Heresy... Rebellion Milieu with Mongoose (changes/thoughts)

[Kilgs]

I'd like to run a more gritty Traveller game some time in the future. I really like TNE but the inability to waste senseless amounts of time on ship construction irritates me to no end since its one of the more interesting settings for me.

But I don't know much about the Rebellion milieu. I have a ton of Mongoose products and, although I am down on them currently, was wondering how easily it would be to simply drop-in/play using Mongoose. I assume it shouldn't be too much of an issue...

But are there facets/parts of MegaTrav that just absolutely need to be included and require additional rules? Things which make the game so much more than just a different time period for the Imperium... from a mechanical perspective.

And... what are the books to get?

(I've recently ordered Hard Times and Diaspora.)

 

[mike wightman]

Hard Times is by far the best thing to come out of the mess that was MegaTraveller because it is a setting designed for PCs not fleet admirals.

The rule set you use doesn't matter.

Come to think of it you could easily use MgT to run a TNE or post TNE era setting too.

 

[Ishmael]

The Referee's Companion.

Lots of general purpose fluff, including aliens overview and an extensive TL overview.
Scientific Research is covered and the conglomerate unit rules for wargaming are a must have, imo.

some nice ref's aids for mapping and official language generation charts, too.

 

[Kilgs]

Just an update to thank those responsible, I own pretty much everything for MT now. Much obliged! It is tied with Gateway for my all-time favorite setting/milieu. I luuurve Hard Times.

But I ditched Traveller systems entirely and am doing a Silhouette hack.

 

[Daidoji Dave]

Just an update to thank those responsible, I own pretty much everything for MT now. Much obliged! It is tied with Gateway for my all-time favorite setting/milieu. I luuurve Hard Times.

Okay, this makes you the perfect person to ask. Say I've only got Mongoose and don't want everything for MT, what are the must-haves?

 

[McPerth]

Okay, this makes you the perfect person to ask. Say I've only got Mongoose and don't want everything for MT, what are the must-haves?

I'd say the basic set (off course) and, if you like the setting, Hard Times (it also has the timeline). I'd also will advise you to obtain Don McKiney variant for Trade and Commerce if it's still available (not sure where to obtain it, now that Don's page is off).

World Builder's Handbook is quite nice for world details, and Starship opeator's Manual gives a nice insight about starship operations. The various ship's suplements Sekker edited are good to play on them (mostly deckplans).

Kinghtfall has details about trade and commerce (that are also in Don's variant), and Referee's Companion has also interesting points.

Fighting Ships of the Shattered Imperium is, IMHO, perfectly prescindible, as most its designs are (to say the least) flawled to the point of being unusable.

Of course, that's just my opinion, and others may thing otherwise.

 

[aramis]

Okay, this makes you the perfect person to ask. Say I've only got Mongoose and don't want everything for MT, what are the must-haves?

For the cost of 4 books in PDF, you can get all 9 GDW (PM, RM, IE, RC, RSB, COACC, FSotSI, Arival Vengeance, Diaspora) plus the challenge articles on CD-rom or Thumb-Drive from FFE.

 

[Spartan159]

For the cost of 4 books in PDF, you can get all 9 GDW (PM, RM, IE, RC, RSB, COACC, FSotSI, Arival Vengeance, Diaspora) plus the challenge articles on CD-rom or Thumb-Drive from FFE.

Thumb-Drive? That's an option now? Or are you talking about buying the CD's and transferring the data?

 

[aramis]

Thumb-Drive? That's an option now? Or are you talking about buying the CD's and transferring the data?

you have to specifically ask for it on thumb drive in the memo. Been an option for several years.

 

[Spenser TR]

I've gotten all my FFE materials on thumbdrive. It's been quite a while since I've had access to a CD-ROM drive

On that - whenever I browse there I idly speculate on how conversion on the FFE site would change if "CD-ROM" were removed from the buying icons and the idea that you had a choice of disc of thumbdrive was clearly put forth for potential customers.


