Traveller Thoughts?

[Parmandur]

Hey all, I've been giving some thought into exploring Traveler a bit, and was wondering if anybody here had any thoughts on Classic versus Mongoose as a system to go with; I mainly remember Mongoose for iffy splat books in the D20 days, but their Traveler stuff looks interesting. Any opinion is appreciated!

 

[Morrus]

What I do know is that I think it deserves a Traveller thread prefix, and not an Aberrant one!

I loved Traveller in the 80s. I only played a brief campaign of Mongoose's version a couple of years ago, and while I enjoy the themes, i didn't like the mechanics too much. It even prompted me to start writing my own game!

 

[gamerprinter]

Yeah, I'm pretty much in the same boat as Morrus. I originally played Traveller in the 1980's, thus the original game, and I recently purchased the Mongoose Traveller and 2300 campaign setting, mostly as inspiration for a sci-fi game I working on for a home game (not intent on publication) that is largely Pathfinder and nothing like Traveller at all. I don't hold the Traveller ruleset as anything better than any other ruleset, which I have little interest in. I purchased Traveller for the fluff, not the crunch. Traveller holds little nostalgia for me, despite it being one of the first sci-fi rules I've ever used. I don't think I can help much in your goal of choosing the "better" set of rules - I have no opinion on this.

 

[Parmandur]

What I do know is that I think it deserves a Traveller thread prefix, and not an Aberrant one!



I loved Traveller in the 80s. I only played a brief campaign of Mongoose's version a couple of years ago, and while I enjoy the themes, i didn't like the mechanics too much. It even prompted me to start writing my own game!

Yeah, sorry about that, Windows Phone was not playing nice with the tags

Seems the Classic stuff is pretty readily available from Far Future Enterprises now; thanks for the feedback!

 

[Parmandur]

Yeah, I'm pretty much in the same boat as Morrus. I originally played Traveller in the 1980's, thus the original game, and I recently purchased the Mongoose Traveller and 2300 campaign setting, mostly as inspiration for a sci-fi game I working on for a home game (not intent on publication) that is largely Pathfinder and nothing like Traveller at all. I don't hold the Traveller ruleset as anything better than any other ruleset, which I have little interest in. I purchased Traveller for the fluff, not the crunch. Traveller holds little nostalgia for me, despite it being one of the first sci-fi rules I've ever used. I don't think I can help much in your goal of choosing the "better" set of rules - I have no opinion on this.

Thing that gets me is the Career life path character generation. I love random tables and esoteric math, and I am kind of shocked so few games have this sort of naturalistic approach to characters. Just making the character is a game unto itself!

 

[Bluenose]

As a long time Traveller lover I'd say that the differences between Classic and Mongoose Traveller are pretty slight, although that assumes that you're using Classic Traveller as it was towards the end rather than straight from the LBB. Most of the later additions to CT make it a better game, or at least that seems to be the general opinion everywhere I discuss Traveller. Effectively though if you'd rather have physical books with PDFs as a secondary feature then Mongoose is the easier way to go; if you don't care about physical books then the Traveller CDs from FFE are terrific buys. 35$ for almost everything GDW did for Classic Traveller is a bargain that I only don't take advantage of because I already own virtually all of it. Most of it could also be used almost directly with the Mongoose version, although a few things have different names.

 

[Koloth]

Might give the Gurps variant a look. If you liked the original version's character creation as a pre-game game, then the Gurps Traveller isn't for you. If you want to just create a character and start, they include several templates that make creation fairly simple. Sci-Fi/Modern Tech seems to be Gurps strong suit.

 

[Parmandur]

Might give the Gurps variant a look. If you liked the original version's character creation as a pre-game game, then the Gurps Traveller isn't for you. If you want to just create a character and start, they include several templates that make creation fairly simple. Sci-Fi/Modern Tech seems to be Gurps strong suit.

Yeeeaaaah,not a fan of point buy, though I find GURPS ambitions to be intriguing. The randomized lifepath is the part I find cool, though the old school Foundation/Dune/Known Space setting is pretty neat, I like pre-80s SciFi as a genre.



The lifepath system seems perfect for getting a believable character, when I played around with GURPS rules, point optimizing power gaming was too tempting. If I could get a random character generation method for the game, GURPS would be more attractive to my tastes.

Also never do point buy or array in D&D; love random generation.

 

[Parmandur]

As a long time Traveller lover I'd say that the differences between Classic and Mongoose Traveller are pretty slight, although that assumes that you're using Classic Traveller as it was towards the end rather than straight from the LBB. Most of the later additions to CT make it a better game, or at least that seems to be the general opinion everywhere I discuss Traveller. Effectively though if you'd rather have physical books with PDFs as a secondary feature then Mongoose is the easier way to go; if you don't care about physical books then the Traveller CDs from FFE are terrific buys. 35$ for almost everything GDW did for Classic Traveller is a bargain that I only don't take advantage of because I already own virtually all of it. Most of it could also be used almost directly with the Mongoose version, although a few things have different names.

Any thoughts in the other material from FFE? The Journal of the Travellers Aid Society, it the FASA stuff?

 

[MortalPlague]

I've only ever played Mongoose, and it's decent. I love the character creation, but like others have said, the mechanics of the actual game are a little creaky. Traveller, I've discovered is too 'hard' on the sci-fi scale for my tastes. I want more aerial starfighter dogfighting.