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2300ad
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€38,95 €18,69 |
| Average Rating:3.7 / 5 |
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Teils nett aber teilweise auch nutzlos.
VORSICHT SPOILER-ALARM !!!
Als 2300AD (bzw. seine Vorgänger Traveller 2300AD) raus kamen, war ich aus dem Häuschen. Ich habe mir das Original schicken lassen und bin für die Box 400 km weit gefahren. Ihr könnt Euch also vorstellen, wie sehr es mich gefreut hat, dass das gute alte Hard-SF-Game wieder da ist.
Entsprechend enttäuscht war ich vom PDF. Wie schon andere Fans vor mir bemerkten fehlen die schönen Bilder und Graphiken. Bei Durchlesen erschien mir das Material als zurechtgestutzte Ausgabe von 2320 AD (vom selben Autor), wobei schlampig gearbeitet wurde.
z.B.: Die verschiedenen "Egos/Persönlichkeiten" der Eber werden erwähnt aber nicht erklärt. Stats für Käfer fehlen, die Klaxun, Ylii fehlen ebenfalls. Ein Index zum Auffinden von Infos wurde ebenfalls nicht erstellt. Die Kapitel sind nicht durchnummeriert, was das Auffinden von Fakten unnötig erschwert. Der Schwerpunkt liegt viel zu stark auf den Menschen, den Konzernen, Terroristen und den Kolonien. Dabei bleibt das Feeling von früher "Der Aufbruch der Menschheit zu den Sternen" und "das wilde Leben in den Randregionen" (Serenity lässt grüßen) auf der Strecke.
Dafür gibt es Delphine... toll, die haben schon in Traveller genervt... oder fandet Ihr einen PC als Delphin in Anti-Grav-Kampfanzug witzig? Den besten Delphinauftritt in der SF gibt es im "Anhalter", doch das soll eine andere Geschichte sein.
Unsere Kampagne vor 20 Jahren war eher eine von Scout- und Militäroperationen geprägte Abenteuerserie, die sich mit den Kafern beschäftigte oder wo sie als Störenfriede auftauchten. Alles lebte von dem Geheimnis dieser Aliens, woher sie kamen, was sie wollten, wie der Krieg mit ihnen verlaufen würde. Das alles ist nun auf eine Spalte, d.h. eine halbe Seite Text beschränkt worden. Schweigen auch zu den Hintergründen und Zielen der Pentapods usw.
Nach zwanzig Jahren und vielen, vielen deutschen Fans hätte ich eine Überarbeitung der deutschen Namen und Bezeichnungen erwartet. Die waren im "vorGoogle"-Steinzeitalter grauenhaft übersetzt und Sinn hatten sie meist keinen. Einige waren auch schlichtweg falsch. Auch diese Chance hat man sich weitgehend entgehen lassen. Immerhin ist jemand drauf gekommen, dass man einen Kampfanzug deutscher Produktion nicht ohne geschichtlichen Bezug KZ-7 nennen kann und man hat die Bezeichnung rausgeschmissen. Das beim "Astronomischen Recheninstitut" vielleicht richtiger "Astronomisches Recheninstitut" gewesen wäre, steht in den Sternen. Die sonstigen Bezeichnungen sind eher krude Aneinanderreihungen von deutschen Worten, die wohl im amerikanischen Slang gewaltig (oder gewalttätig?) nach deutscher Sprache klingen.
Die von anderen Schreibern schon erwähnten Karten zu den Planeten sind nützlich, besser als in den Supplements zum Original und mit der Planetenbeschreibung zusammen auch einigermaßen brauchbar. Mir fehlen aber Hotspots oder Abenteuerideen wie man sie in 2320AD finden konnte. So bleiben sie nur eine nette Aneinanderreihung von Spieldaten, die ich mir mit 15 Minuten Arbeit und dem Traveller Basisregeln hätte selber machen können.