( now back to our regularly scheduled thread topic )

 

[whartung]

I'd like to run a more gritty Traveller game some time in the future. I really like TNE but the inability to waste senseless amounts of time on ship construction irritates me to no end since its one of the more interesting settings for me.

There's no reason for you to spend an excessive amount of time doing ship design, especially ACS class ships. One you've done one ship, the rest are so similar as to be mostly trivial.

While they provide a host of options for different systems, in truth you only need a few of them for any particular design, and most are limited by TL, so build one ship in a certain TL, and most of the decisions are made for the next one. (Sure you could had the Vacuum Tube based TL7 based electronics system to your TL12 starship, but why would you?)

The Socket system for weapons helps you readily plug and play turrets ala book 2.

So, basically, build one or two ships and the rest come quite quickly as the the initial complications of simply sifting the FF&S rules to find the relevant points for a ship is the hard part. Once isolated, it's not that much worse than High Guard.

Brilliant Lances reduces FF&S to just a few pages with some stock weapons.

 

[mike wightman]

An alternative or two to avoid FF&S or even BL is to use LBB2 or MGT CRB ship design or HG with the following fudges:
jump fuel is (5+Jn)%, HEPLaR fuel is 10% per g
no hardpoint restrictions on turret weapons but turrets now require 3t instead of 1t
bridge space includes airlocks, life support, grav plates, radiators etc
computer model actually represents avionics and sensor suite.

Or do what I did for a few designs. Photocopy the deckplans from Traders and Gunboats a few times, cut them out, cut along bulkhead lines, assemble Frankenships from the bits. Handwave performance stats.

 

[whartung]

An alternative or two to avoid FF&S or even BL is to use LBB2 or MGT CRB ship design or HG with the following fudges:
jump fuel is (5+Jn)%, HEPLaR fuel is 10% per g
no hardpoint restrictions on turret weapons but turrets now require 3t instead of 1t
bridge space includes airlocks, life support, grav plates, radiators etc
computer model actually represents avionics and sensor suite.

Or do what I did for a few designs. Photocopy the deckplans from Traders and Gunboats a few times, cut them out, cut along bulkhead lines, assemble Frankenships from the bits. Handwave performance stats.

Actually this is important.

While it's nice that we have detailed rules like FF&S, in the end, the ship (or ships) are merely stages upon with RP happens. Nobody cares how much they cost, how long they take to build. They barely care how much damage can do or take 99% of the time. (and the other 1% is basically "whatever the referee wants to drive the story".)

A ship in Traveller needs a Jump Drive, ships with Jump drives tend to be able to make 1, maybe 2, jumps before refueling. They also have an M drive which determines how fast they can get to and from 100D. And that's about as much detailed narrative that they need.

For cargo, they need space and some numbers for expenses. Only a little more detailed.

Everything else is window dressing.

So, if you want to run in the TNE universe, even use the TNE mechanics, you don't need to worry so much about building ships out to the 3rd decimal point in order to do that.

 

[Kilgs]

The books I would recommend for a Mongoose-Rebellion game:

Rebellion... this gives you an idea of the scope and the players.

Hard Times... this focuses on a later time period (five years) but the historical discussion of how things get there is important. How bad things are. It also has a number of great ideas inherent in it. It provides you with a sector. (See also the Diaspora Guide).
-It ALSO is my favorite book ever. So there.

Referee's Guide... the basics.

Best recommendation... pick up the electronic bundle. There are some amazing Challenge articles/adventures that flesh out different locales and history. You can also download for free the "Empires Fall" supplement which is a collection of all the TNS articles from the Rebellion.

If you can find the Alien sourcebooks (it took me patience and $$$) then those would also be recommended.

But other than that, you can use all the Mongoose ship stuff and trade stuff in the Rebellion.

GOOD ADVENTURES
The Flaming Eye is a great sourcebook for adventures. Knightfall seemed like it would be irritating to be a player in... but it has some old-school sci-fi in it.