J. E. Goodrich

The game that I probably have the most "stuff" (books, games, magazines, PDF files, bookmarked websites, etc) for is Traveller. Its even greater than my collection of GURPS books and SFB items.Classic Traveller and MegaTraveller are my two favorite versions, followed by the GURPS version. T4 comes next simply because its fairly similar to Classic Traveller and its got that neat Pocket Empires book that appeals to the emperor-wannabe in me. I've seen some T20 stuff, but never got around to buying the book.

Like GURPS, CT and MT are very flexible systems. With a little modifications to the rules, any number of different settings can be handled. Also, I'm one of those people who can spend hours entertaining myself by designing worlds, star systems, vehicles, and other items. Most might never be used, but some find their ways into other campaigns.

Things I like to do with Traveller --

1. Design vehicles. I can be a real number-crunching gearhead sometimes. Most of these I do for fun, like trying to design a military vehicle or starship within a series of limitations (or one with no limitations to see what the "best that money can buy" would be).
2. Design star systems. Not just regular star systems, but something different and unique. A star with only one planet, a huge gas giant. Or maybe a bianry system where there's nothing but asteroids and small, airless rockballs. Some of these I've used in various campaigns or adventures.
3. Creating characters. Sometimes it can be a lot of fun to just run through one of the character generation systems in Traveller. T4 isn't that much fun, but CT and MT are my favorites.
4. Running a merchant vessel. Taking a few different types of ships in different areas tying to find a right combination of trips to make the most money. Yeah, that's real geeky.
5. Coming up with new rules or variants. I have a whole list of various house rules and variants for CT and MT. Most are designed to tailor the game for a specific background, while some are attempts to fix the 1970s view of the future that CT had.

I haven't had as much time recently to play with the system, but every once in a while I look at the Traveller bookshelf and find myself wondering if there's anything else I could play around with in that universe. Traveller is another game that I'm thinking about using on the message boards.

Posted by James E. Goodrich at 06:49 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Twilight: 2000 was one of my favorite RPG games in the 1980s. Set in 2000, the world was ruined by a 5-year war that began with a Sino-Soviet conflict that spread to Europe when Germany reunited. The introductory adventure had the players as part of the devestated 5th Mechanized Division, trapped behind enemy lines in Poland after their unit was destroyed. Later adventures expanded the scope of the game to the Mid-East, America, and other parts of Europe.

I ran my first T2K campaign while I was still in high school and another after I graduated. Both campaigns used the introductory scenario as a background, although the second campaign was much more successful and fun. I ran a third campaign set in the Mid-East which had a much more structured environment for the players

(The Mid-East campaign also allowed me to introduce one of my favorite NPCs, Colonel Yuri Brekov -- a perfect foil for the players and one that drove them crazy a few times. I'll have to write a blog about him sometime ...)

By the early 1990s, GDW switched T2K over to a new system; one completely different from the first edition (T2K 2.0). While it had a number of good points, it never caught on with myself or the group and the fourth campaign barely started before it was done. GDW did yet some more tweeking to the system (T2K 2.2) to bring it in line with their other RPGs (Traveller: The New Era and Dark Conspiracy).

Twilight: 2000 also spawned a sci-fi game: 2300 AD (intitially called Traveller: 2300). 2300 took the T2K history and looked at what would happen in 300 years. While it had some good, hard science and an interesting setting, one aspect of the background killed it for me (France as the world's superpower?!? Right. Not unless somebody clones Napoleon.) there were a few other little bits I found hard to believe as well.

Aparently, there is a new version of Twilight: 2000 in the works for release sometime next year (Twilight: 2013) and a d20 version of 2300 AD (2320 AD) is still being worked on by another company. Although I'm not really looking forward to either version, it might be interesting to see how the new versions are presented. Twilight:2000 was always a gritty game and I can't see it being powered by a cinematic system like d20. 2300 AD was gritty as well, but later adventures and supplements began emphasizing the cyberpunk aspect of the game, so I could see it as a d20 system.

The reason why T2K is on on my mind is that its one of the games that I'm thinking about running as a PBP on the message boards. I still have a lot of fond memories of the game, even if its setting and history have relegated it to an alternate history. Or an alternate Earth.

