I played very little Traveller 2300 when it came out and sold the books within six months of my first reading as we were neck deep in Classic Traveller and Twilight 2000 so nobody in our crew got excited about 2300. It's been so long that I don't really remember anything about the game.
Did I miss something cool?
Is there a reason to hunt it down again?
Is it a lost gem?
Do you have some fun memories of the game?
Traveller was basically nonexistent in my neck of the woods - I ordered 2300 more or less by mistake. The Near Star Map in there is very nice. Ran one game of it with a converted Alternity adventure.... Combat seemed to have lots of heart called shots, apart from that and some of the weirder bits of character generation (attribute modifiers for being an ectomorph?)...I've mostly forgotten the system. Nowadays I've lost most of the box apart from the player's book, from that I couldn't actually figure out even what dice I was supposed to roll.:o
Bought it but never played it. Sigh...
The main reasons I picked it up were A) It was from GDW and B) It seemed to be channeling the aesthetic of Aliens.
After reading it I thought it was a bit too 'straight'... but I think the weapon illustrations were partially responsible for setting off my short-lived passion for Living Steel/Phoenix Command.
All I know of it is that it is some kind of bridge between T2k and Traveller. There's mention of "The Twilight War" between east and west blocs in 2300, is there not?
Quote from: thedungeondelver;710755All I know of it is that it is some kind of bridge between T2k and Traveller. There's mention of "The Twilight War" between east and west blocs in 2300, is there not?
Yes and no... 2300 AD/Traveller 2300 WAS a futuristic continuation of Twilight 2000. However, the original edition's name caused confusion between it and Traveller.
According to Lester Smith, who wrote about the Traveller 2300/2300 AD revision in
Challenge #34:
QuoteSome people originally confused Traveller: 2300 with Traveller or thought that there was some link intended between the two games. By changing the title to 2300 AD, we put an end to that problem, while at the same time maintaining the continuity of the releases in the 2300 line. Let me emphasize here for anyone who might still be wondering: 2300 AD has nothing to do with Traveller. Not only are the rules to the two games much different, the games are set in different "universes," with completely different alien races, different routes of travel between the stars because the FTL drives in each game operate on completely different theoretical bases, different technologies (there are no grav plates in 2300 AD, for instance), and different themes. Traveller spans the Milky Way galaxy and concerns humanity's struggles to maintain a civilization over that broad reach of space. 2300 AD reaches stars just beyond 50 light-years from Sol and concerns humanity's struggles just to survive among those stars.
It should be noted that Traveller 2300 and 2300 AD ran with the T2K 1st edition rules. Why GDW didn't revise 2300 AD to the T2K 2nd edition rules instead of giving us TNE with those rules I'll never know...
Later!
Harl
Mongoose has also re-issued 2300AD with their system for Traveller; but, if you want the original, FFE sells it all as a disk (bunch of PDF's).
Yes it developed out of the T2K universe, 300 year space faring French Empire and all that.
Bought a couple editions of it. Never played though. Not bothering with the Mongoose edition since that would never see any play either.
The original Traveller didn't catch on my RPG circles. The only SF games that were played were Star Wars (WEG) and 2300 AD (and a homebrewed Stargate-like game based on the mechanics of Midgard 1880).
And yes, you missed a nice hard SF setting with fascinatingly alien aliens.
I was a fan of it back in the day.
Essentially it's a fairly good attempt at producing a serious, half-way plausible hard SF game.
Basically Earth develops a FTL drive (stutter-warp, it's called, something like the proposed Albiero (sp) drive) and all the nations of Earth go into space, with the galaxy divided up between them, I think based on how much land they controlled on Earth.
However, besides conflicts, humanity also ran into another expanding race. So there was a war with them ongoing.
The rules weren't great, and probably one of the things holding it back.
Yes, you certainly missed something if you skipped 2300AD.
Traveller is Asimov, Heinlein, Piper, etc.
2300AD is Aliens, Outland, with a touch of a blade Runner.
The setting is a continuation of Twilight 2000 where the discovery of the Stutterwarp Drive, short range quantum teleportation cycled many times per second, has opened up the nearby stars.
