No comments about Alien Races 2: Aslan, K'Kree, and Other Races Rimward of the Imperium (GURPS Traveller).

No comments about Deck Plan 1: Beowulf-class Free Trader (GURPS Traveller).

1 comments about GURPS Traveller: Starports : Gateways to Adventure (GURPS Traveller).

1. Whether you play Traveller or Gurps-Traveller, this is an excellent supplement. The details and game ideas are at the level of excellence that we've come to expect from Steve Jackson Games. Players often spend a lot of time at a world's starport, and this helped me to bring them alive in ways I'd never thought of before. The first time your players goto an otherwise mediocre world specifically because they like its starport, you'll know you got your money's worth. Maps of several starports, buildings, and small craft are included. I didn't give it 5 stars only because the book should really be titled Imperial Starports, as it gives less than a page of data on ports outside the Imperium.

5 comments about Traveller's Handbook (Traveller T20 D20).

1. This is easily the best d20 old-game-to-new-game adaption I've seen in the last couple years. It is fully developed - tons of skills, classes, feats, and equipment. The combat rules are logical and lethal. Starship combat, psionics, and planetary generation are well-designed and incorporated, drawing on twenty years of game development. The "Imperium" background is vague enough to allow plenty of flexibility when designing the setting while still providing enough of an inspiration framework to avoid doing it from scratch.

   The game is a hard-science sci-fi roleplaying game - more Star Trek or Foundation than Star Wars. Belongs on every gamer's shelf.




2. The long wait to a modern vision. The best game produced with out being backed by a movie. Mark Miller wrote the forward and you can tell he is happy about the product that was his baby, and now all grown up, setting another standered in RPG's. Thank God for this book, saved me from giving up gaming.



3. T20 is a really great game. It may look a little pricey, but you get a lot of bang for the buck (unlke many expensive White Wolf books, this one is packed with info).

   I highly recommend this if you like the d20 system. I doubt that Wizard's d20 Future will even hold a candle to it.




4. I'm a big Traveller fan. It was one of the first RPGs I ever played and the first I GMed. I've owned products from every incarnation of it, even the dreaded Gurps Traveller, and own almost all original (or Classic as it's now called these days) Traveller products.
   
   Physically, this is an impressive book. It's heavy, and it's huge. That's the first thing you notice. The next thing you notice is the price tag (...). Though after a quick mental "D'oh!", you realize it's priced reasonably, given it's size. (...)
   
   Traveller 20, or T20, takes the tack that Fading Suns d20 took - ditching all the regular d20 classes and introducing several new ones. Herein lies much of the problems I have with T20. Although realistic, several of the classes are simply terrible at combat. They have a Base Attack Bonus progression which ends up at +5 when they are 20th level. Again, this is somewhat realistic, especially for classes like the "Academic". But I think it's bad game design. You're going to end up with many characters simply worthless in combat. No one likes playing the far future version of Richard Simmons. By using the weakest normal Base Attack Bonus progression (where it ends up at +10 at 20th level), you're giving the character a much better chance of being useful, yet aren't stretching reality too much.
   
   I also found it odd that the Army class has a fairly weak base attack bonus progression - the average one in d20 terms, that ends up at +15 at 20th level. The Navy is even worse. Not quite as bad as the Academic, but weak (the weakest normal progression, like that of a wizard). Should military classes be worse at combat than a Mercenary? Maybe the Navy, but not the Army. And should Mercenaries be on par with Marines? Marines are considered to be the toughest regular fighting forces around (and this is especially true in the Traveller universe). So I'd definitely say no.
   
   While presumably not everyone will run a combat heavy game, Traveller always had a strong criminal and mercenary slant since the begining (early on, it was more or less "Thugs in Space", where the PCs were criminals or toughs.) So this great imbalance between the classes is perhaps a bigger problem in a game like Traveller than other SF games.
   
   I also have problems with the concepts of some of the core classes. The "Traveller" class for instance. Does that really need a class? No. And why is "Mercenary" a core class? I don't really get how you can become a mercenary from the get go, once you're 18. It seems like it's something that you can't start out in, but can become on after a tour in the military or somesuch. I.e., essentially a prestige class. In fact, this is likely why in the original Traveller, which didn't have classes but had careers, there was no mercenary or "Traveller" career. Though they did follow the classic Traveller careers fairly closely (which is good, as early reports about the game had them doing something complete different and very wacky), I think they should have followed them much closer.
   
