What version of Traveller do you play?

[aramis]

In my experiences:

A good ruleset can make an inexperienced GM worth playing under.
A Bad ruleset will make an inexperienced GM completely annoying.

A Good GM can make any system playable.
A Good GM with a good system is playable and not a stress source for the GM.

A Great GM can override any system and make it fun.

Most of the people who claim "System doesn't matter" are not GMing... The game systems job is to make life easier on the GM.

 

[grendelttroll]

I am a T5 playtester who has a few of the T5 rules to be tested. Where the T5 rules fall short, I make up for using MT at this time. I will post my reviews once I get enough data to make such statements.

All in all, my favorite rules were TNE, but my longest running campaign (3 years) was done with MT. I know that one the best. That is why I am playtesting T5 that way.

 

[Smeelbo]

T20, baby!

For my money's worth, it's T20, all the way. Not only perhaps the best implementation of Traveller (although the comments on this board will have me taking a second look back at Classic), but also the best D20 game I've seen to date. My only complaints are:

1) Very hard to read. Really needs an editor, and a good writer. Once you get it, it's good, but getting there is a real chore. Numerous structural errors.

2) Very hard to get into the store. QuikLink Interactive has listed it as being available, and Alliance claims to offer it, but I haven't been able to get a copy into the store for over two years. I could probably move at least twenty copies a year between our two stores, if it were only actually available for me to stock.

Smeelbo

 

[Rindis]

Play? People have time to play?!? o:

I'll admit to not being able to concretely decide which system I'd end up with if I was to launch a game tomorrow.

One part says GURPS. It's a good fit for the Traveller style of universe, I'm very familiar with it, and pretty much anyone I'd have in my group is at least passingly familiar with it.

But another part says that GURPS has grown into a more unwieldy system than I'd really like to use. That part suggests MT with the ships done via High Guard. Of course, then half my players would know the rules better than I, and the other half wouldn't know them at all.

 

[Antony]

I mostly use the TNE rules but largely use them for a non-TNE setting. This is partly because of FF&S1 (being something of a gearhead).

 

[Ishvar]

I know Traveller for a long time and I have not played many games so far. I am the Referee and I have always been deterred by the sheer amount of work required to prepare a Traveller game.

Moreover, I am more and more fed up with rules and especially turn based ones.

Now that I have discovered the Story Engine (a scene resolution based generic game system) I am planning to play again in the Traveller universe and in several eras.

I have realized a few weeks ago that each time I was thinking about a Science-Fiction role playing game I was either thinking about Traveller or either comparing a new game with Traveller. I think that it is time to play Traveller rather than think about it.

Engage !

 

[hunter]

You know, it has really surprised me how well T20 has been received over the years. I honestly expected a LOT more resistance to it.

Not that I am complaining mind you!

 

[Ishvar]

You know, it has really surprised me how well T20 has been received over the years. I honestly expected a LOT more resistance to it.

Not that I am complaining mind you!

I am very surprised about the number of players having adopted the D20 rules. As far as I am concerned I can't imagine playing a science fiction game with such rules. To be honest, the D20 rules are the quintessence of what I don't like in role playing rules... levels and tons of rules for everything.

 

[Devin Parker]

Classic Traveller here.

Having said that, I've only very recently discovered Traveller, and I wanted to start from the beginning, as it were. So far I dig the relative intuitiveness of it, though I haven't yet run a game.

 

[YunusWesley]

Interstellar Wars

I haven't seen much in this thread about the new GURPS Traveller setting, Interstellar Wars. It would seem to qualify as Yet Another Setting, but not system; unless you make a big deal about it being based on 4th ed. GURPS, where previous are based on 3rd.

I've been getting back into tabletop RPGs for the first time in 10 years and have been really only acquiring GURPS books. I feel like I can learn most rules if I have somebody else to play with, but for things *I* want to run, I want to learn well a rule system that's both flexible and well-established.

 

[sirpedro]

If I was to run a Traveller game today, I would go back to the basics, CT for me. When MT came out I picked it up to use as a "supplement" to CT, and I've played GURPS Traveller (like a GURPS games character gen. takes for ever). I just picked up T20, and I'm finding it cumbersome, maybe because its a new system and I'm just not used to it, but having to flip back and forth between multipul pages over and over again is either bad editing or bad design, I'm not sure which yet.

