[RPG]: Megatraveller Referees Manual, reviewed by Lev Lafayette (2/3)

http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/12/12747.phtml

Lev Lafayette's Summary:

A product of significant substance and fairly good scope, but hampered with an inaccessible style, disorganisation, biases, and an overabundance of tables. Best for referees who enjoypre-game preparation, rolling lots of dice and looking up lots of tables.

Go to the full review for more information.

[The Last Conformist]

Does charge of "authoritarian" bias apply to the GM/player relationship suggested, or to the setting?

[Ante]

I must frankly disagree about the value of the world profile! It is not that hard to memorize, and contains an amazing amount of information in a small space. You can print one line and give information enough for adventures on a whole planet!

The oddities in the world generation are, as noted, peculiar. They reflect their author's views on politics and can seem quite bizarre at times. I agree. They also gives some very unlikely results from a astrographical and logical point of view. It's heritage since 1977 and some of it was weeded out in The New Era game.

DGP published an expanded system in their book about exploring and surveying worlds, World Builders' Handbook. It gives some ideas on how to interpretate and manage the oddities. It will make the GM who likes to tinker a lot to do.

As for the game style portrayed and emphasized I have had troubles with it myself, but I think I know where it comes from. Traveller originally was designed to give a "scientific" look, with the funky numbers for stats and such. It was a design desicion to reinforce the "science" fiction feel.

Maybe the tone of the game is influenced a bit too much by this? DGP, the company who got the job of revising Traveller and write MegaTraveller, have talked about how they played. In character acting, funny voices and intra-personal relations was frequent. Thus I guess that the tone in the books might be the heritage from older Traveller books to be "scientific". I've found a few of my sessions to bog down in those kinds of stuff, and it works better without.

While I respect the reviewer might have valued things differently than me I'd have given it highter marks for Substance, since it's a very meaty book. Sure, the many errors and problems with layout makes it less than useful, but what's there is quite a bunch.

I do dream of a reorganized MegaTraveller myself, though.

Thanks for the review.

[Lev Lafayette]

Originally Posted by Ante

I must frankly disagree about the value of the world profile! It is not that hard to memorize, and contains an amazing amount of information in a small space. You can print one line and give information enough for adventures on a whole planet!

Well, I would tend to think if it was that easy other SF games would have adopted something similar, verdade?

While I respect the reviewer might have valued things differently than me I'd have given it highter marks for Substance, since it's a very meaty book. Sure, the many errors and problems with layout makes it less than useful, but what's there is quite a bunch.

I seriously was about to give it a 4 for substance and then I held back and gave it a second look.

The refereeing section (p5-15) is probably below average. The star systems and worlds generation (p16-30) is mainly a key to the numerous tables and doesn't provide much detail on what it's like to be on such worlds. The animals (and environment) pages (p30-36) and encounters tables (p37-43) is certainly underdeveloped. The interpersonal and trade and commerce chapters are good to very good (p44-p55) and the starcraft and starship combat chapters certainly fulfil their goals (p55+).

So overall I could only give it a '3'. I found the star and world design pretty undeveloped and likewise for the encounters, societal types, climates and flora and fauna. This are matters which I consider very important to SF gaming.

[Ante]

Originally Posted by Lev Lafayette

Well, I would tend to think if it was that easy other SF games would have adopted something similar, verdade?

Hey! I never said anything about easy!

Well, it's not always that the best prevail.

I do think it is a very neat thing to have so much information in such a tight presentation. It isn't very "user friendly" I can agree with that.

Note, though, that it harkens back to a time when a RPG was less about fluff and more about doing the number heavy stuff for the GM.

Many other games have some kind of World Profile and Vehicle Profile and while they might be more verbose I do think that Traveller was their source of inspiration.

[Ante]

Originally Posted by Lev Lafayette

I seriously was about to give it a 4 for substance and then I held back and gave it a second look.

The refereeing section (p5-15) is probably below average. The star systems and worlds generation (p16-30) is mainly a key to the numerous tables and doesn't provide much detail on what it's like to be on such worlds. The animals (and environment) pages (p30-36) and encounters tables (p37-43) is certainly underdeveloped. The interpersonal and trade and commerce chapters are good to very good (p44-p55) and the starcraft and starship combat chapters certainly fulfil their goals (p55+).

So overall I could only give it a '3'. I found the star and world design pretty undeveloped and likewise for the encounters, societal types, climates and flora and fauna. This are matters which I consider very important to SF gaming.

I see what you mean. Traveller is part of the old school, though, and it was more about giving the GM tools than showing him how to use them.

It's true that the system generation don't give much "soft" sociological data on how it is to live on a world. It's kind of expected not to be as important in the harder spectra of science fiction litterature and gaming. I agree it could have helped, though. DGP did another book on world generation, where they wasn't as limited by the GDW heritage and it has more of those details.