Edition synopsis?

[Finarvyn]

This has probably been covered elsewhere, but I'm having trouble with the "search" function at the moment and can't get an answer to a fundamental Traveller question.

I began with Classic Traveller in the late 1970's and the little black books. More recently I bought GURPS Traveller and T20 to see how they handle the rules. Now I'm hearing that Mongoose is going to put out Traveller rules. So many rules sets, all Traveller but all somewhat different.

Would anyone be willing to give me a quick synopsis of the different editions of Traveller and what makes them different from each other?

 

[far-trader]

A very condensed and biased overview from memory...

CT (LBB 1-3) : Classic Traveller (originally just Traveller) : 2d6 with basic char gen, limited skill set, and simple task resolution

CT (post LBB 1-3) : 2d6 with advanced char gen, expanded skill set, and simple task resolution

MT : Mega Traveller : compiled CT mostly, 2d6 with advanced char gen, expanded skill set, and a real task system

TNE : Traveller The New Era : a new direction, altered just about everything, d6 and d10 with advanced char gen, expanded skill set, and a real task system

GT : GURPS Traveller : GURPS rules for Traveller, metric dumped, another new direction, never got into it

T4 : aka Marc Miller's Traveller : an attempt to return to CT poorly executed, multiple d6 with half dice task system, advanced char gen, and expanded skill set

T20 : Traveller 20 : d20 version of Traveller, fairly well executed adaptation of CT to d20, all kinds of dice, advanced char gen, and expanded skill set.

T5 : yet to be finalized

HT : or TH? Hero system for Traveller, also unfinished and perhaps in limbo

TM : or whatever, Traveller by Mongoose, the latest and most unknown

...did I miss any?

EDIT: And now it occurs to me that this is probably (or should be) in the Traveller Wiki

 

[Gadrin]

T4 : aka Marc Miller's Traveller : an attempt to return to CT poorly executed, multiple d6 with half dice task system, advanced char gen, and expanded skill set

quasi-munchkin version of CT ? sorry I don't mean to attack T4, however from what I have read, it does seem to go a bit above & beyond previous editions, however I'm no Traveller expert. I might be reading too much into some of the fluff writeups and the stats in the Emperor's Arsenal.

I had mentioned on the GT boards, how CP2020 "Listen Up You Primitive Screwheads" mentioned how Traveller was once the ultimate game of seeing how many weapons a character could carry at a single time.

Loren Wiseman replied:

I don't know about CP, but with Twilight: 2000, that was one of the main design criteria. we (GDW) wanted to tap an (at the time) untapped market. We suceeded.

I was wondering if that motivated some of designs & ideas, like ACRs that held 100s of rounds of ammo to come up with a "BIG VERSION OF TRAVELLER"

 

[aramis]

H4T is what has been used for HeroTrav. "Hero For Traveller"...

You also mised the quasi-traveller rules:
T2300: Not the OTU, but a mechanically related system to MT and T2K; Looks like Traveller, Plays Like Traveller... But not the setting, and so to avoid confusion, renamed:
2300AD

But the two 2300 mags I've encountered were ALSO equally or moreso Traveller mags. The ones I recall: Challenge and Traveller's Digest

 

[The Thing]

maybe a new thread should be made that has synopsis' of the settings of each edition such as their millieu.

 

[far-trader]

maybe a new thread should be made that has synopsis' of the settings of each edition such as their millieu.

Or it might be better to see what the Traveller Wiki has already and work on it there?

 

[Finarvyn]

Thanks for the input. I really don't mean to start an edition war over this, just trying to get a handle on what is and what has been for Traveller.

It would appear that most of the versions have a few things in common:
* most sound like they are based on d6 dice.
* they all sound like they vary in terms of depth of character generation.
* they all sound like they vary in terms of task resolution.
* CT, MT, and T4 all sound like variants of CT with different tweaks. The others are just different systems altogether.

Part of what makes me think about this in the first place is Mongoose's idea of unifying the fragmented Traveller editions. At first I thought it was impossible, but it does sound like many of the editions are based on the same underlying rules. (GURPS, TNE and T20 clearly are not.)

