Beginning with The Traveller Book in 1982, GDW began a shift away from digest-sized books and toward more traditional 8½" × 11" books for the game. I'm not entirely sure why the company chose to do this, but, whatever the reason, there were soon no more digest-sized books to be had. The Traveller Adventure, the various alien modules, and even the Starter and Deluxe editions of the game were all published as standard-sized books – a size every subsequent version of Traveller has used up to the present day.
Around the same time, GDW released new versions of Mayday and Snapshot that made use of the larger size. These were the versions I owned, though I've long since lost and replaced them with the earlier digest-sized versions, because I'm silly that way. These games paved the way for additional boxed sets for use with Traveller, like Tarsus, which appeared in 1983. Then, in 1984, BeltStrike appeared in the same format – two 12-page, staple-bound booklets, four 4-page adventure folders, a fold-out map of Koenig's Rock, and some perforated cards containing the write-ups for a dozen pregenerated characters. Like most Traveller products, there's not much in the way of art beyond David Dietrick's box art.
Like Tarsus before it, BeltStrike devotes itself to the description of a single star system in the Spinward Marches, in this case the Bowman Belt, a planetoid belt located in the same subsector as Tarsus, District 268. As its name suggests, District 268 has not yet been fully incorporated into the Third Imperium, but is instead a colonial territory being developed in preparation for eventual inclusion within the empire. This gives its worlds, including the Bowman Belt, a distinctly "frontier" feel to them – which is saying something, as the Spinward Marches sector itself is something of a backwater sector located on the fringes of the Imperium.
The first 12-page booklet is the Bowman System Reference Book. It lays out the basic facts of the Bowman system, as well as its major points of interest. There's also a map of both the entire system and of Bowman Prime (a gas giant) and its satellites, so referees and players alike have a good idea of where all the major astronomical bodies are located in relation to one another. Information about Bowman's history and place within the Marches takes up much of the booklet's page count, followed closely by library data and a key to Koenig's Rock, a planetoid settlement with a reputation for lawlessness and vice.
The second 12-page booklet is the Belter's Handbook. As its title suggests, it focuses on creating and playing belter (asteroid miner) characters. There's not only a full career for such characters (which had previously appeared in Supplement 4: Citizens of the Imperium), but also many practical details on asteroid mining, like the ins and outs of prospecting, claims and profits, encounters, and the effects of zero and low gravity. None of these details are exhaustive – the booklet is short, after all – but they're solid enough to provide the referee with sufficient guidance that he could pretty easily make use of them in his campaign.
Finally, there are the four adventure folders – really just two double-sided pages – each of which presents a different situation that might involve the player characters within the Bowman system. The first one, "Lodes of Adventures," is really just an introduction to the system and its sights. The second, "On the Rock," takes place on Koenig's Rock and its shady inhabitants. Adventure three, "Claimjumpers," deals with fending off rival belters. Finally, there's "Archeology," which allows the characters to find a high-tech base of an alien civilization that's been lost in the belt for centuries. Like everything else in BeltStrike, the adventures are more sketches than fully fleshed out scenarios. While this is fairly typical for Traveller, this might prove frustrating for inexperienced referees.
In my youth, I wasn't a big fan of BeltStrike for precisely this reason. I felt there was too little information to fully exploit its potential. After all, asteroid belts are inherently interesting locales in a sci-fi setting and I simply didn't think the Bowman Belt was interesting as I had hoped it would be. Now, I look on it a little more charitably. I made good use of it during my Riphaeus Sector campaign by repurposing bits and pieces of it in my own non-Third Imperium setting. Both Koenig's Rock and the ancient alien base made great additions to the continuing adventures of the characters as they made their way across the sector. It's far from the best thing GDW ever released for Traveller, but I'm still fond of it (and it inspired me when I took my own stab at presenting an asteroid system for gaming).
Worth noting that 1977 also marked the release of Raphia 217 BC, the first in their "120 Series" of small wargames, so named because they only had 120 counters and had theoretical play times of 120 minutes. They were in many ways an answer to the popularity of other small-format wargames of the era, notably Metagaming's Microgame line (the birthplace of OGRE) and Task Force Game's "ziplock baggie" games (which included the original Star Fleet Battles, a very big deal back then). GDW still cared quite a lot about their wargames in '77 and wanted a piece of the pie, and by using a digest-sized boxed format they stood out better on shelves than most - but also had higher prices.
ReplyDeleteSeries 120 wasn't generally well-received by historical gamers and critics, but Asteroid and Dark Nebula did better with scifi fans, and many people conflated Mayday and Snapshot and even Striker with Series 120 games because of their shared format. Traveller used the same small boxes and digest-sized books, of course. IIRC the last Series 120 game dropped in 1981, which also marked the beginning of the end for the digest format and the small boxes associated with them.
