Quote from: Lynn;909809Are you sure it didn't originate with the d20 based printed books? They seemed to pick their font and color combinations so that its so awful you wouldn't want to try to scan them.

d20 Gamma world used a speckled background for about every other chapter. It made it hard to read as the speckles were oft larger than letters and dark to very dark grey. argh.

Quote from: CRKrueger;909804What troubles?

Nobody is using TAS. There is a single test case whose publisher has decided that there is no money to be made by giving away your IP. The rest of the Mongoose Traveller 3PP have decided to go their own way.

Read the current license and it should become clear why 3PP are pretty much not using it. It was met with a heavily negative reaction in Traveller circles when it debuted.

Quote from: CRKrueger;909804What troubles?

The TAS Program, along with other community content programs, recycles the license used by the DM's Guild. Most of the current Traveller 3PP have original settings due to how the program for Mongoose Traveller 1st edition (OGL/SRD for rules only not Third Imperium) worked. However the license for the Community will fuck over your ability to use anything you release for an original setting. The Community Content license states that you grant an EXCLUSIVE license to the company and One Bookshelf to host your content. Anything you release have to stay there.

Hence only a handful of people are using TAS to release 3PP stuff and none of the current Traveller 3PP people.

Now with DM's Guild it has not been much an issue because a SRD under the OGL has been released.

So if you have an original setting for 5e you can release under the OGL and have your rights to the setting protected under the product identity clause.

If you have something that specific to Forgotten Realms, Ravenloft, or depends on the full ruleset of 5e then you can release it on the DM's Guild. You wan't make as much and it will stay there permanently but then again you didn't have any right to use any Forgotten Realm or Ravenloft material before so it a win overall.

The contrast with Traveller is that in addition to coming out with the TAS program, Mongoose also released the 2nd edition rules for Mongoose Traveller which are different enough from 1st edition to make conversion problematic for certain areas.

Mongoose has sunsetted the old Traveller Logo program. So while the Trav SRD will be always be there you can't cite any type of Traveller compatibility. You get access to the Third Imperium with TAS and access to play with the full Mongoose Ruleset which is something that didn't exist before. However without an SRD, nobody is going to release original settings or support for original settings for TAS.

To make it worse is the fact that the pool of Traveller Fans who have the desire to publish is vastly smaller than the pool of D&D 5e fans. So 5e has a wealth of authors willing to throw up content, mostly splat books, on the DM's Guild. But there has been a lack of releases for TAS.

The same problem afflicts the Cortex and Cypher community content program. It is especially bad for Cortex because it doesn't offer any access to any of the licensed Cortex properties.

The take away for a publisher is that nobody going to use a community content programs unless rights to an original setting is preserved either by the program itself or by a corresponding SRD under an open license.

Quote from: Omega;909833d20 Gamma world used a speckled background for about every other chapter. It made it hard to read as the speckles were oft larger than letters and dark to very dark grey. argh.

That's actually a feature. The text of d20 Gamma World is so terribly written and so not-Gamma World that not being able to read much of it is a good thing.

Quote from: DavetheLost;909871Read the current license and it should become clear why 3PP are pretty much not using it. It was met with a heavily negative reaction in Traveller circles when it debuted.

Probably because the artwork in the mongoose TRAVELLER sucked out the wazoo. At least the SJG version of the same universe looked like what it was supposed top be - it also looked much more realistic in the GURPS books.

- Ed C.

Quote from: Kellri;909956That's actually a feature. The text of d20 Gamma World is so terribly written and so not-Gamma World that not being able to read much of it is a good thing.

Then why didnt they use it on all the prose pages?

Quote from: Koltar;909959Probably because the artwork in the mongoose TRAVELLER sucked out the wazoo. At least the SJG version of the same universe looked like wehat it was supposed top be - it also looked much more realistic in the GURPS books.

- Ed C.

I thought the art has been pretty decent, at least in the few Mongoose Traveller Second Edition books out thus far.

Quote from: Omega;910017Then why didnt they use it on all the prose pages?

Good question. Actually, there is one upside to GW d20. The resulting backlash (accompanied by a giant sigh of 'What the fuck is this shit!?') gave Bruce Baugh the badwrongfeels while simultaneously ensuring he will never again be trusted with a beloved legacy setting ever again.

I couldn't stand FASA Star Trek, but it was at least still a slightly better fit than the first Doctor Who game.

Quote from: Omega;9096411: Um... Wrong? (and right)
2: If you pay attention in TNG. Worf is about the only honourable Klingon in the series. The rest are oft shown to be just as conniving backstabbing thugs as they ever were. Worf just has a skewed ideal of what Klingons are and was very disillusioned when he found out they were not what he thought.

Holy crap... Worf is Sturm Brightblade.

Think about it... he's the sometimes disgraced often disparaged epitome of what the spirit of Klingon Honor is supposed to be, while the other Klingons only pay lip service and continue to be bastards and backstabbers.

Isn't that really the same about every organization that claims to have some moral or ethical code?  Pick a religion, pick a political party, pick a Social Justice Warrior - most of them are paying lip service only, because they get some form of personal power out of the affiliation.

You will always have very few true believers who walk the walk.  The rest talk the talk and sacrifice nearly everything for expediency, convenience and "practicality".

Shhh, don't disillusion him (yet). We may still be able to fleece some cash off of him.

Did FASA Trek ship combat use any kind of map, or were the relative positions between the ships abstracted somehow?

Quote from: Skarg;910797Did FASA Trek ship combat use any kind of map, or were the relative positions between the ships abstracted somehow?

Hexgrid.

When it gets right down to it, the starship combat was a hexgrid based tactical miniatures game with the character's RP skill percentages shoehorned in a couple of places for mostly negligible effect.