Fri, Feb 5, 7:00 AM (3 days ago)
Thank you for replying.
Also I wanted to ask you a question. May I email you basically some of my past life issues concerning dealing with "bullies" fighting and some child hood issues? I am trying to figure out why I am the way I am and how I can improve. But I don't want to send you it, if you would rather not be bothered with it. Absolutely no worries at all if the answer is no.
Your RPG Triumph is really interesting. I have always wanted to role play a realistic rpg. I did a lot of gaming with my dad and his friends. I am 31 this month and my dad introduced me to a lot of old school games like traveler. Have you ever played traveler? What is your favorite rpg?
Take care and stay safe,
-Jonah
Jonah, any questions you have for me in the self-defense/masculinity realm, I will answer. I do this in article form, like this, as I know each man who writes in, probably represents many who do not. It is a responsibility of mine, having published near 20 books on the subject. Send me your concerns and I will address them in such a way as to protect your identity—for instance the fact that you were recently swallowed by whale—and, as is my current plan, I will post reader Q&A and dialogues on Monday.
Yes, Jonah, I did play Traveler. It was a single black book of rules, a 6-by-9 I think, and was a realistic treatment of space adventure gaming. The movie most like the setting would be Sean Connery's Outland, about a cop on a space station. The most realistic thing about traveler is that firearms were still used—just as the movie Aliens was realistic in that way. The use of lazars and such as side-arms is just stupid. Such weapons, when employed, would be used as ship and habitat defense ordinance. For rubbing out meat puppets, hot lead would do well enough. Within ships and habitats in space, low velocity shotguns, handguns and submachine guns such as used by SWAT operators in built up areas, would be practical. Rifles would be locked away for use on planets.
When I first published Tribes and Pizza Wars, I bought a booth two years in a row in the late 1980s at Atlanticon, and lost lots of money. The first year I was lucky enough to have the booth next to Game Designers Workshop, the guys that published Traveler. At the time, they were, I think, working on a serious cyberpunk RPG called Shadowrun. I don't know what happened to them, but they were smart guys that gave me some game design tips for Tribes, particularly the thin fellow with the frizzy brown Manhattan-fro.
Ominously, Games Workshop, the miniatures-based designers of Warhammer and Warhammer 40K and publishers of White Dwarf Magazine, had just come out with their Warhammer Fantasy RPG and we agreed, at out little, sparsely attended tables, as the nerds all descended on the Games Workshop booth, that their "Blood and Snot" settings were going to leave our more realistic science-fiction settings in the shadows.
I am glad you are enjoying Triumph.
It is not very playable in the combat realm, which was the key design feature, that getting into a fight with sharp objects and guns was going to be a huge pain-in-the-ass and probably get you killed. the idea, was that by building a realistic and therefore brutal combat system, that actual roleplaying would occur far more often than combat—as in real life adventure settings.
That system grew out of Tribes and later Fights, two systems that I play-tested a lot in the late 1980s that used quicker-paced combat systems.
By The Wine Dark Sea is a supplemental history book for developing RPG characters and settings in ancient Hellas, for any system, including Triumph.
I have not played triumph yet. I just read a little bit about it on your website. But honestly I might pick it up in the future just to see how you designed the game to be realistic. The idea of a realistic combat system has always fascinated me.
Have you played Axis and Allies? If so what are your thoughts? I went to a lot of orc con conventions in LA CA. These guys would set up basically a hybrid axis and allies game on steroids in always looked super cool.
In one of your recent posts you talked about how germany or the confederates might have one. As a fan of yours, those topics really interest me and I would love to see your write more details articles on how the axis might have won.
Could the germans have won if they concentrated on a north Africa middle east campaign. cutting off gibalter and the suez canal?
Take care!