New to GURPS for Traveller

[parmasson]

Just got GURPS Traveller, starships, starports, Star Mercs Grounds Forces and GURPS Space from a friend and I am looking for reasons to love it.

Keep in mind I am a CT man and this system is all new to me. I want to pull the best and blend it into MTU. I am looking for the top reasons to love GURPS Traveller because I have an adenture to write by Sunday, a baby to take care of and pile of laundry that makes me wish that I had a PGMP-14 right about now.

 

[Malenfant]

Primary reason to love it: It's all very well written and well researched, and you can use the ideas in any Traveller game at least.

 

[daryen]

Reasons to love it:

- It is much more detailed than any other version. Both Starships and Starports give a wonderful sense of what it would be like to actually be on one.

- It is reasonably compatible with any other GURPS book. Consequently, if you so desire, it is pretty easy to fold in Robots, Biotech, or whatever, into your Traveller campaign.

- Once you get past the vastly different sizes of some things, its starship construction system gives options never possible in CT, but stays closer to the "feel" of CT than any other system besides T20.

- No Rebellion. No Virus.

Reasons to hate it:

- Uses a vastly different tech scale. Traveller tech assumptions and GURPS tech assumptions don't mesh well. Plus, the higher TL translations are (IMO) botched.

- Uses imperial units rather than metric.

- If greater detail tramples all over deeply held beliefs. (E.g. jump masking.)

- No Rebellion. No Virus.

 

[Kirth]

GURPS defines so much that it is easy to take adventures from QLI and run them in GT.

CT has been described by others as GURPSlite.

One difference is that you'll be able to build your character your way in GURPS using the point buy system instead of them being nearly totally random.

 

[parmasson]

I like using the points system. Instant game balance is achieved. Give them 75 points and tell them to go at it. Instantly balanced characters with no muss and no fuss. Disadvantages are a neat idea too.

Hey-
No rebellion, no virus, no problem.

 

[J.C.D.]

As a GT player, I must askm what is jump masking? Is it the ability to disguise where you're jumping to/from?

They have jumpo shadow, I think that covers a star's 100D limit blocking a direct jump to a planet at times, but I don't think that's mwhat you meant.

As for GT, I like it, having (foolishly, I admit) ignored previous versions of the big T I can't compare it to them, but would HATE a random character generation system with a passion. I want to design my character, damnit, and gurps does that.

GT products are well written and intelligently done. Asides from having to cover over a certain name on some of their cedits they're excellent products.


As far as value goes, I think starships is a must, far trader is too. The alien mods are nicely done. Starmercs and ground forces have potential depending on your campaign style.

 

[Whipsnade]

Originally posted by J.C.D.:
As a GT player, I must askm what is jump masking? Is it the ability to disguise where you're jumping to/from?

JCD,

No, that's jump flash, which is another (partial) GT innovation! TNE made it explicit first, IIRC. GT allows information to be gleaned from it. As with TNE, the 'arrival' flash simply lets folks know you've arrived. In GT, you can determine the direction of a jump but not its distance by observing a 'departure' flash.

They have jumpo shadow, I think that covers a star's 100D limit blocking a direct jump to a planet at times, but I don't think that's mwhat you meant.

That's it sort of. Jump masking occurs when a jump limit creates a shadow. The idea was one of those many, many, many things in the older versions of Traveller that were 'kind of', 'sort of', 'maybe' implied if you read something a certain way. Some folks claim it is implicit in Marc Miller's 1985 'Jump Space' essay and other folks feel it is either not there or not implicit enough. Jump masking was no where near explicit until GT:Far Trader was published and it is still not accepted by many.

And life goes on...

As for GT, I like it, having (foolishly, I admit) ignored previous versions of the big T I can't compare it to them...

All of what you need to play Traveller is in GT. All of what you need is in T20 too. The older versions are nice sources to plunder for ideas, you really don't need them to play Traveller though.

Asides from having to cover over a certain name on some of their cedits they're excellent products.

You really need to stop doing that. It brings you across as a bitter clown, something I don't believe actually you are. Kill that sig too, before Hunter sees it and tells you to kill it.

You've already posted a great adventure idea here, but people will ignore you and your ideas if you continue to act like this.

Back to the topic:

GT Pros:
- Build your PCs.
- Lots of other sourcebooks you can easily import if you wish.
- Lots to plunder from a lot of material even if you don't play GURPS.
- A different mass comabt system than MT. Neither is better, but having a different one means more people may run mass combat.
- A quick way to design grav vehicles. Striker is great, but do I really need to go thru all that to make a firetruck?


GT Cons:
- Isn't metric.
- Build your own PCs. Part of Traveller's fun was creating backstories for PCs rolled up semi-randomly.
- The TL mach ups between GURPS and Traveller are awful. This is because GURPS wasn't designed for Traveller and must be bashed to fit.
- Too many equipment options from various sourcebooks. Players can sneak campaign and/or setting wrecking items from a variety of books past an unwary or unknowing GM. UT-I, UT-II, and Psionics are very dangerous in this regard.
- Made the decision to add details that some places players would have preferred were left fuzzy.

I don't care which version you play, buy every GT book you can find, including BtC. There's just too much plunder to ignore.


Have fun,
Bill

 

[mwturnage]

One additional con: All of the extant Gurps Traveller books are for Gurps 3rd edition, not 4th. For non-Psionic characters this is a minor trifle; just grab the Update document on the SJG website and use that. Psionic mechanics and values have changed considerably in 4e, so existing characters may be a bit problematic.

Equipment, however, will be noticeably different. There's already conversions on the SJG forums, but nothing official will be coming for some time. Also, vehicle design between 3e and 4e is completely different and not really compatible...and it's going to be some time before the 4e design rules are finalised.