If I had to speculate, there was probably a shift in production costs in 1980-ish that made larger formats more profitable going forward. Maybe the supplier of those small, sturdy boxes raised their rates or went out of business, or prices dropped on larger boxes for one reason or another. Series 120 hadn't proven to be as popular as DW had hoped, and the design constraints of the format obviously cramped their creators (although they certainly could have had more stuff in those boxes - one common complaint was that they felt kind of empty), and no attempt was made to continue them past the digest era.
Of course, Traveller had also very much become the main income source for GDW at this point, and while they never stopped making wargames they'd increasingly be known as an RPG publisher until their eventual closure. It's interesting to imagine a different world where Series 120 boomed as well as expected and the "tiny wargame" market didn't die out in the mid-80s, leading to GDW staying more balanced between their two interests - and perhaps traditional wargaming remaining a larger part of the hobby overall, rather than its current diminished status as something of a historical vestige.
I often wonder whether the rise of RPGs necessarily resulted in the fall of tabletop wargames. I'm sure there's at least some connection, but is it the largest part of that story?
DeleteI agree there's a connection, but looking into the future, CCGs (another landmark development in the overall hobby within my lifetime) didn't permanently relegate RPGs to third-class citizen status, and if we look at modern trends board games are huge again, a resurgence driven by many factors but definitely influenced by crowdfunding. They don't look or feel very much like the old hex-and-counter historical wargames of old, but they're scratching a similar itch for a broader audience, and they're doing it with much better developed design tools and philosophies than even the best SPI and AvHill designers had available.
DeleteIf anything, I think a major cause of traditional wargaming's decline was the increasing popularity and acceptance of the scifi and fantasy genres. Wargaming in the 50s and 60s and even 70s was rooted in historical simulation and the "what if?" alt-history. A lot of its small community was appalled when familiar publishers started to offer sf/f games, but they were pretty quickly drowned out by new blood flowing into the hobby from adjacent fandom spaces. The rise of RPGs is probably equally dependent on that shift in tastes. It's really hard to envision a world where a strictly historical version of D&D (Dukes & Dragoon?) kicked things off the way it did here, or an alt-GDW becoming a major player on the strength of an obsessively detailed RPG about NASA's operations.
I suspect the move to larger formats was probably an attempt to follow TSR's success in escaping game stores and colonizing ordinary bookstores (via TSR's distribution deal with Random House). I don't recall GDW ever having quite the success in getting those books onto normie bookstore shelves that Palladium and even ICE did until WEG came along and truly rivaled/challenged TSR's domination at Barnes & Noble, etc., but those stores definitely weren't going to stock and display oddly-sized digests (or boxes). (My possibly dubious recollection is that GDW was more successful in getting later titles like Twilight: 2000 and Space: 1899 than in getting Traveller into mainstream bookstores, but my brain may be betraying me. S1899 in particular had a hardbound edition that was obviously meant to stand out on display next to offerings from TSR, WEG, and FASA (I'm especially thinking of Shadowrun, which came out around the same time).)
DeleteTalking about scratching a similar itch, Renegade Games is currently publishing Axis & Allies - a WW2 tabletop war game. A&A was originally released in 1981 and has been in publication/production relatively consistently since then. There is/are one or more very high profile conventions and major competitions for A&A, with accolades galore for the tournament winner(s).
DeleteA&A has several major expansions, house rules, dedicated fan base, homemade content, blog and YouTube followings, etc.
Homemade and handmade/painted sets and pieces go for a premium. Some collections shown on YouTube rival the biggest and best tabletop mini D&D setups ever put together.
A&A has changed hands several times over its storied history, Milton Bradley, Avalon Hill, Hasbro, WOTC, but it has always been around with an avid war game fan base since its inception.
The picture is more complicated than that. While it’s true that the rise of RPGs did siphon off some of the table top/wargame audience, video games took many more. So, the wargame hobby is now diminished, but I wouldn’t yet write it off as a historical vestige. I came to wargaming from RPGs and today see conventions as large as those I attended in the 1990s, but the clientele is older – not being replenished.
ReplyDeleteWe still have many wargame producers who publish games large and small. Their market share is certainly less than RPGs, but so is their competition. For example, I know of companies that gave up their RPG line, for lack of profitability, and retained their wargame line because it was still viable. The barriers to entry are much fewer in the RPG market, so many more fish swim in that pond, dividing the total spoils into ever smaller fractions.
On the other hand, contemporary wargaming resembles the early days of RPGs in that you can just walk into a convention (dozens around the world every year) and game with 25-100 individuals focused on game play over a long weekend for about $30-50. Modern RPG conventions in contrast often have complex registration processes with tiers of participation (that sell out) at very high prices and a collection of dissimilar individuals so varied that it requires assorted rules of etiquette for what can and cannot be raised during a game and how to behave on the convention floor. I’m often perplexed by what I see coming up in the context of RPG conventions: consent, diversity, gender identity, safe spaces, etc. Yes, those are important issues, but they never surface in the context of wargame conventions, even though we do have assorted non-traditional wargamers! Why? I think it has something to do with the nature of wargames – it’s all about the rules with a lot less room for interpretation.
