Little Did They Know

Back when I first began playing MMOs --okay, WoW-- back in 2009, most of my game time was spent playing in parallel with people. By that, I mean I was out in the game, doing whatever, while Soul and his wife were also online and playing, but we weren't necessarily doing the same thing. We may have been questing, but we weren't questing together. Or even in the same area.

My playing on the family PC also meant that I had to work around my wife and my kids' usage as well, so I moved in the direction of solo play at odd hours. 

This was my life when the mini-Reds
were in elementary school.
From yourtango.com.

Middle school sounded the death knell for early morning WoW, because the kids would have to get up at 6 AM to catch the bus and/or get dropped off at school*, and I wasn't getting up at 4 AM to play WoW. Okay, in 2020 I began staying up until 3 AM to finish raids, so I guess you could say that I came full circle, but still...

For me, playing MMOs began to mean "doing my own thing, whether on my own or grouped with strangers."

***

There's a certain amount of freedom to being on when nobody else that you know is. 

For example, if you're on a PvP server in WoW you can make a run for it through certain zones without worrying about whether some max level toon is going to come along and gank you.

Kind of like this, running as Horde
through Wetlands and Dun Morogh.
From tenor.com.

No matter how much you try to handwave it there's a significant amount of stress involved, and even in the off hours that's no guarantee that some toon won't come along and fuck you up just because. However, I discovered way back in 2009 that if you time that run from Arathi through to the Badlands just right, you won't see a soul on the road.

These past few weeks I've been channeling my younger self and have been spending more and more time on my alts, such as Linna 2.0 and Neve, getting them to max level and doing things that I used to do on Azshandra and Cardwyn in my pre-raid days: run Battlegrounds, quest, and queue for instances. 

I know the Wrath instances very well, having done them back in the day ad nauseum, so I'm comfortable queueing for those instances in what passes for an LFG system in Wrath Classic. I also made a point of doing that dungeon running when it's highly unlikely that I'll run into anybody I know from the franken guild on Atiesh-US; my status on the server as Deuce --messy and uncomfortable and all-- means that I try my hardest not to put myself out there where I could run into people I don't care to interact with. And that means leaving Deuce on the shelf when outside of raids while I get in touch with my past.

"Bolster my defenses! Hurry, curse you!"

I can imagine that you might be thinking "Hey, Atiesh-US is supposed to be a very large server. Why all the caution?" That's because I keep running into the same people while doing leveling dungeons on Atiesh. On Myzrael-US, which is a much smaller server, that's to be expected. But on Atiesh? Yeah, it's very much a thing.

Just like back in the day, when I ran dungeons at odd hours I kept seeing regulars in the automated LFD tool, despite being in a large battlegroup. 

***

This brings up yet another item that I discovered in TBC Classic and has seemingly carried over into Wrath Classic: people sprinted to max level and jumped straight into raiding, and once they --and their primary alts-- hit max level, dungeon running participation plummeted. I guess I shouldn't be surprised at this development, and from conversations I've had with people in game it also seems that people are getting bored (or whatnot) and are unsubscribing and/or dropping from raid teams until the next phase hits.

If this sounds like a modern mentality of saying "I've done that already so I'll unsub until new content drops", yes it does. 

And with that revelation, I think I can now explain the sudden reappearance of the Joyous Journeys XP buff far sooner than people expected: to try to fight that yo-yo effect of people subbing and unsubbing.**

But I digress.

***

I've found a lot of relaxation and joy in just going with the flow and running some dungeons with people whom I've become acquainted with over the past few weeks. We're not guildies or anything, but we're people who know each others' abilities, and we reach out to each other if we've got a spot available. There's no pressure involved, and even if it doesn't work out as intended, we'll still have fun.

What Ingvar needs is some stylish gear,
that's all. I'm gonna miss these Brutal
Battlegear sets that our group was rocking.

The biggest part about these dungeon runs is that I truly do feel no pressure to perform. The expectations are different for me in these runs, because I know going in that I'm not going to have a lot of gear so I won't be rocking the charts or anything. And when a piece of blue gear drops that I can use, it's a bonus all around. 

I can hear my questing buddy already, saying that we want to just hang with you, not put any pressure or anything on you. The thing is, no matter what is said --and I'm sure it's meant by everybody I know who has told it to me-- I still put pressure on myself to perform. 

(There, I even put it in italics for emphasis.)

And no, once I've joined a raid team --or been a former member of a team-- I can't avoid the pressure. It's just part of me, because once unlocked it can't go back into Pandora's Box.

In these scenarios, however, nobody is trying to max out their gear and get those last BiS items before raiding. Nobody is trying to speed run their way through the instance, collect their daily badges, and log prior to the raid. If we get to the extra boss in time in the Culling of Stratholme Heroic dungeon, we get there. Otherwise, nobody sweats it out. 

The lack of defined purpose is key. Because we aren't there for a specifically defined metagame reason, these runs are enjoyable. That I am just an anonymous pugger from a leveling guild with hardly anybody left on the server (Neve) or a small friends guild in a large server (Linna 2.0), I can relax. The major raiding guilds all keep to themselves on Atiesh-US, and Myzrael-US is small enough that everybody has to band together to keep a pugging community alive. 

