If you do include a minis line do a bunch of different unarmed civilians.

If you do revise any books please revise the Merchant Marine career from Book 7.



No thank you. You would've had me if you'd said 25MM, though, as I want something I *could* wargame with.

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Baron Damascaa Kiikiigulii/Sakhag/Antares. Deal with it - come visit!

My impression is that the RPG hobby has been in a slow decline ever since the d20 wave crested and that the premature announcement of D&D 4e was the final nail in the coffin, with many people choosing to leave the hobby entirely rather than upgrade to a new version of the flagship fantasy RPG. The only bright spot on the horizon is that the emergence of PDF publishing and POD has made it economically viable to publish products with very small print runs, enabling the industry to weather the storm. Of course, the whole publishing industry is in a state of upheaval at the moment and who knows how things will pan out in the long term.

That's about right.

4e split the D&D part of the hobby, killed the third party market but did wonders for Paizo.

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"Bringer of Warmth, Carrier of Carrion, Prophet of Dilgarness, Speaker of all thing Llort!"

Part-time Narn.

ACTA playtester
Victorious Grand Admiral

Yes...but it's a bigger slice of a smaller pie.

And this creates issues for Traveller because SF roleplaying has never been as popular as fantasy. Without a strong fantasy market, there are fewer gamers around willing to try an SF game.

Here's an interesting question - if Mongoose produces a second edition of the Traveller core rulebook should it place a greater emphasis on the OTU setting in the core rules or should it strive to be more of a generic SF ruleset?

Total number of PDF copies sold rarely makes a big dent within any reaasonable time - their benefit is that they can carry on selling years after release.

As for Frank, the answer to your first question will be 'unknown' and the second would be 'probably nothing.'

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Matthew Sprange

Mongoose Publishing
http://www.mongoosepublishing.com

My vote is very strongly for "generic". When I first encountered Traveller back in the 80s, what I loved most was the amount of setting- and campaign-generation baked into the rules. Ever since then, I've always used Traveller as a toolbox for building settings, regardless of whether it was for an actual Traveller game or not. Most of the tables and meta-game systems can be applied directly to any sci-fi game and they're not that difficult to adapt for fantasy or other genres.

Meanwhile, when I have played games using the full Traveller rules, the OTU setting has never interested me in the least. I'd much rather roll up a subsector (or sector) of my own and go from there without having to worry about what might be happening in the canon OTU timeline. (Not to mention that rolling my own also lets me get rid of the overarching Imperium, lower the average TL/population figures, etc. if I so choose.)

As a Traveller since the days of the original Box with the first three Little Black Books, I STRONGLY recommend that it stay as neutral as possible. Sandbox is how Traveller started. Also, since Mongoose has now published quite a few non-OTU setting books, if they make the OTU more integrated into the rules, they will have a much harder time supporting their other lines. 2300AD seems to be off to a good start and Judge Dredd is EVERYWHERE right now.

Black books should stay as generic as possible. Setting books are where you apply the rules with a slight twist.

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l vote for 0TU since having a setting build in makes parts of the rules [Vehicle / ship creation , tech - oriented characters ] more playable since it gives hard rules instead of the "if the GM feels good it might work" status that sector has now IMHO. Since I dislike debate style systems or systems that depend on the GM sharing my idea [or understanding them] a hardcoded setting please

Generic, generic, generic. I have built so many different settings using Traveller over the decades, Alpha Persei, Ursa Majoris, the Capella Authority, Roman sailing in the Mediterranean (!). The Traveller tool-kit made all this easy...

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Paul Elliott
ORBITAL: The Solar System Setting for Traveller, a hard setting full of TL 9 technology, rockets, landers, Orion capsules and colonies on Mercury, Mars and the moons of Jupiter and Saturn.

http://zozer.weebly.com/orbital.html

You know I have played for 36+ yrs and have always had my Traveller campaign set in the Verge sector when my players play in a standard game based campaign. I have also had or used other campaigns were I have had one set in a BSG setting, andother in a Space1999 setting, and still another based in a 2300 style setting. That being said I look at any book as a pure resource book to be used as a reference only anyway, I always rewrite my own stuff anyway.

So for me I just want more stuff written is all and I will just utilize it as best I can, if I so feel it is of value or not.

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37+ yrs of RPGing, War Gamer, Table Top Minatures - Resin Space Minis
AD&D, D&D v2.5, D&D v3.5 & v3.75+ Pathfinder, Traveller, 2300 AD Traveller, Hero Systems v5R, Conan, Gama World, D100 Basic Roleplaying, D20 System. Anything SciFi

Generic Core rules, with maybe a small chapter on how a setting can be made/established, using the 3I as an example.

Then produce Setting books for those who want more detail.

Dave Chase

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It is also the right to walk away from those you don't want to listen to.

Ok...a couple of related questions....

Should a new edition of the core rulebook spend expand upon the current exploration of alternative technological paths such as warp drives and stargates / artificial wormholes? Or should it stick as close as possible to technological paradigm of the OTU?

What about settings where portable energy weapons are more common than they are in the OTU (blasters, disruptors, etc)? Should Traveller offer stats for these weapons in settings where they are available?

And how should Traveller tackle potentially game-changing technologies such as cybernetics, artificial intelligence, genetic engineering, and nanotechnology? In a technologically conservative setting of the OTU these technologies either don't exist or are heavily regulated by the Imperium, but they are of great importance in other SF settings.

Even if we stick close to the OTU, there are areas where a subtle update of the technological assumptions may be worthwhile - for example, Mongoose has already updated the look and feel of battledress to have more of an anime influence. Are there other areas where long-standing technological assumptions could be revised? For example, the Advanced Combat Rifle looked awesome back in 1977, but doesn't look quite so impressive in 2012.

Are the Luriani close enough

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Andrea

Keep it generic. I'd actually want to make it more generic if anything (remove OTU alien details, etc), and expand it out to be as inclusive of any sci-fi settings as possible.

However, a release of a HB Core OTU book would be a very good idea to follow.

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