Last night, a friend shared with me his "rebuttal" to my recent assertion that Traveller was "obviously" the best science fiction roleplaying game.
Friday, July 25, 2025
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Last night, a friend shared with me his "rebuttal" to my recent assertion that Traveller was "obviously" the best science fiction roleplaying game.
Show us the slides!
ReplyDeleteYou're not the first person to ask to see them.
DeleteSorry if I'm dense, but is there a link?
ReplyDeleteThere's no link. It's just a single fake slide. There are no others.
DeleteA fact that, by itself, amounts to 39 fake slides worth of well reasoned, objective praise for Traveller!
DeleteBut a retro review of DQ would be most excellent...
ReplyDeleteFollow the link in the post above for the one I did way back in 2009.
DeleteAnd so you did! I missed that (now, and back then). I very much resonate with the folks who appreciate DQ, as we played it more than D&D in HS. Once we got the system we house-ruled it with RQ for all sorts of campaigns. Wish I could get a group to try it out again.
DeleteUniverse is also one of the few games that are very difficult to find on the internet—even several go-to sites never carried it. I don’t think I’ve ever come across a decent pdf of the original rules.
ReplyDeleteGames and RPGs could really use some sort of archival library system.
Although it requires an account on the Book of Faces, there is a very active group on there with plenty of Universe material both original and new.
Deletehttps://www.facebook.com/groups/universerpgbyspi
Try here: https://spigames.net/rules_downloads.htm#U
DeleteAlso here (links to the previously referenced site): https://github.com/goltz20707/OpenUniverse
DeleteThanks for the links! I have the 1e Universe (sans Delta Vee), still with its $5 sticker (those were the days), but it’s nice being able to download and read these on the screen.
DeleteI'd be hearing a deeper dive on _Universe's_ star system/planet generation system that you speak highly of in your 2010 post. You've given a lot more thought to these system from a gaming-usefulness perspective than most reviewers and game historians. Maybe a Powerpoint presentation on it? ;)
ReplyDeleteDunno how I scrambled that, but I meant to write something like "I'd really enjoy and appreciate hearing a deeper dive...". Apologies, and for the other typos.
DeleteI wrote a retro-review of Universe on my own blog about eight years ago. Here's the link: https://www.jamescambias.com/blog/2017/06/island-of-lost-games-universe.html
ReplyDeleteI liked the game (I've kept it for close to forty years!) but I can see why it never accumulated much of a following. Like a lot of early RPGs, it's over-complicated in game mechanics, and under-supported in setting and adventure material.
Universe is a hoot but gosh it's dense and *weird*. I love me some dense games, don't get me wrong (I ran T2000 using Phoenix Command for the combat system), but I never managed to run Universe. Absolutely entrancing game to loot for mechanical ideas, though.
ReplyDelete"in 40 slides" ... Is the cherry on top. Perfect
ReplyDeleteI liked DragonQuest, and would soon be playing RoleMaster and other complex games, but Universe left me cold. What is there to do, once I've made my guy? Heinlein had a vast unexplored universe and dangerous colonizations, but Universe had an empire already. Piper and Niven had aliens and FTL that didn't need magic. Asimov, maybe? But robot mysteries are not easy for a 12-year-old to write.
ReplyDeleteGamma World had mutants and Black Ray Guns. Star Frontiers had alien friends, robots, and Sathar and space pirates vs Star Rangers! Trav had everything except robots. Universe had a slug in a cave?