So I find that when I set aside my raiding life, placing it in a compartmentalized box, I've found my time spent being anonymous to be enjoyable.  

*The elementary school started at 8:30 AM, whereas the middle school began at 7:30. This was to accommodate the bus schedules. Like a lot of school districts in the US, ours had to deal with a lot of  voters who believed in the "lean and mean" style of school district financial management, so schools had to make do with as few busses as possible. That meant adjusting school start times to get the most out of as few busses as possible.

**And with Ulduar opening up on January 19th, Joyous Journeys' ending on the 16th seems very appropriate.

Meme Monday: Post Holiday Blues Memes

Once you make it through the running of the Holiday gauntlet, there's this stretch before Valentine's Day and then another long stretch before Spring arrives.

If you're in my part of the country, you're not going to see the sun very much during that time. It's just a fact of life that SAD creeps in for a significant chunk of the population. So... Here's some memes to cheer people up.

Uh... I tried my hand at tanking, so I can
appreciate this even more than before.
From Shaneplays.com.

Gnomes. Just... Gnomes.
From Shaneplays.com (again).

This hits a wee bit too close to home,
if you ask me.
From dnd_memes1.

If I'd have seen that on the road
at night time, I'd have likely 
had a heart attack.
From Reddit.

Alas, Pandora's Box Has Already Been Opened

There are times when I wonder whether the old adage about necessity being the mother of invention is actually a good thing.

After all, look at some of the designs behind monetization in video games, and I wonder just whose necessity is behind those creations. Surely not the players' necessity, and certainly not the developers' necessity either. I suppose you could argue that those designs were created for the necessity of the investors so that the companies could make larger profits off of video games, but is that good for the long term health of the industry?

Note that I said industry, not the companies. I'm absolutely certain that video game companies --particularly the AAA game companies-- are more profitable because of the monetization techniques that rely heavily on psychological manipulation. That, however, doesn't mean that the industry itself is healthy. 

If nothing else, you could argue that by creating addictive responses to the monetization techniques, the video game companies have figured out how to adapt the same tricks used in the illegal drug trade* for their own profits.

It just doesn't sound the same, and
it would probably work as well as the
original "Just Say No" campaign too.
Original photo from USA Today.

Given that Grand Theft Auto V exists, I'd imagine my comparison of the AAA video game companies to drug cartels isn't something that those companies really are concerned about. Additionally, the embrace of "gambling mechanics" by the video game industry may sound bad to most of us until you realize that gambling is a fact of life among sports leagues. Just look at how many teams in the Premier League are sponsored by gambling outlets, or the embrace of the NFL and other American sports leagues by formalized gambling, and you realize that the stigma of "gambling mechanics" is likely considered a good thing by many investors.

Photograph from this article by The Guardian.
By Shutterstock; Getty.

But you know what suffers? The games themselves.

In the same way that tobacco industry executives and insiders considered cigarettes to be "nicotine delivery devices", I have to wonder whether the AAA game companies consider their products --video games-- to be "microtransaction delivery devices". Certainly the games themselves have suffered a bit in terms of quality, as if the games themselves aren't the most important part of the development process.

To that end, Josh Strife Hayes created a video that touched a nerve with me:

Hayes' Box of Abusive Monetization Strategies --or Pandora's Box of Bad Design-- pretty much encapsulates all of the practices that people dislike about video games today. And, I suppose, just like the original Pandora's Box, you can't put those items back and lock them away now that they've made their way into game design.

A game developer can choose to not utilize them. Or a video game player can choose to not purchase games that contain the Box's contents.

Me, I tend to wait for everything that was going to be released is released, and then wait for it to go on sale via Steam, before I buy a game. Some games are perpetually updated, such as Paradox Games' offerings (Europa Universalis IV and Stellaris, to name two of them), and I just wait until there's something I find interesting and yes, dependent upon whether it goes on sale (and I've the spare money, which is frequently an iffy thing) before I purchase it.

Obviously this does not work so well with MMO subscription games, such as WoW Classic, but I tend to spend a lot more of my time watching and waiting on expansions before I decide whether or not to purchase them. Considering I'm not going to be doing anything that requires me to be on the bleeding edge of a new expansion, I can afford to wait.***

But I'm not a lot of people, and neither are a lot of people the whales who are targeted by a lot of contents of Pandora's Box of Bad Design.

What can save us in the long run? Ourselves. We have to resist the Bad Design practices, and play games that don't have them, if we want to effect change. If nothing else, just play those games because they're good games.

And for pete's sake, don't preorder games from companies that use the contents of Pandora's Box. That's giving those companies a blank check. Make them earn your money by making good games.

*Back when I was still into the Robert Jordan Wheel of Time series --circa the late 90s-- there was a free paperback of the first part of The Eye of the World available to people at bookstores. "You know what this is?" a bookstore employee told me, holding a copy up. "This is your free sample of crack." 

