This is a review of
Traveller5, which was funded through this
Traveller5 kickstarter. I participated in this kickstarter and have been involved in the playtest for this RPG, hence my own review may be considered biased by the reader.
Traveller5 is not the RPG that it could have been.
Actually,
Traveller5 is not the RPG it should be, yet.
Ronald Reagan used to tell the parable of two little boys - one an optimist, the other a pessimist. The pessimist was placed in a room full of toys and he whined and cried continually saying that there was nothing to play with. In contrast, the optimist was placed in a room full of horse crap. The optimist was happily digging away in the manure. When asked why he was so happy, he said: "There's got to be a pony in here somewhere!"
I'm an optimist about
Traveller5. We'll get to the pony later on.
Physically,
Traveller5 is a large hardbound tome of 658 pages. It is larger than my
Pathfinder Core Rules, of equal size as my copy of
Ptolus, and has slightly better bullet stopping capabilities than my last phone book. The interior is mostly black-and-white priting on white paper with several pages of color prints in the back. The binding is exceptional, better than my
Pathfinder Core Rules in fact.
In keeping with the tradition of
Classic Traveller, the illustrations are spartan. Most of the book is taken up by rules, very densely written rules. The scope and breadth of the rules are astounding, an incredibly daring attempt at covering everything the author felt was important.
Unfortunately, one of those things was not proofreading or editing. There are spelling errors throughout the book, simple ones which could have been solved by running the documant through spell check. Then there are the proofing errors, sometimes it is misplacing the example armor's defense against certain types of attacks thus causing anarchy in the blogosphere (for example cloth armor has an armor value of 1 against bullets and 14 against EMP) and sometimes it is confusing the V0 system for V1 or V2 (there is no V0 system, and the V1 system is for NPCs only and optional). This makes some of the most important rules a hash and damn near unuseable.
And those rules themselves are what makes
Traveller5 potentially great. Well, there are the Makers. GunMaker makes guns and just about any other kind of ranged weapon. BladeMaker makes melee weapons. ArmorMaker makes all kinds of armor and shields. ThingMaker makes the rest of the equipment that a Player could possibly want. Tech level goes up into the TL=33 range (the technological singularity), so super high technology can be extrapolated. BeastMaker creates critters of all shapes and sizes and ecological niches. VehicleMaker creates everything from horse-drawn carriages to ship's boats. Characters can be created as natural (with a system for determining characteristics of offspring from parents), robots, clones, or bioilogical constructs. Sophonts (Traveller for alien races) allows you to create almost any possible alien race that is biologically imagineable. Starships are given eight possible drive systems in two categories and use the same Maker-like system which allows each component (maneuver, jump, power, sensors, weapons, defenses) to be specifically designed. Stars and worlds allows you to craft star systems, subsectors, sectors, and include systemic mapping for those places. Computers and consoles and the accompanying personalities and brains chapter cover everything cyberpunk and transhuman you could possibly desire. Robots shows you how to build your own robots. Trade and Commerce allows you to play the classic mode of ethically challenged merchant. To top it all off, each Maker has a section allowing you to randomly roll outcomes from it instead of picking and choosing.
The downside being that the Makers have editing problems, as mentioned above. However, most of their output is compatable with the rules.
In all good conscience, with a cover price of $75, I cannot recommend this book for purchase. It has been poorly produced and is not worth the money for the average gamer. Your $75 can be better spent elsewhere.
With that said, I can now show you the pony.
Having invested their time, effort, and money into this game - the community of
Traveller gamers at the
Citizens of the Imperium forum are working with Marc Miller and the playtesters to compile Errata for
Traveller5 to ensure that the game works.
I have never seen that before. Usually if a bad version of a popular game comes out, people will be rushing to trash it in private and in public, typically because of some past real or imagined slight. But to try and fix what is considered broken? To band together and make a bad product better? I will and have gladly joined with a group of fans dedicated to doing just that.
Traveller5 is currently not worth its cover price.
Traveller5 will be worth more once we get done with it.
This is a link to the latest Errata File.