The Third Imperium

When Mongoose first released their version of Traveller, I was fairly enthusiastic. With a few minor glitches, the core rules got things right. It didn't take too long though before the kind of slipshod editing and production errors that have come to be associated as typical of Mongoose products began to appear. Missing paragraphs, incorrect tables of contents and typos galore. Combined with a few questionable editorial decisions *cough* 760 Patrons *cough* I soon lost the urge to collect all the books as they came out.

I do still have to give credit for at least one thing they're doing right : the setting. They decided from the beginning to split the setting from the rules. This let's them use the core rules as a generic system, which they've already used to support supplements for Hammer's Slammers and Babylon 5. And, perhaps unintentionally, it lets fans of the Third Imperium just buy the Third Imperium books and pass over the rulebooks.

While the separation between the two isn't perfect (supplements like Fighting Ships are full of Third Imperium specific designs), it is good enough for my purposes.

Most of the decisions they've made regarding the development of the Third Imperium Setting have been good ones. They started by resetting the clock back to the year 1105 by the Imperial Calendar (5626 AD), the year that GDW started with back when they first created the setting. A lot of later developments in the setting weren't appreciated by all the fans, so by doing things this way, they don't totally alienate anybody.

Next, they picked a single region and chose to expand outwards from it. The original Traveller made the mistake of having two settings: The Spinward Marches, and the Solomani Rim. The problem was that while both are sectors of the Third Imperium, they are on opposite ends of the Imperium. Due to the sheer size of the overall setting, no campaign would ever end up using both settings. Mongoose wisely decided to just pick the Spinward Marches (the more popular of the two settings) and expand out from it.

The first Third Imperium product from Mongoose was a book about the Spinward Marches. While they didn't attempt to write the definitive text (after all this time such a thing would probably take multiple volumes), they did add some new things and set up the seeds for a series of possible futures, not just the one future that occurred in the original setting timeline. There's enough there for people new to the setting to get going, but presented in such a way that those already familiar with the setting now have a lot of new options to toss into the mix.

One of the biggest changes is the shift of focus in the political sphere. The focus of the original setting was Duke Norris of Regina. A clash between the Imperium and the neighboring Zhodani led Norris to take a prominent role in Spinward Marches politics, becoming the Sector Duke and eventually Arch-Duke of the re-established Domain of Deneb. In the Mongoose setting, Norris is still a relatively minor player who barely gets a mention. The focus is instead on Duchess Delphine of Mora, an important trade world. This simple shift in focus adds a lot of interesting new detail to the setting, and several different options for where to take a Spinward Marches campaign other than through the events developed in the original timeline.

Next, they introduced the first alien book, Aslan, covering one of the major races that has a presence near the Spinward Marches. In addition, they covered the entire Trojan Reach sector that lies immediately to Rimward (towards the galactic rim) of the Spinward Marches in as much detail as the Marches themselves were covered in the first book. They followed this up with the Vargr module and the Gvurrdon sector to Coreward (towards the galactic core) of the Marches.

The latest book is another sector book, like the Spinward Marches book, but this time covering the Reft Sector that lies to Trailing (Spinward refers to the direction the galaxy is spinning, while Trailing is the opposite direction) of the Trojan Reach. This sector includes the Islands Clusters subsectors that have been a part of the Traveller universe for some time. While in the original timeline these subsectors were cut off from the Imperium and waged a bloody multi-sided war that started sometime after 1106, this book changes things a bit by establishing a minor Imperial presence in the region prior to the outbreak of war, and presenting alternate future possibilities that don't necessarily end in war.

In addition, Mongoose has been releasing "map packs" for each sector they detail, which are simply a poster sized map of the sector in question.

I hope that Mongoose continues releasing information on sectors that connect to the sectors already released.

I also hope that they stick with their "snapshot" approach to describing the Third Imperium. So far every product has been created as if it were a snapshot of the situation as it exists in 1105. There is no attempt to move the timeline forward as each product is released, as was done with the original Traveller products. This lets a GM move the timeline forward on his own, either following the original metaplot, creating his own, or letting the actions of the players have more influence over the course of events.

At this point I don't really ever expect to run a game set in the Third Imperium again, but I do still like reading about it, which is why I'm still buying these books despite no longer collecting the rules.

