TheRPGSite

Just like the thread title says.

There's a great abundance of fantasy OSR/retroclone games, but damned if the pickings for non-fantasy aren't still pretty slim.

For my part I put out Hulks and Horrors of course for SF, and SWN offers a different take, and on the docket for the future I'd like to try tackling cyberpunk at some point, and I've seen one or two kinda weak attempts at supers or pulp, but overall it seems like there's still kind of a small number out there.

Any genres you're particularly interested in seeing get old-school-D&D-ified?

Modern-day spy thrillers.

I'd love to see a TSR-era-D&D-powered game in which players are a mercenary black ops outfit taking missions in a world of military, political and corporate intrigue set up sandbox-style.

No magic, but maybe we could have a Gadgeteer class and a big ol' gadget list, from prosaic surveillance equipment and gun sights, to crazy James Bond stuff like laser pens and explosive cufflinks.

To top it off, endgame procedures for PCs to become movers and shakers and spin their own webs of intrigue. Unless of course they'd rather retire to a tropical paradise or remote island.

I dunno if its OSR and maybe this doesn't answer your question, but I'd like to see some throwback Spy game, even in its setting. Some 1980s era spy/action stuff. That could be cool.

Quote from: The Butcher;643413Modern-day spy thrillers.

I'd love to see a TSR-era-D&D-powered game in which players are a mercenary black ops outfit taking missions in a world of military, political and corporate intrigue set up sandbox-style.

No magic, but maybe we could have a Gadgeteer class and a big ol' gadget list, from prosaic surveillance equipment and gun sights, to crazy James Bond stuff like laser pens and explosive cufflinks.

To top it off, endgame procedures for PCs to become movers and shakers and spin their own webs of intrigue. Unless of course they'd rather retire to a tropical paradise or remote island.

This, totally this. Except maybe minus the gagets, and gadgeteers. Ive always been more partial to John le Carré than James Bond.

Quote from: Ronin;643421This, totally this. Except maybe minus the gagets, and gadgeteers. Ive always been more partial to John le Carré than James Bond.

I'd say that, if we're talking typical DnDish mechanics, it'd be a cross between Fleming's and le Carre's depictions of modern espionage - on one hand, indeed the film gadget's best be gone, or related to the status of "magic items", so to speak, but on the other - since given the typical DnD mechanic Mechanical Power = Position, you'd need to take care of the notions of "falling from grace", loosing your social standing to Do The Right Thing, and the moral and sanity - depriving decisions, that are common in le Carre's characters.

What about a Western setting? I mean, DnD's lbasically taking a Wild West ideas of equality and Skill=Social Standing to the fantasy setting. I'd certainly see a potential for "mechanics - light" Western game. Deadlands, while an interesting setting, have a far too odd mechanic for me, and Aces and Eights, while my current favourite on the Western Front, aren't rules - light for sure.

And as said - even the name levels'd fit. Depending on the class, you'd get a goldmine, town, sheriff's office or a parish...etc.etc.

Within the fantasy genre, I'd love to see two OSR things: one that genuinely feels like the myths and and legends of antiquity and the middle ages, and one that does High Fantasy well.

Outside medieval fantasy... not sure. Something that puts an adventuring spin on 20th century warfare, perhaps in the register of Kelly's Heroes, might be fun.

After watching The Walking Dead, I have been interested in Survival Horror. It would seem to have both a strong sandbox and lethality feel to it.

I've said it many times: '50s atomic age horror.

Personally, I'm also really kind of itching to tackle some kind of urban fantasy. Somewhere between Dresden Files and the "D&D meets Modern Day" stuff they teased at but never really properly handled in D20 Modern.

Commando-esque (as in the Shwartzenegger movie) action movies.

Postnuke!  Some T2k-like or Aftermath! or Morrow Project.

Quote from: talysman;643441I've said it many times: '50s atomic age horror.

Yes this as well. Bring on the Jonny Quest style adventure!!!!

Quote from: J Arcane;643479Personally, I'm also really kind of itching to tackle some kind of urban fantasy. Somewhere between Dresden Files and the "D&D meets Modern Day" stuff they teased at but never really properly handled in D20 Modern.

Yeah the Urban Arcana setting was lacking at best.

Quote from: thedungeondelver;643482Postnuke!  Some T2k-like or Aftermath! or Morrow Project.

Serious Post-Apoc would be welcome as well. Seriously this thread is made of win. So many ideas, so little time......

Quote from: Ronin;643629Yeah the Urban Arcana setting was lacking at best.

It was a seriously cool idea, it just seemed very perfunctory and the boring d20 Modern classes didn't really sell it.

I want to do something like the 2e game my friends and I tried as a lad, where D&D stuff straight up manifested and we were all playing actual D&D classes.

So like, wizards and stuff are still there, but the wizard can carry a .44.

Lucha Libre wrestlers vs Monsters
http://wrongsideoftheart.com/wp-content/gallery/posters-s/santo_and_blue_demon_vs_monsters_poster_01.jpg

Quote from: TristramEvans;643643
Lucha Libre wrestlers vs Monsters
http://wrongsideoftheart.com/wp-content/gallery/posters-s/santo_and_blue_demon_vs_monsters_poster_01.jpg

Only if based on this,
(http://d1466nnw0ex81e.cloudfront.net/n_iv/600/1110741.jpg)

A number of different genres have been represented on various blogs and forums.

I and others have done the following:
Western/Spaghetti Western
Victorian/ Monster Hunting
Colonial/Historical and Horror
War (WWII and Vietnam both historical and fantastic)

I'd like to see a good Greek or Viking themed game (other than Mazes and Minotaurs/Vikings and Valkryies)

I second the 50's Atomic stuff (and yes I'm working on something myself. :P)

Simon Washburne has done a lot of genre OSR games as well:

Blood & Bullets (Western)
Sabres & Witchery (Colonial Monster Hunter)
Ancient Mysteries & Lost Treasures (Modern Treasure Hunter)

Looks like he's working on Post Apoc, Supers, and Space Fantasy.
Here's his site: http://beyondbeliefgames.webs.com/freestuff.htm

Hey wasnt Berin someone or another working on a James Bond clone? What ever happened to that?

I like to see something with some WWII tech and flavour. Not necessarily Historical or Weird War on Earth. More like a few disparate squads of axis (well lots of Nazi's to shoot in the face) and allied soldiers ending up in a bog standard D&D type world.

I'd also like to see a Heroes (as in the TV show) type scenario in a low fantasy D&D setting, and a Zombie Apocalypse in a High Fantasy setting.

Some pulp space opera osr rules with lots of weird aliens, planet hoping, rocketships, robots, and rayguns would be fun too.

Non-gonzo Post Apocalyptic (I like Mutant Future and all but I want something more... grounded).
Cyberpunk
Spies

Quote from: LibraryLass;643795Non-gonzo Post Apocalyptic (I like Mutant Future and all but I want something more... grounded).
Cyberpunk
Spies

Yeah, Shadowrun OSR could be really good. Use something like the SWN engine, replace "class" with "power source" (Mana, cyberware, skillz). Probably the biggest change would be stuff like racial stats, but you could handle those with either stat mod changes, or die rolling tricks.

If anyone else ever does the spy-fi stuff, above, it could be "generously borrowed" to such a game.

I did start tinkering with this, as one of my "less bullshit SR" ideas, but eventually went another route. Still, could be revisited.

No more OSR treatment!

