th year and was nearly
wounded, but I'd rather the dice didn't tell me that my merchant has to
buy a fouth level of Mechanic when I want him to have at least _some_
skill at piloting a ship or being a trader or fancying goldish... Ick.
I think GURPS' robust character creation system will be one of the
highlights of the new Traveller -- and I'd much rather see the space of
the book used to detail background and setting (especially things that
have been obscure for years, like exactly how the feudal system works in
conjunction with local planetary governmnet, or what are the various
intelligence agencies in the Imperium, as well as things like details of
law enforcement, crime and punishment) than wasting space by grafting
propellers onto GURPS's jet engine in the name of retro appeal.
What _would_ be a useful graft would be some sort of trading system, since
this was a major part of Traveller and GURPS doesn't currently have one. I
leave it to partisans to decide whether it should be borrowed from
Merchant Prince, the Book 2, or a new one created from scratch... (there
was a rather nice one in the Star Trek merchant book, actually, but I
doubt it's for rent...)
-David Pulver
David P. Summers
In article <n2KF.1330$N4.84...@news.itd.umich.edu>,
jms...@toastman.us.itd.umich.edu (Joseph M. Saul) wrote:
> I'm wondering if they'll have some sort of mechanic for *random* character
> generation.
I would be suprised if they did....
> Jokes about dying during generation aside, I feel the random
> mechanism is really central to the feel of Traveller.
Well, you could always use the Traveller generation system and
use the conversion notes to convert the character. Or you could
make up your own GURPS random generation system...
--
Name_David P. Summers
Email_...@Alum.MIT.edu
Bill McHale
Graelorn (Grae...@gte.net) wrote:
: Joseph M. Saul wrote in message ...
: >I'm wondering if they'll have some sort of mechanic for *random* character
: >generation. Jokes about dying during generation aside, I feel the random
: >mechanism is really central to the feel of Traveller.
: >
: Random character creation is central to the "feel" of Traveller?
: I thought the setting is what people wanted...
: I prefer current character design systems (point based) and can only hope
: that random rules are left out in place of setting material.
: I never really like Trav, but I know Ill spend cash on it now, since SJG is
: in control.
: Just out of curiosity, how many old time Trav fans out there are chomping at
: the bit in anticipation of SJG attempt at Trav?
Well, although there are Cyberpunk and Mecha games that are more popular,
I would guess that Traveller is still the most popular Classic Science
Fiction/Space Opera game around. Considering the difficulties with T4 and
the possibility of Imperium Dumping the line, I would guess that a lot of
people are waiting for the Gurps release.
I would also guess that many of the people who played Classic Traveller,
and even Mega Traveller are grateful for a return to the days before the
virus.
--
Bill
***************************************************************************
(question == (2b || !2b)); If Shakespeare was a C programmer.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Home page - http://www.gl.umbc.edu/~wmchal1
***************************************************************************
George W. Harris
In Mon, 16 Feb 1998 21:44:28 GMT of yore, jms...@toastman.us.itd.umich.edu
(Joseph M. Saul) wrote thusly:
=Obviously, it had to be tempered with a certain amount of judgement and
=willingness to intervene on the part of the GM. But it was cool to have
=some random elements, and the feeling of having gone through a career that
=was not entirely under your control.
And indeed, sometimes the military careers embodied
all the forethought, planning and good sense that characterize
the present day military. A friend of mine created a character,
regular military, stayed in for a long time as a non-com,
eventually was some tremendous enlisted rank (something
equivalent to Master Gunnery Sergeant), was sent to OCS,
commissioned as a Lieutenant, and promptly discharged.
=Joe Saul
=jms...@umich.edu
Michael T. Richter
> If you hate both Traveller and GURPS, why are you bothering to
participate
> in this thread? Do you plan to use the SJ Games Traveller source
material
> with another system, or systemless, or is it purely hypothetical to
you?
I saw a passing reference to what I considered the weakest point of CT:
the almost totally random character generation system. I thought I'd
point out why it was weak (my favorite example being the naval doctor
with 7 points of skill in various naval tactics and only 3 in
medicine).
I rather doubt I'll be using any Traveller material of any kind
anymore. After the T4 debacle, I took a very careful look at Traveller
from every angle: game system, setting, character generation, feel,
etc. and decided that for every part of it either my own material or
another game's material was superior. I took stock of my experience
with Traveller and decided that nostalgia just wasn't worth it:
Traveller just wasn't interesting any more.
In short: Marc Miller and Imperium Games, through the T4 fiasco, have
together driven off this Traveller old-timer into the arms of other
games. Congratulations, guys.
Bill McHale
Michael T. Richter (mric...@rogers.wave.ca) wrote:
: Joseph M. Saul <jms...@toastman.us.itd.umich.edu> wrote in article
: <Z2kG.1673$N4.10...@news.itd.umich.edu>...
: > If you hate both Traveller and GURPS, why are you bothering to
: participate
: > in this thread? Do you plan to use the SJ Games Traveller source
: material
: > with another system, or systemless, or is it purely hypothetical to
: you?
: I saw a passing reference to what I considered the weakest point of CT:
: the almost totally random character generation system. I thought I'd
: point out why it was weak (my favorite example being the naval doctor
: with 7 points of skill in various naval tactics and only 3 in
: medicine).
This is true, but the player is hardly unplayable. You could always play
him as a soldier who decided to become a doctor. Besides it is hardly
worth criticizing CT for a random character generation system, that was 20
years ago when almost every system had random char gen.
: I rather doubt I'll be using any Traveller material of any kind
: anymore. After the T4 debacle, I took a very careful look at Traveller
: from every angle: game system, setting, character generation, feel,
: etc. and decided that for every part of it either my own material or
: another game's material was superior. I took stock of my experience
: with Traveller and decided that nostalgia just wasn't worth it:
: Traveller just wasn't interesting any more.
So the question is... What game do you use now for Classic SF/Space Opera?
Matthew Goldman
Bill McHale (wmc...@umbc.edu) wrote:
: So the question is... What game do you use now for Classic SF/Space Opera?
GURPS.
--
O O __ | \| O O
/|\ -/- _ __\ O _\O |/ (/ O/ /\- /|\
/ \ / ) / \ | /O _ O/_ _ O_ ^_ / \^_ )\ / \
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Matthew Goldman E-mail: gol...@visi.com Home: (612) 535-5220
Work: (612) 883-6640
My day today? Nothing major, just Xenon base gone, Scorpio gone,
Tarrant dead, Tarrant alive and then I found out Blake sold us out.
Allan Goodall
On 17 Feb 1998 13:39:57 GMT, in message <6cc3vd$i7a$1...@news.umbc.edu>,
wmc...@umbc.edu (Bill McHale) wrote:
>Well, although there are Cyberpunk and Mecha games that are more popular,
>I would guess that Traveller is still the most popular Classic Science
>Fiction/Space Opera game around.
I would suggest that _Star Wars_ is the most popular space opera game.
A friend and I were discussing Traveller last night. From a nostalgia point
of view we really enjoyed the game, but in many ways it was a rather
anticeptic product. We never had much of a feel for detail in any given
planet. One tech 12 world felt pretty much like every other tech 12 world.
The most fun my friend had was running Larry Niven-like adventures dealing
with hard SF themes. For the most part, there was very little compelling
players to spend significant amounts of game time on any one planet.
In many ways our group has outgrown Traveller. For one thing, I no longer
have the time I'd have to dedicate towards building detailed
planets--complete with unique governments, cultures, etc. One of
Traveller's biggest strengths, and its biggest weakness, was the sheer size
of the Empire and GDW's concentration on hardware instead of cultures and
world development.
Allan Goodall agoo...@sympatico.ca
"Once again, the half time score.
Alien Overlords: 142,000. Scotland: zip."
- This Hour Has 22 Minutes
James Nicoll
In article <6cc3vd$i7a$1...@news.umbc.edu>, Bill McHale <wmc...@umbc.edu> wrote:
>
>: Just out of curiosity, how many old time Trav fans out there are chomping at
>: the bit in anticipation of SJG attempt at Trav?
>
>I would guess that Traveller is still the most popular Classic Science
>the possibility of Imperium Dumping the line, I would guess that a lot of
>people are waiting for the Gurps release.
Could you define "Classic SF"? Star Wars, Fading Suns and Jovian
Chronicles (which admittedly has exos, although I myself prefer to think
of them as a nasty typo which is found through out the book) all outsell
T4 and TNE at my store.
Mind you, in the used section, CT has a shelf life measured in
half hours. MT lasts weeks, TNE months and I haven't found out yet what
the half life of used T4 is, although I'm beginning to think the protons
in my store will decay first.
--
"Don't worry. It's just a bunch of crazies who believe in only one God.
They're just this far away from atheism."
Bill McHale
James Nicoll (jam...@ece.uwaterloo.ca) wrote:
: In article <6cc3vd$i7a$1...@news.umbc.edu>, Bill McHale <wmc...@umbc.edu> wrote:
: >
: >: Just out of curiosity, how many old time Trav fans out there are chomping at
: >: the bit in anticipation of SJG attempt at Trav?
: >
: >Well, although there are Cyberpunk and Mecha games that are more popular,
: >I would guess that Traveller is still the most popular Classic Science
: >Fiction/Space Opera game around. Considering the difficulties with T4 and
: >the possibility of Imperium Dumping the line, I would guess that a lot of
: >people are waiting for the Gurps release.
: Could you define "Classic SF"? Star Wars, Fading Suns and Jovian
: Chronicles (which admittedly has exos, although I myself prefer to think
: of them as a nasty typo which is found through out the book) all outsell
: T4 and TNE at my store.
Well, admittedly the definition of Classic SF will vary with usage.
However I would at least like to classify SF as something which at least
makes a stab at being plausable, so that tends to exclude Star Wars and to
a lesser extent Fading Suns. Jovian Chronicles is rather close, I will
grant you that, but if exos are a typo, they are a rather large one :-).
Don't get me wrong I have nothing against any of the above games, and I am
always glad to see games by smaller publishers flourish (Though I am not
sure if West End games can be considered small anymore, and DP9 seems to
be growing rapidly, though they are still great guys :-).