Hammer's Slammers

This time last year I was reading The Complete Hammer's Slammers collection of stories. Apparently someone at Mongoose Publishing was doing the same thing, because they just released the Hammer's Slammers supplement for Traveller.

Physically, this is one of the best products I've ever seen from Mongoose, which isn't saying much given their track record, but in this case the work is adequate. It's a 208 page book, full color, and hardbound. The bindery and printing are of good quality. The artwork is acceptable, if not exceptional. I believe a good portion of it has been recycled from supplements for the Hammer's Slammers miniatures game, but I could easily be mistaken since I've only seen excerpts of those books. There are cut-away views of both a tank and combat car, which should be a nice treat for most Slammers fans. The only really bad art in the book comes from the tactical maps used in the sample adventures and history sections. They are cheap looking cut & paste jobs.

The layout is generally good, and so far I haven't noticed any glaring typos. This is apparently due to the work of Will Chapman, a professional layout and graphic design artist who was recently hired by Mongoose. This is one of his first projects with the company to reach print. Hiring him was a long overdue move by Mongoose, and one that can only lead to good things for their product lines.

The book itself is a supplement to the Traveller core rules, and requires those rules to be used. It starts with short overviews of the Hammer's Slammers Universe (HSU), and the way the mercenary business works in it. Both of these are of interest to both the gamer and Slammers fan, but are limited in the amount of information presented.

Next up is Character Generation. It looks like they did a good job with the new character careers covering the different specialties within Hammer's Slammers, but I think there could have been a little bit more effort put into harmonizing the careers from the core Traveller rules with the HSU. For example, there's no evidence of an equivalent to the scout career in the Hammer's Slammers universe (HSU). There's also not much evidence of a Traveller style navy or marine force. It's questionable whether any of these three careers should be allowed in Hammer's Slammers character generation. Another example is in the mustering out benefits for the core book careers. There's no TAS in the HSU, and ship shares are going to be pretty useless in the average HSRPG campaign. There probably should have been a discussion about replacing these with something more appropriate to the setting.

After the Character Generation rules is a History of the Slammers. This is one of the more interesting sections from a fan's perspective as it organizes all the different campaigns from the stories into a coherent timeline. In the books themselves there's a definite beginning and end, but it's unclear where a lot of the stories in the middle occur. The narrative of the history makes it appear that there's no room for additions, but the year by year timeline shows that there are plenty of gaps where the GM could create his own missions for the Slammers to participate in, if he doesn't want to accept the default situation of setting the game after the Slammers have once again become a part of the Nieuw Friesland Army.

After the general history is a Character Roster of many of the main characters from the books. As an interesting point going back to the character generation, write-ups of these characters make use of the nobility, rogue, army, and citizen careers, in addition to the new careers presented in the Hammer's Slammers book. There's also a chart of stats for generic Slammers personnel, but no equivalent chart for any opponents they might face.

The Equipment chapter comes next, and this is another of the sections that fans will find most interesting, with descriptions of small arms technology in the HSU, including cut-away illustrations of a powergun, coilgun, and flechette gun. There's new rules for dealing with how powerguns deal with cover, and how coilguns use energy and penetrate armor. There's also a description of armor available and a short section of other equipment and technology that appears in the HSU.

After Equipment comes the real Equipment, the Super Tanks and Other Vehicles. The Slammers are all about the tanks, and they get lots of good coverage here. Fans will enjoy the detailed descriptions of the vehicles, including cut-away views of a tank and combat car. Another section of high interest to the fan.

The Table of Organization of Hammer's Slammers is next, which also includes a few pages of camo patterns used by the Slammers in different environments. I suspect this was recycled from the miniatures game, but don't know for sure.

If you're only interested in this book as a fan of the stories, then you're pretty much done here. Next is new vehicle combat rules that introduce a new scale between personal and ship to resolve battles between military vehicles in the HSU. I haven't looked at these very closely, so I can't say how well designed they are. Generating missions and running the game are the topics of the next chapter, and there look to be some interesting ideas there that could be mixed in with the stuff from Mercenary or adapted to other games, but I haven't spent a lot of time going over them. A pair of adventures and an index round out the book.

