T5 is awesome

[mike wightman]

Have you noticed in CT it actually mentions playing without a referee?

Just in case, here it is:

PLAYING THE GAME
There are three basic ways to play Traveller: solitaire, scenario, and campaign.
Any of these three may be unsupervised (that is, without a referee; the players
themselves administer the rules and manipulate the situation).

Now add the number of rng mini-games that Traveller is built from - character generation, world generation, encounters, trade... who needs a referee

 

[Ulsyus]

I like T5 for all the reasons you do.

For me it's how ranges corresponding to difficulties are consistent across combat and sense actions. Sophonts are completely scalable in a rules-compatible way.

I would love the errata to be completed and integrated into a new edition. And there are quirks in the mapping rules that could do with a second look; I've discovered a few in building the T5 world mapping web page.

I agree about the Personals as well. To make it less intimidating, I developed a set of laminated cards for the players to choose from when thinking about the best approach. See the link in my signature.

Been away for a while so I’m a bit late here.

I agree with Adam & Onjo. T5 is awesome. I believed that when I first received it and still feel it now.

I would love T5 if it worked. When I first received the book, I had a huge smile on my face. It was the first edition of Traveller since CT that actually felt like it went back to its roots, in a way. It felt like CT, but more.

When I dug into the book, though, I was disappointed. IMO, it's not finished. It's a game that is 75%-90% complete. It needs finishing. Polishing. The bugs worked out. From where I sit, it's got a lot of bugs.

I understand what S4 is saying, but am happy with a 90% solution today rather than the perfect one at an indistinct time in the future.

 

[Blue Ghost]

I'm not sure this is a popular opinion, but T5 is f-ing awesome.

I just re-read it, up to the Makers. I remember being wowed by it the first time I read it, a year or two ago, but after a second or third comprehensive read, there is so much amazing in it.

I love the new dice mechanics. They're incredibly expressive and powerful.

I love the new character generation system. It presses all my "sim" buttons in a happy way. I love the knowledge + knowledge + skill conceit. I love the standardization of tasks in the Universal Task Format.

Even the arcane, esoteric stuff like genetics and sophont profiles and senses is really, really cool and integrated with the rest of the rules.

QREBS is so powerful and useful to a ref.

The Personals system is complex (but does offer a "quick personals" solution for refs in a hurry) but really comprehensive. I've never quite seen a social system so well considered, even if potentially a chart-lookup stressor in play.

Combat seems rather well reconceived, complete with easy but effective Aiming rules and a very simple but workable Initiative system. Damage seems very carefully designed.

There are lots of little details that make me really happy, too, like the thought that went into the technology descriptions (gravitics-based comm systems!), or the specific 10 trades, or the initial systems based on the Spinward Marches.

Anyway, I feel like T5 gets little love these days, and there's a ton of great stuff in it.

The attraction of CT was the simple 2d6 mechanic for combat and tasks, which later got married to a well vetted background. So, take that for what it's worth.

*addendum*
To me T5 is over-engineered. I didn't care much for the first draft. This latest draft is more well thought out and not as confused, and I have some thoughts on that that I'll withhold for now.

It strikes me that one of the attractions of the original game was that it was fed to you in digestible chunks with well edited supplements that added to the game. I didn't care much for being enticed to buy new supps to get new gear because I saw it as a marketing strategy, but the content was strong enough to keep buying more. Even so, it did make sense to feed you new rules for various aspect of the game. T5 might have benefitted from such a scheme.