Yeah, that will upset my players no end. Thanks !
Player's Book: What's needed?
- Thread starter Daddicus
- Start date
Yeah, that will upset my players no end. Thanks !
thesmiths4
SOC-8
I agree. The idea I posted would mostly be the redone pages that you'd be fixing in the core book, I think. If that's the case, it may just be a natural product of the fixes to the core rules?
Anyway, it's just an idea. I appreciate having the opportunity to express it to someone involved with the effort. Thanks!
I think the "core" is really solid. But, the organization and errata need fixing.
Anyhow, doing a shorter "Player's Guide" allows us to get significant things fixed, but leaves open doing other fixes later. So, I really like the idea of a PG.
I created a new thread to discuss volunteering.
To sum up what I've read and decided from here so far, starting with the errata-ed core rules:
Character generation - 6 of the careers (Scout, Spacer, Marine, Noble, Merchant, Rogue)
Tasks, Skills.
Personals, Sensing, and Combat (includes a usable summary of range and size).
Lists: weapons, armor, vehicles, small craft, starships, exploration gear.
Space combat.
Worlds (UWP generation and explanation).
Trade.
Psionics.
200 pages, hardcover. Follow The Traveller Book's format.
NO star system design
NO mapping
NO makers
Then post a free, lite version of starship design which mimics Book 2.
Character generation - 6 of the careers (Scout, Spacer, Marine, Noble, Merchant, Rogue)
Tasks, Skills.
Personals, Sensing, and Combat (includes a usable summary of range and size).
Lists: weapons, armor, vehicles, small craft, starships, exploration gear.
Space combat.
Worlds (UWP generation and explanation).
Trade.
Psionics.
200 pages, hardcover. Follow The Traveller Book's format.
NO star system design
NO mapping
NO makers
Then post a free, lite version of starship design which mimics Book 2.
It is T5, not CT!
One, if you are including CharGen for Careers, then put in all the damned Careers, not just the CT ones. Those other Careers are one of the cooler parts of T5 and should not be cut to make T5 look like CT when it is not. If folks want Classic Traveller, then please do play CT.
Two, if you are leaving out all the creation parts like SysGen and the Makers, then either cater to all the gearheads and just release a Maker/Generator book later and just include ACS with that. Again, T5 is not CT, if they want simple, two minute ships, just don't use the spiffy parts like Stage Effects. That doesn't require that the system be reduced to some CT players' comfort zone which is what this list looks suspiciously like it is catering to. No, offense, but they have a game/system they don't want or need ours.
If you are going to cut things, then bloody cut them, but don't reduce them to being the old CT mechanics.
A couple things...
One, if you are including CharGen for Careers, then put in all the damned Careers, not just the CT ones. Those other Careers are one of the cooler parts of T5 and should not be cut to make T5 look like CT when it is not. If folks want Classic Traveller, then please do play CT.
Two, if you are leaving out all the creation parts like SysGen and the Makers, then either cater to all the gearheads and just release a Maker/Generator book later and just include ACS with that. Again, T5 is not CT, if they want simple, two minute ships, just don't use the spiffy parts like Stage Effects. That doesn't require that the system be reduced to some CT players' comfort zone which is what this list looks suspiciously like it is catering to. No, offense, but they have a game/system they don't want or need ours.
If you are going to cut things, then bloody cut them, but don't reduce them to being the old CT mechanics.
That's a reasonable argument.
Nah, Craig, this is my view of a Player's Guide: PGs won't have all of the tools the referee uses.
Holy space cows, I am reasonable! 
* Now personally, I don't think making things is Refs' Work and I encourage Players to Make stuff. But then I am odd compared to my fellow great apes.
If you are talking about a Players' Guide then don't include any making parts period. That includes ACS lite, if making things is Refs' work* then leave it to Refs to find and use the tools. That is my argument.
* Now personally, I don't think making things is Refs' Work and I encourage Players to Make stuff. But then I am odd compared to my fellow great apes.
