Lots of Dice and a little Cepheus Engine, too

[Sigtrygg]

On the subject of T2300:
it was a harder sci-fi setting (and I wouldn't get too hung up on modern star gazing replacing star charts because guess what, in twenty years time today's data will have been overwritten)
it had the potential to be a transhuman sci-fi rpg (the authors got too hung up on the kafer war instead of developing the provolutionists)
the rebranding from Traveller 2300 to 2300AD was too little too late for brand separation
T2300/2300AD had more material published than MT (it comes close to giving CT a run for its money as far as word count goes).

The powers that be at GDW gave serious consideration to retconning the Third Imperium setting with T2300 tropes such as the stutterwarp drive, and if they hadn't developed the d20 house system they may have used the T2300 task system for Traveller the next generation - as I was we got TNE.

 

[rust2]

Now...getting back to the topic at hand, do we know when the editable version of the editable version of the Cepheus Engine SRD will be available? I'm itching to play around with it

Unfortunately not, which may well be the reason why we spend so much time with unrelated topics ... :wink:

 

[Sigtrygg]

The Expanse, a setting for MgT...

 

[fusor]

On the subject of T2300:
it was a harder sci-fi setting (and I wouldn't get too hung up on modern star gazing replacing star charts because guess what, in twenty years time today's data will have been overwritten)

To an extent. Yes, there will be more updates, but the gap between what we knew 30 years ago and what we know now is far greater than the gap between what we know now and what we'll know in 30 years, simply because we HAVE discovered most of the stars and substellar objects within 50ly of Sol now.

it had the potential to be a transhuman sci-fi rpg (the authors got too hung up on the kafer war instead of developing the provolutionists)
the rebranding from Traveller 2300 to 2300AD was too little too late for brand separation
T2300/2300AD had more material published than MT (it comes close to giving CT a run for its money as far as word count goes).

You speak of 2300AD in the past tense - you do know that Mongoose are still publishing it, and it's actually using Traveller rules, right? That's a done deal - today, 2300AD is a harder SF setting that is run using Traveller rules. It pretty much destroys the argument that Traveller rules can't be used for anything other than space opera.

 

[Tenacious-Techhunter]

The majority of the Traveller community, which is the majority of those people whose money enables Mongoose to publish Traveller material, obviously likes the Third Imperium setting well enough to keep Traveller going in that direction and shows no sign whatsoever that it would do the same for another, more realistic hard science fiction setting. As a result of this it would be rather unwise for Mongoose to take a financial risk by creating such a hard sf setting instead of continuing to support the Third Imperium setting. There is therefore a high probability that the question concerning the possibility of a Traveller hard sf game and setting will remain a rather academic one for the foreseeable future.

Here’s the thing... if the canon is just going to become noticeably obsolete, then the only market for that canon is a constantly diminishing pool of diehard fanboys, and the brand won’t ever grow. Selling an RPG exclusively to diehard fanboys is no path to success either. A commitment to the existing canon isn’t anything but a last effort to cash out.

 

[Tenacious-Techhunter]

(and I wouldn't get too hung up on modern star gazing replacing star charts because guess what, in twenty years time today's data will have been overwritten)

Maybe to a few additional decimal places, and fleshed out with additional larger orbit radii, but they know the size, mass, and sometimes chemical makeup of the planets they’ve found to beyond doubt... the numbers may be quibbled over, but the planets existing? Nope, that’s immutable.

To an extent. Yes, there will be more updates, but the gap between what we knew 30 years ago and what we know now is far greater than the gap between what we know now and what we'll know in 30 years, simply because we HAVE discovered most of the stars and substellar objects within 50ly of Sol now.

You’ve stretched it a bit too far, fusor; we only know about the planets that eclipse their own stars within Earth’s orbit... planets orbiting stars on any other plane, we don’t currently have a detection technique for.

 

[fusor]

You’ve stretched it a bit too far, fusor; we only know about the planets that eclipse their own stars within Earth’s orbit... planets orbiting stars on any other plane, we don’t currently have a detection technique for.

I'm not talking about planets, I'm only talking about the stars we know of now vs the ones we knew of then. Though yes, some of those are now known to have planets too.

 

[Tenacious-Techhunter]

The Expanse, a setting for MgT...

As Mongoose Traveller is right now, I hope not. Maybe for 3E.

 

[madmike]

The Expanse, a setting for MgT...

Orbital by Zozer Games based on the MgT 1e SRD.

 

[NOLATrav]

The Expanse, a setting for MgT...

Orbital by Zozer Games based on the MgT 1e SRD.

Which is awesome. And Outer Veil by Spica Publishing presents an entire Earth-based sector with a similar ethos.

 

[madmike]

The Expanse, a setting for MgT...

Orbital by Zozer Games based on the MgT 1e SRD.

Which is awesome. And Outer Veil by Spica Publishing presents an entire Earth-based sector with a similar ethos.

"Cough"

Naturally I will promote Clement Sector by Gypsy Knight Games.

But for hard "Expanse" style non FTL Traveller setting, Orbital is the best available.

