On 21/10/21 04:03, Ethan McKinney - ethan.mckinney at gmail.com (via tml
list) wrote:
> I'm trying to sell a guy on Traveller on a naval history Discord
> group. There's an SF/naval topic and he asked, "if anyone has
> recommendations for a "we fly around on a spaceship" RPG I'm all ears"
>
> What was I supposed to do?
>
> (Just amused that it's a naval history professor's YouTube/Discord
> channel.)
>
> -----
>
Ethan,

Your tense is a bit ambiguous here - has the selling already happened,
not yet started, or is convincing Prof a work in progress?

If Prof is not yet already sold:

Given what little I know of Prof's background, the "age of sail in the
near/far future" (depending on whether you use Interstellar Wars era or
Golden Age) thing could go either way.

If you're going for IW era, you can try the "Earth reaches the stars at
the end of the 21st century... only to find humanity already there"
approach.  When I've tried that approach, the first bit gets a ho-hum
response, but the second brings the WTF needle down to the vinyl.

"High Tech Firefly" is another approach I've used to sell a younger
(most born after MT's release - myself and Easy Frag were Da Geezers)
group on a Golden Age GT game (which was the source of "Captain, I would
have taken the Starburst at face value - you didn't need to _show_ me
your guts" line, along with "My... God... it's... full... of... GOON"). 
Bonus poits if their ship landing is met by people on horseback (or
local functionally-equivalent critter) a fair chunk of the time.

Hope that's of some help,

Alex