MegaTraveller has better editing and less errata than T4.

Also, interesting things actually happened in the OTU during the MT years.

Quote from: Xavier Onassiss;823483Also, interesting things actually happened in the OTU during the MT years.

If a person isn't all that interested in using the OTU setting and plans on using CT/Mongoose for rules... is there anything left to Megatraveller that makes it worth a look? Interesting new aliens or technology... ingenius mechanical bits that would port over easily?

Quote from: ArrozConLeche;823326Not having played any iteration of that game, I'm wondering if anyone has opinions on Megatraveller. I'm asking because of the current bundle of holding.

I'm already kicking myself for not buying the Dying Earth bundle, so wondering if I should get this one.

MegaTraveller has a lot of problems. The errata is a separate book in itself. As a charity thing, Bundle of Holding is money well spent. If you want Megatraveller on CD-ROM, you can buy all of it from FFE for a roughly equivalent price.

Quote from: Simlasa;823503If a person isn't all that interested in using the OTU setting and plans on using CT/Mongoose for rules... is there anything left to Megatraveller that makes it worth a look? Interesting new aliens or technology... ingenius mechanical bits that would port over easily?

The cinematic nugget system of adventure design is incredible, but it is the only thing I have been able to recover from that version of Traveller as useful.

Quote from: Xavier Onassiss;823483MegaTraveller has better editing and less errata than T4.

Also, interesting things actually happened in the OTU during the MT years.

T4 was shat out in the space of a couple of months by a committee who didn't even talk to each other and cobbled together by an editor rushing to make a deadline. As far as products go, it doesn't exactly set a high bar.

Did Megatrav use the same system as 2300, and T2K9v2)? Or am I thinking of a different game?

Quote from: Ronin;823604Did Megatrav use the same system as 2300, and T2K9v2)? Or am I thinking of a different game?

Different game. You are thinking of Traveller: TNE.

Ahhh.... thank you.

I've often wondered how TNE would have done if they'd done a generic sf core and then put out a generic space opera setting rather than hitting Traveller's core assumptions first.

Quote from: ArrozConLeche;823326Not having played any iteration of that game, I'm wondering if anyone has opinions on Megatraveller. I'm asking because of the current bundle of holding.

I'm already kicking myself for not buying the Dying Earth bundle, so wondering if I should get this one.

It's one of the least-played versions of Traveller. The game mechanic started to become troublesome with MegaTraveller. Mongoose Traveller restored the game mechanic to sanity level.

I'd have to agree with you there Shawn.  The attempt to integrate elements from Snap Shot / Ahzanti High Lightning /Striker / High Guard and the failure to rationalize the gap between advanced and basic characters strike me as the core source of problems.

But DGP were always better at fluff than mechanics.

Quote from: David Johansen;824019But DGP were always better at fluff than mechanics.

I dunno, Grand Survey and Grand Census are both worth the $150 I paid for them.

I think DGP's failure with Megatraveller was that they tried to cram it all together into one unified game without taking into account that they were dealing with radically different game mechanics for different types of games.

Yeah, I think megatraveller was generally a misstep (but most other games were making similar ones at the time).  I vastly prefer CT or Mongoose Traveller, which are essentially very similar to each other.

DGP's megatraveller stuff was far less errata-ridden than GDW's as far as i remember.

now if they ever release a cd/download of the DGP stuff, i'd be all over that.  pitched a lot of my GDW megatraveller stuff due to the errata, but kept DGP's. . . still missing a few things from that era.  was my main SF game.  tweaked & combined with CT of course.

I actually decided to pass on this one. I got the indie rpg bundle instead for Spione. I will also likely get the CD for classic traveller instead.

Quote from: David Johansen;823758I've often wondered how TNE would have done if they'd done a generic sf core and then put out a generic space opera setting rather than hitting Traveller's core assumptions first.

For what was a second-edition ruleset after Twilight 2000, the game was another one with multi-hundred page errata.  A lot of cases of "realistic" tables being full of garbage result, or text not being consistent with the game rules.  So the fluff says that you can increase stats during character generation - which was true for one career in the actual rules.

Glitches like the Tech Level 11 Gauss Rifle being an all-round poorer weapon than the TL 10 Combat Rifle.  Plasma and Fusion weapons were seriously nerfed and got a massive boost in a Challenge article soon after release.

Another stat + skill system, but quite heavily biased in favour of stats.  And the multiplier/divider system to determine your final target number was too coarse for me.

PCs were generally too tough to kill unless you used the optional headshot rules... in which case things get messy quickly.  Except pistols are still useless.

A vehicle "wear" system to represent the aged tech you were using was kind of OK.  Except your gear started too high on the scale, so your starship broke down every jump.  There was an advanced rule where your starship broke down every day instead.

Starship combat got the hexes per point of acceleration calculation wrong in the core rulebook and the whole thing felt like a lot of dice rolling for that one killer hit.  Brilliant Lances was worse, although Battle Rider was good at the PC-ship scale of things (not so great rolling buckets of dice for the big ships).

Not a bad game, just very "meh" in its execution.  Lots of nice touches in there though.  Starship combat had some good ideas - the "1D" map for two-ship combat where you're either closing/separating or moving obliquely made life easy.  I appreciated that starships had very few "game only" stats, instead there was a list of features - just as the PCs would see it.

Adding in fuel-burning thrusters rather than "grav-plate magitech" was widely criticised at the time, but it actually fits with the scrabble for resources in a post-apoc setting.

The actual background was pretty cool - the PCs are rats in the walls of a collapsed high-tech civilisation, and the malevolent entities that caused the crash are still out there.  It almost certainly wasn't worth demolishing the Third Imperium universe though.  Maybe as a single collapsed sector or separate universe entirely?