Actually the other definition includes how often the games are actually
played. I would imagine that Star Wars has a lot of SW people buying it
because it is Star Wars, and may never actually play the game.
: Mind you, in the used section, CT has a shelf life measured in
: half hours. MT lasts weeks, TNE months and I haven't found out yet what
: the half life of used T4 is, although I'm beginning to think the protons
: in my store will decay first.
Well unfortunately T4 was a major botch on the game design and
implementation roll (if you follow me) and TNE was not all that
successful either. I think the fact that the game system was completely
revised every 4 to 5 years, and that the background was often radically
shaken up for now good reason, alienated a lot of fans.
It will be interesting to see what happens when Traveller is coupled with
one of the more successful rules set in gameing. At the very least SJG
thinks there is enough life left in the old game for it to devote an
entire line to it.
Evyn MacDude
Matthew Goldman wrote:
> Bill McHale (wmc...@umbc.edu) wrote:
> : So the question is... What game do you use now for Classic SF/Space Opera?
>
> GURPS.
Mega Ditto
--
Evyn,
Warleader of the Clan MacDude
Fortalice Desertum
(Home of the ClusterNuke)
AD. 1998
Doug Berry
On 18 Feb 1998 12:34:55 GMT, "Michael T. Richter"
<mric...@rogers.wave.ca> wrote:
>I saw a passing reference to what I considered the weakest point of CT:
>the almost totally random character generation system. I thought I'd
>point out why it was weak (my favorite example being the naval doctor
>with 7 points of skill in various naval tactics and only 3 in
>medicine).
So there has never been a doctor who studied naval tactics, or had to
learn on the job? Half the fun was coming up with you back story.
Maybe your doctor was so interested in other matters that he never
became that good a doctor, which is why he left the Navy. Perhaps he
was the Admiral's personal physcian, and picked up a lot. Maybe he
was on staff at the subsector Naval Acadamy and took extension
courses.
That took me 30 seconds to explain why your doctor has high levels of
ShpTac and FltTac. This while on obscene amounts of Dilantin and
Vicodin.
>I rather doubt I'll be using any Traveller material of any kind
>anymore. After the T4 debacle, I took a very careful look at Traveller
>from every angle: game system, setting, character generation, feel,
>etc. and decided that for every part of it either my own material or
>another game's material was superior. I took stock of my experience
>with Traveller and decided that nostalgia just wasn't worth it:
>Traveller just wasn't interesting any more.
Your loss. So does this mean we won't have to put up with you jyhad
against the system anymore?
>In short: Marc Miller and Imperium Games, through the T4 fiasco, have
>together driven off this Traveller old-timer into the arms of other
>games. Congratulations, guys.
Don't tell me you've been hanging on IG's every release! You wrote
off the system, and the company, two years ago!
--
+---x---x---x---x---x---x---x---x---x---x--+
x Doug Berry dbe...@nospam.hooked.net |
| http://www.hooked.net/~dberry/index.html x
| (remove "nospam" to reply by mail) |
+-x---x---x---x---x---x---x---x---x---x---x+
x Traveller Evangelist, Writer, and |
| enthusastic flame war participant. x
+-x---x---x---x---x---x---x---x---x---x---x+
Allan Goodall
On Wed, 18 Feb 1998 21:03:02 GMT, in message
<34ee4238...@news.demon.co.uk>, edh...@equus.demon.co.uk (ed) wrote:
>The noble agoo...@sympatico.ca (Allan Goodall) spake on the day of Wed,
>18 Feb 1998 16:52:15 GMT:
>
>
>>"Once again, the half time score.
>> Alien Overlords: 142,000. Scotland: zip."
>> - This Hour Has 22 Minutes
>
>Your quote totally misunderstands Scotland's approach to Sporting
>events.
It's taken from a Canadian TV programme _This Hour Has 22 Minutes_ (the
name of which is a takeoff of an older Canadian news magazine show called
_This Hour Has 7 Days_). It was presented at the end of the programme as
coverage from World Cup 98. The Alien Overlords (all hail the Alien
Overlords!) were playing against Scotland, but with some rules changes of
their own. The play-by-play of the Scot's captain breaking for the goal
line then tackled and eviscerated was quite funny. Well, I guess you had to
be there. As a dual citizen Scot Canadian, I found it quite hilarious.
P. ENGEBOS
> Bill McHale (wmc...@umbc.edu) wrote:
> : So the question is... What game do you use now for Classic SF/Space Opera?
In order of Prefernce:
CORPS
Fuzion
Gurps
And maybe Alternity when it comes out.
Peter Engebos <peng...@nmsu.edu>
T'Sarith, Lord deGaalth <tsa...@io.com>
http://web.nmsu.edu/~pengebos/
>
Evyn MacDude
Anthony Ragan wrote:
> authors like H. Beam Piper, for example.
Ah, Traveller..
Nick Eden
>Joseph M. Saul <jms...@toastman.us.itd.umich.edu> wrote in article
><Z2kG.1673$N4.10...@news.itd.umich.edu>...
>> If you hate both Traveller and GURPS, why are you bothering to
>participate
>> in this thread? Do you plan to use the SJ Games Traveller source
>material
>> with another system, or systemless, or is it purely hypothetical to
>you?
>
>I saw a passing reference to what I considered the weakest point of CT:
>the almost totally random character generation system. I thought I'd
>point out why it was weak (my favorite example being the naval doctor
>with 7 points of skill in various naval tactics and only 3 in
>medicine).
Just a thought, cross genre, but what the hell. In Patrick O'Brian's
novels Stephen Maturin clearly has at least as many points of spy type
skills as he has medical. It can make for an interesting characater.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
www.pheasnt.demon.co.uk/Pheasant/Pheasant.html
Comics. TV. Games. Stuff.
Anthony Ragan
jam...@ece.uwaterloo.ca (James Nicoll) screamed into the Void:
>Could you define "Classic SF"?
I've always thought (perhaps wrongly) that "classic SF" referred to
the Sci-Fi of the 1950's and early 1960's -- authors like H. Beam
Piper, for example.
*****
--Anthony Ragan
Snotling in Chief, Staadtholder van Marienburg
iris...@mindspring.com (primary) & Iris...@aol.com (secondary)
The Warhammer FRP FAQ is at:
ftp://ftp.westfalen.de/warhammer/FAQ3.3
Michael T. Richter
Bill McHale <wmc...@umbc.edu> wrote in article
<6cf0cb$mti$1...@news.umbc.edu>...
> This is true, but the player is hardly unplayable. You could always
play
> him as a soldier who decided to become a doctor. Besides it is
hardly
> worth criticizing CT for a random character generation system, that
was 20
> years ago when almost every system had random char gen.
I couldn't actually successfully play him that way: he went to medical
school and then enlisted in the Navy. Further, he was a fully-fledged
doctor (Medicine-3) and, indeed, a surgeon (Dex above the limit: A+ was
it?). Then he joined the navy and gained a whole bunch of non-medical
skills.
The character, as generated, was silly. Suspension of disbelief became
very difficult whenever his tactical skills entered the scene. This
was especially funny considering he had *no* other combat skills past
level 1 -- one of which he got on mustering out.
BTW, I'm not criticizing CT for having a random character generation
system 20 years ago. I'm pointing out to people *now* who yearn back
to the days of CT just why the random character generation wasn't
actually that hot a mechanism. There's a subtle but distinct
difference.
I actually quite enjoyed my CT days. As I said in another post, back
when I was just learning characterization the random character
generation system -- outside of some humourous distortions like the
tactical doctor or the doctor/spy Aslan -- actually helped me learn the
process by forcing me to do the why-cubed thing. It is merely a crutch
I no longer need: I come up with bizarre and interesting (but much more
believable) characters at the drop of a hat nowadays.
> So the question is... What game do you use now for Classic SF/Space
Opera?
It depends upon what I'm looking for. The odds-on favorite right now
is Silhouette. I take Jovian Chronicles rules and tweak them for my
settings. Silhouette only recently deposed CORPS 2e, though, and may
not stay there permanently. I find CORPS more suitable for harder-SF
and JC better for softer-SO. Alternatively I'll sometimes use Theatrix
for a specific subset of my gaming acquaintances.
Setting-wise, the only SF/SO gaming I do at all anymore is that set in
my own creations. I have two SF/SO settings which I actively develop
at this time -- one more SF than SO, the other more SO than SF. I did
play with Fading Suns for a bit, but my own creations satisfy me (and
apparently my players) more.
Kevin Brewer
In <6cf0cb$mti$1...@news.umbc.edu>, wmc...@umbc.edu (Bill McHale) wrote:
~ Michael T. Richter (mric...@rogers.wave.ca) wrote:
~ : Joseph M. Saul <jms...@toastman.us.itd.umich.edu> wrote in article
~ : I saw a passing reference to what I considered the weakest point of CT:
~ : the almost totally random character generation system. I thought I'd
~ : point out why it was weak (my favorite example being the naval doctor
~ : with 7 points of skill in various naval tactics and only 3 in
~ : medicine).
~ This is true, but the player is hardly unplayable. You could always play
~ him as a soldier who decided to become a doctor.
Even more likely, the character became a medical officer due to family
pressures even though he was FAR more interested in ship and fleet
tactics. If the character was generated under book 5, and was in the
medical branch, he most likely went through the medical school option.
If he did, he got medical 3 automatically. A that point the extra
skills are, to a point, decided by the player because he gets to choose
which skill table to roll on, and NONE the charts have both Medical skill
and naval tactics skills.
The only way that the character above could be generated is if the player
decided to deliberatly silght advancement of their medical skills in favor
of their naval tactical and other skills.
In other words, the character's focus was decided by the player. The
details, such as specific skills, were randomly determined. If the
PLAYER had felt that his character was focused on becoming a better
doctor, he would not have rolled on the skill charts that increased
his naval tactics skills.