I know that people here like Stars Without Number and Hulks & Horrors, I like H&H as well, but the fact is that Classic Traveller was around back during the era that the OSR wants to replicate and Mongoose Traveller does not do the Classic Traveller game any injustice and both games are fully compatible with each other.

Stars Without Number is Traveller with levels. If I wanted that, I would play d20 Traveller. Back in the day when they first came out, I thought that Space Opera sucked and Star Frontiers sucked and FASA Star Trek sucked - none could compare to Traveller back then and those games still suck today. Likewise, by keeping the aspects of Classic Traveller that make it such a success, Mongoose Traveller has no real competition today.

(Although that may not keep Mongoose from stepping on its own dick, like with what happened to its Babylon 5 license.)

Mongoose Traveller was OSR to Classic Traveller before it was very popular to do so and does it better than any that have followed. I'm sick of seeing new games made just to grab a piece of the nostalgia profit. I'd like to see the current games be used in new and creative settings made by Third Parties. Mongoose Traveller has already been the springboard to launch several of these.

So the OSR has been great, now start doing something with what is out there already instead of masticating old material for a few bucks.

I don't really understand what you're complaining about.

I also don't see why the existence of other games in the old-school era in a particular genre precludes the existence of vintage D&D treatments of those genres.  

And if there had been another game like Hulks and Horrors already out there, I wouldn't have made it.  

That's not how I operate. It's partly why I've put Hackerscape on hold: it was shaping up to be too generic.

Quote from: J Arcane;643895I don't really understand what you're complaining about.

I also don't see why the existence of other games in the old-school era in a particular genre precludes the existence of vintage D&D treatments of those genres.  

Because not every genre needs a vintage D&D treatment. To say that every genre needs a vintage D&D treatment is to say that every game genre is invalid unless it is like vintage D&D.

Quote from: jeff37923;643896Because not every genre needs a vintage D&D treatment. To say that every genre needs a vintage D&D treatment is to say that every game genre is invalid unless it is like vintage D&D.

No it doesn't.

That's absurd.

You are being silly right now, aren't you? You can't honestly believe that making a D&D game is offensive to non-D&D games.

I agreed with you Jeff on the first point - I'd say that for some genres, there are much better fits than vintage DnD mechanics. But the second comment was a bit of jumping the shark.

Then again, I suppose the first jumping the shark was obviously daring to say that DnD may not be bacon. You iconoclast you.

Quote from: J Arcane;643898No it doesn't.

That's absurd.

You are being silly right now, aren't you? You can't honestly believe that making a D&D game is offensive to non-D&D games.

No, not being silly.

Just sit with that thought for a while.

Quote from: jeff37923;643890Stars Without Number is Traveller with levels. If I wanted that, I would play d20 Traveller.

The mechanics in SWN take up several dozen pages out of 240, leaving a suspicious number unaccounted for. If all SWN happened to be was Traveller with levels, I never would have bothered to write it in the first place.

SWN and many of the new old-school RPGs have very little to do with mechanical concerns. They involve a systematic deprivileging of system identity as the dominant trait of a game. Take Hulks & Horrors,  Backswords & Bucklers, Crypts & Things, ACKS, or the like- what they're selling isn't "another version of D&D", they're selling "dungeoncrawling in space", "Elizabethan adventuring", "Lovecraftian S&S", and "integrated fantasy adventurer endgame". OSR mechanics are used in almost all these cases simply because they are the most effective medium for conveying the creative payload of the project.

A "vintage D&D treatment" misses the point. It is not about the D&D, it is about the treatment. Old-school mechanics are amazingly robust, widely-understood, and extremely amenable to homebrewing. If you have some shiny new idea you want out, why shouldn't you simply use a perfectly good existing chassis to carry your message?

Quote from: jeff37923;643903No, not being silly.

Just sit with that thought for a while.

As the player and creator of a number of non-D&D games, I don't have to sit very long at all to tell you your thesis is bananas.

Quote from: SineNomine;643905A "vintage D&D treatment" misses the point. It is not about the D&D, it is about the treatment. Old-school mechanics are amazingly robust, widely-understood, and extremely amenable to homebrewing. If you have some shiny new idea you want out, why shouldn't you simply use a perfectly good existing chassis to carry your message?

Because the idea is not new nor has it not already been done.

"Dungeoncrawling in space" has been done since the inception of Classic Traveller. The adventures Shadows, Annic Nova, and Death Station are testament to the concept of "dungeoneering in space". They were done well enough that those adventures are still played and enjoyed today. In fact, I argue that one of the main reasons why they are so enjoyable to play then and now is that they are made with the dungeoncrawling concept, but with the added complication of the high lethality of the Traveller combat system.

Replace Classic Traveller mechanics with vintage D&D mechanics and you lose the impact and fun of the above adventures.

Quote from: J Arcane;643906As the player and creator of a number of non-D&D games, I don't have to sit very long at all to tell you your thesis is bananas.

Which was better suited to immersion and fun in the Star Wars universe? The d6 version or the d20 version of the RPG?

Quote from: jeff37923;643913Which was better suited to immersion and fun in the Star Wars universe? The d6 version or the d20 version of the RPG?

Depends on the group. Familiarity with a system can count for more than anything else sometimes. Personally I cant stand D20, but I know people who swear by it.

I have been working on a OSR-ish Spy game, but I only had one playtest and I was not sure if I was happy with the lethality. There are HP for wounds, but I wanted a game where guns kill people and weapons do D6+X and you die on a natural roll of a 6. So you could survive several non-killing blows, taking various hits from weapons, but regardless of your health sometimes your head gets popped. The players liked the danger level because it made the genre about sneaky Spies and not Rambo. I am tinkering to make nat 20 into a kill shot instead, lessening auto-kills from 17% to 5% which may be a better idea.

Quote from: jeff37923;643913Which was better suited to immersion and fun in the Star Wars universe? The d6 version or the d20 version of the RPG?

I didn't enjoy D20 Star Wars but many others did.

Are you accusing those that did of badwrongfun?

Because that's what that question reads like.

Quote from: jeff37923;643910"Dungeoncrawling in space" has been done since the inception of Classic Traveller. The adventures Shadows, Annic Nova, and Death Station are testament to the concept of "dungeoneering in space". They were done well enough that those adventures are still played and enjoyed today. In fact, I argue that one of the main reasons why they are so enjoyable to play then and now is that they are made with the dungeoncrawling concept, but with the added complication of the high lethality of the Traveller combat system.

Because the OSR combat system is... less lethal? Yeah, I'm not following you here. Old-school D&D started out substantially more lethal than Classic Traveller ever did, and it wasn't until mid-levels that you could actually keep breathing for longer under fire than the average Traveller PC. The average newbie Traveller PC could actually get hit without expecting to die on the spot.

QuoteReplace Classic Traveller mechanics with vintage D&D mechanics and you lose the impact and fun of the above adventures.

And if your sole objective was to perfectly reproduce the lethality level and thrilling excitement of exploring featureless acid-atmosphere alien farm tunnels in vintage D&D mechanics, then you're right- you would be wasting your time. Yet none of the games I've pointed to are actually trying to do that. They are trying to do new things.

Unsurprisingly, I like Traveller. I've got the Classic Traveller one-volume hardback next to me right now. It gives me lots of help in determining a planet's hydrography, and precisely zero in figuring out why any adventurer should give a rat's ass about the place. I wrote SWN so that somebody could sit down and actually put together a playable, adventure-worthy sci-fi sandbox without killing himself on minutiae. People can argue whether or not I succeeded in pulling it off, but the mechanical framework I chose was totally irrelevant to that goal save that it was most usable and comprehensible to my target audience. Telling people to stop using old-school mechanics is like telling painters to stop using oils- it misses the fundamental point.

