One of the strangest reactions I have ever gotten in gaming was when I ran a large-scale [Classic] Traveller game at university with a custom setting (a high frontier game set in the .solar system). One person was apparently quite incensed and angry that I called it a Traveller game when it wasn't set in the Third Imperium. The only real differences being that jump drives were considered fusion torches (for interplanetary travel) and maneuver drives were chemical thrusters (for maneuvering), and a Security branch replaced the Marines. I suspect he wanted to show off his knowledge of the Third Imperium.
The truth is I've never really made use of the Third Imperium, since ,most of the games I ran were in the early phase of the game, before the Third Imperium was really established. One golden-age Terran Empire game (with the awesome Nova-Class Dreadnaught being in a 5000 ton hull because that's as far as the hull table went), a Colonial game where TL represented industrial capacity and which declined the further from the homeworlds you travelled (due to mass adding to FTL transit costs), the aforementioned High Frontier game with Earth trying to keep control of the frontier by whatever means necessary, and most recently, a more heavily modified Traveller game (with less emphasis on skill rolls) were interstellar transit is via massive interstellar Starliners run by strange aliens and their robots, rather than little private or semi-private starships (using the original Jump Route table [excised in later printings] to determine if there was a liner heading in that direction in the next week or so). All fun experiences.
How do these contrast with games with explicit settings like Star Frontiers or Coriolis? How do you think having a more defined setting change play? Where is the line between what you want and what these games have?
That's a very big question and one I hope to answer in future posts. My brief answer is that I think games with very explicit settings are bought and played *for the setting*. The setting is the draw, not the rules or anything else. Mind you, the vast majority of RPGs nowadays are bought for that reason, so it obviously holds an appeal. What I'm wrestling with is a way to keep the game less explicitly defined in order to allow for GM customization/creativity while also leveraging some of that interest in a predefined setting that I think most roleplayers have.
One of the strangest reactions I have ever gotten in gaming was when I ran a large-scale [Classic] Traveller game at university with a custom setting (a high frontier game set in the .solar system). One person was apparently quite incensed and angry that I called it a Traveller game when it wasn't set in the Third Imperium. The only real differences being that jump drives were considered fusion torches (for interplanetary travel) and maneuver drives were chemical thrusters (for maneuvering), and a Security branch replaced the Marines. I suspect he wanted to show off his knowledge of the Third Imperium.
The truth is I've never really made use of the Third Imperium, since ,most of the games I ran were in the early phase of the game, before the Third Imperium was really established. One golden-age Terran Empire game (with the awesome Nova-Class Dreadnaught being in a 5000 ton hull because that's as far as the hull table went), a Colonial game where TL represented industrial capacity and which declined the further from the homeworlds you travelled (due to mass adding to FTL transit costs), the aforementioned High Frontier game with Earth trying to keep control of the frontier by whatever means necessary, and most recently, a more heavily modified Traveller game (with less emphasis on skill rolls) were interstellar transit is via massive interstellar Starliners run by strange aliens and their robots, rather than little private or semi-private starships (using the original Jump Route table [excised in later printings] to determine if there was a liner heading in that direction in the next week or so). All fun experiences.
How do these contrast with games with explicit settings like Star Frontiers or Coriolis? How do you think having a more defined setting change play? Where is the line between what you want and what these games have?
That's a very big question and one I hope to answer in future posts. My brief answer is that I think games with very explicit settings are bought and played *for the setting*. The setting is the draw, not the rules or anything else. Mind you, the vast majority of RPGs nowadays are bought for that reason, so it obviously holds an appeal. What I'm wrestling with is a way to keep the game less explicitly defined in order to allow for GM customization/creativity while also leveraging some of that interest in a predefined setting that I think most roleplayers have.