I hope I've put this in the right forum, and sorry if these kind of musings have been around before. Before I start, obviously this post is biased away from MGT and T20 but I honestly don't have anything against them - more choice for fans I say!
I've come back to Traveller after many years off, and I'm planning on running some of the CT adventures but using the MT rules - which are basically CT but pulled together into a system in my opinion. I'll be throwing in some of the material from old JTAS I've found, as well as fan magazines that have spawned across the internet while I was away from the game!
But what has fascinated me when I had a look at TNE and T4 rules recently (and boy, had I missed out on YEARS of development of the game!) was the gun design system. After experimenting with small arms slug throwers to see what the real options were, and comparing the results to MT, I realised that TNE and T4 (and I presume by extension, T5) substantially rebalanced combat rules.
But I like the idea of the design-your-own slugthrower. Not that I want to sit down and spend hours poring over numbers - but more like when I'm world-building, what if the local government forces that the players are likely to encounter have TL9 7.5mm x 30cmm light assault rifles, which are a step up from the standard auto rifle but aren't quite covered in the rules?
By extension, things like Solar Sails, water craft, and air ships as sub-systems in TNE give the referee the option to build game-playable worlds with loving detail. Of course common interstellar tech isn't going to be interested in a commercial aspect of a solar sail. But what about that mysterious ship of unusual design? What are its performance specs? What if there are more than one of them? etc. etc.
I've had a stab at conversions between TNE/T4 and MT. But combat mechanisms appear to have been so extensively rebalanced that I'm not sure it's possible - the way that penetration works in TNE/T4 and MT are very, very different, and energy weapons have been turned on their heads as far as I can see. As an aside - my current hypothesis is that armour in TNE/T4 should be multiplied by 2.5 to get armour value in MT, but then in the TNE standard ship designs, armour ranges from values of 10 through to more than 70, whereas in MT all of them got a rating of 40 (minimum required) - 16 in TNE/T4 by my theory. I suppose MT penetration / attenuation can be calculated by working out when damage gets halved in TNE/T4 against various armour values and coming up with a penetration value from there, with attenuation worked out by comparing TNE/T4 S/M/L/E ranges to the standard CT/MT range bands.
I've had a look at the T5 threads and based on that I think I will purchase T5 - but I would also like to think that I can bring forward detail from MT like the World Builders Handbook, and mods to Classic Traveller like the Gamelords terrain supplements. I'm pretty confident that it'll be an easy task given that central mechanics such as UPP and UWP will remain. From looking at the contents of T5 available on FFE, it looks like all the central mechanics will be there, you just need to add the stories you want from any era you want. Things like Hard Times mechanics for UWP degredation would fit right in.
But on the other hand, I've seen many posters - some quite high ranking here on CoTI - who like MT for its balance of gameplay vs. realism. And after all, given that role playing is primarily about the story telling (yes, with a wargaming bias I'm happy to have thrown in for Traveller - I play Warhammer 40k as well), and the mechanics need to be reasonable. I'm not in favour of the TNE 'body part hit' system - the old UPP 777777 = 3 hits till you're out of action, 5 till you die works fine for me, and I love the way that MT united all vehicles and personnel into the one set of numbers for combat.
I don't want to start a flame war over which systems are 'superior'. But given all of these considerations, I am interested in a system that can be taken down to the sub-atomic level by the referee to construct worlds in detail, while keeping the mechanics simple for running smooth sessions. That's just my style for having fun, and I'd be interested in what other players and referees consider fun as well.
I've come back to Traveller after many years off, and I'm planning on running some of the CT adventures but using the MT rules - which are basically CT but pulled together into a system in my opinion. I'll be throwing in some of the material from old JTAS I've found, as well as fan magazines that have spawned across the internet while I was away from the game!
But what has fascinated me when I had a look at TNE and T4 rules recently (and boy, had I missed out on YEARS of development of the game!) was the gun design system. After experimenting with small arms slug throwers to see what the real options were, and comparing the results to MT, I realised that TNE and T4 (and I presume by extension, T5) substantially rebalanced combat rules.
But I like the idea of the design-your-own slugthrower. Not that I want to sit down and spend hours poring over numbers - but more like when I'm world-building, what if the local government forces that the players are likely to encounter have TL9 7.5mm x 30cmm light assault rifles, which are a step up from the standard auto rifle but aren't quite covered in the rules?
By extension, things like Solar Sails, water craft, and air ships as sub-systems in TNE give the referee the option to build game-playable worlds with loving detail. Of course common interstellar tech isn't going to be interested in a commercial aspect of a solar sail. But what about that mysterious ship of unusual design? What are its performance specs? What if there are more than one of them? etc. etc.
I've had a stab at conversions between TNE/T4 and MT. But combat mechanisms appear to have been so extensively rebalanced that I'm not sure it's possible - the way that penetration works in TNE/T4 and MT are very, very different, and energy weapons have been turned on their heads as far as I can see. As an aside - my current hypothesis is that armour in TNE/T4 should be multiplied by 2.5 to get armour value in MT, but then in the TNE standard ship designs, armour ranges from values of 10 through to more than 70, whereas in MT all of them got a rating of 40 (minimum required) - 16 in TNE/T4 by my theory. I suppose MT penetration / attenuation can be calculated by working out when damage gets halved in TNE/T4 against various armour values and coming up with a penetration value from there, with attenuation worked out by comparing TNE/T4 S/M/L/E ranges to the standard CT/MT range bands.
I've had a look at the T5 threads and based on that I think I will purchase T5 - but I would also like to think that I can bring forward detail from MT like the World Builders Handbook, and mods to Classic Traveller like the Gamelords terrain supplements. I'm pretty confident that it'll be an easy task given that central mechanics such as UPP and UWP will remain. From looking at the contents of T5 available on FFE, it looks like all the central mechanics will be there, you just need to add the stories you want from any era you want. Things like Hard Times mechanics for UWP degredation would fit right in.
But on the other hand, I've seen many posters - some quite high ranking here on CoTI - who like MT for its balance of gameplay vs. realism. And after all, given that role playing is primarily about the story telling (yes, with a wargaming bias I'm happy to have thrown in for Traveller - I play Warhammer 40k as well), and the mechanics need to be reasonable. I'm not in favour of the TNE 'body part hit' system - the old UPP 777777 = 3 hits till you're out of action, 5 till you die works fine for me, and I love the way that MT united all vehicles and personnel into the one set of numbers for combat.
I don't want to start a flame war over which systems are 'superior'. But given all of these considerations, I am interested in a system that can be taken down to the sub-atomic level by the referee to construct worlds in detail, while keeping the mechanics simple for running smooth sessions. That's just my style for having fun, and I'd be interested in what other players and referees consider fun as well.