For some people these may be major negatives. Personally, I'm about to start a G:Traveller campaign with the 4e rules. I'd likely throw out the ship rules even if I were using 3e, so that's not much of an issue for me. Integration with 4e doesn't look difficult though, as long as you can live with things working different for vehicles (lasers and rate-of-fire are the major issues I can see).

 

[daryen]

Heh.

Or, one can always do the ultimately radical plan of just using 3e with GURPS Traveller.

But that is probably just me.

 

[BrennanHawkwood]

Originally posted by daryen:
Heh.

Or, one can always do the ultimately radical plan of just using 3e with GURPS Traveller.

But that is probably just me.

Me too...

Regarding the pros and cons of point-based character construction, it is not too hard to do a hybrid where the semi-random prior history system from the Traveller version of your choice is used and then the character is converted/rebuilt in GT. I found that this gives the best of both worlds, allowing the prior history to provide some shape to the character while GT allows you to tailor the actual mechanics of the character to better fit the concept developed.

Character-wise, most of the systems convert to GT pretty well. I've actually found T20 to be one of the hardest to convert to GT because it is not a straight skill based system and it is easier to end up with T20 characters that are experts at everything than most of the other Traveller variants.

In general, the Pros and Cons for me were...

PROs:
* Well written, good information that clarified many of the fuzzier points of the setting
* Many of the gearhead portions are better thought out (and in some cases more "realistic").
* Trade that makes sense and isn't too hard to make work as major sideline of a game

CONs:
* While characters aren't too difficult to rebuild across game lines, the same can't be said for everything. For example, while GT starships still feel like Traveller starships, its definately a rebuild rather than a conversion situation and you can't always make the same design work out.
* Monetary 'unequivelance' (is that a word? ). How much things cost in GT is based on compatabilty with GURPS, not Traveller. As a result, prices can be significantly different and game mechanics that pertain to money can be difficult to convert. (For example, a 'standard' 200-ton Far Trader is in the 30-40Mcr range in GT vs. the 60-70MCr range for T20)

 

[J.C.D.]

May I suggest using the current GT combat and construction rules for ships? Then use the 4e rules for characters and combat? Weapons conversion isn't too hard, there are guidelines.

 

[mwturnage]

Originally posted by daryen:
Heh.

Or, one can always do the ultimately radical plan of just using 3e with GURPS Traveller.

But that is probably just me.

It's a quite sensible one. I was just pointing out the disjoint as it seems to be the cause of some teethgnashing over at the SJG forums.

 

[daryen]

Originally posted by BrennanHawkwood:
CONs:
* While characters aren't too difficult to rebuild across game lines, the same can't be said for everything. For example, while GT starships still feel like Traveller starships, its definately a rebuild rather than a conversion situation and you can't always make the same design work out.

I would like to point out that this is true for every version of Traveller. Even going from CT to MT required a redesign. (Actually, all of the base ships in MT were CT designs. They didn't actually redo the ships in MT. The scout in MT is still a Book 2 (!) design!)

For the real challenge, try to go from TNE FF&S to CT, MT, GT, or T20. You can't. All you can do is try and go for the "feel" of the ship and then wing it.

I will give GT credit on one big point with its starships: Its ships were actually designed using the presented design system and actually followed the rules. That really hadn't been true in Traveller since first edition Book 2. (I don't claim the designs are necessarily good, just that they seem to follow the rules.)

(I can't speak for T20; I haven't checked its ships to see if they follow the rules. I will give Hunter and Martin the benefit of the doubt and assume they do.)

 

[BrennanHawkwood]

Originally posted by daryen:
I would like to point out that this is true for every version of Traveller. Even going from CT to MT required a redesign. (Actually, all of the base ships in MT were CT designs. They didn't actually redo the ships in MT. The scout in MT is still a Book 2 (!) design!)

Absolutely...some are a little easier to move between than others, but you are certainly correct.

For the real challenge, try to go from TNE FF&S to CT, MT, GT, or T20. You can't. All you can do is try and go for the "feel" of the ship and then wing it.

Yeah. When I have tried various 'conversions' it has seemed that moving back and forth between CT, MT and T20 wasn't usually too problematic (T20-CT by design IIRC) while anything built with either FF&S ruleset or GT takes much more rethinking/retooling to move into anything else (or to move anything into those systems.

 

[Anthony]

Actually, there's something to be said for using High Guard for ship designs, and then figuring out a way to translate into GURPS. Lemme give that one some thought, it really should be doable, and might even be fairly easy.

 

[parmasson]

I think we might take the plunge and convert to GT from CT and give it a shot. I am sure to go to hell now, I know it. I just love all the detail and supplements. I downloaded the T20 pdf but received scowls and lots of disapproving looks. What is weird is that we play d20 DnD all the time. I think that the GT book is 3e as are all of our basic books so no trouble there. Now I just have to sit down and actually READ the rules to see if I can live with myself.

 

[J.C.D.]

You're right, you're sure going to hell now...

 

[Hal]

If it helps, I've got a few ship designs on my webpage you can look at. One is a jump-3 trader based on the beowulf design. I've also done a 100 dton Jump-2 "wanderer" class ship with only 3 staterooms and no intentions of carrying passengers. It is strictly a freighter. The other ship designs were destroyer escorts, nothing fancy.

http://users.adelphia.net/~alaconius

 

[parmasson]

Thanks,
Stat conversions should be no problem, but skills are something else. My understanding is that GURPS characters end up with a lot more listed skills. How have others dealt with this?

 

[BrennanHawkwood]

We winged it. Don't worry too much about the point totals of your characters. Use the GT templates as sources of ideas for which GT skills are envisioned as going with various character concepts. Build decent fun characters that approximate the original ones without worrying about them being no more or no less capable than the originals.