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Taking a post from Mike Wightman, here's what a minimalist Player's Guide would look like:
[FONT=arial,helvetica]
So a minimum size looks to be nearly 250 pages.
[FONT=arial,helvetica]
- (p10) Intro
- (p21) Tasks
- (p35) Characters
- (p65) Character examples
- (p75) Skills
- (p119) Equipment (smack dab in the center of the book)
- (p142) Starports
- (p150) Personal Combat (animals and vehicles are part of this, btw)
- (p180) Ship Combat
- (p192) Trade
- (p212) Psionics
- (p222) Final Word
So a minimum size looks to be nearly 250 pages.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
It could be edited and reformatted down to a third that size.
Smaller font, better layout, ruthless edit - 80-100 pages easy.
Smaller font, better layout, ruthless edit - 80-100 pages easy.
No thanks.
esampson
SOC-13
Missed this thread when it first got started.
The idea should be a book that gives the players everything that they need to play. It may not be completely sufficient unto itself (someone will need a referee's guide) but players shouldn't need to purchase anything else.
Character Creation: As others have said, I would have all of the current careers, not just the 6 from Book 1. There should be no planetary generation information here. There might be a list of generic nameless planets that can be chosen or rolled for a character's home planet along with pertinent information (any trade classifications that can affect character career choices and skills) but there's no full blown star generation. A chart for specific named planets can be included with any book detailing an area.
Tasks Resolution: General skill information. Not the full nitty gritty of combat but the basic idea for 'here's how to do a skill roll'.
Skills: Information about every skill and what it's used for.
Psionics: Psionics are essentially nothing more than specialized skills. They get their own section both to make clear that they are specialized (you can't just become psionic in the same way you can learn a new skill, even though most mechanisms are similar) as well as providing a slightly different format between psionics and mundane skills.
Character Development: Characteristic and skill improvements and aging.
Combat: All the information for how to handle combat including specifics for sensing, attacking, defending, combat movement, and how damage is handled. With these first 6 chapters and a list of equipment a player should have everything they need to run a combat between two or more people. Section ends with a list of standardized weapons and armor.
Starships: Information on sharship combat as well as general starship operations (jumping, navigation rolls, landing, in-system travel, etc.). Information about spaceships. There does not need to be anything about finance or trade at this point. A player who has read up to this point should know all the rolls involved in the immediate operation of a starship. Maintanence costs, bank loans, salaries, etc. go in the Referee's Handbook along with trade rules. Section ends with entries for every ship awarded as mustering out benefits and a floorplan for at least one ship.
Worlds and Exploration: An explanation of how to read a UWP but nothing about generation. Players don't need to create planets. That's a job for the referee. Rules about non-combat activities that might occur on a planet such as non-spaceship travel, survival, surface to surface communication, exploration, character to character interactions that rely on skill rolls such as bargaining, etc. Rules for non-spaceship vehicles. Section ends with a list of standardized vehicles and equipment.
There should be no 'Makers' in the book beyond Character Generation and that should be limited to only characters. Any system that might involve a maker such as a system to allow characters to build their own guns would be pushed off into other books. Similarly trade rules and the economics of running a ship will be put either in the Referee's Handbook or a Starship Handbook (most likely they would be put into both with basic rules being put into the Referee's Handbook and more detailed rules available in the Starship Handbook).
At least that is how I feel it should be organized. This should make it fairly accessible to players without innundating them with information they either don't need to know (such as how to generate encounter charts for a planet) or information where there is a high probablity they are unconcerned (in my experience players worrying about the economics of running a ship or worrying about the trade system are a minority).
Excellent explanation, I second the motion.
Keep it simple, only what a player needs to play the game. If it was prepared concurrently with the Referees Book, each chapter or section could have a reference to a successive chapter or section in the Refs Book & vice versa. This way a ref could buy both and at any point, when looking up something in one, be able to readily find where the related material is in the other tome.
Personal preference? Putting Tasks, combat and ship combat together as they all use the same mechanic. Also, trade (in my head anyway) sits together with equipment and star ports, thematically at least.
