Early RPGs

One important thing to understand about the first role-playing games is that the people who created them were already role-playing when playing other games. So their role-playing games weren’t designed as rules for role-playing. They didn’t need rules for role-playing in other games, so why would they need them in a role-playing game? Rather, the rules were designed to not get in the way of role-playing.

This is why the combat system† in original D&D is anemic compared to the wargames with Gygax’s or Arneson’s name on them. This is why the combat in the main three classic Traveller books is anemic compared to the wargames Marc Miller had previously designed.

†While original D&D said to use Chainmail, neither of the creators did so in practice. Arneson said he abandoned Chainmail early on in favor of developing the “alternate” combat system. Gygax said he never used Chainmail for D&D combat.

On stats in RPG adventures

An introductory rant from “Big Trouble on a Little Planet”, Adventurer #7 February 1987, by A.J. Bradbury:

This scenario is designed for use with any of the leading SFRPG’S—Traveller, Star Trek, Space Opera, Star Frontiers, etc., though this isn’t the only reason why no player stats are included. To judge by some of the letters appearing in the leading RPG magazines, many Referees and GMs are still locked into a mental straightjacket which makes them try to run any printed game straight off the page—which is a big mistake—or to reject such scenarios because they don’t fit into the current game (which is just as daft).

Although the scenario produced here is complete within itself, it is designed to be a source of ideas rather than a finished unit, and is particulary unsuitable for ‘unedited use’, so to speak. On the contrary, anyone wishing to use this material is strongly advised to read through the entire text before (a) making any and all additions/deletions he/she thinks necessary, and (b) rolling up character points which will tailor the scenario to the preferred game and style of play, and the experience of his/her players.

And now, having got those few thoughts off my chest, let the action commence.

CT CD surprises

Due to a mix-up, the first time I tried to order the classic Traveller CD-ROM from Far Future, I got the Traveller⁵ CD instead. During FFE’s December sale this year, I ordered it again. No mix-up this time. Looking through it, I found a few of unexpected surprises.

Firstly, it’s got earlier printings of some books including the 1977 versions of Books 1–3. I’d read about some of the differences therein, but this is the first time I got a look at them myself. Most interesting to me is the “Jump Routes” table from the 1977 Book 3, which was omitted in later versions of the game.

The next surprise was a classic Traveller errata compendium.

And the last surprise—so far: Special Supplement 4, Lost Rules of Traveller. The blurb on the back describes it thusly:

This special supplement examines and interpolates various Lost Rules tucked away and forgotten in various Traveller® sources, and was produced to complement the Classic Traveller Reprints from Far Future Enterprises.

It is really great that Marc has been making all this GDW stuff, as well as stuff produced by other companies under license from GDW, available.

Traveller: the infection

Recently I’ve been occasionally hosting my role-playing gaming group again. The kids are now old enough that they are really paying attention to the game now.

Sunday, after Saturday’s game, Grace (8yo) took at stab at improv’ing a Star Wars game for her brother. No rules, per se. Just imitating what she’d seen us doing.

I printed out a copy of Starter Traveller for Jake (10yo). Space, military, and the phrase “create starships” immediately got his attention. Both kids made characters. (And neither failed a survival roll!) Jake then had me walk him through world generation to give his character a home world. He’s mapping it.

(By the way, Far Future has made Starter Traveller free from DriveThruRPG and RPGNow until the end of the year!)

This week, Jake’s been taking the books to school with him. All his friends have made characters. Last night he made up a planetary system and some NPCs and took his first stab at referee’ing an actual game today. Apparently it went well, and his friends are asking where they can get their own copies of the game. Tonight, after homework and bath, we reviewed space combat since it had come up today and he’d had to improvise because he hadn’t read the rules.

One of the things I’m very impressed about is the way he seems to natural see the rules as tools to use when it suits him and to ignore when they don’t. (Or to gloss over for now and learn later.) He went ahead and improvised space combat until he could look at it later. Even as we were going over the space combat rules, he was deciding how he was going to house rule it. “I’m going to simplify this bit.” & “We’ll ignore that for now.”

Indie elves and old-school dwarves

Ken Hite:

I’ll have more to say on the storied rivalries—and eerie similarities—between indie elves and old-school dwarves in later columns

When—around 2004—I found that the two role-playing games I wanted to play most were classic Traveller and Expert D&D, this was the thing I had noticed. These games from c. 1981 seemed to have a lot in common with current indie games. I’m looking forward to reading Ken’s thoughts about that.

Semi-generic RPGs

Only the oldest games—Traveller, D&D—get away with the sloppy design of having rules that are kinda generic but really are spiked with loads of setting assumptions that you’d have to go clean out to really use them as a generic ruleset.

—mxyzplk@RPGnet

I think one of the real stregths of classic Traveller (following the lead of D&D) is that it has an implied setting. Yet, it doesn’t detail the setting. The setting is only implied.

There’s a lot to be said for the implied setting approach. It is quick to get into. The implied setting has already filled in enough blanks to get things rolling. Not too many, however, that would slow down getting started. It still leaves a fair amount of room for the group to really make the setting their own.

Classic Traveller (perhaps even more than D&D) also provided tools to aid in fleshing out the group’s unique version of the implicit setting. Those tools being presented as random generators gave us the flexibility to either randomly generate things or just make choices.

