Sold most my CT/Mongoose books can you guess which I kept?

[nats]

I havent played Traveller for a few years now. I used to enjoy designing things with Classic Traveller and I played a few games with my kids a few years ago.

But it seems that since Mongoose Traveller took over the franchise I seem to have just been buying more and more books and not really doing anything with them. I tried to read them got fed up and didnt go back. Sometimes I think you can get swamped by rules.

So I decided to do a massive Traveller cleanout. I got rid of all of my Classic Traveller books except for the seven major rules books and some of the adventures.

Then I got rid of all of my Mongoos books except for four.

And I feel a whole lot better.

So can you guess which four books I kept for Mongoose Traveller and which adventures I kept for CT?

 

[Anonymous]

OK, I'll bite

The Core Rule Book
Central Supply Catalogue
Spinward Marches
High Guard

That's what I would have kept and I'm the same, I buy more books than I use.

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

I have nearly all the Mongoose books. Read them for inspiration. I'm not much of a rules person.

 

[Reynard]

I'm a space squirrel. I have nearly all the books, supplements, aides and magazines from all the editions from the beginning of Classic to the present. I can't conceive getting rid of them. I mess with Mongoose constantly and reference the older editions especially for these forums more than any other RPG I have.

If I were to guess:
Core Book naturally.
High Guard for complete ship construction.
Scouts for complete world building.
Central Supply for complete equipment.

 

[Galadrion]

Huh. Well, if I were limited to only four of the MongTrav books, I'd have to go with:

The core rulebook - a must-have. The framework for using the rest of them.
High Guard - primarily for the shipbuilding rules.
The vehicle sourcebook - the Book 5/Book 6 combination version, for the vehicle building rules primarily.
And the Merchant book - for the expanded trade rules, and to some degree for the business entity rules.

But I use so many of the others, that I'm not about to de-stash like that.

 

[nats]

Well no you were all wrong! I kept the Core Rulebook, Spinward Marches, Central Supply Catalogue and the Traders and Cruisers book. I let everything else go. I want to concentrate on playing games with my kids and didnt need anything else just basic rules, setting info, equipment book and ship book.

BUT I am also seriously considering leaving Mongoose Traveller and going back to CT entirely, but using only books 1-3 of CT not the others which I feel introduced problems that werent resolved like unbalanced characters etc. If I was to do this I would probably get myself a good CT Starter Set because I think that is the most complete copy of the early rules.

What do you think I should do? I have never got into Mongoose Traveller at all. Is it worth persevering with and learning properly? Or should I just stick with CT permanently?

 

[AndrewW]

Well no you were all wrong! I kept the Core Rulebook, Spinward Marches, Central Supply Catalogue and the Traders and Cruisers book. I let everything else go. I want to concentrate on playing games with my kids and didnt need anything else just basic rules, setting info, equipment book and ship book.

There's Traders and Gunboats or Merchants and Cruisers...

What do you think I should do? I have never got into Mongoose Traveller at all. Is it worth persevering with and learning properly? Or should I just stick with CT permanently?

Use whatever works for you. If you prefer Classic Traveller then feel free to use that. Or combine and use parts of both. Take what isn't working for you in Mongoose Traveller and pull those parts out and replace with Classic Traveller for example.

 

[hdan]

I want to concentrate on playing games with my kids and didn't need anything else just basic rules, setting info, equipment book and ship book....

What do you think I should do? I have never got into Mongoose Traveller at all. Is it worth persevering with and learning properly? Or should I just stick with CT permanently?

I game with my kids and faced a similar quandary. While I still haven't "cracked the code" with them yet (one likes fighting the most, the other likes playing wizards, so Traveller isn't really where their heads are at), I lean towards CT as a "rules light" game. Sounds like that might be the right path for you, too.

Having said that, I take some concepts and tables from MgT, especially the character generation parts. I also use MgT's weapons categorizations, so you might get Gun Combat/Pistols instead of having to specifically choose Revolver or Autopistol.

I might suggest, depending on the personalities of your kids, that you pattern your game after something like "Mass Effect" or "Star Wars", where your players frequently get into conflict with other people or aliens, and they are trying to save the world(s) from some menace rather than trying to makes some money. My kids at least are more interested in being heroes than retiring wealthy.

 

[Condottiere]

I was going to guess Alien Modules, since rules evolve, but settings are the heart of any RPG.

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

What do you think I should do? I have never got into Mongoose Traveller at all. Is it worth persevering with and learning properly? Or should I just stick with CT permanently?

