Revised CT?

[mike wightman]

Malenfant, did you ever read "Book 0 An Introduction to Traveller"? It came "free" with the deluxe version of the 2nd edition rules or you could buy it separately.
It does all the things you want for CT.

Alternatively there was the free "Understanding Traveller" booklet.

Ok, so CT 1st edition didn't give a lot of guidance, but then again you aren't comparing like with like.
CT's contempories are D&D (original white box - 3 books), and... ???

Look at what came later MT, TNE, T4, all with a richly detailed setting - although a referee could still opt to thow out all the background and do his own. T20 has the Gateway and 1248 settings detailed in comprehensive sourcebooks (Ok the latter is still in playtest, but people are playing it).

So is your whole argument that QLI should (re)print Book 0???

 

[Takei]

Originally posted by Malenfant:
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.

(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)

I'm an old CT hand myself and never had any trouble with making the assumption that you could still play in-service characters, but you do make a very good point. Like a lot of CT players I came from the wargames background so the rules were perfectly OK for me.

A lot of very valid points have been made on the "Why new people don't play Treveller" thread
and it'd be nice to be able to address some of them in any new book. A good new chapter to include would be GM advice on various campaign types, as was done in T20. Hmmm. Maybe I'll start another thread in T20 asking any newbies how useful they found that chapter?

 

[mike wightman]

Originally posted by Takei:
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

You mean like this :
</font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">Stat DM
1-2 -3
3-4 -2
5-6 -1
7 0
8-9 +1
10-11 +2
12-13 +3
14-15 +4 </pre>[/QUOTE]

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by Sigg Oddra:
[QB] Malenfant, did you ever read "Book 0 An Introduction to Traveller"? It came "free" with the deluxe version of the 2nd edition rules or you could buy it separately.
It does all the things you want for CT.

It's a start, but I don't think it comes close to what is needed - Book 0 is too broad and general, and gaming (and the theory of gaming) has moved on a lot since it was written. I think T20 has more useful info in its Campaigns chapter than Book 0 does, especially with the Campaign Types section (though it could have done with more examples)

So is your whole argument that QLI should (re)print Book 0???

No - it's that the Revised CT should have something more like an expanded version of the T20 Traveller Campaigns chapter.

 

[Takei]

Originally posted by Sigg Oddra:
You mean like this :
</font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">Stat DM
1-2 -3
3-4 -2
5-6 -1
7 0
8-9 +1
10-11 +2
12-13 +3
14-15 +4 </pre>

[/quote]Very close to what I use in my own CT games

Personally, I go for this:
</font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">Stat DM
1-2 -2
3-5 -1
6-8 0
9-11 +1
12-14 +2
15-17 +3</pre>[/QUOTE]I work on the assumption that just below and just above an average stat should provide no bonus. Although I'm not particularly happy with a range of three values as it goes up and down. In fact, what you've suggested may well be better as it follows the two value steps of Striker.

 

[vutpakdi]

Originally posted by Malenfant:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />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. </font>[/QUOTE]Malenfant, would you please be civil and a bit more positive? It really seems like a significant number of your posts concentrate on the negative points of things, and, at least, to me, you come across as being seeing yourself as intellectually superior to almost everyone else, particularly if they express a different opinion. If you disagree, it really seems like you have a tendency to make some sort of deragatory and belittling remark in reply.

Please, relax a little, okay?

Ron

 

[Wayne]

Hunter,

It sounds to me that what you are proposing is what MT should have been. An update of the systems with the OTU as a background but not welded into the system.

Time to join the moot and see the playtest for this baby.

Sign me up for 2 (possible more) copies of CT: Modern/Future

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by Ron Vutpakdi:
Malenfant, would you please be civil and a bit more positive? It really seems like a significant number of your posts concentrate on the negative points of things, and, at least, to me, you come across as being seeing yourself as intellectually superior to almost everyone else, particularly if they express a different opinion. If you disagree, it really seems like you have a tendency to make some sort of deragatory and belittling remark in reply.

Please, relax a little, okay?

I am being civil. I think that my observation is a valid one, and that's been evident through the responses in the various discussions about where Traveller's going. There is definitely this attitude that if you need explanations and ideas in a book then you "lack imagination" and are somehow dumb - and THAT reeks of intellectual superiority more than anything I've said. That attitude is just plain wrong - there's enough divisiveness in Traveller already, we don't need that kind of attitude too. And then you get flykiller saying things like:

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

This statement reeks of conceit and intellectual superiority. How can you accuse me of thinking I'm "intellectually superior" and yet ignore things like that?

It doesn't help that some people are over-defensive of the game, to the point where they refuse to see obvious flaws and problems. And it also doesn't help that some people jump down my throat every time I open my metaphorical mouth about the subject. If people stopped taking valid criticism of the game or their attitudes as a personal attack, maybe we'd get somewhere.

