Traveller General--Cross-species Relations Edition

isn't all ortillery game changing? or do you mean surface to space?

Specifically space-to-surface. Maybe ortillery isn't the right term for it. I've seen it called Deadfall Ordinance elsewhere.

ortillery is general and setting agnostic, deadfall ordinance is, to the best of my knowledge, a creation of the traveller fanbase

The name, probably, but the concept of dropping something heavy, from orbit, on to a target is pretty setting agnostic.

>Maybe ortillery isn't the right term for it

Ortillery is the correct term for it. There are those who don't understand the term, but that's their problem.

Deadfall ordinance refers to UNGUIDED munitions. Ortillery refers to those munitions plus other types directed beams and guided munitions.

Thanks for clearing that up for me user.

No problem, user. As usual it was a case of spergs fixating on labels and failing to see the big picture.

Have any of you fine folks run Pirates of Drinax? I'm thinking about running it and was looking for a bit of advice.

Do you run the chapters as presented in the book, or is there a more optimal order to go by?

How much time to you give between the printed adventures for your players to go about doing Adventure Stuff?

PoD has been talked about in previous Veeky Forums thread before so I'm sure several anons will chime in.

I've haven't run it in toto, but I have borrowed bits and pieces along with marking which parts I'd change to more fit my group's preferred play style. While I think the general idea is good, I've problem with the specific application.

and what're these problems, so that other's who wanna run it can go in informed?

I finished reading it earlier, and it seems like a pretty good campaign. But it does seem make a lot of assumptions about what your players are doing.

I think the first thing I'll change up is rather than hiring generic crew of various talent, have a pool of crew the players can recruit from with a picture of them, a brief bio, and what positions they prefer. But the crew pool will be filled with NPCs made with the character generation rules, and they'll work on increasing their skills behind the scenes.

I think that'll get the players more invested in their crew, rather than viewing them as disposable assets.

It's still remarkably good for mongoose

Yeah, but I think their proof-reader gave up about half way through the document.

The editing up to about the fourth mission is decent, then it just get jammed with typos.

It's not problems as much as emphasizing different aspects for what different groups would perceive as more "realism".

user points to how they would change how the crew is hired. In others threads, much has been made about how repairs and general maintenance for a centuries old ship built by long vanished factories to equally long vanished standards should cause many more issues than PoD wants to admit. I dislike the seeming lack of planning regarding when/where to raid. Historical pirate just didn't sail about hoping to bump into someone, they had pretty good intel about who was sailing when to where.

There's nothing fatally wrong with PoD, nothing which makes it unusable "out of the box". That being said, it is simplistic, overly cinematic, and lacks any depth. All of those "problems" aren't problems for every group, however, and all can be "corrected" by a competent referee.

Seeing as it's a Mongoose product, I was surprised it was edited that well.

>much has been made about how repairs and general maintenance for a centuries old ship built by long vanished factories to equally long vanished standards should cause many more issues than PoD wants to admit.

5Mrc or 1 Ship Share is a bit of a cop-out.

>Historical pirate just didn't sail about hoping to bump into someone, they had pretty good intel about who was sailing when to where.

I'm sure this is, very briefly, covered in one of the adventure threads where the players are looking for a specific ship. The logic behind it could easily be used for hunting prey, instead of the Nu-Space Encounter Table.

>5Mrc or 1 Ship Share is a bit of a cop-out.

A cop out in the eyes of some groups, but a opt out for groups who want to emphasize different aspects.

My groups have always tended more towards "gearheads". They like working though finding the parts, skills, money, and time to keep things flying.

For other groups that's beyond boring. They don't want to deal with that level of detail in that particular aspect of a campaign. They want any emphasis place elsewhere and some want no emphasis at all. They're happy with a pulpy cinematic feel to things.

I get what you mean. But when I say "cop-out" I say it because I think it's a bit cheap for what it does.