There is one issue that makes this book slightly less useful to fans of the books. The RPG obviously draws its information from the books and the miniatures game, but it ignores three novels that weren't Hammer's Slammers novels, but were set in the same universe. This may have been a conscious decision as ignoring those books allowed them to slide the HSU more easily into the core Traveller rules. Since the Hammer's Slammers stories don't go into how space travel works, borrowing the core starship rules from Traveller works fine, but these other stories do go more into FTL travel and communications, and the details don't mesh very well with the way it works in Traveller.

Adopting the information from these books would have required creating a whole new rules system for starships for inclusion in a game which really doesn't deal with starships, so it's understandable if they chose to leave them out, but it does make the book a bit less useful as a sourcebook for the stories as certain assumptions in the book directly contradict the way things work in the established canon.

Even taking this into account, I think this book is worth getting for most Hammer's Slammers fans; however, as a game book I'm not sure how valuable it is. There's already Mercenary for Traveller, if you just want a military based sci-fi campaign using the Traveller rules. The assumptions of the HSU do create some different possibilities given the relative impotence of air power, so that might make it worthwhile for some groups. If you have a group that likes playing military style RPGs, then it's probably a good purchase, but for the general roleplayer it's probably not going to have much use.

Quick Impressions

I've been glancing through a lot of RPG stuff recently, but haven't had the time to go through any of it with the level of detail needed to do a full review. Instead I'm going to give a few comments here covering things I noticed so far and wanted to share.

King of the Trollhaunt Warrens: It's not set in the Nentir Vale, and doesn't make any effort to connect to the H series of adventures. I expected the H, P, E series of adventures to be more of a level 1-30 campaign, not a set of largely unconnected adventures that just happened to go from levels 1 to 30. There's at least a suggestion of what direction the setting lies from the Nentir Vale, but I think more could have been achieved here.

Martial Power: Rangers rock. I was already a big fan of the Archer ranger and they get some interesting new paragon paths, but the Beastmaster ranger is going to make my choice difficult if I ever get to actually play. The only drawback to this book is that by adding even further options for Defenders, Strikers, and Leaders, it makes the Controller role look even more straightjacketed. Hopefully the Arcane Power book will give Wizards at least a couple of new builds, if not a completely new Controller Class or two either there or in the PHB2.

High Guard: I open the book and the table of contents is for Mercenary. Come on guys! You were doing so well, don't pull a Mongoose and blow it. Your brand is rapidly becoming synonymous with poor quality control, whether it's in editing or production.

It's a shame, because the content seems pretty good (aside from a good deal of further errata). The deckplans for the capital ships are interesting and something that has been largely missing from Traveller, but why change canon unnecessarily? There's already an established set of plans for the PF Sloan, yet someone felt the need to completely alter the shape of the ship and create new ones.

It was nice to see the plans for a superfreighter included. Hopefully we'll see more of that if there's ever a Merchant book done.

Scum and Villainy: I think that Star Wars Saga Edition may be the most consistently good RPG product line out there right now. Although it got a slow start due to the resources being devoted to the launch of 4th Edition D&D, every release that has come out has had something for everyone, players and GMs alike. Even the weakest book, Threats of the Galaxy, still had a number of new talents, equipment and playable races scattered through the book. It may be a good thing that I'm not running a Star Wars campaign, because each book that comes out makes me want to run a campaign based on it. So far we've had the Knights of the Old Republic setting, the Dark Times setting in the Force Unleashed, and now the Fringe setting in Scum and Villiany.

I haven't had much time to actually read Scum and Villainy yet, but among other things it's got rules for smuggling, bounty hunting, equipment modifications and Jawas. I am so playing a Jawa if I ever get into a game.

Traveller Metal

Doing some searches for images of Vargr for my play-by-post Traveller game I stumbled across a band called Slough Feg (formerly The Lord Weird Slough Feg) that did an album titled Traveller back in 2003. I'm not a huge metal fan, but I read some reviews online and listened to some clips on iTunes and decided to go ahead and buy the album. I'm still not a huge metal fan, but it's an enjoyable listen, especially given the subject matter. With track titles like Spinward Marches, Vargr Moon, and High Passage/Low Passage it's hard to go wrong!

