<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Arjen:
I was thinking about T20, but the myriad of game systems has gotten me dazed and confused. So I am kinda interested in what is, in your opinion, better in T5 (and the other 'real' Travellers
) than Gurps, and especially T20?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
In all honesty, at this point I'd suggest T20 as the way for you to go. T^5 won't be out for years (and that's optimistic!), CT/MT IMO require a great deal of tinkering that a newbie wouldn't be able to do, TNE is long out-of-print (and wasn't that great to begin with), T4 is terrible (and also oop), and you already know about GURPS.
I'm not on the T20 playtest and thus know nothing (or at least very very little) of the specifics of how T20 will work, so my objections to it (and d20 in general) are purely philosophical:
But that's just me. As I said, at this point T20 looks like the best game in town. I have great confidence that Martin, Hunter, et al (under Marc Miller's watchful eye) will be crafting great setting material, and all of the playtesters (or at least all of the publicly vocal ones) insist that the T20 rules come very close to approximating the elusive 'Traveller feel,' which is what's most important (and, IMO again, has never really been there in GURPS Trav).
So buy it, and play it. And if, after awhile, you grow dissatisfied with d20's mechanics (and haven't been brainwashed by WotC into thinking the human mind can only possibly comprehend one set of rpg rules per lifetime), buy the CT reprints or track down a used copy of MT and see the other (IMO superior) philosophy of game design in action. And then you can join the rest of us in clamoring for another edition of 'real' Traveller
I was thinking about T20, but the myriad of game systems has gotten me dazed and confused. So I am kinda interested in what is, in your opinion, better in T5 (and the other 'real' Travellers
In all honesty, at this point I'd suggest T20 as the way for you to go. T^5 won't be out for years (and that's optimistic!), CT/MT IMO require a great deal of tinkering that a newbie wouldn't be able to do, TNE is long out-of-print (and wasn't that great to begin with), T4 is terrible (and also oop), and you already know about GURPS.
I'm not on the T20 playtest and thus know nothing (or at least very very little) of the specifics of how T20 will work, so my objections to it (and d20 in general) are purely philosophical:
- <LI>Class/Level, Experience Points, Armor Class: These (plus Alignment and Hit Points, for those keeping track) were the very things that drove me away from D&D -- and straight towards MegaTraveller -- back in the 80s, and they're all still there. While I can understand their appeal some games/gamers, I still prefer systems (specifically Traveller and Chaosium's BRP) that don't have them. YMMV, but after ~15 years this is something I'm pretty set regarding.
<LI>Single Platform: the notion of a single rules platform which all (or, at any rate, most) games would employ is troubling enough to me. That the platform being employed is one I don't particularly like anyway makes it doubly so. The notion that the OGL allows setting-designers to publish their material without having to devise a whole new rules engine to go along with it is nice, but when that leads to games with established (and IMO better) rules engines of their own like Traveller and Call of Cthulhu feeling the need to 'go d20' in order to keep market share, that sits very uneasily with me.
But that's just me. As I said, at this point T20 looks like the best game in town. I have great confidence that Martin, Hunter, et al (under Marc Miller's watchful eye) will be crafting great setting material, and all of the playtesters (or at least all of the publicly vocal ones) insist that the T20 rules come very close to approximating the elusive 'Traveller feel,' which is what's most important (and, IMO again, has never really been there in GURPS Trav).
So buy it, and play it. And if, after awhile, you grow dissatisfied with d20's mechanics (and haven't been brainwashed by WotC into thinking the human mind can only possibly comprehend one set of rpg rules per lifetime), buy the CT reprints or track down a used copy of MT and see the other (IMO superior) philosophy of game design in action. And then you can join the rest of us in clamoring for another edition of 'real' Traveller
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