New Traveller

[thebitterguy]

Mongoose has made their new Traveller available for open playtest here.

For those who are interested.

Comments

[rentagurkha.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the pointer.

[thebitterguy]

NP. Let me know how it is.

[spross.livejournal.com]

Why do parts of this remind me of SPI's Universe rpg?

[rentagurkha.livejournal.com]

Well, Universe was a Traveller knockoff, so if they stole something back it's only fair.

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

One of the stories I heard was that SPI had produced DragonQuest which was built by people who understood what roleplaying was and cared about it, and who were also quite clever when it came to game design and development. Then the company said, "Hey! We should have an SF rpg, too!" and gave the task to someone who did not understand what roleplaying was about and didn't care very much about it (I believe his interest was mostly in tactical boardgaming). Whether Butterfield was clever about game design or not is anyone's guess, but it's quite clear that Universe certainly suffers from under-development as it has inequities and sharp corners that become quite clear with only a small amount of play.

[thebitterguy]

Suddenly I'm very glad I never got drawn into that Universe game.

[maliszew.livejournal.com]

Universe was an odd thing: totally unplayable, to be sure, but it had a few intriguing setting ideas and a glorious fold-out star map that was never bettered till 2300 AD (né Traveller: 2300) was released.

[thebitterguy]

The GM of that game had this binder full of rules that I just assumed meant it was particularly complicated. Maybe they were the house rules to make it playable?

[maliszew.livejournal.com]

Anything's possible.

From what I recall, Universe wasn't hugely complex, although starship combat could be, since it used real physics for movement. The bigger issue was that the various sub-systems didn't seem to interact very well together and so the whole game had a schizophrenic vibe.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

The environmental rules were kind of cool.

One of the things that I need to post about is what I assume is a Trek-influenced tendency to see trade between high tech and low tech cultures as inherently bad.

In Universe, this showed up as a rule about not being able to trade between societies whose "Civ" level was too different. Unfortunately, one of the things that reduced Civ level was uninhabitability so sometimes you'd generate low Civ cultures on airless worlds that were forbidden to import things like life support systems.

[jkahane.livejournal.com]

If you're talking about me and the binders of additional stuff, Justin, that was the additions and modifications made to the system. New professions, new skills, new starship designs, new pod designs, and so forth. Admittedly, some of the stuff was to help clean up the game system somewhat, but the rest of it was all additions.

::nostalgic sigh:: I still have all my Universe game stuff, too, including an unopened boxed set of the game. :)

[jkahane.livejournal.com]

Viktor, Universe suffers from all of the typical problems that plagued rpgs at that time. That said, John Butterfield was a remarkable game designer, but as you stated, his primary expertise was tactical boardgaming, and this showed in the <>Universe combat systems, both man-to-man and for starship combat. (That said, Delta Vee was an amazing starship combat system for its time, and I still have fond memories of running Universe as a whole. And there's still an active community on the net for the game, so...

[jkahane.livejournal.com]

Actually, there's nothing overly reminiscent of this and UNUIVERSE. I think many folks who played and ran UNIVERSE believe that the game system was never adequately tested, although I always found work-arounds when I was gaming with it.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Am I right in remembering that someone with Blade 5 or lower was incapable of touching someone with Blade 7? I've lost my copy of Universe but it seems to me that there was a square of the skill level thing going on.

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

It is correct that there was a square of the skill level thing going on. I'm not sure if this translated into the effect you describe, but you're my chief source for actual play information about Universe, so.... 8)

[jkahane.livejournal.com]

Yes, the Universe rpg used the square of the Skill Level for stuff, something that I remember adoring because the game placed an emphasis that way on the Skill, per say, rather than the actual Attributes.

As for the business with Blade skill, don't rememeber having any problems with that.

[michael-b-lee.livejournal.com]

Damn. I'm seriously tempted.

I'm shocked there are others out there who still remember Universe I still have the starmap and most of the books in my mom's attic.

[thebitterguy]

Well, there's a nice selection of grognards hanging around TBG today.

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

Hahaha!