Everyone seemingly loves the LBB edition.

What exactly is wrong with the later editions of the game?

The only other editions I've seen first-hand are MegaTraveller and GURPS Traveller.

MegaTraveller scared me off when I saw the amount of errata needed.  The vehicle design rules were also a bit over the top.

GURPS just isn't the same (it's a great system, but it lacks the feel of the original).

The old game is just more wide-open, and its systems are far simpler in play.  It's not perfect, but it just seems to have something the other versions I've seen lack.

(That said, I do have a copy of Pocket Empires for T4.  It's an incredibly cool book!)

Way back when, in the early 1980s, I saw Traveller in my then FLGS.

The box set, with the simple colours and the text on the front, most evocative thing I ever saw in gaming.

It just does the job, later editions don't really improve it much and tend to add cruft, the LBB just do what you need.

MegaTraveller likely would have been better, but the errata were horrendous.  TNE messed up the setting, the LBB didn't really even have a setting and were better for that, and TNE I think had some really odd dice rules.

Gurps, well, it's Gurps you know.  To me Traveller needs random chargen, at least in part, Gurps works well for gritty sf but for me not so much for Traveller.  That said, Andrew Hackard is a great line editor for all Dominus hates the guy and the Gurps Traveller books are very good and a lot of people have fun with them, I think they just tend to post elsewhere.

What about that last edition they did?  It had LOADS of support I remember.

Original Traveller had clean rules and a solid setting.  Every subsequent edition screwed up one of those things, except for The New Era, which managed to poop on both the old system and the old setting.

Now, every later edition has its own virtues.  But the LBBs drew a huge following with many diehard fans.  You don't keep those fans by changing 50% of the product every few years.

MegaTraveller is absolutely aces until you try to make spaceships fight.  If you go crazy and want to build one, your flesh pulls back from your skull and wispy, howling ghosts erupt from you ears and I think you die.

Quote from: Dr Rotwang!MegaTraveller is absolutely aces until you try to make spaceships fight.  If you go crazy and want to build one, your flesh pulls back from your skull and wispy, howling ghosts erupt from you ears and I think you die.

Building ships in megatraveller was one of my hobbies in the early 90s (along with vehicles using either the standard rules or the Striker rules).   But fleet battles were pretty much impossible unless you used statistics to handle all the weapons other than spinal mounts.

On the whole Megatraveller is my favorite version.

Personally, I highly-recommend GURPS Traveller.

Even if you ignore all the GURPS rules, it's still the best "one book" explaination of the classic (no Imperial assassination) Traveller universe. It's the perfect book to hand somebody who has no familiarity with the setting whatsoever. Hell, I myself was too intimidated for years by the huge mountain of our-of-print stuff that I felt I would need to ever truly "grok" Travaller.

Other plusses:

1. It has tons and tons of notes reflecting back on the history of the game and explaining why the designers did what they did when designing it. If you like restrospectives and "designer's notes", it's very insightful.

2. It addresses some of the ways in which the classic Traveller background can seem outdated to modern sci-fi fans. What to do about nanomachines, Transhumanist-type genetic engineering and cybernetics, internet-style computer networks, etc.

I like GURPS. I like classic Traveller. I like the GURPS 4e Traveller:Interstellar Wars as well (in fact it's the only GURPS Traveller I own).

But with little difference to Balbinus, GURPS isn't classic Traveller in a visceral way. Don't get me wrong, I'll play GURPS Traveller and enjoy it. The CT chargen is a big part of it.

After reading Yamo's post I might have to get it anyway.

Quote from: NicephorusBuilding ships in megatraveller was one of my hobbies in the early 90s (along with vehicles using either the standard rules or the Striker rules).

Ha ha ha!  The funny thing is, I do that kind of crap for fun, too, but I ever qyuite got a handle on the MT design process.  Maybe I'm missing a gene or two.

By the way...I have run GT quite successfully, and have been pleased.  I must echo Yamo's sentiments about the "one book" home run, as well as the stuff about the history and designer notes and stuff.  In fact, I have almost the entire line of GT books, and they're my go-to source for Trav -- my encyclopedia, as it were.

I'm just more in love with CT's "Here are some tools, go get in trouble" vibe.

Quote from: Dr Rotwang!I'm just more in love with CT's "Here are some tools, go get in trouble" vibe.

I'm with you there.  Some of the later design sequences (starting as early as High Guard for me) making starship creation less about facilitating the game and more about fiddling with the starship creation rules.  There's nothing wrong with that approach, I just prefer the earlier, simpler, shut-up-and-play approach.

Well, GDW did create the traveller legend, the problem was that GDW just couldn't create a damn thing without a lot of errors and eratta. Later even T4 by imperium games was plagued with errors, missing sections and other problems.

GDW had great ideas and concepts, the execution was flawed. Now with all the DTP software available T5 had better be perfect or it may be the end of traveller.

I got into GT before I had interacted with any sjg personnel, and liked it. I still like it even if there are some assess associated with it's creation.

As to random character generation, forget it! I like being able to create a character my way, so I can play him my way.

Traveller is a setting,. not a system, so I don't follow the complaints re GT "just not being really traveller, knowudahmsayin?" No, I don't. It's traveller, period.

Quote from: Dominus NoxTraveller is a setting,. not a system, so I don't follow the complaints re GT "just not being really traveller, knowudahmsayin?" No, I don't. It's traveller, period.

Now, see, for me, a virtual newb to the goodness that is Traveller (I'm about to hit my one-year anniversary with the game), what I like about the LBBs is the system.  And I really don't like the Imperium.  Bits and pieces of it are wonderful, yes, but the whole picture just doesn't do it for me (especially the aliens).

I was really surprised when I started researching the game online how many people are into Traveller for the setting alone.  It didn't occur to me to treat the background materials as anything more than an example of how to use what was given to you in the books.  I mean...LBB3 had rules for creating worlds of your own...why not use them?

Quote from: Dominus NoxTraveller is a setting,. not a system,

Bullcrap.  Traveller is a game.  Charted Space, the future history outlined by Marc Miller and filled in by many others, is a setting.  Traveller existed as a game before the setting became part and parcel with the system.  Nowadays the two are intertwined in complicated ways but you can (and people still do) play Traveller without the official setting.  Here's some nifty descriptions of two pre-3rd Imperium Traveller campaigns.  Several folks at the Classic Trav section of Citizens of the Imperium still run similar games today.

Y'know, I totally missed this Traveller phenomenon.  I have no idea what it is or what it's like save what I've picked up from online conversations about it, which I can sum up as the following:

• It's some sort of space trading game.  So typical gameplay involves umm...  commodities speculation and dealing with ship errors...  or something.
• It's old and has more editions than you can shake a stick at.
• It has a life path type character generation system (like CP2020?).
• Typical PCs tend to be old scruffy retiree / small business owners.
• You can die in chargen.
• There was some sort of edition / setting wars thing where old school fans were upset by a certain edition of the game for some reason.
• It has a long-time and still-active fanbase.
• The cover art is really minimalist.  So much so that one gets no feel for what the game is.