Kickstarters Thread

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So, let's talk T5!

It begins with a big section of Benchmarks scaling ranges, sizes, money and so forth, setting stuff out so you know what's what.

The Attributes are C1 (Strength), C2 (Agility, Dexterity, or Grace), C3 (Endurance or Stamina), C4 (Intelligence), C5 (Education or Training), and C6 (Social Standing, Caste, or Charisma)

The differences are racial, for example Agility is for races that lack fine manipulators and replaces Dexterity.

The 5.0 book had a big section of die combination probability charts, which people found too scary I suppose. I've always believed it was a case of Marc trying to justify the nd6 mechanic.

Next up character creation!

So, Race Generation is later in the book with worlds and stuff but for humans you roll 2d6 for C1 - 6. You can opt to take the remedial Edu5 course if your C5 is lower than 5. Next up you can either go to school or get a job. Career entry rolls are 2d6 roll equal to or under listed characteristic. Each term is 4 years. You roll for Entry, Risk and Reward, and Continue. Where more than one Attribute is listed you pick one and roll on it but can't re-use it until you use each of them. The careers are Citizen, Craftsman, Noble, Functionary, Marine, Merchant, Scholar, Scout, Soldier, and Spacer. Each career has unique aspects, for instance Soldiers, Marines, and Navy get medals and awards for their risk and reward rolls. You get one skill per year plus specific career skills. It's really nothing new, the presentation has been confusing and messy and it gets frustrating. Skills and Knowledges are messy, they make sense but they were only explained in one place I could find. It's like this, on your first and second acquisition you get a knowledge like Adventure Class Ship Pilot or Small Craft Pilot but on the third acquisition you get a broader skill like Space that adds to everything under that heading. It's actually neat and I like it but it's also one more thing.

Mustering out got less fun in 5.09, the random secrets and stuff disappeared. I don't know why, mustering out with secrets as benefits was fun. There were also tables for things like random university names, which was awesome if non-essential. Ship shares are worth 100dTons each and can be combined for a bigger ship or sold off for cash. At first I thought this was a bit unreasonable as ships have different prices but the thing to bear in mind is that profitability is based on cargo capacity and bigger drives and more fuel eat away at the profit margins.

There's also a section on Talents which work for things like Telexiu Face Dancers and Mentats from Dune.

The Mechanics

Traveller 5 uses an nd6 roll equal to or under Attribute + Skill indicates success mechanic. 2 - 3d is pretty average. Range bands tie directly to attack and sensor difficulty but you also apply Target Size - Range so, at range 1 a size 5 human is +4 to hit on 1d.

There's a neat section on senses which will tell you things like what wave lengths a Vargr can hear. I kid you not, every race has a sense string that tells you how they can see, hear, taste, smell, sense psychically and so forth.

There's interpersonal rules where you pick a strategy and check some factors on a chart. A fellow I know who's on the spectrum took one look and said "If only it was that easy." It's an interesting approach that I suspect most people won't use.

I personally think 1d increments are too large and dice difficulty levels with modifiers is cludgy and ugly, but I'm probably the only person who liked the half dice in T4. I'm also, probably the only person who liked T4.
 
So, we'd better talk about combat. Originally it was all simultaneous and resolved in the order of Situation, Target, Aim, Move, Penetrate. You could opt to shoot first in exchange for everyone getting a bonus to hit you. The tactics pool gave out some free floating modifiers. Cover gave -2 to -6 to be hit and -1 to -3 to hit because it costs you opportunities. Movement was a die modifier. Target Size and Range were modifiers. In the earlier versions the combat system used 2d tasks but we foolishly pushed for the nd6 mechanic to be used and it made things messier. Really that's where the problem is. The combination of modifiers and nd6 difficulty modifiers is messy and confusing. So confusing that the 5.09 combat committee missed that you cant' miss at short range and that moose were still the ultimate weapon in the Galaxy.

