Why do you like your version of traveller?

[The Thing]

This is exactly what has ticked me off with GURPS - the sheer amount of chargen options and the complexion of character generation. I've also thumbed once through GURPS: Vehicles and it looks complex, probably even more complex than Striker, and I've heard that WorldGen is also very detail-oriented. I have nothing against this in general, but it doesn't fit my current style too well (though a part of me loves gearheading, unfortunately I have very little time to gearhead ).

But how many books do you need to play GT well? GURPS mainbook, GT book, Ultratech, Vehicles and First In, or could you play the whole range of Traveller in it with just the mainbook and the GT book?

Well, it depends. If you want to use all the traveller material you'd need gurps 3e, the compendiums and all the traveller stuff, mainly the main book, the alien races modules and the starship system, plus ground forces. You don't really need vehicles for the traveller ship design, the main book and GT starships would do.

The main traveller book doesn't have the stats for some races so the alien races modules would be needed for the whole traveller experience.

If you want to run the ISW period you'd need 4e, the GTIW book and ultratech 4e since the dolts running the gurps end of SJG left weapons and gear out of GTIW. The ship combat system is nicer in GTIW but not totally compatible with GT's rules so you could not use all the advanced rules and goodies in GT starships.

LKW did say that there is a plan to someday update all GT stuff to 4e, but when that may happen and what format it will be in are still unknown.

 

[Rover]

My favored system is T20. I fell in love with the LBB's back in the day, but I was never really satisfied with the rule systems

T20 has the answers to pretty much all of the issues I had with the original.

First and foremost the Chargen is my favorite of any game system. With multiclassing you can make almost any conceivable character.

I also like the d20 combat system in general (some feats are just too much.) The mods made to combat make a lot of sense to me, like the autofire rules, and making Dex the primary stat for combat. The lifeblood/stamina thing was clunky at first, soon became second nature.

I like the wider variety of skills available and the skill resolution system as opposed to CT.

R

PS I guess the big issue I had with CT back then was everything was resolved with D6’s rolls did not progress linearly and I had a hard time wraping my head around it. The difference between 8+ and 10+ on 2D6 is a little harder to figure than 8+ and 10+ on a D20.

 

[Straybow]

Sorry but wrong. GURPS isn't very complex. Download GURPS/Light, it's only 50 pages and that includes Character Generation and Equipment.

The game system boils down to

Take 3D6 and roll under your (modified) skill/attribute

with the Modifiers being few and well defined. No difference between combat and regular tasks. Combat system can work with or without damage locations and with or without the three different damaga types (cut, piercing, blunt). I can teach GURPS Game system to any RPG newbe in 15-30 minutes.

The complex things in GURPS are the character Generation (Something even a 10+ year GURPS-Fan like me does with a program)...

I like the concept of GURPS but find it too unbalanced. Stat costs are way out of proportion to advantages/disadvantages. For example, an 18 takes up a whopping 125 points. I know they want to curb stat-munchkinism but that is excessive. For 50 points one can have wealth at a level that the GM should restrict (iirc 100 times the average), and for 125 points one can have wealth at the Bill Gates level (25 pts per factor of 10 higher = 1000 times the 50 pt level).

At the same time, one can compile a collection of advantages that gives benefits equivalent to a high stat for a far lower number of points. So, instaed of having cookie-cutter high Str/Con fighters you have cookie-cutter Hard To Kill/High Pain Tolerance/yada yada fighters.

Must... restrain... from threadjack... erg...

OK, carry on.

 

[daryen]

But how many books do you need to play GT well? GURPS mainbook, GT book, Ultratech, Vehicles and First In, or could you play the whole range of Traveller in it with just the mainbook and the GT book?

If you are willing to use 3e, then all you *need* is GURPS 3e Lite and the GT sourcebook. That is all you *need*. After that, you can get whatever you *want*. I could go through the various book choices, but at the base you have Far Trader for merchants, First In for scouts, Ground Forces for gun bunnies, and Starships for gearheads. Get the Alien Race books for the races you want. Flavor as desired.

You can always add in the GURPS 3e mainbook and Compendium I, but they really aren't necessary. Simply ignore any adds/disadds you don't have definitions for, and go from there. Seriously, if you can't find the definition of, say, Sanctity, ignore it and move on. There are still plenty of good choices from GURPS 3e Lite; it isn't necessary to have *all* of them. The other non-GT books are *way* more optional. They might have something useful in them, but, for the most part, they are completely unnecessary. (Yes, this includes Space, Ultratech, Vehicles, Biotech, Robots, etc.)