   In a way, all core classes are somewhat similar in that all their special abilities are bonus feats. Some of the feats are exclusive to that class, but they all get the same number of bonus feats (about one every other level).
   
   There are 3 prestige classes - the Big Game Hunter, the TAS reporter, and the "Ace Pilot". By contrast, these do have some special class abilities which aren't feats. But the Ace Pilot is a really dorky name. I can't help but think of Red Dwarf - Ace Rimmer. I think the first two should have been regular, core classes (well, maybe a generic reporter or media class). I also think some more prestige classes were needed. Special Forces, for army characters. Assassin. Lots more.
   
   I also think Psionics should have been handled as a prestige class. Not only does it makes sense (that's one thing prestige classes are for - secret societies and such), there are balance reasons for it. As it is, Psionics are largely handled by feats and by random luck. If you have psionics, you might have powers in one of 5 different areas, or spheres. Each different power requires a feat to be taken, and each sphere is also a skill which needs to be built up. Okay, except that all spheres are not equal. Telepathy has 7 different powers or feats. Telekinesis has one. Teleportation has one. The latter two are potentially very powerful, depending on the character's PSI ability.
   
   So, while I think most new classes are okay, some are flawed pretty badly, either in execution or concept. Even as NPCs classes, they wouldn't work. And as there are no NPC classes, the workload on the DM or Referee is going to be increased a lot. For some reason, many don't realize that part of the reason for the NPC class was to make things easy on the DM - the original ones are all very simple, with no special abilities or powers (other than the adept and it's spells). This is somewhat mitigated by the large appendix of stats for NPCs. But still annoying, IMHO.
   
   Another interesting idea, but flawed (or so I think) is how characters gain past experience, called Prior History. This is similar to past versions of Traveller, and is almost a game of it's own. But in essence, the problem is it ends up producing characters that have a wide variety of character levels (each year of prior history, they get 1000 xp, plus possible bonuses). One PC might have a 3rd level character. Another might have a 10th. While this is perhaps realistic (though honestly, older is not always better), it largely defeats the whole purpose of having character levels (which is to make combat ability easier to gauge, as well as general competence).
   
   While Prior History has balance problems, it also is quite confusing. I can't quite figure out how college works. Characters in it get XP, but what class are they? Academic? Any class they want? It doesn't say. And multiclassing is confusing. On the one hand, it says anyone can apply to a service class until they are 33, but in the multiclass rules, it says those classes can't be multiclassed into unless you have prior experience in that class. So how do you multiclass into it? And the Mercenary career - the text mentions an Academic might want to multiclass into that, but Mercenary is restricted to those who were in the Army, Navy or Marines. And why can't Scouts be a Mercenary? They were in a military service, and are as good in combat (in T20 terms) as the Army and better than the Navy. Or Rogues? While not in the military, they are good at combat as well.
   
   It doesn't help that the only example of prior history is as simple as you can get: a character that starts off a rogue and stays a rogue his entire career (he's also immensely fat, perhaps this was meant to be a Marlon Brando/Godfather reference). Gee, thanks for the help. So in making up characters, we just ignored the multiclass restrictions in the prior career, and no one took university.
   
   Speaking of combat, T20 introduces several new combat rules, most pretty major. For one, there are no more hit points. Instead, there are stamina points, which are more or less identical to hit points (and go up every level). There is also "Lifeblood" points, which are based on a characters constitution and are fixed. The explanation of this is actually hard to find in the book. It's in the combat chapter, but rather being the first thing explained, it's buried after a long section on starship sensors. WTF?
   
   Anyway, since there are two types of hit points,armor is handled a bit differently. Armor increases armor class, but also has a damage reduction value. This reduces the number of dice a weapon does, to a mininum of one. The remaining value is then subtracted from that remaining die (which was the high roll). It's confusing to explain, but is actually fairly clever.
   
   Example:
   
   Alec is wearing cloth armor, which has a rating of 6. Homer comes along and shoots him with a Laser Rifle, which does 3d10 damage. Homer rolls for damage and gets a 7, 10, and 4. Alec thus takes 21 stamina poinst of damage, which is easy enough to figure, but the lifeblood damage would be 6. The cloth armor has a rating of 6, so that means 6 dice would be removed from the total. But there's only 3. So 2 of the 3 are removed, leaving the roll of 10 (the highest). From that roll of 10, 4 is subracted, leaving 6. (4 because the armor rating of cloth armor is 6, but 2 of that was used to remove dice).
   
