a Grumbe about Buying Books for a few pages of info

MrUkpyr

Banded Mongoose
I am going to use Agents as my example, but the other books have had much the same situation.

In Agents we have a number of pages which go into detail about how Law Levels work. Each Level goes into a bit of detail about what is prohibited and some of the logic involved.

Now that is something *very useful* to most Traveller referees and players.

BUT, I don't have *any* people in my game who are playing Agents or Bounty Hunters.

I don't have any PCs who fit into the Scoundrel category, but I'm wondering what info will be found in that book which could be used by everyone.

I've got 2 PCs with Psionics, so I am purchasing Psion.


It is very frustrating to have a book with 5-10 pages which are really useful, but the rest is marginal at best.

As a few examples of what I mean....
- Law Level from Agents
- Mining Asteroids or Belter Character Creation from Beltstrike
- Nobility and what it means from Spinward Marches
- Survival from Scouts
- and other examples from other books.

I would love to own all the books, but I cannot afford to purchase them all.

What I would love to see are sections like the above being put into PDF format so they could be purchased separately as needed.

Is it possible for something like this to be done to assist us poorer mice?
(grin)
 
MrUkpyr said:
...BUT, I don't have *any* people in my game who are playing Agents or Bounty Hunters.
So why not NPCs?

It is very frustrating to have a book with 5-10 pages which are really useful, but the rest is marginal at best.
Well, that depends on what is important to the individual - and marginal typically refers to quality aspects - I would say, perhaps, the rest of the book has less value for you!

Of course, there is nothing unique in any of this. Books generally aren't sold by chapter or page. Even online. (Professional periodicals not withstanding). Most people don't use TOC or Outlining features (or even Styles) in MS Word - but they gotta buy the whole package to get the parts they want.

Can't really see this being profitable for Mongoose - the overhead even online - keep in mind online payments cost money to the retailer for each transaction to the banks and credit processing firms, not to mention the online hosting and database fees - makes this somewhat prohibitive (i.e. - you still might not afford it).

And if you can't afford the official rules - nothing stops you from making up your own - heck, you even have a start from books available at local stores or in online previews (unless you bought Agents, how do you know those legal rules exist?)!
 
MrUkpyr said:
I don't have any PCs who fit into the Scoundrel category, but I'm wondering what info will be found in that book which could be used by everyone

Criminal organizations, pirates, perhaps the lost words section. Could be a bit in there depending on ones needs. Even without any scoundrel type players plenty of NPC possiblities. And might still make use of stuff like intrusion.
 
MrUkpyr said:
Is it possible for something like this to be done to assist us poorer mice?
(grin)

I suggest buying the BOOKS (physical objects) that you use frequently and getting the PDFs for those you only need 'some' of.
Then print out the parts you want to have handy.

That will save some money.
Books (even as a PDF) sold by the chapter seems unlikely.
 
get your players to buy the books?? pool resources?

but i find with most matirials there is always something in them to get the old synapses firing, plot lines, interesting characters or just something for you to go... oh!!

every book so far has had its uses. even mercenary which is in my opinion the weakest publication but still has some good bits in it.

chef
 
This is really no diferent than the situation with D&D and many other RPGs. You can play the game just fine with the core book(s), everything else is just icing - it's up to you how much you use.

And as an OGL system, I'll bet somebody somewhere eventually puts the stuff you're looking for into something you can use, whether it's an OGL compilation, or their own take on the same things.
 
The core book itself is really a gold mine. It has enough of everything you mention except belters to cover you. There are also the SRDs for some books, e.g. the SRD for Mercenary has the new skills and expanded Army mishap table.

If you want material that's inspirational or gives useful background that can easily be adapted to Traveller, Far Future Enterprises (farfuture.net) sells collections of earlier edition Traveller material on CD. For about the price of a campaign book, you can get a CD that has all the original ("Classic Traveller") stuff on it--rulebooks, expansions, supplements, adventures, maps, boardgames. Another, the JTAS CD, has all the articles on Traveller from the GDW house organ magazine from several years. I have these two and they're great resources for my present Mongoose Traveller campaign.

The original Traveller stuff translates very easily to present Traveller rules.You'll want to pay attention to weapon damage, the original didn't have damage effects from die roll results. There are other minor differences, too, but a whole lot of stuff is drag-and-drop simple to bring in. I've been using this to flesh out my present campaign since the playtest. Even though I've got better than half the present books (probably about 80%), I still draw from these disks.
 
So what is TOO Much for a game book?

When I was buying into Traveller, low those many years ago the average was a couple of days lunch money for a new aquistion ($3 to $5)

How much would you pay for a 48 page digest sized staple bound book?
 
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