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T5 Traveller5 Core Rules 3-Book Set
 
$99.00 $44.95
Average Rating:3.8 / 5
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T5 Traveller5 Core Rules 3-Book Set
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T5 Traveller5 Core Rules 3-Book Set
Publisher: Game Designers' Workshop (GDW)
by Adam [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 01/05/2024 19:00:41

Heavy Weapons Skill Page 152 Book 1: "WMD Weapons of Mass Destruction is any weapon intended to produce indiscriminant area killing or destruc-" an example of the quality T5.

This is poorly formatted and the grammar is just stupid. If you buy it, understand it is just a manic rules dump. It is not worth $45 or $100. I do have Mongoose 2e and many of the CT Traveller books.



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
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T5 Traveller5 Core Rules 3-Book Set
Publisher: Game Designers' Workshop (GDW)
by Daryl F. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 07/29/2023 14:01:12

Way to complicated to be playable. The main task resolution system can involve rolling upwards of a dozen dice for a single task, and you roll for everything. Trying to create a random alien results in something truley random and not realistic in the slightest. I needed the forums to be able to understand starship and vehicle design which were broken and no one really had any good ideas on how to fix. By the time I had it all worked out I had lost interest and never even got to play a single session. Plus it feel like a scam to release a product for sale in basically a Beta version, have the people who purchase it be the testers, and then release it again on yet another kick starter for the final version. I bought the hard copy because I wanted a hard copy, not a doorstop and a PDF.



Rating:
[1 of 5 Stars!]
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T5 Traveller5 Core Rules 3-Book Set
Publisher: Game Designers' Workshop (GDW)
by wade g. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 07/09/2023 01:53:42

Incredible stuff.

  • Although very dense (very, very dense) it can be easily used for any sci-fi setting, even outside of Traveller.
  • Remember, the thought "very dense" simply means that rules can provide as amazing details you'd imagine. Amazing in a good way, IMO.
  • Black covers with red bar is there and my pdf has bookmarks, so...
  • No "blank/missing pages".
  • You don't have to make all the rolls when creating a character/vehicle/starship/solar system/universe. The GM and players could simply read through the lists and choose what they want. The lists are wonderfully detailed but use them as you wish.
  • In my opinion, combat should be deadly and here it is. I like it.
  • Book 1: almost 270 pages,Characters and Combat; chapters are: Basic Info, Characters, Core Concepts, Fighting and Appendixes
  • Book 2: almost 288 pages, Starships; chapters are: How Ship Systems Work, Starship Activities, Technology and Appendixes
  • Book 3: almost 292 pages, Worlds & Adventure; chapters are: Systems and Worlds, World Surfaces, Makers, Special Circumstances, Adventuring and Appendixes
  • Create several types of characters: species, genetics, chimera, androids, synthetics, and clones
  • Core Concepts: tasks, skills, knowledges, talents, intuitions, personals, senses
  • Fighting: personal combat, combat charts, the armor
  • Starships: adventure class ships, starship design processes, starship design charts, elements of the "shipcard" (ship stats).
  • How Ship Systems Work: maneuver, Jump, power systems, sensors, weapons, defenses, fuel
  • Starship Activities: ship combat, ship combat charts, trade classifications, trade and commerce
  • Technology: understaning tech, tech charts, lifespans of intelligent species, interstellar communities, computers consoles controllers, personalities and brains, robots and mechanical persons, robotmakers charts
  • Systems and Worlds: star system creation, world generation charts, world mapping (parts 1-4)
  • World Surfaces: terrain, altitudes, depths, and speeds
  • Makers: gun makers and charts, armor makers and charts, vehicle makers and charts, thing makers (general stuff) and charts w/examples.
  • Special Circumstances: Psionics and charts, sophonts and creation charts, beast makers and charts
  • Adventuring: adventures, EPIC adventure
  • Between the books are several appendixes: Dice, Imperial Calendar, Master Mods, Mega Corps, Building Weapons, Quick Armor Tables, Crimes, and Important Concepts.

One thing serious is bad... one-minute turns. I can make a sandwhich in that time



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
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T5 Traveller5 Core Rules 3-Book Set
Publisher: Game Designers' Workshop (GDW)
by Brent I. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 01/24/2023 09:17:21

A huge encyclopedic expanded mechanics edition for the traveller universe. This is basically the mechanics, tables and rules for building a universe, but itself doesn't have enough to run a campaign without other information.

