Nobody liked Terminal Space?
http://terminalspace.blogspot.com/
Why did TSR drop the ball so badly?
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Juju EyeBall
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Re: Why did TSR drop the ball so badly?
I do!DungeonDork wrote:Nobody liked Terminal Space?
http://terminalspace.blogspot.com/
Of course, Terminal Space is OD&D in space, not AD&D in space.
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Juju EyeBall
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Re: Why did TSR drop the ball so badly?
Geoffrey wrote:Of course, Terminal Space is OD&D in space, not AD&D in space.DungeonDork wrote:Nobody liked Terminal Space?
http://terminalspace.blogspot.com/
What's the difference?
KIDDING!
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geneweigel
Re: Why did TSR drop the ball so badly?
Thats the hub of it.Flambeaux wrote:TheRedPriest wrote:
This is where I get pelted by the Star Wars fans.
Why? Star Wars has nothing to do with science fiction. Space Opera? Sure. Fantasy/Mythology set in "space"? Yep. But sci-fi? Nope.
Classifying sci-fi is hard even back then MA came out as a sci-fi and almost immediately GW came out as "science fantasy" in almost an apology.
Wow! That started on such a good "high" then "hiccuped hard and vomited" by the time it got to mi-go as a race!DungeonDork wrote:Nobody liked Terminal Space?
http://terminalspace.blogspot.com/
Nobody liked Terminal Space?
http://terminalspace.blogspot.com/
Re: Why did TSR drop the ball so badly?
Congratulations on getting my point.Flambeaux wrote:Why? Star Wars has nothing to do with science fiction. Space Opera? Sure. Fantasy/Mythology set in "space"? Yep. But sci-fi? Nope.TheRedPriest wrote:This is where I get pelted by the Star Wars fans.
"The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek." - Joseph Campbell
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geneweigel
Re: Why did TSR drop the ball so badly?
Its bizarre thats there is so many things out there that I'm unaware of.
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Juju EyeBall
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Re: Why did TSR drop the ball so badly?
You could leave it out. Not like various editions haven't had their share of dumb races.geneweigel wrote:Flambeaux wrote:TheRedPriest wrote:
Wow! That started on such a good "high" then "hiccuped hard and vomited" by the time it got to mi-go as a race!
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geneweigel
Re: Why did TSR drop the ball so badly?
That is, my mind was heading towards what that TERMINAL thing is but... not like that. Its just recapping sci-fi over the 3 book text.
Anyway see in that light that "D&D got a space treatment" already is a little discouraging to the sense of this conversation.
At least in trying to establish that it hasn't been done.
There's another game for the internet thats just like it for GAMMA WORLD called MUTANT FUTURE which frankly has the same hiccups riddled throughout.
Anyway see in that light that "D&D got a space treatment" already is a little discouraging to the sense of this conversation.
At least in trying to establish that it hasn't been done.
There's another game for the internet thats just like it for GAMMA WORLD called MUTANT FUTURE which frankly has the same hiccups riddled throughout.
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Juju EyeBall
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Re: Why did TSR drop the ball so badly?
I found Mutant Future to be more accessible than Gamma World for some reason.geneweigel wrote:That is, my mind was heading towards what that TERMINAL thing is but... not like that. Its just recapping sci-fi over the 3 book text.
Anyway see in that light that "D&D got a space treatment" already is a little discouraging to the sense of this conversation.
At least in trying to establish that it hasn't been done.
There's another game for the internet thats just like it for GAMMA WORLD called MUTANT FUTURE which frankly has the same hiccups riddled throughout.
Of course there's also Encounter Critical which is just a hoot.
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Falconer
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Re: Why did TSR drop the ball so badly?
I think you have to break D&D down into its most basic assumptions, and then decide which elements will work and which elements will need to be replaced in a Space RPG...
