Travellers Needed - The Future of Traveller

[CrusaderWarden]

Well, with Robots on the way, my immediate "must have" is covered.

I'd love to see a campaign or supplement that focuses on law enforcement, bounty hunters, and criminal gangs and organizations. Whether its Cops & Robbers in space, smugglers, bounty hunting, etc., I'd love to see a Traveller treatment. Preferably focusing on both sides of the law rather than just one over the other.

I don't know if Pioneer will address this, but supplements dealing with founding colonies & outposts would be extremely interesting, as well.

2300 Core Worlds or similar high-population/high society worlds of the Third Imperium for cyberpunk or neo-noir style games would be interesting.

I think this was done in 1e, but being able to create/run organizations appears to be one of the few "setting/world integration subsystems" currently missing from the game.

I'm sure I'll come up with more, but those are my first pass.

 

[CrusaderWarden]

A Traveller GM adventure design book. Science fiction RPGs are more challenging to GM than fantasy RPGs by virtue of how broad they can be, the presence of technology, the options available to the players, etc. I'm envisioning a Referee-focused book with adventure design advice/essays by Traveller adventure writers. Adventure generator tables, ideally geared toward the various campaign styles laid out in the core rulebook, and many examples of how to incorporate Traveller's various subsystems (trading, spacecraft operations, combat, space combat, chases, etc) into adventures successfully. Genre-lenses, optional setting tweaks/rules, and other guidance.

Ideally, it would showcase examples for each of Traveller's settings: Third Imperium, 2300, Pioneer, etc.

 

[TrippyHippy]

Having been petitioning for a Robots book for about the last five years, I absolutely concur it is a major priority on the wish list - but it is on the release schedule, so it is a matter of patience now.

I would also definitely like to concur with the notion of having an App like Cyberpunk Red Companion for Traveller.

We have had the RPGSuite program for some time and while I use it all the time, the big thing they have been missing is to just have a simple, inexpensive app that players can buy to generate and store characters, and also a dice-rolling mechanism. D&D Beyond is another app we use - and they manage to make sales of all their books through the same device and link it to community media also.

Why can’t we have the same thing for Traveller?

 

[IanBruntlett]

A Traveller GM adventure design book. Science fiction RPGs are more challenging to GM than fantasy RPGs by virtue of how broad they can be, the presence of technology, the options available to the players, etc. I'm envisioning a Referee-focused book with adventure design advice/essays by Traveller adventure writers. Adventure generator tables, ideally geared toward the various campaign styles laid out in the core rulebook, and many examples of how to incorporate Traveller's various subsystems (trading, spacecraft operations, combat, space combat, chases, etc) into adventures successfully. Genre-lenses, optional setting tweaks/rules, and other guidance.

Ideally, it would showcase examples for each of Traveller's settings: Third Imperium, 2300, Pioneer, etc.

Having read some system-independent books about aspects of adventure design, I think these books work best with multiple authors - as done https://enginepublishing.com/.

OTOH, Mongoose has already published a lot of Traveller specific info that help with adventure design with their 1st edition. Off the top of my head:-

• Campaign Guide

• 760 Patrons (2e)

• 1001 Characters

• Adventure Seeds

And, to some extend, the Traveller Companion, a Traveller 2nd edition book.

 

[blaster219]

Portable Web Apps that can run on any platform for ship/vehicle building and character creation.

Take the one for Star Trek Adventures for example. Runs in the browser on my phone, my tablet and my Chromebook. Generates PDF sheets for starships, PCs and NPCs. Although, creating editable PDFs would be an improvement.

 

[TrippyHippy]

ENWorld just announced that they are not renewing their Judge Dredd and 2000AD license.

Maybe it could be the right time to bring it back - possibly as a standalone game based on the core mechanics of Traveller, but with tailored differences?

 

[Darren66]

I would like to see more Sector or Domain sourcebooks. The Domain of Gateway has always been a favourite of mine, and one I’d be happy to write or contribute to.

 

[GamerDude]

May I enquire a bit more about the proposed Prime Directive for Traveller book?
Is it potentially slated for some time soon? How is it going to be supported? What sort of thing should we be looking forward to?

well, as the author of the TPD books I can speak to some things.

Listed as I think of them:
1) The TPD core book is currently being Playtested as the material is written.
2) All four books currently out for GURPS/d20M are planned for TPD (Core, Federation, Klingons, Romulans).
3) All the background, Histories, species, etc in each of these books for the Star Fleet Universe (SFU) will be in the TPD editions
4) We (ADB) are shooting for releasing the PDF of the core book in Feb 2022 with print approx 2 months later (if things go according to plan)
5) Right now the core book will have over 30 playable species from across at least 10 empires. The SFU is broken down by “Empire/Species/Race” ex: “Federation/Human/African”.
6) Besides the small adjustments to the core MGT2 careers so the fit the SFU, the core book will have careers for at least Starfleet, Starfleet Marines, Federation Mercant Marines, the Galactic Intelligence Agency (GIA), and the Federation Marshals Service.