Damage is in dice, but divided by type, most apply to Armour but some hit Insulate, Sealed, and around eight other protection values. Armour is subtracted from the damage with whole dice divided among the characteristics by rolling 1d3. There's also hit locations and your armour goes away if its penetrated. Not really unrealistic, ballistic plates shatter when absorbing bullet energy, ablative foam burns away, plasma guns burn everything away and so forth. There was a lot of debate about how damage types are applied. For instance do you apply Bullet -2 Penetrate-1 separately? What's the difference. The official ruling is that each damage type is applied against armour separately but the armour values don't bear this out and the H0 column in the Gun Maker contradicts this ruling entirely. Hit system 0 / 1 was a quick damage for npcs rule that knocks them out of the fighting if they take 10 points of damage from a hit. It makes mooks almost invulnerable. Anyhow, we don't know how this will play out. Melee weapons have been a nonsensical mess from the beginning. Personally it's mostly fixed by saying the damage listed is in points not dice. So Strength Cuts means an average joe does 7 points with a sword not 7 dice. There's a few other issues like some weapons having fixed damages and others having strength based damage. Oh well, I got passed a sneak peak of a fixed up table but whether it's in or out, who can say?

Anyhow, 5.09 combat allows additional shots per round for additional difficulty and makes combat a little more flowing but I've ran it and found it really messy and unfun. As I've said many times, 5.0 needed about a page of clarifications not a total reworking.

The Gun and Armour Makers were included in the combat section originally. They're pretty neat if buggy as hell (for example, the table allows magnum lasers but not heavy and very heavy ones because stuff got printed on the wrong lines) . Basically, you take a basic weapon and apply modifiers which affect its cost, weight and damage. So, for instance you might have an Ultimate Very Heavy Laser Pistol -15 Range 2, Penetrate-2 , Burn -4, 1 kg . The armour system works in a similar fashion. It'll be too much work for some but its no Fire Fusion and Steel (sigh).
 
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Michael Prescott is finally Kickstarting a book of his 48 system-neutral adventure locations available for free on his blog. If you haven't seen his fine maps and imaginative content check it out. I think he is doing some of the finest OSRish work current today.

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From the KS page:

The book is 112 pages, including:

  • 48 adventures, reformatted, revised for clarity, and re-edited
  • Ten of the adventures have been expanded to an extra page
  • two pages of adventure summaries so you can quickly find the perfect adventure
  • a detailed index of people, places, demigods and monsters that reveals the hidden links between the adventures
  • up to 46 pages of stretch goals are planned, which would bring the book to 160 pages.

  • 8848
Everything is written as tightly as possible, distilled to get the maximum idea density on the page. I don't put in stats, so they're best for games where you can stat on the fly: early editions of D&D, Dungeon World, Torchbearer, Into the Odd, Maze Rats, or World of Dungeons (to name but a few). They also work fine in 5eby using similar creatures.

From One-Shots to Sandboxes
Each adventure location is designed for ease of use at your table. They're not stories but scenarios spring-loaded with potential. Whether your players arrive as marauders, explorers, diplomats, or thieves, interesting things will happen.
 
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It's déjà vu all over again!
 
It's déjà vu all over again!

Whoops, missed that. Hopefully the mods can merge the threads.
 
I personally think 1d increments are too large and dice difficulty levels with modifiers is cludgy and ugly, but I'm probably the only person who liked the half dice in T4. I'm also, probably the only person who liked T4.
Let me correct this misconception: I also liked T4, though I only played it, and that briefly*, after T5 was announced:grin:! The part about spending Dex and Str in melee** was especially fun. I hope this part makes a return:smile:!

I'm going to add my houserules for T5, which resolve most current issues, to this thread. Just because it would be fun to check whether they've been used in 5.10 by some accident. (No, I don't think Marc Miller knows about my games. But they just sound logical to me:wink:!)