Intro
Characters (How to make one)
Character examples (obvious)
Equipment (lists and explanations for character use)
Starports (short section on the places you might go, and what you might find)
Trade (how to make money for you survival)
Tasks (obvious, with a few examples)
Personal combat (hitting things)
Ship combat (flying around and hitting things)
Psionics (thinking about hitting things! I jest....)
Final word
For me, the Intro, Character examples, Star ports sections would benefit from lots of juicy colour and flavour to inspire potential players. Yes, the CT/MT/T2k grogs et al have that experience, but dropping this on a player for the first time, a player who might not be familiar or even aware of Traveller's potential might need a little push here and there.
Thought: Additional download of free short in-world fiction? Not included in the PG due to size constraints?
Adjusted content based on good thoughts from cym0k and esampson. This is a high page count.
Code:
Front Matter ................. 1 10 pp
Intro ........................ 11 10 pp
Characteristics and the UPP .. 21 20 pp
Characters ................... 41 30 pp
Experience ................... 71 2 pp
Characters (Examples TBD) .... 73 10 pp
Skills pp142-175 ............. 83 34 pp
Equipment List ............... 117 23 pp
Vehicle List TBD ............. 140 2 pp
Smallcraft List TBD .......... 142 2 pp
Starship List ................ 144 2 pp
Tasks ........................ 146 13 pp
Personal Combat .............. 159 26 pp
Ship Combat .................. 185 14 pp
Starship Ops ................. 199 41 pp
Worlds (Starports) ........... 240 8 pp
Worlds (The UWP pp432-434) ... 248 3 pp
Worlds (Interactions) ........ 251 6 pp
Worlds (Vehicles pp281-295) .. 257 15 pp
Worlds (Costs pp48-53) ....... 272 6 pp
Worlds (Money p56) ........... 278 1 pp
Psionics ..................... 279 10 pp
Final Word ................... 289 2 pp
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I will do a high-pass analysis on that idea, because it's worth thinking about and keeping in mind.
The main issue is that I'm taking the easiest route. Edits, extractions, and/or supplement decisions are not mine to make. I do make suggestions from time to time, but again, I try to contain most of the work to correction and adjustment, rather than rewrite.
Front matter and introductory material is likely to be 20 pages, although it could be trimmed to 13 pages. However, these sections DO have to explain "how to play Traveller", don't they?
The chargen-related info tells us how "Checks" work, how to read the UPP, how to use each characteristic, how to generate characters, and how to specialize and gain experience. A complete rewrite might reclaim pages, but just as likely it would grow the chapters.
Skills is trimmed to omit Talents; otherwise, however, skill descriptions and how to use skills in general is important.
The Equipment List has some stuff that's not necessary; however, most of the equipment there is useful. I hope the list isn't considered excessive.
The Tasks chapter seems to be good, and includes examples.
Personal Combat is being rewritten, but I wouldn't bet that it will be any shorter than it is. I assume Ship Combat will also be that way.
Now, Starship Operations is a big chunk of text. However, it's just so dang useful for a player to understand, with examples of starship-based tasks, plus it has a crunchy goodness reminiscent of Starship Operator's Manual that just seems to have value. There are ways to reduce the page count here, but every page lost is interesting and useful material lost.
If Starship Operations is reduced, for example, to a few checklists, then it can be maybe five pages. Again though, a lot of player-useful information is being lost there. Edits, extractions, and/or supplement decisions are not mine to make, however. I'm taking the easiest route, essentially.
The material I classed under "Worlds" -- starports, the UWP, Personal Interactions, Vehicle operations, Cost and Money -- is already trimmed down pretty far, it seems to me. Vehicle operations could be trimmed down by a third, to 10 pages, but that would require careful editing, and careful edits are tricky.
Psionics is 10 pages. Perhaps it can be excluded entirely.
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esampson
SOC-13
This is probably one of the biggest areas to target for trimming down. I understand what you are saying about all the crunchy goodness but it is probably too much for a Player's Handbook. Put another way, you have 41 pages while a dedicated book was close to 100 pages. You are taking nearly half the material from a book dedicated to starships and putting them into the Player's Handbook.