Hmmm .. isn't there a GURPS book about alternate Earths ...

Posted by James E. Goodrich at 06:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Recently on one of the message boards I belong to, someone started a thread about advice for GMs, DMs, and Referees. Naturally, I can't avoid a topic like that, so I tossed a few ideas out there. And since I thought it would be a good topic, here's my contribution in no particular order --

• Never underestimate the creativity of a good group of players. And be flexible enough to go with what they come up with if it makes the story better.
• Never railroad your players or run an adventure that must be followed like a script. Role players might be frustrated actors, but they enjoy playing in a game where they control events. 
• If you let munchkins and rules-lawyers in your game, you deserve whatever happens to you. 
• If you're not having fun, you're doing something wrong. 
• If your players aren't having fun, you're doing something wrong.
• Give the players what they want. If you've got a group that wants to play freelance mercenaries, they aren't going to be too happy playing cops. Tailor the campaign to what the players want.
• Obstacles should be challenges, not impossible walls.
• Recurring NPCs (good and bad) are important. And, like the characters, they should improve, change, and adapt.
• Keep good notes. Someone's gonna remember something and you better have notes for when it happens.
• Get rid of disruptive players. Not the character, the player. Get them out of your group. Now.
• Stealing ideas from other media is perfectly acceptable. Television is full of stories copied from other shows and books. Why should you be any different?
• Play the game, not the rules. If bending or ignoring a rule makes for a better game, do it. Rules lawyers should go play Star Fleet Battles. Remember that RPG rules are designed to be guidelines, not the Ten Commandments.
• Sometimes, you're wrong. Admit it and move on.
• Don't let players fight over rules or actions during the game; save it for afterwards. For online games, take it to e-mail or another topic on the board. Don't disrupt the game with an argument.
• RPG rules define the "reality" of the game -- what can and cannot be done. It is up to you to provide the rest -- the background, the NPCs, the adventure, the history, the politics, the relationships, the reasons, everything. That's why being a GM is tough.
• You're gonna burn out. Accept it. Avoid it by taking breaks from running a game. When I ran a regular tabletop group, there would always be a one month Christmas / New Years break and usually a couple more breaks during the year. You need time to relax as much as anyone else. Take it. Otherwise you will burn out and the game will suffer.
• Its a game, not a job. When it becomes a job, its not fun. That's why they call work "work" and not "fun."
• Getting people together on the internet for a game is almost as difficult as doing it in real life. If you're going to run an internet game, consider e-mail or message board over chat games. It may take a lot longer, but you're much more likely to keep a regular group of players.
• Real life is irritating, mundane, routine, and tedious. None of this should apply to your game.

 

Posted by James E. Goodrich at 08:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I took a long break between the last online campaign and the current ones. I really didn't have a lot of time in my life for gaming and I was pretty unsure of what kind of campaign I wanted to run. Eventually, I started the GURPS WWIV campaign and suddenly everything came together. I had a good core group of players, a setting that they were all interested in, and a lot of new ideas to run with.

One of the things that I kept from my first online campaign was the individual games with the action mainly being described in e-mail (with occasional chat or IM sessions). Unlike the first campaign, this one had all of the players working on the same side and moving toward the same goal. This made it a lot easier to keep track of what was going on and even led to more than a few cross-over adventures where the various players would meet up, resolve an adventure, and then continue with their own plot lines. It made things interesting and it made it easier on the players. If Dennis couldn't participate for a couple weeks due to reserve duty, it wouldn't affect anyone else. I could devote time to the players who had the time to game and let those who needed more time relax and not feel like they were under pressure.

Eventually, I added some more to my plate by introducing a Prime Directive campaign. While the RPG side is moving ahead slowly, my original idea of having a Federation & Empire strategy game as a backdrop to the campaign kind of fizzled. Instead, I'm going in a new direction with that -- the F&E game will still be used, but more as a flavor for the RPG side rather than determining what will happen in the campaign. Of course, this may change if I suddenly end up with a lot of wargamers in the group.

As the current campaigns continue (and no doubt the number of players will change as the game progresses) I find that I am enjoying this format more and more. While I still want to get a regular group of players for an actual tabletop campaign, for now this is more than satisfying.

