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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Derren" data-source="post: 7133183" data-attributes="member: 2518">A bit more about the mechanics of Traveller as changing them is a bit harder than modifying the setting.Traveller uses a d6 system. Checks are made with 2d6 + ability + skill vs 8 + modifier. (High is good). This system is also used for combat.Which skill uses with attribute is not completely fixed. There are examples for common tasks but the players can argue to use diffetent attributes for more unusual skill uses (for example when using the athletic skill not to perform athletic feats but to evaluate the feats from other people).There are a lot of skills, especially as most skills have specializations which are tracked independently. Although the newest Mongoose version (which you probably meant with "has just been released) has eliminated some skills (for example using power armor and using space suits are now the same skill).Space combat is abstract (although a more detailed version is available in splatbooks) and even boarding combat can be resolved by die roll instead of slugging it out on a battlemap. It still has the problem that depending on their skills some players have not much to do during ship or vehicle combat.One warning, Traveller is very deadly. It has no HP system. Instead your attributes are used as pseudo HP and they are also rolled with 2d6 and dont rise by much if at all. And especially high tech weapons can  do a huge amount of damage (3d6 and a long way  upwards). Wearing armor which acts as flat damage reduction is quite essential.Also unlike for example D&D the system does not ensure or even encourage that the PCs have combat skills. A party of researcher and civilians with no combat training at all is a completely valid group for Traveller. So if you have a specific campaign in mind you have to not only inform your players beforehand about that but also intervene in the character creation (see below).Traveller by default uses a life path character creation. That means the dice not only decide your attributes but also which career you can take (the player decides which one to attempt, the dice and attribute modifiers decide if he makes it or not). Even which skill you learn is random with the player only deciding which career appropriate list to roll on.So that means that not only can the player end up with a completely different character that he intended, the PCs will also be not balanced against each other as one might have rolled a lot better than the other. In older versions of Traveller your character can even die during character creation which forces you to start over. So if you do use this creation method it will take some time and likely require several DM calls to steer the PCs into the right direction.The Mongoose version of Traveller has also a Build Point system which bypasses the randomness of the life path character creation but I am unsure if other Traveller versions have that.</blockquote>

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