The Stutterwarp has a range limite of 7.7 light years which create three natural routes of exploration. The Three Arms, French, American, and Chinese. There are roughly two dozen nations with exta-solar colonies and a half dozen alien races.
Aliens are depicted as real as possible.
I arrived in 10th grade with my friends playing D&D, Star Wars, Palladium. Then one day another kid showed up with Traveller 2300. It was amazing though I never actually owned it.
When the Mongoose version was released, I grabbed it right away. It's pretty good. In a way, I find it more approachable than Traveller itself.
The PDFs of GDW's version started out a bit rough but have improved over the years. I bought mine on RPGNow so I've been getting the updates.
I just bought the disk of the original, it also has notes and pictures on "the great game", from where T2K evolves into 2300. Like the OP, I was an avid CT player and we played T2K as well; 2300 was a non-starter, the tech was wanky - flying hover tanks? Nope, never. Plus the things like the spin habs, don't work from an engineering point of view; this infects all of GDW's work by the late 80's, early 90's: they are liberal arts people trying to interpret engineering and getting it wrong.
That doesn't even go into the politics of it all, even mongoose's version writes "Americans do not like Mexicans"; which if my wife and son saw that, they would be offended. I know it is inheritance from the original, but it is bad inheritance.
Quote from: dragoner;710871. Plus the things like the spin habs, don't work from an engineering point of view; this infects all of GDW's work by the late 80's, early 90's: they are liberal arts people trying to interpret engineering and getting it wrong.
Marc has had the same problem since '77.
Quote from: dragoner;710871Plus the things like the spin habs, don't work from an engineering point of view; this infects all of GDW's work by the late 80's, early 90's: they are liberal arts people trying to interpret engineering and getting it wrong.
Actually, spin habs have been a staple of science fiction since the 50's. The spin hab is downright venerable.
How do they not work from an engineering point of view?
Quote from: jeff37923;710993Actually, spin habs have been a staple of science fiction since the 50's. The spin hab is downright venerable.
How do they not work from an engineering point of view?
This, they work fine, you just need to get the radius large enough.
Also tanks taking advantage of ground effect would be an awesome weapon; contrary to popular opinion, tanks are very limited as to where they can go. They just happen to mostly be deployed against populated areas where people and hence trucks can go these days.
Quote from: jeff37923;710993Actually, spin habs have been a staple of science fiction since the 50's. The spin hab is downright venerable.
Mostly in the form of space stations, not the spin habs on 2300 ships.
QuoteHow do they not work from an engineering point of view?
Caveat: I'm not saying that the reactive centrifugal force from centripetal acceleration can't be used to emulate gravity, it can.
However, the orthogonal nature of the force from the linear acceleration of the spin hab will have direct consequences on the vehicle: minimally, this is a gyroscopic effect, eg why helicopters have a tail rotor to compensate for the torque (a counter spinning hab could act as a harmonic damper somewhat). Worst case is that it will actually break the ship in two (like with mast bumping in helicopters), esp when one figures in the length of the moment arm so that one doesn't get different acceleration between the head and foot of an average height person. Then there are electrical connections, a contact ring is the only thing I can think would work, but those run into ohm's law like a brick wall, esp under prolonged duration. This is just off the top of my head and from memory of being a engineering student at Purdue at the time when we were looking at the game; it wasn't the first disappointing design sequence from GDW, Striker's paper Panther had it as well. It has been a long time though.
GDW had a lot of fun stuff, trav was great until it started in with the guys in unitards and blunderbusses, that was pretty bleh. Then I read Dave Nielsen talking about the "problem" with micro-vibrations and turret mounted weapons, something that our lowly tech had solved with things like shaft mounted dampers, or bitching about Vampire: The Masquerade players; that was not encouraging. He is actually a nice guy though, I think the ship was sinking by that point, Marc had left to become a insurance salesman; it must have been stressful on Dave.
I will use the 2300AD mongoose stuff for lower tech worlds in campaigns, I do like it well enough.
Quote from: dragoner;710871Like the OP, I was an avid CT player and we played T2K as well; 2300 was a non-starter, the tech was wanky - flying hover tanks? Nope, never. Plus the things like the spin habs, don't work from an engineering point of view; this infects all of GDW's work by the late 80's, early 90's: they are liberal arts people trying to interpret engineering and getting it wrong.
