gridlore | Oh, by the way..

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Oh, by the way..

.. the previous entry was inspired by this essay.

and he's right. Classic Traveller had the best cover of all time. Those words still give me chills.

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Traveller never grabbed me. Maybe it was just the people who ran it, who seemed very much the "I'm playing a group of numbers" than "I'm playing a character" types. Space Opera was my preferred space game (still is, actually), once it came out (Starships and Spacemen was first).

shadowcat48li again here:
I liked Space Opera for the setting and the sector atlas books if nothing else, I always wanted to run a traveller game set in the merchantile league

The Atlas books rocked. But it was the actual mechanics of Space Opera that put me off.

Eric is completely correct.

This is Free Trader Beowulf, calling anyone...
Mayday, Mayday...
We are under attack...
Main drive is gone...
Turret number one not responding...
Mayday...

Losing cabin pressure fast calling anyone...
Please help...

This is Free Trader Beowulf ...

...mayday...

I was impressed beyond measure of coherent words when the initial page for GURPS:Traveller featured the following -

Free Trader Beowulf
Come in, Free Trader Beowulf
Can you hear me?
Come in, Free Trader Beowulf
Hang in there, Beowulf...
(Gurps Traveller tag)
...help is on the way!

with the suggestion that, at long last, the song of the Beowulf might actually have a happy ending...

maybe.

Some old CT and MT die-hards (but I repeat myself) found that implication to be presumptuous of GT, to say that it was "coming to the rescue."

I say fuck 'em.

After the death of GDW and the Creeping Horror that was T4, the news that an established company with a good history of quality was picking up the line and was hiring Loren to edit it was seen as a rescue.

(shrug)
I've owned Traveller products since the original LBBs - bought in a store new, still in the box. I've owned every edition of Traveller since. My hat of overly pretentious, self-important grognards knows no limit, however, so I pay their opinions little mind.

(and as Gridlore says, after the eventual fiasco that was T4, G:Traveller *was* a rescue of sorts).

I wonder what the cover of T5 will have on it?

What other roleplaying game put your first adventure seed on the cover?

Traveller, back when things were simple.

I was quite surprised to see the number of people who commented on that essay who...
A) Remembered Traveller fondly.
B) Are planning on picking up T5 because of that article.

C) (postscript) ...Will be picking it up regardless of whether or not they actually expect to ever play it.

I've been watching the development process, and so far I'm really of two minds on this.

On one hand, it's Traveller! My family would probably die of heart failure if I didn't buy it, and I want to support table top RPGs...

On the other hand, it's Traveller. Everything I see looks like 1977 with a few refinements. While that might appeal to the CT purists, I'm used to more detailed systems.

On the gripping hand, it looks like he's using the DGP/BITS task system. Which means that we could see a new version of ACQ to support T⁵

Dither. I'll keep watching and probably end up buying it.

Heck I even bought T20 books.

I thought about them, but decided not to for a couple of reasons.

First of all, I'm not that thrilled with d20. It's worlds better than AD&D, but still lacks in many places.

Secondly, I realy think the d20 paradigm is best for epic fantasy. The game engine is locked into class and level systems (no matter what you call them)that advances abilities on a predictable, linear path.

Not so for GURPS. One of the things I've used over the years is giving out a portion of experience as skills and contacts. An experienced trader might not be much harder to kiill, or be much better with a pistol than he was five years ago, but he know the streets of Leedor like the back of his hand, speaks fluent Gvegh, and the Marquis of Aramis owes him a couple of favors.

Well I bought the source book out of curiosity and then the sectors book because I have nothing else on most of the region.

The guns and vehicle books were less than useful and I sometimes remember I own the Imperial Navy PDF, one reason I don't like PDF's.

from shadowcat48li: I have e-mailed LJ support, it may be a firewall issue of some kind.

I started off playing D&D my freshman year in HS, one of the kids in our gaming group had a brother who worked for GDW in the warehouse at the time, and he tried running traveller with the original lbb set, I read about it in the review in a very early Dragon and walked downtown to the GDW office to get a copy myself, I got hooked there and have been ever since

I will buy T5 at some point, Loren and crew have done a great job with GT
and T20 isnt too bad, although I hate the D20 mechanics

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Oh, by the way..

Hm.

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On T5...

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