17th May, 2009.
You know, it’s not that often I have time for a quick read.
Tonight was rather busy, after all.
But during a quick break at work, I managed to flick through
Which is currently published by a lot of competing companies, but was originally produced by Games Designer Workshop*.
And, my word, although I only refereed a few games of it, it was a fascinating one to read.
We’re onto backgrounds, again.
One of the issues I had with the venerable — but iconic — Dungeons & Dragons was not only that the rules were quite hefty, but that it had settings.
Lots of them.
Which made the choice of which world to play in rather big, and some of the published adventures non-specific; a Games Master had to put some work in, to make sure the details matched.
One or two other games took different directions; 1978’s RuneQuest, with its Bonze Age Glorantha setting, was one good example.
But Traveller, published a year earlier, beat RuneQuest to it, in a way.
While it was originally designed for a generic space opera background, Traveller also used its own feudalistic Third Imperium as both an example of what could be done, and as a setting for GDW’s own in-house, published adventures.
Which is what fascinated me with the game; it actually had a logical setting, complete with logical reasons for how things worked.
The government was a feudal one because, while this sci-fi universe had faster than light travel, it didn’t — like Star Trek or Star Wars, for example — have any sort of faster than light communication; subspace radio, what have you.
Local government had a lot of flexibility and autonomy: because it would take 2 months to tell your rulers a war had started.
And another 2 months, for them to issue any relevant orders.
That local government, incidentally came complete with feudal titles; ones character could easily end up as a knight, or with another junior title, that showed you his place in the Traveller government.
Actually, that’s another thing, the rules for Traveller were quite different to Dungeons and Dragons, as well …
To the point were actually generating a character was quite fun, too; AND meant you ended up with something approaching a rounded character to play in whatever background you ended up using.
Rather than a generic 18-year-old rookie magic-user/fighter/what-have-you …
Traveller took something of a different view of adventurers; it saw characters as someone who was gaining further experience, rather than initial experience.
And that their adventures were about gaining position.
•••••
Just thought I’d mention go totally off subject; ITV has been The Silence of the Lambs, tonight.
Utter Classic!
And a very good excuse to post up the ‘cage’ scene; which I personally always thought is what got the film the Oscar.
* This was the US company. And not to be confused with the UK company, Games Workshop; the guys behind the seemingly all conquering “Warhammer” games franchise …
No comments:
Post a Comment