Traveller General

Looks really good. Thanks!

That's cheap, but come on, everyone's used an air/raft as a technical once or twice, and grav-lifter thingies that you have to push have been in various flavours of the setting for quite a long time.

I suppose that's true, and an air/raft isn't that much larger.

Mostly I'm glad that the new vehicle book makes the mechanical gap between people/vehicles and starships a bit less jarring; more heavily armored and armed vehicles can stand up to starship fire and you can build up with vehicles and down with starships to where there's appreciable overlap in price/performance.

For instance, a slightly smaller g/carrier (which would be a better fit on, say, a 200 or 300dton ship than the g/carrier in 2e core) with armor and weaponry that can nearly match a 10dton fighter craft, comes out with a price that is... almost that of a 10 dton fighter craft. Marvelous. It's smaller and can carry more people, but it's not really space-capable, so the trade-offs are at least in the ballpark where you can compare the two.

Neat, this is MGT2, right?

Any of the Classic Traveller adventure modules good for a green party that needs some direction? I'm thumbed through several of them and they see much more open ended than adventures, from say, early DnD.

Yeah, images pulled from Central Supply Catalogue. Will report in two weeks or so how it works in sessions.

That sounds pretty great. Can't wait to get my dirty hands on this book.

So far one of the most enjoyable things in traveller for me is making starships. And now I'll be able to make airplanes to go with those.

>Any of the Classic Traveller adventure modules good for a green party that needs some direction?

What do you mean? Do you have a group that's already playing but they're just wandering around? Or do you have a group that's getting ready to play?

Any of the Doubles are good places to start, the ATV Doubles (Mithril/Brightside) especially so. The Chamax Double is another good one.

The Freelance Traveller site has an entire section of starter adventures called "Getting off the Ground".

We're getting ready to play, but we've played DnD together and from DMing with them I know they need a very structured adventure. I'll check out those doubles and the website, thanks.

Jump

Sticking a good portion of your fuel (or anything for that matter) at the end of a narrow bridge seems like a bad idea

I didn't design it. I just bumped the thread with a pic.

He might not be criticizing you directly then. It was an observation.

I didn't think he was. I was just stating why I couldn't explain the design. I think it's dopey too.

New here. Is getting the release date of Traveller wrong a meme?

Not that I'm aware of. What, was somebody saying Classic Traveller was released in 1952 or something?

It was a typo, asshole, not a meme.

There's a typo in the intro post, 1976 instead of 1977, so wants to "think" it was meme.

This is probaly an odd question. So I'm starting a game in a month or so and I want to get a hard copy of the Central Supply Catalog so that we can have a big book of gear on the table. We're going to use Mongoose 1st Edition but skimming through the PDFs it seems the 2nd Edition version is mostly the same but with more art which my players would appreciate when picking out their stuff, and it's only about ten bucks more on DrivethruRPG so I was thinking of getting the newer version.

Is there anything that stands out asglaringly incompatible between the two editions' catalogs that I missed flipping through the PDFs?

> Chamax Double
Would it be too obvious for my players if I played:
youtube.com/watch?v=f9egQyLpEyI

I would avoid the central supply catalog to start with, the list of gear in the core rulebook is plenty to start with. Things in the CSC can be game breaking and introduce a whole lot of complexity that a new campaign doesn't need.

Only use the CSC if a player specifically asks for a weapon or item that isn't covered by the core book, and then dont actually show them the CSC, just make them go to some underground weapons dealer, who offers them some items at an inflated price, and/or takes time to order in / acquire. Make finding that awesome weapon or armor a quest in itself, dont just hand it to them on the table. Dont even mention that the CSC exists, its there purely for you as a referee to see ideas on how to handle insane plasma flamers or armor piercing rounds.

Just my advice, I've run long Traveller campaigns and there's plenty in the core book to keep even the most tech-savvy players interested.

>Central Supply Catalog

Be careful with what you let them get, that thing's full of crazy broken nonsense.

...

The Zeta Reticulan parasites are at least semi-intelligent while the Chamax are just mindless zerg-rush "bugs".

I might be an asshole, but I don't want it to be a meme.

