Traveller Thoughts?

[trancejeremy]

Personally, I love the FASA stuff.

I am a huge Classic Traveller fan, but have been leery of buying into Mongoose Traveller because their d20 stuff was usually so dire. There was some good stuff, but mostly because they chanced in hiring a good author for that particular book.

 

[Derren]

As others have said, Mongoose Traveller is very similar to Classic, in a sense that they basically are just updated and streamlined Classic rules. There are still some issues especially in the Alien modules where for example the character generation looks nice on paper but eventually you will find a poorly thought out combination or something not explained very well. But at least with Mongoose you can't die during character generation.

Otherwise I do not share the sentiment that the mechanics of Traveller are bad.

 

[Bluenose]

Any thoughts in the other material from FFE? The Journal of the Travellers Aid Society, it the FASA stuff?

JTAS has a wide range of quality in it's articles, some aren't good at all while some are excellent. As a magazine that's not entirely unexpected. FASA material is excellent, well worth buying. Sadly Digest Group material isn't currently available, but I'd suggest that if you ever see any of it on sale and you want to run Traveller then you should buy it.

 

[Stacie GmrGrl]

This thread has convinced me to stick with the newest Star Wars iterations for any sci-fi gaming goodness... although there is that new River of Heaven game that looks really cool.

I came to this to ask this very question about Traveller because it was on my mind for some reason and now my desire for it has been cured so thank you everybody.

 

[TrippyHippy]

Traveller is one of my top 3 favourite games ever, and my goto game for Sci-Fi.

The Classic is still the original, but I like Mongoose’s Traveller too. It opens up the character generation options, with a more rounded and standardised skill rules, and provides more backstory. Most of the other systems are close enough to what they were, however, that it’s quite backwards compatible.

The reason why I like it over games like Star Wars or 40KRP, is that it’s inherently more flexible to run different science fiction stories. You can really do any sci-fi setting with these rules, including cyberpunk, wild space opera, Cthulhoid horror or straight hard science. It’s generic qualities basically make it the same for Sci-fi to what D&D is to fantasy. The interior design could be better, although there has been some acknowledgement of this recently with a plan to upgrade over the next year. I’m also looking forward to their completion of the Pirates of Drinax campaign, which can be dowloaded for free on their website, but will eventually be sold as a hardback.

I did actually back the Rivers of Heaven Kickstarter, and it’s OK too, although I wouldn’t replace my Traveller book with it.

 

[jaz0nj4ckal]

I started with Mongoose’s version; however, then I found some Classic Traveller resources. To be honest – I like Classic Traveller more than the Mongoose version. It could be argued by some, that Classic has a darker, grittier feeling, Old School Gaming rules; however, both systems are compatible.

As other pointed out – Mongoose does allow for more options during character creation, and has (imo) a better detailed Dice Rolling Target Scale for task resolution, but that can be adopted in Classic with no problems. One item that sounds out between Classic and Mongoose – Mongoose uses damage reducing armor mechanics, while Classic uses a chance to hit mechanics – where armor influences the dice rolls.

What is a big selling feature of Traveller for me is the LifePath system. There is nothing more exciting when (role playing) a character, which might not have the best of stats, and making the best of it.

Now – if GURPS provided a LifePath… that might be something to look into.

 

[Parmandur]

Anything to be gained from the other editions, like MegaTraveller?

 

[TrippyHippy]

Anything to be gained from the other editions, like MegaTraveller?

Yes.

MegaTraveller made a few mistakes in my view. Firstly, it tied the system of the game too heavily to the Imperium setting, along with a strong metaplot, so that you couldn’t use it for anything else. Secondly, the presentation of the game - not least in it’s “Mega” title - was garish, and broke the simple effectiveness of the iconic minimalist presentation of the previous edition. Finally, the various supplements in the game continually increased the complexity of the game - to the point where it started becoming difficult to comprehend.

That said, the core MegaTraveller set did consolidate and tidy up lot of the Classic Traveller stuff that came before. Some of the rules were neat and the whole thing functionally worked under the same 2d6 basis as what went before. It’s entirely compatible, and arguably has a much more polished and clarified ruleset. On top of this, if you do like the Imperium setting (in this specific era) then it does give you a lot more setting material to run with.

 

[jaz0nj4ckal]

Yes.

MegaTraveller made a few mistakes in my view. Firstly, it tied the system of the game too heavily to the Imperium setting, along with a strong metaplot, so that you couldn’t use it for anything else. Secondly, the presentation of the game - not least in it’s “Mega” title - was garish, and broke the simple effectiveness of the iconic minimalist presentation of the previous edition. Finally, the various supplements in the game continually increased the complexity of the game - to the point where it started becoming difficult to comprehend.

That said, the core MegaTraveller set did consolidate and tidy up lot of the Classic Traveller stuff that came before. Some of the rules were neat and the whole thing functionally worked under the same 2d6 basis as what went before. It’s entirely compatible, and arguably has a much more polished and clarified ruleset. On top of this, if you do like the Imperium setting (in this specific era) then it does give you a lot more setting material to run with.

I have a copy somewhere, which I played back in the day; however, I could never understand the modifier for ‘task time’. It is true what you say about making some aspects of the rules tidier, but at the same time – items were added and made the system a little more rules intense. If I remember correctly, I think STATS were divided by 5 or something, which gave a bonus to 2d6 dice rolls (not sure… trying to remember).

MegaTraveller came out around the mid 80’s – and Twilight 2000 v1 was in full swing, so it could be argued that GDW was looking for a unified game mechanics, which was seen in Twilight 2000 v2.2, and from what I hear – MegaTraveller was the first attempt at making a unified game mechanics system, or so the rumor goes.

 

[TrippyHippy]

The Stats/5 were added as a standardised bonus to Task rolls, along with skill scores, and there were several target numbers denoted to easy, default and difficult tasks respectively. It operated on the 2d6 roll high basis as previous however, and in most respects could be used with previous Traveller books.

There was an attempt to unify systems from the various games in the GDW stable, although it was only really the next edition - The New Era - that actually switched to a d20 based mechanic as with Twilight 2000/2300AD etc.