bluegargantua (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
bluegargantua) wrote2008-03-11 09:52 am
bluegargantua) wrote2008-03-11 09:52 am
Entry tags:
The Finest RPG design of 1978
Hey,
So I finally got my Classic Traveller CD-ROM yesterday. This time with all the data on it. Oh man, is it great. I'm seriously considering picking up the Twilight 2000 CD-ROM and the Traveller 2300 CD-ROMs as well. It appeals to the pack-rat in me because it's a complete set of everything GDW put out for Traveller, but it's super cheap and it takes up hardly any shelf space. So sweet.
It's also great to look back in time at how the games were put together and there's two things that kinda jump out at me:
1.) Weapon/Armor matrix!?!? -- you cross reference your weapon with the armor worn by the target to get a modifier. There's maybe a dozen weapons (over half of which are melee weapons) and 6-8 types of armor. It's really odd. It's great because ablative armor is fantastic against lasers, but not so hot against a club, but it does seem as though it'd be kinda goofy to track the modifiers, especially against a ragtag group of mixed-armor opponents.
2.) Characters are thin -- By that I mean that your character stats don't directly come into play the way they do in d20 (with a consistent bonus to the relevant actions). Instead, they act in a sort of "sliding scale" method. For example: anyone can use a pistol, but if your dex is too low, you suffer a -2 and if it's high enough you get a +2. But there's no standard threshold for when you get that bonus. Different ranged weapons have different breakpoints (and I suppose you could have special pistols with different thresholds as well). Some skills are affected this way as well, but those stats you start out with pretty much sit on the shelf.
Oh, and the skills. So it's a total hodge-podge of skills that you get. Often you get a thin layer of 2-5 skills all at level 1. You're a happy man if you get a skill level of 2 or better in something and it's something useful. I forget how you raise skills in Traveller, but I seem to recall it was rather long and expensive (after all, in one 4-year term the only thing you got was Carousing-1? skills are hard to learn in Traveller).
But the base system is what makes the skill system so odd. Basically, roll 2d6, add mods and meet or beat an 8. Since the average roll is a 7, you're pretty much 50/50 for anything and the single skill level translates into average success. But still, it's not that much better than 50/50. You have to angle for lots of bonuses, and since a lot of that is at GM discretion, you can expect to fail almost as often as you succeed.
And that's what I mean by "thin". You're mostly defined by a small suite of skills that only gently tip the odds of success in your favor. You're definitely going to try the things that you're skilled at before trying untrained stuff and you really want "jack-of-all-trades" as a skill, but so much of your character is completely nebulous in mechanical terms.
Still, I'm totally jazzed about pawing through all this stuff and I'm totally going to run a one-shot in the near future.
later
Tom
So I finally got my Classic Traveller CD-ROM yesterday. This time with all the data on it. Oh man, is it great. I'm seriously considering picking up the Twilight 2000 CD-ROM and the Traveller 2300 CD-ROMs as well. It appeals to the pack-rat in me because it's a complete set of everything GDW put out for Traveller, but it's super cheap and it takes up hardly any shelf space. So sweet.
It's also great to look back in time at how the games were put together and there's two things that kinda jump out at me:
1.) Weapon/Armor matrix!?!? -- you cross reference your weapon with the armor worn by the target to get a modifier. There's maybe a dozen weapons (over half of which are melee weapons) and 6-8 types of armor. It's really odd. It's great because ablative armor is fantastic against lasers, but not so hot against a club, but it does seem as though it'd be kinda goofy to track the modifiers, especially against a ragtag group of mixed-armor opponents.
2.) Characters are thin -- By that I mean that your character stats don't directly come into play the way they do in d20 (with a consistent bonus to the relevant actions). Instead, they act in a sort of "sliding scale" method. For example: anyone can use a pistol, but if your dex is too low, you suffer a -2 and if it's high enough you get a +2. But there's no standard threshold for when you get that bonus. Different ranged weapons have different breakpoints (and I suppose you could have special pistols with different thresholds as well). Some skills are affected this way as well, but those stats you start out with pretty much sit on the shelf.
Oh, and the skills. So it's a total hodge-podge of skills that you get. Often you get a thin layer of 2-5 skills all at level 1. You're a happy man if you get a skill level of 2 or better in something and it's something useful. I forget how you raise skills in Traveller, but I seem to recall it was rather long and expensive (after all, in one 4-year term the only thing you got was Carousing-1? skills are hard to learn in Traveller).
But the base system is what makes the skill system so odd. Basically, roll 2d6, add mods and meet or beat an 8. Since the average roll is a 7, you're pretty much 50/50 for anything and the single skill level translates into average success. But still, it's not that much better than 50/50. You have to angle for lots of bonuses, and since a lot of that is at GM discretion, you can expect to fail almost as often as you succeed.
And that's what I mean by "thin". You're mostly defined by a small suite of skills that only gently tip the odds of success in your favor. You're definitely going to try the things that you're skilled at before trying untrained stuff and you really want "jack-of-all-trades" as a skill, but so much of your character is completely nebulous in mechanical terms.
Still, I'm totally jazzed about pawing through all this stuff and I'm totally going to run a one-shot in the near future.
later
Tom
no subject
A lot.
I always liked the way the weapons system worked.
no subject
2300 had a funky system though. I thought of it as the SQL system because you constructed this SQL-like query to define the task at hand and then plugged in your numbers and rolled the dice to determine the result:
COMBINE [Agility] + [Gun Skill] - [Range} + 2d6 > 8 + [target armor]
or something like that. I thought it was neat, but it just made me think of work too much...
Tom
no subject
no subject
Traveller is actually really pretty good for what it is. It has a unified task resolution system and even if I think the weapon/armor matrix is a little wonky, it's completely consistent with the 2d6 + mods >= 8 system it builds on.
There aren't a lot of ridiculous sub-systems. Building new bits of equipment or solar systems can be a pain, but once it's done, it's done and you can just run with it (if you don't just grab lots of pre-generated stuff off the net instead).
Well-supported. Lots of modules. Lots of third-party stuff lying around (Judges Guild and FASA made a raft of Traveller stuff). Still has an active player base. It's a good game system and certainly better than a lot of other games that have come out since then.
later
Tom
no subject
no subject
Traveler was fun. I enjoyed dying as part of the character creation process. :-)
no subject
Twilight 2000 was pretty cool. Only played once, but scrabbling for supplies with your unit and fending off looters was a whole lot of fun. And that CD should contain all the vehicle and weapon guides, so that's worth the price of admission if you're running any sort of late-20th-century cold war military game...
Oh, and BACK UP THAT CD. Stuff breaks, y'know.
no subject