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Post by tyrion on Sept 4, 2020 17:50:29 GMT
Speed read this last night, 17 minutes.
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vagsancho
Knight
Posts: 809
Favourite Gamebook Series: CRYPT OF THE SORCERER
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Post by vagsancho on Sept 23, 2020 20:00:23 GMT
Starship Traveller was an obvious imitation of Star Trek. But for some reason, i never liked star trek, but i always liked very much starship traveller. I miss starship traveller.
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vagsancho
Knight
Posts: 809
Favourite Gamebook Series: CRYPT OF THE SORCERER
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Post by vagsancho on Oct 8, 2020 15:20:46 GMT
Starship Traveller is the more underatad gamebook of the series.
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vagsancho
Knight
Posts: 809
Favourite Gamebook Series: CRYPT OF THE SORCERER
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Post by vagsancho on Oct 8, 2020 19:07:48 GMT
Steve Jackson (Starship Traveller) gave a lesson to Steve Jackson (Creature of Havoc). Comparing with that unnecessarily big and awfull background of Creature of Havoc... ... What a beautifull, rich, and extremely short background in Starship Traveller because it was all contained in the paragraph 1.
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vagsancho
Knight
Posts: 809
Favourite Gamebook Series: CRYPT OF THE SORCERER
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Post by vagsancho on Oct 12, 2020 19:32:30 GMT
The puffin cover of starship traveller is from the planet malini, am i right?
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Post by vastariner on Apr 8, 2022 13:54:55 GMT
Some observations from having picked it up for the first time in a while:
-it feels absolutely packed, you do not notice it lacks the full 400. You do get an idea of each different planet from the brief visits to them, even though you're restricted really to one adventure each;
-there is a lot of wasted dice-rolling, given that you have quite a large crew and only a limited opportunity to use them. Indeed the multi-crew might have been more suited for a single-planet adventure so all skills could be given prominence;
-I think I might have wanted to stay in this universe rather than try to black-hole my way back, although the end suggests you might have reached the end of it, which in itself is intriguing;
-the rule about replacements for specialist roles was an interesting idea, not enough room for it to develop though;
-all told, there are only 2 planets you need to make, so there is good replayability value. Just from memory, on my recent play, I missed out on the Ganzigites, the Macommonians, and the transfer-meld for starters.
It was, all told, an enjoyable and nostalgic romp. You have to treat your crew as special skills because they're not given any personality. (Interesting though that the science officer is female - that was probably surprising to me in 1983 and not so much now.) And really the redshirts are a waste of a dice roll - just have the security officer.
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Post by vastariner on Apr 8, 2022 14:20:59 GMT
Couple of other thoughts about the book's solution. It needs two more encounters. One right at the start as a must-visit telling you you need warp speed, stardate, and location in order to get back - maybe put some time limit thing in there to suggest that the universe itself is eating away at you because you don't belong there, and maybe a random stat deduction near the end to demonstrate the point.
And it needs another one for another warp speed. I missed it in my successful run as it's not a stat you actually need. But given the warp speed is 3, that suggests the solution is to multiply the number you get from stardate and co-ordinates by your warp speed. So there probably should be another encounter in the first half of the book (I think Cliba is a chokepoint) to give you an alternative warp speed. Your two necessities are close to the end so it smacks as if we lost at least one other planet in the first half.
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Post by aeris2001x2 on May 1, 2023 7:10:43 GMT
No where near as bad as Skylord, Star Strider or Space Assassin, but boy is this book dull, its biggest flaw is there is nothing interesting to do.
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Post by a moderator on May 2, 2023 0:56:15 GMT
I'd rank it below Space Assassin and Star Strider because of that dullness.
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Post by paperexplorer on Jan 26, 2024 7:24:31 GMT
I've always spelt traveler wrong (with 2 x L's), and I've just realised it is all Steve's fault
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Post by a moderator on Jan 26, 2024 10:45:12 GMT
I've always spelt traveler wrong (with 2 x L's), and I've just realised it is all Steve's fault That's not a right/wrong thing, it's a British English/American English thing.
