Mongoose's Traveller Settings

[Finarvyn]

I've been thinking about getting a couple of the Mongoose setting books: the Hammer's Slammers one and the Babylon 5 one.

1. How well written are they? Do they capture the essence of the settings they are trying to emulate? Do they still have that Traveller "feel"?

2. Are the rules streamlined or changed a lot, or if a person is familiar with regular Traveller (either CT or MGT) will things make sense quickly?

Thanks for any insight!

 

[Whipsnade]

I've been thinking about getting a couple of the Mongoose setting books: the Hammer's Slammers one and the Babylon 5 one.

Finarvyn,

I can only answer for Hammer's Slammers because 1) I've been following the series since the first short stories came out and B) I have that setting book.

1. How well written are they?

The setting book is written is well as any of the other Mongoose products I own. While it's neither noticeably worse or better than those other products, I'd rate it as good.

Do they capture the essence of the settings they are trying to emulate?

Up to a point. Two examples: Drake's Slammers universe has FTL comms, as seen in Cross the Stars, and interstellar travel which is trivial in both cost and time, as inferred by many stories. Sadly, because the Traveller rules are being kit-bashed to fit Drake's setting, interstellar comms and travel costs/times become more Traveller-like and less Slammers-like.

Of course, any effect those examples may have will depend completely on the type of Slammers campaign you run.

Do they still have that Traveller "feel"?

Yes, and that's not a good thing.

I got a definite impression of Traveller being "forced" into the Slammers universe rather than being "modified" for the Slammers universe. For example, there's a few sentences containing a rather lame excuse in the section explaining UWPs about how most of the Slammer colonies developed governments which featured actual nobility. Very few Slammer stories are set on worlds with nobles because Drake is a good enough author to realize that actual nobility is a low probability. Instead, Drake shows local political elites which are something entirely different and entirely more probable.(1)

Rather than modifying the Traveller government tables and descriptions to better fit the Slammers universe, Mongoose chose the easier route of modifying the Slammers universe to fit the Traveller government tables and descriptions.

2. Are the rules streamlined or changed a lot, or if a person is familiar with regular Traveller (either CT or MGT) will things make sense quickly?

Most certainly yes.

Buy Slammers. There's enough in there to make the purchase worthwhile and you can easily change whatever you don't like. After all, who runs a setting right of the box?


Regards,
Bill

1 - So, what's the difference between nobility and elites? Well, what's the difference between the House of Windsor and the Kennedys? Get the idea now?

 

[Blue Ghost]

My post doesn't have much to do with Mongoose, but rather the Bab-5 milieu itself. I've skimmed some of the Hammer Slammer series, found them fun reads, but can't remember too much about them. Lot's of high military adventurism there. But Bab-5, to me at least, doesn't seem well suited to any kind of gaming environ, lest it be the war game. The whole concept seemed rather loose and, even for a sci-fi show, implausible. The core thrust of how and why the main conflicts were fought seemed pretty hair brained and empty. That, and the show was overwritten. Still, it had high production values, and I enjoyed seeing it for the first time, but it didn't gybe with me at all.

A "gaming group" I belonged to ran several T20 sessions with Bab-5, and I found them awful at best.

But hey, maybe Mongoose has spruced it up some.

Until then, I'd buy the Florian League material, if it ever crops up.

 

[aramis]

Bab 5: Not bad; it adapts a bit. It feels badly rushed and slightly incomplete. But the key tech is present and in a GM useable format for the design sequences.

Hammers Slammers: the additional CGen really doesn't feel needed to me, and the additional combat options/details are Ok. It lacks, however, the vehicle design system, or even the addenda to use the one in the MGT vehicle supplements.

Plenty of setting stuff, but the distinctive tech isn't set up for GM's to expand upon the setting with it.

 

[saundby]

I think both the Hammer's Slammers and B5 material is at the top tier of what MGT offers.

Hammer's Slammers does a great job on milieu detail and game rules. It has lots of Drake snippets and bits in it as well, so it's a good start. It's far better than Mercenary for play, too. There's only one real rules flaw IMO, and that's how skirt damage is dealt with. It's easy to fix.

The big picture isn't there though--the interstellar system map and details outsie the vignettes. So it'll be up to you to weave it together into a campaign,

The B5 material is good for a post-Sheridan campaign as-is, and is easy to modify if you want to start earlier. I started my B5 campaign on the day after the pilot ended.

There's only one rule problem that hasn't been errata'd, ppg damage--easy to figure out if you look at other stats. The classes are mostly pretty good, I mix in core book classes in place of some of the B5 "grunt" classes myself. I think the Psi rules turned out well, I use them in non-B5 games with some minor houserules in place of the core book's rules.

Like Hammer's Slammers, a lot of material I consider basic "big picture" stuff for a campaign setting has been left out. I picked up a used copy of the Babylon Project RPG to help, and I look up things on the Lurker's Guide as well. The B-5 book has lots of setting detail, equipment, and characters. The ship book sort of shoehorns the B5 ships into the Traveller model. There are B5 specific rules for ships in the B5 book that work pretty well if you're willing to abstract ship travel a bit. If you're being gearheaded about the ships and space travel, though, go with one of the other B5 games that does this well, and either fuse the ships onto an MGT B5 campaign or just play the other game entirely.

