The very first thought
damage scaling character-vehicle-starship
there are much better ways to do this (MT, TNE, T4), the D, DD, DDD system reminds me of bra sizes rather than damage scaling...
Second thought, make authors use the rules as they are rather than making up new stuff that contradicts the core rules, contradicts other rules written by the same author, and often have unforeseen consequence.
Finally, decide if MgT is Traveller or The Third Imperium rpg because of late your authors have been introducing CRB tech that has no place in the OTU
This is where I think an SRD (ideally ORC/ELF/OGL/CC licensed) with core game mechanics would be helpful. Everyone uses the SRD for the books they write and if they create new game mechanics, it gets added to the SRD. That way books don't conflict with each other.
Got it, thanks. I may have a slightly different view of "rules" vs. "setting" given that I started playing in 1977 and there was a 2-year period where there was no named setting or published adventures. But there were declarations of what the Traveller 'Verse was about, and that's what I was getting at with my 3 posts on "Premises": things distinctive to Traveller (jump drive most significantly) independent of an as-of-yet unnamed setting. Today, it's hard to conceive of Traveller without the Third Imperium et al., but there was a brief period when you could.
Anyway, I don't want to belabor this. The points being made above do suggest that clarity on what rules and tech are OTU and which are variant seem like good ones.
I started playing in 79. I've never limited Traveller to Charted Space and I'm glad that Mongoose is actively distinguishing the two. Charted Space is great, but there's a lot of other things you can do with the game.
A completely consistent rewrite is a MgT v3 sort of deal. It affects every piece of equipment and has to fix band-aids like vehicle damage. I was pretty much told not to try to make CSC weapons work with the Mercenary rules and my attempt to rationalise Armour based on a background mechanic just didn't work (without changing prices and masses for just about everything).
By the time FF&S came out for TNE and T4, I was too busy with life to spend any time trying to design Traveller equipment, so though I have the documents (dead tree and electronic), I don't feel qualified to comment on it right now. The design rules in T5 made me cross-eyed, but that might just be a formatting issue.
The thing that's a challenge is to make it simple enough for a casual user and interesting and consistent enough for those few of us who are out there on the spectrum (As I raises a hand and wave without making eye contact)
Personally, I think what we should really do is organise a think-tank, speedrun our real-world TL up to about TL20, and then transform that into an elegant TTRPG design system that's 100% internally consistent because it's a condensed real-world engineering textbook.
This is entirely feasible and completely practicable, I am sure of it.
Incidentally, to answer the thread's title more fully... after the VHB, sort of.
The Plan, such as it is, is to revisit these core books to refresh the art and make any little tweaks we think are beneficial - the idea being, we can keep Traveller evolving without actually doing a brand new edition and invalidating all the books you currently have.
So, there may come (say) Traveller Core Rulebook Update 2027, but your current Core Rulebook Update 2022 will still be valid and useable (and its predecessor, for that matter), and still be compatible with all new supplements and sourcebooks that get released in the future.
Even if there are more substantial changes, we will endeavour to keep those past rulebooks current and useable. For example, we have been tinkering with the Initiative system, but even if that were implemented, it won't invalidate the previous rulebooks (because all it is deciding is who goes first in a firefight, and you can choose precisely which mechanic you prefer - and if we are really clever, you will be able to use both, simultaneously at the same table, but I digress).
Now, being games designers, there is always the temptation to make more fundamental changes. For example, we are also considering Project Combat Evolved (that name will have to change, obviously) which makes some deeper changes in the way damage is handled. If we were to go forward with that in a new Core Rulebook, we would also provide a free PDF that updates the previous ones to remain compatible.
I suppose this is a way to turn Traveller into the Ship of Theseus...
That, at least, is The Plan. Basically, we want to keep Traveller fresh and relevant but not overturn the cart and invalidate huge swathes of your gaming library by doing a completely new edition.
I think the initiative is commendable, but not perfect — though in the same way that pretty much anything in the world isn't perfect.
The little latinamerican boy in me that grew up with laughable disposable income who couldn't really afford to keep up with constantly-updated product lines stands up and applauds heartily the goal of not creating a new edition and maintaining backwards-compatibility.
A more critical side of me thinks that it might have some unintended, detrimental side-effects.
I find optional and alternate rules to be a huge boon to the system, which is why I like the Companion so much. JTAS serves that niche too, to an extent. But once you start to have multiple versions of the rules all labelled as "Core", you start to suffer from an effect I can only really describe as 'rules diffraction'.
Allow me to explain: there have been since the publishing of High Guard 2022 quite a few instances where writers of new books (The Aliens of Charted Space series and the Sector Books come to mind) that have accidentally created starships using the older High Guard rules, due to either being unaware of the changes or forgetting that something had been changed. This isn't catastrophic or anything, but it is an example of 'rules diffraction' at play. Whenever a new set of rules is introduced, a new chance/risk of a de-sync between the rules and writers is introduced, which over time can lead to the gradual loss of cohesion of the line as a whole, rules-wise (this would obviously be a worst-case, long-term scenario).
If Mongoose's writing team consisted solely of game designers based on Swindon who meet daily and can think-tank and cross-check each others' experiments in real time, that'd probably be completely manageable, and not really a problem at all. But given Mongoose's current model of relying on recurring freelance writers when making its books, I think that either a lot of administrative bandwidth would have to be spent to avoid 'rules diffraction', or that approach (freelance writers) would have to be dropped, which I — though far be I from telling me how to run your business! — think would largely be detrimental to both MongPub and the fanbase.
(What? Me? Biased? Preposterous.)
For example, we are also considering Project Combat Evolved (that name will have to change, obviously) which makes some deeper changes in the way damage is handled.
