Traveller General

>>50483440
bumpity bum

>>50483440
Is there a way to help each system feel memorable without going full Star Wars and making every planet completely different?

>>50486614
Cultural quirks and good NPCs

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>Traveller memory

>Be Merc
>Be fighting on some shithole planet for a mining company. Fighting natives with flintlocks and bows.
>Contract expires, they hire someone else.
>Decide to do something nice for a change.
>order 20 low tech steam tractors, and some steel that been sitting at the star port for years.
>Party welds the steel over the tractors,obtain old rifles
>Drill up old rebels

Storms the star-port and mine with land-ironclads.

>>50489669

Heh. This is why you don't stop paying your mercs until the job is finished.

>>50490240
Exactly.

>Had a "Naked girl in the box" adventure years before firefly happened.

Nightly bump

>>50489669
that is wonderful.
Thanks for sharing

>>50483440
So, how does it feel to know that an artificial inteligence is better at your game than you?

See EURISKO

>>50496869
Same way that computers are best at chess anon. Does not bother me at all.

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>>50496869
Trillion Credit Squadron is pretty much a number crunch anyway. I'd love to see those games played out in an animation so something, it'd be fun to watch.

>>50497130
>>50497150
Interesting.
AFAIK, it's the only ttrpg that someone programmed a computer to play, so I got rather curious about the player community thinks about.
Playing chess is nice, but I only got really impressed when I saw that AI who playes nethack.

Also, yeah, animations of the battles would be amazing

>>50483440
Slingshot manouevre off page 10!

>>50497250
The AI that plays nethack and other games like that sometimes make me feel incompetent. I made it to the zoo a few times, and the bottom of the mines a few times.

>>50500537
IIRC that AI can get to the castle in most it's games. I never got to the castle

>>50501129
Now I am going to be tempted to play nethack...

Frankly I'm amazed that anyone is capable of completing a game of Nethack at all. I flipped on Wizard Mode once in "Slash 'Em!" so I could go see what the endgame was like, and it's BONKERS. Getting the Amulet is child's play compared to how difficult it is to get the Amulet to its destination. Meanwhile, I consider it a "pretty good run" when I can even get my hands on something cool like Snickersnee or Thiefbane.

>>50501658
They say that the Ascension Run (aka everything after you get the amulet) is the most boring part of the game

>>50501658
My most successful run was a Wizard who completed the quest (he died gangbanged by Dragons on dungeon level 19)
If I'm playing Knight or a Samurai I can reliably get to Dungeon Level 10, get the luckstone at Mine's End and similar things

>>50501658
Complete? People speedruns in nethack! It's ridiculous

>>50501800
I think the furthest I've gotten was with a drow barbarian- the combination of being able to 'zerk as well as drow having a chance on hit to put enemies to sleep made for a really strong early game. Unfortunately, it's hard to maintain that advantage, since being dumb as bricks makes it difficult to use magic effectively. Your artifact weapon's are kinda lacking, too, and one of them has the drawback of circumventing the "Are you sure you want to attack this friendly NPC?" dialogue, if I recall.

Dopplegangers are pretty cool, too. If I recall, their Liquid Leap is the only ability that lets you travel through walls in Sokoban.

>>50501895
that would be Stormbringer (I play vanilla nethack, dunno if there's something different in slash'em) I think, really bad to use close to peacefuls

>>50501951
Yeah, that's the one! It's a shame, 'cause it's a great weapon, otherwise.

>>50501819

Who was that guy who ascended like 23 out of 25 characters in the annual competition one year? That guy's ridiculously good.

>>50502411
There's a guy on nethack.alt.org who ascended 29 characters in a row (no deaths between ascencions). All while doing all sorts of ludicrous conduits.

