PRIME DIRECTIVE: TRAVELLER
One of the most popular RPG game engines in the industry is the Traveller series (produced, in various incarnations, by Game Designer’s Workshop and Steve Jackson Games), and the current “Mongoose Traveller” incarnation is the most successful ever. They have an “open license” and Jean Sexton’s team was already at work doing a Prime Directive Traveller version for that system. Our experiences with GURPS, however, showed that any RPG done by a publisher other than the original will have at most 10% of the sales of books by the original publisher. (Hence, our GURPS books are done to the design standard of SJG books, but sell only a fraction of the numbers.) Doing these books as a joint venture means every retailer will carry them.

By Gary Carney (Nerroth) on Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - 11:58 am: Edit

Here's hoping there will be room for the five founding ISC member species in this version of the core rulebook...

(If there isn't, that would make it three out of four current editions of the core rulebook to not feature the Concordium.)

By Mike West (Mjwest) on Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - 12:17 pm: Edit

Gary,

It all depends on space. It all depends on how much can be fit in to a fairly constrained space.

We'll see.

By Gary Carney (Nerroth) on Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - 01:02 pm: Edit

Understood; but given the level of exposure this book is set to gain, I would hope that they aren't left behind.

Between War and Peace and ISC War, the Concordium is having a good run of publicity as of late; which, as a major Alpha Octant empire in their own right, they fully deserve.

The ISC was one of the key hooks that brought me in to the Star Fleet Universe in the first place; hopefully they can be so for some in the next generation (no pun intended) of fans who this RPG book can reach.

By Jeff Johnson (Jeffro) on Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - 01:09 pm: Edit

I was floored when I opened my GURPS: PD book from e23 last week and stumbled across the ISC races. Wow!!

(Jeffro pauses to reflect on a J Andrew Keith Classic Traveller style "module" focusing on the ISC....)

I don't see how you could cover much more than Federation Starfleet, Marines, and "Citizen" style char gen in a core rule book. The GURPS templating system is very concise when compared to the Traveller "life path" style generation.

I'm bummed that the GURPS deal didn't pan out as desired as I feel that GURPS is a really good fit for SFU gaming. (It's realistic for the most part, with nobs for tuning up the cinematic bits to taste. Plus... it was designed by a Steve.)

Will Mongoose be siccing their own writers and so forth onto SFU material...? They really cranked out the Traveller material these past few years, though a goodly chunk of that *was* MJD's T20<<<CT<<HeroTrav<<<<<<<Whatever system material readapted to it....

By A. David Merritt (Adm) on Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - 01:32 pm: Edit

I have never looked at a Mongoose Traveller book.
What is there game engine like? Is it OGL, original Traveller, a point system, or something else?

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - 01:41 pm: Edit

PD Traveller will be done by Mike West and Jean Sexton, not by Mongoose.

This is not the place to discuss what did or did not happen in GURPS. The deal worked out as expected, but we still want to change it to work out better. Now, no more gurps here.

By Jeff Johnson (Jeffro) on Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - 01:43 pm: Edit

Mongoose Traveller is much closer to "Classic Traveller."

It's a 2d6 based rpg system with character generation similar to "Basic" Classic Traveller but with some more bits and fluff added to it.

By A. David Merritt (Adm) on Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - 01:52 pm: Edit

Thank you, Jeffro.

By Jeff Johnson (Jeffro) on Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - 01:58 pm: Edit

Are there any plans for the production of "Little Black Book" style resources...? Or will the books be mostly of the "large" perfect-bound and/or hardback book variety...?

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - 02:18 pm: Edit

My understanding is large perfect bound or hardback. I never heard Mongoose talk about little black books.

By Mike West (Mjwest) on Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - 03:11 pm: Edit

Considering that they have apparently on done the small-format books (as an homage to the LBB of yore) for Traveller universe material, and not any of the cross-licensed universes, I would not expect to see that with Prime Directive, either.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - 03:37 pm: Edit

Gary Carney: Hey, BFF, drop me an email.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - 04:48 pm: Edit

Original Traveler came in black books that were about 5"x8.5" or so; the same size as those in some SJ Games boxes, like the original GEV stuff. The books came in a box with others and various materials.

I wouldn't think that would be suited to SFU material. The "Zip Lock" days are long gone.

By David Zimdars (Zimdarsdavid) on Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - 05:18 pm: Edit

I have a set of the original traveller books in my basement.

IMHO Traveller suffered, in those early days, in comparison to D&D, in that it was much easier for a beginning DM to create a dungeon crawl, but there was no particular simple equivalent that was obvious for a newbie Traveller GM.

By Jeff Johnson (Jeffro) on Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - 07:03 pm: Edit

[Thank you, Mike West for the information about Mongoose publishing patterns.]

[Hey... is that Zimdars of Zimdar's Dipsy Doodle fame...?]

