I agree with some of your concrete criticisms, but not your conclusion.

–Index–
The book would be improved by an index. As a former technical writer and project manager, actually reading the document and understanding its structure is far more important than an index. This makes the contents more important in a published volume.

–Size of the volume–
The primary audience for a core rule book is the Referee who will run the game. The T5 core book still has many things left out (Battle Class Ships, personal combat rules including tactical map based combat, game background, canon alien races, canon sector data e.g. Spinward Marches to name a few).

I have offered in this review the observation that the Player Manual promised as a future idea on the Kickstarter Page here will improve this situation.

Marc Miller’s philosophy seemed to be that he wanted a complete game presented in one volume – is this an ‘amateur mistake’? All I can say is that I like what has been produced and I will be using it.

–Professionalism of the process–
The product was marvellously backed on Kickstarter, and the money was invested in rewards for players on top of printing. I personally backed this product because on seeing the drafts I loved them. I understood the risks – I was backing someone else’s idea and a measure of trust was needed.

Did Marc Miller have the money to hire professional proof readers or an editor? I do not know, I have not seen any financial statements about how the quarter of a million dollars was dispersed.

But the fact that Marc could not get the project really rolling before putting it up on Kickstarter and that he has sold a licence to Mongoose and SJG years ago means me to conclude that he personally did not have the capital to put up for this project. And once he put it up on Kickstarter, time constraints meant that the process was always going to be a rush to the printers to get rewards out to backers.

Prior to the money being raised on Kickstarter, this was an amateur affair, but in the sense of an affair of people who loved the project. Don McKinney ably managed the process on the CoTI bulletin boards, and in the middle of the process suffered big health problems. We also had to cope with the deaths of key people involved (read the absent friends page carefully). With pride I include myself among the ‘army of dedicated playtesters’ mentioned at the front of the book. The editing and proofing work was done by a volunteer community. With the benefit of hindsight, I can see several ways of organising a better volunteer community.

–A second edition–
With the substantial errata still present in the book, I agree that a second edition is probably going to be necessary. Kickstarter is not an arms-length commercial transaction, it is about giving someone a start. On that basis, I am looking at the money I contributed as a worthwhile investment. It also means I will be purchasing a second edition and not looking at it as wasted money.

The Core Rules of T5 are now out in public and we can now join in a deep reading and understanding of Marc Miller’s ideas. The way he has laid out the foundation for all player character interaction with the universe is fascinating, leaving out detail that isn’t important (e.g. kilowatt consumption of robot brains).

–Market success?–
Will this product get market success? It is difficult to say – your judgement seems to be that it will not. You might be right. I am not sure – the blinding success of the Kickstarter is hard evidence that a lot of people believe in Marc Miller and are prepared to put their money where their hearts are.

T4, T20 and GT have indexes, but I haven’t really used the indexes in any of these. I have read the books and learned where to find the rules was looking for. None of these books are 650 pages, but the T20 book is 440 pages. I don’t think I will have any trouble learning the T5 book. (But I think that it would have been better with an index.)

It is a massively rushed product. Despite MM having the money and time to get it absolutely spot on he didnt even hire professional proof readers or an editor. That to me speaks volumes.

The need to include everything into one giant book was an amateur mistake, someone should have told him to split the stuff up into three or four books. I want my basic Traveller to be very simple and easy to pick up and game with. Complexity should come with optional follow on releases.

MM should have concentrated on getting a perfectly presented, beautifully produced, concise basic rule book out first and won over all the old players, just like Mongoose did with one of their few truly remarkable products, the Traveller Core Rulebook.

The route MM followed was probably the worst thing he could have done, producing a massive unwieldy book with tons of basic errors and no sensible arrangement. The real shame here is that either nobody had the sense to tell him where he was going wrong, or he didn’t listen.

I will be waiting for the 2nd Ed to come out, if there ever is one after this mess.