I want to start a sci fi space-faring campaign, 6-12 months long.  Interstellar travel should be fairly routine for players.  I am the very beginning stages of developing this.

Rules light to moderate.  Although I love the movies, I don't want Star Wars or Alien or Star Trek.  Intelligent alien beings would probably exist, but players could not play one.  Years ago I glanced at Traveler and remember that I liked what I saw.  Not interested in learning a complex system.  I plan to doing "inspirational research" for a few months (reading novels, watching sci fi, setting up star systems and an overview of my world(s) and of course, learning new rules)

What edition of Traveler or other sci fi game is good?  
Why?
I define good in this context as:

-rules light to low end of rules moderate
- inspirational and good atmosphere (when you read the rules, you are drawn in - 1st edition Shadowrun and Symbaroum did this.)
- lots of good ideas in core rules
- system makes sense
- rules are a fun read or at least not tedious to get through

Thanks.

Okay, Traveller with two 'l's.  And, well, probably Mongoose Traveller.

Classic Traveller + Including Books 1-8, Supplement 4, and whichever adventures and supplements have the various deck plans is good too.  But don't use the character generation from Books 4 - 7, just the other information.  The characters are crazy unbalanced.

If you want the setting, Megatraveller + The Referee's Companion + Rebellion Sourcebook covers the above CT material and adds a unified task system and vehicle design system.  The errata's a killer if you can even find it.

If you want the best setting bits the two CT Library Data supplements or Mega Traveller's Imperial Encyclopedia are a good starting point.  Survival Margin and TNE's Path of Tears are good reading.

TNE and T4 both have some interesting aspects but never quite come together.

T5 is, well, it's an awful lot of charts with an awful lot of errors in them.  Don't get me wrong, the sheer scope of what T5 contains is astonishing, just expect to make a lot of rulings.  But if you want a tool box for creating universes it's an amazing thing.  Supposedly the next update will be available in the near future I'd wait for that.

But Traveller's never quite managed to be complete and consistent.  Mongoose Traveller modernizes it and cleans it up.  Not my favorite by a long shot but if I want complete and consistent I go to GURPS.

Quote from: Vic99;937394I want to start a sci fi space-faring campaign, 6-12 months long.  Interstellar travel should be fairly routine for players.  I am the very beginning stages of developing this.

Rules light to moderate.  Although I love the movies, I don't want Star Wars or Alien or Star Trek.  Intelligent alien beings would probably exist, but players could not play one.  Years ago I glanced at Traveler and remember that I liked what I saw.  Not interested in learning a complex system.  I plan to doing "inspirational research" for a few months (reading novels, watching sci fi, setting up star systems and an overview of my world(s) and of course, learning new rules)

What edition of Traveler or other sci fi game is good?  
Why?
I define good in this context as:

-rules light to low end of rules moderate
- inspirational and good atmosphere (when you read the rules, you are drawn in - 1st edition Shadowrun and Symbaroum did this.)
- lots of good ideas in core rules
- system makes sense
- rules are a fun read or at least not tedious to get through

Thanks.

With regard to Traveller, I would go with one of three editions - Classic Traveller (CT; the three LBBs and supplements), MegaTraveller (MT), or Mongoose Traveller (MgT)/Cepheus Engine (CE). CE is the MgT engine with the original Traveller universe stripped out. Samardan Press, which produces CE, also has a nice guide to creating aliens that may fit your bill as well. CT and MT are available under GDW's flag at DTRPG, or you can get a good chunk of the books for CT or all of MT on disk for $35.00 per disk from Far Future Enterprises. By far, the GURPS Traveller (GT) books - which are now available on CD at FFE's site - are the best read for the fluff.

Setting-wise, if you're looking for truly alien aliens as NPCs only, I'd run with 2300 AD. I haven't read up on the original system as of late, but Mongoose did update the setting for MgT. The original edition from the 1980s and 90s can also be found on DTRPG and FFE's site.

Later!

