The Traveller's Handbook (T20)
Traveller was one of the first Science Fiction role-playing games, first emerging in the 70's. It was first published by a company called Games Design Workshop (GDW) as 3 small black books with no setting information to speak of, just basic details on character generation, starship creation, and world creation. The character generation sequence, however, was an outgrowth of a strategic boardgame called Imperium. The background of Imperium would become the background of Traveller as it was expanded with additional supplements and adventures.
The classic Traveller game was known for its character generation sequence. Character generation was almost a game in and of itself. A character selected a career, and using a sequence of tables, determined what skills they got, mostly as the result of random rolls. Rolls were also used to determine how long a character could stay in a given career, how far they advanced, or if, indeed, they survived. This last point was phased out (replaced by a softer "injury and mustering out" rule) in subsequent versions of the game, but is a common wailing point for those who dislike the game.
The Traveller game had a feel that was based on the classic SF stories that were well read in the day, most notably the works of Piper, Norton, Anderson, Niven, Pournelle, and Vance. Most characters were assumed to be from a star-spanning empire called the Third Imperium, which was dominated by humans. However, the member worlds were anything but uniform in nature, providing the impetus for many bizarre adventures for the characters, who (as the name of the game should indicate) frequently travel the stars. However, the fact that the early books had few details about the imperium, and that the game provided material to make your own starships and worlds, meant that the system was frequently used for homebrewed SF settings.
From these humble beginnings sprung a game that would persist and be played in several variations over the years. The game went on to a revised edition called MegaTraveller (my personal favorite) that saw two major changes: a robust skill system that replaced the rather ad-hoc system that was in place before, and the introduction of a civil war in the Imperium. The subsequent Traveller: The New Era was somewhat ill receiving owing in no small part to its sweeping changes: the use of a totally different base system and a setting change entailing the total collapse of civilization in the galaxy. After GDW collapsed, the game has seen two other versions, a version called Mark Miller's Traveller or T4, and a version based on the GURPS game.
With the advent of the d20 system, and its widespread acceptance, many old Traveller fans (myself included) began to wonder if the game would have a d20 version. At last it happened. QuikLink Interactive, a company that facilitates online RPGs, decided to take up the task of making a licensed version of Traveller using the d20 system. Thus the so-called "T20" was born.
A First Look
The Traveller's Handbook is a 448 page hardbound book priced at $44.95 U.S. That may seem like a lot for a game book, but it is quite a value on a cost per page basis. Of all the hardcover books I have reviewed, only the most cost effective Sword & Sorcery Studios hardbounds compare.
The cover art is by Dave Mattingly, and depicts a man and a vargr (see below) under fire against the backdrop of a futuristic city.
The interior is black and white with some color plate sections. Interior artists include Steve Bryant, Paul Daly, Chad Fidler, Bryan Gibson, Jason Millet, and Allen Nunis. The art is lightly dispersed through the book, and most pieces are crisp ink drawings. The color plates are particularly good. Bryan Gibson's work immediately struck a chord of nostalgia with me, as he was one of the illustrators during the MegaTraveller era.
However, I was a little disappointed that there were no illustrations of the scout starship (a staple in old Traveller games) or mercenary cruiser, which is strange since illustrations of both appeared on the T20 website. Also conspicuously absent were some of the deckplans of ships that were de rigeur is old Traveller games.
The layout is crisp and attractive, and the book has a nice futuristic looking border. There are some noticeable errors and omissions, such as improper table entries and references to items removed in the final draft (such as the psionicist prestige class).
A Deeper Look
The Traveller's Handbook is arranged into 18 chapters and three appendices.
The book begins with a short story Kishimaa Downport or Bust, a foreword by Marc Miller (creator of Traveller) about the themes of the game, and a brief introduction with a few background details about the game, including types of adventure that might be played, what settings you might use (including, but not limited to, the official Traveller universe), and a discussion of what you need to play. One interesting note here is that the book does not refer you directly to the D&D PH, but rather "a roleplaying core book published by Wizards of the Coast." I assume the implication here is that you might wish to used d20 Modern or Star Wars as a reference, which would be a bit closer to the subject matter.
Character Generation
The second through seventh chapter covers various character generation topics.
The first thing that sets D20 Traveller character generation apart from other d20 system games is that when you are generating ability scores, you will have to generate two more than usual. Two new ability scores are introduced: education and social standing. These are inherited from the original Traveller game. Education is a measure of the character's general knowledge, while social standing in a measure of one's standing in imperial society. A sufficiently high social standing grants the character a noble title.
