Quote from: One Horse Town;644066I think people are being a little unfair to Jeff. I can see some of the annoyance at the OSR being linked pretty exclusively to d&d, when plenty of other games share a similar ideology.

Well, nobody's stopping the people congregating around the Citizens of the Imperium forums to start making old-school games and adventure modules using the frameworks of CT and branding them "OSR" - or any other acronym for that matter. If Jeff has a problem with them not doing it, then he should complain about them not doing what they "should" be, instead of berating other people for doing what they want to. Or, even better, he should start writing a game like that himself. I know I would check it out; but the old-school D&D crowd doesn't have any sort of moral responsibility to create material for other systems.

If the CT people or the Star Frontiers people or the RuneQuest people have no interest in creating their own retroclones and variants and other old-school material, that decision is on them, not on the folks who are creating stuff for their own favourite games.

Quote from: One Horse Town;644066I think people are being a little unfair to Jeff. I can see some of the annoyance at the OSR being linked pretty exclusively to d&d, when plenty of other games share a similar ideology.

I like Jeff, myself, and can understand his POV, but I'd say he was in the wrong in that discussion...but I've never played Traveller so I may be talking outta my ass. :idunno:

Quote from: Premier;644069Well, nobody's stopping the people congregating around the Citizens of the Imperium forums to start making old-school games and adventure modules using the frameworks of CT and branding them "OSR" - or any other acronym for that matter. If Jeff has a problem with them not doing it, then he should complain about them not doing what they "should" be, instead of berating other people for doing what they want to. Or, even better, he should start writing a game like that himself. I know I would check it out; but the old-school D&D crowd doesn't have any sort of moral responsibility to create material for other systems.

You'll find no argument from me.

Quote from: One Horse Town;644066I think people are being a little unfair to Jeff. I can see some of the annoyance at the OSR being linked pretty exclusively to d&d, when plenty of other games share a similar ideology.

The way I see it, D&D dominates the OSR because D&D has always been the #1 game in the hobby by a wide margin.

Several bloggers in the OSR have already professed their love for Runequest, Traveller, TFT and other games.

It's true that none of these other classic games have merited the attention that D&D has, especially in the publishing arena.

However, I don't see how opposing one specific D&D-powered game (and an amazing one at that) does anything to address the lack of non-D&D material.

Traveller in particular is seeing a lot of third party publishing these days. You can even draw a nice parallel between the OSR and Traveller 3PP (e.g. the abundance of S&S stuff in the OSR, and hard SF in Traveller 3PP).

I just think that Jeff can express his preferrence towards Traveller in a more positive light. Like posting his Traveller campaign notes -- I know that he loves Traveller, but what are his campaigns like? Classic Third Imperium free traders? Mercenary tickets in an original universe all his own? Immortal transhuman spacers dungeon-crawling through abandoned astroengineering projects of a long-gone alien civilization, complete with house-ruled stuff up the wazoo to make this happen with CT?

He's actually done a good job of pointing out a few of the reasons he prefers Traveller to SWN, but I'd love to see him expound at length and in a less fragmented manner, and using actual play examples of interesting scenarios and decisions that arose with Traveller that he feels SWN couldn't possibly replicate.

Quote from: Spinachcat;644040There is nothing science fiction in Traveller's chargen, half of its skills and most of its tech. There is nothing science fiction in its task resolution or its combat system or its damage system.  Hell, I've used the space combat system for fantasy naval combat and it worked just fine.

CT has great core mechanics and so does OD&D. Thus, its no surprise to me that people would enjoy tinkering with using those mechanics for other genres.

It is at this point that I stopped believing you. Before I just thought you were crazy.

Quote from: Premier;644046Here's a summary of the last couple of pages for busy people:

- SWN does the sandboxy semi-hard sci-fi thing with a different flavour than Traveller. No one is putting a gun to Traveller fans' heads forcing them to play SWN, no one is campaigning for banning Traveller. They're just offering a taste that's similar to but somewhat different from what's already out there. They say "We like it this way better, feel free to have a try." They are not trying to deny Traveller's right to exist.

