Traveller t20 and d20 Future

[tjoneslo]

This topic has come up once or twice on the COTI boards. The general consensus is that both games are D20 and it should be very easy to do a conversion of things from one to the other. So easy in fact, no one has much interest in actually doing the work. The books covers so much of the same ground that it's usually just little tweaks to one or the other to make a perfect game.

I thought about re-writing T20 to use the D20 Future rules. But after looking through the SRD, I couldn't find a whole lot D20 future did better enough than T20 to want to replace the T20 rules. Perhaps I've underestimated the desire of D20 players to have their games written precisely to the latest edition of the rules.

 

[Ariakor]

hm, i'd like to.

but that's probably because i've got so much else on my mind what i want/have to do that i barely find the time to do it all.

so most of the differences are minor, liek inthe techlevels, for example. but does anyone know if it would be better to just use the whole starship combat rules set or just prot a bit or two over to the other system?

 

[Pol-Detson]

I can't speak to the ship rules (although I found them a bit too complicated), but T20 does differ from regular D20 in its hit point and armor system. Armor in T20 gives you a variant sort of damage reduction that is pretty unique to the system. Hit points are also a little odd, and are probably best compared to Starwars D20's Vitality/Wound points. IMHO, Dragonstar is probably the better starting point for a D20 Scifi game: the feats and skills are more in line with what you'll find in Modern/Future, and the vehicle rules are easier to use than T20's. See if you can find Neo's Dragonstar Ship Construction rules online, as they're both easy to use and detailed.

 

[Olive]

I'm not going to get rid of D20 Future. I want to run a sci-fi game and I want to use the D20 Modern class system, which I think is the best class system I've ever see in it's conception. I am so completely sick of classes which define the archetypes. Given that T20 uses classes more or elss like DnD, I'm not going to use it wholesale.

I just want a better ship to ship combat system. So I'll take a look at T20.

thanks for the feedback guys.

 

[HeapThaumaturgist]

Hrmmmmm ... yea, T20 was supposed to get an Honor Harrington supplement that my wife wanted to play, but the Hit Point and Class system in T20 never appealed to me so I never bought the system. Mixing the two might be up my alley.

Anybody know if that Honorverse thing ever worked out?

--fje

 

[Ariakor]

As far as i've seen on their website, the honor harrington book is still being written. but unfortunately they give no planned release date for it...

I'm just going to use the starship combat rules and probably some of the design/equipment rules (as well as those for generation star systems and such, because that is lacking in d20 future). otherwise i'll combine the d20 modern classes system with a kind of open class skill selection depending on the character's background, if that works (have to think further about that).

 

[Angel Tarragon]

I completely agree with Turanil on this matter.

 

[tjoneslo]

Hm.
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....

I wrote an article about building your own prior history tables so they could be better adapted to your game. This is now posted with the other articles in the Moot.

The downside of a prior history system is characters end up at wildly different levels. During the T20 playtest campaign I ran the character level spread was 7th to 17th. I, nor none of my players had too much of a problem with it, but you may need set expectations for your players particularly if they are old hands at D20.

 

[Pbartender]

Can anybody give a brief summary of the T20 starship combat rules? It seems to be the one thing they left out of the T20 Lite preview.

 

[HeapThaumaturgist]

You have to be a subscriber to get access to the moot, apparently.

Just a heads-up to other users.

--fje