*Never owned it myself, but am looking to correct the oversight when the stars are right. Maybe next year:shade:.
**Though I'd never know why only sport fencing weapons were able to riposte after an enemy failed an attack roll. Or why fencing weapons were defined as the weapons used in sports fencing...but then I'm a HEMAist, and I suspect that wasn't the most common complaint:tongue:!


So, to preserve them for posterity...

Hopefully this time, a moose won't be a better anti-tank weapon than a plasma cannon.
Haven't done anything. I was using it to run a low-tech planet and it never cropped up. I suspect I'd have decided that Str-based attacks against hard armour vehicles are calculated at half the creature's strength, making it a much more reasonable range.
Reasoning: Why? Because I'm the Referee, and the other option grates me the wrong way. Questions?

Hopefully this time the numbers line up right on the charts.
Unresolved. I really hope for the same thing:devil:!

Hopefully you have a better than 0 on 2d6 chance of hitting in Melee against an evenly matched foe (5.09)
In T5.09 you substract the enemy's total skill (Attr+Skill total) from yours.
In my T5.09 you substract the enemy's skill (Knowledges included) from your Attribute+skill, and roll under that.
Reasoning: Untrained/unskilled* fighters might have a good attack ability, but only skilled fighters actually have any defensive ability beyond "press the attack so he never gets initiative", in many people's observations.
And yes, someone with great attributes might still "get you" (and attributes also allow you to sustain more damage, so yes, you can be Rocky vs. Apollo Creed)...but nobody said good attributes don't help in fighting. Quite the contrary!

Please note: I was using the "divide attribute by 2 round up, then add skill times three**" houserule (not mine) for the basic skill roll numbers (not only in combat). But that's just because a Skill 6 Dex 9 pilot being inferior to the Skill-1 Dex-15 newbie grates me the wrong way.
So your 13-Str Skill-1 brawler is going to hit on 8 or less against a Str-10 Skill-2 opponent, which is a lot***, but the latter hits him on 10 or less. The same powerhouse vs an Attribute 9 Skill-3 opponent is in deeper trouble: hit on 8 or less, get hit on 12 or less. OIdds are, the enemy would try for a trick shot at this point.

*It's not about being formally taught, but about having technique vs relying on physical abilities. You can argue that someone with the Rogue career isn't necessarily formally taught to fight, but is likely to know a bit about the subject.
**Or times two, I was still experimenting. Either way, you subtract the resulting number without multiplying the substracted skill.
***However, as a nod to a couple previous editions, you could substract your skill number again after seeing the roll...at the cost of your next attack being made at an (additional) degree of difficulty.


Hopefully it's not 5 or less on 0d to shoot a target at close range. (assuming Dex 8 and Weapon-1 (not at all uncommon in T5 skills are about 3-4 times CT skill levels) with the target and shooter maximizing cover and a single shot rather than rapid fire)
I'm not sure what was the solution for this.
Reason(ing): Similar situations did crop up, sure, but not all that often. See above for the "low tech" campaign I was using T5 for...the players tended to spend most of their time there even after being able to leave the planet. And being skilled in close combat, they tended to grapple and stab enemies as soon as that was possible.
Or maybe the change to the TN had taken care of that by itself? It's hard to tell, since I don't remember the modifiers for shootouts at close combat. As mentioned above, melee was used a lot more often.
This might have something to do with the Referee not being American, and thus most worlds having a Law Level which made guns less practical. We all have our biases!
 
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In my experience the first thing players do is look for a law 1, TL 12+ world to travel to so they can buy more guns.

There was a bit of a fun scene where a PC was looking for some black market weapons on a high law world ran into some Vargr who broke out a sling shot and a stick with a nail in it. Angered the PC stormed off. The Vargr did have real weapons to sell, they were just being cagey in case it was a sting operation.

When it comes to the skill + attribute thing, it helps to remember that the average attribute is 7, so really a skill of 4 (which is about 1 in CT) is quite significant but you also need to take This Is Hard into account. If your skill is less than the difficulty the difficulty doubles.