>glaringly incompatible between the two editions' catalogs
1) The most "problematic" discrepancy is that armor values have been changed in 2e (to smooth out the transition between personal, vehicle, and starship damage values), so 2e armor is slightly more protective than in 1e. Prices are also a bit different. It's not a huge difference, but ~15-20% could be meaningful to some, I suppose.

2) the mechanics for computers (specifically, and electronics in general) has been somewhat changed (for the better) in 2e. I'd recommend just using the core 2e mechanics for computers. The pdf for it is upstairs in the master archive.

3) it probably won't come up, but a lot of the much heavier weapons in the CSC are meant to be mounted on vehicles, and 1e and 2e handle them somewhat differently.

Also, generally, I'm of the mind of other anons. I wouldn't let your players get their hands on the CSC until they've had at least their introductory adventure. You can get away with a lot of crazy stuff even if you just adhere to character creation limits on weapon/armor prices and TL.

Listen and heed and Mongoose had dreams of turning Traveller into a generic sci-fi rules set. While they don't have the skills or intelligence to do so, they're are too lazy to do the necessary work even if they had the ability. So their "attempt" failed.

After failing to make B5, Judge Dred, and Hammer's Slammer "fit" Traveller, Mongoose finally admitted their own inabilities and refocused their publications on the 3I/OTU. They hired writers who knew the setting and then shafted 3rd party publishers to "clear the deck" for further MgT products.

The fallout of their original "Traveller is generic sci-fi" flight of fancy is a lot of rules and equipment that are both poorly thought out and will break your game.

Give it a rest, fuckwit.

yeesh thanks for the warnings I think I'll hold off on either edition the book for a while.

Don't get me wrong. The core editions are good enough and they contain a lot of chargen options current players prefer. There's a lot you can plunder from MgT.

In the long run by shafting the 3rd party publishers producing 3I/OTU work AND releasing a Traveller SRD, Mongoose has only fucked themselves. The game is increasingly opening up to exciting and well crafted alternate TUs like Orbital and Clement Sector which Mongoose's products cannot match. Then, as T5 products begin to be released, Mongoose will lose their monopoly on the 3I/OTU.

Just as the Black Plague helped spark the Renaissance, the Plague of Mongoose could help Traveller in the end.

>Mongoose had dreams of turning Traveller into a generic sci-fi rules set
Threadly reminder that Traveller was originally intended to be a generic set of sci-fi rules. Also, jesus, the buttpain is great. What did Mongoose do to you to cause such hate?

It's New and Different and (((Casual)))

It might be the former playtester who has popped up a few times here over the years and he really, really, really hates Mongoose.

However, if you did want to make it a meme, make the date say 1973, so that Traveller is older than D&D.

For what it's worth, the Mongoose 2e CSC is better balanced than 1e.

And despite, , I will vouch for 2e. It's certainly got problems (though, more basic editing ones than most other systems), but, if you don't read the rules as dogma (which is usually a good idea anyway), then there's plenty of good ideas. You can always steal the good ones and go back to Classic if that's your thing.

For example, and I'll badger on about it for days, but making rules for computers that don't hearken back to the days of vacuum tubes and punch cards and mainframes taking up 3 city blocks is a good thing. By making the mechanics generic, it better fits various settings other than the zeitgeist of 1970s futurism.

>Threadly reminder that Traveller was originally intended to be a generic set of sci-fi rules.

No, it wasn't. This is the SECOND sentence in the FIRST book:

"The major problem, however, will be that communication, be it political, diplomatic, commercial, or private, will be reduced to the level of the 18th century, reduced to the speed of transportation."

Reducing communication to the speed of transportation precludes a host of sci-fi settings.

>>What did Mongoose do to you to cause such hate?

Mongoose did a lot of damage to a great game and a great setting. Miller has always said he considered Traveller to be the third sci-fi setting to come out of the 60s/70s with Trek and Star Wars. Each was unique, each flowed from different precepts. Mongoose in their half-assed attempt to recast Traveller as a generic sci-fi rules set, diluted it's uniqueness.