Warning on the B5 book--the backgrounds make it very hard to read in many parts and the ink smears easily. This is a physical printing problem with the book. Also, errata came in the form of a PDF edition of the book, which Mongoose can no longer provide, I believe. At the time if we showed proof of purchase of the book, they'd give us the PDF for free.

I like both of the campaigns, and consider their books superior to a lot of the core and OTU MGT books.

Edit:
Dug up llinks to a couple of related posts I did on these:
http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Discuss/showpost.php?p=333182&postcount=21
http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Discuss/showpost.php?p=315117&postcount=4

 

[robject]

I've been thinking about getting a couple of the Mongoose setting books: the Hammer's Slammers one and the Babylon 5 one.

1. How well written are they? Do they capture the essence of the settings they are trying to emulate? Do they still have that Traveller "feel"?

2. Are the rules streamlined or changed a lot, or if a person is familiar with regular Traveller (either CT or MGT) will things make sense quickly?

Thanks for any insight!

In general the remarks from the others sum up my feelings: useful material, not without its drawbacks. The B5 material in particular is thorough and loyal.

I have all three Babylon 5 books (the main book, the starships book, and the Drazi adventure), if you're interested I can sell them to you cheaper than you could find them on eBay etc.

 

[Finarvyn]

Thanks for the input so far!

I got a definite impression of Traveller being "forced" into the Slammers universe rather than being "modified" for the Slammers universe.

Rather than modifying the Traveller government tables and descriptions to better fit the Slammers universe, Mongoose chose the easier route of modifying the Slammers universe to fit the Traveller government tables and descriptions.

This does worry me a little. I'm a little uncertain as to what a Slammers adventure would look like anyway (unless it was mostly one big combatfest) and it's possible that I'd use the book more as a sourcebook than an actual campaign. If so, it would be a pain to try to figure out what liberties were taken and where.

Must ponder this.

 

[Finarvyn]

I have all three Babylon 5 books (the main book, the starships book, and the Drazi adventure), if you're interested I can sell them to you cheaper than you could find them on eBay etc.

I might take you up on this!

A friend loaned me several seasons of B5 in the hopes that I'd run a game. I watched a few episodes, found it kind of neat, and I bought the d20 version of the game, only to sell it last spring when I had lost interest in it.

Now, this summer, I got into a SciFi mood and my son and I have zoomed through the first two seasons of the series already. If I do run a Babylon 5 game, I'd much rather do it with Traveller since (1) it's an awesome game, and (2) it's the one being currently supported.

 

[Whipsnade]

This does worry me a little.

Finarvyn,

It should only worry you if your campaigns need to operate at that level.

I'm a little uncertain as to what a Slammers adventure would look like anyway (unless it was mostly one big combatfest)...

A "big combatfest" is what the stories and novels seem to be at first, but Drake clearly has a specific universe in mind when writing them. The background of the nasty little wars the Slammers fight in is shown to us through inference, character asides, and other subtle literary methods. In that, I find Drake quite a bit like Piper. When reading one of Piper's stories you know the story is just one part of a huge civilization because Piper's characters act, think, and talk as if they're part of a huge civilization. Drake and Piper don't "tell", that is they don't cram paragraphs of exposition in a story, instead they "show".

The first Slammers book was a collection of short stories with interspersed essays Drake used to describe the setting he had in mind. He told about powerguns, why tanks had made a comeback, and about the Banking Cartel and it's grip on both mercenary groups and the governments hiring them the Bonding Authority. Drake also wrote about the flood of extra-solar colonies.

As flatly described by the essays in the first book, and as shown by character actions and events in all the later stories, interstellar travel in the Slammers universe is both cheap and quick. Third World nations are said to found colonies with the same effort they used to make building presidential palaces and buying fighter jets. All sorts of fringe groups can hie off to settle their own brands of Eden too. Interstellar travel in Traveller cannot be said to be the same however, hence my comments about modifying the Slammers to fit Traveller instead of the other way around.

... and it's possible that I'd use the book more as a sourcebook than an actual campaign. If so, it would be a pain to try to figure out what liberties were taken and where.
Must ponder this.

Buy it. It's relatively cheap and, even if you don't use it in toto, there are plenty of bits to plunder.


Regards,
Bill

 

[aramis]

The big lack in the Slammers book is the adjustments to the design systems.

To get the "cheap" colonization of the slammer's universe, cut the costs on hulls and staterooms by 50%, drives by about 90%, and fusion fuel use by some smaller amount, and reduce the crew salaries (say, halve the amount over KCr1). Then all you need is to come up with powergun stats.

 

[Whipsnade]

The big lack in the Slammers book is the adjustments to the design systems.

Wil,

Agreed.

To get the "cheap" colonization of the slammer's universe, cut the costs on drives by about 90%, and fusion fuel use by some smaller amount, and reduce the crew salaries (say, halve the amount over KCr1).