Ob ich mir die Einführung von genmanipulierten Menschen als Siedler gefallen lasse ist ebenso eine Geschmackssache wie Cybertech. Ich habe es vor 20 Jahren nicht gebraucht und werde es nur sehr zurückhaltend nutzen. Meinen Spielercharakteren wird noch schön schlecht, wenn sie fremde Planeten betreten. Wofür habe ich Schwerkraft und Atmosphäre, wenn ich sie als SL nicht einsetze?. Für den Notfall habe ich ja noch ein As im Ärmel und verteile Pentapod-Equipment... Was fand ich eigentlich gut, wo ich doch 2 Sterne verteilen wollte?
Hmmm... ja, das alte 2300AD ist out of print, das neue Settig für TRAVELLER lässt sich bisher nur mit Hilfe des alten Materials einigermaßen gut in spielbares Material umsetzen. Immerhin sind die Regeln aus Traveller sehr gut bekannt und vielschichtig einsetzbar. Das Traveller-Material spannt einen weiten Bogen an Möglichkeiten und Ausrüstung für das 2300AD-Spiel.
Alles in allem macht das PDF aber den Eindruck eines Teasers. Vieles wird angedeutet und vorgestellt, aber das Ganze zu flach, als dass man daraus ohne altes Material eine sinnvolle Kampagne flechten kann. Der Versuch alte Sourcebooks und das Regelheft zusammenzuführen ist durch die schlechte Bearbeitung misslungen. Der Autor kann es besser, was er in 2320AD bewiesen hat. Es reicht eben nicht nur die Stats von T20 anzupassen. Der Fließtext lebt halt auch.
Bleibt abzuwarten, ob Mongoose bei weiteren Veröffentlichungen sauberer arbeitet, besser strukturiert und nicht ganz so sehr die Geldmachermaschine anwirft. Ich hoffe inständig, dass die angekündigten Veröffentlichungen zum "French Arm" die Quellenlage zu den Kafern und zu anderen Aliens verbessert und nicht halbdurchdachte Zusammenfassungen den Lese- und Spielspaß bremsen.
Für Sammler o.k als Impuls die alten Sachen wieder aus dem Archiv zu kramen. Man kann mit vertrauten Traveller-Regeln wieder in die faszinierende Welt des Jahres 2300 AD einzutauchen. Für Neulinge mit Vorsicht zu geniesen und als Sourcebook sicherlich ein Teaser. Wartet aber besser ab, was sonst noch so rauskommt.
FAZIT zu wenig Leistung für zu teures Geld (PDF = 21,72 Euro)
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The appearance could have been improved with more art, etc, and there are some glaring editorial errors throughout (equations being mistyped, etc). Yet, all this said, this is an indispensable Traveller book and setting for any gamer who wants to get into a hard science, near future setting. The 'French Empire' conceit seems a little counterintuitive to me, but it's well grounded out in the future timeline explanations and the science of the game is generally pretty solid. Personally, I think the RPG world needs a strong 2300AD setting to ground out BladeRunner/Firefly type stories - and its great to see this game line return, regardless of anything else. I would hope they revisit the editing of the game before too long, however. Incidentally, my new Mac has the cover in white borders rather than black - what's up with that?
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I am really grateful for seeing the 2300AD source book, as it reminds me of a campaign setting which I used to think was excellent, whilst being visualised through the prism of the today's Traveller rules.
For Mongoose to fuse original (old-school) far-future Traveller with it's broad Foundation style brush strokes, with this, Earth's hands-on tentative steps into space, employing chunky, clunky gadgets and tank armour, seems, at first glance, almost heretical! Hats off to Mongoose for bravery.
One thing that Mongoose 2300AD does do well, is that it provides planet maps. Ace! The colony planets feel like solid, real places.
The addition of DNA modifications as a norm seems a little unnecessary, but this is tied up with the bio-tech Pentapods' contact with humanity, which just about works.
Where are the gun pictures? Surely the look and feel of the equipment is really important to distinguish this source book from the main Traveller setting? The descriptions are there, but show us some eye candy! ;) Otherwise the presentation is very good.
As a sourcebook for today's gamer, the potential for the 2300AD setting is HUGE, the supposedly gritty feel on the broad backdrop of newly settled worlds will make for a great campaign - and many styles of game are possible from espionage to battlefield war. Its whopping 312 pages are packed with background information and game material.
