Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;220136And this is almost proof to my theory that Wanderer wouldn't work today, as a product. (As a meme it does work very well.)
There are as many conflicting visions of how a Fantasy Traveller would have to look as there are gamers grognards.

I think it proves the opposite: the mere idea of Wanderer has people get so worked up about it they go off in all sorts of directions speculating about what it might be like.

I'm betting the farm that if published as photographed the game would sell 5000 copies.* Because it would scratch the itch of both the CotI AND the Dragonsfoot-type grognards. A rare feat.

*3000 sans box, 2000 if 8x11 rather than LTB.

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;220154I have known Traveller gamers IRL who played the game as a solo trading simulation [...]

But I have also seen players who did nothing but creating subsector after subsector, with hardly any gaming going on.

Absolutely, me too - and I've done it.

But to my mind that is no different from when GMs would spend hours every weekened drawing beautiful maps or writing up obscure deities and cultures which no player would ever see or care about.

It's a way to pass the time and is fun, but is not what roleplaying is really about, which is a group thing. And rpg rules have to appeal most to what happens in a group.

QuoteBTW, Kyle, your Six-Letter-System looks nice, simple and elegant. Now I feel quite stupid for abandoning my notes and struggling with hanging too close to original Traveller vs. being not true enough to the rules/spirit of Traveller.

Thanks! I haven't playtested them yet, but will at the first opportunity.

I'm not sure why you feel stupid. You just respected tradition. I don't

Weird, my group actually played CT and loved the hell out of the gearhead-y bits.  The trade system didn't come up often, but it made several appearances in play and the players were very concerned on maximizing profits from seized cargo.  We designed ships and made deckplans that were actually used in the game.  Those little sub-systems were like crack manufacturing for us...make it up then use it all as soon as possible!

That's great! I'm glad you had fun! You should start a thread and talk about it.

But why don't you play it now?

See, to my mind that's the real test of how good a game system and setting are, and how worthy of ripping off - er, I mean, "emulation" - not how nostalgic people are about it, but how much it's still played. I'd rather have written, say, Twilight: 2000 than Tekumel.

Our CT campaign ended many months ago, and we wanted to get back into fantasy.  Though we've been batting about ideas resurrecting our ATU as the wiki still exists with the library data we wrote, the first few session summaries, and everything.

I understand where you're coming from, Kyle, I was just surprised by the idea that people didn't use the economic, starship, etc. systems in play.  I don't really read CotI or TML (despite being subscribed to the latter), so wasn't aware of how widespread this phenomenon is.

Well, it's more that they don't play the games at all, but when they do play, we don't hear anything about commerce or gearhead stuff.

Whereas the people not playing talk about the commerce and gearhead stuff at great length.

I think it's a bit like the discussions you get on the GURPS forums where people discuss the minutae of developing powers to do this or that, or combat subrules, stuff that you know when it comes up in play, it's just not an issue. Like say overland hiking - the GURPS rules tell us that the average unencumbered person travelling on open ground can cover 50 miles a day. So they try to develop better rules for it, all the while forgetting that during play PCs never go more than 10 miles before encountering an adventure or NPC which keeps them busy the rest of the day...

It's not confined to Traveller. I just mentioned Traveller's gearhead appeal to say, well, it's not essential to games to make them popular. If Wanderer were made it could be popular without sailship generation rules.

A supplementry question:

Aren't the rules for spaceships very detailed? Would it be possible to convert them to work for sailing ships?

And another one:

In fantasy, usually the main weapons are hand-to-hand. Whereas in science-fiction they're usually guns. How would you convert that?

The Classic spaceship rules are fairly detailed, but not obsessively so.  You can do everything with pencil and paper if need be.  You could conceivably convert them to sailing ships (and I tried, but needed to do more research).

The only thing you'd miss out on is the nifty computer programs, which I kind of like from a game standpoint.  But, eh, it's not a necessary system, and most of what programs do (weapons control, navigation, etc.) can be done with skills and the like.

The High Guard supplement had a more abstract ship system that would probably work better for conversion, now that I think of it.

Quote from: Age of Fable;220261And another one:

In fantasy, usually the main weapons are hand-to-hand. Whereas in science-fiction they're usually guns. How would you convert that?

Because it had to cover a wide range of tech levels, Trav had a full complement of primitive/Medieval weaponry stats.  Easy enough to use.

Quote from: KenHR;220262The only thing you'd miss out on is the nifty computer programs, which I kind of like from a game standpoint.  But, eh, it's not a necessary system, and most of what programs do (weapons control, navigation, etc.) can be done with skills and the like.

Could they be crew?

Quote from: KenHR;220263Because it had to cover a wide range of tech levels, Trav had a full complement of primitive/Medieval weaponry stats.  Easy enough to use.

Sure, but wouldn't that make whatever stats and skills cover aim less useful, and whatever stats and skills cover hand-to-hand weapons more useful?

Quote from: Age of Fable;220271Could they be crew?

Yes, absolutely.  Wow, that's such an obvious solution...I didn't even think of that....

Quote from: Age of Fable;220272Sure, but wouldn't that make whatever stats and skills cover aim less useful, and whatever stats and skills cover hand-to-hand weapons more useful?

Well, you'd want to re-do the lifepath tables for character generation to reflect fantasy archetypes, anyway, so you just replace "Rifle" skills and the like with "Melee Weapon" and such.

Quote from: KenHR;220276Well, you'd want to re-do the lifepath tables for character generation to reflect fantasy archetypes, anyway, so you just replace "Rifle" skills and the like with "Melee Weapon" and such.

The ones I can remember reading about are Scouts, Merchants, Navy (could be said to cover any seafaring profession), Army (could be said to include mercenaries, town guards etc)...it'd sounds pretty usable as is, although it'd give a more 'low fantasy' feel than D&D.

Maybe you could have combinations of existing ones, like eg perhaps pirates are halfway between Navy and Army.

How does psionics work? Is it a profession?