Rob Dean asks how many Traveller combat systems there have been...
"Five or six?" Well, no, actually. Believe it or not, there have
only been two: Trav Classic's and MegaTraveller's. You could include
Striker as a third one but that was never considered official Trav
canon law.
I'd like to interject my own two cents' worth here: everyone has
his or her own balance of playability, realism, and game balance
that is preferred for RPGs. It is absolutely impossible that a
game will have a combat system that pleases everyone-- in fact,
the odds are good that a compromise will actually ALIENATE everyone
to a small degree, rather than wholly pleasing anyone at all.
There are three approaches to this metaproblem:
1. The Historical Approach: The first few RPGs to be released, TRAVELLER
AMONG THEM!, had combat systems that were just designed to sorta work.
There was not yet a wide enough base of PRG-oriented experts (as opposed
to wargamers, whose priorities are different) to draw on for suggestions.
This meant that these systems formed a basis for the complaints that
led to later systems.
2. The Diplomatic Approach: strike a balance between playability, game
balance and realism, and hope that you can sorta please everyone to the
point where they'll buy the game for its OTHER merits. I would class
MegaTraveller and RuneQuest in this realm, as well as many others.
3. The Extremist Approach: pick one area to maximize at the expense of
others, and totally woo one sector of the buying public. This generally
falls into two categories: playability at the expense of realism (Star
Ace, Star Frontiers, and (if you feel like whining) Trav Classic) and
realism at the expense of playability (Space Opera, Fringeworthy, and
Phoenix Command).
The moral is, NO ONE will be happy with what GDW does, because their
design philosophy is, and has been for at least six years, founded
upon the Diplomatic Approach. The thing to do, which has been completely
forgotten in these days of Officially Approved Gaming Materials (TM),
is that rules systems can be customized to suit. If you think a system
leans too far in one direction, replace it with something that works.
I have a combat system for Trav Classic that I sort of shelved when
MegaTrav came out and seemed to address my concerns to some extent.
However, when TNE is released, I am going to give the combat system
a very critical look (I don't regard DC or T2k2 as good paradigms for
guessing, for several reasons). If I don't like it, and I am sure
I won't, I will either rewrite it extensively, or dredge up my old
Trav Classic combat system, which was and is the best system for MY
purposes I have ever used.
I have developed a number of tricks that apply to any game system I use,
that speed up combat while retaining realism. But these days I tend
to be sloppy about such things. My parties don't seem to mind, as long
as the game flows well. (Game balance at the expense of realism and
to some extent fast playability.)
- --
Mike Metlay
[email removed]
[address removed]