Hi Matt! Just one problem: your site says the authors are "Any" Lilly and his wife.
Good call - we'll look into that
I am getting a bit fed up with the recent wealth of books that list Encounters or People or Factions etc in the Mongoose books it has to be said. Got to be more interesting stuff that that to publish for Traveller - the best science-fiction role playing game ever?
Not to state the obvious, but one man's interesting book may not be the same for everyone.
One of the principles (the The principle, nor even an over-riding one, but something we pay homage to nonetheless) we follow with Traveller is making life as easy for the referee as possible. Traveller has a great starting point for this, due to all its 'sub-'games (players go off piste and sail into the unknown, a few minutes dice-rolling gets you an entire new world).
The encounters/people books are an extension of that. Starport Encounters is a great example and, for my vote, is one of the best of its type. Players land at a starport and look across the docking bay - simply pull a page at random from this book and, at worst, you have instant colour and background, and the feeling the starport is a living breathing place where things go on beyond the players' own actions. At best, you will have a brand new mini-adventure that needed no planning but may be good for a night's play, maybe for a recurring theme for the rest of the campaign.
There really is no downside to that
Anyway, the point here is that you may not need this type of book, but plenty of people (including myself) find them invaluable.
Whatever happened to expanding the star system/worlds design or what about a book with nothing but really great monsters/aliens in it (with speeds -that goes without saying). What about a book that details advanced combat for ship boarding etc along the lines of Snapshot? Lets see some interesting stuff come out that suits standard Traveller games where the characters explore worlds and fight on ships etc.
I'll go through these one by one...
1. The World Builders book is something I very much want to do, and we have discussed it with a handful of writers. However, this book, more than most, has to be done right. It is on the cards, but I will wait until we find the right writer for it. In short, I would rather do it in 3-4 year's time and get it right rather than rush it out this year.
2. Monsters and aliens... I would publish this tomorrow if someone were to write it. We have a few aliens and creatures pop up in the Compendiums and whether it is one person writing the book or a compilation of many, this is something I, too, would like to see.
2a. I have kinda pencilled in Book 11: Alien as a possibility. basically a toolkit for creating (minor) alien races that players can use and referees can populate their universes with. Waiting for a writer.
3. Snapshot... Now, this is trickier. A general book on Marines and ship-boarding would be cool, be it 3I specific or more generic. However, I think what you are suggesting is closer to the original Snapshot which is not something we would like to do without miniatures (which is effectively what Snapshot is), with miniatures-type gameplay and probably a little less complexity than you might want yourself.
Miniatures for Traveller are on the cards, and we have been discussing this with Marc for some time now. We are currently leaning towards 6mm-based 'epic' battles (Fifth Frontier War is one possibility) with lots of vehicles involved, but that is by no means set in stone. And if it did come first, it would not rule out a spin-off ship-boarding game later.
A few things we want to do with the RPG first before we get onto a serious miniatures game.
Getting too serious and 'grown up'. I dont even want to know what 'Powers and Principalities' covers but on the face of it it sounds even worse than 'Dynasty'.
Powers and Principalities does for the world outside the starport what Starport Encounters did for the starport itself. May be not your bag of chips, but referees like me will love it.
Now, Dynasty is actually a good book, but I admit it is for a _very_ specific type of campaign. The intention was for people to be able to play Dune-esque campaigns, where the game runs across generations of characters operating at high levels or to be brought in at the end of a campaign when players are already lords of their own worlds and want to carry things on beyond the deaths of their primary characters - literally creating a dynasty.
Again, may not be your kind of lobster, but it _is_ a valid way of playing Traveller and it goes to the strengths of the game.
It should be remembered that we have and always will take the long view on Traveller. When we first stepped into these shoes, we made a ten year plan with Marc, rather than the 3 years publishers normally get with this kind of thing. Imagine things ten years on, when we perhaps have Supplement 47: Space Zombies coming out. Imagine all those other books, some you may use all the time, others you may not have touched since they were first released. If you ever want to run a far-reaching, multi-generational camapign, Dynasty is already there, waiting for you.
I appreciate people are used to 'classic' ways of playing Traveller, and we do want to pay duty to that. For example, the mercenary style of play is going to be getting a lot of attention later this year, something I admit we have been weak on thus far. However, at the same time, we do also want to showcase other universes and styles of play, many of which (I know) won't hit the mark for many or even most.
But they will be there, lurking, just in case you ever want to give them a try
At the end of the day, and though it may take another ten years, we want Traveller to be the sci-fi RPG that can handle anything.
