Why Were There Not Multiple Settings for Classic Traveller?

[creativehum]

You simply can't get to the OTU as portrayed in MT from just CT-77 Bks 1-3.
Nor even from the 1981 version Bk 1-3 alone, either.
But you can get really close with the 1983 The Traveller Book...
You NEED books 4 & 5 to get the OTU. Book 6 is really already in the OTU, not generic, despite half the content not being tied at all to the OTU.
You also need Supplement 4.
With Bks 1-5, plus either Sup 4 or SMC, and one of TTA, Sup 3, Sup 10, or SMC, you can really get that OTU feel.

I agree with all of this. (I've been arguing all of this for some time now.)

It was on this board that I came across the notion of Proto-Traveller and was in love. What the Third Imperium became, over time, was not anything I was interested in or what I ever imagined when I first read LBBs 1-3.

Inspired by the posts about Proto-Traveller, I decided to peel back the layers even further and read LBBs 1-3 cold (both '77 and '81) for the first time in years.

That's when I saw how what is contained in LBBs 1-3 -- the text, the intention, the design, and all the pieces and how they fit together -- not only are not connected to the OTU in any concrete way, but are as you say, in many ways, incompatible with what the OTU became.

Which is fine. Some people love the OTU and that's great. But I've found an appreciation for original Traveller that I lost years ago when I got buried under all the material tied directly to the OTU.

 

[aramis]

The biggest problem for the Prototraveller setting is the lack of military hardware.

 

[creativehum]

However, the LBBs in and of themselves do not need the later material...

This was one of the revelations for me as I dug into original Traveller (Books 1-3) -- the game quite complete, wonderfully so, in my opinion. It isn't complete my modern day game design standards. But if one puts oneself in the playstyle of the '70s RPGs it makes perfect sense.

Trade rules were new to games. Shop rules were new to games, starting characters out later than the onset of adulthood was new. Providing a useful model for significant planetary data was new. Using Education as a key metric was new. Building starships was new. Building substantial capital investments was new.

A flexible Throw system was new
Skills, the acquisition of skills, and skills as a DM for the Throw was new
A combat system weighted toward being knocked out of the fight before death was new
The animal creation system was new
Patrons as an integral part of the game system was new
Lack of levels and lack of focus on character abilities was new
The Psionics system, while much like a magic system, was flexible in a way D&D (focused on spell lists) never was...

Original Traveller came out in 1977... shortly after D&D and Empire of the Petal Throne, but before RuneQuest and almost any other RPG.

It did a lot of new things.

 

[creativehum]

The biggest problem for the Prototraveller setting is the lack of military hardware.

Perhaps.

My own view is that Traveller assumed that the if the Referee needed something for his setting, he would create it, and creating such things was a relatively trivial task.

Aliens and Robots of almost any stripe could be created by combining the Characteristic lists (or a variation of them, as was ultimately done in CT), or the Animal creation system, along with the rules for weapons, armor, psionics, and drugs. (Such a combinations are not made by literally using weapons, psionics, and drugs, but the effects (in the same way the animal creation rules use the effects of armor and weapons to scale creatures, even though a creature won't be using a rapier when it bites someone). In this way, one can build quite a range of exotic encounters.

In the same way, one can use the existing weapons and armor to build all sorts of hardware, if one wants it, exactly as Loren Wiseman explained how to build a laser pistol for Classic Traveller in issue #2 of the JTAS.

This isn't to say having many things statted out and at hand by someone else's work isn't a good thing. It can be great.

My point is that the system is remarkably flexible and forgiving when it comes to these matters.

***

Also, the lack of high end weaponry is one of the reasons I always assumed "the setting of play" (as opposed to the overall setting that goes beyond the borders of the subsector the Referee has created) is at the edges (or beyond) of the civilization the characters are from. They'll need tech that can be repaired, and tech that can be easily replenished, and tech that can be armed and bought at a reasonable cost as they travel off the beaten path. For me, the specific list of weapons definitely focused the kinds of settings for the default, implied setting. (Thought, again, as above, the Referee can slap weapons together by defining them by DMs for Range, DMs for Armor, DMs for DEX, and any other special qualities he wishes (for example, the rules found for shotguns and auto fire.)

 

[aramis]

The military hardware is the basis of the 4-4-4 plan.

You need Bk 4 for military hardware, at least on the personal scale, or you need to write your own equivalent.

You can easily fake larger weapons on ships - they're not table-driven. But for the personal scale, the table driven content makes it a pain to expand. (Which is why there are several magazine articles providing additionals in the fanzines.)

Supplement 4 cures the "No military gear" issue.