**And to be fair, a lot of the Software as a Service or SaaS model itself falls under that header too.

***Since I'm really keeping my WoW account active for Wrath Classic (and to a lesser extent Classic Era), there's no worry about being on, say, a current raiding tier there. I don't have to pay extra for WoW Classic, which is perfectly fine with me.

New Year, New Labor

Microsoft is now a company with a union.

Zenimax, which we gamers know more for Elder Scrolls Online and Bethesda in general, has had their QA testers vote to join the Communications Workers of America. Unlike certain other tech companies, Microsoft "officially" remained neutral on this vote. Since they decided to not oppose the union, I suppose one could take it as a tacit endorsement of unionization for the QA people, who are frequently among the lowest paid of the development staff.*

I honestly have no idea if this will change anything, but we'll see.

*Source: I worked in software QA for five years.

A Sobering Reality

I know that PC is a gaming blog --and no, not gambling "gaming"-- so items such as sports don't officially come under the "mission statement"* of Parallel Context. Still, I have talked about sports before on the blog, and referenced sports in comparison to video games. And I've mentioned more than a few times in the past about my complicated relationship with our local NFL team, the Cincinnati Bengals. I mean, I've seen hopes dashed and freak injuries and losses --oh, the losses that would make a Manchester City fan nod in remembrance of the "Typical City" times-- so I've been acquainted with bad stuff happening.

But never in my life have I seen something like what happened last night, live on television during the Buffalo Bills / Cincinnati Bengals game:

Other players were just starting to realize
Damar Hamlin had collapsed, but Bills
#30 Dane Jackson immediately recognized
the severity of the situation and began rushing
to his teammate's side.
From ESPN via NYBreaking.com.

The collapse happened after this tackle
of Bengals' #85 Tee Higgins.
From Fox5 Atlanta, likely originally from Getty.

Damar Hamlin made a tackle which for all the world seemed like something made hundreds of times each NFL season, got up, and then promptly collapsed onto the field. 

Trainers from both teams rushed to his side, cut off his uniform and chest pads, and began administering CPR and using defibrillators. After what has been reported to be upwards of 10 minutes, Hamlin's heart was restarted. 

From the Associated Press and Jeff Dean.
Via News4Jax.com.

He'd gone into cardiac arrest on the playing field.

From the Cincinnati Enquirer.

I've never seen CPR performed outside of training purposes on dummies --and yes, I was trained back in middle school in the ancient times but I never kept my certification up-- but I'm told by friends who were paramedics that CPR performed by medical professionals out in the real world is much more aggressive and violent than what you're used to seeing on television. To put it bluntly, a person's ribs are frequently broken on the first couple of pushes, but you keep going because you have to get a heart rhythm started. People are frequently not able to be resuscitated via CPR, but in situations where seconds count, it's the best option we have. 

Needless to say, watching this entire thing unfold in prime time was very sobering.

From Associated Press via Arizona Sports.
Photo by Emilee Chinn.

From Getty Images via Ball State Daily.
Photo by Dylan Buell.

The game was suspended, and the NFL announced just a little while ago that the game will not be resumed this week. I'd not be surprised that the game were simply declared a draw and teams given a tie or simply have the game not count.

For me, I was never happier for a raid night than last night. It gave me a chance to not think about what I saw, or the young man currently in critical condition at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center.

*I don't actually have a "formal" mission statement --I've not gone corporate on you-- but it's not a bad idea to have a statement of purpose around. Revisiting that statement from time to time allows a person to refocus the blog as needed.

Meme Monday: New Year's Memes

Yes, I posted a quickie late last night after raiding, but that doesn't mean that I didn't forget about Meme Monday. I only forgot that the raid ran into Monday, that's all.

Without much ado, there's a ton of New Years' related memes out there. Here's but a few...

I think I actually did this in WoW
since I play on a West Coast server
and I reside in the Eastern time zone.
And that my wife already had gone to
bed a few hours before then.
From Reddit.

I'm with Doctor Evil on this one.
I don't even keep up with monthly
gaming goals because I never keep them.
From, well, you know what Austin Powers is, right?

Hey, at least there's sexy fun time involved.
From 9gag.

Ah, Life of the Party. You never
let me down.

A Quick Note

I don't like retrospective posts very much, especially reviewing how things went over the past year or so. After all, I don't set playing goals for a month, because I know I won't ever meet them, so reviewing what I've been up to in general seems a personal performance review that I know I'd fail.

And really, I get enough of those at work, so why bother with another performance review?*

Neve's Horde guild has all but collapsed,
as most of the active people changed servers
AND factions in one fell swoop. This
Utgarde Keep run felt like a trial run put on
by the top Horde guild on the server, as
I was the only non-member in the run.

About the only thing I will say is that I survived another year around the Sun, and despite its best intentions, my heart hasn't killed me yet.

Carry on, then.

