Traveller t20 and d20 Future
- Thread starter Ariakor
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Psion
Adventurer
Hmmm. Any thoughts about what exact peices you want from each?
T20 was based on D&D 3.0. Though it has many changes, there are some things that have gone by the wayside that could use some sprucing up in T20.
Whatever your other decisions, I will say this much: T20's spaceship combat is probably the best d20 has to offer. It gives the entire crew a role in combat.
T20 was based on D&D 3.0. Though it has many changes, there are some things that have gone by the wayside that could use some sprucing up in T20.
Whatever your other decisions, I will say this much: T20's spaceship combat is probably the best d20 has to offer. It gives the entire crew a role in combat.
Psion
Adventurer
Olive said:
Not extremely. You'd have to tweak the skill selections. The approach to vehicle skills is already similar; you would need to either adapt the ship combat tasks to d20 modern tech skills, or import T20 tech skills into d20 modern.
Erm, you pick a tonnage (which describes volume, mass is not tracked) and then buy components, which can be expressed in terms of percentage or flat tonnage.
Don't know how else to describe it without going into ugly detail.
Olive said:
Honestly, most of T20 is rules and there is little background material on the Official Traveller Universe in the book itself.
I picked up d20 Future recently and after reading it, I'm going to sell it. If you want to do hard science fiction, then you do not need any other rulebook than T20. So far the only thing that d20 Future has that T20 doesn't, is better interior artwork. T20 has got a usable vehicle and starship design system with a supporting combat system that allows you to out-of-scale combat (starships vs characters, vehicles vs characters, starships vs vehicles) with a minimum of fuss. T20 has got a working system for creating worlds and their star systems so that players have a place to travel to (which is something that is annoyingly absent from d20 Future). T20 also has a skill set which makes sense (in both d20 SWRPG and d20 Future the skill Computer Use allows you to operate everything from radar to a computer to an extreme range communications laser, which gets pretty unbalanced during play), a creature generation system that is geared to allow the Referee to create something more like an ecology than a random monster, and all this in an accessible (via the web) game background that has existed for over 25 years.
I was disappointed when I began going through d20 Future. The book appears like it was rushed and most of the campaign material was taken from other sources that were owned by WotC. I was able to find shreds of Gamma World (or Omega World from the d20 minigame in Polyhedron), Star Frontiers (the races and the Star Law campaign), Alternity (races and Star*Drive campaign), and a couple of other d20 minigames from Polyhedron (Mecha Crusade and Genetech campaigns, the rules on genetic engineering and mecha) within the book which gives it a patchwork feel - like WotC grabbed anything that was science fiction that they owned the rights to and threw it all together in one book.
Now, with all that being said, in the end its really up to the personal tastes of the individual buying the book. If you like science fiction, I'd recommend T20. If you like science fantasy, I'd recommend d20 Future. "Comparing T20 and d20 Future is like comparing the movie Deep Impact and Armageddon", is probably the best descriptive quote I've read about the two systems.
My suggestion is this, just get T20.
Turanil
First Post
jeff37923 said:
I disagree with that. My own opinion is to begin with, is that T20 is hard sci-fi as it was seen in the eighties, so is now almost obsolete. Then d20 Future is not science-fantasy; d20 Star-Wars is science-fantasy (or futuristic fantasy as I would rather call it), but not d20 Future (except for a few paragraphs, like super technolgy that create things out of nothing).
My suggestion is this, just read T20 and d20 Future reviews (there are a couple on Enworld), and get a look at the books in your LGS. Then you will know what you want to buy.
Thanee
First Post
Havn't really seen a lot of T20, but it doesn't look as detailed and as "hard sci-fi" as the old instances of the game.
We are currently using some of the T20 (and some of the old Traveller/Megatraveller and some Dragonstar and whatnot) for our SG-1 d20 game (which is more of a crossover between Stargate and Traveller), and our DM is not very pleased with the T20 rulebook so far, he likes the old Traveller books much better (much more detailed; information in the T20 book is often very shallow as it seems).
Anyways, combining these should work without much trouble, as they all use d20. Some specifics might be different, but that can usually be improvised.
Bye
Thanee
We are currently using some of the T20 (and some of the old Traveller/Megatraveller and some Dragonstar and whatnot) for our SG-1 d20 game (which is more of a crossover between Stargate and Traveller), and our DM is not very pleased with the T20 rulebook so far, he likes the old Traveller books much better (much more detailed; information in the T20 book is often very shallow as it seems).
Anyways, combining these should work without much trouble, as they all use d20. Some specifics might be different, but that can usually be improvised.
Bye
Thanee
Hm.
I've flipped through t20 twice at my FLGS and it seems easy to combine...just needs some adaptions on the skills, i think and what i really liked was the "prior history" idea... something like this appeared in the third edition rules for mechwarrior as well and i relly liked that (though i've been using these rules for a homebrew scifi-setting with some adaptions from preivious editions) and so i was thinking about switching to a d20 version.... the only thing i didn't like in t20 was that it had only 3 prestige classes...i 'd like to see some more geared towards future/sci-fi... but i could probably adapt some part of the t20 classes as kind of advanced classes....
I've flipped through t20 twice at my FLGS and it seems easy to combine...just needs some adaptions on the skills, i think and what i really liked was the "prior history" idea... something like this appeared in the third edition rules for mechwarrior as well and i relly liked that (though i've been using these rules for a homebrew scifi-setting with some adaptions from preivious editions) and so i was thinking about switching to a d20 version.... the only thing i didn't like in t20 was that it had only 3 prestige classes...i 'd like to see some more geared towards future/sci-fi... but i could probably adapt some part of the t20 classes as kind of advanced classes....
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