Though DGP's The Travellers' Digest was very well regarded among Traveller fans in the late '80s and early '90s, it wasn't especially lucrative for the company. That's why, when GDW announced it would end the MegaTraveller line and proceed with Traveller: The New Era, DGP saw it as an opportunity to forge its own path by publishing an original roleplaying game called A.I. Here's an advertisement for it from issue #59 of Challenge (April 1992).
A.I. is set on "an alien, future Earth" some 1500 years in the future, after rampant artificial intelligence, genetic engineering, and nanotechnology have made it nearly unrecognizable. I adore settings like this, where technology has become indistinguishable from magic – "secret science fiction," I call them. Needless to say, I was very excited to see A.I. and ads like this one only increased my excitement.
Alas, a series of unfortunate events, including a catastrophic hard drive crash, resulted in A.I. becoming RPG vaproware. Soon thereafter, DGP itself was no more. It's a pity, because DGP did great work on Traveller and I would have loved to have seen what they'd imagined for a wholly original science fiction setting. But, even in 1992, there were already more roleplaying games in existence than I could ever play, so I didn't waste too much energy mourning this one. Seeing this again, though, briefly took me back to a time, more than three decades ago now, when I not only looked forward to this game but first began to ponder the possibility of trying to make a living as a RPG writer. Simpler times!
Oh, I remember this one. I also remember a more extensive presentation in one of the later issue of the Traveller Digest.
ReplyDeleteI confess I would have loved to see how it would have turned out.
At the time I was disappointed by how Megatraveller had been developed - and terminated - and even more by Traveller New Era.
I know the Rebellion marked the start of my own drift away from Traveller. For a while it was interesting to read the "war news" in Challenge every issue, but got old fast when it became clear it was going to turn into a grinding stalemate that would last until some deus ex machina resolved things - and the Virus was an even worse ending that we'd been dreading.
DeleteI don't recall a single MT game I played that used GDW's metaplot, and TNE only got to the table once for me and that only lasted a few weeks. Haven't played a steady game of Traveller since then, just the odd nostalgic game using the LBB rules. I have a serious hate for Mongoose (or more accurately, Matt) based on past behavior so the current edition does nothing to encourage me to change that.
I've read some Mongoose Trav books in the past few years and -- not knowing anything about the company or its dealings -- my objection is the frequent sloppiness of the worldbuilding (and world-maintaining specifically) on one hand, the copyediting on the other, and the basic proofreading on the third. Especially the first two. There's a few cool ideas in there, but they're so carelessly thought out and described, who are the people that want to pay for the privilege of making something out of them? Any Traveller (or other SFRPG) discussion group, or archive of one going back to the 80s, is going to be as good a source of inspiration and chrome.
Delete> the copyediting on the other, and the basic proofreading on the third.
DeleteYeah that was pretty much why I stopped buying Mongoose Traveller books. And then MgT 2e felt like a cash grab, splitting what had previously been in a single core rulebook into two.
For those unfamiliar with Mongoose's history, their proofreading and editing are legendarily terrible, to the point where folks frequently recommend not buying initial print runs of anything in the hope that later ones will correct at least some of their mistakes. Been like that for decades, and I see no indication that they've improved much over time.
DeleteNot my primary beef with the company, but it certainly doesn't make me like them any better.
Haven't thought of that one in a long while. From a 2024 POV it sounds like it would have been a setting not unlike Numenera, perhaps with overtones of a more serious/plausible Gamma World blended in.
ReplyDeleteBut yeah, not much point anymore in pining for might-have-been RPGs or even the ones that died early and might have deserved more success. There's more out there than anyone could ever hope to even read, much less get to the table. Best to just remember DGP for the good work they did do and move on.
Never having the taste for this particular genre flavor, I _wasn't_ enthused to read about DGP's change of focus to "A.I." but was still sorry to see them fold up so quickly.
ReplyDeleteI got the impression that some/many of the DGP crew were also just tired of RPGs and were content to leave the scene -- which hasn't been really contradicted by anything I've been able to read or hear in the years since then. The residual fanboy in me still finds that upsetting and regrettable, but at the same time, I really, really do get that.
Trying to make money publishing RPG materiel is often a great way to stop wanting to publish RPG materiel forever.
DeleteNo doubt! I imagine the DGP crew may have also been frenzied OD&D players like James describes here :) And it does come across they were putting a lot of time and effort into Traveller gaming and writing. In which case a late-80s waning of enthusiasm for the hobby (if that was really a factor) is pretty sympathizable-with.
DeleteI do wonder if that's not a happier outcome than the opposite one: becoming a _professional_ about it. I don't think I've ever wanted to officially publish any game materials, have tried to avoid it a couple times, and really am more comfortable with the shabby weirdness and shabby sameness of the DIY/purely amateur approach.
“Fuzzy logic and object-oriented approach” is evocative, if it was more that marketing it sounds like they had some new approaches to the gaming itself that might have been very novel. Alas!
ReplyDeletei remember getting a promo flyer for A.I. at Origins '91, the only gaming con i've ever been to, never seeing an actual release and, knowing nothing about Traveller, Megatraveller (outside of the PC games), or DGP, wondering for decades what ever happened to it.
ReplyDelete