Quote from: J Arcane;643919I didn't enjoy D20 Star Wars but many others did.

Are you accusing those that did of badwrongfun?

Because that's what that question reads like.

Of course it reads like that to you, because you are trying to paint me as the bad guy instead of someone with a different opinion.

Let me ask the question a different way. Which version of Star Wars provided a game play environment that best represented the genre feel of Star Wars, d6 or d20?

Quote from: SineNomine;643920Because the OSR combat system is... less lethal? Yeah, I'm not following you here. Old-school D&D started out substantially more lethal than Classic Traveller ever did, and it wasn't until mid-levels that you could actually keep breathing for longer under fire than the average Traveller PC. The average newbie Traveller PC could actually get hit without expecting to die on the spot.

And if your sole objective was to perfectly reproduce the lethality level and thrilling excitement of exploring featureless acid-atmosphere alien farm tunnels in vintage D&D mechanics, then you're right- you would be wasting your time. Yet none of the games I've pointed to are actually trying to do that. They are trying to do new things.

Unsurprisingly, I like Traveller. I've got the Classic Traveller one-volume hardback next to me right now. It gives me lots of help in determining a planet's hydrography, and precisely zero in figuring out why any adventurer should give a rat's ass about the place. I wrote SWN so that somebody could sit down and actually put together a playable, adventure-worthy sci-fi sandbox without killing himself on minutiae. People can argue whether or not I succeeded in pulling it off, but the mechanical framework I chose was totally irrelevant to that goal save that it was most usable and comprehensible to my target audience. Telling people to stop using old-school mechanics is like telling painters to stop using oils- it misses the fundamental point.

Except that Classic Traveller is OSR. My problem is conflating OSR to mean vintage D&D as a default.

So, you say that you like Classic Traveller, but you created Stars Without Number as an alternative? Why? What about Classic Traveller did you think you needed to fix? What minutiae in Classic Traveller do you think is game-killing?

Quote from: jeff37923;643929Except that Classic Traveller is OSR. My problem is conflating OSR to mean vintage D&D as a default.

This is quite an interesting notion by itself, how the OSR movement is so predominant DnD, that to think of OSR = converting things to RuneQuest or Traveller did not even cross my mind.

Also, jeff - I thought that "If you convert a game to DnD it means that the game cries" was a joke. Just a subtle hint to paint yourself out of that silly corner.

Quote from: Rincewind1;643936Also, jeff - I thought that "If you convert a game to DnD it means that the game cries" was a joke. Just a subtle hint to paint yourself out of that silly corner.

No, not a joke, but not as silly as you make it. A lot of games were deliberately set up how they are in their rules to avoid D&Disms which will destroy the immersion of the RPG. Case in point, think of the problem of firearms in a vintage D&D level and hit points kind of combat system.

Quote from: jeff37923;643937No, not a joke, but not as silly as you make it. A lot of games were deliberately set up how they are in their rules to avoid D&Disms which will destroy the immersion of the RPG. Case in point, think of the problem of firearms in a vintage D&D level and hit points kind of combat system.

True. Though I'll admit that Wounds & Vitality from D20 Star Wars [and probably D20 Modern? Can't remember for sure] fixed quite a lot of "mental" issue for me on regard of the Hit Points vs Wounds dilemma. Surprised it isn't used more.

Then again, I'd really say it'd be the same deal as for me converting Planescape to BRP - it doesn't work per se, and probably won't work for most people (Planescape kinda really needs badly the alignments, then again, I feel like DnD mechanics "choke" potential of that setting, at least for me), but since I love BRP, I convert. That's probably the heart of most DnD conversions, not some jihad against other systems.

Then again, the whole Cults of Planescape would probably work well in RuneQuest....so what, the OSR conversion of Planescape, but with the other Old School Game? ;)

Quote from: jeff37923;643929Except that Classic Traveller is OSR. My problem is conflating OSR to mean vintage D&D as a default.

That leads into the "What is the OSR?" question. For myself, I've answered it with "Games that could theoretically be used to run B2 without serious mechanical alterations." Other answers will vary.

QuoteSo, you say that you like Classic Traveller, but you created Stars Without Number as an alternative? Why? What about Classic Traveller did you think you needed to fix? What minutiae in Classic Traveller do you think is game-killing?

The question is not what Classic Traveller has, it's what it hasn't got. Its entire one-volume hardback world generation section amounts to four pages plus tables, and while it's champion at determining surface water percentage and planetary mass, the only thing it says about the people is how many there are, what kind of government they have, and whether you'll get arrested for carrying an axe there. There's absolutely nothing there to suggest what might interest the players about the place, what qualities might make for a good adventure, or what sort of NPCs might be found there.

CT tacitly presumes an essentially uniform cosmos where every planet is pretty much like every other planet. You have generalized rules for trading that seem to apply equally on every world and a social class system that appears to have such universal validity that your Social score is meaningful on every planet in the galaxy. You have standard chances of scout bases, naval bases, outposts of the TAS, uniform starship plans that give you a percentage off if you use the "standard" schematics... Classic Traveller gives the GM almost nothing to work with to actually make adventures in their sandbox. You get four pages of patron hooks and its sincere best wishes. Presumably, it's up to you to either set your game in Space Iowa with endless rolling fields of hexadecimal worlds or put in the skullsweat necessary to delineate each world in an interesting way, an effort the game provides zero help in accomplishing.

So when I wrote SWN, I wrote it as a reaction to this lack of sandbox support. Someone with the creative capacity of a pencil eraser can walk through the SWN world creation process and Society chapter and come out on the other side with a unique world that has a bunch of problems for the PCs to get involved in. The Faction rules let PCs run their own large-scale organizations, or let the GM handle their machinations in the background without eating up prep time. The life-form creation tables produce animals that can be used in an adventure, the sapient alien generator produces aliens that can function with minimal elaboration, and the resource tables at the back provide for fast generation of the odds and ends that a GM regularly needs to produce for their game. It's a game written in response to the needs that were not obvious at the time CT was written, because CT was the first to try it.

And you know what? You can clip off the first quarter of SWN- hell, the first quarter of every game I write- erasing the entire system and replacing it with your own favorite, and the important part of the game will be completely untouched and fully functional. I've had a lot of people do precisely that. They have no intention of using the mechanics in my books, but they're delighted to peel out the tools for their own games. I am entirely pleased with this state of affairs because they are recognizing what I value most about the games, and responding to the reasons they were written.

Quote from: jeff37923;643890If I wanted [Traveller with levels], I would play d20 Traveller.

Talking about sucking... "T20" is a giant pile of suckage.

Quote...and Star Frontiers sucked

Nah, Star Frontiers is a blast. And it has a distinctly different flavor compared to Traveller.

Quote from: SineNomine;643941That leads into the "What is the OSR?" question. For myself, I've answered it with "Games that could theoretically be used to run B2 without serious mechanical alterations." Other answers will vary.

So to you, OSR is vintage D&D only. I kind of guessed that.

Quote from: SineNomine;643941The question is not what Classic Traveller has, it's what it hasn't got. Its entire one-volume hardback world generation section amounts to four pages plus tables, and while it's champion at determining surface water percentage and planetary mass, the only thing it says about the people is how many there are, what kind of government they have, and whether you'll get arrested for carrying an axe there. There's absolutely nothing there to suggest what might interest the players about the place, what qualities might make for a good adventure, or what sort of NPCs might be found there.

