There you go, cutting to the chase again... :-)
> Honestly I think Traveller vs BT comes down to different target audience.
>
> Traveller is more open source in that it provides you the tools to create
> your technology you want for a setting with having a sort of hand wavy
> back
> drop for the setting.
>
> Where as BT is a setting in a box in which you open it and use toy mechs
> to
> blow each other up. ala war game.
>
> BT started its life as a war game not an RPG and I think Traveller did.
> All
> things after those choices are informed by these facts.
>
> On Mon, Jul 16, 2012 at 7:14 AM, <> wrote:
>
>> **
>>
>>
>> BT had a different deal with its players than Traveller did. BT would
>> dole
>> out a new class of technology every few years and call it "Clan Tech" or
>> whatever, and a new set of maps with the lines redrawn in a strangely
>> far-too-orderly fashion. BT was very stage-managed, which on the one
>> hand
>> was preferable to the lack of management GDW exerted in MT, but still
>> felt
>> far too heavy-handed to me.
>>
>> If GDW had done something like that, the Traveller fans would have said,
>> "Yeah, we already designed that stuff, and you did it wrong." The BT
>> fans
>> mostly said, "Cool!" Nice work if you can get it.
>>
>> I always had a hard time reconciling the statement that these mechs were
>> so valuable and irreplaceable and unmaintainable, and yet everyone would
>> go out and spend them like water, and all of the lines on the maps would
>> move in such an orderly fashion. The line developer's position made
>> sense
>> in that FASA knew that the entire point behind the game was setting up
>> all
>> of the mech miniatures, closing to point-blank range, and having a
>> brawl.
>> Everything else was stage dressing to get to that point. No point in
>> doing
>> the realistic thing and destroying enemy ships before they got a chance
>> to
>> deploy their mechs, because that negated the entire reason for the
>> game's
>> existence. Traveller had a big picture POV, while BT was very much
>> stylized. But if you liked it, you liked it.
>>
>>
> Honestly I think Traveller vs BT comes down to different target audience.
>
> Traveller is more open source in that it provides you the tools to create
> your technology you want for a setting with having a sort of hand wavy
> back
> drop for the setting.
>
> Where as BT is a setting in a box in which you open it and use toy mechs
> to
> blow each other up. ala war game.
>
> BT started its life as a war game not an RPG and I think Traveller did.
> All
> things after those choices are informed by these facts.
>
> On Mon, Jul 16, 2012 at 7:14 AM, <> wrote:
>
>> **
>>
>>
>> BT had a different deal with its players than Traveller did. BT would
>> dole
>> out a new class of technology every few years and call it "Clan Tech" or
>> whatever, and a new set of maps with the lines redrawn in a strangely
>> far-too-orderly fashion. BT was very stage-managed, which on the one
>> hand
>> was preferable to the lack of management GDW exerted in MT, but still
>> felt
>> far too heavy-handed to me.
>>
>> If GDW had done something like that, the Traveller fans would have said,
>> "Yeah, we already designed that stuff, and you did it wrong." The BT
>> fans
>> mostly said, "Cool!" Nice work if you can get it.
>>
>> I always had a hard time reconciling the statement that these mechs were
>> so valuable and irreplaceable and unmaintainable, and yet everyone would
>> go out and spend them like water, and all of the lines on the maps would
>> move in such an orderly fashion. The line developer's position made
>> sense
>> in that FASA knew that the entire point behind the game was setting up
>> all
>> of the mech miniatures, closing to point-blank range, and having a
>> brawl.
>> Everything else was stage dressing to get to that point. No point in
>> doing
>> the realistic thing and destroying enemy ships before they got a chance
>> to
>> deploy their mechs, because that negated the entire reason for the
>> game's
>> existence. Traveller had a big picture POV, while BT was very much
>> stylized. But if you liked it, you liked it.
>>
>>