Mark, I would like to draw one further observation from Question 28:
> 28. What is the average age of your gaming group?
>
> 1 - under 15
> 1 - 15-17
> 3 - 18-20
> 19 - 21-25
> 19 - 26-30
> 8 - 31-35
> 0 - over 35
Besides there being no one over age 35, there is a low number of respondents
below age 21. This indicates that to me, that most of the readership comes
from people who a:
Work for a company on a large world wide network
Attend a University that is on a large world wide network
Are experienced enough with the network to find and figure out how to
use the network and the mailing list.
So the 21-25 gang catches the Juniors, Seniors and Grad Students and some of
the employees. This implies that the entire survey is skewed to those types
of people. Of course we all expected that.
Also, the new kids don't have the Traveller Opprotunities that we once had.
At least here in Louisville (Yes, I am the one from KY) I can count on 2 hands
to total number of Traveller items for sale in the four stores that have gaming
supplys. I havn't seen a new Challenge since about issue 28 or 29. They had
one copy of MegaTraveller. Also, finding Traveller groups is difficult.
Our gaming group only has 1 or 2 who like Traveller besides me. The rest are
the hard core fantasy types. Now, when I convince them to do Traveller, I
either ref for one of the other GMs does the Traveller with AD&D rules and AD&D
characters. We fiddled with GURPS Space and it had some success, but I was
refing it and being a Traveller born space person, I had trouble adapting to
the "Environment" (Not the rules, but the concepts, different planet
descriptors, different ship descriptors, etc).
Any way, the young players aren't being exposed to Traveller and with there not
having been a serious "Space" film out in a while it has hurt the popularity of
Sci-fi for the little ones. They see Star Trek, but that isn't the same.
When Traveller was at its peak here was when Star Wars, Alien, Ice Pirates (so
it wasn't serious), and other such movies were coming out right and left.
Maybe if Spelberg and Lucas get together they can create: MegaTraveller, the
Movie! (Hmmm, as a side thought, I bet we, the TML could write a nice script)
Then we could have mass marketing, MegaTraveller figures, bubble gum cards,
watches, sleeping bags, etc. (The problems of having a 4 year old Teenage
Mutant Ninja Turtle Child)
Off of the Soapbox
Thanks
Rob