   I find this pretty clever, and it seems to work well enough, though it has some quirks. They've also managed to keep weapon damages and armor value consistent with other d20 stuff. Another change is that strength no longer helps in melee combat, it's dexterity, like in missile.
   
   About 110 pages of the book is on design sequences for vehicles and examples of vehicles. While many Traveller fans are in fact people who love to design stuff, I think this really would have been better suited for another book. It's also really only suited for Traveller games, as Traveller tends to make certain assumptions about it's starships that don't really apply to other universes. (For one, their expense. Ships in Traveller are insanely expensive. Contrast that to say, Star Wars, where starships are priced like cars. Or most SF games where they are more like ocean ships. This is one of those things I never liked about Traveller. There's no real reason for starships to be that expensive, given the technology levels - robot construction, contra grav, computer design, all would drastically reduce the cost of starships. But they still cost 200 million credits+, even for a small ship. I also don't understand how it can take years to build relatively small ships either. But I digress).
   
   Basically, by comparison, in 35 pages or so, the Imperial Encyclopedia fro



5. This is a comprehensive and well executed adaption of D20 to Traveller. Traveller is a game I've held in high esteem since I was a young teen in 1983. The other reviewers do a great job of describing what's appealing about Traveller, so for the sake of brevity: ditto.
   
   But not only that. It's a better D20. Here are the areas where I think T20 does better than D20:
   1. Armour exists not only to deflect weapons, but to reduce damage.
   2. Being more experienced doesn't make weapons less damaging. A sword or pistol is always a dangerous thing to have pointed at you.
   3. People who work together have different backgrounds, different levels of experience, and different ages.
   4. Magic Powers (in this case, psionics) are built on the existing skill system and bought with skill points.
   5. In many cases, you can compensate for poor education by having high IQ, poor charisma by higher social standing, etc.
   6. Experience points for completing objectives, rather than winning fights.
   
   If you like lots of combats where your character takes a half-dozen 10-point sword wounds in a row and comes out fighting, and you get masses of XP for this, then this game isn't for you.
   
   If you like a lot of variety with exploration, role-playing, a few *very* dangerous fights, space ships, high-tech, low-tech, utopias, hell-worlds, commerce, aliens, etc, then try this game.

No comments about Classic Traveller Reprint: The Basic Books (1-3).

5 comments about GURPS Traveller: Science Fiction Adventure in the Far Future (GURPS Traveller).

1. Well...as an avid Traveller player, I was very interested inseeing what SJG could do to Traveller. I approached buying the gamewith great apprehension. But, in the end I was throughly satisified.Sure, I beef with the GURPS mechanics, but there is more than enough background info which one can overcome that by possessing another rulebook. If you are a Traveller collector, which owns everything that GDW ever produced for the game...then this game is not for you (you will find too much repetition). But, if you are like most of us with a decent Traveller collection. You will find happy to see everything under one roof, so to speak. In the meantime, lets hope T5 is everything we want!



2. As a big fan of Traveller, I was eager to see how Loren Wiseman would adapt the game for GURPS. While I suppose GURPS Traveller is a necessary book to introduce Traveller to GURPS, the book certainly isn't very meaty and doesn't have much in it that you couldn't just glean from purchasing the GURPS main rulebook. The character archtypes are a must but beyond that, they could have distributed the material among GURPS other sourcebooks. I would have rather scene a more detailed history section, akin to those I've come to expect from my Traveller products.



3. to set up a new campaigne or universe. I've been away from gaming for about 15 years and have passed on all my old Traveller stuff. Never having used Gurps before, I thought that the Traveller book would be enough to get going again. I figured it would contain the basic info as found in the first three original Traveller books. Wrong! There's no real info on world creation or space combat or even charactar creation. That's all covered in other GURPS books. By the time I get all the books I think I'll need, I'll be in for $100 or more. The GURPS system takes the narrow yet deep info approach to gaming. Travellar is a good background book if you're already a GURPS player but you need other books if you're new to this. It looks like I'll be getting "Traveller Scouts: First In" for world building and "GURPS Space" for space combat as well as "GURPS Basic Set" and "Compendium II" (charactar creation) . The good thing is that SJGames (publisher of GURPS) has a free GURPS Lite pdf file you can download that gives the basics of GURPS roleplaying. This may let me put off picking up the Basic Set for a while.



4. I'm a twenty year traveller veteran - I cut my teeth on classic Traveller, played MegaTraveller so much I probably could have won the rebellion single-handedly ;-) - and enjoyed wandering around the ruins of the Third Imperium, in Traveller : The New Era.