Based on the reviews I've read, if you are a metal fan you should like this album a lot. The reviews I've seen are uniformly positive, with lots of 10/10, 100% and 5/5 ratings.

According to an interview with the apparent founder of the band, Mike Scalzi, the album concept is based on a story he wrote set in the Traveller universe. I'm still puzzling out the overall plot from the lyrics myself, but it seems to be about a Vargr Corsair who is experimented upon by a human scientist, possibly attempting to create a human/vargr hybrid. I keep getting distracted by stuff whenever I sit down to listen to the actual lyrics, so I could be off a bit, but it's something like that.

Scalzi is not a gamer currently, but has a love of the Traveller universe from his gaming days back in school, and it shows in this album. If you like either metal or Traveller, give this one a listen.

More Traveller

I finally got my hands on the 760 Patrons and the Mercenary books for Traveller. I haven't gotten to read much of either yet, but I've browsed through them enough to give my initial impressions.

Mercenary is very much what you would expect if you ever read the original Mercenary book for Traveller. It's all about expanded rules for running mercenaries, from character generation, to equipment, to combat rules everything has been given new options. Toss in a system for generating mercenary tickets (otherwise known as jobs), and we have the classic Mercenary book updated for MGT. It looks promising.

760 Patrons on the other hand, is not at all what you would expect if you ever read the original 76 Patrons supplement. A patron encounter has a specific meaning in Traveller terms. A meaning that is clearly defined in the MGT core rules as follows:

Each patron encounter lists:

• The patron’s name and role.
• The skills and resources required to complete the mission
• The suggested reward for the mission
• The mission as described to the characters
• What’s really going on. Several possible variants will be presented – either pick or roll for which is the real situation.

760 Patrons lists the patron's role and that's pretty much it. There are no missions here, merely charts of NPC motivations that could be used to inspire a mission or flesh out an NPC. If they were insistent on stealing a name from an older supplement, it would have been more accurate to call this one 760 Characters after the old 1001 Characters that simply gave you line after line of randomly generated character stats, even though there's no stats here.

To be fair, I can see this being a very useful supplement. It's a great way to bring to life an otherwise random NPC. It's just not what I was wanting or expecting based on the title and marketing. I would still love to see another book of true patron encounters at some point. In the meantime, I still have the FFE reprint of 76 Patrons.

Mayday... Mayday... This is Free Trader Beowulf...

We're finally getting my online Traveller game underway. We've been working on it for a few weeks now, but character generation has taken longer than I expected. We've still got a bit of work to do on some of the characters, but we can finish that up as we play. I've been playing in my friend Griffin's play-by-post Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay game for a while now, but this is my first attempt to run one. If I do this again I will probably either use pre-gens or set a deadline for character submission, after which players get assigned a pre-gen.

I'm really excited about this game as I'm going to run it based on The Traveller Adventure, one of my favorite old Classic Traveller (CT) products. Like most CT adventures, it needs a lot of tweaks to actually make work, but it has some interesting situations for the players to deal with. Of course, I suspect the players will derail things almost immediately, but I won't be too disappointed if that happens. Traveller can be a great game to wing things with, and I'm just really happy to be playing it.

Mongoose Traveller: The Spinward Marches

The Spinward Marches is the original setting for Traveller, and has gotten more attention over the years than any other setting for the game. From its first appearance (I think) in Adventure 1: Kinunir, to the original Spinward Marches little black book (LBB) supplement, to Behind the Claw for GURPS Traveller, to the pdf only New Era 1248 Spinward States sourcebook, this setting has gotten a lot of attention over the years. Probably more than any other sci-fi setting created for gaming.

Now, with the release of Mongoose Traveller, we return for yet another look at the Imperial frontier. It's appropriate that with the new rules being an update to the original rules, that the new The Spinward Marches sourcebook returns to Imperial Year 1105, the beginning date for material originally published by GDW back in the late seventies.

Unlike most other more recent looks at the region, there is an evident attempt to keep the secrets of the Traveller Universe secret. It's often assumed that most readers are fully aware of such things, which has the unfortunate effect of spoiling them for new players who might otherwise have been able to enjoy playing through the original adventures. This new supplement doesn't make that mistake. With a few minor exceptions, the information available in the book is information that would be readily available to any traveller living in the Spinward Marches in 1105. Those of us who know what happens in the next few years according to classic canon can see hints of what is to come, but those hints won't spoil things for people new to the setting.