For example, if you've pre-briefed your players that the campaign is going to have a piracy theme to it, a few of them are likely to roll Rogues for the Pirate specialisation. Now, consider that a few lucky rolls in the Rogue career can net you 2D ship shares, and combine that with the D3 ship shares that replace ships you'd get as a career benefit and you can easily end up with a party with more than the 15 Ship Shares required to fully repair the Harrier before it even leaves Drinax.

>But when I say "cop-out" I say it because I think it's a bit cheap for what it does.

I agree with you. As a mechanism to "wave off" the repair and maintenance issues that should come with a non-standard, centuries-old statship, PoD's suggested 5MCrImp or 1 ship share is insulting to anyone's intelligence.

It is Mongoose however and insulting our intelligence is what they do best.

Working various angles to make the Harrier even partially operational should be the focus of the campaigns early stage. Weighing the possible risks of damage in a raid versus the potential benefits of the same should be something the players are doing for the rest of the campaign. Planning raids while taking into account inoperable equipment should also be a constant issue.

Instead, Mongoose waved that all away so simpletons could play at being Johnny Dep in space.

Hell, in 2e, only three careers have no chances for ship shares: Army, Marine, and Prisoner.
Everyone else has a MINIMUM 1-in-6 chance (ignoring the 7th result, for those who restrict the number of terms) of getting 1 or more ship shares. Navy has a 1-in-2 chance.
Merchant, Noble, and Scholar have a 1-in-6 chance of getting a ship with 25% paid off, while scouts have a 1-in-6 of getting loaned a scout.
While I kind of like the new rules for ship shares (each one represents MCr1 in buying power from various savings, investments, deals, favors, and ship-ownership programs), you can get quite a lot of cash with the excess ones - each ship share not used adds Cr1000 to your pension. Each quarter-ship not used (if someone else rolls up a ship, or you roll up more than 100% of a ship) adds Cr25000 to your pension.
Just one quarter ship not used allows a High standard of living - with 83 credits left over each month.
What a nice retirement plan.

>Hell, in 2e, only three careers have no chances for ship shares: Army, Marine, and Prisoner.

That's why many say Mongoose went too far with it's "Monty Haul" chargen system. PCs finish chargen with too much in the way of "cash & prizes"; i.e. ships shares, pensions, Ancient artifacts, etc. As you noted, many PCs can comfortably retire after MgT chargen so why the fuck are they out adventuring?

In Classic Bk2, two careers had a chance at ship. Scouts had a 1-in-6 chance (which Mongoose kept) but are on detached duty and subject to recall (which Mongoose didn't keep). Merchants have a chance ONLY if they made Captain and then still with a 40yr mortgage. Supplement 4 COTI added two other careers with chance at getting a ship, pirates and scientists, and each comes with a mortgage too.

MgT, OTOH, lets almost anyone earn ship shares not matter how implausible or idiotic the result.

A couple threads back, some user posted a MgT PC whose 1st career was as a TL0 barbarian king and who still somehow ended up a merchant captain owning a ship! Not only was a Stone Age barbarian allowed to shift careers and become a starship crewman, their barbarian terms allowed them to roll for ship shares! Complete fucking lunacy on MgT's part and brain dead adherence to idiotic rules on the user's part.

Both Mongoose versions say the scout ship still belongs to the service, and MgT2 says the character can expect to handle missions from time to time.

The barbarian receiving ship shares is only because it isn't its own career, but part of the drifter career (which is unfortunate). Becoming a merchant captain isn't impossible however. Ships visit worlds of all tech levels. Get on one somehow, and you are on your way.

Forgot to add - the barbarian earning ship shares isn't that far out anyway. Again, ships visit worlds of all tech levels. Ship shares can represent "contacts, credit rating, savings and
favors". The barbarians tribe had contact with the merchants (maybe they traded precious metals for food, steel weapons, or whatever), and/or the king saved the merchants life somehow. That would establish a contact and/or a favor, and therefor be a potential ship share.IT is possible.

Traveller has a lot of weird situations. IT is up to you explain it. It can be done.

