A QUICK COMPARISON OF TWILIGHT:2000 (2nd Ed) and MEGATRAVELLER
AS APPLIED TO THE REVISION TOPIC
With all the discussion going on, I decided I better have another look at
Twilight:2000 just so that I could discuss the issue from a position of
lesser ignorance.
As far as I can see it, the main things that a Traveller set of rules would
use from Twilight:2000 are the character generation system (about 35 pages
including a lot of illustrations and World War II/Earth specific material
that would need to be completely altered), the "How to Be a Referee" (13
pages, fairly generic, but does include 2 pages on skill use resolution),
and the combat rules (35 pages, but does not cover a lot of science fic-
tional material presumably needed by Traveller.) That's 83 pages out of
280, and it includes a lot of material that would need substantial rework.
Is it really worth sacrificing almost complete compatibility with all
previous referees' work and existing products in order to provide a poten-
tial new player a boost up by letting him roll 2d6-2 instead of 2d6 in
character generation, and 1d10 instead of 2d6 for task resolution? I don't
think so. I know that I have played a lot of games, but once the whole
concept of being the gamemaster and winging it with no more than a vague
idea of "Simple, Routine, Difficult, Formidable" and a few die rolls has
been absorbed (rather Difficult (-:), the additional business of shifting
between 1d10, 2d6 or Skill(d6) between different games is fairly minor.
A Twilight:2000 character has six characteristics generated by rolling 2d6-
2 (with a reroll on a zero result). A Traveller character has six charac-
teristics generated by rolling 2d6, and can gain values of up to 15 in the
generation system. The difference is that T:2000 substitutes Charisma for
Trav's Social Standing. Both games now use four year 'terms' to add
experience. Most T:2000 terms will give a character 3-4 skill levels.
Most Traveller terms will give a character about the same. In T:2000 a
skill is functionally limited by the value of its 'controlling characteris-
tic'. That is, if I have a character with a strength of 1, it will be
difficult gain a high level of skill in Small Arms (Rifle) for an example.
(Hmmm...). In Traveller, a character is limited to a total of his educa-
tion and intelligence in skill levels. I have an unsubstantiated (mathe-
matically) gut feeling that a skill level in Traveller is worth more than a
skill level in T:200). (See success chances below.) In T:2000, a charac-
ter gets seven hit locations calculated on his body. Traveller used an
abstract system. I have a few problems with the execution of the system in
T:2000, but there's nothing too terrible about the idea of hit locations
(other than that fact that they will be mostly irrelevant to a non-combat
heavy game). A T:2000 character with average strength and constitution
values of 5 will have 10 head hit points, and 30 chest hit points. A
critical wound to the chest (more than 2*h.p.) will knock him unconscious.
That is to say, 61+ points of damage. This is the same value required to
render an elephant unconscious, and can be delivered by 3 average
damage .50 caliber machine gun bullets, 9 average damage M-16 5.56N bul-
lets, 18 average 9mm pistol bullets, or 25 average arrows. "It's safe to
charge them--all they have is a hunting bow..."
Regarding skill levels, I present the following chart, showing the chances
of various outcomes using the T:2000 system.
Skill Outstanding Success Success Failure Catastrophic Failure
1 0% 10% 36% 54%
2 0% 20% 40% 40%
3 0% 30% 42% 28%
4 0% 40% 42% 18%
5 10% 40% 40% 10%
6 20% 40% 36% 4%
7 30% 40% 30% 0%
8 40% 40% 20% 0%
9 50% 40% 10% 0%
10 60% 40% 0% 0%
Since a typical very skilled Traveller has a three or a four in his main
skill, it can be seen that a Traveller skill level must be worth more than
a T:2000 skill level (otherwise most ship's engineers would damage their
drives on a routine repair attempt 28% of the time.) So,m a typical T:2000
character is probably less capable at any given age than a typical Travel-
ler character. This, by the way, is my major objection to T:2000/2nd as a
revision of T:2000/1st---given the background, I thought that having par-
ties made up of extremely capable characters was quite reasonable. A
T:2000/2 party wouldn't last very long up against a T:2000/1 party.
If a revision consisted only of grafting on a combat system based around
the seven hit locations and so forth, I'd have no strong objection. After
all, it's been done before. As someone pointed out, a NewTrav would repre-
sent the fifth or sixth personal combat system. I think that this could be
done in such a way as to leave the current character values the same--a two
point shift in the average value of characteristics can be compensated for
by a shift in weapons' damage values, if necessary. I think a move toward
a less random character generation system would be acceptable, providing
that the average number of skills gained stayed about the same. I think a
move to the d10 skill resolution system and away from the 2d6 universal
task system is a bad idea, unless compensated for by an increase in the
average level of skills, which would be a bad idea because of the compati-
bility problems. Tasks are one of the few non-problem areas in MT, at
least in routine usage. (I usually trim back on the fumble rolls when in
actual play.)
Enough for now.
Rob Dean