   ...Let me say straight out that this is a *great* addition to that legacy. Loren Wiseman has done a fantastic job of presenting a background rich in detail that will be accessible to newbies and ancient grognards alike. Set in an "alternate universe" in 1120, where the Imperium never fell, the supplement lovingly brings the feel of classic traveller to the GURPS system.

   The book is packed with library data, essays on the Imperium and its worlds, character templates, weapons, equipment - and the second edition even includes a modular starship design system to ease the pain associated with the enormous detail in GURPS vehicles.

   So without further ado - I bequeath this supplement ...5 stars. Its well written, beautifully presented and just a joy to own. If you are inquistive about Traveller this is a great book to start with. If you are vaguely serious about Traveller this is a purhase that you just can't do without.




5. Wow! Finally got round to playing Traveller with the GURPS system last night and I was amazed at what a good fit they make. The attention to detail in GURPS (and in particular combat) really works well with Traveller. The weapons and armour are beautifully realized and the character generation system gives a level of detail and flexibility that sits well with the depth of the Traveller universe. My worry that we would get bogged down in details was groundless. Though the GURPS rules cover pretty much everything, they don't get in the way. And another thing, how nice, how Traveller, to only be using six sided dice!

5 comments about Gurps Traveller Interstellar Wars (Gurps Traveller Sci-fi Roleplaying).

1. When I first started to play Traveller 25 years ago, I was really intrigued by its back story, especially the story of the Terran Confederation and its epic struggle against the Vilani Imperium, and I wanted to know more, that was the story I wanted to role-play. Now here it is, and it's really worth the wait.
   GURPS have done an excellant job in creating the world of the Interstellar Wars. This is a book that leads to real role-playing, as the characters struggle to survive and flourish in the background of this epic struggle, and we are following real people, not simply stereotypes. This is especially true for the Vilani. In this book, we see Vilani as real people, with a culture and society that is worth defending against the Terrans, not just simply an evil space empire.
   And the writers have done a wonderful job in creating the world of the Terran Confederation, of a humanity that struggles to live and learn together in the face of the Vilani threat. The nations and peoples of Terra don't always agree with each other, yet we survive. It's not a perfect world, or Golden Age, but the Terran Confederation is also certainly worth fighting for. And what I really apprecaited is that the Confederation is not the United States writ large, but truly a reflection of the diverse nature of humanity and the struggle of the great powers of the 22nd century.
   The mechanics of the game are well done, to create the characters for the various campaigns that are suggested, especially for the worlds of Free Traders. I especially appreciated the starship design protocols.
   So get this book, and take part in history in the making, become a Free Trader and follow in the wake of the good ship "Cutty Sark"!



2. I eagerly awaited this book's release since getting back into GURPS via 4th Edition (too many out-of-print books in 3rd Edition, plus the system did need a couple of fixes). I found that the future history was well-detailed, worthy of most history books. The rest, however, were lacking in some areas:
   
   - Despite the importance of gas giants for refueling, the world-generation rules don't include a check for a gas giant in the system.
   
   - No weapons. The rules default to the ones in the Basic Set, which may work for modern-day weapons but canonical future weapons in Traveller are VERY different.
   
   - The book says it's geared for gamers new to Traveller, but does not mention explicitly that what makes Traveller special is that there's no faster-than-light transmitted signals. It's implied by references to couriers, but most modern-day sci-fi takes hyperlight communications for granted.
   
   - Not much in the way of ground vehicles. Then again the really crunchy tech-books for GURPS in general are still months (or years) off.
   
   I'm still mostly happy with the purchase, but will probably have to wait for future supplements to effectively use it.



3. Overall this is a fine tool. I didn't buy it for the campaign setting material but rather for the other non-campaign specific stuff. Now unfortunately that's only about 1/3 to 1/2 of the book but I knew that going in.
   
   I do have to say though that I think the ease-of-use of GURPS books has gone down as the 'BLING' has gone up. Full color, glossy pages and the like are all nice but leaving out important tables and things like that (or the rules-free GURPS Space book which is all bling and no rules) is a bad direcetion to go.