If Mongoose had been able to modify Traveller enough to produce even run-of-the-mill rules for B5, Dred, and the rest their changes would have been worth it. Instead their lack of ability and laziness damaged the game while producing nothing of merit in return.

Completely new. Mongoose Traveler 2e.

Are psionics worth anything whatsoever?

>This is the SECOND sentence in the FIRST book:
No, no, that's the first sentence of the second paragraph of the introduction to Traveller.

The actual second sentence of the first paragraph reads:

"...Traveller is set against a background drawn from adventure-oriented science fiction literature and the scope and breadth of the game are limited only by the imagination and skill of the players and referees." - page 8, Traveller

THAT, user, is the stepping off point. Not the 3I/OTU itself. Just as SW and ST were influenced by serial comics, and those were influenced by post-modern impressionism, and so on and so forth, it's shaped by what came before.

>diluted it's uniqueness.
I can, however, agree with this. I will say that this is a good thing. Generic systems are, generally by definition, more flexible, and allow for greater variety of stories to be told. If someone wants to have subspace FTL communication in their setting, then a system that explicitly does not support it fails in that regard.

>Are psionics worth anything whatsoever?
Short answer: yes
Longer answer: not as much as you'd believe.

Psionics in Traveller typically has long recovery period and fairly difficult task difficulties. Teleportation is awesome, but also perilous. Telepathic suggestion is useful, but only if it doesn't fail. And of course, the character can always cascade fail at learning the powers in the first place.

It must be mentioned that Miller explicitly wrote in the Introduction to Traveller that:

"Almost any situation which occurs in any SF novel, movie, or short story can be recreated in Traveller with a little work on the part of the referee."

That's certainly not a preclusion of other sci-fi settings, only that they certainly could be modified to fit the player's vision.

>I will say that this is a good thing.
So, by your metric, GURPS Traveller is the best Traveller, because it's the most flexible?

>The actual second sentence of the first paragraph reads:

No. Page 8 is the beginning of the Characters section of both the 77 and 81 versions of Book 1.

The second sentence on page 5 in both versions is as I quoted it.

>No. Page 8 is the beginning of the Characters section of both the 77 and 81 versions of Book 1.
I have the 81 Book 0 pdf open right now. Page 8, Introduction to Traveller. I don't know what you're smoking.

>>Book 1.
>>Book 0

I'm quoting '77 Book 1. You're quoting '81 Book 0. See the problem?

>Page 8 is the beginning of the Characters section of both the 77 and 81 versions of Book 1.
>of Book 1
>I have the 81 Book 0 pdf open right now.
What did he mean by this?

Book 0 is from '81, so a later source than the '77 printing of Book 1.
That one does contain the bit about communication being no faster than transportation, but it also says:
>Using this three-book set, players are capable of playing single scenarios or entire campaigns set in virtually any science fiction theme.

No FTL comms is a rules assumption that made stuff like the trade system work, but you were free to toss it out if you didn't mind handwaving the resulting weird bits or tossing the trade system out.
CT77 was very light on setting and setting assumptions beyond those that make its intended style of gameplay function, and in that it's a general purpose SF system; it's just not a universal one.

Only if you extrapolated it to an extreme. As all things, it's a continuum, right? Some systems only really work within a particular setting because the mechanics so rigidly adhere to it that they don't really work anywhere else (say, Phoenix Command, or any of the various sailing-ships-and-iron-men scurvy simulators). Then you move towards the other end and you get systems whose mechanics are deeply colored in a particular setting because they reflect a core concept of the setting (say, class structure in OD&D). Then you get systems that could be fairly generic but have major or minor setting requirements but could substitute for similar settings fairly easily (say, nWoD). And then you get into the variety of generics (your GURPS, so on). So it depends on what you want, of course.

I just find that restricting the mechanics of Traveller to the OTU is a bit silly.

Sudoku, here I come. My demise aside, having flipped open to book 1 of CT77 and read:
"Using this three-book set, players are capable of playing single scenarios or entire campaigns set in virtually any science fiction theme."

Which is again repeated in the 81 and (awfully googly eyed) 82 rulebooks.

Same gist.

>I just find that restricting the mechanics of Traveller to the OTU is a bit silly.