I see this as a failure of imagination on your part rather than the game's fault. Not many other Referee's seem to have had this problem in writing adventures in Classic Traveller. However, you should take a look at the Cultural Differences Table in the World Generation section of Mongoose Traveller Core Rulebook.

Quote from: SineNomine;643941CT tacitly presumes an essentially uniform cosmos where every planet is pretty much like every other planet. You have generalized rules for trading that seem to apply equally on every world and a social class system that appears to have such universal validity that your Social score is meaningful on every planet in the galaxy. You have standard chances of scout bases, naval bases, outposts of the TAS, uniform starship plans that give you a percentage off if you use the "standard" schematics... Classic Traveller gives the GM almost nothing to work with to actually make adventures in their sandbox. You get four pages of patron hooks and its sincere best wishes. Presumably, it's up to you to either set your game in Space Iowa with endless rolling fields of hexadecimal worlds or put in the skullsweat necessary to delineate each world in an interesting way, an effort the game provides zero help in accomplishing.

Wow. This is such bullshit and it tells me that you do not have a lot of experience with Classic Traveller. There are whole books about detailing worlds, adventures, and patrons. Again, I see an imagination fail on your part.

Quote from: SineNomine;643941So when I wrote SWN, I wrote it as a reaction to this lack of sandbox support. Someone with the creative capacity of a pencil eraser can walk through the SWN world creation process and Society chapter and come out on the other side with a unique world that has a bunch of problems for the PCs to get involved in. The Faction rules let PCs run their own large-scale organizations, or let the GM handle their machinations in the background without eating up prep time. The life-form creation tables produce animals that can be used in an adventure, the sapient alien generator produces aliens that can function with minimal elaboration, and the resource tables at the back provide for fast generation of the odds and ends that a GM regularly needs to produce for their game. It's a game written in response to the needs that were not obvious at the time CT was written, because CT was the first to try it.

And you know what? You can clip off the first quarter of SWN- hell, the first quarter of every game I write- erasing the entire system and replacing it with your own favorite, and the important part of the game will be completely untouched and fully functional. I've had a lot of people do precisely that. They have no intention of using the mechanics in my books, but they're delighted to peel out the tools for their own games. I am entirely pleased with this state of affairs because they are recognizing what I value most about the games, and responding to the reasons they were written.

Again bullshit which shows that you do not know as much about Classic Traveller as you think. There is an entire section on Encounters in the Classic Traveller rules which includes Animal Encounters and a method of generating them based on the animals position in the ecology rather than how many hit dice it has. There is no random sapient generation system because the underlying assumption of Traveller is that intelligent races will not be some kind of "alien of the week" and instead treated with more care and respect for them than is common (which is why the Aslan cat-people and Vargr dog-people of Traveller are not considered jokes like many alien races of other games are).

Quote from: jeff37923Let me ask the question a different way. Which version of Star Wars provided a game play environment that best represented the genre feel of Star Wars, d6 or d20?

I know what youre doing here, and I agree. I think a more glaring example of incompatibility between rules and setting is d20 Conan - the action in the books is fast and furious, while d20 makes it a slow, complex and "tactical" affair; and the "classes & levels" concept dont fit the source material either.

But as someone said above, familiarity is always a huge factor to be considered. Sometimes its best to just ignore some rough edges than to learn a entirely new system.

Quote from: silva;643954I know what youre doing here, and I agree. I think a more glaring example of incompatibility between rules and setting is d20 Conan - the action in the books is fast and furious, while d20 makes it a slow, complex and "tactical" affair; and the "classes & levels" concept dont fit the source material either.

But as someone said above, familiarity is always a huge factor to be considered. Sometimes its best to just ignore some rough edges than to learn a entirely new system.

I'll concede that point, familiarity is a huge factor. However, the caveat that how the rules themselves are written does indeed come into play and making everything a different flavor of vintage D&D is often taking all the flavor out of the gameplay.

Quote from: jeff37923;643955I'll concede that point, familiarity is a huge factor. However, the caveat that how the rules themselves are written does indeed come into play and making everything a different flavor of vintage D&D is often taking all the flavor out of the gameplay.

I dunno, I look at stuff like Mazes and Monsters and I think, is this the best representation of Greek Myths? No. Is it the best genre game for playing a game based around Classical mythiology or society? No. But its a fun game in and of itself, and I wouldnt say its useless or shouldnt exist. Its just a different riff on things.

Quote from: Spinachcat;643917I have been working on a OSR-ish Spy game, but I only had one playtest and I was not sure if I was happy with the lethality. There are HP for wounds, but I wanted a game where guns kill people and weapons do D6+X and you die on a natural roll of a 6. So you could survive several non-killing blows, taking various hits from weapons, but regardless of your health sometimes your head gets popped. The players liked the danger level because it made the genre about sneaky Spies and not Rambo. I am tinkering to make nat 20 into a kill shot instead, lessening auto-kills from 17% to 5% which may be a better idea.

Color me interested. Would love to hear more

QuoteI see this as a failure of imagination on your part rather than the game's fault. Not many other Referee's seem to have had this problem in writing adventures in Classic Traveller. However, you should take a look at the Cultural Differences Table in the World Generation section of Mongoose Traveller Core Rulebook.

I salute those valiant GMs who wrote their adventures uphill both ways in the snow and the writers who put in a random culture quirks table into a different book 30 years later. The 15,000 people who've downloaded SWN maybe want a few more tools in the box.

QuoteWow. This is such bullshit and it tells me that you do not have a lot of experience with Classic Traveller. There are whole books about detailing worlds, adventures, and patrons. Again, I see an imagination fail on your part.

What, the S03 Spinward Marches supplement was actually useful to you? Their idea of a helpful supplement was 32 pages of hexadecimal code, line-noise world names, and a hearty handshake. A great many of the first Traveller supplements were published as if the people who wrote them had no idea whatsoever what their audience was going to need... almost as if they were writing the first such supplements ever, and had only minimal experience with the medium they were participating in creating.

QuoteAgain bullshit which shows that you do not know as much about Classic Traveller as you think. There is an entire section on Encounters in the Classic Traveller rules which includes Animal Encounters and a method of generating them based on the animals position in the ecology rather than how many hit dice it has. There is no random sapient generation system because the underlying assumption of Traveller is that intelligent races will not be some kind of "alien of the week" and instead treated with more care and respect for them than is common (which is why the Aslan cat-people and Vargr dog-people of Traveller are not considered jokes like many alien races of other games are).

The Aslan and Vargr are bog-standard space furries with traits lifted verbatim from their Terran animal counterparts and are perhaps the worst alien ideas Traveller ever had. The Encounters section in the CT hardback is borderline worthless to most GMs. How often does a GM need to fill a random ecological niche on their world as opposed to creating an animal that could somehow be a problem to PCs? Worldbuilding tools that aim at creating some kind of Harnesque ultraversimilitude are the GM equivalent of the forty-page long charop forum wanks of 3.x. It's an enormous amount of effort poured into self-gratification that, while perhaps enjoyable for the author, is profoundly unlikely to improve anyone else's experience at the table.

Quote from: SineNomine;643965I salute those valiant GMs who wrote their adventures uphill both ways in the snow and the writers who put in a random culture quirks table into a different book 30 years later. The 15,000 people who've downloaded SWN maybe want a few more tools in the box.