I know flykiller thinks I get my kicks from pointing out the problems in CT, but I don't - it's a game that has many flaws. It's hard for me to be positive about CT as it stands because there's not much there for me to be positive about, and I'm not going to pretend that there is.

EDIT: And I don't see how you can be surprised that I'm writing "negative posts", given that I'm the one who started the threads asking what the problem with Traveller is that new people aren't getting into it? To do that, you've got to be able to look at the game and see what the problems with it are, otherwise you're never going to get anywhere toward answering the question! And once the flaws are identified, publishers will know what to correct about it - that's what I hope the rpgnet thread has helped to do.

 

[Gruffty]

Here's my Cr 0.02 worth on this:

Although I started off in the 80s playeing CT, I could see then it had problems in the game mechanics. LBBs 1-3 made some references to canon, but not reams of detail. I went on to buy LBBs 4-8 and Striker, and again, all had bugs in the mechanics but overall weren't too soaked in the (then expanding) OTU. I bought all the Supps, Advs and Dble Advs to explore the OTU, which I felt was "OK" but still left me with the feeling that "this is not quite what I'm looking for" gamewise.

Then I bought MT, and once again, I liked the way the game system had developed and could see bugs were there in the mechanics, but there, on nearly every page, was the canon drawings, articles, library data, references in the game mechanics. The MT books are soaked in OTU canon.

So I bought T4...

and regretted it....

Then I downloaded the free T20 lite PDF, joined the Moot and downloaded the TGB pdfs, then the T5 pdfs.

I sat one evening with CT Book1 and 4, MT Player's Manual, T4, a paper T20 Lite, a paper TGB and a paper T5, all of which were open on the relevant charcter generation system pages (Marines).

And I thought....."It's still not right".

Canon was everywhere, on nearly every page of a lot of the books, in the rules mechanics. And the more I looked at these books, the more claustrophobic I felt, the sheer weight of the OTU bearing down on me .

So, my conclusions arising from the above:

I want to see a 100% de-canonised Traveller rules system.
The above system would take the best of all the various rules systems, put them together and make it work.
If people want OTU, they could buy it as supplements.
The core rules would include things like "how to create an interstellar empire for use in your TU" or "things/ideas/politcal set-ups/types of wars you might like to use in your TU".

That way, people could just buy the core rules and build their own TU, or could immerse themselves (glub glub glub) in the OTU.

 

[Gruffty]

Dammit, I'll just have to write the game mechanics myself..............

 

[Malenfant]

Thing is, would the Traveller community accept and use a revised CT? Or will they just ignore it and either keep using what they're playing with or wait for "The One True T5"?

 

[Gruffty]

People will do whatever they feel is best for themselves at any given point in time (management speak for "I do not know" ).

I think T5 as a published system is a long way off yet, and whilst there are the CT reprints, T20 and GT freely available, I think any new Traveller gaming system would have to out-shine the competition (i.e. the other Traveller systems) from a game mechanics point of view to make people sit up and notice it. In addition, people are habitual and like what they know, and know what they like (sweeping generalisation there ), so I'm firmly of the opinion that those people who stick to one system would do so anyway, irrespective of any new system on the market.

For example, I never liked using loads of polyhedral dice in D & D (although I did buy them), and wasn't that enthusiastic about the fantasy setting, so I'll probably never buy a T20 based system, unless someone rips the game mechanics apart and standardises the dice used in the game to either all D6 or all D10/D20/D100.

The same goes for characteristics - CT characteristics work, but only so far, but (correct me if I'm wrong here, not owning any T20 books) T20 has more characteristics, some with different names ("Con"? "Wis"?). I'd want to see the characteristics elements re-defined and clarified.

 

[The Hinterworlds Rambler]

I suppose it's a much longer wait than for "GURPS: Third Shift Assembly Workers" or the "GURPS: Melrose Place Sourcebook." my real hope is held out for "GURPS: Smurfs"

T5 does look like it isn't going to happen, but we needn't cheekily dance on its grave. If we had a tenth of the imagination that the Man has, we would all be playing Traveller on the Official Traveller Cruise Ship or something.

 

[jchurchill]

I suppose it's a much longer wait than for "GURPS: Third Shift Assembly Workers" or the "GURPS: Melrose Place Sourcebook." my real hope is held out for "GURPS: Smurfs"
================================================
As I said in another post....the critical missing element is young women in their underwear killing mutants and virus infected zombies. If it works for the video game set then it should certainly work for role playing games.

 

[Gruffty]

I never intended to dance on T5's grave, Baron. I was simply pointing out that with such a multiplicty of Traveller systems available that any new system would have to have aspects and qualities to it that make it a preferable, obvious choice over the other systems.

