Buyers Guide?

TechnoGolem

Mongoose
I've been interested in the game for a while now. I've been watching Seth Skorkowsky's YouTube videos on the game for a few years now and decided to finally dip my toes into the game. I prefer physical books and plan to order enough to get the free shipping.

The updated core book is a given choice, but what other books would you recommend to someone new to the game?
 
I'm sure you will need the Companion, as it gives you much alternate rules you may like.
The Central Supply Catalogue is also a must, as it gives you plenty of stuff your players will love.

After those 2, it really depends of your needs. I would recommand a setting book to have a playground to explore :
- Behind the Claw gives you 2 sectors with much informations, at the frontiers, where much can happen.
- The Sword Worlds gives you a sector with a distinct "viking" vibe you may well enjoy.
- The Third Imperium gives you much information about the nobility, navy, history of the dominant human power. Plenty of opportunities in those civilised worlds

Or you can opt for one campaign :
- The Pirates of Drinax : 3 books, one for the Trojan Reach (just aside the sectors explained in Behind the Claw), one for ships and one big adventure. It needs proactive players but it's one of the best campaign made. You will have also several other published adventures you can set inside.
- The Great Rift : Dwelve in the unknown in this setting, but i'm not the right people to talk about it.

Enjoy :)

K.
 
I agree that Central Supply Catalogue and Companion are the two most useful additional books. Everything else is cool, but niche. Whether you need it or not depends on what you are looking to do in the campaign. I would actually recommend the Journals of the Traveller's Aid Society as the next pick-ups, as they give you a little bit of everything in each one: adventures, gear, characters, world descriptions, etc.
 
In agreement with folks above. Core Rules, Companion, and CSC feel like the do the most. I then went supplement/sourcebook heavy, and am now batting cleanup with High Guard, Vehicles, and Robuts, as well as crazy more source books. I have a problem, I admit it.
 
High Guard is also a good shout if you want to make your own spaceships :)

I really don't think HG is a must buy. It's just useful when you want to tinker with spaceships. If it's not something you want to do and you take the spaceships you have in the corebook or CSC, you won't use it much. Same with Robots and Vehicles which are less useful imho.

I agree that Central Supply Catalogue and Companion are the two most useful additional books. Everything else is cool, but niche. Whether you need it or not depends on what you are looking to do in the campaign. I would actually recommend the Journals of the Traveller's Aid Society as the next pick-ups, as they give you a little bit of everything in each one: adventures, gear, characters, world descriptions, etc.
The JTAS are a really nice touch, yeah.

K.
 
Print or pdf?
If you want a taster get the Explorer's Edition in pdf and go to drivethru and download the two free adventures - Death Station and Stranded.
 
I really don't think HG is a must buy. It's just useful when you want to tinker with spaceships. If it's not something you want to do and you take the spaceships you have in the corebook or CSC, you won't use it much. Same with Robots and Vehicles which are less useful imho.


The JTAS are a really nice touch, yeah.

K.

Definitely not a need, more of a fun addition :)
 
The Core Rule Book and the Referee screen are really all you need. The 'Third Imperium Spinward Marches' book I use quite a lot for travelling/exploring (although you can also use the online interactive Traveller Map). The Companion is very good for more options and good explanations of things like Fuel Skimming. The CSC is probably the only other book I would get for some nice tech.

There are some good scenarios - especially the free updated Classic Traveller ones on Drivethru! The Great Rift boxset is very good and got some nice rules on deep space exploration.

The Vehicle Book, Robots, High Guard, Mercenary, all have some parts that are interesting but are fairly specific and not really that useful for most people in actual games I would suggest, unless you want to have some fun designing things on your own or fighting some large battles.

The only books on the horizon that I am interested in are Bounty Hunting and the World Builder's Handbook. They both sound very promising.
 
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Having purchased the core rules recently, I am looking at running a game. I am wondering what is in the companion? Also, the CSC is being updated? Background, I own just about everything for 1e, up to and including space stations, in fact I was a player in Barnes' pbp here; probably around '20 I stopped running mongoose. What else is good? I notice no robots in the core. Jump 3 ships would be good, under 5k tons, as I run a small ship universe.
 
Thanks, any news on when it might see print? I like to have hard copy. Probably don't really need anything except some stuff might be nice, like ships, robots, vehicles ... etc.. Any supplements good for bio-hacking or cybernetics?
 
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There's some cybernetics in the Central Supply Catalogue. I don't think there is a 2e supplement on biological stuff. There's some older stuff that would be easy to adapt.
 
Special_Supplement_1_Biotech_Vehicles? Yes, been years since I looked through it, iirc 2300 had dnam's also, might work.
 
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