Traveller was ahead of its time. By separating skills from "classes" and creating a system that would work for a variety of environments and tech levels... they essentially created the first stab at a more or less generic, universal role playing system. (Everything soon became tightly coupled to the 3rd Imperium setting, of course, leaving an opening for a game designer named Steve to exploit.)

Traveller by itself is a sprawling monster game... with several variations for each subsystem... and lots of trouble in store for anyone that wants to extrapolate setting details from (say) vehicle design systems and so forth. The core premise of the game from a referee standpoint is the fleshing out of more or less randomly generated census data for dozens of worlds on a hex map... and then letting the players wander in that gigantic "sandbox" pursuing things as they choose. This is even harder to hold together if you can't trust the underlying rule system(s), but most Traveller GM's I've come in contact with from the olde times appear to have continuously developed their own house rules and developed their own interpretations of setting difficulties and so forth.

Out of all the plethora of space rpg's, I ultimately went with Prime Directive. I found it too difficult to synthesize a game from all the data that Traveller can provide... and I had little interest in brewing my own universe by extracting the perfect subset of material from the gigantic GURPS line. Prime Directive did both of those things out of the box. Also, I can explain the premise of a Prime Directive game in a few sentences, and most people would immediately "get it"... *and* I can maybe get non-gamers to try it out occasionally.

At any rate... I recognize the value of having Traveller "mini-games" and tools available. (GURPS tends to go the "end all be all" route to the point of not being actually usable.) I'm *really* curious as to what sorts of things we'll get in the new Mongoose Traveller line:

* A playable trade system that is suitable to SFU?
* A playable "mercenary" sub-game that (again) fits the SFU?
* Naval campaign rules that leverage world profiles and SFU fleet data to make something that actually works...?! (Hint: High Guard and Trillion Credit Squadron are *NEAT*, but they do not actually work as an actual game.)
* Grav tank design system and miniatures rules...? (Striker III!)

I expect all that's on the table right now is the SFU translation of "Characters and Combat"...?

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - 07:22 pm: Edit

We plan to do the Traveller books while they do the Call to Arms books. I haven't a clue to any of your questions (Mike West and Jean Sexton can probably answer them) but my company practice is to print what people (lots and lots of people) want to buy. So, for example, if thousands of traveller players want a trade system, they will get one (maybe not in the first book) but if only seven players want that, it may depend on some player doing it and us putting it up as a PDF none of us ever read. Anything in between rates a treatment somewhere in between.

Yes, he is THAT Zimdars!

By Jeff Johnson (Jeffro) on Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - 07:29 pm: Edit

I am not super-familiar with what Mongoose is doing right now... but I think if you're going to have "Traveller" written on the cover, it better have [beyond the expected characters and combat systems] a Trade System, a small ship design and combat system (optimized for freighters, fighters, and PF's but scalable up to small warships in a pinch), and a small world generation system.

The other stuff can wait.

Really... the coolest thing you could come up with: a system for filling out, mapping, and "stocking" an F&E hex. That would be really cool. And very Traveller-ish.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - 07:55 pm: Edit

There is a finite number of pages and within priorities we will include all that we can. It's all Lower Western Urdu to me, and I have no idea what you're talking about or if your theory of what is needed is valid. Fortunately, I have Jean and Mike West to tell me what I think about it.

By Edward Kroeten (Ekroeten) on Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - 08:47 pm: Edit

Do you know Norther Urdu? :-)

By Mike Strain (Evilmike) on Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - 09:48 pm: Edit

You can already pretty much do Trav:Star Trek just by using the core rulebook....they have a design switch for 'warp drive' ships instead of the classic Traveller 'Jump Drive'.

Drop in the usual ST 'supertech' (Transporters, tractor beams, and phasers/disruptors/etc) and you are just about done.

As for ship combat, just use the regular Traveller rules (with modifications for the setting, obviously). I wouldn't try (or even bother) to have a 'conversion process' to SFB/FedCom....those are WARGAMES.

By Terry O'Carroll (Terryoc) on Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - 09:59 pm: Edit

I assume that Jean and Mike W are following this thread? Anyway, I'd like to suggest that the post-GW era would make a pretty good setting for PD Traveller. In the post-GW period, you have lots of demobilised ex-military types flying around the devatasted zones in military surplus de-weaponised gunboats. That fits with Traveller's basic assumptions quite well, i.e. that the characters are ex-military types who own their own small ship. The physical devastation and political and social upheaval that were caused by the War would make for some interesting plots IMO.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - 10:00 pm: Edit

Yes, and we already created and filled out that setting for the battlestations thing.

By Xander Fulton (Dderidex) on Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - 11:36 pm: Edit

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Quote:

we already created and filled out that setting for the battlestations thing.

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By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - 11:37 pm: Edit

Xander, you seem to be slow on the uptake. I said "yes, and..." which means I ALREADY did what you suggested. You're copy-catting MY IDEAS.