Well said.
How Do We Improve T5?
- Thread starter ovka
- Start date
Well said.
I'd really like to see a standardized understanding of the TL system across the boards, like once appeared in the Imperial Encyclopedia.
Rob AKA Robject was trying for that recently in his UWP summary project.
And, expanded, detailed version would be nice.
Shalom,
Maksim-Smelchak.
Rob AKA Robject was trying for that recently in his UWP summary project.
And, expanded, detailed version would be nice.
Shalom,
Maksim-Smelchak.
David Johansen
SOC-12
I think Blue Ghost is hitting on the edge of the matter but is overly focussed on the law enforcement and crime fighting.
First off, player characters are almost universally criminals of some stripe. They're smugglers and rogue agents and amoral mercenaries. Thus it's more often a caper game with the cops as opposition.
Next, it is a safetech setting. Computers and robots haven't supplanted humans. It's like Star Trek, Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, and Babylon Five in this. Not because it's the eighties scifi television rpg but for the same reasons. If everything is done by remote drones and robots the game becomes less thrilling and challenging because it has become less relatable.
So Traveller is primarily about science fiction adventures on a human scale. Small mercenary actions, frontier fire fights, desperate cat and mouse games with pirates in the asteroid belt. We're shown that the huge capital ship battles are out there but they're more often a setting for personal scale activity than they are the focus of the game. The Ahzanti High Lightning is Traveller's Temple of Elemental Evil mega dungeon.
Science and strange technology are a big part of Traveller but usually as the McGuffin that goes away at the end of the episode. The readily available technology serves to shape the setting, making it easy to run planet of the week games or up the ante. Oh no! The police here have Advanced Police Dress, our mighty shotguns won't get us out of this one. Jump without FTL radio and a hard cap of 1 hex per week regardless of drive ensures that PCs can get and stay ahead of the authorities.
Time travel could most certainly have its place in Traveller. Strange artifacts and random misjumps might take you anywhere if the referee wishes. But at the end of the episode everything's back to normal and the technology well beyond the player's grasp.
First off, player characters are almost universally criminals of some stripe. They're smugglers and rogue agents and amoral mercenaries. Thus it's more often a caper game with the cops as opposition.
Next, it is a safetech setting. Computers and robots haven't supplanted humans. It's like Star Trek, Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, and Babylon Five in this. Not because it's the eighties scifi television rpg but for the same reasons. If everything is done by remote drones and robots the game becomes less thrilling and challenging because it has become less relatable.
So Traveller is primarily about science fiction adventures on a human scale. Small mercenary actions, frontier fire fights, desperate cat and mouse games with pirates in the asteroid belt. We're shown that the huge capital ship battles are out there but they're more often a setting for personal scale activity than they are the focus of the game. The Ahzanti High Lightning is Traveller's Temple of Elemental Evil mega dungeon.
Science and strange technology are a big part of Traveller but usually as the McGuffin that goes away at the end of the episode. The readily available technology serves to shape the setting, making it easy to run planet of the week games or up the ante. Oh no! The police here have Advanced Police Dress, our mighty shotguns won't get us out of this one. Jump without FTL radio and a hard cap of 1 hex per week regardless of drive ensures that PCs can get and stay ahead of the authorities.
Time travel could most certainly have its place in Traveller. Strange artifacts and random misjumps might take you anywhere if the referee wishes. But at the end of the episode everything's back to normal and the technology well beyond the player's grasp.
I guess my stance is that in all the 14 years I've been coming here and reading other people's anecdotes about gaming sessions, and going over the official material published, and given my rants on wanting to expand Traveller, I actually (after what, ... 40 years?) finally understand that Traveller's focus is on societal or geopolitical scenarios, with shades of psychiatry.
And I think that's fine, but I think there needs to be a preamble or opening statement to that effect, because idiots like me wondered where or how things like Vampire Clouds or Doomsday Machines from Star Trek could be incorporated, or a whole slew of sci-fi tropes that seem to be missing from Traveller.
