Even so, "what is selling" is a proper marker to consider.
So, uh...
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Even so, "what is selling" is a proper marker to consider.
This is true. I can't imagine what it would be like growing up with such high quality game publications. It would probably be fantastic... compare Judges' Guild with TSR back in the 70s. For that matter, we had comic books back then too. We were no less imaginative for buying stuff that had more compelling art. Or were we?
creativehum
SOC-14 1K
Some people move the goal posts.
Some people, like flykiller, move the stadium.
We just went from insisting that "the kids" needed apps and all manner of worlds in all sorts of media pre-packaged for them... to saying the Little Black Books aren't fancy enough for the today's market.
Sweet Bejeezus, you've got some balls on you.
Anyway, back to reality:
Advanced Dungeons & Dragons second edition set a bar for artwork and presentation back on 1989. While that was 12 years after the first edition of the Traveller LBBs, it is 28 years ago. Nothing that is in the current D&D RPG products or the current Star Wars RPG products go beyond anything that could have been found a generation and a half ago.
I'm going to be running Classic Traveller this weekend at a convention. If previous experience holds for the games I've played in and run, the people sitting at the table will be, at the oldest, a decade young than me. Most will be about fifteen to twenty years younger than me. And some will twenty five to thirty years younger than me.
They're imaginative. They're fun. They know how to create. And -- for crying out loud -- apps? Apps to do what? You know what they know how to do? Sit down and make stuff up.
Some people, like flykiller, move the stadium.
We just went from insisting that "the kids" needed apps and all manner of worlds in all sorts of media pre-packaged for them... to saying the Little Black Books aren't fancy enough for the today's market.
Sweet Bejeezus, you've got some balls on you.
Anyway, back to reality:
Advanced Dungeons & Dragons second edition set a bar for artwork and presentation back on 1989. While that was 12 years after the first edition of the Traveller LBBs, it is 28 years ago. Nothing that is in the current D&D RPG products or the current Star Wars RPG products go beyond anything that could have been found a generation and a half ago.
I'm going to be running Classic Traveller this weekend at a convention. If previous experience holds for the games I've played in and run, the people sitting at the table will be, at the oldest, a decade young than me. Most will be about fifteen to twenty years younger than me. And some will twenty five to thirty years younger than me.
They're imaginative. They're fun. They know how to create. And -- for crying out loud -- apps? Apps to do what? You know what they know how to do? Sit down and make stuff up.
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5E is the least supported D&D edition.
Total official products to shelves, 2 years on:
- PHB
- DMG
- MM
- SCAG
- 5 big hardcover adventures (12-16 levels worth of play each)
- 1 boxed adventure (5 levels worth of play)
- GM Screen
Maybe I wasn't clear. Maybe I should leave it be.
But I won't.
Kids don't -need- apps.
A modern game, one that needs broad appeal to be successful today in the long run, and has particularly crunchy bits, could certainly benefit from apps. Pick up money laying on the table, so to speak.
This requires no balls to say. I don't know how old you are CreativeHum, but the "younger" people signing up to play in your convention game... I wonder if they're already on board with buying Traveller stuff that comes out, fans of the game and "brand advocates," or they're new or undecided. Hard for me to even guess.
But one of these groups would be better to consider, for marketing purposes.
As for what the apps would be for... not everyone who might love Traveller, or who might buy the game, enjoys the prospect of spending the required time to find, absorb, and run through the tables for results and then work through, error check, and clean up this work to just make a character. You might. lotrs of people here might. But I'm pretty sure not everyone who loves RPGs or Traveller does.
Rinse and repeat for items you want. If you're running the game, rinse and repeat again for more items, a ship, a planet, for almost all the sophonts you need any level of detail on, and so on.
Doing all this by hand could very well be your cup of tea, but I'm open to the possibility that it's not everyone's brand of joy. Apps would help with all that, and increase appeal of the game as a whole. I don't think saying so is insulting anyone, or a sign of massive balls.
That's just my opinion, though. I do have less than 20 posts, here.
But I won't.
Kids don't -need- apps.
A modern game, one that needs broad appeal to be successful today in the long run, and has particularly crunchy bits, could certainly benefit from apps. Pick up money laying on the table, so to speak.
This requires no balls to say. I don't know how old you are CreativeHum, but the "younger" people signing up to play in your convention game... I wonder if they're already on board with buying Traveller stuff that comes out, fans of the game and "brand advocates," or they're new or undecided. Hard for me to even guess.