Nethack top players are insane

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>>50507449
Bump

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>>50497250
Trillion Credit Squadron is like a competitive aspect of Traveller, where players build starfleets according to a set budget then sic them on each other. It's not suprising that an AI should dominate it, seeing as it would determine a perfectly optimized "build". IIRC it was all about massive Battle Tenders as opposed to starships, and could deal out a truly Macross-sized barrage of missiles that would elimnate enemy fleets in one turn.

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>>50508632
Huh. I wonder if such an approach would necessarily be good for an actual protracted conflict, though, or if it's just an instance of an AI being good at gaming one particular system. It occurs to me that a force composition good for winning a battle might not necessarily be the best for winning a war.

Then again, that AI was years ago, so there's probably heuristics out there now that could totally determine the best fleet comp to have in order to remain on a viable war-footing. Heck, maybe that's secretly how we determine the armed services budget now.

>>50510912
great image BTW.

How does everyone handle computer stuff since Traveller predates the computers everywhere part.


>I play that the governments are wary of computer systems due to hacking and so on, so many forms are still paper, and there some Newt filing away paperwork after it is scanned in.

>>50514569

Yeah, that's kinda how I handle it. Take one part "Vilani distrust of automation", one part "every planet out there invented its own standards in the Long Night", and add in a touch of zeerust for the fun of it.

Players that land on a decent tech level planet may get inundated with "special offers" for comms devices that only work in this one system, and may be tapped by the local authorities/secret police/corporations/crime syndicates.

>>50514569
Carefully ignore it, even in the Third Imperium setting. Even the mechanics, when they do touch upon it, are woefully out of date the instant it's published. For instance, even in 1e Mongoose, which wasn't all that long ago, a 5 GHz computer is TL11 tech; a 1TB memory stick is apparently TL10 tech.

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>>50514569
>>50517851

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>>50519681

>weigh

OH NO, MUH AUTISM!

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>>50519681
It seems that Mongoose at least has learned some of its lessons. In 2e giant mainframes stop at TL7 and there's no mention anywhere of non-portable computers smaller than those installed on a ship.

Conversely, it's clear they know their audience. Why else does the Central Supply Catalogue have an "alien cosplay kit"? (also, 350 credits for that? Ridiculous)

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>>50519790
>Imperial measurements survive well past TL13

>>50519839

Nah, I'm comically angry that displacement tons are being treated as a unit of weight, when it's a measurement of the space it takes to install in your ship. An empty room might be 10 dTons, but it doesn't weigh anything remotely like 10 tons.

How many travel codes do you guys have in your games, or how often do they even get enforced/used? In MgT's universe creation you're apparently supposed to give an Amber code to any planet at Atmosphere 10+, Government 0/7/10, or Law 0/9+ (that "or" being strangely changed to an "and" in 2e).

Makes sense given the meaning behind those specific numbers, but as I'm rolling up a universe I'm noticing that like HALF the planets in any given subsector are getting slapped with an Amber code for one reason or another. Looking at the online Traveller map, there are far fewer Amber/Red zones compared to what I've been rolling up.

>>50519894
It is a unit of volume based on a known mass of hydrogen at a particular temperature and pressure, but yes.

On the other hand, building material masses can add up quickly. Traveller ships are assumed to mass around 8-12 metric tons per displacement ton unless you have a lot of drives and armor (higher mass) or are all cargo (lower). Note that *water* would be 14 metric tons per displacement ton, and solid steel more than that.

>>50520263
Amber Zones are not "enforced" as such in the default setting. They are warnings about somewhat dangerous worlds, but are not a government rating.

Red Zones, on the other hand, ARE government enforced. They are only assigned to systems or worlds that should not be visited.

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bumping

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So the Infinity tabletop's RPG is coming along nicely (if very slowly) and backers got a new version of their Lifepath system. I'm not a huge fan of Mophidius' 2d20 system, but as the rest of the system is basically Mongoose Traveller with some funky setting modifications, I'll get started on converting the rest to be in line with 2e Mongoose. Hopefully it'll be interesting to some anons.

So what's the consensus on Mongoose 2e?