- Jeff68463 denies SWN's right to exist and would ban it if he could because it blemishes the purity of the Aryan sandboxy semi-hard sci-fi thing of which there can be only one. Jeff is a fucking cunt.


There, people, saved you a tl;dr. Did it as first post of the page, too, so you don't have to waste time browsing back.

Wrong.

Amusing, but wrong.

Quote from: Premier;644069Well, nobody's stopping the people congregating around the Citizens of the Imperium forums to start making old-school games and adventure modules using the frameworks of CT and branding them "OSR" - or any other acronym for that matter. If Jeff has a problem with them not doing it, then he should complain about them not doing what they "should" be, instead of berating other people for doing what they want to. Or, even better, he should start writing a game like that himself. I know I would check it out; but the old-school D&D crowd doesn't have any sort of moral responsibility to create material for other systems.

If the CT people or the Star Frontiers people or the RuneQuest people have no interest in creating their own retroclones and variants and other old-school material, that decision is on them, not on the folks who are creating stuff for their own favourite games.

Go reread what I have written.

My beef is that OSR has become vintage D&D only to a lot of people. Classic Traveller is OSR, but the Traveller fans did not have to go through the whole retroclone happy dance because Mongoose Traveller learned the lesson that older does not necessarily mean bad and made MgT backwards compatible with CT.

My beef about SWN is the author's belief that it needed to be written because Classic Traveller needs some training wheels for uncreative types. Even though the SWN author's belief hasn't stopped a shitload of others from creating tons of material for Classic Traveller.

Quote from: The Ent;644070I like Jeff, myself, and can understand his POV, but I'd say he was in the wrong in that discussion...but I've never played Traveller so I may be talking outta my ass. :idunno:

Contact me via PM and I will send you a copy of the game for you to try.

Quote from: jeff37923;644092Contact me via PM and I will send you a copy of the game for you to try.

Awesome!
You're a gentleman.

Quote from: The Butcher;644063Jeff... I think you're a great poster, but that's crazy talk, buddy.

Then to you, I am crazy.

Quote from: The Butcher;644063How do you feel the existence of SWN interferes with Traveller?

I addressed this in an above post.

Quote from: The Butcher;644063Do you think people would stop playing Traveller because SWN is available?

I also addressed this above.

Quote from: The Butcher;644063Because I don't think the SWN being around is bad for Traveller, any more than, say Runequest being around was bad for D&D.

I mean, preferring Traveller to SWN I can understand and even sympathize -- I love SWN but last time I ran SF I went with Traveller because it felt grittier, I'd never run it before, and having just wrapped up a 2-year-long Castles & Crusades game, being distinct from D&D was a plus. But taking exception at the very existence of a perfectly normal game strikes me as odd.

The exception that I take has two parts.

A) I think that the idea that any genre of game is better when it is done as a flavor of vintage D&D is bullshit and it causes people to ignore some really great games that have been around for decades.

B) I think that the SWN author's idea that Classic Traveller was flawed and thus needed to be "fixed" by writing it through the lens of vintage D&D to be wrong. There have been millions of Classic Traveller fans in several different nations who have created tons of material that demonstrates this.

Quote from: The Butcher;644077I just think that Jeff can express his preferrence towards Traveller in a more positive light. Like posting his Traveller campaign notes -- I know that he loves Traveller, but what are his campaigns like?

Shit, dude. I have Traveller campaign notes that go back for thirty years. Enough to fill half a bookcase and a good chunk of my hard drive.

Quote from: The Butcher;644077Classic Third Imperium free traders? Mercenary tickets in an original universe all his own? Immortal transhuman spacers dungeon-crawling through abandoned astroengineering projects of a long-gone alien civilization, complete with house-ruled stuff up the wazoo to make this happen with CT?

