Traveller 5e coming from World's Largest RPG in cooperation with Mongoose Publishing

[dragoner]

Why is this an expected turn of events (is that just snark or was this leaked or something)?

It had been hinted at in the Mongoose forums when people asked why no 5e port.

 

[schneeland]

Hey! Dumb question here. Why is this an expected turn of events (is that just snark or was this leaked or something)? Is it just because of the popularity of 5E? Lots of people on Bluesky and /r/Traveller are scratching their heads over this one.

It should read unexpected, but I apparently cannot type (correcting this now)

 

[andyvanhout]

It should read unexpected, but I apparently cannot type (correcting this now)

Story of my life (the not being able to type part), my sympathies.

I am really keen to see how this Kickstarter does next year as a barometer for how 5E is doing generally! I say that it probably isn't for me, but I've enough love for both D&D and Traveller which means I'm probably going to be suckered into at least give this thing a look over.

 

[overgeeked]

That's too bad. The money machine must be fed.

 

[andyvanhout]

Here's a take. I don't know if it's a correct take, but here we go:

Because the 5E SRDs are released under a CC-BY-4.0 license, making content for this hypothetical Traveller 5E so long as you don't use IP that's owned by Mongoose Publishing has less restrictions on it than making content for Mongoose's in house system.

That's a bit wild to me, and it's still wild to me that the 5E SRDs got yeeted into the Creative Commons (in a good way, I think it's amazing for the hobby).

 

[SteveC]

I still have my 3E era Traveller rules, and they weren't awful. I just don't see the need for a 5E version, but I understand that these versions do sell, so I hope people enjoy that. You have to make a living as a company, right?

 

[TheAlkaizer]

Uh... yeah, no.

Because the 5E SRDs are released under a CC-BY-4.0 license, making content for this hypothetical Traveller 5E so long as you don't use IP that's owned by Mongoose Publishing has less restrictions on it than making content for Mongoose's in house system.

That's an interesting question. I'd guess that if they do make it for 5E they need to respect it's license. It could be interesting if it opens up Traveller more widely to third parties.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

Well there's a lot of people who came into the hobby with 5e, struggled through learning that one system reasonably well, and just don't want to learn a new system (not unreasonable, people have lives and varying interest in learning ttrpg rules). I doubt many of them would personally know or care about Traveller, but I think the market for this is people who play with these sorts of people and want to provide a version of Traveller they'll play, along with 5e DMs who like Traveller but don't personally feel comfortable trying to run it. It is a little funny, since 5e is sort of the compromise, makes-nobody-completely-happy system, to make compromise systems between it and other games. Meta compromise!

There might also be some market for people who just want more extensive 5e D&D in space rules than 5e Spelljammer offered.

But as someone who really loves 2014 5e (and really tolerates 2024 5e) I have to say I don't think it should be grafted into every situation possible. It's a pretty robust system, but if has never handled added subsystems well, and if your using it in a context where the core classes don't make sense well then you're designing new classes and almost certainly not playtesting them as much as is really required to do them right. And also at that point nobody's advanced knowledge of 5e really translates anymore and it's just a bait and switch.

 

[Waller]

I just got my Voidrunner Codex here in Florida. Covers 5E sci-fi for me.

Traveller is all about its system and it loses that by converting it to 5E. Unless they’re completely replacing 5E’s classes and levels with a new life path system in which case it isn’t 5E any more.

 

[TheAlkaizer]

Traveller is all about its system and it loses that by converting it to 5E.

To be hair, I also really like the setting of the Third Imperium. But yeah, without the associated mechanics I would not stick around.