Dice ?? Game mechanic ??

[trader jim]

I have done NO study of anything concerning T5...
(my loss).

What kind of dice will be used?? D6 D10 D20 or
what???

The game mechanic....what type is it?? What can you compare it to, if anything???

What is the very CORE of the game??

 

[mike wightman]

It will be d6 based - probably

The task system hasn't been finalised yet so far as I know, although the old playtest version was based on T4.

 

[trader jim]

If it is D6.......it fits!!!.......I will buy it!!!!........I will even send my money to HUNTER!!!!!!

 

[notagoodusername]

I think its safe to say Mark Miller's next version of Traveller will stick with the d6's that started it all....

Shane

 

[robject]

d6.

The primary task system seems to be a multiple d6 one. Its goal is to fully distinguish between different characteristic values, while still modeling skill appropriately.

Ah, and there's no half die.

Examples:

Fred Dex=8, Darts=1.
Dave Dex=7, Darts=2.
Val Dex=9, Darts=2.


For a simple game of darts, Fred will do as well as Dave.

For an average game of darts, Dave will do better than Fred. In T5, Dave will do much better than Fred.

Val will do better than both of them in both cases.

 

[Eto Demerzel]

I believe that a 2d6 task mechanic is adequate for T5. I find the concept of throwing multiple dice to be somewhat, uhm, distracting, to say the least.

I can, of course, see the objective that Mr Miller is trying to reach with his proposed task system for T5. Distinguishing between skill level and atribute statistic is an honorable goal and would, as has been pointed out, improve game play somewhat.

 

[aramis]

It appears that MWM is fixated upon the t4.1 task system.

In short, he's ignoring the player base, at least on tasks.

 

[robject]

Well, we don't have a true playtest doc yet, so Marc can't show off the perceived benefits and/or reveal the clunkiness of T5's task system.

 

[parmasson]

As long as it makes sense I’ll be happy.
I’m still using a modified LBB system. I’d bet anything is better than what I came up with.

 

[aramis]

Rob:
He's had a playtest of it. It's called "T4."

It was, and is, "badly broken." The draft (I've got it on the other 'puters' hard drive) was nothing more (nor less) than a relabeling of the T4.1 task system of 1997-8.

The cure for it is simple, but unwieldy: make attributes cost more to raise than skills, say about 3:1...

CT used a +1, +0, -1 scale for att mods on "tasks" (combat rolls), effectively a 3 point scale covering the 15 point attribute range. The value was about 2-5 reciepts to make the difference.

MT used instead +0-+3 for the same range, but more consistently. The consistency put a 5:1 Att:Skill correspondence. (I prefer 3:1...)

TNE used a 2:1 cost for atts. (It took both hobby reciepts to earn a +1 att.) This made up for the 1:1 ratio used in play. Reduced skills received in later terms of CG.

2300 used un-raisable atts. Problem solved. Range was +0 to +4, in a 5:1 ratio in use. Progressive skill costs, too.

T4 used 1:1 in CG AND Tasks. Even with TIHTIT (This is Harder than I thought), skill reciepts outside of concept are far better spent att-seeking.

GT (& GURPS as a whole) makes attributes about 6:1 for comparable raises, and uses a 1:1 in play. (At least, once you abstract out the various difficulty mods by skill difficulty...) It also uses progressive costs, and doubled attribute costs once play started.

Just for reference: Some other systems correspondences for systems which have been used for Traveller games.

Vampire/WOD: 1:1 in play; 7:1 in CG/XP, progressive costs

Hero: 5 levels of att (5-15 points) grant +1 on skills; +1 on a skill is 2 or 3 points.

CORPS: No difference in costs, but different uses. 4:1 for baseline costs.

EABA: different cost scales. (1d of att ranges from 3 to 18 points in the range of extreme PC's; 1d of att ranges from 5 to 20 points)

BRP - based upon RQ3, range from 2:1 to 1:2, by specific skilll group, on a percentile system. Raising atts not handled in same manner as skills.

Space Opera: in-play varies widely; Atts usually add their level, skills add 5-15% per level.