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Post by paperexplorer on Feb 3, 2024 6:23:05 GMT
Ah, then I'll amend my statement to Steve is why I always use the British English spelling of the word
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IoannesKantakouzenos
Traveller
Being slowly eaten alive by a Ghoul
Posts: 105
Favourite Gamebook Series: Fighting Fantasy (Aventuras Fantásticas)
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Post by IoannesKantakouzenos on Feb 17, 2024 18:26:13 GMT
I don't know whether it's just on the book I own, but some of the dice-roll's results seem switched - yes, I know you need no dice for the optimal route but one does like to deviate from it and explore a bit. I know Titannica's entry on the book mentions (223) and (326), but it seems there are more, at least from my point of view that, in order to succeed a test, you need to roll less than the value you are testing. (10) is one such example (if you roll less than your Luck score, you end up drifting away for eternity in your powerless ship); in (151), rolling lower than your Skill leaves you stranded in a planet without oxygen (if SJ wanted the test to be challenging, since you are desperate and trying to come up with an idea without anyone's help, you could deduct 3 from your Skill score as most crew members in combat); in (210), getting a lower number than your Luck value makes your Medical Officer get a developed illness which will get her dead unless you return with her to the ship, instead of a mild cold which will cure itself after some rest; and (268) is a bit of a grey area, since rolling lower than Mr. Scot… erm, your Engineering Officer's Skill means he cannot make a generic filter for the transmatter machine work - however, making that thing work ends up getting you killed (unless you have Luck), so I can excuse that one. I wanted to like this one a lot, but it's not possible. It's mildly enjoyable at its best, and the lack of 60 references doesn't help. Like some of you said already, we end up with a good premise that in the end amounts to cardboard characters with which creation we waste more time than with the adventure in itself. Down the drain went my chance of feeling like a James Tiberius Kirk…
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Post by terrysalt on Feb 18, 2024 20:55:10 GMT
My copy has the same issues.
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Post by Pete Byrdie on Feb 19, 2024 12:26:55 GMT
My copy is the same. I remember first playing it and being annoyed that my apparently good roll led to a negative result, but it happened about three times before I dared distrust the book and started checking when it seemed wrong.
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Per
Traveller
AHAHAHA!
Posts: 151
Favourite Gamebook Series: Morris VR, some FF, Chalk LW
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Post by Per on Apr 2, 2024 21:13:57 GMT
Three random notes on this book:
1) I checked the Swedish edition, it unsurprisingly has all the oddities listed above.
2) The premise of exploring a strange universe beyond a black hole is shared with the short-lived comic book continuation of Disney's The Black Hole from 1981. (That abortive storyline, which for some reason had two more issues printed in Spanish only, also inspired a similar plot that I created with a friend for our space opera setting that was chiefly inspired by Stewart Cowley's Terran Trade Authority art/story books and the French/Japanese animated series Il était une fois... l'Espace. This would have been in 83 or so, so around the time Starship first came out, but a few years before the Swedish edition.)
3) I wonder if it might have improved the book's ending if instead of a number of identical "you make some calculations on a napkin and scoot into the black hole" and then "but you don't come out again, lol", there had been a unique description of what happens for each combination. For one thing this could have been used to hint at which numbers are correct; for instance with two wrong numbers you might have been crushed or arrived in a universe completely hostile to life, while if you had one correct number, you might have ended up in a habitable but alien or hazardous universe. (Optional le twist: in the winning ending, you land on Earth to find everyone is a lizard person, but then the crew rip off their masks and were lizards all along.) Using unused sections to incorporate speed as well, you could have a whole spectrum of funny and bizarre endings to provide a little something more than "lol no", which I tend to think gamebooks should. But then again I once complained about the open-endedness of Demons of the Deep...
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Post by vastariner on Apr 2, 2024 23:17:23 GMT
Even better, one option tells you to turn to reference 1 of The Shamutanti Hills...
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Post by CharlesX on Apr 4, 2024 7:13:08 GMT
Three random notes on this book: 1) I checked the Swedish edition, it unsurprisingly has all the oddities listed above. 2) The premise of exploring a strange universe beyond a black hole is shared with the short-lived comic book continuation of Disney's The Black Hole from 1981. (That abortive storyline, which for some reason had two more issues printed in Spanish only, also inspired a similar plot that I created with a friend for our space opera setting that was chiefly inspired by Stewart Cowley's Terran Trade Authority art/story books and the French/Japanese animated series Il était une fois... l'Espace. This would have been in 83 or so, so around the time Starship first came out, but a few years before the Swedish edition.) I'm pretty sure it's also the plot of the much later Star Trek: Voyager series, as well, not to mention Lost In Space (definitely in the film, and in both the series I believe). Although the execution is so poor presaging Star Trek: Voyager doesn't feel like an achievement.
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kieran
Baron
Posts: 2,458
Favourite Gamebook Series: Fighting Fantasy
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Post by kieran on Apr 4, 2024 14:14:53 GMT
I'm pretty sure it's also the plot of the much later Star Trek: Voyager series It's similar, but not quite the same. It's not a black hole in Voyager. An extremely powerful alien pulls the ship across the galaxy and Janeway has to destroy the means of returning, leaving them stranded. The crew also know exactly where they are and how to get home, it will just take them a very long time unless they can find a few shortcuts.
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Post by CharlesX on Apr 4, 2024 14:17:59 GMT
I'm pretty sure it's also the plot of the much later Star Trek: Voyager series It's similar, but not quite the same. It's not a black hole in Voyager. An extremely powerful alien pulls the ship across the galaxy and leaves them stranded. The crew also know exactly where they are and how to get home, it will just take them a very long time unless they can find a few shortcuts. Thank you Kieran that's interesting. It's also unsurprising I'd forgot as I haven't seen the Voyager pilot for a year or so. It doesn't sound dissimilar to Q tossing Picard's Enterprise many thousands of light years away where they first encounter The Borg.
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