Growing up in a small town with very limited roleplaying material available, I was never exposed to Traveller. So I was flicking through some classic Traveller books at the shop on the weekend and...

Wow. They just don't make games like that anymore. I had the same wave of nostalgia I get whenever I re-read the classic red box Basic D&D books. And this, for a game I've never even played before! I think I might actually buy the reprinted material.

I want more. Not necessarily more Traveller because the detailed universe actually bores me after a while. But more of that feel. That old school style of gaming that only the classics... the real classics can give you.

Old school Traveller is great because it is easily played with our without the official setting. I keep meaning to pick up a copy of the reprints myself, but I am unemployed going to school and living off my wife, so I limit my purchases.

*flicks through his copy of RuneQuest*

You're turning me off that Unknown Armies campaign, mate. That RQ ain't got anywhere near the fluff of UA. Less pages, more actual useful stuff.

I totally get what you're saying -- those games do a number on me, too.  Good to know I'm not alone!

You're describing the exact feeling I had when I cracked open my copy of The Classic Books reprint for the first time.  There's something about the presentation, both in how the books are written and how they are presented visually (the font, the sparse look of the pages, etc.), that gets me. And thus I had to start a game.

The old FGU games do that to me, too.  Never saw nor played them until the last ten years or so, and wow!

It´s because those games were made by wargamers, and not by would-be novelist.
The sheer professional awesomeness that 3.5 represents should still be honoured, though.

Quote from: SettembriniThe sheer professional awesomeness that 3.5 represents should still be honoured, though.

It should?  Why?

I'm not sure how much my story applies, but, here goes.

For a long time I played Vampire, then I played hunter, and bough the werewolf book just to flesh out werewolf enemies.  I never bought Mage.

I had the Vampire and werewolf special editions, so as the line was ending, I bought the Mage special edition, just to be a completist (consumer whore).

When I got it in the mail and casually perused it, my jaw hit the floor. It was such an awesome setting and game I almost died.

I only got to play like 6-7 sessions before nWoD came out, after that we couldn't go back to that horrible old storyteller system.

I'll still crack it open and read it though, and wish something someday will come close to being as cool (unknown-armies comes real close).

It's hard for me to think of Mage as "old-school" (REAL hard -- like, "Cadillac Up Your Nose" hard), but your mileage of course will vary.

No need use the OTU (Official Traveller Universe) which came later. Just pick up:

• any of the various editions of the core rules (books 1-3 1st or 2nd edition, Starter, Deluxe, Deluxe Starter, The Traveller Book and like some I'm forgetting; GDW did a lot of repackaging)
• Book 4 and/or the Traveller's Aide from QLI that covers civvie weapons
• Citizens of the Imperium for more careers

and start rolling six siders. The last two are optional.

Granted the rules produce OTU-like settings but you don't have to generate a sector just to play. The Traveller Book adds in a subsector of the Spinward Marches which is big enough and there are some other similar small snippets of the OTU out there. There's also the excellent GURPS Traveller: Interstellar Wars book which is a small-verse/small-ship Traveller universe with fewer aliens, lower tech, and a geared towards Classic Traveller goodness.

True.  My own Trav setting is an original subsector that waves at the OTU now and then.  The great thing about the OTU, though, is that you can stick your own stuff innere without bugging the larger whole...hell, sometimes even without making reference to the whole.  Remember, the LBBs were just the toolbox...the OTU is just, umn, a really big dinette set.

Quote from: JimBobOzYou're turning me off that Unknown Armies campaign, mate. That RQ ain't got anywhere near the fluff of UA. Less pages, more actual useful stuff.

Between stuff like this thread, your dark ages campaign thread, lev's 15th c. bit, and the Translight playtest, I've been going over RQ3 lately. Still more rules than I like in a BRP game but there's a lot of goodness there. I can always trim rules.

I do like some of the streamlining of later games and for newer games tend towards "hybrids". Like Castles & Crusades (d20 + TSR D&D), Tekumel: Empire of the Petal Throne (in play it's something like a point buy Runequest with one of the oldest settings), and Traveller d20 (d20 + CT/MT/TNE).

I always thought base edition Traveller would be great for a humans only universe as in Asimov's Foundation novels. About the right technology level and attitude, plus no aliens are included in the boxed set!

I never got into the Judges' Guild material for A/D&D when I first started role-playing around 1980.  However, I have since picked up a fair amount of JG stuff -- along with the revised material put out by Necromancer -- and it does give me a faux sense of 'nostalgia'!

Weird.  :hmm:

Uh huh. I was born in 1980, and yet when I first saw City State of the Invincible Overlord (and later the Wilderlands), I fell in love instantly. Now, of course, I can cite several rational responses about why I like JG products that much, none of which has to do with nostalgia - but a lot with aesthetics, game design priorities, table utility and so on. JG pioneered a lot of very functional game design ideas that never caught hold for some reason.