It has the best treatment of tech levels from any traveller edition, rules for early prototypes and when you make something at a higher TL that was earlier. Like an internal combustion type of automobile, possible at TL5, but made at TL9 might be a much better more solid thing.

The tables for creation of an alient Sophont is amazing.

Word of warning, this is a level of "crunch" that I have not seen this side of Adanced Squad Leader. I love it, but it won't be for everyone. I suspect the best use of this would be as a good reference for Referees to help with TL, settings, worlds, etc. There seems to be a mechanic ro table for everything.

(Heck it even has rules for making the old Annic Nova!)

If you want these books, suggest you get the newest rules and these to supplement. They will be compatible.

4/5 since it isn't really a standalone game, it needs a campaign setting if you are going to run T5. It possibly could be the best possible Referee reference in campaign building.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
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T5 Traveller5 Core Rules 3-Book Set
Publisher: Game Designers' Workshop (GDW)
by jimmy d. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 01/04/2023 11:14:21

Well I have been playing Traveller only a short while, but I'm really glad I found it. Truely a beautiful game, capable of almost anything. I got T5 because it's the newest edition from the original designer, how can that be beaten? He invented it. I am very impressed with T5. It's a work of true genius. Yeah I see a lot of reviews saying its a toolkit etc, no it's not. It's an awesome modular game. You can make it as complicared or as abstract and simple as you want. He just included an absurd level of detail, you can go as far as you want in adding crunch to the game using these books. Or you can make your game childishly simple. It's genius. Yes its hard to find stuff in the books but once you get the hang of where stuff is it's fine. I love these books, but you have to not be overwhelmed by the awesome level of details.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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T5 Traveller5 Core Rules 3-Book Set
Publisher: Game Designers' Workshop (GDW)
by Jeff S. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 08/16/2022 10:32:19

Great toolbox for playing Traveller -- and you really need to approach it as a toolbox, there are so many layers of complexity that you really do not need to use if you don't want to. I personally prefer Classic Traveller or Cepheus Engine, or Mongoose 2e, but I think this is well worth it for a wider range of ideas and tools for any Traveller game.

My only serious annoyance with this is the lack of bookmarks. Any PDF longer than a few dozen pages, particularly any that will be a necessary reference to play, absolutely 100% needs to be bookmarked. No exceptions. I'd rate this 4 stars but for this egregious failure in usability.



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
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T5 Traveller5 Core Rules 3-Book Set
Publisher: Game Designers' Workshop (GDW)
by Timothy B. [Featured Reviewer]
Date Added: 05/24/2022 11:44:52

Origninally posted here: https://theotherside.timsbrannan.com/2022/05/review-t5-traveller5-core-rules-3-book.html

We are entering a strange time now. There are now two editions of Traveller on the market, the Mongoose version and now, in 2015, a new version from Far Future Enterprises, the inheritor of Game Designers' Workshop intellectual properties. This one is designed to be a new edition of the Traveller 4 edition and thus an "unbroken line" from Classic Traveller. I have the Traveller 5.09 version I grabbed from Far Future Enterprises and the 5.10 version from DriveThruRPG. For the purposes of this review, I am going to be considering the 5.10 version.

T5 Traveller5 Core Rules 3-Book Set

As with Classic Traveller, this version is split up into three books. They are not little, and the covers are not included, but they do have the same names. So that is fine.

Each book has a comprehensive table of contents of all three books.

Book 1: Characters and Combat

PDF. 208 pages, black & white and color interior art.

Starting out this has a different feel than other versions. We start with the the typical "What is a Roleplaying Game" bits and "What is Traveller" under the Traveller is a Role-Playing Game section with an example of play. What follows is a bit on the Galaxy (weird to see how little of it is charted in Traveller), A Brief History of the Universe, and The Foundations of the Universe. The feel here is one of situating the characters in the Traveller Universe first as opposed to having the character operating in the universe as Classic Traveller does. Thematically (not rule-wise) this makes it a bit closer to MegaTraveller.

Traveller Uses Dice takes us back to the real world. There seems to be some new dice mechanics being introduced here in the form of "Flux Rolls." We get bits on Money, Ranges, and Humanity. I have to admit I admit I am not liking the organization so far. The topics seem to come at random.

