Best Traveller rules book/supplement/adventure ever and why?

[MichaelSTee]

Best Rules: The Traveller Book (TTB). Though I first bought Starter Trav, and didn't see B123 until the big floppy books, and didn't see TTB until the CT CD. TTB has all the simplicity of CT with enough extra detail to fuel the imagination. It's like liking TOS over TNG: it's how we got where we are now.

Best supplement: Starship Operator's Manual

 

[Supplement Four]

It's like liking TOS over TNG: it's how we got where we are now.

I like both, but if I had to choose, I'd pick TOS over TNG.

 

[Chuck Anumia]

My choices

Starter Traveller
MegaTraveller Player's Manual
TNE
Smash and Grab
Mercenary book 4
World Builder's Handbook

I have used these to build a cohesive (MTU) universe and my players have enjoyed the challenges presented.

 

[Uxi]

1) Fire, Fusion, & Steel TNE Mk 1 Mod 1 for complete unlocking of my imagination and creating anything I could imagine either from reality or in fiction

2) Path of Tears, TNE (perfect blend of source material, astrography, a complete setting, and the subsector and world profiles complete with player handouts and separate ref section with adventure nuggets.

3) DGP Starship Operators Manual


I still love TOS but TNG was soooo corny and Voyager stunk. DS9 almost reaches up to TOS for me.

 

[Hemdian]

Spinward Marches Campaign - not only does this include S3 but also gives you some history, a backdrop of current events, and an adventure all in one.

JTAS - not just a potpourri of articles but the TNS made the Spinward Marches seem like a real living place. JTAS 6 and 8 were the first things I ever bought for Traveller (before I even bought the basic rules) ... got me hooked on the OTU and Traveller, and I've never looked back.

Also shout outs (in no particular order) for CT Traders & Gunboats, the two CT library data supplements, CT Leviathan, CT Fighting Ships, the 5FW boardgame, SOM, WBH, and the MT box set.

 

[Supplement Four]

Also shout outs (in no particular order) for CT Traders & Gunboats,

Oh, man! This brings back memories. I came to Traveller in the 80's, and my first set of the rules was the Starter Edition. But, for whatever reason, Traders & Gunboats was hard to find. At least in Dallas and Houston. There was one gamer I knew that had it. And, man, I wanted it.

I looked all over for it. Back then, there was no net, of course. You had to physically drive around town to game stores and used books stores to try and find it. I finally found a used copy and snapped it up. Back then, it was worth its weight in gold because it was one of the very few books with deckplans in it.

Tons of joy when I finally found it.

I still have that same copy.

 

[Blue Ghost]

I never liked basic Traveller's combat rules. By that I mean I had no problem with the to hit throw, but I had a problem with the DMs that were supposed to serve as determinants of whether your bullet effected your intended target.

I liked MT's creation of the penetration mechanic for weapons against armor.

My least favorite version of the game would be T4 simply because it didn't feel like Traveller to me. Suddenly I'm seeing helicopter gunships and a variety of Gauss weapons that struck me as being odd. Like an uprated near future cops and robbers game...almost. It just didn't feel right to me.

I didn't like MT for lack of adventures. I don't know what happened there. Aside from getting a career and girlfriend, that's the main reason I dropped Traveller. Otherwise I would have kept it as a once a month hobby had there been more adventures. I still don't understand what happened there.

TNE; I keep hearing about TNE, I keep hearing b__ching and moaning about the good and the bad (mostly bad) of TNE ... my gut impression is that I think Traveller would have been well served remaining a generic rule set with a generic background; i.e. as per GURPS Traveller; Rebellion and Virus never happened, here's a bunch of really cool stuff to work with.

That's about all I have.

 

[nats]

Oh, man! This brings back memories. I came to Traveller in the 80's, and my first set of the rules was the Starter Edition. But, for whatever reason, Traders & Gunboats was hard to find. At least in Dallas and Houston. There was one gamer I knew that had it. And, man, I wanted it.

I looked all over for it. Back then, there was no net, of course. You had to physically drive around town to game stores and used books stores to try and find it. I finally found a used copy and snapped it up. Back then, it was worth its weight in gold because it was one of the very few books with deckplans in it.

Tons of joy when I finally found it.

I still have that same copy.

I agree I have got rid of all my Classic Traveller supplements now but the lack of this supplement is the worst to have to bear, I loved those little bulkhead sections, the hatches description and the little people. And the plans/illustrations are still the best looking I have ever seen for Traveller ships.

 

[salochin999]

I liked CT 1-3 as the mental picture they conjured up for me was very Firefly-ish (long before Firefly obv), which is what I liked. Mercenary and High Guard jinxed that for me as a universe full of hundreds of dreadnoughts suddenly felt too crowded and Coruscant-like for what I wanted.

(I ran naval and mercenary campaigns with them but the Traveller setting stopped working for me as an RPG at that point.)

It was only in the last couple of years I came up with a mental image I was comfortable with that allows both the Coruscant part of the OTU and the Firefly part to comfortably reside in the same mental space so I missed a lot of Traveller in between those two points. So for me it's

1) CT 1-3 and the supplements that fitted well with the "scout in the boonies" part of the setting like "traders and gunboats"
2) and then a long gap till Mongoose.

Although now my mental picture of the setting is rebuilt I would probably like MT and/or GURPS more than I did at the time.

However my actual favorite is probably the opposite of all the above and the one exception to my general rule about "Coruscant" settings which was an assassin/secret agent career book with a lot of cool gear which I briefly used to run corporation vs corporation type games on the alpha planets. Googling suggests it may have been called "SORAG" but not 100% sure.