Personally, all of my GT efforts are based on 3e Lite + the various GT books. The rest is pure chrome. (It can be very nice chrome. But it is chrome none the less.) Conveniently, unlike ISW (below), the GT sourcebook includes all of the base Traveller weapons and vehicles to get you started. (Well, it is missing the speeder, but ...)

As an alternative, if you want to run the Interstellar Wars (or a derivative thereof), all you *need* are the two main GURPS 4e books and GT:Interstellar Wars. At that point, you are good to go. Sure, it would be nice to have some spiffier weapons, but, seriously, the weapons in the GURPS 4e books work well enough. You don't *need* Ultratech or Starships or whatever. Just go with those three books and you are set.

 

[mbrinkhues]

I like the concept of GURPS but find it too unbalanced. Stat costs are way out of proportion to advantages/disadvantages. For example, an 18 takes up a whopping 125 points. I know they want to curb stat-munchkinism but that is excessive. For 50 points one can have wealth at a level that the GM should restrict (iirc 100 times the average), and for 125 points one can have wealth at the Bill Gates level (25 pts per factor of 10 higher = 1000 times the 50 pt level).

At the same time, one can compile a collection of advantages that gives benefits equivalent to a high stat for a far lower number of points. So, instaed of having cookie-cutter high Str/Con fighters you have cookie-cutter Hard To Kill/High Pain Tolerance/yada yada fighters.

Must... restrain... from threadjack... erg...

OK, carry on.

I freely admit that GURPS is best played three things: a mature group, a spade and a 9x19mm.

The mature gamers will refrain from over-optimizing characters and instead play a concept. The other two are for "Can Alls" and "Character Optimizers"

Yokes aside. Any attribute above 13 is an extreme (and GURPS states so) and more than one benefit (i.e Hard to kill) is labeled "Cinematic" for a reason.

GURPS requires a GM that is willing to say "NO" during character generation and players who create Characters not by "What are the best values" but by "What is my concept" and then take the costs. This is helped by a GM willing to handwave some point limits and accept that some chars have 5-10 percent more Buildpoints in the end. Templates partially solve the problem since they restrict ads/disads.

As said, CharGen is the biggest effort in GURPS.

 

[mbrinkhues]

Minimum Traveller Basics:

GURPS 3e or GURPS 3e light, GURPS:Traveller(GT), Character Assistant or similar program for CharGen

Recommended Traveller Basics:

GURPS 3e, Compendium I, GURPS:Traveller(GT), Character Assistant or similar program for CharGen

Recommended Add-Ons/Trader Campaign

Far Trader (Trader Templates and Tradeships, Advanced Trading Rules etc)
Starports (Starports and Startowns, Custom officers and all needed Templates)
Any setting book from any Traveller Version (1)

Recommended Add-Ons/Smuggler Campaign

Far Trader (Trader Templates and Tradeships, Advanced Trading Rules etc)
Starports (Starports and Startowns, Custom officers and all needed Templates)
Starships (Ship construction/modification beyond the basic system)
Any setting book from any Traveller Version (1)


Recommended Add-Ons/Merc Campaign

Ground Forces (Army and Marine Templates, Vehicle Construction Rules)
Starmercs (Mercenaries, Lot's of Gear and Character Templates
Any setting book from any Traveller Version (1)


Recommended Add-Ons/Nobles Campaign

Nobles (Noble System and Nobel Templates)
Sir Walter Scotts Ivanhoe, Machiavellies "The Prince", A good book on English Monarchie



Nice to have for Gearheads

Starships (For building and improving ships past the base system in GT)
Ground Forces (Vehicle Construction)
WWII (For more vehicle add-ons like bigger guns)

Nice to have but not necessary

The four Alien books. Only needed if they feature prominently in your campaign or you want them as PC (IMHO only Vagr and Bwap work)

Rim Of Fire. No, not the Traveller Book on Sodomie! It's about the Solomanie Rim and the Solomanie. Nice to read but unless you play there you don't need it. OTOH makes a nice Add-on to Gateway to Destiny

Sword Worlds. A great book - if you play in that region

Least useful

Humanity, most Human variants are not that different to play or they are not really playabel

Behind The Claw, The Marches have been described a lot


(1) Behind the Claw, GT's Spinward Marches book is not worth the price it fetches on EBay. The CT data works quite well

 

[sergeantq]

I still like MT. I started out with CT when it first came out, but I have found MT does what I need it to do (with a few mods).