No, mongoose kept the scouts being on loan.
All other rolled ships come with the mortgage being paid off at 25% per time rolled, and they can't be combined with ships the other players have rolled. So you need a minimum of 4 terms (with no promotions, 3 terms with 1-2), with really good luck.
I can explain the barbarian king thing - MgT has Barbarian being a specialty of Drifter, and so it shares the same benefits table. They also later said that he was a TL1 (maybe TL2), and did try to create a story where that character did end up with a reason to go into space.

By the way that you're acting, I would say they didn't succeed, or you recoiled in horror from extraordinary events.

Anyways, have a random 20x20 dotmap. No GG rolled, ready for your next scout game. Or pull the Wilderness Exploration article from FreeTrav and hit your group with a misjump....

>and MgT2 says the character can expect to handle missions from time to time.

And MgT1e doesn't. How many referees new to Traveller are even going to know about the IISS Detached Duty Office let alone impose recalls on a player?

>The barbarian receiving ship shares is only because it isn't its own career, but part of the drifter career (which is unfortunate).

It is unfortunate.

>>Becoming a merchant captain isn't impossible however. Ships visit worlds of all tech levels. Get on one somehow, and you are on your way.

Bullshit. A TL0 or 1 adult who has spent enough of their life to become King of the Cave Bear Clan isn't going to be able to learn what they need to know to be a TL 10 starship captain.

They could work as a human forklift in the hold, but piloting? Or sensor ops? Or navigating? Engineering, computing, or any of the rest? Not a fucking chance.

Artifacts are really a rarity, so it looks like you're bitching about the chance for them.
We really don't know how many people do The Wrong Thing and roll up characters without the group - so we don't know how many of them fudge the numbers hoping for something uber-special (which is why all my artifacts are in fact very mundane items, like pens or paperweights, just alien or ancient).
Every career has a 1/6th chance of getting a life event per term. Unusual Event is a 12 on that table - 2.78%. On that table, you have 1/3 chance of getting an alien or ancient artifact.
What they don't mention, and should, is that Unusual Events require talking with the Referee to figure them out.

We all can come with various scenarios in which a person from very low-tech could end up in a starship.

What you cannot do, however, it plausibly explain how that same person learned the hi-tech SKILLS the glitch in MgT chargen awards them.

MgT1 does as well, just not in the core book. IT is in Book 3: Scout, page 26.

>What they don't mention, and should, is that Unusual Events require talking with the Referee to figure them out.

Which is why those events are routinely abused and/or misunderstood.

We've seen the questions asked in these very threads. New players with asinine, yet RAW correct, chargen results and needing help a pretzel logic backstory to "explain" them.

Tech level does not represent the highest level of tech available on a world. It represents the highest level of tech the world is capable of producing by itself. It is entirely possible for a low tech world to understand (and even own, through imports) higher level technology. It just isn't capable of producing it themselves.

It is very possible the king knew of the technology (not enough to have even rank 0, but enough it wasn't completely foreign).

So I have to buy another $20 splat to explain something which has been in every other version's core rules? Thank you Mongoose.

Don't your grandfather how to suck eggs, okay? I've been fucking around with TL since 1977.

There's TL in the rules and TL in the OTU/3I. You're talking about TL in the OTU/3I.

TL in the rules "indicates what precise types of equipment are available and common locally" and it's been that way for 40 years.

The description of technology levels in the rulebook specifically state that one of the things TL measures is capabilities of the world (MgT core, page 5). And that lower tech levels may have higher tech available (page 6).

The separation between the rules and the OTU/3I does not exist as far as MgT is concerned.

>The separation between the rules and the OTU/3I does not exist as far as MgT is concerned.

Which, of course, is why MgT has a specific 3I setting splat.

You do remember that Mongoose pitched MgT1e as a GENERIC sci-fi rules sets? And that they released various settings for the 1e rules like Dred, Strontium Dogs, B5, and others?

Ah yes, the "generic" crap. Where The typical Traveller careers are included, 3Imp organizations like the TAS are included, the alien races are all from the OTU, all the equipment is stuff you could find the the OTU, sample patrons are from the OTU, and a host of other crap. Even the "alternate" settings end up more like modified versions of the OTU that the settings they are supposed to represent.

