"Star Trader - Mongoose RPG Traveller Rules?" Topic

Just curious to see what people think of these rules, if they've read, seen, or played them?

The on-line reviews look favorable, and they're available from DriveThru RPG, and others for about $4.06 USD.

Supposedly, they're good for solo-gaming, as a Merchant Trader, and there are rules for encounters in space, and on planets too.

I'm especially interested in the ship-to-ship combat rules, since supposedly they've been streamlined to help speed play, so would appreciate feedback on how people think those work.

Don't know them, but at $4 USD, it's hard to go wrong.

BTW- I replied again to your other thread- sorry for the delay.

Can't look here but be sure they do not require the Mongoose version of Traveller in order to use them. I've heard they are decent enough set of rules but that bumps the price up by at least $20 USD more.

I don't know about that.

I think I've read somewhere that the Mongoose rules could be used with CT (Classic Traveller, which I have), but don't know if that is a straight-up crossover, or if there is a need for some conversion first to make that work.

I can't speak tothat specific book, but in general Mongoose traveller uses the same skill levels. A 2 in a skill means roughly the same.

So you can translate easy and with no fuss. Mongoose characters tend to have more skills, so there's that.

They're about on par with Megatraveller or Book 4 characters, I find.

Also, of course, the skill selection has changed in every version but that's not so hard to figure out :)

They are primarily designed for TRADING, not combat.

If you can email me, I will send you a file composed of the posts someone made as they ran a blog adventure using "Star Trader". The file is in .odt format (i.e., Open Document Text), which most word processors can open.

My email is . . . bluebearjeff at shaw dot ca . . . note that it is "ca" (for Canada), NOT "com".

-- Jeff

Thanks for the offer, Jeff.

I really appreciate it.

I bought these the other night, and they look pretty good. A bit different than what I was expecting, but some of the random charts inside will be pretty useful.

They're definitely not a stand-alone type rules set. You need to refer back to the Traveller rules for many things, but they do have some nice, bolt-on chrome ideas to help set up, and/or run various games.

The space combat rules, as mentioned, are very rudimentary, e.g. single die roll to try to escape a pursuer, and very basic rules for space combat, but good enough I guess, for quick-play resolution with a few die rolls.

I was thinking they'd be more along the lines of the Traveller My Way solo Trading rules, which are available for free, but these will still be useful for adding a bit of interest to those, and/or the other Traveller rules.

It should be pointed out that "Star Trader" is NOT a Mongoose product but is produced by Zozer . . . nevertheless they DO refer to the Mongoose Traveller rule book . . . but I think that they would work for any version of Traveller as well as some other space games.

link

-- Jeff

Picked up the PDF; must say a brief browse suggests no big issue in converting.

Pretty simple stuff which might not be enough for some, but I'm intrigued.

Doug