--
Kevin Brewer k...@hwcn.org
Bertil Jonell
In article <6cf0cb$mti$1...@news.umbc.edu>, Bill McHale <wmc...@umbc.edu> wrote:
>So the question is... What game do you use now for Classic SF/Space Opera?
1) CORPS
2) BRP (ie the Call of Cthulhu et al rules)
3) T2K2 (my own version, *not* TNE)
-bertil-
--
"It can be shown that for any nutty theory, beyond-the-fringe political view or
strange religion there exists a proponent on the Net. The proof is left as an
exercise for your kill-file."
Bill McHale
John Rudd (jr...@cygnus.com) wrote:
: >
: > Well, admittedly the definition of Classic SF will vary with usage.
: > However I would at least like to classify SF as something which at least
: > makes a stab at being plausable, so that tends to exclude Star Wars and to
: > a lesser extent Fading Suns. Jovian Chronicles is rather close, I will
: > grant you that, but if exos are a typo, they are a rather large one :-).
: I think what you're really defining here is closer to "Hard SF", where
: everything presented has to be either consistant with current physical laws,
: or a reasonable exptrapolation of what we already know. Sheffield's
: McAllister Chronicles (sp?) do a good job at both defining and giving some
: examples of this.
: I can't think of much in the way of things considered "Classic SF" that fits
: what you're talking about. Can you give some examples? I mean, some things
: we can throw out right away are: "Forbidden Planet", "Star Trek", "Dune", and
: most things with an FTL drive or psionics.. (see what happens when you put
: that "plausable" bit in there..). Something like the FTL presented in
: "Forever War" is at least trying to preserve relativity effects.
: Most SF that takes place outside of just our solar system has to make some
: leap past plausability. Even Niven's books have this hyperdrive thing.
Well I certainly cannot fault your definition of hard science fiction...
Maybe plausible was not the best term to use. Though I do agree that even
the definition I did intend would exclude Dune, and a lot of games with
psionics (though not necessarily all of them). I suppose what I meant by
plausible was that the material at least tries to give a scientific or
technical explination for everything encountered in it. Star Wars and
Dune are out because of their franky psuedo mystical approach to reality,
and the fact that they are all but devoid of science. Star Trek is a
marginal case, it does try to make everything sound scientific, but it has
a tendency to competely ignore real science.
I think that what I might be thinking about is a story, which might be
hard, that does not go out of its way to ignore science. Some examples of
Novels I would classify as Classic SF, The Foundation Trilogy,
City and the Stars (or the earlier The Fall of Night), Starship
Troopers (book not movie), Voyage of the Space Beagle, A Fire Upon the
Deep, The Hyperion Cantos (1st two books anyway, haven't read the last two
yet), any of Brin's Uplift Novels. Few of these books would be classified
as hard SF, but in general I would think they could fit under a category
between Hard and Soft.
: (I'm not looking down on 'soft sf' (for one, I'm a major fan of many things
: that would really be considered soft SF or space opera), I'm just saying that
: I've always considered the plausability clause to be the domain of hard sf,
: and the further you get from plausability, the less hard sf you've got, and
: the more you reach toward space opera and stuff. Whether or not something is
: 'classical' SF is tangential to whether or not it is hard or soft SF.
: There's plenty of "classical" SF that I'd call space opera, or reaching in to
: touchy-feely spiritial issues that have nothing to do with, or directly work
: against, hard-sf issues (and thus the plausability clause).)
I suppose when I think Classic SF I am thinking in terms of certain
Tropes, galactic Civilization, Possibly ancient mysteries... It can verge
on Space Opera, even be Space Opera.
David L. Pulver
On Wed, 18 Feb 1998, James Nicoll wrote:
> >Well, although there are Cyberpunk and Mecha games that are more popular,
> >I would guess that Traveller is still the most popular Classic Science
> >Fiction/Space Opera game around. Considering the difficulties with T4 and
> >the possibility of Imperium Dumping the line, I would guess that a lot of
> >people are waiting for the Gurps release.
I'd say that GURPS Space remains rather popular even without Traveller.
Remember, "game" does not equal "background." Many people use GURPS Space
to run self-designed classic sf backgrounds (just as many people used
Traveller) or adapt existing literary backgrounds on their own.
Of course, GURPS does not appear as popular as many newer games (e.g.,
Heavy Gear), but I would suspect that it has a sizable fan base --
possibly as large or larger than Traveller's -- current -- fan base, who
use it for classic sf roleplaying. Note that many of these GMs/Players
were former Traveller players, including myself.
John Rudd
In <6cfdd4$rqq$1...@news.umbc.edu> Bill McHale wrote:
> James Nicoll (jam...@ece.uwaterloo.ca) wrote:
wrote:
> : >
> : >: Just out of curiosity, how many old time Trav fans out there are
chomping at
> : >: the bit in anticipation of SJG attempt at Trav?
> : >
> : >I would guess that Traveller is still the most popular Classic Science
> : >Fiction/Space Opera game around. Considering the difficulties with T4
and
> : >the possibility of Imperium Dumping the line, I would guess that a lot
of
> : >people are waiting for the Gurps release.
>
> : Chronicles (which admittedly has exos, although I myself prefer to think
> : of them as a nasty typo which is found through out the book) all outsell
> : T4 and TNE at my store.
>
> However I would at least like to classify SF as something which at least
> makes a stab at being plausable, so that tends to exclude Star Wars and to
> a lesser extent Fading Suns. Jovian Chronicles is rather close, I will
> grant you that, but if exos are a typo, they are a rather large one :-).
>
I think what you're really defining here is closer to "Hard SF", where
everything presented has to be either consistant with current physical laws,
or a reasonable exptrapolation of what we already know. Sheffield's
McAllister Chronicles (sp?) do a good job at both defining and giving some
examples of this.
I can't think of much in the way of things considered "Classic SF" that fits
what you're talking about. Can you give some examples? I mean, some things
we can throw out right away are: "Forbidden Planet", "Star Trek", "Dune", and
most things with an FTL drive or psionics.. (see what happens when you put
that "plausable" bit in there..). Something like the FTL presented in
"Forever War" is at least trying to preserve relativity effects.
Most SF that takes place outside of just our solar system has to make some
leap past plausability. Even Niven's books have this hyperdrive thing.
(I'm not looking down on 'soft sf' (for one, I'm a major fan of many things
that would really be considered soft SF or space opera), I'm just saying that
I've always considered the plausability clause to be the domain of hard sf,
and the further you get from plausability, the less hard sf you've got, and
the more you reach toward space opera and stuff. Whether or not something is
'classical' SF is tangential to whether or not it is hard or soft SF.
There's plenty of "classical" SF that I'd call space opera, or reaching in to
touchy-feely spiritial issues that have nothing to do with, or directly work
against, hard-sf issues (and thus the plausability clause).)
--
John "kzin" Rudd jr...@cygnus.com http://www.cygnus.com/~jrudd
=========Intel: Putting the backward in backward compatible.============
"The hardest thing about being you isn't what you can do, it's living
with still not being able to do all of the things you can't" - Lois Lane
ed
>"Once again, the half time score.
> Alien Overlords: 142,000. Scotland: zip."
> - This Hour Has 22 Minutes
Your quote totally misunderstands Scotland's approach to Sporting
events.
it'd be Alien Overlords 1 Scotland 2
BUT
the next match would be.
Scotland 0 Spoo (Alien Food Creatures) 6
ed
--
edh...@equus.demon.co.uk _//// http://www.equus.demon.co.uk/
o_/o /// For devilbunnies, Diplomacy, RPGS,
<*> __\ ///__ Conspiring Rodents and other stuff!
Michael T. Richter
> The only way that the character above could be generated is if the
player
> decided to deliberatly silght advancement of their medical skills in
favor
> of their naval tactical and other skills.
Well, actually what happened was that I was pushing for a few skills
which were not medically oriented and kept getting fleet/ship tactics.
And then, when I noticed that the medical skill was languishing quite a
bit, I tried to roll medical skills and kept missing.
ed
The noble dbe...@nospam.hooked.net (Doug Berry) spake on the day of Wed,
18 Feb 1998 20:10:07 GMT:
>On 18 Feb 1998 12:34:55 GMT, "Michael T. Richter"
><mric...@rogers.wave.ca> wrote:
>
>
>>I saw a passing reference to what I considered the weakest point of CT:
>>the almost totally random character generation system. I thought I'd
>>point out why it was weak (my favorite example being the naval doctor
>>with 7 points of skill in various naval tactics and only 3 in
>>medicine).
>
>So there has never been a doctor who studied naval tactics, or had to
>learn on the job?
I'm not a big Trek fan, but I read the "Kobiyashu Maru" book, which
explains Kirk's, Chekov's. Sulu's and Scotty's answeres to the Kobiyashu
MAru scenario (and other stuff).
This book at least explains why the Engineer kept getting put in charge
of the Enterprise, because normally Engineers are not in the line of
Command, Scotty having done most of Command School.
Not great, but at least an attempt to explain a plot hole
John Kovalic
> >Just out of curiosity, how many old time Trav fans out there are chomping at
> >the bit in anticipation of SJG attempt at Trav?
I think the phrase is "Champing" at the bit (although I could be mistaken).
Anyway,
Champ, champ, champ!
John Kovalic
--
******************************************************************
"This must be Thursday. I never COULD get the hang of Thursdays"
- Arthur Dent
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
* "Wild Life": a Web comic -- *
* MUSKRAT CENTRAL: http://www.msn.fullfeed.com/muskrat/ *
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Steven Anderson
In a previous article, slo...@io.NOSPAM.com (Brett Slocum) says:
>On Tue, 17 Feb 1998 01:29:45 -0500, "Graelorn" <Grae...@gte.net>
>wrote:
>
>>Joseph M. Saul wrote in message ...
>>>I'm wondering if they'll have some sort of mechanic for *random* character
>>>generation. Jokes about dying during generation aside, I feel the random
>>>mechanism is really central to the feel of Traveller.
Hey, if the character you'd spent developing got killed off just
before you finished it, you aren't laughing. By definintion, the
character is the person you will be running in the game, unless the GM
rejects it. A mechanism that states the character who is ther died
before he or she could get there is defacto STOOOOPID. If Mocking this
aspect of Traveller can deter other game makers from EVER putting such a
mechanism in their products, the mockers can legitimately consider
themselves benefactors of humanity.
