- William Hostman(aramis)United States
Eagle River
Alaska
Gaming in Greater Anchorage area, Alaska since 1978. Looking for Indy-willing RPG players in Eagle River (or willing to drive to Eagle River). Geekmail me if interested.
Yes, this really is what I looked like when I uploaded that avatar. Not that it's quite current anymore.
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Traveller edition change is so bad that each edition is a wholly separate RPG entry... And most materials require conversions to work in other editions - but aside from rules, were not converted, just replaced.
A very few items survive across editions:
The UWP - Universal World Profile - survives all editions except GT.
Merchant Prince Trade System - originally an expansion to CT - was used in MT, TNE, and T4. Only the skill effects were ported to the various systems.
The Bk3 trade System was used in CT, and the Merchant Prince one was a later add-on. An expanded version of it was used in T20 with some additional options pulled from Merchant Prince.
The Tech Level system is used with only minor changes in all editions except GT.
The Jump Drive: 168±16 hours in jump to go up to drive rating parsecs, using (drive rating +1)% of hull for the drive and (drive rating x 10)% of the ship's hull in jump fuel of Hydrogen. Used in all editions, and thee formulae were established in CT Bk5, but MT used a different fuel formula (5x drive tonnage) tons, and CT Bk2 used roughly 2.5% + 5 Tons for the drive size, rounded to the next whole 5T.
None of these made it into 2300, and many of these really are considered core to what traveller is..
Traveller (Classic), aka CT, was my 3rd RPG to play, and 2nd to run. I loved it. I played in 1983-84, and ran it in 84-86. The setting was pretty schematic, but rich with places to make it your own. I had The Traveller Book (aka TTB), which had some of the OTU setting in the back.
There are two CT editions, and the 1st edition has multiple minor revisions - if your copyright dates are pre-1981, you have 1E. I've always had 2E.
But for play purposes, adding Supplement 4 and bks 4-8 changed your game radically. Each did things to alter the game.
Traveller: 2300 came out in mid 1986. I bought it a few months on. It was billed originally as the early history of the OTU in some 3rd party reviews, but it wasn't. It was, however, a sibling game mechanically, of the next "Real Traveller" edition. It established clearly that the market had linked the OTU to the Traveller name, and Traveller was no longer a generic game, because GDW was flooded with hate mail.
MegaTraveller, aka MT, was the second major edition of "real" Traveller. It was very similar to CT in many ways, and CT materials could be used right off. Ships, however, were very VERY different. Also, it added vehicle design. It also moved the setting out of the supplements (and appendixes of TTB) and into the core rules. Further, it used the same basic task mechanics as 2300... It generally incorporated the Striker minis game's design mechanics and combat ratings with CT Bks 1-7... and it also advanced the timeline 10 years, and thrust a civil war that ripped the imperium apart. Eventually, they showed the hard slide into darkness of an extended civil war with Hard Times.
I loved MT. I'm not so thrilled with it any more, but it's far and away better than CT, TNE, T4, T20, or T5... I even loved Hard Times, despite seldom playing the rebellion setting.
2300 AD was the revised edition of Traveller: 2300. Mechanically almost identical to T:2300. (The changes are errata items.) But it was explained that the name change was due to the fan hate upon not finding the OTU's key elements of the era... including the different jump drive. GDW had thought that Traveller was still generic, but realized it wasn't with the fan hate. So, in 1988, they rereleased it with errata, and dropped the Traveller name. And they made it clear this time it was supposed to be the future of the Twilight 2000 setting... but that wasn't a good idea, either.
Collectively, T:2300 & 2300AD generally called are called 2300.
Traveller: The New Era, TNE to Traveller fans since the early internet days, was a near-reboot. Almost unrelated rules mechanics for characters, modified from the Twilight:2000 second ed rules. Characters weren't compatible with Traveller nor 2300, and the compatible mechanics were system generation and trade. Everything else was different. Including ship design and tasks.