I’m probably forgetting a few things but those are the high points.

 

[CrusaderWarden]

I'd love to see a career expansion book. I just discovered some of the MT1 books that seem to flesh out/expand the career options for increased detail/specialization. They look very interesting and seeing a MT2 treatment would be fantastic.

 

[L23]

1) More big campaigns.
2) Psion book.
3) Bestiary.
4) Yet more big campaigns.

 

[CrusaderWarden]

Yeah. Agree on all 4 points.

 

[dmccoy1693]

3) Bestiary.

Have you checked out Foreven Worlds: Creatures of Distance Worlds?

 

[Tarkin]

Rules for Solo play, and Solitaire Adventures (like Chaosium's Scorpion Hall and Alone Against the Wendigo, or WFRP's Night of Mystery).

 

[agentwigggles]

A big book of art.
In particular, a big book of Aliens Art.
Traveller has a long history of weird-ass aliens. And overall its pretty neat.

But I find myself always at odd at trying to find out to use for them for our game. We sometime have some scant black and white line art.
A big book of art for all (well a lot of them) aliens and the more exotic Humaniti.

Though ideally would be an art generator or a character marker. By art marker, for me at least, I mean something like with a good amount of premade faces, chests and legs and lots of clothing/accessory items and the ability to adjust the colors.

 

[briansommers]

Traveller the computer simulation

 

[GamingGlen]

A big book of art.
In particular, a big book of Aliens Art.
Traveller has a long history of weird-ass aliens. And overall its pretty neat.

But I find myself always at odd at trying to find out to use for them for our game. We sometime have some scant black and white line art.
A big book of art for all (well a lot of them) aliens and the more exotic Humaniti.

Though ideally would be an art generator or a character marker. By art marker, for me at least, I mean something like with a good amount of premade faces, chests and legs and lots of clothing/accessory items and the ability to adjust the colors.

I would love an art book, but an art book is a hard to sell product. It will need some rules or game information to help sell it. Suggestion: describe the scene of a picture (half page) and have the characters and vehicles in the picture given game stats (the other half of the page; or full page art and opposing page information). (edit add This would give the characters and vehicles more "character" than the photo ID that is used now.

 

[GamingGlen]

I'd love to see a career expansion book. I just discovered some of the MT1 books that seem to flesh out/expand the career options for increased detail/specialization. They look very interesting and seeing a MT2 treatment would be fantastic.

The thing I liked about those was the expanded events. The different specializations of the careers were only slightly better than what's in the core book. An expanded generic Life Events table, perhaps with career-based caveats within some of the entries, would suffice.

Keep any expanded careers to one book, not 12, and include expanded mustering out benefits.

 

[GamingGlen]

A Traveller GM adventure design book. Science fiction RPGs are more challenging to GM than fantasy RPGs by virtue of how broad they can be, the presence of technology, the options available to the players, etc. I'm envisioning a Referee-focused book with adventure design advice/essays by Traveller adventure writers. Adventure generator tables, ideally geared toward the various campaign styles laid out in the core rulebook, and many examples of how to incorporate Traveller's various subsystems (trading, spacecraft operations, combat, space combat, chases, etc) into adventures successfully. Genre-lenses, optional setting tweaks/rules, and other guidance.

Ideally, it would showcase examples for each of Traveller's settings: Third Imperium, 2300, Pioneer, etc.

I could use one of those.

In a fantasy game there's not much to question when you present another "dungeon" for them to go raiding and take all the loot. I have a hard time justifying in a science fiction RPG "yet another alien ruins to plunder that hasn't been plundered already". But then it might be easier with my game group, the greedy little munchkins that they are.

 

[agentwigggles]

A cheap PDF collection of stuff from the various books that been published.

Its great that the traveller line is so expansive and seems to be pretty well loved but its getting to be an issue to try and find stuff you half remember something.

A book on Spaceships from all the JTAS and from any other mongoose 2e publication.
A book on Vehicles from all the various publications.
A book on Equipment... which would probably a CSC 2.

I don't know what a good price point would work, as I am very much in favor of authors and artists getting royalties if owed. Sub 15 USD seems good price area for me.

 

[MongooseMatt]

I don't know what a good price point would work, as I am very much in favor of authors and artists getting royalties if owed. Sub 15 USD seems good price area for me.

This sounds like a good idea - but it wouldn't be $15 books we are talking here. They could end up being quite mighty tomes... We might be better off taking the cream from these secondary sources whenever we update a core book - so, grabbing the most fun items from JTAS when we do CSC Update 2022, for instance...