1. referee
2. 3-8 players
3. one (primary) character (at a time) per player
4. Middle-earth as major basis for world assumptions (elves etc.)
5. getting rich, and powerful and establishing a barony as overarching goal of the game
6. dungeon exploration as primary activity
7. limited scope of the game’s utility within the imaginary world (use another game for mass warfare, for example)
1. referee
2. 3-8 players
3. one (primary) character (at a time) per player
4. Middle-earth as major basis for world assumptions (elves etc.)
5. getting rich, and powerful and establishing a barony as overarching goal of the game
6. dungeon exploration as primary activity
7. limited scope of the game’s utility within the imaginary world (use another game for mass warfare, for example)
RPG Pop Club Star Trek Tabletop Adventure Reviews
Re: Why did TSR drop the ball so badly?
I happen to enjoy Star Frontiers, it has the sci-fi and with some good after market work done by some folks at DwD it has some great fun....
AD&D in space it is not,,, But then why would one want to have AD&D in space.
AD&D in space it is not,,, But then why would one want to have AD&D in space.
Re: Why did TSR drop the ball so badly?
I think this would be a reasonable start. The next thing to do would be to settle on one "look" and one "setting" for that look. As Gene said: "Without a solid background that resists pull from overbearing genres it'll just drift right back into it and you'll get the same old shit sandwich again." (bold is mine).Falconer wrote:I think you have to break D&D down into its most basic assumptions, and then decide which elements will work and which elements will need to be replaced in a Space RPG...
1. referee
2. 3-8 players
3. one (primary) character (at a time) per player
4. Middle-earth as major basis for world assumptions (elves etc.)
5. getting rich, and powerful and establishing a barony as overarching goal of the game
6. dungeon exploration as primary activity
7. limited scope of the game’s utility within the imaginary world (use another game for mass warfare, for example)
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Thomas Jefferson in letter to Madison
Back in the days when a leopard could grab and break your Australopithecus (gracile or robust) nek and drag you into the tree as a snack, mankind has never had a break"
** Stone Giant
Re: Why did TSR drop the ball so badly?
The key problem with adapting D&D to space, or to answer why Gygax and Co. didn't do it, is probably based on the following.
(A)D&D is a very specific game, designed mostly to handle the dungeon crawl. At it's roots, it's about killing monsters and taking treasure. I'm not sure that fits the S-F theme. Things like the saving throw, whole character concepts, etc, are designed around this premise. Like others have said, you'd have to change a lot.
The core character classes are designed around fantasy archetypes. Fantasy fiction has some common archetypes as the knight or barbarian, and wizard. When you start to get to SF, it gets a little muddy. Most of what we call archetypes are based around jobs or professions, and might be very specific for genre. At the very least, you would have to throw out the Wizard and Cleric. That's about 3/4ths of the PHB right there.
It's also harder to do a pure level-based system IMO around this. There are so many subgenres. At the very least, if you're going to have a class based system you may need to have it with skills, options, or some kind of customization. It's harder to nail it down to core concepts. Also, I think a more mythical game handles class and level better than a more modern game. I noticed that the trend was for fantasy games to be more class/level based than S-F/Modern.
Many of the rules are based around melee combat and not firearms. You'd need to change that and handle those special conditions. Also, the D&D concept at the core (without taking into accout Gary's later preference of adventures having "day jobs") involves collecting loot. But if you're playing an S-F game, you are likely to be backed by military. It makes it hard to replace (get a Mark VI laser rifle instead of a +5 sword), because you should be able to more easilly buy, procure, or steal equipment. This is probably why a post-apocalyptic or lost-world setting works like that.
The game design theory at the time was very, for lack of a better term, simulationist. Because of its wargame roots any game would be based on that concept. For instance, in many cases Psychic or Mutation power seemed to be assigned as random genetic quirks in any rules that came up. I can't see EGG or similar thinking people create a level-based mutant or psi.
