Traveller t20 and d20 Future

[Falkayn]

T20 only has a few prestige classes, as there is no limit/penalty to multiclassing people usually just do that rather than look for a neat (specialised) prestige class. The PrCs are Big Game Hunter, Ace Pilot, Psionicist etc.

One key difference between D&D 3.0 and T20 is that the classes (Academic, Noble, Marine, Navy, Mercenary, Barbarian, etc.) are fairly generic. Every class gives its class features as bonus feats, so it is entirely up the player to determine in what order they gain those (excepting ones that have requirements of course). That plus the heavy reliance on skills means that a PC can end up however you like them to.

The T20 Handbook (THB) gives a pretty good covering of the rules, especially for T20 specific stuff like the vehicle/spaceship/planetary generation rules. However it was justly criticised as being a little hard to follow with its reliance on you being able to find things in the PHB/DMG as needed. Many things they could have included from the SRD were left out so they would have room for all of the other rules.

They are addressing this with a Traveller's Guidebook which is basically a player's guide to T20. It will be released under OGL only (not d20) so they can include a bunch of stuff about how to generate a character and go up levels that they previously had left out. They also have taken the opportunity to include a bevy of new classes, and some new skills and feats. This is available now as a playtest download for Moot subscribers - and has got to be the cheapest way you can get access to T20. The GM would still need the THB, but this makes things easier for players.

The Moot also gives access to other playtests based on the T20 ruleset (currently TNE:1248, Legacy of the Aldenata and 2320AD). I'd imagine that eventually the Honor Harrington stuff will end up there.

 

[yojimbo]

I got a copy of T20 and it wasn't for me.

T20 goes against some fundamental unwritten rules of d20 game design in its attempt to try and be realistic. Primarily, the T20 classes are not balanced against each other, military classes are the most powerful in the game (fighter BAB, good saves) whereas professional classes like Scientist, I think that's the class name, are incredibly weak (BAB worse than wizard, average saves).

It seems pointless offering such classes as they are not going to be taken by players. Maybe they should have created balanced classes for each of the archetypal Traveller campaigns: merchant, merc, scouts, etc. That way weak classes would be balanced with other weak classes and the strong classes prohibited.

The two extra attributes are wholly unnecessary and appear to have been added simply for verisimilitude with CT.l

The damage system seems overly complex not as elegant as D20M or Star Wars.

The starship design system is an accountant's dream. It looks to be a port from Classic Traveller and is pretty numbers heavy.

Anyway, not for me, I prefer d20M and d20F.

James.

 

[LcKedovan]

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

I know that they have the licence to produde the Honorverse supplement and when I last checked it was under development. If I find an update I"ll post it here.

-Will

 

[Falkayn]

It seems pointless offering such classes as they are not going to be taken by players. Maybe they should have created balanced classes for each of the archetypal Traveller campaigns: merchant, merc, scouts, etc. That way weak classes would be balanced with other weak classes and the strong classes prohibited.

Well ... most characters are not pure combat grunts, and pick up on those classes for skills or useful special abilities. Like I said above, multi-classing is the norm. The combat system is deadly enough that few pure combat campaigns work, unless you're willing to generate replacement characters all the time.

The starship design system is an accountant's dream. It looks to be a port from Classic Traveller and is pretty numbers heavy.

Agreed, which is why I created a spreadsheet to make it much easier to use. You can find that on the T20 Downloads portion of my website, along with other people's computer design and vehicle design spreadsheets, and some sample starships.

 

[jeff37923]

T20 goes against some fundamental unwritten rules of d20 game design in its attempt to try and be realistic.

James.

Huh?
I don't understand what you're saying here.

Also, I'd like to ask - Did you just read the rules or did you actually play the game before you decided that it wasn't for you? I'm not trying to be offensive here with the question, I'm just curious. I'll explain.

See, I've been playing Traveller for a long time, a little over two decades, and when I first heard that there was going to be a d20 version of Traveller - I thought that the game was going straight into the toilet. So I bitched, whined, and moaned about how it was doomed without really giving it a chance. It wasn't until about a year after it came out that I actually picked up a copy of it and played using the system. I found out something interesting, the game that I had loved as a teenager was still there in all its glory but with a shiny new d20 suit on. It wasn't broken at all, like I was afraid that it would be.

T20 stands out amoungst d20 products in that it does not provide a whole bunch of pregenerated background for the reader to digest and apply to their game (although one is available called the Official Traveller Universe that has been slowly evolving and growing for over 25 years). Instead, like Classic Traveller, it provides a range of design sequences allowing you to create your own vehicles, starships, creatures, star systems, and worlds to be used in a science fiction setting that come up with yourself. All of the design sequences are compatible with each other, so that it all works together nicely.