 

[mike wightman]

Paranoia Press published a few approved for use with Traveller books. SORAG was the one all about the Zhodani secret service, Scouts and Assassins was about... the name says it all really, and then there was Merchants and Merchandise. They also had a couple of sector books, Beyond and Vanguard Reaches. Had great fun with them all way back when.

If you like the small ship setting and a less benign 3I you could do what I've done, base your TU around the setting material in Adventure 1: The Kinunir.

 

[salochin999]

Paranoia Press published a few approved for use with Traveller books. SORAG was the one all about the Zhodani secret service, Scouts and Assassins was about... the name says it all really, and then there was Merchants and Merchandise. They also had a couple of sector books, Beyond and Vanguard Reaches. Had great fun with them all way back when.

If you like the small ship setting and a less benign 3I you could do what I've done, base your TU around the setting material in Adventure 1: The Kinunir.

will check that out

 

[JTSmythe]

The Sky Raiders Trilogy

The Sky Raiders Trilogy and the Keith Brothers last offering in MT Journal#4, Lords of Thunder.

 

[Vargas]

If you like the small ship setting and a less benign 3I you could do what I've done, base your TU around the setting material in Adventure 1: The Kinunir.

Makes me wonder what the OTU would have been like had it followed that path . . .

 

[rancke]

Makes me wonder what the OTU would have been like had it followed that path . . .

Even more inconsistent than it turned out. The one in The Kinunir wasn't just a 'small ship' universe; it was a 'small ships and not nearly enough of them' universe. Turns out that billions of people can support a LOT of ships.


Hans

 

[salochin999]

Makes me wonder what the OTU would have been like had it followed that path . . .

I prefer the small ship universe feel but the logic of the world stats dictate that it has to be a big ship universe which has always been a problem for me. My solution is it doesn't all have to be a big ship universe.

If you think about the world stats then the systems with high pop and high TL are going to be many orders of magnitude more wealthy and powerful than the rest so the alpha systems are the only ones the Imperium needs to care about and so I think it's quite plausible that they are the only systems the Imperium does care about or more fully:

1) alpha systems
2) systems that are possibly on the way to becoming alpha systems
3) systems that are physically close to the alpha systems
4) systems along the main communication routes between alpha systems
5) systems being built up for some reason e.g. as a border fort.

If you mess around on travellermap.com then you find there's usually only 1-3 alpha systems in a sub-sector (often just one) and maybe 4-6 of the second category which often overlap with the 3-4 in the third category plus a few in the fourth and fifth categories.

So all you have to do to create a half-big, half-small universe is say the Imperium simply doesn't care about the small half - or rather it cares enough to fund detached duty scouts as an early warning system but that's about it.

That change means you can have about half of space - in any sub-sector, even deep within Imperium space - as your SSU.

edit:

random example Dagudashaag sector / Remnants sub-sector near the center of the Imperium, roughly five sub-sectors spinward of the capital

http://travellermap.com/?scale=22.625&x=5.614&y=17.049

has only one alpha system (my working definition being pop 8+ and TL 12+) and as it doesn't have a class A star port which is my strict definition of alpha system I wouldn't have that as an alpha system either. (I'll need to dream up a list of reasons why systems like that which ought to be a big deal don't have high enough star port e.g. they're xenophobic and made a deal with the Imperium to be ignored in exchange for not building star ships or they're rebellious worlds that aren't allowed to build star ships.)

However there are six or so alpha systems just outside the sub-sector so a plausible setup might be that because the hinterland clusters of those surrounding alpha systems overflow into the sub-sector those outside alpha systems tend to dominate it making the edges of the sub-sector part of the BSU but most of the central part SSU.

 

[rancke]

(I'll need to dream up a list of reasons why systems like that which ought to be a big deal don't have high enough star port e.g. they're xenophobic and made a deal with the Imperium to be ignored in exchange for not building star ships or they're rebellious worlds that aren't allowed to build star ships.)

Simplest reason is that it doesn't build starships nor spaceboatsfor the general public. If a starport doesn't build starships or spaceboats commercially, it can have refined fuel, annual maintenance, repairs, TAS facility and anything else a Class A starport usually has and still not rate better than a Class C.


Hans

 

[mike wightman]

I read an interesting blog the other day from a guy arguing that '77 edition of the game was the one that gives you the most flexibility in designing your own setting.

 

[aramis]

I read an interesting blog the other day from a guy arguing that '77 edition of the game was the one that gives you the most flexibility in designing your own setting.

Keep in mind: which 1977 printing matters, too.. the second printing isn't exactly the same as the first. (Somewhere, there's a thread comparing quotes from the various editions. Some interesting differences.)

The CT rules didn't stabilize until the 1981 printing...
Then the 1983 The Traveller Book made a couple more.
And the 1984 Starter Traveller made a few more than that.

 

[GM Joe]

If anyone has a link to that thread on differences between 1977 printings, I'd love to read it. I tried doing a search, but no joy.

 

[aramis]

If anyone has a link to that thread on differences between 1977 printings, I'd love to read it. I tried doing a search, but no joy.

I'm afraid it got lost when one of the "pissed off by staff, so I'll delete everything" types pulled out (deleting the first post usually deletes, or at least orphans, the whole thread). Either that, or it was before the switch to vBulletin.
There were glitches when that switch was made, and very few of those threads show up on Google.