While people are saying "leave spaceships out", I think a lot of players EXPECT to fly their own ship, and ignoring this would give you an incomplete game. I can't see a good rules-set ignoring this--it would be like having a naval based campaign only focused on ship to ship or shore-leave stuff. There should be information on planets, etc.
S-F is also more about story than combat, at least from fans of the genre. The key thing to good S-F, what many people forget, is at its core a lot of the good S-F is a way to comment on society and technology. Hard SF focuses on the changes the future might be, and soft SF tends to focus on the Speculative qualities of "what if you add this and that". At it's core it is much more nuanced than "kill and take stuff", and I think this makes the older D&D rules harder to deal with.
Gygax himself admitted that SF was not as popular a genre as Fantasy, because of the limitations. If he didn't create an SF game, I suspect it wasn't as important to him as Fantasy, and further he did not beleive in the whole "universal system" thing, at least at the time this would have happened, so if he had created an SF game, it would have likely been different from AD&D in many ways. I know one thing Gary has said is that he didn't like alien races because he felt they should be truly alien instead of just akin to sterotypes based on human personalities. (He even critiqued Fantasy for this). When somebody (Jim Ward) asked him to create a game, he said "write it yourself", thus came Gamma World. So I don't think he was interested in delving into the area filled by Traveller.
The only pure SF (as opposed to weird S-Fantasy or Sci-Fantasy) I saw him write was Elder Worlds--this was a draft game once placed on his web site, based on a computer game premise. It dealt with a race of humanity on the opposite side of the galaxy, impling we are a seed race. It was based on a dynastic empire of humans with a caste system and didn't involve as much space travel, and for most non-nobles tech was limited to about the 17th century level of things, and only one true sentient alien race. It needed a lot more to be complete though--I think Gary was going to have somebody eventually expand and make it a genre for Lejendary Adventures.
(A)D&D is a very specific game, designed mostly to handle the dungeon crawl. At it's roots, it's about killing monsters and taking treasure. I'm not sure that fits the S-F theme. Things like the saving throw, whole character concepts, etc, are designed around this premise. Like others have said, you'd have to change a lot.
The core character classes are designed around fantasy archetypes. Fantasy fiction has some common archetypes as the knight or barbarian, and wizard. When you start to get to SF, it gets a little muddy. Most of what we call archetypes are based around jobs or professions, and might be very specific for genre. At the very least, you would have to throw out the Wizard and Cleric. That's about 3/4ths of the PHB right there.
It's also harder to do a pure level-based system IMO around this. There are so many subgenres. At the very least, if you're going to have a class based system you may need to have it with skills, options, or some kind of customization. It's harder to nail it down to core concepts. Also, I think a more mythical game handles class and level better than a more modern game. I noticed that the trend was for fantasy games to be more class/level based than S-F/Modern.
Many of the rules are based around melee combat and not firearms. You'd need to change that and handle those special conditions. Also, the D&D concept at the core (without taking into accout Gary's later preference of adventures having "day jobs") involves collecting loot. But if you're playing an S-F game, you are likely to be backed by military. It makes it hard to replace (get a Mark VI laser rifle instead of a +5 sword), because you should be able to more easilly buy, procure, or steal equipment. This is probably why a post-apocalyptic or lost-world setting works like that.
The game design theory at the time was very, for lack of a better term, simulationist. Because of its wargame roots any game would be based on that concept. For instance, in many cases Psychic or Mutation power seemed to be assigned as random genetic quirks in any rules that came up. I can't see EGG or similar thinking people create a level-based mutant or psi.
While people are saying "leave spaceships out", I think a lot of players EXPECT to fly their own ship, and ignoring this would give you an incomplete game. I can't see a good rules-set ignoring this--it would be like having a naval based campaign only focused on ship to ship or shore-leave stuff. There should be information on planets, etc.
