Friday 5 April 2019

I'm not saying it's Traveller..... but it's Traveller

I found this being referred to online as a decent Traveller clone, and thought I'd check it out.

It's available as a PDF and/or softcover book from DriveThruRPG at https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/237247/Cepheus-Engine-RPG — as of writing it's about seven bucks for the PDF, and thirteen for the hard copy/PDF bundle. And it seems to be fairly well supported with other volumes on planetary systems, vehicles, and so forth, which is all to the good.

Dried out, but still slightly mangled.
Thanks so much, NZ Post.
I liked what I saw of it enough to spring for the extra six whole dollars for the book, and it arrived the other day. Late. Having been dropped in a puddle.

Thanks, NZ Post.

And yep, it's Traveller all right, which suits me just fine.

It's been many, many years since I've played Traveller. We dabbled briefly in T20 when it first appeared, but I didn't like it much — it seemed to me to be a bit too much like D&D with blasters, which is fine as far as it goes, but not what we were looking for. I ran some Travellerish games using the Hero System ages ago, and they were pretty satisfying, but I became weary of the amount of accounting required to keep a Hero campaign running.

http://mojobob.com/…/terr…/campaign_notes/campaignindex.html
http://mojobob.com/rolep…/hero/sci-fi/gaeanreach/sci-fi.html

Anyway, the culmination of my long-running AD&D campaign is in sight at last, and I thought I'd switch gears and try a Traveller game, probably fairly Firefly-ish because I loved that show and the characters in it.

So, now I have a copy of The Traveller Book, and my waterlogged copy of the Cepheus Engine (thanks again, NZ Post!) which has dried out a bit in the hot water cupboard and been ironed dry and flattish. How practical would it be to run a campaign using both at the table? Probably better to stick to just CE. My beloved players are more likely to spring for a $13 copy of Cepheus Engine than forty yankeebucks on their own copies of the Traveller Book.

1 comment:

  1. Hope it works out for you! You know when I first watched Firefly I thought it had a Traveller game vibe! I switched over to GURPS Traveller myself, your right not exactly cheap!

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