"The 2300 AD Revision", © 1988, 1998-2005 by
Lester W.
Smith, originally appeared in _Challenge_ #34 (pages 56-58),
and is reproduced here with the author's permission.
Text-entry & HTML:
Steve C.
In the June 1988 issue of Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, in his "1987 Science Fiction Games of the Year" review article, Matthew J. Costello rates Traveller:2300 as one of the year's eight best science fiction games. He says, "Traveller:2300... is almost a daring role playing game. These days, role playing seems a field filled with licenses and quirky appeals to a narrow audience. Traveller:2300, on the other hand, sets out to present state-of-the-art interstellar role playing. With finesse, polish, and a mind-blowing star chart, the game succeeds admirably." We thank Mr. Costello for his applause, and we appreciate the positive reception that the game has received from role players in general, but we have a confession to make - we believed that Traveller:2300 needed an extensive revision. By now, most of you will have seen that revision, titled 2300 AD, in the stores.
For those of you who have already purchased the revision, this article will identify what changes were made and why. For those of you who have the old edition, this article will also explain not only why your edition is not outmoded, but also what you are missing from the revision. For those of you who have never played either version of 2300, you may learn from this article something of what makes the game the "daring" venture that it is.
If you hold Traveller:2300 in one hand and 2300 AD in the other, you will immediately notice three differences. One is that the 2300 AD box is bolder, with deep reds, yellows, and blues against a starry black background. In this case, you can "judge a book by its cover" - the polish of the box reflects the polish of the rules and information inside.
Next, you will notice the difference between the titles. Some people originally confused Traveller:2300 with Traveller or thought that there was some link intended between the two games. By changing the title to 2300 AD, we put an end to that problem, while at the same time maintaining the continuity of the releases in the 2300 line. Let me emphasize here for anyone who might still be wondering: 2300 AD has nothing to do with Traveller. Not only are the rules to the two games much different, the games are set in different "universes," with completely different alien races, different routes of travel between the stars because the FTL drives in each game operate on completely different theoretical bases, different technologies (there are no grav plates in 2300 AD, for instance), and different themes. Traveller spans the Milky Way galaxy and concerns humanity's struggles to maintain a civilization over that broad reach of space. 2300 AD reaches stars just beyond 50 light-years from Sol and concerns humanity's struggle just to survive among those stars.
The third difference you will notice between Traveller:2300 and 2300 AD is that the latter game is much heavier. It is literally almost twice the game at the same price. Traveller:2300 had a 48-page Player's Manual, a 49-page Referee's Manual, an eight-page book of forms, an eight-page adventure, an eight-page Near Star List, and an eight-page book of examples and supplementary material entitled Understanding 2300, for a total of 129 pages of material. 2300 AD has a 92-page Adventurer's Guide, a 108-page Director's Guide, and a 32-page play aids booklet containing forms and tables, a programmed adventure, and the Near Star List, for a total of 232 pages. Both games contain the Near Star Map, of course.
The watchwords for changes to the text have been (1) Keep the rules that work (following the old adage, "If it aint broke, don't fix it."). (2) Add rules that are missing; (3) Make sure all rules mesh together; (4) Give plenty of examples; (5) Provide illustrations of all equipment; and (6) Make it easy for the reader to get into the game.
Those directives have been traslated into a box that is eye-appealing and rules books that are a pleasure to read. For example, no longer does the player have to wade through 18 pages of history and political geography to reach the character creation rules. Instead, he begins creating a character immediately, and as he goes, he learns something about the universe in which his character will be operating. By the time the reader has completed creating and equipping his character, he is mentally prepared to learn more about the 24th century by reading the history and political geography that follow. Likewise, the new sidebar format breaks the text up into main rules and supplementary material such as play examples, tables, and tasks, making assimilation much easier for the reader.
There are many major changes from the old Player's Manual. Primarily, these have been additions to the old rules. For example, the character creation chapter now includes both a dice-rolling method and a point-allocation method. At any point along the road of character creation, the player can use one system or the other. Also, an experience system has been added, as well as a system for keeping track of accumulated fame or infamy. The basics of these two systems are given in the Adventurer's Guide, and they are further explained in the Director's Guide. A few new skills and careers have been added, and gravity types have been defined, with gravities listed for each colony and enclave. A short description of each colony world is also given, so that players will know something about the homeworld they choose for their character. Frontier and Core are defined as well - for those of you who have been wondering, Core worlds are Earth and Tirane (Alpha Centauri); all other worlds are Frontier worlds.
Next, as has been mentioned, all equipment, weapons, armor, and vehicles are illustrated. The equipment chapter has been expanded considerably as well - it is now 12 pages long. Basic equipment has been expanded, as have purely futuristic equipment and examples of Pentapod products. (Even more equipment will be available later this fall in a separate product, the 2300 AD Equipment Guide.)
Political maps line the sidebars of the chapter on political geography, helping to bring Earth somewhat more to light. (If you are wondering why Earth has not been dealt with more fully in the past, the reason is that people on Earth in the 24th century have a very different attitude about life than do people from other worlds. There is simply no room to devote to a detailed description of Earth in the basic game - but more information will be forthcoming in Challenge, and we will most likely have an Earth sourcebook in the future.)
Finally, an expanded map of each Arm is included, with all routes of 7.7 light-years or less marked - not just the major routes as shown in the corners of the Near Star Map, but all secondary routes as well.