You know, just because Classic Traveller was too hard for you to use imaginatively does not mean that it was a problem for the millions of gamers in several different countries to understand and use.

Quote from: SineNomine;643965What, the S03 Spinward Marches supplement was actually useful to you? Their idea of a helpful supplement was 32 pages of hexadecimal code, line-noise world names, and a hearty handshake. A great many of the first Traveller supplements were published as if the people who wrote them had no idea whatsoever what their audience was going to need... almost as if they were writing the first such supplements ever, and had only minimal experience with the medium they were participating in creating.

Again, millions of gamers in several different countries proves you wrong. The problem lies with you and not Classic Traveller.

Case in point, the Universal World Profile was used as a shorthand to allow hundreds of worlds to be displayed with the minimum relevant information. The Referee was given great latitude in the interpretation of the numbers in that UWP so that interesting worlds and adventures could be created. You got the snaphot of the world and the Referee was allowed to dial in the detail to as great or as cless as desired. You think it is useless because you lack the imagination to use the data given.

Quote from: SineNomine;643965The Aslan and Vargr are bog-standard space furries with traits lifted verbatim from their Terran animal counterparts and are perhaps the worst alien ideas Traveller ever had. The Encounters section in the CT hardback is borderline worthless to most GMs. How often does a GM need to fill a random ecological niche on their world as opposed to creating an animal that could somehow be a problem to PCs? Worldbuilding tools that aim at creating some kind of Harnesque ultraversimilitude are the GM equivalent of the forty-page long charop forum wanks of 3.x. It's an enormous amount of effort poured into self-gratification that, while perhaps enjoyable for the author, is profoundly unlikely to improve anyone else's experience at the table.

Again, just because you have demonstrated incompetance in using Classic Traveller does not mean that it was just too tough a game system for millions of gamers in several countries and that those gamers were happily unsatisfied and just didn't know any better.

I think it is funny that you declare Aslan and Vargr to suck so badly and yet you have not created anything for SWN that outshines those races. If they are that bad, then you should be able to use your imagination and create something so fantastic that it puts them to shame in your sleep. Why haven't you?

As far as filling ecological niches for a world as oppossed to creating a monster for the PCs to kill really demonstrates how shoehorning a vintage D&D approach to a good system that never needed it can really fuck it all up. Taking a believeable approach to an ecosystem helps to keep the Players immersed in the environment. By pushing the science of the science fiction you get something that does not jerk at a Players disbelief suspenders so hard that they lose interest.

Oh, and Classic Traveller predates Harn by about six years.

Quote from: jeff37923;643972Case in point, the Universal World Profile was used as a shorthand to allow hundreds of worlds to be displayed with the minimum relevant information. The Referee was given great latitude in the interpretation of the numbers in that UWP so that interesting worlds and adventures could be created. You got the snaphot of the world and the Referee was allowed to dial in the detail to as great or as cless as desired. You think it is useless because you lack the imagination to use the data given.

The fact that you consider it acceptable to pay for the opportunity to make something usable out of your purchase is leading me to suspect that I am working way too hard on my tools.

QuoteI think it is funny that you declare Aslan and Vargr to suck so badly and yet you have not created anything for SWN that outshines those races. If they are that bad, then you should be able to use your imagination and create something so fantastic that it puts them to shame in your sleep. Why haven't you?

Because I don't sell brilliant ideas- I sell tools to help you create your own brilliant ideas. That is the value that focused OSR games bring to the the table- they're toolkits to help you assemble your own game in the idiom you desire, not gazeteers to give you a premade setting.

QuoteAs far as filling ecological niches for a world as oppossed to creating a monster for the PCs to kill really demonstrates how shoehorning a vintage D&D approach to a good system that never needed it can really fuck it all up. Taking a believeable approach to an ecosystem helps to keep the Players immersed in the environment. By pushing the science of the science fiction you get something that does not jerk at a Players disbelief suspenders so hard that they lose interest.

To quote from that chapter:

"Animal Descriptions: The referee may elect to describe animals in order to allow a better image in the adventurers' minds. The basic system may be used without this aspect, but descriptions such as lion-like, amoeboid, canine, or others may prove useful."

Look out! It's a charging 24,000 gram Intermittent with claws+1 and a Mesh-equivalent hide!

Quote from: jeff37923;643929So, you say that you like Classic Traveller, but you created Stars Without Number as an alternative? Why? What about Classic Traveller did you think you needed to fix? What minutiae in Classic Traveller do you think is game-killing?

I am a huge fan of CT and I enjoy SWN. CT has lots of problems that are solved in SWN and SWN is an awesome resource for every Traveller GM.

Like OD&D, CT was the trailblazer and did an amazing job that still rocks four decades later. But SWN gives you cool tools and a nice levelling system so unlike CT, you get that zero to hero character arc that many players want.

I disagree with Sine Nomine that the CT charts were useless. The tables were so awesome for the time and I still can crank out a fascinating planet just buy tossing the dice and spending some time imagining how all the pieces fit. The UPP codes were a great shorthand, but like "10x20 Room, 4 goblins, 30 cp" the creativity was not in the abbreviations, but in what an individual GM did with the bare bones info.

I am just grateful I can so easily combine goodies from SWN and CT and use one to influence and enhance the other.

Quote from: Spinachcat;643979I disagree with Sine Nomine that the CT charts were useless. The tables were so awesome for the time and I still can crank out a fascinating planet just buy tossing the dice and spending some time imagining how all the pieces fit. The UPP codes were a great shorthand, but like "10x20 Room, 4 goblins, 30 cp" the creativity was not in the abbreviations, but in what an individual GM did with the bare bones info.

I may have been excessively harsh in calling them "useless". It's certainly true that if you sit down and use the pieces as touchstones for inspiration, you can often put together a very interesting result, just as you can with 2,000 coppers and nine rats in a room.

But every GM has a certain budget of time and creative energy. We don't have an indefinite amount of leisure and enthusiasm to build our worlds out of bare rocks and superglue. The goal of a purchased product should be to give the reader enough preformed components and trimmed tropes to save him the trouble of constantly reinventing the wheel or regularly rationalizing new explanations for a repeated clash of elements. The lingua franca that is old-school D&D allows bits and pieces to be carved off of dozens of different games and hundreds of other supplements and creations, allowing us to save our creative energy for those parts that are most fun and rewarding for us. This makes it all the more likely that we'll actually get to make something playable and entertaining.

New OSR interpretations of a genre are valuable for that effect alone. Each one increases the network benefit to all the other offerings. Honestly, I think the old OGL dream of a perpetually churning D&D that was constantly folding in useful d20 elements is actually coming to fruition in the OSR, except that the D&D that is constantly being refined is happening individually at each GM's table rather than in a single official edition.

Quote from: SineNomine;643978The fact that you consider it acceptable to pay for the opportunity to make something usable out of your purchase is leading me to suspect that I am working way too hard on my tools.

No, you are merely unjustifiably proud of your "tools". See, a lot of people can come up with their own details without having to rely on someone else's "tools". Again, just because you can not does not mean they can not.

Quote from: SineNomine;643978Because I don't sell brilliant ideas- I sell tools to help you create your own brilliant ideas. That is the value that focused OSR games bring to the the table- they're toolkits to help you assemble your own game in the idiom you desire, not gazeteers to give you a premade setting.

Then why isn't there Third Party material to support your game?

While you are at it, tell me why making everything like vintage D&D makes it better.