*Apparently my ex-guild has now instituted weekly performance reviews of raider activity to see if they're up to the quality level expected of the 25 person raid teams. Oh, and not only those reviews, but raiders who do good parses will be given priority on gear, too, as a kick in the pants reminder that they do Loot Council on gear. Oh, and guess what? They began the Wrath expac with about 30-35 raiders vying for spots on each 25 person raid, so an excess of 10 players per raid team, and now they're having to recruit for raiders. I'm damn glad I'm not in the middle of that shitstorm.

Change on the Horizon in 2023

The other week I was in a dungeon group comprised of several raid team members* and the question of what happens after Wrath Classic came up.

I believe this question is one that we'll have to confront sooner rather than later, because the WoW Classic team demonstrated in TBC Classic that they were willing to push harder and faster than the original timeline for TBC, and my opinion is they'll do the same for Wrath Classic. After all, there already has been a survey of options for a potential Cataclysm Classic, and those options skirted around one major issue: the Cataclysm and reworking of the Old World itself. 

One person in the dungeon group started it off by saying that they had no interest in anything beyond Wrath Classic: this expansion was their swan song, and nothing after it would change their mind. Others held out hope for the Classic WoW team to create a divergent path from Wrath onward, thus skirting around Cataclysm and later expansions, but my suspicion is that simply isn't going to fly. Why would Blizzard create divergent timelines and double WoW's development effort when there's no real return given the current monetization of WoW Classic being part of the subscription price for WoW Retail? And if you said "Let Blizzard release new WoW Classic expansions for purchase," why would Blizz sow confusion among the ranks by having expansions for a game from the past?

I was the gloomiest of the assessments, stating that Cataclysm Classic is coming, and the WoW Classic team is trying to find a way to make it palatable to enough people to keep them playing, such as keeping the automated LFD tool in Retail only. I know of more than one person for whom they're actually looking forward to Cataclysm so they could play a Worgen**, but in general I don't know of many people who are looking forward to Cataclysm in general. 

That doesn't mean that Cataclysm doesn't have its supporters, because I expect we'll hear from more and more of them the farther down the Wrath Phase release path we go. We're still in Phase One for a bit longer, and the expectation is that Phase Two --meaning the Ulduar raid-- will hit in January.

And let's be honest: Ulduar is considered a very difficult raid for the era, along the lines of original Naxx 40 or Sunwell Plateau in terms of difficulty. If the WoW Classic team steps its foot on the gas and starts burning through content once Ulduar is released, Wrath Classic might start bleeding players as they discover that Ulduar is much more difficult than Wrath's version of Naxxramas was.

So...

What are the other potential options for someone who reaches the end of their time in Wrath Classic and the WoW Classic team unveils Cataclysm Classic?

• Return to Classic Era WoW
  
  That's a distinct possibility. I cloned several of my toons --although Linna is stuck at L26 or something in Classic Era-- but there's plenty of opportunity to continue to consume content as my players hadn't finished everything in the game. In the case of Cardwyn, she already has almost all of her BiS items --she missed out on the 1 Handed Weapon-- so she could just do whatever without any concerns for gear. 
  
  The major drawback to Classic Era WoW? No Neve or Quintalan. I mean, I'll survive, but I would miss Neve's Yang to Cardwyn's Ying.
  
  
• Stay in Wrath Classic WoW Servers
  
  This is a big question mark: would the WoW Classic team maintain some Wrath Classic servers in perpetuity? After all, they emphatically did not do that for TBC Classic when it ended; and if you think nobody cared, let me introduce you to Shintar. I personally would have been more interested in TBC Era servers myself, given that I was unable to continue raiding in TBC Classic. I'd like to get a chance to see the raids that I was unable to see --or in the case of The Eye at Tempest Keep, actually finish-- without any external pressures involved. 
  
  And hopefully on another toon than Briganaa; raiding with her has been... tainted by dealing with the pressure to do more and more DPS when I began coming up against the limitaitons of my own physical abilities.
  
  
• Move to Retail
  
  Dragonflight has gotten some good reviews from the player base, although to be fair the problems from Battle for Azeroth and Shadowlands didn't really manifest until a couple of months after release. So while there's cause for optimism for Retail as an institution moving forward, I've decided that Retail is not for me. For all the people who say "try it, you might like it", Blizzard moved in a direction that was evident even back in Wrath that you are some superhero for merely doing the job asked of you, and I simply can't pick up Retail without being forced into that reality on a daily basis. My players are not superheroes, they began as raw recruits to assist Stormwind against a bunch of local thugs named the Defias. Or they were one of the few Draenei and/or Blood Elves remaining after their respective races were decimated by disasters far beyond their own control. They were there, and they began their journey to help their own people, no more and no less. 
  
  For me, this mirrors real life to a large extent. Just because I moved into management and have to deal with pushing paper and other managers and management from clients doesn't mean that I feel like I belong there. Like my toons in WoW, I'm an in-the-trenches person who does what they're supposed to do because... well, because that's what I committed to doing. And like them, I consider myself just an ordinary person doing their job.
  
  
• Switch to another MMO
  
  This is another tempting option, as I've played enough of them over the years. I've plenty of options to work with, such as SWTOR, LOTRO, ESO, and GW2. This might be the time I finally try out Final Fantasy XIV and go playing with my son.
  