>>50523847

I don't know about a consensus, but I'm not really impressed. It seems to have a few good ideas, and lots of poorly thought out ones. Mongoose has a thing for changing stuff for no good reason, and then not doing the editing and testing needed to make it good.
We had some dissection of the ship building rules in High Guard about two months back.

Personally, I'm over in the Classic camp now, Mongoose needs to step it up if they want to win me back. Unfortunately, Mongoose Publishing doesn't "step it up" ever. If MGP were a guy, he'd be the sort to show up in faded blue jeans, a t-shirt with a dirty slogan, and a backwards baseball cap, and if you try to turn his cap around, you find it's still on backwards. Mongoose does not seem to give a shit, no matter what.

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>>50523949
>and if you try to turn his cap around, you find it's still on backwards.

>>50521369
>Hopefully it'll be interesting to some anons.
Absolutely

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>>50521369
I'm intrigued by Infinity, although I've only skimmed the main book. I do like visiting the general to look at the pretty models. The Ariadna faction in particular really appeals to me because I love their used-future look. They'd make great Solomani stand-ins. Certainly I will be checking out the RPG when it's released.

I wonder what goes into writing a good splatbook for Traveller.

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>>50523847
It's got its ups and downs, like most systems.
Good stuff:
- Cleared up little, but necessary things from 1e, such as swapping assignments, getting rid of homeworld skills, broader and more appropriate background skills.
- much better extrapolation of computers by making their mechanics completely distinct from real-world values.
- a few little mechanics from little-read books (Races 3:Darrians, for instance) make their way into 2e HG, which is... nice, I suppose.

Bad stuff:
- it's not exactly the most well edited books in the world
- In an effort to condense material from disparate books, it's very clear if you've looked at both 1e and 2e that some paragraphs were cut out to make room, especially in High Guard. Now that's problematic because some of those sentences were really quite important distinctions (example: fuel consumption for fission reactors, which was addressed in 1e core, was removed, which is a fairly important oversight.) Now, it's not too much of a hassle to go back and realize where these
- Personally, my biggest complaint, is the arbitrary restrictions in ship-building. The authors seemed to have difficulty trying to make HG, and 2e in general, broad enough to be used as a generic sci-fi toolbox (look, they have trashcan astromech droids and protocol droids that know 6 million languages, explicit mentions of planet-destroying super-lasers, etc etc), but at the same time, still constrain themselves to silly things like:
- Why is there a minimum jump drive size? Or, why is it not TL based?
- Why is there a minimum ship size? Or, why is it not TL based?
- Why is there a minimum powerplant fuel usage requirement? Or, why is it not TL based?
- Ship based fuel refineries are still too cost and size efficient.
- Ship power is not well integrated into the rest of the mechanics; surely there should be some mechanics that allows bleeding off of excess power to weaponry or somesuch

>>50527550
So pretty typical for Mongoose in general, then.

>>50528930
there a reason why I don't care for mongoose, and >>50527550 says why....

>>50523949
>Mongoose needs to step it up if they want to win me back. Unfortunately, Mongoose Publishing doesn't "step it up" ever.
It HAS happened, but only a few isolated times in 20 years of products. Part of the problem is that Sprange's grasp of what quality work means is approaching the Whitman end of the scale.

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>>50528930
>>50528949
I should note that 2e, despite all that stuff I wrote in >>50527550 is still my favorite system of the moment; it's got a solid, simple-to-use basic set of mechanics, without some of the wonkiness of 1970s zeerust in Classic, and, if you ignore some obvious mistakes or substitute from other lines, a fairly workable system for everything else.

