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Loot: More Traveller Stuff

This morning I had three books that I ordered from DriveThruRPG a while ago in the mail. Initially  I tried to order these books from a local shop, but it seems most German and UK distributors don’t have access to most of the Mongoose stuff anymore. I have absolutely no idea, why that’s the case, but that meant I had to rely on DriveThruRPG’s POD service.

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The first book I ordered was the Traveller Core Rulebook. I already own a hardcover version of said book, but I was hoping to get the 2nd printing. But alas for some reason the POD edition is based on the 1st printing. I haven’t checked if the errata has been edited in, but the artwork is definitely from the 1st printing. This means that the PDF you get looks different than the printed book. This is no big deal, but it definitely feels wrong somehow. But overall I am still happy with the book. I like the softcover format more than the hardcover one and the price was reasonable.

The next book was Supplement 2: Traders and Gunboats. It contains a plethora of spaceship designs from small civilian ships to large military vessels. Each ship comes with a deckplan and an illustration. Alas some of the illustrations don’t seem to match the deckplans and look pretty nonsensical to me. Luckily this can be easily ignored. For me it’s definitely a must-have book if you plan to run a game in the Original Traveller Universe (OTU).

Last but not least I got a copy of Spinward Encounters, a book containing a large number of adventure hooks and several adventures set into the Spinward Marches. Instead of the other two books it hasn’t been written by Mongoose, but is from Comstar Media. The book is published by Mongoose and uses the Third Imperium cover and backcover design, but the interior doesn’t use the regular Traveller look. To be honest it reminded me more of my Traveller rulebook from the 80s. While the adventure hooks and adventures look interesting enough and will probably fit into everyone’s game easily, I would have preferred a slightly more professional layout. But aside from that minor quibble the book is definitely fine.

Overall the quality of the printing and binding is ok. The only thing that bothers me a bit is that the black text and large black areas in the artwork are pretty shiny. This is something I haven’t noticed in other POD books before.

I am still waiting for my copy of the Spinward Marches book to arrive and I recently got the Spinward Marches map by 13 Mann, which is as awesome as I hoped. So I might post short reviews of these products in the future. So stay tuned.
Stargazer

Michael Wolf is a German games designer and enthusiast best known for his English language role-playing games blog, Stargazer's World, and for creating the free rules-light medieval fantasy adventure game Warrior, Rogue & Mage. He has also worked as an English translator on the German-language Dungeonslayers role-playing game and was part of its editorial team. In addition to his work on Warrior, Rogue & Mage and Dungeonslayers, he has created several self-published games and also performed layout services and published other independent role-playing games such as A Wanderer's Romance, Badass, and the Wyrm System derivative Resolute, Adventurer & Genius, all released through his imprint Stargazer Games. Professionally, he works as a video technician and information technologies specialist. Stargazer's World was started by Michael in August 2008.

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6 comments

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tehbagder

Regarding the issue with the core book, contact DTRPG about that. I had this happen to me a few years back, and they resolved it by eventually sending me out the correct printing to match the revised version (after sending out another incorrect copy). POD for that went away for a while (not due to me I think. I hope). But I’m shocked to hear that it’s still a problem. There’s no reason the POD files should be out of sync again.
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    Stargazer

    Thanks for the advice. I’ll get in touch with Mongoose then.
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      tehbagder

      You can use DTRPG’s resolution system to start the ball rolling on that. They’ll do all the dealing with the publisher and sorting out out with the printers. It could just be that the particular printer that printed your copy has the outdated POD files.
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        Stargazer

        Ah, ok. Makes sense. I’ll do so!
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charl

I agree that the illustrations in Traders and Gunboats do not seem to match the deck plans. I’ve been staring at many of them trying to puzzle out what’s going on, but ultimately it just doesn’t make any sense. Someone in the art department failed it seems.

I have I believe most MgT books as pdfs by now. Don’t own any hardcovers, since I can’t find the here in Sweden. Good tip about POD though. Will definitely check that out.

I’ve never actually had opportunity to use Traders and Gunboats. My group has so far stuck to a simple Far Trader from the core book (in which, btw, some of the ship illustrations also don’t seem to match the deckplans). But if you’re in the market for other books at some point then I highly recommend the Alien series. I’ve found all of them (well, I don’t have the Minor Race Luriani or Solomani ones so can’t speak for that) quite nice, especially the Aslan and Vargr. They both gave me a whole new respect and understanding of them as they are intended to be in the OTU. The Aslan book also contains information about the Trojan Reach sector. I liked this section so much I based my current campaign there.
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    charl

    Mean to say printed book in general rather than hardcover. Oops.
    Reply