Converting older material.......

[Commonman]

Has anyone begun to convert any of the older books to the new T20 system? I have the CT reprints and plan to run my campain in this era, and I have picked up a couple of 4th edition books at a used book store to use for source material. So, unless this thread has been covered I would like to discuss converting older books to the new.

 

[Flynn]

Commonman,

I am currently looking at converting some of the CT and MT adventures to a T20 format for some Convention play, as a way to get used to the new rules while I'm building my own ATU. Do you have any specific questions I could help with?

-Flynn

 

[Commonman]

Well I was wondering about the compatability of the ships from the original books of CT, can they be taken straight from the books or do they need to be redsigned. Also, I ahve the vehicle book from the 4th edition and can you use those vehicles with little trouble?
What are you doing about the chars from the original game to convert the NPC stats?
Thanx

 

[Tom Schoene]

Starships are very close. For most purposes you can just use High Guard stats if you want. I'd only bother converting ships run by the PCs or major NPCs.

Can't comment on T4 vehicles, but I'd be surprised if they did work together very well.

 

[William]

Originally posted by Commonman:
Well I was wondering about the compatability of the ships from the original books of CT, can they be taken straight from the books or do they need to be redsigned. Also, I ahve the vehicle book from the 4th edition and can you use those vehicles with little trouble?
What are you doing about the chars from the original game to convert the NPC stats?
Thanx

Stuff from CT can easily be used as is; that's one of the big goals of T20. For ships just take the High Guard USP and run. For other things, just use the stats as presented. For weapons, I really gotta say buy a copy of TA1 as all the dirty work has already been done.

Now, T4 gadgets are going to be difficult at best. Like TNE and G:T, T4 used a very different technical architecture from the CT/MT era. Fire Fusion and Steel 2 (the T4 version) had many other problem; too many to go into here. Suffice it to say, find something like what you want to use in CT and make a SWAG (scientific wild assed guess) and carry on. In the end the gadget does what the Referee says it does - no more, no less.

Hope this helps,

William

 

[DrSkull]

I've been working on TA #4 "76 Gunmen", and I had to make both T20 and CT versions of the same stock NPC's. I'd say that for converting NPC's from one system to the other, it's more or less an "eyeball" thing.

Loose guidelings:

Levels/Terms:
3rd level= 1 term
6th level= 2-3 terms
9th level= 4-5 terms
12th level= 6-7 terms

Ability Scores:
CT 2= T20 3
CT 3= T20 4
CT 4= T20 5
CT 5= T20 6-7
CT 6= T20 8-9
CT 7 = T20 10-11
CT 8= T20 12-13
CT 9= T20 14-15
CT 10= T20 16
CT 11= T20 17
CT 12= T20 18

If you are converting T20 characters to CT, you'll have to give them a fair number of level 0 skills to match the broader rang eof competencies of T20 characters

 

[JTSmythe]

I will soon be running the Traveller Adventure and for the most part will be winging it...since the adventure as written is rules light, and a lot of the encounter mechanics are super-simple anyway.

For important NPCs I just run them through prior history. Gvoudon, the Vargr NPC in tTA ended up an 8th level character (7 Merc/1 Prof).