Classic or Traveller Version

[rgrove0172]

Ive been a fan of the old Twilight:2000 system for years. We played that awesome RPG for almost 3 years in one continous campaign. I never got a chance to game 2300AD but I picked up all the stuff anyway, hopeful.

I suddenly have a chance to game this great setting now, many many years later.. and I didnt even hesitate - picking up my old collection of classic rules.

But I heard about Mongoose and the Traveller version recently published so I got it mainly out of curiosity. At a glance I wasnt impressed and went back to my old books... but upon further reflection Ill admit, it has a lot going for it.

One main thing that has me thinking is the style of play my games tend to follow - very much a dramatic flair with a heavy dose of narrative color and a tendency to overlook picky mechanics in favor of the "cool" factor.

Im beginning to wonder if maybe MT2300 isnt a better option. It a bit less rule heavy, nice clean mechanics and probably easier to manage. The setting stays the same so..

Whats your thought on the two compared?

 

[aramis]

Mongoose is traditionally abbreviated MgT, since MegaTraveller has been using MT since about 1988, in the days of WWIVNet... 20 years before Mongoose.

 

[rgrove0172]

Apologies, Im an avid gamer but never been much of an active part of the community. I missed out on stuff like commonly used abbreviations.

 

[epicenter00]

As a GM that runs games using 2300's original rules I am all for ...

... using MgT's 2300.

No, seriously. I'd do MgT 2300 if I was starting a new game. I've basically "fixed" and "patched" the 2300 rules so much over the years it's basically not 2300 anymore, but my own rules. This may sound cool, but it's very anti-cool to be honest because the main reason why you use published rules is that is that newer players can just look at a professionally laid out rules set they can buy and understand the rules they'll be playing with, even if you're not around.

MgT's 2300 rules are:

* Newer (this may sound shallow, but players prefer to play in game systems that are still being supported).

* Still being published. Your players can go out and buy the books without any trouble. They don't have to troll around on eBay or something for old copies.

* The rules are cleaner - 2300's rules have a number of places and situations they just don't cover or don't cover well. Again, I've had to rewrite 2300's rules so much over the years I look back on it and really think the effort was not worth it.

* They've already done any conversion work for you, so it's just pick-up-and-play.

* It's compatible with other MgT products, so if you want to try variants such as introducing various pieces of Traveller-standard tech into 2300, it's much easier.

 

[rgrove0172]

Thanks for the reply. I can appreciate your sentiment and honestly, having modified and tweaked a few old favorites over the years myself I understand the "love & hate" relationship.

Ive spent about a month gearing up for our first session and suddenly it seemed I was doing a lot of extra work just to keep from using the new rules set. Yes, there is a flavor there in the classic mechanics that I wont deny appeals to me, but Im beginning to see its a nostalgic thing for me.. when in reality, the new rules are probably better suited to me, my players and our style of play. (Notice I didnt say better, just better suited.)

Im gonna sleep on it, maybe wait for a few more opinions but Im moving that way.

 

[LemnOc]

As a GM that runs games using 2300's original rules I am all for ...

... using MgT's 2300.

I'd agree that Colin did a good job of smoothing, reconciling and tightening the 2300 backstory, while presenting it under a game mechanic that is instantly recognizable to EDIT: thousands* of gamers who can play Traveller with their eyes (and stacks of books) closed.

When I go back and read through the original GDW stuff, I am struck by what they'd spend hundreds of words describing exhaustively at the expense of not mentioning other things at all. Examples of this would be like the crew roster of the Bayern, versus even a whisper of a deck plan (or scale) for a ship that was supposed to serve as the center of an entire lengthy campaign. Loving illustrations of military shoulder patches, tons of gun ⌧, but a mechanic that leaves you baffled about how to handle routine (non-military) aspects of day to day life in the 24th Century. Maps, for any of the systems described in the Colonial Atlas. Pages and pages devoted to the costumes and moods of the Eber, with barely a line about their internal layout, feeding/diet and reproductive habits, architecture, etc., etc.

At least the overlay of MgT rules allows you a better chance to wing it when you're over your head as GM.

But mostly I think that older stuff is at war with itself, unable to reconcile whether it wanted to be an RPG or war game, and I think the military aspects tended in the long run to wipe out the exploring adventure in a unique, highly geopolitical, hard science setting. I mean, about the time the Kafers were actively destroying as far as Beta Canum, there was not much you could do in the French Arm to get away from them even for a change of pace. They built a GREAT setting—the BEST IMO—then set about dynamiting its most intriguing aspects.

I also played the heck out of that game, but I think Colin has done a good job of resetting it firmly as an RPG with hard science worlds that can be played in. It's a sequel that both honors and in several ways improves on the original... like Aliens.