Starting with Book 5, the mechanics and the setting are increasingly intertwined. Want big ships, advanced chargen, or detailed trade? The OTU is embedded to varying degrees in the package. It was perhaps the biggest mistake GDW made with the game.

What's being called Proto-Traveller dials back the mechanics to Books 1-3 (or sometimes 4). While that performs an "OTU-ectomy" of sorts, the basic technological assumptions within the game still constrain the range of setting UNLESS the referee puts in a lot of work.

I used Traveller to run pulp adventure games simply by capping TL because the rules had guns where D&D didn't. However saying "Hurr durr Trav can be Kirk & Vader herp derp" ignores the amount of work that needs to be done and major changes that need to be made.

>"Hurr durr Trav can be Kirk & Vader herp derp"
Easily. Especially because both ST and SW are super-light on actual physics, we don't need to worry about, for instance, whether or not that 6g gravitic drive actually requires a proportionally greater amount of fuel than a less advanced drive acting on the same amount of mass. Just call it a Warp Drive capable of Warp Factor 6 and move on.

If we assume that economics as a concept exists (which, of course, you never know) then the same speculative trading in Traveller could apply to even post-scarcity settings (The Federation may not use money, but they do trade and latinum is a thing).

I can see where you're line of thought leads to though. I'd say that you don't have to push the rules to match the setting/ideal to the degree you're referring to in order for the game to work. Else you get pic related, and frankly, no one plays that.

So I should play this?
youtube.com/watch?v=CIGHCoVzqtk

You play the Alien music in the session they pick up a distress call asking them to "liberate me."

talestoastound.wordpress.com/2015/11/20/traveller-book-4-mercenary/

>Book 4 Mercenary doesn’t refer to The Third Imperium, the house setting GDW eventually created for Traveller, anywhere in its text.

>This will come as a shock to people convinced Traveller is The Third Imperium, or people who conflate the game line into one unified product. (The Traveller Books were setting neutral until Book 6 Scouts, at which point the rules and setting became one.)

Traveller was originally pretty generic, in the sense that it was for playing on the frontier of a distant empire with plenty of freedom to do stuff.

The tech doesn't fit that well with a lot of existing settings, but you can make it work for a lot of them.

3I being the ultimate canon is disappointing.

I hate mongoose, more so because they occasionally come out with something legitimately good and I start to hope that maybe I can trust them again.

>>Book 4 Mercenary doesn’t refer to The Third Imperium, the house setting GDW eventually created for Traveller, anywhere in its text.

Not exactly. Page 1, paragraph 3, 1st sentence: "Traveller assumes a remote centralized government (referred to in this volume as the Imperium)...". In the Striker Ticket, Marastan is described as an "Imperial reservation". Yes, pedants, it doesn't say THIRD Imperium, but the official setting is beginning to poke through.

>>(The Traveller Books were setting neutral until Book 6 Scouts, at which point the rules and setting became one.)

Again, not exactly. Book 5 High Guard is crammed full of references to the Imperium and even repeats the sentence from Book 4 quoted above. Again, the phrase THIRD Imperium isn't used, but all the characteristics are there.

>Traveller was originally pretty generic, in the sense that it was for playing on the frontier of a distant empire with plenty of freedom to do stuff.

Generic in play style and/or campaign type.

>The tech doesn't fit that well with a lot of existing settings, but you can make it work for a lot of them.

Not generic in technology.

>3I being the ultimate canon is disappointing.

Yes. Wrapping the rules and the setting around each other was a mistake that only got worse as time went on.

>a mistake

I disagree, systems that try to be universal feel mushy to me. I like it when a game's mechanics fit the game world, especially when they work together in creating a universe that's fun to play in.

What's a good edition for first time Travellers?

Mong 2E, as it is easily available, easy to learn, forgiving and comfy. Also Computer rules make sense.

You can either buy it from mongoose's site or get it from the master archive.

And stick to the core rulebook at first.

>This usually takes place in a Traveller’s first term (in place of a career), though it can be delayed up until the third term if a term or two in a career is desired. From term four and onwards, pre-career education is no longer available.
wat
What do you even do for 3 terms if you aren't rolling for education?