Ok. We finally get to a chapter Characters are the Central Focus of Traveller, but not till page 46.

Characters still have the same six basic characteristics/abilities but there are an additional two added, Psions (Psi) and Sanity. Then there are another eight that are also used that are combinations of the regular six. I can't help but feel that something that was elegant is not needlessly complicated.

Eleven pages later we get to Characters and Careers. This covers the careers that we see in many versions of Traveller. I do like the art on the various medals a character can get while in the service, nice touch. The careers are comparable to previous versions. Each carrier gets a single page of detail which is nice really, print it out and staple it to your character sheet card. There are also many tables for backgrounds.

There is a new section on Genetics. There are some lists and diagrams for family trees (genetic trees) but I am not seeing the in-game application to this yet. I guess if your character is genetically modified this would be good. Sections on Chimeras, Synthetic Lifeforms, and Clones follow.

Tasks are next and deal with how you do things in Traveller. We are back to a Roll Under task resolution. A few pages discussing how tasks are determined with an example of three character with low, medium and high dexterity.

Skills is introduced with a Master Skill list, though "Massive Skill List" would also be appropriate. There are a lot of skills here. Skills and their descriptions take up the next 40 pages.

Equipment is given the acronym QREBS for Quality, Reliability, Ease, Bulk/Burden, and Safety.

We jump back to character focus with Intuitions, Personals, and The Senses.

We get to the second half of the title 2/3 of the way into the book. Combat. Up first is Personal Combat. This covers all sorts of types of combat, conditions, environment, movement, and more. There is even an example of combat between two groups of five combatants. This is good, because I still have no real good notion of how combat works in this system. This follows by a list of weapons.

Dice is next and covers all the rolls for 1D to 10D and the Flux die. Look I have a Master's degree in Stats, I like math, I like numbers. But this feels needlessly complicated to me.

The book ends in an Index (but hyperlinks and the PDF is not bookmarked).

Book 2: Starships

PDF. 304 pages, black & white and color interior art.

One of the things I love about Traveller has been their starship-building rules. It's like character building and I don't feel bad about min-maxing or even meta-gaming it.

We start out with the basic anatomy of a stellar hex grid. Ok, that is useful. This introduced us to the section on Star Systems. We get some brief overviews of systems and some helpful charts and tables to describe them. This is followed by Star Ports (places to go in the system) where the adventures usually begin.

Starships are next and cover all sorts of starships. The same sorts of details are here as in other versions of Traveller. I would need the rules side by side to see the differences, but it feels more like Traveller T4 than anything. Lots of color art for the various types of ships are a nice touch. Our old friend the Beowulf-class Free Trader is present.

Starship Design and Construction covers how to build and pay for these ships. All of this is recorded on the Ship Card, like a character sheet for ships. This is a feature that goes back to the beginning.

Maneuvering is next, or how your ship is a ship and not a space station. This includes interplanetary travel. Jump covers interstellar travel.

Plenty of sections on how Power, Sensors, Weapons, Defenses, Fuel, and Space Combat work. Far more detail than I recall in any version of Traveller so far.

Trade and Commerce Between the Stars section is next. Traveller is built on the reality that goods and people need to move between the starts and there is an economy based on that.

Technology and Tech Levels are discussed in detail. Followed by Lifespans of intelligent species (why wasn't this in Book 1?), Interstellar Communities, Computers, and Robots.

This book was a bit better organized than Book 1, up till the end that is.

Book 3: Worlds and Adventures

PDF. 304 pages, black & white and color interior art.

This covers Worlds and Systems. It seems that some of the System material from Book2 would have been better here.

If Book 1 creates characters, and Book 2 creates Starships, then Book 3 creates worlds and systems. Again pretty detailed with charts and graphs galore. This covers the first 94 pages or so.

Makers or building things run the next 80 odd pages. Seems like this should have been in book 2.

Special Circumstances are next for the next 70 pages. This includes Psionics. This covers psionic characters and their powers. This also covers the Zhodani.

There is an interesting sub-section on Sophonts, or intelligent non-humans. Again, this would have been better served in Book 1 I think, but I do see why it is here.

We don't get to Adventuring until page 270 and then it is only 10 pages. Very underserved in my mind.