  But if I thought the "Chosen One" narrative was pretty thick in Retail WoW, that narrative is pretty much what you start out with in FFXIV.
  
  And to be fair, just about every MMO I listed above has a "Chosen One" or "Chosen Hero" narrative to them in some form or another; it is, after all, a staple of the MMO genre.***
  
  With one notable exception: Vanilla Classic WoW. 

So... I've got some contemplating to do.

It would seem that my best option once Wrath runs out is to return to Classic Era servers, since they are going to be around for a while at least. However, I don't see clearly enough to know what it is that the Classic WoW team is thinking, and despite best intentions I also believe that this upcoming 2023 will be the last hurrah for several of my Classic WoW friends. That sucks, knowing the end is going to get here, but I understand their intentions to shut it down when Cataclysm Classic rolls out.

You can't prevent change, only deal with it.

*We were attempting the so-called World Tour, where you hit every single 5-person Wrath instance in one sitting. I suppose if you had the time and/or were fond of speed running you could do it, but we ran out of gas (and willpower) after 7 of them. We missed out on The Nexus and The Oculus, the latter of which is one of the least favorite 5-person Wrath instances among the raid team for some reason. I personally like The Oculus, but I am definitely in the minority.

**I never hear people saying they want to play a Goblin, only a Worgen.

***And video game RPGs in general.

Meme Monday: Gifted Memes

In our post holiday euphoria, I almost forgot Meme Monday. But hey, there's always last second gifts such as mugs, right?

For the Healer who needs to remind people
of what they do for them. 
From Pinterest.

Found the mug worthy of carrying
my coffee. From Etsy.

Even my wife doesn't buy this
excuse. From Etsy.

I'm pretty sure that my team at work
won't understand this one. At all.
From Etsy.

Just in Time for the Holidays

For the annual Yule Festival in LOTRO, there's this soundtrack...

Happy Yule, everyone!

Gaming Weather, Part Two

This is what greeted me on Friday morning:

The top numbers are the indoor
temperature and humidity,
the bottom is the outside ambient temp.

Couple that with 21 MPH winds, our -6.5F/-21.4C felt like -31F/-35C.

Brrrr.

The cold alone was enough, but if that were it I could handle that sort of cold temperature. But the wind...

Oh boy, that wind was something.

As in, lots of four letter curse word somethings.

You step outside and even if you're bundled up in thermal undergarments in addition to regular clothes and a parka, and that blast of cold wind just sucks all of the air right out of you in a gasp.

From memecreator.org.

To shovel the snow out to the cars so that we could even scrape them off and start them up, I had to do the "little kid" routine and do something for a couple of minutes and then go back inside to warm up. Even those chemical pack "hand warmers" couldn't keep up with the cold temperatures, but at least they gave it the ol' college try. 

From Pinterest.

Between that and the lack of services --our trash pickup was cancelled, with a "we'll be back to pick it up next Friday!" from them-- and the lack of people on the road, it wasn't that bad. Just annoying.

Right now it's a balmy 10F, so... Yay?

Gaming Weather, that's for Sure

I believe that someone, somewhere, had to have said that it'd be a cold day in Hell before Messi and Argentina finally won a World Cup.

Uh oh.
From Associated Press, photo by Martin Meissner.

I do know that people said as much concerning the Cincinnati Bengals and the Super Bowl this past January.

Double uh oh.
From Associated Press, photo by Charlie Riedel.

So... Be careful what you wish for, I suppose. Time to turn on the heater down below.

***

Time to batten down the hatches, here comes the Snowpocalypse.

From The Weather Channel.
NOAA's forecasts are more detailed
but the maps a bit cruder in design.

Okay, that's being a bit self serving, but most of the US is (or will be shortly) in the grip of what is being called a bomb cyclone, along with temperatures low enough that's not been seen in quite a while. 

From The Weather Channel.
Just search for "bomb cyclone."

Here in Cincinnati, the forecast is for -2F/-19C with wind chill reaching -28F/-33C (or worse), so...

Not gonna be fun outside, that's for sure.

I guess that means its time to play some games!

EtA: Corrected a grammatical error.

Meme Monday: Naughty Memes

Well, you know that All Seeing Eye of Santa...

He sees you when you're sleeping
He knows when you're awake
He knows if you've been bad or good
So be good for goodness' sake!

Well, since he's making a list and checking it twice, let's take a look at some memes on the Naughty side of that list...

Now I know what to wear when my
questing buddy needs an assist.
From etsy.com.

when Monty Python and Star Wars
intersect. From imgflip.com.

/sigh
We all have had that ONE
player that definitely walks
on the naughty side...
From fb.com/dndmemes.

As DM I have become acquainted with this.
From fb.com/dndmemes.

And one bonus meme, because why not have one about the Big Guy?

Why yes, as a lad I looked a lot
like Kris Kringle, the one in
the NG slot. From Deviantart.

