Mercenary and High Guard... But why?

[hogscape]

It's a pity Mongoose plans to supplant the new rules so quickly after their publication. I would have thought it a poor commercial move to invalidate a system before it's taken flight?

One thing that annoyed me about Traveller was the way in which new books upped the power level. Mercenary characters were far more powerful than characters generated via the 3-book set or Citizens of the Imperium and High Guard jettisoned the existing starship rules completely.

The thing I always loved about the original Traveller was its simplicity.

Isn't the new Traveller good enough already? If not why bother to release it at all?

I'll climb down from the soapbox now, after all, I'm happy to create my own 3rd Imperium Sectors, starships and characters.

 

[Golan2072]

My understanding is that Mongoose Mercenary, unlike CT Mercenary, would not render anything in the core-book redundant - it will supplement it, not supplant it. From what I could gather from various Mongoose-personnel posts on these forums, it'll add more guns, add character generation options (but not complexity), add optional combat rules, add more vehicles, discuss mercenaries and military forces and so on. MGT probably won't have the infamous CT gap between "basic" and "advanced" chargen, but rather more options on the same power level.

However, I share your fears about High Guard - and I hope that it will be more or less an extension of the core-book ship section rather than a total replacement.

 

[Deniable]

Everything I've read so far says that they're not doing this. For Mercenary they've already said they will be giving options for character generation but not changing it. There's a thread further down that has multiple mentions of this from the guy writing it.

Here it is: Mercenary Expectations.

 

[simonh]

It's a pity Mongoose plans to supplant the new rules so quickly after their publication.

Where did you read that they are going to do that?

Simon Hibbs

 

[klingsor]

Mongoose's Traveller book is based on the original three book edition of Traveller but they have the wisdom of thirty odd years of experience and all the subsequent books to draw on so they can avoid some of the mistakes made with the little black books such as the leap in detail and capability between Book 1 characters and those in Books 4 - 7 (while naturally making a few new ones along the way, such is life).

I am curious to see what they do with High Guard though. Personally I think I would have gone for percentage based drives from the start as it is simpler and is perhaps one of the more obvious differences between Book 2 and Book 5 ships.

 

[MongooseMatt]

Both Mercenary and High Guard (and all the other character books, for that matter) supplement the main rulebook - they do not replace it.

 

[cbrunish]

I'm excited for both of the books. Especially High Guard. I simply love creating fleets of capital ships.

 

[tneva82]

It's a pity Mongoose plans to supplant the new rules so quickly after their publication. I would have thought it a poor commercial move to invalidate a system before it's taken flight?

Well they could have put this extra material into corebook. Of course this would have made the book bigger(harder to find what you are looking for from core rules) and expensive. To include rules not everybody are interested. And delay release of game by several months while they are at it.

Or they can split additional material into separate books thus giving customers choise to buy what they want which gets more cheaper/expensive depending on their tastes.

One possible reason.

 

[Jame Rowe]

However, I share your fears about High Guard - and I hope that it will be more or less an extension of the core-book ship section rather than a total replacement.

I agree - if they would put something in which will allow for building ships up to 12,000 tons using the rules laid out in the core book I would be happy.

 

[rje]

The books are extensions of material in the core book. They do not invalidate or supersede it (e.g. like CT did).

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

Sounds interesting, I am interested in how they get beyond the Z drive limit for larger ships (multiple drives adding together maybe?).

If you don't expand the drive tables, or allow stacking drives, then you are limited to about 5000 tons for 1G, J1 ships.

 

[Charakan]

I'm relieved that Mercenary and High Guard are just going to supplement MGT, one of the things that irritated in my MegaTraveller campaign was as soon as the players saw the advanced characters they wouldn't play anything else so ruling out a lot of civ character archetypes.