For instance, building a 5dton space fighter in 2e HG is actually fairly doable; just ignore the line that says 10 dton minimum (or imagine that, say, at TL9 10 dtons really is a minimum, but miniaturization over time allows for higher TL to get tiny fighters). Add the following:
- 2dton cockpit (though 2e HG helpfully allows drones as well, so that option saves even more space
- 0.5 dton gravitic drive for a nice, solid 10g thrust
- 0.3125 dton of armor (5 points of armor)
- 0 dton fixed mount pulse laser
- 1 dton TL12 fusion plant will provide more than enough power (only need 0.5 dton, but whatever, lets be generous)
- 0.25 dton aerofins, because style.
- and now you have 0.9375 dton of fuel, which is enough (if you abide by the 1 dton minimum requirement, which is silly) for a full month's worth of operation.

>>50530806

Will have to check it out sometime, and bump

>>50530806
I was under the impression that fixed mounts were 1 dton.

>>50532057
No, fixed mounts take up no tonnage.

>>50533312
>>50532057
That's stupid. They should take up SOME volume.

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>>50535845
No. Remember, ship dtons only accounts for the *internal* volume that could otherwise be encased by the ship's hull. That's why even massive wings only take up 5% of the ship's tonnage; the tonnage only accounts for internal bracing and not for the volume displaced by the lifting bodies themselves.

Also, they do take up 'space' in that ships are limited to a certain number of hardpoints or firmpoints by the size of the ship. It's just that very small craft may choose to not mount turrets, which require more machinery, and instead install a fixed mount, which takes up space, but not the internal volume where a cockpit or fuel or sensors may go.

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>>50483440
Well I finally shilled out money for InDesign and now I am working on a Mongoose 2e hack of Fallout. Any ideas of what I should add or consider while writing it?

>>50496869
But does the AI have more fun?

>>50536272
Is that the rationale they are using? Its still stupid.

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>>50538383
Gotta love the potato there giving zero fucks
>goddamn Terrans, I just wanna finish my drink

>>50539318

I bet it's a lot like being the only human in a Vargr bar.

>>50539318
Say, remind me again what the potato-races official name is? I've been used to the potato moniker for so long I've actually forgotten.

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>>50540076

>>50540102
Haha, there we go. Thanks, anon.

>>50540102
The Denaar are the only race unique to T4 that got art outside the aliens chapter.

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>>50536963
It's the rationale they've always been using, because, by definition, displacement tonnage references the internal volume of a ship, which allows for wiggle room for more imaginative designs that would otherwise be too constrained by more 'accurate' counting systems.

It's the same reason ship computers don't take up tonnage or why you don't have to worry about how all the plumbing or wiring works on the ship; it's part and parcel of the hull itself.

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>>50536539
That looks very interesting. Consider me intrigued.

>>50542976
That is a most curious design. Am I just blind, or does that ship have no exits besides the cargo doors? Providing the crew with private quarters, but giving passengers only a bunk (along the only hallway to the passenger toilets!) does not seem like it would make for a very comfortable passage. 42 staterooms for crew also seems like a lot. It is nonetheless nice to see a more interesting hull shape than the usual Traveller cones or pyramids.

>>50544181
Maybe extra crew rooms are used for normal passage with the bunks being slightly-above-low passage

>>50542976
Interesting ship.
Looks like more of a short run hopper due to the lack of anything to do aboard. Although it could possibly hold a small fighting force in luxury.
I think I would gut the bunks on the left and make a bigger galley/ rec area and maybe replace one of the turrets with an observation dome.
Also, It's got 5 turrets that I can see what the hell is it going to be carrying that needs that much firepower?

- do you have any sort of flavour text for this?

Jump

>>50536778
Interesting question.
Would an AI ever be able to feel fun?

>>50552228

I think it'd have to have some pleasure/pain analogues to really be an AI. An AI would need some self-motivating factors to drive it or else it's just going to be a paperweight that sits there and does nothing.

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>>50547480
Just something I picked up on the interwebs. An interesting ship, if not the most... efficient usage of space, I suppose.