Even in the bundle this still feels a little pricey, one would hope that PDFs would be considerably cheaper than their printed-and-bound versions - or at least it would be good to have a deal which combines both.
General note: 2300AD is implicit in its need of the Traveller Core Rulebook. The introduction also suggests that Supplement 5: Vehicles and 6: High Guard "would also be useful".
In summary, 2300AD it's a bumper book with plenty of details about many of the colonies and enclaves in the 2300AD near-star sphere. How this fits with Mongoose's Traveller will be up to individual players to interpret. The good news is that if Mongoose Publishing don't produce more 2300AD products that there's the so many older GDW T2300/2300AD products out which can be "mined" for ideas.
-Billiam B.
http://bit.ly/rpgblog2300AD
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SUMMARY
A respectable update to a classic hard sci-fi setting. What it lacks in nitty-gritty details in some areas it makes up for breadth of coverage.
THE BAD NEWS FIRST
If you're looking for a lavishly-illustrated book like the original, you're going to be very disappointed with this. Art is sparse in here, although generally pretty decent. This book favors density of information over artistic beauty, and it covers a LOT of ground in its 314 pages.
There's a couple of editing & formatting errors. A half-page is blank where I'm guessing they intended to put a picture but changed their minds at the last minute. Some of the tables are a little hard to read at first. A couple of the nation profiles in the core worlds have the wrong population digit, and Tirane is lacking its UWP. These last issues are pretty easy to get the right numbers when you read the description. Tirane, for instance, is pretty much Earth's twin with interface A, and probably one digit lower for population & law level.
THE SETTING
I'd describe 2300ad as a mildly dystopian, hard-sci-fi setting in the tradition of movies like Alien, Outland, or Gattaca. In Traveller terms, it's roughly Tech Level 12, with some areas like genetic engineering as high as Tech Level 16. However, there are a number of Traveller-standbys that don't exist: reactionless maneuver drives, jump drive, gravity control and antigravity vehicles, and meson guns & communicators.
Many current nations still exist, albeit in different forms or with different roles. Peculiarities of the stuttewarp drive (which acts like an STL or an FTL drive depending on how deep in a star's gravity well the craft is) have limited exploration along three "arms" of local space, named for the dominant power in each: American, Chinese, & French. France is the aging superpower if 2300ad, with China (specifically Manchuria) a close second and a resurgent America trailing behind. About 30 worlds have colonies, and there almost as many outposts. Some potential new colony worlds are also detailed.
There are 5 alien species, ranging from the nearly human (but almost religously technocratic) Sung to the Petapods (who treat DNA like tinkertoys). Only the most recently encountered species, the insect-like Kaefers ("Bugs" in German), has proven a genuine threat to human dominance of the 50 or so light-year spehere of human exploration.
GAME RULES
2300ad uses rules from the Core Rulebook, High-Guard, Central Supply Catalog, & the new Vehicle Handbook. However, all the relevant non-Core rules are repeated here for your convenience.
Character creation has some significant differences: the card-deck based character motivations are ported from the original GDW game, and there's a whole system of character traits similar to the alien species traits in the core rulebook.
Characters have to pick a nationality, and if they're from one of the frontier worlds they will also have a DNA modification. The character traits may grant bonuses or penalties (sometimes both), and add an additional layer of depth to characters.
There's also more detailed rules for operating in different gravities from your home world: these are modifications to characteristics. There's also rules to acclimating to different planetary environments (Planetary Adaptation Syndrome).
Not only does the book include NPC stats, but there's a system for generating quick NPC's for any occasion.
Starship construction & combat are re-vamped. Construction is generally similar, with more options available than traditional Mongoose-Traveller ships.
Space combat in 2300ad is very different than standard Traveller: I would compare it more to submarine warfare than age-of-sail gun battles. The dominant weapons are missiles: which in 2300ad work more like kamikaze drones than fire & forget weapons. Finding the general location of an enemy ship is easy (there is no stealth in space), but getting a firing solution on a rapidly-moving stutterwarp ship can be tricky. If your ship doesn't have a good enough sensors package, you may literally end up just shooting in the dark.
