Re: FT + Traveller

Me:

>>Lately I think that Traveller has gone down the tubes with the
>>release of T4

Win Barker:

>>Down the tubes? T4 is the way Traveller started! Granted, I don't
>>particularly like the new Chris Fosse illustrations, but IMHO,
Traveller
>>has been brought out of the dolldrums of repeated new editions and
>>backgrounds.

Hm, well I have to admit that I'm a fan of the Imperium (pre Shattered
Imperium that is).

My biggest problem with the rules is that the skill system is hopeless.
The (attribute + skill) method gives far too much bias to attribute over
skill, and this combined with Impossible = 4d6 makes the required rolls
just too low. We tried the rules in an introductory game, one PC, with a
Dex of 12 and a skill of 2 trying to perform an impossible task had to
roll 14 or less on 4 dice. The average of 4d6 is 14, which seemed rather
ridiculous to me.

I was never really keen on the 2 ship combat systems though. The
original
with vectored movement etc, was too complex, and High Guard was a bit
too
abstract. FT looks like it would fill the gap quite nicely. I guess that
the major problems are to do with the character conversion into FT
terms,
and effects of damage, etc to ships and crew. The FT dice rolls are much
more granular than the Traveller ones of any edition, so my first
thought
is to classify PC's (or NPC's) above a certain skill level as 'Aces' as
per the fighter rules, allowing a +1 mod to some dice rolls, combat,
maneuvering etc, e.g. Pilot-3 allows (half thrust +1) for turning
ability?
I don't think anything greater than +1 should be given though.

cheers,

Mark.