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Traveller20 (T20) is a d20 update to the venerable Traveller science fiction RPG line. It's a combination player's handbook/game master's guide. What it doesn't have is any Traveller setting information (or, what it has, it has in the same sense that the D&D PH and DMG have Greyhawk setting information - there's core hardwired assumptions in the races and tech, but nothing explicit).
Side note: I have not played Traveller before. I own a couple random old Traveller supplements as part of my eclectic RPG buying habits, and have read and enjoyed the first 4 or so books in the GURPS:Traveller series, but am not a Traveller "grognard". Therefore my perspective coming into the game was that of a moderately informed outsider. I have played in a T20 campaign for about six months now, so have decent experience with this ruleset, but can't compare it to previous Traveller rulesets for you - sorry.
Format
The book's black and white, hardbound, with a couple small color sections. The art is sparse, but of passable quality. Much of the art appears to be single-sourced, and the color sections repeat previous illustrations, just in color this time (they're collections of character and starship art). Not every vehicle, spaceship, gun, etc. is illustrated (in fact very few are), and there are a number that really need illustrations - the grav belt, is it "James Bond rocketpack" size or "part of normal clothing?" T20's interior is functional and readable. It could really benefit from better graphic design - the tables (esp. in the tandard designs section) are sometimes hard to read, there are very few illustrations, and no helpful graphics (you know, the standard stuff like "here's the alien races standing side by side in silhouette so you can get a picture of relative sizes"). Some of the sections, the Prior History section and the design sequences in particular, could have greatly benefitted from flowcharts and other graphic aids. The editing's pretty bad (yes, worse than RPG average). There's a large amount of errata on the QLI Web site, but even more errata that they don't mention (I personally posted a number of items on their forums months ago, but haven't seen the errors mentioned officially). As is traditional for poorly edited games, the example character generation is incorrect in a number of different places, don't let it throw you.
Content
Well, I can say one thing - there's lots of it.
Characters
After the initial fiction and "what is" bits, you have 126 pages of character creation. They've added two new stats, Education (Edu) and Social Standing (Soc). Edu is useful and is used as a base for most technology-oriented skills. Soc is less useful, it's more roleplaying effect plus upkeep. I think this should have been a separate metric, like "honor" in Oriental Adventures or the like, because it's something that should be malleable over the life of a character. Get a noble title? Soc goes up a lot. "Felon wanted for particularly repulsive crimes?" Soc goes down a lot. Not appropriate for a stat.
They have a batch of human and alien races, including human subraces. For humans, there's the Solomani, Vilani, Zhodani, mixed, and "other." Their stats don't differ and they only get a small paragraph or who of description. Then you get the Vargr (wolf guys), Aslan (lion guys), Luriani (aquatic humans), Sydites (strong, dumb humans), Ursa (bears), and Virushi (large rhino-armadillo things). This section left me wanting something a bit more "alien," but apparently these are the usual Traveller suspects. In general I like them.
Then a character picks (well, randomly generates) a homeworld. Based on type of world and tech level and other factors you get some starting feats and skills (if you're from a mid tech world, you get the Vessel/Wheeled feat so you can drive a car). Now, on to classes. There are only 9 base classes - Academic, Barbarian, Belter, Mercenary, Merchant, Noble, Professional, Rogue, and Traveller. Then there's 4 "service classes," Army, Navy, Marines, and Scouts. And there's three unexciting prestige classes, TAS Field Reporter, Big Game Hunter, and Ace Pilot. On the plus side, they've turned all class abilities into feats, and you get to choose which you take at levels where you get class bonus feats. I've never understood why d20 didn't go this way in the first place. On the minus side, they have left "gaps" in the character level progression - you get a class feat at levels 1 and 2, but not 3 or 4 or any level divisible by 3 or 4 (presumably because you get your character bonus feat and ability increase at those levels). However, since multiclassing is unrestricted, that makes a substantial incentive to take another class after level 2, since you won't get anything more until level 5.
The skills section isn't terribly surprising. There's a bunch of almost-like-d20-Modern skills. The distinctive parts are the T/* skills, which is a whole nest of technical skills (like d20 Craft, Profession, or Knowledge skills). Profession/Administration and Profession/Prospecting get particular attention.
The feats concentrate on skill use a lot. You could probably slim the section down a bit by saying "you can just make up a feat that gives you a +2 on two plausibly related skills when performing a broad type of task." There's one feat that no warrior wants to be without - Martial Training. It gives you a +1 to BAB for every 4 character levels! Most of the d20 shooting feats you'd expect are here; lots of the melee ones have been removed, like Power Attack. You also use feats to be able to operate certain types of vessel, and they get pickily specific - if you get vessel/ground, you have to pick wheeled or tracked or legged or hovercraft... In my opinion either this should just have been an overloadable skill (Pilot/*) or there should be a class that gets a lot of Vessel feats, as feats are far between enough that you'll never be able to operate too many kinds of vehicle (for those who pull out the realism argument here, it's possible in this game system for someone to be a technical expert in every field of human endeavor as T/* is skill, not feat, based).
So far this is like any random d20 game - but now we get to the distinctive Traveller part of character generation. Usually Traveller characters aren't starting L1 characters. They have a "Prior History" system that allows you to put your character through University, tours of duty in the armed forces, working a job, etc. The character gets XP and other bonuses from these (usually four year) terms. The process is randomized - there are rolls for "survival" (an old Traveller holdover from when your character could actually die during character creation; now it's more of a random mishap result), for XP and cash bonuses, for rank advancement, decoration, and commission... It's an interesting system where you can kinda guide what you want your character to be but are at the mercy of the dice for a lot of it. You can stop whenever you want to, or push your character on into middle age... Since in a SF game levels don't mean as much as they do in D&D, it's OK that you start out with differently leveled characters. So you can be older and higher level, possibly with stat penalties for age and advancing slower in play, or you can start younger and lower level, but advancing quickly. It's a good system and one that can be adapted to any other d20 game with a little work.