This is why I'm always reluctant to play supposed 'hard' scifi games... cause there's always gonna be that guy who wants to claim expertise and lecture on how the setting or the ref has gotten some bit of trivia wrong.
Last week our Shadowrun game nearly collapsed under the tantrum the resident tech support guy had about the dangerous feedback featured in the rules. He just couldn't swallow it, or allow anyone else to swallow it either.
I see the same guys on various forums pitching fits about grav tanks.
Quote from: Simlasa;711041This is why I'm always reluctant to play supposed 'hard' scifi games... cause there's always gonna be that guy who wants to claim expertise and lecture on how the setting or the ref has gotten some bit of trivia wrong.
Last week our Shadowrun game nearly collapsed under the tantrum the resident tech support guy had about the dangerous feedback featured in the rules. He just couldn't swallow it, or allow anyone else to swallow it either.
I see the same guys on various forums pitching fits about grav tanks.
I love grav tanks (I'm an armor guy), I just don't like it when someone wants to repackage them as flying "hover tanks" and sell me a line of garbage that they are realistic, because no, they aren't. ACV's suck, period, end of sentence; and that is straight from the mouth of guys who worked with them in Vietnam.
IIRC, the term "hard sci-fi" was coined by Asimov for the science being a central part of the story, as opposed to character driven, I guess. But in that, it doesn't sound as good for an RPG.
Trav is hardish sci-fi enough, and I do get sick of people that come in a gripe about certain details, whence what they are doing is more realistic when it isn't. Certain groups are more guilty of this than others.
That is weird about Shadowrun, because it has magic and the supernatural, no? You would think that they would be able to handwave away minor discrepancies.
Quote from: dragoner;711048That is weird about Shadowrun, because it has magic and the supernatural, no? You would think that they would be able to handwave away minor discrepancies.
Yeah, you'd think... but somehow the fact that it has 'technology' is just an invitation for some players to bloviate about their knowledge of 4G systems and whatnot.
Never did adopt 2300 AD for anything.
Seemed like a remake of Traveller. Most of us who had gotten a start with Traveller, had also went on to add bunches of homebrew stuff. We had Air/Rafts, GEVs, Hover Tanks, Heavy Weapons, Specialized Equipment, and not just one of each, but stats for vehicles and equipment from multiple different major alliances, and factions.
2300 Seemed a bit backwards in time, and very limited in scope in comparison. We used a lot more stuff for our Traveller games from the Star Frontiers books. Star Frontiers was actually so good, it was looking like it could replace Traveller for a time. What killed Star Frontiers though was the sorry Starship Design Rules, and the lack of ready-made NPC, and Faction Starships.
They eventually came out with a SF book for starships, but it was too late...
I played in a campaign of the then-spanking-new T:2300 with some college kids back in 1986 when I was a snot-nosed high school whelp (It was very gracious of them to let me join them, thinking back on it). At the time, it blew my mind: It was the most CUTTING EDGE and GRITTY and RADICAL sci-fi game EVER.
Good times, good times. The early years of "Cyberpunk" (Using the term in the broadest possible sense of "Near-Future gritty SF") as a nerd fad were a lot of fun as a kid.
Quote from: Simlasa;711056Yeah, you'd think... but somehow the fact that it has 'technology' is just an invitation for some players to bloviate about their knowledge of 4G systems and whatnot.
That being said, I was just expressing my disappointment at the time, I do not want to ruin anybody's fun with 2300AD.
Sorry to anybody if it came off that way.
Thanks for the feedback everyone!
Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;710777And yes, you missed a nice hard SF setting with fascinatingly alien aliens.
What made the aliens fascinating?
Would they still be interesting to players today?
Quote from: jeff37923;710792Yes, you certainly missed something if you skipped 2300AD.
Is it worth revisiting today?
Is the MongTrav version of 2300 more interesting than the original?
Quote from: Just Another Snake Cult;711060At the time, it blew my mind: It was the most CUTTING EDGE and GRITTY and RADICAL sci-fi game EVER.
How do you feel when you look at it today?
Quote from: Spinachcat;711076Is it worth revisiting today?
Is the MongTrav version of 2300 more interesting than the original?
