After reading the criticisms of the Twilight:2000 2nd Ed system as a source for
a Traveller re-do, I want to offer what I imagine will end up as a defense of
the T:2000 system. But, I'm not going to suggest that it's the best starting
point for another Traveller iteration, simply that T:2000 2nd Ed has some real
virtues. I would consider the purchase of a sci-fi game that builds on them,
even as I realize how remote a prospect that's likely to be.
I'm about to toss around a lot of opinions, but I don't think that anyone
else's opinions on this subject are wrong. These are simply my experiences,
based on the flavor of role-playing I and my group prefer. It may be
significant to point out that I have no vested interest in preserving the
Megatraveller system, if I did I'd probably feel very differently.
T:2000 2nd Ed contains a kernel of a game system that is realistic, quick, and
easy to play, in short it's the most viable GDW system we've tried.
Specifically, here's what I find so successful:
- - Task resolution. The D10-based system, where you roll to beat the
character's skill modified for Easy, Average, or Difficult tasks, is
easy to use, and realistic enough for play. I can referee large, disparately
equipped and skilled group of NPC's in combat, in vehicles, and spend more
time thinking about their intentions and actions than about the task
resolution rules. This is a nice break for me as ref. It's intuitively
simple to incorporate new tasks into the game. While it's not the most
comprehensive task system I've ever seen, it is the most eloquent one
in terms of playability.
Note that T:2000 2nd Ed gives several complementing rules for skill
improvement. So, characters that start out with mediocre skills or initiative
will improve them. Characters with really low skills improve at a faster
rate. Our experience reveals that it works!
- - Combat. With its 6-phase turn sequence and initiative system, T:2000
2nd Ed does a super job of modeling the salient factors in a combat:
hesitation, the relative value of automatic fire, aimed and unaimed fire,
the threat of the area weapon, and the impact of movement on all the above.
No other system I've seen puts those items together in such an economical,
logical, complete way. 1st Ed T:2000 didn't pull this off, either.
2nd Ed's system of volume-of-fire reductions for range, and strength due to
weapon recoil, is meaningful from every standpoint. The use of handfuls of
D6 to simulate the effects of auto fire is on the money. The primary effect
of auto fire, more often than not, is simply to suppress the enemy's ability
to move. Mr. Chadwick is exactly right: it doesn't necessarily take a great
skill to use auto fire, like the Russian tank riders of WWII. This is a good
example, as the 2nd Ed makes the submachine gun a potent alternative to
the larger rifles; that's not the case in most other games. But, maybe it's
just that there's something tremendously satisfying about tossing
a handful of dice when your character decides to rock-and-roll.
The "truths" in the 2nd Ed apply whether the hand holds a machete or
plasma gun. On the other hand, (sorry) there's a lot from the 2nd Ed rulebook
that should be thrown out the window. Role-playing games are like a good Chili
recipe: take what you like, leave out what you don't, add the special
ingredients, and write it down so you can make it again. I've NEVER seen a
game I'd accept in every detail, I never will. What saves T:2000 2nd Ed is
that it has a skeleton of rules that's well worth being fixed.
In my case, along the way I realized that 2300AD's strengths are T:2000's
weaknesses, and vice-versa. I married the 2 systems. Here's how:
- - 2nd Ed's entire firearm damage system, using D6 combinations for each weapon,
sucks root, and requires too much dice-rolling and record-keeping. So, I
adapted the Damage Point Value and Armor Value systems from 2300AD. Now, for
example, a 7.62mm rifle in my game has a DPV of .7, and can administer light
wounds, serious wounds represented by shock points, or death depending on
the hit location, power of the weapon, or presence of body armor as an AV
deduction from DPV. No muss, no fuss, no messy hit points. Calculate life
level values from the requisite attribute(s) of your choice; NPC's get 1
shock point per initiative level.
I re-evaluated the effect of contact hits from heavy weapons. If you know
2300AD, then you know what this revision means to a character struck in a
vital area by a .50 cal or a 30mm autocannon round. While others eschew this
kind of lethality, our group feels the need to make it so without taking away
from the heroic nature of the game, at least from our standpoint.
T:2000's wound recovery system defies rational explanation. As luck
would have it, 2300AD's is the best in the business, and translates cleanly
into T:2000 MED tasks. It's simple to incorporate T:2000 medical devices as
task modifiers; we're really happy with the way it turned out.
Oh yeah, I tweaked a few other things, like
- made the task to hit at close range with aimed fire AVG:weapon skill,
not 2x weapon skill, hence unaimed fire at close range is DIF:weapon
skill. This helps cut back the lethality of the firearms, and is far
more realistic than the flat curves of the "to-hit" numbers in the
vanilla T:2000 2nd Ed. Also, number 9 should NOT be an auto-miss.
- toned down KNOCKDOWN so that it affects a character for the duration
of the current phase, and through the end of the next one rather
than for the duration of the turn
- removed the ability to fire to extreme range for many weapons, and
limited it to aimed fire only (Basically, this is a T:2000 1st Ed.
rule adapted over)
- brought shotguns, concussion, fragmentation effects, unarmed combat
damage into line with the revisions
- made vehicle movement rates divisible by 8
- defined the OBSERVATION skill in terms of tasks relevant to an encounter
situation, so as to keep it from being a "queen of the battlefield"
kind of skill
- allow players latitude in character generation...it's their character,
we're all adults, as ref who am I to mess with that?
I plan to include high-tech weapons, vehicles, maybe even magic/psionics.
This will become my Generic-Universal-Traveller System. It will be interesting
to see what GDW does with theirs.
Regards,
Brian