--
Which is the greater number of hours: Time sent covering the Cuban
Missle Crisis by the media or time spent covering the death of Princess
Diana?
Alan D Kohler
On Tue, 17 Feb 1998 01:33:14 -0500, "David L. Pulver"
<dlpu...@kos.net> wrote:
>On Sun, 15 Feb 1998, Thomas R Scudder wrote:
>
>> Joseph M. Saul (jms...@toastman.us.itd.umich.edu) asieoniezi:
>> : I'm wondering if they'll have some sort of mechanic for *random* character
>> : generation. Jokes about dying during generation aside, I feel the random
>> : mechanism is really central to the feel of Traveller.
>>
>> I see no reason to think they won't. They've done it in the past, when it
>> was appropriate (cf. GURPS GOBLINS).
>
>I can't see any reason why they should. The Traveller character generation
>system is a relic of En Garde, a solitaire game. It has a certain
>nostalgic appeal: it was the first-skill based system that I know of, and
>certainly the first that I ever used, and it was more interesting than
>rolling up D&D characters.
And I, conversely, see no reason why they shouldn't. Although my own
homebrew games tend to be points-based systems and I espouse them, I
see nothing wrong with random character creation systems if done well.
The Classic and MegaTraveller systems of character creation were
excellent, IMO, save the one flaw that they assume that fresh out of
high school kids have absolutely no measurable skills whatsoever.
Traveller (and many other) random chracter creation system have more
to offer than nostalgia. Many such as yourself have touted that
point-based creation is the "preferable alternative." I disagree; it
is merely an alternative.
>Nevertheless, it's sole utility is
>to assist players in coming up with a character concept, and IMHO, a good
>set of guidelines for character types ("Merchants will have these
>skills...") has equal or greater utility.
I disagree. Traveller was more than that. Certainly, using a pacakage
of skills or a skill chart that has mercantile skills on it will both
produce a character with the appropriate skills. But the latter will
add more; it gives the character a picture of the character's career
beyond what most players put into their charaacter concept and helps
add depth to the characters.
> If you really _can't_ come up
>with an interesting character on your own, some sort of story-telling life
>path system (like the one in Renegade Legion or the various RTG games)
>would be more useful.
Three term marines and five term merchants are _not_ character
concepts except in the vaugest sense. But it certainly gives you more
to work with than a couple of shopping lists of skills in most cases.
In either case, the player still has to come up with a character.
> It might be fun to learn I was stationed with the
>Imperial Navy performing a strike mission in my 28th year and was nearly
>wounded, but I'd rather the dice didn't tell me that my merchant has to
>buy a fouth level of Mechanic when I want him to have at least _some_
>skill at piloting a ship or being a trader or fancying goldish... Ick.
To each their own. I think that such random oddities do more to add
"quirks" to a character than 1-point kickbacks for such do in GURPS!
>I think GURPS' robust character creation system will be one of the
>highlights of the new Traveller --
I disagree. I think that such would be replacing one of the best
character generations systems in the industry with one of the worst.
(snip)
Spam Filter Notice: Remove "REMOVE2REPLY" to reply by email.
Alan D Kohler <hwk...@REMOVE2REPLYpoky.srv.net>
New on my RPG Pages: The swashbuckling South Seas campaign!
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Alan D Kohler
On 17 Feb 1998 13:56:35 GMT, "Michael T. Richter"
<mric...@rogers.wave.ca> wrote:
>j...@inlink.com wrote in article <6cab86$bin$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>...
>> How do you the character is a Navy Doctor? (Well, maybe if you're
>using High
>> Guard, which I don't have, so I can't comment on), but in CT, a
>doctor is
>> defined as a character with Medical skill of 3 or more. (p26, The
>Traveller
>> Book, p20 Book 1). So, a Doctor without Medical skill is impossible.
>
>Again, yes: I used Book 5: High Guard. You should learn the whole
>domain of CT before mouthing off to others with a lot more experience
>and knowledge than you.
>
>You also screwed up on another count: I said "a doctor with more
>fleet/ship tactics skill than medical skill" not "a doctor without
>medical skills". The doctor in question *had* Medical-3 (or it might
>even have been Medical-4 -- it was a long time ago). He also had Ship
>Tactics-4 and Fleet Tactics-3. That's three (or four) points of skills
>in Medicine and a total of seven skill points in various naval tactics.
> Only the totally buggered character generation mechanisms of CT (and
>MT and T4) would allow this kind of distortion.
Do you have a lot to learn! Join a branch of the military for a while;
you may learn something. In the military, cross-training is a FREQUENT
occurance, especially on small ships with small crews. As a perfect
parallel to the above, a corpman on a submarine (the closest thing to
a doctor on a submarine; I'd guess most that have to go through the
training that submarine corpmen go through would be medical 2 or 3 in
traveller terms) can qualify as diving officer... which could easily
yield skill levels in ships tactics. There is no reason to assume that
future space navies would be that much different.
>> Travellers quirks are no worse than say, Gurp's quirks, which
>encourages
>> players to play one-eyed, unstable, phobic, albinos.
Hear, hear!
>I don't play GURPS. I don't play Traveller. Both for pretty much the
>same reason: the game systems in each case are too clunky and dated for
>me to enjoy. I like much more streamlined and consistent game
>mechanisms these days.
GURPS, clunky - yes. Traveller.... I think they had something going
there with MT .... elegant and flexible (and many "modern" systems
have equivalent dice mechanics). The only fault is, of course, that
they don't support it anymore. Then they went to the GDW "house
system" with TNE, and soon after that, GDW went under (coincidence? I
think not!). Now we have T4 with its icky, psuedo-starwarsian dice
mechanic - blech!
I myself decided that the industry will not be producing a good
classic/hard SF game like Traveller in the near future and resolved to
write my own.
Alan D Kohler
On Wed, 18 Feb 1998 16:28:10 GMT, gol...@visi.com (Matthew Goldman)
wrote:
>Bill McHale (wmc...@umbc.edu) wrote:
>: So the question is... What game do you use now for Classic SF/Space Opera?
>
>GURPS.
Blech!
Gee, the name of the system even sounds like vomit.
Coincidence? I think not!
:-)
Alan D Kohler
On Wed, 18 Feb 1998 16:06:07 -0700, "P. ENGEBOS" <peng...@NMSU.Edu>
wrote:
>
>> Bill McHale (wmc...@umbc.edu) wrote:
>> : So the question is... What game do you use now for Classic SF/Space Opera?
>
>In order of Prefernce:
>
> CORPS
> Fuzion
> Gurps
>
> And maybe Alternity when it comes out.
Of those, I think I'd go
CORPS
Fuzion
....(scroll down to bottom of list....)
Alternity (seen it. NOT impressed)
and dead last...
GURPS
All IMHO, of course.
Jeremy Reaban
Actually, while I don't know about the 3 little books, in the Traveller
Book, death was an option (p18). If a character missed his survival roll,
he could be considered wounded in action, and only have to leave the
service midway into the term.
Steven Anderson <an...@lafn.org> wrote in article
<snip>
Scott D. Orr
>On 17 Feb 1998 13:56:35 GMT, "Michael T. Richter"
><mric...@rogers.wave.ca> wrote:
>
>>You also screwed up on another count: I said "a doctor with more
>>fleet/ship tactics skill than medical skill" not "a doctor without
>>medical skills". The doctor in question *had* Medical-3 (or it might
>>even have been Medical-4 -- it was a long time ago). He also had Ship
>>Tactics-4 and Fleet Tactics-3. That's three (or four) points of skills
>>in Medicine and a total of seven skill points in various naval tactics.
>> Only the totally buggered character generation mechanisms of CT (and
>>MT and T4) would allow this kind of distortion.
>
>Do you have a lot to learn! Join a branch of the military for a while;
>you may learn something. In the military, cross-training is a FREQUENT
>occurance, especially on small ships with small crews. As a perfect
>parallel to the above, a corpman on a submarine (the closest thing to
>a doctor on a submarine; I'd guess most that have to go through the
>training that submarine corpmen go through would be medical 2 or 3 in
>traveller terms) can qualify as diving officer... which could easily
>yield skill levels in ships tactics. There is no reason to assume that
>future space navies would be that much different.
>
Submarines are an exception--that sort of rigorous cross-training is
due to small crew sizes, and in addition a particular fetish on the
part of the sub community. Some military communities are like that,
and some aren't, but in any case a _doctor_ with extensive strategic
and tactical experience is not really believable, since officers in
auxiliary services (medical, legal, and even intelligence) aren't
allowed to assume (and aren't trained to assume) combat commands in
most mlitaries. And on a ship big enough to have its own doctor, you
wouldn't have the same need for cross-training anyway.
Scott Orr
David Crowe
Jeremy Reaban <j...@inlink.com> wrote:
: Actually, while I don't know about the 3 little books, in the Traveller
: Book, death was an option (p18). If a character missed his survival roll,
: he could be considered wounded in action, and only have to leave the
: service midway into the term.
I think the survival option was added after the 3 books were out.
--
David "No Nickname" Crowe http://www.primenet.com/~jetman
So as we can see, the last twenty years have made the use of nonviolent,
snack-related solutions utterly useless. -Jim Smith
George W. Harris
In Fri, 20 Feb 1998 12:02:32 -0500 of yore, mus...@msn.fullfeed.com (John
Kovalic) wrote thusly:
=
=
=> >Just out of curiosity, how many old time Trav fans out there are chomping
at
=> >the bit in anticipation of SJG attempt at Trav?
=
=I think the phrase is "Champing" at the bit (although I could be mistaken).
But GURPS fans have a religious aversion to Champs.
=John Kovalic
--
Doesn't the fact that there are *exactly* fifty states seem a little suspicious?
