In general the book feels and read like classic TRAVELLER done well in a new hardback book.

 The only glaring mistake or problem I saw were the ceckplans and ship illustration = they suck or rather STINK outright. The Marava just doesn't look like an Empress Marava should.

At GenCon I said as much to a Mongoose staffer/worker - he agreed with me that those deckplans could have been done much better artistically speaking.

 IF I was to run a classic-style game using the MOngoose books - I'd have to use the SJG deckplans and  GM it using the square sides of my back up copies.


- Ed C.

Quote from: Napftor;276149Has there been any substantial 3pp support?  I'm planning on releasing at least one adventure in 2009 through Tricky Owlbear.

A company called (I believe) Spica put out a pretty cool little career book. Though I wish they could have thought of a better name than "Militant Religious" for one of their careers. Though the concept does have visions of Dune and Fremen (as well as Necromongers) dancing through my head.

Quote from: jeff37923;276155(the creative team which was writing Traveller material for Comstar Games/Avenger is now working directly with Mongoose Publishing).

This is not 100% correct, Avenger is still producing for Comstar but now we are publishing via Mongoose's Flaming Cobra.
Avenger is very much alive and kicking and we have a bunch of new products and some redone old ones in the pipeline.
We do work very closely with Mongoose on all things Traveller and have been known to playtest for them from time to time.

Rog.

Quote from: Roger Calver;276216This is not 100% correct, Avenger is still producing for Comstar but now we are publishing via Mongoose's Flaming Cobra.
Avenger is very much alive and kicking and we have a bunch of new products and some redone old ones in the pipeline.
We do work very closely with Mongoose on all things Traveller and have been known to playtest for them from time to time.

Rog.

Thank you for the correction. That's welcome news.

Glad to help.

Quote from: ColonelHardisson;276141What are some of the complaints about the system - the ones that seem legitimate, that is?

The most legitimate one I've heard is that the scouts' survival rolls are too tough and they get nothing in return for it. Every other complaint I've heard I consider pretty insubstantial.

Not related to the core game, but taste-wise, I think they needed to hire someone to write Mercenary with more of a bead on the Traveller "semi-realistic" feel. Stuff like mortars that shoot "energy balls" is way too soft SF, and a tag line mentioning "Lazguns" is way too 40k.

QuoteBy the way, I know you were a fan of Traveller d20. How does it stack up now against Mongoose's version, play-wise?

Well, to be fair, I haven't actually played MongT yet, and honestly, I haven't done all sections of the book due diligence yet.

But some immediate contrasts:

• Though the T20 player's guide makes T20 chargen easier, I still expect it to be easier in MongT.
• T20 gives the player more control over where they put their skills, within the class and level limitations provided by the career.
• T20 produces a bit more broadly competent characters. This is a bit more to my taste.
• I like events, relating characters, and skill packages in MongT, something it holds over both CT and T20.
• When it comes to modeling vehicle skills, T20 > MongT > CT to my taste. I like the idea that a good pilot has honed reflexes and skills that would be useful in a variety of situations once they understand the fundamentals. I like the way T20 models this with proficiencies better than the "level 0 general skill" thing in MongT, which in turn I like better than "serves as" skills in CT.
• MongT might be a bit less abusable when it comes to maxing out high level characters (though I've never seen this be a problem in my game; the oldest most skilled character who maxed out their terms in my T20 game was the DOCTOR, which I really don't have a problem with).
• I haven't inspected ship combat in MongT yet, but until I do, T20 will remain in my eyes the best small ship combat system out there. :cool:

Quote from: Caesar Slaad;276219Not related to the core game, but taste-wise, I think they needed to hire someone to write Mercenary with more of a bead on the Traveller "semi-realistic" feel. Stuff like mortars that shoot "energy balls" is way too soft SF, and a tag line mentioning "Lazguns" is way too 40k.

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Well the core books (main, Merc & High Guard) while they are intended to be of course for the OTU are also intended to be generic sci-fi game books, an example of this is the Babylon 5 sourcebook coming out soon.

As always with Traveller the grognards get steamed up with the minor details and go off on tangents claiming "canon" and how it most not be changed.

Merc in point, some people cliam that the artillery Battledress is to mecha and not fitting for Traveller, they may like to take a look at T5 someday soon and see the part about armour.

Rog.

I plan to buy Mongoose Traveller and the Babylon 5 suppliment (out now I believe), being a fan of both.

Can anyone tell me if the pocket version of Mongoose Traveller is missing anything significant from the big book?

According to the Mongoose forum, it contains all of the core rules. I don't own it, so I don't know for sure.

Quote from: Terrible Tim;277817According to the Mongoose forum, it contains all of the core rules. I don't own it, so I don't know for sure.

If it does contain everything, then it's a really good deal.

It has everything. It's just smaller.

The Pocket Edition has everything of substance* from the full-sized core rulebook, in the same number of pages.  It accomplishes this by using an uncomfortably small font size (and I say that as someone with good eyesight and who uses small fonts as a matter of course; I can only imagine what someone who needs reading glasses would say!).  It's a poor formatting choice IMO, but it does provide wonderful economy of size and price.

(* It did accidentally leave off an important table relating to starship fuel consumption, but this is very easily worked around in the short term and will be fixed in future printings.)

I think MongTrav is quite excellent, and coming from someone with my low opinion of Mongoose that's saying something.

KoOS

Quote from: RandallS;276132I'm a Classic Traveller player/fan. I've been very impressed with Mongoose Traveller. It is "close enough" to Classic Traveller to be easily compatible with my CT stuff and most of the changes made in Mongoose Traveller seem to be for the better.  I haven't seen High Guard yet, but if they do as well with High Guard as they have doing, I expect to like it.

So I could take the expanded character generation from Mongoose Trav and plop it into my CT game?  The group's decided they want me to run Traveller in a month or so, and the new stuff I've heard about character generation makes at least the Mongoose core book look mighty tempting.

If anyone interested missed it, I ran my first MongT game with my group, only one of which had any prior Traveller experience, and that one was negative:

http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=13171

In short, it went well.