Mongoose Traveller - how is it?

[Azgulor]

So it's been a veeery long time since I've run or played in a Traveller game. I see that Mongoose is going to be releasing a new version of the 2300 AD setting and Reign of Discordia, another fave of mine, has a Traveller version as well.

If anyone cares to sing the praises or ID the blemishes of Mongoose's version, I'd be interested to hear them. It looks as though the RPG is receiving very good support. Just curious how it compares to other editions. My understanding is that it is closer to the original version rather than MegaTraveller or TNE.

Of particular interest:

1. How is character advancement handled post-character creation?
Are there mechanisms for character improvement & advancement or is it like the original where characters were largely static after char gen?

2. How well does the game handle elements that didn't see a lot of play in the original game -- namely computers, cybernetics, & robotics?


I've got a lot of fond memories of playing Traveller in the past, but I'm not interested in playing a "retro-sci-fi" RPG. If the Mongoose update handles modern sci-fi well (and given some of the licensed properties I'm thinking that it may), then I may take a look at the game.

Thanks in advance!


2.

 

[jedavis]

Hey, I ran a game of MongTrav last semester at CMU... It is indeed close to Classic, but cleaned up and with standardized DMs. There is a mechanism for increasing skills, but it is fairly slow with multi-term characters; it takes a number of weeks of training equal to your total skill ranks plus the rank to which you're raising the skill you're training (ex: a character with Gun Combat (Pistol) 1, Pilot (Starship) 1, and some level 0 skills goes to train a skill. To get a new level 0 skill takes 2 weeks, to raise a level 0 skill to a level 1 takes 3 weeks, and to raise a level 1 to level 2 takes 4 weeks).

Computer, robot, and cybernetic design is rather limited, but I'm not familiar with CT's versions thereof.

One thing I will say is the quality of Mongoose's supplements is... questionable. I've read Mercenary and High Guard, and was not terribly impressed, and have heard less-than-good things about the Supply Catalogue and Animal Encounter.

 

[RainOfSteel]

I picked up Mongoose Traveller, High Guard, and Cybernetics a while ago. I have scanned through them all.

I have rechecked the main rulebook, and found one section of three paragraphs on learning new skills (at the end of the skills chapter). It offers training for obtaining a new skill point in any skill at a rate of one week per total skill points already possessed.

MT Supplement 8: Cybernetics, is quite extensive. I have scanned-through my copy, and it seems to cover all major systems you would expect to find. Some of the chapters are: cybernetic limbs; body augmentation; head augmentation; chrome, chips, and plug-ins; weapons; cyberspace. The main rule book also has a limited selection of systems.

There is a supplement on robots, but I don't have it.

The main rule book shows that computers get lighter and more powerful as the TL goes up now (although the list of examples are all "lap top sized"). Security and Intrusion programs are on the standard list of software.

In the main rulebooks, medical technology gets a very limited nod with a healing and a replacement option for care.

High Guards spends time on expanding the Classic Book 2 starship construction system, and then goes on to an expanded version of the Classic Book 5 system.

I would say MT is like Classic Traveller as it would have been had it been expanded more by GDW, but taking into account at least some realities of modern technology when projecting future technology.

 

[The Shaman]

I wanted to like it, but I didn't.

Calling it "cleaned up" original Traveller* presumes that the game was in some way broken in the first place, and I don't believe that to be true. A number of the changes they made actually made the game worse for me, not better.


* I can't tell you how many times I've heard that "cleaned up" phrase by gamers who, when asked, never actually played the original game in the first place. Such is the power of marketing.

 

[Treebore]

I started with Classic, stuck the longest with MegaTraveller, and have been using Mongoose as my "base line" for a couple of years now.