The purpose of this book is to make the game accessible. That means cutting out extraneous detail. Players need to know that in the 'standard Traveller setting' ships need to be about 100D out from a planet to be able to jump safely and that it takes about 168 hours (leave out Hop and Skip drives, alternative power plants, and alternative maneuvering drives). They need to know how much fuel gets used and the rolls for piloting, navigation, engineering, communication, and sensor operations. Possibly some rolls for mining, but that could quite possibly be pushed off into the Referee's Handbook or the Starship Manual (or even some other book). Some very simple maintanence rules could be put in (e.g. ships need an overhaul once per year that costs .01% of the value of the ship).
More detailed starship operations, options for different drives and power plants, the whys and wherefors of what is going on would be much better suited for a separate Starship Manual. Yes, the T5 book has 41 pages of crunchy goodness, and I think as we've seen from discussions that is still lacking, at least for those who want all that crunch. However, not everyone wants that crunch, especially going in, and just seeing it in the Player's Manual might make it seem more daunting to someone new. Remember, the purpose here is to give them what they need. We want crunch, but we don't need it. Most of us are perfectly capable of creating crunch on our own when it isn't supplied.
I definitely wouldn't do that. You might try and cut it down to a more minimal selection of psionic abilities and then put more abilities and crunch into a supplement but there should be something there. The chapter should also be moved up front so it is in the same general area as all other character abilities.
There should also probably be something for making an alien character. Not full chapters about them but something more along the lines of 'make these modifications to make an Aslan' or 'make these modifications to make a Vargr'. You would generally be talking about modifications to base characteristics with the aliens being aliens brought up in the Imperial system so they wouldn't have separate character generation trees nor would they have long in depth discussions of their culture.
My guess is that 23 pages of 'Equipment List' could also be pared down a fair amount.
Good stuff!
Whilst interesting and useful material may be lost, getting the size down is important. But not as important as knowing who the document is primarily for. There is one post in this thread that suggests "new players". But new to what?
The Players guide needs to be focused on the who, not just the what. Are these people new to Roleplaying, new to Traveller, or new to Traveller 5?
If they are new to roleplaying, you will probably need to produce something akin to the PF box, or new D&D starter set*. If they are new to Traveller, maybe something in the vein of Liftoff of the MgT intro document? If the book is for new players to Traveller 5, it may as well just cover the core differences between editions and be an errata almost (I jest).
Knowing this exactly will focus what skills need to be listed, what equipment needs inclusion, what vehicles, craft, everything. Those "deep" into Traveller will wish for the kitchen sink, the crunch and the data. Freshly mustered newbies who have barely stepped outside their own subsector, let alone off their own planet, will just want (nay need) a ship and a gun for survival. Maybe some armour and a patron, but that's pushing it.
You, the internet may disagree. But the utility of the document and who is going to use it needs nailing down. Perhaps it has been in backstage discussions? If that is the case, play on and ignore me!
*As a footnote, the races, complexity, equipment and crunch has been reduced in the D&D set, pregen characters have been included and much to the horror of some, character generation is also omitted. However, the basic game was released as a free PDF which included character generation. My point: Like D&D you don't have to put everything in there with a first contact document (though character generation and a ticket for a free "You haven't lived until you've died in character generation" t-shirt would be a good idea)
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Someone should send the poor guy a bottle of oxygen and some chocolate bickies (cookies to some of you)
For the former: this is a good start for the game, but I still vote T5 as a better system, better able to integrate material from CT & MT & T4...
For the latter point, I haven't heard anyone advocating a full-steam-ahead idea without correcting the errata
My bolding: who's the customer here? My son an a bunch of his mates have started their own group recently, and I'd willingly buy them a copy of the T5 Starter, but is this starter set going to be aimed at them? It should be. The rest of us tragics will likely get a copy anyway, but I can't wait to get my next edition of the B3
