Newbie inquiry

[DuneFox]

All.
I am a newbie to Traveller 5 but not a newbie to Classic Traveller.
I downloaded my copy of the Traveller 5 Core Rules V5.09 and I am working my way through the rules and all can say is WOW!!!!

I have never seen a more in-depth rules system -ever!!!

What I am curious about is this new version more of a toolkit approach - meaning that one must develop all weapons, spaceships and worlds oneself as I am not finding lots of examples.

How are you all approaching this game?

DF

 

[robject]

The core rulebook is very much tool-box-y.

That said, check out my helpful stuff link for Traveller5.

 

[Draconian]

All.
I am a newbie to Traveller 5 but not a newbie to Classic Traveller.
I downloaded my copy of the Traveller 5 Core Rules V5.09 and I am working my way through the rules and all can say is WOW!!!!

I have never seen a more in-depth rules system -ever!!!

What I am curious about is this new version more of a toolkit approach - meaning that one must develop all weapons, spaceships and worlds oneself as I am not finding lots of examples.

How are you all approaching this game?

DF

You will notice a lot of things done in the classic, "Old School" approach, like how to generate systems by rolling dice, or a character sheet that is actually inset with two 3"x5" spaces where all the info goes. Supposedly if you fill in that sheet you can cut and glue them together and have character-sheets compatible with the legacy box of index-cards first suggested in Classic Traveller.

Of course, that doesn't mean that you have to do things that way...

Web-based utilities exist to design a whole sector at a time, at

http://www.heldenhaufen.de

Robject has made many utilities on his own site as well. GunMaker is available as a phone app (!)

 

[Orc65001]

I regard T5 as a rules update, (a rather comprehensive one), and while there seems to be little setting information to work with. I think the idea was that if you don't have the setting material from previous versions of Traveller, the rules enable you to create your own setting. Traveller was always good for that, and continues to be so today. That being said, one can find numerous setting references scattered throughout the book, nearly every page has some little tidbit of setting information, whether that is the name of a weapon, a class of ship, a university somewhere in the Imperium, the name of a sophont, etc. Just looking at the mods tables supplies you with 33 minor corporation names, or Brand Names. There are other examples of this in some of the makers. So while it doesn't have a section dedicated to describing the setting in detail, there is considerable setting detail scattered throughout the book. It's up to us to flesh it out in our personal Traveller universes.

btw I love this game.

 

[aramis]

What I am curious about is this new version more of a toolkit approach - meaning that one must develop all weapons, spaceships and worlds oneself as I am not finding lots of examples.

How are you all approaching this game?

DF

Many are not bothering to design stuff. Instead, many T5 users are using it as a supplement to other editions.

• New system design - easily ported.
• New ship rules - portable, with minor difficulties, to MT/TNE/T4/MGT/T20
• Vehicles - relatively portable to any edition if you know the nuts-n-bolts of the target system.
• Character gen - easily ported to T4 or TNE, less so to others.
• Tasks - hot swap with systems in TNE or T4. Trivial for those two, as the general levels of competence are the same number of modifiers. Not so easily done with CT, MT, T20, MGT, GT/GTIW, HT.
• Trade and Commerce - since it uses tasks, pretty easily ported to any edition except GURPS and CT. If you know MT or MGT, you can port it to CT relatively easy by converting the tasks to CT-style explicit die-roll rules.

For me, the biggest thing is that I can look at T5 ship rules and backport just the new drives into my MGT variant ship design rules. Which are going to get more variant when I next run the Elestrial Concordat setting.

 

[Licheking]

I hated Classic Traveller for its simplicity, and was only turned on to the setting through MegaTraveller which i found to be well thought out and much better rules wise. Traveller 5 for me is now the definitive version with the correct feel for Traveller universe and the rules feel of MegaTraveller.

I have used all the Makers and have converted all the vehicles/ships/robots from previous versions of the game to T5, including 101 Vehicles and 101 Robots. Yes the Makers do need some errata and tidying up but with a little common sense you can get the results you want.

My groups have been playing T5 since its release and all of them like over all the previous versions and consider it to be a full game.

By the way there is 2 documents available through FFE with weapons and armour for T5, i think they are free but check. As for ships and vehicles you don't have to redesign them from previous editions unless you want too. Unless the ship or vehicles is going into combat they can be used the same as always and deckplans can remain the same, the rules havn't changed that much.

 

[robject]

Many are not bothering to design stuff. Instead, many T5 users are using it as a supplement to other editions.

• New ship rules - portable, with minor difficulties, to MT/TNE/T4/MGT/T20

OK, yes, porting to MgT has relatively minor difficulties. But there are more than I originally expected, sadly, since Mongoose went off the reservation with its compressed, non-formulaic drive potential table.

 

[aramis]

OK, yes, porting to MgT has relatively minor difficulties. But there are more than I originally expected, sadly, since Mongoose went off the reservation with its compressed, non-formulaic drive potential table.

CT was also non-formulaic. Gareth used what he had — which was CT 1E books 1-5 and a couple adventures — and worked from there.