Traveller T4: Marc Miller's Traveller, more commonly just T4, was what happened when GDW closed. Marc Miller wrote this travesty of bad rules, and still swears it is a good game. (I like Marc, really, for as little as I know him -online only- but this game was a dog.) Characters are incompatible with the prior editions (CT, MT, TNE) and with 2300. It's a dice-by-difficulty, roll stat+skill or less, 1 skill level per year, att increases cost 1 skill level issue. Oh, and the editing was absolute utter crap... Marc's early drafts are better edited than the game was... and that's really NOT Marc's fault. It also rolled the setting back by 1100 years, to the dawn of the Imperium. Then F*d up the world listings in the M0 setting.
It's also the only edition to use the same design system as a prior edition... but of course, it rates things differently, so you have to redesign published ships from other editions if they didn't include the design worksheets. But it did include 4 different design systems derived from the TNE FF&S system... subsets, really, save for FF&S2, which added a lot, but had the worst editing of any T4 product.
GURPS Traveller, aka GT, was released about the same time as T4. It takes the CT setting, eliminates the Rebellion setting of MT, but does advance the timeline. I bought it, and realized it was "Not My Kind of Traveller" - Loren altered the setting in some curious ways that many (but not all) fans had rejected when he tried it in the 80's with an article in JTAS.
Traveller T20, Usually just T20 or T20 THB. This is the first edition my name appears in. Yes, I AM that Aramis. This is also the edition that made me into a canonista. (Which is a derogatory term, BTW, for someone who argues from canon even when canon is clearly broken.) It's a pretty good adaptation of the D20 SRD to do Traveller. As for why it didn't use D20M? The SRD wouldn't be released until after T20 was en route to the press. There are a dozen rules elements that are in fact my ideas, and a few that are still pretty much as I originally worded them. The Broker mechanics, the 3d6 actual value table, the Airframe rules - blame me. This is the only CT compatible ship design system - and only with Bk 5. changes the setting to about 100 years before the CT setting.
Traveller (Mongoose), aka MGT, is the current edition. My name appears in it, too. I had less impact in this one, but got better credit. I wound up corresponding with Gareth through the open playtest, and not via the BBS. The Open Playtest was, BTW, a bad thing in terms of the game, but a great marketing move. The Core rules are pretty good, but major changes were made between the last public playtest and the published rules, and many of them not for the better. Playtest Draft 3.2 was really a different-but-compatible edition entirely - it's that different.
Like MT, CT characters can be used easily, and everything else needs conversions... but it is also the same level with MT. Probably the best character generation of any edition... worth porting to MT... but it works differently and, of course, has another ship design system. CT designs usually convert with no fuss, but not the other direction.
Traveller5, aka T5, is really T4 on steroids. And like so many steroid users, it's bulked out, and suffers from holes in the head, as well as having 'roid rage issues. It's almost-but-not-quite character compatible with T4, and uses a very close variant of the same task mechanics. As for the 'roid rage, it only hurts those who try to love it. It's still in development. And yes, a new ship design system.
2320 AD was an adaptation of the 2300 setting to the T20 mechanics, and the T20 mechanics to the 2300 setting. I don't know if my name appears in it, but I got a copy of the PDF for my few efforts in the playtest.
Coming soon is MGT's 2300 sourcebook... by the same Colin Dunn who wrote 2320. Should be good.
And then, the editions that never were:
For a while, there was work of ACT: Avenger Classic Traveller. Their license got pulled before it came out. It was suppsed to be MT's task system, T20's design system, and otherwise, CT Bk's 1-8 integrated.
There were also rumors of a 2300 edition for GURPS. It didn't happen.
There were, a long time ago, rumors of 2300 being ported to TNE mechanics. This was fueled by the inclusion of the 2300 drives in FF&S.
There was supposed to be a print edition of 2320. Never happened.
and the unofficial ones
The first GURPS Traveller - a fan adaptation that was, in some ways, better than the released one. It was on SJG's io.com BBS for years.
WoD Traveller - porting the traveller setting to the World Of Darkness mechanics - uses VTM 1E as the basis. My work. Enjoy.
All editions are available except CT 1E... tho only GT and MGT are in print. So the edition wars are fueled even higher than ever, and a small but really obnoxiously vocal crew who think that Traveller is "just a ruleset, not a setting"... mostly CT1E and TNE fans.
Family: Traveller