You can for example go to the army, or pick any other career for your first two terms and go to university on your third term. Later that's not an option.

Drafted into army to pay for college?

Came to this thread looking to try and find a way to sell "Orbital" to my gaming group

Now I read that the makers of orbital have been fucked by Mongoose and are now selling the rules using the "Cepheus Engine"

So... whats the difference guys. Are the changes purely cosmetic because I have a battered old copy of both Mongoose and Orbital. Worth buying the new books?

You take other career terms. So, for instance, at 18 you take the Citizen career for 1 term, and then at 22 you roll to enter a university.

>whats the difference guys
Every thread until OP makes it a sticky:
Changes from 1e to 2e Core (decide for yourself it is worth it):

- Streamlining of skills so that characters focusing on less commonly used specializations can still use the general skill. Notably, the Electronics skill is broader.
- Getting rid of the planet of hats and making background skills not explicitly dependent on the character's homeworld type
- Something I'm sure everyone's already done, but a wider array of background skills (read: you can be athletic without having to join the army)
- Integrated military academies from Mercenaries and university from Cosmopolite into core
- Explicit rules for changing assignments within a career
- integrated Prisoner career terms
- some changes to combat (melee dodging in particular), but it's mostly the same.
- Armor values are slightly increased in 2e compared to 1e (so that there's a slightly more linear path between personal armor, vehicle armor, and starship armor), but your FGMPs and PGMPs have higher damage ratings to compensate, which is relatively faithful to the 3I setting.
- Animal rules are streamlined. Not great, but it's better for Refs. And let's be honest, how many people actually purchased the Animals sourcebook?
- streamlined and more flexible/generic starship creation rules (though what was once in core 1e has been moved to a more expansive High Guard, and inexplicably a few key paragraphs have been lost in translation)
- significantly more streamlined vehicle rules, including mechanics for shipping size and speed/range bands rather and tossing out the original 1e vehicle handbook m^3 calculations.
- much better continuity of scale between personal, vehicle, and starship scales, considering that in 1e, it's a 50x multiplier (from Mercenaries), and that's problematic to say the least

All-in-all, it's pretty easy to bash together stuff from 1e and 2e, depending on what you like.

>One of us is mistaken, I'm hoping its me

Sorry not the difference between 1st and 2nd ed Mongoose

The difference between Mongoose and Cepheus. Is the later just the former with names changed for legal reasons?

Also, lastly, and it's the straw that broke the autistic camel's back for many, is 2e's introduction of dogfighting rules. Now, very clearly, this isn't exactly in line with a bunch of preexisting material (mostly fluff, but even the mechanics in 1e HG). It's fairly easy to ignore if you want to, though doing so makes small craft even less useful than they already were in 1e.

I will say, however, that the accusation that dogfighting rules make the system too "casual" is, while logically understandable, a bit of an overreaction. Traveller is a niche RPG in a niche hobby. There's like, at most, 35, maybe 40 people in these slow, slow threads. And I'd wager that at least half, if not more, have designs for using Traveller in settings other than the 3I. I'm not convinced that 40 people makes a system too casual.

Oh, my mistake. Cepheus is more backwards compatible with CT. Essentially differences between Mongoose 1e and Cepehus:
- More basic careers (so Colonist is separate from other mundane careers like Belter and Barbarian is separate from Drifter)
- The skillset is similarly trimmed down as in 2e, but there's some differences (Liason is a skill as opposed to Steward, drive/flyer/pilot/seafarer is split off to more specific skills), most electronic related skills (comms and computers) are separate skills.

Otherwise it's basically MGT 1e with some CT dressings.

>Is the later just the former with names changed for legal reasons?
It was a necessity for 3rd party publishers; when Mongoose made 2e, the OGL they had for 1e essentially didn't carry over, unless the publishers paid half their profits to Mongoose.

It's not like Dogfighting is even necessarily Pearl Harbor-tier fighter plane juking. It's really just rules for determining who gets to point their fixed mount guns at who. Even with theoretical hard sci-fi zero atmosphere maneuvers you can only point a 90 degree cone in one direction at once. It also covers a bonus for getting "under the guns" of a big ship by getting right up against them and using its own hull as cover.