Quote from: SineNomine;643978To quote from that chapter:

"Animal Descriptions: The referee may elect to describe animals in order to allow a better image in the adventurers' minds. The basic system may be used without this aspect, but descriptions such as lion-like, amoeboid, canine, or others may prove useful."

Look out! It's a charging 24,000 gram Intermittent with claws+1 and a Mesh-equivalent hide!

Since you lack imagination, I will give you the benefit of mine.

Also quoted from the chapter-
"Intermittent: Herbivores which do not devote full time to eating are termed intermittent. They tend to be solitary. Intermittents usually freeze when an encounter occurs, fleeing if attacked by a larger animal. There is some potential that an intermittent will attack to protect territory or young.
Typical Terran intermittents are the chipmunk and the elephant."

Now since you didn't bother with terrain it was found in or the numbers for Attack, Flee, or Speed, I will come up with something on my own. Now the Mesh armor hide caught my attention and I immediately thought of something like an armadillo or a pillbug, I'll go with pillbug because a 24 kilo pillbug just tickles my fancy. Now this thing will be found in forested regions and uses its claws+1 to dig through the tough bark of trees to get at the tender parts inside and/or the sap it may drip out. I will also declare it to be edible by humans and be 30% edible meat (another thing you forgot from CT). Now while they tend to be timid and roll up to protect themselves if attacked, they do unroll and attack if their young or their part of the forest territory is threatened.

Now the Uber Pillbug is adventure-worthy because the trees in the forest it inhabits are valuable because the sap can be used in medicines, the tree for furniture lumber because it is quite beautiful due to the presence of minerals that are brought up by its root system. The Uber Pillbug is however, part of the tree life cycle in a symbiotic relationship with the tree using the Uber Pillbug's nymph stage for pollination. You must get rid of the Uber Pillbugs to get at the tree for harvesting.  Aslan and Vargr like to play sports games with them before battling the Uber Pillbug once it attacks back. Humans think it tastes like lobster with a hint of chicken.

See, that wasn't that hard, was it?

Quote from: SineNomine;643982I may have been excessively harsh in calling them "useless". It's certainly true that if you sit down and use the pieces as touchstones for inspiration, you can often put together a very interesting result, just as you can with 2,000 coppers and nine rats in a room.

Nice to hear that you agree with me.

Quote from: SineNomine;643982But every GM has a certain budget of time and creative energy. We don't have an indefinite amount of leisure and enthusiasm to build our worlds out of bare rocks and superglue. The goal of a purchased product should be to give the reader enough preformed components and trimmed tropes to save him the trouble of constantly reinventing the wheel or regularly rationalizing new explanations for a repeated clash of elements. The lingua franca that is old-school D&D allows bits and pieces to be carved off of dozens of different games and hundreds of other supplements and creations, allowing us to save our creative energy for those parts that are most fun and rewarding for us. This makes it all the more likely that we'll actually get to make something playable and entertaining.

New OSR interpretations of a genre are valuable for that effect alone. Each one increases the network benefit to all the other offerings. Honestly, I think the old OGL dream of a perpetually churning D&D that was constantly folding in useful d20 elements is actually coming to fruition in the OSR, except that the D&D that is constantly being refined is happening individually at each GM's table rather than in a single official edition.

Except that making every past game genre over in terms of vintage D&D robs them of the individuality which makes them unique because it reduces much of the gameplay to the same and that can easily become bland and tasteless.

Quote from: Spinachcat;643917I have been working on a OSR-ish Spy game, but I only had one playtest and I was not sure if I was happy with the lethality. There are HP for wounds, but I wanted a game where guns kill people and weapons do D6+X and you die on a natural roll of a 6. So you could survive several non-killing blows, taking various hits from weapons, but regardless of your health sometimes your head gets popped. The players liked the danger level because it made the genre about sneaky Spies and not Rambo. I am tinkering to make nat 20 into a kill shot instead, lessening auto-kills from 17% to 5% which may be a better idea.

I am interested as well.

Quote from: jeff37923;643983Except that making every past game genre over in terms of vintage D&D robs them of the individuality which makes them unique because it reduces much of the gameplay to the same and that can easily become bland and tasteless.

This is a profoundly confused idea.

By this logic, once a game has been created for a genre, no future game should ever be created for it. If you can dilute the individuality of Traveller with old-school mechanics, then you can dilute it with FATE, or with X World, or with Rolemaster. GURPS is an even worse offender, as it has multiple offerings in multiple genres, relentlessly blandifying them all. People must stop making games, because people might like them better than the firstcomers!

How does this position not amount to a categorical rejection of any semi-hard sci-fi RPG published in the past 30 years?

Quote from: TristramEvans;643643
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Quote from: SineNomine;643994This is a profoundly confused idea.

By this logic, once a game has been created for a genre, no future game should ever be created for it. If you can dilute the individuality of Traveller with old-school mechanics, then you can dilute it with FATE, or with X World, or with Rolemaster. GURPS is an even worse offender, as it has multiple offerings in multiple genres, relentlessly blandifying them all. People must stop making games, because people might like them better than the firstcomers!

How does this position not amount to a categorical rejection of any semi-hard sci-fi RPG published in the past 30 years?

Confused? Because I like some variety in my gameplay and do not want everything to play like vintage D&D?

Those different versions of Traveller you mentioned used the same setting background, but were each different systems. You are advocating the use of the same system in all genres, not just some settings.

You are also arguing from a lack of information. GURPS was originally designed as a Generic Universal Role-Playing System, it is in its very nature to go and be used in different genres. Vintage D&D was designed for fantasy and trying to shoehorn it onto genres outside of fantasy just creates vintage D&D in that genre as it poorly emulates gameplay outside of fantasy.

Quote from: jeff37923;643997Confused? Because I like some variety in my gameplay and do not want everything to play like vintage D&D?

Because you are talking as if the simple existence of other options somehow threatens your ability to play your preferred game.

QuoteVintage D&D was designed for fantasy and trying to shoehorn it onto genres outside of fantasy just creates vintage D&D in that genre as it poorly emulates gameplay outside of fantasy.

I disagree entirely.

But that's not really the point here- the point is that you give no credence to the idea that these other OSR games might be bringing something other than the system mechanics to what they offer. Because they use old-school mechanics for their system they must not do anything that B/X D&D didn't do and must not offer any help to the GM in ways the earlier game couldn't offer. This is not the experience of the people playing them, however terribly mistaken you may think they are.

Quote from: SineNomine;644005Because you are talking as if the simple existence of other options somehow threatens your ability to play your preferred game.

Threatens my ability to play my preferred game? No.

Think that forcing vintage D&D on to every genre just because it is not there is pretty fucking stupid and myopic. Yes. There were a lot of Old School games and some were absolutely great, saying that OSR only means vintage D&D and therefore everything is better with it attached, is stupid. That is like saying that every food is better with chocolate sprinkles on it, regardless of whether or not you are talking about steak and lobster.

Quote from: SineNomine;644005I disagree entirely.

Of course you do, you slapped vintage D&D on Classic Traveller and got Stars Without Number and "fixed" it.

Quote from: SineNomine;644005But that's not really the point here- the point is that you give no credence to the idea that these other OSR games might be bringing something other than the system mechanics to what they offer. Because they use old-school mechanics for their system they must not do anything that B/X D&D didn't do and must not offer any help to the GM in ways the earlier game couldn't offer. This is not the experience of the people playing them, however terribly mistaken you may think they are.

