Originally posted by Havocatalyst:
I have a good gaming group that would really like to play T20, they are familiar with the D20 system but they cant understand why Traveller isn't like many of the other sci-fi RPG, Traveller doesnt have cybernetics or world shattering psionics or even one handed photon blasters that can level a building. I have one moron that says "I dont like any game were you can die in character creation." or "Traveller tech is based on the 1970s we have more advanced tech today than is in Traveller." I refuse to change Traveller to make it more like say Alternity or Star Wars. I feel that Traveller is fine, and is anti-munchkin, especially the older versions. Can anyone help me to explain the elegance of Traveller or should I just find someone else to RPG with.
To respond to the author's original post; apologies if this has already been mentioned, but you should keep in mind that Traveller, as originally conceived, was meant to be a GURPS like system. What I mean by that is that it was never originally meant to have a whole "world" or "universe" setting unto itself, but rather be able to provide a system that could present a variety of environments and situations to keep the players entertained.
It wasn't until the game became more defined with addons that its own existence became more defined. The technology levels and law levels, as originally presented, were meant to be descriptors of world's general attitude and knowledge base for the GM/referee to access when presenting the players with a certain environment.
Traveller can have all the things your players want, but you need to extract yourself from the mire of sticking with the "strict canon" (as some might call it), and present your players with things like mind-shattering psionics or mega-photon-blasters. The inherit abilities of such mental powers would be something well beyond what strictly described in the rulebook, but it's certainly not a thing that could not be handled by the rules nor even defined by them. Ditto with the weapon; it's tech base may be rather high (TL17?), and not fall within the scope of some weapon's chart, but that's where you the Referee need to come up with how such a device works.
Myself, I used to take my players to all kinds of crazy places during the 1980's when we played a great deal. Places that weren't defined by anything in the rules, but by using the rules that the players had for their own devices I was able to fashion how they were able to deal with really fantastic stuff: Everything from dragons to super landroving tank-fortresses, to deathstar like space stations. It's all doable. You just need to be able to let yourself go and think "OK, this player wants device-X or power-Y for his character .... now how would that work? How do I define such a thing for Traveller?"
And that's where you start coming up with range modifiers, weight statistics, power and/or power consumption, and other aspects.
Again, Traveller was meant to be able to accomodate all those things. I sometimes think people let their immaginations get stifled by too much conventionalization; i.e. "this is what's defined, so we're only going to use this..." You don't need to create ultra-powerful things for your players, but you owe it to them to be inventive to create things that they might like to experience.
