Megatraveller more playable???? Even the most diehard MT player on Citizens of the Imperium or downport would laugh at you. Megatraveller was a notoriusly buggy game of GDW's house rules that took up 3 times as much space to get the same idea across that CT did. Ship construction was needlessly complicated and involved huge amounts of math. The only thing MT had for it was a good storyline that paralled another sci-fi classic "Star Wars" with its weak rebellion against the empire drivil.
I only reviewed the first 3 books too, (even though I have reprint 0-8).
Kid doesn't seem to have read the books that much at all unfortunately. He bases much of his review on Megatraveller (a later traveller game and Traveller 2300 AD and Dark Conspiracy games that are not part of the traveller line. Plus rules provied in the Supplements books and in High Guard, Mercenary, Scouts, and Merchant Prince make character creation very interesting.
Eric 's right by the way the only way to play traveller is to use classic. Succesive editions (MegaTraveller, Traveller New Era, Imperium Games Marc Millers Traveller, Gurps Traveller, and T20 have all been either needlessly complicated (in the case of the former 3) or completely out of character (in the case of the latter). Yes Traveller is a bare bones system designed for GM who like to do a little legwork when preparing a game but I dont think that that makes it a flaw. Combat is a little bit of a problem but it can also be fixed by buying snapshot or the Little White Book supplement At Close Quarters by BITS (British Isles Traveller Support) which has all sorts of good combat rules from overwatch points to full auto fire.
Interestingly enough Hex wasn't enough to keep KID from playing MegaTraveller (which used hex also) possible one of the most buggy games ever made.
I guess my objections to KK's review come from the fact that he seeems to have skimmed the character creation section rather than read it. A character does not have to die if they don't make a survival throw. If the player and GM agree they can be automatically kicked out of the service due to a horrible injury (from which you have now recovered)
Also a character does not start losing atributes at thirty. They start having to roll to keep from losing atributes. While this may not seem to be much of a distinction I assure you it is. My 42 year old Merchant captain hasn't lost a single attribute point due to aging yet.
Skills are a little under developed by todays standards but anything could be easily changed or added to for ease of play. The inclusion of cascade skills in my oopinion was brillant and allowed two players to have a melee weapon skill that was completely different.
Plus I think the format for the Reprints is very attractive, they are 11 by 8.5 and all black with a marking band for each. Collected they are cheaper than many other games and definately a great collectors item.
