Quote from: J Arcane;633976Hulks and Horrors - Damn right it's a favorite, I wrote it. I don't write what I don't love.

Classic Traveller - All those random tables make me hot. I've gotten more fun out of this game than many of my other purchases and I had to pay for those.

Cyberpunk 2020 - This is a long favorite genre of mine and I still think this is the best tabletop presentation of it, even if Shadowrun did weirdly have a more realistic computer system.  

Star Wars D6 - the only Star Wars system, as far as I'm concerned. So good.

Hmmm, no wonder I liked H&H - those are my three favorite sci-fi RPGs. I thought I detected some homages to Cyberpunk 2020 in there, and the link-up with Classic Traveller was evident.

I just re-read your rules for random generation of ancient installations and, again, kudos. I think it's the first time I've felt like creating space stations and hulks could be as easy as creating dungeons.

GURPS Steampunk, which came out long before steampunk became a mainstream fad and lost any resemblance to Victorian Space fantasies, is one of the btter GURPs sourcebooks.

while I'm not a fan of the GURPS system (meaning I don't dislike it, its a very functional system that does exactly what it sets out to do and ends up being exactly what it says on the box: "generic"), I wouldn't consider running a steampunk campaign without that resource.

My favourite actual system/setting for Steampunk, besides Planescape (which is merely Steampunk-esque), would be Castle Falkenstein.

Quote from: TristramEvans;638256GURPS Steampunk, which came out long before steampunk became a mainstream fad and lost any resemblance to Victorian Space fantasies, is one of the btter GURPs sourcebooks.

I never read that one. I might have to keep an eye out for it.

Quote from: TristramEvans;638256GURPS Steampunk, which came out long before steampunk became a mainstream fad and lost any resemblance to Victorian Space fantasies, is one of the btter GURPs sourcebooks.

while I'm not a fan of the GURPS system (meaning I don't dislike it, its a very functional system that does exactly what it sets out to do and ends up being exactly what it says on the box: "generic"), I wouldn't consider running a steampunk campaign without that resource.

My favourite actual system/setting for Steampunk, besides Planescape (which is merely Steampunk-esque), would be Castle Falkenstein.

The GURPS "Steam-Tech" book, basically a companion to the Steampunk book is very good as well

Castle Falkenstein though is, if anything, even less "steampunk" than Space:1889. If the latter is "Imperialism!" at least it includes "Science! Progress!" in all that, while Falkenstein is "dreamy victorian-fairy-story Romanticism", which I think is almost the opposite of steampunk (inasmuch as "steampunk" is really anything at all, and not just a really stupid word geeks use as an excuse to put cogs on shit while cosplaying).

RPGpundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;638737Castle Falkenstein though is, if anything, even less "steampunk" than Space:1889. If the latter is "Imperialism!" at least it includes "Science! Progress!" in all that, while Falkenstein is "dreamy victorian-fairy-story Romanticism", which I think is almost the opposite of steampunk (inasmuch as "steampunk" is really anything at all, and not just a really stupid word geeks use as an excuse to put cogs on shit while cosplaying).

RPGpundit

Steampunk is a pretty meaningless word, originating from back when people started confusing "punk" with "genre" and adding it to everything. But the best definition I've heard is simply

"exalting in the joy of Victorian aesthetics".

I can get behind that.

Quote from: TristramEvans;638775Steampunk is a pretty meaningless word, originating from back when people started confusing "punk" with "genre" and adding it to everything. But the best definition I've heard is simply

"exalting in the joy of Victorian aesthetics".

I can get behind that.

I agree that this definition is what that word means; but what it probably should have meant is "if cyberpunk had been written in the 19th century".  That would have made some etymological sense, at least.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;639141I agree that this definition is what that word means; but what it probably should have meant is "if cyberpunk had been written in the 19th century".  That would have made some etymological sense, at least.

RPGPundit

Technically, that is sort of what it was at it's inception.  Remember that one of the core books of the genre was co-written by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling.

Quote from: J Arcane;639154Technically, that is sort of what it was at it's inception.  Remember that one of the core books of the genre was co-written by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling.

That's right; but how quickly it moved away to that to sheer Lameness, With Cogs.

RPGpundit

When people say that Mongoose Traveller misses the feel of Classic (which was waaaaaay before my time) because there's no possibility of death in chargen: I don't have my book to hand at the moment but I'm 99% sure it's in there as an optional rule.  Can anyone verify whether it's the same mechanic?

Quote from: AndrewSFTSN;641715When people say that Mongoose Traveller misses the feel of Classic (which was waaaaaay before my time) because there's no possibility of death in chargen: I don't have my book to hand at the moment but I'm 99% sure it's in there as an optional rule.  Can anyone verify whether it's the same mechanic?

Absolutely. It's in page 40 ("Iron Man Character Generation") and it's the same mechanic (if you fail a Survival roll, instead of rolling on the Mishap table, you die).

I actually feel the Mishap table does a fairly good job of preserving the gambling spirit of Traveller chargen (because there's still a Survival roll with bad things happening to those who fail) as well as getting across Traveller's theme of "the Universe is a pretty fucking dangerous place", while doing away with death in character generation -- which is kind of cool but can be a drag at times (ask the guy who's rolled three dead men in a row). But I've actually considered slotting in a small chance of death in the Mishap table.

The problem is the feel of Classic Traveller, it's the balance.  The reason people think it's the game of super human seventy year olds is that none of the injury tables or mishaps tables I've ever seen restored that balance adequately.  Nor does aging accomplish it in any version where you get more skills and thus more access to personal development rolls.  Allowing a new career after a failed re-enlistment roll also compounds the problem.

Because the set up is simply this: if you take another term you could lose your awesome or horrible character.   And you have to weigh that against the benefits of an additional term.  It's not just a life path it's a hopeless character removal system.

Megatraveller did okay with splitting the difference a bit.  If you failed a survival roll you lost half of the term and your prior experience ended right there the character was done as surely as if they had failed a re-enlistment roll.

But the issue is balance not tone or feel or style of play.  Its that there were distinct advantages to playing a fresh faced youth if you rolled a decent set of stats.  Now it's all about maxing out your prior experience.

Traveller characters are superhuman? When did that happen?

In CT weapon damage comes directly off stats, and if you roll average and get to a skilled age, they go down. So let's say, generously, you have physical stats of 768.

Now, weapon damage for a simple weapon is, what, 3d6? And the first hit you take in a combat scene has to all come off one stat. So on average that's 10 damage and you are taking one stat completely down. You are disabled. One of your stats is at zero and another severely reduced.

Heaven forbid you get hit with a laser rifle. What, 5d6 or something like that? So mean is 23 and a bit. You are just plain dead, first hit.

This was a great strength of Traveller. Despite having all kinds of gun porn, combat was dangerous in the extreme. Whole Traveller sessions at my table often revolved around avoiding combat someone else wanted to get into. Characters built with Mercenary or even Scouts might have been very skilled, but they also remained very fragile, and that often meant that subtlety was called for even if you had a weapons rack full of Gauss Rifles and Combat Rifleman-3.

Well if I ever get to run MongTrav (sadface) I'll absolutely be including the death in character generation rule as mandatory, for the reasons specified by David above.  That's always what I understood the rule was for-it's a gamble to see if you can squeeze in a few more connections and benefits-rather than the "soooo hardcore" idea you sometimes see it portrayed as.