Many of the races provided in the book are from the classic Traveller game. Humans are an important race, existing in several variations - in the Traveller setting, humans were taken from earth in an ancient epoch and seeded on several worlds throughout the universe by a race of beings called the ancients. Humans have the standard array of abilities that they do in the core rules. Other races include:
- Vargr: Vargr are a race of genetically engineered canines. Like the humans scattered about the galaxy, the vargr were likewise taken from earth. But the vargr were engineered by the ancients. Vargr are dextrous and have excellent senses, but are not as strong and tough as humans.
- Aslan: Aslan are descended from carnivores and are thought by humans to be lion-like, but are not connected to earthly lifeforms like humans and vargr are. Aslan are strong but not dextrous, have good hearing, and have a society that is still sharply divided along gender lines. Males have no concept of money or economics and may only take combative classes. Females, on the other hand, have exclusive province to classes like academic and merchant, but are not permitted to take combative classes.
- Luriani: A race of amphibious humanoids, also genetically engineered by the ancients.
- Sydites A race of genetically engineered humans bred to be workers, but none too sharp or charming.
- Ursa: Ursa are genetically uplifted bears. Unlike other genetically engineered races on this list, the Ursa were uplifted by a human corporation.
- Virushi: Virushi are huge but peaceful creatures with a centaur-like body form and thick plates covering their bodies.
In addition to race, homeworld is important to D20 Traveller characters. The character generation chapter includes a method to roll characteristics of the characters homeworld, or the player may choose a homeworld in the game sector at the GM's option. The character's homeworld may prevent the character from taking certain classes. The character gets a number of world skills that are added to his class skills, selected from a list dependant upon the homeworld's traits. The character also gets one or more feats depending on the technology and environment of the homeworld. For example, characters in a high tech world may learn how to pilot a high tech vehicle, characters from low tech worlds may get survival skills, characters from water worlds may get swim, etc.
The game uses an entirely new selection of classes. Nine of the new classes are core classes. Four classes are so-called "service classes." Service classes are similar to core classes with one major exception: in order to take a level service class, the character must be part of the military service that bears the same name. Scouts are essentially always considered to be scouts, so may take additional levels in the class after they are no longer working for the scouts full time.
The core classes are as follows:
-Academic: Educated characters such as scientists, engineers, bureaucrats, and so forth.
-Barbarian: Characters from primitive societies and accustomed to outdoor life.
-Belter: Asteroid miners or prostpectors.
-Mercenary: Skilled combatants outside of the armed services.
-Merchant: Trader, corporate factor, of merchant ship crew member.
-Noble: Character in the influential upper crust of imperial society.
-Professional: Skilled technical professionals, including some scientists with a hands-on appraoch.
-Rogue: Criminals and others who live on the edge of the law.
-Traveller: Characters that travel in pursuit of their career, such as starship crews.
The service classes are:
-Army: Member of armed ground forces.
-Marines: Member of the marines, a mobile force deployed on starships and in hostile environments.
-Navy: Crew or Command member of armed spacecraft services such as an interstellar navy or planetary defense force.
-Scouts: Scouts are member of the interstellar Scout Service, an service dedicated to exploration and interstellar courier duties.
The classes use a fairly standard arrangement of attack bonuses and saving throws. All of the character classes have a very similar advancement scheme. Each character receives a number of starting feats, as well as bonus feats at first level and at every class level at which a single classed character would not receive a feat or ability score bonus. Each class has its own list of appropriate bonus feats, as well as special feats unique to the class.
The heavy reliance on feats and skills make the classes very flexible. However, there an aspect to D20 Traveller character generation that may seem unusual to most d20 system gamers. D20 Traveller characters do not necessarily start at first level. A character can start out a 1st level character, but most characters are assumed to undergo a prior career.
In prior career generation, characters cycle through 4 year terms. Each term is associated with a specific class; typically, a character must have a level in the given class to serve in that career. The player must make rolls to enter a career, earn promotions, strive for bonus experience, avoid mishaps (like injury or demotion), and to continue serving in that career. Each term the character receives 4000 experience points, plus a possible allotment of bonus experience. Then, the player designates the character's abilities according to the resulting class and level.
When the character completes their prior service, they roll on mustering out tables to determine what cash and other benefits they accumulated during their time in service.
While you are typically required to have a class to serve in a career, you are not prohibited from multiclassing while in the midst of a career so long as you meet the multiclassing requirements for the additional classes. For example, if you wanted to make Hudson from aliens (a marine with technical skills), you could make a marine, then multiclass to professional while in the marines.
Overall, I like how flexible the classes are, and I like how the prior career system works. The skill and feat selection make the classes very flexible, and there are a wealth of possibilities that can be created from the classes presented here. The heavily feat-dependant nature of the classes reminds me of the way that the upcoming D20 Modern game.