COMPARISONS TO THE ORIGINAL
The setting's background has been tweaked: the "bad things" are moved up from the late 1990's to the mid-21st century. Dates & details are left deliberately vague, explained by a combination of loss of records, social taboos, and government suppression.
Technology has been re-worked slightly, there's some mild transhumanist elements, and there's explanations of why AI hasn't become more commonplace. Computers & related technologies have been updated to be more plausible.
Overall the equipment selection is very good: there's a wide range of gear available for exploration or military-style adventuring. While fans of "gun porn" might be disappointed with the lack of illustrations, there's ample description: the new version has 48 varieties of personally-carried mayhem, to the original's 37. Most, if not all of the favorites from the original Adventurer's guide show up, plus several others only seen in supplements.
Fewer starships are listed, although there's at least one of each type in the book: a fighter, an exploratory ship, a frigate, a cruiser, a courier, and a bulk freighter as well as a variety of interface craft. Unlike the previous version, there's an official deck plan for every one.
"Libertine Traders" are a change from the "all starships are owned by transnationals, big foundations, or governments" paradigm of the original. The Libertines remind me vaguely of the merchanters of CJ Cherry's Alliance-Union novels: fiercely independent, and often times somewhat shady.
Much has been made about the lack of Kaefer stats & gear. I actually see this as a feature & not a bug (!). In many respects, the original setting was marred by the dominance of the Kaefer War: GDW seemed to be in a bit of a rut, and much of 2300ad turned into Twilight: 2000 in space with NATO fighting the bugs instead of communists.
In the new version, you can't go bug-hunting right away. You CAN do just about anything else, however: you can run a Firefly-esque game with a Libertine family or a group of troubleshooters in a courier, play (or chase) pirates in a frigate, run cyberpunk or Minority Report adventures in the core, or contend with the harsh realities of colony life on the Frontier. Or you can try exploring some of the potential new colony worlds listed in the book.
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First Impressions
2300 AD is an impressive 312 page book with a color cover and black and white interior illustrations.
2300 AD is a campaign source book for Traveller and you will need the core rules from Mongoose to make use of it. If you intend to design Vehicles you will need the vehicles book but for spaceships you just need the core book. You do not require any of the previous incarnations of 2300 to provide background.
What’s in the book
The book contains an overview of the setting, setting specific rules and setting specific equipment ranging from starships to portable shelters.
The setting information covers Earth, its nations and extra-solar colonies giving a potted overview of each along with planetary maps of all the habitable planets that humans have visited. There is also the story of how earth has developed over the 300 years between now and 2300 AD, starting with the deliberately vague “twilight war” that almost destroyed civilization at the start of the 21st century.
Character generation rules are based on core Traveller careers with fairly minor modifications except that the Citizen career is completely replaced, some changes, such as no Pilot(Grav) are derived directly from the background assumptions, and some seem simply added flavor; my youngest daughter was delighted to find that there was the possibility of ending up with a pet.
Differences from previous versions
In previous versions the history of the world started with Twilight 2000, here the link is less explicit also some reference is made to the developments of the last 30 years such as Trans-humanism, Nanotechnology and human DNA modification.
Nearly all colonists start with some sort of DNA modification simply to allow them to survive. In addition you actually get maps and details for all the worlds visited by humans without having to wait for supplements to come out; GDW’s colonial atlas did not have any planetary maps at all and the best source of detail on the worlds of the French arm was Invasion where all the maps looked like they had been scribbled by a GM in a hurry.
Criticisms
My main criticism is of the layout of some of the tables, there are a couple of places where what is semanticly a 2 column table has been wrapped to make a 4 column table without this being immediately obvious. There are other multi-page tables, such as the near star list, where the headings are only on the first page making this a harder read than necessary.
I also spotted a couple of references to DC which have come across from 2320. In addition I could have done with a little more detail on the Kaefers, the other aliens get example NPCS, but not them.