Each book ends with book specific Appendicies and Indexes.

--

So. 816 pages of PDF rules for Traveller 5.10. (FYI my Traveller 5.09 weighs in at 760 pages).

What do I know? Well. This version of Traveller is an interesting view of divergent evolution. In 2015 to 2019 (and still) there are two in print, live versions of Traveller out there. Traveller 5 and Mongoose Traveller. Both have the same ancestor, Classic Traveller, but each went on a different path.

We also live in a world now where ALL versions of Traveller are easily available in PDF, Print, and POD versions.

Given all of this, I just can't see myself playing Traveller 5. There is a LOT here I can see myself using though. I do not regret buying it at all. Far from it. I think my goal here is to grab anything I can find that is useful that is still roughly compatible with the Classic Traveller Core.

My issues with Traveller 5 are largely from the organization of the material and the over-complication of the rules. I am not a fan of roll-under systems, but I can get over that for the right game.

I give Far Future Enterprises credit for trying to expand the game in a new direction, it's just a direction I am interested in going in these days. At nearly $45 for three (four if you count the "Read me" pdf, which I don't) PDFs and no POD option is a bit rich for most people's blood.

Still, I am a perpetual sucker for the sunk cost fallacy, so I am always looking for an excuse to use all my books.



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
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T5 Traveller5 Core Rules 3-Book Set
Publisher: Game Designers' Workshop (GDW)
by CHARLES K. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 11/16/2021 11:09:56

Excellent updating of the classic system. Organization very clear and helpful. Highest recommendation for both veterans and new players!



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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T5 Traveller5 Core Rules 3-Book Set
Publisher: Game Designers' Workshop (GDW)
by Mikael H. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 10/10/2020 10:03:44

Interesting tools-suggestions-something in a too large package, usless for actual gaming and the tools needs to be tweaked and snaity checked (and errata corrected) to be useful. So, do not buy but look at it if someone gifts it to you.

This may be one of the largest cons in the gaming world, and it just goes on and on.



Rating:
[1 of 5 Stars!]
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T5 Traveller5 Core Rules 3-Book Set
Publisher: Game Designers' Workshop (GDW)
by A customer [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 09/19/2018 19:58:14

Note this review refers to version 5.09 last updated 7th June 2015 bought 2nd September 2018.

Traveller 5, oh how I wanted to love you.

Background, 1978 - Traveller was the first RPG I bought and I bought a most, if not all of the LBBs over the next few years. We drifted apart as I moved on to FGU's "Space Opera" and I never kept up with all of the subsequent versions.

Fast forward to around a year ago, I have a Sci-Fi loving, Fantasy hating son who's approaching "RPG age" so I decide to introduce him to RPGs via Traveller. I still have my LBBs but digging around on the internet I find out about all of these new versions. My interest is piqued in T5, but ultimately I go for Mongoose 2 because of a special offer on DTRPG but the Traveller 5 itch is still there, so, a few months on, I've taken the plunge.

First impression - Where's the Cover? Why did you not include the iconic Black and Red cover? When I double clicked on the pdf - that's what I was expecting - and not getting that thrill was a major disappointment. Not a good start.

Anyway, to give you an idea of the issues I've encountered so far, scroll through to the Contents page and have a read. Combat, page 210, so you type 210 into Adobe Acrobat and you are propelled over 30 pages into the Combat section. So, the Contents haven't been updated, but the page numbers have, and what's worse, the conversion factor isn't a constant - the further you go into the book, the more innaccurate the contents page is. I think the main reason for the discrepancy is moving the various early sections like Dice, Ehex, ranges and Distance to appendices - which seems to be a good idea. But, because it's not constant that's not the whole story, I feel - although as this is the only copy of T5 I have ever seen I can't be sure - as if section splash pages have also been deleted because the actual start of Combat is pretty abrupt with an unheaded page containing a description of the Combat round, followed next page by the heading "Personal Combat" So, in summary, the contents section is useless, and I have a strong suspicion some pages are missing.