 

[Condottiere]

I'm fairly sure I prefer Traveller with artificial gravity fields; medical science seems fairly convinced it's a good thing.

 

[simonh]

Every time we roll a skill, we subtract -8 at the end of that roll. Why not just bake it into the dice, if it’s always there? Is that somehow not an improvement to you?

Aha, an actual concrete suggestion.

Anybody that's ever played Monopoly knows how to roll and sum 2D6. It's almost certainly the most rolled and most widely familiar combination of dice on the planet. Explain that your game uses 2 six sided dice added together, and most people coming to the game immediately get a feeling of familiarity. It's something they are likely to have already done many times before. They think "I know how to do that!". It's an easy win.

The problem with baking in a fixed modifier into the dice is, what happens when that's not the modifier you want? It locks you into an arbitrary target number. Have a task with a different target number, and you immediately lose the benefit of normalizing the dice to -8.

Finally, there's the issue of backwards compatibility. Regardless of the details of the various resolution mechanics in the many 2D6 iterations of Traveller, you can often straightforwardly use any of the adventures for CT, Mega Traveller or T5 with Cepheus and the target numbers will work for you pretty much as-is.

So along with the fact that we all have six sided dice in our dice bag, that's 4 reasons right there.

Simon Hibbs

 

[simonh]

I'm fairly sure I prefer Traveller with artificial gravity fields; medical science seems fairly convinced it's a good thing.

It's the worst explanation for how simulated gravity works on starships, except for all the others.

Simon Hibbs

 

[fusor]

I'm fairly sure I prefer Traveller with artificial gravity fields; medical science seems fairly convinced it's a good thing.

You don't need magical gravity plates to create artificial gravity - you can do with spinning passenger sections.

 

[Tenacious-Techhunter]

The problem with baking in a fixed modifier into the dice is, what happens when that's not the modifier you want? It locks you into an arbitrary target number. Have a task with a different target number, and you immediately lose the benefit of normalizing the dice to -8.

Finally, there's the issue of backwards compatibility. Regardless of the details of the various resolution mechanics in the many 2D6 iterations of Traveller, you can often straightforwardly use any of the adventures for CT, Mega Traveller or T5 with Cepheus and the target numbers will work for you pretty much as-is.

So along with the fact that we all have six sided dice in our dice bag, that's 4 reasons right there.

No, you really don’t. The player subtracts -8, but the GM adds or subtracts the more vague situational modifiers on top of that. Locking you into the most common target number isn’t a bad thing, when all the other numbers are either obvious to the player, or subtle effects hidden by the GM.

And, again, we were speculating on the best dice to use for producing the best possible feel of a next-generation Traveller game; the obsolete canon technology and the obsolete canon setting contribute nothing to that; after you eliminate both of those things, what is left from Traveller canon to preserve?

Not really counting 4 reasons there... more like 2... care to make the other two clearer, please?

 

[fusor]

Of all the complaints Traveller has ever had, I don't think any have been "man, I hate having to add or subtract numbers from die rolls".

You're offering a solution for which there is no problem. If you want to argue that the dice used should be a different combination of size and/or shape then fair enough, but the idea that custom dice should be used for different races or rolls is just ridiculous.

 

[Tenacious-Techhunter]

Well, it depends on what you think makes one race different from another. If you think races are mostly similar, then a simple static modifier here and there is appropriate. But, for a Hard Science Fiction setting, where different races have very little, if any, biology in common, it makes sense for the distribution of one stat to be different than the distribution of another, and not just some flat bonus. For instance, if you had some sort of big, hulking, clumsy brute race, it would make sense that they might have dice with more faces to represent a larger average strength, even though they can fail just as badly as another race, on account of their clumsiness. Should Hivers and Vegans, for example, really be so similar to humans in terms of performance? I don’t think so...

Ultimately, the “pre-subtracting” dice is just an example that simple benefits can be baked into the dice in a way that streamlines gameplay for new players, by making all the math immediately obvious. It’s mostly just an exercise in opening up people’s eyes to the possibilities currently available that we’ve neglected up until now by holding onto the canon way of doing things... a justification that is rapidly becoming obsolete, which requires re-thinking what is truly best for Traveller as a game system.

 

[fusor]

Well, it depends on what you think makes one race different from another. If you think races are mostly similar, then a simple static modifier here and there is appropriate. But, for a Hard Science Fiction setting, where different races have very little, if any, biology in common, it makes sense for the distribution of one stat to be different than the distribution of another, and not just some flat bonus. For instance, if you had some sort of big, hulking, clumsy brute race, it would make sense that they might have dice with more faces to represent a larger average strength, even though they can fail just as badly as another race, on account of their clumsiness. Should Hivers and Vegans, for example, *really* be so similar to humans in terms of performance? I don’t think so...

Sure, but that's just sticking to normal dice. I'm fine saying that humans roll 2d6 for stats and aliens roll 3d6 or 1d4 or 3d20 or whatever. I just think the idea of 'baking modifiers into custom dice' with weird number ranges is silly.

 

[K Peterson]

Are there any plans for the Cepheus Engine to be released as a full product with interior artwork, etc.? Or will it remain as a reference document?