In opposition to CT , why should I try T20 ?

[Xoqortit -nem]

Hey,


Happy NEw Year everyone. I'm getting back into gaming after a long, long hiatus ,and am attracted to Traveller . I simply would like to know why those that prefer T20 to CT, do so . I wouldn't mind a few examples in preference . You could give me specifics as well .

Lifeblood ?

Flexibilty ?
BEtter Starship rules ?

Whatever. I'll apprecate everything.

In advance, thank you.

ROn

 

[Garyius2003]

I really like CT, but:

The injury and combat rules are better for T20, the careers are more balanced(make more sense?), and the starships and crewing make more sense and there is a reason for a navy to buy a light destroyer or Firey instead of pooling the money for another J-4/6G meson 50k hull .

 

[Xoqortit -nem]

Garyius,

Thank you and , If I may , why do you prefer CT ?


ROn

 

[aramis]

Me, I use T20 as an adjunct to MT. The T&C system is an expansion of Bk2, the ship design is a revision of HG, and the non-spacecraft design system is derived from HG principles, and is about as complex.

So significant chunks, even if you don't play T20, are useable in other editions with minimal modifications.

 

[Rover]

I am a huge fan of T20, I never liked the 2D6 mechanic of CT, and thought the character creation system was a little too sparse.

Personally the aspect I like best about T20 is the prior history. It allows for incredibly detailed and varied character creation. It may not be spelled out greatly in the THB, not sure about the new book. Basically in character creation you can multiclass. This was an idea that took me a while to get my head around. As you serve terms in a service you gain experience. With that experience you gain levels, but they don’t necessarily have to be in that service. For example you can enlist in the Army, serve a term in the Army and use the XP’s you earned to take a level in Rouge. Why would you want to do this? Suppose your character concept was the crooked sergeant that ran a black market out of the motor pool. If you want to be a plastic surgeon for the mob you can enlist in the rouges and take levels in professional. There are some restrictions, and it is best to limit it to 2 or at most 3 classes, but I think you get the point. I really love the Chargen system.

Also T20 uses D20 mechanics for combat and skill resolution. Some people think these rules are a little too granular and tactical, but I like granular. T20 uses class and level, like D&D, but there are some mods, primarily the life blood rules, that make for a really gritty and deadly combat system. In D&D a 20th Level buck naked fighter with no weapons will kick the crap out of 5 mooks armed with daggers. In T20 an unarmed 20th level Marine won’t stand much of a chance against 1 mook armed with a pistol. Combat is deadly and should be avoided.

Basically the Chargen is great, and although it can be clunky at first, the D20/T20 combat system works well.

R

 

[JohnMarsh]

Best of both worlds.

I haven't played it yet but will use T20 over CT for several reasons.
We know D20 rules from D&D 3.0 / 3.5.
The T20 combat system is better understood by us and I think more flexible and less lethal.
Characters in T20 can level up and improve skills so they develop in a way CT characters don't.
Having said that there is an enormous amount of info compatible with T20 that CT provides so you can use that e.g. System UWP's and tons of stuff on the net. I understand that there is also a lot of compatibility with High Guard ships so maybe they can be easily used as well.
On the D20 side I am sure scenarios and probably some rules on class and feats / skills and equipment can be pinched from D20 modern although I haven't looked at that yet.
In short T20 takes the best of CT and makes it available and adds the massive amount of material from D20 genres as well.

 

[Xoqortit -nem]

Great

Well, thank you very much Garyius, Aramis , Rover and John. All of that information and description helps out alot. Thank you for taking time out to help me.

Ron

 

[hunter]

I understand that there is also a lot of compatibility with High Guard ships so maybe they can be easily used as well.

Yes T20 ships are High Guard compatible. Pretty much two different systems to achieve the exact same results. Basically I reverse engineered High Guard.

 

[hunter]

Don't forget you can download T20 Lite for free. Only has the Merchant class, but contains most of the basic character creation rules, skills, feats, and personal combat.

 

[Xoqortit -nem]

Thx ,Hunter !

 

[Garyius2003]

Garyius,

Thank you and , If I may , why do you prefer CT ?


ROn

The Skill Resolution System and Combat is easy and quick. That encourages role playing.

Also, the character system forces people to play characters they wouldn't usually do.

That being said, I am still going back and forth between GURPS and T20 for my next game so that we can have a good party mix and since I have decided against CT because the starship rules push navy ships in only two directions--J4, 6-G at and over 1,000 tons, and something much slower under that. I need an Imperium where the Firey dashes after the enemy while the cruiser goes slightly slower and the Tigeress lumbers.

 

[Xoqortit -nem]

......J4, 6-G at and over 1,000 tons, and something much slower under that. I need an Imperium where the Firey dashes after the enemy while the cruiser goes slightly slower and the Tigeress lumbers.

Gotya. SOme of those details I'm not yet familiar with but I understand.

 

[Garyius2003]

Gotya. SOme of those details I'm not yet familiar with but I understand.

Because of the way the CT ship design system works out, at TL 15 (and even 14 mostly) any ship really has to be 1,000 tons or more (3,000 even better) to have 6-G and agility 6 and comp 9-fib (A-6 and comp 9-fib being VERY important in combat dice rolls).

Then, if you are going to have a 5,000 ton destroyer class, it is actually better to forgo building 8-10 of those vessels to have a 50,000 ton with a spinal code N meson mount that can do some damage. In order to have a code T mount you really need 200,000 tons, but four 50,000 ton cruisers with code N will beat the 200,000 ship almost every time.

 

[Xoqortit -nem]

Cool, Cool. Thank's.

 

[whartung]

I need an Imperium where the Firey dashes after the enemy while the cruiser goes slightly slower and the Tigeress lumbers.

