Quote from: jibbajibba;531979I agree ed + int is a good cap but in most traveller games the PC is 40 ish with 5-6 skills and unless they are really dim the 14 ish average of Int + edu is a mile away

in CT, true.  MT (or CT with books 4+) would grant higher amounts of skills, generally one per year as opposed to one per term.

Quote from: Xavier Onassiss;531950There's a strong bias in the Imperium against nobility using anagathics, and most of the Admiralty of the Imperial Navy are nobles, so it's not likely you'll see a lot of Admirals using them.

Since when? Can you site a source for this?

Quote from: Xavier Onassiss;531950As for the rest, Traveller was written in the late 70s, and it's firmly grounded (see what I did there?) in classic pre-cyberpunk science fiction. It's great for "old school" SF and "old school" game design, but if you want something with a more modern outlook, or a more state-of-the-art approach to game balance, there are lots of other RPG's out there.

Wow, this totally ignores later versions of Traveller from about TNE onward which do deal with more modern outlooks and cyberpunk style technology.

Quote from: jibbajibba;531961but yout points on the design and where the game came from are sound.

Not by a long shot.

Quote from: jibbajibba;531949like I said 20 -30 combats over a 6 month campaign.... that is about one combat per 4 hour session.... high but I don't think exceptional .... and it's not liek a D&D session where there may be 3 or 4 combats (or of course none) in one session I think you misread my post.

And no most characters do not survive that long but PCs are tricky little bastards and quickly learn that an ambush or laying down covering fire with an illegal heavy weapon tends to swing a lot of battles in their favour.

I was just giving a way to increase skills without doing so at such a rate that after a few weeks of adventuring the PCs haven't learnt more than they learnt in 20 years with the army....

just sayin....

Well, in my experience (admittedly somewhat limited...) one combat per session is a LOT for Traveller, and in 3e D&D is probably about average... though 'downtime' sessions where you handle all the administrative bullshit accumulated during your dungeon crawl sessions would actually mean the average is slightly LESS than one per session.

I'll be honest: in the MegaT game I played back in the day (a dozen or so sessions) we never once got in a fight, and in the GURPS traveller session that imploded when one player got greedy and bitchy about salaries, there was only one combat, and that was because my character was a faaking mercenary, so the GM gave us a Mercenary job offer 'on the side' of our previously purely merchantile adventure... that was out of about five or six sessions.

Also: People who survive combats in real life generally are the sneaky and unfair people, which is why I mock anyone who complains about a lack of proportionality in armed conflicts.  Truly proportional conflicts kill almost everyone involved, while one sided fights don't. Er... not relevant but amusing anyway.

My question of you, and really anyone who... er... complains?... that players get sneaky and tricky to survive dangerous fights (make easy games with hard combat systems, whatever...)... is why you let them turn EVERY fight into 'ambush went according to plans' and never have them find out their enemies are trying to do the same to them?

Quote from: Imperator;531705Could you elaborate on this when you have some spare minutes? I mean elaborate about ypur despise and the reasons to it, and that nugget you speak about.

Megatraveller came about when DGP offered to create and print the next version of Traveller for GDW. There was little editorial oversite and the result is an edition filled with bugs and errata. Only T4 comes close to being such a bungled version of Traveller.

My main headache comes from the gearhead sections - ships, vehicles, and equipment. Megatraveller combined the design sequences and equipment lists from Striker, High Guard, Book 3 Worlds and Equipment, and Book 2 Starships along with every Ship's Locker article from The Journal of the Traveller's Aid Society up to that point but did not bother to ensure that it was a seamless integration of systems. The Megatraveller system is very cumbersome to use and creates too much information for the designer to adequitely absorb at one sitting. Instead of making things simpler and easier to work with, it made it all overcomplicated and unwieldy.

My second headache comes from the metaplot that was dumped on to the OTU. I just do not see the Third Imperium disintegrating like it did in the books. The best alternative I have found to this is The Wounded Colossus article by Bill Cameron.

The combat system makes more sense for a wargame and I think is a poor fit to shoehorn in for a RPG, but it had to be forced in to be compatable with the design sequences. Which just continues the cumbersome rules chain reaction.

I just did not like this version of Traveller as much as others.

Quote from: Imperator;532002Wow, I missed this part completely. In the Traveller Book edition I have (the Spanish translation) this rule seems to be absent.

Interesting.  What does the cover of the Spanish edition you have look like?

Here is the exact rule from Merchant prince, the Starter Edition and The Traveller Book for your reference.

"Skill Limitations: No character should have more skills (or combined total levels of skills) than the sum of intelligence and education." Marc W. Miller & J. Andrew Keith Merchant Prince 31 (GDW 1985).

“Maximum Skills: As a general rule of thumb, a character may have no more skills (or a total of levels of skills) than the sum of his or her intelligence and education.  For example, a character with UPP 77894A would be restricted to a total of 13 combined skills and levels of skills. This restriction does not apply to level-0 skills.” Marc W. Miller, Traveller: Starter Edition 16-17 (GDW 1983).

“Maximum Skills: As a general rule of thumb, a character may have no more skills (or a total of levels of skills) than the sum of his or her intelligence and education.  For example, a character with UPP 77894A would be restricted to a total of 13 combined skills and levels of skills. This restriction does not apply to level-0 skills.” Marc W. Miller, The Traveller Book 29 (GDW 1982).

Quote from: Kuroth;531944Expanding upon the perceived disconnect between technological development and technical levels, Traveller tech levels are not catch-all.  A society may have higher tech levels in some areas, while lower in others.