The Traveller's Handbook contains three prestige classes as well, the Big Game Hunter, the TAS Field Reporter, and the Ace Pilot. The classes are not as adaptable as the core classes, having a predefined list of class abilities rather than using bonus feats, much like a typical D20 System prestige class or a D20 Modern advanced class.
The skill selection expands on the standard selection of skills available in the D20 System with new skills appropriate to the high tech setting. As an artifact of earlier editions of the game, T20 calls skills like craft, knowledge, and profession that require you to select a specialty "cascade skills", and adds entertain and technical to this list of skills. Skills of this sort are abbreviated by the first letter of the skill followed by the specialty, such as "T/Electronics."
Another convention T20 adds is that of "0-level" skills. The idea of a level zero skill is that they allow you to use a trained only skills but do not add a bonus; characters who receive skills as part of their skill list receive 0-level skills when they receive a trained only skill as a world skill, but receive an actual skill rank if they receive an untrained skills. I consider this as one of the more dubious adoptions. The scale of skills in the D20 System is larger than that of older versions of Traveller, and the effects of making such a distinction adds a lot of potential confusion for a small change in the effects of creating a dichotomy in how such skills are handled.
T20 also expands on the available selection of feats as appropriate for a high tech setting. For the most part these follow typical D20 System conventions, though some skill enhancing feats only offer a +2 bonus to a single skill, which essentially makes them named instances of the skill focus feat. I would give such feats a +3 bonus.
Vehicles are operated using the drive or pilot skill, but there are a number of Vessel feats. Without the appropriate vessel feat, the character suffers a penalty to drive or pilot checks with that type of vehicle.
Combat
Characters in D20 Traveller don't use the normal hit point mechanic. Rather, the character has two statistics called stamina and lifeblood. Stamina is a statistic that improves as the character gains levels, but lifeblood is fixed. As far as this goes, the mechanic is superficially similar to the VP/WP mechanic of Star Wars and Spycraft. However, in practice this works a bit differently.
When a character loses all their stamina, they fall unconscious, and any further stamina damage is treated as lifeblood damage. When a character loses all of their lifeblood, they start dying as per the normal d20 system rules using HP.
When a character is hit by an attack, they take the damage to both their stamina and lifeblood. However, the lifeblood damage is reduced by armor the character is wearing. Armors are assigned an armor rating. This rating contributes to AC as with the core system. It also reduced lifeblood each point of armor rating reduces the damage dice of a weapon by 1 per AR point, starting with the lowest dice. If there is only one dice left, each point of AR reduces the damage of the last dice by one.
This modified damage and armor system is fundamentally different than the VP/WP system in that it makes armor more important. This is as it should be; armor has always been fairly important in the D20 Traveller setting. Another side effect of the system is that it makes it more likely that lower level characters will get knocked out from combat than high level characters, who are more likely to get killed before they pass out.
D20 Traveller uses the basic D20 combat system, but provides additions to handle conditions in an SF campaign. The combat system extends the rules to cover modern weapons and armor as well as vehicles and starships. Vehicles and starships use a different scale, and more advanced detailed systems are provided for more detailed treatment of such combat.
Among the more elegant extensions is the treatment of automatic weapons. Weapons are rated by the size of the burst they release. The attack roll and damage dice are simply increased according to the size of the burst.
Psionics
The psionics system in D20 Traveller is almost a direct translation of the psionics system of classic Traveller. Characters must be trained in psionics to use it. The psionic potential of characters that are not trained atrophies as they age. For each 4 years that the character ages past 18, they lose a point of psionic potential. However, this system is a little more generous than classic Traveller, as the initial psionic potential is rolled with 3d6 vice 2d6.
There are 5 spheres in which characters may have the ability to train: telepathy, clairvoyance, telekinesis, awareness (which allows the character to take control of their bodily reactions), and teleportation. The character does not choose which spheres are available to her, but can try for certain spheres over others.
Each sphere is developed as a skill, and each sphere has a number of talents which are methods that the character may apply that skill. Each talent takes a feat and requires a certain skill level in that sphere to use and temporarily expend psionic potential points.
Technology and Equipment
The technology and equipment chapter defines the default technology assumptions of the Traveller setting. Several different areas are covered, such weapons, electronics, transportation, and power.
This chapter also defines many common pieces of equipment for adventurer types, such as weapons, armor, communication sensory and survival gear for a variety of different technology levels. Rules are also provided for medical procedures and cybertechnology.
The chapter also provides rules for basic subsistence. The higher the social class of the character, the more that the character is expected to spend on subsistence. A character can get by with buying just what they need to survive, but this can give the character temporary penalties to their social standing score.