A1 Leviathan is pre-HG, small ship with prototype HG rules, and the dark imperium.
A2 Research Station Gamma is ship-free, and a dark view of the imperium
A3 Twilight's Peak is a fairly grim view, provides the first truly alien aliens in the setting.
A4 Kinunir is still small ship, prototype HG, still a dark look at the imperium (perhaps the darkest of the GDW adventures).

A5 and A6 are firmly Big Ship Universe...

the exceptions are S10 Spinward Marches, and A7 Broadsword... both of which are reasonably useful for the PTU and can be read as SSU friendly.

 

[whartung]

The biggest problem for the Prototraveller setting is the lack of military hardware.

The Ironmongery chapter of Mercenary is probably one of my singularly favorite chapters in the entire game. I liked it because it really expanded the game to beyond "Shotguns in space", but it wasn't presented as just pure fantasy in space, like hand phasers or lightsabers. The gear all had a sense of reality and practicality to them vs just sounding cool.

From the Gauss rifle, to the RAM grenades, to the progression of the P/FGMPs.

That, plus the drawing of the trooper just, to me, set the gritty tone of the universe that survives today.

 

[creativehum]

In my "Traveller Kit" I have
Books 1, 2, 3, 4
Supplements 1, 2, 4

I find the weapons found in Book 4 helpful as well, for the same reasons named above.

 

[mike wightman]

... because none of the cited material was particularly unique to traveller.

what was unique?

the setting. the implied setting.

navy. marines. army. nobles. interstellar trade. interstellar transport of important people. retirement. interstellar insurgencies. bribery, forgery, mortgage payments, tremendously expensive efforts and ships and people, all working for and against ... who? what? where? when? why?

the imperium answered those questions and very well. how could it have been otherwise?

Name one other role playing game that was available in 1977 that could also do these thing?

With hindsight I could have written a brilliant science fiction roleplaying game for myself...

 

[mike wightman]

The biggest problem for the Prototraveller setting is the lack of military hardware.

Referees and players were encouraged to fill in the gaps themselves though.
I designed phasers, blasters, stunners, light sabres, sliver guns and who knows what else for the early Traveller games I ran back in 80-81.

In my protoTraveller game I have some homebrew weapon types still.

 

[mike wightman]

Spoiler

The military hardware is the basis of the 4-4-4 plan.

You need Bk 4 for military hardware, at least on the personal scale, or you need to write your own equivalent.

You can easily fake larger weapons on ships - they're not table-driven. But for the personal scale, the table driven content makes it a pain to expand. (Which is why there are several magazine articles providing additionals in the fanzines.)

Supplement 4 cures the "No military gear" issue.

A1 Leviathan is pre-HG, small ship with prototype HG rules, and the dark imperium.
A2 Research Station Gamma is ship-free, and a dark view of the imperium
A3 Twilight's Peak is a fairly grim view, provides the first truly alien aliens in the setting.
A4 Kinunir is still small ship, prototype HG, still a dark look at the imperium (perhaps the darkest of the GDW adventures).

A5 and A6 are firmly Big Ship Universe...

the exceptions are S10 Spinward Marches, and A7 Broadsword... both of which are reasonably useful for the PTU and can be read as SSU friendly.

Were you very tired when you posted all this?
When you see this post you will realise your errors and edit them - I'll edit this post to remove the spoiler/quote.
LBB4 not S4 for military weapons.
A1 - Kinunir
A4 - Leviathan
S10 - Solomani Rim

Also none of the later adventures are really 'big ship' adventures. They may use HG USPs and designs, but the ships themselves are all in the LBB2 hull size range. You could easily run them without owning HG. Even the Traveller Adventure only mentions HG sized weapons as off board fluff.

What is different is the subtle move away from the darker Imperium of the early adventures, and the S3 line about the Imperium being in decline appears to have been dropped as well...

 

[mike wightman]

GDW did produce another setting for Traveller. [sort of]

Unfortunately they changed the rule system. [a d10 version of the DGP/MT task system]

They called it Traveller 2300 and produced more setting material and adventures for it than they did MT. [wonder what happens if you do a word count for all GDW published CT rules, supplements and adventures and compare with T2300?]

After a while they realised their goof and dropped the Traveller bit in the title because it was misleading, but consider these three points:
the core tropes of Traveller 2300 were exploration, military conflict and alien encounters
the folks at GDW seriously considered porting the stutterwarp into their OTU for a while
TNE FF&S included design rules that could be used for either Traveller setting OTU or 2300 and there were discussions about if the two universes could be sewn together at some point (major retcons required for this)
the Traveller 2300 setting is still with us, now powered by MgT

 

[Hyphen]

When I first saw this thread, for some reason I immediately thought, "When The Universe Is Not Enough". ;-p

 

[flykiller]

With hindsight I could have written a brilliant science fiction roleplaying game for myself...

so do it now.