They may have pitched it 1e as generic, but failed miserably. Which isn't surprising. The only thing Mongoose can succeed at is failing.

And from what I can tell, they all failed because Mongoose couldn't rewrite the rules to fit the setting.
By being intelligent. It's a matter of becoming familiar with the level of technology - and we're not talking about knowing the science behind them. The average person these days could be conned into running household mains through a can of pringles to make a computer. But they still use them.
Hell, walk a TL1 person through which buttons to push in response to X, and you can start making a basic crewman.
I preferred Tech Index, which was "native capabilities equal to X", and one of the examples was a dried combustible bug that gave them the equivalent of gunpowder. Now it's like a ladder, and don't get me on how mongoose treats it.
Just don't read the first part of the Psion splat, okay? Just skip to the powers section.
No, you just don't like extraordinary events. So ban them at your table and quit bitching about the rest of us.
Now, I do agree that new players are mostly going "is it like a +5 gun or shit?", but we need to focus on helping them make sensible pretzel logic that adds story hooks.
And enemies. I like the idea of extraordinary events adding enemies, because reasons.

>Hell, walk a TL1 person through which buttons to push in response to X, and you can start making a basic crewman.

Basic crewman, not captain & owner. There's extraordinary events and then there's outright belief suspender snapping, pants on head, lava bathing, stupidity.

>I like the idea of extraordinary events adding enemies, because reasons.

So do I, which is why I don't ban them outright. Care to guess how small a minority we two are?

Last FLGS open night, I was running the great bug shoot 'em up Chamax Plague for a bunch of casuals. They were having a great time blasting bugs and trying not to get splashed by the acid.

Next table over was running Pathfinder (I think.) One player had an archer with two halfling magic user followers. The halfings would somehow enchant every arrow he loosed so that they would hit his target in the eyes. On halfling for one eye, one for the other.

The DM "lost" the "discussion" regarding that fighting "tactic" because all the spergs sitting in pulled various splats and starting quoting various RAWs. The DM said fine, played along, eventually targeted the two halflings, and killed them. I don't think you would have got a worse reaction from the spergs if you'd insisted they all bathe and put on clean clothes.

That's the general run of players and that's who Mongoose caters to. Remember that the next time some rule in MgT hands your PC the universe on a platter with a pocketful of blowjobs.

We should put at least part of it into the Getting Started
Your character is made with the rest of the group, so you can use the connections rule. If you made a character without the group, they're an NPC.
Unusual events require talking with your referee. Try to make them minimal - the artifact is something completely mundane, the contact in the government was a meet & greet won by lottery, etc.

And if anybody wants the universe on a platter and a pocketful of blowjobs, then the universe is a small orb that causes temporary insanity from information overload, and the blowjobs have somehow given you an STD that happens only in Hivers.

The insurance code on that last one depends on how religious you are - it's either "Malicious Divine Action" or "The Universe Hates You".

>We should put at least part of it into the Getting Started

It wouldn't fly.

For some people the sort of applied common sense you posted and even similar such suggestions in the published rules are perceived as "accusations" of "Bad Wrong Fun".

Many people don't play games as much as they "hack" them. Each loophole, quibble, broken rule, or vague sentence is something which must be exploited to the fullest. The letter of a rule must be folded, spindled, and mutilated while the spirit of the rule is deliberately ignored. All interpretations are predicated on meta-game concerns or ulterior goals and not what would make for fun game play.

I've got to stop attending FLGS open nights. Watching the yahoos hack rather than play whatever RPG is on the table has made me too cynical. I had 2 players last time join my table in mid-game after leaving another table in disgust. I handed them a pair pre-gens no one selected and they were shooting bugs in no time.

>STD that happens only in Hivers.

There's a running joke in TNE about Hivers and corndogs that I'm surprised got past MWM. There are examples of it in TNS snippets, the Hiver splat, and even the TNE novels.

