I ended up picking this up recently and like it so far. Anyone have any good tips on how to run it better? What supplements would you guys say are good? I played 1e ages ago, but don't have much recollection of it to be honest.
>>97929500Read the rules. Play it.
>>97929799I have been reading the rules so far, and I am enjoying it enough with what I have played. I figure seeing if anyone who has played 2e, and traveller in general, would have advice on how to run the game smoothly and keep things interesting.
>>97929500>What supplements would you guys say are good?Robot Handbook is pretty cool and adds more than just robots
>>97929500Central supply catalog is a must. People on both sides of the screen love gear porn and that's all the crazy shit you can just find and make people want to use or MAKE them use. Also High Guard has a lot of really fun stuff for ship building and unique stuff you wouldn't really think of
>>97929500Depends on what kind of game you're playing, and what your players are into. The Companion probably has the most generally useful extra and alternate rules. Otherwise:High Guard if you like custom ship additions or ship design.Robot / Vehicle Handbook if you like robots or vehicles.Central Supply Catalogue if your players are gearheads.The Alien books have extra ships, careers, vehicles etc. for those species.Various other books have extra rules for specific kinds of campaign.
>>97930253Traveller can easily be much more diegetic than most RPGs. If you have a proactive group you should feel free to show players the Trade rules, Traveller Map etc., scatter some patrons around and let them figure out what they want to do, rolling the random encounter tables as they move around. For a more reactive group, run them through some more linear published adventures, there are a million of them and most are easy to chain with minor tweaks.
>>97932289>>97931462>>97931407Thanks for the advice. I picked up a few of the supplements bundled together like the companion, supply catalog, and the robot/vehicle books. They generally are more reactive as a whole.In terms of what my players want, I am not sure if the trade book or high guard would be fun for them. They generally like more of a personal focused crew or trucker campaign than a whole armada of trade routes, and they do not have the ship building autism i do at times. I was thinking of maybe the bounty hunter or the mercenary and special forces book. I looked at the field catalog as well, but that seems to have very mixed reception.
>>97932477You really should see with your players what sort of space adventures they want first.Space hobos scrapping by not even having a ship? Shipowners looking for well-paying patrons? Scouts? Bounty hunters? Mercs? Independent traders? Subsidized traders? Military against whatever enemy? Explorers pushing the boundaries of charted space?
>>97931407>more than just robotsLike what?
Whatever type of campaign you choose, make sure there is a default thing for players to do. The nice thing about the generic tramp trader game is that the mortgage forces players to do freight and/or passengers to make money, which drives travel, which results in random encounters and new planets with new patrons to provide adventure hooks. The equivalent for a merc (e.g.) campaign can be a bit harder to setup, but you can use rumors about nearby conflicts etc. to encourage travel like trade would.
>>97929500Latest Core gets you most stuff. They keep putting more stuff in it, making it more complete. Catalogue is important for gear. High Guard is important for ships. Companion comes with lots of optional rules that may be relevant to you.
>>97934135Clones, cybernetic augmentations.Also it covers more than just star wars droids, the robots can range from literal insects and nanomachines to however large of a ship or vehicle you can attach a robo brain to. You can make a cartoon syringe full of healing nanomachines, a sapient action figure, or just a vat grown dude. There's rules for robot weapons that aim themselves or in one case a flying sword that swordfights for you. There's rules for making realistic, humanlike robots. Rules for animalistic robots, you can have a robot that remote controls other robots so you can have a smart robot hivemind controlling a bunch of drones. You can remote control the robots yourself if you want to ofc. They can do basically anything a human can do and a lot they can't.The rules for making said robots are quite in-depth too, and there is of course guidelines for if someone wanted a robot PCIt's honestly hard to list everything in the book, it's incredibly extensive and I enjoyed reading it. I'd say it's only real flaw is that the rules can be so extensive that it might be hard for a player/GM to keep track of it all. They do have resources on their website to help though, like an official excel spreadsheet to automatically calculate costs and stats for various robot parts.
>>97934410>>97934359>>97932920Thank you for the advice. Overall, they generally seem to want to go somewhere between firefly and the a-team. How are those two mercenary campaign books? Do they mostyl focus on running a whole company, or are they good for some other stuff? They usually don't really like ship building or grand empire building stuff. They generally prefer smaller or more straightforward things on the ground. Like a personal vehicle for them would be cool, but they don't really care much for ship or base building if there is no obvious benefit.