I would have to say "yes", but then again my name is in the book.
Now I would not say that it is more interesting, but the setting is just as interesting - what is more interesting is the fan-based work that has happened with a "dead" game between GDW's demise and now. There is a horde of cool stuff out there to incorporate (or not, as suits your personal taste) into 2300.
There is no Starter 2300 as of yet, but I will venture to say that it is worth the money.
Quote from: dragoner;711071That being said, I was just expressing my disappointment at the time, I do not want to ruin anybody's fun with 2300AD.
Sorry to anybody if it came off that way.
No, no. I grok where you are coming from. There are a few minor things, though. The hover tanks just hover - they can overpressure the fan output to get over obsticles, but they cannot fly. The spin habs, to reduce vibration problems, torque, and having people stroke out when they turn their heads in a small radius are limited to a max of 4RPM - most only produce 0.2g or less.
Quote from: Spinachcat;711076What made the aliens fascinating?
(http://www.geocities.ws/pentapod2300/art/races.gif)
From the left to right.
The Xiang - a stone age civilization with a focus on the arts. Formally enslaved by the Sung.
The Sung - a technological civilization only slightly behind humanity. Divided into nation state analouges, enslaved the Xiang. Although the version of Sung slavery is more nuanced than our history's slavery. Basically the leading philosophy of the Sung Homeworld believes it is the obligation of a "superior" civilization to uplift the inferior and then liberate them when they have done so.
The problem with Xiang is they have little interest in the type of technology the Sung values. In any case when the Canadians, who made first contact, figured out that Sung enslaved the Xiang they formed an alliance and fought a short war to liberate the Xiang.
Kafers - I will get back to them in a minute as they are the major antagonist.
Klaxun - a stone age civilization, their evolution has blurred the line between plants and animals.
Ebers - a formally advanced civilization that was star faring. They have a multi-lobed brain. They switch from lobe to lobe to do different types of tasks. They use elaborate rituals to do this. A the same Eber might have a different personality depending on what lobe is in use.
Humans -use
Pentapods - actually biological robots sent out by sessile "gods" to explore the universe. Their starfaring civilization is based on biological technology. A pentapod god can be seen in the back of the picture.
Finally back to the Kafers
Kafers are an advanced starfaring civilization that is currently at war with humanity, at the end of the French Arm. What makes Kafer unique is that normally they are pretty stupid about equivalent to human IQ of 60 to 80. However when faced with danger or stress their endocrine system triples their IQ. Moreso this effect feel like the equivalent of a drug high for a human. And when it wears off the Kafer base IQ rises a little. Given enough stressful experiences and time a Kafer can develop average human level intelligence and beyond.
The civilization developed when they figured out a ritual system of violence to keep the average intelligence high enough to sustain a technological civilization. As an example a leader hits their subordinate before they give an order to make them more intelligent to understand what needs to be done. They are divided in numerous nation-state like warbands.
Main conflict is the fact their system of violence is abhorrent to humans. And that we are viewed as "smart" barbarians a major figure of evil in Kafer history.
The main deal there is very little of the human in funny suit vibe among 2300AD aliens. For me the Ebers, Pentapods, and Kafer are pretty interesting in their own right.
Quote from: Spinachcat;711076Thanks for the feedback everyone!
How do you feel when you look at it today?
I never actually owned the game myself (Money was really tight in my teen and college years) but had a blast at the time and the game is one of the many on my "Pick up a used copy if you see one cheap somewhere" list.
Quote from: estar;711129(http://www.geocities.ws/pentapod2300/art/races.gif)
Finally back to the Kafers
The Kafers! One of things from T:2300 I fondly remember. The Kafers were extremely cool antagonists. Definitely not the standard Klingon-wanna-bes.
I know their name is a sore spot for some, but in the rough-and-tumble "New Colonial Age" of the game's background it made sense.
I bought the 2300AD box a year ago at a yard sale, but found it far to crunchy for my taste, so it's for sale now.
But the most important bit I took from that box is, that back when it was published, the people who wrote roleplaying games were so cool, that they put pictures of themselves on the back of their games. I mean, c'mon:
(http://reservoirelves.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/r6.jpg)
Quote from: jeff37923;711078No, no. I grok where you are coming from.
