Haltherrion
First Post
Traveller was one of those games I spent a lot of time on in high school and early college, not so much playing it although there was some of that but playing around with character and ship creation. Eventually, I drifted from it dissatisfied with how it played: it was a little too "realistic" for my tastes at the time. I wanted frequent combat and never felt the system was all that well suited for it. Or put another way, my level of ref'ing and gaming required combat to carry it and that was hard to do in the Traveller system if you wanted your PCs to live a while 
There my opinion of Traveller sat for many years and I finally gave away my 1980s era books a few years ago. But my son is just about 13 and showing a strong interest in hard-science roleplaying games. I had the Star Wars d20 book kicking around as well as the Firefly RPG but he didn't care for those. He's always been one to draw detailed ship plans (like ol' dad that way) and I got to thinking Traveller might be the game system for him.
So I bought some of the Mongoose publishing books and he is just starting to dig through it now. So far it's a big hit and even if he never plays or refs it much, seems like a good acquisition. Lots of deck plans, even more than in the old days although the old staples are still there which is nice. The editing is, unfortunately, not so good but that actually brings back some of the nostalgia as well: a lot of stuff published in the late 70s and early 80s was not so well edited either.
Anyway, it's been fun looking through the material. It certainly brings back memories and these days I don't find a bloody combat system quite so off putting, having learned how to carry a campaign without so much combat over the years. Might even give it a go between D&D campaigns, especially if some of my group remains on the fence about 4E.
Any old time Traveller players giving it a new look? Any folks, new or old, using Mongoose Traveller want to comment on it? It seems a lot like the 80s edition but I missed some of the intermediate editions (except for making the mistake of buying the version with the super-virus in the setting- ugh).
There my opinion of Traveller sat for many years and I finally gave away my 1980s era books a few years ago. But my son is just about 13 and showing a strong interest in hard-science roleplaying games. I had the Star Wars d20 book kicking around as well as the Firefly RPG but he didn't care for those. He's always been one to draw detailed ship plans (like ol' dad that way) and I got to thinking Traveller might be the game system for him.
So I bought some of the Mongoose publishing books and he is just starting to dig through it now. So far it's a big hit and even if he never plays or refs it much, seems like a good acquisition. Lots of deck plans, even more than in the old days although the old staples are still there which is nice. The editing is, unfortunately, not so good but that actually brings back some of the nostalgia as well: a lot of stuff published in the late 70s and early 80s was not so well edited either.
Anyway, it's been fun looking through the material. It certainly brings back memories and these days I don't find a bloody combat system quite so off putting, having learned how to carry a campaign without so much combat over the years. Might even give it a go between D&D campaigns, especially if some of my group remains on the fence about 4E.
Any old time Traveller players giving it a new look? Any folks, new or old, using Mongoose Traveller want to comment on it? It seems a lot like the 80s edition but I missed some of the intermediate editions (except for making the mistake of buying the version with the super-virus in the setting- ugh).
) but the standard method is to suffer a mishap. I kind of like that better to be honest.
As before, have fun just rolling up characters.