If doing character generation from CT and MgT doesn't help you decide still at this point, nothing will.

 

[Anonymous]

Well no you were all wrong! I kept the Core Rulebook, Spinward Marches, Central Supply Catalogue and the Traders and Cruisers book.

Hey! I got 3 out of 4!

What do you think I should do? I have never got into Mongoose Traveller at all. Is it worth persevering with and learning properly? Or should I just stick with CT permanently?

Advantage to MgT is it's a current/living/evolving product, there's new stuff coming out and while it seems painfully slow, there is also errata.

CT is available but not what I would call supported so any issues you have you'll have to sort yourself. CT dates back to a time when the mechanics of RPGs were in their infancy and to me, MgT has streamlined the tasks and combat to be more playable.

Disadvantage to MgT is it's a current/living/evolving product, there's new stuff coming out it isn't always as well thought thru in it's compatibility with the existing. If you're only using the 4 books listed, that's moot.

I'd hazard a guess that most people here (using CT or MgT) are using house rules and on the fly decisions that make for a hybrid ruleset. If your players are largely ignorant of the rules I think you can run simpler rules and have more fun and either rules set will work.

I'll bounce the question back at you: Which (basic) system are you most familiar with?

 

[nats]

Sorry it was Traders and Gunboats I kept.

I'll bounce the question back at you: Which (basic) system are you most familiar with?

Definitely CT, Ive read through the MgT books once but they never grabbed me enough to play a game with the 'new' system. I have played the original traveller a few times though and we all enjoyed it. I am also into D&D 5thEd and reading those books and watching the D&D videos was helped me enormously with my DM/referee development so I think I could do much better running a Traveller game than I used to. I might have to give another Traveller game a go.

Problem I have always had with Traveller compared to D&D is that whereas D&D has prescripted ways of carrying out combat etc I have never felt that Traveller has done the same very well. I mean the main task of piloting a starship is not even covered very well in terms of what skill checks you need and when.

Its a shame there dont seem to be any play videos around of people playing Traveller I have learned so much from watching people play D&D. Its definitely something that would be very useful to see in terms of learning how other people play the game. But then there is so much that Traveller is lacking compared to D&D ...

 

[Reynard]

If not video, a few of us are part of a Pirates of Drinax campaign online over on The Tangled web. We describe what our characters do and spell out the rolls for groundside and space encounters. The format of the rolls label the task and we often lay out all modifiers we use. It's easy to follow.

I've been a D&D fan literally as long as Traveller. Traveller was my second RPG because it was a scifi compared to a fantasy. I have all the editions. The game is good enough for me that I'm still playing it today. It's skill system is more casual and interpretive than D&D but D&D is highly focused on hack & slash and very limited skill actions. Once people stop comparing the two systems and play Traveller, the skill system works. Mongoose did a good job cleaning up and expanding the Classic rules.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Sorry it was Traders and Gunboats I kept.

I'll bounce the question back at you: Which (basic) system are you most familiar with?

Definitely CT, Ive read through the MgT books once but they never grabbed me enough to play a game with the 'new' system. I have played the original traveller a few times though and we all enjoyed it. I am also into D&D 5thEd and reading those books and watching the D&D videos was helped me enormously with my DM/referee development so I think I could do much better running a Traveller game than I used to. I might have to give another Traveller game a go.

Problem I have always had with Traveller compared to D&D is that whereas D&D has prescripted ways of carrying out combat etc I have never felt that Traveller has done the same very well. I mean the main task of piloting a starship is not even covered very well in terms of what skill checks you need and when.

Its a shame there dont seem to be any play videos around of people playing Traveller I have learned so much from watching people play D&D. Its definitely something that would be very useful to see in terms of learning how other people play the game. But then there is so much that Traveller is lacking compared to D&D ...

What would the typical treasure horde consist of in Traveller? What sort of "monsters" would you guard it with?

 

[hdan]

What would the typical treasure horde consist of in Traveller? What sort of "monsters" would you guard it with?

Caches of powerful military gear or valuable drugs are ok "magic items". Prototype weapons could be useful in certain campaign types.
Also, plain ol' credits are useful, especially if players have a ship or are some sort of military unit. (This includes bounty hunters, "Knight Saber" type avengers, etc.)

And there's always whatever macguffin your patron asked you to grab while you're there.

Monsters are usually just guards. You can vary their species and equipment levels, or make them combat robots, especially if you're playing with players who would rather their "bad guys" be non-human entities. You could also have some geneered creatures (think "Reticulan Parasites" or Chamax) as guard dogs to get by, and it's always possible that some horrifyingly nasty local wildlife has taken up refuge in the place you're trying to go.