S-F is also more about story than combat, at least from fans of the genre. The key thing to good S-F, what many people forget, is at its core a lot of the good S-F is a way to comment on society and technology. Hard SF focuses on the changes the future might be, and soft SF tends to focus on the Speculative qualities of "what if you add this and that". At it's core it is much more nuanced than "kill and take stuff", and I think this makes the older D&D rules harder to deal with.
Gygax himself admitted that SF was not as popular a genre as Fantasy, because of the limitations. If he didn't create an SF game, I suspect it wasn't as important to him as Fantasy, and further he did not beleive in the whole "universal system" thing, at least at the time this would have happened, so if he had created an SF game, it would have likely been different from AD&D in many ways. I know one thing Gary has said is that he didn't like alien races because he felt they should be truly alien instead of just akin to sterotypes based on human personalities. (He even critiqued Fantasy for this). When somebody (Jim Ward) asked him to create a game, he said "write it yourself", thus came Gamma World. So I don't think he was interested in delving into the area filled by Traveller.
The only pure SF (as opposed to weird S-Fantasy or Sci-Fantasy) I saw him write was Elder Worlds--this was a draft game once placed on his web site, based on a computer game premise. It dealt with a race of humanity on the opposite side of the galaxy, impling we are a seed race. It was based on a dynastic empire of humans with a caste system and didn't involve as much space travel, and for most non-nobles tech was limited to about the 17th century level of things, and only one true sentient alien race. It needed a lot more to be complete though--I think Gary was going to have somebody eventually expand and make it a genre for Lejendary Adventures.
The thing to remember about Gary Gygax is he was more inclusive rather than exclusive. He did not call people who liked newer versions of D&D "3tards" or "4ons" or whatever. He may have been critical of things that came later, but he stopped short of making fun of the people who liked that stuff--it's a subtle difference but it is a difference. People should never confuse the OSR or Old School D&D with Gary's personal preferences. People who do are turning EGG into some quasi-pseudo "gamer Jesus", and I think that's wrong.
The last word I have to say on anything...
http://www.clashofechoes.com/jrt-interview/
The last word I have to say on anything...
http://www.clashofechoes.com/jrt-interview/
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geneweigel
Re: Why did TSR drop the ball so badly?
Certain elements of STAR FRONTIERS were very interesting but actually playing out those rules with the space station map and the Volturnus modules were an ordeal that I never want to repeat.
Admittedly MARVEL SUPERHEROES was a worse game than STAR FRONTIERS but it had character appeal at least for a while but once everybody had a chance to play all the big names (Captain America, Submariner, Spiderman, Thor, FF, etc) it was "cooked".
Back to sci-fi in general, I've noticed sci-fi fans have a huge and vast threshold for "anything with blinking lights". For sci-fi lit, if you throw some lowbrow popular science magazine crap at them and have everyone act like a social "pervert" then its "hard science". They suck in their cheekbones and throw hissy fits over it. If its all about the story rather than believability its "space opera" that seems to exist just for the hardliners to scowl at. For sci-fi onscreen, its aliens that act totally "human" and the humans who are acting "inhuman" everytime.
Years ago I went to this science fiction club. Man, did I make the mistake of joining that nightmare. Every meeting was listening to the president "download" to a captured audience about episodes of Babylon 5 and Deep Space Nine. When myself and the others finally got him to stop (to get a chance to speak) it was more like they all wanted to do exactly the same thing but about other mediums equally as bad just because they were "sci-fi". I wasn't going to "save" these guys (they seemed content) and they could care less about science fiction as a thinking man's medium of concepts and future visions and were only interested in the established mediocrity.
On the other hand, I came off this experience totally burned by sci-fi mediocrity and I made the mistake of getting sucked into another disgusting sci-fi niche when starting a new job with a real "hard science" crowd. With these guys, I was pretty glib about having bad experiences at a ST con that I went to and this SF club thing so they were amused. Thats when they started stacking up must read books for when I had downtime running experiments. Omigod, I'm sorry I opened my mouth and came off all high faluting with those guys. I read the worst pop "hard science" dreck that I almost became an anti-science fiction fan. However, ever since the ebook readers have come along I've gained a new appreciation for pre-Nebula awards era SF literature.