But there is now an index the ommission of which caused much rage upon the release, let's look up "Combat" - Accurate but useless for anything significant. Let me explain; "Combat" has ten lines of page numbers with a mixture of individual pages and page ranges, clearly machine generated but not human-edited so the actual Combat section, the bit you're probably looking for, starts on line three of the combat entry and reads thus: 176-180, 182, 184-188, 191, 200... etc. What about pages 181 & 183? They're about Armor and don't happen to have the word "Combat" on the page, so they're not part of the index entry for "Combat" - logical for a computer. So, to actually find the Combat section you either have to "know" that you subtract 34 from the Contents page entry (210), or you have to "know" by looking at the ten lines of page numbers in the index which are the relevant ones. Good luck with that.

Oh, and whoever generated the PDF either didn't bother or didn't know how to generate bookmarks so you can't navigate that way.

So, in summary, you have a 759 page book with a reputation (according to reviews I've read) for having the content scattered a little haphazardly and there is no way to navigate the pdf... and FFE haven't updated since June 2015 - over three years ago. So, a potentially wonderful reference for Traveller referees regardless of their preferred flavour has been crippled by bad execution. Please guys, regenerate the table of contents and add hyperlinks to the contents page entries, add the Chapters as bookmarks at an absolute minimum, Re-add any missing pages and the iconic cover (which is the thumbnail used to actually sell the thing on DTRPG), and finally, if at all possible, send some brave soul through the index to actually do it properly - for obscure terms, it's great (e.g. "Waterskins" has a single, correct (but unlinked), page reference), for less obscure things, like Combat, it's useless.

With all of the poor editing, poor navigation, and missing cover/pages the general impression is of the sort of thing handed out free to Beta testers; not the full price ninth revision of a book published over five years ago. There is no excuse for this lack of polish at this price. Mongoose do far more polished products, heck, even veritable minnows like Gypsy Knight games display infinitely better commitment to the ongoing support of their products. As I write this, R. Talsorian games seem to be updating all of their Cyberpunk stuff from the early '90s (adding bookmarks) as I'm getting regular e-mails saying that new versions of the books I've bought are available.

Finally, an offer. Send me a copy as a "Word" file and I'll do as much tweaking as I have time for as a labour of love and thank-you for those LBBs back when I was a teenager. Contact me if you want to take me up on it.



Rating:
[2 of 5 Stars!]
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T5 Traveller5 Core Rules 3-Book Set
Publisher: Game Designers' Workshop (GDW)
by Rory H. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 12/18/2017 02:52:20

Certainly an improvement from the unedited and flatly impenetrable version originally published from the kickstarter. The index is welcome, while the additional 50 pages or so are mainly used to provide clarification, a slightly tidier layout and a more logical organisation of the book. There is no linkable contents menu, however, which is also pretty vital for a pdf and the cover on my copy was missing still.

Certain rules clarifications that are now included make the accusation of it being ‘unplayable’ an overstatement, but it is still most likely to be an overwhelmingly complex book for casual gamers or those with any sort of aversion to maths. That said, I’m not sure that was ever the market for this game. For existing Traveller fans, there is a lot of material that will undoubtedly be useful for their games.

EDIT: Further to my original comments after reading through more fully (and it does take some reading!), there are some genuine gems within this book. I can see the logic - finally - of using a variable dice pool, roll-under system as opposed to the fixed 2D6 system used in Classic and Mongoose Traveller. Firstly, it meshes more tightly with the Characteristic scores used and secondly, it’s simply more open ended in terms of operating on a universal scale. The probability charts at the end of the book give a clear indication of your chances and, fully developed it looks pretty smooth.

Character generation is more involved than before with the role of education fully integrated and with differing paths for each career. You can also create a genetic legacy, while options for sophonts, clones and robots are fully detailed. The various ‘Maker’ sections have fuller explanations, along with starship and world designs. There are some interesting scientific asides as well as advice for running games throughout the text.

This is not a game for novices, and there are still lots of issues about editing throughout. But for Traveller fans, there is something of worth and investment at the core.



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
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T5 Traveller5 Core Rules 3-Book Set
Publisher: Game Designers' Workshop (GDW)
by Andy H. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 09/15/2017 13:21:32

For me, I really want to like and recommend this product. I've been a fan of Traveller since the first small box, as it was the first actual role-playing game I ever purchased. That being said, I realize that I am somewhat biased, but Traveller5 is really hard to recommend to all but the most die-hard Traveller aficionados.