Oh? I've got to find this.
Or you could tell me, but I'll try for reading.
>For some people the sort of applied common sense you posted and even similar such suggestions in the published rules are perceived as "accusations" of "Bad Wrong Fun".
I think we could safely tell those people to go back to D&D. Because you know what they are? They're the sort of people who play a video games with the cheats on so they can kill everything and ignore the actual game itself (as opposed to people to like me, who put on cheats so I can ignore the tedious and repetitious combat that make up 75% of all video game content these days and focus on the actual 5% that is the story)

>Or you could tell me, but I'll try for reading.

The Hivers as a whole somehow become extremely interested in and very fond of corndogs going as far as serving them on formal diplomatic occasions. Some speculate that the Hivers' odd interest is due in part to the fact that they've finally identified a food which both they and humans enjoy.

Then what the Hivers actually use to make their corndogs...

... is revealed to be a tubular parasite which attaches itself to the urogenital orifice of a very large semiaquatic animal on some Hiver planet.

I guess Nathans and Oscar Meyer didn't make to the 57th Century.

Hah! I love it.
And of course they would find something similar that they could harvest themselves.
In fact, amongst those who could partially understand human social rules, it would appear to be a great honor to be fed them, if the harvesting was a dangerous activity, or if the original material could not be harvested elsewhere (and if it could, then the ones from the original world would be more prestigious).

Might be better than what actually goes into hotdogs.

>They're made from cow's eyes, and dog's heads, and old phone books, and, oh yeah! Weeeeiner flavor! Mmmmm.

>And of course they would find something similar that they could harvest themselves.

Exactly. As you note, the whole scenario is entirely logical from the Hivers' point of view and "fits" with their canonical behavior.

Also, it's not just a gross out for sake of being a gross out and there are historical parallels. That and the fact it "fits" the Hivers may be why MWM let it slide by. Contrary to popular belief, he's not "against" stuff like this. He just wants to leave it up to individual referees to add what they feel is right for their group.

With regards to the "harvesting", the Hivers import critters from their homeworld to planets which they feel don't have either enough predators or sufficiently nasty predators to "cull" the larvae the Hivers constantly produce.

I wonder if the host creature could be one of those imported critters? It would explain how/why Hivers in widespread locations suddenly had "corndogs" on the menu.

Hippos are the most dangerous animal in Africa. What about a really large and really nasty "Hiver-potamus" as the so-called corndog's host?

True, but with hotdogs you don't really know and can only guess.

With Hiver corndogs you KNOW and don't need to guess.

It's a case of culinary TMI.

I have a few more items too add when you next get a chance to, all three of them for CE
Enigmatic - Quick Setting 1: Event and History Generator
Worlds Apart (Fantasy, sort of like Spelljammer. Space replaced with an endless ocean that requires special engines to cross)
Worlds Apart: Suppliers (prepackaged random brokers, and their available goods)

I'll post a link to Worlds Apart, it's 10mb too large for Veeky Forums.

It's zippy, but it should work
www107.zippyshare.com/v/veIvbfzD/file.html

I should note that in Worlds Part, it is very easy to make the mortgage.
I think. I'll have to run the math - jumps are still a week, but mortgages are quarterly.

Do we have world's apart in the archive ? Looks like a neat setting.

What's the difference between traveller and mongoose traveller?

Where is the Traveller Companion for TM2E?

I assume you mean MgT2e? (Mongoose Traveller 2e).

Doesn't exist yet. Word is sometime "early 2018"..

yeah sorry
that's a little disapointing to hear. you'd think they'd release it before they talked about it in their book...

Mongoose Traveller is a specific ruleset of Traveller. Which other version of Traveller are you asking about?

Well, Mongoose isn't known for making intelligent decisions.

I dunno, I guess 5? I'm checking out Traveller and other systems for a space opera game.

In that case, the difference is that Traveller 5 isn't a game. There may be one buried somewhere in there, but at this point is is nothing more than a massive book of various tables.

>What's the difference between traveller and mongoose traveller?

Read and look for the "Getting Started" document in the Archive's root folder.

I have a question: if you start your traveller with electronics 0, and major in electronics (special) 1, does that overwrite general electronics? or does that mean you only have a 1 in that specific type of electronics

With specialties, you still (usually) have all other types of that skill at rank 0. So having Electronics (Comms) at rank 1, you can still use all the other parts of the Electronics skill at rank 0.

