Grand Unified Traveller

[robject]

This is the Platonic Ideal, or the rules-version of Hans' True Traveller, the Confession of all Travellers, everywhere, at all times. IMTU of course.

Life path chargen. No XP.

Armor absorbs damage. Some armor ablates. There is more than one type of damage. Pressure maps to damage.

Combat is deadly.

The environment is not your friend.

Task rolls are fast. Char and skill are balanced well. Other metrics (world atmosphere, range, speed, TL) work well within the task system.

Vehicles work with personal combat.

Vehicles use tons when it makes the most sense, cubic meters otherwise.

Vehicles use meaningful power ratings. Meaningful means task utility.

Vehicles includes starships.

Computers and robots share a common paradigm.

Drives get better with TL. Alternate drives exist, each with various tradeoffs.

Aliens and robots can fit naturally into chargen.

 

[JustinInOz]

Sounds pretty good.

Ambitious but good. Shoot for the stars and you might reach Mars.

 

[mike wightman]

Sounds like CT+ from a couple of years back

 

[fusor]

And is T5 anything like this?

 

[aramis]

And is T5 anything like this?

No, not really. Actually, pretty close to "not at all."

It does sound very like CT+ meets Burning Wheel....
I was hoping for AvengerCT... but that got canned, and I know not why.

 

[robject]

Note that being close to this ideal doesn't mean I necessarily like it better. (Wait, does that make sense?)

Various sets get close to this in one way or another.

CT is the one which most misses the mark.

MegaTraveller comes close, could have been closer. A revised MT could come even closer.
CT+ (theoretically) came close too, but only in different ways than MT, not in degree.
Similarly T4.
Similarly ACT (which was an instance of CT+).

TNE came closer than them.

Mongoose Traveller comes close.

I'm largely basing (biasing) the "requirements" off of T5, which has most of these elements. It downplays power in vehicles, and while starships are treated like vehicles, the design systems are separate. Volume is always in tons for vehicles, and only reverts to liters for equipment, animals, and sophonts.


Put another way:

• take MT,
• segregate the vehicle design system to be usable,
• extract vehicle component properties and factor them into modifications,
• graft on T4's armor and psionics rules,
• standardize environmental effects,
• use tons instead of cumets almost everywhere,
• simplify power assumptions vastly,
• add a robots chapter,
• add an aliens chapter,
• rationalize computers to work with robots,
• rationalize chargen

The result is sort-of an MT approximation of T5.

Fewer steps might get you from MGT to T5.

 

[kafka47]

Good that and the crunchy bits is why I am glad that I going to buy T5. So far, I like Mongoose has down well for the line and name of Traveller - those parts that I do not like - I ignore like I did in previous versions (why can't people follow Gygax's dictum - it is rulings not rules and we make stuff up). So I do eagerly await the final product and wish that Hans' as well as what I have followed a bit this forums all comes to pass.