An RPG From the Past: Traveller

This is Free Trader Beowulf,
calling anyone . . .
Mayday, Mayday . . .  we are under
attack . . .  main drive is gone . . .
turret number one not responding . . .
Mayday . . .  losing cabin pressure
fast . . .  calling anyone . . .  please help . . .
This is Free Trader Beowulf . . .
                                        Mayday . . .

--The iconic distress call gracing the cover of various editions of Traveller

Back in the late 90s when I worked as a Software QA Engineer, one of my friends there* and I would spend about a half hour after 5 PM chatting about whatever was on our minds. He wasn't interested in "traditional" sports, but he was an absolute racing nut. He preferred the CART series** back then, so we frequently talked open wheel racing. One day, however, we geeked out over RPGs, mainly because of the upcoming D&D 3rd Edition.

"I never really played D&D," he confessed. "I played Traveller."

"What's that?" I thought I knew of most of the RPGs at the time, but this one was new to me.

"It's a Sci-Fi RPG."

"Like Gamma World?" Gamma World was put out by TSR, the publisher of D&D, and was essentially D&D in a post apocalyptic setting.

Be warned, the prices for the
Gamma World 1e rulebook can
spike. A LOT. From eBay.

"No, although it was closer to Star Frontiers." Another TSR game, this time set in space.

Yikes. This is the $90 copy on eBay.

"I'd never heard of it before."

"Oh yeah, it was really cool. It came out right around the time Star Wars was released in theaters, so it got kind of a boost from that."

A few days later when I stopped by his cubicle, he handed me a small booklet. 

"The Travellers' Digest?"

"Yeah! It was a periodical that was put out to support Traveller. It had premade adventures, like early Dragon magazines, but in a scientific journal format."

I flipped through it. "Looks pretty cool."

"Hey, you can have it. I don't play any more, and I happened to stumble on it the other day while I was moving boxes."

"Thanks!"

It's digest sized too, much like the
original Traveller rulebooks were.

That was the extent of my knowledge of Traveller until several years later, when I was perusing the RPG section at a (now deceased) local game store and came across a few Traveller books under the GURPS license.*** As it turned out, the employee at the store was in a long running campaign of GURPS Traveller, and over the course of a half hour he filled me in on the history of the game.

I found this pic from
talestoastound.wordpress.com.
No, I've never acquired a copy of
the original version.

Traveller was published by Games Designers' Workshop, a wargaming company, in 1977. Marc Miller was the primary designer, with Loren K. Wiseman, Frank Chadwick, and John Harshman assisting. The original intent for Traveller was to be a generic space RPG system, but what ended up happening was that the Charted Space setting, released by GDW over the years, became so associated with Traveller more people think of Charted Space when they think of Traveller. (Kind of like how D&D and Forgotten Realms are so intimately intertwined.) GDW also kept up with an "official" timeline of what is going on in the Third Imperium****, in much the same way that White Wolf did with Vampire: the Masquerade, so that further integrated Charted Space into the Traveller RPG.

Traveller has seen many iterations over the years. There was the original Traveller, then Megatraveller in the late 80s, then Traveller: The New Era, and Marc Miller's Traveller (4th Edition). There is also a 5th Edition of Traveller put out by Marc Miller, but that version has returned to its roots as a "generic" space RPG system and is mostly comprised of tables upon tables of stuff. Hey, if you like tables to generate things for a space RPG game, there you go.

But for me, Traveller took on new life when it escaped the confines of GDW after GDW closed up shop in 1996.

Among the first of the "non-GDW" Traveller games was GURPS Traveller, supposedly a deal made with a handshake between Loren K. Wiseman and Steve Jackson of Steve Jackson Games, the publisher of GURPS. GURPS Traveller followed an alternate timeline than the "official GDW timeline", and Steve Jackson Games put out quite a few high quality settings books for Traveller.*****

The starship on the cover of Behind the Claw
is the Beowulf Class Free Trader.
The Spinward Marches is a contested sector
in Charted Space that is the starting
point for many Traveller campaigns.

There was also a d20 version of Traveller, called Traveller20, Traveller Hero (using the HERO System), and what is commonly known as "Mongoose Traveller" (a version of Traveller put out by Mongoose Publishing). Of all of those various versions of Traveller out there, the most popular one that's currently being supported and published is Mongoose Traveller, which is presently on its Second Edition.

Over the years I acquired several GURPS Traveller splatbooks, but I could never get into the GURPS system enough to warrant running the gauntlet of configuring GURPS for a campaign of my own. But Mongoose Traveller...

Now, that's a system I can get behind.

The late Andrew Boulton created several short videos
based on Traveller and the Charted Space setting
about 15 or so years ago. This is the best of the bunch,

using "He's a Pirate" from Pirates of the Caribbean:
Curse of the Black Pearl for the music.

***

Mongoose Traveller is a bit of a throwback to the original Traveller system in as much the same way as D&D 5th Edition borrowed from Old School D&D. If you want to play a game of Traveller today, most people will be expecting a game of Mongoose Traveller, so if you say "Let's play Traveller!" this is what people expect you to pull out:

It is functionally the same as the
Traveller Second Edition Core
Rulebook, just tweaked for clarity.