Now, regarding this I'm of two minds, mostly because I really dig the current system; it's wargame-y without being too crunchy and it just falls in a sweet spot I really like!
Though now that I think of it, wouldn't there be a space for Mongoose to publish a modern equivalent to GDW's old Game Modules? Perhaps not as fully-fledged board games given the nightmarish logistics of that, but I could very well see a more crunchy, wargame-y combat system being sold as an optional module for the wargames crowd, potentially even as a quasi- or actually standalone, but compatible product, like Snapshot and Mayday back in Ye Ole GDW Days.
Anyway, that's my Thoughts™, which I guess can be boiled down 'frustratingly mixed messages' lol
Personally, I think what we should really do is organise a think-tank, speedrun our real-world TL up to about TL20, and then transform that into an elegant TTRPG design system that's 100% internally consistent because it's a condensed real-world engineering textbook.
This is entirely feasible and completely practicable, I am sure of it.
Even mathematics itself must be either inconsistent or incomplete; my life has been a process of learning to accept that any given Traveller must also be.
Yes CRB means core rule book. OTO is the Official Traveller Universe, the one described by GDW and later T4 and T5, not to mention MWM's book Agent of the Imperium.
Traveller is a set of rules for running sci fi games.
The Third Imperium is a setting for Traveller.
Since MegaTraveller each subsequent version of Traveller has been tied directly to the OTU (although you could see this back in CT days with LBB:6 onwards being specifically written for the Third Imperium). TNE did at least provide rules for alternative sci fi technologies in FF&S.
The current Mongoose Core Rulebook contains tech that is not, never has been and never should be part of the Third Imperium setting, the same with High Guard, without careful consideration of how the setting changes as a result.
There is nothing to stop you using everything in your own universe, but there are restrictions on the OTU, or at least there were.
Honestly, I think we should be done with updates for a while. Vehicles is a candidate but if it isn’t even started yet, I think there are more important projects. Save the next update for the 50th anniversary (in 2027).
Honestly, I think we should be done with updates for a while. Vehicles is a candidate but if it isn’t even started yet, I think there are more important projects. Save the next update for the 50th anniversary (in 2027).
As vehicle is now it’s totally worthless for anything over TL11 so we absolutely do need a update for vehicles but once we get that I’m sure we should be done with updates
I rather doubt we're going to see a third edition before Twenty Thirty, when, I suspect that Mongoose would feel corporately more settled, and when they assess how far artificial intelligence generated content has developed.
Despite the obvious milestone of the Fiftieth Anniversary, which they probably will commemorate, but might leave mostly to Far Future Enterprises.
See I totally disagree with this Traveller has been the third imperium since the LBBs and other settings were alternate not the main. Setting it up this way would have each of the setting core books having to have the majority of the character creation rules. Now I could get behind this but the none third imperium setting have ever been as popular as the third imperium is.
The Third Imperium was not fleshed out until the Library Data supplements and LBB:6 onwards being written specifically for it.
And even then the early Third Imperium was a very different place to yanks in space.
CT LBB:0 had a section on making your own setting, while in the original LBBs the Imperium was never mentioned. it wouldn't be until The Traveller Book that the setting would be included in the rules, and I think it has gone downhill from there.
The setting revamp gave us the awful mess that was MegaTraveller, followed by a rules revamp and setting revamp that was TNE with setting and rules completely tied together.
Most of my Traveller gaming does not take place in the Third Imperium.
Risking beating the dead horse that is MegaT, I have a very cleaned up and edited version of the MegaT vehicle/spaceship/robot design system that sings. Having a consistent fictional theory of energy/power in real SI units creates a level of consistency across all devices that is very satisfying. Yes, High Guard and Striker were not compatible, but I think the changes made in MegaT were fine.
The MT design system was hopelessly broken by their shoehorning of Striker power generation to starship scale.
What was/is needed is another scaling factor for ship power plants to make less then TL15 power plants viable, and the fuel use needs reducing so you don't have to reduce jump fuel requirements as was done in MT and FF&S.
If the interwebs had been a thing back then a lot more people could have helped refine the design sequence.
The MT design system was hopelessly broken by their shoehorning of Striker power generation to starship scale.
What was/is needed is another scaling factor for ship power plants to make less then TL15 power plants viable, and the fuel use needs reducing so you don't have to reduce jump fuel requirements as was done in MT and FF&S.
If the interwebs had been a thing back then a lot more people could have helped refine the design sequence.
Nah, this decision was fine IMHO. It was just different than what came before, and it showed that the base HG starship power plant assumptions were arguably too generous. Now given that HG was essentially a set of starship miniatures rules, you don't want too complex a build system. But in an RPG, there is an advantage of having a consistent fictional theory of power and energy that applies across all devices, including starships. After patching errata and making a few adjustments, MetaT's design rules are terrific. Now to be clear, I would never expect anyone today to put up with that amount of work. It's just that I've already done it, and the result is very good. But that's me.
Nah, this decision was fine IMHO. It was just different than what came before, and it showed that the base HG starship power plant assumptions were arguably too generous. Now given that HG was essentially a set of starship miniatures rules, you don't want too complex a build system. But in an RPG, there is an advantage of having a consistent fictional theory of power and energy that applies across all devices, including starships. After patching errata and making a few adjustments, MetaT's design rules are terrific. Now to be clear, I would never expect anyone today to put up with that amount of work. It's just that I've already done it, and the result is very good. But that's me.
Well I see you never really did anything with MegaTraveller from this statement. I’ve seen viable ship designs from every TL from 9-15 in Mega Traveller. Just because all the designs in the core books where TL 15 doesn’t make that the only viable options.
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