George W. Harris For actual email address, replace each 'u' with an 'i'
Jeremy Reaban
Nope! Just looked it up. Page 10 of Book 1, Characters and Combat. Of
course, my three black books are the 2nd printing. Still, I don't see them
going back and re-formatting everything just to add an optional rule-
they'd stick it in a supplement or something.
David Crowe <jet...@primenet.com> wrote in article
<snip>
Zoran Bekric
Bill McHale (wmc...@umbc.edu) wrote:
>John Rudd (jr...@cygnus.com) wrote:
< snip>
>Well I certainly cannot fault your definition of hard science fiction...
>Maybe plausible was not the best term to use. Though I do agree that even
>the definition I did intend would exclude Dune, and a lot of games with
>psionics (though not necessarily all of them). I suppose what I meant by
>plausible was that the material at least tries to give a scientific or
>technical explination for everything encountered in it. Star Wars and
>Dune are out because of their franky psuedo mystical approach to reality,
>and the fact that they are all but devoid of science. Star Trek is a
>marginal case, it does try to make everything sound scientific, but it has
>a tendency to competely ignore real science.
Dune not Hard SF? But Dune has one of the best extrapolations of ecology
ever done in an SF novel.
Or is even considering ecology what you meant by "psuedo mystical approach
to reality"?
Regards
Zoran
--
Zoran Bekric
(zbe...@hempseed.com)
ars longa, vita brevis
Bruce Baugh
>Dune not Hard SF? But Dune has one of the best extrapolations of ecology
>ever done in an SF novel.
It also has psychic powers and fate, which usually fall outside the
definition of hard sf.
--
Bruce Baugh <*> bruce...@mindspring.com
The Codex Brucaica <*> http://www.mindspring.com/~brucebaugh
New science fiction by S.M. Stirling, rolegaming, writers' tools
Kevin Brewer
In <01bd3d9b$ec55c0b0$525c7018@retrotech>, "Michael T. Richter"
<mric...@rogers.wave.ca> wrote:
~ > The only way that the character above could be generated is if the
~ > player decided to deliberatly silght advancement of their medical
~ > skills in favor of their naval tactical and other skills.
~ Well, actually what happened was that I was pushing for a few skills
~ which were not medically oriented and kept getting fleet/ship tactics.
~ And then, when I noticed that the medical skill was languishing quite a
~ bit, I tried to roll medical skills and kept missing.
So what were you going for; gun combat, or bribery? The other skills
on the staff officer chart are also on the medical branch skills chart.
I admit that the random system doesn't give you exactly what you want,
but I always found it to be a lot of fun. I find it amusing that you were
deliberatly going after non-medical skills. You were just annoyed that
you were not getting the non-medical skills that you were after.
Ain't life a bitch?
All of the systems that I play these days are points based. But that
doesn't mean that I don't get a bit nostalgic for those old random games.
These days I am more likely to use them as toys, building characters that
will never be played, or appear as NPCs when I'm running a game. Sometimes
trying to justify the results of a random system will allow you to invent
an interesting character that you would never have come up with if you had
complete control.
--
Kevin Brewer k...@hwcn.org
Joseph M. Saul
Steven Anderson wrote:
> Hey, if the character you'd spent developing got killed off just
>before you finished it, you aren't laughing. By definintion, the
>character is the person you will be running in the game, unless the GM
>rejects it. A mechanism that states the character who is ther died
>before he or she could get there is defacto STOOOOPID.
Agreed. So is anyone who blindly follows the rules, if it bothers them
that much. Didn't your group come up with some modification, like ours
did, and like everyone else I've ever talked to about this? We just
awarded a PH, knocked a point off a random physical characteristic, and
went on. Others came up with more elaborate resolution systems.
Joe Saul
jms...@umich.edu
Rupert Boleyn
wmc...@umbc.edu (Bill McHale) wrote:
>So the question is... What game do you use now for Classic SF/Space Opera?
Be totally retro - use Space Opera.
A (slightly) more serious answer - I use Traveller: The New Era (TNE).
R. Boleyn <rbo...@clear.net.nz>
Palmerston North, New Zealand
"This weak, degenerate generation - even their sins are watered down.
The old pirates of my father's day could have eaten them all for
breakfast and digested their bones before lunch."
_The Warrior's Apprentice_, by Lois McMaster Bujold
Rupert Boleyn
bruce...@mindspring.com (Bruce Baugh) wrote:
>In article <zbekric-2202...@ppp194.adelaide.on.net.au>, zbe...@hempseed.com (Zoran Bekric) wrote:
>
>>Dune not Hard SF? But Dune has one of the best extrapolations of ecology
>>ever done in an SF novel.
>
>It also has psychic powers and fate, which usually fall outside the
>definition of hard sf.
>
Not to mention that logical uses of available technologies are often
ignored.
One of the more obvious ones being the placement of one shot lasers on
anti-tank (or smaller) rockets, so that when they hit a screen the
laser fires, and it's bye bye battlescreen. Or a missile that has a
small high power screen and a laser in it.
Andrew Vallance
"Jeremy Reaban" <j...@inlink.com> wrote:
>Nope! Just looked it up. Page 10 of Book 1, Characters and Combat. Of
>course, my three black books are the 2nd printing. Still, I don't see them
>going back and re-formatting everything just to add an optional rule-
>they'd stick it in a supplement or something.
Nope it wasn't in the first printing. The 2nd printing was actually
included some major changes (weapons damages and small craft were the
biggest changes). The death = invalided out rule started as a house
rule in most campaigns (because the death rule was just so silly).
This particular rule ceased to be optional in MegaTraveller (ie since
MT characters don't actually die in generation).
Andrew etc.
a.val...@netaccess.co.nz
http://users.netaccess.co.nz/amv/index.htm
http://users.netaccess.co.nz/amv/abuse/abuse.htm (child abuse)
************************************************************************
The longest distance between two points is with children
************************************************************************
Chris Camfield
On 22 Feb 1998 03:34:00 -0500, ae...@james.hwcn.org (Kevin Brewer)
wrote:
>In <01bd3d9b$ec55c0b0$525c7018@retrotech>, "Michael T. Richter"
><mric...@rogers.wave.ca> wrote:
>~ > The only way that the character above could be generated is if the
>~ > player decided to deliberatly silght advancement of their medical
>~ > skills in favor of their naval tactical and other skills.
>
>~ Well, actually what happened was that I was pushing for a few skills
>~ which were not medically oriented and kept getting fleet/ship tactics.
>~ And then, when I noticed that the medical skill was languishing quite a
>~ bit, I tried to roll medical skills and kept missing.
>
>So what were you going for; gun combat, or bribery? The other skills
>on the staff officer chart are also on the medical branch skills chart.
>
>I admit that the random system doesn't give you exactly what you want,
>but I always found it to be a lot of fun. I find it amusing that you were
>deliberatly going after non-medical skills. You were just annoyed that
>you were not getting the non-medical skills that you were after.
Heh. Sounds like the military! I can picture a doctor, bored, trying
to get transferred to another branch, but bureaucracy will have its
way...
"Your psychological profile indicates that you would make an excellent
tactician."
"With all due respect, sir, my request is a transfer to medical
research."
"Tough. We need ship captains." (Or whatever)
Chris
Michael T. Richter
Jeremy Reaban <j...@inlink.com> wrote in article
<01bd3f23$b38b54a0$088e87d1@jer>...
> Actually, while I don't know about the 3 little books, in the
Traveller
> Book, death was an option (p18). If a character missed his survival
roll,
> he could be considered wounded in action, and only have to leave the
> service midway into the term.
That was a hasty patch applied because people were making fun of the
original rules too much.
Michael T. Richter
Alan D Kohler <hwk...@REMOVE2REPLY.poky.srv.net> wrote in article
> excellent, IMO, save the one flaw that they assume that fresh out of
> high school kids have absolutely no measurable skills whatsoever.
And the "death by character generation" schtick, of course. And the
fact that characters can't learn anything through hobbies. And the
sometimes completely idiotic characters which could be generated by
them (like a Scout bureaucrat with no shipboard skills who gets a
Type-S as a mustering out benefit or a naval doctor with more points in
ship and fleet tactics than medicine).
Aside from these (and several other) obvious, glaring, totally idiotic
flaws, the Traveller character generation mechanism was brilliant, yes.
Michael T. Richter
Kevin Brewer <ae...@james.hwcn.org> wrote in article
<6conto$q...@james.hwcn.org>...
>~> The only way that the character above could be generated is if the
>~> player decided to deliberatly silght advancement of their medical
>~> skills in favor of their naval tactical and other skills.
>~ Well, actually what happened was that I was pushing for a few skills
>~ which were not medically oriented and kept getting fleet/ship
tactics.
>~ And then, when I noticed that the medical skill was languishing
quite a
>~ bit, I tried to roll medical skills and kept missing.
> So what were you going for; gun combat, or bribery? The other skills
> on the staff officer chart are also on the medical branch skills
chart.
Gun combat. I wanted to get a level or two in some kind of small arm
so that the I didn't have to essentially sit out combats and merely
clean up afterwards (the usual role of medical types in campaigns).
> I admit that the random system doesn't give you exactly what you
want,
> but I always found it to be a lot of fun.
It could be fun, yes. I've never said otherwise. It's just that it
could also be a serious pain in the butt.
> I find it amusing that you were
> deliberatly going after non-medical skills. You were just annoyed
that
> you were not getting the non-medical skills that you were after.
In a properly designed character generation system, this wouldn't be an
issue.
> Ain't life a bitch?
Not really. That incident was one of the ones which lead me to
dropping Traveller in favour of other, more sane game systems. I now
quite enjoy these other games.
> All of the systems that I play these days are points based. But that
> doesn't mean that I don't get a bit nostalgic for those old random
games.
And again this is what I said a while ago: that this reminiscence about
the "good old days" is what's behind most who want to see the Traveller
generation system again.
> Sometimes
> trying to justify the results of a random system will allow you to
invent
> an interesting character that you would never have come up with if
you had
> complete control.
That was true for me years ago. It is no longer.
Thomas R Scudder
Michael T. Richter (mric...@rogers.wave.ca) asieoniezi:
: a Scout bureaucrat with no shipboard skills who gets a
: Type-S as a mustering out benefit
"So what am I going to DO with the blasted thing?"