I am also well aware of the great deal of work MWM has put into Traveller over the years and did not set out to minimise that effort on his part.

 

[Malenfant]

It's not so much "dancing on T5's grave" as accepting it's not going to happen. If people keep looking forward to some mythical version of Traveller that isn't going to be made that's supposedly going to be everything to everyone, then they tend to pass over and ignore the good stuff that's coming out now that may well be what they're after.

I remember when T20 came out there were people here who said that they'd ignore it simply because it wasn't really T5.

 

[jchurchill]

Actually, from what I have seen of the test portions of T5 on the web it looks like a cleaned up version of T4 -- well not that cleaned up because there are still typos and broken bits in the parts posted to the web.

 

[far-trader]

Originally posted by Malenfant:
Thing is, would the Traveller community accept and use a revised CT? Or will they just ignore it and either keep using what they're playing with...

And with that I'll speak out as the lone voice in the wilderness, at least as far as I've seen while reading this thread.

Don't get me wrong Hunter, I wish you nothing but success but I'm not sure this is one that'll fly. I expect you're talking to Marc on this topic and I can't imagine him being too happy about (imo) your idea pulling the rug out from under his own T5 work, unless that is being shelved. I know there are differences but I think they'd be minor enough that all you'd be doing is killing sales or either (or both) T20 or T5 (and maybe CT reprints and your own little book).

Personally I won't be at all interested. I like T20 and want to play more of that and see it tweaked/fixed rather than your efforts divided further. Why not make a proper T20 lite, and introduction to T20, not adapt CT to play like T20. Unless I'm totally missing the idea here. That's the impression I'm getting at least.

I also like CT and still "play with" and would play it just as it is (LBB 1-3 mostly). You already have your fine compilation of CT Basic and I don't see it needing replacing. Make a companion for it maybe but even that is not needed, it appeals to who it appeals to just as it is.

Addressing that point, I don't see that statement (or the one similar to it above) as intellectual snobbery, just a fact. CT was different, a fusion of wargaming and early rpg, it appealed to myself and others for that reason and we didn't need directions beyond what there was to be off and running. I can only imagine how anyone without some prior experince in both would have coped with those first 3 LBB and nothing more.

<seguay>

Much like my cousin who got the Basic D&D for Christmas waaaaay back. He was interested, as were a couple of the adults. I was visiting at his home that Chirstmas day and they knew I played "that" game so they asked could I explain it

I tried. The problem was I was the only one who had a clue, the rest of them, well the closest they had come to the genre was fairy tales as babies and they kept asking the usual questions "How do I win?" "When is the game over?" "Who won?". None of these people were of low intelligence or even limited education, they just had little or no experience with the genre of swords and sorcery fantasy and all their gamesmanship background was of the sport, board and card game variety, including many advanced games (chess for eg.). All games that are conducted as a test of whatever where one person or team plays against another to determine a winner by some scoring. Quite different from rpg's and a concept they failed to get in that brief aborted attempt, for which I take most of the blame since I failed to get it across due to my own inexperience in teaching rpg'ing.

Anyway back to the topic I just don't see a need for another variation of Traveller, especially from a company with an active version in the market, and certainly not when it's a step back to bridge to the original. It's called Classic for a reason, learn from Coke's experiment and just don't go there is my advice.

 

[Malenfant]

Anyway back to the topic I just don't see a need for another variation of Traveller, especially from a company with an active version in the market, and certainly not when it's a step back to bridge to the original. It's called Classic for a reason, learn from Coke's experiment and just don't go there is my advice.

This is a good point I think. I'd be the first to say that CT needs a complete overhaul, but then isn't that really what all subsequent versions of the game have been?! Well, at least MT was definitely a refined/consolidated CT, and T4 was supposedly a refined CT gone down a different path.

The more I think about it, I think refining T20 itself might be more worthwhile than trying to revamp an old system. From the sound of it the new system would be a completely new engine in practice anyway, with bits based on CT. Oddly enough, I thought that was the point of T20 - using the same CT systems but in a d20 framework?

It sounds like Hunter wants to have a non-d20 Traveller option that's like T20. Couldn't that be done more easily by moving away from the d20 trademark and going completely OGL? Then at least you might have more freedom to reinvent mechanics. Though that said, T20 was practically an OGL book anyway, since it shared very little with D&D. But at least if you went OGL you'd have the option of new characteristics, and you could put in advantages and disadvantages and possibly lose the feats - it gives you more versatility in chargen

.

I'd much rather see a second edition of T20 with everything revamped as Hunter wants it to be than a new CT myself.

 

[siefertma2]

I think it's also important to note that OGL and D20 are well past their peak. We are begining to see more and more of the D20-Boom game companies begining to come out with their own game systems rather than relying on D20 material.

We can only ride the OGL gravy-train for so long.