Hated
Hated the rationale for retconning 3500years-in-the-future, story-friendly technology and downgrading it to stuff based on Reagan's Star Wars program 1980's research papers 'to make it more realistic'. I thought at the time there might be some TL9-15 stuff that supercedes our 1980's understanding materials, weapons, high energy physics, etc. but c'est la vie. The concept of A-grav and Jump seemed almost only begrudingly included because they were intrinsically necessary to the setting without breaking it outright and calling it something other than Traveller.
Hated replacing the simplest, most consistent game system I'd used for years with their house System rules. So that my players could what, use 3500 year old individually statted specific 20th century guns from the extended weapon supplements of TW2K, etc? ("
That FN FAL belongs in a Museum!" "So, Doctor Jones, do you!") The half dozen ammo types and 'genericized' guns for all the different TL's from various Challenge Magazines (Missing Links/Advanced Lasers, etc.), MT and/or CT Book 4 Mercenary already had way more granularity in ironmongery than I would ever need for space opera setting, and enough even for a historical earth American Civil War setting.
Hated the reset button of Virus, and anomaly of it hitting everyone but Regency, somehow the Windhorn 'barrier' and the chaotic vargr get their act together with the Regency to keep it from shutting down 'classic areas'. Also, the game's name of
Traveller only really applied anymore to these bottled up Regency areas.
Hated the accelerated corruption of the Imperial Nobility to help soften the blow of their going away through oddball, and sometimes patently bizarre retconning. All forms of anagathics now interlace with jump-travel to give rich nobles heart attacks?
Hated that the Regency's democratic 'reforms' - they felt like a badly veiled and jingoistic attempt to turn the 'safe Traveller goodguys' into the United Stars of America. Its been said repeatedly that this was not their intention, but it sure
felt like it. The game didn't evolve/last long enough to alter that perception.
Hate it in retrospect because I associate it with the end of DGP and their contributions to Traveller, and TNE, to me at least, even seemed to herald the beginning of the end (their Hard Times if you will) of GDW. It felt like bad karma all around.
Hated the reset button for the Zhodani in particular, and psionics in general, and how impossibly the secret of a lightspeed moving Empress Wave as kept for thousands of years prior to the game's setting.
Loved -
(Not so much TNE, but Hard Times/Survival Margin buildup to it.)
Loved the tie-in of Signal GK's infamous chips with Virus, and scifi implications.
Loved the notion that the K'Kree had been ended. Badly. (Though from interviews, etc. it wasn't so much an ending, as another reset button, whereby they can become the Big Bad Beetleborgs *shudder*).
Loved reading Dulinor's last few regretful accounts, and him being eaten by a harvesting machine. (Somehow this has always been more satisfying than the bomb-death he got off lightly with in the GURPS universe.)
Loved the mysteries of the Empress Wave, the Something Big Is Coming (though, not that it seemed yet another reset button), Avery, Longbow, and the hints that Strephon was psionic.
Loved the oddly danced around issue of Norris and his psionic chief aide being very close friends. ~Very~ close, and Norris's heir is a true-clone? Seemed odd that if they weren't in a romantic relationship that the writers would pad it so its like they're dancing around the issue - though it was more the whole political 'private life is private' attitude. Did remind me of an old JTAS article discussing at length Women Playing Roleplaying Games, and dealing with/handling the issues that players unfamiliar with female RP'ers might have, as well as what female players could bring to the game - it just seemed alien to me, to even need to consider the gender of my players as a factor. *sorry, long digression*
Loved - the cover of the core book, fwiw.
Liked - That they at least kept the fav'd 'pet' major races in intact pockets in Regency. "
One day we'll find it, the Grampa Connection - The Vargr, The Aslan, Humaniti. p/~"
