Traveller's Handbook (Traveller T20 D20) [Hardcover]

Martin Dougherty (Author), Hunter Gordon (Contributor)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 464 pages
• Publisher: Quiklink Interactive (October 7, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1558782176
• ISBN-13: 978-1558782174
• Product Dimensions: 10.6 x 8.9 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #597,312 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars T20: A Legend is reborn, November 6, 2002

By 

Randy Ray "entertainmentista" (Temple, TX United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Traveller's Handbook (Traveller T20 D20) (Hardcover)

The Travellers Handbook for the d20 game system is easily the best d20 release since the original D&D 3E Player's Handbook. To put it simply -- this book rocks!

T20 uses the popular d20 rules system, yet retains the distinctive flavor and classic style of Traveller, the first science fiction role-playing game. It is not just D&D in outer space. This is a harder, grittier, more realistic sci-fi RPG than Star Wars or Dragonstar.

This hefty book is packed with goodness. All of the classic Traveller elements are here: the jump drives, the character prior history, the cool alien races, the archetypal starships and armed traders. The prior history system alone makes this product a must-buy for RPGers. You can create a 10th-level Traveller character in about the same amount of time it takes to create a first-level D&D character. And multiclassing, which is encouraged, is a breeze. Many of the skills and feats will be familiar to D&D 3E players. The new skills and feats make sense for a sci-fi setting, and many can be imported to other d20 games.

Another strong point are the creation rules. With these, you can create new items -- such as computers, ground vehicles and starships -- from a wide range of technology levels. There also are rules for creating whole star systems. These rules are generic enough that they can be used with any d20 game setting, and can easily be adapted for use in any game system.

The combat system also is very flexible. It can be used for person-to-person combat, vehicle-to-vehicle combat or starship-to-starship combat, or any mixture between the three. Stuck in a planetside firefight and need your friends in orbit to help you out with a meson gun or particule beam bombardment? Or want to try to shoot down that pirate corsair in orbit from your grav tank? No problem, the rules can handle that.

If combat is not your bag, there are economic rules for trading cargoes. Want to buy a starship and make your fortune in the stars? The rules are all there. You can even engage in speculative trading -- buying low on one planet and selling high on another. If your merchant instincts are right, you can make a big score. If you're wrong, well, you might have to try you hand at a little smuggling to make your next mortgage payment. The rules also cover prospecting on planet or in an asteroid field.

Traveller has always been one of the most richly detailed, highly flexible and best sci-fi RPGs ever created. T20 continues that grand tradition while at the same time carving out its own unique pocket universe among the plethora of d20 products.

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Traveller works brilliantly as a D20 game, November 26, 2002

By 

Stan Argos "Stan" (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Traveller's Handbook (Traveller T20 D20) (Hardcover)

This is easily the best d20 old-game-to-new-game adaption I've seen in the last couple years. It is fully developed - tons of skills, classes, feats, and equipment. The combat rules are logical and lethal. Starship combat, psionics, and planetary generation are well-designed and incorporated, drawing on twenty years of game development. The "Imperium" background is vague enough to allow plenty of flexibility when designing the setting while still providing enough of an inspiration framework to avoid doing it from scratch.

The game is a hard-science sci-fi roleplaying game - more Star Trek or Foundation than Star Wars. Belongs on every gamer's shelf.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A good Traveller adaption and some nice general enhancements to D20, August 2, 2005

By 

Robert Brown - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Traveller's Handbook (Traveller T20 D20) (Hardcover)

This is a comprehensive and well executed adaption of D20 to Traveller. Traveller is a game I've held in high esteem since I was a young teen in 1983. The other reviewers do a great job of describing what's appealing about Traveller, so for the sake of brevity: ditto.

But not only that. It's a better D20. Here are the areas where I think T20 does better than D20:
1. Armour exists not only to deflect weapons, but to reduce damage.
2. Being more experienced doesn't make weapons less damaging. A sword or pistol is always a dangerous thing to have pointed at you.
3. People who work together have different backgrounds, different levels of experience, and different ages.
4. Magic Powers (in this case, psionics) are built on the existing skill system and bought with skill points.
5. In many cases, you can compensate for poor education by having high IQ, poor charisma by higher social standing, etc.
6. Experience points for completing objectives, rather than winning fights.

If you like lots of combats where your character takes a half-dozen 10-point sword wounds in a row and comes out fighting, and you get masses of XP for this, then this game isn't for you.

If you like a lot of variety with exploration, role-playing, a few *very* dangerous fights, space ships, high-tech, low-tech, utopias, hell-worlds, commerce, aliens, etc, then try this game.