Not surprisingly, the HTML version is simply easier to use on the iPad and on the computer. HTML resizes for screen size by its very nature better than PDFs. The other two documents are great, they are well-designed for print, but for older eyes like mine I find them a bit harder to use. I don’t really like having to constantly resize the PDF. Maybe it’s just me. Now, they are usable. I’m not saying they aren’t. They are both well-bookmarked. It is fairly easy to move to desired sections in the documents. It’s just the reading.
Full disclosure - I love all three versions. I understand that no one is getting rich off publishing these documents. They are pretty much doing a public service, which is much appreciated.
Stuff I like and stuff I want
I’ve got pretty much every version of Cepheus Engine, Classic Traveller, and both editions of Mongoose Traveller. Running my Classic Traveller campaign one thing I had to invent was a system for vehicle combat. So I invented one, and it worked really well, then I found Omer Golan-Joels vehicle combat stuff on his blog Den of the Lizard King as well as his versions in Cepheus Light and Cepheus Deluxe and some other systems. Mine is pretty good, but these other systems are all better. Not my fault. I was just getting started on all this!
But I’d like to see a vehicle combat system actually added to a base Cepheus Engine SRD. Given the importance of vehicle chases, combat, and dogfights in SF movies, it was kind of conspicuous in its absense from Classic Traveller. To me it should be part of the core of any SF RPG. Now, since it is all based off the Mongoose Traveller 1st Edition SRD, I have no idea if it is possible to add stuff. I’m just blabbering.
So I have downloaded the MS Word Version of the Samardan Press’s version as well as the entire HTML version available from GitHub. When I have an extra month in my life I’d like to add vehicle combat to a core SRD.
Skills
Thus far, comparing skills between Classic Traveller, the SRD, and other versions, in general I prefer the SRD as an improvement on Classic Traveller. I think they (Mongoose, I suppose) got it right in this version (Right for me, at least. To each his own). In particular, I like the way they adjusted the various weapon skills, other cascade skills, and the background and service skills. The addition of all service skills at level zero makes a lot of sense to me. I like that Engineering includes all the major ship systems. For me that is the right level of granularity.
To me, if you have Engineering-3, you are at Montgomery Scott Miracle-Worker level. You should be able to fix anything on the ship. How do I arrive at this conclusion? In the old Citizens of the Imperium supplement, the writeup of Darth Vader gives him Pilot-3. If Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader is Pilot-3, then I feel that Engineer-3 should be Mr. Scott. Honestly, I kinda play it like this. Level-1 = bachelors degree. Level-2 = master’s degree. Level-3 = PhD. Anything over level 3 is super grandmaster overlord level (Vader is given Blade Combat -5 in CotI).
Well, I’m rambling here with my not-that-well-thought-out opinions.
Scientist term 1
Sciences-2 (social sciences)
Commission and Promotion in first term - rank 2
Admin-1
Animals (Survival) -1
term 2
Linguistics (precursor dialects?)-1
term 3
advances to rank 3
adds Computer-1 for rank 3
2 new skills
Advocate-1
+1 DX from Personal Dev
Musters Out
+1 Ed, +1 SS from material benefits
Mid Passage
Service skills at level 0 from Rogue
Mech-0, Gun Cbt-0 (slug pistol), Melee Cbt-0 (slashing weapons), Recon-0, Grav Vehicle-0
Service skill at zero from scientist
Elec-0
Age: 18+6 (for 1.5 terms) +12 (for 3 terms)= 36 years
Aging roll: 2-4 - -2
Reduce each physical characteristic by 1
Final Character: Ral Partha
6B49B7
Background Skills: Melee-0 (bludgeoning), Zero G-0, Medicine-0, Carousing-0
Service Skills:Mech-0, Gun Cbt-0 (slug rifle), Melee Cbt-0, Electronics-0, Melee-0(slashing weapons), Recon-0, Grav Vehicle-0
Earned skills: Gun combat-1 (slug pistol), Streetwise-1, Sciences-2 (social sciences), Admin-1, Animals-1 (survival), Linguistics-1, Advocate-1
36 years old
20,000cr
Mid-passage
Background: Grew up poor in an asteroid colony, resulting in low endurance due to low gravity. Highly intelligent but no guidance - fell in with the wrong crowed and became somewhat of a street rogue. Injured during a burglary gone wrong and lost his position in the gang. Reevaluated his life, used high intelligence to go to university, studying social sciences. Field work on primitive worlds as well as bureaucratic work on a couple of colony planets. After 12 years of such work found his jobs boring. Retired, mustered out, and now seeks adventure and riches.
I found it pretty easy to use. There is a bit of flipping back and forth on the site, which might be easier to do with the printed book, but it wasn’t bad. I did this while sitting in my chair, watching TV with my wife. I used an online dice rolling application as well.
As most RPG players know, one of the best way to learn a big chunk of a system’s rules is to roll up some characters of various different types. It will lead you through the process of learning about the game, from the players point of view, without being overwhelmed. I found this to be the case with the Cepheus Engine. Even though I’m an experienced player of Classic Traveller, there are enough differences that I need to study the Cepheus Engine to really understand it.
Anyway, without going through the whole character, I rolled the dice and put them down on the character record sheet as rolled. No third “drop-die” or an extra “drop” roll. I just rolled ‘em and took ‘em. Ran the character through a term as a Rogue. He failed the survival roll for term 2, which gave me a chance to try out the Mishap table rather than killing him. Ended up with an injury.
This in turn let me make the roll and succeed to begin a second career - this time as a scientist. Doing this forced me to learn the rules for 2nd careers as far as skill learned and all that. I ran him through three terms as a scientist before rolling to see if he was able to retire, which he could. So that is 4.5 terms of service (the failed second term in Rogues equals a half term. So that is 18 years of service, for a total age of 36.