 

[whitedalek]

OOOOooooooh I can be an angsty emo vampire!!!!!!!!! Cooooool

(I know that's gonna piss somebody off )

And that said I'm gonna shut up and quit derailing this thread and quit breaking my own rules (sorry about that Mike!).

can we get emo Zhodani vampyrs??

or maybe SolSec's secret wolven project (lycanthrope supersoldiers)

or the eldritch horror of Droyne space...

but, really - it's the undead Hiver Zombie Army that gives me the willies... ; )

 

[soloprobe]

Me I use CT, with T4's task system.....

 

[Thoth-Amon]

CT for me. Started playing it when it was released and am still in love with the dark and grittiness of it, not unlike WFRP. My two favorite games of all time, BTW.

 

[magnusfalkirk]

Traveller Versions

Greetings,

I realize I'm coming to this thread late but I started out with Traveller when it first came out in 1977 and have been very happy with it. Looking at the poll itself I'm glad to see that, if you count Mongoose Traveller under "Other", it would be considered the 8th version of Traveller.

Which leads me to a question of my own. Why is it that some people call Mongoose Traveller the 5th version of Traveller? Are they ignoring Gurps Traveller, T20 and Traveller Hero? Someone please explain this to me if you can because if definitely confuses me.

Thanks for your time,
Magnus

 

[Hemdian]

Why is it that some people call Mongoose Traveller the 5th version of Traveller? Are they ignoring Gurps Traveller, T20 and Traveller Hero? Someone please explain this to me if you can because if definitely confuses me.

Either:

GDW produced three different game systems for Traveller (CT, MT, and TNE). So when they folded, the next version (produced by Imperium Games) was officially known as T4. Marc Miller then started on an update ... originally to be T4.1 but later known as T5. A few years went by, during which time we had GT, T20, and HT. But still Marc toiled on T5. When MG came on the scene it was planned that Marc’s T5 with by ‘advanced’ Traveller, and MG would produce a lite or ‘basic’ version. In the end, however, T5 wasn’t ready in time for MG to make a lite version of it. So instead MgT was really CT+ ... but some people still think of it (erroneously) as T5-lite.

Or:

Alternatively, MG’s launch PR was a bit clumsy. I remember sitting at the BITS stand at Gencon UK and reading the MG flyer that announced that Traveller would soon be back in print for the first time in over a decade. I remember looking around at all the BITS/T20/GT/AvengerPress books and thinking ‘huh?’

So the confusion probably stems from MgT originally going to be T5-lite, exacerbated by a muddled PR flyer.

 

[BlackBat242]

Greetings,

I realize I'm coming to this thread late but I started out with Traveller when it first came out in 1977 and have been very happy with it. Looking at the poll itself I'm glad to see that, if you count Mongoose Traveller under "Other", it would be considered the 8th version of Traveller.

Which leads me to a question of my own. Why is it that some people call Mongoose Traveller the 5th version of Traveller? Are they ignoring Gurps Traveller, T20 and Traveller Hero? Someone please explain this to me if you can because if definitely confuses me.

Thanks for your time,
Magnus

Because Gurps Traveller, T20 and Traveller Hero were all simply providing a Traveller simulation for another game system, and were not actually stand-alone versions of the Traveller game system.

Of course, some of us think TNE & T-4 were also different systems (rather than modifications of Traveller) as well.

 

[aramis]

Alternatively, MG’s launch PR was a bit clumsy. I remember sitting at the BITS stand at Gencon UK and reading the MG flyer that announced that Traveller would soon be back in print for the first time in over a decade. I remember looking around at all the BITS/T20/GT/AvengerPress books and thinking ‘huh?’

So the confusion probably stems from MgT originally going to be T5-lite, exacerbated by a muddled PR flyer.

Heck, CT was back in print at that point, with TWO publishers; QLI produced just a consolidated bk1-3, and Marc DBA FFE had reprinted the whole thing in the big floppy books. They made it into my FLGS...

It wasn't just bad PR work, it was outright factually wrong (intentional or not).

 

[beowulf2044]

If it's not currently being published, it's dead to me. Except for T-5, which I decided against from what I saw before it was born.

 

[aramis]

If it's not currently being published, it's dead to me. Except for T-5, which I decided against from what I saw before it was born.

You realize that CT, MT, TNE, 2300AD, and T4 are all still available legally from Far Future Enterprises?

GT is still available from SJG...

Only T20 and HeroTraveller are in fact out of publication, as the term is used by law.