One thing we found was that the 3d version of Melee works better than the 2d version as less capable combatants simply miss more.
 
Well, I went ahead and backed at All the Newness for now. I may increase my pledge to get some add ons later. We'll see.
 
I'm in for $150. I want all the newness and some extra character journals and pads. I'd really love for this KS to break $100k it would send a clear message to the hobby that the Fantasy Trip is a viable OSR game not built on D&D.
 
Well it has performed well so far, so we can certainly hope for 100,000. I’m going to have to increase my pledge again, as I want a copy of Robin’s laws (borrowed it from a library fourteen years ago, I remember liking much of the content). Also possibly more character journals. Either that or melee pads. I would really like more of the Wizard pads though. They are pretty much perfect for ITL characters (sure, they don’t have all that room for notes, but regular notepads can handle that).
 
I too find the Wizard size just right for typical starting PC's and most NPCs. Big enough to hold a list of talents and spells; small enough to fit in the recipe card box.
 
I thought Traveller 5 wasn't considered a very good edition? Why would it be reprinted? What's wrong with Mongoose Traveller 2nd Ed?

I've seen quite a few people comment that they loved the rules as huge honkin' toolkit, but organizational issues made it daunting to use.

Wait a minute. They ran a kickstarter for a game years ago and now they are going to release an errata free edition (HOPEFULLY) with another Kickstarter? Doesn’t that strike people as double dipping?

My feelings exactly. That's a lot of chutzpah. (Unless backers of the original KS are getting a complementary copy, but I've seen nothing to that effect.)
 
In my experience the first thing players do is look for a law 1, TL 12+ world to travel to so they can buy more guns.

There was a bit of a fun scene where a PC was looking for some black market weapons on a high law world ran into some Vargr who broke out a sling shot and a stick with a nail in it. Angered the PC stormed off. The Vargr did have real weapons to sell, they were just being cagey in case it was a sting operation.

When it comes to the skill + attribute thing, it helps to remember that the average attribute is 7, so really a skill of 4 (which is about 1 in CT) is quite significant but you also need to take This Is Hard into account. If your skill is less than the difficulty the difficulty doubles.

One thing we found was that the 3d version of Melee works better than the 2d version as less capable combatants simply miss more.
Presumably, high law worlds have some means of remaining that way.
 
I've seen quite a few people comment that they loved the rules as huge honkin' toolkit, but organizational issues made it daunting to use.



My feelings exactly. That's a lot of chutzpah. (Unless backers of the original KS are getting a complementary copy, but I've seen nothing to that effect.)
Actually, at least their PDF files are going to be updated at no extra cost, as per the KS page.
 
I love reading T5. I also love the Cirque supplement. I just can't see trying to run the game, or play it.
 
Check this out; a great explanation for the intended uses of Decks of Destiny:

 
Interesting they chose to set it in the 1880s and assume the players will "take on the role of outlaws, brigands, and bandits." Talk of the referee "curating the narrative experience" makes me wonder. The section on their "design philosophy" is completely empty of meaning. I presume they chose the 1880s so as to incorporate the most infamous outlaws, but for me personally things get less interesting once railroads and telegraphs became more commonplace and locations became less isolated, which is why I generally set Westerns in the immediate or near-intermediate aftermath of the Civil War. I'm not crazy about the Luck point concept, but it seems that would be easy to leave out. The character sheet looks nice and concise. I can't watch the video here at work: do they actually explain what the system is? The text on the page doesn't really spell out anything. I'm not clear on the "Progression" system as it seems ill-fitting for the genre for a character to keep acquiring new talents and skills; most people hit a certain level of expertise in a small number of areas and plateau, but it would depend on how much and how often a PC improves. I find it a bit odd that playing someone on the right side of the law would require additional rules and a $10,00.00 stretch goal.