---

* EDIT NOTE: I've never had a good handle on the numbers of people who are passingly familiar with Traveller. Seems every kid I knew growing up played it, but not sure what that says about the population at large. DnD sort of swallowed everything, and served as generic for everything.

 

[McPerth]

I had no opportunity to read MgT2300 (my usual game shop will have it next week or so, since about a year ago...), and I've not played classic 2300AD since it was published (I had no even access to it, until I could borrow a firend of mine's T2300, when all those discussions began), but I mostly agree about your analysis of the clasic 2300.

I guess most of Lemnoc crithicisms (too much a military game while few details are given about non military issues) may be also told about its forerunner (T2K), and perhaps the vices form it were trasplanted to 2300 too.

THis said, I'll wait until next week or so arrives to give my opinion about MgT2300...

 

[rgrove0172]

Wow, Im actually very pleasantly suprised. I supposed I was going to catch a backlash of purists screaming at me to "turn away from the darkside" and embrase the game "as it was meant to be played".

Im feeling a lot better about the move.

 

[BytePro]

...
Ive spent about a month gearing up for our first session and suddenly it seemed I was doing a lot of extra work just to keep from using the new rules set. ...

Sounds like, even if after a while you decide the new version is not for you, that it would be worth while trying it out in play.

I went with MgT, with new Players, after decades of CT. Played for several years (and still on PbP, but that style of play is much different) and then went back to my house ruled CT. My Players had no problem with this - we all appreciated better the strengths of CT - and my CT house rules gained from the strengths of MgT. I don't regret trying the newer game.

 

[LemnOc]

For me, this

* It's compatible with other MgT products, so if you want to try variants such as introducing various pieces of Traveller-standard tech into 2300, it's much easier.

has been very true, Basically you can bolt on any of the stuff about robotics and cybernetics, starship design, worldbuilding, wildlife generation, etc. And you can use the Universal shorthand to stat out most things.

Paul Elliott's Orbital, for example, is a natural companion to 2300, IMO.

 

[rgrove0172]

Yeah, Orbital is packed full of great ideas. My view of the 2300 is probably at the low end of the tech scale, probably even more conservative than the popular view that 2300's tech is not nearly as advanced as it should be with 300 years of development. I dont try and explain it.. it would probably be more fitting if my game took place in 2200 or even 2100.. but Im willing to make the leap of faith to make it work and my players seem to agree.

 

[LemnOc]

Yeah, Orbital is packed full of great ideas. My view of the 2300 is probably at the low end of the tech scale, probably even more conservative than the popular view that 2300's tech is not nearly as advanced as it should be with 300 years of development. I dont try and explain it.. it would probably be more fitting if my game took place in 2200 or even 2100.. but Im willing to make the leap of faith to make it work and my players seem to agree.

IIRC, I think this gets explained in a couple of convenient ways. First, Twilight seriously threw R&D off the rails. Second, and conveniently, there's a retro vibe going in the 24th Century.

But, yes, I also try to keep things gritty, and rooted in low tech. Strikes me all these new planets would revive interest in burning cheap dirty fuels in the dumbest way imaginable, at least off-world. And IM2300U gun development kind of got stuck around TL9 or so, with a few exceptions. Not much a laser can do that a bullet can't do for less... why mess with success?

 

[epicenter00]

Yeah, Orbital is packed full of great ideas. My view of the 2300 is probably at the low end of the tech scale, probably even more conservative than the popular view that 2300's tech is not nearly as advanced as it should be with 300 years of development. I dont try and explain it.. it would probably be more fitting if my game took place in 2200 or even 2100.. but Im willing to make the leap of faith to make it work and my players seem to agree.

Actually, that's a common view. It's one I hold.

Basically, if you look at 2300AD is more like 2100AD as far as technology goes. The Twilight War breaks economies of the world so badly that we lose about 200 years of technological development because we're too busy rebuilding. In fact, if you really look at most technology in the core 2300AD game, it's more like 2075AD. While the geopolitical setting of 2300AD cannot exist easily without the Twilight War, the technology of 2300 exists very easily without the Twilight War ... at about 2100AD.

There's a few things I personally find unbelievable, like fusion power being practical, but I fully admit I could be wrong on that. However, it's not Traveller where they have that 1960s attitude that fusion is safe, compact, and easy and therefore the solution for everything and is everywhere even in cars. If you read between the lines in 2300AD colonies are "places for people to live" instead of colonialism being a resource-grab like it is in Traveller, which basically is more realistic as a view.

