I liked Traveller better, but I played some Star Frontiers. They were both fun. Different. I'm a Traveller guy.

I had a huge amount of fun with Space Opera. Universe, too. I can't recommend ether as an optimal game design, but that was the time I really enjoyed making games work, whether they were designed to or not.

Haven't played either but just thought I'd pop in to mention this spot, which for the curious has a number of the old star frontiers rule books as .pdfs

http://www.starfrontiers.com/

Space Opera!!!

We played the hell out of that game. I have no idea why our group loved that game, but we played it for years.

Star Frontiers has such awesome races, cool setting, but what a crap system. I wonder why they didn't do a AD&Dish system.

But Traveller has been my go-to scifi RPG since I got the box set.

Quote from: Spinachcat;450517Star Frontiers has such awesome races, cool setting, but what a crap system. I wonder why they didn't do a AD&Dish system.

I'm glad they didn't. I hate AD&D.

Traveller. I can still remember generating subsectors with the LBBs as early as 1978. There was no Imperium then just the things we created instead. For inspiration from TV and movies we had Star Wars, and Battlestar Galactica, and reruns of Space 1999, Six Million Dollar Man, and Planet of the Apes.  

Towards 1980 and 1981 there was even more Sci-Fi goodness with Alien, Empire Strikes Back, BSG 1980, Buck Rodgers in the XXV century, the Flash Gordon Movie, and The Thing... then things really picked up in 1982 with a slew of sci-fi movie releases, mostly bad, with a few gems.

Plus there was all the Sci-Fi literature to draw on... up until 1981 I was running games based on Poul Anderson's Polestechnic League, and games based on Larry Niven's Ringworld and  and Jerry Pournelle stories, as well as Heinlein, Gordon Dickson, Phillip Jose Farmer, Isaac Asimov (Especially the Foundation series, which we saw as the precursor to GDW's Imperium), Joe Haldeman (especially Forever War), Arthur C. Clarke, and John Varley.

Anyone else here remember that series of Terran Trade Authority art books that came out with all those great plates of enormous  multi-colored starships... we used the books as references and many of our early games were based on those kinds of influences.

In my social groups we  thought Star Frontiers was a late release, an attempt from TSR to capture the growing Sci-Fi market share that GDW had pretty much locked up. We did use the SF counters and maps provided for our other games though... they were very good.

Before Star Frontiers was even published GDW had already released into distribution Traveller, Asteroid, Azhanti High Lightning, Mayday, Snapshot, Imperium, Dark Nebula, and Fifth Frontier War, and they also had a massive following with the Traveller's Aid Society.

The problem with Traveller is that it was marketed more towards wargamers back then. Star Frontiers, on the other hand, made it very easy to pick up and had cool art.

For Star Frontiers, I was the single holdout... I had bought a copy when it was first released, and tried to get the group I was involved with to play it, but they weren't interested.

We also never did figure out a way to make Star Wars really work using Traveller, although we had several GM's in our group back then try.

What's to figure out?  Light Sabers give have the penetration and damage characteristics of a Laser Rifle.  Blasters = Autopistols, SMGs, and Autorifles.  Jedi have psionics.

My only regular SF gaming in the '80s was West End Games: d6 Star Wars, and Paranoia!  Both very cool games in their original incarnations.
Sadly I got into Traveller just when The New Era came out, and it's my only significant experience of Traveller.

I played Star Frontiers, although I always found it kind of lacking. The universe, technology, and races all just seemed kind of half-baked.

I've never played Traveller in my life, and I kind of feel like I missed out.

Star Frontiers - simply because it was closer to the space opera of both the Star Wars films and also the StarBlazer comics I used to read.

Back in the day it would have been Star Frontiers for me.  I never saw Traveller until much, much later.  

Like many young gamers of the 80's, I didn't really go to game stores until I was older so the TSR stuff being in toy stores meant I primarily played those until I was quite a bit older.  BD&D, Star Frontiers, and Top Secret were the big ones in my case.  Less so with Gamma World and Marvel Supers, though those were played as well.  We even played the non-RPG Dawn Patrol a lot.

Oddly, only Boot Hill was never played because absolutely no store carried it.  I've still never actually seen a copy of it, even on eBay (I'm starting to wonder if it really existed).

As for Traveller, we all heard of it, but no stores in my area seemed to carry it.  The closest anyone got was Traveller 2300 (which, of course, wasn't Traveller at all).

Quote from: jgants;450588Back in the day it would have been Star Frontiers for me.  I never saw Traveller until much, much later.  

Like many young gamers of the 80's, I didn't really go to game stores until I was older so the TSR stuff being in toy stores meant I primarily played those until I was quite a bit older.  BD&D, Star Frontiers, and Top Secret were the big ones in my case.  Less so with Gamma World and Marvel Supers, though those were played as well.  We even played the non-RPG Dawn Patrol a lot.

Oddly, only Boot Hill was never played because absolutely no store carried it.  I've still never actually seen a copy of it, even on eBay (I'm starting to wonder if it really existed).

As for Traveller, we all heard of it, but no stores in my area seemed to carry it.  The closest anyone got was Traveller 2300 (which, of course, wasn't Traveller at all).

This is pretty much my exact experience, though I've never played Dawn Patrol but have seen Boot Hill on eBay once in a while.

I didn't have anything Traveller until the FFE reprints were published a few years back, at which point it became one of my favorite games.

we started out with both star frontiers and classic traveller, but slowly migrated to just traveller.  every now and then we'd throw some frontiers tech into our traveller games as experimental stuff (variable lasers mostly).  

star frontiers, while lots of fun, felt rather contained compared to the toolkit approach of the LBB's.  

didn't see space opera until i got to college in the late 80's.  even then i just copied the gear/weapon lists and incorporated that into my classic/megatraveller campaign.

Quote from: jgants;450588Oddly, only Boot Hill was never played because absolutely no store carried it.  I've still never actually seen a copy of it, even on eBay (I'm starting to wonder if it really existed).

My hobby shop had it every now and then, but it must have been one of the older editions, but the cover just wasn't appealing so I never bought it.