Posted by James E. Goodrich at 06:58 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

The third online campaign was known as "The Great Space Game" (an unofficial but accurate description). It was a grand political, economic, and military campaign set in the same GURPS Space universe with the players taking the roles of the various national leaders. It was ambitious, it was grand in scale, it covered diplomacy, it had conflict, it had role playing.

It was seriously unbalanced.

The game had one huge nation, which I tried to balance by giving it to the most social player (Amanda), and a whole bunch of little empires. The problems started when Amanda tried to reach out to the other players and was snubbed by almost everyone right away. After a few turns of this, she decided that she had a large enough economy and military to do what she wanted without any of the other players. And she was right.

Like I said, it was seriously unbalanced.

It should have been balanced, but the game was set in my campaign universe and things weren't exactly balanced there. What made for a good role playing environment really didn't translate well to a large-scale conflict game.

It was a fun game, even if it only covered a few years of the game's history. It inspired me to make a few changes in the RPG game and brought a little more flavor into the setting. Even though the campaign failed, I still think it was a fun little experiment. For years afterwards I would still have players mention things that happened in the game, or bring up their own ideas on how a game like that should be run. Every once in a while I would spend a night or weekend trying to make a better campaign setting or work up better rule. Although I never quite got it the way I wanted, or ran another game like that again, I still would like to give it a shot someday.

Posted by James E. Goodrich at 06:44 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

The second online campaign I ran wasn't quite as large as my first attempt. In fact, it consisted of one player. Amanda played a starship captain in the first campaign and we decided to carry on with the character. I was still running the tabletop game at the time and having a player pursuing a separate plotline than the main game was pretty interesting. The online campaign even outlasted the tabletop group when that broke up.

Running the second game was a lot of fun. With a one-on-one campaign, I could focus a lot of time and energy on one single aspect without worrying about if any of the other players would get bored. For both of us, the game was pretty much a mutual story writing series (although I was the one who knew what the overall plot was).

That game eventually ended but it showed me how much fun a one-on-one session between a player and GM could be. Virtually all of my RPG experience until then had been with groups (typically 3-5 people, but sometimes much more), so this was a new experience for me.

Posted by James E. Goodrich at 07:36 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Recently, I had a couple of players mention things that have happened in some of my previous online games. That got me to reminiscing about some of my earlier attempt at running RPGs online and I decided it would make a good blog entry.

I started running a GURPS Space campaign many years ago. This was sometime around 1993 or so (before I even got an online account). It was a tabletop game set in a universe of my own creation and it was fairly popular with the group I was running at the time. After a few years of running the game and getting some experience with the online environment, I decided to start an online version of the game. This was sometime in 1997 or 1998.

I realized from the start that the best way to run the campaign was by e-mail. I had read enough message boards and chatted with enough people to realize that trying to get folks together for a chat session would be almost as difficult as it is in real life. In addition, I was working non-traditional hours, so my free time wasn't the same as the rest of the world.

The campaign was designed to be a little different than the tabletop game -- that one had the players working together as the crew of a starship. The online game would put the players in  high-level positions of authority -- fleet admirals, governors, and similar careers. I worked out a lengthy e-book with the background of the campaign (which was fairly extensive) as well as my own rules for creating characters.

The game struggled on for a few months before it eventually died. I had made a few serious errors with the campaign that most likely caused its death.

First of all, I had about six players in the game and I was trying to run each of them with a separate plotline. It was ambitious, but way to complicated for the campaign. Trying to keep sight of what everyone was doing and what their goals were was just a little too tough. Add in the fact that I lost a few players due to real life stuff and the whole thing just ground to a halt.

The second problem was that my overall story arc was too distant. I had the same story arc in the tabletop game, but it was in the background with the players working away at the edges of the story, slowly uncovering the truth. Those players were already vaguely aware of the overall theme. The only players were new to this universe and had no idea what was going on. Clues that would have been obvious to the tabletop group were lost on the online gamers.

So ended my first attempt at running an online campaign. I learned a lot from the experience and applied it to my future campaigns.

Posted by James E. Goodrich at 06:58 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)