I’m glad there are games that strive to be more generic. I’m glad that there are games that are strongly tied to a specific setting. I enjoy games from both of those approaches. I’m very glad, however, that there are still games—like Mongoose’s incarnation of Traveller—that take a more moderate approach.

Look, no fault of Traveller's initial design, it's fine for the 1970s when people didn't know any better.

This is not sloppy. This is not ignorance. This is a very strong, middle-of-the-road approach. Moreover, I think such a middle-of-the-road approach is especially suited to newcomers to the hobby.

On mxyzplk’s criticism that Traveller never presents a main Imperium setting book: I don’t really know any of the editions except classic well enough to confirm or deny that charge. I can think of some arguments against it. Yet, I think it has merit. Even with such a book, however, I think having the implied setting in the main rules fits what Traveller was meant to be.

Wanderer

pure awesome

A picture that asks the question: What if Traveller had been a fantasy game? There’s lots of nice little touches. Like REH’s “Know, O Prince...” text substituted for the “Free Trader Beowulf” text.

Since I first played Traveller (c. 1985?), I’ve wanted to run a fantasy game with the Traveller rules. I’ve not been alone. In fact, the 1981 Thieves’ World set included Traveller stats!

Games that aren’t D&D

Inspired by Other Games I Have Known et alia...

Although the first role-playing game I owned was a D&D Basic Set and an Expert rule book, the first role-playing game I played on a regular basis was Traveller.

In the past few years, I’ve had the opportunity to play classic D&D and classic Traveller again. Both games were as much (if not more) fun today as they were then.

Here’s a list—as memory serves—of the other role-playing games that aren’t a D&D that I’ve played for a significant amount of time.

• (classic) Traveller
• Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay
• GURPS (3/e)
• Rolemaster
• Hârnmaster
• Fantasy HERO
• Marvel SuperHeroes
• (Decipher’s) Lord of the Rings
• Toon
• Forbidden

Forbidden is a homebrew horror game a friend of mine has designed.

Oh, and “d20 Fantasy”. (Duck & run) ^_^

RPG form factor

There’s something very appealing to me about saddle-stitched role-playing games. (And other kinds of games too, I suppose.)

“Saddle-stitched” is a fancy way to say “bound by staples”.

Stapling through the center fold, also called saddle-stitching, joins a set of nested folios into a single magazine issue; most American comic books are well-known examples of this type.

I really enjoy my c. 1981 D&D Basic and Expert booklets. My Starter Traveller booklets. Even more, I enjoy digest-sized, saddle-stitched booklets. Like the classic Traveller booklets or the original D&D booklets.

When I flip through a new RPG in a big hardback book or a big “perfect bound”, it seems so unwieldy.

Maybe it has something to do with the simplicity. I bought a saddle stapler, so I can make my own.

One factor may be that a saddle-stitched book can’t be more than about 60–90 pages. (Well, 64–88, since you need a page count evenly divisible by four.)

They tend to be easy to use at the gaming table. They tend to lay flat well, and you never have too far to search when looking for something.

While typing this, I typed “appealling”. The choices my computer offered for correcting it were “appealing” and “appalling”. It seems there’s a short distance between the two. (^_^)

Where are the stories?

I’ve written about this before, but it—unsurprisingly—comes to mind again.

Probably any more-than-casual D&D player has read a story from Gygax’s Greyhawk campaign. (Not the published setting, but the actual campaign run by Gygax and Kuntz.) One of the earliest magazine articles about the game included one. They were told in the pages of The Dragon magazine. They were told in modules. They were told even in relatively recent issues of Dragon magazine.

Do some searching, and you can find a few stories from Arneson’s Blackmoor campaign.

Despite a lot of searching, though, I haven’t found a story from Marc Miller’s personal Traveller campaign or Steve Jackson’s personal GURPS campaign.

(Interestingly, a pre-GURPS SJG game, Melee, did open with a story taken from actual play!)

Perhaps those designers feel it would be inappropriately vain to talk about their games and good enough to let people create their own stories.

But such stories are, I think, important to communicate aspects of the game—as played by its creators—that the rules and advice alone do not. They certainly help breathe a life into it. Not that we then have to play as the creators do, but I think there’s still a lot of value in such stories.

More recently it’s become popular to make up stories to try to give a game more life, but it doesn’t work for me the way the stories of Gygax and Kuntz and company do.

Mongoose Traveller playtest v3

Wouldn’t you know it. Yesterday I print the Mongoose Traveller playtest document v2—today they post v3.

ADD, Mongoose Traveller, & me

I feel like, as I get older, I’m developing attention deficit. I printed out the Mongoose Traveller playtest document, but I just can’t seem to concentrate on reading it.

Rogues in the RPG

Today, I read this sentence in reference to the Mongoose Traveller playtest document: “Rogue—sounds too D&Dish, honestly.” That’s kind of ironic considering that Traveller used “rogue” long before (Supplement 4, Citizens of the Imperium, 1979) D&D did (Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition, Player’s Handbook, 1989).

Mongoose Traveller reaction

Yeah, so it's D&D4e announcement day, & I'm posting about Mongoose Traveller. So, I'm behind... Mongoose is going to release a version of Traveller. Considering the track record of attempts to update classic Traveller such as MegaTraveller & T4... Considering Mongoose's track record such as the many problems they had with Conan & RuneQuest... Is it any wonder that I'm not excited?