But one of these groups would be better to consider, for marketing purposes.
As for what the apps would be for... not everyone who might love Traveller, or who might buy the game, enjoys the prospect of spending the required time to find, absorb, and run through the tables for results and then work through, error check, and clean up this work to just make a character. You might. lotrs of people here might. But I'm pretty sure not everyone who loves RPGs or Traveller does.
Rinse and repeat for items you want. If you're running the game, rinse and repeat again for more items, a ship, a planet, for almost all the sophonts you need any level of detail on, and so on.
Doing all this by hand could very well be your cup of tea, but I'm open to the possibility that it's not everyone's brand of joy. Apps would help with all that, and increase appeal of the game as a whole. I don't think saying so is insulting anyone, or a sign of massive balls.
That's just my opinion, though. I do have less than 20 posts, here.
creativehum
SOC-14 1K
Hello Spencer,
My "balls" comment was directed directly to flykiller, who has a habit of making preposterous claims, and then when asked to explain them either walks away (typing "...shrug..." with not other comment, or changing the subject of the conversation, as he did in the situation above.)
You are taking the time to explain your points. That's called a conversation. And i think that's awesome.
Also, I don't think you made any claims the kids have no imagination.
Also, I don't care how many posts you have.
As for you points, they seem sound, but we have no data to back it up. There's always been this great white whale of "getting more people into the hobby." But the fact is, its a specula little hobby, and the number of people who might be into it is limited. That said, from all the accounts I'm hearing. D&D 5e is doing better than all the other editions put together. It has no more bells and whistles than previous editions. In fact (perhaps significantly) fewer.
As far as Traveller goes I'm not sure which edition of Traveller we're talking about. I use Classic Traveller -- and by Classic, I mean Basic Traveller -- the first three Little Black Books. And by that I mean, original Traveller, with no concerns for the OTU or getting it "right" but having my own material, full of improvisation and fun as my Players explore many worlds and make they fortune. Which is what Traveller was once.
Combat can be a bear, but I've made some tools to speed this up significantly. Other than that, alien races are just a string of numbers like any other PC. Depth of culture is as deep as I need it to be for sessions of adventure fiction in the far future.
Original Traveller is an amazing toolkit in the spirit of the earliest days of the RPG hobby: flexible, easy to adjudicate in the spirit of "Rulings, Not Rules," and a breeze to create content on the fly if needed. Your description of character creation, for example, doesn't match my experience with character creation in Classic Traveller.
Now, if a game system is so complicated that apps needed (or at least make the process bearable) than I suppose apps should be used. I can only ask at that point, "Why is the game so complicated? What is being gained from it?"
The fact is the people who like to sit around and puzzle solve problems with their friends in fictional environments might like things simple enough that they can handle the character creation and conflicts at the table using only paper, pencils, and dice. Once it gets more complicated than that it might be becoming something else.
I can't support this point except with an anecdote:
My friends at Harebrained Schemes made an awesome miniatures game called Golem Arcana. It's like Battletech, but with magical creatures. The miniatures are fun, the rules are fun. And there's an app you put on a tablet that lets the game handle all the calculations of firing, movement, and results. It saves a lot of time.
It didn't do very well.
Now, there are lots of reasons why it might not have done very well. But one of them might be that the people who like miniatures games don't want the game to do all that work. I honestly have no idea. But I think there's something to be said for digging into the fun people have and reasons why they are fun -- and that some things that seem like drudgery from the outside often are fun for the people in the middle of it.
I would argue that this whole issues has nothing to do with the age of the consumers. Again, 5e is doing gangbusters right now. And a lot of that will be the younger market. If an RPG is so complicated it needs an app, I don't care whether it came out in the '70s or today, it'll have a tough road. That's an issue for anyone of any age.
But the main point I wanted to make was that my post was specifically addressed to flykiller. Not you.
My "balls" comment was directed directly to flykiller, who has a habit of making preposterous claims, and then when asked to explain them either walks away (typing "...shrug..." with not other comment, or changing the subject of the conversation, as he did in the situation above.)
You are taking the time to explain your points. That's called a conversation. And i think that's awesome.
Also, I don't think you made any claims the kids have no imagination.
Also, I don't care how many posts you have.
As for you points, they seem sound, but we have no data to back it up. There's always been this great white whale of "getting more people into the hobby." But the fact is, its a specula little hobby, and the number of people who might be into it is limited. That said, from all the accounts I'm hearing. D&D 5e is doing better than all the other editions put together. It has no more bells and whistles than previous editions. In fact (perhaps significantly) fewer.
