Revised CT?

[hunter]

Originally posted by plop101:
I dunno about 'tweaking' vehicles, starships, and personal combat; I think that would be alot more like an extensive redo. However, it would be very easy to lift the Trade and Commerce and Starship Economics sections out of T20; there just tweaked versions of the ones in CT.

Starship construction in T20 is nothing more than a revised version of High Guard. Vehicles were never really done with the exception of Striker.

A question for Mr Hunter: How far along is this? Are you in the idea and conception phase, or is this at the drawing board, or are you constructing the new version?

I plead the 5th...


Hunter

 

[aramis]

I'm likely to buy it, at least the core book.

Sounds pretty good, actually.

 

[mike wightman]

Put me down for two of them now...

When's the playtest???

 

[plop101]

from Sigg Oddra:

When's the playtest???

Yeah, sign me up for that playtest!

My current job has me 7 on and 7 off, so I could put two weeks a month into the project.

from Hunter:

I plead the 5th...

Again, quoting Adv 6:

Interesting.

I wonder how you would deal with Book 4 and Striker. Hmmmm...

 

[Andrew Boulton]

This could either be Very Good or Very Bad.

 

[Takei]

Originally posted by hunter:
Nope, haven't mentioned it before, probably shouldn't have then.

Originally posted by hunter:
heheh CT: Modern....

Hunter

Or, more appropriately, CT: Future or even Far Future

It sounds like a very good project, and one I'd definately like to be involved in.

The T20 combat mechanics would certainly port over nicely. Defence would be 8 + Dex mod?

The more I think about this the nicer it's getting!

EDIT: Should've read Hunter's post properly about using T20 combat mechanics! Changed my combat comment to reflect this.

I think that using the d20 task mechanic (using the d20 SRD difficulties) would port over very nicely as well, rather than the more involved DGP task system.
<runs for cover>

 

[mike wightman]

I want it...

oops, I'm repeating myself

I think that this is a seriously good idea.

As for title how about:

Traveller:
future role playing

 

[Ranger]

This sounds like a good idea to me. I know I'd buy a copy based on the concept that Hunter has layed out here.

 

[Takei]

Originally posted by hunter:
Nope, haven't mentioned it before, probably shouldn't have then.

Hunter

But it's out of the bag now!

That being the case, do you intend to get some sort of playtest going? Or even create a catagory on the boards like Spica where interested parties could bounce ideas around?

 

[siefertma2]

One suggestion for character creation: Allow a little more freedom in character creation. What fun is it to play a middle aged RETIRED marine or scout when you play an active scout or marine in the prime of their lives?

 

[hunter]

Originally posted by Takei:
The T20 combat mechanics would certainly port over nicely. Defence would be 8 + Dex mod?

Yes but unlike in T20, AR would NOT add to defense, only reduce damage.

I think that using the d20 task mechanic (using the d20 SRD difficulties) would port over very nicely as well, rather than the more involved DGP task system.

Task system for MT was good. My only real beef with it was it wasn't graduated enough. Ranging the difficulties in blocks of 2 rather than 4 would keep it compatible with T20's system and not really change anything as far as how the MT system worked.


Hunter

 

[hunter]

Originally posted by Takei:
That being the case, do you intend to get some sort of playtest going? Or even create a catagory on the boards like Spica where interested parties could bounce ideas around?

It would show up in the Moot.

Hunter

 

[hunter]

Originally posted by Mark A. Siefert:
One suggestion for character creation: Allow a little more freedom in character creation. What fun is it to play a middle aged RETIRED marine or scout when you play an active scout or marine in the prime of their lives?

This could be done in CT already though I will admit it wasn't specifically noted that you could. No reason why the referee couldn't let a player stop at a given point in character creation and begin the campaign from there for an active military campaign.

Hunter

 

[Michael Taylor]

----------------------------------------------------
QUOTE: "I woudl like to see a combination way of generation. 1/2 random 1/2 chosen. This way you might get a cool skill you did not think about before but still have the core skills you were looking for..."

You mean JOT-10?

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by hunter:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Mark A. Siefert:
One suggestion for character creation: Allow a little more freedom in character creation. What fun is it to play a middle aged RETIRED marine or scout when you play an active scout or marine in the prime of their lives?

