Two more RPG Bundles - Mongoose Traveller

[ffutures]

Two bundles for Mongoose's editions of the venerable SF RPG Traveller, one a repeat and the other new

Mongoose Traveller 2E

https://bundleofholding.com/presents/2023MongTrav

This revived May 2021 Mongoose Traveller 2E Bundle is one of two offers in progress featuring the Second Edition Traveller SFRPG line from Mongoose Publishing. This revival has the Starter Set and essential 2E supplements. If you're new to Mongoose Traveller, start here. The new companion offer, Traveller Mercenaries, adds recent soldier-for-hire supplements and adventures on the Solomani Rim and across Charted Space.

This Traveller offer gives you everything you need to play any science fiction RPG campaign: desperate battles across the stars – free traders operating on both sides of the law – grungy cyberpunk cities – or campaigns spanning entire galaxies where mighty empires clash and suns explode. Traveller lets you explore the universe the way it suits you.

We provide each title complete in .PDF. Like all Bundle of Holding titles, these ebooks have NO DRM (Digital Restrictions Management), and our customers are entitled to move them freely among all their devices. (By publisher request, the DriveThruRPG versions of these files are unobtrusively watermarked.)

Ten percent of each purchase (after gateway fees) goes to these two Mongoose Traveller offers' designated charity, Direct Relief. Direct Relief sends protective gear and critical care medications to health workers, with emergency deliveries to medical facilities across the US and to regional response agencies across the world.

The total retail value of the titles in this revived May 2021 Mongoose Traveller 2E Bundle is US$214. Customers who pay just US$17.95 get all three titles in this revived offer's Player Collection (retail value $100) as DRM-free ebooks, including the complete Mongoose Traveller 2E Starter Set (retail price $40), the versatile Traveller Companion (retail $30), and the new Central Supply Catalogue Update 2023 (retail $30). This version of the Central Supply Catalogue replaces the older version in this offer's original run, and all previous purchasers of the May 2021 offer receive the new version automatically.

Those who pay more than this offer's threshold (average) price, which is set at $27.95 to start, also get this revival's entire Referee Collection with ten more titles worth an additional $114, including the essential ship-design supplement High Guard Update 2022 (retail $30) – and again, all previous purchasers of the original run automatically receive this new update – plus the Deployment Shuttle (retail $6); the 2E Vehicle Handbook (retail $30); six Referee's Briefings (retail $6 each) – 1: Companies & Corporations, 2: Anomalies and Wonders, 3: Going Portside, 4: Mercenary Forces, 5: Incidents and Encounters, and 6: Garden Worlds; and the Referee's Screen (retail $12).

 

Traveller Mercenaries

https://bundleofholding.com/presents/TravMercs

This Traveller Mercenaries Bundle is one of two offers in progress that feature the Second Edition Traveller line from Mongoose Publishing. The companion revival from May 2021, Mongoose Traveller 2E, has the Starter Set and essential supplements. If you're new to the game, start there.  Then return here for this all-new offer of recent soldier-for-hire supplements and adventures.

Mercenary has been part of the Traveller line since the 1978 Little Black Book 4. Mongoose published Mercenary 1E (2008) as the first supplement for its Traveller 1E. This offer presents the newest and largest version, the three-book Mercenary Second Edition boxed set (2021). Funded in a February 2021 Kickstarter campaign (1,026 backers, £100K) and designed by longtime Traveller writer Martin J Dougherty, Mercenary 2E presents expanded systems for recruiting merc units of any size from squad to battalion; new mass-combat rules; defined equipment levels from Basic to Standard, Generous, Lavish, and Excessive; and a new ticketing system that lets you line up Commando, Striker, Warfighting, Cadre, Support, and Specialist contracts. A full support line adds tickets, equipment, adventures, and an entire theater of operations, the Solomani Front.

We provide each title complete in .PDF. Like all Bundle of Holding titles, these ebooks have NO DRM (Digital Restrictions Management), and our customers are entitled to move them freely among all their devices. (By publisher request, the DriveThruRPG versions of these files are unobtrusively watermarked.)

Ten percent of each purchase (after gateway fees) goes to these two Traveller offers' designated charity, Direct Relief. Direct Relief sends protective gear and critical care medications to health workers, with emergency deliveries to medical facilities across the US and to regional response agencies across the world.

The total retail value of the titles in this Traveller Mercenaries Bundle is US$198. Customers who pay just US$12.95 get all three titles in our Player Collection (retail value $97) as DRM-free ebooks, including the new Mongoose Second Edition of Mercenary (retail price $40), Mercenaries of Charted Space (retail $27), and the Field Catalogue (retail $30).

Those who pay more than the threshold (average) price, which is set at $24.95 to start, also get our entire Referee Collection with five more titles worth an additional $101, including Specialist Forces (retail price $30), Solomani Front (retail $35), and three Mercenary Adventures (retail $12 each): 1: Verloren Hoop, 2: Bug Hunt, and 3: Must Travel, Need Guns.

In 2021 I said This feels like a return to the roots of Traveller; without a lot of the grimdark elements that predominated in later editions, and with rules that are much closer to the versions that the game began with. There are a lot of new careers and options, but it ought to be possible to get up and running fast if you're familiar with the original game. This isn't to say that it's perfect - I found the explanation of character generation a little confusing, even though I actually know pretty much how it works. There's a flow chart that helps considerably but more of a simplified "these are the things you need to do in this order" explanation might help. Presentation is very good, and avoids some of the pitfalls by minimizing illustrations where they aren't really needed - for example, there is only one illustration of a player character, a spotty nerd just entering college, in the first fifty pages, and sexual balance seems fairly even in later pictures, with zero gratuitous nakedness, at least for pictures of humans.

I'm personally not so interested in Mercenaries, since I tend not to run military campaigns, but the 1978 version was one of the most popular supplements for the original rules, and at a quick glance this is a good updating of it.

The bottom line is that Traveller has been around nearly as long as D&D, and as a result there's a vast range of material in print for it: Supplements, campaigns, space sectors, alternative universes with variant history, and anything else you could possibly want for an SF game, and publishers like Mongoose have kept it up to the standards people expect from modern RPGs. If you're even slightly interested in running an SF campaign it should be high on your list of systems to check out.