Traveller: Imperium was awful

There's been a lot of chatter about Traveller over at RPGSite, which got me back into it a bit. I have owned every edition of the game, and played most of them.  Mongoose is still my favorite.

In any case, I think the Third Imperium was just awful. There was no frontier, and no really evil enemy that military-based campaigns could just go off and blast with no issues (the Zhodani were sorta-Russians, but basically just the Imperium with psionics).

If there had been a completely open border, and a border with something like tyranids, I think the setting would have been dramatically better. Having an enemy who was only interested in eating you, with no chance of diplomacy, just makes a game more interesting to me.

In addition, the setting is very anti-psionics, which I think is just dumb. Psionics are cool. In most games, they are a generic version of the Force from Star Wars, and what kid didn't want that in his game.

The default 70s era technology hampered the game, and when the Virus was introduced to try to fix the setting, lots of players were pissed. I think GDW would have been better off just creating a new setting, but sadly, that didn't happen. I personally liked the New Era setting. Unfortunately, the rules were not nearly as good as Classic Traveller.

Traveller 5 is out in the wild

Looks like Marc Miller has started shipping books of Traveller 5 to the pre-orders.

RPGSite Thread - Here are some pics and various posts about its contents.

From that thread, it looks like I won't be buying the game. I'm really glad that Marc finally finished it and got Trav5 published, but the game is very different from Mongoose Traveller, which is my personal favorite (though I did like the Traveller: New Era setting, its rules were terrible).

For those of you who are long-time Traveller fans, this is probably a must-buy. I just wanted to spread the word that the book is now shipping.

Science Fiction Roleplaying - Great time for it!

Just an observation that those who like science fiction roleplaying have it made for the last couple years. For most of the 90's and early 2000's, there wasn't much of anything easily available, other than second-hand copies of Traveller and fringe games like Fading Suns.

Now there's Mongoose Traveller, with it's supplements, and then there's all the Warhammer 40k lines. Both are very popular, and selling quite well. I am willing to bet the 40k rpgs have been a gateway drug for the mini gamers.

I didn't expect Mongoose Traveller to be nearly as well done as it is. I am really glad that they did such a great job with it. I wonder how many old-school gamers have picked up these books and restarted gaming. I'm betting at least a few guys have. If nothing else, for the nostalgia trip. And the game is good enough that I wouldn't be surprised if it continues chugging along for years. Though the way the treadmill is running, sooner or later the sales will stop and Mongoose will either dump the game with no warning or have a new edition, that would likely screw stuff up. I personally would love it if Traveller became an evergreen product. Unfortunately, there are no successful rpg lines that don't change editions every few years. Too much looking at quarterly profits to allow it.

I also like Dark Heresy, though I think it was  a mistake for the game to not be about full Inquisitors right off the bat. You can do it with the Ascension book now, so I bet they realized their mistake. I like Rogue Trader as well. It feels like running a standard Traveller campaign in the 40k universe, which is perfectly awesome to me. I haven't picked up Deathwatch yet. I'm waiting for the second printing to kill errata. It does look cool. 40k's biggest problem at the moment is their refusal to publish a big "Races" book. They've covered Chaos very well, and touched on some of the other races in various supplements. But I'd love to have a book with Eldar, Necrons, Dark Eldar, Orks, Tyranids, and all the rest, along with entries for all the major Army List types.I also think it would be a HUGE seller for FFG, so it's really odd that they haven't done it. Maybe it's some crap coming from Games Workshop preventing this. I wouldn't be surprised.

In any case, I think having the choice of either of these game just shows that scifi gamers have it made nowadays.