Commander George MacDonald, Commander, TLA Scouts (ret.), looked out on
his prize: 20 meters of sleek silver starship - the pride of the Scouts'
service, the XCV-239 class Independent Scoutship.
"I don't suppose I could send it back? Get a full refund, that sort of
thing?"
Lt. Commander Jeremy Forsythe coughed. "Think. What would that look like
at fleet command? You KNOW that our division is long past due for a full
honors retirement, and you're the best lobbyist we've had in years.
Everyone knows that you were primarily responsible for keeping our funding
back in '67. This is a rare show of appreciation for folks like us, the
guys in the trenches.
"How would it look if you turned down the highest honor the Scouts can
bestow?"
--
Tom Scudder aka tom...@umich.edu <*> http://www-personal.umich.edu/~tomscud
I'm called little Ishmael / Sweet little Ishmael
Though I could never say why...
-from _H. M. S. Pequod_, words by H. Melville, music by A. Sullivan
SD Anderson
In article <01bd3f23$b38b54a0$088e87d1@jer>,
"Jeremy Reaban" <j...@inlink.com> wrote:
>
> Actually, while I don't know about the 3 little books, in the Traveller
> Book, death was an option (p18). If a character missed his survival roll,
> he could be considered wounded in action, and only have to leave the
> service midway into the term.
According to the Starter Edition set (1983) p.10, it
was the other way around. Keeping a character who failed
a survial roll during a term of enlistment was an option
in the rules. The default was that the character died.
-----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==-----
http://www.dejanews.com/ Now offering spam-free web-based newsreading
Craig Tremblay
Hello!
Any chance of the Droyne PCs being put back into the Treaveller system?
If so, will they get their own 'Aliens' book?
Craig
SD Anderson
In article <ttYH.2398$N4.14...@news.itd.umich.edu>,
Actually, before you play a game, you should read the
rules and evaluate them. The evaluation of 'Stoopidity'
comes whether anyone enforces that rule in game or not.
Unfortunately, many GMs did enforce it, which is why
there was sufficient motivation for GDW to add an optional
rule. And the fact they kept the rule is a pretty good
indicator that it had supporters.
James Nicoll
In article <01bd405d$c95810d0$525c7018@retrotech>,
Michael T. Richter <m...@ottawa.com> wrote:
>Alan D Kohler <hwk...@REMOVE2REPLY.poky.srv.net> wrote in article
>> The Classic and MegaTraveller systems of character creation were
>> excellent, IMO, save the one flaw that they assume that fresh out of
>> high school kids have absolutely no measurable skills whatsoever.
>
>And the "death by character generation" schtick, of course. And the
>fact that characters can't learn anything through hobbies. And the
>sometimes completely idiotic characters which could be generated by
>Type-S as a mustering out benefit [...])
Suddenly, the scout ship policy makes sense to me: it's a
pork barrel project aimed at subsidising the people who make scout
craft. Nobody cares if the scouts are used (which is why the air
filter design problem never got fixed). All they care about is
that scout ships disappear from inventory, justifying more purchases.
James Nicoll
--
"Don't worry. It's just a bunch of crazies who believe in only one God.
They're just this far away from atheism."
Alan D Kohler
On 23 Feb 1998 13:19:18 GMT, "Michael T. Richter"
<mric...@rogers.wave.ca> wrote:
>Alan D Kohler <hwk...@REMOVE2REPLY.poky.srv.net> wrote in article
>> The Classic and MegaTraveller systems of character creation were
>> excellent, IMO, save the one flaw that they assume that fresh out of
>> high school kids have absolutely no measurable skills whatsoever.
>
>And the "death by character generation" schtick, of course.
Which is GONE by MT!
> And the
>fact that characters can't learn anything through hobbies.
Sure they can. Have you ever *READ* MT?
> And the
>sometimes completely idiotic characters which could be generated by
>them (like a Scout bureaucrat with no shipboard skills who gets a
>Type-S as a mustering out benefit or a naval doctor with more points in
>ship and fleet tactics than medicine).
I don't buy those as major warts. Just because a scout bureacrat gets
a scout doesn't mean that he has to be able to run it. Can you say our
buraucracy is any little quirky at time. And I've already argued why I
think the doctor with ship and fleet tactics is no great travesty.
>Aside from these (and several other) obvious, glaring, totally idiotic
>flaws, the Traveller character generation mechanism was brilliant, yes.
IYO. From where I sit, it was pretty good, if not perfect. I'm sorry
Mr. Richter, but your arguments have shown no major defieciencies. MT
cleaned up most of the warts of CT.
Alan D Kohler
>In article <01bd3f23$b38b54a0$088e87d1@jer>,
> "Jeremy Reaban" <j...@inlink.com> wrote:
>>
>> Actually, while I don't know about the 3 little books, in the Traveller
>> Book, death was an option (p18). If a character missed his survival roll,
>> he could be considered wounded in action, and only have to leave the
>> service midway into the term.
>
> According to the Starter Edition set (1983) p.10, it
>was the other way around. Keeping a character who failed
>a survial roll during a term of enlistment was an option
>in the rules. The default was that the character died.
But by the time MT came out, the "wound" was the default rule.
Alan D Kohler
On 23 Feb 1998 13:14:42 GMT, "Michael T. Richter"
<mric...@rogers.wave.ca> wrote:
>Jeremy Reaban <j...@inlink.com> wrote in article
><01bd3f23$b38b54a0$088e87d1@jer>...
>> Actually, while I don't know about the 3 little books, in the
>Traveller
>> Book, death was an option (p18). If a character missed his survival
>roll,
>> he could be considered wounded in action, and only have to leave the
>> service midway into the term.
>
>That was a hasty patch applied because people were making fun of the
>original rules too much.
Oooh, yeah. Becasue they respond to the public, it becomes a "hasy
patch," eh?
Sorry, I don't buy it. Classic traveller was one of the first RPGs. To
expect it to stand for 2 decades without fixes is silly. And to call a
fix a "hasty patch" is equally silly. But trying to modernize it too
much was the downfall of the game, as TNE and GDW's demise have shown.
John P. Raynor
@news.clear.net.nz>:
Distribution:
Rupert Boleyn (rbo...@clear.net.nz) wrote:
: Not to mention that logical uses of available technologies are often
: ignored.
:
: One of the more obvious ones being the placement of one shot lasers on
: anti-tank (or smaller) rockets, so that when they hit a screen the
: laser fires, and it's bye bye battlescreen. Or a missile that has a
: small high power screen and a laser in it.
Not so!
Herbert does address this issue. At one point, Paul raises the
possibility of Harkonnen agents using lasguns fitted with timers to fire
into the shields protecting the ducal palace. His father replies that an
explosion caused by lasgun/shield interaction is nearly indistinguishable
from one caused by an atomic weapon, and the Great Convention makes using
atomic weapons against human targets an *extremely* bad idea. When Paul
uses atomic weapons to blast a hole in a mountain range, to facilitate his
worm-borne attack on the Empire's forces, the Emperor throws a fit, and
accuses him of violating the Convention. I strongly suspect that the
battle had taken place on any other planet, nobody would have paid any
attention to the technicalities, and Paul would have gotten himself
toasted for pulling such a stunt.
- J. Raynor
David Q. Spitzley
> >Nope! Just looked it up. Page 10 of Book 1, Characters and Combat. Of
> >course, my three black books are the 2nd printing. Still, I don't see them
> >going back and re-formatting everything just to add an optional rule-
> >they'd stick it in a supplement or something.
> Nope it wasn't in the first printing. The 2nd printing was actually
> included some major changes (weapons damages and small craft were the
> biggest changes). The death = invalided out rule started as a house
> rule in most campaigns (because the death rule was just so silly).
Actually, I could see a rather entertaining alternate campaign where
characters -did- die during training, but it was only a temporary setback.
I guess this would wind up as some strange horror crossbreed, although
death was also a method of gaining superpowers in the Elementals. Still,
this is obviously a tangent. Sorry...
Brett Slocum
On Mon, 23 Feb 1998 01:07:37 GMT, rbo...@clear.net.nz (Rupert Boleyn)
wrote:
>wmc...@umbc.edu (Bill McHale) wrote:
>
>>So the question is... What game do you use now for Classic SF/Space Opera?
>
>Be totally retro - use Space Opera.
One of the most retched systems on the planet. Even after
understanding the rules and building many characters, it still took 4
hours to build a character.
Brett Slocum, slocum AT io DOT com, unSPAM address to reply
http://www.io.com/~slocum/
Tekumel Home Page: www.io.com/~slocum/tekumel.html
GURPS Home Page: www.io.com/~slocum/gurps.html
Nick Eden
On 23 Feb 1998 13:19:18 GMT, "Michael T. Richter"
<mric...@rogers.wave.ca> wrote:
>Alan D Kohler <hwk...@REMOVE2REPLY.poky.srv.net> wrote in article
>> The Classic and MegaTraveller systems of character creation were
>> excellent, IMO, save the one flaw that they assume that fresh out of
>> high school kids have absolutely no measurable skills whatsoever.
>
>And the "death by character generation" schtick, of course. And the
>fact that characters can't learn anything through hobbies. And the
>sometimes completely idiotic characters which could be generated by
>them (like a Scout bureaucrat with no shipboard skills who gets a
>Type-S as a mustering out benefit or a naval doctor with more points in
>ship and fleet tactics than medicine).
>
>Aside from these (and several other) obvious, glaring, totally idiotic
>flaws, the Traveller character generation mechanism was brilliant, yes.
The problem with this example is that every Scout gets Pilot-1 for
free on enlistment. (Book1 P23)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
www.pheasnt.demon.co.uk/Pheasant/Pheasant.html
Comics. TV. Games. Stuff.
Nick Eden
On 17 Feb 1998 13:56:35 GMT, "Michael T. Richter"
<mric...@rogers.wave.ca> wrote:
>j...@inlink.com wrote in article <6cab86$bin$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>...
