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General Book 9: Pirates is now out in print!

Book 9: Pirates is now available in print, and we are shipping out pre-orders as we speak...

r/traveller - Book 9: Pirates now in print!

You can grab a copy here: https://mongoosepublishing.com/products/book-9-pirates

Embark on daring exploits and leave your mark on the stars! Whether leading a crew of daring corsairs or battling ruthless raiders, this book provides new rules and tools for pirate campaigns:

• Advanced character generation for creating infamous pirate crews.
• New corsair starship designs and acquisition rules.
• Privateering mechanics covering the economics of piracy.
• A ready-to-play border subsector ripe for plunder and adventure.

Screenshot 2025-04-02 111436.pngScreenshot 2025-04-02 111445.png

For Classic Traveller, the term Books has a special meaning, presenting additional rules on specific subjects, expanding on Traveller's basic concepts. Books run 48 to 56 pages and may be used independently or together, but all require the basic rules sets.
 
Other than just being the arbitrarily chosen colors of the stripes on the covers of the Published Booklets, no.
(Or at least not that I am aware of).
We asked Marc this question when choosing the colour for Pirates. What secret, esoteric method was used to select colours, and what secrets of the universe did they pertain to?

Nah, they were just random :)
 
It a really nice book. I like it a lot and it pretty well recreates the look and feel of the old Classic books. Except for the images of the two ships on pgs 36 & 37 they let it down a bit compared to the fantastic ship illustrations in Supplement 7, which has always been my favourite Traveller book of all. But the old style ship deck plans are superb, The Glory Corsair ship design looks just stupid though one of these days Mongoose will find someone who can design ships and vehicles. This is one of the main reasons (too much errata being the other) that I have stopped supporting Mongoose Traveller, but this Pirates CT book was the exception that I had to buy.
 
The Glory Corsair ship design looks just stupid
By "looks stupid" are you referring to the ship design (i.e. the stats) or the picture? If you mean the latter, I really miss Bryan Gibson and the Bill Keith, both of whom had a great eye for this.
 
Yes the look of it, with the daft sharp wings and the horrible ugly bow, just looks like a kid's drawing of a spaceship. I might have to do a sketch of how I would make this ship look and post it on here. I think the idea is good but the design just needs a 'creative eye' over it.

Mind you some of the Classic Traveller ships are very unimaginative too especially those in Fighting Ships Supplement which I think is the only CT book I dislike.

The best ships designs for me are in Supp 7 and also IISS Ship Files, of which I need to get a new copy as I sold mine years ago.
 
I did a review when I got it that was also added to Freelance Traveller a while back. And yeah, generally not a fan of the Mongoose art style but then I am biased by learning Traveller in the early days and the black & white line art and that is what is "Traveller art" to me.

https://traveller-ct.blogspot.com/2025/03/classic-traveller-book-9-pirates.html
https://traveller-ct.blogspot.com/2025/04/traveller-pirate-character-generation.html
https://traveller-ct.blogspot.com/2025/04/traveller-pirates-hard-copy.html
 
I did a review when I got it that was also added to Freelance Traveller a while back. And yeah, generally not a fan of the Mongoose art style but then I am biased by learning Traveller in the early days and the black & white line art and that is what is "Traveller art" to me.

Yeah I do love a lot of the old CT art. Mongoose have improved their artwork lately and some of it is really nice now, but I still dont like their ship plans much. It's a real shame the ship art and Corsair design let down Pirates because otherwise it looks like a good book, mind you I haven't read the text yet. Mongoose just keep letting these odd shoddy things through their editing and I do not know how they manage to do it. Just infuriates me lol because otherwise I could really enjoy their books.
 
Yes the look of it, with the daft sharp wings and the horrible ugly bow, just looks like a kid's drawing of a spaceship.
The artist appeared to be going for something like the Vargr ships depicted on p. 152 of The Traveller Adventure.

I don't think they really hit the mark. 😝

The best ships designs for me are in Supp 7 and also IISS Ship Files . . .
The ship plans in IISS Ships Files are by Albie Fiore, who also did the plans for Leviathan, which is arguably my favorite Traveller ship design.
 
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