Okay, time for me to burn some bandwith with my personal opinions.
Here's what I think about TNE. I love the new rules (except for the
loss of reactionless drives in "official" games--oh well, I've never
been too "official" anyway).
The setting. Yes, now that the aggregate Tech Level of the galaxy has
fallen, the game does feel more like Twilight:5800 rather then
Traveller. It doesn't have the same science fiction feel that CT or
even MT had.
Everyone seems to love the old CT setting because it was so stable.
Personally, I loved MT, I thought that it provided a very interesting
mix of politics, location, and science fiction that you couldn't achieve
with the Frontier Wars. But I digress...
The big problem that I have with TNE is that there is very little
support for anything but an RCES campaign. Take a look at the stuff
that Loren said was being released over the next year or two. All I see
is RCES stuff! Guess what? I don't like the RCES campaign setting!
Why? It's quite simple, it has a Tech Level that my campaign doesn't
want to play in. We happen to like luxury over grim-and-gritty. "Okay"
you say, "start the campaign in the Regency" you say. I want to, but
where's all the nifty detail on it? The odd glance that you get in the
TNE book is not enough to start a good in-depth. I want UWP's, I want
patrons, I want a bunch of other things. Get the picture. Good,
because it doesn't seem like GDW does.
Why am I bitching and moaning? It's not because I think that the RCES
is crap. In fact, I disagree, I think that it's a very strong
campaign. But (there's always a but), it's not the campaign for me.
No, I don't view the RCES as only Star Vikings out to conquer. But I
would rather play in a less military-oriented campaign.
I find this very upsetting. When there was CT, GDW gave sectors to
specific publishers, and let them develop them. Do you know how great
it was to have a wealth of info for anything from Ley Sector to The
Spinward Marches to wherever. And then with MT, the concentration was
on the Spinward Marches and Deneb (originally). But there was always
more then enough information on the rest of the Imperium, and no one
faction of the Rebellion was truly concentrated over another one. And
there was always The Traveller's Digest/MegaTraveller Journal which had
a wealth of information for all parts of the galaxy, and all types of
players and campaigns. Boy do I miss having a Traveller mag (at least,
and at last there's The Traveller Chronicle).
The more I see of TNE (and yes, I'm saying this after seeing all of the
releases for TNE), the more I wish that GDW did sell the rights for
Traveller to DGP. Maybe then we could have had "Traveller: The New
Era--Traveller Done Right."
--Jerry
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