Mako11 | 09 Jul 2014 4:57 p.m. PST |
On a related note to my other question, I'm interested in finding out what is new in Traveller T5, that wasn't included in the original LBBs (Little Black Books), but that might be useful for players with the original set of rules? I know they now have some rules for making things (weapons, etc.). Not sure that is really needed, since it seems a little like overkill to me, but to each his own. I'm curious about what additional rules, and/or general concepts might be useful to someone continuing to use the original rules, but to add a bit more color, or depth to game, or campaign? |
cmdr kevin | 09 Jul 2014 8:29 p.m. PST |
The page count has increased. Seriously you could bludgeon someone to death with the rulebook. |
dragon6 | 09 Jul 2014 8:48 p.m. PST |
Or just drop it on them They are not likely to survive |
Maddaz111 | 10 Jul 2014 6:16 a.m. PST |
Use it as body armour. It's quite good, with lots of clever ideas, but I have not read it from beginning to end yet. |
David Johansen | 10 Jul 2014 7:22 a.m. PST |
The big thing is the inclusion of the "makers" gun maker, vehicle maker, armor maker, thing maker, sophont maker etc. These work more like a compression routine than a traditional design system like Fire Fusion and Steel. Instead you start with a basic class of thing and apply descriptors that modify its characteristics. "FGMP" is an actual weapon design now. In the sense that desconstructing "fusion gun man portible" with gun maker gives you its cost, weight and damage value. The makers are cool but the errata is annoying, for instance the burden modifiers on one of the gun maker tables all got inverted. Character creation is pretty neat once you get the hang of it. Lots of life events and cool mustering out stuff. You can muster out with secrets and forbidden knowledge. There's things I wonder about like doing ten different world map sheets, one for each size of world with the hexes staying the same size and mapping tools for randomly mapping hexes. |
darthfozzywig | 10 Jul 2014 11:31 a.m. PST |
Character creation is pretty neat once you get the hang of it. Lots of life events and cool mustering out stuff. You can muster out with secrets and forbidden knowledge. That sounds cool. I always liked rolling up characters for Traveller, especially the extended career ones from Books 4-6. Not cool enough to buy T5, but still cool. Besides, I have so many versions already: LBB Traveller, Traveller 2300, GURPS Traveller, T4 (ugh. why? WHY?), even Mongoose Traveller. Enough's enough. ;) |
fox news tea party | 10 Jul 2014 7:58 p.m. PST |
Mongoose really has their churn-publish down to an art. Sad |
David Johansen | 11 Jul 2014 7:03 a.m. PST |
T5 is Marc Miller's Far Future enterprises. One of the big problems people have with it is that he wants it to be his Traveller and isn't willing to move from his vision to please the same people who trashed T4. Actually I loved T4 and wish T5 was a bit more like it in places. |
Mithmee | 11 Jul 2014 12:16 p.m. PST |
Picture on that one page it holding some type of secret. |
Mako11 | 12 Jul 2014 2:58 p.m. PST |
Sounds like the stream-lined "maker" rules are a nice change of pace, from the overly onerous, and super-detailed vehicle creation rules. If they have something like that for aliens, that would be neat. Also, the new additions for life events, mustering out, etc. sound good as well. |
David Johansen | 12 Jul 2014 8:07 p.m. PST |
Character creation is basically: Roll 2d6 for stats, use differently colored ones if you want to record genetic information for later use. Pick or roll a homeworld and record skills based on trade classifications. Clever but the choices are a bit odd at times. Go to school. Roll Intelligence or Education each year to pass. Get skills based on school attended. This section is after the careers for some very stupid reason. Pick a career. Pick a stat or less on 2d6 to get in. Whichever stat you use has to be used for risk and reward as well and you can't use the same stat until you've used all the stats. Roll for risk, reward, and promotion. Roll for what you did each year. Roll a skill for each year, what you were doing opens up tables. Roll to reenlist. Once you get to 34 you make aging rolls which seem to be a little tougher than they used to be. Which is good because at 4 skills per year personal development stands to boost stats more than in Classic Traveller. Once you're done, roll for mustering out benefits one per term plus one for ranks etc. These are 1d6 + rank tables. And less generous than earlier editions if you're only rank 1. |
infojunky | 17 Jul 2014 8:02 p.m. PST |
The Lack of a finished Tactical ground and Starship combat system really blows though. Don't get me wrong there is a playable game in that mass of poorly laid out tables, just wish Marc hadn't done the advanced course at the Gygax school of game design (Any one remember Dangerous Journeys?). |
David Johansen | 18 Jul 2014 9:57 p.m. PST |
Yeah, I always prefer tactical combat. It's far easier to abstract a concrete game than it is to concrete an abstract one. |
Mako11 | 19 Jul 2014 4:52 p.m. PST |
I plan to use Full Thrust for spaceship/spacefighter games. |