Bursting With Excited Anticipation

[Supplement Four]

Traveller Sighted in Des Moines!

Evidently, the package is travelling at Jump-1. First, it jumped from the Bloomington Directorate to the pastoral world of Hazelwood.

After refueling and re-supplying, taking on low berthers, a few Mid-Passages, and a High Passage, the ship left Hazelwood bound for the busty starport on Des Moines.

It is expected in Texan space by Monday.

2-9 days? Guess that's straight average at 5 days (but, we really can't count Sunday).

Guess I rolled a 3 on the d8, +1, means 4 business travel days.

Here's to hoping it's not intercepted by Vargr corsairs.

Cheers!

 

[Magnus von Thornwood]

And now we know why all shipping goes through there.

Traveller Sighted in Des Moines!

Evidently, the package is travelling at Jump-1. First, it jumped from the Bloomington Directorate to the pastoral world of Hazelwood.

After refueling and re-supplying, taking on low berthers, a few Mid-Passages, and a High Passage, the ship left Hazelwood bound for the busty starport on Des Moines.

It is expected in Texan space by Monday.

2-9 days? Guess that's straight average at 5 days (but, we really can't count Sunday).

Guess I rolled a 3 on the d8, +1, means 4 business travel days.

Here's to hoping it's not intercepted by Vargr corsairs.

Cheers!

And here I thought the busy starport was the thing.

 

[mechascorpio]

And again, I have to point out that those who have ordered from FFE directly are getting their notices and books before those of us who backed the Kickstarter a year ago, despite assurances that this wasn't the case.

I'll be sure to include that in my review of the book and the way the KS itself was run. This same thing has happened when other Kickstarters accepted the funds of their patrons, ran late, but still managed to debut the product at a con. And then shipped to the backers afterwards. Sometimes months afterwards.

Yes, I know. A bunch of people will now come forward to defend honor that I am besmirching with the truth, and explain to me why this is a good thing, perfectly understandable, somehow only fair.... don't waste your breath or your bytes. I've noticed more than once that there are those who have stated that they didn't back the KS, but still managed to get a book in the past few weeks. It's an insult to the few hundred of us left who have been told to be patient despite one missed self-imposed deadline after another.

I'm bursting all right, but not with "excited anticipation"

 

[Jazzlvraz]

...there are those who have stated that they didn't back the KS, but still managed to get a book in the past few weeks.

Have you considered the benefits, to those people, of Internet anonymity? They might be stirring up trouble by claiming not to have backed the Kickstarter when, in fact, they did. EDIT: They may also claim to have received their book when they haven't.

I find it far easier to trust Marc Miller, who puts his name on the product and the promise, than folks I've not been dealing with since 1977. That's not to say deliveries aren't happening out of order, but it's one distinct possibility.

 

[Baltech Budapest]

I certainly didn't back the KS. Missed it by about a week.
I ordered from FFE on 3rd April but I must stress that I haven't received my book, nor any shipping notice.
I don't expect to see or hear anything until all the KS backers have theirs.
But I do read the KS updates and I almost sure I read in one update that some of the web orders were getting slotted in with the KS orders.
Marc's update (number 52) on KS is good news for everyone.
And just to add to Marc and Darlene's workload, I ordered the dice last week.
Again, I don't expect to see anything until July (maybe later).
As far as the web orders are concerned, I don't think that more than a handful of people have received theirs before the KS backers.

 

[robject]

Regardless of any official word, Mongoose Traveller and Traveller5 are related. But then I've never been a purist.

In what way, Rob?

The first stop Matthew made when he was carving out the core rules was Marc, who gave him CT and early chapters from T5. As we all know, Matt liked the CT/MT task system -- and I think that goes a long way to define a game. But the amount of structure borrowed from T5 is significant. Some of the subsystems for T5 weren't drafted at the time, so Matt used CT, which turns out to be just fine and quite usable.

T5 in MGT

The careers come directly from T5. It is slightly different (adding the interesting "Drifter" career, and dropping a couple others), and the method is MGT's take, but the list is otherwise the same.

The skills come directly from T5. It is slightly shorter in MGT (48 vs 64), and folds in some concepts (e.g. persuasion) which in T5 were moved under the task system in general, but the two lists are still closer to each other than anything else.

Mongoose's starship design system stems from that draft of T5, blending in a bit of other rulesets (e.g. for armour) and some of their own neat stuff (drones). Some parts are verbatim from Early T5 -- the hull, bridge, drives, fuel, drive performance table. Some parts are simply influenced -- the sensor packages and computers are not the same, but show Early T5's influence. Check out page 107 -- see the power plant fuel requirements table? Does it look like an afterthought to you? It was missed -- I had to have it tacked on. And the table was generated from .... that early draft of T5.

Despite that, chargen and ship design "feels" quite different between the two systems. I am just pointing out the origin of many of MGT's rules are T5.

MGT in T5

On the other hand, MGT has also influenced T5. The example that comes to my mind is page 110, the "Luxuries" section. That didn't exist in Early T5, but has been adapted into the final document. Another example is on the next page, with "Fixed" weapon mounts. In Early T5 that didn't exist, but showed up in a modified way as "Firmpoints".

T5 and MGT

Finally, MGT was vetted by people who also vetted T5. This subtly allowed both rule systems to inform each other. For example, some MGT personal armor values were vetted by me, as Marc was also developing the armor build rules for T5. At one point I had to establish a correlation function between MGT and T5's armor ratings, to gauge whether or not the armor ratings were reasonable (especially when they climbed into the stratosphere). I would then submit suggestions for value tweaks (seldom).

As it turns out, that opens up the possibility of using T5 to generate equipment for Mongoose Traveller, and porting innovative equipment from MGT to T5.