This lack of "inside information" doesn't make it any less useful to gamemasters new to the setting. There's a solid bedrock of information here as to how the Imperium in general works, with enough specific details concerning the Spinward Marches, that should allow them to take their campaign in whatever direction they choose. If they do want to follow the classic canon, then they can purchase The classic Traveller compilations from Far Future Enterprises that include the adventures and articles that developed the original timeline. They don't have to do that though, as there's plenty of information here to allow them to take things in their own direction.

In any case, this is a useful setting book that players can read without actually spoiling things. That's rare in any game.

My Other Traveller Pet Peeve

It's only fair after praising Mongoose Traveller for getting the weapon/armor balance right to point out where they failed: the deadly Low Passage. Traveller has three levels of interstellar travel tickets, like first, business and coach in today's airlines, only in the Traveller universe you have a significant chance of dying if you fly coach. In Traveller they are called High, Medium and Low Passage. Low passage involves being put into cold sleep and revived on the other end. You have to make a revival roll and if you fail you never wake up. There's even a Low Lottery where every low passenger bets on how many will survive the trip.

This is, in fact, utterly ridiculous. There's an approximately 28% chance of dying for the average person if revived by a doctor. The odds get worse if a doctor isn't present, or if the passenger happens to have below average endurance. So much worse that there's nearly a 60% chance of dying if only a med-tech is present on revival. There is no commonly used voluntary mode of travel in human history that is any where near as dangerous. If this was the best rate of survival that could be managed the technology would have been abandoned, not put into widespread use as it is in the Traveller universe.

Editions that followed Classic Traveller recognized this and made failed revival rolls result in injury rather than death. IMTU (In My Traveller Universe, a common acronym in Traveller discussions), I'll be using a similar method.

Fortunately, this problem is easier to fix than my other pet peeve would have been had it not been done right in the rules. Still, it's disappointing to see this bit make it in unchanged from the original rules. I can see where some old-time players may be glad to see its return, but I'm not one of them.

Artwork in Mongoose Traveller

A thread over on RPGnet got me to thinking about Traveller art. The original three Little Black Books that formed the core of the Classic Traveller rules didn't have any art. They had a few diagrams to show movement in space, and that was it. Most of the early Traveller art was found in the adventures and the Journal of the Traveller's Aid Society, the magazine for the game.

Now, in today's market you can't put out an RPG book without art. It just isn't done. Even indie games attempt to put some sort of artwork in their books. Mongoose Traveller is no exception. The art in MT is passable, but not exceptional. It is also very reminiscent of the early Traveller art. The earliest art was dominated by the line drawings of William H. Keith. He drew images that evoked alien landscapes but populated with fairly conservative looking men. The result was something of the same effect achieved by the "used feel" of Star Wars. A universe that felt real. Keith was not a great artist, but he was a passable technician that could pull off semi-realistic images that inspired the imagination.

On the other end of the stylistic spectrum from Keith was Donna Barr. Barr had a very cartoonish style with minimal landscapes. Whereas Keith's characters all had the same look and little personality, Barr's characters were all about personality. I hated her work at first, because I wanted the feeling that I was seeing a real alien place like I got from Keith's work. Later, I came to appreciate Barr's humor and character and eventually came to consider her the best of the early Traveller artists (which also included Paul Jaquays, Liz Danforth, and Paul Deitrick, among others).

The art in Mongoose Traveller appears to be trying to capture some of the same feelings. The book has a mix of artists that roughly fall along the same stylistic spectrum defined by Keith and Barr. Unfortunately, the artists that are more like Keith don't have his attention to detail in the landscape and equipment, but the artist they have who draws more like Barr seems to have a great deal of potential. They are also getting a lot of criticism from reviewers who seem to be looking for more realism and less character, which just serves to reinforce the comparison with Barr in my mind as I remember my own initial reactions to Barr's artwork were similar.

For the record, I think this artist is Robin Everett-McGuirl, but it's difficult to tell for sure as whoever it is uses a stylized signature.

