Wednesday, November 10, 2021

Retrospective: Snapshot

I've never made any secret of the fact that Traveller is without question my favorite roleplaying game. In large part, that's due to my lifelong love of science fiction – some of my earliest memories are watching Star Trek reruns with my aunt in the early 1970s – but I firmly believe that my affection is also due to the elegance of the game's design. Traveller's rules are straightforward, wide-ranging, and expandable. Time and again, GDW showed how relatively easy it was to add to, subtract from, and modify Traveller for various purposes.

A good example of what I'm talking about is evident in the various boardgames derived from Traveller that GDW published, such as  Snapshot. Snapshot first appeared in 1979 in a black and green box of similar size to the 1977 Traveller set. A second edition released in 1983 came in a larger, 8½" × 11" box. I owned the second version and, like so many RPG products of that era, I played it until the box literally fell apart. 

Snapshot is an adaptation of Traveller's combat rules for the purposes of simulating, as its subtitle proclaims, "close combat aboard starships in the far future." Inside the box is a 28-page rulebook, a collection of counters, and a sheet featuring the deckplans of a Type-S scout vessel and a Type-A free trader (scaled for use with either the included counters or 15mm miniatures). If you're already familiar with Traveller's combat system, Snapshot is easy to understand. Newcomers might find it takes a little effort to comprehend, but not much. Compared to most miniatures wargaming rules, Snapshot is refreshingly simple.

Make no mistake: that's what Snapshot is – a set of science fiction miniatures wargaming rules. Like other wargames of this kind, it's played in conjunction with scenarios, several samples of which are included in the rulebook. For example, one scenario deals with alien animals destined for an imperial zoological park that get loose while in transit; another deals with an attempted hijacking of a starship. All of the scenarios include victory conditions for one side or the other, as well as options for altering their basic parameters. Of course, referees and players of Traveller would likely have no trouble coming up with scenarios of their own.

Snapshot would seem to have had two audiences in mind. The first is people just looking to play a quick miniatures game and who might, through playing the game, become interested in Traveller. The second is people like myself, who already played Traveller and were keen to get our hands on counters and appropriately scaled maps for use with our RPG adventures and campaigns. It was in that capacity that my boxed set fell apart. Over the course of several years, I made regular use of Snapshot to adjudicate hijackings, boarding actions, and many other combats in and around starships. I can't begin to tell you how many hours my friends and I spent doing this, but it was a lot. I suppose any kid who thrilled upon seeing the opening scene of Star Wars would have a natural affinity for this kind of thing.

A few years ago, when I was refereeing my Riphaeus Sector Traveller campaign, I regretted that we were playing online, because I was keen to pull out my old Snapshot maps and counters whenever the characters became involved in combat aboard a starship. We made do with virtual tools that allowed us to do the same thing, more or less, but I can't deny it didn't quite feel the same to me. They say nostalgia is a hell of a drug and perhaps that's so. On the other hand, the fact that a little box containing cardboard squares and a fold-out map still exercise a hold over my imagination decades later has got to be worth something too.

15 comments:

  1. Loved this game, and its giant-sized cousin Azhanti High Lightning. Also played it quite a bit using FASA's deck plan sets - their first products, now largely forgotten by most folks along with the meaning of their company name. :)

    Also recall trying to use the maps from GDW's Asteroid boardgame with Snapshot, with less success.

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  2. Not much for Snapshot, but I think that the later Striker combat and design rules may be the best Sci-fi wargaming rules ever written.

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    1. If Stargrunt and Dirtside didn't exist, Striker would still be my favorite "fairly hard" scifi minis game. As it is, it still gets the Bronze from me.

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  3. Your reminiscence has stirred my nostalgic muse. I too, played many a happy scenario, in boarding actions and onboard skirmishes. Many a time my characters were spaced because we did not yet have control of the ship's hatches. We discovered that being able to turn the artificial gravity on and off could give us great advantage. Once we started designing our own ships, especially the interior security systems, we would beg pirates to try to board us. I still have the 15mm Galactic Grenadier figures and still long to play a good scenario of repelling boarders.

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  4. Classic Traveller wound up with three ways of resolving combat. Core book combat, Snapshot combat, and Azhanti High Lightning/Striker combat which ultimately became the foundation for Megatraveller's combat system.

    As for Roll20 you are aware of the CDs of PDFs offered by Far Future? They are a good buy compared to the prices on DriveThru and the Classic Traveller CD has the snapshop maps scanned in.

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    1. Yea, it's worth highlighting that Snap Shot provided clear information on using it to adjudicate combat for the RPG, the stats, skills, and weapons were all the same, actually Snapshot provides a few more details for some of the weapons. And a handy combat matrix reference card (with the 1981 weapon damage to boot and all the Supplement 4 and Book 4 weapons). There are also a few handy extra rules for Zero-G combat.

      And yea, the CDROM includes Snapshot... and lots more...

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  5. As nostaglic those old maps are some the new fan made stuff is just outstanding like Robert Pearce's Starship Geomorphs 2.0
    http://travellerrpgblog.blogspot.com/2020/07/starship-geomorphs-20.html

    Or the break down of the symbols he created for those geomorphs from here.
    http://travellerrpgblog.blogspot.com/2020/08/even-more-images.html

    I did a version of the Classic Traveller Lab Ship using those.
    https://drive.google.com/file/d/10RtaH8QyFKzkR6GBa6_xuRMN3F_ZFJT8/view?usp=sharing

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  6. Huh, interesting. I wonder how much inspiration Snapshot might have provided for the original Warhammer 40K.

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  7. I really enjoyed Snapshot. I still have my small box version from the very early '80s. I should dig it out.

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  8. That would have been so cool if you had used those counters for that fight! You'd have had to make your own deckplans for that ship, but you could have scanned the counters...

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  9. Memories!
    Didn't get to play it much...but sure loved staring at the deckplans...
    always wanted to convert Battletech to Striker.

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  10. I have a strong impression that throughout their existence, GDW maintained a strong affinity for the hobby's wargaming roots, even as RPGs matured into a distinct thing. My go-to miniatures game, Starport Scum, actually cites Traveller (along with the more obscure Laserburn) as an inspiration.

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    1. Well, the company did spend the first four years of its existence as a wargames publisher, and was originally founded in 1973 to produce the gigantic Europa games series, and they were producing wargames and miniatures rule sets right up until they closed down in early 1996. It's understandable that they'd remember their gaming roots, which definitely predated the idea of roleplaying as its own hobby by a few years.

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  11. Your post prompted me to buy a PDF of Snapshot. It's quite a nifty game, with a lot of possibilities packed into a concise package. I'm once again reminded that my utter lack of access to a gaming store circa 1984 meant I missed out on a lot of great games.

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