As far as Traveller goes I'm not sure which edition of Traveller we're talking about. I use Classic Traveller -- and by Classic, I mean Basic Traveller -- the first three Little Black Books. And by that I mean, original Traveller, with no concerns for the OTU or getting it "right" but having my own material, full of improvisation and fun as my Players explore many worlds and make they fortune. Which is what Traveller was once.
Combat can be a bear, but I've made some tools to speed this up significantly. Other than that, alien races are just a string of numbers like any other PC. Depth of culture is as deep as I need it to be for sessions of adventure fiction in the far future.
Original Traveller is an amazing toolkit in the spirit of the earliest days of the RPG hobby: flexible, easy to adjudicate in the spirit of "Rulings, Not Rules," and a breeze to create content on the fly if needed. Your description of character creation, for example, doesn't match my experience with character creation in Classic Traveller.
Now, if a game system is so complicated that apps needed (or at least make the process bearable) than I suppose apps should be used. I can only ask at that point, "Why is the game so complicated? What is being gained from it?"
The fact is the people who like to sit around and puzzle solve problems with their friends in fictional environments might like things simple enough that they can handle the character creation and conflicts at the table using only paper, pencils, and dice. Once it gets more complicated than that it might be becoming something else.
I can't support this point except with an anecdote:
My friends at Harebrained Schemes made an awesome miniatures game called Golem Arcana. It's like Battletech, but with magical creatures. The miniatures are fun, the rules are fun. And there's an app you put on a tablet that lets the game handle all the calculations of firing, movement, and results. It saves a lot of time.
It didn't do very well.
Now, there are lots of reasons why it might not have done very well. But one of them might be that the people who like miniatures games don't want the game to do all that work. I honestly have no idea. But I think there's something to be said for digging into the fun people have and reasons why they are fun -- and that some things that seem like drudgery from the outside often are fun for the people in the middle of it.
I would argue that this whole issues has nothing to do with the age of the consumers. Again, 5e is doing gangbusters right now. And a lot of that will be the younger market. If an RPG is so complicated it needs an app, I don't care whether it came out in the '70s or today, it'll have a tough road. That's an issue for anyone of any age.
But the main point I wanted to make was that my post was specifically addressed to flykiller. Not you.
they're at the convention to have a good time, and maybe ... maybe ... try something new. if you want to know what made an impression on them, look at what they buy as the convention winds down.
there is more to support than specific products at specific times. a century of fantasy artwork (mostly of big muscular barbarians and chainmail-bikini-clad females) and quite a few movies (conan, world of warcraft) (not to mention the on-line game world) and quite a bit of literature delineates the genre generally and specifically.
"what's d&d?" "swords and monsters and magic and fantasy!" "oh, I know what that is!"
traveller has very little in comparison.
"what's traveller?" "science fiction in the far future." "what, star wars, with energy swords and mind powers and troubled heros struggling with morality and the fate of the universe in the balance and the heros striding like gods above the common folk? star trek, with exploding planets and 25 year old captains commanding starships and exploring strange new worlds themselves and saving the federation and the heros self-actualizing themselves?" "no, it's shotguns in space, older people living out their retirements while spending many weeks travelling between the stars." "oh."
reading through this, it occurs to me that most games involve people playing megacharacters. kirk is a megacharacter. luke is a megacharacter. conan is a megacharacter. game characters are megacharacters, or very rapidly grow to be such. they're not called that, they're not defined that way, but in effect they are. such games are attractive precisely because they are not realistic in any way - they allow the players to live a heroic and victorious fantasy.
traveller has very little room for megacharacters. it's just not heroic.
and that is why the other games have so much support - because they are extensions of that desire to live a heroic and victorious fantasy. and why traveller has relatively little - because it is not.
Well, an "interactive" rule book may well be compelling.
A game that is distributed, as an "app" that is a combination of rules and any support applications that come along with it (simple example character generator, character sheet printer -- obviously if that's all that was offered it would be terrible).
But the problem is while I don't mind reading so much on a e-reader, I sure hate "browsing" on one. You just can't easily "rifle" through a PDF rule book, looking for a captivating graphic, or an interesting chapter heading.
As much as we hate junk mail at the house, I do like catalogs. They're far easier to browse than a web site. Just thumb through it, and you can see so much stuff, stuff I want, stuff I don't, stuff I didn't know I wanted. The electronic experience just isn't there yet, not easily, not conveniently.
