Review - Marc Miller's Traveller (T4)
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- Опубліковано 25 сер 2024
- A review of Marc Miller's Traveller, or T4, the fourth main edition of the Traveller game, published in 1996 by Imperium Games.
T4 books can be purchased from DriveThruRPG and FFE:
DriveThruRPG: www.drivethrur...
Far Future Enterprises: www.farfuture....
BITS (British Isles Traveller Support) has a website at www.bitsuk.net... (not updated) and a Facebook presence ( / bitstraveller ).
BITS products are available from DriveThruRPG: www.drivethrur...
T4 might have been bungled but it has my favorite art in the entire Traveller series, if Mark Miller release 'The Art of Traveller' I'd pick it up the a heartbeat. Looking forward to Gurps Traveller video.
Are you referencing the B&W interior art, or Foss's colour plates and covers?
@@WillyMuffinUK Foss, while I do like some of the black & white art in the book but Foss' art resonates with me.
@@bigtastyben5119 He's definitely one of those artists that captured me, along with Roger Dean and Chris Achilleos, among others. A huge chunk of my sci-fi novel collection of a certain vintage have his artwork on the covers!
Really good video. Really enjoying your Traveller history through the editions. Keep them coming.
Thank-you! :)
T4 has a lot going for it. First ; price. It wasn't on my radar at all ( I've never heard anything good about it) but I grabbed the hardback core book at HPB for $5 and it was a pretty good read. After that I scoured about half of the other books for $6-10 . As for content - Emperor's Arsenal really fleshes out the armor kits - Battledress 9 is just a mass of plates worn only by the big dudes , battledress augmented 10 has power support for the legs only and BDA12 finally is the fully sealed and powered walking tank we all know and love. It's a long way from : "You are on a TL10 planet so CES is all that's available ; yes I know it's a vacuum outside the dome...".
It's not bad at all, just terribly errata'd. The more extensive looks at gear started in MegaTraveller, with DGP's equipment sheet form - T4 added a continuation of description over simple tabulation.
There is a good game in T4. It's just a shame about the net execution of its run.
I wanted to like T4. It was the follow on to Classic that I was looking for. Kinda.
I do like the armor system (blocks dice, not damage points, basically), and I wish T5 had really just been a "cleaned up and more consistent T4".
A bit of missed opportunity on both fronts, really. I generally like the system, but it has huge inconsistent holes.
It does make me wonder if the holes are maybe uncloseable, and there's no "perfect T4.5" possible.
@@DanHigdon You may be right. For me, there are some fundamental system changes that would need to be made - for example, getting everything to refer back to the core "many dice vs. target" system.
I got an autographed copy of the rules book when it came out. Didn't play it much. Life at the time got in the way. I had the entire collection but somehow it got lost in the chaos of my life back then, and I only have the rulebook and the Mileu 0 book now. Foss had a great eye for color and I really appreciated Larry Elmore's contribution to art as well.
Always loved Foss's work, and it was lovely to see it in Traveller.
Great work!
Thank-you 🙂
When are you doing another Traveller video Ardwulf?
@@twossock hopefully soon!
Thanks for this... I would love to see a play thru of Pocket Empires
That might take a while to put together. Similarly, the colony rules for T:NE. But, good suggestion - I'll add it to the To Do list!
@@WillyMuffinUK oh without a doubt you are correct. PE looks amazing but there is essentially zero out there on it
Can I just say that Miller did not get the rights to 2300AD or Twilight: 2000 in 1996. 2300AD and Twilight: 2000 were purchased by Tantalus, a Florida based computer games company who wanted to release a version of Star Cruiser. In the early 2000's they went under and Miller was then able to purchase them ca. 2002.
In early 2003 (January) QLI announced they had a licence to do a d20 version of 2300AD, and asked for authors to write it. That became, sadly, 2320AD, which was reskinned into Mongoose 2k3.
All that I did not know. Seems like the poor old Twilight world had to do the rounds!
@@WillyMuffinUK Checking, there was a QLI version of t2k written under the name "Twilight:2020." It was still set in 2000, but was never published, even as a PDF (unlike 2320AD, which was published as a PDF). So that makes 5 editions (6 if 2.2 is counted) of t2k.
