[email removed] (Kelly St.Clair) writes:
> [on k'kree and hivers being inspired by Niven's Puppeteers, and Fteirle
> (Aslan) being inspired by Kzin]
I'm suprised that nobody mentioned C.J.Cherryh's Hani (or maybe I'm just
coming in late). The Hani have several of the main attributes of the
Fteirle: males fight one another to settle political disputes and
females have exclusive control over business/trade/technology.
I frequently (and inaccurately, but what the hey) give the following
description of them to new players "Imagine a race that has the female
Hani (C.J. Cherryh) and male Kzinti (Larry Niven)".
[email removed] (J Roberson) writes:
> I have never played Classic Traveller; I
> have always assumed the only difference was no Rebellion.
And lots of game mechanic differences, including
readable rules and a lack of errors ;-)
> As for controls, I rather imagine that given the range of space, most
> contact and conflict will occur outside visual range, leading control of
> ships to be more akin to modern naval combat, as simulated by Harpoon and
> Red Storm Rising (the latter being a computer game). Meaning that rather
> than a joystick, dynamic controls for the display of information and
> operation of multiple ship functions will be used.
Where's that piece written by Scott Kellogg (sometime a year or so ago?)
about flight controls for the different races? Come to think of it,
where's that bit I wrote about how to fly a spaceship ... ?
[email removed] writes:
> Subject: Brilliant Lances
I've taken a look at it too, but haven't gotten a chance to play it yet.
My overall impression is pretty good. Specifically, the game fits into
T:TNE in pretty much the same way that Mayday fit into Classic Traveller.
(Hm ... maybe we should call it "Mayday: The New Era") But BL is a much
more complete and interesting boardgame than Mayday ever was.
Inside the box (which I saw at Dream Wizards here in Rockville, for $30)
you get 2 rulebooks, 2 sheets of color counters, 3 maps (really BIG hexes!),
2 player reference cards, 1 sheet of errata (avertising on the back), and
1 T:TNE comment form.
One rulebook is the rules of play (32 pages, including scenarios). Good
solid boardgaming rules that should interface *very* well with T:TNE. So
well in fact that if I were the suspicious type, I'd think that the rules in
T:TNE were an earlier version of this, with "hex" globally changed to "range
band". ;-) The game uses the T:TNE task system to resole die rolls, so PC's
skills just drop in place of the "crew quality" assets. There is a good
number of ships provided, more than with T:TNE (or MegaTraveller, or Classic
Traveller, for that matter).
The other book (48 pages) has the ship profiles for the ships to use in the
boardgame, as well as the ship design rules. The design rules seem complete
but has some holes, which Mr. Kirsch did a good job of describing.
Brilliant Lances doesn't seem to be designed to be able to deal well with
ships bigger than a couple of thousand tons. The biggest "spinal" mount
is a little under 200 dispacement tons (or about 1/5 the size of the smallest
High Guard/MegaTraveller spinal mount; the rest of the BL spinal mounts
would have been High Guard or MegaTraveller bay weapons; it might be
possible to cram a small BL spinal mount into a small craft).
A few interesting observations that long-time Traveller players might
want to take note of: There is no longer any lower limit on the size of a
starship. There is a minimum size for a jump drive, but from off-the-cuff
calculations, I think you can get a 10-ton craft to jump with at least
enough left-over space for a crewman. There also don't seem to be any
limits on the number of weapons you can cram into a ship, excepting of
course what will actually fit into and onto the hull. Finally, there
isn't any limit on the accelleration of the craft, except what will
squash the crew (or at least leave them unable to function: gravity
compensation varies by Tech Level). All in all, I don't mind these
changes, I think that the elimination of arbitrary restrictions (no
starships less than 100 tons, only 1 turret per hundred tons, etc) is
worth it. And besides, we get to explore the utility of jump-capable
fighters, and other strange stuff.
Overall, the game is very nice, but it does have some rough edges. A
page of errata is included, but that doesn't cover them all. I get
the distinct impression that BL should have been kept back another
week and proofread one more time.
Summary and Recommendation: If you and your players like "boardgaming
out" spaceship encounters, get this game. If you like playing SF
boardgames get this game, the vector movement is good. If you want
ship construction rules for T:TNE, give this one a miss and wait for
the Technical Architecture book (Fire, Fusion and Steel) in November.
Call for Errata: If you have any Brilliant Lances errata, send it to me,
and I'll compile a list with suggested fixes, just like I did with T:TNE.
Send your errata to: [email removed]
Please put something like "BL Errata" in your subject line, so I can sort
them out of the rest of the mail.
[email removed] (Rich) writes:
> Now that the smoke has cleared a bit on the new line of Traveller
> products, what are the *recommended* sourcebooks and supplements to buy? (Like
> many of the folks on the net, I started playing Traveller when it was the series
> of black books.)
Well, now. As far as I know, all that's available for T:TNE right now is the
massive Traveller: The New Era rules, and Brilliant Lances.
If you're still playing with the little black books, and are happy with them,
there's a lot to be said for not buying anything. T:TNE is a different game
than Classic Traveller. T:TNE is based on the Twilight:2000 (2nd ed) rules
system, and also re-writes the Traveller background (the best way to describe
it is that T:TNE does to the Imperium what Twilight:2000 does to the
present-day world).
Assuming that, like me, you are in the market for a new game, T:TNE has a
bunch of things going for it. It's *NOT* overpriced; as a matter of fact
the thing is very reasonably priced. The game system is pretty good, and
a lot of material is provided in the one book. The only caveat I would give
is that if you can't stand the T2k2 system, T:TNE is the same system.
Recommendation: Buy (but see below)
The only other thing out is Brilliant Lances, and I just reviewed that above.
Coming in November is the Technical Architecture book, which will probably
also be a "buy".
According to the advertising in BL, T:TNE Deluxe Edition is coming out in
November. This will include both T:TNE and the Technical Architecture book
in one box, and may be a better buy if you can wait for it.
Other items that were mentioned in the BL advertising are the T:TNE referee's
screen and several projects due next year. I don't know anything about the
ref screen, and I think next year's products are a little far away to be
making purchasing decisions about. Of course, don't forget Challenge. There
should be a bunch of New Era material showing up in it Real Soon Now. In
the past few years, I haven't found Challenge to have enough Traveller and/or
Space: 1889 material in it to be worth the price (to me, IMHO). However, as
T:TNE material starts showing up I will be re-evaluating that ...