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Help!

E

Ebon Pharos

SOC-5
Hello
I am new to the forum and to Traveller. I am confused and could use some help. I would like to try Traveller out, but not sure which set of rules to even try out. I am mostly a wargamer, but I do like a good rpg every now again. I love starship battles. I like to 'try before I buy', as 'money for such crap is not in the budget'. Anyways, I could some help. I would like to play in an online game if possiable if anyone could crutch me through a game till I could buy a set of rules, No I don't want free 'bootlegged' rules. I would buy a set, but would like a lite set. I want a set of rules that are pretty simple to learn. Well Thank you in advance for any info/ help. Oh one bit more info I did at one point own three old Traveller books, from Judges Guild. the adventure Tancred, the purple and blue maps books, not sure what they were called. I have lost them and want to replace them and I know I can buy them on a disc from Far Future, so I know I want to buy that at some point no matter what set of rules I play.
 
The Mongoose options...
  1. the SRD, while it is missing a bunch, is pretty well the majority of the rules. You can see from it if the MGT rules will work for you.
    Price: $0
  2. Mongoose Book 0: A playable but limited subset of the rules. Combined with the SRD, you have 90% of the core rulebook, legally, and a fully playable game
    Price: $2.97 in PDF at the moment
 
You can find the free SRDs for Core, High Guard (and Mercenary, IIRC) at http://www.mongoosepublishing.com/rpgs/traveller/traveller-core-rulebook.html via the Developer's Pack (http://www.mongoosepublishing.com/pdf/travdevpack.zip)

Re: your intent to buy FFE CD-ROMs - Classic Traveller material from FFE is, intentionally, largely compatible with Mongoose Traveller.

Traveller isn't strongly war-gaming or space battle oriented, but both are possible within the rule sets. At least one play by post game involving capital ship combat was ongoing at http://forum.mongoosepublishing.com/
 
http://www.travellersrd.com/ is a compilation of the freely available Mongoose Traveller (MgT) rules.

You can also get Starter Traveller from RPGNow.com, which is "Classic Traveller" (CT, the first version of Traveller, and the direct ancestor of Mongoose Traveller) and not very expensive.

MgT is more approachable to a modern RPG player than CT, since it's a few decades newer and has a more internally consistent system. The old Judge's Guild stuff shouldn't be TOO hard to convert to MgT. Certainly much easier to convert than 1st edition D&D material would be to 4th edition, if that means anything to you.
 
Thank you all. I will look more into Mongoose. This brings me to another question, will Far Future pull its licencing from Mongoose? I would hate to start collecting rule then in 6 months to a year have it pulled from the shelf. I ask because this has happened to me only once and it was with a mongoose game. I do not blame Mongoose, I do not believe they did anything to lose the licence, however I know that it could be pulled at anytime.
 
Mongoose had a 10 year, with mid-term mutual renewal option, Traveller license with FFE... IIRC, within the last few months Mongoose & FFE committed to the second 5 years.

Matt Sprange (Mongoose owner) announced this on the forums - IIRC in one of the errata/re-release/'what people want' threads...

Of course, any license could be pulled at any time - the same as any company can go under or be bought out, etc. Mongoose seems very committed to the line, and MgT from the outset was proclaimed to be a 'light' version to T5 (instead of a possible competitor) and compatible with both it and CT.
 
BytePro said:
MgT from the outset was proclaimed to be a 'light' version to T5 (instead of a possible competitor) and compatible with both it and CT.
Click to expand...

Even a casual glace at T5 shows this to be an abject lie by Mongoose. It might not have been at the outset, but from the moment of the first design blog for MGT, it was no longer true, and T5 is about as compatible with MGT as Atarti Cartridges with the PlayStation - yes, you can get an emulator, but boy howdy, the controls sure don't feel the same.

Edit note: Clarification of who made the lie -- Mongoose, not BytePro. BytePro simply echoed a claim that Mongoose seems to have dropped in 2009.
 
Last edited:
I'm not sure how much the above has helped, but briefly, Mongoose is the 'current' game, and if you're looking to enter an online game this is probably the way to go. The Pocket Book is the same as the core rule book but half the price - however, you'll need good eyes because the print is half the size too.

Having said that, the Classic rules are the ones from FFE and these are still played quite frequently. You will probably find an online game or two using them if you hunt about. The Classic rules also include some more 'wargamey' starship battle games, including Brilliant Lances, Trillion Credit Squadron and Invasion Earth. So the Classic set may be a good buy for you there, too. It also contains lots of background info on the setting.