Ok. I have another question. When you're entering into a career for the first time, and the service skills in basic training overlap with skills already at level 0, does that mean they go up to 1?

No.

No, I'm pretty sure it states "get those skills at 0, unless you already have them".

Granted, Mongoose Publishing's blind-idiot tier editing can get a bit confusing, so I can see where the confusion comes from.

jump-1

I want to git gud at playing traveller, but I don't know anyone who plays it.

Unrelated, does anyone use the system for other settings? SWN probably has my favorite one-page setting ever, but the core mechanics feel pretty uninspired.

Just about everyone ignores 5. Use Mongoose 1, Classic, or Cepheus Engine (which is basically a mix between the two). Everyone except Mongoose and MWM (the guy who created the game) use CE for their stuff now.
Ignore all overlapping skills when doing basic training - its called basic for a reason, and if you already have that skill at 0, you learn nothing from that portion of the training (well, you learn how to use it in the context of your career, but that's not worthy of gaining it at 1).

>which is basically a mix between the two

It's an MgT1 clone. I don't know where people got this idea, but there's very little Classic in it, if any. The 1970s 2d6 Rules book makes it a mix of Mgt1 and Classic.

>Granted, Mongoose Publishing's blind-idiot tier editing can get a bit confusing, so I can see where the confusion comes from.
Both versions of MgT explicitly call out what gaining a skill at level 0 does (under Skills and Training), and actually gives examples of what each scenario of gaining skill levels actually does for you in character creation. But, whatever. Keep acting like that guy who takes a jab at his ex with every joke he makes even when it stopped being funny ages ago. We get it.

And before you start calling people Mongoose shills again, I actually find it the worst edition of Traveller. It's just getting really tiring to see such butthurt every single thread.

>Both versions of MgT explicitly call out what gaining a skill at level 0 does (under Skills and Training), and actually gives examples of what each scenario of gaining skill levels actually does for you in character creation. But, whatever. Keep acting like that guy who takes a jab at his ex with every joke he makes even when it stopped being funny ages ago. We get it.

MGT is the version I play, I like it, but it has its flaws. Bad editing being its biggest. Pointing that out doesn't make me a dick. So stop being a whiny faggot.

>I don't know where people got this idea, but there's very little Classic in it, if any.

Look at it this way: Does CE have all of 1e's "Monty Haul" chargen tables? Or does CE chargen more resemble Classic's "Stingy" chargen system?

There's more to a RPG system than a die rolling mechanism.

>Unrelated, does anyone use the system for other settings?

All the time. There is a fantasy Classical Rome/Mediterranean setting called Mercator, a generic fantasy setting called Wanderer, and a Spellgamer like setting called Worlds Apart. The setting for the GURPS version is an alternate timeline and anons here have mentioned someone using it for a pulpy 1930s Indiana Jones setting.

Because the game has stats for tech ranging from bows&arrows to laser guns and because Classic was designed to be modded, you can pretty much use the rules for anything.

Go to bed, Matthew.

Tech index? What's that? I've never heard of it

Has anyone here used Traveller for unrealistic and likely large robots before? Whether planetside or in space, I wanna get some mecha going on, but I also like having something like Classic Traveller for simplicity's sake.

Battle Dress on steroids.

MgT1e has a few examples of mecha, but that means you're not using Classic simple rules.

What Tech Level was back in the original '77 release. 81 it got changed to Tech Level for some reason. 81 also saw the trade route rules being removed and replaced with guidelines for x-boat routes.

So, Sword Worlders are 'Conan with a Spaceship' right? That's how the game seems to be telling me to play them...tell me if I'm wrong

I've only read mongooses splat on them

There is a "mech tech" and "cyclops" 3rd party supplement under
mongoose 2008 = Third party = Ships and Vehicles

My tip is also that you decide upon oe of those as basline mecha because traveller handles great variations in power between single characters rather poorly. Hence why you don't use traveller for a superhero ame

More early-medieval era Norse, but with spaceships and laser guns.