I’ll start with the positive. Traveller5 is greatly updated and expanded compared to previous versions/editions. The basic rules have been adapted to allow for more flexibility for characters or other intelligent beings that deviate from the human norm. This flexibility can cause some confusion, as a previous reviewer noted when sometimes attributes were written “Str C2 End” instead of the just saying “Str Dex End” – this allows for beings without a specific Dex stat to make the specific check. There are even sections on genetics for your character! The expansion also continues with a good system for the quality of items, which manages to apply to everything from a hand tool to a starship drive. Finally you have the notion that a higher tech level civilization can actually make a better power plant or jump drive, for example – no longer does a TL15 civilization necessarily build the same component with the same characteristics as a TL9 civilization. There are also accommodations for prototype and experimental versions available at earlier tech levels. Many tech level tables have been greatly expanded to show systems that are possible well beyond the Imperial norm of TL15. And other Traveller rules of the past that sometimes caused a chuckle (remember Murphy’s Rules in Space Gamer magazine?) have been corrected or modified: you don’t die in character creation any more. Taken all around, there is a lot of good new material here and a lot of positive changes.

But that brings us to the negative. To be fair, much of what is negative is viewed as such because there have been so many positive features added or revised that those which remain as they were, or are missing entirely, seem jarring. But let us firstly address the elephant in the room, and the primary reason is Travller5 is so hard to recommend:

The rules are a mess.

It is more than typos or charts in the wrong places or the like: it is more the overall impact that it has on the reader. There are over 700 pages in the PDF, and yet most sections read as if there was an editor behind the scenes doing their utmost to cut down the word and page count. It means most concepts are, at best, about half-explained. It means that the reader has to go over and over sections, refer to charts, refer to examples (if any are given), to try to figure out what is really being said or what the intent of the rule or system might be. You then add to that obtuse style a number of other problems, such as no references to charts. So it may explain a system on one page, perhaps give you an example, and you’ll know from both the text and the example that you’re missing something . . . which you’ll find on a chart three pages later. Then you’ll flip back at try to figure it out, as it may not be obvious . . . because the example (if you have one) could be wrong. The example may mysteriously make a different roll (is it a typo? Did you miss it on the chart?) or completely miss a whole selection of modifiers that really leaves you wondering (again) what the original intent might be. Here’s an example from the section on “How Jump Works”:

On page 338, it talks about the Astrogation task, and gives the table at the top of the page. So far so good, but part of the task is that the number of dice is modified by Stellar Density . . . which isn’t even explained on that page, it’s much later in a section on generating subsectors and the like. The text below on the page, though, never makes mention of Stellar Density as a modifier at all. Even the example given doesn’t use that modifier. As a reader you know something isn’t right from reading the text: given the example as written, a jump of 6 parsecs is effectively impossible (average roll of 7 dice, including the uncertainty die, is 24.5, meaning that a character would have to have an Int of 12 and Astrogation skill of 13 just to make it half of the time) for a player, and a TL15 computer would fail most of the time too (at TL16 you could get an artificially intelligent computer which would still fail). If you factor in Stellar Density from the chart, that makes it reasonable (reduces it to 4 dice, or an average of 14, which the computer could do most of the time). And then it gets odd: a character who, because of the uncertainty die, is not certain that their roll might be successful, is encouraged to “verify” the task. But to do so takes 24 hours and adds to the difficulty of the task, meaning you’re far less likely to succeed at the verification than you are at the original task. So you take much longer, and have a much higher chance to fail . . . why would you do that?

And what is really not mentioned there either is that the fuel requirements of the old Traveller are unchanged so if you fail an astrogation task, and wind up jumping in to deep space . . . you’re dead. There may be jump-9 technology, but that just means 90% of your ship is taken up for fuel. You can now link jump drives together, too . . .but that doesn’t help you for fuel, so if you link two jump-4 drives together you’d still need 80% of your ship’s tonnage in fuel.

Astute readers then note that, even with stellar density modifiers, the astrogation task for all of those higher order jump drives is effectively impossible (except across rifts or extra galactic distances). How do the rules address that? With an egregious hand wave: “without making any criticism of the Astrogator, most higher order jump Astrogation tasks fail.” A basic, “yeah we can’t explain it to you, but it works exactly the same way as a TL9 jump drive and has the same limitations as jump-1, so you figure it out.” The book is chock full of other advanced technologies that aren’t explained, so it seems really incongruous to say they’re all governed by the same mechanic, except when you get really advanced that mechanic doesn’t work, so you just flit about randomly.

