Traveller T20

[JoeGKushner]

It does sound promising, but, and this is me, I don't want to be bothered by conversion. I play maybe once a week, maybe twice a month of I'm lucky.

For people with more time, there probably won't be any problems.

For others like myself... well, I haven't mixed Fading Suns, Farscape, or Darwin's World (and I believe that the first and last are pretty plug & play with standard d20), how would I ever have time to do a book like Traveller?

I'll stick with the fantasy stuff with the plug & play combatibility is much higher with a few werid exceptions out there.

 

[Psion]

Yes, none of the material is OGL. However, take AEG for instance. Parts of Spycraft and clearly from Star Wars.

Take a look at the title page for Spycraft. The material you recognize from Star Wars is not OGC, and got used by permission from WotC.

I'm afraid to me, that's not an acceptable answer for having four or more different science fiction games.

I'm not sure why you think it is compulsory that they have to hoe the same row as the other SFRPG releases. Not only are releases like SW untouchable, but releases like Fading Suns and Farscape are specific and make more specific setting accomodations. I think trying to play to the conventions of those books would have seriously hindered the utility of T20... not to mention, not all of the books you mention were out when T20 was in development.

Further, I really have to praise RPGRealms for NOT making the same mistake that Farscape did. Farscape differs from Star Wars in significant ways, but it also borrows heavily from it behind the scenes. For example, take a look at the explosives table in Farscape. Note that it seems to be missing footnotes. That's because the table was lifted from SW. I really don't see how you get off blasting T20 when there efforts were far more original and complete than the games you complain about lack of compatibility regarding.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Did you say blasting?

I stated clearly that it is not impossible to take PI elements from WoTC and that it has been done by at least four different companies (Ravenloft, Kenzer, Green Ronin, and AEG).

I stated clearly that I dislike having all the variants in d20 Science Fiction.

Please point out a specific reference where I've stated that Traveler D20 is going the wrong route and not ALL science fiction d20 have went a wrong route. I and my friends, a small group to be sure but some intelligent people there, do not want four different science fiction game that are all 'd20'. If you took it as a blast agaisnt T20, read it again and pull out the 'rant' that states "T20 sucks." or something along that line. Maybe I'm just missing it.

My personal preference is for a unifed d20 Futuristic Game ala the route Alternatity once promised and elements of Star Wars have indeed made their way to other books. And hey, imagine AEG missing something from a table due to bad editing? The horror!

 

[RPGRealms]

Joe, I do understand where you are coming from, but the problem is that WotC has not made it possible to use Star Wars as a 'core' science-fiction ruleset because it is not OGL. Because of the fact it will take additional money for a company to (possibly) obtain such rights, you automatically reduce the number of potential companies that might go that route.

Hence, you have different rulesets. Personally it is our (planned) hope that T20 will fill the niche you are describing. That is why we tried to provide in the main book just about all of the basic material anyone would need to run a d20 science-fiction campaign.

We intend to supplement the core book with additional material that will further expand the 'generic' usability of the game.

I don't disagree with what you are asking, I am saying that we are attempting to fill those needs. There is a huge amount of material that was released as OGC in the book, which can be used by other publishers.

Whether you think T20 will actually accomplish that is another story. We think it can, but only time and customer reaction will tell us if we succeeded.

 

[JoeGKushner]

And I have no problem with that. I stated I looked forward to reading Psion's view, it looks like a good book, but my personal preference.. yadda yadda yadda... It's like when I say I'm tired of Frontier Villages being attacked by humanoids. It my preference.

It looks good so far and Psion's review is full of praise. But his response... here, on the net, where things are written out, to be accused of 'blasting' something I say looks promising just strikes me as wrong because the damn text is right there to see. I don't know if he's in love with the book and thinks I'm attacking it or what but man, get the facts straight.

I mean how did this start? "I look forward to reading your review. One of my friends has it. It doesn't look FULLY compatible with Star Wars." Is that a blast? I am just missing something there?

 

[Gallowglass]

It does sound promising, but, and this is me, I don't want to be bothered by conversion. I play maybe once a week, maybe twice a month of I'm lucky.

For people with more time, there probably won't be any problems.

For others like myself... well, I haven't mixed Fading Suns, Farscape, or Darwin's World (and I believe that the first and last are pretty plug & play with standard d20), how would I ever have time to do a book like Traveller?

I'll stick with the fantasy stuff with the plug & play combatibility is much higher with a few werid exceptions out there.