The problem is that mongoose tends to go over the top with their descriptions and strays from the usual "open for interpretation" stance most editions had.

99% of their time they arejust sligthly more buff modern people who favour physical health and a "hands on" approach to most things.
There IS some viking style design going on with them and they pretend to be vikings from time to time.

But how much that is is open to you as GM and your players. No two traveller universes are alike, even if we have people here who try to push their "true" OTU by all means neccesary, ignore them if they aren't constructive.

thanks, I think I'll go with space vikings because it's cool

Space=rad
vikings=rad
Space vikings=rad2

Godspeed user.

They always came off as a bunch of space-sexist dickbags with a terrible understanding of history trying to be "like the ancestors!"

>Look at it this way: Does CE have all of 1e's "Monty Haul" chargen tables? Or does CE chargen more resemble Classic's "Stingy" chargen system?
>There's more to a RPG system than a die rolling mechanism.

Or maybe look at it this way: Can you run Classic Adventure 10: Safari Ship with it? No, you can't. It's flat-out incompatible.
Yeah, there's more than dice mechanics, but there's also more than chargen.

And as a side note, I think the difference in results between Classic's chargen and Mongoose's has been greatly exaggerated in this thread of late, it's hardly the Monty Haul Experience from what I've seen. Can you get some crazy characters once in a while? Yeah, but you can have that happen in Classic, too, and in my experience it's not noticeably more common when using Mongoose's chargen.

The real difference is the number of skills, and the events tables.
And editing, but GDW didn't really have a quarterly release cycle like it seemed MgT had.

They also had editors who could pass the GED.

>So, Sword Worlders are 'Conan with a Spaceship' right?

Not in the slightest. That's just Mongoose catering as usual to the lowest common denominator; i.e. their normal customers.

There's a Sword Worlds sourcebook in the GURPS Traveller folder of the Archives. Read it and ignore anything Mongoose says.

The SW were settled by an army corp recruited primarily from Scandinavia. The unit wound up on the losing side of a minor civil war during the fall of the Rule Of Man/2nd Imperium. Not wanting to be treated as war criminals, they swung a deal with the Aslan, working as mercs in return for assistance in crossing the Aslan's jump-5 rift route. After exploring for a bit, they settled Gram in the Marches and expanded to other worlds from there.

The arrival of the 3rd Imperium, the resurgence of the Darrians, and getting their asses regularly kicked up between their ears in a few of the Frontier Wars despite being allied with the Zhodani, sparked a "return to our roots" movement which revived what people in the 57th Century believed were "authentic" Scandinavian/Norse attitudes and beliefs. There was even an attempt to introduce a pseudo-Norse religion.

The revival coincided with a reunification of the fractured SW Confederation after the 4th Frontier War and was supported by the new confederation government as a tool for reunification. By the time of the Classic Era however, the Norse revival has become more of minor cultural trend than actual everyday beliefs.

So, no, the Sword Worlders don't fly around with horns on their vacc suit helmets, carry axes into battle, or swear oaths to Odin. Only Mongoose and other terminally derpy morons take things that far. They're normal people with Norse nuances and not fucking cartoons.

Yeah, but increasing the number of skills reduces the power of each skill, yet MgT characters still end up with fewer skills than a Classic character using the Advanced chargen.
There's plenty of fodder for criticism in Mongoose's edition, but I think the chargen criticism has been a little overboard of late.

Go to bed, Matthew. CE is here and your version is dead because of your piss poor business practices.

You were stupid enough to release the SRDs into the OGL framework and then compounded your stupidity by attempting an IP grab which drove all the 3rd content creators - the people who were writing rings around the shit you produce in house - to use CE.

You fucked it all up all by yourself, so do everyone a favor and go some place where your version can die an unmourned death.

I didn't care for the GURPS sourcebook. I feel like it tried a little too hard to make them into the fuill-on East Germany of the 3I/Zhodani cold war.

IMO, the only proper Sword Worlds sourcebook is the one originally published right here.