My Traveller Pet Peeve

I originally described one of my biggest pet peeves with Traveller over the years as part of my mini-review in the previous post, but after consideration I decided that it didn't really fit with the rest of the post. Instead, I expanded on what I'd written a bit and turned it into this article.

A lot of Traveller fans are science geeks and approach the game from a hard sci-fi perspective. For example, in an errata list I was following (which, by the way, had a very small amount of actual errata so far) one of the suggested errata referred to a piece of fiction that described globs of blood floating in a cargo bay exposed to space. The complaint was that the blood would have frozen after the cargo bay was exposed to space, and that they should now be frozen crystals, not globs. This just goes to show that everyone has their own level of suspension of disbelief, as I would have never noticed the problem.

Personally, as a student of the softer sciences, it's the political and social aspects of a game that will throw me out of my suspension of disbelief if they aren't handled properly. A governmental structure that just doesn't make any sense won't get past my filters. Similarly, as a student of military history, I get thrown by certain elements of military organization or equipment that don't make sense.

This leads to a problem that I have had with most of the editions of the Traveller rules. I refer to this as the "Tech Level 13 cannon fodder problem" (ok, I didn't actually have a name for this problem until right now, but it's one of the first things I've looked at with every new set of Traveller rules). Way back in the original Book 4: Mercenary, there was a list of the common military equipment issued at various tech levels. At Tech Level 13 the common soldier is issued combat armor and a gauss rifle. The problem is that in most versions of the rules a gauss rifle does zero damage to a man in combat armor, or at best might do a single point with a critical hit (the equivalent of a scratch or bruise). This leaves most Tech 13 soldiers as literal cannon fodder as their issued weapon does absolutely nothing against an enemy equipped to the same level, which makes their only purpose on the battlefield to be meat shields for the crews of the heavier weapons.

In Mongoose Traveller, an average roll for damage using a gauss rifle on burst fire will at least wound a target wearing combat armor, and a higher than average roll could take a target out with a single burst. A lower than average roll can still leave the target completely unharmed, but that's fine. The result is that both weapon and armor prove to have a reasonable level of effectiveness, making sense for them to be issued together.

This consistency between the rules and the fluff are important to me in any game, and I'm glad to see they got it right in this set of rules.

Traveller

I've now had a chance to skim through the new Mongoose Traveller Core Rulebook. I haven't read every word, but I've gone through the important bits and wanted to give my initial impressions. I may post about it again later after I've read more if I find other good bits, or if I come across something broken that I haven't noticed yet.

This is the game I was hoping for back in 1987 when GDW released MegaTraveller. It takes the core mechanics from the original game, unifies them without adding a bunch of new complexity, and deals with some of the outstanding issues that the game had.

The core mechanic is roll 2d6 for 8+ to succeed at a task. Skills, attributes, difficulty level and sometimes situational modifiers are added to the roll. The result is pretty straightforward and easy to understand. Combat has more situational modifiers, but otherwise works the same as other tasks. The Combat rules take up only nine pages, but seem to cover most common situations, including vehicle combat (although space combat is covered separately).

Even problem areas like automatic fire and grappling were easy for me to grasp after a single read. This was a pleasant surprise given how many rules systems have a hard time with those areas.

One of my favorite bits from Classic Traveller was the way it handled character damage. Damage taken was applied directly to physical characteristics. This has been kept in Mongoose Traveller. The result is a very elegant way to keep track of damage and its effects. Wounds lead naturally to lower attribute modifiers as those attributes fall.

Space combat is similar in complexity to character combat. It uses abstracted movement rules and a character centric system that relies on plenty of task checks. I've already seen some complaints from old-time players that the system is too simple. Compared to the original system that taught me how to calculate vectors, I suppose that's true, but this system is better designed for a group that wants to concentrate on role playing instead of space tactics.

The only problem with all of this is that this is the game I wanted back in 1987, not necessarily 2008. The state of the art has moved on, and I value many of the concepts that have been introduced in the meantime. Some of the most important of those concepts involve the use of mechanics to encourage role playing, rather than just to determine the outcome of actions with a chance of failure.

I could see having a great deal of fun with this set of rules, especially with the right group, but in many ways I still prefer the approach being taken with Spirit of the Far Future. It's good to have choices though, and I'm happy to have not just one but two good sets of rules to play around with.