All at one time or another. Except for the one that reads like a Alastair Reynolds rip-off, not too interested in that.

Quote from: The Butcher;644077He's actually done a good job of pointing out a few of the reasons he prefers Traveller to SWN, but I'd love to see him expound at length and in a less fragmented manner, and using actual play examples of interesting scenarios and decisions that arose with Traveller that he feels SWN couldn't possibly replicate.

OK. Ask me some specific questions and I'll give you some answers.

Quote from: jeff37923;644095Then to you, I am crazy.

Aren't we all...

Quote from: jeff37923;644095The exception that I take has two parts.

A) I think that the idea that any genre of game is better when it is done as a flavor of vintage D&D is bullshit

I agree with this.

Quote from: jeff37923;644095and it causes people to ignore some really great games that have been around for decades.

How so?

Quote from: jeff37923;644095B) I think that the SWN author's idea that Classic Traveller was flawed and thus needed to be "fixed" by writing it through the lens of vintage D&D to be wrong. There have been millions of Classic Traveller fans in several different nations who have created tons of material that demonstrates this.

Not sure about the "millions" and I can't speak about Classic Traveller -- Mongoose Traveller being what got me into the game.

But it really is OK to love a game and find any given aspect of it "flawed". It's also OK to try and "fix" it and create something novel in the process.

In SWN's case I think the world generation subsystem does a nice job of supplying the GM with a very space operatic setting, which is a departure from Traveller's (at least as presented in Mongoose) hard sciencey outcomes.

I'll go out on a limb here and guess that Kevin wanted a different sort of planet-hopping SF game than Traveller, so he put his money where his mouth was and wrote one. He may have used D&D as his core engine because that's something everyone in his group was facile with, because it's super easy to roll up as character with, because he wanted to run a campaign of PCs raiding ancient derelicts and ruined colonies searching for pre-cataclysmic super-tech, or any one of several reasons that do not necessarily have anything to with "D&D is better than everything."

I see the point you're trying to make, and I even agree with it, at least in part; I don't think D&D is the be-all, end-all of the hobby. I don't think having any version D&D, houseruled or otherwise, as your system, will necessarily improve your game by dint of being D&D alone.

On the other hand, I enjoy witnessing clever hacks of a venerable old system. I don't think I'd use Traveller to run a fantasy game, but a modern-day spy thriller or a gritty post-apocalyptic adventure (a la Twilight: 2000) with Traveller both sounds like intriguing propositions that I'd love to see Traveller enthusiasts (with a better grip on the game than me) tackle.

Quote from: jeff37923;644100Shit, dude. I have Traveller campaign notes that go back for thirty years. Enough to fill half a bookcase and a good chunk of my hard drive.

And why aren't you sharing, you miserly sort of man you.

Quote from: jeff37923;644100All at one time or another. Except for the one that reads like a Alastair Reynolds rip-off, not too interested in that.

It's OK. This one in poarticular would be easier done withy SWN anyway.

Quote from: jeff37923;644100OK. Ask me some specific questions and I'll give you some answers.

For starters, do you use the OTU or a homebrew? If OTU, how do you deal with the years of accreted "canon" and metaplot?

Quote from: The Butcher;644114How so?

This very thread is a good example. Stars Without Number is touted as good OSR game while Classic Traveller takes a backseat. It does not matter that the gameplay of each is radically different from one another. The desire to have games which only present genres through the lens of vintage D&D means that the only style of gameplay presented is vintage D&D in (insert genre here). For SWN, it is vintage D&D in Spaaaaaaace and therefore good OSR.

Quote from: The Butcher;644114And why aren't you sharing, you miserly sort of man you.

Been busy writing and playtesting Traveller related stuff primarily.

Quote from: The Butcher;644114For starters, do you use the OTU or a homebrew?

Depends on the campaign and the Players involved. Sometimes I want it to be in the OTU in a certain era because that is what fits best. Sometimes I just want to go do my own thing entirely.