Frankly, if you're going to sperg out it should be over manned space fighters in the first place and not specific rules for resolving their combat once you have them.

>it should be over manned space fighters in the first place
I agree, 100%.

I had a general question for anyone who has run a sci fi game like this before, it was reading SWN's rules that got me thinking: How do low populated low-tech worlds exist in a system or sector with future-tech worlds?
Wouldn't a middle ages society's science and technology be launched forward a few hundred years the moment first contact was made?

>I've been to South Sudan with work
>Once you walk out of the airport the TL rapidly decreases by the km

Same reasons as in real life; weaknesses in the bureaucracy and civil society, civil strife, corruption, cultural aspects which I won't go into on Veeky Forums in case pol joins in...

The reasons for the low TL could be part of your plot

>So... whats the difference guys.

has kindly answered that. TL;DR Some improvements added and some errata cleaned up combined with Mongoose's normally shit editing and new errata. 2e hasn't been a years yet and there's already a multipage errata document for it.

>>Are the changes purely cosmetic...

There are improvements in 2e.

>> Worth buying the new books?

Why buy when 2e is available in the links above?

Information quarantines. It may not serve the future-tech world to divulge their secrets, for whatever reason, to the low-tech worlds. Maybe they're xenophobic, or want to keep hegemony over the other worlds, or even more convoluted altruistic reasons like protecting low-tech worlds from being undone by problems that arise by using high-technology.

Failing that, note that just because a nation/polity/corporation/entity may have knowledge of how to do something doesn't mean that they have the means to do it. If that Jump Drive requires producing a super-special material that can't be mined or acquired in your backwater planet, then that's a problem.

>Every thread until OP makes it a sticky

The /hwg/ group is process updating their mini sales list. Interested anons are putting links in a Word doc and uploading them as an attachment to the thread.

Perhaps if you put together a doc listing the 1e to 2e changes, the Archivist OP could add it to his usual thread starting link dump?

Hmm, not a terrible idea, though I'd have to be bit more thorough (and probably shouldn't use such an informal tone?).

As mentioned above, didn't make it clear enough, I was wanting to know if "Cepheus Orbital 2100" was worth buying when I already have "Mongoose Orbital 1e"

Can't imagine why its confusing

Anyway why; dunno I just like owning legit copies of the games I actually run. You can argue I'm a chump, but if I GM a game, I typically buy the corebook to asway my piracy guilt!

>Frankly, if you're going to sperg out it should be over manned space fighters in the first place

Traveller should have more drones and the classic warship designs should be retconned to include them.

That being said, the game's detection and weapon ranges are measured in multiple light-seconds. That comm lag puts a drone at a distinct "decision curve" disadvantage. Even semi-autonomous RPVs face this issue.

The comms a drone requires can also be jammed, spoofed, overridden, hacked, occluded, etc. Even lasers/masers can be interfered with Trav's tech.

I'd love to see a "MIRV" missile bus akin to the 2300AD missiles which carry multiple det-las warheads. I'd love to see drones which extend/enhance sensor ranges too. However, I'm also aware of the many comm issues involved. Sometimes a man has to be on the spot. Not all the time, sometimes.

>>you can only point a 90 degree cone in one direction at once.

20 minutes combat turns give you more than enough time to "aim" your ship.

>>It also covers a bonus for getting "under the guns" of a big ship by getting right up against them and using its own hull as cover.

With weapon/detection ranges measured in multiple light-seconds, you're going to be an expanding ball of gas & debris long before you can get "under the guns".

>How do low populated low-tech worlds exist in a system or sector with future-tech worlds?

Travel to 90% of this planet that isn't the West or tourist enclaves and you'll get your answer.

>Can't imagine why its confusing

Because I'm a dope!

>Anyway why; dunno I just like owning legit copies of the games I actually run. You can argue I'm a chump, but if I GM a game, I typically buy the corebook to asway my piracy guilt!

Me too and, if that makes me a chump, I'm guilty as charged. I use troves as a sneak peak of sorts, something which is still bad.

I like Orbital and I like Cepheus, so I can't imagine a combination of the two would be bad.

