Friday, January 21, 2022

White Dwarf Interviews Marc Miller

Issue #23 of White Dwarf features a lengthy – and insightful – interview with the creator of Traveller, Marc Miller. I'm always interested in early interviews with foundational designers of the hobby. In this case, though, I'm especially interested, as Traveller is a game that's near and dear to my heart. The unnamed interviewer (Ian Livingstone?) asks a number of excellent questions and Miller's answers tell us a great deal about himself, GDW, and the origins of Traveller.

Miller's comment that he initially disliked D&D in intriguing, in light of the fact he (and Loren Wiseman) produced some of the earliest D&D-related comics in the pages of The Strategic Review. I also continue to boggle at the usage of "FRP" as shorthand for the hobby of roleplaying. It's not one I regularly encountered myself, but, based on what I've read, it was once quite widespread.

This perspective was, I think, quite commonplace in first half-decade of the hobby, but became less so as time went on. Certainly by the mid-1980s, if not sooner, roleplaying's connections to miniatures or board wargaming were tenuous to the point of non-existence. That said, GDW seemed to be a company that tried to maintain the connections, as evidenced by its publication of both miniatures rules and board wargames to support Traveller, for example.
While there is lots of useful information here, I find the acknowledgement of D&D's influence the most important. Of course, the presentation of Traveller in the form of three digest-sized booklets revealed this already, but Miller's admission clinches the matter.
This section of the interview is, for me, the single most important one. I've often encountered people who believe that Traveller was primarily inspired by cinematic science fiction. Miller certainly makes a concession to this possibility – "Movies and television particularly affected me." – but I think it's significant that all the direct influences he mentions are literary, from Anderson to Tubb to Niven and Pournelle. It's not an accident that, when pressed, the titles Miller rattles off are books, most of which were written in the two decades prior to Traveller's release. 

The interview, as I said, is quite lengthy and touches on a number of important topics regarding Traveller's design, such as why it has no levels or experience rules ("Most people in their real lives don't improve much as they live out their lives."), why many characters are middle-aged, and even why the game uses two six-sided dice ("Six-sided dice are ubiquitous; they are easily obtained, and most people are familiar with them."). Miller's answers are always interesting and, much as I'd like to share them all here, I don't want this post to go on interminably. However, I will include his answer to a longstanding criticism of Traveller, one that I think roleplayers have been making since 1977.
And there you have it!

13 comments:

  1. I have no comment, other than I wish we had a like/love button to hit for articles such as this. Thanks JM!

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  2. I've always loved that interview, and especially the picture of Marc with long hair and facial hair!

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  3. "Certainly by the mid-1980s, if not sooner, roleplaying's connections to miniatures or board wargaming were tenuous to the point of non-existence."

    I tend to disagree. I only started gaming in the early to mid 80s, but I always felt the link between miniatures/wargaming and roleplaying was fairly strong. perhaps not so for some games as D&D, but certainly so for e.g. Warhammer. But also, the mere fact that many rokleplaying games kept stressing the idea of using floorplans and miniatures kept the link alive.

    I feel that the link only startened to weaken in the mid 90s, with the games published by White Wolf (Vampire etc.)

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    1. You may well be correct. As I often do, I may be conflating my own personal memories, which didn't include much wargaming at the time, with those of the wider hobby.

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    2. And yet, White Wolf published a miniatures game and modest but well-sculpted figure range for their later Trinity RPG, and had plans for one based on Werewolf and (later) Exalted that sadly never saw the light of day. Ral Partha's licensed figure ranges for Vampire and Werewolf and IIRC Mage also sold quite well, although they were RPG adjuncts rather than for a minis game. So even they saw some appeal to minis gaming.

      In the 80s you also had FASA's Mechwarrior and Renegade Legion: Legionanaire RPGs, which are some the few RPGs in that era that I can think of which were spun off earlier, more successful minis/board game rules rather than the other way around. That might be the real sea change in the 80s - RPGs were coming first and sometimes spinning off minis games afterward, rather than the two developing more or less alongside one another like Traveller/Snapshot/Striker did.

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    3. I agree with your last thought. I suspect the pool of players has always been linked, but the game types grew more independent. And we see influences going the other way, recently with “legacy” board games introducing campaigns into board game play (i.e., the outcome of one play affecting future ones).

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  4. Any Traveller player who's read EC Tubbs' Dumarest books will see loads of connections - slow and fast drugs, low berths, etc. Despite being written long before Traveller existed they're the closest thing I've seen to how early-days campaigns (before the Imperium setting really gelled into canon) really played out, albeit with a single "PC" rather than a party.

    Dumarest clearly cheated on his stat rolls though. The guy's got a couple of "F" results on his UPP, if not "G" or higher. :)

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    1. The UPP for Dumarest in the back of 1001 Characters is BFCA98, for what that's worth. I can agree that the F could well be a G (or is that 10? Isn't the UPP supposed to be in hexadecimal?)

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    2. A was 10. F was 15, and IIRC the highest human stats could reach in the LBB days. G would be 16, and got used (along with most of the rest of the alphabet outside of I and O) in High Guard, which dropped the hexadecimal thing and just used whatever needed to stick to single-character notation.

      13-15-14-10-9-8 seems about right for Dumarest, although the Soc score might be a bit high depending on where in the series he is. They breed gods among men on Terra. If all the Solomani had stats like that the Rule of Man would have lasted longer. :)

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    3. If it wasn’t clear, John Brinegar means that 10 in hexadecimal represents 16 in decimal notation.

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  5. On the use of "FRP" to describe roleplaying games: I am quite used to this, and have been as long as I can remember, but I don't know where I first saw it. I associate it with Chaosium products for some reason. I think it may actually come from APAs, particularly Alarums and Excursions. Does anyone else have more definite knowledge?

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  6. I didn't know that Marc Miller designed educational sims for class use.

    Thanks for the post!

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  7. I would love to see the whole interview!

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