Minimum of 5 double turrets, but possibly with symmetrical underside for 3 more turrets means that the ship is 500 to 800 dtons, which makes a ~20 dton bridge look... somewhat in proportion? 42 staterooms, probably double bunked for silly mercenary hovertank action. Could be fun.

I'm just bored waiting for the 2e vehicle handbook to come out. It's been in layout prep for how long now?

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>>50553111
It's an interesting design.
I would have gone for more of a symmetrical "flying V" look like a Nazi prototype or this Hydra plane.

those are some loooooong cars.

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>>50553369
I honestly don't know why people go asymmetrical even if they are still airworthy.
- like this atomic powered pig.
did they really need to do design it like this?

What do people think of the starship combat rules in Traveller? I am mostly familiar with Mongoose 1st edition ones, and found them to produce interesting and unpredictable battles when used with ships of ~200 d-tons, but very slow and a bit boring when applied to 1000 d-ton ships blasting away at each other. Do the other versions of the game have any good ideas worth stealing? Are there any good ideas on how to handle larger ships without boring everybody with twelve turrets firing individually?

>>50558647
Barrage combat rules from 1e High Guard, or capital ship combat rules from 2e High Guard. Both can work with any size of ship.

>>50559101
Has anyone had any experience with those? I've read them and they seem a bit...wonky.

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Better bump.

Here a question - what was the funniest moment you did in Traveller?

>>50563745
Here one that sticks out.

>We all decide to disrupt a diplomatic conference with the K'kree.
>we recall we have cases of bacon bits from a failed trade deal.
>change the labels
>Convince the cook that these are the ground nuts found on a planet we explored, and they are tasty.
>added to the veggie diplomatic meal.
>Fun happens.

Ahhh, what we got away with when we where 14...

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better bump again

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>>50562030
You know, I have a bad habit of keeping on installing luxury staterooms for my characters.

>dat feel when you need a 400 or 500 dton hull just to fly 10 characters around (in extravagant luxury).

>>50565408

Heh, I can see that.

"Look man, I NEED my own personal sauna, I'm not sharing one with everyone else. And the walk-in closet is non-negotiable."

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So Vehicle Handbook for 2e is delayed until January. Ah well.

>>50566657
Mongoose 2nd edition any good?

What is the best "boxed adventure" to start a group that has players who never have played the game

>>50570097

The Traveller Adventure, called Aramis in Mongoose, is a good starter campaign. It starts the players off in an isolated cluster of systems following a conspiracy, and eventually lets them loose into the wider universe once they upgrade their jump drive.

If you're doing Classic, I hear the FASA adventures are great, especially the Sky Raiders series. It's an Indiana Jones archaeology/treasure hunter adventure about searching out the lost home of a legendary band of raiders from way back in the long night.

>>50555765
This is like someone had a bunch of model kits opened up and was building an Enterprise - but after a while got really high on the glue and woke up to THIS.

>>50570835

It is pretty weird and ugly, huh?

>>50571930
ugly can be good

>>50565408
>>50566657
as pretty as these designs are, they are not only impractical, they have inflated capacity numbers by 25 to 50%.

>>50571930
let's call it "different"

I'm coming up short on things for my party to do, where's a good place to get some juicy plot hooks?

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>>50574319
The Spica Publishing books perhaps? Or the BITS series - basically just a bunch of story ideas. I'm sure they're in the archive there. Alternately you can't go wrong with the classics like PDF related!

>>50574481
Fair enough, but while Im things about it. What do space truckers (read PCs) even do? they are basically freelanced contractors, but why would they get hired over someone official?

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>>50574507
They're cheap and deniable

>>50574546
Guess I should think of them as Shadowrunners then

>>50574507

Small scale shipping. Picking up leftover cargo that's too small to warrant a liner, or too irregular to have a contract.
Like maybe the word came down and Brother Theodore has to get to the Holy Sept with some crates full of his special sacramental wine before they elect a new Space Pope and he misses his chance to get in good with the new regime, but he doesn't have an official church transport and he's way over cargo limits for a passenger ship. In that case, Brother Theo is going to need a tramp ship heading his way.

