Anyone want to start any Traveller based discussions?

Rules, setting?

Can't say much about the original setting, as the only Traveller campaign I played was a home-made. The d20 rules were ok, though.

Let's talk about Virus Pirate Fleets that threaten worlds with near-C-rocks and other fleets with jump torpedoes!
We'll have to decide wether it shall be a small or large ship universe fleet.

"Virus" was in megatraveller, right? I never got into that genre', I started in gurps traveller 3e, then got GTIW which was a good product except for the inexcusable lack of ANY weapons or equipment, and the tantrum that sjg thru when people criticized them for it.

I like the fundamental idea of traveller, and the setting and backgrounds are excellenty. It could have done with some more original aliens, but you can add your own to taste, no problem.

My post was totally in-jokey.
Virus is T:New Era.
And the topics I combined are the most loathsome on the Traveller mailing list.

A so-called stand alone product called Interstellar Wars has no stats for guns?  Buh?  Me, I am one of the few New Classic Guys, who became a fan of the original game when the reprints started rolling out.  But I cherry pick stuff from other editions.  For example, I have Gurps Traveller Aliens 4 for extra cantina creatures.

The Fifth Edition that Marc Miller is hoping to release next year is about the only new game I plan to buy anytime soon.

Quote from: jrientsA so-called stand alone product called Interstellar Wars has no stats for guns?  Buh?  Me, I am one of the few New Classic Guys, who became a fan of the original game when the reprints started rolling out.  But I cherry pick stuff from other editions.  For example, I have Gurps Traveller Aliens 4 for extra cantina creatures.

The Fifth Edition that Marc Miller is hoping to release next year is about the only new game I plan to buy anytime soon.

Yeah, I just picked up GURPS 4e not too long ago, and really was thinking hard about picking up Insterstellar Wars.  But I heard there were a few missing bits (like the guns, refueling/gasgiants rules), and for every person that seems to love it to death comes another who has some gripes.  So the jury is still out.  I still have my CT to fall back on.

I, too, am looking forward to T5.

No refueling rules either?  The fuel rules strike me as one of the lynchpins driving the official setting, almost as important as the limitations of the jump drive itself.

Longstanding traveller fan here.

MegaTraveller and/or T20 are pretty much what I've settled into these days.

Hated TNE/the Virus.

Loved Chris Foss' art in T4, but the system made me weep.

Never been a big gurps fan, but some of the GT books are excellent fluff or background material for an MT or T20 based game.

Played Traveller(back when I was young, there was only ONE version of Traveller and we liked it!  Dadgummit) once back in the day and we ended up taking over/piloting the Kinnunir around blowing shit up...ahhh..good times.

The Classic Reprints is a great series and they are a great introduction (or re-intro for me) to Traveller.  I really like the tookit feel from creating ships to creating sectors and planet.  The Spinward Marches are the Sci-fi equivalent to the Wilderlands of High Fantasy.

I really want to run Classic Traveller in a "PCs have a ship and explore, tool around, buy low/sell high, blow stuff up" mode, but haven't had time to get it off the ground.   Damn you Father Time!!!!

I am a big fan of Traveller, and I am working on a campaign that I will be running any time now...

It seems that the discussion has forked between system and setting, so here are my thoughts on both.

System:  GURPS Traveller (3rd) has been my default for a while now.  I kinda like GURPS for most things, and I strip it down somewhat to make parts of it, particularly combat, flow faster.  I haven't looked at Interstellar Wars, but I like the changes made in 4th Ed.

Classic Traveller was just a little too bare bones for me, and Megatraveller left me unenthusiastic for some reason.  GURPS just works, and there is a TON of support material for it.

Setting:  I prefer my sci-fi gritty (and I have a predisposition towards the apocalyptic) so my favorite Traveller settings are the Hard Times and The New Era.  Virus was a bit of a deus ex machina plot device to crash the Third Imperium, but in my opinion it sort of needed crashing.  The Classic Traveller universe just sort of grew organically and quickly got out of control, with most versions coming after it just trying to scale down the focus so that PCs could be relevant.  In that respect, I really liked TNE.  It gave you the opportunity to either play a "bootstraps and bailing wire" kind of game in the Reformation Coalition, or you could play standard Traveller (Merchants of Death, we call it) in a largely untouched Spinward Marches, which was always the best developed part of the Imperium anyway.

BTW, for my money one of the finest supplements for any sci-fi game is the Magatraveller Hard Times book.  It rocks hard!  Any time I need to destroy an interstellar society it is my go-to book...


TGA

I've only recently gotten into Traveller.  After a bit of review reading and perusing used books when I found them, I settled on Classic Traveller (via the FFE reprints) as my poison.  Mostly because it's a simple system that is reminiscent of the old games I started out on in the early and mid 80s (my older brothers grudgingly let me play in their group, so I got started young!).

The thing that's astounded me since I've started designing my campaign (space pirates!) is how beholden people are to the official Third Imperium universe.  I figured the world creation rules were there for a reason and launched right into designing my own setting, using the OTU as an idea mine (there are enough assumptions hard-coded into the rules that would probably make any homebrew bear a strong resemblance to the 3I).  But then, I really dislike using official settings; there's always some smartass out there who will quote canon just to tick a GM off, and I had my fill of that after an abortive Greyhawk campaign years back.

Anyway, I'm completely in love with Classic Trav, and I've been on a mad collecting crusade ever since my late discovery.  Just can't wait to get my game up and running so I can put all this stuff to use (and justify the costs to my SO!).

I own all the Traveller rulesets, although Classic Traveller is still probably my favorite (warts, house-rules, and all).

I disliked TNE/Virus, although ironically I loved Hard Times (a major inspiration for my Unisytem space-opera PBP game).

I loved it in college. Specifically I loved the idea of a "merchant trader" game where we spent a lot of damn time between games going "hey GM, Whats the price for gems on that system bordering ours? Because I think I need to load my ship up and head out there if I think I can get a good deal.."


Seriously, the merchant trader game part of Traveller was so much fun. I had like a 40 page character sheet. One page was my stats, 2 pages were my ship, and 37 pages detailed my sprawling merchant empire of buying and selling contacts and commodities across the known galaxy.

QuoteThe thing that's astounded me since I've started designing my campaign (space pirates!) is how beholden people are to the official Third Imperium universe.

A lot of fans take the setting deadly seriously.  Me, I'm working on sort of a hybrid that's part official setting and part gee-whiz pulpy space opera with exploding planets and giant space amoeba.