I also will put in a plug for T-20, different system, but easily adaptable. I have used several monsters out of the d20 books and dropped them into T-20 and had a blast with them.

 

[Straybow]

Yokes aside. Any attribute above 13 is an extreme (and GURPS states so) and more than one benefit (i.e Hard to kill) is labeled "Cinematic" for a reason.

GURPS requires a GM that is willing to say "NO" during character generation and players who create Characters not by "What are the best values" but by "What is my concept" and then take the costs. This is helped by a GM willing to handwave some point limits and accept that some chars have 5-10 percent more Buildpoints in the end. Templates partially solve the problem since they restrict ads/disads.

I have GURPS Lite and don't see that it says an attribute above 13 is "extreme," nor multiple benefits restricted in some way. I do notice that STR is interpreted linearly in GURPS (carrying limit being 2×STR for unencumbered, 4×STR for the next increment, etc). I think the people who make these games underestimate what the human body (and mind, etc) can do and be.

To accommodate the range of physical strength encountered in human beings requires a logarithmic scale. Suppose an average 20yr male (average size and build, makes no particular effort to develop or neglect strength) can bench press 100 lb. Somewhere in the top 16% (one sigma) they'll double that to 200 lb. In the top 2% (two sigma) you'll find they can do 300 lb. Almost any AAA High School in the US has a senior athlete who can bench 400 lb (roughly 3 sigma). In the extreme, the record is over 660 lb. You need a logarithmic scale that doubles more than 2½ times between average and maximum.

(I have a similar objection against the Traveller scale of 1-F.)

A "run of the mill" university athlete would have two attributes above the one-sigma level without spending all day in the weight room. Statistically, that is no extreme. The GURPS CharGen paradigm is basically forcing characters to be "average" in the dullest sense of the word, even for a "heroic" character of 100 points.

[/threadjack]

 

[mbrinkhues]

I have GURPS Lite and don't see that it says an attribute above 13 is "extreme," nor multiple benefits restricted in some way. I do notice that STR is interpreted linearly in GURPS (carrying limit being 2×STR for unencumbered, 4×STR for the next increment, etc). I think the people who make these games underestimate what the human body (and mind, etc) can do and be.

To accommodate the range of physical strength encountered in human beings requires a logarithmic scale. Suppose an average 20yr male (average size and build, makes no particular effort to develop or neglect strength) can bench press 100 lb. Somewhere in the top 16% (one sigma) they'll double that to 200 lb. In the top 2% (two sigma) you'll find they can do 300 lb. Almost any AAA High School in the US has a senior athlete who can bench 400 lb (roughly 3 sigma). In the extreme, the record is over 660 lb. You need a logarithmic scale that doubles more than 2½ times between average and maximum.

(I have a similar objection against the Traveller scale of 1-F.)

A "run of the mill" university athlete would have two attributes above the one-sigma level without spending all day in the weight room. Statistically, that is no extreme. The GURPS CharGen paradigm is basically forcing characters to be "average" in the dullest sense of the word, even for a "heroic" character of 100 points.

[/threadjack]

GURPS Light is a SUBSET of GURPS. One of the things missing are the numerous side-bars and the tables giving labels/decriptions of what a skill-level/attribute equals.

And the 100PT = Hero is only true in a few settings (Fantasy, Gritte WWII), other settings use more starting points. I.e the starting points for a "Nobel" campaign in Traveller can go up to 200PT for a "court intrigue" campaign, same for some Merc or Trader campaigns.

100PT is the starting value in G:Light, the full core book goes into more details as does the Traveller rulesbook and the sourcebooks.

As for the above Athlete: He might have Strength 12 (for Endurance) and Athletics/Running/Jumping/Throwing at 15+. GURPS uses Skills for most of the things, not Attributes. The Attributes are mostly for Skill-Bases, Fatigue, Hitpoints and Willpower/Notice rolls (Can all be modified by Advantages/Disadvantages)

As for cargo loads, that rule is for COMBAT purposes mostly and not for long range travell.

 

[Merxiless]

Well, I like T4, simply because it has more charts for character generation. I was always making up my own for CT.

The half die doesn't bother me. I want the simplicity of CT, without taking hours to do char gen a la Gurps. While GT is nice, characters take forever, and have a skill list a mile long.

I want to be able to do stuff on the fly.

