MGT2E How does initiative work?

[alfarobl]

It's funny how I never noticed initiative is based on effect and not modified die roll. I grabbed my book and was like oops. We've been using MGT2 for quite awhile and nobody has noticed (or brought it up before now). This is definitely the advantage of newer people using the ruleset. You catch the things that we just use as normal.

I would rather have discovered Traveller in the 80s so I could have a good Third Imperium background... I just learned about it and got into MGT2E so very happy to be of any help!

I have to give back someway to the good job you are providing to newcomers like me. I think MBM, you and Lordnanoc do very good advice and stuff those .mod provided are great!

[esmdev]

One thing about the Third Imperium is even in the 80s it was only so so define and there were quite a few inconsistencies and several separate companies developing their own areas of space. Authors for various trade publications also sort of did their own thing. Slowly over time people sorted through and tried to organize and explain things. Since that time there have been several different eras that have also caused changes and revisions.

Classic Traveller started in 1105 and is considered the Golden Era. It spans from 1100 to 1116. The Fifth Frontier War is the most notable event that happened in that era and was supported by a war game and several supplements. For the most part, however, Classic Traveller mostly was a hodge podge of unrelated adventures and expansions and supplements that were kind of all over the place.

I had a theory that, based on the published adventures being all over the place, the Marc Miller (the original author) expected people would make characters and play and adventure and then start another with new characters. The lack of a post creation advancement system also supports my idea. I never really asked but it was always my feeling.

MGT1 and MGT2 take the Official Traveller Universe (OTU for short) back to the Golden Era.

After Classic the next generation was Mega-Traveller. It was an attempt to organize the scattered systems and expand some of the more used systems (ship building, custom weapons, vehicles, etc.). Systemwise it was a huge advancement but unfortunately it was also really buggy and updating it was difficult being it was still the 80s. In addition it advanced the Imperium calendar to 1116 and brought about the Rebellion era.

I think the idea was to shake things up, break up the Imperium and create a whole new group of adventure ideas. Sadly my experience with this was the factions were so far apart that it made most of the stuff irrelevant most of the time. It did add a lot of strife and conflict into certain areas so if you wanted you could make use of it. The most defined setting area in all versions of Traveller is the Spinward Marches. In the rebellion era the Spinward Marches were unified under Archduke Norris and mostly removed from the internal conflict, so again, it was kind of irrelevant.

The next edition of Traveller was the New Era. In my opinion they had decided the universe was to well defined and organized and wanted to give it frontier feeling. A sentient computer virus took over ships and world networks and brought a out an apocalypse. Later in the future pockets of civilizations start to put the pieces back together. The game system changed completely (imho not in a good way) and there were lots of mixed feelings about the New Era setting.

GDW (the publisher) went out of business and Marc Miller retained the rights to Traveller (and many other GDW systems and settings).

T4 (Traveller 4th edition, also called Marc Miller's Traveller) was next up. It took us back in time to year 0 (aka Milieu 0). The core rules were overhauled but without much quality control. I actually liked T4 and generally a lot of people really wanted to like T4 but the pages and pages of errata got in the way. I found the two starship systems written for T4 to be my favorites. I also liked the speculative trade system.

The best part of T4 was Milieu 0. It took the setting back to the beginning of the Third Imperium after the dark ages. There was a lot of room for discovery, diplomacy, world building and an expansion that supported generation style campaigns for building your own dynasties. It is cool that a lot of ideas from T4 found their way into MGT1. One difficulty Milieu 0 had was the potential to entirely erase huge swaths of canon. Some people liked that and others didn't.

MGT1 and MGT2 reset the system going back to the classic rules and reorganizing much like mega traveller did, but in the internet age fixing bugs is easier. They also kept with the Golden Age which most people like.

In addition to the Mongoose rules Marc Miller has create T5. It a massive tome and is currently in its third massive revision (and now broken up into three large tomes). It's system is built on top of T5 and is designed to satisfy the extreme gearheads amongst the Traveller crowd. There are rules for making just about anything but the overall complexity level many I've spoken with consider off putting. Still as a Traveller rules bible has a lot of really great ideas.

T5 doesn't really get much into settings, eras or anything. It is just 800ish pages of rules.

Traveller was also used in GURPS and the Hero System under license and has probably been converted to a bunch of systems by communities. I don't know much about those or the settings.

I didn't mean to type a novel when I started but here we are...

[MadBeardMan]

I didn't mean to type a novel when I started but here we are...

I think you failed that roll!

Erm thanks for the brief history though. Now I've played Class Traveller, MGT1, MGT2, Mega Traveller, TNE..... I'd like to try T5, it's interesting and because it's Marc's own take on his own game, the issue though, the rulebooks are heavy reading...

Cheers,
MBM

[esmdev]

I think you failed that roll!

Erm thanks for the brief history though. Now I've played Class Traveller, MGT1, MGT2, Mega Traveller, TNE..... I'd like to try T5, it's interesting and because it's Marc's own take on his own game, the issue though, the rulebooks are heavy reading...

Cheers,
MBM

In actually forgot T20 which is funny because I tried to help with testing. Sadly most of the errors I listed still made into the book. There was much sadness. The system was a little wonky and trying to merge classic ideas and generation into the D20 system was a little odd but somehow it kind of, sort of worked. Some of the graphics and illustrations in the sourcebooks were actually some of the better in any edition.

T20 came out between T4 and MGT1.

T5 is a serious read. Many sections need to be reread to figure out what is being said. Despite the current being the third errata driven rewrite there is still a lot of clarification and errata being generated. If you consider the many years it was in beta this is actually the fourth rewrite.

Regardless T5 has a lot of really great systems and ideas. For instance the trade system I use is a fusion of MGT2 and T5. I always liked the T4 speculative trade system and T5 took that and went overboard in a good way so I did some tinkering and made it work. Solar system design is insanely detailed which is awesome if you want that. Generally I'm good with general system but if you want to know the temperature of the fourteenth moon of the fifth gas giant orbiting the third star T5 will get you there.

I am actually thinking about running a campaign with a small cluster of solar systems where it would be useful to develop each solar system and I would probably use T5 to do it.

[alfarobl]

Thank you for the history information... I miss playing some of the CT original modules that did add to the setting. I hope Mongoose adds those at some time if possible. I know some are inside Compendiums on MGT1 and also on the JTAS. But some important ones would need an update to 2E.
Also found one interesting intent from a German company to come with a Mongoose Traveller Starter Box called Liftoff that never came but it had some amazing illustrations specially for the MGT1E era with all black and white: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/t...-liftoff-rpg#/

[LordNanoc]

I've been playing Megatraveller in the nineties. Now MG1 and MG2, because of FG.

A small history, I know