Yup, I think that Classic Traveller works quite well all by itself. I see no reason to force it to be raped by vintage D&D in the hope that it will crossbreed a mule that is easier on the less imaginative amoungst us for their benefit.

Why? Because rules mechanics dictate the gameplay that follows. Change the mechanics and you change the gameplay. Make the mechanics vintage D&D and it is no longer the original game, it is the original game filtered through vintage D&D.

Quote from: jeff37923;643929Except that Classic Traveller is OSR. My problem is conflating OSR to mean vintage D&D as a default.

I just read it as Old School Religion at this stage.

Quote from: The Traveller;644009I just read it as Old School Religion at this stage.

I'm starting to think the same.

Quote from: The Traveller;644009I just read it as Old School Religion at this stage.

I agree there are those who fetishise the Old in RPGs (hells, I myself refuse to acknowledge Warhammer 2e, despite the fact that the rules are probably better), and it's really the same as fetishising the New in RPGs. But I really think that there's been a storm in a bathtub here - after all, it's just the talk about people trying to fit their liked settings into favourite mechanic, and it went nuclear pretty fast.

If you would say Jeff that there are mechanics that are better at conveying certain themes/genres better than others, I certainly agree with you. And I do agree with you that in a way, indeed the "OSR conversion" is a wee bit...needless? After all, right tools for the right job and whatsonot. But at the same time, well, if someone really feels most comfortable in the old D&D mechanics - let them. Though I guess I can understand a bit of a...distaste, if I may call it? At treating the original D&D mechanics as RPG bacon. I'm just not really agreeing with going full ballistic here.

Still, all in all, I'll be giving the Spaghetti Western rules a twirl, if only to see if they could be used for an easy one - shot, little preparation Western game.

Gamma World and D&D share an essentially same system, but I doubt anyone who is a fan of Gamma World would declare it flavorless.

Same for CoC vs. RQ.

And I have run fantasy with Traveller and it rocked and certainly didn't feel like a regular CT campaign.

Quote from: SineNomine;643982But every GM has a certain budget of time and creative energy. We don't have an indefinite amount of leisure and enthusiasm to build our worlds out of bare rocks and superglue.

Especially when we look at 2013 vs. 1974.

Quote from: Ronin;643962Color me interested. Would love to hear more

I will start a separate thread called OSR Spy Game this week. I have done a first draft and my design goal is OD&D + SpyCraft + Top Secret where I hope to get a cool spy game, but deadly spy game.

My goal is for combat to be dangerous. Even an idiot guard is a major danger when doing a spray and pray with an Uzi. Thus, the PCs want to be more like Assassins than Fighters, sneaking about and ambushing their foes and avoiding toe-to-toe fights whenever possible. The goal of each session is to  Accomplish the Mission and that is rarely done by going room to room dungeon style.

Quote from: baran_i_kanu;643992I am interested as well.

Woot!

My whole interest in doing a Spy Game is because I so badly wanted to love SpyCraft, but the damn game system kept getting in the way of my fun. In some ways, my game is the Castles & Crusades version of SpyCraft.

Quote from: Spinachcat;644019Gamma World and D&D share an essentially same system, but I doubt anyone who is a fan of Gamma World would declare it flavorless.

Same for CoC vs. RQ.

Yet in each of these games, they were built from the ground up around those systems. They were not something unique and genre specific that "got an OSR treatment".

Quote from: Spinachcat;644019And I have run fantasy with Traveller and it rocked and certainly didn't feel like a regular CT campaign.

Gee, maybe it didn't feel like a regular Classic Traveller campaign because you used a science fiction RPG to run a fantasy game?

OD&D is the new GURPS.

Quote from: jeff37923;644021Gee, maybe it didn't feel like a regular Classic Traveller campaign because you used a science fiction RPG to run a fantasy game?

There 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.

Here'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.

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.

Hell yeah, spot on. Only thing wrong with this post is that it wasn't posted two pages earlier. :rotfl:

...SWN fan myself. It's fantastic for sandboxes. Really fantastic.

I like Other Dust as well allthough it hasn't blown me away in the same way - yet that is. However it does "osr post-apoc" in a way sufficiently different from Gamma World & Mutant Future to very definitely have a place of its own (much less gonzo imo).

Quote from: jeff37923;643986Except that making every past game genre over in terms of vintage D&D robs them of the individuality which makes them unique because it reduces much of the gameplay to the same and that can easily become bland and tasteless.

Jeff... I think you're a great poster, but that's crazy talk, buddy.

How do you feel the existence of SWN interferes with Traveller?

Do you think people would stop playing Traveller because SWN is available?

Because 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.

Still, I enjoyed reading Kevin's defense of the game. If anything, the back-and-forth made me want to order the hardcopy and run something with it. Maybe Eclipse Phase using the Polychrome and Transhuman Tech supplements?

I 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.

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. :D

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.

Quote from: SineNomine;644135Really, 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.

That particular style of play being vintage D&D only.

Quote from: SineNomine;644135The 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.

System doesn't matter because vintage D&D can be shoehorned into everything because it makes any genre better. Vintage D&D in Space! Vintage D&D After The Bomb! Vintage D&D in Darkest Africa!

Quote from: SineNomine;644135It 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.

We can tell you don't give a damn, but it really does not so much hurt the predecessors as much as it creates myopic Players. If the One True Scotsman of OSR RPGs is to have vintage D&D be the best fit for every kind of RPG genre gameplay then why have different games at all? No matter how you slice it, it is still balony.

I would still really like to see an OSR (that is, Old-school D&D-based) version of Shadowrun.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;644795I would still really like to see an OSR (that is, Old-school D&D-based) version of Shadowrun.

RPGPundit

I thought about going this route with Hackerscape but decided against it.

Though once Arcana Rising is out and I go back to it, the two books together should be all you need to do something SR-esque.

Quote from: RPGPundit;644795I would still really like to see an OSR (that is, Old-school D&D-based) version of Shadowrun.

RPGPundit

I did that once, had a Ravenloft campaign where the player ended up passing through a mirror into the future. Had stuff like Stradh industries as a megacorp and a Cyborg Lord Soth.

Quote from: TristramEvans;644831I did that once, had a Ravenloft campaign where the player ended up passing through a mirror into the future. Had stuff like Stradh industries as a megacorp and a Cyborg Lord Soth.

Hmm. I don't know if that's exactly what I had in mind, really.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;644795I would still really like to see an OSR (that is, Old-school D&D-based) version of Shadowrun.

RPGPundit

I actually have a handful of notes towards exactly that.

Quote from: LibraryLass;645560I actually have a handful of notes towards exactly that.

That'd be an interesting thing for you to share in a thread here.

RPGPundit

Quote from: jeff37923;644081It is at this point that I stopped believing you. Before I just thought you were crazy.

You really can't imagine taking the Book 2 Space Combat rules and applying them to fantasy naval combat? Why not?

CT has an easy range system, you replace "turrets" with ballistas, you rename "engines" with sails, etc.

Traveller isn't some sacred holiness. CT is a toolbox that's incredibly fun to tear apart, re-examine and rebuild to make into something you imagine.

Kinda like OD&D.

Quote from: jeff37923;644090My beef is that OSR has become vintage D&D only to a lot of people.

The majority of the OSR belongs to the AD&D Revival faction, but not all.

I've read about small OSR cons on Dragonsfoot and while most people run vintage D&D, there are usually several people running other old games too.

CT fandom is unique because we were cranking away playing CT because every edition of Trav post CT and pre-Mong was absolutely retarded and there have been so few space RPGs that caught any attention.

