Recommend a traveller game (with apologies for reviving a dead horse)

[DMScott]

As I read these responses, I was wondering why no one was mentioning T4. So...why avoid it? What's wrong with it?

IMHO:

It had very little market exposure compared to the other versions, so there aren't that many advocates for it. The rulebooks were poorly edited, lots of typos and some serious omissions. In terms of rules mechanics, the task and dice roll system had some needless additions - if there's one thing MegaTraveller handled perfectly, it's tasks, so why fix what ain't broke?

On balance, it's not a bad game, just not good enough to attract new players (as T20 has done) or impress people who have older editions, so it never really had a niche. If you'd posted your question a few days earlier I actually would have mentioned T4 because it was the freebie on DriveThruRPG.com last week, but if you have to pay for it there's really nothing to recommend it over other versions, IMHO.

 

[Desdichado]

My favorite editions are MT and T20 (traveller d20).

CT is the original, but pretty ad hoc by modern gaming standards. MT is CT rather more crisp and codified, with one of the greatest (simple yet robust) task systems ever put to print.

Not only that, MT has built in conflict, which is a good thing. CT seemed most of the time to be about wandering around as a merchant/freelance freighter, whereas in MT you had all the military and political backdrop to give the game a lot of interest. Subsequent editions pulled back a bit from being actual science fiction, in a way; TNG almost feeling like it wanted to make overtures to the Warhammer/Dune type of crowd.

MT for me all the way.

 

[Psychic Warrior]

With all due respect to diaglo;

Classic Traveller is the one true game, all others are pale imitations.

 

[TheLostSoul]

Traveller

I would recommend Traveller 2300, mainly because of the setting. I have not read the systems yet (I have MegaTraveller, Twilight 2000, Traveller 2300 and T4. Got them cheap at DriveThrough), but there are others who are better at that than me

 

[Psion]

TNE shattered the whole background of the universe as well as taking the system in a whole new direction. It had a feel totally at odds with earlier versions of the system, with the players as sort of neo-facist raiders in a devastated universe instead of merchants and mercenaries in a populated but vast universe.

It also relied on a "virus" plot device which many fans (myself included) found stretched suspension of disbeleif beyond the breaking point.

It also totally revamped the system, replacing it with one that totally overemphasized the role of stats.

T4 carried with it the hope of salvaging the mess TNE made of the line. And to be fair, I feel chargen was not to bad. It was a cleaned up version of the CT and MT system. However, its resolution system lacked. It was this die pool thing that used "half dice" steps and that was even worse at over-emphasizing statistics over skills, and made "impossible" task fairly trivial if your stats were good enough.

The authors of some of the supplements and adventures also seem to have forgotten that they were writing for traveller not Star Trek, and did things like insert subspace radio in the system (an important tenet of the traveller background is that only starships travel faster than light; you can't have FTL radio. As T4 represented a period before the preceeding products, it was pretty hard to ignore this inconsistancy.)

So whatever other versions you consider, TNE and T4 should be on the bottom of the list IMO.

GURPS has some okay support material, but I personally don't care for the system. The random lifepath style generation is one of traveller's charms.

BTW, some people fume on about how you can die in chargen. That hasn't been the case since CT.

 

[shady]

Strongly agree - Megatraveller or T20. Megatraveller is basically CT with a unified task system (much like the D20 based task unifications in D&D3E), otherwise most of the material is reusable (CT is a lot closer to Megatraveller than 3E is close to 3.5E). Megatraveller also saw a significant improvement (on an already good base) of published material (but not so much from GDW - look for the DGP stuff if you can find it).

T20 is a very good conversion to D20. I'd prefer if there was a version for D20 Modern, but the conversion predates Modern and frankly it doesn't matter that much. The Gateway Domain supplement is also excellent.

GURPS - well firstly either you like GURPS or you don't. Secondly there are a bunch of unnecessary changes to world generation, the economic model, plus some additional races grafted in from previously published spacemaster supplements.

T4 was kind of interesting, with an emphasis on a bunch of new metagames for domain level play, exploration, etc. But it was somewhat buggy, and frankly MT was better.

TNE was just a mess, though some people prefer the grittier background.

 

[billd91]

Strongly agree - Megatraveller or T20. Megatraveller is basically CT with a unified task system (much like the D20 based task unifications in D&D3E), otherwise most of the material is reusable (CT is a lot closer to Megatraveller than 3E is close to 3.5E). Megatraveller also saw a significant improvement (on an already good base) of published material (but not so much from GDW - look for the DGP stuff if you can find it).

YES! Anything you can find by DGP (Digest Group Publications) is worth its weight in gold for a Traveller campaign. Does anybody out here know of any of the more obscure DGP stuff that may not have reached wide publication? Does anybody know anything about Onnesium Quest, for example?

 

[RPGRealms]

YES! Anything you can find by DGP (Digest Group Publications) is worth its weight in gold for a Traveller campaign. Does anybody out here know of any of the more obscure DGP stuff that may not have reached wide publication? Does anybody know anything about Onnesium Quest, for example?

You can always ask Joe Fugate of DGP. He's recently surfaced over at CotI and is answering questions.

 

[Psion]

You can always ask Joe Fugate of DGP. He's recently surfaced over at CotI and is answering questions.

Oh, lord. There goes the rest of my day...

 

[Kax Tuglebend]

If i ever get round to playing (which is infact a possibility as i purchased Firefly on DVD a week ago and by best friend has decided he likes it) i shall either use pure MT, or MT character generation converted to GURPS Traveller (i do rather like GURPS, but the equal point buy characters lack a certain Traveller something) or T20, that said i have to say i greatly prefer TNE's mustering out benefits, namely the ship acquisition rules (using CT, MT or T20 its quite possible to have a group of PC's all of whome own a very expensive starship, in TNE the party were assumed to have banded together to get the financing, and there were more options that just ship/no ship)