BTW Miller is trying to buy up the rights to all the non-GDW Traveller stuff and bring it all under his control. The HIWG guys won't budge on their stuff though...
@@liverpoolirish208 I hope he has managed/will manage to get the DGP side of things.
What does HiWG actually own directly?
@@liverpoolirish208 Ah, unpublished stuff is just someone's spare disk space. Like RuneQuest 4 and so many other graveyard games!
Hello!
Which version/edition would be the most recommended if I am looking for the greatest realism and details in terms of mechanics/rules? Which has the hardest and most realistic science fiction without being The New Era (since I don't want that post-apocalyptic space opera component)?
Mongoose traveller 2nd edition is fine... but it's simple and "good looks" more than anything else. I remember coming across a Traveler manual years ago that had pretty detailed rules about cloning (you had to make several dice rolls of your biology skills with Intelligence or something like that), but in this Mongoose 2E cloning is barely mentioned 3 or 4 times in the entire manual and it's only in short sentences to say "cloning can be used to recover lost limbs or organs", "a TL12 civilization can easily clone organs". It does not say anything about how the process of creating a clone is and in a supplement there is talk of "cloning beds or tanks" that do the cloning but in a completely automatic way without having to do anything more than buy the machine. Simplifications like this kill my interest with disappointment... the role-playing is in the details and limitations or obstacles to be resolved.
If you want crunch, TNE or T5. T5 has a fair chunk on genetics (including cloning).
I say TNE because the rules are not specifically tied to the setting. You can use them for any era of Traveller's default setting, or a different setting entirely. The Virus era is simply its default, in the same way that the Rebellion was the default for MT and Milieu 0 for T4.
@@WillyMuffinUK
Thanks a lot for your answer! I am fascinated by genetics, in fact I was about to decide to go study it at the university once I finished high school/middle school, but in the end I followed another path. But well, while I'm under 40 I'm still young, right? Maybe I can still go study that, at least just for the fun of it.
And there is also that I really like the detailed, with mechanics to simulate everything and tables of results, all well thought out. That's why I stay with Pathfinder 1e and D&D 3.5e (although I liked the mechanics of rolls to define backgrounds by Character Class), and that's why Stellaris, Distant World Universe, and Stars in Shadow are by far my favorite videogames; leaving me disappointed games like Master of Orion.
Then it must have been some Traveller T5 book that I came across by chance years ago without knowing anything about Traveller, the first impression it gave me was that it was something homemade, or rough, because of the minimalist art... and colors, haha XD; but although I could barely "sneak a peek" it, I went straight to the rules on genetics and cloning, and there it impressed me a lot. It's a pity that at that moment I was just beginning to know what ttrpg is, if I had known that those rules were so unusual I would have bought it at that moment.
I was wanting to know where to start, you know, for it to be my first love (my first approach to Traveller) but later, over the years, I'll probably explore the other editions, at least only to learn the full history of the galaxy.
But I must admit that this Mongoose 2E hit me in one of my weak spots: dolphins (When I randomly stumbled across Aliens of Charted Space vol. 3 I decided to finally dive into Traveller, starting by buying that pdf and right after the Behind the Claw too (because in Aliens Vol. 3 is mentioned that there was more about dolphins in page 35)... and then the Core Rulebook). And that combined with the fact that they are genetically modified species so that they developed their brains, and it is also that ONLY their brains... which is why they preserved their anatomies, with all the potential for roleplay of a species with such a non-anthropomorphic anatomy. different. Although I don't like that they use "suits that make them levitate by antigravity fields" (antigravity is like a "magic card" to be able to ignore the inconveniences and technicalities of the absence of gravity in space... but there is at least 2 different ways in which artificial gravity can be generated in space travel without the use of "magic. And the dolphins can ride on "beds" with wheels, mini-helicopter or a robot suit with two or four legs). With what you're answering now, I think I'll take only the dolphins but with one of those other two systems.