>> Everyone likes to make fun of classic Traveller, but no one seems to
>remember
>> the rules (the basic rules anyway, if you're talking about the
>supplements, I
>> can't comment).
>
>Then don't. In this next matter...
>
>> There's no such thing as a scout without any ship skills - all of
>them get
>> pilot skill (p25, The Traveller Book or p15, Book 1 (Characters and
>Combat).
>> (Of course, if you using the book Scouts, YMMV, as I don't have it)
>
>...I was specifically talking about Book 6: Scouts. Book 6 was still
>considered Classic Traveller last time I checked.
I remember that when I started playing Trevller (mustabeen 1981)
Mercenary and High Guard were out and established. After a couple of
years GDW started producing new core books, like Scouts and Robots.
They didn't have the same status.
Classic in the big picture, but not what we thought of as Classic at
the time.
Jeremy Reaban
It seems to me, that the original Traveller chracter generation, the one in
the 3 black books was pretty good. But when they tried to make it more
complex, like the systems in High Guard, Mercenary , and Scouts, they ended
up breaking it. That's where all your bad examples come from -the extended
generation tables from the extra books.
As to hobbies, CT tends to assume characters have skills that aren't Skills
in the game sense. For instance, most characters can cook, read, have a
hobby or two. etc. The skills chracters have, like pilot, engineering,
etc, are professional skills, that they could earn money doing. And even a
skill level 1 is pretty good, the result of professional training. For
instance, most people under 30 now days can program computers in say ,
Basic. Yet should they have computer skill 1? No, computer skill 1 is more
like the level of a decent professional programmer - not brilliant, say
like someone at Microsoft.
Michael T. Richter <mric...@rogers.wave.ca> wrote in article
<01bd405d$c95810d0$525c7018@retrotech>...
<snip>
SD Anderson
In article <34f1bcff...@news.srv.net>,
hwk...@REMOVE2REPLY.poky.srv.net (Alan D Kohler) wrote:
>
> On Mon, 23 Feb 1998 11:37:25 -0600, 10225...@compuserve.com (SD
> Anderson) wrote:
>
> >In article <01bd3f23$b38b54a0$088e87d1@jer>,
> > "Jeremy Reaban" <j...@inlink.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> Book, death was an option (p18). If a character missed his survival roll,
> >> he could be considered wounded in action, and only have to leave the
> >> service midway into the term.
> >
> >was the other way around. Keeping a character who failed
> >a survial roll during a term of enlistment was an option
> >in the rules. The default was that the character died.
>
> But by the time MT came out, the "wound" was the default rule.
And if the subject for this thread was "Cover of GURPS: MegaTraveller",
you'd have a point. As it was, Jeremy Reaban was commenting
on the Traveller rules and stated death was optional.
All I did was point out in Traveller, Death was the rule.
Not dying was the option.
Jim Davies
ni...@pheasntDOTdemon.co.uk (Nick Eden) wrote:
>Just a thought, cross genre, but what the hell. In Patrick O'Brian's
>novels Stephen Maturin clearly has at least as many points of spy type
>skills as he has medical. It can make for an interesting characater.
Handy combination. You can sneak up on people and heal them.
Dr Jim Davies
----------------------------------
Keep out of the reach of children.
Zoran Bekric
R. Boleyn (rbo...@clear.net.nz) wrote:
>bruce...@mindspring.com (Bruce Baugh) wrote:
>
>>In article <zbekric-2202...@ppp194.adelaide.on.net.au>,
zbe...@hempseed.com (Zoran Bekric) wrote:
>>
>>>Dune not Hard SF? But Dune has one of the best extrapolations of ecology
>>>ever done in an SF novel.
>>
>>It also has psychic powers and fate, which usually fall outside the
>>definition of hard sf.
>>
>Not to mention that logical uses of available technologies are often
>ignored.
>
>One of the more obvious ones being the placement of one shot lasers on
>anti-tank (or smaller) rockets, so that when they hit a screen the
>laser fires, and it's bye bye battlescreen. Or a missile that has a
>small high power screen and a laser in it.
Okay, the stuff about psychic powers I'll buy, but fate and not employing
technology as logically as possible would seem to be cultural and thus
irrelevent to the status of the novel as hard sf or not.
Or is hard sf defined not so much by hard science as by an engineering
attitude among the main characters? Is it hard sf only if teh rivets show?
Just curious.
Regards,
Zoran
--
Zoran Bekric
(zbe...@hempseed.com)
ars longa, vita brevis
JR Holmes
>Alan D Kohler <hwk...@REMOVE2REPLY.poky.srv.net> wrote in article
>> The Classic and MegaTraveller systems of character creation were
>> excellent, IMO, save the one flaw that they assume that fresh out of
>> high school kids have absolutely no measurable skills whatsoever.
>
>And the "death by character generation" schtick, of course. And the
>fact that characters can't learn anything through hobbies. And the
>sometimes completely idiotic characters which could be generated by
>them (like a Scout bureaucrat with no shipboard skills who gets a
>Type-S as a mustering out benefit or a naval doctor with more points in
>ship and fleet tactics than medicine).
Rather than follow up on the doctor with more points in tactical
skills (which has been done quite thoroughly), I'll admit to a certain
fondness for the Scout bureaucrat who receives a ship on mustering
out.
Though this exact occurence never happened in my play of long ago, I
did have instances in which a Scout player with minimal ship skill
happened to receive a ship. The proper way of playing the character
is as a person with many "friends" still in active service. In
exchange for the big favors represented by the ship, and other
instances, he became a sort of independent investigator that could
look into situations without bringing to bear the glare of an official
action.
The character got into (and mysteriously out of) a lot of trouble in
some of the more sensitive situations among minor nobility that were
chafing under the rule of a rather harsh duke. Lots of good stories
there.
--
JR Holmes
jrho...@execpc.com
Jeremy Reaban
I sort of mispoke. Death is the default rule, being wounded and forced to
muster out is the option in Traveller (2nd printing BBs/Traveller Book). I
consider them both options really, so that's why I used my phrasing.
At any rate, it (dying during character generation) seems to have been
a device to help the GM. In the rules it recommends that the GM keep all
the dead characters to use as NPCs.
SD Anderson <10225...@compuserve.com> wrote in article
<snip>
Bill McHale
sone.com> <34ef36df....@news.srv.net>
<01bd405d$c95810d0$525c7018@retrotech> <01bd40ad$5f70f4c0$628c87d1@jer>:
Distribution:
Jeremy Reaban (j...@inlink.com) wrote:
: As to hobbies, CT tends to assume characters have skills that aren't Skills
: in the game sense. For instance, most characters can cook, read, have a
: hobby or two. etc. The skills chracters have, like pilot, engineering,
: etc, are professional skills, that they could earn money doing. And even a
: skill level 1 is pretty good, the result of professional training. For
: instance, most people under 30 now days can program computers in say ,
: Basic. Yet should they have computer skill 1? No, computer skill 1 is more
: like the level of a decent professional programmer - not brilliant, say
: like someone at Microsoft.
Just a nit here, but most people under 30 cannot program a computer in any
language. Except for a relative few, most people who learn to program do
so in a class, and most non Computer or Informations Systems people never
take those classes. (In fact I know quite a few IS people who have no
clue about how to program either).
I would argue that computer programming 1 is equivalent to someone who had
taken one or two classes in programming. I would suggest that a score of
2 is the minimum requirement for a professional level of training.
--
Bill
***************************************************************************
(question == (2b || !2b)); If Shakespeare was a C programmer.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Home page - http://www.gl.umbc.edu/~wmchal1
***************************************************************************
Alan D Kohler
On Mon, 23 Feb 1998 23:10:19 -0600, 10225...@compuserve.com (SD
Anderson) wrote:
>In article <34f1bcff...@news.srv.net>,
> hwk...@REMOVE2REPLY.poky.srv.net (Alan D Kohler) wrote:
>>
>> On Mon, 23 Feb 1998 11:37:25 -0600, 10225...@compuserve.com (SD
>> Anderson) wrote:
>> > According to the Starter Edition set (1983) p.10, it
>> >was the other way around. Keeping a character who failed
>> >a survial roll during a term of enlistment was an option
>> >in the rules. The default was that the character died.
>>
>> But by the time MT came out, the "wound" was the default rule.
>
> And if the subject for this thread was "Cover of GURPS: MegaTraveller",
>you'd have a point. As it was, Jeremy Reaban was commenting
>on the Traveller rules and stated death was optional.
Get real. I think that discussing MT in this context is every bit as
valid as discussing Classic Traveller.
> All I did was point out in Traveller, Death was the rule.
>Not dying was the option.
And all I did is point out the converse in the case of MT.
Michael T. Richter
JR Holmes <jrho...@execpc.com> wrote in article
<6ctgfm$2...@newsops.execpc.com>...
> Rather than follow up on the doctor with more points in tactical
> skills (which has been done quite thoroughly), I'll admit to a
certain
> fondness for the Scout bureaucrat who receives a ship on mustering
> out.
> Though this exact occurence never happened in my play of long ago, I
> did have instances in which a Scout player with minimal ship skill
> happened to receive a ship. The proper way of playing the character
> is as a person with many "friends" still in active service. In
> exchange for the big favors represented by the ship, and other
> instances, he became a sort of independent investigator that could
> look into situations without bringing to bear the glare of an
official
> action.
And how is somebody with no ship skills at all supposed to be played
when issued a type-S on mustering out? I mean no pilot skill, no
navigation skill, no engineering skill, no mechanical skill, no
electronics skill, no gravitics skill... I think you get my point.
This guy had never been in a ship in his entire life. He probably
didn't even know how to operate an airlock. (He could fill out a mean
978-65VOHI-5437-UBYEWD-423987664123798 form, though!)
All the rationalizing after the fact in the world isn't going to change
the fact that the result was just plain stupid.
Michael T. Richter
> All I did was point out in Traveller, Death was the rule.
> Not dying was the option.
And even that was an option only from the second printing of the
original rules onward.
Michael T. Richter
>> That was a hasty patch applied because people were making
>> fun of the original rules too much.
