CT content in PEGASUS Mag

[ShapeShifter]

Is anyone familiar with the Classic Traveller material in Judges Guild's Pegasus magazine? I've read that issue #6 had a write-up of a new ship and that issue #9 had some stuff. I don't know yet if any other issues contain Traveller articles, though. The PDF's are available on drivethru and I started looking around, but I don't know what kind of quality to expect from JG's magazine. Are these useful or only for die-hard completists?

 

[aramis]

If you play CT, they will be usable, but not inspired. Much like all the non-sector JG stuff. The sectors were generally about as well done as S3...

 

[BlackBat242]

Pegasus Magazine CT articles

1. Issue 3
2. Issue 5
3. Issue 9
4. Issue 11
5. Issue 14


The only one I have is #11, with the following article:

An Alternative to Services in Traveller (But I Don't Want to Join the Service) by Gerry Matson

It is a generic character generation "career", for those characters that do whatever comes up without following a specific career track.

It generates skills, etc just like a service, but without any survival rolls, etc... it just generates skills.

This means that the only discouragement to a prolonged "career" is aging rolls, but that seems to be the main glitch.

Remember, though, that the lack of a recognized career might well cause problems getting qualification certificates for the character's skills, making it harder to sign on as ship's crew when play starts (if the Ref so decrees).


One neat feature is a sub-table on the "material benefits" tables.

Table 4 is monetary benefits, a roll of 12+ allows a roll on table 4B (gun, high passage, major money, vehicle, or starship), and either table 4C (vehicles) or 4D (starship) allows a further roll on table 4E (condition of vehicle/starship). This sub-table generates a "value" from 10% of new to 110% (indicating special modifications).

 

[ShapeShifter]

Thanks, Batty. BTW, what CT stuff's in #5?

 

[BlackBat242]

I dunno... as I said, #11 is the only one I have, and the list is from a much larger one that claims to have all magazines issues ever published with CT/MT articles.

 

[DonM]

Ok, let's see here...

#3: Traveller Combat Revisions, by Tom Holsinger: This is basically a rewrite of the Book 2 ship design and combat system, ignoring High Guard.

#5: Gateway Quadrant, by Dave Sering: It's basically designer's notes on the quadrant as done by JG.

#9: Five articles:
Traveller Tips, by Paul Denisowski: Basically, about what CT equipment to pick.
Face Turned Blue, by Richard Tucholka (!) and Ree Moorhead Pruehs: An odd system for vacc suit damage in combat.
Power Play, by Paul Denisowski: An "adventure" set in Verge subsector of Glimmerdrift Reaches. It's a "your jump drive is broken, commit criminal acts to get someone to fix it, get arrested and screwed over" type of adventure.
General Purpose Machine Gun, by Paul Aoki: Equipment page.
Necthrim, by Paul Denisowski: Alien race.

#11: The aforementioned "An Alternative to Services in Traveller" article, by Gerry Matson

(Personally, I always used Terry McInnes' point buy article from Dragon, which is why one of my HIWG documents created a system for MegaTraveller that did the same thing...)

#14: There are no Traveller articles in this issue.

Hope that helps!

 

[ShapeShifter]

Thanks.



(more words here to fulfill stupid minimum word requirement.)

 

[Supplement Four]

Personally, I think the JG CT stuff is a hell of a lot better than what most people give it credit for. I'm not just talking about the Pegasus mags (and JG had, I think, two other mags...couldn't get them to catch on, I think). JG was putting out keyed D&D-like adventures when GDW was giving us adventure ideas that required a lot of GM input. Not that the later is bad--it's just that a lot of the JG stuff was read-n-play vs what GDW gave you, requiring the GM to put in hours upon hours to get the bare bones up to speed.

JG was afraid to experiment with the rules, either. Lots of their stuff showed a GM "another" way of looking at things. Personally, I think the first several pages of 50 Starbases (enough to fill a large "Special Supplement") is worth its weight in gold. That's THE best starport stuff CT ever saw from any publisher.

As for the Pegasus run of, what, 5 mags with Traveller material, one of the issues (the one on starship addons) had some pretty nifty ideas, especially if you consider the stuff was published before Book 5 came out.

The childish art, 1st grade presentation, and newsprint really does a disservice to some otherwise good CT material.

If you took the exact same material and squeezed it into a LBB with no art, I'd bet money that most would regard JG's contribution to CT in a much more favorable light than most do today.

With JG, you've got to read the stuff only, and forget how poor the drawings, art, and presentation is.

 

[aramis]

I agree that the presentation was the biggest problem with JG.

Their sectors were better than Supp 3, and on par except for art with S10.

 

[ShapeShifter]

People seem to heap a lot of criticism on matters cosmetic, as the illos in various publications (JG, for example), as if this facet of a publication inexplicably drags down the ingenuity or creativity of the rules, which, arguably, are far more important to an RPG.

In my younger years I would have been perhaps overly enamoured by the pictures and conversely dismayed at the lack thereof--a problem seen in many GDW books (TTB, notwithstanding), but as an adult the first thing I deem of importance are the rules and only regard the maps and spot illustrations of no more than middling significance.

Fifty Starbases is a great example of the need to scrutinise the mechanics and forgive the 'primitive', unskilled nature of the illustrations.