"When The Universe Is Not Enough"

more along the lines of "when the universe is not to my liking" ....

 

[creativehum]

more along the lines of "when the universe is not to my liking" ....

Actually, no.

As I mentioned in the first post, Bill referenced Greyhawk and Blackmoor, and I thought about how many other settings were built around D&D's rules, and a question got triggered in my head. I thought someone might have had some insight into this.

 

[flykiller]

"When The Universe Is Not Enough"

more along the lines of "when the universe is not to my liking" ....

Actually, no.

actually, yes. that is why traveller has the phrase "atu" - "alternate traveller universe".

 

[creativehum]

But for the first two years of the game there was no setting at all.

Marc Miller has stated clearly there was no setting when Books 1-3 were originally published, and (according to him) at first GDW had no plans for a setting. He assumed, as Gary Gygax did about D&D, that people would not want a setting constructed by someone else, and would make their own.

The phrase ATU was only introduced several years later, when people had to distinguish the settings they had made, and were still busy making, and the OTU, which had, with time, become one in the same with the game.

But before that... there was no need for the phase. There were simply as many settings as there were Referees.

I was simply curious if anyone knew why GDW hadn't developed or offered several other settings -- since, again, the Classic Traveller was (and still is) built to encourage Referees to create their own settings. Offering settings with starkly different flavors would have offered folks more product to buy... just as TSR did with D&D.

 

[aramis]

actually, yes. that is why traveller has the phrase "atu" - "alternate traveller universe".

Not the same. Not at all the same.

D&D had multiple published settings by 1978. GMs who didn't have time and/or creativity enough for an Alternate D&D setting had a choice of published settings to work with. Grayhawk, Blackmoor, the slightly divergent EPT... and the JG Wilderlands of High Fantasy.

Traveller had the OTU. 2300 wasn't an ATU, despite the name, it was a different set of rules (mechanically derivative, but not the same) and a different kind of setting, with very different assumptions... and was 1987. It required a bunch of player & GM relearning.

In 1987, D&D has Mystara, AD&D had Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, Ravenloft, and more coming (planescape, Dark Sun, Birthright), plus continued support by third parties, including JG doing Blackmoor (as First Fantasy Campaign, for trademark reasons), Wilderlands of High Fantasy, and the Fantasy Hex system for enabling easier GM-creation of custom worlds. Several other companies had similar, if less well known, ready to roll worlds. Kingdoms of Kalamar is a little later, but not much. Also, TSR's Buck Rogers was using a close variant of AD&D - and it falls into the same role as 2300 - just close enough to be annoyingly different, just different enough to need actual relearning of the system for the differences

All the D&D worlds made a few key changes to character gen, included a tweak or two to mechanics, but were still the same game system.

Buck Rogers was not a "D&D Game World" - despite being grounded in the same original mechanics, due to the heavy modifications.

2300 was not an ATU, either, despite the similarities of the task system, everything else was different. Even the attribute and skill scaling was different.

The various D&D worlds all used the same attribute scaling, the same class/level base sets, the same mechanics.

There was no comparable niche in the Traveller ecology.
Third Parties were assigned (up until 1984) chunks of the OTU to develop as they saw fit, subject to approvals. It was all one big setting.

It was a freaking nightmare for the "collector" - because EVERYTHING was official. Everything was different. Lee's Guide was very different in tone to Judges' Guild's stuff and Games Workshop's stuff. (But those two fit nicely together, JG and GW.) And FASA and Gamelords were closer in tone to Loren's own additions to the OTU. DGP was so well received that DGP wrote the 3rd edition - MegaTraveller. But it was all one setting.

In many ways, Atlas of the Imperium was what killed the ATU as a thing.

 

[Whipsnade]

But for the first two years of the game there was no setting at all.

I think that's part of the reason why there weren't any settings other than the OTU offered or developed. D&D had a long history of play and a "setting" before it was codified and published. Traveller apparently did not. So, initially GDW didn't put too much effort into a setting because no one at GDW was playing Traveller often enough to need a setting.

Marc Miller has stated clearly there was no setting, and at first no plans for a setting. He assumed, as Gary Gygax did about D&D, that people would not want a setting constructed by someone else, and would make their own.

But Gygax, Arneson, and the other TSR Great Old Ones quickly set aside that idea. GDW, on the other hand, did not and I think that was due in part to two things:

1 - As I mentioned in the other thread, there was nothing at GDW like Gygax's Greyhawk, Arneson's Blackmoor, or even Greenwood's Forgotten Realms. Sure, the GDW staff played Traveller but there weren't any long running, long standing, personal Traveller campaigns created and continuously run by Miller, Harshman, Wiseman, et. al. There weren't any in-house campaigns or settings because those men were busy. Which leads me to...