If Traveller can explain itself before hand, then I think things fall into place as far as attracting new players and keeping the system thriving.
[size=-2] p.s. I just got up a few minutes ago, and I had visions of George Lucas and Chewbacca banging on my hotel room door, yelling at me to get up....my blood sugar must be low or something. Egg McMuffins here I come
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And I think that's fine, but I think there needs to be a preamble or opening statement to that effect, because idiots like me wondered where or how things like Vampire Clouds or Doomsday Machines from Star Trek could be incorporated, or a whole slew of sci-fi tropes that seem to be missing from Traveller.
If Traveller can explain itself before hand, then I think things fall into place as far as attracting new players and keeping the system thriving.
[size=-2] p.s. I just got up a few minutes ago, and I had visions of George Lucas and Chewbacca banging on my hotel room door, yelling at me to get up....my blood sugar must be low or something. Egg McMuffins here I come
[/size]David Johansen
SOC-12
Except they can. The PC's ship is around a gas giant and a THING comes out of the depths. By the time the patrol cruiser arrives it's vanished back into the mists and there's just a few strangely dead passengers and hired crew.
And If you go and build a TL 20 automated dreadnaught and throw it at PCs in their puny little TL 12 Free Trader it's plenty of doomsday machine. Of course once they've tricked it into damaging itself or come up with some other way to beat it the thing jumps out leaving nothing but a tall tale.
I'll agree that Traveller's game engine isn't designed to incorporate rules for fiat based challenges but really it doesn't need to be. If you throw Q at the PCs you're well out of the range where dice rolls determine what happens. In the end you just have to remember that if you kill them all off by fiat then you can't feel too bad when they never come back or let you referee again.
And If you go and build a TL 20 automated dreadnaught and throw it at PCs in their puny little TL 12 Free Trader it's plenty of doomsday machine. Of course once they've tricked it into damaging itself or come up with some other way to beat it the thing jumps out leaving nothing but a tall tale.
I'll agree that Traveller's game engine isn't designed to incorporate rules for fiat based challenges but really it doesn't need to be. If you throw Q at the PCs you're well out of the range where dice rolls determine what happens. In the end you just have to remember that if you kill them all off by fiat then you can't feel too bad when they never come back or let you referee again.
Perhaps that is what is meant by terming Traveller a hard-science RPG? No Vampire Clouds, Doomsday Machines, or the like?
(Not that I'm trying to make an argument about whether or not Traveller should be considered hard-science.)
Cheers,
Baron Ovka
And I totally get that. I guess I'm just grousing hollow here because I feel like I've invested a lot of time and money into a hobby that was never really designed to be the next big scifi property, but always to maintain a low profile as a kind of law enforcement laboratory by way of games for smart pre-teens and older.
I actually did a few fantastical like scenarios with my groups, but found it difficult in creating stats for various monsters or phenomena. I would have delved into the other RPGs (and did), but they didn't survive; FASA's ST RPG, Star Frontiers is on hiatus, GAMMA World is gone, and so forth. More recent scifi RPGs are too soon for me because I don't have a play group any more, and Traveller is what I know best.
So it's just another layer of angst on my part. But at this point I just kind of shrug at it, and hopefully anything I write here will result in a T5 that's a little more honest in the kind of games it can present ... regardless of what I or anybody else think of it.
I hope that makes some sense.
True.
No, pretty much all the sci-fi tropes exist in one form or another in traveler, it's just that they are subdued behind the primary story line of the Third Imperium.
*** Which tropes do you propose are missing? ***
Vampire clouds and doomsday machine analogues certainly exist in somewhat modified form...
Some modern tropes are not dominant though such as nanotech or self-replicating machines... Then again, the new novel addresses some of that and we're still waiting on the Galaxiad.
Shalom,
Maksim-Smelchak.
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Hard Science was defined (unofficially) by the SFWA leadership back in the 1970's or earlier - Larry Niven mentioned the definition - no more than 3 breaks from known science.
