Mongoose Traveller

daddystabz

Explorer
I have been a bit intrigued reading about classic Traveller and the good reviews about the new Mongoose Traveller. I am looking for information on using it as a generic system for characters/equipment/starship construction to use with a different settings. I am especially wondering about the feasibility of using it for a setting like Star Trek or something similar.

Does anyone have any good links for stuff like this?
 

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A conversion for Darrin Drader's Reign of Discordia campaign setting is in the works.

You might want to check that out when it releases.
 

I have been a bit intrigued reading about classic Traveller and the good reviews about the new Mongoose Traveller. I am looking for information on using it as a generic system for characters/equipment/starship construction to use with a different settings. I am especially wondering about the feasibility of using it for a setting like Star Trek or something similar.

Does anyone have any good links for stuff like this?

The only links I could recommend are the mongoose Trav forums and the Citizens of the Imperium forums:
Mongoose Publishing : For All Your Gaming Needs ...
Citizens of the Imperium - Powered by vBulletin

High Guard does have rules on creating ships on the scale you would see in Star Trek, and the main book has a number of variant rules sidebars that discuss how to use technology that differs from the traveller imperium's assumptions.

You may or may not know this, but there are already books slated to use the MongT rules in different licensed settings such as Babylon 5 and Hammer's Slammers.
 

I read just the other day that the Babylon 5 one is now off the table since the license was not renewed. I'd love to see what they could do with Star Trek or maybe the old Buck Rogers XXVc setting.
 




I'm not familiar with Mongoose's version, but earlier versions of traveller were never really a toolbox of generic ideas. Rather, the setting and rules went hand in hand. I think you would find that FTL travel (jumping 1-6 parsecs using LOTS of fuel, trip taking a week with no communication to normal universe), FTL communications (none), and ship weapons/defenses (missiles/particle accellerators/meson beams on the one hand, sandcasters and black/white spheres for the other) don't really fit into a Star Trek or B5 concepts. You might be able to wave some of it away with "description differences", but you might also end up building things wholesale from scratch if they are key to your ideas of a campaign.

On the other hand, the split of technology (which most space settings do) could certainly be laid out for either setting. Older technology would be easy to identify for any of those "retro" worlds that Kirk, Spock, and Bones beamed down to. Similarly, if Earthforce were barely high enough tech to use FTL (9 or maybe 10 in the classic settings IIRC), the blasted post-apocalyptic Narn homeworld may be primarily earlier tech (TL6 or 7?) for everything except weapons and presumably the Centauri would be one or a couple higher TLs than Earth (11ish?) and Minbari a couple more beyond that (14ish?).

If you're looking for a generic system, I was always partial to Alternity. They provided just enough that you could pick and choose and build a setting from. I'm sure Gurps space is good too, but I was always more overwhelmed with the amount to choose from and discarded much more than I ever used. Gurps Traveller did some of the paring down of generic Gurps Space for you, but again with the intent of casting it into the Traveller type universe/setting.
 
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Like you said, it depends on Tech Level (TL), Star Trek in many areas was around TL 20, IIRC, and very little was written for Traveller at those TL's. However you can definitely set your TL at that and adapt other sources.
 

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