Compare 0E and 1E D&D books: with the exception of masterful artists like Erol Otus and Dave Trampier, a lot of the B/W artwork in the rulebooks and modules is laughably bad. However, the jejeune art can be overlooked if the book can be redeemed by innovative, thought-provoking rules and scenarios.

 

[aramis]

In products of that era, much of the setting was conveyed by the (often primitive) images.... while modern games tend to use art less to convey information and merely to convey tone, the materials were so schematic (in D&D, AD&D, T&T, and many other RPGs of the era, including Traveller), that much was hinged on art. People argued rules using art... and the art often told you as much about the monsters and/or bad guys as the text did.

The great irony is that, with modern high-art layouts, art LOSES importance to the product.

 

[kafka47]

In products of that era, much of the setting was conveyed by the (often primitive) images.... while modern games tend to use art less to convey information and merely to convey tone, the materials were so schematic (in D&D, AD&D, T&T, and many other RPGs of the era, including Traveller), that much was hinged on art. People argued rules using art... and the art often told you as much about the monsters and/or bad guys as the text did.

The great irony is that, with modern high-art layouts, art LOSES importance to the product.

No sure that I would agree with that...I never read Hammer's Slammers but I picked up the Goose supplement on the basis of its nice pictures. Now, I am reading Drake to piece together the images, sourcebook and novels into MTU.

Also, the Aliens RPG had good art (even if they were stolen from the movies) did not detract from a good game...similarly Renegade Legion. What I think you are mistaken is flawed rules (ie 4e which overly mechanize an essentially social activity ie role playing with language constructed from mathematics) with a veneer of glossy art...

Art has to reflect a capturing of a mood. Just like fluff narrative. It has to make you want to read the rules of the chapter. The oversaturation of art is just the age in which we live. Therefore, tight rules and strong visuals will be the formula needed. Rather than more or less art. Just rules that work and inspire. Rather dictate and restrict.

 

[aramis]

Kafka, the games you are citing are a DECADE later. Or more.

D&D of the 70's and mid 80's, the art was much less, and much more evocative of feel, in its sparseness. CT had almost no illos except ships and guns in the core; a bunch more in the Starter and TTB versions, but still, almost nothing compared to the late 80's-mid 90's stuff. And it was very much used as a tool.

Modern games tend to use art as a lure, not as an informative mode.

MT, and T2K 1E: both use the art to inform. They set the tone strongly with the art.

MGT, the art is used banally, just to provide whitespace; it does little to inform, and has no consistent tone.

TNE's art was far less informative than MT's, too. And much of T4's was not even relevant to the game.

D&D 4 art is at least pretty... very pretty. But is it tied to the setting? Not really. It often is there to inspire, but it doesn't inform.

By the mid 90's, art was no longer there to inform, merely to lure, most of the time.

 

[the angle]

Sadly, the dreadful art in many of JG's Traveller products was the least of their problems. Quite a few of them contained nothing more useful than a long list of NPC stats. Others were stories that would have seemed trite in D&D but were ludicrous in Traveller. They often flirted around the edges of a cool story and then did nothing whatsoever with it.

The "background" supplements tended to be the best, IMO. The one thing JG had that no one else did back then was poster-size maps. Typically, that's the best thing in the package; some of them are quite useful despite the newspaper-quality paper. The prices seemed a bit steep at the time, but since you can buy them now for about the same $ as you would have paid in 1979, they're decent value if only for their curiosity factor.

I never got into their big star sectors, so I can't comment on those. Of the things I have, my favorites are 50 Starbases, Doom of the Singing Star, Simba Safari, Starships & Spacecraft, and Dra'k'ne Station. Back before the age of personal computers and ready access to printers and photocopiers, I also found Navigator's Starcharts quite handy; I have a sentimental attachment to those even though their usefulness is much diminished these days.

Steve

 

[Keklas Rekobah]

I've used JG's "Portals of Torsh" in my adaptation of Stargate to MTU.

( Teaser: Naji had only 1 pt of Telepathy, but her wand was an Ancient device that allowed her to "cast" illusions with minimal concentration ... PCs rolled 2D+4 v. INT to "disbelieve" ... )

Sometimes, those old second-source D&D materials could be useful.

 

[Finarvyn]

Personally, I think the JG CT stuff is a hell of a lot better than what most people give it credit for. I'm not just talking about the Pegasus mags (and JG had, I think, two other mags...couldn't get them to catch on, I think).

Just a comment on JG's "two other mags": JG originally had one magazine, called The Judges Guild Journal and then they absorbed an already existing fanzine called The Dungeoneer, publishing each one every other month and in alternating months. They finally decided to have a single "mouthpiece" magazine for the company, which became The Dungeoneer Journal and after a few issues was renamed Pegasus. So, the notion that the "other magazines" coudn't catch on is a little misleading.

As far as JG products go, I think they were very hit or miss. Their early fantasy products in particular were all excellent, then somewhere along the line they began to expand so quickly that overall quality became inconsistent. Keep in mind that they created stuff for OD&D, Runequest, Traveller, Superhero 2044, AD&D and other games. (Eventually they came up with "universal" fantasy modules, which I particularly disliked because now I had to covert everything.)

Anyway, I remember liking many of their Traveller products and totally wore out my GM screen. JG was a nice little company....

 

[beowulf2044]

Superhero 2044! Gads! I'd forgotten that old thing. I'll probably die in a horrible closet avalanche in an effort to find my old copy.