Even the events of 2300AD are very much more like 2100 with a pretty conservative view towards technology. Original 2300AD didn't have cybernetics for instance. Everyone uses hydrogen fuel in fuel-cell arrangements in 2300 because it's Post Peak Oil. Solar power is common (like Aurore's colonies used solar power satellites) because the world's had enough of fission power in the post Three-Mile Island/Chernobyl/Fukushima world, though in-world it's explained as the result of the nuclear part of the Twilight War. They know Solar isn't as easy or high-return as fission, but the risks of fission are perceived as too high.

 

[LemnOc]

Even the events of 2300AD are very much more like 2100 with a pretty conservative view towards technology.

You could even reason that after two centuries of the hellish abuses of the Surveillance State, the luster has rubbed off being wired in, as a social phenomenon.

 

[whartung]

Wow, Im actually very pleasantly suprised. I supposed I was going to catch a backlash of purists screaming at me to "turn away from the darkside" and embrase the game "as it was meant to be played".

The value of 2300 is the setting, not the mechanics. Especially today when RP mechanics are a dime a dozen. 2300 Mechanics were pretty clearly an evolutionary move from CT -> Azhanti -> MT -> T2K.

Obviously it's not popular enough to make a GURPs book out of it, but the setting is where the meat of the game is, IMHO.

I still think a 2300 -> House Rules conversion would be interesting so you can use FF&S et al with it.

 

[LemnOc]

The value of 2300 is the setting, not the mechanics. Especially today when RP mechanics are a dime a dozen. 2300 Mechanics were pretty clearly an evolutionary move from CT -> Azhanti -> MT -> T2K.

Obviously it's not popular enough to make a GURPs book out of it, but the setting is where the meat of the game is, IMHO.

I still think a 2300 -> House Rules conversion would be interesting so you can use FF&S et al with it.

+1

Actually, someone did a GURPS conversion: http://ad2300.tripod.com/GURPS 2300 AD.pdf

 

[aramis]

Original 2300AD didn't have cybernetics for instance.

They were in a supplement. The Earth/Cybertech supplement.

2300 Mechanics were pretty clearly an evolutionary move from CT -> Azhanti -> MT -> T2K.

T2300 predates Megatraveller by most of a year. The Task System was originally used in DGP's CT supplements, licensed for T2300, and DGP themselves wrote MT, and used it in MT.

 

[epicenter00]

They were in a supplement. The Earth/Cybertech supplement.

They did indeed. But that's a supplement, an add-on for the game. It's certainly an official add-on, and one of my favorite. But it didn't come with 2300 originally and marked the beginning of GDW's attempt to rebrand 2300 into a cyberpunk game...an effort that I thought was kinda admirable, but if they were going to do that, they should have changed what the core worlds were like and get into detail about it. It certainly could have been used to explain why so many people were streaming out to the colonies.

 

[McPerth]

IMHO, one major difference among clasic 2300 and Traveller (all versions) is that the former is a setting specific game, while Traveller is a setting free one.

RPGs that are setting specific are quite adapted to it (as are MERP, Pendragon, Star Wars, AFAIK Thorg, etc), and, while they can be adapted to other settings (when I read Purnell's Future History and The mercenary, being mostly ground based, they made me thinking as easily adaptable to 2300AD, but its space part, shown in Mote in God's Eye is not so), they are maximized to function in its own setting, setting free RPGs (as D&D, P&P, etc and whose maximum trying was in GURPS) are more easily adaptable to any setting, but not so good in any of them.

I guess when Colin adapted MgT to 2300 setting he had to choose whether to maximize the setting or the rules. Again my guessing is that the target public for the book was not as much the old timers 2300 players by giving them a new possibility to play it, as it was the new MgT players, presenting them a new setting for MgT (one using very different standards and assumptions), so, for what I've read in those forums, he chosed for the rules over the setting (while, being a 2300 fan, I'm sure trying to keep as much of the original setting as he could).

Just my guessings and conclusions over all I've read about MgT2300...

 

[Kaye]

The 'touch and feel' of 2300AD is pretty unique among RPG's. It is fairly constrictive in its setting and rules, but that is OK to me because I like the way the game comes across.
It gives a very 1980-ies vibe that you have to appreciate.

That is exactly what I don't like about Traveller in general: Anything goes there! You can build a world any way you like it and the Tech levels and forms of government are combinable in any which way.

The mechanics of Traveller make it possible to develop a campaign in any setting and with any background you as a GM feel works for you. That is nice because the mechanics are very well thought out.
2300AD is exactly the opposite to me: The setting is set in stone and that has to suit you. The game mechanics are interwoven with the setting in such a way as to make them inseparable. A snag that everyone here knows about is that the mechanics and rules aren't always that good.
I think that if you like the game then the strength of an RPG and a good group of players is that you can overcome broken mechanics. A broken setting is MUCH worse!