>>50574507
On the wild frontier, where mega freighters dare not tread since simply entering the sub-sector voids their very expensive insurance, a free trader might be the only option available. In civilized space the patron hiring a free lancer probably has some reason for doing so: either they lack the contacts to use a "real" service, the parcel needs to go Right Now and will be late if the patron waits for the official channels, they want to cut some corners, or the job is somehow shady. I imagine the legitimate free trading available in very civilized space is mostly about taking care of the irregular jobs that pop up when something goes wrong in the well oiled machine of an interstellar corporation.

So, I only found out about Traveller recently, what IS the "best" edition to run?

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>>50577092
I imagine most run Mongoose 1e, since 2e is not yet finished and still new and expensive, but there also seems to be a healthy congregation for Classic, since the books are very plentiful and there's a lot of material for them, like Behind the Claw and whatnot.

>>50577207
Behind the Claw is the GURPS Traveller book, but is largely without mechanical edition constraints.

>>50577358
Do either tend to grant more freedom for the players? My groups practically ready to marry the MgT 1e character creation and the level of customisation for almost everything has them frothing, just wondering if Classic is more expansive or not.

>>50577358
Oh? I meant the podcast of the same name; I had no idea there was a book of that title.

>>50566657
No, they're assuming double occupancy.

>>50577092
Classic (Or Mega, which is close), Mongoose 1ed, or GURPS if you know how to play GURPS. (Gurps is a specific rabbit hole that you will hate or love)

>>50574507
Think Firefly episodes.

>>50577394
You can legally get every Classic book in PDF on CD for about 20 bucks.

or get them for free on the trove

>>50577394

MGT1 character creation is more detailed, so if you enjoy its slower pace, you'll want to stick with that, but it also generates characters that are compatible with Classic.
Classic has two chargen methods, Basic and Advanced. The Basic one is in the core books, and Citizens of the Imperium. Advanced was introduced in Mercenary, and has a lot more steps and detail, but also tends to create significantly more powerful characters. (It mitigated that somewhat by beginning to split skills up, so they were less powerful individually)
Basic with Citizens of the Imperium gives you more career options than Mongoose 1e core does, but chargen would be quicker and less involved.
Advanced gives you fewer options -- some of the base careers never got an official Advanced setup, so you have to go with third party and fanmade ones, which are a bit scant because Advanced was less popular. (It adds crunch, but not much else. No events or anything cool like in MGT1)

Classic does have more stuff out there for it, by my estimate. There's a mountain of third party and fan-made stuff floating around for Classic, as it's been the most popular edition for most of Traveller's 39 year run.

Howdy, I'm GMing an MgT game and my players want to play some alien races aside from the Vargr and Aslan. I've been looking for the Alien Module pdfs, but can't find them in the mega; and all of the mediafire links in the old threads I can dig up are broken.

Anybody got a link to them, or can somebody throw them up here on the thread?

>>50581733
Its is in the mega under Mongoose (2008) - Settings third Imperium.

>>50581733

Archivist here. For Mongoose, look under Settings - Third Imperium. All the official 3I stuff for Mongoose is under there.
If you want some more weird races, check the GURPS aliens books, they're got some good stuff you could probably port over.

>>50581864
>>50581881
Thanks for the directions, got 'em!

>>50581881
>>50582209
I always forget that not everyone read the gurps books (GURPS Traveller is my first Traveller) but the gurps books,even if you ignore the crunchy stuff, always has at least 30-40 pages of really good setting stuff.

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>>50490921
So you stole it from Outlaw Star instead

>>50582447
Never even heard of it. but Kek.

Traveler is my favorite system. I just love how quickly my party became drugs and arms dealer after 1 session

>>50582668
>not knowing about Outlaw Star
It really should be mandatory watching for Traveller groups.

>>50584227
Pirate vessel approaching.

