Traveller D20

bolen · Jan 6, 2003

I have not seen anything else (besides the core rule book) from this company was it a flop

Unseelie · Jan 6, 2003

It didn't come out all that long ago... give them a chance. Sheesh...

RPGRealms · Jan 7, 2003

Referee Screen and the Gateway Campaign setting book are in the works.

Johnny Wilson · Jan 7, 2003

If you liked Traveller, you're going to like T20. At first, I thought it was going to strip away the part of character generation I enjoyed in the initial Traveller, but they handled this niftily with a "Previous History" section for character generation. Then, I thought that it might not have the capacity for min-maxing in vehicle design that the old Traveller and MegaTraveller had. I was wrong on that score, as well.

T20 is reviewed in Dungeon/Polyhedron #97, on sale later this month, and I will be sharing some GM experiences on the Paizo website toward the end of the month.

Don't give up on this system. It has tons of potential.

tburdett · Jan 7, 2003

I was saddened to hear that you can no longer die during character generation. The one truly unique (at the time, and maybe still) part of the game is gone.

Ranger REG · Jan 7, 2003

How are you going to create a character if it dies during character creation?

I mean it may be amusing at first, but come on! You gotta have a character ready before you can begin play.

TheAuldGrump · Jan 7, 2003

Ranger REG said:
How are you going to create a character if it dies during character creation?

I mean it may be amusing at first, but come on! You gotta have a character ready before you can begin play.

Believe it or not in character generation each term of service had a 'Survival' roll. The difficulty of the roll was based on career choice, if you failed you died and started over with generating a new character. There was also a roll to re-enlist fail that and thats where you started play. I think that this was to prevent players from pushing their luck too far and getting an uber-character.

Character generation was also the only time your character got experience, once he was generated your stalwart adventurer was set in stone till he died. Which was sometimes quite quickly, there were weapons that did a higher minimum damage than a character had maximum 'wounds' - which came directly off of your stats...

There are actually a lot of things that I don't miss about the old traveller.

The Auld Grump, on the other hand Traveller had the coolest cover blurb I have ever seen. 'This is Free Trader Beowulf calling anyone...'

WayneLigon · Jan 7, 2003

TheAuldGrump said:
There are actually a lot of things that I don't miss about the old Traveller.

And (especially before the expanded character books came out) it was possible that you'd come out with absolutely nothing

I did like that you could have five or six characters on a 3x5 card, and that was with possessions, a personality sketch, etc.

Considering that ...

Derrix Nash 958A56 Pistol-0 Rifle-2 Electronics-2 Cr 1000

..is a complete, and I mean complete, character under Classic Traveller, it was a model of efficiency.

bolen · Jan 7, 2003

So how is it selling? I have the book but have yet to play it.

Johnny Wilson · Jan 8, 2003

Actually, it is STILL possible to die in character generation if you use the Prior History rules. The Survival DCs are pretty low with a couple of exceptions (a soldier in the Army assigned to Raid only has to make a DC of 6 and that's the worst chance case for that class, but a Barbarian at war has to make a DC=10 and a Belter on Belt Fringe duty must make a DC=18). I did lose my first character, though. Doh!

Also, characters can use the UPP (as modified for d20) for characters, planets and vehicles--just like in the classic game.

I just don't want to see T20 get bad raps that it doesn't deserve. Also, playing both SWRPG and T20, I find myself occasionally getting rules mixed up, but that's MY fault.