Is that the kind of Imperium that GT provides? Because most systems that I've seen promote ships to be as fast as possible, and the technology supports fast ships. The M Drives tend to not be the particular limits on the design, so there's little need to restrict them. The costs of faster drives are truly incremental and minor compared to other aspects of the ships.

The primary benefit smaller ships have over larger ships is simply their size. Larger ships are easier to hit. Slowing them down makes them easier still, and in the "one shot one kill" universe of the Meson Gun "Death Ray", you want to avoid being hit at ALL above everything else.

Get rid of Meson Guns, and the game is more "Wooden Starships and Iron Men", with big ships being harder to kill because they're bigger ships. Where you need to put the ships on the rotisserie and roast them until all of the weapons cook off and you boil the crew inside to about medium crispy. Is that what you're thinking then? Get rid of the Meson gun?

Normal Traveller combat is nimble Rifleman in a open stadium, with no cover save maybe an old trashcan lid strapped to an arm, with smaller, non-meson ships, running around childllike armed with straight razors to inflict "death by a 1000 cuts/lasers/missiles". In that game, you want to bring as many Rifleman as you can.

 

[Garyius2003]

I think so. For my new game I need the bigger ships to be slower, and GURPS does that.

At GTL-12, TL-15, the Tigeress lumbers around at 1G, your Kokirrak is 2G, your cruiser is pushing 4G, and your Kinunir is pushing 5G. Then you have your Fiery slashing along at 6ish G.

 

[Rover]

The Skill Resolution System and Combat is easy and quick. That encourages role playing.

Also, the character system forces people to play characters they wouldn't usually do.

Hi Garyius2003
I really have to disagree with you on these points. I fount the CT combat system clunky and less intuative than a percentage based system or an incremental system like D20.

As for being quick, the lifeblood rules ensure that firefights are to be avoided.

Also I think the players and GM are more important to promote roleplaying than any combat rules. If firefights are all that is offered to the players then that is what they will do.

As for playing being forced to play a character you don't want, I really have to diagree with this. Game play is for fun and entertainment. Why should I be forced to play a 2 term merchant with Steward-2 Vacc suit-1 when I want to play a Belter, Rouge, or Marine? Does it make me a beter person? Back in the day of the LBB's that was one aspect of traveller that really grated on me.

As a player or GM, I would much rather players have the characters they want. Of course a lot of that has to do with they style of game you are playing. If you are playing Traveller as a tactical simualtion or large scale starship combat game then individual characters may not be as important. And if that is how you like to play then more power to you.

In my games, as player or ref, I like to keep things on a personal scale, more about the characters interacting, exploring and trading. I don't think I ever had ship in any game that was biggerthan 500tons, and almost never did ship to ship combat. But that is just how I have fun.

R

 

[Captain Midnight]

Is that the kind of Imperium that GT provides? Because most systems that I've seen promote ships to be as fast as possible, and the technology supports fast ships. The M Drives tend to not be the particular limits on the design, so there's little need to restrict them. The costs of faster drives are truly incremental and minor compared to other aspects of the ships.

The primary benefit smaller ships have over larger ships is simply their size. Larger ships are easier to hit. Slowing them down makes them easier still, and in the "one shot one kill" universe of the Meson Gun "Death Ray", you want to avoid being hit at ALL above everything else.

The difference here is that in the GT ship design system, mass is tracked as well. Your M-drive produces a particular amount of thrust for its size and TL, and then our good friend Sir Isaac Newton tells us to divide thrust by mass to determine acceleration. CT doesn't track a ship's mass; instead, a given M-drive will accelerate a given VOLUME at a defined rate, no matter if it contains empty space or neutronium.

GT also allows evasion of enemy fire in a different manner than CT. In GT, your pilot rolls against [(Skill + Accel - Size-mod)/2], with a ship's Passive Defense (and the pilot's Combat Reflexes) as a modifier; if he succeeds, the shot misses. In CT/HG, agility depends on excess power being available for the M-Drive, but the Agility modifier can't be greater than the G-rating of the M-Drive; pilot skill modifies agility as [(skill -1)/2]. In essence, GT lets skill affect "penetration", and CT lets skill affect "to hit".

GT also assigns damage in terms of "damage points", and armor reduces the effect of every shot that hits by its Damage Resistance (except for meson weapons, although Meson Screens provide armor against those if the operator makes his skill roll). Spinal meson guns typically do so much damage they'll get multiple Major Damage rolls against anything smaller than 100,000 dtons; those are roughly equivalent to HG's "Critical Hits", but a 500 kton DN has so many hit points that you're not going to kill it with a single shot from any weapon in the Traveller arsenal.

Under the GT ship design system, a Tigress is big and slow (with a 2-G acceleration and a +15 size-modifier), but it'll take anything you can dish out for a very very long time.

However, I'll also point out that acceleration is just one factor, and that initial velocity is going to be very important, too. The GT version of the Tigress doesn't change speeds all that quickly, especially when compared to a 6G-capable ship, but once it gets up some speed, it can move along with alacrity. Not a lot of fleet actions will be decided in a single pass of ships, anyway.

 

[Garyius2003]

***I really have to disagree with you on these points. I fount the CT combat system clunky and less intuative than a percentage based system or an incremental system like D20.***




Those are all good points. It is one of the reasons that my next game is going to be CT.

In fact, the only thing you said that I don't agree with is the combat table.

Sometimes, though, it is fun to play different characters, and CT really forces you to do that.

 

[BlackBat242]

Rouge = color, a shade of red; a make-up for coloring skin (usually lips) red; a polishing agent (usually consisting of ferrous [iron] oxide) for metals; the red compartments in roulette.

Rogue = a thief or other criminal type; a career in Traveller.