Not all of the rule sections or systems are this bad, nor are they all incomplete to this same degree. But the overall effect is that the reader is forced to go over and over sections, read the whole thing, go back and revisit, and otherwise spend an inordinate amount of time simply deciphering some systems. Some things are fixable with errata it’s true – hey on page 340 where it talks about jump mishaps I don’t think the injury diagnosis / first aid table is supposed to be at the top of the page, you could correct some examples and add modifiers, and so forth. But even if you fixed all of those things there were still be areas that would require quite an investment in time to read and re-read, and still some systems that would be fodder for a 21st century version of “Murphy’s Rules.” If you’ve experience with Traveller, you can get through this, although you did likely expect more from a PDF that costs this much. If you’re not, start with one of the older Traveller versions – they won’t be as complete, or as novel, in some areas, but it will give you a strong foundation in what to expect to perhaps enable you to overcome the later shortcomings of Traveller5.



Rating:
[2 of 5 Stars!]
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T5 Traveller5 Core Rules 3-Book Set
Publisher: Game Designers' Workshop (GDW)
by Chet C. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 08/19/2016 22:40:11

Rats! Accidentally deleted my original review, which went back to a week or three after publication. Let's just say that T5 does Traveller proud and it's once again what it was best: a toolbox filled with tools to create MY favorite sf rolegame.

I still bet Marc wishes he had the support group he had in 1977. It's hard to believe almost all of this came from one mind.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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T5 Traveller5 Core Rules 3-Book Set
Publisher: Game Designers' Workshop (GDW)
by Carl A. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 08/22/2015 23:37:58

Where to start? AS someone who has played various incarnations of Traveller, starting with Megatraveller when I was a kid, there are some interesting choices in this system that make me really want to like it. But I'm having a very hard time.

The Bad: The editing isn't very good. I expected problems when I started reading the table of contents and found errors in that. The page numbers haven't been updated since changes were made. For example, it says: Androids and Synthetics 124, but they are actually on page 92. The index might be better as it lists the correct page numbers, but there's no excuse for one of the first pages a new player sees to be wrong.

Another example is page 93, there is a section that has a line that looks like this (the entire line):

as The nest contains ach and as a sourc

That's clearly some sort of editing goof. Maybe multiple sentences blended together, but it is hard to tell what it should have been. For a PDF that costs this much, the editing needs to be top notch, and this certainly isn't.

The systems are overly complicated compared to previous versions. As an example of that there are 6 stats listed for humans, but sometimes they are Referenced as their abbreviation (Str for Strength), and sometimes as the order they appear in (C1 for Strength). Presumably this is because some of the stats can be replaced for different races. The inconsistency is annoying and needlessly complicates things. Some of the examples seem to have issues as well as after reading more I think they may have incorrectly applied their own modifiers, but I'd have to find the section again to verify this.

Maker systems. You want a gun? Build it using GunMaker. Want Armor? Build it through ArmorMaker. This sounds interesting, until you start going through them and realize this doesn't really help you as a Player to actually do anything useful. Just give a list of items with stats. A system like this should have just been an add-on optional thing rather than part of the core rules. Having a system to build start ships in a science fiction game make sense, but a nearly 20 page system just for building a gun? That's massive overkill.

The Good There is a thought toward legacies that I think is interesting. You roll 2d6 for each stat, and there are genetic stats, like Strength and Intelligence (but not Education or Social Standing). The first die rolled for genetic stats is your 'gene' and the second is how well you developed it. With this you can take any two characters and figure out an offspring's genetic predisposition. That's an interesting idea for a game to include.

Final Verdict: Skip this and keep with previous editions. They took the parts of previous editions that weren't great and expanded them to make them even more complicated and there is 0 payoff to this for both Players and Game Masters. I'm not sure how they thought that was a good idea.



Rating:
[1 of 5 Stars!]
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T5 Traveller5 Core Rules 3-Book Set
Publisher: Game Designers' Workshop (GDW)
by joel R. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 07/24/2015 01:15:52

Amazingly deep system. Better layout and thought than the first effort. Worth the time and the money. Traveller 5 is what mongooses wishes it could be



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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