"We have the game written" and "We need...further playtesting and editing, and more fantastic design" seem contradictory statements to me.

Whatever we do, let's make sure we don't fund the "Myths & Legends Expansion" as the last thing the world needs is another "Weird West" RPG. :hehe:

I wouldn't mind trying this out sometime to see how it plays when they actually have it done, but I can't say I feel any need to help fund it or buy it. I wish they put some actual content into their text to explain how the game is supposed to work and what makes it good and/or different.
 
I’m inclined to agree in regards to the setting. My best guess? Done to capitalize on the Red Dead Redemption fuss, which are explicitly set in the dying days of the West.
 
Check this out; a great explanation for the intended uses of Decks of Destiny:

The solo / random stuff I kind of figured, but these can go a long way to dealing with a common complaint with GURPS and HERO about GM prep time. Draw some rumors, treasures. encounters and then weave a tale around them for the game that night.
 
Yes; something special about TFT is that it spans the space from zero-prep beer and pretzel board game to full blown roleplaying game pretty much seamlessly; I feel like a lot of what they are offering in this boxed set is material you can use in various combinations depending on where you want to be on that spectrum on a given night.
 
And the Wizard pads are now a stretch goal. Now we just need some more backers to get another six thousand dollars in.
 
I can't watch the video here at work: do they actually explain what the system is? The text on the page doesn't really spell out anything.

No, the video is vague and just has three or for bullet points. The progression system seems to be tied to your reputation where you become more and more infamous. I saw that obligatory "weird west" expansion and thought the same thing. :/
 
Given the duration of the campaign and the time-function they generally follow, this one's on track for something like 100k total. So, they'll definitely unlock those wizard pads.
 
I also noticed very little art is previewed. I won’t invest in a Kickstarter when the creators clearly haven’t invested much of their own money.
 
While I fully agree on obligatory "weird west" expansions, my main gripe with weird west settings usually concerns the incusion of weird tech / steam punk / alternate timeline crap, which I loathe with a passion. I can see the subtle inclusion of setting/genre-appropriate mystical/supernatural elements in a western game. Nothing that warrants a full expansion book, however.

HonestVillainousAmericanwarmblood-small.gif
 
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While I fully agree on obligatory "weird west" expansions, my main gripe with weird west settings usually concerns the incusion of weird tech / steam punk / alternate timeline crap, which I loathe with a passion. I can see the subtle inclusion of setting/genre-appropriate mystical/supernatural elements in a western game.

Indeed. The steampunk aspect of Deadlands is the part that pops up the least in my games. I don't have an issue with the suitable supernatural stuff, though.
 
While I fully agree on obligatory "weird west" expansions, my main gripe with weird west settings usually concerns the incusion of weird tech / steam punk / alternate timeline crap, which I loathe with a passion. I can see the subtle inclusion of setting/genre-appropriate mystical/supernatural elements in a western game. Nothing that warrants a full expansion book, however.
There's a Western hack (or at least playbooks) for Apocalypse World that has a pretty good take on the "weird west" that I appreciate. Two of playbooks are the Revenant (they're dead) and the Lone Rider (they're a horsemen of the apocalypse). They are more "mysterious/spooky west" than steampunk.
 
Is the Lone Rider supposed to be like Clint Eastwood as the Preacher in Pale Rider?
Exactly. Based loosely on Pale Rider. It has supreme horsemanship type moves as well as Wanderer of the Wastes which is basically a supernatural traveling move. The creepiest move is bringing your horse back from the dead.
 
Michael Prescott has been releasing high-quality free content for years, and deserves some support.

And I'm curious to see the beasties statted up.

That’s a good point. A creator who’s been releasing this much quality content for this long really deserves some support.

Now I’m a backer :grin:
 
Given the duration of the campaign and the time-function they generally follow, this one's on track for something like 100k total. So, they'll definitely unlock those wizard pads.

Yup. And we are getting some adventures Kickstarter this month too!
 
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