4. I know it is probably tably taboo to say slighting words against GURPS or traveller in general, but this game is neither GURPS or Traveller. It is just another money maker for the SJ company written by a freelance author who is now the lead writer in the GURPS line of books. First of all, the book has not the expect flexibility of a GURPS game . Neither does it have the simple yet reliable character, spaceship, planetary creation systems that are dealt with in cogent form in the first three books of the original. Worst of all, this version of traveller is not playable without buying four extra, very expensive books (the complete basic set, GURPS Spece, GURPS high-tech, Ultra-tech and the GURPS Traveller book. In addition, forget about using weapons unless they are knives, Poles or sticks as found in the basic set. This book has no weapons stats whatsoever. Steve Jackson games (and WotC) should know better than to produce volumes and volumes of supplement books that could have fit in a single volume. I would recommend that the serious, thinking gamer not buy this at all. Unless you are as rich as an heiress and had have unlimited storage space, this Steve Jackson game is a poor example of the GURPS system and does not deserve to be considered a valid edition of this most popular science fiction game of this kind.



5. 12-15-2007
   
   I've been away from RPGs for a looong time. I played Traveller ('77 era) from about '79 - '82. Recently, I found a group of folks playing the new Star Wars Saga edition. It's not bad, but the lack/imbalance of certain technologies gets a little annoying. But the game got my juices flowing, and I've got a campaign arc in mind. What other Sci-fi RPG can I run?
   
   I happened upon GURPS Ultra-Tech 4th edition. I was very impressed with the clarity and conciseness of the writing. It provides very good guidelines for choosing a sci-fi background, and which of many technologies--and technology "paths"--to incorporate. Then I spot GURPS Traveller Interstellar Wars. Forty bucks for 240 pages? Seemed a little steep. I flipped through. Not bad at all. Since no other reviewer appears to have provided one, here's the TOC:
   
   1. A Dangerous Galaxy...10 page intro to the current time period, Terran Confederation and Vilani Imperium.
   
   2. The Epic Struggle...30 pages of in-depth timeline to the Terran-Vilani conflict, plus ten "biographies" of important people in the setting.
   
   3. Terra...20 pages of: The Home Front, Terran Confederation, Navy, Ground Forces, Merchant Marine, etc.
   
   4. The Imperium...24 pages of same for Vilani.
   
   5. The Known Universe...37 pages of: one sector and 9 subsector maps and star system/planet descriptions, describing and generating your own planets, populations, starports, tech level, trade routes, etc.
   
   6. Characters...24 pages of Point Totals, Advantages/Disadvantages, Skills, Ranks, Wealth, Racial & Occupational Templates, and Jobs. (YES, you also need GURPS 4th Ed Basic set.)
   
   7. Technology...10 pages of Armour & etc, Communications, Computers & etc, Med Gear, Sensors & etc, Survival Gear, and Weapons. NOTE: As another reviewer noted, this book refers to Basic Set pp. 267-281 for Tech Level 9-11 weapons. You need to remember though, that this Traveller time period is waaay earlier than the time periods of the older Traveller games, so slug, gauss and the rare laser weapons make sense here.
   
   8. Starships...almost 20 pages of Component Systems (Drive, Bridge, Sensor, etc) Operations, Trade, Exploration.
   
   9. Starship Design...30 pages of: 15 Steps of Ship Design, Common Ships, including 25 separate ships and 4 deck plans (nicely done.)
   
   10. Starship Combat...10 pages of Sequences and Phases, Charts and Tables. Haven't tried this, so no comments, except that you can download a FREE pdf of starship counters from Jackson Game's e23 website.
   
   11. Campaigns...10 pages of The Default Campaign, Alternative Campaigns, Campaign and Adventure Seeds.
   
   Index...approx. 525 entries.
   
   So, to run my GURPS Traveller campaign, I need the two Basic Set books, and this one (Ultra-Tech NOT required, but nice to have.) At Amazon's normal discount, the three books come to seventy-five bucks. Since this book is not available New from Amazon right now, you may have to pay a ten buck premium for it. Sounds a little stiff, but I reckon I'd need 6-10 of those dinky Traveller 1st edition books to cover what I get here -- and those books were five to six bucks each -- in 1980! I bet that's at least ten bucks each in today's funny money.
   
   So, "try it, you might like it..." And frankly, if nothing compares to 1st edition Traveller for you, then by all means, play 1st edition.
   
   Game On,
   AWAbooks

No comments about Traveller Hero Book Two: Adventure in Charted Space: The Imperium, Gadgets, Vehicles, Robots and Starships.

No comments about Traveller Hero Book One: Adventurers in Charted Space: Character Creation, Psionics, Combat and Races.

No comments about Traveller RPG Core Rulebook.