I'm coming in a bit late here (ok, THIRTY PAGES late
) so if I rehash anything I may have missed in my cursory skim of what went before please forgive my oversight.
Traveller has six incarnations of rules sets now. CT, MT, TNE, T4, T20, GurpsTrav, and T5 (if you care to count it in its unfinished state) makes seven. I have GM'd or played in all but the last one, with the bulk of my time spent using TNE. They all work well enough. They all do the job. None of them are perfect. None of them will ever be perfect. I have tweaked the rules in all of them to suit my GM style and/or fancy.
Of the rules sets, my favorites have been a CT/MT amalgam and T20. That’s my preference, not an endorsement. I have friends in several states that will never play Traveller, but buy T20 because its another D20 plug in that they can use with other games they play or run. I also have friends who will never play T20 because its "just not traveller".
And there in lies the rub.
Traveller does not need another rules set. It has plenty of them. It does not need a rehash of old rules that will only be played by semi-progressive minded grognard types (like me). What it needs is new blood.
In my (admittedly limited) experience, the issue that people have with the Traveller tends to be the OTU itself. Often touted as the largest and most fully realized setting in existence, I rather think sometimes that the OTU is a victim of its own success. It happens to be TOO big, TOO well realized, and in many ways forged in stone.
If you wish to play a true exploration campaign, there aren’t too many frontiers. IIRC, the Solomani and the Zhodani hold the only true frontiers. In most settings the Imperium is either fenced in or trying to reclaim blasted bits of its former self. All well and good. I’ve had fun with these, but they are not new ground.
Don't get me wrong. I have enjoyed many long hours with the OTU setting. Its a wonderful gaming environment... IF you understand the setting. But there have been times when I have longed for a true space exploration game in a setting that wasn't so very big, or where ships weren't limited to six parsecs per week. Or where the aliens were different. And please note… I am a fan of the OTU.
The almost universal complaint I have had as a GM when dealing with new players has been that there is simply too much to absorb. I’ve been playing this game since 1986, and I still don’t have all the bits and pieces. How can the newbie possibly get it all?
The simple answer is… they can’t.
So, here comes the sacrilegious statement. Perhaps what Traveller needs to attract new blood is a new setting. Not a new milieu. Not a new star cluster. Not a war scrapped rehash of what already has been. But something altogether new. Not that I wouldn’t mind a full compendium of the totality of Imperial space traveller, but maybe a complete new setting is in order.
It’s a thought anyway.