But a DM app with rules and utilities, accompanied with a Player App that the DM can send characters and gear and little bits too -- that could be interesting if done right.
A game that is distributed, as an "app" that is a combination of rules and any support applications that come along with it (simple example character generator, character sheet printer -- obviously if that's all that was offered it would be terrible).
But the problem is while I don't mind reading so much on a e-reader, I sure hate "browsing" on one. You just can't easily "rifle" through a PDF rule book, looking for a captivating graphic, or an interesting chapter heading.
As much as we hate junk mail at the house, I do like catalogs. They're far easier to browse than a web site. Just thumb through it, and you can see so much stuff, stuff I want, stuff I don't, stuff I didn't know I wanted. The electronic experience just isn't there yet, not easily, not conveniently.
But a DM app with rules and utilities, accompanied with a Player App that the DM can send characters and gear and little bits too -- that could be interesting if done right.
5e at least doesn't have much in the way of GM support (it's pretty much all adventure campaigns beyond the three core books). That said the 5e DMG is fantastic, full of ideas and questions to answer about making up your own campaigns, worlds, classes, magic etc. It's truly a toolkit book. And honestly that's more than Traveller has ever had (and it desperately needed it).
If the young people of today are the dullards you claim they are (and they're not) then they'd just stare at that blankly and go "duh, gimme setting". Instead they're crafting their own worlds with it.
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Traveller had tables to build some aspects of a setting, but no advice (which is in the part that you conveniently replaced with "..." when you quoted me). A proper creative toolkit isn't just a bunch of tools, it's also instructions and advice on how to use them.
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creativehum
SOC-14 1K
Without doubt original Traveller was a toolkit without instructions. I do think that Traveller Book 0: An Introduction to Traveller was a solid step in the right direction for an instruction set. But it might not be as solid as the material in 5e.
That said, original Traveller game out of a specific hobby mindset. And by that I mean, the publishers assumed anyone buying it already had a) a familiarity with war-games and probably D&D; b) a familiarity with the pulp adventure SF books of the previous three decades. Those were the original sourcebooks that people used as the soil to build their own campaigns.
I'm not arguing your point, flg. I'm agreeing with it. As I said to some friends recently, all my Traveller blogging is basically me trying to fill in all the gaps that were assumed for the game in 1977 and never stated clearly. But I do think it's worth keeping in mind how different the hobby circumstances were back then.
The guys I've seen playing Golem Arcana in Anchorage are all under 25. They keep giving up and switching to 40K. Why?
I asked a few of them last summer...
1) 40K has LOTS OF PLAYERS
2) 40K has rules you can use without tech, in case "your mother war-dialed you about leaving the milk on the counter and killed your battery."
3) 40K is simpler to play unautomated than GA is automated.
The die hard will play (and teach) GA on the drop of a hat... but no one else sticks with it, and most of those play 40K.
5e, at comparable points in the product lifestyle, is well above the sales of 3.0, 3.5, and 4.X lines. 3.X, year for year.
For what it's worth, it's what I've run the most in the last 2 years. FFG Starwars is second. I can't fine a group of 4 to play Traveller when I can find groups of 6+ for Star Wars.
It gives the user the rules in electronic format. Lots of stuff is being sold as a PDF today, and, frankly, I doubt most of it is being printed out. PDF is "OK", and suffers from it's limitations. Try the enormous Starfire Solar Rule PDF. It's, what, 300-400 pages, lots of internal links, and they did a great job, but it still suffers, especially on a touch device. I'd love to be able to mouse over an abbreviation and get its definition right there.
But not just electronic format, but ideally a first class rules format, ideally something better than just links, contents, index, and search. For example, on a iPhone with "3D Touch", you can see a rule reference in the text: "Bullets do stated damage, unless the attack is Dodged, see (Rule 1.23)" and press over the link, and a summary of the rule shows up. If they tap, they jump to the rule, but the summary may well be enough.
You can have an active link: "Players who drink poison must make a Saving Throw against Constitution or suffer 2D6 of damage." Tap the Saving Throw button, and the dice roller app pops up, with the last Character (or NPC) in context (which may or may not be relevant, but the other PCs are right there), so you can tap the "Saving Throw" button for that character. 3D Touch the 2D6, and you get an instant roll.