Traveller is one of those games whose character creation was a mini-game of its own. You start out as a fresh faced 18 year old, then you go through some (or many) iterations of "professions". You could be a student. Or join the military. Or be an assistant on a trading crew. Or... you get the idea. After that iteration is over, you make a few rolls to see how that period of your life came out, you gain skills, potentially gain "defects", and either join the campaign or spend more time in another iteration.

If somewhere in the back of your mind you're thinking, "That's nice and all, but it's not like your character is ever in any real danger during this character creation process, right?" Well, it's a good thing you're not playing the original version of Traveller.

Why? Because in the original release of Traveller back in 1977, your character could actually DIE during the character creation process.

You read that right.

It was one of the quirks that Traveller was (in)famous for.

Thank you, John Kovalic.
Dork Tower April 4, 2019.

The modern game, starting with GURPS Traveller and Mongoose Traveller, does not allow for character death during the creation process; it's merely "optional" in Mongoose Traveller. I suppose you could use that rule if you really wanted an "old school" feel to your game, but why bother? The point is to create a character that you can play, not realism to the point of having a useless or dead character.#

Another quirk that is not so unusual these days is that character creation in Traveller is a shared experience. Instead of creating a character --in consultation with the GM-- and then showing up with the completed character on the first group session, Traveller expects that character creation for the entire group is what happens in your first session. Along with other RPGs, such as FATE and Burning Wheel, characters in Traveller are created with character hooks, so that each character has a connection with the others. (Or some of the others.)

This is one of the big editing changes
in the 2022 Update version of the rules.
If only other RPGs did this!
(I'm looking at you, Ars Magica...)

***

One thing that distinguishes Traveller from, say, Paizo's Starfinder or the various iterations of the Star Wars RPGs is that Traveller skews much more toward hard SF. Elements of Fantasy --Magic, Force wielders, etc.-- are not found in Traveller. There's SF handwaving in terms of how faster than light (FTL) travel is achieved via the Jump Drive, and there's Psionics among some species --such as the Zhodani, a sub-species of Humans-- but aside from that, Traveller is very much a hard SF setting. Even The Ancients, a mystery species (well, not to the GM) who planted human ancestors across Charted Space and tinkered with and/or uplifted others, are less Fantasy and more SF. I mean, CRISPR-Cas9 exists already.

Unlike Star Trek, where players typically are members of the crew of a Starfleet or Klingon starship, the Traveller crews can fill any number of potential roles:

• Independent Trader
• Naval
• Mercenary
• Pirate
• Espionage
• Smuggling
• Warzone/Rebellion
• Exploration
• Diplomacy
• Etc.

All that's limited is your imagination.

Yeah, Smeghead.
From zhodani.space.

• Want to play a campaign inspired by Firefly? Traveller can do that. 
• Want to play a rebellion campaign without Fantasy elements, such as Star Wars Andor or Blake's Seven? Traveller can do that.
• Want to play a bounty hunter space campaign inspired by Cowboy Bebop? Traveller can do that too.
• Want to play James Bond in Space? Or an Ocean's Eleven in space? Traveller again.
• Want to play a space exploration/horror campaign where your crew encounter aliens based off of Alien or The Thing? Or even Men in Black? Yeah, Traveller has you covered.
• Want to play a military oriented campaign in the same vein as John Scalzi's Old Man's War? Hey, if you want to homebrew the setting a bit, Traveller can do it. After all, there's a Traveller setting called 2300 A.D.
• Want to play a space opera where Duchies encompassing different star systems vie for power and prestige in a galactic empire? Let me introduce you to Traveller's Third Imperium, set in the Charted Space universe.
• Want to play a game with a lot of starship oriented combat and maneuvers? Traveller was built with starships in mind at the beginning, not bolted on at the end (Starfinder) or added in an expansion (Star Frontiers).

In fact, Traveller's Charted Space setting can handle all of these campaign ideas and more, while providing a familiar framework to fall back upon. Even Charted Space itself may feel familiar to SWTOR fans in an unexpected manner, as the Third Imperium's modus operandi is that the Imperial Space doesn't mean that the Imperium centrally controls worlds or systems, but the space between the systems.

***

Mongoose Traveller uses the six-sided die as its main mechanic --typically 2 six-sided dice rolled, with the nomenclature of 2D instead of 2d6-- but aside from that the basics of RPGs are still intact. There are skill checks, combat checks, etc., all things you'd expect in an RPG. While Traveller is definitely a hard SF game, don't mistake the game as being entirely centered around combat. 

It's not.

Traveller was designed from the beginning to handle a lot of campaigns, and while the "free form trader" type of campaign is the most ubiquitous type of Traveller campaign, that doesn't mean that you spend all of your time examining spreadsheets and figuring out optimal profit margins as if you were playing a pencil-and-paper version of EVE Online.## 

Heh. If you really want to, I guess both.
From imgflip.com.

But campaigns aside, let's talk about another elephant in the room: advancement.