In the PDF there is a small amount of interior color but not where I would have expected it, for example, the world maps, which I know were originally in color, are still black and white but would have benefited from color while the deck plan grids are in color.
Overall I think this is a welcome return of a setting that still has fans 20 years after going out of print. I'm giving this 4 out of 5.
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I am sorry if this review disturbs anyone who worked on it. I am sure you are reading this thinking I am overly critical. If so, I apologize. But if you had maintained the integrity of the product, or even tried to follow its predecessor more, I would be happy. Sadly, I just paid $29.99 for something I must wait for new supplements to use.
And as for Mongoose, the Babylon 5 RPG line was well done. Because of that, the only reason I can see for 2300AD to be so pathetic is that it was done so to make you buy the next book, and in this case, it is blatant.
I have been a fan of 2300AD since its very first inception as Traveller 2300AD. When it just became 2300AD, it was much improved. I have followed the 2300AD fan base, and it has been kept alive by the Etranger site. That being said, I feel I can give a good review of Mongoose 2300AD.
First off, this is not the 2300AD I grew up with and have remained a fan of for 25 years; it is boring, it is minimal in its focus, and it does not have the feel of 2300AD.
I am disappointed with it for many reasons. 2300AD is one of my favorite settings. I expected a product produced over 25 years after the original to surpass it: This does not. It is less than the original and for absolutely no reason other than the one many publishers pull now: MINIMAL USEFUL INFO FOR THE GM TO ENSURE SALES OF THE FUTURE PRODUCTS IN THE LINE. This game focuses on Earth and the nations there. There is no space exploration. Worst of all, it is visually boring! Where is all the art???? Perhaps I am spoiled by the product printed 25 years ago before computers dominated the industry, and expected that, with all of the resources produced in 25 years, this one would rock, and it does not even try.
I am not sure how the system itself will work for 2300AD. Mongoose Traveller is a good and simple system, so I will not rate it.
Original 2300AD books were visually interesting. There are lots of charts for such things as what language a nation speaks, where a planet or star system is, and many charts for star ship design.
The written material here is good. Cybernetics and DNA mods are covered well. These are things which were not deeply covered in the original products. Earth/Cybertech did some, but not much. I have the original books, so this part supplements them in this department.
The chief protagonist race of 2300AD are the Kafer. This product glosses over them: you receive no stats for GM usage, no ships, no equipment, and one small blurry picture. You will not be using the French Foreign Legion to fight the Kafers on Aurora in this game until a supplement is published.
As for weapons, the original 2300AD had tons of stats and pics of the weapons. Not this one. You have a few of each type.
I feel that the intention here is to focus on human versus human, and wait for the Alien Supplement to come out. This is very disappointing. A $29.99 pdf should have more depth. It seems to me that you are expected to play Cyberpunk 2300AD, as opposed to exploring the frontiers of space, whereas the original product focused on the frontier, with the Kafer War and The Aurora Source book.
Buy this if you have no other reference to 2300AD, or if you have all of the old books, in which case I am sure you can convert things. This book will not give you a feel for 2300AD.
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The written material is very good - in fact you could split the book into multiple books and kept the value.
The decision to go with a B&W interior was not a good one - it distracts from the quality and depth of the game.
It's a great system, with far more detail than the original game, but one where the detail does not detract from play.
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After months of anticipation, having loved the original 2300, I picked up this book on the release day and was immediately disappointed with the purchase. The book is antiseptic in presentation, devoid of decent art and presented in an uninspired layout. It reminds me of the Traveller books of the late 70's, before the days of computers. Speaking of which, there are a few 3-D renderings of classic vehicles and ships (the Kennedy cruiser for example) but they are extremely simple. Dense hex grids on the world maps making viewing of the geography difficult. The best (and only color) picture inside the book is an advertisement for another of Mongoose's products.
The writing, while not awkward, tends to jump around topics as the author tried to address too many things too quickly. More on this as I do more reading.
The pdf is weak copy of the layout without bookmarks or outline to scan and find topics (less expensive books from other publishers include this feature).
Considering the age in which this product laid out, the price charged, and in comparison to Mongoose's own Traveller Core book, this is a weak effort.
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