I’ve not finished the character yet. Tonight I need to make his Aging roll, which is different than in Classic Traveller. I forgot about that this morning.
I’ve look through some of the other rules in the SRD, and they are all faithfull to the “feel” and tradition of Classic Traveller while really being an improvement. I like that in the first term of service a character gets all the skills from their profession’s Service Skills table at level-0. This makes a lot of sense to me. There are other changes to the skills that I think are entirely positive.
My initial excitement over the online version of the SRD seems well-justified. It is very useable, and of course the game is just great. I feel like especially for people doing a homebrew campaign who don’t need a bunch of setting material the Cepheus Engine SRD is really a perfect modern SF RPG.
I’m going to explore converting my Classic Traveller homebrew campaign to Cepheus Engine. At this point, only a few skills would change, and addition of 0-level Service Skills would make sense for our campaign. Frankly it would codify a lot of things we’re already doing, that I wrote into our House Rules.
It is 3:48pm Sunday afternoon. I have a list of things I wanted to do for my Traveller game today, but apparently I’m incapable of really working on anything before about 8pm at night. Not sure why. So I’m writing this blog post instead. Most people reading this will already know everything I’m about to write. That’s fine. This is really just me thinking “out loud.”
In a previous post I wrote about the Cepheus Engine. When I returned to the world (universe?) of Traveller back in 2016 I found variations on Traveller very confusing. What was Mongoose Traveller? What was the Cepheus Engine? What was all the stuff coming from Omer Golan-Joel? Independence Games? The list of things to be confused about seemed endless.
It took a while to sort this stuff out. Now I understand that the “mess” I had encountered is actually a thriving, healthy, vibrant ecosystem of gaming material all inspired by the original Traveller game. While we now have publishers like Stellagama and Independence and others who’ve diverged sufficiently from Mongoose Traveller 1st Edition that they are really their own things, they all still share a love of science fiction roleplaying.
Since really exploring the online Cepheus Engine Reference Document for the last week I can’t seem to get it out of my head. I have owned a hard copy (seen in the image below) of the SRD for several years now. I’ve imported several of its useful systems into my Classic Traveller campaign.
Rather than writing a crappy explanation of what The Cepheus Engine is, who who publishes what, I’l just link to this page from Paul Elliot Books. It shows that the original SRD came from Jason Kemp, and is available on a pay what you want basis.
Conversion of the SRD to this hypertext document really made it pop for me. I have actually downloaded the entire hypertext SRD from GitHub in case it should ever disappear
Maybe it’s because the online version just looks so good on my computer and my iPad. Like so many people, I feel like the internet has destroyed my attention span. I think it more likely, however, that the way it’s presented in the online version is just easier on my eyes. It’s very easy to navigate. Like - super easy. Easier, I think, than flipping through a book. The stripped-down nature of the SRD certainly facilitates this. This is the basic DNA of an SF RPG campaign. You supply the setting and all that.
Actually, I just figured out why I can’t get this out of my head…
Imagine.
A 15-year old with no money for expensive game books finds this stuff. They download the SRD and/or bookmark the online version on their computer, tablet, or phone. They go to the generator page and create a random subsector. They save the star map to their device, along with a screen shot or the text of the subsector details. They look at those numbers and rules. They share this with a few friends. The friends generate characters using these free materials. The original kid uses imagination to give life to that subsector. They steal a few six-sided dice from a sibling’s board game. Suddenly you have a whole new gaming group born with zero expenditure of money.
That’s powerful. That is accessible. Even a kid with no computer, tablet, or phone could go to the public library and print out everything they need.
A few years ago we had the OGL debacle. The potential revocation of the Open Gaming License held great peril for the publishers who’ve come to depend on it. Disrupting all of that would be been bad for those businesses. At least inconvenient, potentially disastrous.
But when I consider that averted calamity in light of my little story above – I think that would be the real loss. To sell professional gaming materials companies need gamers. And the old ones are…old. We need new gamers. We need new 2d6 SF gamers. Allowing these inexpensive or free materials to exist and flourish is an investment in the future. Those kids will grow up and buy your hardbacks if they are nice.
It’s the beauty of that original Traveller box, with three little black books and two tiny dice, for a very small price. BUT it’s even cheaper, and a kid with no gaming or comic store nearby can get it.
I’m very inspired by this campaign. Jeff and I are going to discuss it on SAFCOcast, but I thought I’d mention it here. Actually as a first “original” post on this blog I felt compelled to. The Campaign Pitch page really sold me on it, and then reading the first few session reports made me love it even more. It reminds me a lot of our Into the Void campaign, but it seems better.
They’ve been on hiatus for a while now, which I can understand. So have we. It’s been almost a year since we’ve played. Sometimes that happens, but that doesn’t mean the campaign has ended. I hope they start up again soon.
A few things that really struck me about this campaign as a GM.
They just use the online Cepheus Engine System Reference Document (linked to above)
They play relatively short sessions. 2 hours per week. That makes it easy on everyone
They don’t appear to have used any purchased materials. All the stuff seems to be free and online
Now, I’m not suggesting that people shouldn’t buy cool stuff from publishers. Frankly, I need to do that. I suck at designing ships, for one thing, and I love finding great maps on DriveThru RPG and adapting them to my game. But the ability to run a really good campaign using only free, online materials shows how accessible this hobby is. I’m blown away.
I’ll leave you with this. Peter runs a more general RPG blog, and on it he did this One year of classics 2d6 sci-fi adventure summary, which I really loved. I want to do it for my campaign.