The Director's Guide has even more additions to it than to The Adventurer's Guide. It begins (after an introduction) with a six-page chapter explaining how to design and run adventures. One of the major points brought up in this chapter is the use of campaign themes based upon the Arm of exploration on which a campaign takes place. Basically, these themes are the Kafer War on the French Arm, attacks by Provolutionist anarchists on the Chinese Arm, and smuggling operations on the American Arm (more is explained about these last two below). But this chapter also gives detailed information on how to develop ideas into an adventure for play and how to run a campaign that is challenging, exciting, and fun.
The "Foundations" chapter from the old Player's Manual has been moved to the Director's Guide, but its title has been changed to "Organizations," reflecting the fact that it now contains information on military, paramilitary, and police organizations as well, plus two evil organizations for the players to fight. One of them is AmeriCo, an interplanetary business organization that first appeared in Nyotekundu Sourcebook, and which has a few members who use its facilities as fronts for smuggling, especially on the American Arm. The other evil organization is Provolution, a band of renegade scientists and statesmen who are dedicated to the overthrow of conventional governments so that they might establish a rule of genetically and mechanically enhanced humans. Provolutionists hold individual lives to be of very little value in the face of the propagation of their grand scheme.
The experience and renown rules are also explained more fully in this book, focusing in particular upon how to award experience and renown points and what effect they should have on play.
Next, details are given for each of the six alien races that humans have met, including individual statistics, hit location charts, and the secrets of the races' psychological motivations. Players should not read this chapter! The secrets given here are intended to help the referee to play realistically alien aliens - they should remain an enigma to players.
Much more information is given on the use of NPCs, as well, making the referee's job much easier. Some simple tools are explained for rating NPC skills and attributes, and tables are included for making up appearances and attitudes on the spot. A form for the recording of data for NPCs is included near the end of the book.
The task system has had some polishing, tasks are just a bit more easy in general, and the effects of failure are more easily understood, as are the effects of uncertain tasks. The combat rules are formatted to be more easily understood, and a two-page scenario gives examples of how those combat rules work, helping the referee to learn to use them effectively. The combat tables have been reorganized a bit, and an optional wounding rule has been added that will allow you to generate light wounds to the head and killing wounds to the limbs, for example. Area fire rules have also been changed a bit so that you can hit one target with multiple rounds from a burst.
Star travel remains substantially the same, but sensors are explained more clearly, and ranges are given for the various types. Space combat has been polished to make it mesh closely with Star Cruiser, but with the addition of wounding rules for the player characters. Also, the ship ratings have been substantially reworked with an eye to providing one good example of many types of ships the player characters might serve on, and a few examples of Kafer ships and weapons are given as well.
The world generation rules have been improved. This is most evident in that a referee can now generate major gas giants and asteroid belts with the system. But many minor changes have also been made to the charts in this chapter to clean up any errata.
The animal encounters chapter has been doubled in size, adding some information about creating more varied animal types. Sample hit location diagrams are provided for a number of common forms.
Finally, a number of forms and tables from the Forms Book and the Adventurer's Guide have been included in the Director's Guide, simply to make them handy. This is also true of the Arms maps mentioned earlier.
To make things easier to locate, the Forms Book, the sample adventure, and the Near Star List have all been incorporated into one book. The forms are in front and include anything that it was decided would be helpful before or during play. The player character sheet (now a full page) and generation tables from the Adventurer's Guide are duplicated here, as are the task charts, the combat charts, the travel table (updated), the table of nations, the table of colonies, the colony world form, and the NPC form. All of the forms from the original Forms Book are still here as well, although some of them have been expanded.
The adventure included in this book is now a programmed solitaire adventure entitled "Terror's Lair." It deals with an American marshal hunting a smuggler on a passenger liner travelling from Earth to Tirane. The adventure is intended as an entertaining exercise for the referee, allowing him to try out some of the game's rules on his own before adapting the adventure to be run in his campaign.
Finally, the Near Star List is included as the last part of the book (where it can be found easily for reference). A real work of art from its beginning, The Near Star Map needed no updating.
For those of you who have the old game and are concerned about whether you will be able to play the new modules with your old game, relax. Much effort was taken to keep the revision from making your original edition outdated. You do need to know that the armor rules and ratings first given in Aurore Sourcebook, and then duplicated in Mission Arcturus and issue 31 of Challenge are now officially part of the new game.
One other major rules change is the addition of an experience and renown system. The renown system requires more explaining than we have room for here, so ignore references to renown in future modules. An experience system you can use is to award each character three to five experience points per adventure (one per major hurdle crossed). Let players spend these points on skills, as in character creation, but each skill level costs twice as much. To determine primary, related, and unrelated skills, consider the last career in which a character trained during character creation to be his official career.
You might notice some task ratings in upcoming modules are more difficult, as they are adjusted to the new, easier task systems, but this should not be a major problem. If you have any specific questions, we are happy to answer mail - please just phrase your questions as simply as possible (questions that can be answered with a simple "yes" or "no" will tend to get answered sooner than more complex questions).
The next release in the 2300 AD line will be the 2300 AD Equipment Guide. Next year you can look forward not only to some new adventure modules and some exciting 2300 AD board games. More will be revealed about that in the next Challenge.
The future of 2300 AD looks bright. There is all of endless space to be explored, but the task is a long and difficult one, full of danger and, conversely, satisfaction. If we hold firm to our resolve, we can conquer the very stars.
- Lester W. Smith