Not even the guy you're responding to, but it doesn't even have to be remotely operated drones. Fully autonomous AI drones cut out the need for our squishy bags of flesh, and depending on the trajectory of TL, could well be available before Jump 1 is developed (Again, it speaks to the greater problem that a lot of the extrapolation is predicated on current understanding, which is, of course, never actually current and should probably be updated when it becomes outdated).

Of course, by most Traveller rules, a 1 TB hard disk drive is apparently TL12 technology.

>Hmm, not a terrible idea, though I'd have to be bit more thorough (and probably shouldn't use such an informal tone?).

I know I've seen your 1e-to-2e posts in several generals now and they've always been very well received. Hell, I even saved one as txt file.

You've been able to succinctly and successfully explain the changes in something as character limited as a chan post, so I can't see how having more "room" would be a bad thing. A page or so would be enough to get the high points across, right?

As for tone, read what you've written aloud and you'll know whether or not any change is needed.

>aka, D&D's Tensor's floating disk, which got super-nerfed in 5e specifically because that's what players used it for
Perhaps that's because that IS what it was for when the spell was first published back in 1e.

Important note: This is a TNE deckplan with a 2m grid instead of a 1.5m grid. A dton is ONE square.

>Not even the guy you're responding to, but it doesn't even have to be remotely operated drones. Fully autonomous AI drones

First, Traveller already has fire & forget missiles which are one use AI drones.

Second, I specifically mentioned my desire to see something like 2300AD's reusable "MIRV' bus in Traveller.

My position isn't the all too usual false binary "choice" all too many gamers all too often default to. I'm not saying "huur no drones durr" or "herp no men derp". I am saying their are roles and reasons for both.

>and then shafted 3rd party publishers to "clear the deck"
>What did Mongoose do to you to cause such hate?
This same thing, over and over, with everything they've done in the past 20 years.

>This same thing, over and over, with everything they've done in the past 20 years.

Exactly. Mongoose is essentially GW's retarded kid brother. Not as smart and not as successful because they can't employ the same shady business practices with equal skill.

>Yes, pedants, it doesn't say THIRD Imperium, but the official setting is beginning to poke through.
"Take shape" is more accurate. Unlike the modern habit of creating a setting then (attempting to) write the rules to fit, Traveller started as rules. The setting was written from scratch because the setting bits published quickly became the most popular.

Mistake only in hindsight, and only for those whom a different Emperor would chide for lack of vision.

Note that the Cepheus Engine is mostly a trademark change, as it is derived directly from the Mongoose 1e SRD.

>Mistake only in hindsight,

Yes, but a mistake nonetheless.

I've written in the past that, IMHO, the reason Traveller never established a "chinese wall" between the rules and the official setting was that no one inside GDW was running a personal long term Traveller campaign.

Look at the group that became TSR and published D&D. Well before the rules were codified, Gygax had a which he not only carried forward into the D&D rules but also kept playing. Arneson's experience with D&D was the same. He too had a setting which predated the published rules and one he kept playing through all the iterations of the rules.

Because TSR was constantly and continually using D&D for different campaigns, they were more aware of the need to differentiate the rules from the settings.

Unlike Gygax and Arneson, Miller, Harshman, Wiseman, and the others weren't running a continuous Traveller campaign for years.

GDW averaged one new product every 20 days for 20 years. They had a wide number of product lines across several genres too; wargames, minis, several RPGs, you name it. They were BUSY. Not too busy to playtest or occasionally play for fun, but too busy to create and continually play in a Traveller version of Greyhawk and Blackmoor.

Now, 40 years later with the release of the SRD, CE, and the rest, the long delayed explosion of published Traveller settings is beginning.

Here we are, in pdf form, for any who are interested. I've inevitably missed some stuff, so feel free to rip it apart.

Superb. It's just what the doctor ordered. Thank you.

Hopefully the Archivist/OP will add it to his "Start a new thread" kit. If not, I've saved a copy and will make it my first post in any new threads.

Thank you again.

>Gygax
Gygax's campaign specific rules shaped D&D and AD&D in deleterious ways for 20+ years, though.