Punch it!

Accelerate?

No. do what I said and punch it.

>>50587560
I know this sounds heathen

But has anyone ran a CT game with humans (namely Terran) exploring new sectors of space, with new Colony worlds being established and so on, but with say, 40 worlds settled?

>>50588213

Yeah, that's a thing that people do sometimes. Roll up like a couple of subsectors and just go from there.

>>50489669
That was the plot of one of the Hammer's Slammers novels. If you're a total dickbag never let your merc contracts lapse while they are still in system.

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>>50584507
>>50582447
Speaking of mecha-related nonsense, here's an easy, shitty 2-step homebrew recipe for making thematically appropriate mecha in 2e High Guard:
1) New frame: Humanoid. +50% cost, non-streamlined. Includes 2 grappling arms that do not take internal space but only have a range of the value of 1/2 the dton of the ship in meters. The limbs (due to AMBAC) reduce reaction fuel usage by 25% (stacking), and give fixed mount firmpoints a facing of all (therefore allowing one to fire the firmpoint even if he or she fails a dogfighting check).

2) Mecha of all stripes typically have oversized reactors compared to, say, contemporaneous space fighters. To represent this, we introduce a new rule (which needs a name): Take the amount of excess power the mecha's power plant produces (power plant power - total ship requirement). Divide this excess power by the total power of all its weapons, rounding down as usual. This number acts as a bonus to the number of weapons in a turret for purposes of damage (remember, turrets receive a damage bonus equal to +1 per weapon *per damage dice*). Using this rule increases maintenance costs from 0.1%/year to 10%/year (or some other high value).

So a fixed mount pulse laser (2D, power 4) on a mecha that produces an excess of 12 power may fire that pulse laser for 2D+(2*3) damage.

The way the rule is formulated benefits small weapons over larger weapons, which is appropriate for the genre.

>>50592300
yep, the mercs ran the mining concession as payment from the rebels. Ended up being a damn profitable contract. It was based off executive outcomes IIRC

I'm looking to start running Traveller in the New Year. I have a PDF of Mongoose 1e plus a bunch of GDW stuff, and I'm expecting a fair bit of money over Christmas. Is Mongoose 2e worth checking out?

>>50601204

There are some posts upthread discussing its merits.

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>>50601204
Nah, 1e is fine, and stable as hell.

The 1e supplements are pretty good too. traders and gunboats, military vehicles, even the campaign guide if you want lots of random events tables and fun stuff.

>>50604138
>the campaign guide

Isn't that the one that's riddled with spelling and editing errors, and the badly written tables with goblins and dragons and like eleventy different "zombie apocalypse" events for you to randomly roll on?

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The Mongoose Traveller core rulebook is only $40 on Amazon right now, is that a decent price for the book or should I look elsewhere? They also have the referee screen for $15. Both sound like it would be fun to have.

>>50604330
pretty much yes. It has questionable elements, but some of the parts are pretty good. The random ship encounter table is excellent, referencing all the splat books like traders and gunboats.
The "What happened to the PC of the player who didn't show up this week" table is pretty funny and I used it a couple of times to good effect.

Some of the tables like the "whats on TV" table are pretty cool for random immersion too, if you remember to use them

>>50608639
Hey, that's from Guild Wars 2, right?

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>>50609840
Apparently it is! Can't remember where I saved it from.

>>50609861
Ah, I loved that game. Wish I still had time to play it. Really cool aesthetic going of living in the ruins of a really high-tech society, at least in the artwork.

If MTU was centred on a small Confederacy/Federation that's ostensibly a liberal "democracy" plutocratic oligarchy, would I be better replacing Social Standing with something like Charisma? Think the Alliance from Firefly.
While "good families" definitely exist, this polity is definitely less stratified than the Third Imperium, and while society varies from member world to member world, the stat would need to be universally applicable.
Maybe Social Standing could be an untrainable skill, like Jack-of-all-Trades?