If I wanted a game it would have to be based on certain sci-fi not all of it for sure. Just like D&D wasn't related to all fantasy but fans of that crap did the legwork and made WILLIAMS' TSR into a perfect harmonious vehicle for that stuff. If there was a sci-fi game in the spirit of AD&D I can see a lot of legwork being done in the aftermath!
Admittedly MARVEL SUPERHEROES was a worse game than STAR FRONTIERS but it had character appeal at least for a while but once everybody had a chance to play all the big names (Captain America, Submariner, Spiderman, Thor, FF, etc) it was "cooked".
Back to sci-fi in general, I've noticed sci-fi fans have a huge and vast threshold for "anything with blinking lights". For sci-fi lit, if you throw some lowbrow popular science magazine crap at them and have everyone act like a social "pervert" then its "hard science". They suck in their cheekbones and throw hissy fits over it. If its all about the story rather than believability its "space opera" that seems to exist just for the hardliners to scowl at. For sci-fi onscreen, its aliens that act totally "human" and the humans who are acting "inhuman" everytime.
Years ago I went to this science fiction club. Man, did I make the mistake of joining that nightmare. Every meeting was listening to the president "download" to a captured audience about episodes of Babylon 5 and Deep Space Nine. When myself and the others finally got him to stop (to get a chance to speak) it was more like they all wanted to do exactly the same thing but about other mediums equally as bad just because they were "sci-fi". I wasn't going to "save" these guys (they seemed content) and they could care less about science fiction as a thinking man's medium of concepts and future visions and were only interested in the established mediocrity.
On the other hand, I came off this experience totally burned by sci-fi mediocrity and I made the mistake of getting sucked into another disgusting sci-fi niche when starting a new job with a real "hard science" crowd. With these guys, I was pretty glib about having bad experiences at a ST con that I went to and this SF club thing so they were amused. Thats when they started stacking up must read books for when I had downtime running experiments. Omigod, I'm sorry I opened my mouth and came off all high faluting with those guys. I read the worst pop "hard science" dreck that I almost became an anti-science fiction fan. However, ever since the ebook readers have come along I've gained a new appreciation for pre-Nebula awards era SF literature.
If I wanted a game it would have to be based on certain sci-fi not all of it for sure. Just like D&D wasn't related to all fantasy but fans of that crap did the legwork and made WILLIAMS' TSR into a perfect harmonious vehicle for that stuff. If there was a sci-fi game in the spirit of AD&D I can see a lot of legwork being done in the aftermath!
Re: Why did TSR drop the ball so badly?
I like the idea of the implied setting being informed by works such as:
REH's Almuric
Rice Burrough's Mars series and Venus series
Lindsay's A Voyage to Arcturus
some of Vance's stuff
Lewis's Perelandra and Out of the Silent Planet
original Flash Gordon strips
Clark Ashton Smith's futuristic yarns
the more sci-fi aspects of some of Lovecraft's stories
Just looking at the above, one could see that technology would be very much in the background (though definitely present). Instead of zipping between planets on spaceships, one would be just as (if not more) likely to travel to another planet by means such as wandering into a cave and then coming out of the cave only to find oneself on another planet.
REH's Almuric
Rice Burrough's Mars series and Venus series
Lindsay's A Voyage to Arcturus
some of Vance's stuff
Lewis's Perelandra and Out of the Silent Planet
original Flash Gordon strips
Clark Ashton Smith's futuristic yarns
the more sci-fi aspects of some of Lovecraft's stories
Just looking at the above, one could see that technology would be very much in the background (though definitely present). Instead of zipping between planets on spaceships, one would be just as (if not more) likely to travel to another planet by means such as wandering into a cave and then coming out of the cave only to find oneself on another planet.
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