Traveller may not be so unusual today, but the concept of a game where there is little if any skill advancement once character creation is complete very much went against the grain back in the 1970s. Think about it this way: what would WoW be like if there were no levels or power ups or skill progression such as is currently found in the game? If the point of the game wasn't to become powerful but the telling of the story and your character's progression through the story? While you may potentially learn more skills (and/or spells, attack moves, etc.) and you might find better arms/armor/weapons, the concept of raid bosses with explicit and/or implicit affiliated gear checks would take on a different meaning. 

If you were a crewmember on the Firefly (or the Bebop), your focus isn't on progression, it's where your next meal is coming from. If you were Fezzik, Inigo, or Westley, your "character progression" in The Princess Bride happened before the real story began, when Princess Buttercup was captured. The entire adventure didn't end with someone "leveling up", but rather their escape from Prince Humperdinck's clutches. Their adventures certainly didn't end there, but they weren't running around looking for loot and better magic items to use. 

My point is that the mindset we have with a lot of our RPGs is very much advancement/loot oriented or maybe min/max oriented, and Traveller is not built for that. Sure, you might end up with a better ship than the Beowulf Class Free Trader --hey, that Empress Marava Far Trader would work-- but how you got that ship in place of your old one is worth an extended campaign all by itself.### In fact, there's a starter adventure hook out there that is exactly this: your crew purchased the rights to a starship that's sitting out in the wilderness, having landed there a while back and the owner wasn't able to get back and take off. It's all yours, but it's out there, somewhere. Surely that's not a big deal, is it? Is it?

***

In the end, Traveller is one of those RPGs whose Charted Space setting is so amazingly deep that if the game mechanics don't suit you, I could easily see Traveller's Charted Space being used as the setting for another RPG, such as FATE or Savage Worlds. Still, Traveller itself has its share of devotees even today.  Not too long ago, my oldest was hanging with a couple of friends from her high school days. The boyfriend of an acquaintance was there, and talk eventually turned to RPGs. "Oh, I play this Sci-Fi RPG that hardly anybody has ever heard of," the boyfriend piped up. "But we like it."

"Oh," my oldest replied. "You play Traveller?"

"Holy crap! You've heard of it?"

"Yeah, my dad has a lot of splatbooks for it."

Score one for the Sci-Fi devotees!

Free Trader Beowulf . . .

Come in, Free Trader Beowulf . . .

Can you hear me?

Come in, Free Trader Beowulf . . .

Hang in there, Beowulf. . .

                . . . help is on the way!

--From Steve Jackson Games' GURPS Traveller website

*Before anybody asks, yes he was one of the people from this story. I still keep in touch with him, even after he left our company and moved to Houston to take a job with NASA. Yes, he works at NASA as a third party programmer, and presently is coding various systems for Artemis. The lucky dog.

**It's morphed into the IndyCar Series of today. It's a very long story as to how CART led to a rival league, the IndyCar Racing League (IRL), and how after several years one league folded and the resultant fallout created the IndyCar Series.

***GURPS is one of many generic role playing systems out there, but also one of the more complicated ones to set up. It is so detailed that it is difficult to configure the way you like it, but once you've decided on a system and customized a set of abilities it is easy to implement. That being said, I frequently like to quip that GURPS is a game where the system tends to get in the way of a good time.

****The Third Imperium is the largest star empire in Charted Space, and so you frequently see Charted Space and Third Imperium used interchangeably. If you're like me and see a space game with a name like "Imperium" in it and immediately think of "Evil Galactic Empire", don't worry. The Third Imperium is definitely NOT that. The closest way I can describe the Imperium --and Charted Space in general-- is that it is the Age of Sail in space. Distances still have to be crossed for communication, and while the Jump Drive does connect star systems, it does take time for a starship to cross the vastness of space. Subspace communications --ala Star Trek and Star Wars-- simply don't exist. 

*****If you ignore the GURPS stat blocks and/or tweak them to your own version of Traveller you're using, the writeups for these GURPS splatbooks are fantastic to mine for ideas and setting materials. I think the only drawback now is that they might be hard to find in print. Not as hard to find as MERP, for example, but definitely not something that'll just show up in the cheap bin in a random game store. However, Steve Jackson Games has PDFs of the splatbooks for sale at their Warehouse 23 website.

#This is a pale echo of the same argument about "realism" by modifying a PC's character stats in AD&D 1e due to aging or gender. I understand the desire to make a PC "realistic" by modifying character stats if you want to play an aged Cleric, for instance, but you don't need to modify stats for that. Any DM worth their salt would accommodate this without resorting to changing a character's stats at all. Same with playing a male vs. female Human PC: just because the average male Human is stronger than the average female Human doesn't mean that female PCs should have a lower ceiling on their Strength stat: after all, you're playing an outlier to the "average" Human, so artificial limitations to the stats for the sake of realism make no sense.

##I know NOW that EVE Online isn't like that, it just seems like it at times. So that little quip here was to just tweak the EVE fans out there.

###After all, we can't all be so lucky as to win a freighter in a game of Sabacc. And if you did, can you imagine that the crew of said ship would be happy about that?