Example of a MTU -

I was listening to the radio on my way home from work and the songs "Seven Bridges Road" and "Copperhead Road" both came on back-to-back. My mind drifted to what a subsector map looked like and I visualized a series of seven jump routes between eight worlds in a diagonal scross the map with an eighth jump route branching out at almost a right angle to the main.

Both songs are American Southern Rock and I wanted the area to have that kind of flavor to it. Christian religion, particularly Baptists, are big in the American South, and I wanted to include it but remembered that one of the things that Marc Miller (The creator of Traveller) prefers to avoid is religion. Since it is my own campaign, I broke that rule.

I decided that the area was initally colonized by a double misjump to keep it far away from most OTU stuff but allow the possibility of having it link up one day. So the colony ship accidentally misjumped at first and ended up in an area where an alien ship was. The alien ship then used a weapon that caused the colony ship to misjump again even further off course. Most of the colonists were in low berths and only a skeleton command crew was awake. Forced to make due with the marginally habitable world near where the colony ship exited the second misjump, the Captain made the decision to spin the alien contact and the misjumps as God's way of placing the colonists exactly where God thought they needed to be.

A branch of Christianity was formed in the colony that embraced science and technology as ways of understanding God and thus the colony thrived in spite of the hardships. Building up industry and tech to the point wheer they could build starships and explore their own neighboring star systems was almost a holy calling to these people.

The campaign began right after the initial exploration wave and the beginning of the first colonization wave in that subsector.

Quote from: The Butcher;644114If OTU, how do you deal with the years of accreted "canon" and metaplot?

I set the campaign in an era that I choose. Also, just because something is canon does not mean that I cannot change it or that the Players know about it. Plus, some things are golden while others do not make much sense at all.

Quote from: The Butcher;644114I'll go out on a limb here and guess that Kevin wanted a different sort of planet-hopping SF game than Traveller, so he put his money where his mouth was and wrote one. He may have used D&D as his core engine because that's something everyone in his group was facile with, because it's super easy to roll up as character with, because he wanted to run a campaign of PCs raiding ancient derelicts and ruined colonies searching for pre-cataclysmic super-tech, or any one of several reasons that do not necessarily have anything to with "D&D is better than everything."

Really, it was just a matter of wanting to write a consciously sandbox-focused sci-fi game that was built from the ground up to support a particular style of play. I really like sandboxes, so I write games that help people make sandboxes. Spears of the Dawn, Other Dust, SWN, the two I'm working on right now- they're all built to treat their topics from the perspective of a GM who wants to make an easy, effective, useful sandbox of his game.

The system these games uses doesn't especially matter. I picked old-school mechanics because the vast majority of gamers understand them and can gloss over them on their way to the important parts of the books- the parts where they build their sci-fi sector, or put together their post-apoc wasteland, or gin up their own version of the African-flavored Five Kingdoms. Those parts are the reasons I wrote the games and the reasons I'm writing the next games as well.

It may be that this somehow wounds their predecessors, but I don't give a damn. Traveller has taken care of itself for the past thirty years without my generous cheerleading, and I suspect it would continue on merrily were I to spend the rest of my days wharrrgrbling against it. It does its thing, I do mine, and there's not a damn thing anyone can do to stop us.

Quote from: jeff37923;644090Go reread what I have written.

My beef is that OSR has become vintage D&D only to a lot of people. Classic Traveller is OSR, but the Traveller fans did not have to go through the whole retroclone happy dance because Mongoose Traveller learned the lesson that older does not necessarily mean bad and made MgT backwards compatible with CT.

My beef about SWN is the author's belief that it needed to be written because Classic Traveller needs some training wheels for uncreative types. Even though the SWN author's belief hasn't stopped a shitload of others from creating tons of material for Classic Traveller.

Well Jeff, the best way to counteract that OSR=D&D is to write a game under the "banner" of OSR with mechanics of Traveller or RuneQuest in mind, rather than scream "OSR IS NOT DnD", which I must admit, you do have a point on.