Proneutron
SOC-13
EASILY for me were the original core MT books. Unusable as printed. I went back to CT until MgT came out.
Your biggest waste of money?
- Thread starter Border Reiver
- Start date
coliver988
SOC-14 1K
Honestly for me nothing has been a waste of money. I bought stuff, may or may have used it, but enjoyed reading it at least once, sometimes dozens of times now. And even the stuff I will never directly use has some use, for inspiration if nothing else.
I have mostly stopped getting Traveller stuff as I maybe regret some of those big boxed sets I got from Kickstarter the last couple of years and will likely never use. But I had more discretionary income at the time and I may use them...though half are fully just regurgitating already published things, so I don't need yet another version of the same thing I already have 2 or 3 version if (trying to kick the completionist / FOMO cycle with varying success)
And finally, I have never regretted any of the 3rd party stuff I've accumulated over the decades: I like supported the "small" guy as I think anyone brave enough to publish their creations deserves a good chance (possibly as I keep thinking I may like to try, but am far too much of a coward to put myself out there. The internet can be a cruel place!)
I have mostly stopped getting Traveller stuff as I maybe regret some of those big boxed sets I got from Kickstarter the last couple of years and will likely never use. But I had more discretionary income at the time and I may use them...though half are fully just regurgitating already published things, so I don't need yet another version of the same thing I already have 2 or 3 version if (trying to kick the completionist / FOMO cycle with varying success)
And finally, I have never regretted any of the 3rd party stuff I've accumulated over the decades: I like supported the "small" guy as I think anyone brave enough to publish their creations deserves a good chance (possibly as I keep thinking I may like to try, but am far too much of a coward to put myself out there. The internet can be a cruel place!)
BackworldTraveller
SOC-13
Easy answer - The bag I bought to carry my Traveller books, figures and dice...All it did was allow some erk to pick the lot up in one go and walk out of the convention with it unnoticed!
coliver988
SOC-14 1K
ouch! that really, really sucks.
For me it was T4, and especially T4 FF&S.
I got caught up in the buzz around T4 and actually bought 2 books, I guess to treat one as a "collectible". But was off put by the layout and presentation of the book. It was a seemingly impenetrable wall of text.
And FF&S 2 was a typesetting disaster that, at a glance, didn't offer really anything much over FF&S 1.
I have held off on T5 due to its eternal development cycle.
I haven't bothered with MgT because I didn't want a rehash of Book 1-3.
I got caught up in the buzz around T4 and actually bought 2 books, I guess to treat one as a "collectible". But was off put by the layout and presentation of the book. It was a seemingly impenetrable wall of text.
And FF&S 2 was a typesetting disaster that, at a glance, didn't offer really anything much over FF&S 1.
I have held off on T5 due to its eternal development cycle.
I haven't bothered with MgT because I didn't want a rehash of Book 1-3.
Timerover51
SOC-14 5K
Do not write off T5. I have T5.09 in PDF from DriveThru, and was on the kickstarter for T5.10. There is a lot there, but it has its uses. I do not view it as a waste of money at all.
Yup.
There are many things in T5 that are portable to other systems.
The World Gen and System Gen rules are edition transposable without issue, and are improved as to realistic contents over all other editions.
The drive technologies can be ported to CE, CT and MGT1 near-seamlessly, and minor effort for most others.
I wouldn't quantify MgT as an LBB rehash, they are their own things.
Don't want to spend money, get some of the free CE stuff for a taste of the differences.
With the caveat that, while based upon MGT 1e, CE is moved a step to the side and a step back towards CT...
Not being a detailed student of the system, I just saw variant of the LBB stuff. Simple trade, simple starship design, "same" character generation. Mechanically and systemically, it seemed very similar to LBB. The RPG mechanics may have been different, I'm not really a cognoscenti on RPG mechanics.
TNE advanced equipment to a whole new level by expanded on what was done in Striker with FF&S, making it fundamental to the system. FF&S was written in cohort with TNE, so as to design all of the standard ships, vehicles, and weapons and such. As will all things there's an evolution, and bugs, and gaps, but more so than not they started from a clean slate and worked up. Similarly with combat and how it applied to all of this. If you fire a Body Pistol at a Starship, TNE will tell what will happen. Similarly, if the Starship defends itself and pumps a 150MJ laser in to the shooter, TNE will, sorta, tell you what happened.
In that sense, TNE advanced the entire platform with a solid bedrock of "Here's how the physics mostly work in our universe" and built everything up.
GT: Far Trader pushed trade to a new level introducing, albeit simplified but still detailed, economic models beyond mere "lists of stuff that cost XXX".
First In, World Tamers Handbook, World Builders Handbook all helped move forward the states of the art in to terms of world building systems, each contributing in their own way.
I honestly don't know if MgT has done much in any of these areas. It just seemed more of the same old, same old, in new books with current publishing dates.
