Twin Dragons said:
Now that Traveller has more setting books out and on the way I'd love to see a conversion book done to cover converting characters (although I admit it wouldn't be too much of a hassle but some settings will require less or more work to do so) and also some info on using choice bits from specific settings to use in others (races/careers/equipment/tech/other).
This would also be a good companion piece for setting hopping PCs. Imagine playing a character that has alternate reality hopping hardware (Holly Hop Drive from Red Dwarf?) and being the explorers of these settings. Personally, this book would be ambrosia for me (I'm a huge fan of Sliders).
I'm not actually sure that this would be needed - it seems to me that (at least for the settings that are already out) you have all of the information you need in the 'core setting book' to do the kind of adaptation you're talking about.
More to the point, every time a new setting gets licensed or invented, the proposed setting-conversion book becomes out-of-date, as it won't contain the new information. Do you really want to re-spend $30 every time a new setting comes out, IN ADDITION to the new $30 that you're spending for the setting itself?
A better way to go is to include the conversion information for a particular setting in the core book for that setting - e.g., in The Universe of B5, Hammer's Slammers, Judge Dredd, Strontium Dog, et cetera, using the Traveller Third Imperium setting as the 'common base' - you'd have the awkwardness of having to convert a Hammer's Slammers character to Core Traveller (3I) and then from Core Traveller to a hypothetical "Legacy of the Aldenata", but I don't see any sensible way to otherwise accomplish the aim.
(For those setting books that have already been published and do not include conversion info, perhaps a free PDF or small pamphlet distributed free at FLGS would/should be an option, with a commitment from Mongoose to include such conversion information in future editions of those settings, plus any new settings.)