The fork that created the Traveller timeline happened in the early '70s if I remember.  The timeline we stayed on, for whatever reason, does not use mainframe technology in space.

Quote from: jeff37923;532027I just do not see the Third Imperium disintegrating like it did in the books. The best alternative I have found to this is The Wounded Colossus article by Bill Cameron.

I was kind of excited about the Shattered Imperium.  But I didn't like the MegaTraveller rules all that much.  When The New Era came out, I had lost any remaining interest in the Traveller rules and its current universe setting.

Quote from: jeff37923;532027The combat system makes more sense for a wargame

Which combat?  Close combat on shipdeck maps?  Or ship to ship combat, while in orbit?  Or both?

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;532154Which combat?  Close combat on shipdeck maps?  Or ship to ship combat, while in orbit?  Or both?

The one that was originally for Azhanti High Lightning and then was expanded for Striker. Which was then bastard-patched to cover everything not-space.

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;532152The fork that created the Traveller timeline happened in the early '70s if I remember.  The timeline we stayed on, for whatever reason, does not use mainframe technology in space.

Quote from: Kuroth;531916The other thing that is often mentioned as dated are the computer rules for starships, but I have always felt that the majority of the effort needed to achieve jump drive and the high energy aspects of starships were provided by incredibly advanced computers with applications far beyond such a term could be used in our understanding today.  So, the operations a computer must perform are called simply programs, but it is just a term used as a placeholder for some future incredible synthesis of engineering and science, which is why computers require so much power and why computers and programs in computers require so much space.

The computer rules provided in Marc's three books are specific to the needs of Starship jump drives and high energy fiction like what seem impossible energy beams.  Regular vehicles and computer driven devices that do not require those aspects didn't require those types of computers designed for incredible feats of science fiction.

One can play Traveller as an anachronistic interpretation of the future too, though.  I'm not a purist at all on it.  For example, I never used the Third Imperium as a setting often.  I also see the psionics rules as a set of magic rules.  I usually add Pyrokinesis and Awreneness Other to the talents.

Quote from: jeff37923;532156The one that was originally for Azhanti High Lightning and then was expanded for Striker. Which was then bastard-patched to cover everything not-space.

I bought Striker when it came out, not nowing anything about mini gaming.  I never touched the game.  That's when I feared I might have become a game collector more than an actual game player.  I did like Azhanti High Lightning combat better than Snapshot combat.  Soon after, I would start to lose interest in square grid maps though.  I was battling in death arenas that used hexagon grid maps.  And I have not gone back to squares since.  Since Traveller uses hexagons for planet maps, I make all my maps for Traveller hexagon.  Just change their scale.

Quote from: Kuroth;532160The computer rules provided in Marc's three books are specific to the needs of Starship jump drives and high energy fiction like what seem impossible energy beams.  Regular vehicles and computer driven devices that do not require those aspects didn't require those types of computers designed for incredible feats of science fiction.

Yes.  10 years ago when I looked at my old copies of Traveller and saw the mainframes, I thought how dated it was.  But now I look at them and think how maintenance-free those ship computers really are.  Just plug in a program module and go.  The computers come with the ship when it's built.  And the 200+ year-old software still does the job needed without worries.

Quote from: Kuroth;532161One can play Traveller as an anachronistic interpretation of the future too, though.  I'm not a purist at all on it.  For example, I never used the Third Imperium as a setting often.  I also see the psionics rules as a set of magic rules.  I usually add Pyrokinesis and Awreneness Other to the talents.

I'm 50/50 when it comes to gaming in Traveller's universe or doing my own universe.  It makes no difference to me.  Both are fun.  I like making my own subsector maps.  I used to have FORTRAN 77 for making them.

Quote from: jeff37923;532018Since when? Can you site a source for this?

Short answer: Not without a lot of research in books I don't have any more.

Long answer: from memory...

The bias against nobility using anagathics was mentioned but never fully explained, to my knowledge. I think it had to do with the fact that their titles were inherited, and eventually had to be passed on; for someone appointed to a lifelong fiefdom over one or more Imperial worlds, life-extension amounted to a rather crass "power grab" from the next generation. I don't recall where this was mentioned; it might have been in GURPS Traveller's Nobility sourcebook. (?) OTOH, are there additional negative modifiers for nobility using anagathics during chargen? I think at least one edition of Traveller had that detail.

Quote from: jeff37923;532018Wow, this totally ignores later versions of Traveller from about TNE onward which do deal with more modern outlooks and cyberpunk style technology.

IIRC, there were some rules for cybernetics in Fire Fusion and Steel for TNE, but they seemed like an afterthought; the cybernetics in T20 looked even worse, IMHO. The statistics were presented, but there was no discussion about how to fit them into the Traveller universe, as far as I know. You were on your own with that. I would have enjoyed seeing a thorough discussion of cybernetics in the Third Imperium; did anyone ever do this?

I don't have my Traveller books any longer -- I divested after hearing the "my Traveller's better than your Traveller" rant one time too many from reactionaries who couldn't deal with anything changing in the OTU. Personally I welcomed the "more modern outlook" of TNE; it incorporated ideas from SF novels written after 1980, and touched on themes from the "new space opera" which was in fact very new in 1993! But the Traveller community reacted to it with sheer irrational hatred, and some of them still do. ("Why TNE sucks" posts will begin in 3, 2, 1... you rang the bell, now they're salivating like Pavolv's dog. Haters gonna hate.)