It's cool, I had similar gripes to as the direction MegaTraveller took as well, too much crunch took away from the flow, like with the pen/atten. As a CT fan, it was like we were just suddenly abandoned by GDW. My gaming group chose to go over to Rifts, which was somewhat neat, more gonzo, but had that horrible MDC/SDC issue. I was still called "Traveller Rob" by my group though, kind of annoyingly.
Quote from: DKChannelBoredom;711143But the most important bit I took from that box is, that back when it was published, the people who wrote roleplaying games were so cool, that they put pictures of themselves on the back of their games.
That's actually really cool.
One of the classic Warhammer Fantasy RP Enemy Within books had an "About the authors" page with headshots, and of course Synibarr had the now-infamous mini-hagiography of Mr. McKraken, but other than that I can't think of any RPG products that did anything similar.
To my mind, the best part of the 2300 line was the books treating this or that world in some detail. The basic rules set (at least in the original T: 2300 box) was just another bare-bones set of "mechanics" -- servicable, but nothing mind blowing.
Yep. GDW boxed games were great about setting, but horrid almost about mechanics. This would continue until GDW's death. Mechanics would not improve much for spin-offs out of the box during the '90s and later, but settings would still be interesting. See Traveller 4 and later.
I jumped on GURPS, thinking its mechanics would be more enjoyable for role-play. But it was too much mechanics for me. It belonged more in a desktop than on a tabletop.
Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;711306I jumped on GURPS, thinking its mechanics would be more enjoyable for role-play. But it was too much mechanics for me. It belonged more in a desktop than on a tabletop.
GURPS is actually pretty darn simple in actual play, unless you go and turn on ALL the OPTIONAL rules... and why would you do THAT?
Somewhere I've even seen an alternate lifepath character generation setup for GURPS Traveller.
Quote from: Simlasa;711313GURPS is actually pretty darn simple in actual play, unless you go and turn on ALL the OPTIONAL rules... and why would you do THAT?
Somewhere I've even seen an alternate lifepath character generation setup for GURPS Traveller.
I prefer real-time role-playing. It only takes one player to slow a GURPS game to a crawl for everyone. I might still have a GURPS Traveller char generator on an old drive.
Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;711323I prefer real-time role-playing.
That is an odd thing for an advocate of games over the internet to say.
Never had the slightest interest in 2300.
Quote from: RPGPundit;711933Never had the slightest interest in 2300.
I'm not sure if Mongoose Traveller's mechanics can save 2300. Unless one is a fan of the re-booted 2300's political setting.
I would have rather seen time wasted on a Mongoose Traveller: The New Era re-boot.
Speaking of alternate Traveller settings MGT has one for the Hammers Slammers. I love the books. But I fear Im the only one out of my cliq thats read them. I would love to run a game in that setting.
If I liked all the other settings, like Dredd, and Hammers, etc., I'd get them because I like the Mongoose Traveller mechanic they all use. I do love Orbital and Chthonian Stars though, published by other companies for Traveller.
Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;712034If I liked all the other settings, like Dredd, and Hammers, etc., I'd get them because I like the Mongoose Traveller mechanic they all use. I do love Orbital and Chthonian Stars though, published by other companies for Traveller.
Oh, Im not suggesting it might be for you. Just lamenting about not being able to get a group together for it.
Quote from: Ronin;712035Oh, Im not suggesting it might be for you. Just lamenting about not being able to get a group together for it.
Totally understand. If I see a Hammers Slammers or Dredd person I'll mention to them that there are RPGs for those books they're reading. Is Bolo anything similar to Hammers? Or Ogre/G.E.V.? Or is it a smaller tank operations setting?
No they are of the same relative size as a normal tank. They are ducted fan air cushion vehicles, with super heavy armor and a large energy cannons (Powergun) as their primary weapon. Imagine an "Abrams" that is a hover craft, and has a bigger gun.
This (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammerverse) gives a pretty quick over veiw of the setting.
I ran a OGRE/GEV minicampaign using Classic Traveller. I modified the spacecraft combat rules for vehicle combat, and it worked fine, but I am glad that I only planned out a 4 session campaign because I don't know if I could have made a longer campaign of it last.