If you don't like randomly generated characters, this is not the system for you. Nearly every aspect of a character's background is randomized in some way. But as long as you don't mind that (and I don't), it's great fun.
Combat
Here's where T20 doesn't particularly shine. First of all, there's a lot of d20 details that aren't handled rigorously - the rules leave a lot of room for confusion on natural weapons, flat-footedness, etc. - things that are all very precisely defined in D&D, and you'd think they would have just pulled all that over. Also, the section is poorly organized and confusing - if you don't already know d20 combat, you're going to have a high "what the hell?" factor.
In Traveller20 DEX is used rather than STR as a melee attack bonus - which is fine, but it means STR is devalued pretty heavily in the game and there's a lot of aliens whose distinctive is high STR - Aslan, Sydites, Virushi, Ursa.
Wisely, T20 uses a dual wound point/hit point system. You have Lifeblood equal to your CON, and that's what lethal weapons do damage agains. You have Stamina like normal level-based hit points, and that's for nonlethal damage and fatigue and stuff. This also means that you can die fast in T20.
Armor (though this is incompletely explained here) is really effective in T20. That 6 points is first applied to the AC of the opponent when you roll to hit. Then, if you hit, it reduces damage by dice and then by points - so it would remove up to the AR in *dice* of damage, and when you get to the last die it removes points. A normal weapon might do 2d12 points of damage. Normal armor might have an AR of 6. So the target's AC is increased by 6, and if you hit then you'd remove the (lowest) d12 and then take 5 points off whatever the other d12 rolled. So armor rocks on ice, you need it, you want it.
There's sections for vehicle and starship combat as well.
Psionics
There's a small section on psionics, basically they tend to be minor and you ned psi-drugs to do a lot. There's a feat that gets you natural psi talent, but you have to be tested for psi power which is a random roll.
Technology and Equipment
Then there's a big section on tech and equipment. Traveller has the concept of Tech Levels (heck might have invented the concept back in the day for all I know). A dagger is TL2, a revolver TL4, a laser rifle TL9, and a fusion gun TL14. (Here in real life we're early TL8). There's bunches of weapons and armor and adventurer-type equipment. My one complaint is that there's no real allowance for advancement of tech level. For example, light intensifier goggles are available at TL7, weigh .25 kg, and cost Cr500. But apparently even if you're hanging out at TL14 you still have to buy the TL7 version - they don't get lighter, better, less expensive, or anything. I know it's a daunting task to try to figure out how to work that, but I would have appreciated some stab at it.
Design Sequences
OK, we're halfway through the book. Now we get into 100+ pages of "design sequences", which are rules for designing vehicles, starships, computers, etc. There's also lots of "standard designs" for those who don't want to do excessive math. The design system is of moderate complxity and works fairly well - it's more than the Silhouette system but less than GURPS (or, God forbid, VDS). It's not effect-based, it's a standard buy-the-pieces-and-put-them-together-and-find-the-cost system. It works OK, but has some wonky bits, and one of the most distinctive Traveller bits of tech - "battledress," a personal armored suit a la Starship Troopers - doesn't work worth a damn in it. (See many threads at travellerrpg.com on why.)
Travelling
Then there's a short but good section on traveling in the Traveller universe. How you book passage, what you can work as on a starship, starship encounters, etc.
Universe/Worlds Development
There's an apparently time-honored Traveller tradition of designing planets and giving them codes called Universal World profiles (UWPs) that sum up their deal briefly. You use this section to make up a world - terrain type, tech level, government, weather, critters, etc. It's short but sweet - a more comprehensive system could be bolted onto it that would do more work. But - where's the bad guy aliens? Or other threats?
Traveller Campaigns
Some short info on usual Traveller campaign types and how to run them.
Then there's appendices giving mook NPC stats, a glossary, an index, and some handouts.
Not necessarily a drawback, but you need to be advised - there's no Traveller setting information in this book (the Imperium, etc.). So this tome contains what you need rules-wise to play and GM, but don't buy it thinking you'll go from 0 to Traveller with it. People who are already Traveller-knowledgable and have setting information can easily adapt it.
The book's d20 bits could be more sound, however. And there's no threats except for NPCs of the PC races and some critters. There's no K'Kree, Hivers, Virus, or anything else.
Summary
On Style - I had to really soul-search for a while over whether this should be a 2 or a 3. Not much art, poor editing, and they need to hire a professional graphic designer badly. It's "unattractive" but not "ugly" - however, most $45 print RPGs I've bought lately have good production values so I can't call this average for this product's class. It is average across all RPG products, including PDFs and miscellaneous third party rules supplements, but as a high-dollar hardback main rules system it's a cut below the standard.
On Content - There's a lot of stuff here, and some great crunchy bits like the Prior History system and the world development section (not to mention the design sequences, which though flawed are ambitious). It's worth having for the (pseudo) hard sci-fi stuff to lend an air of realism to your other sci-fi games as well. So, in the end, I'd definitely call it meaty.
On Play - I have enjoyed playing Traveller under the T20 ruleset. Our group has house-ruled a bunch to cover over the weaker parts (like medicine, TLs and equipment, etc.) and that's pretty easy to do. And the ruleset is more enjoyable than straight d20 Modern for my money.