 

[mike wightman]

If a version of the T4 task system makes it to the final version of T5 it wouldn't bother me one bit.
I'll ignore it and keep on using my own

 

[Fritz_Brown]

Elsewhere, Aramis, Marc has speculated on skill levels having the same maximums as attributes. How would that impact your above statements (not all of which I understand, but I get the gist)?

 

[robject]

Aramis, if it's badly broken, then how can it require only a simple fix? There's got to be more broken than just a cost.

I always figured the "This Is Hard" / "It's Harder Than I Thought" rule was the bulky and somewhat annoying fix.

The T4.1 playtest did reveal this att-seeking habit you're referring to. My wife loved rolling up characters. They spent half their chargen task rolls on the physical development table, and were uber-men and -women when they finally retired (at an advanced age, by the way).

Geezer Traveller meets Mr. Universe.

When the next iteration of chargen comes out, we'll fix the problems. If it's a matter of making it hard to increase ATT, then that's what'll have to happen. The obvious way is to only have one Physical Characteristic Improvement slot on the PD table.


I thought you disliked the system on a more fundamental level. Most people who dislike it, do so because it uses the T4 system, rather than the MT system.

 

[Pickles]

I'm a disinterested party, never having played T4 in spite of having the free Drivethru PDF download.

However, has anyone looked at Commander Drax's new T4 task system over on his Children of Earth website?

 

[aramis]

I do dislike it on a more fundamental level.

It's biggest problem is a simple fix. The others are not.

It has another fundamental (and unfixable) problem: until players know the difficulty they can not roll the dice. That can only be solved by throwing the whole T4.x task mechanic out the window. (Marc's propsed and tested "fix" annoyed players far more than was worth using.)

Which has been the basic reaction of most of the vocal supporters of the rest of T4.

Me, I just use MT tasks.

 

[daltoncalford]

For our home system, we went with skill/attribute packages.

So, if you are in the scouts, and you roll a uneventfull term, in the beuracracy, you would have a limited skill package from which to roll/get skills.

One package per term, skills/attributes available limited by the package, some packages are standard across the different careers, while other packages are specific to the career.

Depending upon the career and term, you may only have 3-4 different packages available at a time, although, one of the careers has 8 packages available to choose/roll from, for the first term.

It allowed us to keep the flavour of classic traveller, with a random background element, while both allowing higher skill levels and stopping uber-characters.

Best regards

Dalton

 

[Qstor2]

Originally posted by Aramis:
Rob:
He's had a playtest of it. It's called "T4."

It was, and is, "badly broken." The draft (I've got it on the other 'puters' hard drive) was nothing more (nor less) than a relabeling of the T4.1 task system of 1997-8.

The cure for it is simple, but unwieldy: make attributes cost more to raise than skills, say about 3:1...

What about the D6 system by West End Games? A lot of Star Wars fans were happy with that system for sci-fi.

Mike

 

[jrients]

As someone with no experience with T4 but lots of experience with an armfull of other popular RPGS, altering the total dice thrown based upon task difficulty looks bass ackward to me. I think it would take me some time to wrap my head around such a mechanic. More importantly, my players (who are far less enthusiastic about Trav than I) will rankle at the mental gyrations.

 

[aramis]

Originally posted by Qstor2:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Aramis:
Rob:
He's had a playtest of it. It's called "T4."

It was, and is, "badly broken." The draft (I've got it on the other 'puters' hard drive) was nothing more (nor less) than a relabeling of the T4.1 task system of 1997-8.

The cure for it is simple, but unwieldy: make attributes cost more to raise than skills, say about 3:1...

What about the D6 system by West End Games? A lot of Star Wars fans were happy with that system for sci-fi.

Mike </font>[/QUOTE]It is a good system; aside from lots of dice, it's just about dead opposite of the T4/T5 "vision"

 

[Valarian]

Originally posted by Aramis:
It is a good system; aside from lots of dice, it's just about dead opposite of the T4/T5 "vision"

Another good system, and one with lots of dice (d10), is the White Wolf Storyteller system.