So T4, with some CT books, and grand survey and grand census allow me to do all of that.

 

[poi]

Just the thread I was looking for.

I played a variant of CT, using some rules from 2300, run by Andy Slack, who did a bunch of WD articles back in the day.

I love the Traveller background, especially the Ancients/Grandfather stuff.

I'd like to give it another go, but I can't decide which CD to order from FarFuture. The comments in the thread are nudging me towards CT or MT.

Rules and background wise, what are the differences?

 

[atpollard]

I'd like to give it another go, but I can't decide which CD to order from FarFuture. The comments in the thread are nudging me towards CT or MT.

Rules and background wise, what are the differences?

Since you are familiar with CT, I found MT to be most like Striker (if you remember those vehicle/equipment design rules) with a Task System involving the “difficulty” of the task affecting the chance of success (see the BITS task system for an idea of how this works). Some of the PDF files for T5 contain details on the different task systems used in all of the versions of Traveller.

If you were a big D&D fan, the T20 rules use a D&D like AC/Hit Point combat system with a CT ship and World design system. (Someone, please correct me if I am wrong about that). You may want to consider T20.

Background wise, CT has a big Imperium with a strong government surrounded by other big empires. MT has a rebellion with the imperium shattered into a handful of small kingdoms all at war to destroy the other factions and reunite the empire. The resulting destruction creates multiple small pockets of civilization, surrounded by bands of war torn frontiers, all separated by a no-mans-land of desperate fallen worlds. If you like Star Trek or Star Wars, go with CT. If you like a darker setting like Bladerunner or Serenity, then MT is more your style.

 

[mbrinkhues]

Warning: Some minor spoilers


Background:

Classic Traveller (CT) is settled shortly before the Fifth Frontier War (1105). The 3. Imperium (3I) is resonably safe and powerful, the borders are at best secure (Aslan, K'Kree, Hiver(1)) and at worst in a ColdWar State (Zhodanie, Solomanie). Max TL is 15 and we are looking towards a resonably bright future. Scenarios focused on exploration, Ancients and small-scale warfare


MegaTraveller ist set 1116 shortly after Archduke Dulinor of Iilish and Prince Lucan(as a copycat) decided to change the Imperial Succession by generous application of small-arms ammunition. With no clear succession and candidates for Emperor popping up left and right (Including a Vagr Archduke) the 3I collapses into a civil war.

Early MT is set during the first stage of it when the Vagr invade Corridor, cutting of the Domain of Deneb (incl. the Spinward Marches) and the big fleets clash. Most published material was centered on the Domain of Deneb under self-promoted Archduke Norris trying to secure it's borders against the Vagr, getting some special spare parts etc.

The Hard Times(HT), Assignment:Vigilanty(A:V) and Arrival Vengeance (A) sourcebooks/booklets advanced the timeline to 1125. The factions have burned out and withdrawn to small "Safe" areas they can defend. Most of the 3I is either Borderworlds (Buffer zones somewhat patrolled by a faction) or Wilds (No mans land, often the Warzone between the factions). During the withdrawl each faction (except Deneb) played "Sorched Earth", badly damaging the Infrastructure. The players try to survive and "keep the light burning" by aiding a small interstellar nation (HT, A:V) or by re-contacting each faction (A) in the service of Deneb.


MT is more action oriented with a certain "Mad Max" undertone in the Hard Times.

 

[aramis]

Given the choice between CT and MT...
MT character generation is more decision rich due to more cascades and slightly more skills per term.

MT combat is striker derived... and it works well, but is poorly worded... but is NOT striker.

MT Craft Generation is FAR more complex than CT Bk2, and significantly more complex than CT Bk5, but less so than FF&S... you can just use bk5 or t20 ships if you use the MT HG variant (in the Ref's Manual); you can also use the "personal" combat rules just fine against ships... and just rerate them for MT Hits from the design.

My personal recommendation is both...

 

[Keklas Rekobah]

Why do you like your version of traveller?

"My" version is Classic Traveller, with GURPS Traveller used as a resource for its historical and material content.

I play CT because (1) it was the first version that I ever played, (2) I have more CT material than any other version in any form, (3) the only other version I have ever seen for sale in a brick-and-mortar store is GT.

Other players tell me that their favorite version is far superior to all others (especially the ones that I have), but I may never know if that is true, especially if those versions are not sold in a store where I can examine the actual product in physical form.

I've been burned too often to ever again trust the "virtual" promises of an on-line sales website.