And if Mongoose can somehow unify CT/MT/T4 by taking the "best" from each and superimposing it all onto CT, then T5 should fall into place as well since I understand that T5 is to be an Advanced version of Mongoose Traveller.

I wish I had more knowledge about the various editons, but so far what I am hearing makes me excited. I really loved CT back in the 1970's and look forward to a "cleaned up" version of the game!

 

[aramis]

Finarvyn:

for non-character issues, T20 is FAR closer (fully compatible) to CT than T4 is (Almost unrelated...)

For character issues, they are about equally far.

Examining starships:

MT used a variant of striker for combat, and evolved that a step. The design sequences were striker simplified... MT ship designs could be used as is in HG, and vice versa, if one knows how to read the two forms of USP. Further, the ships could be statted out from the design spreadsheet to generate thr secondary MT UCP stats (like Hits)

FF&S1 for TNE was incompatible, but derived from MT's craft design, and evolved from it by about. Neither the designs nor the resultant stats were compatible, but the designs could be (courtesy of MT's own rules) restatted from the design worksheets back to work in MT... except for weapons.

FF&S2 for T4 was an expansion and evolution from TNE's FF&S1... lots of ideas, little space, and less formating. Loads more options, no easier, and the "easy variants" were buggy as the floor of a bat cave.

GT ship design used a "simplification" from GURPS Vehicles. As with SSDS under T4, it is quite possible to produce significantly better designs by ignoring the abstraction layer. Unlike SSDS, the design system was relatively well done.

T20 ship design is an evolution of Bk5. As with MT, the UCP is useable in CT, and vice versa. Further, it is thus useful in MT, as it is no harder than using HG ships.

All of them generate the same "Real World" stats:
Tons Displacement (and thus volume)
G's Accelleration
Parsecs Jump Range
Operational range (as a time)
Fuel Used (a volume)
Cargo Space (a volume) in Displacement Tons

CT and MT characters are almost compatible.
TNE are not compatible with CT/MT in any way; different skill list, skill ranges, and stat ranges from CT/MT
T4 characters are only superficially compatible with CT/MT. Same stat ranges, but a tendency to higher stats in those ranges; much higher skill ranges, despite a similar list. Compared to TNE, T4 is just totally a different game in almost all ways except ship design....
GT characters are almost totally incompatible... the method and the results are alien from all other traveller games.
T20 is an evolution towards CT of the d20 characters. Stats and skills incompatible with other editions.

CT had two trade systems, Bk2 and Bk7.
Bk7 was ported to MT, TNE, and T4.
T20 based off CT, but expanded, and integrated a few concepts from Bk7.
GT uses G:FT, totally unrelated to the other three.

 

[Fritz_Brown]

...evolved from it by about...

Sounds about right, though.... :nonono:

Otherwise, pretty good synopsis.

 

[aramis]

"by about 1.5 generations."

Sorry about that.

 

[Finarvyn]

aramis, thanks for the further information. Sadly, the whole edition issue is more complex than I had hoped.

 

[Hemdian]

My take on the different versions ...

First there was CT. Initially background-less, this saw the birth of the OTU.

MT was derived from CT and was sort of CT++. It was attempt to consolidate everything over the past ten years and had at its core a task system originally developed as an add-on to CT. While the design was good (IMHO) it suffered horrendous typos (a production problem, not design problem) and there were large amounts of errata. It also came with the OTU integrated into the text ... and advanced the timeline of the OTU into the Rebellion era (ending with 'Hard Times').

Then came TNE which was Traveller emulated with GDW's house system (basically Twilight:2000 2nd ed rules). It was an attempt to 'harden' the science which gave it quite a different feel. The background was the OTU post Hard Times: the Imperium is gone and now rebuilding can begin.

After GDW folded Marc Miller released, through Imperium Games, another version: T4 derived from CT and was sort of CT+. Quality is very varied. A background based on the birth of the Imperium was provided.

Next we had GT ... an emulation of Traveller in the GURPS system. (Alternative timeline to MT.)

Followed by T20 ... an emulation of Traveller in the D20 system.

And even HT ... an emulation of Traveller in the Hero system.

During this time Marc was working on an upgrade to T4. Initially referred to as T4.1 but now called T5. It should be released at the end of this year.

