Traveller or Star Frontiers?

[Dannyalcatraz]

I'd have to vote for Traveller. Its had more versions within its system than any other game I can think of except maybe D&D, and thats excluding things like GURPS Traveller and other sytem versions of it.

It is, quite simply, the D&D of Sci-Fi RPGs- the one by which all others are measured.

I have found some more customizable or flexible (HERO- but it doesn't really count), I have found some better within a particular genre (MechWarrior, CyberPunk, RIFTS), and even one that had some better mechanics (Universe)- but none have been as comprehensive, well supported, or internally consistent.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

That's not true at all. At worst, Traveller's star system creation (using the advanced star system creation from High Guard) required you to know how to do some algebra and/or use a calculator.

Rats! Beaten to it! And even back in the early '80s you could find programs for generating star system data on a computer (two versions that I recall, one for the TRS 80 and one for the Apple ][ +).

The Auld Grump

 

[Christian]

I loved the original Traveller game. Especially the part where you could die during character creation! With some of the supplements & reckless decision-making, you could easily be on your fifth character before the first adventure started ...

 

[Shadowdancer]

Traveller. It was the first sci-fi RPG I ever played, and the second RPG overall (after D&D). I love the versatility of the system, which allows me to recreate just about any space-based scifi movie I've ever seen.

 

[Sunderstone]

I loved Star Frontiers with the Zebulon's Guide sourcebook. We played this for a good 2 years or so. All homebrew adventures.

 

[thol]

Well, as you can see by my avatar, I'm a Star Frontiers guy all the way.

But, I have to say that Traveller is far more popular these days, though I had never heard of it until sometime in the mid 90s, when I came across MegaTraveller. So I can't really say how popular either of them was in the 80s.

I love the more hard sci-fi in Traveller, but you couldn't beat Star Frontiers for pure gaming pleasure.

 

[sjmiller]

I loved the original Traveller game. Especially the part where you could die during character creation! With some of the supplements & reckless decision-making, you could easily be on your fifth character before the first adventure started ...

Okay, this is a statement that has always bugged me because, in reality, it is not entirely true. In the early printings (I have copies from the 5th and 7th printing of the 1977 copyright) it did indeed say that failing the Survival roll for a term resulted in the death of the character. In later printings, including the one you can purchase today (a copy of the 1981 copyright, 3rd printing), the option exists to change this. It says:

-Optional Rule: If the referee or player so indicates prior to character generation, then a failure of the survival roll can be converted to injury. The character is not dead, but instead is injured, and leaves the service (after recovery) having served only two years of the four year term.

That's from 1981! That's nearly a quarter century that the "failed Survival roll = need to roll a new character" fallacy has been null and void. Even if you did follow the original ruling, I can say that in all the years I have been playing Traveller (from 1979 to the present day) I have never seen anyone make more than two characters.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I can say that in all the years I have been playing Traveller (from 1979 to the present day) I have never seen anyone make more than two characters.

*ahem*

I picked up Traveller in 1979 as well. 3 aborted PCs in a row was my personal best.

 

[Turanil]

Answering the question, my uninformed opinion is that Traveller is more popular. It says nothing of the merits and flaws of both games though. And personally I just know about T20. Hope this helps!

 

[Ranger REG]

Not so much the campaign info (which you can't really expect in a tiny article like that in d20 Future), but there was a lot of gear in Star Frontiers that was not in d20 Future.

Shrugs. Well, frankly, it's not news to me. I knew from the get-go that as big as the $30 d20 Future is going to be, the attempt to cover ALL science fiction elements only result in scant surface-level information. I mean they had a lot of written material but that they had to cut and trim them off in order to promise us a $30 price tag.

And yeah, the stats for the races were wrong (or at least different than the original ones, there was a thread on this when d20 Future came out over in the d20 Modern section)

Is the difference in the "translation" from SF to d20, or design change (an attempt to tweak the races better for PC gameplay)?