Anyway, I think a lot of people would be surprised at the current strength of wargaming, but we are running out of track with not enough young recruits to replace those aging veterans.
Agreed, there is very much a hex-and-counter resurgence taking place, though it seems to be mostly a nostalgia thing these days. Wargaming was in the doldrums during the 80s and 90s, then seemed to be dead, and is now sort of "undead." (Though my impression is that Advanced Squad Leader is still finding new adherents.)
DeleteJim Dunnigan (founder of SPI, designer of PanzerBlitz and countless other games) has written about the decline of board wargames. As I understand it, SPI was one of the few game companies (in the 70s and early 80s) to do serious market research. According to Dunnigan, he could tell that SPI's days were numbered, because the surveys all indicated that people preferred computer war games to boardgames. In a hobby where it was a challenge to find an opponent or to execute complex rules solitaire, even primitive PC games were an attractive option. Of course, Dick McGee is also right that sci fi and fantasy were gaining in popularity at the same time (and SPI tried, awkwardly, to meet that demand, as did Avalon Hill). We should also note that the failure of SPI's Dallas RPG was the major contributor to SPI being acquired by TSR.
To James's query, I tend to think that RPGs just proved to be a more popular and potentially more lucrative product than historical war games, so that's where the industry went. I doubt that GDW sold very many copies of Drang Nach Osten!, even at the height of the 70s war game boom. As for size/format, it could just be as simple as printers refusing to do odd sizes, or retailers (not just hobby shops but also toy stores and book chains) preferring a particular size.
Regarding Beltstrike!'s adventure modules, it kind of goes on the side of evidence toward my hypothesis that GDW's Traveller line was usually much better at creating rules and setting/background material than it was at producing ready-to-play scenarios and campaigns. Obviously there are exceptions, but I feel like they never found and consistently maintained a good balance between "one-page (single-sided) premise" and "fully worked-out caper-on-rails manual". For every "The Traveller Adventure" there's a "Spinward Marches Campaign".
ReplyDeletePersonally I don't remember that being a problem, but I was also a lot younger when GDW was publishing Traveller. (As was the entire RPG genre.) But looking back from today, I'm often thinking: "The scenario/adventure part of this book shoulda just been a blog post or a message on the Traveller Mailing List."
Well, "Fantasy" had a big advantage on this: the main "staple" was always a dungeon. So even if you had no ideas for complex NPC or factions interactuon, or little space, a dungeon would always do.
DeleteEspecially because "fitting" a dungeon in some homebrew campaign would always be easier than trying to fit a more complex plot in an ongoing Traveller campaign.
Later developments (Star Wars, Call of Cthulhu) proved you could create varied and interesting scenarios and still make these work in a not-so-formulaic setting, but Traveller came out right after D&D and at the time it was Dungeons, Dungeons everywhere.
Beltstrike! was designed to fill out how an asteroid system might be populated and developed creatively. It lacked a sense of story. That can be a plus for gamers who want an open-ended approach. GDW didn't have TSR's touch for peopling their creations or giving them a fleshed-out sense of mission, with The Traveller Adventure being the one glowing exception.
DeleteI am not sure if this for the boxed set or Mongoose. But I wrote this for when players went asteroid mining.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.batintheattic.com/traveller/beltstrike/beltstrike.html
I always considered Tarsus and Beltstrike to be part of the Starter Traveller subset of product. All three had a similiar contentment, sported those awesome Deitrik covers, and shared a sequential product code (251, 252, 253). Though there really was little distinction between the digest-sized books, The Traveller Book, Starter Traveller and Deluxe Traveller. GDW repackaged that ruleset every-which-way until Megatraveller was released.
ReplyDeleteThere is an is not "very little distinction" between the various forms of Traveller, but there are. See my Section by Section Comparison:
Deletehttps://docs.google.com/document/d/1jsH-EgKvaR0mdbtJMj_Xj7X3TcYyZTqQGf-Gwu58PX0/edit?usp=drive_link
All this discussion about GDW/FFE content made me want to look for the FFE CD ROM for CT and JTAS. I can't get the link to work for me at all.
ReplyDeleteThe site won't load for me. I get error messages, server can't be found messages, site isn't secure messages, etc, etc, etc (I should be bald with hands on hips as this is typed).
Anyways, has anyone else had similar issues with the FFE site as of late?
It was fine when i looked a couple of days ago but according to “downforeveryoneorjustme dot com” it is indeed down now. Hopefully just a brief hiatus, i still need a couple of those CDs!
DeleteI don't see wargaming as disappearing at all. I am continually finding games and publishers that are new to me, and I have more un-played games on my shelves or pre-order lists than I have ever had before. Yes, the hobby is aging, but so is model railroading (another hobby of mine), and yet there are still new model-making companies turning out products with eye-watering levels of detail. New members come along and float under the radar, it seems.
ReplyDelete