Silly Noob question

[rustorod]

I was going through character creation and do I roll 2d6 for each characteristic? Also, I already own Central Supply Catalogue, is Mercenary worth picking up? I saw some reviews that were less the positive.


Thanks.
Mike

 

[AndrewW]

I was going through character creation and do I roll 2d6 for each characteristic? Also, I already own Central Supply Catalogue, is Mercenary worth picking up? I saw some reviews that were less the positive.


Thanks.
Mike

Yup, usually 2d6 is rolled for each characteristic. Though there are exceptions for some alien races or mutations (ie: Strontium Dog).

Mercenary would depend on what you are looking for.

 

[dreamingbadger]

I was going through character creation and do I roll 2d6 for each characteristic? Also, I already own Central Supply Catalogue, is Mercenary worth picking up? I saw some reviews that were less the positive.


Thanks.
Mike

by default assuming a human then yes (it's on page 6 of the Traveller Rule book) , with the exception of PSI which is not rolled up until specific condition have been met in a mainstream Traveller campaign.

As for Merc depends on what you want, the list of toys is largely all in CSC; with the eratta, i think it is not a bad document; the newer edtitions will feel more complete.

 

[rustorod]

Thanks for the responses. I like how the supplements flesh out the characters a bit. I have the Scout, Agent, Merchant Price, and Scoundrel books. I had the original Merc book years back and it was our favorite. I was wondering if it gave a little more depth to being a mercenary. I'll keep an eye for it on Amazon.

Thanks.
Mike

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

The MGT Mercenary has a nice section on how to write up Mercenary Tickets, so if your game is going to be about a bunch of mercenarys, then I would strongly recommend it; but if mercenaries are not going to be integral to the campaign, CSC probably has all the goodness that you would need.

 

[rinku]

Mercenary does have a few useful extra rules re combat, and does add the option of your military character doing a term or two as a merc, even if the campaign isn't going to be merc-heavy. I'd tend to reccomend it over CSC if someone was choosing between them, as CSC is padded with a lot of low tech and silly gear (and frankly, I'm surprised Games Workshop hasn't taken legal action over some of the more blatant rip offs...).

 

[alex_greene]

Mercenary does have a few useful extra rules re combat, and does add the option of your military character doing a term or two as a merc, even if the campaign isn't going to be merc-heavy. I'd tend to reccomend it over CSC if someone was choosing between them, as CSC is padded with a lot of low tech and silly gear (and frankly, I'm surprised Games Workshop hasn't taken legal action over some of the more blatant rip offs...).

The low tech gear's there for a reason: not every Traveller setting's going to be all gleaming glass and burnished aluminium towers and screaming starfighters with blazing lasers scoring the hulls of capital ships.

Some time, you might get a setting where the characters are hacking through some dense jungle that's never seen sentient life, or trekking across some post - apocalyptic landscape with a weapon that's no more sophisticated than a couple of rocks tied together with rope.

 

[Nuclear Fridge Magnet]

My Traveller experience (as a 20-year GM!) is that low-tech swamp worlds are more likely than shiney TL 15 utopias.

Plan on using AK-47s rather than FGMP-15s that need spare parts you can only get on a world 21 light-years away...

 

[rinku]

Yeah, but you don't need anything but the basic book rules to game out a swamp world.

Look, *some* TL1-3 stuff is OK, but it just isn't going to get used enough in most Traveller campaigns to justify the amount of the book spent on it IMHO.

 

[alex_greene]

This is going to sound like heresy, but as a Referee you've got to ask yourself: what do you want to do with this book?

Mercenary is about being a professional soldier, working for money and for a generous Patron with more credits than sense. If you look at the book as a guide to living the life as a soldier of fortune, this is it.

The tech is not nearly so relevant as the lifestyle: shady back room deals, wealthy clients shaking hands over brandy and cigars in some gentleman's club, sweating suited couriers sitting in sweltering bars in some dustball in the back end of a town on some backwoods planet waiting for the clients to turn up so he can hand over the Samsonite case chained to his arm, containing the client's orders and contract, and then a whole lot of fun in some swamp world, blacked-out faces, crappy fatigues chafing, up to the waist in swamp water, picking off armed, brassed-off locals with some eyeball-achingly primitive rifle.

Same kind of deal with the rest of the books - Scout, Agent, Scoundrel etc. The focus is on the people, not really on the tech. Well, apart from High Guard - I've not heard of many people who focus on the Naval careers. Everybody seems to go straight for the ship design engine.