Thanks to the excellent Godzilla Gaming Podcast, I've become interested in said game. Has anyone played it? Opinions would be much appreciated.

As a dedicated fan of classic Traveller at the time, I never played 2300 AD (or Traveller: 2300 as it was originally known).  However, I bought a number of the game's supplements, and I owned and played Twilight: 2000 which was the basis for the rules of the game.

As far as setting goes, I really, really liked it.  It was developed as a logical progression of the post-WWIII setting of Twilight: 2000, where the influence of the US has declined, while the new French Empire is ascendant, as is China.  The initial emphasis was on the grittier colonies instead of the hyper-developed Earth core, with a very frontier-like feel.  The small handful of aliens depicted are very alien, and the big-baddies, the Kafers, are a truly nasty threat.

The mechanics, as I understood it, were directly adapted from Twilight: 2000, which is a far cry from classic Traveller.  It's a rather crunchy percentile system that requires a bit of front-loading (there are a number of derived stats, requiring a couple of rolls, then simple calculations), but once you get your character sheet straight, it plays smoothly.  The mechanics are very task-driven, so don't expect personality or emotional traits beyond CUF (Cool Under Fire) to come into play (though Twilight:2K had a neat system for using a standard deck of playing cards to determine NPC personalities).  It's quite old school in that the more thespian aspects of roleplaying are left to the players, not the mechanics.

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I found the 2300/2000 mechanics a bit so fiddly for me for most situations - I don't usually care for hit locations and the like but ymmv.  But the setting material was really cool.  Unlike most SF settings, earthlings expanded into space without first being unified so you have the American regions of space, the French, etc.  The aliens are well thought out and not of the catpeople variety.
 
I have only the core box and a few frontier supplements so I can't address the quality of most of them.  I get the idea that those on or near earth are cyberpunkish.

Quote from: Nicephorus;258722I get the idea that those [supplements set] on or near earth are cyberpunkish.

The Earth/Cyberpunk supplement was very jarring in relation to the greater setting.  It was a popular topic of the time, but not in keeping with the prevailing material.

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I liked the Traveller: 2300 (that's the title on my box set) concept, though the rules are a bit clunky.  It's a very military-focused type of game, with a lot of near future style weaponry that's still largely recognizable.  Basically, its a Cold War in Space kind of game.  Not that you can't play non-military characters, but that's kind of what the focus is on.

I want to use the background with the new Mongoose Traveller rules, myself, because I prefer a more streamlined rule set these days.

Quote from: noisms;258687Thanks to the excellent Godzilla Gaming Podcast, I've become interested in said game. Has anyone played it? Opinions would be much appreciated.

If you really are interested, for $35 you can get the whole collection on PDF and all the releated Challenge articles here.

Quote from: CavScout;258740If you really are interested, for $35 you can get the whole collection on PDF and all the releated Challenge articles here.

Listen to CavScout on this. The 2300AD CD-ROM is a bargain at twice the price. Even if you only have a mild curiosity about the product, it is well worth the money to completely satisfy that curiosity.

Quote from: jeff37923;258772Listen to CavScout on this. The 2300AD CD-ROM is a bargain at twice the price. Even if you only have a mild curiosity about the product, it is well worth the money to completely satisfy that curiosity.

The story/background is certainly worth it, even if you junked the entire mechanical system.

Quote from: CavScout;258794The story/background is certainly worth it, even if you junked the entire mechanical system.

Truth be told, I would love to have a copy of the extended background summary alone.  GDW put together some really inspirational backdrops right around the end of the '80s.  I similarly have a copy of the backdrop booklet from my copy of Sky Galleons of Mars that I've repeatedly used as inspiration (or direct application) for other games without ever having bought the game Space: 1889.

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Quote from: Ian Absentia;258828Truth be told, I would love to have a copy of the extended background summary alone.  GDW put together some really inspirational backdrops right around the end of the '80s.  I similarly have a copy of the backdrop booklet from my copy of Sky Galleons of Mars that I've repeatedly used as inspiration (or direct application) for other games without ever having bought the game Space: 1889.

Check out http://www.farfuture.net, $35 is a bargin. I've got both T2K sets and the 2300AD set.

I've never played Twilight: 2000 but I thought I'd read somewhere that 2300 AD's system isn't the same. Maybe derived. However, if Ian's right that T2K is percentile, 2300 AD certainly deviates in that it uses d10s.

As for the clunkiness of the system, it has a good deal of front-loaded calculation, for sure. Beyond that, I couldn't tell since I played a one-shot with the GM handling most of the system issues. He said, though, that the game works fine with fixed target numbers to streamline play.

Thanks for the info. I might check out that farfuture.net deal. I've noticed they also have a fair few Traveller and Twilight: 2000 goodies.

I've been tempted by the CDs.  From what I've heard, the scans are so-so on the whole but the sheer amount of hard to find content is a bargain - all of classic Traveller or all of the 2300 or 2000 lines.

The scanning of the books for the Classic Traveller and Journal of the Traveller's Aid Society CD-ROMs is not the best (and I'm assuming that the 2300AD CD-ROM is of the same quality), and occassionally you will find pages scanned upside down.

However, all of the pages scanned are legible and you are getting approximately $1000 worth of material (more than 60 books (totaling some 3,000 pages and more than half a million words according to the CD-ROM itself)) and is considered the Classic Traveller canon, for only $35.

I'd call that one of the best RPG bargains out on the market today, even with its minor problems.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;258874I've never played Twilight: 2000 but I thought I'd read somewhere that 2300 AD's system isn't the same. Maybe derived. However, if Ian's right that T2K is percentile, 2300 AD certainly deviates in that it uses d10s.

D'oh.  That's what I get for speaking from an absence of experience.  I just dug about on the net and found a description of the mechanics as "d10 plus skill and attribute mods over target number".  The Twilight: 2000 mechanics, as I recall them, involved a skill rated from 0 to 100, modified for difficulty, then roll under.

Sorry.  I really did think they used the same system.

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