Re: [GZG] First Sci-Fi Game

On Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 6:06 PM, Mark Kinsey <Kinseym@ptd.net> wrote:
>
>
> Robert N Bryett wrote:
>> I played "Classic" Traveller (though we just called it Traveller
>> then) a lot in the late '70s and early '80s, but then pretty much
>> dropped out of RPGing for years. I always especially liked the
>> character-generation system, though my characters did occasionally
>> perish before the game even started,
>>
> And we *liked* it that way by-gum-it!  <slaps knee for effect>
>
> -Mark K.
>

If I could somehow, magically, get any SF author (living or dead) to
sit at the head of a table and GM an RPG campaign, I would get Alexei
Panshin to run Traveller.  His trilogy of books featuring Anthony
Villiers, a viscount of the Nashuan Interstellar Empire, published in
1968 and 1969, describe just the sort of place the Traveller Universe
must be (the books are out of print, but an e-copy that includes all
three came out).

The interesting aspect of the Traveller system was that it was a
sci-fi skin over a playable, generic roleplaying game.	You could use
it for roleplaying The High Crusade, as it included rules for weapons
running the entire gamut of clubs to edged weapons to slug throwers to
energy weapons.  All it lacked was a magic system-- forgivable, given
the offered setting.

Given that it did not take THAT long to roll up a character and the
only ones with a high probability of death were military careerists
who HAD to have the Starburst for Extreme Heroism (a decoration
generally only awarded posthumously [must beat decoration roll by at
least 6, each -1 penalty on survival roll gives a +1]), dying during
creation was not that bad, IMHO.

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