I find the Mongoose version to be very much like Classic, just with a lot more content. Like Classic, and especially MegaTraveller, Mongoose has had some errata issues, but nothing I wasn't quick to fix myself, often by just referring to how it was done in Classic or MegaT. The supplements for Robots, Cybernetics and Psionics are over all much, much better, even with the few glitchy things they have. Again, easy to fix by any GM with the confidence in their own abilities to do so. Even so, the "errors" in most cases are not really errors, just differences in opinion about how things should be priced or designed. I've also seen a few people cry about deck plans, but I don't have a problem with it. Like always some things about Traveller has been "stellar", others were around "ho hum". If you do decide to give Mongoose Traveller a try do NOT buy supplements 5 and 6. In a few months we will have a new book with a new "design system" for vehicles, etc... and from what Matt has posted on the Facebook page, its going to be a very easy new design system for creating whatever it is we wish to create. In fact he gave a 6 step outline of it, and it definitely sounds very simple and easy to use. So wait for the new combined book.

There are a few "issues" in the core book, but most can be corrected with some critical thinking, others that were more hard core errors were corrected by way of the players guide PDF, which were errors in tables. Some other confusing things have still yet to be offered up as errata by Mongoose, but nothing I didn't find so easy to "fix" that I didn't even think of them being a problem, but that is very likely to my decades of history with Traveller, and being very comfortable with the rules and modifying them almost without thinking to "work" for me.

So someone very new, or long out of Traveller, may actually find these "issues" a actual challenge to deal with. Me, I barely even notice them as a problem, and quickly forget that they even were a problem since I so easily fix them. Common sense, mixed with a strong scientific and technical background probably helps me as well. I've long been (since I was about 13) a avid reader of Scientific American, Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, and later in my life the more serious peer reviewed Science journals out there. Combine that with my Bachelors of Science and being a Missile Technician for 10 years in the US Navy, I am pretty comfortable with making my own judgements about how things should be done in Traveller.

So I really can't tell you how you will deal with what I consider to be very small issues with Traveller. You may agree they are mostly so small as to be inconsequential, or you may be like others I see who seem to get very bent out of shape. The only thing I agree with being "serious" issues are the design rules, but the new combined book will hopefully fix that for everyone.

 

[Bluenose]

I wanted to like it, but I didn't.

Calling it "cleaned up" original Traveller* presumes that the game was in some way broken in the first place, and I don't believe that to be true. A number of the changes they made actually made the game worse for me, not better.


* I can't tell you how many times I've heard that "cleaned up" phrase by gamers who, when asked, never actually played the original game in the first place. Such is the power of marketing.

Well, as someone who still has the original black box set, I'd say the Mongoose version is "cleaned up". At least, task resolution uses a much more elegant system than that presented in the original books. Of course, it's very similar to the task system that DGP developed and that then got used in MT. That doesn't make the original game broken, but I think the Mongoose version is "tidier" in that respect. This version reminds me a lot of Classic Traveller towards the end of it's life, just before MegaTraveller came out.

Oddly enough, I also have ended up not really liking the Mongoose version. Partly I think because it's so similar to Classic, which I already have. If they'd changed more, or less, I'd probably like it more. As it is there's just enough different to confuse me, and just enough the same that I don't really remember that not eveerything is the same. I do like the fact that I can pull out my CT material and use it without having to make significant modifications.

 

[The Shaman]

At least, task resolution uses a much more elegant system than that presented in the original books.

You just nailed one of the reasons I don't like 'goose Trav' (or MegaTraveller, for that matter), actually - I prefer the original skill system much better than the unified DGP system tacked on later. I think uniform task resolution is way overrated, so making skill resolution discrete to the skill is a feature for me, not a bug - it's something I wish more systems did.

 

[Treebore]

You just nailed one of the reasons I don't like 'goose Trav' (or MegaTraveller, for that matter), actually - I prefer the original skill system much better than the unified DGP system tacked on later. I think uniform task resolution is way overrated, so making skill resolution discrete to the skill is a feature for me, not a bug - it's something I wish more systems did.

Have to admit that change did have me "up in the air" about Mega T when it came out , but I decided to give it a try and haven't had any desire to go back. Even though I can, I have played in Con games of Classic Traveller and had no problems with it, but neither did it awaken a desire in me to return to its task resolution system. Besides, I've never seen the difference as anything truly "big". It's definitely not any kind of challenge to flip back and forth between them.