When you update the "app", you get the Errata incorporated instantly, and correctly (i.e. the indexes are updated, etc.). Of course, you can annotate the rules as well with your own notes. Add your own footnotes, etc.
Ever read a GURPs book that references the Basic Set (or even another GURPs Book), those are all integrated seamlessly (assuming you purchased the relevant modules).
Of course, you have the Char Gen app, the Ship Design App, the Traders Worksheet, a "Play Session" page keeping track of characters, and combat, offering dice rolls, character sheets. Have the player tap the "Roll to hit" button on their app, and the ref gets not just the roll but whether it succeeded (and how well it succeeded). Up to the ref to decide if it DID succeed, but he can see the results of the roll, not just the actual number. He can even set up the context, so that there might be hidden DMs the player doesn't know about.
The ref can stand up combat by selecting the characters, and the relevant NPCs (since they're annotated in the game module): "Starport Bar: It's bustling, late afternoon, happy hour is just starting. If the players remain more than 1/2 hour, Bounty Hunters Rocko and Tex will show up looking for them." 3D Rocko or Tex, and get a quick summary. Click on the Starport Bar, and a map, with the NPCs and the players, may show up, ready for action.
So you end up with an integrated, extensible rules system. Adventures can integrate in to the environment. "Tex will grapple (Rule 2.34) the closest player." Never Grappled before? Well there's a handy reference right in the adventure.
There are all sort of opportunities available with the new medium. It's certainly not easy, but it's available. Over time, perhaps the ref won't need much more than a GM screen, but that doesn't mean that Play Management utilities won't be helpful in the long term.
sounds good, but it has to be set up first and I can see that bogging down real quick, because someone will have to specify player/weapon/opponent/distance/whateverElse before the roll can be applied. that's a lot of menu buttons to hit, especially for the referee who has to run all the opponents simultaneously.
CreativeHum... you're very gracious, thank you for that. And for your conversation as well. In the future I'll look a little longer when I figure attributions and such. I appreciate what you said about post count, but it's also clear I'm still getting the lay of the land.
As to Apps & RPGs... two of my worlds, colliding. And you're right - a lot of supposing. Not so much data. My personal feeling is that T5 is too complicated for adoption except for all but the most serious of loyalists or adept of mechanics. My long time with RPGs has this ringing my Spidey sense pretty loudly ( again, no real data ), as I very much would like to see Traveller flourish, using Aramis's point - where you can get a good-sized game together. For me, that's the def of success. I love reading, writing, and talking about it... but for me playing with a group wins hands down.
Games being successful or not is a pretty slippery set of eels to cajole, I'd think. I take a look at a bunch of aspects of Traveller as a game for sale and also as a culture, including the debacle this threat was created to discuss, and I feel like there's a lot of good work to be done. Only a small slice of which I am any sort of expert in.
And yea Flykiller... DnD definitely has some serious support, in many aspects. And the more successful it is, the more successful it becomes. It really doesn't need so much support, because it has a lot going for it from "go." From before that.
And Whartung, yes. To it all. Yes. This is my day thing for the most part, imagining just this then getting it designed. You expressed it better than I would have. As far as how the interface( s ) might go, Flykiller... figuring that is a helluva process. Complex, but good times.
Like Traveller.
Okay, time for me to shhhhhh a bit.
As to Apps & RPGs... two of my worlds, colliding. And you're right - a lot of supposing. Not so much data. My personal feeling is that T5 is too complicated for adoption except for all but the most serious of loyalists or adept of mechanics. My long time with RPGs has this ringing my Spidey sense pretty loudly ( again, no real data ), as I very much would like to see Traveller flourish, using Aramis's point - where you can get a good-sized game together. For me, that's the def of success. I love reading, writing, and talking about it... but for me playing with a group wins hands down.
Games being successful or not is a pretty slippery set of eels to cajole, I'd think. I take a look at a bunch of aspects of Traveller as a game for sale and also as a culture, including the debacle this threat was created to discuss, and I feel like there's a lot of good work to be done. Only a small slice of which I am any sort of expert in.
And yea Flykiller... DnD definitely has some serious support, in many aspects. And the more successful it is, the more successful it becomes. It really doesn't need so much support, because it has a lot going for it from "go." From before that.
And Whartung, yes. To it all. Yes. This is my day thing for the most part, imagining just this then getting it designed. You expressed it better than I would have. As far as how the interface( s ) might go, Flykiller... figuring that is a helluva process. Complex, but good times.
Like Traveller.
Okay, time for me to shhhhhh a bit.
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