CT fans are kinda like Palladium fans. Nothing much has changed for them in 25 years so they keep plugging along with the same game. But in that time, D&D has changed repeatedly from 2e to 3e to 4e to 5e.

Quote from: RPGPundit;644795I would still really like to see an OSR (that is, Old-school D&D-based) version of Shadowrun.

I've attempted this many years ago, but didn't like what I had. I ran "Sixguns & Sorcery" at conventions and the setting was semi-Deadlands, semi-post Apoc, lotsa Shadowrun. It was fantasy urban noir and while we had fun playing it, I never got excited enough about it to finish it.

My problem is guns. In the OSR Spy RPG I am writing, I am taking a hardcore approach to guns. Guns kill. I don't want James Bond, I want Counterstrike so that's my approach with that game.

But I am totally opposite about plasma guns for whatever reason. In my D&D in Spaaace game, people will definitely be hurling grenades and blasters about because that game is all about my mash-up of Gamma World and OD&D.

Quote from: Spinachcat;645878You really can't imagine taking the Book 2 Space Combat rules and applying them to fantasy naval combat? Why not?

CT has an easy range system, you replace "turrets" with ballistas, you rename "engines" with sails, etc.

Traveller isn't some sacred holiness. CT is a toolbox that's incredibly fun to tear apart, re-examine and rebuild to make into something you imagine.

Kinda like OD&D.

Because you obviously do not know what you are talking about here. The Classic Traveller space combat system is nothing like D&D naval combat.

The Classic Traveller space combat system uses vector movement to simulate straight acceleration with turnover at midpoint style travel. It hardly resembles medieval sailing or rowing waterborn vessels. The ships move differently and the scales are incompatible because medieval weapon ranges and even spell ranges are short compared to the extreme ranges at which spacecraft weapons operate.

In short, you are full of shit.

Of course, if your medieval seagoing ships all maneuver like Starfuries from Babylon 5 or Vipers from New Battlestar Galactica, then I guess it is OK.

Quote from: Spinachcat;645878The majority of the OSR belongs to the AD&D Revival faction, but not all.

I've read about small OSR cons on Dragonsfoot and while most people run vintage D&D, there are usually several people running other old games too.

I would not call OSRIC the majority. I would buy your statement if you said vintage D&D because there are several clones of 0D&D and Basic D&D.

Quote from: Spinachcat;645878CT fandom is unique because we were cranking away playing CT because every edition of Trav post CT and pre-Mong was absolutely retarded and there have been so few space RPGs that caught any attention.

CT fans are kinda like Palladium fans. Nothing much has changed for them in 25 years so they keep plugging along with the same game. But in that time, D&D has changed repeatedly from 2e to 3e to 4e to 5e.

Your blanket of statements here has some pretty big holes in it. Not every version of Traveller post-CT and pre-Mong is retarded. Each has unique aspects which are useful across every other version of Traveller. Even Megatraveller, which is an overcomplicated mess, has got the Visual Nugget adventure format that has proven invaluable to me in my own games.

As far as nothing changing, the UWP of Classic Traveller has stayed the same through the majority of Traveller versions. This makes all the old maps still useful today.

As far as CT fans being like Palladium fans, I don't see a lot of CT fans exhibiting the same level of Kevin fanaticism for Marc Miller. Then again, Marc Miller hasn't tried to con his own game's fans multiple times either.

Quote from: jeff37923;645900As far as CT fans being like Palladium fans, I don't see a lot of CT fans exhibiting the same level of Kevin fanaticism for Marc Miller. Then again, Marc Miller hasn't tried to con his own game's fans multiple times either.

:teehee:

Quote from: RPGPundit;645852That'd be an interesting thing for you to share in a thread here.

RPGPundit

Maybe. It's nothing quite usable yet. In need of work, you know, and I've got ongoing projects as is.

Quote from: LibraryLass;645975Maybe. It's nothing quite usable yet. In need of work, you know, and I've got ongoing projects as is.

Well, keep us updated.

It is a mistake to think OSR = clones because for a large faction of the OSR, its about a return to the original texts, not just play style.  You don't get Gygax worship via OSRIC. Thus the clamoring for AD&D reprints, not S&W in hardcover.

Quote from: jeff37923;645900Because you obviously do not know what you are talking about here. The Classic Traveller space combat system is nothing like D&D naval combat.

Its always cute when you get extra dumb!

Vector movement isn't even used by most Traveller fans. Its immediately traded for space movie cinematics by almost every GM I've played with so its a non-issue when picking apart the system and re-assembling it for fantasy naval combat.

Turnover at midpoint? Those are your players really?  Mine are more let's jump while we're still in the atmosphere. Adama did it so why can't we?

And ranges? Are you kidding me? You got short range and long range in Book 2 weapons and that's easy enough to break down for naval combat. Throwing spears? Short range. Magic Missile? Long range. Ballista? Long range. Fire-breathing? Short range. Fast and easy abstractions.

The CT space combat system works fast and gets nasty, leaving somebody with a broken wreck floating dead in space. This worked great for naval combat because I didn't care about the realities of ocean currents, sails and whatever, but how I could run some fantasy cannon blasts, some ballistas, some magic spells and boom, boom, boom  - one shit was crippled so let's board it and get into melee combat.

As with everything in the 3BB of CT, you can chop out stuff you want, leave the rest and modify it every which way.

It's not rocket science.

Quote from: Spinachcat;646316Its always cute when you get extra dumb!

Vector movement isn't even used by most Traveller fans. Its immediately traded for space movie cinematics by almost every GM I've played with so its a non-issue when picking apart the system and re-assembling it for fantasy naval combat.

Turnover at midpoint? Those are your players really?  Mine are more let's jump while we're still in the atmosphere. Adama did it so why can't we?

And ranges? Are you kidding me? You got short range and long range in Book 2 weapons and that's easy enough to break down for naval combat. Throwing spears? Short range. Magic Missile? Long range. Ballista? Long range. Fire-breathing? Short range. Fast and easy abstractions.

The CT space combat system works fast and gets nasty, leaving somebody with a broken wreck floating dead in space. This worked great for naval combat because I didn't care about the realities of ocean currents, sails and whatever, but how I could run some fantasy cannon blasts, some ballistas, some magic spells and boom, boom, boom  - one shit was crippled so let's board it and get into melee combat.

As with everything in the 3BB of CT, you can chop out stuff you want, leave the rest and modify it every which way.

It's not rocket science.

So what you are saying here is that your fantasy naval combat is not based on Classic Traveller space combat, but is something you pulled entirely out of your ass.

That and statements like "I didn't care about the realities of ocean currents and sails and whatever" and "Mine are more let's jump while we're still in the atmosphere. Adama did it so why can't we?" make me think you are just being a liar here. Why? Well, if you don't care about what an ocean environment is like, then why do you give a fuck at all about naval combat?  Rules making in-atmosphere jumps dangerous, if not lethal, have been in the Classic Traveller rules from the beginning - about 20 years before the concept of in-atmosphere jumps ever appeared iin media, so how did your Players decide it was cool to do?

If you ignore the entire basis for Classic Traveller space combat, the 1000 second combat turns, the vector movement, how it is nothing like most cinematic space combat where the ships move like WW2 dogfighting planes and battleships, then you are not using the Classic Traveller space combat system. You are not even making a hack of it. You are just pulling your own combat system out of your ass.

That is what made the Classic Traveller space combat system unique and attractive, it is rocket science. Used by Players and Referees who like vector movement.