B - GDW was BUSY. What's the oft quoted description of their output? A new product every twenty days for twenty years? I'm not saying TSR wasn't busy too, but they were busy with essentially one product line. How many different lines was GDW successfully juggling at one time? There was Traveller, all the wargames, all the miniature rules, Grenadier magazine, JTAS, Challenge, and everything else with a far smaller staff and budget than TSR enjoyed.

Gygax could spend time detailing his personal setting and then getting it into print. Ditto Arneson, ditto Greenwood. And speaking of Greenwood, was there anyone at GDW acting as the same kind of D&D/Forgotten Realms Johnny Appleseed like Greenwood? GDW attended conventions, but how often did they run sessions? And, considering how many other RPGs they released, how often did they run Traveller sessions?

I was simply curious if anyone knew why GDW hadn't developed or offered several other settings -- since, again, the Classic Traveller was (and still is) built to encourage Referees to create their own settings. Offering settings with starkly different flavors would have offered folks more product to buy... just as TSR did with D&D.

I don't think GDW saw itself in the "setting business". They published rules and supplements, presented their official or default setting, and took it as a given that other people were doing other things that differed from the OTU by varying degrees.

Without GDW staffers interested in promoting their own personally developed non-OTU Traveller settings, there was no real push to develop any settings beyond the OTU. Besides, there was always a lot of work to do on a lot of other projects and not many people with which to do it.

They did "open" Traveller to an extent with CT's "Land Grants", but the concept of releasing OGL materials so third parties could produce settings and other content for the Traveller rules set was a concept that no one in RPGs had developed yet. (It's worth noting that most of the Land Grants produced materials different enough from the OTU that they're nearly all de-canonized.)

 

[aramis]

Without GDW staffers interested in promoting their own personally developed non-OTU Traveller settings, there was no real push to develop any settings beyond the OTU. Besides, there was always a lot of work to do on a lot of other projects and not many people with which to do it.

They did "open" Traveller to an extent with CT's "Land Grants", but the concept of releasing OGL materials so third parties could produce settings and other content for the Traveller rules set was a concept that no one in RPGs had developed yet. (It's worth noting that most of the Land Grants produced materials different enough from the OTU that they're nearly all de-canonized.)

It's also worth noting that no one particularly saw a need for actual licenses EXCEPT GDW. Frank, Loren, and Marc had a pretty damned advanced idea in that they not only developed a game world, but, from about late 1978 to 1984, there was about one new Approved for Traveller product per 15 days or so. And only one in 3 was GDW's. It dialed back a bit in the 1984-1992 time frame - fewer licenses, and not all of them canonical anymore... And that's not counting the articles in other company's magazines which push the number closer to 12 days per traveller-useful publication. Plus GDW doing a load of other games, including, from 85 on, T2K.

JG and Mayfair produced "for use with any FRPG" supplements that were essentially "For Use with AD&D but not marked as such for legal reasons." Mayfair eventually did get a license deal... And JG won the TSR suit against them.

Rolemaster was a series of add-ons (1980) for D&D that eventually (1982) was flipped into its own thing. No license.

Melee and Wizard (1978) were similar, and many D&D GM's used them in place of D&D combat, until ITL was released, when it became its own RPG.

Wulf Blackhaus commented several times that TSR refused to consider C&S... and wouldn't license him to make it a 3rd party supplement, so he eventually pitched it to FGU as a stand alone game.

Chaosium didn't license to anyone. They actually SOLD the trademark for RuneQuest to Avalon Hill in order to save the company; their only other valuable property was Call of Cthulhu. They did pull through... and produced some of the best licensed games out there in their day: Elfquest, Storbringer/Elric!, and Ringworld. Their license from Moorcock was a handshake that Moorcock almost about.

Traveller was a fairly unique beast. it was the biggest name that actually wanted others to do stuff in their playground. They had WAY too much going on to do anything else. Their friends picked up their slack - Bill and Andrew, the FASA guys (Lorne, Jordan, Guy, et al.); going further abroad, the Seeker guys, DGP, Games Workshop, and a dozen fanzines....

 

[Condottiere]

D&D inherently embraces a multi-universe concept as a macro-setting, pretty much as Marvel and DC comics do, so cross-overs really do look inviting, whereas with Traveller/Imperium that feels off, much like with Star Trek and Star Wars.

Perhaps that's the nature of SciFi that doesn't explicitly and fundamentally have it at it's core.

If you disagreed with the tone or feel of Forgotten Realms, and certainly it's future timeline, you can always move on to somewhere else, literally, with your character.

Maybe if the setting isn't tied to a wargame aspect like Warhammer, where any change that doesn't add to the overall enjoyment of the setting feels annoying, and unable to just be set aside.