Traveller's core breaks from known science:
- Jump Drive
- Gravitics
- Practical Fusion
- Psionics
- Meson Guns
Note that the Ancients are NOT on that list.
A few areas have remained based upon deprecated theories:
- Star System planetary configurations
- Stellar types
- Relationship of autocracy and population
- Relationship of populations and Law Level
- Relatioship of religion and autocracy
- capping of slugthrower propellant development
- Relationship of gas giants and asteroid belts.
Traveller, for that pile of deviations, really can be shown not to be hard sci-fi. (Marc has recently stated it wasn't intended to be Hard Sci-Fi.) But it's on the harder end of the space opera subgenre. It's "Hardish Sci Fi & Hard Space Opera"...
Science Fact: No breaks from known science.
Hard Science Fiction: 1 to 3 breaks from known science.
.
.
Traveller
.
.
.
.
Space Opera: routine, casual violations of known science, with no explanation given. Internal consistency not required/expected.
.
.
.
Space Fantasy: Magic in spaaaace!
Hard Science Fiction: 1 to 3 breaks from known science.
.
.
Traveller
.
.
.
.
Space Opera: routine, casual violations of known science, with no explanation given. Internal consistency not required/expected.
.
.
.
Space Fantasy: Magic in spaaaace!
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mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
I don't see the limitations that Blue Ghost sees.
CT was a method for generating and equipping a character.
It was a guide to building worlds to adventure upon.
It had rules for personal and space combat.
At its core this is what T5 boils down to too.
The actual universe can be as hard or soft sci fi as you want to make it.
A while ago I used my homebrew CT+ to run a campaign set in the Culture. Sentient machines, system class ships the size of small moons, orbitals, personal weapons that combined the functions of laser and plasma guns etc.
I had to borrow from the psionic rules for displacers, sensors and personal augmentation glands, but everything was based on Traveller rules from one version of Traveller or another.
One of the adversaries they had to deal with - a very special circumstance - was a race of technologically advanced gas giant dwellers who were moving into a more primitive(still mining gas giants for fuel etc.) polity's area of influence.
The GeeDees used bioengineered starships that dwarfed system class ships...
all done with Traveller.
T5 has some of the tools/rules that make the Culture level of game play accessible.
Maybe we should be telling people on other forums that T5 updates Traveller technology to modern sci-fi standards. You can still use the tropes of golden age Traveller or you can add as much of the new stuff as you want - synthetics, wafers etc.
CT was a method for generating and equipping a character.
It was a guide to building worlds to adventure upon.
It had rules for personal and space combat.
At its core this is what T5 boils down to too.
The actual universe can be as hard or soft sci fi as you want to make it.
A while ago I used my homebrew CT+ to run a campaign set in the Culture. Sentient machines, system class ships the size of small moons, orbitals, personal weapons that combined the functions of laser and plasma guns etc.
I had to borrow from the psionic rules for displacers, sensors and personal augmentation glands, but everything was based on Traveller rules from one version of Traveller or another.
One of the adversaries they had to deal with - a very special circumstance - was a race of technologically advanced gas giant dwellers who were moving into a more primitive(still mining gas giants for fuel etc.) polity's area of influence.
The GeeDees used bioengineered starships that dwarfed system class ships...
all done with Traveller.
T5 has some of the tools/rules that make the Culture level of game play accessible.
Maybe we should be telling people on other forums that T5 updates Traveller technology to modern sci-fi standards. You can still use the tropes of golden age Traveller or you can add as much of the new stuff as you want - synthetics, wafers etc.
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Not if you use the rules as written. Which, you've repeatedly said you don't...
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
Read the rules again - especially LBB1-3 - referees are encouraged to make stuff up, using the rules as guidelines
I tend to cherry pick from editions, and T5 is no different. I have found a lot in it to mine for ideas.
Using T5 rules as written I can use which ever bits of it I want to adjust the hardness.
I tend to cherry pick from editions, and T5 is no different. I have found a lot in it to mine for ideas.