This also raises the question of how the OTU handles SOC. While it is applicable across the Imperium, what happens if the party decides to fuck off to Hiver space for the rest of their lives? Does make SOC irrelevant?

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>>50610048
>what happens if the party decides to fuck off to Hiver space for the rest of their lives? Does make SOC irrelevant?
I guess they're gaijin of a sort - they don't fit into the structure so they're left out of it. (Although as it happens I think a lot of Terrans happens to live in Hiver space).

>>50610048
>>50612735
Changing SOC due to moving around in the default setting is case by case, The Vargr are likely to acknowledge a human's high standing and/or success, while the K'kree really don't give a shit.

What are the big differences between Mongoose 1e and 2e?

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>>50620264
I hear much ado about changes to drive systems. I haven't been able to afford a copy of 2e yet, but in 1e, fission drive systems, though incredibly expensive and bulky, are the undisputed champions of long-duration travel power, since they need only be refueled once per year. Apparently, they have now changed that.

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Bumping as it on page 8.

>Shows that could easily be a Traveller game

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>>50621960
>Shows that could easily be a Traveller game

>>50496869
That's just TCS, you mugu. And it's fucking obvious, because TCS is literally just a bunch of probability and math shit. Makes sense a computer would be good at it.

Also, pretty much every Traveller fan knows about Eurisko, it's a cherished part of our history. You ain't blowing anybody's mind with that "revelation".

>>50621960
Is that show actually good? NEtflix keeps trying to get me to watch it.

>>50624362

I had a great time watching it. Some of the plot twists are pretty crazy, but it introduces the more hard-to-swallow things slowly enough that it all worked for me. Grab some popcorn and give it a go, it's pretty fun.

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>>50620264
Major (mechanical) differences between 1e and 2e:
1) A few skills are condensed. For example: computers and sensors are no longer separate skills, but specialties within electronics.

2) There are integrated rules for changing assignments within a career, taking pre-career education at a military academy or university (from 1e's mercenary and cosmopolite) as well as a prisoner career. There's obviously fewer careers in 2e than in 1e's library, but most 1e careers are still compatible since the career path remains identical. Oh, and background skills are no longer homeworld-dependent, though the book does note that it could be.

3) Ship creation rules are much more flexible than in 1e (instead of choosing a set hull size, for example, you're free to choose a range, so have fun making a 15 dton ship)

4) the damage scale is a bit changed. It's the same at the low end, but towards the high end, in order to bridge the gap between personal scale and ship scale (which was 50x in 1e mercenaries), the higher end armor in personal scale is increased, while ship damage scale was decreased (to 10x). It's not really noticeable in most situations, but it makes vehicle-vs-spaceship mechanics a bit less wonky.

All-in-all those are good changes. Of course, some of that comes with a few issues, like >>50620836.
It's not necessarily that the drive changes are *bad*, per se, it's just that a rather important paragraph regarding fission engine fuel consumption in 1e was left out, and thus they, as per RAW, consume as much fuel as fusion plants do. Frankly, I'd chalk it up to space and/or the authors forgetting, and re-insert that paragraph in a FAQ or something.

There's some other issues with the limits of spaceship construction, but it's already been talked about further up in the thread.

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>>50628322
Bug eyes are ugly.

>>50624362
Its fun, has some nice plot twists. If you like Traveller you will most likely like it.

>>50624362
Had a really interesting premise but utterly shat the bed after the first half hour.

Fuck Mongoose, just go with Classic, warts and all.

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>>50628944
Most editions of Traveller are expressly intended as toolkits. Classic with some bits of Mega and/or Mongoose is a solid game, while world building and ships can pull something from just about any edition since they are largely separate from the dice mechanics.

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>>50628382
Sure. Whatever.

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In color, even.
This is the T20 version of the Type T. No plans were produced, but it looks similar enough to the older art that those plans could be used by all except the most ... ah... "detail oriented".