This could be done in CT already though I will admit it wasn't specifically noted that you could. No reason why the referee couldn't let a player stop at a given point in character creation and begin the campaign from there for an active military campaign.</font>[/QUOTE]I hated this about CT myself (and I never noticed the option to stop generating the character explicitly mentioned). The last thing I want to play in an RPG is a retired old guy .

If you're going to do this, I'd suggest including some help for GMs wanting to run "active career campaigns" too (ie. if all players work for the Navy, or a Merchant company, or the Scouts...)

 

[vutpakdi]

Originally posted by Malenfant:
I hated this about CT myself (and I never noticed the option to stop generating the character explicitly mentioned). The last thing I want to play in an RPG is a retired old guy .

If you're going to do this, I'd suggest including some help for GMs wanting to run "active career campaigns" too (ie. if all players work for the Navy, or a Merchant company, or the Scouts...)

Help? What help do you need? It always seemed quite apparent to me that you could always run characters that were active career fellows by just saying that characters were still in their chosen careers. The "mustering out" benefits were just things or benefits people picked up along the way.

Active career campaigns were just ones where people were chosen from related careers (say navy and marines) and run from there.

Ron

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by Ron Vutpakdi:
Help? What help do you need?

The sort of help that comes with other RPGs but that didn't come with CT. Advice and ideas on what sort of stories you could run in a military (or whatever) campaign, and how to keep things flowing, how to justify PC parties, and any pitfalls of the subgenre to avoid.

 

[flykiller]

What help do you need? It always seemed quite apparent to me that you could always run characters that were active career fellows by just saying that characters were still in their chosen careers.

me too, all the way back in 1984. but lots of people see only the rules and not the possibilities. just the way it is.

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by flykiller:
but lots of people see only the rules and not the possibilities. just the way it is.

It's not a case of that at all. There seems to be this belief that you and some others have that actually explaining what you can do with a game is somehow bad - and worse, that if you would like to see that sort of explanation then you're intellectually inferior to those who don't think they need it. Frankly, that's utter BS and complete rot, and the sooner you get it out of your heads the better.

CT is a very badly explained game. It's laid out more like wargame rules - lots of "bullet point" rules with little flow between them. There's little elaboration or clarification of the rules. And to cap it all, there is NO guidance provided to the GM at all - it's just a case of "here are the rules, do stuff with it". And also, the rules for different things are randomly scattered across books 1-3, which doesn't help.

I'm sure you'll just say I'm "flogging CT", but if you do then find me something in the corebooks that tell you what to actually DO with the game.

The "Final Word" in Book 3 even admits that Traveller is "a framework describing the barest of essentials for an infinite universe" and that "the greatest burden, of course, falls on the referee, who must create entire worlds and societies through which the players will roam". And what assistance does CT provide in this endeavour? Just a sentence saying "go look through scifi literature". Gee, how helpful - thanks for that.

There is more to roleplaying games than just the game engine, which is what CT provides. If the purpose of CT is to allow GMs to create an "infinite universe" for players to adventure in, don't you think a little advice and some ideas to kickstart the imagination would actually be useful?

(for comparison, the other generic games out there that I can think of - GURPS Space, Star HERO, and D20Future - provide such advice and inspiration in spades. Until Traveller does the same, it'll never compare to them as a toolkit to create scifi universes)

 

[Takei]

Originally posted by hunter:

Yes but unlike in T20, AR would NOT add to defense, only reduce damage.

Makes sense.
I guess the figure juggling would be done with armour (keeping weapon damages as per TA1)?

Task system for MT was good. My only real beef with it was it wasn't graduated enough. Ranging the difficulties in blocks of 2 rather than 4 would keep it compatible with T20's system and not really change anything as far as how the MT system worked.


Hunter

Steps of 2 sounds much better, and keeps more in line with CT. Striker used steps of 2 in it's attack tables so I never quite understood why MT went over to steps of 4.
One thing I never really liked about the MT system was having the stat modifyer being stat/4. I prefer the d20 system of average stat giving no bonus and working up and down from there. But that's a Moot point