@@the_epipan Have you never tried Rolemaster or its SF sister, Space Master? If you enjoy tables, and "stuff for everything" - they might appeal to you. They're certainly far more crunchy than 3.5E/Pathfinder (in fact, in my 3E video, I call 3E "Rolemaster Lite" - I don't think it's a coincidence that Monte Cook, long-time editor for the publishers of Rolemaster, ended up heading the D&D edition that feels most like Rolemaster...).
Anyway... plenty of uplifts in the Traveller universe beyond Dolphins, although most are anthropomorphised. As you note, that only the brains of Dolphins were uplifted sets them apart somewhat.
As for antigrav... I wouldn't call it magic - but it's certainly within the realm of handwavium!
@@WillyMuffinUK
Haha, yeah, Rolemaster has been mentioned to me several times, but I haven't decided to dive into it yet because I know that it would entertain me for a while, hehe. But every time I want to get into it more. I'll probably obsess once I start 😆
I had never heard that there was a sci-fi version of Rolemaster, I'm going to start looking a bit about it, thanks for commenting.
I've been staying up late, without sleep, researching and reading about T5, and from the looks of it it's pretty dense with rules. There was a first version that was a single book/volume of about 700 pages, right? And it seems that more recently they separated it into 3 smaller books, right? I'm not sure, but I think that between one version and the other they added to the newest some maps with the location of the entire set of sectors that make up the totality of the explored galaxy (which is little more than a point compared to the size of the Galaxy). I really liked that realistic detail. Human-generated electromagnetic and radio waves have been traveling through the galaxy at the speed of light for more than 100 years, and even so, if we compare the distance they traveled with the size of the galaxy... it's that little. That is the answer to the Fermi Paradox. The universe is infinitely bigger than we can imagine.
And... just like you said, it seems that T5 has some specific sections for Cloning and Genetics, of a couple of pages each section, but looks like that it is not what I expected: they are rules on how to build or define a kind of numerical code that I am not sure what it is for (an identifier? a representation of the genetic code?) although there are numerical parts attributed to personality and education (which can be implanted in a clone (anyway it looks interesting, I should read it more carefully/calmly)), but I can't find any rules/mechanics on how to create the clone within the story, I mean, I'm looking for something like "to create the clone you must make an Intelligence + biology skill/knowledge roll to start the process, and thereafter you must make the roll every 1 week of the time the clone is gestating. The gestation time can be accelerated, but an accelerated clone will see its lifespan reduced". That last thing about the "accelerated clone" exists there, but not the skill checks for your character to create the clone. In Mongoose 2E they use a cloning machine, according to how little it talks about cloning, is it that in Traveller it is simply assumed that cloning is automated and that you get your clone without doing more than paying the cost in credits and that's it?
Maybe that manual or supplement that I read years ago with those rules/mechanics about cloning wasn't Traveller, I 'am not sure what it was... Could it be that Rolemaster SF that you mentioned? I'll have to investigate on that side.
But now... I'm going to go get some sleep 😅
@@the_epipan The "three book" version is the one to go for. The single volume was very heavily errata'd, and the three-volume version is the result.
As for skills and clones... You shouldn't need to roll per week of gestation, nor to start the process - ROAN (Roll Only As Necessary). Given the correct equipment and knowledge, it's automatic - just takes time. Traveller does not get hung up on rolling skill checks for everything; only for those stress situations where interesting results might happen depending on degree of success. You don't make a chef roll to succeed at making a soufflé - you don't make a cloning expert roll to do his job.
It could be something you've read somewhere. There's been a lot of material published over the years in books and magazines! Traveller Digest issues 12-14 have some info, mainly from a medical perspective, so you might want to dig for those.
Rolemaster/Space Master has a lot of rules across all sorts of subjects. Space Master Tech Law has some rules on cloning within its item creation rules - but the main complications (i.e., skill checks) called for there generally refer to the transference of memories to a grown body.
Anyway, my inclination in this regard - regardless of system - would be to state that anyone sufficiently expert within the field of cloning shouldn't need to make a check to succeed under normal circumstances. Extraordinary circumstances, though - that's a different matter.
willy muffin will you do one on traveller 5 :)?
Of course 🙂
\o/