Design Sequences, Vehicle and Starship Designs
Traveller is historically a gearhead-oriented game, and D20 Traveller continues that tradition. The book provides complete rules for characters to design computers, vehicles (including robots and powered armor), and starships. The design sequences have a moderate level of complexity. The designers claim it is closely based on the classic Traveller supplement High Guard. The system looks easier to use than high guard to me, but provides a bit more detail than was available then. The system is easier to use than those in MegaTraveller and later editions, and much easier than the likes of the GURPS or CORPS vehicle design system.
The Standard Design chapter provides a number of complete designs for computers, vehicles, and starships, including many vehicles and starship illustrations. Most of these are vehicles that have been regular edifices of the game such as air/rafts, scout ships, and free traders. As mentioned earlier, the book lacks any sort of deckplans, and also lacks illustrations of a few staple Traveller starships such as the scout and mercenary cruisers.
Campaign and GMing rules and advice
The Travelling chapter covers the details of space travel in the Traveller universe. This includes rules for physical aspects of the universe, such as realistic rules for travel time between planets. It also introduces economic assumption for such things as buying passage and salvage right, details of manning requirements for starships, starport fees, trade and commerce rules allowing characters to make money on the side of their adventures.
The Starship Encounters chapters provides random tables and ideas for running encounters in space.
The Universe/World Development chapter provides rules for generating star systems for use in a game. The system is not as the basic world generation system for classic Traveller that only generated the main world of each system; instead, the system is geared at generating entire star system like the classic Traveller supplement Scouts. However, the system is less computationally intensive than Scouts, simplifying many world details into single rolls that would require compuation in Scouts.
The chapter also defines effects of weather or other conditions on various worlds, such as different types of atmospheres, radioation, terrain, and animal encounters.
The Traveller Campaigns and Traveller Adventures chapter provide rules and advice for creating and running traveller campaigns. They outline models for types of campaign (milatary campaigns, political/intrigue campaigns, etc.), random encounters, patron encounters, as well as rules for assigning experience in Traveller. The experience system in Traveller bases the experience award on the difficulty and length of the adventure, and also provides for learning by performing a job or the simple passage of time. Bonuses are provided for good roleplaying.
Appendices
There are three appendices.
The first appendix is Friends and Enemies. It provides stat blocks for a number of stock NPC types including bandits, guards, thugs, starship crews, and soldiers. Stats are also provided for a few simple animals.
The second appendix is a glossary of standard terms used in the rules. This includes both elements of the rules and Traveller conventions.
The third appendix is an index.
Finally, the book has a number of photocopyable forms, including a character sheet, a character prior history worksheet, a subsector map, a star system worksheet, and a world worksheet.
Conclusions
D20 Traveller is one of the strongest offerings in SF games for the D20 System. The class arrangement is very usable, and the prior history system is a great addition to the D20 System. Most of the combat conventions are pretty sensible. The ship and world design systems are simply the best to appear in a D20 System product. D20 Traveller is a setting-light book, essentially making this the best choice for a generic D20 System SF game.
Another neat attribute of the book is that the ship and planet design systems are compatible with prior editions of Traveller. This means that Traveller veterans can jump right in an still use their classic materials.
There are a few things I would have like to seen, however. Perhaps this is my experience with Traveller speaking, but I feel as if this game could should have tried to forego the standard BAB mechanic and use weapon skills instead. The stamina and lifeblood system, while it has some potential, doesn't feel quite right to me; the author mentioned that in part it was designed so that you can easily tweak it to be more or less heroic, but this is not mentioned anywhere in the book.
Still, D20 Traveller is a great option for d20 gamers looking for some SF action, as well as being a very good adaptation of the Traveller game.
Edit: I have updated my score according to actual play experience. Noteworthy lessons are these:
- Starship combat is probably the best a d20 game has to offer. The way that the game creates a task for many different sorts of characters in starship combat helps keep as many players as possible involved.
- CharGen is a bit tedious. It took us more than one session to make characters. I have practically BEGGED the QLI folks to green light the PCGen Traveller module (which is all but written), to no avail
- Some aspects of the system are too retro, hewing too close to CT. MT improved on many aspects of the system (primarily in terms of tasks and starship operation), and all too many of the lessons learned from MT were bypassed.
- Similarly, on the scale that d20 skills occur on, I feel the "0-rank skill" convention was entirely unneeded and confusing to boot.
- Also similarly, some of the planet generation material is a bit behind the times. I converted size to be a measure of mass instead of radius to make planetary characteristics more beleivable given modern planetary science.
Overall Grade: B
-Alan D. Kohler