Using T5 rules as written I can use which ever bits of it I want to adjust the hardness.
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Read the rules again - especially LBB1-3 - referees are encouraged to make stuff up, using the rules as guidelines
Which is an utterly useless point of view when trying to make the rules of T5 work better. Sufficiently so as to be off topic in this thread.
If you have something constructive to add, or T5 problems you've identified, post away. This is a public and general warning. "Houserule it" and "GM make it up" are off topic.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
People keep posting the same things about how to improve it:
apply errata
fix the rules that don't work as intended
produce a simplified version that can engage new players and referees
The errata issue is slowly being solved.
The simplified introductory version need to be in two parts, one for the player and one for the referee. Play aids, equipment lists, adventure ideas should be free.
The only reason I took another look at T5 was Marc's new novel.
Will people buy the novel who don't play Traveller? Some might especially if it gets advertised on various rpg forums. Will they then be tempted to buy T5? I doubt it but if there was a T5 light pdf (a few pages at most) that could offer people a route into the game it may be worthwhile producing it.
But the main improvement T5 needs is a setting book.
apply errata
fix the rules that don't work as intended
produce a simplified version that can engage new players and referees
The errata issue is slowly being solved.
The simplified introductory version need to be in two parts, one for the player and one for the referee. Play aids, equipment lists, adventure ideas should be free.
The only reason I took another look at T5 was Marc's new novel.
Will people buy the novel who don't play Traveller? Some might especially if it gets advertised on various rpg forums. Will they then be tempted to buy T5? I doubt it but if there was a T5 light pdf (a few pages at most) that could offer people a route into the game it may be worthwhile producing it.
But the main improvement T5 needs is a setting book.
I'm trying to crack the whip ("combat! combat! combat!"), but for some reason he doesn't follow my orders. It's as if he doesn't work for me.
Mike W said:
I've posted some (recently, aimed towards player use), and gotten a few comments.
Mike W said:
Or cloning off a Marc wafer.
[FONT=arial,helvetica]
[/FONT] :coffeegulp: "The beatings will continue until morale improves."
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
Lol, keep up the good work.
A lot of it is very useful, it should be made available to everyone who buys T5. Play aids, examples, equipment, get as much stuff out there to attract people to the game.
If only we could...
I guess I should clarify; T5 seems to be more encompassing of other genres, but CT had a very open system in terms of potential "what ifs..." for other genres. But my personal observation of the game points to a game that, at its origins and through much of its evolution, wasn't well prepared for other tropes beyond what the adventures had established. T5's mechanics seem to address that, but it's still my sense that Traveller, in all its iterations, leans towards crime drama and geopolitics. And I've had emails and PMs expressing that opinion to me.
If that's the case, then T5 might want to shed the more extraordinary passages addressing other tropes that it hadn't touched on, stick with the tried and true, and therefore keep its primary emphasis since inception.
T5's thing maker, gun maker and other facets appear to put the game on proper footing for creating additional technologies. But on the more basic level, apart from vehicles and equipment, I think the interpersonals are either superfluous (that is this is actual role playing codified), or, to me, have the feel of another game altogether. I think an improvement would be to make the interpersonals an optional set of rules. To me they feel like they've taken the role playing out of role playing. But I've already talked about that.
Just my two bits. I don't have too much more to add, but I'll respond to anyone who has thoughts on what I've written.
If that's the case, then T5 might want to shed the more extraordinary passages addressing other tropes that it hadn't touched on, stick with the tried and true, and therefore keep its primary emphasis since inception.
T5's thing maker, gun maker and other facets appear to put the game on proper footing for creating additional technologies. But on the more basic level, apart from vehicles and equipment, I think the interpersonals are either superfluous (that is this is actual role playing codified), or, to me, have the feel of another game altogether. I think an improvement would be to make the interpersonals an optional set of rules. To me they feel like they've taken the role playing out of role playing. But I've already talked about that.
Just my two bits. I don't have too much more to add, but I'll respond to anyone who has thoughts on what I've written.
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