Harl Quinn

I love Classic Traveller, although you have to work with the quirks of a near-40 year old system to get it to work the way you want. I have time for most other editions too, but the latest Mongoose edition is by far the most accessible and easy to play. It's broadly back-compatible with Classic material and has a multitude of options for character careers to build with. The default setting is the Third Imperium, but it's also been adapted to Mindjammer as an interesting alternative, and there is an upcoming campaign called Pirates of Drinax that is building a very strong reputation.

Classic. It is fully fleshed out without hitting the 'bloat' stage, really well engineered, fun, excellent balance of the things people enjoy doing in play, and easily played as either straight-up canon or molded to a universe of your liking. It is just a great game that doesn't need any major tweaks.

Have you read Stars Without Number?

It's an OSR / D20 / Traveller hybrid. The PDF is free.
http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/86467/Stars-Without-Number-Free-Edition

As for Classic Traveller, it does the job excellently. I've run dozens of campaigns over the decades and I've had no problem modifying the rules to support whatever setting I was creating.

Just continue to use a generic system you like for your sci-fi setting. The player characters will basically be human in your game. You just need to pick a sci-fi setting that your players will like is all.

I'd go with the original 3 Little Black Books but I don't know in which format they are still available (if at all).

Two games that are quite Traveller-ish (the first more than the second) are:

Rogue Space
This feels like a rules-lighter interpretation of Traveller, with a bent towards older SF. There's no setting attached.

Hard][Nova
This one is more space opera-like.

Both play very fast and have small, concise rulebooks.

I actually own the original box set, in beautifully pristine condition, but the original little black books are downloadable either from a CD-Rom sold over at the Far Future Enterprises webpage or just from DrivethruRPG these days I think. If you take the files to a good printer, I'm pretty sure you can get them to come out well. There is also a POD version of The Traveller Book, which was a complete collection of the core rules.

If we are looking at alternatives to Traveller, whilst still having a Traveller feel, then I'd also point out the excellent M-Space by Clarence Redd. It feels exactly like the mimilist style of Traveller, and has the same types of systems for spaceship, world and alien design, but it's based on the Mythras (RuneQuest 6) rules. It's completely self contained though.

All that said, I still think the best game for Traveller, these days, is the new Mongoose Edition.

Personally, I started with CT, but switched over to the Mongoose version when it came out.

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;937437I'd go with the original 3 Little Black Books but I don't know in which format they are still available (if at all).

Classic Traveler (pretty much the whole shebang, but the LBBs are in there) is available as CD (and I'm guessing .pdf) from Far Future Enterprises (http://www.farfuture.net/FFE-CDROMs.html).

It's a bit like OD&D, and the 1e Mongoose is like an OSR or B/X or BECMI-- the original has some nuance that is lost to make the newer version easier for a newcomer, but the newer version is easier for a newcomer (and players who might not care too much).

To me, Mongoose Traveller (1st edition; I've never played 2nd) hits a nice sweet spot of playability, flexibility, and maturity as a system. Before that, I liked MegaTraveller, but though the system is good, chargen is a bit uneven.

Though Traveller does have some implicit setting assumptions, it is nowhere near as setting-laden as Shadowrun. The thrill of wonder of Traveller always came from the GM task of rolling a subsector and seeing what came out of it, and for the players, exploring it.

I'll second Mongoose Traveller.  Classic Traveller has a lot of sincere fans, but for me, coming to it late rather than having started with it back in the day, the skills working differently in regards to target number or stat bonus made it a lot more complex than it would seem from the rest of the system.  Mongoose's unified target number and modifiers vastly simplified things for me.

Stars Without Number is a possibility if class-and-level is a selling point and not a stumbling block (was a negative for me).

Thread has nice timing.  I've been looking to get into Traveller lately- that and Harnmaster.  Anyways, found a good price on Mongoose's Traveller 2nd ed and pulled the trigger on it last night.

Thanks for all the interest in the thread.

So Mongoose Traveller is essentially after GDW went away?

What is the Traveller feel?  I haven't played it before, but it seems to be the standard (or one of them) for sci fi exploration and big empire control and all that.