 

[Jacqual]

Well no you were all wrong! I kept the Core Rulebook, Spinward Marches, Central Supply Catalogue and the Traders and Cruisers book. I let everything else go. I want to concentrate on playing games with my kids and didnt need anything else just basic rules, setting info, equipment book and ship book.

BUT I am also seriously considering leaving Mongoose Traveller and going back to CT entirely, but using only books 1-3 of CT not the others which I feel introduced problems that werent resolved like unbalanced characters etc. If I was to do this I would probably get myself a good CT Starter Set because I think that is the most complete copy of the early rules.

What do you think I should do? I have never got into Mongoose Traveller at all. Is it worth persevering with and learning properly? Or should I just stick with CT permanently?

Well that is pretty much how I play, CT books 1-3. I have a house rule character creation document which requires the books to use for my CT campaign. It has all the careers from book 1, as well as the Citizens book so I have 18 careers. But the Draft only covers book 1 careers, the document also covers mustering out with my house rules. I also have a 1 page pdf I got somewhere that has the MGT task resolution on it. I like MGT task resolution as it is so much cleaner then CT's. I use attribute mods from MGT as well.

 

[dragoner]

I have been slowly scaling back as well, waiting to see what was going to come, I'm not so hot to re-buy anything at v2. I didn't buy merc 2 because I didn't like the ammo rules, and nothing else appealed to me in it.

 

[nats]

I have been slowly scaling back as well, waiting to see what was going to come, I'm not so hot to re-buy anything at v2. I didn't buy merc 2 because I didn't like the ammo rules, and nothing else appealed to me in it.

I think you can go a bit mad buying books here and there that you will never use. I was getting to that point. But reading my D&D books has got me to realise that you can actually do a whole game based on just rolling a 10 15 or 20 task check on a 20 sided die and applying some skill DMs. On top of that all you really need is character creation, some combat rules, some equipment/weapons and a background/setting. Everything else can be pretty much done 'on the fly' or designed by the DM with a little bit of thought beforehand.

You dont needs loads and loads of rules in order to play a game. D&D gets by on a few pages of rules and I wish Traveller would get back to that sort of thing. The role playing is the fun part not the rules mongering.

I feel Traveller is really losing its way. You have all these design books and specialisation books and yet the basic books doesnt cover the basics well at all - creatures dont have speeds, the procedure for space flight is very sketchy, the combat is a bit woolly, an the character creation is a bit drawn out. It could all be done a lot better and more simply. It is a shame Traveller 5 didnt take the opportunity to simplify and consolidate matters with a concentration of role playing rather than trying to introduce even more complexity. I think T5 just went completely the wrong way!

 

[dragoner]

I think you can go a bit mad buying books here and there that you will never use. I was getting to that point. But reading my D&D books has got me to realise that you can actually do a whole game based on just rolling a 10 15 or 20 task check on a 20 sided die and applying some skill DMs. On top of that all you really need is character creation, some combat rules, some equipment/weapons and a background/setting. Everything else can be pretty much done 'on the fly' or designed by the DM with a little bit of thought beforehand.

You dont needs loads and loads of rules in order to play a game. D&D gets by on a few pages of rules and I wish Traveller would get back to that sort of thing. The role playing is the fun part not the rules mongering.

I feel Traveller is really losing its way. You have all these design books and specialisation books and yet the basic books doesnt cover the basics well at all - creatures dont have speeds, the procedure for space flight is very sketchy, the combat is a bit woolly, an the character creation is a bit drawn out. It could all be done a lot better and more simply. It is a shame Traveller 5 didnt take the opportunity to simplify and consolidate matters with a concentration of role playing rather than trying to introduce even more complexity. I think T5 just went completely the wrong way!

T5 is really bare bones in a lot of ways, imo the biggest complaint I've seen is that it's gone away from the 2d6 mechanic. But that is a whole other subject.

Mong's combat can get a bit wooly, I have a tendency to simplify things if I can, esp to keep the flow. Speed for animals I just judge by human standards, thus an animal is 2-3x faster or so, but at the same time, it's too easy to get animals that can brutally kill players, so there is a balance. Mong's most annoying bits for me are everything being spread out over multiple books, and some things don't scale like they should, such as vehicles and spacecraft, or the sensor hand packs in the scouts book.

Mostly it does well though, with a lot of options for the ref and players, and minimal legacy issues with using old stuff.