Mongoose have just announced they will be releasing games (both Traveller and non-Traveller) using T5-lite (MGT). This should be released at the start of next year.



In summary:

CT --> MT

CT --> T4 --> T5 --> MGT

TNE

GT

T20

HT



(Note that the use of the word 'emulation' here is not meant to be derogatory, and doesn't imply that emulated verions are any lesser than non-emulated versions. I'm just using it as a classification device.)



Mention has also been made of Traveller:2300 (later renamed 2300AD). This is the Twilight:2000 background 300 years on and has nothing to do with Traveller.


Regards PLST

 

[aramis]

Mention has also been made of Traveller:2300 (later renamed 2300AD). This is the Twilight:2000 background 300 years on and has nothing to do with Traveller.


Regards PLST

Aside from the 1d10 variant of the Task System, and a most of the concepts in 2300 appear later in MT....

2300 is mechanically more closely related to Traveller, not to T2K (either edition, per se)... and some people ran the OTU using 2300. (Best of the Bunch? not IMO, but it's close..)

Of course, mechanical similarities with the same design teams should be no surprise... That "CT Task System" appears in T2300 before MT comes out; almost identical, except it uses 1d10 instead of 2d6.

 

[Fritz_Brown]

Hemdian, based on the other thread (in Mongoose Traveller), the accepted abbreviation for the Mongoose Traveller is RTT. That's for Riki-Tiki-Traveller.

 

[chshrkt]

... based on the other thread (in Mongoose Traveller), the accepted abbreviation for the Mongoose Traveller is RTT. That's for Riki-Tiki-Traveller.

I think I missed something somewhere down the line.
What is the significance of the phrase "Riki-Tiki-Traveller"?

 

[Andrew Boulton]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rikki-Tikki-Tavi

 

[Finarvyn]

Sorry. I'm famililar with the story of Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, but I still don't quite get the reference here.

I thought at first you meant that Traveller would be a "mongoose killer", but R-T-T is the mongoose in the story so that didn't make sense unless Traveller was the cobra.

The best I can come up with is the notion that "Rikki-Tikki" is really fast, so the assumption is that Mongoose Games will crank out Traveller quickly (and without getting it right)? That didn't quite make sense to me, either, since Traveller (in one editon or another) has been around for about 30 years and so a tweaked edition probably doesn't need much playtesting. Am I getting closer?

This is what we call the "shotgun" approach. Multiple guesses in one post.

 

[Badbru]

Thanks for that wiki link Andrew. I'd never heard of Rikki Tikki except for the Gunnery Sergeants use of "Ricky Tick" in the Swathard/sniper/Desert sheild movie, who's name obviously escapes me at the moment, so I could never understand why people were calling it RTT. I thought it stood for Return To Traveller at first.
MGT for Mon-Goose-Traveller, has allways been my preferred choice since I heard the news.

 

[atpollard]

Sorry. I'm famililar with the story of Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, but I still don't quite get the reference here.

I thought at first you meant that Traveller would be a "mongoose killer", but R-T-T is the mongoose in the story so that didn't make sense unless Traveller was the cobra.

The best I can come up with is the notion that "Rikki-Tikki" is really fast, so the assumption is that Mongoose Games will crank out Traveller quickly (and without getting it right)? That didn't quite make sense to me, either, since Traveller (in one editon or another) has been around for about 30 years and so a tweaked edition probably doesn't need much playtesting. Am I getting closer?

This is what we call the "shotgun" approach. Multiple guesses in one post.

You are working too hard at finding a deep meaning. It is primarily just a pun. Rikki-Tikki-Tavi becomes Rikki-Tikki-Traveller. They sound similar. Since Rikki-Tikki-Tavi was a mongoose and Rikki-Tikki-Traveller will be published by Mongoose Publishing, it is a clever pun.

Also, it is just a fun word to say, "Rikki-Tikki-Traveller". It makes you smile. Compare that to saying "MongTrav". No smile, not a fun word at all.

 

[far-trader]

I like Badbru's alternate guess at RTT a lot too. Return To Traveller works quite nicely, and we still get to say Riki-Tiki-Traveller