That handles the cost issues, but it doesn't touch the time issues. As I've written before, but failed to write in this thread, Drake's FTL is trivial in cost and time. (Interface travel is trivial too, although Drake doesn't have thrusters or contragravity.)

FTL travel in the Slammers universe, or "translation" as Drake sometimes calls it, seems to take hours, not days, and there isn't much in the way of distance restrictions apart from some navigational issues.

There is also nothing resembling a 100D limit. After "translation', ships "arrive" on the edge of planetary atmospheres, it's a minor plot point in one book and the hero in Cross the Stars does so regularly. There's no in-system travel in the actual stories, unlike with Traveller, but the Mongoose version of the Slammers requires it.

Then all you need is to come up with powergun stats.

True, that is a failing in the book along with a lack of FTL comms.


Regards,
Bill

 

[aramis]

FTL comms can be snagged from B5 for Slammers...

I agree, Drakes drive is faster, but I'd say it should be parsecs/day, rather than parsecs/week. It's fast, but not "instant", as several protagonists have time to brush up using tapes on the way out to the fringes...

 

[Whipsnade]

It's fast, but not "instant", as several protagonists have time to brush up using tapes on the way out to the fringes...

Wil,

Yes, it's very fast and there doesn't seem to be a 6 parsec limit either. You can chug right along for however far you need to go.

I do remember the language tapes. Once, Drake refers to the old sci-fi trope of sleep media in regards to them. It's one of those seemngly minor details that make the stories "pop", like when a few Slammers are drinking in a bar watching locals of south Asian descent sing Gaelic ballads. It seems the entertainers on that world had quickly learned the songs the Slammers had been enjoying on a world a few tickets ago.

I'll have to look at the B5 book at my FLGS about FTL comms.


Regards,
Bill

 

[aramis]

It does seem to be a hyperdrive rather than a jump drive. But its been a few years since I read any of the Slammer's books.

Bill: no FTLC in the B5 Universe book as a tech. (Bummed out me...) Just alternate drives.

 

[Finarvyn]

Well, at this point I'm still somewhat torn on both settings.

Seems like there are both good and bad points for each -- in terms of how closely the game matches the setting or the setting is squeezed into the game, in terms of how closely the books can be used as true sourcebooks or if they are just guidelines.

Must ponder further. Thanks again for the input!

 

[aramis]

Looking at the B5 book whilst rewatching the series... there are a number of inconsistentcies. No worse than the older Chameleon Ecclectic Babylon Project RPG... but in different areas.

 

[mbrinkhues]

Biggest problem with the HS-book is IMHO that they mostly "re-tell" Drakes stories. It seems implied that you play that unit and their adventures. Little is given on other units (and then only defeated/dead HS enemies) and worlds outside the novels/stories. It's more a HS almanach than a true setting book IMHO. A very well done almanach with graphics etc. that are mostly "spot on" (von Steuben is off IMHO)

B5 suffers from the "universe with well-defined main story line" problem. The big events are either well played out (B5 TV show) or given to someone already (Crusades). Looking at the adventure run in S&P getting players involved in the main line of Crusades used quite a few "Deus Ex Machina" elements and often had a "forced/railroad" feeling. OTOH the universe lacks additional interesting areas/scenario hooks. Again production quality as an almanach ranges from great (Where they use original material) to acceptabel (where they do own ship designs)

 

[Finarvyn]

I suspect this is a problem with most "franchise" type games. If you play a Star Wars game, players tend to want to follow the action of the movies. Same with Dune, Lord of the Rings and others.

One needs to find ways to encourage players to create their own characters and follow their own adventures, even if the basic world is the same.

For example, if I want to run a B5 game perhaps I throw out the big sweeping plot arc and follow something more like season 1, where you have a bunch of ambassadors hanging out in a dangerous space station and have things happen. Maybe keep things generic and try to build stories different from the series. Once you start to trace out the plot arcs, there is always a player who knows what happens "next" better than the GM.

 

[ThunderChilde]

I've played more than a few campaigns using MERP and LOTR rpgs. In the case of JRR Tolkien's work, he wove a whole complex world. It's easy for you run all kinds of campaigns and never touch the books main arc's or the films.

Its a bad example my friend.

B5 being a television show, with its narrow focus on the arc of the show, leaves less room to ramble. That is mostly limited by the GM's ability to spin whole cloth from the source materails.

 

[far-trader]

Back while B5 was on in first run, might have been season 2 but I don't recall for sure, I had a desire to run some B5 play with Traveller rules. I hacked together some simple conversion notes and created a small trade ship and trader/smuggler, inspired by an episode with/of the same. I don't recall the name now but I had a whole campaign pretty much ready to go in a couple days designed around the whole station underground society (whatever they were calling it) and the ethically challenged but generally decent traders who kept it alive. Would have been a good game, with the overall bigger story not much mattering but there for background. Pity we never played much and it all went nowhere. What I'm saying is there's usually stories to be told in any setting that are removed from the big one and it's larger than life heroes. The stories of the ordinary people, who may find themselves thrust into extraordinary circumstances of the big story, even side by side with the heroes. I seem to recall said merchant in that story ended up saving what's his name, the security chief, but the story felt more to me to be about the plight of the nameless residents of the underground.