Each to their own of course, but the problem with expecting that high degree of "plug and play compatibility" between SF d20 games is that SF settings are too different from each other. D&D leads people to believe that all worlds are the same; they aren't IMO and straight 3e does a lousy job of simulating anything other than a 3e world. d20 Publishers are now beginning to realise that, but there are an awful lot a weak worlds out there because they all have the same D&D'isms (AC, Hit Points by level, "Vancian" magic etc). Faithful adaptations of most literary settings to d20 will involve changing at least some of these to some degree, requiring some conversion work between them and other d20 games. With SF settings, it gets even more extreme: covering something as fundementally comic book as Star Wars and Arthur C Clarke's Rendevous With Rama with the same rule set would be foolish to the point of lunacy IMO, it involves such a huge disservice to both.

And what really puzzles me is that this is what I thought the point of d20 / OGL was: to give designers and gamers a common framework to allow the maximum number of people to play whilst being flexible enough to cover any genre. But that flexibility does mean that things cannot be obsolutely identical...

And I suspect that WotC will NOT touch a "Future d20" until their license with Lucasfilm expires...

 

[Razuur]

My 2 cents -

I guess I don't see the point either. I also don't understand what is so not compatible.

It is very compatible with star wars. The biggest difference being that WP/VP and vehicular combat.

The minor differences are really WOTC's fault. They haven't released some things to Open Gaming. Hardly any companies fault. I would bet most of them would like their rules to be as similar, but are prevented from it by the very thing that brought everyone to D20. Kinda Ironic.

Essentially it is the same though. Same skill mechanics. It isn't really any different than different D20 companies coingup with different rules for Naval combat, or magickal variants, etc. Same thing, different genre.

Same feat mechanics. Having looked over the rules, I think I like T20 better. As a matter of fact, I am already likening it to D20 Future.

I think the quicklink kids did a fine job.

Razuur

 

[James Heard]

Did you say blasting?

I stated clearly that I dislike having all the variants in d20 Science Fiction.

I don't know why having variants in d20 SF is such a bad thing, especially since I haven't seen a clear "winner" in the game design category yet. Some of my players are running a Farscape game religiously during the week, but they're fans. I'll be dishing out for Traveller soon, but thats a given since I owe some of my most dear roleplaying experiences of Jr. Highschool to the little black books. The main problem with having a unified approach to a SF setting is that SF isn't that unified, it spans many different genres and conventions. The rules set out to portray Jedi Knights duking it out with mysterious Force powers is probably going to trip over itself if it were saddled with the realism marks that a "Hard" SF genre would require. Similarly, a cohesive d20 SF setting would have to have basic models and rules for things that _might_ be needed. That increases page counts and costs, making allowances for psionics that don't always exist in SF and rules for kinetic kill meteors that would make Vader look like a wussy. If you stick with the assumption that you're going for a specific genre portrayal though, you get to concentrate your writing.

On the other hand, with D20 modern coming out and promises of additions to the Open Content who knows what people will decide works "good enough" for their needs tomorrow? I think it's fun though now that there is at least one or two genres of the d20 market that aren't dominated by a single clear market leader, it reminds me of when game stores were packed with hundreds of different games with wildly different rulesets and premises.

JMH

 

[JoeGKushner]

There's been a lot of interesting talk about the need for different science fiction but I still haven't seen anyone point out where I "blasted" T20.

 

[Psion]

Joe,

Sorry you find my characterization of "blasting" as so baffling and annoying. Basically I mean "strongly and persistently assailing." Let me rephrase by saying that I think your reaction towards T20 taking a different tack than other games is a little strong. I'm not saying that you were saying the game was worthless or anything.

I don't know if he's in love with the book

"In love with" the book as in "think it is a good product..."? My review should reveal that is the case. As in "not seeing a product for its flaws?" Come now, I think you should know me better than that. When I did the preview, I only gave it a 4 because I really had some problems with the class structure (I have had some time to digest it and can now see the advantages; I strongly prefer the classes of T20 over any other d20 SF game I have). Even in my current review, I express some doubts about the stamina/lifeblood system. But overall, I think it is a monumental resource for SF gaming.

I can see how in some ways they would have benefitted by emulating some other d20 games, but in other ways I think the distinctions that they created make the game stronger than other SF games. If any existing d20 SF game is a standard to emulate, it is T20 IMO.

To be more specific, I feel that the combat conventions could have benefitted if they had access to some other material, but classes, technology, and world creation rules are clearly superior to any other d20 SF game I have seen (with the disclaimer that I have not seen d20 FS, but I do have Farscape, Star Wars, Dragonstar, Dinosaur Planet, the final draft of D20 Modern, and Darwin's World.)