 

[Ranger REG]

With all due respect, yojimbo, I'd rather the game designer tweak the ruleset to fit the setting, rather than tweak the setting to fit the ruleset. Not every d20-labeled game should be D&D compliant.

 

[LcKedovan]

I got a copy of T20 and it wasn't for me.

T20 goes against some fundamental unwritten rules of d20 game design in its attempt to try and be realistic. Primarily, the T20 classes are not balanced against each other, military classes are the most powerful in the game (fighter BAB, good saves) whereas professional classes like Scientist, I think that's the class name, are incredibly weak (BAB worse than wizard, average saves).

It seems pointless offering such classes as they are not going to be taken by players. Maybe they should have created balanced classes for each of the archetypal Traveller campaigns: merchant, merc, scouts, etc. That way weak classes would be balanced with other weak classes and the strong classes prohibited.


James.

Hi James,

I'm just curious which classes you think players won't take? The beauty of Traveller (and T20) is that regardless what level, how powerful, or what class you are there are chances for everyone to shine. Have you played? I think you may be judging the game on a D&D scale when you rate the character classes solely on BAB and saves... if you have played the game (with a half decent referee at least) you should find that for the most part those attributes are not as hugely important as D&D which in a lot of cases is more hack n slash by default.

Of course, as you mention, in a Merc or Military campaign you are less likely to find Scientists etc. (Although they still often turn out to be balanced and a fun RPG challenge in such a campaign) since the focus of that campaign benefits more military classes, but that does not mean the other classes are useless as a result.

As for the accounting bit as Falkayn mentioned he has a spreadsheet and it rocks, so I encourage people to use it, report any bugs and offer any improvement suggestions!

-Will

 

[tjoneslo]

Hi James, I was one of the T20 playtesters.

I got a copy of T20 and it wasn't for me.
It seems pointless offering such classes as they are not going to be taken by players. Maybe they should have created balanced classes for each of the archetypal Traveller campaigns: merchant, merc, scouts, etc. That way weak classes would be balanced with other weak classes and the strong classes prohibited.

During the playtest no one ever brought up the fact that the T20 classes must be balanced in the way you are discussing. The reason is that the T20 combat is so much more deadly than normal D20, the differences in levels are much less noticable. That is, if you have characters 3, 5, even 10 levels apart, the differences in BAB and hit points disappear in the combat system.

The two extra attributes are wholly unnecessary and appear to have been added simply for verisimilitude with CT.

This is true. Many of the rules in T20 were only minor tweaks of rules in the CT rule set. Education is somewhat redundant, and probably should be less random than it is. But I really like Social Standing as a attribute. It adds a whole range of social interaction game mechanics which I've seen reproduced to various effect in other D20 products.

The damage system seems overly complex not as elegant as D20M or Star Wars.

This is true. And we went through about 6 or 7 variations. The problem was we wanted something which was much deadlier than the existing D&D or star wars rules. As one traveller wag pointed out, in T20 your hit points are rolled on a 3d6, and a shotgun does 3d6 damage. We wanted to preserver this symetery.

The starship design system is an accountant's dream. It looks to be a port from Classic Traveller and is pretty numbers heavy.

Wow, this system is numbers heavy? Remind me never to show you GURPS Vehicles. In any case, There are number of spreadsheets and programs to assist you. And because it is a port of the CT system, there are several hundred existing designs on various web pages. And if you are looking for somthing specific, post a request for quote on the COTI boards, and you should get several designers to do the math for you.

 

[yojimbo]

Re: class imbalance in T20

It seems to me that having a universal experience table implies that characters of the same level ought to be roughly equal in power (be it by feats, class abilities, skills, etc). Only this way does multiclassing make any sense.

However, this does not that the T20 classes must be balanced against D&D or d20 Modern classes just that they are balanced against each other. d20 CoC characters are considerably weaker than D&D characters.

However, in T20 this is not the case. And even if the combat system is much deadlier than D&D or d20M does not change the fact that an Academic class level offers less "bang for buck" than a Merc class level.

Perhaps, T20 could take the Castles & Crusades route and have individual experience tables for each class. In this case characters are balanced by experience points gained rather than character level (as is the case in AD&D). However, d20 multiclassing no longer makes sense under these rules and has to be abandoned.

Another possibility would be to scrap the T20 classes and use the d20 Modern base classes offering the usual Traveller character options as advanced classes. Or, make T20 a 'Powered by Spycraft' game, another good modern/sci-fi d20 game.

Of course, the most obvious suggestion is to rewrite the classes to balance them better.

James.

 

[solomoncane]

It still seems that people are making the mistake of evaluating T20 classes based solely on combat ability. Traveller has never been completely about combat (although it could certainly be run that way). The real class balance comes from how the GM runs a campaign. If there are no non-combat challenges, then there is certainly no need for Academics, etc.