As for 'try before you buy', I believe there used to be a partial set of rules online from when Mongoose Trav was being playtested. I believe they were still up quite recently, and AFAIK they are legal. Obviously the rules changed during playtest, so they're no longer up to date, but it may give you a feel for the Mongoose game. I don't know where they are, and your Google-Fu is probably as good as mine. Maybe someone else can point you to them.

The other versions still have their adherents, and you might be able to find a game, but if you look at the game-specific forums here, you'll get an idea of their relative popularity from the number of replies generated for each one. Mongoose and Classic are way ahead in the polls.
 
Icosahedron said:
As for 'try before you buy', I believe there used to be a partial set of rules online from when Mongoose Trav was being playtested. I believe they were still up quite recently, and AFAIK they are legal. Obviously the rules changed during playtest, so they're no longer up to date, but it may give you a feel for the Mongoose game.
Click to expand...

The rules changed quite a bit. Combat, in its entirety, is different, as are tasks. Neither came forward. Ship design is the same, but ship combat is, again, totally different.

Really, the playtest draft is good only for seeing the Character Generation, Trade, and Ship Building rules... pretty much everything else got changed... and those items are in the SRD, anyway.
 
I agree that Mongoose and CT are the most popular choices for finding games, CT is the best deal, while Mongoose may have more players.
 
Dragoner said:
I agree that Mongoose and CT are the most popular choices for finding games, CT is the best deal, while Mongoose may have more players.
Click to expand...

The combination (MGT core for rules, CT for setting and adventures) is pretty popular.
 
O.k So Mongoose Traveller and Classic Traveller aren't compatible? How would you change things from Classic Traveller to Mongoose Traveller? I some day in the future(120 to 150 years from now) would like to GM some games.
 
Not owning any mongoose stuff, I am afraid I can't help you there, I'm still playing CT, but when DonM finishes his cleanup I'll probably switch over. From what I hear, the CT Amber Zones and such, the adventures, all work well in Mongoose. If you go to FFE, they have a 443 deal and those four disks give you a dton of material.
 
Ebon Pharos said:
O.k So Mongoose Traveller and Classic Traveller aren't compatible? How would you change things from Classic Traveller to Mongoose Traveller? I some day in the future(120 to 150 years from now) would like to GM some games.
Click to expand...
No - they are fairly compatible - at least so far as using CT resources and adventures for MgT games. T5 and Mongoose not so much (from the sounds of it - T5 being still in development).

The design sequences between CT & MgT produce differences - but the resulting stats are all pretty comparable - from characters to ships to planets.

For instance, CT PCs could even work right beside Mongoose ones - just adding homeworld and career basic training (Skill-0) skills it would be hard to tell the difference. Some cascade skills, like engineering need tweaking... but for NPCs no real changes.

Starship designs don't match, but would still work (just costs and dtons on things would vary).
 
Characters
CT, MT, and MGT have roughly compatible characters - CT and MT skill lists are near exact duplicates except for the MT weapon group skills, tho MT gives more per term. MGT is a little different, but not so much as to throw most people, and gives fewer than MT, and more than CT.
TNE characters have roughly 1.3-1.7 x the skills of CT/MT characters; the list is close to MT's list.
T4 and T5 characters scale the same, but have different skill lists. They are roughly 2-3x the skill total of CT/MGT/MT characters, and the skill lists are unique to each, but close relations to MT/TNE.
T20 characters are incompatible with all other versions
GT Characters are incompatible with other versions, but are compatible with other GURPS books.

Ships
CT Bk2 designs can be directly ported to MGT unchanged, provided they are 2000Td or less. You'll wind up with extra space.

CT Bk5 designs are directly useable in MT, but not MGT. They are not design portable, but are ratings portable to MT; they are design compatible with T20 designs. They can be mostly redesigned in MGT, but it's not a direct conversion.

MT designs are incompatible with all other editions, but the ratings can be used as is in T20 and CT Bk5.

MGT designs can have many features not in CT Bk 2; some are CT Bk5.

TNE and T4 designs use the same design rules, but different ratings as each other; CT Bk5 designs can be ported, with some effort, but larger designs run into design limits that don't exist in CT. MGT Bk2 designs can be ported into TNE or T4 with the same level of effort.

Combat Equipment
No two editions' combat equipment stats are compatible with each other.
GT's are compatible with GURPS.
 
Yet another question for you guys and girls. Is there some where I could some background for Traveller? Or is that all in the rulebook?
 
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