Several coments on TNE...
Anyone noticed the increased similarity between Battletech and TNE? 'Ships are
rare antiques, and boarding actions are common, and all that...' 'An empire
dependant on past science...' etc...
Thank God, no BattleMechs...
Double that, that cyborgs will be few and far between, no teen-angst cyberpunk,
as Metlay puts it for me thank you...
Traveller in the past, has had features unique to itself, and has also let
several gaming fads slip by without jumping on the bandwagon, and becoming yet-
another-generic-battlemech-cyborg-netrunner-psyionic-fantasy-robot game for
teenagers. It's made minimal inclusions of each to accomidate fanatics, yet
Traveller has more of less stayed the same, and not let itself be jerked around
by 'new technology'.
Traveller has been a game apart, and a standard. But it has aged quite a bit,
and it has been jerked around quite a bit by several completely different rules
systems, and about a dozen different 'official' publishers which were later
blacklisted and their material contradicted.
I like generic rules systems that can be applied consistantly to any type of
campaign or scenario. But I also want Traveller to continue to have it's
unique flavor.
On Starships...
As with all equipment design, *real* terminology should be used, and it should
be consistant... You should be able to tell if you can but a framistat in your
fighter, and why, and be able to design a fighter with a framistat if you want
to. Be able to design ships with & without grav plates etc, and have there be
significant differences. Have several different interplanetary and
interstellar drives for different cultures/races/empires. etc...
I don't like the 'fallen empire' atmosphere. I prefer the 'expanding empire'
attitude. But it's easier to move forward in time and crush the Imperium to
create frontiers then to move backwards to the point where the Imperium or some
subset of it had genuine frontiers...
Enough for now...
Jim Baranski