> Oooh, yeah. Becasue they respond to the public, it becomes a "hasy
> patch," eh?
Nope. It becomes a hasty patch because it was the minimal change
necessary to divert the harshest criticisms of the game's character
generation system. It sort of solved the actual problem, but did so in
a manner that was jarring and still rather silly.
> Sorry, I don't buy it. Classic traveller was one of the first RPGs.
To
> expect it to stand for 2 decades without fixes is silly. And to call
a
> fix a "hasty patch" is equally silly. But trying to modernize it too
> much was the downfall of the game, as TNE and GDW's demise have
shown.
I didn't say it was expected to stand for 2 decades without fixing. I
said that one specific change (from the first printing to the second
printing of the original rules, no less) was a hasty patch. I stand by
it.
Second, GDW didn't go down because of "modernizing Traveller too much".
It wasn't even TNE that killed GDW and Traveller. GDW died because of
really bad business management (and not by rumours as one idiot tried
to say here before). Traveller was already dead long before the
attempts to modernize it started. It was an old-fashioned game with
quaint mechanics in a day when newer, sleeker and more palatable
mechanisms were mainstream. Further it was a game with multiple,
subtly incompatible flavours for almost every mechanism. MegaTraveller
tried to fix all that, but failed due to absolutely horrific editing
and a major change to the setting which pissed off a lot of old-timers.
TNE was an attempt to recover from the MT fiasco (albeit a failed
one).
Brett Slocum
On 24 Feb 1998 13:48:49 GMT, wmc...@umbc.edu (Bill McHale) wrote:
>I would argue that computer programming 1 is equivalent to someone who had
>taken one or two classes in programming. I would suggest that a score of
>2 is the minimum requirement for a professional level of training.
I always used the Skill-2 requirement for employment, unless OTJ
training was available.
Bill McHale
@news.srv.net> <01bd4126$4f65db80$525c7018@retrotech>:
Distribution:
Michael T. Richter (mric...@rogers.wave.ca) wrote:
: Second, GDW didn't go down because of "modernizing Traveller too much".
: It wasn't even TNE that killed GDW and Traveller. GDW died because of
: really bad business management (and not by rumours as one idiot tried
: to say here before). Traveller was already dead long before the
: attempts to modernize it started. It was an old-fashioned game with
: quaint mechanics in a day when newer, sleeker and more palatable
: mechanisms were mainstream. Further it was a game with multiple,
: subtly incompatible flavours for almost every mechanism. MegaTraveller
: tried to fix all that, but failed due to absolutely horrific editing
: and a major change to the setting which pissed off a lot of old-timers.
: TNE was an attempt to recover from the MT fiasco (albeit a failed
: one).
Well I rather liked MT, and yes there were some problems with the editing,
but then I encounter tons of games every day with fairly major editing
problems. Overall it had a rather neat and streamlined system.
I am just curious? How was TNE suppose to fix the problems of
MegaTraveller? The rule set was (with the exception of character
generation) almost a complete divorce from previous editions of the game,
and it had some significant problems (don't get me started on the autofire
rules; you know the ones where you rolled a number of dice equal to the
number of bullets fired). Further if Old-Timers hated the Civil War, who
in their right mind would think that they would like the the complete fall
of the empire?
If you ask me they would have been better coming up with an entirely new
campaign universe rather than the setting they produced.
Michael T. Richter
> At any rate, it (dying during character generation) seems to have
been
> a device to help the GM. In the rules it recommends that the GM keep
all
> the dead characters to use as NPCs.
"A device to help the GM." What a nice way to spin it! Ridiculous.
Contrafactual. But nice, nonetheless.
Michael T. Richter
Bill McHale <wmc...@umbc.edu> wrote in article
<6cvar6$ev$1...@news.umbc.edu>...
> Well I rather liked MT, and yes there were some problems with the
editing,
> but then I encounter tons of games every day with fairly major editing
> problems. Overall it had a rather neat and streamlined system.
Yes it did. Unfortunately it couldn't be used as supplied. For instance,
how did you use any of the automatic weapons? There was a column of vital
data missing in the version I had. How did you build starships? There
were formulae with undefined terms used to generate crew sizes. There were
starship weapons tables with entries missing in sporadic ways (left-shifted
by one whole column in some places with the leftmost column missing). Even
the errata sheet I finally got had to be corrected later with more errata!
The MT release was an unmitigated editing disaster: quite possibly the
worst I've ever seen. (This in a publishing industry which includes ICE!)
> I am just curious? How was TNE suppose to fix the problems of
> MegaTraveller? The rule set was (with the exception of character
> generation) almost a complete divorce from previous editions of the game,
> and it had some significant problems (don't get me started on the
autofire
> rules; you know the ones where you rolled a number of dice equal to the
> number of bullets fired). Further if Old-Timers hated the Civil War, who
> in their right mind would think that they would like the the complete
fall
> of the empire?
TNE was supposed to attract new gamers who had already voted with their
feet against the old rules set. Frank Chadwick thought (rightly) that the
old-timers wouldn't be able to support Traveller financially (given that
they had already failed to support it financially). He actually didn't
care if old-timers dropped it: GDW was losing money to the old-timers.
T2K was a quasi-popular game at the time. MT was moribund. Chadwick
thought that using one game system as the core system of all GDW games
would leverage a popular system into a moribund setting and system. He was
wrong -- mostly because he didn't realize two major points:
1) Virus was stupid and caused the new setting to suck.
2) T2K was a (reasonably) elegant game design with some quirks. TNE was a
crufted-together mess which replaced simple game elements with hopelessly
impossible-to-actually-use-in-real-life mechanisms (like your cited
autofire rules).
The theory was sound. The execution stank on ice.
> If you ask me they would have been better coming up with an entirely new
> campaign universe rather than the setting they produced.
Agreed. That's why GDW is no longer around. They couldn't figure out the
basics of judging their market.
SD Anderson
In article <01bd4126$74df0ee0$525c7018@retrotech>,
> <6ctknr$m3h$1...@nnrp2.dejanews.com>...
> > All I did was point out in Traveller, Death was the rule.
> > Not dying was the option.
>
> original rules onward.
No it wasn't. I was quoting the nineteen eighty three Starter
Edition. Even by that late date, Death on a failed survival roll
in character generation was the rule. NOT DYING but taking some
sort of crippling damage was presented as the OPTIONAL RULE.
SD Anderson
In article <34f2dee2....@news.srv.net>,
hwk...@REMOVE2REPLY.poky.srv.net (Alan D Kohler) wrote:
>
> On Mon, 23 Feb 1998 23:10:19 -0600, 10225...@compuserve.com (SD
> Anderson) wrote:
>
> >In article <34f1bcff...@news.srv.net>,
> > hwk...@REMOVE2REPLY.poky.srv.net (Alan D Kohler) wrote:
> >>
> >> On Mon, 23 Feb 1998 11:37:25 -0600, 10225...@compuserve.com (SD
> >> Anderson) wrote:
>
> >> > According to the Starter Edition set (1983) p.10, it
> >> >was the other way around. Keeping a character who failed
> >> >a survial roll during a term of enlistment was an option
> >> >in the rules. The default was that the character died.
> >>
> >> But by the time MT came out, the "wound" was the default rule.
> >
> > And if the subject for this thread was "Cover of GURPS: MegaTraveller",
> >you'd have a point. As it was, Jeremy Reaban was commenting
> >on the Traveller rules and stated death was optional.
>
> Get real. I think that discussing MT in this context is every bit as
> valid as discussing Classic Traveller.
>
> >Not dying was the option.
>
You're also claiming relevancy to the thread.
To recap:
Joseph M. Saul wrote in message ...
:> >>>I'm wondering if they'll have some
:> >>>sort of mechanic for *random* character
:> >>>generation. Jokes about dying during
:> >>>generation aside, I feel the random
:> >>>mechanism is really central to the feel
:> >>>of Traveller.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject & Context:
Traveller of olde
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Me:
:> >> Hey, if the character you'd spent
:> >>developing got killed off just before you
:> >>finished it, you aren't laughing. By
:> >>definintion, the character is the person
:> >>you will be running in the game, unless
:> >>the GM rejects it. A mechanism that states
:> >>the character who is there died
:> >>before he or she could get there is defacto
:> >>STOOOOPID.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject & Context:
Death in Character Generation, 'stoopidity' of;
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Reaban:
:> >Actually, while I don't know about the 3 little
:> >books, in the Traveller Book, death was an option
:> >(p18). If a character missed his survival roll, he
:> >could be considered wounded in action, and only have
:> >to leave the service midway into the term.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject & Context:
Survival roll death, status as rule or optional
rule in use in the 3 little books (Traveller of
very olde)
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Me:
:> According to the Starter Edition set (1983)
:> p.10, it was the other way around. Keeping a
:> character who failed a survial roll during a
:> term of enlistment was an option in the rules.
:> The default was that the character died.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject & Context
Survival roll death, status as rule or optional
rule in use in later printings of the Traveller
rules, establishment that death was not the
optional rule even then.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
:Kohler: But by the time MT came out, the "wound"
:was the default rule.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject & Context
MegaTraveller, a game first played years after the
3 books were printed.
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You basically changed the subject and stated a
factoid that bears little relevancy to the thread
as noted above over a number of postings. More
specifically, in reference to the title of the
thread, **GURPS: Traveller**, (ok, the Cover of...)
you need to establish relevancy. The license SJ
Games has to publish the game does NOT extend to
MegaTraveller, TNE or T4.
What was done in CT is relevant to G:T because
it is the material that G:T is based on. Will
this aspect of the MT rules be applied to the
GURPS version? Probably not. I really don't
see a point based equivalent of a survival roll
being put into the rules.
But simply pasting in that factoid about MT
does not constitute contextual relevance to the
subject. Had you added paragraphs showing
relevance and making some sort of point, that
would be an entirely different matter. But the
only thing you did after printing the factoid
was toss in your signature file.
Your post had no relevance to the thread.
Your post made no point at all relative to
the subject at hand.
If you do have a point concerning the subjects
of this thread and MT, please tell it.